On
a peaceful knoll overlooking the Golden Gate, in the National Cemetery of San
Francisco, under a headstone with the simple inscription
"Charles
C. DeRudio - Major, 7 Cavalry
November
1 1910"
rest
the ashes of a remarkable man. He
had lived his life to the fullest, with intensity and passion, with undoubted
courage, at times recklessly, not without his share of human shortcomings and
contradictions. A man, who had been largely misunderstood by his contemporaries
and, until recently, remained a forgotten figure in his native Italy.
The
story of Charles DeRudio (born Carlo di Rudio) reads like a romantic tale of
revolutions and political intrigue. Yet, Count DeRudio's epic story is as real
and incredible as were his exploits on two continents during the seventy-eight
years of his wandering and adventurous life.
Carlo Camillo di Rudio, the son of Count Ercole di Rudio and Countess Elisabetta de Domini, was born in 1832 near Belluno, some 40 miles north of Venice, in the Veneto region, at the time under Austrian domination. When the 1848 Revolution broke out in Italy and in the rest of Europe, Carletto di Rudio - nicknamed Moretto, "The Little Moor," because of his dark complexion - committed himself to fighting for Italian
unification
and independence against foreign domination and the temporal
power
of the pope. This decision led him to a wandering and action-packed life that
took him from the snow- capped Alps of northern Italy to sunny California
through an incredible sequence of thrilling adventures.
18th Century Villa Rudio near Belluno
After
a brief stay in the Austrian Military Academy of San Luca in Milan, at sixteen
years of age Carletto joined the ranks of the volunteer corps of the Cacciatori
delle Alpi of Pietro Fortunato Calvi (who was later captured and hanged in
1855), fighting against the Austrians in the historic defence of the Venetian
Republic. A year later, in 1849, young Rudio joined Giuseppe Garibaldi's famed
Red Shirts in the defence of the Roman Republic against the French and the papal troops. With the defeat of the Italian republicans, Rudio went into exile in Paris where in December 1851 he fought alongside the
Jacobins
who opposed the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon, soon to be crowned emperor of the
French.
In
1852, Carletto, who had meanwhile joined Giuseppe Mazzini's patriotic movement
of Giovane
Italia,
returned to Italy to take part in a series of unsuccessful uprisings directed by
Mazzini himself. Rudio also travelled secretly to his native Belluno, where he
had hoped to start an insurrection that would free his town and the rest of the
Veneto from the hated Austrians. This attempt also failed. While still in hiding
near Belluno, Rudio learned of the arrest of his own father and his older
sister, Countess Luigia, who were sent in chains to the infamous castle prison
of Mantua. Wanted by the Austrian police, Rudio was able to escape to England.
In London, like many other European patriots in exile, Rudio lived in poverty,
but remained unshaken in his determination to continue fighting for Italian
independence. In 1855, Carletto fell in love and married Eliza Booth, a teenage
distant relative of the founder of the Salvation Army. Eliza would remain his
loyal and faithful wife for more than half a century and would bear him six
children.
It was in London that in 1857 Rudio joined Felice Orsini and other Italian and French exiles in a conspiracy to kill Napoleon III, whom they regarded as the main obstacle to Italian independence and to the democratic movements of Europe.
The
assassination attempt took place in Paris on January 14, 1858, but failed.
Four Italians were arrested, put on trial and found guilty: Andrea Pieri and Felice Orsini were sent to the guillotine, Antonio Gomez and Carlo di Rudio were sentenced to life imprisonment at Cayenne in South America. Di Rudio was shipped in chains to Cayenne in December 1858. He immediately began to plan his escape. A first attempt with a dugout canoe was aborted due to torrential rains and a cholera epidemic.
di Rudio survived the epidemic and tried again, and his second attempt, one year
after his
arrival at Cayenne, proved successful. With a handful of other prisoners, Rudio seized a fishing boat and reached British Guyana, where he was given asylum. From there he sailed back to London, arriving on February 29, 1860. Now on the "most wanted" lists of Italian, Austrian and French police, in London Rudio sought the help of Giuseppe Mazzini and English sympathizers of the Italian cause who raised money to help him emigrate to America and gave Rudio important letters of recommendation that would help him greatly in the new country, then in the midst of a terrible civil war.
America and the Seventh Cavalry