Biography
Luigi Cadorna was born to General Raffaele Cadorna in Verbania Pallanza, Piedmont in 1850, and he joined the Italian Army in 1868. He was offered the post of chief of staff for the first time in 1908, which he rejected due to the issue of political control during wartime. He was again offered the position in July 1914, as the Triple Entente and Central Powers girded for war. When Italy entered the war in May 1915 on the side of the Entente, Cadorna fielded thirty-six infantry divisions composed of 875,000 men, but only 120 modern artillery pieces.
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“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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