# when was the battle?

Recently, an old grave were discovered in Italy. On the grave was written a mysterious inscription (originally in italian but translated in english there).

Here lies an italian soldier who died in battle
12016485 is the multiplication of his day and month of death,
his age when he died, his number of children and finally,
the number of years between his death and Boru's death

Hint:

France was part of the war.

Hint2:

He had less than 10 children

Source: strongly inspired by Diophante.fr website

• "12016485 is the multiplication of his day and month of death", but $31 \times 12 = 372$, and that's the max you can get. – ibrahim mahrir Jan 17 '18 at 17:56
• well yes maybe you need to multiplicate with his age and number of children! I added a coma so it is clearer. – Untitpoi Jan 17 '18 at 17:58
• Ah I see. I thought that line was a separate one. – ibrahim mahrir Jan 17 '18 at 17:59
• 12016485 = 3*3*3*5*13*41*167 – ngn Jan 17 '18 at 18:20
• You already have the inscription in block quotes, so you don't need to enclose each line in quotes. And presumably you mean "years" instead of "year". – Acccumulation Jan 17 '18 at 20:06

It would appear that our soldier died on:

September 13, 1515, at the age of 41, leaving behind 5 children. He died during the Battle of Marignano, a conflict between France and the Old Swiss Confederacy, taking place near Milan, Italy.

I deduced this by:

Finding the prime factorization of the number: $$12016485 = 3*3*3*5*13*41*167$$ Then allocating those factors into reasonable values for the given values. I started with "Years since Boru's death," and guessed that it meant Brian Boru of Ireland, who died in 1014. I searched for wars involving France in various years, and settled upon 1515 (from 1014 + 3*167) for the year he died.

September 13th was part of that conflict, so that took care of the other two 3s and the 13 required, and then it was just reason that said 41 would be the age, and 5 the number of kids, as opposed to the inverse :).

• Nice one, I will have one question. What about 1849? – Untitpoi Jan 17 '18 at 18:31
• @Untitpoi That was close to the French Revolution (though a bit after), and would have worked with mostly the same numbers if he had fewer kids, but it wouldn't have made sense for a grave to be in Italy. – DqwertyC Jan 17 '18 at 18:38
• I guess it was an obscure war ;). But France had a participation in this first Italy independance war. – Untitpoi Jan 17 '18 at 18:42