But the people had no desire for such reconciliation; the Assembly decreed that Rome should have no garrison but the National Roman Guard:  that if the Republic were invaded by force, the invaders by force should be repelled.  A commission of barricades established, the people flocked to erect and remained to man them.  The National Guard summoned by Mazzini all answered, “Present,” and served enthusiastically throughout the siege; all the troops dispersed in the Provinces were summoned to the capital, and Garibaldi and his volunteers marched into the city amid the acclamations of the populace, too thankful to welcome them to demur at the strange appearance they presented.

Now that Garibaldi’s military and naval genius is fully recognized, and the extraordinary fascination he exercised over officers and men, the enthusiasm with which he filled whole populations whom others failed to stir, are undisputed, many historians and critics have expressed their astonishment that he was not made at once commander-in-chief of the Roman forces, and have blamed the Triumvirate for having failed to recognize in the hero of Montevideo the good genius of Rome.  Such critics must be simply ignorant of the actual condition of Rome and her Government.  There existed, in the first place, the regular Roman army, which would have served under none save regular generals; then there was the Lombard battalion under Manara, whose members, after fifteen months of regular campaigning, were thoroughly drilled and disciplined, who insisted on retaining the cross of Savoy on their belts, and, until their prowess made them the idols of the Romans, were nicknamed the “corps of aristocrats.”

Little did they imagine, when they kept aloof from the legion, that before three months were over their young hero chief would resign his command of them to assume the delicate post of head of Garibaldi’s staff.  Carlo Pisacane—­educated in the military college of the Nunziatella, who had served as captain in the foreign legion in Algiers, destined later to become the pioneer of Garibaldi and his “Thousand” and to lose his life in the attempt—­while recognizing Garibaldi’s prowess and talents as a guerilla chief, in his military history of 1849, severely criticises his tactics, and blames his sending up “a handful of boys against masses of the enemy” and censures, unhesitatingly, “his indiscipline at Velletri.”  One of the Deputies of the Roman Constituent wrote to the Triumvirate begging them to “Send Garibaldi with his motley crew to a terrible spot, called For del Diavolo, between Civita Vecchia and Rome; on no account to allow them to enter the city, as they are quite too disorderly.”