The Battle of the Italians: Victory in Russia

In 1812 the French and all those powers subject to or allied with Napoleon launched the invasion of Russia. It was one of the largest military operations undertaken in Europe up to that time. Among the forces included were those of the (Napoleonic) Kingdom of Italy led by Napoleon’s step-son Viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais. It was a considerable commitment for the country. With a total military strength of around 90,000 soldiers the Italian contingent of the invasion force sent to Russia numbered some 27,000 men and of these some 25,000 were fated never to see the sunshine of Italy again. However, they fought with extreme skill and courage and no battle showed their ability more than the Battle of Maloyaroslavets on October 24, 1812, a town in Kaluga Oblast, Russia. It was a stunning defeat for the Russians but failed to changed the overall strategic situation. Five days earlier Napoleon had abandoned the ruins of Moscow and began moving southwest with the Italian forces of de Beauharnais in the vanguard. The Russians, under the overall command of Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, thought this was only a minor force and not the lead elements of the entire French army. He dispatched forces to intercept them and both sides were pulled into a major battle.

Although the Franco-Italian forces initially held the numerical advantage, the Russians poured in more and more manpower until they had employed more than 25,000 men against the 20,000 French and Italian troops whose numbers were reduced in the early part of the battle. When the Russians arrived from the south, they found Maloyaroslavets already occupied by the Franco-Italian forces and the French held a key bridgehead that was vital for control of the battlefield. The Russians attacked relentlessly, but the French counter-attacked and control of the town shifted from French to Russian control some five times. Just when it seemed the French were victorious, Russian General Raevski arrived with 10,000 fresh troops and pushed them out of most of the town, though the soldiers holding the bridgehead stubbornly held on. When all seemed lost, de Beauharnais committed the Fifteenth (Italian) Division to the battle led by General Domenico Pino, Minister of War for the Kingdom of Italy. The Italian troops smashed into the Russian lines with reckless intensity and before nightfall had broken the Russians and forced them to retreat.

It was the courage and determination of the Italian troops that played the decisive part in the battle, so much so that it came to be known as the “Battle of the Italians”. The Italian troops fought largely unsupported by the French. The Italian Royal Guard under the direct command of Viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais acquitted themselves particularly well as one observer noted that the Italians ‘fought like lions’. Looking back on the campaign later, Napoleon himself said that, “The Italian army had displayed qualities which entitle it evermore to rank among the bravest troops of Europe”. When the Russian Marshal Kutuzov arrived on the scene, he decided against risking a larger battle by continuing the struggle the following day. However, he did not need to. The way of the French had been blocked and due to the defeat of French forces under Murat at Vinkovo, Napoleon decided to turn west and begin the long retreat from Russian soil. The Italian soldiers had won for themselves a matchless reputation for their heroism during the campaign in Russia, particularly at the Battle of Maloyaroslavets but the ruinous retreat decimated their ranks and left the Kingdom of Italy with only a skeletal army to defend themselves from the Austrian and British attacks that were to come later and which ultimately brought down the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. Still, some of the men survived and many people would remember what they had accomplished. The dream of a restored and fully independent Kingdom of Italy was one that would not die.

Symbols of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy

Flag of the Kingdom of Italy

Crown and Arms of Napoleonic Italy

Grand Coat of Arms of Viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais

Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Italy

Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Italy

Viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais

Napoleone as King of Italy by Andrea Appiani

General Ettore Perrone di San Martino

Ettore Perrone conte di San Martino was born in Turin on January 12, 1789 to a prominent aristocratic family of Canavese. He began his military career in the service of France when the French dominated northern Italy. In 1806 he volunteered for the “Legion du Midi”, graduated from Saint-Cyr military academy and then served as an infantry junior officer in the campaigns of 1807 to 1809. He earned the Legion of Honor for gallantry at the battle of Wagram where he was wounded. From 1810 to 1811 he fought in Spain as an officer in the Young Guard, in the summer of 1811 becoming a member of the prestigious Old Guard grenadiers. Despite being wounded, he hobbled off on crutches to serve in the invasion of Russia. As an infantry captain he fought at Luetzen and Bautzen in 1813, was stabbed by a bayonet and was wounded no less than three times at the battle of Montmirail. The following year Napoleon promoted him to command of the 24^th Infantry Battalion and during the famous Hundred Days campaign he served as adjutant to General Gerard.

Perrone stayed in France after the Bourbon restoration and was recalled to the army in 1817. After his service he returned to Turin after a stopover in England. When the House of Savoy restored the monarchy to its pre-Revolutionary form he tried to enlist the support of other nobles against it, advocating instead for a constitutional monarchy. This coincided with the Carbonari uprising in Piedmont-Sardinia and a resulting crackdown by government forces. He was arrested and condemned to death for revolutionary activity, however, he managed to escape to France and rejoined the army there, rising to the rank of general. Back home he was hanged in effigy by the authorities. In France, Perrone married a relative of the famous Marquis de Lafayette but took his family out of Paris during the uprising that brought down King Charles X. Perrone stayed with the army, rising to command the Loire Department command. However, his homeland was never far from his thoughts, nor was he from their own and in the revolutionary year of 1848 22,330 people voted for him in elections for the Constituent Assembly, despite his still being in France. That month, after the proclamation of March 23 by King Carlo Alberto, after 27 years in exile, he left France and wrote to his old friend, Cesare Balbo, offering his sword for the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

It was also in March of 1848, in the famous “Five Days” that Italian nationalists in Milan rose up and expelled the Austrian garrison. Afterwards, the Provisional Government of Milan gave him the post of Inspector General of the Army of Lombardy and the city of Ivrea nominated him to be their Deputy in the recently formed Subalpine Parliament in Turin. However, General Perrone dismissed all praise for himself, claiming all the time to be nothing more than a humble farmer and foot soldier. Nonetheless, the government in Turin named him Minister of Foreign Affairs though at the same time others cast aspersions on him for his long stay in France and his handling of the army. From October 11 to December 16 he held the post of Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, though his enemies still tried to spread opposition to him. Not allowed to stand for elections, King Carlo Alberto stepped in and appointed him to the rank of general in his army, giving him command of the Third Infantry Division consisting of 12,027 men and 16 canon. It was in this capacity that, the following year, he took part in the pivotal battle of Novara in the First Italian War of Independence.

The Austrians under Field Marshal Graf Radetzky had marched into Lombardy and seized Mortara and the Piedmontese army under the Polish Napoleonic veteran General Wojciech Chrzanowski (who was ignorant of the ground, the situation and did not even speak Italian) rushed to meet them at Novara. Lt. General Ettore Perrone commanded the left wing of the Piedmontese forces. A key portion of the army was cut off (whether by treachery or incompetence remains debated but the general in charge was shot) and the whole Austrian army fell on the Piedmontese at Novara. The Austrians were experienced, well trained and disciplined and with a veteran and skillful commander very familiar with northern Italy. The Piedmontese had a slight numerical advantage but were disadvantaged in every other way. The Austrians launched a heavy attack on his sector and he at least held firm but he was cut down in a heavy fusillade, being shot in the head and knocked from his horse, dislocating his shoulder in the process. He lingered for several hours in great pain before passing away.

His funeral services were large affairs attended by many people and his family went on after him. His great-great granddaughter is HM Queen Paola of the Belgians.

Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy

It was on May 26, 1805 that the famed Corsican conqueror Napoleone Buonaparte was crowned “King of Italy” with the sacred Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan. The Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy was officially formed on March 17, 1805 and succeeded the earlier Italian Republic which was a vassal of the First French Republic and itself the successor of the earlier Cisalpine Republic and of which Napoleone was the President. However, Bonaparte had monarchial ambitions and, as he once famously said, had the urge to sit on any empty throne he found. So, after driving the Austrians out of northern Italy, and after crowning himself “Emperor of the French” he also assumed the title of “King of Italy”. This was extremely important to him and the attachment he had for the Italian peninsula is shown in the official title Napoleone used which was, “Emperor of the French and King of Italy” giving his Italian title precedence over all others but his French imperial title. This new Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, which covered all of northern Italy not directly annexed by France, had a parliament but it was never called to sit and, significantly, Napoleone decreed that his sons would succeed him on the throne even if it meant that the French and Italian crowns no longer be united in personal union.

The strange thing, perhaps, about that was the fact that Napoleone himself was not originally to be the first King of his new Kingdom of Italy. That honor was first offered to his brother Giuseppe Buonaparte but he declined it, “forcing” Napoleone to take up the Iron Crown himself, uttering at his coronation the famous traditional phrase, “God hath given it to me; woe to him that touches it!” Obviously, since Napoleone (when not at war) would be spending the preponderance of his time in Paris rather than Milan, he appointed a Viceroy to act on his behalf in the government of the Kingdom of Italy. The man he appointed to this post on June 7, 1805 was his stepson Eugè ne de Beauharnais. His job was to suppress republicanism (which the first French revolutionaries who overran Italy tried to force on the people) and to manage Italian affairs in accordance with the best interests of the French Empire. And this was, by the European standards of the time, no minor satellite. After the battle of Austerlitz, the Austrians ceded part of Venezia, Istria and Dalmatia to Italy and in 1808 after the partition of the Papal States the border of the Kingdom of Italy was extended all the way to the frontier of the Kingdom of Naples.

Under the King-Emperor Napoleone, Italy was placed under French style law and civil administration with the Code Napolé on becoming the law of the land. This was not always to the detriment of Italy, in some ways it was an improvement over the patchwork system that preceded it, however, the Kingdom of Italy suffered greatly because of the ‘continental system’ imposed on all the states under Napoleonic influence to strangle trade with Great Britain. The effects on the British were rather negligible but it had a terrible effect on the Italian peninsula (as well as many other regions in Europe). As with all things Napoleonic, Italy also established a very stylish and highly effective army. Their cockade was in the national colors of red, white and green and was outfitted much the same as the French army but with dark green rather than dark blue being the dominant uniform color. There was a Royal Guard, seven line regiments, two dragoon regiments, a horse artillery regiment and an engineer battalion along with the usual auxiliary and support personnel. The Italian troops the Viceroy led into battle alongside his stepfather proved themselves exceptionally courageous and served with particular distinction at Maloyaroslavets.

The end came during the disastrous Russian campaign when the Italian army was all but wiped out and this precipitated the eventual collapse of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy altogether. However, one observer still said, looking back, “The Italian army had displayed qualities which entitle it evermore to rank amongst the bravest troops of Europe”. With French power on the decline, the Kingdom of Bavaria allowed the forces of the Austrian Empire access through the Tyrol and the valley of the Adige to attack Italy. Republicanism began to spread again and the famous French Marshal Murat defected. Nonetheless, Viceroy Eugè ne (considered by many to be the most talented of Napoleone’s relatives) fought desperately to maintain his piece of Europe but he had never been truly accepted and never had the time to become so. When Lord William Bentinck landed at Leghorn on March 8, 1814 it was only a matter of time and on April 14 at Mantua the Viceroy signed an armistice and the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy was no more. Yet, the ultimate historical impact was significant.

Perhaps because of his Corsican roots, Napoleone always seemed to have a special attachment to Italy. Not only did he go to the trouble of having himself crowned King of Italy in Milan, he prized that title above others, he made his stepson (and adopted son) Viceroy of Italy and he possibly might have succeeded to that throne himself eventually. Napoleone also gave his own son and heir the title “King of Rome” and to some extent modeled his Empire of the French on the legions of ancient Rome. The French-backed Kingdom of Italy might have gone but the idea, particularly in the north, of a truly independent Italy, a united Italian nation under one flag and one monarchy lingered on and continued to grow over the years. When the campaign for national unification began, it did so in much the same area as the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy had existed and took as its symbol the familiar green, white and red national tricolor. When this dream was finally realized it is also noteworthy that it was done at a time when there happened to be another Buonaparte on the French throne, who was sometimes a help and sometimes a hindrance but without whom Italian unification may not have happened when it did.