The part of Hess in the campaign of Solferino was played with more success in that of Custozza by Major-General Franz, Freiherr von John (1815-1876). On this officer’s advice the Austrian army, instead of remaining Second Battle of Custozza. behind the Adige, crossed that river on the 23rd of June and took up a position on the hills around Pastrengo on the flank of the presumed advance of Victor Emmanuel’s army. The latter, crossing the Mincio the same day, headed by Villafranca for Verona, part of it in the hills about Custozza, Somma-Campagna and Castelnuovo, partly on the plain. The object of the king and of La Marmora, who was his adviser, was by advancing on Verona to occupy the Austrian army (which was only about 80,000 strong as against the king’s 120,000), while Cialdini’s corps from the Ferrara region crossed the lower Po and operated against the Austrian rear. The archduke’s staff, believing that the enemy was making for the lower Adige in order to co-operate directly with Cialdini’s detachment, issued orders for the advance on the 24th so as to reach the southern edge of the hilly country, preparatory to descending upon the flank of the Italians next day. However, the latter were nearer than was supposed, and an encounter-battle promptly began for the possession of Somma-Campagna and Custozza. The king’s army was unable to use its superior numbers and, brigade for brigade, was much inferior to its opponents. The columns on the right, attempting in succession to debouch from Villafranca in the direction of Verona, were checked by two improvised cavalry brigades under Colonel Pulz, which charged repeatedly, with the old-fashioned cavalry spirit that Europe had almost forgotten, and broke up one battalion after another. In the centre the leading brigades fought in vain for the possession of Custozza and the edge of the plateau, and on the left the divisions that had turned northward from Valeggio into the hills were also met and defeated. About 5 P.M. the Italians, checked and in great disorder, retreated over the Mincio. The losses were—Austrians, 4600 killed and wounded and 1000 missing; Italians, 3800 killed and wounded and 4300 missing. The archduke was too weak in numbers to pursue, his losses had been considerable, and a resolute offensive, in the existing political conditions, would have been a mere waste of force. The battle necessary to save the honour of Austria had been handsomely won. Ere long the bulk of the army that had fought at Custozza was transported by rail to take part in defending Vienna itself against the victorious Prussians. One month later Cialdini with the re-organized Italian army, 140,000 strong, took the field again, and the 30,000 Austrians left in Venetia retreated to the Isonzo without engaging.
In spite of Custozza and of the great defeat sustained by the Italian navy at the hands of Tegetthof near Lissa on the 20th of July, Venetia was now liberated and incorporated in the kingdom of Italy, and the struggle for unity, that had been for seventeen years a passionate and absorbing drama, and had had amongst its incidents Novara, Magenta, Solferino and the Garibaldian conquest of the Two Sicilies, ended in an anti-climax.
Three years later the cards were shuffled, and Austria, France and Italy were projecting an offensive alliance against Prussia. This scheme came to grief on the Roman question, and the French chassepôt was used for the first time in battle against Garibaldi at Mentana, but in 1870 France was compelled to withdraw her Roman garrison, and with the assent of their late enemy Austria, the Italians under Cialdini fought their way into Rome and there established the capital of united Italy.
Bibliography.—The war of 1848-49 has been somewhat neglected by modern military historians, but the following are useful: Der Feldzug der österr. Armee in Italien 1848-49 (Vienna, 1852); Gavenda, Sammlung aller Armeebefehle u.s.w. mit Bezug auf die Hauptmomente des Krieges 1848-49; Major H. Kunz, Feldzüge des F. M. Radetzki in Oberitalien (Berlin, 1900), and Major Adams, Great Campaigns. Both the French and the Austrian governments issued official accounts (Campagne de Napoléon III en Italie 1859, Der Krieg in Italien 1859) of the war of 1859. The standard critical work is Der italienische Feldzug 1859 by the German general staff (practically dictated by Moltke). Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, who had many friends in the Austrian army, deals with the Magenta campaign in vol. i. of his Letters on Strategy. General Silvestre’s Étude sur la campagne de 1859 was published in 1909. In English, Col. H. C. Wylly, Magenta and Solferino (1906), and in German General Cämmerer, Magenta, and Major Kunz, Von Montebello bis Solferino should be consulted.
For the Italian campaign of 1866 see the Austrian official history, Österreichs Kämpfe 1866 (French translation), and the Italian official account, La Campagna del 1866, of which the volume dealing with Custozza was published in 1909. A short account is given in Sir H. Hozier’s Seven Weeks’ War, and tactical studies in v. Verdy’s Custozza (tr. Henderson), and Sir Evelyn Wood, Achievements of Cavalry.
(C. F. A.)
[1] Several of the French generals—Lamoricière, Bedeau, Changarnier and others—who had been prominent in Algeria and in the 1848 revolution in France had been invited to take the command, but had declined it.
[2] Students of Napoleonic strategy will find it interesting to replace Ramorino by, say, Lannes, and to post Durando at Mortara-Vigevano instead of Vespolate-Vigevano, and from these conditions to work out the probable course of events.
[3] Ramorino’s defence was that he had received information that the Austrians were advancing on Alessandria by the south bank of the Po. But Alessandria was a fortress, and could be expected to hold out for forty-eight hours; moreover, it could easily have been succoured by way of Valenza if necessary.