Count Carlo Pellion di Persano (11 March 1806 – 28 July 1883) was an Italian naval officer and politician, who was commander of the ''

Regia Marina The ''Regia Marina'' (; ) was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy (''Regno d'Italia'') from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the Italian constitutional referendum, 1946, birth of the Italian Republic (''Repubblica Italiana''), the ''Regia Marina'' ch ...

'' fleet at the 1866 Battle of Lissa. Persano was born at

Vercelli Vercelli (; pms, Vërsèj ), is a city and ''comune'' of 46,552 inhabitants (January 1, 2017) in the Province of Vercelli, Piedmont, northern Italy. One of the oldest urban sites in northern Italy, it was founded, according to most historians, ...

in the

Kingdom of Sardinia The Kingdom of Sardinia,The name of the state was originally Latin: , or when the kingdom was still considered to include Corsica. In Italian it is , in French , in Sardinian , and in Piedmontese . also referred to as the Kingdom of Savoy-S ...

on 11 March 1806. As a young man Persano joined the

Royal Sardinian Navy The Royal Sardinian Navy was the naval force of the Kingdom of Sardinia. The fleet was created in 1720 when the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II, became the King of Sardinia. Victor Amadeus had acquired the vessels be used to establish the flee ...

and advanced rapidly through the ranks. He commanded the fleet from 1860 to 1861, and saw action in the struggle for

Italian unification The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

. After unification he was elected to the legislature; he became Minister of Marine in 1862 and in 1865 he was nominated a Senator. Persano was appointed to command the Italian fleet during the

Third Italian War of Independence The Third Italian War of Independence ( it, Terza Guerra d'Indipendenza Italiana) was a war between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire fought between June and August 1866. The conflict paralleled the Austro-Prussian War and resulted in ...

, and, despite his warnings about the poor state of his ships and his men, he set sail and suffered a defeat at the Battle of Lissa. To quell the public outcry in Italy after the defeats of Lissa and Custoza, Persano was judged by the

Italian Senate The Senate of the Republic ( it, Senato della Repubblica), or simply the Senate ( it, Senato), is the upper house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Chamber of Deputies). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral sy ...

(which alone had the authority to judge a sitting Senator), condemned for incompetence on 15 April 1867 and cashiered from duty.Storia Militare n. 215, Parma 2011, p. 64 He died at

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

on 28 July 1883.

Notes

1806 births 1883 deaths People from Vercelli Italian admirals 19th-century Italian people Members of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy {{Italy-mil-bio-stub