Missori when a party of the enemy’s cavalry rode up, the captain of which dealt a violent blow at him with his sword, without knowing who it was.  Garibaldi coolly parried the blow, and struck down his assailant, while Missori shot the three nearest dragoons with his revolver.  Hearing the noise, other Garibaldians hurried up, and the chief was saved.  For a long time the issue of the battle remained uncertain, and it was only after hours of severe fighting that Del Bosco was compelled to recognise his defeat, and to take refuge on the projecting strip of land as Garibaldi had meant that he should do.

A few days later, four transports arrived in the bay of Milazzo to carry Del Bosco and his men to Naples.  The ministry had prevailed, and the complete abandonment of the island was decreed.  General Clary, commandant of Messina, informed Garibaldi that he had orders to evacuate the town and its outlying forts; the citadel would be also handed over if the Dictator would engage not to cross to the mainland, but this conditional offer was declined.  The citadel of Messina therefore remained in the power of the royalists, but on agreement that it should not resume hostilities unless attacked.  It only capitulated in March 1861.  Garibaldi reigned over the rest of the island.  The convention was signed on the 28th of July by Marshal Tommaso de Clary for the King of Naples, and Major-General Giacomo Medici for the Dictator.

Before following Garibaldi across the Straits, some allusion is called for to the general political situation both in Sicily and in Italy.  And first as regards Sicily.  When a government is pulled down another must be set up, and the last task is often not the easiest.  Garibaldi appointed a ministry in which the ruling spirit was Francesco Crispi.  A Sicilian patriot from his youth, and one of the Thousand, he has been judged the man best fitted to direct the helm of United Italy in days of unexampled difficulty.  This is enough to prove that he was not the first-come ignoramus or madman that some people then liked to think him.  But Crispi had the art of making enemies, nor has he lost it.  Though volumes have been written on the civil administration under the dictatorship, the writers’ judgments are so warped by their political leanings that it is not easy to get at the truth.  It would have been strange had no confusion existed, had no false steps been made; yet some of the old English residents in Sicily say that the island made more real progress during the few months of Garibaldi’s reign than in all the years that have followed.  Towards the end of June, Garibaldi appointed Agostino Depretis as Pro-Dictator.  Of the many decrees formulated and measures adopted at this period, Garibaldi, who had many other things to think of, was personally responsible only for those of a philanthropic nature.  Busy as he was, he found time to inquire minutely into the State of the population of Palermo, and he was horrified at the ignorance and misery in which