Jean-Baptiste Ventura

Who is Jean-Baptiste Ventura?

Jean-Baptiste Ventura was an Italian soldier, mercenary and adventurer who ended up in the Sikh Empire in Punjab.

Of Italian Jewish origin from Modena, Ventura, at the age of seventeen enrolled as a volunteer in the militia of the Kingdom of Italy, served with Napoleon's imperial army where he reached the rank of colonel of infantry. After the Waterloo and the final downfall of Napoleon he returned to his home; but in 1817, yet known by the local authorities for his revolutionaries and Napoleonic sympathies owing to a dispute between him and a local member of the reactionary Ducal police, he was obliged to leave the country.

He went first to Triest, and then to Constantinople, where he was for a time a ship-broker.

Learning that Persia was seeking the services of European soldiers, he obtained an officer's commission, and helped to instruct the forces of the shah in European methods of warfare. He soon attained the rank of colonel. On the death of the shah in 1822, Ventura offered his services to his successor, 'Abbas Mirza. In the latter's service, however, were a number of English officers who were decidedly hostile to the French, with whom they classed Ventura on account of his having fought under Napoleon; and through their intrigues Ventura was dismissed.