1855: Pietro Fortunato Calvi, the last Belfiore Martyr–world history and facts
Pietro Fortunato Calvi statue 1855: Pietro Fortunato Calvi, the last Belfiore Martyr–world history and facts. Italian Risorgimento martyr Pietro Fortunato Calvi was hanged on this date in 1855 in Mantua. The son of a Paduan police commissioner when that province rested in Austrian hands, Calvi — that’s an Italian link, as are almost all in this post — was an army lieutenant who was drawn by the swirl of patriotism into the Revolutions of 1848. He commanded a 4,600-strong militia in Venice where the abortive proclamation of a republic was suppressed by Austria. He fled to exile in Turin, then part of the mainland remit of the independent Kingdom of Sardinia. But his sympathy for an attempted Milanese insurrection in those parts wore out his welcome with his new hosts, and he was obliged to find refuge in Switzerland. From there, he and four companions launched a romantic, doomed expedition to sound out the alpine north for patriotism that might be stirred into revolution anew.