Alessandria

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 24 July 1857


First published in The New American Cyclopaedia, Vol. I, 1858
Reproduced from The New American Cyclopaedia
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 18
Collection(s): New American Cyclopaedia

The New American Cyclopaedia has two items under this title. The first item reads as follows: "ALESSANDRIA. I. A division of Piedmont, containing about 550,000 inhabitants, growing maize, wine, silk, madder, and flax."

Item II is by Engels (who in his letter to Marx of May 28, 1857 said that he was going to write about fortresses and sieges) and is the one reproduced in this volume.

A fortified city in Piedmont, situated on the confluence of the Bormida and Tanaro, a few miles from the Po. It was founded in 1178 by the Milanese, as a bulwark against the invasions of the German emperors, and has in modern times again received significance as a national Italian fortress against Austria, since the campaigns of 1848 and '49. Though up to the beginning of this century its fortifications were but old-fashioned and indifferent, the French in vain besieged it in 1657, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, in 1706, only took it after a protracted defence.[1] The principal strength of the fortifications as they at present exist, consists in the additions made by Napoleon after the annexation of Piedmont to France.[2] It is the only fortress Napoleon built, and in its works Montalembert's new system of casemated batteries for the defence of the ditch, was applied for the first time, though only partly. Napoleon especially strengthened the citadel, a six-fronted bastioned work, with many outworks, and constructed a bridge-head on the opposite side of the .Bormida. The Piedmontese government has recently resolved to add more works to the fortress, which, if the passage of the Po at Valenza were properly fortified, might become the nucleus of a vast entrenched camp in a commanding position. The city has a college, theological seminary, 13 churches, including a cathedral, and manufactories of linen, silks, cloths, and wax candles. Population, with the suburbs, 36,000.

  1. ↑ The unsuccessful siege of Alessandria by the French in 1657 was an episode in the Franco-Spanish war of 1635-59. Northern Italy, the greater part of which (the Duchy of Milan) had fallen into the hands of the King of Spain by 1635, was one of its theatres. The seizure of Alessandria by Prince Eugene of Savoy in October 1706 was a military operation by the allied Austrian and Savoy troops against the French in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) caused by the struggle for the division of the then decaying feudal Spain's European and colonial possessions, and by the naval and colonial rivalry between Britain and France. France and Spain, whose crown passed to Philip Bourbon, grandson of Louis XIV, after the extinction of the male line of the Spanish Habsburgs, were opposed by a coalition of Britain, the Austrian Habsburgs (to which dynasty the Emperor of Germany also belonged), the Netherlands, the Duchy of Savoy, Portugal, Prussia and other German states. As a result of the war the Spanish possessions in Northern Italy passed to the Austrian Habsburgs while the fortress of Alessandria was ceded to the Duchy of Savoy.
  2. ↑ Annexed to France in September 1802 Piedmont was ruled, together with Genoa annexed in 1805, by a French military governor. In 1814 the independence of Piedmont was restored under the rule of the Savoy dynasty. The territory of the former Genoese Republic was united to it by decision of the Vienna Congress of 1815.