The battle continued to expand. The enemy maintained intact his resistance from Stelvio to the Astico, but he was vacillating on the Asiago Plateau and in full retreat along the remainder of the front. He was protected more by interruptions in the roads than by his rear guards, who were irresistibly overwhelmed. Italian batteries, brought forward quickly with captured enemy artillery, were intensely shelling the adversary, firing to the extreme extent of their range. Cavalry divisions, having destroyed the enemy resistance on the Livenza and reestablished crossings, were marching toward the Tagliamento.
The Sixth Army, on October 31, 1918, entered into action with a brilliant advance by the Ancona Brigade at the end of the Brenta Valley, and in the morning it attacked the adversary along the whole front.
On the Grappa, under the impetus of the Fourth Army's thrust, the enemy front had collapsed. It was impossible to estimate the prisoners coming down the mountain in flocks. All the hostile artillery here was captured. The Italians forced the gorge of Quero, passed beyond the spur east of Monteresen, and were advancing in the Piave Valley. Overcoming the enemy rear guards at the Passo di St. Buldo, Italian troops were descending into the Piave Valley toward Belluno. Other parties were engaged in fighting in the hollow of Fadalto, which was still occupied by the enemy. Cavalry and cyclists, following the road to the foothills, were opening the way to Aviano.
By the end of the day the Fourth Army was master of the Fonzaso Valley. The Bologna Brigade entered Feltre that night.
The Twelfth Army, having gone through the Quero defile from the mountains, was joining up on the Piave course with the Eighth Army. The latter had descended the valley of the Piave to the south of Belluno, and had detachments engaged in the Fadalto Valley, which light columns were encircling by way of Farra d'Alpago.
The right wing of the front of the Third Army had been prolonged toward the coast by a marine regiment, which had occupied all the intricate coastal zone, which the enemy in part flooded. A patrol of sailors had reached Caorile. The Third Army by nightfall had reached the Livenza. Advanced guards entered Motta di Livenza and Torre di Mosto. British infantry and mounted troops occupied Sacile. The troops of the Tenth Army reached the line of the Livenza from that place as far south as Brugnera. The number of prisoners was continually increasing, and the various armies captured more than 700 guns. The booty taken was immense, its value being estimated in billions of lire.
As the Italian army prosecuted its victorious advance, most deplorable evidence was coming to light of atrocities by the enemy during the period of invasion. In Italy, as in France, the fury of the barbarians was intense against things and persons. Such fury was witnessed not only by Italian soldiers, but by representatives of the Italian and Allied press accompanying advancing columns. Everywhere there were tokens of willful, useless destruction and brutal robberies. Terrified eyewitnesses narrated horrible scenes. The Italian Government, the military authorities, and the Allies stated that they would not fail to carry out rigorous inquiry regarding abominations committed, of which the enemy must give an account. Italians found in freed zones were in a terrible state. They lacked everything because the enemy during a year of occupation had destroyed, burned, sacked, and carried off everything.
The utter collapse of the Austrian forces and the fierceness of the fighting are well illustrated by a special dispatch sent under date of October 31, 1918, from Italian headquarters east of the Piave and published in the New York "Times" the following day. It said:
"At many points east of the Piave there are so many Austrian prisoners that they block the roads over which they are being marched to the rear. The Venetian plain immediately east of the Piave is a scene of desolation. Houses and villages have been ruined by shell fire. When the advancing Italians reached Sacile they were received as saviors, and the women and children of the town fell on their knees before them. During a recent influenza epidemic in the town the Austrians are said to have brutally rejected appeals from mothers for food for their sick children.
"Every bridge in the path of the advancing Allies has been the scene of fighting. One railroad bridge near Conegliano was lost and retaken thirty times. In the storming of Monte Cismon, which gives to the Allies command of the valleys of the Brenta and Cismon—and the domination of the Brenta virtually means possession of the Trentino—an Austrian battery of six guns which had been shelling the city of Bassano was captured. The morning before it was taken fifty persons were killed in Bassano."