“I Mille,” Vito said as I wove through the crowd toward him that evening.
I Mille“Sì, The Thousand,” I translated. It was the historical nickname for the small band of followers attracted to Giuseppe Garibaldi in the leadup to the revolution in 1860. The actual count varies from seven hundred to nearly eleven hundred, but I Mille has become the folklore captured in history books.
SìI Mille“Before Garibaldi arrived, there had been protests in Palermo and Messina in April,” Vito continued, “but the Bourbon king of Two Sicilies, Francis II, was able to put them down quickly. Then Garibaldi entered the picture and things began to change.”
“How so? I read he was from Nice. What was he doing in Sicily?”
“That makes an interesting story, an historical ‘what if?’ so to speak,” Vito said with a
