1807-1882
Italian Nationalist

Wanted Man. Garibaldi was born in Nice, France, into a family of fishermen; he was largely self-educated and spent much of his youth as a sailor on Mediterranean merchant ships. Sometime before 1833 he joined the navy of Sardinia- Piedmont and gained his first military experiences. In 1833 he joined Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy movement, which was dedicated to freeing the Italian people from foreign rule and to unifying the country as a self-governing republic. In 1834 Garibaldi participated in a mutiny aboard a Piedmontese warship in a plot designed to spark a republican revolution in Piedmont, but the plot was discovered and foiled by the local police. Garibaldi was condemned to death in absentia by a Genoese court, but he escaped to France and then to South America. In 1836-1848 he lived as an exile in South America. He volunteered for the navy of the...