The Dictatorship of Garibaldi or Dictatorial Government of Sicily was the provisional executive that Giuseppe Garibaldi appointed to govern the territory of Sicily during the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860. It governed in opposition to the Bourbons of Naples. The word dictator did not, at this time, always imply a despotic ruler.
On 14 May 1860 in Salemi, Garibaldi announced that he was assuming dictatorship over Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. On 17 May, Francesco Crispi was appointed First Secretary of State. [1]
The Redshirts advanced to Palermo, the capital of the island, and launched a siege on 27 May. On 2 June 1860 in Palermo were appointed four secretaries of State and created six departments. Created the Sicilian Army and a fleet of the government of Sicily. [2]
The pace of Garibaldi's victories had worried Cavour, who in early July sent him a proposal of immediate annexation of Sicily to Piedmont. Garibaldi vehemently refused to allow such a move until the end of the war. Cavour's envoy, Giuseppe La Farina, was arrested and expelled from the island. He was replaced by the more malleable Agostino Depretis, who gained Garibaldi's trust and was appointed as pro-dictator. [3]
The dictatorial government ended 2 December 1860, while November, 4, the annexation of the Kingdom of Italy was ratified by the popular plebiscite of 21 October.
From 2 December 1860 to 5 January 1862 the dictatorship was followed by the "General Lieutenancy of the king for Sicily".
Francis II was King of the Two Sicilies. He was the last King of the Two Sicilies as successive invasions by Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia ultimately brought an end to his rule, as part of Italian unification. After he was deposed, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Sardinia were merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.
Francesco Crispi was an Italian patriot and statesman. He was among the main protagonists of the Risorgimento, a close friend and supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and one of the architects of Italian unification in 1860. Crispi served as Prime Minister of Italy for six years, from 1887 to 1891, and again from 1893 to 1896, and was the first prime minister from Southern Italy. Crispi was internationally famous and often mentioned along with world statesmen such as Otto von Bismarck, William Ewart Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury.
Agostino Depretis was an Italian statesman and politician. He served as Prime Minister of Italy for several stretches between 1876 and 1887, and was leader of the Historical Left parliamentary group for more than a decade. He is the fourth-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history, after Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Giolitti and Silvio Berlusconi, and at the time of his death he was the longest-served. Depretis is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history.
Giovanni Nicotera was an Italian patriot and politician. His surname is pronounced as, with stress on the second syllable.
Nicola Fabrizi was an Italian politician, born at Sassi, Garfagnana under the jurisdiction of Modena. Fabrizi was one of the most militant and dedicated leaders of the Risorgimento, the movement aimed at the unification of Italy.
Michele Benedetto Gaetano Amari was a Sicilian patriot, liberal revolutionary and politician of aristocratic background, historian and orientalist. He rose to prominence as a champion of Sicilian independence from the Neapolitan Bourbon rule when he published his history of the War of the Sicilian Vespers in 1842. He was a minister in the Sicilian revolutionary government of 1848–9 and in Garibaldi's revolutionary cabinet in Sicily in 1860. Having embraced the cause of Italian unification, he was active in his later years as a senator of the Kingdom of Italy.
The Expedition of the Thousand was an event of the unification of Italy that took place in 1860. A corps of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto al Mare near Genoa and landed in Marsala, Sicily, in order to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the Spanish House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. The name of the expedition derives from the initial number of participants, which was around 1,000 people.
This is a timeline of the unification of Italy.
The Battle of Calatafimi was fought on the 15 May 1860 between Giuseppe Garibaldi's Redshirts and the troops of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies at Calatafimi, Sicily, as part of the Expedition of the Thousand. The battle was the first of Garibaldi's victory during his invasion of Sicily in 1860 and saw his 'Thousand' defeat a larger Neapolitan army sent from Palermo to block the roads to the Sicilian capital.
Agostino Bertani was an Italian revolutionary and physician during Italian unification.
The Left group, later called Historical Left by historians to distinguish it from the left-wing groups of the 20th century, was a liberal and reformist parliamentary group in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. The members of the Left were also known as Democrats or Ministerials. The Left was the dominant political group in the Kingdom of Italy from the 1870s until its dissolution in the early 1910s.
Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri, generally known as the Count of Cavour or simply Cavour, was an Italian politician, statesman, businessman, economist, and noble, and a leading figure in the movement towards Italian unification. He was one of the leaders of the Historical Right and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1852, a position he maintained until his death, throughout the Second Italian War of Independence and Giuseppe Garibaldi's campaigns to unite Italy. After the declaration of a united Kingdom of Italy, Cavour took office as the first Prime Minister of Italy; he died after only three months in office and did not live to see the Roman Question solved through the complete unification of the country after the Capture of Rome in 1870.
Giuseppe Natoli Gongora di Scaliti was an Italian lawyer and politician from the Mediterranean island of Sicily. He was Minister of Agriculture under Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, in the first government of the Kingdom of Italy after unification in 1861.
Antonio Mordini was a longstanding Italian patriot and, after 1861, a member of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy. In 1869 he served as Minister of Public Works of the Kingdom of Italy, a member of the third Menabrea government.
The Southern Army was the force of around 50,000 Italian and foreign volunteers which formed as a result of the Expedition of the Thousand. The name was coined by Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The Obelisk for the 13 Victims of 14 April 1860 is a monument honoring the thirteen prisoners executed, without trial, for conspiring to lead a revolt against the Bourbon monarchy. It is located in a park, the Piazza delle XIII Vittime, at the intersection of Via Cavour and Via Francesco Crispi, just north of the church of San Giorgio dei Genovesi in the ancient quarter of Castellammare of Palermo, region of Sicily, Italy.
Giorgio Pallavicino Trivulzio was a Lombard aristocrat who became a long-standing patriot activist-politician. He was consistent in his backing of Italian unification between 1820 and its accomplishment.
Ferdinando Lanza was a lieutenant-general who fought against Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand. During the conflict, Lanza was stationed at Palermo but surrendered after the siege on May 30, 1860.
Filippo Cordova was an Italian patriot, jurist and politician.
Diego Antonio Tajani was an Italian magistrate and politician. He served as a senator of the Kingdom of Italy and as Minister of Justice in the of the third, seventh and eighth Depretis governments.
