Vincenzo Giordano Orsini Bust

In May 1860, Vincenzo Giordano Orsini led a diversion while Garibaldi advanced toward Palermo. His small force drew Bourbon troops away from the route into the city. The episode gives this artillery officer a specific place in the Expedition of the Thousand: maneuver and professional military training helped a volunteer army succeed.

Orsini had learned that profession in the army he later opposed. Born in Palermo in 1817, he trained at the Nunziatella military college in Naples. During the Sicilian revolution of 1848 he joined the insurgents and directed artillery. Defeat sent him abroad, where he served in the Ottoman forces before returning to the Italian struggle.

After joining Garibaldi in 1860, he took responsibility for artillery and served in the revolutionary government in Sicily. He later entered the Italian army and returned to Garibaldi’s volunteers in 1866. His career exposes a division within the old Bourbon officer corps: men with a shared education fought on opposite sides of unification. Orsini died in Naples in 1889.