1866: Italy Goes to War
By Mike Bennighof. Ph.D.
September 2007

Italy became a united kingdom in 1861 almost exclusively through armed force — both the actions of the Piedmontese Army and Giuseppe Garibaldi's Red Shirt volunteers. And nothing symbolized the new state more than the Royal Italian Army, designed by War Minister Manfredo Fanti to be "the school of the nation."

The Italian army grew rapidly after the 1859 war, with new formations raised in central and northern Italy and others inducted from the old Tuscan, Parmesan and Modenese armies. Good officers proved to be in short supply, and a series of mass promotions and crash courses proved necessary to correct this deficit. Fanti sent recruits to different parts of the peninsula in hopes of using the army to turn young Tuscans or Sicilians into Italians, but most regiments retained their local character in 1866. The melting pot would not show results until much later. Fanti also introduced spaghetti, until then the province solely of the Royal Neapolitan Army, as the army's basic dinner ration.

	Italy before Unification.

Fanti built the new army around the Armata Sarda, the old Piedmontese army. The old army had a reputation as a tough, professional force and its officers considered themselves far superior to those of the other Italian states. The repeated defeats at the hands of the Austrians had only exaggerated their arrogance. Fanti relied almost exclusively on his old officer corps, with only the formations inducted wholesale into the new army showing large numbers of non-Piedmontese officers.

Fanti resisted bringing in many officers from Garibaldi's forces, and showed substantial prejudice against leaders from the other Italian states as well. After his resignation in the summer of 1861, his successor Alfonso la Marmora rolled back some of these measures. La Marmora added a fourth regular battalion to each regiment, and decreased their size while maintaining the same number of officer billets. By finding employment for all or most of the officers left at loose ends after unification, La Marmora hoped to rob potential resistance movements of their leadership.

Politically, La Marmora's move has to be counted as a success. But keeping so many politically or professionally suspect officers, and promoting many of them beyond their competence, gravely diluted the quality of the Italian officer corps. An Italian battalion was about half the size of its Austrian counterpart in 1866, and definitely not as well led. The system proved disastrous in action. Yet even after La Marmora's measures the army remained a Piedmontese preserve, with 68 percent of its officers but only about one-third of the rank and file coming from the old kingdom.

The Italian officer corps of 1866 easily possessed more combat experience than any other army in Europe, with the possible exception of their Austrian opponents. Unfortunately for the new Royal Italian Army, its officers had gained most of this experience fighting against one another. The 12 division commanders present at Custoza included King Victor Emanuel's son Umberto, five generals from the old Armata Sarda, one from the former Tuscan regular army, three former generals of Garibaldi's Red Shirts, one general from the former Neapolitan regular army and the former War Minister of the Kingdom of Naples. The new spirit of Italian unity did not extend to the officer corps, where resentment flared continually between officers of different factions.

Mobilization

The Italian army called 483,087 men to the colors in 1866. Additional forces eventually totaled 38,000 volunteers assembled by Garibaldi, 28,000 National Guardsmen and 20,000 cara-binieri, the kingdom's militarized police. Italy's military forces therefore slightly outnumbered the total Austrian count and greatly outweighed Austrian forces in the theater. Of the Italian total, a large number — at first army reservists, later National Guardsmen — had to be stationed in the old Kingdom of Naples to suppress the contadini rebellion there. About 220,000 men initially went to the field armies.

That's why they called them Red Shirts. Garibaldi's Volunteer Corps, 1866.

Mobilization proceeded smoothly, with less than one percent of those called up failing to respond, but problems abounded. Already the army had failed to call up 40,000 new recruits the previous year because it could not afford to train them, and had shelved plans to revamp the artillery. Even worse, cash shortages had forced abandonment of a desperately needed overhaul of the supply services, which had proven woefully inadequate in the 1848-49 and 1859 campaigns when servicing the far smaller Armata Sarda. Infantry regiments therefore did not call up most of their reservists.

Perhaps even more serious was a great shortage of horses; the already overburdened supply services faced a terrible shortfall in transport. The Piedmontese cavalry had relied on foreign mounts (chiefly North German) since early in the century. The mounted branch suffered even worse than the supply services when France and the German states cut off exports of horses in the spring of 1866, but it is doubtful that the cash-strapped Italian state could have afforded to import them even if they had been available. While conscripted plow horses could pull ammunition wagons well enough, they could not take the place of carefully trained cavalry chargers. The Italian cavalry performed poorly in 1866 in both its scouting and battle roles, due in no small part to its poor-quality mounts.

When the 1866 war began, the contadini war in southern Italy was entering its last stage. Upon fleeing his kingdom in February 1861, Frances II of Naples called on his people to resist the Piedmontese. The new Italian army's leading generals tried their hand at stifling resistance — Alfonso la Marmora, Enrico Cialdini, Raffaele Cadorna. Troop strength grew to 100,000 by July, 1862, and the army resorted to increasingly brutal tactics, destroying villages and summarily executing armed peasants. The army finally adapted to the guerrilla struggle, and by 1865 had the region under control.

A review of the deployment patterns of Royal Italian regiments in the contadini struggle shows a clear preference for using non-Piedmontese regiments to take the brunt of the fighting. Some of these same units would be the first to break at Custoza, such as the former Tuscan regiments of the Pisa Brigade. And the units accused of committing atrocities against Austrian prisoners were precisely those which had conducted some of the most brutal operations of the contadini war.

Leading the Army

Taking the newly-united army of a newly-united kingdom into its first war would require the utmost political skills, and so King Vittorio Emanuele simply militarized his government arrangements. The king would hold the army's titular command, with La Marmora — now holding the twin offices of prime minister and foreign minister — as his chief of staff and the de facto commander.

Popularly known as "Il Re Galantuomo" for his overrated exploits in 1859, the king knew his limitations and left the army's management up to La Marmora. La Marmora had extensive military experience, first gaining exposure by crushing a revolt in Genoa in 1849. He led the Piedmontese expeditionary corps in the Crimean War, but declined command of the Armata Sarda in 1859, retaining his post as Minister of War.

	Gallant King Vittorio Emanuele II.

In a letter to La Marmora dated 1 May 1866, Enrico Cialdini, a highly-decorated veteran of the 1848 and 1859 wars and conqueror of the Papal States in 1860, insisted on an army-level command, "no more and no less." Prodded by War Minister Agostino Pettiti-Bagliani di Roveto, La Marmora agreed to divide his forces into two armies to preserve the army's fragile political unity. The larger army, led by the king and La Marmora, would form around Cremona. The "Army of the Mincio" had a division of heavy cavalry and three oversized corps, each of four infantry divisions and a light cavalry brigade. An Italian division had two brigades, each in turn with two four-battalion regiments and a Bersaglieri battalion, in all about 8,000 to 10,000 men depending on the regiments' state of mobilization — slightly more than an Austrian brigade. An Italian battalion had four companies. The Bersaglieri battalions were often detached from their parent brigade for special duties.

Cialdini led the smaller army, officially known as IV Corps and informally as the Army of the Lower Po. Mobilized around Bologna, IV Corps had eight divisions and two light cavalry brigades. Basing this army on Bologna let it draw supplies from Emilia and Romagna, sparing the overtaxed Italian supply system in Lombardy.

The Royal Italian Army entered its first war with overwhelming numerical superiority, but a number of weaknesses which offset the mathematics. If the bravery of the Italian soldier could not be questioned, the professionalism of his officers and the logistical infrastructure of the rapidly-expanded army left much to be desired. Whatever chance such an army had to dislodge the Austrians from its fortresses would soon be thrown away by spectacularly inept planning and leadership.

Our Battles of 1866 includes the disastrous Second Battle of Custoza, where the new army's shortcomings would be exposed despite the raw courage of units like the Sardinia Grenadiers and a handful of leaders like Giuseppe Salvator Pianell. The Italian army is a powerful force, much stronger than the Austrian Southern Army, but poor organization and weak leadership compensate for these advantages. The Italian player can crush the Austrian, but has to be patient enough to bring his forces to bear. Depending on his insipid leaders to activate at the proper moment is a fool's gamble.

Can you give the Italian army the leadership it needs?
Order Battles of 1866 and find out.