Early Life and Military Career
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (1658-1730) was born in Bologna, northern Italy on 20 July 1658. He was a son of a count in a junior branch of the Marsili family, also spelt as Marsigli.[1] Marsili, unlike his eldest brother Anton Felice Marsili (1649-1710) who was elected bishop of Perugia in 1701, never enrolled in university, but instead pursued private studies in Bologna, Padua and Rome. He studied under, among others, the botanist Lelio Trionfetti (1647-1722), the anatomist Marcello Malpighi (1628-94), and the astronomer Geminiano Montanari (1632-87).[2] Marsili maintained personal contact with his former professors and he corresponded with them and other scholars who, as Antal András Deák writes, ‘gave the best of their knowledge in their replies’ when he turned to them for advice when he was ‘confronted with scientific problems’ in later life.[3]
Unknown painter, Portrait of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, © Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna – Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.
Marsili accompanied a Venetian diplomatic delegation that visited Constantinople, present day Istanbul, in 1679 that was led by the ambassador of the Republic of Venice, Pietro Civran (1623-87), and he stayed there for eleven months.[4] He acquainted himself with Turkish scribes and scholars and began collecting copies of manuscripts and maps.[5] He travelled through the Balkans on horseback on his return journey to Italy in 1680. Marsili published a treatise in the form of a letter addressed to Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-89) in Rome in 1681 entitled Osservazioni intorno al Bosforo Tracio overo canale di Constantinopoli … concerning the Bosphorus Strait in Constantinople that connects the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea, which consisted of 108 pages, a map and several diagrams. John Stoye describes the many topics discussed by Marsili in his treatise including ‘the geographical setting, the currents of the strait and their speed, barometric readings at various places, the prevailing wind system, the salinity of the water, the fish of the Bosphorus and their habits’.[6]
Marsili joined the Austrian imperial army prior to the outbreak of the Great Turkish War (1683-99) that was fought between the Holy League (consisting of the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Republic of Venice, the Tsardom of Russia, and the Kingdom of Hungary) and the Ottoman Empire. Captured by the Tartars fighting on the side of the Turks in 1683, he was forced to work as a labourer in the Turkish siege works during the Siege of Vienna and later in an extemporised coffee shop on the besiegers’ encampment roasting, grounding and boiling coffee. He was sold to two Bosnian horsemen and secured his freedom when a ransom was paid in 1684.[7]
Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Stato militare dell’ imperio Ottomanno , incremento e decremento del medesimo = L’Etat militaire de l’empire Ottoman, ses progrès et sa décadence (The Hague & Amsterdam, 1732), ii, Plate 16. Capture of Marsili by the Tartars in 1683. Courtesy of Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek.
His book Stato militare dell’ imperio Ottomanno, incremento e decremento del medesimo = L’Etat militaire de l’empire Ottoman, ses progrès et sa décadence concerning the rise and fall of the military status of the Ottoman Empire, which was published in The Hague and Amsterdam in 1732 after his death, includes an engraving, reproduced above, of a sketch by Marsili. It shows him among a group of prisoners, labelled ‘C’ near the top of the image, being forced to cross a channel, with feet bound, clutching the tails of the Tartars’ horses.[8]
Marsili’s second book was the publication of one of the manuscripts he acquired in Constantinople on coffee and its medical virtues entitled Bevanda Asiatica, brindata all’eminentissimo Buonvisi, Nunzio Apostolico, which was published in Vienna in 1685. It contained the original Turkish text and an Italian translation, with an introduction describing his time as a prisoner when he brewed coffee during the Siege of Vienna.[9]
Marsili was a military engineer and surveyor during the war charged with strengthening the defences of fortifications and with the task of building pontoon bridges over rivers and swamps. He was also assigned important diplomatic missions, both official and secret, that involved frequent and extensive travelling. He once served, for instance, in the guise of secretary to the English ambassador Sir William Hussey (c. 1640-91) to the court of Sultan Suleiman II (1642-91) in Constantinople whilst secretly still in the service of Emperor Leopold I (1640-1705) in a failed attempt to mediate peace over a twelve month period during 1691-92.[10] Marsili progressed through the military ranks and was promoted to General by 1699.[11] He played an important role as an advisor to the plenipotentiaries in the peace negotiations at Karlowitz / Carlowitz that ended the war as well as in the demarcation of the borders after the ratification of the peace treaty when he was appointed head of the Austrian border commission.
TEXT: Mr Antoine Mac Gaoithín, Library Assistant at the Edward Worth Library.
SOURCES
Deák, Antal András (ed.), A Duna Fölfedezése. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Tomus I, A Duna Magyarországi és Szerbiai Szakasza = The Discovery of the Danube. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Volume I, The Hungarian and Serbian Section of the Danube (Budapest, 2004).
Molnár, Mónika F., ‘An Italian Information Agent in the Hungarian Theatre of War : Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli between Vienna and Constantinople’, in Szymon Brzeziński & Áron Zarnóczki (eds), A divided Hungary in Europe : exchanges, networks and representations, 1541-1699. Volume 2, Diplomacy, information flow and cultural exchange (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014), pp 85-105.
McConnell, Anita, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Voyage to London and Holland, 1721-1722’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 41, no. 1 (1986), 39-76.
McConnell, Anita, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721, and His Report on the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 47, no. 2 (1993), 179-204.
Mrgić, Jelena, ‘Criss-crossing the Danube with Marsigli’, Belgrade Historical Review, 2 (2011), 165-176.
Stoye, John, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730 : the life and times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso (New Haven & London, 1994).
[1] Stoye, John, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730 : the life and times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso (New Haven & London, 1994), pp 8-9.
[2] McConnell, Anita, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Voyage to London and Holland, 1721-1722’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 41, no. 1 (1986), 39; McConnell, Anita, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721, and His Report on the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 47, no. 2 (1993), 180; Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, p. 8.
[3] Deák, Antal András (ed.), A Duna Fölfedezése. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Tomus I, A Duna Magyarországi és Szerbiai Szakasza = The Discovery of the Danube. Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. Volume I, The Hungarian and Serbian Section of the Danube (Budapest, 2004), p. 94.
[4] Molnár, Mónika F., ‘An Italian Information Agent in the Hungarian Theatre of War : Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli between Vienna and Constantinople’, in Szymon Brzeziński & Áron Zarnóczki (eds), A divided Hungary in Europe : exchanges, networks and representations, 1541-1699. Volume 2, Diplomacy, information flow and cultural exchange (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014), pp 91-92; McConnell, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721’, 180-181.
[5] Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, p. 18; Deák, The Discovery of the Danube, p. 95.
[6] Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, p. 26.
[7] Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, pp 20-21; Molnár, ‘An Italian Information Agent in the Hungarian Theatre of War’, p. 94.
[8] Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, p. 35.
[9] Ibid., p. 39.
[10] Stoye, Marsigli’s Europe, 1680-1730, pp 101-109, 112-116; Molnár, ‘An Italian Information Agent in the Hungarian Theatre of War’, pp 94-97; McConnell, ‘L. F. Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721’, 181-182.
[11] Molnár, ‘An Italian Information Agent in the Hungarian Theatre of War’, p. 90.