[This article appeared originally in The London Daily Chronicle of May 29, 1915.]
We have all learned a good deal of French, Russian, and Austrian geography in the last ten months; and, in the same sad school, we shall now become better acquainted with the region of mountain and plain which, through and for 140 miles east of Lake Garda, is the Austro-Italian borderland, and with the northeastern coast of the Adriatic, where there will be important side issues. There is this great difference, among others, between the Adriatic and the Alpine military problems: On the one side, the Germanic powers can now only assume the defensive; on the other, they can, and probably will, attempt the invasion of provinces dear not only to Italians, for their homes and a splendid galaxy of historic associations, but to cultivated minds throughout the world for treasures of art abounding even in the humblest towns and villages.
The irregularity of this northern frontier is the product of an unhappy history; it does not follow the line of the mountain summits or any other natural feature, and still less is it a limit marked by race or language. A glance at the map shows its salient characteristic—the piece of the Austrian Tyrol, from forty to sixty miles wide, which is thrust southward toward the great plain of Lombardy and Venetia, and toward the four provincial capitals, Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, and Belluno. The Trentino—as it is called, after the very ancient city of Trent, once the chief town of Tyrol, now a market centre dignified by many towers and poverty-stricken palaces and castles—is thoroughly Italian; but it still gathers much of its importance, as it has done ever since Roman times, from the fact that the best and oldest road from Germany and West Austria over the Alps runs through it to Verona. For nearly half a century one of the grandest of mountain railways has followed this olden track of conquest and pilgrimage, from Innsbruck over the Brenner Pass, through Botzen, and down the Adige Valley. More recently a branch line has been built which runs from Trent southeastward to Padua and Venice.
It is not only the Italian resistance to Austrian aggression and tyranny that has made this doorway into the lowlands about the Po a vast battlefield. From the Middle Ages onward France and Austria constantly fought out their quarrels here. In 1796, Napoleon, after routing Marshal Wurmser at Lonato and Castiglione, small towns to the south of the Lake of Garda, drove him up the Adige Valley to Trent, and then round the side track already named, the Brenta Valley, by Bassano back to Mantua. In 1848 the Piedmontese Army advanced upon the famous quadrilateral of fortresses, then Austrian, covering the entry—Mantua and Peschiera on the Mincio, Verona and Legnago on the Adige. Charles Albert was far from being another Napoleon; and the three days' battle of Custoza, when four weary and ill-found Italian brigades held out against Radetzky's five army corps, did not serve to turn the tide of the national fortunes. That year saw the first appearance of Garibaldi as a military leader and the accession of the present Austrian Emperor; and it is strange now to recall that in the war of 1859, when Lombardy was liberated by the French and Sardinian Armies, this same Francis Joseph was actually in command of the Austrian forces. The battle of Solferino, fought on a front of five leagues, along the hills to the south of Lake Garda, was a terrible butchery, even by the worst of modern standards, for in twelve hours 25,000 of the 300,000 combatants were killed or wounded. In the war of 1866 Garibaldi took a body of volunteers up the Adige; but the treaty which gave Venetia to the new Kingdom of Italy left the Trentino still to be recovered.
The Adige and Brenta Valley roads to Trent and Botzen are, then, clearly marked out for Italian effort in the present juncture; and if the Austrians have the advantage of innumerable defensive positions on the mountain heights, they have the disadvantage of very long and frail lines of supply and reinforcement. It may be supposed that the Alpine regiments, which are in some ways the flower of the Italian Army, will also attempt the lesser approaches to Tyrol from the west, by the Val di Sole and the Valtelline, and from the east from Belluno and Pieve. The Brenner railway, with its twenty-two tunnels and sixty large bridges, is peculiarly vulnerable. With many cities and good railways behind them, and a popular welcome in front, the Italian troops, on the other hand, will face the hill roads, now generally free from snow, with confidence.
Very different are the natural conditions on the only other part of the frontier where the hostile forces can well come to grips. The Alps gradually fall and break up into separate ridges as we pass east; and beyond Udine there is a flat gap, 50 miles wide, beyond which lies Trieste, with its fine harbor and predominantly Italian population. Further north, where the main line for Vienna passes the border at Pontebba, to penetrate the double barrier of the Carinthian and Styrian Alps, there can be little temptation to adventure on either side. But in the lowlands of Friuli a beginning has been made, the advance at one point, Caporetto, reaching as far as the River Isonzo, while Terzo, Cormons, and other small places have been occupied. If there is to be any large-scale warfare on the Alpine frontier, it must apparently occur either in this gap or in and about the Adige Valley, on the way to Trent.