All these qualities were requisite for the difficult task to which General Cadorna now turned his first line troops, numbering about 700,000 men. To oppose this advance the Austrians mustered on the frontier about half that number. General von Hofer was chief of staff under Archduke Eugene and General Dankl was in command in the Tyrol.
Two reasons have been advanced to explain the succession of small victories with which the Italians opened their campaign. The first, already mentioned, is that it was part of the Austrian plan to yield their outpost positions with slight resistance and protect their numerically inferior forces in the main strongholds of the mountains. The other is that the archduke and his generals made the mistake of underestimating the enemy. For centuries Italy had supplied the Austrian Court with its poets and musicians, until in the Dual Monarchy the Italians were regarded as an effete race, fit only for the politer pursuits of art, literature and song. Italy's successful War of Independence in the latter half of the nineteenth century had not altogether destroyed this impression. This idea, it may be said, was not shared by the Germans, whose military men had made a closer study of world conditions and had learned to respect the virility of the men of modern Italy.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER LXV
FIRST ENGAGEMENTS
Owing to the nature of the scene of hostilities the first days of the Austro-Italian campaign brought a series of engagements between small groups of combatants. Artillery played a large part, and here the Austrians, with their big guns already in carefully studied positions, had a decided advantage. Viewed as a whole only does the campaign at this stage take on an importance and dignity that ranks with the great battles on other fronts of the Great War. Never before had two great powers fought in territory so absolutely ill adapted to the movement of large bodies of troops. For the same reason the story attains a picturesqueness absent from the dreary plains of Galicia and Poland and Flanders. Austrians, Hungarians and Italians fought in a land known throughout the world to tourists for its grandeur of scenery, its towering, snow-clad peaks, and idyllic lakes and valleys. It was warfare where the best soldier was the man most able to surmount the natural difficulties and take advantage of the natural protection of the ground. The official statements of the Italian and Austrian war offices told of feats of mountaineering, and of hand-to-hand struggles, of dripping bayonets and of combatants locked in last embrace with hands clutching each other's throats.
On both sides of the boundary were thousands of men who had spent their lives exploring the trackless mountainsides, climbing with ropes and ice axes and staves. Both nations had encouraged the formation of Alpine clubs.
Soon after midnight on May 23, 1915, the Alpini and Bersaglieri of the Italian army, supported by a few battalions of first line troops and gendarmes, crossed the mountain frontier. Soon the peaks resounded with the popping of rifle fire and the louder detonations of the Austrian mountain guns. Along the whole Trentino front that night a hundred skirmishes drove back the Austrian outpost. Only a few thousand men in all were engaged. The Italian cyclist sharpshooters advanced swiftly up the steep mountain roads until greeted by musketry fire. Then they sought shelter, pushing forward from rock to rock and from tree to tree. Often the light infantry and Alpini foot soldiers were able to skirt the enemy's posts and catch them in the rear.
By May 26, 1915, all Italy was thrilled by the news that all the lower passes of the Dolomites were won and breaches made at Tonale Pass along the northwest and in the Carnic and Julian Alps along the northeast front. Among the points occupied were the Montozzo Pass, 9,585 feet high, Ponte Caffaro, running into southwestern Trentino, the ridge of Monte Baldo, extending northward fifteen miles toward Arco and Roverto in southern Trentino, some of the heights looking westward toward Trento, all the valleys in the labyrinth of the Dolomites, and several footholds in the Alps of Carinthia. The eastern army was well inside Austrian territory, its left at Caporetto on the Isonzo just under Monte Nero, its center looking down on Gorizia from the heights between Indria and the Isonzo, and its right between Cormons and Terzo. Losses on both sides were surprisingly small considering the extent of territory covered by the fighting. The Austrians, after slight resistance, withdrew into their fortresses and waited behind their guns, grimly conscious that the real struggle was still before them.
Then, through the holes pierced by the mountain troops, the Italian engineers began to move forward their artillery and building emplacements and constructing trenches. Skirmishing on the mountain frontier continued until the end of May, 1915. By that time Italian forces attacking Trentino had crossed the Lessini Mountains north of Verona, captured the Austrian town of Ala on the Adige, and penetrated nearly ten miles into Austrian territory. They held high ground on the south commanding the forts of Roverto, and had begun to bring up their heavy guns against this important stronghold. Roverto is one of a number of strongly fortified places girdling Trent and commanding the converging routes to this center of the Austrian defensive. Other lesser fortresses in this girdle are Laredo on the Chiese, Levico on the Brenta, and Riva at the head of Lake Garda. Upon these the Italians closed in, and there they consolidated their positions awaiting the support of the first-line troops advancing in heavy detachments, and of their artillery.
While Italy struck the first blow on land, the first offensive operation of the Italo-Austrian conflict by sea came from Austria. This was an extensive raid on Italy's Adriatic coast. Its object was to delay the Italian concentration by attacking vital points on the littoral railway from Brindisi to the north.