Pietro Pedranzini

Pietro was born on 9 October 1826 in Bormio, a town in the Lombardy region of the Alps in northern Italy. His parents were peasants, and Pietro had five older sisters and two younger brothers.^[1] When he was 11, his father died, but Pietro was able to attend elementary school. In 1842, he enrolled in the re-opened gymnasium at Bormio, but dropped out during his third year to resume work in the field.^[2]

In 1847, he managed to evade the draft by the Austrian army due to heart disease. At the time, the Austrian Empire controlled the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, which stretched from Milan to Venice and north into the Alps. There were a number of rebellions against Austrian rule in 1848, beginning with the Sicilian revolution of 1848 in January. The people of Milan rose up in March, and the Provisional Government of Milan carried out a draft.

Pedranzini was enlisted with the rank of corporal and assigned to the first bersaglieri company of the battalion of Valtellina conscripts. On 20 March 1848, Pietro and a squad of about twenty men went to the Stelvio Pass to guard the border with Switzerland. Pedranzini also participated in supplying Austrian weapons to the Italian forces. He was present for the proclamation of the Republic of Stelvio-Tonale on 12 August 1848.^[3][4] Later in August, Pedranzini and the men of his team—almost all soldiers from the Bormio district—had to abandon the garrison as the Austrians threatened their position. They retreated through the Cristallo Glacier (descending to Bormio via the Cristallo Pass).^[5]

The revolutions all ultimately failed; the Austrian Empire put down the various rebellions and regained control of their territories by August 1849.

Pedranzini married in 1856 and by 1859, due to having two children, he couldn't volunteer for the Second Italian War of Independence.^[1] In 1859, the Austrians occupied the Giogo dello Stelvio and the Alta Valle del Braulio; they garrisoned the IV Cantoniera and the summit of Spondalunga, recruiting about sixty workers from Bormio and its surroundings to carry out fortifications. Once Garibaldi's redshirts of eight or nine thousand men—commanded by Nino Bixio and Alessandro Natale Medici—arrived in Bormio, Pedranzini submitted a plan to Bixio to retake the Giogo. Pedranzini, having obtained information from some escaped workers of the Austrian contingent, suggested a bold, circumventing, and surprising action through the Passo del Cristallo to be conducted with seven to eight hundred men chosen among the best. Bixio dismissed the proposal however, calling it a una ragazzata, ("A bad prank").^[6][4]

In 1861, during the Expedition of the Thousand, a battalion of the National Guard under Major Giovan Battista Caimi was mobilized in Valtellina for the garrison of Bologna. Pedranzini enlisted with the rank of sergeant, serving for two months as an instructor.^[7]

Returning from service with the rank of lieutenant, he participated in the municipal elections of Bormio, in which he was elected senior councillor. He served in this position until 1864, when he assumed the position of municipal secretary, a job he held until shortly before his death in 1903.^[7]