Column battle of Marengo #marengobattle

It is a commemorative monument erected in Marengo, for the first time, in 1801, by the Napoleonic administration, using recycled material from the Episcopal Seminary. A second time, after the First World War, in 1922, when the heirs of the Empire of Austria-Hungary, defeated in the Great War, handed over to the Italians the golden French eagle (the one still placed on the column), which the Austrians 'were taken as spoils in the Restoration. On 14 June 1922 it was relocated to its former place from where it had been flown at the time of the restoration of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The first foundation of the monument was bitter and had a short history. Once the House of Savoy returned to Piedmont, while Alessandria was still garrisoned by the allied Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance, the monument was demolished. The importance of his memoirs, however, encouraged Count Laval Nugent von Westmeath, an Austrian general of Irish descent, at the time in the corps of engineers of the Engineer Corps, attached to the General Staff of the Austrian troops, to "take advantage", so to speak, of the demolished the column, transporting it, as a war trophy, to Trsatto near Fiume in his own castle, where he placed it near the noble tomb of the de Nugent family. The French Empire and the Habsburg Empire proudly used the symbol of the eagle, even if in heraldic ornithology Bonaparte's eagle has only one head, while the Habsburg species has two. The de Nugent mausoleum is still a visitable destination in Croatia, where it triumphs with two eye-catching dragon statues at the entrance to the small temple. When the Italian forces, victorious in 1918, liberated Fiume, Marengo's column in Tersatto was immediately thought of. In 1922 the Superintendence of Monuments of Piedmont and the Historical Society of the Province of Alessandria, with the vote of the Municipality, provoked the Government to return the historical relic to the Municipality of Alessandria, which was its owner. The column was recovered through the military authorities of the time and was placed at Fort Bormida. But it is not at all true that the idea of returning the eagle of Marengo arose for the first time after the victory of 1918. In 1899, in Alessandria, an international committee arose with the aim of celebrating the centenary of the battle. The project was developed by the Napoleonic scholar Alberto Lumbroso and Francesco Gasparolo, a historian from Alessandria. It is interesting to note that at the time there was rigorous thought about having Marengo's column return from Trsatto. The scholar Alberto Lumbroso had assured that he would succeed in his aim, however, having gone to Tersatto, and considering the modesty of the monument and above all the expense that would have been required to transport it to Alessandria, he decided to have a similar monument built in Marengo. The local elections which took place in Alessandria on 25 June 1899, however, suddenly put an end to all the plans that had been made and which had to be implemented. The young socialist party had assumed power in the city administration and a letter from the mayor declared to the President and Vice-President of the International Committee that this, facing the city of Alessandria, was considered dissolved. Count Giovanni Zoppi intervened and organized a small celebration for the centenary of the battle on 14 June 1900. As Gasparolo wrote in the Rivista di Storia, Arte, Archeologia for the province of Alessandria, in 1922 (issue XXIII, series III): «Thus, among other things, the idea of raising the 1801 column in Marengo with means of peace: four decades later the victorious national war against the ancient enemy from beyond the Alps was to restore it." It remains, therefore, in Napoleonic Alexandria, a very special museum and military flâneries reality in the panorama of Napoleonic itineraries and museums, relevant not so much for the rarity or rigor of its collections, but for the singular historical event that it produced with villa Delavo and its monuments, the first world memorial of Napoleonic heritage.

Видео Column battle of Marengo #marengobattle канала Pietro Pecco