Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose Red Shirts conquered Sicily and Naples in 1860 and helped forge a unified Italy, died at his farmhouse on the island of Caprera. Revered across Europe as a champion of national liberation, he had fought for causes from South America to the American Civil War's edges. His death prompted mourning across a nation he had helped create but never fully governed.
Giuseppe Garibaldi spent his final years farming a small, rocky island off Sardinia, a strange retirement for a man once hailed as the era's greatest revolutionary soldier. He had led a private army of a thousand red-shirted volunteers to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860, then handed the conquered territory to King Victor Emmanuel II, prioritizing Italian unity over personal power, an act of political self-denial almost unheard of among revolutionaries.
Before Italy, Garibaldi had already made his name fighting for republican causes in South America, commanding forces in Brazil and Uruguay through the 1830s and 1840s, earning the nickname of the Hero of Two Worlds. Abraham Lincoln reportedly considered offering him a Union command during the American Civil War.
By the time of his death, arthritis had crippled him and he could barely walk, yet he remained a living symbol of the Risorgimento. He asked to be cremated on a pyre facing the sea, though the Italian government, wanting a state funeral, buried him instead. Streets, piazzas, and statues bearing his name still dominate nearly every Italian city, a testament to how thoroughly he shaped the nation's founding myth.
Key people: Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II