Anita Garibaldi

Anita Garibaldi fought in three wars on two continents and died on a retreat at twenty-eight, eight months pregnant. She was born Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro in Santa Catarina in southern Brazil, of a poor family, and married off at fourteen to a shoemaker who left to join the imperial army. Garibaldi was in Brazil fighting for the breakaway republic of Rio Grande do Sul when they met in 1839; the story he tells is that he saw her through a telescope, went ashore, and said that she must be his. She fought beside him rather than following him. She was captured at Curitibanos, escaped on a horse through country held by the enemy, and at Laguna handled a cannon and reportedly went back through fire for the ammunition. They moved to Uruguay for the war against Rosas's Argentina, where she ran the household in Montevideo through a siege and where they were married in 1842, their first son having been born in a camp. She sailed for Italy in 1848 ahead of him and was in Rome for the republic of 1849. When the French took the city the column retreated across the peninsula pursued by four armies. She refused to be left behind, rode with it through the marshes, and died near Ravenna in August 1849 - probably of malaria - in a farmhouse. He buried her hurriedly and a dog uncovered the grave, which produced an inquest and a rumour, never substantiated, that he had killed her. She is on the Janiculum in Rome on horseback with a pistol in one hand and a baby in the other.

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