I have discovered that conscription, la leva obbligatoria, was not practiced in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, except under extreme circumstances. The Kingdom depended instead on recruitment.

When the French invaded the Kingdom in 1799, Queen Maria Carolina considered conscription but decided ...

Grazie, Ricbu,

My great-grandfather, Martino Luigi Tullio, was born in Vallecorsa, in what is now Frosinone Province, in 1848.

Would the Distretto Militare or the State Archive have the military records of the Papal States, in which my ancestor lived?

How would I contact these two Italian ...

Can anyone tell me about military conscription in pre-Unification Italy? Did it exist in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies or in the Papal States? Or did these countries depend entirely on recruitment? I know that all Italian males born after Unification were liable to two years active military ...