Giuseppe Mazzini had traveled in 1831 to…

Giuseppe Mazzini had traveled in 1831 to Tuscany, where he had become a member of the Carbonari, a secret association with political purposes.

On October 31 of this year he had been arrested at Genoa and interned at Savona.

During his imprisonment he had devised the outlines of a new patriotic movement aiming to replace the unsuccessful Carbonari.

Although freed in early 1832, he chooses exile instead of life confined into the small hamlet which is requested of him by the police, moving to Geneva in Switzerland.

Mazzini was born in Genoa, then part of the Ligurian Republic, under the rule of the French Empire.

His father, Giacomo, originally from Chiavari, was a university professor who had adhered to Jacobin ideology; his mother, Maria Drago, was renowned for her beauty and religious (Jansenist) fervor.

From a very early age, Mazzini showed good learning ability (as well as a precocious interest towards politics and literature), and had been admitted to the University at only fourteen, graduating in law in 1826, initially practicing as a "poor man's lawyer".

He also had hoped to become a historical novelist or a dramatist, and in the same year he had written his first essay, Dell'amor patrio di Dante ("On Dante's Patriotic Love"), which would be published in 1837.

In 1828–29, he collaborated with a Genoese newspaper, L'indicatore genovese, which was however soon closed by the Piedmontese authorities.

He then became one of the leading authors of L'Indicatore Livornese, published at Livorno by F.D. Guerrazzi, until this paper was closed down by the authorities, too.