Giuseppe Garibaldi - Early Years

Early Years

Giuseppe Garibaldi was born and christened Joseph Marie Garibaldi on July 4, 1807 in Nice, which at the time was part of France, to Giovanni Domenico Garibaldi and Maria Rosa Nicoletta Raimondo. In 1814, the Congress of Vienna returned Nice to Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia. In 1860, however, Victor Emmanuel II ceded the County of Nice together with Savoy to France in return for French aid in Italy's unification wars.

Garibaldi's family's involvement in coastal trade drew him to a life at sea. He participated actively in the community of the Nizzardo Italians and was certified in 1832 as a merchant marine captain.

In April 1833 he travelled to Taganrog, Russia, in the schooner Clorinda with a shipment of oranges. During ten days in port he met Giovanni Battista Cuneo from Oneglia, a politically active immigrant and member of the secret La Giovine Italia / Young Italy movement of Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was an impassioned proponent of Italian unification as a liberal republic through political and social reform. Garibaldi joined the society and took an oath dedicating himself to the struggle to liberate and unify his homeland free from Austrian dominance.

In Geneva during November 1833, Garibaldi met Mazzini, starting a long relationship that later became troublesome. He joined the Carbonari revolutionary association, and in February 1834 participated in a failed Mazzinian insurrection in Piedmont. A Genoese court sentenced him to death in absentia, and he fled across the border to Marseille.