Giuseppe Rosaroll

Giuseppe Maria Rosaroll-Scorza (Naples, 16 September 1775 – Nauplia, 2 December 1825) was a general, a patriot and an Italian essayist. General in the Army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies he was die for the independence of Greece. He was also the father of the Italian patriot Cesare Rosaroll.

Biography


Born in Naples from a family of Swiss origin he entered as a cadet in the Neapolitan Army in 1793. In 1799 he joined the Parthenopaean Republic and was appointed captain. Captured by the Sanfedisti and condemned to death he escaped repairing in France; then he re-entered in Italy with Napoleon Bonaparte serving in the Italian Legion.

Rosaroll fought in the Battle of Marengo, later entering in the Army of the Cisalpine Republic. In Milan he wrote his famous treatise on the Art of the fencing.

He returned to Naples with general Masséna in 1806. For his brave conduct in the campaign of Sicily of 1811 with Joachim Murat, in 1812 he achieved the rank of Maréchal de camp and was created Baron of the Empire. Again with general Murat he participated to the Russian campaign.

After the Restoration (1815) Giuseppe Rosaroll received from king Ferdinand of Bourbon (Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies) the command of a brigade and then of the division of Messina. In this period he wrote numerous treatises on military technique.

As commander of Messina in March 1821 he tried to organize the military forces of the Two Sicilies stationed in Sicily and Calabria for an extreme resistance against the Austrians entered in the Kingdom in order to repress the Constitutional Revolt of 1820.

Forced to escape to a death sentence for this act (sentence of 27 February 1823), he went in Spain where he joined the ranks of the liberal constitutionalist forces (1822–23). When, in the spring of the 1823, the Spanish revolution was suffocated by the intervention of the reactionary forces of the French Army, general Giuseppe Rosaroll moved again first to England and then to Greece in order to help the Greeks in the fight for their independence. According to modern Greek historian T.Gerozisis, which is based on the testimony of participants in the revolution and later historians Romas, Fotakos and Hrisantopulos, the old acquaintance and friend  of Rosaroll from Zante Theodoros Kolokotronis intended  to make him commander of ground forces. But before the interim government has managed to use it, Rosaroll died of typhus in Nafplion. . Above mentioned also confirmed by William St Clair in his work

His son Cesare too will die fighting for Freedom at Venice in 1849.

Historian of fencing Jacopo Gelli considered Rosaroll and Pietro Grisetti as the regenerators of the true "Scuola Napoletana" of fencing, both were students of Tommaso Bosco e Fucile who was a Maestro of fencing in Naples.