So that's why

when I was in Rome I had this peculiar urge to spit on Garibaldi's grave.

Gerald Warner on the Risorgimento of Italy as a prelude to the EU.

Gladstone denounced

the Bourbon monarchy as "the negation of God erected into a system of government". That phrase would accurately describe the European Union.

[...]

The plebiscite held by the conquerors showed a Stalin/Ceausescu-style 99 per cent voting for incorporation into the Piedmontese state. The remaining 1 per cent must have been formidable since it held the Italian army at bay for five years in a bloody civil war in which more people were killed than in all the other Risorgimento wars combined.

[...]

The brutal invasion of the Papal States caused thousands of Catholics to enlist in a romantic international army of crusaders fighting for the rights of Pius IX, of whom 476 gave their lives in the Papal Zouaves unit, which included Englishmen.

The Sicilian mayor who denounced Garibaldi as "a ferocious murderer in the service of Freemasonry and the British" spoke the truth. The craft's International Bulletin, in 1907, described Garibaldi as "the greatest freemason of Italy" and Mazzini was not far behind. The regime he imposed was a prefiguration of Fascism, with which it later comfortably cohabited. Today, freemasonry is a powerful element within the Brussels elites.