ZUCCHI, CARLO. - General, b. 10 March 1777 at Reggio Emilia, d. there 31 Dec. 1863.
As a youth he left his studies to fight alongside the French and, a second lieutenant in 1796, took part in all the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, earning the noble title of baron and reaching in 1813 the rank of divisional general. He then served briefly in the Austrian army, but having fallen under suspicion for his liberal sentiments, after enduring four years of imprisonment in the Duchy of Modena (1823-27), he was in 1831 at the head of the revolutionary militias of central Italy, clashing valiantly with the Austrians between Rimini and Cattolica.
Captured at sea with other exiles on the Ancona-Corfu route, he was tried in Venice and condemned to death with the sentence commuted to twenty years of hard labor, partly served at Munkács, at Josephstadt and at Palmanova. There the events of 1848 took him by surprise: he defended that fortress resolutely; he then received command of a division of the provisional government of Milan. The Armistice of Salasco forced him, because of the excesses of the mob, to seek brief refuge in Switzerland.
His excellent military reputation and such antecedents led Pius IX in the autumn of 1848 to summon Z. to Rome as minister of Arms in the Cabinet of Pellegrino Rossi (v.). No less obnoxious to the extremists than the latter, he set about disbanding and disarming those riotous and violent free corps that formed the backbone of the insurrectionary ferment. He thus carried out effective work to re-establish the rule of law both in Rome and in the provinces and at Bologna against Garibaldi himself, but it was short-lived because it was interrupted by the killing of Rossi, by the violence of 16 Nov. and by the departure of Pius IX for exile in Gaeta.
A member, by the will of the Pontiff, of the governmental State Commission presided over by Cardinal Castracane, Z., faithful to his oath, joined the sovereign at Gaeta, issuing there on 7 Jan. 1849 an order of the day to the pontifical soldiers that they should not make common cause with the revolutionary regime, and working with the help of Kanzler (v.) to reconstitute first at Benevento, then at Bologna, adequate regular pontifical forces thanks to the influx of soldiers who out of loyalty deserted the republican banners.
Having retired to private life in his native city (10 Oct. 1850), he had his last years embittered by the spite of those sectarians who could not understand his honest and consistent uprightness, and only in 1860 did he obtain from the Italian government the definitive recognition of the rank of lieutenant general.
Bibliography3 works
Paolo Dalla Torre