Revolutions - 7.23- The First War of Italian Independence

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

On March 23, 1848 the Kingdom of Piedmont declared war on Austria. 

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 7.23, the First War of Italian Independence. For the last few episodes, we have been following events in the disintegrating Austrian Empire. Last week, we focused on the Hungarians who were currently demanding virtual independence from Vienna. Well, this week, we're going to focus on the people of Lumberty, Venetia, who are going to demand literal independence from Vienna. And they would not be alone in making this demand. The revolts in Milan and Venice at the end of March 1848 had captured the imagination of patriotic Italians up and down the peninsula.

The specific goal of breaking Lombardy Venetia away from Austria would mean the collapse of Austrian hegemony over the rest of Italy, because even if you lived in Florence or Naples and were not directly ruled by the Austrians, your rulers were directly ruled by the Austrians. So, just as the fire of constitution had swept up from the south in January and February, the fire of patriotic war fever swept back down from north to south.

The Italians now had an arena within which they could fight for liberation and unification. It was the kingdom of Lombardy, Venetia, and the time had come for war. For King Charles Albert of Piedmont, the question of coming to the aid of Lombardy Venetia was a foregone conclusion. He had already spent the last few years pulling away from the Austrians, and over the winter of 1847, 1848, he had been busy building up his army. The five days of Milan simply represented the opportunity he had been waiting for. Charles Albert had latched on to the idea that he might one day be king of Italy,

and that was always going to mean a war with Austria. He might not have been some idealistic liberal reformer, radical revolutionary, far from it, but the fall of Chancellor Metternich and the uprising in Milan positively reeked of opportunity. When the envoys from Milan arrived in turn begging for aid, there was no way Charles Albert was going to say no. But obvious personal ambitions aside, the king was also not 100% the master of his own destiny. He had already been forced to promulgate a constitution he did not really believe in, and now the liberal leaders in turn were demanding immediate military aid for Milan. You're going to declare war, right, sire?

Right? So yes, the king did seek the war for his own advantages, but if he had tried to say no, very likely he would have been overthrown. So on March the 23rd, 1848, King Charles Albert took a really deep breath, and he declared war on Austria. Now, this might seem like a pretty insane thing to do, what with Piedmont being a relatively small Italian kingdom, and Austria being, well, Austria, but it's not as crazy as it sounds. In fact, in terms of manpower, the two sides would be just about evenly matched. At the end of March, the Piedmont Army was at a nominal strength of 65,000. And though I think it was a little bit less than that, that is still a huge army, not some scrappy little band of patriotic volunteers. And they would be facing off against an Austrian

army that they probably outnumbered. During his years as military governor, The old Marshal Radetsky led, at least on paper, about 70,000 men. But following the collapse of order in Venice and Milan, desertion, and casualties, had taken that down to about 50,000, a mix of mostly Austrian artillery, Hungarian cavalry, and Croatian infantry, in case you need reminding of why Vienna was so hot to placate the Hungarians and Croatians. So, even though this is a contest between the relatively small kingdom of Piedmont and the relatively huge empire of Austria, it was going to be a pretty fair fight in northern Italy.

Now, as I said at the end of our episode on the Five Days of Milan, field marshal Redetsky had pulled all his forces back to the so-called quadrilateral. This was a zone that lay between four fortress cities. Pascera, Leniago, Verona, and our old friend, Mantua. The quadrilateral lay in the heart of Lombardy, Venetia, and guarded the passes up into Austria. After he withdrew there, Radetsky prepared for a full frontal assault from the army of Piedmont, and he sent dispatches to neighboring Croatia to send reinforcements at once. And though he would be operating more or less on his own during the coming campaign,

Field Marshal Radetsky would soon take into his service 18-year-old Archduke Franz Josef, the nephew of Emperor Ferdinand, who was sent to get his first taste of battle in preparation for what his mother hoped would be his eventual, well, We'll get into all that sooner, rather than later. But though Piedmont and Austria were matching up pretty evenly, no one believed Charles Albert would be able to do it alone. It would take the united strength of Italy to push the Austrians back up through the Alps. This led to a common response up and down the peninsula.

The people, generally speaking, were excited by the news from Milan and Venice and eager to help. The rulers of the various Italian states, though, were quite a bit more. ambivalent. There were three interrelated considerations holding them back. First, and most obviously, the crowned heads of Italy were all clients of Austria, so it was super against their nature to bite the hand that was feeding them. The second consideration exposes one of the things that is going to help disrupt the whole process of resurgimento, and that was age-old regional rivalries. The principal benefactor of the coming war was going to be Piedmont. Everyone knew that. If they won, Charles Albert was going to be that much stronger.

He was going to hold more territory, wealth, and prestige. So, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the King of the Two Siciles, even the Pope, they were awfully frosty to the idea of going to war for the aggrandizement of Piedmont. Finally, all of them were capable of following logic of liberation and unification to its inevitable conclusion. Liberation and unification meant the end of the existing order. They would either end up absorbed by Piedmont or trapped in an Italian republic. Both were very noxious options. But that said, they didn't really have much of a choice because the people were positively brimming over with patriotic ecstasy and demanding their leaders join the war at once.

In the small duchies of Parma and Modena, volunteers self-organized and sent up small detachments. The respective dukes of those two little states wanted no part of any of this, and they fought. fled their capitals. They were not going to fight. They weren't going to fight anyone. Not the Austrians, not their own people. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, meanwhile, was super ambivalent about sending aid to his rival Charles Albert. But facing massive public pressure, he finally approved sending about 7,000 troops north. But while he sent this aid to Piedmont, he also maneuvered other detachments into disputed territory that he suspected Charles Albert would try to annex. So in the mix of what was supposed to be a grand unified war against Austria,

soldiers from Piedmont and Tuscany engaged in a few side skirmishes. Meanwhile, way down in the South, King Ferdinand of the two Sicilies was absolutely miserable. The trouble in Italy had begun in his own kingdom back in January. Sicily had broken away, and the Naples had risen up and forced him to proclaim a constitution. Now the liberals that this constitution had brought to power, were demanding he mobilized the full force of the Neapolitan army to go fight a war in Lumberty, Venetia. The king did everything he could to drag his feet. He was massively annoyed at the prospect of helping Charles Albert conquer Italy, and he was rightly afraid that if the Italians lost, that retribution from the Austrians would be swift and painful. And then finally, Sicily remained outside his control. Here he was trying to organize an expedition to retake the island,

and these damned liberals wanted to send all his best men a thousand miles away. So he schemed and he stalled to stay out of the war. But public pressure eventually became too great. And on April the 7th, the king announced that, of course, we will help our brothers and sisters in Venice and Milan. And I pledged fully 40,000 men to the effort. This proclamation tasted awful in his mouth. But even more awful, the announcement that the man who would lead this expedition would be, Gulli Elmo Pepe. That's right, our old friend, the Carbonari good cousin, Gullielmo Pepe.

Having been in exile off and on since the failed Carbonari revolt he had led back in the 1820s, Pepe remained an ardent liberal Italian nationalist and was now forced on the king by his people. General Pepe could be counted on to prosecute the war with the utmost patriotic zeal, which is exactly why the king hated giving him the job. But without question, question, the most important contribution to the war effort would come from Rome, both in terms of military support and moral authority. The papacy was considered the critical linchpin of Italian unification. And there was no reason to doubt that Pope Pius Ith supported the Italian push for liberation and unification. Since he had been elevated in 1846, he had said and done all the right things.

The insurrectionaries up in Lumberty, Venetia, had carried his image along with the tricolor, as they manned the barricades. The combined might of King Charles Albert and Pope Pius XVI 9th would surely see the expulsion of the Austrians and the glorious reunification of Italy. But while the spiritual head of the Catholic Church, Pius the 9th was also the civil ruler of the papal states, and no less than any other crowned head in Italy,

he was nervous about joining Charles Albert's war against Austria. At first the Pope tried to get away by saying that, well, we'll only fight if we're a town, act, and then secretly hoped that the Austrians would be beat without him needing to get involved. But enthusiasm in Rome was too high to ignore. The liberals in the Eternal City were on a role. They loved their patriotic pope. They loved their new civil constitution. They loved their new civic guard. And now they were ready to go to war for God and Italy. Within days, 10,000 men signed up for a volunteer legion that would be led by the patriotic officer Andrea Ferrari.

And so, unable to not do what everyone clearly expected him to do, the Pope went ahead and authorized 7,000 regular soldiers under Colonel Giovanni Durando to march up to the Po River, the border between the papal states and Lumberty Venetia. But even as he ordered all this, the Pope was getting awfully queasy about the idea of making war on another Catholic power. While the other Italian states were kind of sort of getting on board, Charles Albert launched his war. On March the 25th, the first advance units crossed the Chino River into Lumberty. The very next day, these advanced units entered Milan, where they were cheered wildly. And I know it's been a few episodes since we've been in Italy. But remember, the five days of

Milan wrapped up on March the 22nd. So this is just four days later. In less than a week, Milan had tossed out the Austrians and now had the might of Piedmont behind it. Everything was looking great. Everything was especially looking great for the constitutional monarchists in Milan. Remember, they had begged Piedmont to enter the war as much to stop the momentum of radical Republicans as expel the Austrians. And with the might of Piedmont, now weighing heavy in the scales, it was going to be tough for the radicals to shift the balance back in their favor. Not that they weren't going to try. The Republicans hated and distrusted Charles Albert. Many of their friends had been exiled or killed by the King of Piedmont.

And just like the crown heads of Italy, they weren't super keen on the notion of pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, just so Charles Albert could take over Italy. And there was serious talk among them that maybe they were actually better off with the Austrians. But rushing back to Italy as fast as he could was a man who was not going to put up with that kind of talk. Giuseppe Matzini had been living in exile in London these past few years, and though he was among those who did not like, Court trust Charles Albert, he firmly believed that the expulsion of Austria and unification of

Italy had to precede the further goal of making Italy a republic. If they tried to start with a Republican grow it out from there, they would have a very hard time convincing anyone to support them, most of all Charles Albert and his army. Matini arrived in Milan on April the 7th, and he was cheered as wildly as the troops from Piedmont. By now, Matzini was an almost legendary figure, His revolutionary Republican credentials were not just beyond reproach. I mean, he was the credentialing committee. So when he counseled a patriotic alliance with Charles Albert for the time being, he was able to carry most people with him.

Not all of them, mind you. And for a few Republicans in Milan, they saw Matzini as parachuting in from his long, and by all accounts quite comfortable, exile in London. And while Matzini had chatted up the ladies in London High Society, They had been living under the boot of the Austrians. They had just shed blood in the street to expel them, and they did not want to be put under the boot of Charles Albert. The patriotic alliance between the king and the Republicans, though,

did appear to be a two-way street. Charles Albert wanted their energy and zeal working with him, not against him. And so he offered Mancini a pretty enticing offer. If you accept that the end result of this war is going to be a monarchy, I will let you write the Constitution. Personally, I might be inclined to make that deal. Was the mere presence of a monarch really such a deal breaker if you get to write the rules about what he can and cannot do?

I mean, there are plenty of perfectly free, democratic and liberal states in Europe right now that just so happen to have kings and queens. They've got fancy clothes and a nice house and they throw excellent tea parties, but that's it. Wow, the king of Netherlands. moonlights as a commercial airline pilot, but you know, you get my point. But before he took this deal, Matzini wanted assurances that this was not just an empty promise.

And more importantly, he wanted it declared right now that the end result of all this must be the total unification of Italy. So he told the king that they could strike a deal if the king agreed to break every diplomatic tie he had and start from scratch with a new policy of unifying Italy. This was a pretty big ask, because at the moment, Charles Albert was trying to coax the other heads of Italy to join the war, and he couldn't very well come out and say, oh, by the way, you're next, which is exactly what Matzini was asking him to do. While these negotiations unfolded, the war itself really began. On April the 8th, the Army of Piedmont reached the town of Guaito on the Machino River, which is just about equal distance between Pescara to the north and Man. Antua to the south, and represented the gateway to the quadrilateral.

Piedmont attacked the Austrian bridgehead at Guaito, drove them back, and took control of both banks of the river. With Piedmont now controlling the Machino, Radetsky pulled his own forces back to Verona. But this is where military historians level their first criticism of Charles Albert. He was moving way too slowly. Radetsky had been knocked back on his heels, The Austrians had lost control of Milan and Venice, and Vienna was in a state of absolute chaos. If Charles Albert had moved quickly and seized the initiative, the way you might have expected Napoleon or Caesar to have done, Charles Albert might have won the war right here just weeks into the campaign. Instead, he moved cautiously.

He opened up a siege on Pesciera, and he gave Radetsky ample time to regroup and re-fortify his position, to say nothing of giving ample time to those reinforcements from Croatia to reach the quadrilateral. On April the 17th, that reinforcing army of about 14,000 men departed Croatia under the command of General Levant Nugent, and they entered Venetia, which brings us to the plight of Danielle Manin and his oh-so-recently declared Republic of Venice. Unlike Lumberty, which now had the Piedmont Army at their backs, Manin and the Venetians had no military to speak of, and no way to resist the incoming Nugent. This put Manin in a tight spot.

He was a Republican through and through, and he did not want to have to call on King Charles Albert to save the day. So he and his colleagues rushed around trying to raise volunteers as fast as possible. But on April the 23rd, General Nugent captured the absolutely vital strategic city of Udine. Manine was forced to dash off a letter to the king that read, In the name of Italy, humanity, and justice, we demand immediate assistance. But the response he got back was exactly the response he feared.

It said the army of Piedmont does not march for chivalry. What do we get if we help you? And there was only one thing they wanted. Venetia would be absorbed into the kingdom of Piedmont. So Manin resisted what he saw as a deal with the devil, but now word was going around, helped by agents and the employee of Piedmont, that the Republicans in Venice were putting everyone at risk. That the good king Charles Albert of Piedmont was happy to help the people, but the stubborn Republicans wouldn't let him, even with an Austrian army now camped in their backyards. So the cities and regions of mainland, Venetia, started holding local plebiscites and saying, well, we, we are we. vote for union with Piedmont, even if Venice doesn't. So please come help us. We'll be your

grateful subjects. But at the moment, Piedmont wasn't even really in a position to help them. Instead, it would come down to the forces coming up out of the papal states, numbering about 17,000 total. Aside from a few thousand raw recruits that Manin had been able to drum up, this papal army was the only thing that could stop Nugent. And that is when the first war of Italian independence was dealt a fatal blow. As I said, the Pope had been getting queasy about the prospect of waging war on the Austrians. His commanders only made this queasiness more acute. Not long after they had departed Rome, Colonel Durrondo had made some intemperate remarks

while rallying his troops. He said that they should all take hearts because their swords were blessed, and that they were being sent by the Pope to exterminate the enemies of God in Italy. When this got back to Rome, Pope Pius was horrified. Durrondo was turning this into some kind of holy war, when the forces on the other side were the Habsburgs, one of the strongest bulwarks of Catholicism in the world. It didn't take long for the German bishops in Rome to hear about Durando's speech,

and they were livid. The Pope now feared that a religious schism was on the way, and so he had to choose between his patriotic Italian tendencies, which he did have, don't get me wrong, and his duty is the visible head of the Catholic Church. He chose the latter. The Pope tried to put the brakes on the forces he had already sent, but orders to Durando led to an open breach.

On April the 22nd, Durando crossed the Po River without orders, and the Pope publicly disavowed him. Durando immediately sent an agent to Charles Auburn, placing these forces under the command of the Army of Piedmont. Then, on April the 29th, 18th, 1848 came the hammer blow. The Pope issued a papal allocution washing his hands of all of it. Addressing both the Italians and the Germans, he apologized to the Germans for the recent turn of events, and then wrapped up everything by saying,

but seeing that some at present desire that we too, along with the other princes of Italy and their subjects, should engage in war against the Austrians, we have thought it convenient to proclaim clearly and openly. in this Our Solem Assembly that such a measure is altogether alien from our councils. He concluded, We cannot refrain from repudiating before the face of all nations, the treacherous advice published moreover in journals and in various works of those who would have the Roman pontiff to be the head and to preside over the formation of some sort of novel republic of the whole Italian people.

Rather, on this occasion, moved here too by the love we bear them, we do urgently warn and exhort the said Italian people to abstain with all diligence from the like councils, deceitful and ruinous to Italy itself, and to abide in close attachment to their respective sovereigns. The Pope's abrupt about face was a shock to everyone. This whole time, everyone had just sort of taken it for granted that the Pope was on board. Everything Pious had said and done since he had become Pope hinted at it. I mean, he had sent troops.

into the field. And now suddenly all the moral and financial and political authority the Pope held that was supposedly behind liberation and unification was yanked back. It put everyone in Italy, from the strongest monarch to the lowliest private, in a very difficult position. How can I keep fighting when the Pope has denounced the war? Can I really go against God? Many couldn't. The Pope's allocution shattered the unity and the momentum of the Italians, just as it was starting to coalesce. News of the allocution landed on the desk of Charles Albert like a ton of bricks. There was no getting around it. The Pope had just openly denounced him and his entire project. But Charles Albert was far too committed now to pull back. So as much for political reasons as

military reasons, the king decided he needed to force a battle. The only way to blunt the fallout from the allocution was to deliver a spectacular victory. So Charles Albert prepared to attack the main body of Austrians at Verona. But the king planned his attack based on two pieces of faulty intelligence. First, he had been led to believe that the Italian population inside Verona was itching to rise up. Second, his scouts had not noticed that for almost a month now, the Austrians had been fortifying all the villages in the area around Verona. So when the Army of Piedmont advanced on May the 6th, their lines were soon bogged down by

unexpected obstacles, and the advance slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile, the population inside Verona was not, in fact, itching to rise up. So much to Charles Albert's chagrin, the focal point of the battle was now not Verona, but the little village of Santa Lucia. In intense fighting, the Piedmontees eventually managed to capture the town, but there was no communication or coordination with the rest of their line, so rather than keep pushing, the drive completely stalled. It stalled for so long that the king had to order a retreat with dark approaching. His planned spectacular victory hadn't exactly been a defeat,

but it certainly hadn't been a spectacular victory. But while Charles Albert focused on Verona and maintaining the siege of Prescia, he did nothing about the incoming reinforce. under General Nugent. As I said, the only force that could stop them was the papal army that has now gone rogue. Durrondo and Ferrari attempted to block Nugent, who had enlarged his own forces to about 17,000, but Nugent and his veteran troops were just better at this than the inexperienced Romans. The Austrian general successfully outflank them and managed to make a critical river crossing, and then Durando guessed wrong about where they were headed. This left the Austrians free to hit a 2,000-man force occupying Cornuda Hill on May the 8th.

The outnumbered volunteer forces held out all day expecting reinforcements from Durando, but those reinforcements never came, and they were forced to abandon the hill. After stopping to make a brief but failed attempt to take Vicenza, General Nugent pressed on to Verona. When he linked up with Redetsky, the Auster. Army, now numbered over 70,000. Now, I know what you're saying at this point. Hey, what in the heck ever happened to Guilomopepe in that Neapolitan army that had been promised way back in the beginning of April?

Well, I'll tell you, they are still a long way from the front line. At the end of April, troop transports had sailed down around the southern coast of Italy and then up the Adriatic coast before finally putting in an Ancona, which is about 200 miles south of Venice, and still technically in the papal states. General Pepe did not link up with the men he was supposed to lead until May the 3rd, and when he got there, he discovered not the 40,000 men he had been promised, but just 14,000. And as if that was not bad enough, as soon as Pepe arrived, he received further instructions not to cross the Po River until he got explicit orders from the king. Steimied, Pepe was forced to sit on the sidelines. Not yet knowing,

that one of the reasons the king was stalling is that he was busy plotting a counter-revolution in Naples. So ever since the upheavals in January that had brought constitutional government back to Naples, there had been the usual bickering between liberals and radicals. As usual, the liberals were content with the political reforms, but representing non-noble landowners and the merchants of the city, they did not want to overturn the social order. This led to periodic confrontations between workers, and the Naples Civic Guard, which was firmly in the liberal camp. This infighting continued during the lead-up to the first session of the new parliament, which was scheduled to open on May the 15th.

King Ferdinand was watching all of this infighting with relish, and then, like a gift from heaven, like literally a gift from heaven, the Pope issued his allocution on April the 29th, denouncing the war with Austria. If there was one thing the liberals and radicals had in common, support for the war. But the less politically-minded population of the kingdom of the two Sicilies thought it quite a bit more important to listen to the Pope than some random politicians. So the king and his agents could now plausibly argue that the liberals and the radicals were working against God. Support for the constitutional regime wavered. Then, after lumping the liberals and radicals

together as the enemies of God, the king cleverly divided them by insisting that when the parliament meet, it must swear not to alter the existing Constitution, which was obviously fine with many of the liberals, but more radical members were coming to the Parliament specifically to make alterations to the Constitution. So, having discredited his enemies and then pit them against themselves, the King massed 12,000 troops in Naples, a garrison that included regiments of the famous Swiss Guard. This provocative concentration of power Inflamed passions of workers and radicals in Naples Who erected barricades throughout the city

In defiance of the liberals Who hoped that cooler heads would prevail And that all their differences could be worked out in the parliament With the pretext he now needed to crack down The king ordered the army to clear the barricades On the morning of May the 15th And pretty soon shots rang out And open fighting in the streets exploded

The results were bloody The army deployed artillery to blast away at the barricades, and anyone who might be in the vicinity, and then they would finish off these pockets of resistance with brutal bayonet charges, usually led by the Swiss guards. This went on all day, and as the nerves and the patience of the Neapolitan army wore thin, the army no longer targeted with precision. They just started shooting at anything that moved. They pushed their way into homes and businesses and just trashed them.

As this went on into the afternoon, a few of the more enterprising soldiers were able to turn a quick profit by demanding payment from families to leave their homes or businesses or lives untouched. By nightfall, the insurgents had been dispersed, the barricades cleared, and martial law imposed on Naples. Two days later, the king dissolved parliament. The constitutional era that had opened up on February the 10th was slammed shut on May the 15th. the king could now concentrate on reconquering Sicily. And never a fan of joining the war in the north, the king issued an order for the expedition to Lombardy, Venetia, to break off and come home at once.

But despite the loss of momentum, the loss of the Pope, the loss of other allies, the larger political project of expanding the domains of the Kingdom of Piedmont continued as if everything was going great. The liberal leaders of Milan prepared to fuse Lombardy to Piedmont. And this was news to Republican leaders like Matzini, who thought that such questions

had not been settled, and that the fusion of Lumberty in Piedmont was by no means a foregone conclusion. But the liberals in Milan just ignored the radicals, and in fact they outflanked the radicals on the left, by announcing on May the 13th that a democratic referendum would be held on the issue of fusing Lumberty to the Kingdom of Piedmont. Except when the ballots actually started being distributed, the question was not, do we fuse with Piedmont or not. It was, do we fuse with Piedmont now, or wait until the war is over. And then when agents from Milan went around canvassing for votes, they helpfully explained that the choice was really between King Charles Albert and Austria. And a vote for a mutiate fusion was a vote against the hated Austrians. This left the

Republicans in Milan absolutely gobsmacked. Matzini denounced the treacherous way this was being handled. Whatever patriotic alliance had bound them together had now been irretrievably broken by the agent of the duplicitous King Charles Albert. But for all their outcries, the Republicans shouted in vain. After staging an unsuccessful riot in Milan on May the 29th, the results of the referendum were announced. 560,000 votes for immediate fusion, 700 for waiting until the war was over. So it was settled. Having sprung themselves free of the House of of Hapsburg. Lumberty delivered itself to the House of Savoy. But the vote for fusion was only going to stick if Piedmont won the war, and that was not at all a sure thing, far from it. At the end of

May, Field Marshal Radetsky went on the offensive with a plan to operate from the center of the quadrilateral and knock out components of his enemy one by one. And here we see the other really big criticism of Charles Albert, that he had spread his forces way too thin. On May the Redetsky marched southwest and hit the army that had been sent up from Tuscany at their positions. Not supported in time by their Piedmont allies, the Tuscan soldiers fought bravely, but were pushed into retreat, leading to a lot of ill-will and desertion. The battle effectively knocked Tuscany out of the war. Redesky tried to follow this up by reasserting Austrian control of the Machino River and lifting the siege of Pascera, but his attempt to retake the bridge at Guaito was successfully repulsed by the army of Piedmont,

and he was forced to pull the Austrians back to Verona. When he did so, the commander of the Pesquera garrison gave up hope and surrendered. And this was counted as a great victory by the Piedmontese, and in Milan they cheered King Charles Albert. They said long live the king of Italy. Despite this victory, though, Charles Albert continued moving slowly and spread out over a long, thin line. With room to breathe, Radetsky whipped around in March northeast to attack the papal army that was now holed up in Vicenza. On June the 10th, the Austrians attacked with 30,000 men, and though Durando and his men spent

all day resisting, they were pushed back and pushed back and could not stop the Austrians from entering the city proper. Holding only the citadel, and with little hope of winning, Durando signaled his surrender, Wishing to remove this threat in his rear with minimum cost and casualties, Redetsky was magnanimous in victory. He allowed the papal troops to depart under full military honors on the promise that they would march directly south across the Poe River and stay out of the war for at least three months. Those three months would be all the time Redetsky needed. So now Tuscany is out. The papal states are out.

And having never even entered the war, the Neapolitan army was out. Well, mostly. General Pepe was in Bologna when he got the order from the king to stand down and return home. Furious, he resigned his commission rather than carry out the withdrawal. But the local patriots in Bologna rushed to Pepe's residence and begged him to keep leading the men. Encouraged, Pepe went back to work and said that he would not be standing down, that he was going to go get into the fight whatever the king said. But the men under his command were not enthusiastic patriots. patriotic volunteers, they were just regular army officers and soldiers.

And with the Pope against the war, and with their king, now having ordered them home, the vast majority of them ignored Pepe and went home, leaving him with just a small band of 2,000 soldiers. General Pepe finally, finally, finally crossed the Poe River on June the 17th. But by then, there were almost no other Italian forces in the region. The Austrians had the upper hand all across. Venetia, and they were preparing to make one final decisive push against Piedmont. Pepe would soon direct his troops towards Venice, where he would put them at the disposal

of what was left of the Republic of Venice. But that was not much. It wasn't even clear that the Republic of Venice was a thing anymore. By the end of June, nearly all the mainland provinces of Venetia had voted of their own accord to fuse with Piedmont, and so the city of Venice was political. isolated, feeling that the pressure was too much to bear, especially given their lack of a military. On July 4, 1848, the Venetian Assembly voted overwhelmingly to abandon the Republic and fused with the Kingdom of Piedmont. With this vote, Charles Albert was now, at least in theory,

the sovereign head of all of northern Italy. But it was all in theory. And it appeared that the Republicans in Venice had waited just long enough to buy high on the kingdom of Piedmont. Practically the moment Venice voted for fusion, the bubble burst, and the cause of liberation and unification crashed back to Earth. At the end of July 1848, the Army of Piedmont was stretched out on a long north-south line, anchored at the far north at the old plains of Rivoli, where Napoleon had won one of his greatest victories. So though both sides still commanded somewhere around 70,000 troops. Field Marshal Radetsky was able to concentrate his forces on a thin point in the Piedmont line, and he hit it hard on July the 23rd, smashing through, and in a wave,

retaking most of the bridges on the Machino River that Piedmont had controlled for the last three months. The next day, Piedmont counterattack, but they were rebuffed. On July the 25th, they had to abandon their last bits of fortified high ground near the town of Custosa. The army of Piedmont fell back to Milan in full retreat. The Battle of Gustosa did not have to be the end of the war, but it was. Feeling that all was now against him, Charles Albert concluded that his gambit had failed. He had rolled the dice, and they had come up snake eyes. So rather than preparing a defense of Milan, he opened up secret talks with Brett Etzky,

who agreed to an armistice. The king would have one day to lead his army, and whoever wanted to follow, out of Lumberty, and back to Piedmont proper. When word of the talks leaked, radicals like Matzini were furious, and they pledged that they would defend Milan. But really, with what? Against what? On August the 6th, the Army of Piedmont marched home, and something like half the city of Milan

followed. Refugees from a failed war of independence. Radetsky and the Austrians reoccupied the city the next day. The First War of Italian Independence was not yet technically finished. Venice still held out, and King Charles Albert would be back. But Radetsky's victory had taken enormous pressure off the Austrian Empire. And next week, we will stay in the Austrian realms as the pushback against the events of March began in earnest.