The ships from Genoa with Giuseppe Garibaldi in command approached the island of Sicily on May 11, 1860. There were French and British frigates in the harbor at Marsala, and Garibaldi had been ordered to avoid contact with the French. He wasn’t very good at following orders, believing that his instincts were best, but he also knew that the heavily armed French vessels could attack and sink his ships, the Piemonte and the Lombardo and, with that action, his expedition would come to a sudden and dispiriting end.
PiemonteLombardoDivided between his two boats he had approximately one thousand men ready for battle. Garibaldi knew that ‘ready’ might be a stretch. His army, what had already become known as I Mille – The Thousand – was composed of more lawyers, merchants, and accountants than sol
