Battle of Turin

Prince Eugene of Savoy, having marched an army the length of northern Italy, smashed into the French siege lines outside the city and broke a siege that had ground on since May. Weeks earlier, deep in the tunnels under the citadel, the Piedmontese sapper Pietro Micca is said to have lit a short fuse to blow a gallery and stop French troops surging into the fortress, dying in the blast and becoming a national hero. The garrison under Count Daun had held through months of bombardment and mining while it waited for relief. When Eugene struck, the besieging army of more than forty thousand was routed. The victory effectively ended French ambitions in northern Italy and set Savoy on the path to a royal crown.

The Pietro Micca legend and the counter-mine tunnels under the citadel are the memory core of the battle. Micca became a foundational patriotic myth of the House of Savoy and later of Italian nationalism, and the preserved tunnel network is now a museum in his name. Historians debate how much of the traditional story is documented and how much embellished, while assessing the relief itself as the strategic turning point of the war in Italy. It is a rare case where the folk hero underground is better remembered than the prince who won the battle above.