Chrzanowski, however, having now to deal with a foreseen case, gave his orders promptly. To replace Ramorino, the 1st division was ordered from Vespolate through Mortara to Trumello; the 2nd division from Cerano to push south on Vigevano; Action of Mortara. the reserve from Novara to Mortara; the remainder to follow the 2nd division. Had the 1st division been placed at Mortara instead of Vespolate in the first instance the story of the campaign might have been very different, but here again, though to a far less culpable degree, a subordinate general’s default imperilled the army. Durando (21st March), instead of pushing on as ordered to Trumello to take contact with the enemy, halted at Mortara. The reserve also halted there and deployed west of Mortara to guard against a possible attack from San Giorgio. The Sardinian advanced guard on the other road reached Borgo San Siro, but there met and was driven back by Radetzky’s II. corps under Lieut. Field Marshal d’ Aspre (1789-1850), which was supported by the brigades that now crossed at Bereguardo. But the Italians were also supported, the Austrians made little progress, and by nightfall the Sardinian II., III. and IV. divisions had closed up around Vigevano. Radetzky indeed intended his troops on the Vigevano road to act simply as a defensive flank-guard and had ordered the rest of his army by the three roads, Zerbolo-Gambolo, Gropello-Trumello and Lomello-San Giorgio, to converge on Mortara. The rearmost of the two corps on the Gambolo road (the I.) was to serve at need as a support to the flank-guard, and, justly confident in his troops, Radetzky did not hesitate to send a whole corps by the eccentric route of Lomello. And before nightfall an important success had justified him, for the II. corps from Gambolo, meeting Durando outside Mortara had defeated him before the Sardinian reserve, prematurely deployed on the other side of the town, could come to his assistance. The remaining corps of Radetzky’s army were still short of Mortara when night came, but this could hardly be well known at the royal headquarters, and, giving up the slight chances of success that a counterstroke from Vigevano on Mortara offered, Chrzanowski ordered a general concentration on Novara. This was effected on the 22nd, on which day Radetzky, pushing out the II. corps towards Vespolate, concentrated the rest at Mortara. That the Italians had retired was clear, but it was not known whither, and, precisely as Napoleon had done before Marengo (see [French Revolutionary Wars]), he sent one corps to seize the king’s potential line of retreat, Novara-Vercelli, kept one back at Mortara—ready, it may be presumed, to grapple an enemy coming from Vigevano—and engaged the other three in a single long column, widely spaced out, on the Novara road. Thus it came about that on the 23rd d’ Aspre’s II. corps encountered Charles Albert’s whole army long before the III. and Reserve could join it. The battle of Novara was, nevertheless, as great an event in the history of the Imperial-Royal Army as Marengo in that of the French.
First the II. corps, and then the II. and III. together attacked with the utmost resolution, and as the hours went by more and more of the whitecoats came on the field until at last the IV. corps, swinging inward from Robbio, came on to the Novara. flank of the defence. This was no mere strategical triumph; the Austrians, regiment for regiment, were more than a match for the Italians and the result was decisive. Charles Albert abdicated, and the young Victor Emmanuel II., his successor, had to make a hasty armistice.
After Novara, the first great struggle for Italian unity was no more than a spasmodic, if often desperate, struggle of small bodies of patriots and citizens of walled towns to avert the inevitable. The principal incidents in the last phase were the siege of Venice, the sack of Brescia by the merciless Haynau and the capture of Rome by a French expeditionary corps under General Oudinot.
The Italian War of 1859
The campaign of Magenta and Solferino took place ten years later. Napoleon III., himself an ex-carbonaro, and the apostle of the theory of “nationalities,” had had his attention and his ambitions drawn towards the Italian problem by the attempt upon his life by Orsini. The general political horizon was by no means clear at the end of 1858, and on the 1st of January 1859 the emperor of the French publicly expressed to the Austrian ambassador his regret that “our relations are not so good as heretofore.” This was regarded by all concerned as a prelude to war, and within a short time a treaty and a marriage-contract allied Sardinia with the leading European power. In the smaller Italian states, as before, the governments were on the side of Austria and the “settlement of 1815,” and the peoples on that of United Italy. The French still maintained a garrison in Rome to support the pope. The thorny question of the temporal power versus the national movement was not yet in the foreground, and though Napoleon’s support of the former was later to prove his undoing, in 1859 the main enemy was Austria and the paramount factor was the assistance of 200,000 French regulars in solving the immediate problem.
The Sardinian army, reconstituted by La Marmora with the definite object of a war for union and rehabilitated by its conduct in the Crimea, was eager and willing. The French army, proud of its reputation as the premier army in the world, and composed, three-fourths of it, of professional soldiers whose gospel was the “Legend,” welcomed a return to the first Napoleon’s battle-grounds, while the emperor’s ambitions coincided with his sentiments. Austria, on the other hand, did not desire war. Her only motive of resistance was that it was impossible to cede her Italian possessions in face of a mere threat. To her, even more than to France and infinitely more than to Italy, the war was a political war, a “war with a limited aim” or “stronger form of diplomatic note”; it entirely lacked the national and personal spirit of resistance which makes even a passive defence so powerful.
Events during the period of tension that preceded the actual declaration of war were practically governed by these moral conditions. Such advantages as Austria possessed at the outset could only be turned to account, as will presently appear, by prompt action. But her army system was a combination of conscription and the “nation in arms,” which for the diplomatic war on hand proved to be quite inadequate. Whereas the French army was permanently on a two-thirds war footing (400,000 peace, 600,000 war), that of Austria required to be more than doubled on mobilization by calling in reservists. Now, the value of reservists is always conditioned by the temper of the population from which they come, and it is more than probable that the indecision of the Austrian government between January and April 1859 was due not only to its desire on general grounds to avoid war, but also, and perhaps still more, to its hopes of averting it by firmness, without having recourse to the possibly dangerous expedient of a real mobilization. A few years before the method of “bluffing” had been completely successful against Prussia. But the Prussian reservist of 1850 did not want to fight, whereas the French soldier of 1859 desired nothing more ardently.
In these conditions the Austrian preparations were made sparingly, but with ostentation. The three corps constituting the Army of Italy (commanded since Radetzky’s death in 1858 by Feldzeugmeister Count Franz Gyulai (1798-1863)), were maintained at war efficiency, but not at war strength (corps averaging 15,000). Instead, however, of mobilizing them, the Vienna government sent an army corps (III.) from Vienna at peace strength in January. This was followed by the II. corps, also at peace strength, in February, and the available field force, from that point, could have invaded Piedmont at once.[4] The initial military situation was indeed all in favour of Austria. Her mobilization was calculated to take ten weeks, it is true, but her concentration by rail could be much more speedily effected than that of the French, who had either to cross the Alps on foot or to proceed to Genoa by sea and thence by one line of railway to the interior. Further, the demands of Algeria, Rome and other garrisons, the complicated political situation and the consequent necessity of protecting the French coasts against an English attack,[5] and still more the Rhine frontier against Prussia and other German states (a task to which the greatest general in the French army, Pélissier, was assigned), materially reduced the size of the army to be sent to Italy. But the Austrian government held its hand, and the Austrian commander, apparently nonplussed by the alternation of quiescence Mobilization. and boldness at Vienna, asked for full mobilization and turned his thoughts to the Quadrilateral that had served Radetzky so well in gaining time for the reserves to come up. March passed away without an advance, and it was not until the 5th of April that the long-deferred order was issued from Vienna to the reservists to join the II., III., V., VII. and VIII. corps in Italy. And, after all, Gyulai took the field, at the end of April, with most of his units at three-quarters of their war strength.[6] On the side of the allies the Sardinians mobilized 5 infantry and 1 cavalry divisions, totalling 64,000, by the third week in April. A few days later Austria sent an ultimatum to Turin. This was rejected on the 26th, war being thereupon declared. As for the French, the emperor’s policy was considerably in advance of his war minister’s preparations. The total of about 130,000 men (all that could be spared out of 500,000) for the Italian army was not reached until operations were in progress; and the first troops only entered Savoy or disembarked in Genoa on the 25th and 26th of April.
Thus, long as the opening had been delayed, there was still a period after both sides had resolved on and prepared for war, during which the Austrians were free to take the offensive. Had the Austrians crossed the frontier Austrian movements. instead of writing an ultimatum on the 19th of April, they would have had from a week to a fortnight to deal with the Sardinians. But even the three or four days that elapsed between the declaration and the arrival of the first French soldiers were wasted. Vienna ordered Gyulai to take the offensive on the 27th, but it was not until the 30th that the Austrian general crossed the Ticino. His movements were unopposed, the whole of the Sardinian army having concentrated (by arrangement between La Marmora and Marshal Canrobert) in a flank position between Casale and Alessandria, where it covered Turin indirectly and Genoa, the French disembarkation port, directly. Gyulai’s left was on the 2nd of May opposite the allied centre, and his right stretched as far as Vercelli.[7] On the 3rd he planned a concentric attack on King Victor Emmanuel’s position, and parts of his scheme were actually put into execution, but he suspended it owing to news of the approach of the French from Genoa, supply difficulties (Radetzky, the inheritor of the 18th-century traditions, had laid it down that the soldier must be well fed and that the civilian must not be plundered, conditions which were unfavourable to mobility) and the heavy weather and the dangerous state of the rivers.
