Southern Army (Italy)

[2] Garibaldi's second dictatorial decree on 14 May formed a national Sicilian militia and set up a tax to fund keeping public order.

During the redshirts' advance even more volunteers joined little by little from all across southern Italy, making a major contribution to the battle of the Volturno, at which they outnumbered the Savoy element in Garibaldi's forces.

When Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy's army reached the front line in October 1860, Garibaldi handed over his force of around 50,000 redshirts to him and returned to Caprera.

[10][11] Others included Percy Wyndham,[12] the Irish artilleryman Dick Dowling and for short periods the Americans Chatham Roberdeau Wheat and Charles Carrol Hicks, who returned to America to fight in the Confederate Army,[13] along with Garibaldi's 'English-Garibaldian' body-double John Whitehead Peard.

One of the most notable foreign volunteers in the Southern Army was the English colonel John William Dunne, nicknamed 'milordo' by the Sicilian street-urchins he enlisted into his regiment.

[15] There were also many Scottish volunteers such as captain Cowper of Aberdeen, noted for his command of an artillery battery at Volturno - Garibaldi was very popular in Scotland, where many saw him as an Italian William Wallace fighting for national freedom.

[16] The foreign officers also included the exiled Hungarians István Türr.,[17] Nándor Éber, Carlo Eberhardt and Lajos Tüköry (who fell at Palermo), the Polish soldier Aleksander Izenschmid de Milbitz and the "Finnish-Garibaldian" Herman Liikanen.

They had also raised British awareness on the issue of Italian unification and formed associations such as the People's International League, founded by Giuseppe Mazzini in 1847, replaced in 1856 by the Emancipation of Italy Fund Committee led by Aurelio Saffi, Jessie White, Alessandro Gavazzi and Felice Orsini, which set up a conference circuit in Britain and the USA.