Luigi Camozzi
Excerpt from "Cenno biografico e necrologico del cav. Carlo Luigi Camozzi, maggiore d'artiglieria edito a Como - Tip. prov. Felice Ostinelli - 1885."
From Carlo Antonio and Maria Caterina Bertelli he was born in Gottro, Mandamento di Porlezza, a di 24 July 1786. He made his first studies in Como under the direction of his father Gaggi, who was as proud of him as of another of his best pupils; then he went to the University of Pavia, and applied himself to mathematics. The warlike spirit of the times shook the fibers of the young student, who in the spring of 1805 ascribed himself Volunteer in the Artillery of the Royal Velvet Regiment.
In those days joining the armies was equivalent to deploying on the battlefield, and the Bravo Camozzi ran jubilantly to his place of honor, and from there he soon distinguished himself as a valiant among the valiant. For which he was promoted to Adjutant Major in the artillery of the Italian Royal Guard.
With this he passed into Dalmatia, where on September 29, 1806, he took part in the Battle of Castelnuovo, in which General Marmont with only two battalions of the aforementioned Guard, beat and escaped a force of as many as ten thousand men including Muscovites and Montenegrins, supported by several Russian gunboats.
Camozzi with only one section of Artillery was able to silence the Russian cannoneries and send them back very badly battered, so that he contributed very effectively to the splendid victory. This honorable fact for our citizen thus recalls Zanoli in the History of the Italian Cisalpine Militia, as does Bertolini in the pages in which he narrates his imprisonment in Russia.
All the wars that from that era until the fall of the Napoleonic colossus were fought by the Italian armies hitched to the chariot of France saw Camozzi always among the first.
The telling of all the deeds of arms in which he gained praise and honor is impossible for us, who must content ourselves with recalling how Bonaparte on the same battlefield created the Camozzi Knight of the Legion of Honor since before and the Iron Crown From then on, and he proclaimed to them "one of the most distinguished captains of the army“.
However, we cannot refrain from recalling the glorious part that this illustrious countryman of ours played in the memorable Russian campaign. In fact, on August 6, 1812, at the Battle of Witebsk on the banks of the Dvina, Captain Camozzi sustained at the outposts the collision of a large enemy column, and forced it to make a hasty escape.
At battle of SmolenskoIn the titanic battle of September 7, 1812, on the banks of the Moskva River, he nobly emulated the renowned Witembergian artillery, bringing defeat to the ranks of the Muscovites; and at the titanic battle of September 7, 1812, he cooperated very successfully in the attack on a large redoubt defended by 70 cannons and a large number of troops, and thus, having made it possible to take that formidable position, the resounding victory was decided and assured.
In the disastrous retreat that followed those great events of arms, "theThe valiant Camozzi", says Bertolini, "was always above all praise for his intelligence, and for his fine displays of courage and skill in directing his artillery". And he singularly distinguished himself on the occasion of the memorable passage of the Beresina, when he held the Cossack hordes in respect for a whole day, and made it possible to save the artillery of the Royal Guard, and thousands and thousands of lives.
In the years following the frightening disaster of the Russian retreat, Captain Camozzi always militated among the valiant Italian ranks that shed torrents of their blood in the last convulsions among which the overbearing founder of the first empire was stirring.
It is regrettable that the limitations imposed on this writing by its very nature do not allow it to recall all the facts sufficient to weave around Camozzi's name a crown of imperishable glory. With the following words of Bertolini, therefore, we close the quick mention of our fellow citizen's military life. "If one by one, says he, I wished to number the replicated proofs of valor of our good comrade-in-arms, I should occupy not pages, but volumes, and to worthily commend the merit of the valiant Captain Cavalier Luigi Camozzi it would require not my feeble pen, but rather that of a Plutarch, or a Livy“.
La Restoration of Austrian rule in Lombardy and the dissolution of the Italian army covered with so much glory, determined Camozzi, elevated in the rank of Major of Artillery, to retire from military service, and nothing availed and induced him to put on the uniform of that enemy that he had so many times fought and defeated. To which he was induced also by the very vivid love he bore for his unfortunate part; for which, as a good patriot, he preferred to retire to the silence of private life, and there within the domestic walls he kept his faith unimpaired, and continued his worship of virtue.
Indeed, having settled down with egregious woman, with Mrs. Teresa Salvioni, in the pure joys of the family and in the constant exercise of piety and charity he sought and found compensation for the strong emotions of battles, the generous ambitions of the warrior, and the noble seductions of glory. He always practiced good for good's sake, and concentrated in his dearest ones all the treasure of his affections, shunning offices and honors, to which the rectitude of his soul and integrity of character called him more than once.
But when in the 1848 among the Lombard-Venetian lands resounded the cry of redemption, the valiant veteran felt every fiber of his heart vibrate, and among the first he rushed to offer mind and arm to the rediscovered homeland. In the five historic days of March of queir year, Major Camozzi was indefatigable at the barricades and on the walls, and actively cooperated in procuring from first the surrender of the one thousand seven hundred men of Austrian troops garrisoning our Como, and from then in forcing the surrender of the flag of the Prohaska regiment, a flag which, by cession of the City Hall, today in the Royal Gallery of Arms in Turin commemorates the splendid victory won by the people of Como.
Following these events, the Provisional Government of Como by Decree of March 5, 1848 appointed Camozzi Chairman of the War Committee, later transformed into the Commission for the Armament and Defense of the Fatherland. With distinguished activity and particular sagacity he discharged the grave duties entrusted to him, for which the Italian government testified to his national gratitude when in the 1861 authorized him to wear the honored uniform of Artillery Major, and in the 1834 conferred on him the insignia of Knight of the Mauritian Order.
Such was the man that our City lost now not so long ago, and the entire citizenry was unanimous in solemnly attesting both the universal sorrow for the irreparable loss and the great devotion professed to the illustrious deceased. If the splendid deeds of his military life aroused the admiration of his contemporaries and valiant comrades, and were written in golden letters in the glorious pages of those heroic times, his private and civic virtues impressed his name very deeply in the souls of his countrymen. Who, while they glory in having had him as a fellow citizen, neither can nor should forget the precious examples they had from him.
