Pilla and the students were killed in the fighting, mowed down by Austrian machine gun fire at Osone bridge.

[3] Pilla maintained notes on his life from 1830 that were later published as Notizie storiche della mia vita quotidiana a cominciare dal 1mo gennaro 1830.

He however omitted the fact that he was in love with the daughter of the chemist Filippo Cassola, who however married his classmate Arcangelo Scacchi.

Although he published in journals and influenced numerous students, Pilla's primary geological output was in his two volume Trattato di Geologia (1847).

Pilla however did not believe in geological activity being uniform and suggested that the slow cooling of the Earth had reduced the intensity of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.