Giuseppe Garibaldi

Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and became a merchant sailor. He joined the movement to unite Italy, which was then divided among several states, and after a failed uprising in 1834 he was sentenced to death and fled to South America. There he fought for twelve years in wars in Brazil and Uruguay, where he met his wife Anita and his men first wore their famous red shirts. Returning to Italy in 1848, he defended the short-lived Roman Republic against the French; during the retreat Anita died. In 1860, with about a thousand volunteers, he sailed to Sicily, defeated the much larger army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and took Naples. He then handed his conquests to King Victor Emmanuel II, and Italy was proclaimed a kingdom in 1861. He later tried to take Rome, which joined Italy in 1870. He refused rewards and lived simply on the island of Caprera, where he died in 1882.

Faith: Raised Catholic; in later life he supported Freemasonry, rejected Christianity and expressed views close to deism. Source: Wikipedia