| 1848: The Prelude
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2009
Austrian interests in northern Italy dated to the War of the Spanish Succession, following several successful campaigns waged by the famous Prince Eugene of Savoy. Thanks to Kaunitz's "diplomatic revolution" of 1756, northern Italy enjoyed almost two generations of peace during which the economy and population flourished. But the alliance between France and Austria numbered among the many casualties of the French Revolution. Northern Italy saw more major field battles during the Napoleonic wars than any other comparably-sized part of Europe. Italian troops took part in all major French campaigns, fighting from Moscow to Madrid both in the regiments of Napoleon's puppet Kingdom of Italy and in the French army itself.
Northern Italy became the Austrian army's proving ground, its main training area and a pleasant garrison assignment where two generations of officers came of age. "After 1850," one Austrian officer recalled, "all talented officers strove for a post in Italy, where they stood the best chance of finding war and promotion." The army's methods and performance in Italy laid down a pattern starting in the Napoleonic wars and culminating with the great victories of the 1848 war that determined Austrian conduct in 1866.
 Bianchi defeats Murat at Tolentino, 2-3 May 1815.
The Austrian army enjoyed a tremendous run of military success in the theater, and it is often forgotten that the Habsburg armed forces won more battles during the Napoleonic period than they lost. Victories at Caldiero in 1805 and Sacile in 1809 helped the Austrian officer corps forget the defeats of Austerlitz and Eckmühl in those years, and the Austrian army became very confident in its ability to fight and win in the region.
In late 1813 and early 1814 Austrian forces led by Feldmarschall Leutnant (FML) Heinrich Bellegarde invaded the Kingdom of Italy, driving Viceroy Eugene's Italian army back across the Mincio River. Veteran Italian troops returned to the kingdom from Spain, and on 8 February 1814 Eugene and his army crossed the Mincio and attacked Bellegarde's forces on what would become the Custoza battlefield. After a day-long struggle, Bellegarde's army retreated to the protection of Verona's fortifications. Eugene's victory only staved off the inevitable, however, and by April Bellegarde had overthrown the kingdom.
Slipping away from his exile off the coast of Tuscany, Napoleon seized the imperial crown again in 1815. Naples' King Joachim Murat flung his forces into Napoleon's cause even before it was clear that the return from Elba would result in war. Though very strong on paper, the Neapolitan army proved unable to put many troops into the field, and Murat found himself badly outnumbered by Johann Frimont's 45,000 Austrians in northern Italy.
Murat defeated an isolated Austrian force in northern Romagna and successfully occupied the Papal States and Tuscany. FML Friedrich Freiherr von Bianchi's wing of the Austrian army caught up with Murat at the village of Tolentino, near Ancona on the Adriatic coast, where a violent battle broke out on May 3, 1815.
Murat fought with all his legendary personal courage. Before Murat had arranged his forces for action his Neapolitan royal guard, without orders, launched an impetuous attack on the Austrians. Two of Murat's four divisions were scattered across the countryside plundering farms in desperate search of food when the firing began. Bianchi's artillery and timely charges by a small contingent of Tuscan cavalry routed Murat's forces. The Neapolitan army dissolved, and Murat boarded a fishing boat headed for Provence.
While not a large battle, Tolentino closed out Austrian participation in the Napoleonic wars on a clearly victorious note. It also set the tone for the Austrian victories in Italy of the next half-century: seize a favorable position, allow the enemy to wear himself down attacking it, especially in the face of heavy artillery fire, and then counterattack with reserves at the key moment.
The Lombard-Venetian Kingdom
The Congress of Vienna sealed Austrian interests in Italy, assigning the Habsburgs Lombardy and Venetia. Styled the "Kingdom of Lombardy and Venetia," a Habsburg archduke ruled the provinces as viceroy from his capital at Milan. The large French cash indemnity went to modernize the Quadrilateral fortresses — Peschiera, Mantova, Verona and Legnano. This arrangement also assured that the 300-year-old Austro-French rivalry in northern Italy would continue.
The two provinces underwent a minor industrial revolution during the next several decades, becoming an important source of textiles. Silver from taxes levied in the kingdom was vital to back the masses of paper money issued in Vienna, and the method of payment — hard currency — made these taxes even more important to the central government than their amounts implied. Numerous authors have pointed to the tax burden, but other provinces paid similar and even higher rates. The taxes did appear onerous to Italians who compared their rates to those levied in the neighboring Tirol. There, low rates could be justified as a reward for the region's fanatically pro-Habsburg sentiments during the Napoleonic Wars and testified to the impossibility of quashing resistance in the high, twisting alpine valleys.
The relatively rich Italian provinces also quartered large numbers of Austrian troops, kept there as much for economic as strategic and political reasons. Local agricultural surpluses and a generally lower cost of living made it much cheaper to quarter a regiment in northern Italy than in a poor province like Galicia or Transylvania. During the economies forced on the army after the death of Kaiser Francis in 1835 this became especially important. Regiments also often remained in their home districts so that their men could be more easily furloughed.
The Austrian army made extensive use of Italian manpower. By 1817 the Habsburg army boasted a total of one cavalry and eight infantry regiments raised in Lombardy-Venetia, plus another Italian-speaking regiment, the 22nd, recruited in and around Trieste.
The seat of war, Austria's Lombard-Venetian Kingdom.
Among the armies of the Italian states, Napoleon's deliberate attempt to create an Italian national consciousness made the native military establishments a stronghold of liberal and nationalist sentiment. Throughout the period of the Risorgimento, this military orientation of Italian political upheavals marked a sharp contrast to movements in other parts of Europe. While armies remained a stronghold of conservatism and legitimacy in other centers of revolution in 1830 and 1848, in Italy revolution often came from the armed forces.
In 1821 Austrian troops shattered the Neapolitan army in a brief campaign, stopping a constitutional movement in the Bourbon kingdom. A decade later, they smashed another liberal movement in Parma, Modena and the Papal States, coming very close to war with France.
Italian adventurers connected to Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy movement attempted to ignite armed revolution in 1834 and 1846, with most of the would-be rebels killed. Piedmontese troops in 1834 and Neapolitan units in 1846 snuffed out the attempts without Austrian assistance. Young Italy had widespread support throughout the peninsula. Mazzini's program called for a unitary Italian republic, leaving no place for kings, the pope or the Austrians. The repeated failures of its uprisings made it obvious that Italy would not rid itself of the Austrians without either outside intervention or some compromise of Mazzini's principles.
Mazzini's ideas circulated most freely in Italy's many institutions of higher learning, including the Austrian naval academy in Venice. "At the naval academy," writes Lawrence Sondhaus, "literally under the noses of the Austrians, the future officers received the 'most liberal' education available anywhere in Italy."
1848
Resentment finally exploded in 1848 with the Five Days of Milan, the Italian nationalist uprising sparked by events in southern Italy. Like most wars, it did not break out spontaneously, but had roots stretching back many years. Several years of poor harvests and economic troubles had fed rising political discontent. A general wave of riot, revolution and civil war spanned the entire continent, but only in Italy did the revolution bring on open warfare between established states.
The 1846 election of the liberal Cardinal Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferrara as Pope Pius IX brought hope to many Italian nationalists. A noted critic of his predecessor, the highly conservative Gregory XVI, the new pontiff pardoned political prisoners, admitted laymen to the papal government and promised to issue a constitution for the Papal States he ruled as temporal monarch.
In 1847 Swiss liberals defeated the conservative cantons in a relatively bloodless but politically seminal civil war. Austria's failure to intervene there, plus its well-known financial plight, helped make Austria's Italian provinces (as well as other parts of the monarchy) ripe for revolution. Already unrest in Lombardy-Venetia had led to the declaration of martial law, and the Austrian Empire stood at a low ebb of international power and prestige.
 From Milan, 81-year-old Field Marshal Josef Graf Radetzky von Radetz commanded Austrian forces in Italy. Radetzky had outwitted Napoleon in 1814 as Allied chief of staff, but circumstances and the slow promotion path for non-Habsburg general officers had prevented him from fulfilling his promising potential. In late 1847 Radetzky's forces numbered only 34,000 front-line troops. Denied reinforcements, Radetzky recalled furloughed men and ordered new conscription for his locally-raised regiments. The new levies brought in few new soldiers, but did increase resentment of the Austrian regime. Those recruits who did arrive also helped increase the Italian proportion of the army. Peasant conscripts, previously lacking any national awareness, became the prime target of Italian nationalist propaganda.
Radetzky added to the tension in 1847 when he sent troops to occupy Ferrara, a fortress in Romagna (the northernmost province of the Papal States) across the border from Venetia. Though the 1815 Treaty of Vienna clearly gave the Austrian army the right to occupy Ferrara at any time, diplomatic protests came from across Europe including strong language from Pius IX and from King Charles Albert of Piedmont. Anti-Austrian street demonstrations broke out in Milan in September, followed by the Tobacco Riots in the first days of 1848. Italian nationalists boycotted tobacco, a government monopoly and prime revenue source. Radetzky countered by issuing thousands of unsold cigars to his Croatian soldiers, instructing them to light up as often as possible in public. The Croats happily obliged, blowing smoke in the faces of nicotine-starved Italians, who responded by attacking them with their bare hands.
Revolutionary fervor also grew in Southern Italy. The Neapolitan army saw disturbances in its ranks, but loyally suppressed outbreaks in Messina in September 1847 and in Palermo in December 1847. An even larger outbreak in Palermo on 12 January, King Ferdinand II's birthday, could not be contained and insurgents soon overwhelmed both the 5,000-man Neapolitan garrison and the 6,000 reinforcements sent from the mainland. Within a few days a provisional government had formed, and by 25 January large street demonstrations demanding a constitution broke out in Naples itself. Ferdinand II had hinted at granting a constitution several times during the previous year, and on 9 February he made it official, issuing a document based on the French constitution of 1830. Piedmont and Tuscany soon followed, and on 11 March Pius IX issued a limited one of his own.
Stay tuned: The story resumes with Radetzky's retreat from Milan.
The Battle of 1848 appears in Battles of 1866: Custoza — order your copy now! |
