Augustine Codazzi

Agustín Codazzi, full name Giovanni Battista Agostino Codazzi Bartolotti (in Spanish: Juan Bautista Agustín Codazzi Bertolotti) (Lugo, Papal States, current Italy, July 12, 1793 - Espiritu Santo, Confederation of Granada, current Colombia, February 7, 1859.) was an Italian military engineer of artillery occupation, brigadier, furriel, Secretary of State Major, chief of accommodation, assistant non-commissioned officer and field marshal, among others, during the Napoleonic Wars; geographer, cartographer, engineer and colonel (later general) of Colombia and Venezuela during and after the liberation of South America, and governor of the province of Barinas (1846-1847).

Biography

Célebre geographer and cartographer born in Lugo, Ferrara, arrived in South America already the centuryXIX and fought at the orders of the famous corsair Aury, demanding the Independence of Florida. Cautivated by the ideals of South American emancipation, by winning the friendship and consideration of Simon Bolivar and other patriotic generals joined the army of the Liberator, in whose ranks, thanks to the military preparation acquired in Italian academies, he had outstanding performance as skilled artillero, and he tried the rank of colonel. After the struggle for Independence, he would leave aside his war activity to dedicate himself to what really passionate about him, geographical and cartographic research, and carry out his unique work: the geography and the atlas of the Venezuelan provinces(successfully, in his leadership of the Colombia Corographic Commission, he carried out countless tasks for the Bogotá government, both cartographic and military.)

Early Years

Codazzi was the son of Domenico Codazzi, a cloth merchant, and Constanza Bartolotti. He was born on July 12, 1793 in Lugo, a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, in the midst of the convulsion created by the French Revolution. Three years after his birth, Napoléon Bonaparte invaded the city for a month, during which time his father was severely affected by the looting of local businesses by French troops.

Agustín Codazzi lost his mother in 1799, when he was 6 years old. He was then sent to the public school of Lugo, where he received his first studies with the blind teacher Pier Matteo Zappi; until graduating in 1810.

Domenico Codazzi had in mind that his son Agustín would be a man of law; for this purpose, he made his son accept the job of notary of the Justice of the Peace of Lugo in 1809 and then sent him to the University of Bologna to study law. However, Agustín changed his mind and decided to pursue military studies, and This is how, in 1810, he entered the School of Engineering and Artillery of Modena and the War Academy of Pavia, schools where he trained as an artillery non-commissioned officer. At the end of that same year, and at the young age of 17, he presented himself in front of Major Damiano Armandi, from Faenza, as a volunteer in one of the military corps that were being formed in Italy to fight on behalf of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleonic Wars

At the Pavia Academy he obtained the rank of second lieutenant in 1813; that same year and after the disastrous Russian campaign of the French Army, Napoleon reorganized his troops using, among others, recruits from the military schools of the regions under his control, among which was the Kingdom of Italy. In this way, Agustín Codazzi joined the Horse Artillery Corps commanded by his compatriot, General Luigi Gaspare Peyri, as part of the Italian expeditionary force that participated in the so-called German Campaign. During this campaign, Codazzi fought with Napoleonic forces in the battles of Lützen (May 2, 1813), Bautzen (May 21), Ulm (August 18) and Dresden (August 26). During this last battle he was promoted to field marshal.

He also fought in the Battle of Leipzig (October 19, 1813), where Italian troops under French command were placed to the right of the Weiße Elster River, a particularly exposed position; Codazzi thus took part in the battle in a crucial position.Legend has it that after this battle he received the officer's ring from Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, when he found him sitting on a cannon. When the Emperor asked him what he was doing there, Codazzi is said to have replied: "Waiting for death, because there is no more ammunition."

After the defeat at Leipzig, Codazzi followed Eugène Bonaparte on his campaign in Italy. During this campaign, Codazzi belonged to the first division commanded by General Carlo Zucchi, which fought in Mantua in 1814. In this campaign, Codazzi received the insignia of non-commissioned officer.

After the defeat of Napoleon and his exile on the island of Elba, he returned to Lugo for a short time, to be called to arms again by the Italian-British forces that were meeting in Genoa and were in charge of Lord Bentick, whose purpose was to bring down Napoleon indirectly. Codazzi entered them as a cadet, later going to the artillery and shortly reaching the rank of lieutenant. He belonged to this army until the final fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, in 1815. At the end of that year he traveled to Rome to enlist in the papal troops, but is rejected and returns to Lugo frustrated.

Trade, shipwreck and job search

Travel of Augustine Codazzi (1816-1822).

After the disbandment of the Italo-British army, and using the savings of nearly three years in the ranks, he decided to follow in his father's footsteps in commerce. In early 1816 he bought cloth in Livorno and settled He embarked for Odessa, where he never arrived because the ship was wrecked within sight of the island of Ithaca. He stayed on that island for a month, during which time he survived by painting houses. From there he traveled to Istanbul without paying a ticket, thanks to the generosity of a coastal seafarer.

In that city he met his great friend, Constante Ferrari, with whom he would share a long period of adventures in America. After a casino in Istanbul of which he was a partner failed (due to a sudden plague epidemic), and without having managed to be recruited by the Sultan, Ferrari and Codazzi decided to leave the Turkish metropolis, in search of a better destiny. Both continued their tour of the Balkans, passing through northern Greece, Wallachia (Varna, Bucharest, Chernivtsi), to then pass through Bessarabia on the way to Russia, before rumors that Tsar Alexander was looking for good officers for the imperial army. Upon arriving in Moscow in the fall of 1816, they were told that he was going to Warsaw to recruit personnel, for which they both undertook the trip to that city. There they had the opportunity to meet with the Grand Duke Constantine, the Tsar's brother. In that interview, his attempt to continue the arms race was frustrated again, since the Russian army was not hiring officers.

Following the rumor that the Netherlands was looking for officers for an expedition to the East Indies, Codazzi and Ferrari passed through Moravia until they reached Danzig, a port where they boarded a German ship that would take them to Amsterdam. The continuous storms and gales of the Baltic Sea forces the vessel to make numerous stopovers, first in Copenhagen, then in Gunbaenborgh (Sweden) and finally in Imbersund (Norway); due to the strong frosts they had to wait two months in this port until the sea melted. Once they resumed the road to Amsterdam, a storm almost threw the ship against the rocks in front of Elsinore, but after this setback they finally reached the Netherlands.

Once again his purpose would be frustrated, since the Dutch expedition had already left. In view of the setback, Codazzi and Ferrari decided to embark for Baltimore in the United States, where they arrived in May 1817.

Spanish American Wars of Independence

Document of the proclamation of the Republic of Florida, 1817.

Shortly after their arrival in Baltimore in 1817, Agustín Codazzi and Constante Ferrari joined the expedition of Gregor MacGregor (Scottish general in the service of the Venezuelan army) and the French privateer Luis Aury in support of the campaign to liberate Simón Bolívar, which was organized by Rear Admiral of the Venezuelan Navy Agustín Gustavo Villeret. But due to disagreements between Villeret and Admiral Luis Brión, commander of the squadron, instead of sailing to the island of Margarita, they diverted to the island of Amelia, off the coast of Florida. The expeditionary force takes the island to invade the Florida peninsula and cut off trade between the United States and Spain; as an achievement of his intervention the Republic of Florida was born.

Fort of the French corsair Louis-Michel Aury on the island of Providencia where he was between 1818 and 1821. The drawing was made by his secretary of state, Luis Peru de Lacroix.

However, said republic did not last long, due to the scant support of the United Provinces of Venezuela. MacGregor left the island of Amelia in September 1817 in the hands of the French privateer with Mexican patent Luis Aury, who declared it part of the Republic of Mexico. However, he was dislodged by the troops sent by President James Monroe in December 1817 due to the annexationist claims of the United States government regarding Florida. After this failure, Aury along with his fleet, among whose crew where Codazzi and Ferrari were, he headed for the island of Providencia off the coast of Nicaragua, which he captured in July 1818 and where he established a base for his corsair operations, thus constituting the first free territory of New Granada. After this event Aury, Codazzi and Ferrari sailed to Buenos Aires to put themselves at the service of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.

In mid-1819, Luis Aury and Gregor MacGregor, who had stationed themselves on the island of San Andrés, drew up an invasion plan for the Isthmus of Panama held by the royalists, which had a relative success, standing out for its fighting spirit Codazzi and Ferrari. However, the victory was in vain, and they had to retire to Providencia again.

That same year, Codazzi was sent by Aury to Bogotá entering through the Atrato in order to offer the services of his small squadron to Simón Bolívar; but upon his arrival, the Liberator was not there and Vice President Francisco de Paula Santander did not pay attention to the offer. On repeated occasions, Aury tried in vain for official recognition by the government of Gran Colombia. Although he did not achieve his mission, Luis Aury continued to support Bolívar's ideals and participated in various campaigns on behalf of Colombia, such as the sieges of Cartagena de Indias, Tolú, Omoa, and Trujillo. After Aury's death in 1821, Codazzi returned to Italy. with his adventure friend Constante Ferrari, passing through Saint Thomas, Amsterdam and Paris before arriving in Lugo.

Landholder in Italy and return to America

Portrait of Agustín Codazzi by the Venezuelan painter Carmelo Fernández.

With the proceeds from their adventures in the New World, Codazzi and Ferrari traveled to Italy and settled as farmers in the Po River valley, where they bought the El Serrallo farm in 1822. But disagreements over the management of the farm caused the friendship between the two to crack, which precipitated Codazzi's return to Latin America just three years after arriving in Italy. He embarked for Cartagena de Indias on April 2 of 1826, arriving in this port on May 24 of that same year; there he met Admiral General Lino de Clemente, who accompanied him to Bogotá. Once he arrived in said city and with the help of Clemente, Francisco de Paula Santander He joined the service of the Gran Colombian army with the position of brigadier of the artillery corps of the department of Zulia.

During his stay in Zulia, General José María Carreño, who was governor of that department, assigned him to Maracaibo with the task of fortifying the entrance to the homonymous lake, in the event of an eventual threat of attack by the Spanish navy, which at that time he was based in Puerto Rico. During his return to Bogotá in November 1828 he met Bolívar, whom he accompanied on his last trip to Caracas (1827) in order to calm the separatist intentions of the District of Venezuela by General José Antonio Páez. It was during this trip that the friendship between Codazzi and Páez was born. In 1829, taking advantage of the work that Codazzi was doing on the lake, General Justo Briceño commissioned him to make a map of the department of Zulia.

Venezuelan military engineer and geographer

Cover of the Physical and Political Atlas of the Republic of Venezuela (1840).

Based on this assignment, Codazzi began drawing up plans for the Venezuelan coastline and making improvements to the coastal fortifications. This was the first step in his career as a geographer and naturalist. Just when he was carrying out these functions, the events that led to the disintegration of Gran Colombia in 1830 arose.

After these events, Codazzi decided to stay in Venezuela, where he presented his general charter of Zulia to the newly formed congress in Caracas. President Páez, seeing his work, entrusted him with the elaboration of maps of the entire country, on the base of the one he had previously carried out, also adding the geographical, physical and statistical data of each mapped region; in a similar way to the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-06) carried out in the United States. To fully carry out this work, Páez appointed him Chief of the General Staff of his military forces.

From 1830 and for eight years Codazzi explored Venezuela, took notes and made cartographic sketches of all the provinces into which the republic was divided, first of the province of Coro (1832), and then toured the provinces of Barquisimeto, Barinas and Cumana (1833). To explore and measure the Orinoco basin, he moved from Caracas to Valencia, a city that became his base of operations. From there he moved to the Orinoco river delta (1834-36) and finally to the extensive province of Guayana (1837- 38). On this trip, he wrote to Congress an accusatory report of the continuous violations and mistreatment of the authorities towards the indigenous people of the Río Negro area.

This work, however, was periodically interrupted by sporadic commitments related to his functions as Chief of Staff: first to deal with the various revolts against the government of Páez by military uprisings, mainly in the plains (1835); another to protect the province of Mérida from the civil war that was taking place in the sister Republic of Nueva Granada and that apparently was going to spread to the territories of the aforementioned province and the province of Maracaibo; and finally against General José Tadeo Monagas, who rebelled in the province of Cumaná in 1836. Thanks to his courageous participation in this last contest, President José María Vargas promoted him to colonel of engineers.

During one of his short breaks from his cartographic and military activities in the city of Valencia, Codazzi met Araceli Fernández de la Hoz, daughter of Lorenzo Fernández de la Hoz, former royalist chief of Cumaná and personal friend of Alexander von Humboldt. He married Araceli on April 29, 1834 when she was 26 years old, and they gave him eight children.

General map of Venezuela drawn and published by Agustín Codazzi in 1840.

Indeed, Codazzi had to finish the complete map of Venezuela in 1839. Páez re-elected for the presidency of the Republic, Codazzi gave him the originals of the work that had been entrusted to him, examining it by the chief engineer, Juan Manuel Cajigal, which gives it its full approval and on October 18, 1839, obtains that of the National Congress, which orders its publication. Upon receiving the go-ahead from the legislative body, he embarked for Paris together with the cartoonist Carmelo Fernández and the historians Rafael María Baralt and Ramón Díaz. There they published in 1840 the Physical and Political Atlas of the Republic of Venezuela and the Summary of the Geography of Venezuela, works that recounted with the financing of the hero of independence Martín Tovar Ponte, and which were deserving of various praise and recognition from the Paris Academy of Sciences, the Paris Geographical Society and by Baron Alexander von Humboldt himself. For their great contribution to world science, he was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor by King Louis Philippe I of France, and he was made an honorary member of the Geographical Society of Paris, the Geographical Society of London, the Geographical Society of Berlin and the American Ethnology Society of New York.

One of the most difficult issues that Codazzi faced in the elaboration of his atlas was the definition of limits, not only between the various provinces studied but also between Venezuela and its neighbors; The same problem that he later had to face in New Granada, Codazzi, in an even-tempered and prudent way, resolved this issue by outlining various borders on his maps.

Upon his return to Venezuela, Codazzi served as Director of the Mathematical Academy of Caracas and Instructor of the Practical School of Artillery. In 1841 the government commissioned Codazzi to promote European immigrants to the uninhabited regions of the country. He conceives and formulates a colonization project for Venezuela with European families, a plan that received support from the National Congress and the financing of Martín Tovar Ponte, necessary for its execution on lands ceded by Manuel Felipe Tovar. For this purpose he traveled to Europe together with Alejandro Benitz (his assistant in the preparation of the atlas maps), and met with Humboldt, who advised him to take families of German origin to America, particularly from the Black Forest region.

Agustín Codazzi arrived in La Guaira on April 6, 1843 in order to build and organize the settlement of the newly created Colonia Tovar (Aragua), named after the Tovar Ponte family. Benitz arrived a month later with 389 immigrants, of whom 239 were men and 150 women, who had joined the company. The numerous setbacks that the group experienced in its early years caused some discontent among them, but the efforts of Agustín Codazzi and Alejandro Benitz did not let the colony disintegrate.

Carlos Soublette, president of the Republic of Venezuela, sent for him to Caracas in December 1845 and entrusted him with the government of the province of Barinas. From the governorship of Barinas, Codazzi once again had to face the political instability that loomed over the entire nation and did everything possible to calm the restless inhabitants of the region under his rule, taking measures to promote civic works, opening schools, reducing crime and violence between political parties of the province. Not having achieved his objectives, in 1848 he accompanied José Antonio Páez in the uprising that he promoted against José Tadeo Monagas, a political adversary of Páez (and consequently of Codazzi), who had declared himself dictator; but because the armed protest was unsuccessful and his own family was involved in the conflict, Codazzi had no choice but to renounce the governorship of Barinas, flee to Maracaibo, send his wife and children to Aruba and leave. into exile to New Granada in 1849.

Exile in New Granada, the Chorographic Commission and death

Map showing the 10 trips of the Corographic Commission (1851-1859), of which Agustín Codazzi assumed the direction.

The provinces of New Granada in 1851. Map published in 1890 based on those drawn by Agustín Codazzi in the 1850s.

After Codazzi had arrived in New Granada, an old friend of his from the Wars of Independence, General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, immediately contacted him. Due to the boom that the action of opening a canal in the Isthmus of Panama, Mosquera had in mind to carry out a great scientific undertaking that would not only include the cartography of the isthmus but of the entire republic, with its corresponding physical, economic and demographic description, and since he had known the work of Codazzi in Venezuela thought that he could do a job similar to that done in that country, but on a larger scale.

As an incentive, Mosquera named Codazzi lieutenant colonel of the New Granadan army and also head of the Military College of Bogotá. As a preview of his later work, he drew up the complete plan of the city with his students. Although Mosquera ended his presidential term just a few months after his meeting with Codazzi, he recommended his successor José Hilario López to enter into a contract with him. to carry out such the company, whose name would be the Chorographic Commission.

Unlike the almost individual work that was carried out in Venezuela, the commission was intended to be a collective and specialized work: geographers, cartographers, botanists, painters and writers, all of them directed by Colonel Agustín Codazzi. Along with him were Manuel Ancízar as a describer and historian, José Jerónimo Triana as a botanist, Carmelo Fernández, Manuel María Paz and Henry Price as draughtsmen and cartographers. Thus, on January 1, 1850, the work and studies of the commission began.

In the middle of 1850 he was finally able to call his family who was in exile in Aruba, and he settled in Carrera 6 with Calle 6 in Bogotá. His sons Domingo and Lorenzo were part of the expedition as attached members and assistants of his father.

The Chorographic Commission was developed in different stages, first touring the regions surrounding Bogotá and Santanderes (1850), then the provinces of Antioquia, Cauca, Córdoba, Mariquita and Medellín (1852), the region of the Atrato river and the entire Pacific coast up to Ecuador (1853), the Darién and Panama (1854), the basin of the Bogotá river (1855), the plains of San Martín, Casanare and Caquetá (1856).

As a result of his tasks within the commission, he published various books: Notes on immigration and colonization (1850), Physical and political geography of the province of Ocaña (1850), Summary of the historical journal of the Army of the Atlantic, Isthmus and Mompox, later called the Army of the North (1855), Political and Physical Jeography of the Provinces of New Granada (1856), General description of the Indians of New Granada (1857), Description of the territory of Caquetá (1858), Indigenous antiquities of San Agustín (1858).

Agustín Codazzi and his collaborators in the Yarumito camp, Soto province.

Due to the continuous explorations of foreigners in the Isthmus of Panama, mainly from France, England and the United States, the government of New Granada commissioned Agustín Codazzi to study a possible route to open an interoceanic canal. He ruled that The Panama-Colón highway was the most suitable for carrying out the work.

When he was carrying out his chorographic work in Panama, Codazzi found himself involved in the conflict that arose from the overthrow of José María Obando by José María Melo in 1854, and he had to join the armies of General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera as chief of his General Staff. Mosquera then commissioned him to prepare the documents related to the military campaign, and among his many tasks he fortified Honda, distinguished himself in the battle of Petaquero and participated in the capture of Bogotá (December 4), receiving in reward for his services the rank of general.

One of his biggest problems when mapping New Granada was, without a doubt, the constant change of the administrative divisions of the republic and the limits between them. This is how from 1850 they went from having 31 provinces to having about 36 in 1855, and that same year they merged to form eight sovereign states (with the corresponding change of the name of the country to the Granada Confederation). These new Political reorganizations of the State gave Codazzi a lot of headaches, since he had to draw up new cartographic designs, make new calculations and extend new statistics; disagreements also arose between State and State about its boundaries, problems that necessarily delayed the completion of the work.

The rise to power of Mariano Ospina Rodríguez in 1857 marked a cooling in government support for the work of the Chorographic Commission, which slowly languished in the following years, without this determining a decrease in the enthusiasm of Agustín Codazzi for giving it completion of his work. On June 11, 1858, he delivered to Manuel Antonio Sanclemente the finished maps of six of the eight states into which the Granada Confederation was divided. With only two states to go (Bolívar and Magdalena), undertook his last trip to these lands in 1858 accompanied by Manuel María Paz, particularly for the desire to explore the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, but without any government support because Ospina had suspended sponsorship of the commission.

A few days after arriving in the Sierra, malaria attacked him and he had to rest in the village of Espiritu Santo. His advanced age (66 years) prevented him from improving, and he died on February 7, 1859 in the arms of Manuel María Paz, his only traveling companion. He was buried near the place of his death in his traveling dress, and on top of that he put on a pile of stones, with the great Sierra Nevada in the background.

After his death

Portada del Atlas de Colombia (1890).

The year of Codazzi's death in Espiritu Santo also saw the deaths of Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Ritter, who have been honored as the founders of modern geography. Their remains were exhumed and transported to Bogotá, to the Church of San Juan de Dios. His widow Araceli Fernández had them transferred to the Cathedral of Valencia, where he had settled after his exile, while the Government of Venezuela asked for them to be deposited in the National Pantheon in Caracas next to those of Bolívar, the place where he currently they rest since 1942.

Although his work in New Granada was incomplete, it fell to his assistants and followers to complete and publish the maps of the republic. The first result of this work was seen in 1865 with the Atlas of the United States of Colombia on behalf of Manuel Ponce de León and Manuel María Paz and whose charts were based entirely on those drawn by Codazzi during the commission. In 1890 the Geographic and Historical Atlas of the Republic of Colombia was published , with the cartography by Manuel María Paz and the explanatory text by Felipe Pérez.

Family

The following family tree was made up of data extracted from the book Escritos sobre Codazzi by Andrés Soriano Lleras (1962) and from his own Memories (1823). Said tree includes only his parents and immediate family (siblings, children and grandchildren).

Tributes

Agostino Codazzi: monument erected in Colonia Tovar, Estado Aragua, Venezuela

The mortal remains of Agustín Codazzi have been buried since 1942 in the National Pantheon of Venezuela, in Caracas.

Because of his brilliant military, political, and scientific career in Italy, Colombia, and Venezuela, Codazzi is known as "The Man of the Three Homelands".

In order to honor his memory several institutions and place names bear his name:

ColombiaColombia

• Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi.
• Battalion of Engineers Colonel Agustín Codazzi No. 3.
• Municipality Agustín Codazzi of the department of Cesar.
• Colegio Militar General Agustín Codazzi (Palmira).

Venezuela Venezuela

• 61. Regiment of Construction and Maintenance Engineers Agustín Codazzi.
• Plaza Agustín Codazzi (Parque El Calvario, Caracas).
• Plaza Agustín Codazzi (Urbanización Prados del Este, Caracas).
• Plaza Agustín Codazzi (Parroquia La Vega, Caracas).
• Plaza Agustín Codazzi (Colonia Tovar, Aragua state).
• Plaza Agustín Codazzi (Ocumare del Tuy, Miranda State).
• Avenida Agustín Codazzi (Caracas).
• Avenida Agustín Codazzi (Barinas).
• Public Library Central Agustín Codazzi (Maracay).
• Colegio (bilingüe) Agustín Codazzi (Caracas).
• Instituto Universitario de Tecnología Agustín Codazzi (Barinas).
• Liceo Agustín Codazzi (Maracay).
• Parque Agustín Codazzi (Maracay).
• Natural monument Pico Codazzi (Aragua).
• Aquarium Agustín Codazzi (Carrizal).
• Calle Agustín Codazzi (Colonia Tovar).

In 2001, the community of Venetos de Venezuela unveiled a monument in the Tovar neighborhood in homage to its founder Codazzi with the inscription "Honored Italy for its extraordinary contribution to the greatness of Venezuela".

ItalyItaly

• Via Agostino Codazzi in Lugo.
• Agostino Codazzi School in Lugo.

Publications by Agustín Codazzi

Among the numerous publications that Codazzi made throughout his life (and after it, since works continued to be published under his name until well into the 20th century), there are several letters, his Memoirs, written by him in 1823 during his stay in Lugo, several decrees and laws issued as governor of Barinas, as well as his many maps.

Writings

The following is a list of the writings that Agustín Codazzi wrote throughout his life:

Maps

The following is a list of the maps made by Agustín Codazzi: