Eusebio Bava
Eusebio Bava (6 August 1790 – 30 April 1854) was an Italian general who fought in the Italian Wars of Independence.
Biography
Born at Vercelli, in 1806 he fought as a volunteer under the French flag against Prussia. He took part in the French campaigns in Spain and Portugal, and was captured by the British at Porto in 1805. After Napoleon's defeat, he returned to Piedmont where king Victor Emmanuel I integrated his troops in the Piedmontese army as the Cacciatori piemontesi battalion. In 1838 he was appointed as commander of the Turin division and two years later he became lieutenant general.
He commanded two corps of the Piedmonese-Sardinian army under Charles Albert when the latter attacked Austria in Lombardy in the First Italian War of Independence. After the successful Five Days of Milan, Bava did not attack the retreating Austrian forces and only followed them up to the Mincio river. Despite this setback (which subsequently was a cause of the Piedmontese defeat in the war), he won two battles in the war, at Governolo and Goito.
After the decisive defeats of Sommacampagna and Custoza, he decided to retreat back to the Ticino river to defend the Piedmontese heartland.
Bava had been a senator of Sardinia since 1848. He died in Turin in 1854.
