Following in the footsteps of his older brother Ugo, on 1863 he was admitted to attend the Military College of Florence and passing to Milan to enter the Royal Academy of Turin [it] in 1866.

[1][4] However, it had to carry out limited offensives to better ensure the inviolability of the Italian border,[4] occupying Austrian territory whenever it was possible and convenient.

[5][6] Starting from the second half of August, the insufficiency of supplies led to the failure of the new attacks against the permanent Austrian fortifications that guarded the head of the Val d'Astico.

However, he never gave up on carrying out further operations aimed at consolidating the front, making the deployment of his troops assume a purely offensive projection but this order led to the neglect of the defenses.

[1][7][8] These were preparations for the so-called Battle of Asiago, strongly desired and planned by the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Royal Austro-Hungarian Army, Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf.

[10]In open disagreement with Cadorna, Brusati ordered the exact opposite,[10] arranging the indefinite defense of the advanced positions, counting on the solidity of the strengthening works carried out up to then.

[11] In addition, on April 1, the Royal Italian Army went on the offensive again, launching assaults that achieved some decisive but partial successes.

[1][14][15] Still on May 14, Cadorna, in a confidential letter written to General Ugo Brusati, Adjutant of the Field of the King, protested Roberto's dismissal with the fact that he didn't believe in the imminent Austrian offensive.

[17][18] The enemy troops swept towards the Venetian plain, and it took four weeks of dramatic and uncertain fighting for Cadorna to be able to stop them, bringing in huge reinforcements from the Isonzo River.

On May 25,[13] a press release from the Stefani agency announced, with unusual relief, that the Council of Ministers had placed General Brusati at rest with the Lieutenancy Decree of May 25, 1916.

[13] In addition, Cadorna Court-martialed Brusati on charges of treason, based on Chapter 1, Article 72, Paragraph 7 of the Military Criminal Code in time of war.

[14] However while the Court-Martial never met,[14] public opinion was led to believe that Brusati had serious faults in the Army and was the subject of a smear campaign, which neither the government, nor the Supreme Command intervened to stop.

[13] On September 2, 1919, the Commission chaired by Admiral Felice Napoleone Canevaro[20] absolved him of all charges, revoking the retirement of authority, and re-admitting him to service with retroactive effect from 1916.