Early Life
John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury was born to Giovanne Battiste Piozzi in Milan, Italy. His father was a member of the Italian nobility who held significant tracts of land outside Milan. During the Napoleonic Wars, the family had been driven from their home by Napoleon's invasion of Milanese territory, which deprived them of an income. Giovanne named his eldest son "John Salusbury Piozzi" after the father of the wealthy and influential Hester Piozzi, the wife of Giovanne Battiste Piozzi's brother Gabriel Mario Piozzi, in the hope that Hester would provide the family with assistance. After she failed to do so, Giovanne Battiste Piozzi gave John up for adoption. The boy became known, informally at this stage, as John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury.
By all accounts, Salusbury was not happy to leave home, and upon seeing sheep heads at market, the child retold how he saw a basket of human heads in Brescia, then a part of Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. His adopted mother eventually wrote a pamphlet regarding the alleged barbarity of Napoleon's army after her son's story.
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