Les artilleurs traducteurs et leurs ennemis. La première traduction italienne du Traité élémentaire de Lavoisier à Naples

The first Italian translation of the Traité élémentaire de Chimie by Lavoisier was published in Naples, edited by two artillerymen in 1791. G.M. La Pira and L. Parisi translated this textbook with the practical aim of improving the learning of chemistry by the Royal artillery corps. This group of military students was the first in the South of Italy to have a laboratory at its disposal to study chemistry. The importance of chemistry for military purposes is abundantly evident, as we learned by the example of the laboratory of Lavoisier at the Arsenal, but, in the Kingdom of Naples, the artillerymen were the only scholars who had the means to study chemistry with a full range of resources. What are the differences between the original French text, the Neapolitan translation and the other Italian translations? In 1799, the short-lived Neapolitan Republic (January 23–June 19 1799) was in power, then, from 1806 to 1815 the Kingdom of Naples was subsumed during the “French decade.” It should be of particular interest for historians of chemistry to know what happened in the realm of science, teaching and research among the men of this military corps: during these crucial events, what happened to the artillerymen who were the first to translate and adopt the “nouvelle chimie”?