Page 37 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER TWO

the expedition to Crimea of 1855-1856, Major
Giuseppe Govone was commissioned to organise
this Office within the Piedmontese Headquarters .
9
Lieutenant Colonel Govone’s service record
indicates that, also during the Second Italian War
of Independence, more precisely from 24 April
1859, he acted as Head of the Intelligence Office
inside the main Headquarters of the Sardinian
Army. Govone was able to implement a well-
functioning Intelligence Service by resorting to
messengers, customs officers, smugglers, plain-
clothes soldiers and for the first time also to
homing pigeons. He received a promotion on the
battlefield for war merits, especially for his “active
and effective (information A/N) contribution to
Major Generals in the various battlefields”.

2.1 Giuseppe Gaetano Govone, who led the
Intelligence Office during the Crimea campaign
and the Second War of Independence

2.2 THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE IN THE ARMY OF THE ITALIAN UNITARY STATE

The baTTle of cusToza and ITs consequences
After the first territorial acquisitions, the Sardinian army gradually expanded up to become the
Italian army. In early 1861, the General Staff Corps was reorganised through the creation of
an Advisory Committee and a General Staff’s ‘Superior Office’ that also included the Military
Office, under the command of Colonel Federico Ceva di Noceto until 1866, when Colonel Edoardo
Driquet replaced him.
In March 1866, the Minister of War, General La Marmora, sent General Govone and Colonel
Edoardo Driquet to Berlin, where they had to negotiate the alliance with Prussia, leaving the task
of the Military Office in the hands of Colonel Enrico Avet. In June 1866, Colonel Driquet returned
to Italy, resumed his functions at the Italian Headquarters, and intensified intelligence activities
in the Venetian territories in view of the forthcoming war against Austria. In addition, detached
offices with Intelligence tasks were created in Brescia and Turin, this last managing the Venetian
emigration flow.
However, on the eve of the Battle of Custoza, Colonel Driquet was assigned to the Army
Headquarters with new functions, depriving the intelligence organisation of its head and main
motivator. General Alberto Pollio remarked that by reassigning the head of the Intelligence Office
a few days before the beginning of the war, “the Headquarters failed to give due importance to

9 Maria Gabriella Pasqualini, Carte segrete dell’intelligence italiana 1861-1918, RUD, 2006, Roma, p. 20.

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