HOWARD C. FELTON
New style of warfare.
At the outbreak of the great war huge and well-equipped bodies of men, led by highly trained officers, rich in the strategic lore of centuries, set out to demonstrate the value of the theories that they had learned in time of peace. In a few months an entirely new style of warfare developed, and most of the military learning of the past was interesting chiefly because of its antiquity.
Italy and Austria fight in the Alps.
After the tremendous conflict at the Marne and the German rush for Calais, which was halted on the line of the Yser, there were on the western front no more battles in the old sense of the word. From the North Sea to the Swiss frontier, the fighting was just a novel and gigantic form of siege warfare. Cavalry became an obsolete arm. Battle tactics, in the old sense, ceased to have any meaning. Of strategy nothing much remained save the dictionary definition.
And now, since Italy and Austria have locked horns above the clouds, among the glaciers and snow-faced slopes of the Alps, even the old text-books on mountain warfare have lost their significance. In the Trentino and along the Isonzo we see the consummation of a new style of mountain fighting, which grew out of the old methods in the struggle for the Carpathian passes during the first winter and spring of the war.
In the old days, during a campaign in a mountain region, most of the battles were fought on the level—in the literal, not the colloquial sense of the word. There was a deal of marching and scouting among crags and precipices, but all with the object of obtaining the best position in an open valley or upland plain where the real fighting must take place. Now the smooth floors of the valleys are comparatively deserted, while whole armies are spread out over great peaks and dizzy snow-fields thousands of feet above sea-level, chopping trenches in the ice and sparring for some vantage-point on a crag that in peace times might tax the strength and skill of the amateur mountain-climber.
Bourcet's "Principles of Mountain Warfare."
Some time between 1764 and 1770, Pierre de Bourcet wrote a treatise entitled "The Principles of Mountain Warfare." This may seem to be going a long way back, but Bourcet's volume and that of the young Comte de Guilbert on general tactics have historical interest and importance because, according to Spenser Wilkinson, they show where some of Napoleon's strategic "miracles" were born. Bourcet's observations are as vital as if they had been written in 1910, but, as will be seen, many of them are somewhat musty in 1916.
Passes and defiles once the strong positions.
Bourcet, without the slightest idea of a battle-line extending from frontier to sea, lays down as the first principle of mountain warfare that when the enemy holds a strong position, the assailant should force him to leave it by turning it. These strong positions in the mountains were, until this war, the passes and defiles.
"These contracted places," he explains, "as they generally constitute the principal objects of the defense, must compel the general who is taking the offensive to seek every possible means of turning them, or of misleading the enemy by diversions which will weaken him and facilitate access to them.
"Suppose, for example, that the general on the defensive should be entrenched at all points surrounding his position in such a way as to be able to resist any direct attack that might be attempted against him, it would be necessary to attempt to turn him by some more distant point, choosing positions that would facilitate the scheme, and which, by suggesting some different object, could not raise the suspicion that the troops there collected were destined for the purpose really in view.
Unlike modern warfare.
"It often happens in the mountains that the only passages favorable to our plans are interrupted by narrow defiles. In such cases we must avoid letting the enemy know our real purpose, and must undertake diversions, dividing our forces into small bodies. This method, which would be dangerous in any other sort of country, is indispensable in the mountains, and is the whole science of this kind of warfare, provided that the general who uses it always has the means to reconcentrate his forces when necessary."
Bourcet's conclusion is that in such a campaign the offensive has great advantages over the defensive. It will always possess the initiative; and if it prepares its blow with sufficient secrecy and strikes swiftly, the enemy, whose troops are necessarily scattered along the whole line menaced, can never be ready to meet the attack.
Generals understand each other's strategy.
To-day, the only trouble about this beautifully tricky system of strategy is that the defending general would pay no attention to it. The Austrian general staff, for instance, knew that the Italians would try to smash through the frontier defenses of the Dual Empire, and that the natural avenues of attack were up the valley of the Adige, along the railway through Pontebba and Malborghetto, or between Malborghetto and the sea. The Austrians have enough men and guns to defend all these routes and all the tortuous pathways in between. So all they had to do was plant themselves on their chosen ground along the whole carefully fortified mountain line, and wait for the Italians to attack wherever they pleased.
"It is only by marching and countermarching," Bourcet said, "that we can hope to deceive the enemy and induce him to weaken himself in certain positions in order to strengthen himself in others."
The enemy cannot be outflanked.
But this cannot be done in the mountain fighting in the Alps to-day. The Italians might march and countermarch as much as they pleased, but there is no possible way of turning the enemy out of his position by outflanking him. It is a case of frontal attack, with every valley blocked and every peak a fortress.
Italy's great objectives.
The Italians campaign has two principal objectives—Trent and Gorizia. These two lovely cities of Italia Irrendenta are respectively the keys to the right and left flank of the Austrian frontier. Trent guards the valley of the Adige, one of the few natural highways from Italy into Austrian territory. Bourcet himself, in 1735, designed the defense of this pathway at Rivoli, just inside the Italian boundary, where he laid out what were considered impregnable positions. To the north; where Trent lies, the country becomes more and more difficult for an invader, and up to this time the Italians have not been able to come within striking distance of the great Austrian fortress, though they hold Rovereto, and have cut the direct line of communication between Trent and Toblach.
Italian game on the Gorizia front.
On the Gorizia front they have made what in this war may be considered as important gains. Gorizia stands watch over the valley of the Isonzo and Austria's Adriatic littoral. Besides occupying Grado and Monfalcone in the coastlands, General Cadorna's forces have crossed the Isonzo at several points, have smashed through to the north, and now threaten to envelop Gorizia. Indeed, many observers believe that Cadorna could at any time take the place by a grand assault if he were willing to pay the cost in blood.
Despite the very unfavorable character of the country, the Italians have gained more ground here in the same period than either the Germans or the Anglo-French forces in the flat or rolling plains of Flanders and northern France. But the outflanking tactics of Bourcet, with feints and swift maneuvering, have had little to do with it. The assailants have had to fight their way step by step.
The Austrians had prepared all sorts of disagreeable surprises. They had hewn gun-positions out of solid cliffs, skilfully placed so as to cover the routes of approach, and had cemented up the embrasures. It was merely necessary to knock the cement out and pour shells upon the advancing Italians at a range of several miles. The batteries were inaccessible to storming parties, and the Italians had to drag up guns of equal caliber to put them out of business.
Ancient methods employed.
In some places rocks and masses of ice were rolled down the slopes, as in the brave old days of the Helvetians; and in this line the Austrians introduced an innovation. When the Italians began driving their trenches up the steep slopes of Podgora—the Gibraltar of Gorizia—the defenders rolled down barrels of kerosene and set them alight with artillery fire. This enterprise throve joyously until the Italian gunners got the range of the launching-point and succeeded in exploding a few barrels among the Austrians themselves.
Austria had possession of the heights.
The writer does not mean to give the impression that Italy's job in the Alps is all but finished. A glance at the map of the frontier will cure any one of such a notion. The Italians were forced to start this campaign under every strategic disadvantage. By the frontier delimited in 1866, they were left without natural defenses on the north and east. All along the Austrian boundary the heights remained in the hands of the Hapsburgs as natural menaces to Venetia and Lombardy. Italy received the plains, but Austria held the mountain fastnesses that hung above them.
This is so much the case that when Italy declared war, the Austrian general orders reminded the troops that they were in the position of men on the top floor of a six-story house, defending it from attackers who must mount from the street under a plunging fire.
Chasseurs Alpins in the Vosges.
But in one way or another the Italians have been doggedly fighting their way up the walls of the house. For one thing, their Alpini have brought to great perfection the use of skis in military operations on the snow-clad slopes. This is the first war in which skis have really come to the front. In France, too, the Chasseurs Alpins have been able to show the Germans some astonishing things with their long wooden snow-shoes in the winter fighting among the crests of the Vosges.
A typical instance of this is the story of the capture of a German post on the Alsatian frontier in the winter of 1914-15. The Germans, holding the railroad from Ste. Marie to Ste. Croix, were expecting an attack from the French position at St. Dié. This impression was deliberately strengthened by a heavy artillery fire from St. Dié, while a considerable detachment of the Chasseurs Alpins led a body of infantry along a winding mountain road to the village of Bonhomme. There they posted themselves just out of sight of the German lines, while the chasseurs scaled the snow-covered heights and crept along the flank of the German position.
When they had reached the desired position, the infantry charged along the road and the Chasseurs Alpins simultaneously whizzed down the slope on their skis. The swift flank attack did the business, and the Germans were driven for some miles down the valley of the Weiss toward Colmar.
Austrians capture of Mt. Lövchen.
One of the greatest single mountain successes of the war was the Austrian capture of Mount Lövchen, the huge black mass of rock, nearly six thousand feet high, which dominates the Austrian port of Cattaro and sentinels the little kingdom of Montenegro on the west.
Ever since the war began the Austrians have from time to time made attempts to reach the summit of this mighty rock. It is only a matter of an hour or two by winding road in peace times, but the Austrians were something like eighteen months on the job; and in all this time it is doubtful if the defenders ever numbered much more than five thousand. It was not captured until the Montenegrins had practically run out of ammunition and of reasons for holding the position. The rest of their kingdom was overrun, and they were to all intents and purposes out of the war.
Russians in the Carpathians.
The Russian campaign in the Carpathians, before the great German drive of a year ago pushed the Czar's armies back into their own country, also illustrates how the mountain warfare of to-day grew by natural tendencies from the tactics of Bourcet into the trench warfare of northern France.
In the first weeks of the war, when the great offensive movement of the Austrian army toward Lublin was crushed by the Grand Duke Nicholas, and the broken hosts of the Dual Monarchy were sent flying through Galicia and the Carpathians, a cloud of Cossack cavalry followed them and penetrated into the plains of Hungary. This last operation was merely a raid, however, and the Cossacks were soon galloping back through the mountain passes.
Then the Russians laid siege to Przemysl, and occupied the whole of Galicia up to the line of the San. Later they pushed on westward to the Dunajec, threatening Cracow. This was their high tide. On their left flank was the mass of the Carpathians, pierced by a number of passes. The more important of these, from west to east, are the Tarnow, Dukla, Lupkow, and Uzsok.
The Carpathian passes.
The Austrians were rallied after some weeks, and put up something of a fight for these "contracted places." The Russians, following the precepts of Bourcet, threatened the passage which seemed most desirable, because of the railroad facilities, and delivered a heavy blow at the Dukla Pass, the least important of the four. Here they pushed through to Bartfeld, on the Hungarian plain. Then, however, Mackensen's fearful blow smashed the Russian line on the Dunajec and poured the German legions across Galicia in the rear of the Carpathian armies, forcing the Muscovites to abandon the passes and scurry home.
Plains more often battlegrounds.
Mountain warfare has always had a certain romantic glamour, and it has filled many pages in the literature of fighting. As a matter of historical fact, however, it has played a comparatively small part in the world's annals. Almost all the great campaigns have been fought out in the lowlands. It is Belgium, for instance, and not Switzerland, that has been proverbially the battle-ground of Europe. Napoleon and Suwaroff marched armies through the Alps, but only as a means of striking unexpectedly at the enemy who occupied the plains beyond.
Up to the time of the present war, mountain campaigns have usually been no more than picturesque foot-notes to history, illuminated by the valor of raiding clansmen like Roderick Dhu of the Scottish Highlands, or guerrilla chiefs like Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolese patriot. Hofer's struggle against Napoleon was indeed a gallant and notable one, but it scarcely entered into the main current of history.
Garibaldi's mountain campaigns.
If, however, we include Garibaldi among the mountain fighters—and such was the characteristic bent of his remarkable military genius—we must accord him a place among the molders of modern Europe, for without his flashing sword Italy could not have been liberated and united. His two Alpine campaigns against the Austrians were successful and effective, but his most brilliant powers were shown in his memorable invasion of Sicily in 1860. Chased ashore at Marsala by the Neapolitan war-ships, and narrowly escaping capture, he led his followers—one thousand red-shirted volunteers armed with obsolete muskets—into the Sicilian mountains, where he played such a game that within two months he compelled the surrender of a well-equipped army of nearly thirty thousand regulars. The history of warfare can show but few exploits so daring and so dramatic.
Copyright, Munsey's Magazine, May, 1916.
The most important military movement on the western front in the early autumn of 1915 was the great French offensive in Champagne. During the preceding months of the spring and summer, there had been hard fighting all along the 400-mile line from the North Sea to Switzerland. The military results had been small on either side and now the French resolved on a mighty offensive which should be decisive in its accomplishments. What these results actually were is told in the following narrative.