It was a Sunday morning. The Italian troops were resting on the march; mass had just been celebrated, and the men were at breakfast, when the outposts suddenly saw young Mansana galloping towards them, carry a lady before him and with two riderless horses secured to his saddle-girth. The lady was a spy from the enemy's camp; her two attendants--officers of the enemy's force--were lying wounded in the forest. The lady was promptly recognised, and Mansana's "evviva" was echoed and re-echoed by a thousand voices. The camp was immediately broken up, as it was more than likely that the enemy was in dangerous proximity, and every one realised that the quick presence of mind of this Giuseppe Mansana alone had saved the whole vanguard from the trap prepared for them.
I have many more anecdotes to tell of him, but in order that they shall be properly appreciated, I must mention that he was universally considered the best fencer and gymnast in the army; on this point, I never, then or afterwards, heard more than one opinion.
Soon after the close of the war, while Mansana was quartered in Florence, a story was told, in one of the military _cafés_, of a certain Belgian officer, who, a couple of weeks previously, had been a frequent visitor to the place. It had been discovered that this officer was, in reality, in the Papal service, and that, on his return to Rome, he had amused himself and his comrades by giving insulting accounts of the Italian officers, whom, with few exceptions, he described as ignorant parade-puppets, chiefly distinguished for their childish vanity. This aroused great indignation amongst the officers of the garrison in Florence, and no sooner did young Mansana hear the tale than he straightway left the _café_, and applied to his colonel for leave of absence for six days. This being granted him, he went home, bought himself a suit of plain clothes, and started away, then and there, by the shortest route for Rome. Crossing the frontier where the woods were thickest, he found himself three days afterwards in the Papal capital, where, in the officers' _café_ on the Piazza Colonna, he quickly perceived his Belgian officer. He went up to him, and quietly asked him to come outside. He then gave him his name, and requested him to bring a friend, and follow to some place beyond the city gates, in order that the reputation of the Italian officers might be vindicated by a duel. Mansana's reliance on the honour of the Belgian left the latter no alternative; without delay he found a friend, and within three hours he was a dead man.