General La Marmora, then Prefect of Naples, and commander-in-chief of the army in the south, reinforced the troops in Calabria to prevent Garibaldi’s advance, but the direction of the decisive operation fell by accident to Cialdini, whom the Government despatched to Sicily when they tardily made up their minds to take energetic measures.  On his voyage to Messina, Cialdini heard that the volunteers had already crossed the Straits; he therefore changed his course, and hastening to Reggio, invested himself with the command on the mainland.  At Reggio he met Colonel Pallavicini, whom he ordered in terms that might have been more suitable had he been engaged in hunting brigands, ’to crush Garibaldi completely, and only accept from him unconditional surrender.’  Pallavicini started with six or seven battalions of Bersaglieri.  It was the 29th of August.  Garibaldi saw them coming when they were still three miles off.  He could have dispersed his men in the forest and himself escaped, for the time, and perhaps altogether, for the sea which had so often befriended him was not far off.  But although he did not mean to resist, a dogged instinct drove away the thought of flight.  In the official account it was stated that an officer was sent in advance of the royal troops to demand surrender.  No such officer was seen in the Garibaldian encampment till after the attack.  The troops rapidly ascended an eminence, facing that on which the Garibaldians were posted, and opened a violent fusillade, which, to Garibaldi’s dismay, was returned for a few minutes by his right, consisting of young Sicilians who were not sufficiently disciplined to stand being made targets of without replying.  The contention, however, that they were the first to fire, has the testimony of every eye-witness on the side of the volunteers against it.  All the Garibaldian bugles sounded ‘Cease firing,’ and Garibaldi walked down in front of the ranks conjuring the men to obey.  While he was thus employed, a spent ball struck his thigh, and a bullet entered his right foot.  At first he remained standing, and repeated, ’Do not fire,’ but he was obliged to sit down, and some of his officers carried him under a tree.  The whole ‘feat of arms,’ as General Cialdini described it, did not last more than a quarter of an hour.

Pallavicini approached the wounded hero bareheaded, and said that he made his acquaintance on the most unfortunate day of his own life.  He was received with nothing but kind praise for doing his duty.  The first night was passed by the prisoner in a shepherd’s hut.  The few devoted followers who were with him were strangely impressed by that midnight watch; the moon shining on the forest, the shepherds’ dogs howling in the mountain silence, and their chief lying wounded, it might be to death, in the name of the King to whom he had given this land.

Next day, in a litter sheltered from the sun with branches of wild laurel, Garibaldi was carried down the steep rocks to Scilla, whence he was conveyed by sea to the fort of Varignano.  It was not till after months of acute suffering, borne with a gentleness that made the doctors say:  ‘This man is not a soldier, but a saint,’ that, through the skill of the French surgeon, Nelaton, the position of the ball was determined, and its extraction rendered possible.