took place during the Franco-Prussian War as commander of the Army of the Vosges. Garibaldi became an international figurehead for national independence and republican ideals, and is considered by the twentieth-century historiography and popular culture as Italy's greatest national hero. He was showered with admiration and praise by many contemporary intellectuals and political figures, including Abraham Lincoln, William Brown, Francesco de Sanctis, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Malwida von Meysenbug, George Sand, Charles Dickens, and Friedrich Engels. Garibaldi also inspired later figures like Jawaharlal Nehru and Che Guevara. Historian A. J. P. Taylor called him "the only wholly admirable figure in modern history". In the popular telling of his story, he is associated with the red shirts that his volunteers, the Garibaldini, wore in lieu of a uniform. Early life Garibaldi was born and christened Joseph-Marie Garibaldi on 4 July 1807 in Nice, which had been conquered by the French First Republic in 1792, to the Ligurian family of Domenico Garibaldi from Chiavari and Maria Rosa Nicoletta Raimondi from Loano. In 1814, the Congress of Vienna returned Nice to Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia; nevertheless, France re-annexed it in 1860 by the Treaty of Turin, which was ardently opposed by Garibaldi. Garibaldi's family's involvement in coastal trade drew him to a life at sea. He participated actively in the Nizzardo Italians community and was certified in 1832 as a merchant navy captain. He lived in Pera district of Constantinople from 1828 to 1832. He became an instructor and taught Italian, French and mathematics. In April 1833, he travelled to Taganrog, in the Russian Empire, aboard the schooner Clorinda with a shipment of oranges. During ten days in port, he met Giovanni Battista Cuneo from Oneglia, a politically active immigrant and member of the secret Young Italy movement of Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was a passionate proponent of Italian unification as a liberal republic via political and social reform. Garibaldi joined the society and took an oath dedicating himself to the struggle to liberate and unify his homeland from Austrian dominance. In November 1833, Garibaldi met Mazzini in Genoa, starting a long relationship that later became troubled. He joined the Carbonari revolutionary association, and in February 1834 participated in a failed Mazzinian insurrection in Piedmont. A Genoese court sentenced Garibaldi to death in absentia, and he fled across the border to Marseille. South America Garibaldi first sailed to the Beylik of Tunis before