(today
Romania) published in
Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus, vol. 2 (1726) Born in
Bologna, he was a member of an ancient patrician family and was educated in accordance with his noble social rank. He supplemented his reading by studying
mathematics,
anatomy, and
natural history helped by the best Bolognese tutors and enhanced by his personal observations. After a course of scientific studies in his native city he travelled throughout
Asia Minor collecting data on the
Ottoman Empire's military organisation, as well as on its natural history. On his return he entered the service of the
Emperor Leopold (1682) and fought with distinction against the
Turks, by whom he was wounded and captured in an action on the River
Rába; sold to a
pasha who met him after the
Battle of Vienna, his release was secured in 1684. He returned to the Imperial Army deploying his skills as a talented military engineer. Marsigli contributed to the successful
siege of Buda in 1686 and in the following years in the military operations of the liberation war against the Turks. After the
Treaty of Karlowitz he was commissioned to lead the Habsburg border demarcation commission. Marsigli mapped the 850 km-long
Habsburg-Ottoman border in the former
Kingdom of Hungary (today including
Croatia,
Serbia,
Romania). During the twenty years he spent in Hungary he collected scientific information, specimens, antiques, took measurements and observations for his work on the Danube. He was assisted by
Dr Johann Christoph Müller who prepared manuscripts for printing and commissioned the engravers in his home town of Nuremberg. The sample of the work,
Prodromus, was published in 1700 and the large work was expected by 1704. His scholarship was well received in England, and was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in November 1691. , after
Raimondo Manzini, published in
Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus, vol. 5. During the
War of the Spanish Succession Marsigli was second-in-command under the
Count d'Arco at the Imperial fortress of
Breisach on the Rhine, which was surrendered in 1703. Count d'Arco was beheaded because he was found guilty of capitulating before necessary, while Marsigli was stripped of his titles and honours by the Holy Roman Emperor, and his chivalric sword was broken over him. His appeals to the Emperor were in vain, but public opinion, however, acquitted him later of the charge of neglect or ignorance. After he had left the
Habsburg Army he made journeys to
Switzerland and then France, spending a considerable time at
Marseille undertaking studies about the nature of the sea. He drew plans, made astronomical observations, measured the speed and size of rivers, studied the products, the mines, the birds, fishes, and
fossils of every land he visited, and also collected specimens of every kind, instruments, models, antiquities, etc. Finally he returned to Bologna and presented his entire collection to the
Senate of Bologna University in 1712. There he founded his "
Institute of Sciences and Arts", which was formally opened in 1715. Six professors were put in charge of the different divisions of the institute. Later he established a printing-house furnished with the best
type sets for Latin,
Greek,
Hebrew, and
Arabic. This was put in charge of the
Dominicans under the patronage of
St. Thomas Aquinas. His major work on the
Danube was published, after twenty years of delay, in 1726 in Amsterdam and The Hague. The maps of the work were published as an
atlas in 1744. His
treatise of oceans, published in 1725, renders Marsigli to be considered the founding father of modern
oceanography. and of
Montpellier. == Works ==