Origins , the major reformer of the Savoyard Army in the 16th century The Savoyard Army was officially established in the 15th century when the
Duchy of Savoy was created. During this period, the army of the Savoyard lands was concentrated at bases in
Piedmont and the
Aosta Valley, where it was maintained by the local feudal lords who in exchange for the command of some regiments, maintained them for state service and stationed them on the land in the meantime. It was Duke
Emmanuel Philibert who was largely responsible for the radical reforms of the army which made it a stable component of the state and disconnected it from the local feudatories at the same time. As part of this, he created the "peasant militia" on 5 July 1566. With this, the command of the army officially passed into the hands of the Duke of Savoy. Since there were no limits on age or length of service, many soldiers remained in service for a very long time, which had a deleterious impact on the army. There was little or nothing in the way of training and the resulting force left a lot to be desired on the campaign.
17th and 18th centuries The Savoyard army engaged in many conflicts of the 17th century including the
Thirty Years War,
Piedmontese Civil War, and
War of the Mantuan Succession. In 1630, during the latter conflict, it consisted of 25,000 soldiers plus a large peasant militia. Of these 25,000, 6,500 were joining Imperial and Spanish forces in besieging French ones at Casale, 6,000 were garrisoning Savoy proper; and 12,500 were scattered throughout the rest of Piedmont. In the seventeenth century, the Piedmontese army underwent notable reforms. The cause of these substantial changes was the foreign policy undertaken by the Savoyard government and new internal conditions. During the first half of the seventeenth century, the Savoyard army was not a solid force, but varied significantly in periods of peace and war and was essentially composed of regiments recruited from the nobility in the pay of the Duke, regiments of mercenaries, and Protestant regiments (mostly consisting of French
Huguenots). In 1664, "proprietary" regiments of the Duke were first created, which bore the Duke's
coat of arms as a flag rather than the arms of their individual commanders. Seven years later, in 1671, the army was also given a uniform, which was light grey for almost all units, much like that which had recently been adopted by the
French Royal Army, which the Ducal army had frequently encountered (as opponents and allies) in the frequent wars of the era. In this period, the Piedmontese army was very open to innovations and was constantly modernising, especially during the reign of
Victor Amadeus II. The two most important reforms of these years were probably the creation of a specialised group of
grenadiers and the abolition of the
pikemen, both of which took place in 1685. The second of these reforms in particular anticipated the motion of travel throughout Europe – in fact, the French and the Spanish only abolished their pikemen some fifteen years later, while the Swedes still had a third of their infantry equipped with pikes in 1720. by
Andrea Gastaldi Also important, somewhat later, was the Regulation of 1709, which was inspired by the discipline of the
Prussian Army observed during the
Siege of Turin and by the firing tactics of
British and
Dutch troops. Thus, the fire of platoons in serried ranks was adopted instead of files in open ranks. The difference was that when firing in files, the soldiers were deployed in four or more files separated by four metres and all the soldiers in one file fired at the same time, with a set interval between the fire of each file, making a more constant fire possible. However, with the fire in platoons, the soldiers were separated into three close files and their front was divided into platoons, in each of which the soldiers of the three files fired at the same time, followed by the other platoons at a regular interval. This system remained the standard for all units throughout the first half of the 18th century. Throughout the century, there was a general tendency to the expansion of the army. In 1691, it contained 12 regiments of infantry, 3 of
dragoons and 2 of cavalry; in 1747, it exceeded 32 regiments of infantry, but the cavalry continued to be formed of 2 regiments, while the dragoons had expanded to 5 regiments. With respect to numbers, we know that in 1774, the total number of Savoyard troops reached 100,000 individuals. In that year a regulation was introduced concerning the length of permanent military service. The king maintained control of the troops, supported by a defence staff, composed of adjutants and 28 experienced generals, all of aristocratic origin (nobles held 78% of the positions in the officer ranks), while in the various ranks of the infantry and cavalry forces, the bourgeois formed 20%. The rest of the army was manned by the proletariat.
Nineteenth century , who established the Royal Carabinieri in 1814 After the
Armistice of Cherasco in 1796 and the failure of the Kingdom of Sardinia's attempt to prevent the Napoleonic invasion, the Sardinian Army was gradually demobilised and was converted into the forces of the
Subalpine Republic and then of the Napoleonic
Kingdom of Italy. After the restoration of the kingdom in 1815,
Victor Emmanuel I ordered the reconstruction of the Piedmontese army, organised into ten brigades of infantry and supported by cavalry and artillery. These were divided into two large armies, each of which contained two divisions and a reserve division. Under
Victor Emmanuel II, the Royal Sardinian Army was changed in many respects, with an increase in numbers and in the quality of the forces. In 1858, before the outbreak of the
Second Italian War of Independence, a new military code was introduced by the king, which regularised the period of
military service, establishing it as five years of active service, then 6 years in reserve, up to the age of thirty, with 50 days of obligatory training and instruction per year. The active service was divided into two kinds:
ordinanza and
provinciale. The first included service in the Royal
carabinieri, the armourers, the musicians, the musketeers, and the volunteers, while the second consisted of all the other soldiers who were obliged to remain in the army for 8 years unless the government ordered otherwise. In this reform, criminals condemned to forced labour, imprisonment, and exile were excluded from military service, as were those guilty of crimes relating to the penal code, men condemned by foreign courts to similar punishments, and the executors of justice, including judges, magistrates, their children, their adjutants and the children of their adjutants. The Piedmontese army in this period had a total force of 79,000 men (roughly 22,000 of which were officers and 56,000 were regular troops), in addition to around 20,000 officers and soldiers in non-Piedmontese volunteer forces, like the
Hunters of the Alps. The volunteers in the regular army numbered around 20,000 men. The conscripts were chosen by lot and could escape by making a payment or substituting a relative. The division took place on the basis of age and the oldest soldiers (provided they were literate) were made
corporals. From these, the
sergeants were chosen on the basis of merit. After the
unification of Italy the army became the
Royal Italian Army. == Organisation ==