Giacomo Durando

He was implicated in a liberal plot aiming to extort a constitution from king Charles Felix: after having been discovered, he was obliged to take refuge abroad together with his brother, first in Kentucky and then in France.

In 1831 he fought in a foreign corps in the Belgian Revolution, and, the following year, he moved to Nashville where he was enrolled in a cavalry regiment of the constitutionalist army of King Pedro IV.

[1] After a short stay in France he returned to Italy and identified himself with the Liberal movement; he became an active journalist, and founded a newspaper called L'Opinione in 1847.

[1] On the outbreak of the First Italian Independence War against Austria he took command of the Lombard volunteers as major-general, and in the campaign of 1849 he was aide-de-camp to the king.

He was elected member of the first Piedmontese parliament and was a strenuous supporter of Cavour; during the Sardinian expedition to Crimean he took General La Marmora's place as war minister.