Ignazio Giuseppe Bertola Roveda
Ignazio Giuseppe Bertola Roveda, Count of Exilles (* 1676 in Tortona ; † May 22, 1755 in Turin ), called " Piedmontese Vauban ", was a fortress builder from Sardinia-Piedmont .
Life
Ignazio Giuseppe Bertola Roveda came from the middle-class Roveda family. The father died when Ignazio was still a child. The mother later married the lawyer and architect Amedeo Antonio Bertola (* 1647 , † 1719 ), who adopted the young Roveda and gave him his family name. Antonio Bertola, a well-known fortress builder, renovated the fortress of Turin together with his adopted son from 1704, among other things with a system of mine tunnels , in which a French success was prevented by miner Pietro Micca during the Spanish War of Succession at the siege of Turin in 1706 . After the war, the two Bertolas were commissioned to fortify the kingdom's new borders . In the Western Alps they began with the large fortifications of Susa ( La Brunetta ) and with the construction of the fortress of Exilles . After his father died in 1719, Ignazio Bertola brought this work to a first degree. Then he planned the Alpine fortresses of Fenestrelle and Demonte .
On April 23, 1728 Ignazio Bertola was taken over as lieutenant colonel and fortress builder in the Piedmontese army . At the same time he was commissioned to build a new fortress in Alessandria on Tanaro , which was to become one of the most important eastern defenses in Piedmont.
In 1732 King Karl Emanuel I appointed him "His Majesty's First Engineer". In 1734 Bertola led the siege of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan during the War of the Polish Succession . In the years that followed, he continued to take care of the construction of the fortresses of Alessandria, Fenestrelle and Exilles, as well as, for example, the new construction of the Turin traffic axis Via Dora Grossa (now Via Garibaldi ).
In 1739 Bertola founded an artillery and fortification school in the arsenal of Turin , of which he remained director until 1755. It still exists in Turin as an officer training school ( Scuola di Applicazione ) of the Italian army and is responsible for the second, practice-oriented part of officer training.
For his achievements, King Charles Albert I raised Bertola to Count of Exilles on March 2, 1742. During the Austrian War of Succession he fortified the Val Varaita and Val Maira valleys in the western Alps and connected them with a military road . 1744 brought a low point for Bertola's career: After several days of artillery bombardment, his fortress Demonte fell. However, the king defended him against numerous demands for his resignation and the battles that were fought at the other fortresses in the following years completely rehabilitated Bertola. In October 1746 he besieged the Saint Paul's fortress of Ventimiglia and finally took it.
When the military engineers were spun off from the artillery on July 4, 1752 and formed their own corps, Karl Albert appointed Bertola as its boss. Almost three years later Bertola died as a highly decorated lieutenant general in Turin.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bertola Roveda, Ignazio Giuseppe |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Piedmontese fortress builder |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1676 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Tortona |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 22, 1755 |
| Place of death | Turin |