Giuseppe Perrucchetti

Who was Giuseppe Perrucchetti?

Giuseppe Domenico Perrucchetti was an Italian general and politician, the creator of the Alpini corps.

He was born in Cassano d'Adda, in what is now the province of Milan in Lombardy. He studied architecture in the University of Pavia, but when he was twenty, he fled from Lombardy to enroll in the Piedmont army. He was a volunteer in the Second Italian Independence War and in the 1866 war against Austria, at which point he gained a silver medal in the Battle of Custoza.

Perucchetti was a made a captain in 1872, when he proposed the creation of the Alpini corp, in an article published in the Italian military journal Rivista Militare Italiana. Perrucchetti drew examples from the mountain militias in the Roman age, the “Cacciatori delle Alpi” brigades, and the Volontari Cadorini led by Pier Fortunato Calvi.

Perucchetti later became a General, and a Senator, of the Kingdom of Italy. However, he never became an Alpino, nor did he command the corps he invented. He died in 1916, when the Alpini were operating in the Alps and in Africa during World War I.