THE MILITARY QUESTION

[GM111]

The defeat of the Piedmontese army marked the beginning of an unfavourable period for the revolutionary movements both in Italy and the rest of Europe (France, Austria, Hungary, Croatia and the Czech territories) with significant intervention by feudal, Tsarist Russia.

Ferdinand II, after violent bombardments of Messina and Palermo (earning himself the nickname ‘King Bomba’), took back full control of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies, favoured by the irreconcilable differences within the Sicilian revolutionary government over the agrarian question, about whether or not to sell the peasant farmers the landed estates confiscated from the church and Bourbon loyalists.

In the Papal State, the recalling of the troops provoked an uprising, and, after fierce struggles, the Pope’s flight to Gaeta. The Roman Republic would be proclaimed in February 1849 and be ruled by a triumvirate headed by Mazzini, bolstered later on by the arrival of Garibaldi and his South American volunteers. The Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II also took the road to Gaeta; on the one hand calling on Austria for military assistance, on the other granting audiences to the Tuscan moderates with a view to a peaceful solution.

In the Piedmont, Carlo Alberto had failed to understand it wasn’t a question of expanding the Sabaud Kingdom with a few military conquests, but of a national independence movement; which was why he made very little effort to enlist the help of volunteers.

In March1849, taking advantage of Austria’s preoccupation with the revolt in Hungary, Carlo Alberto called an end to their truce. Radetzky responded with a mass attack from the South, getting to within 12 kilometres away of the Sabaud High command. The decisive battle, which would end in defeat for the Piedmontese, was fought around the little hill of Bicocca. The same evening Carlo Alberto fled to Portugal, abdicating in favour of his son, who would go on to sign an armistice the following day. The war had lasted just four days.

Radetzky would now set about restoring the old regimes south of the Po. From Brescia he headed down to Tuscany and subdued Lucca, Pisa, Livorno and finally Florence, to which Leopold II could now return, escorted by, or as hostage of, his Austrian guards.

Pius XI had addressed his appeal to all the catholic powers of Europe to support his reinstatement as ruler of Rome. His call was answered by France (where Louis Napoleon – the future Napoleon III – had recently been installed as president); by Austria, which dispatched Radetzky; by Ferdinand II of Naples, who stood alone to engage Garibaldi’s troops, by whom he would be defeated; and by Spain, whose troops were kept away from Rome to defend part of the Lazio.

Thus the Roman Republic was surrounded, but only after three weeks of violent bombardments did a shattered Rome finally surrender to the French generals. A part of the Roman army followed Garibaldi in his attempt to relieve Venice, but after a matter of days it had totally dispersed.

Radetzky could now concentrate on Venice: first he bombarded and completely destroyed Marghera, then he launched a brutal 24 hour bombardment of Venice, after which, in August 1849, weakened by hunger and malaria, it surrendered too. The Absolutist reaction had taken back control of Italy.

But the insurgent cities had only surrendered after putting up a very stiff resistance, indicative of a strong popular will powered by the rising proletariat, which at the time was still tailing a bourgeoisie which was highly unsure of itself, (when, that is, it wasn’t actually supporting the old regime). Engels’s’ verdict is most succinct: “The Italian bourgeoisie has turned traitor”. From a technical point of view, with the development of increasingly accurate and powerful cannons, artillery would take on a fundamental role in military campaigns.

[GM112]

In the brief period between 1850-1870, wars were not fought to enforce an internal reorganisation of the European States, despite some still being in the process of defining their territories; instead, there were a number of brief and restricted conflicts between already existing States for the control of external areas, namely: The Crimean War, the Second and Third War of Italian Independence, the Austro-Prussian war for the control of Denmark, and the Franco-Prussian War. These wars, and specifically the Paris Commune, mark the end in Europe of the anti-feudal alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and the beginning of the struggle between these two classes for the political control of society.

Amongst the agreements reached by Cavour and the now Emperor Napoleon III at their secret meeting in Plombieres, in July 1858, is the plan for four Italian States: a kingdom in Upper Italy under the House of Savoy; a central one to be entrusted to Luisa di Borbone; one which included the territories immediately adjoining Rome to remain under the Pope; and a kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to be entrusted to Luciano Murat, son of Joachim. In exchange the two strategic zones of the whole of Savoy and the province of Nice would be transferred to France.

From the technical point of view, the introduction of the Bessimer system, for converting cast iron into steel in a much cheaper and more economical way than before, allowed arms and rolling stock to be mass produced, removing from Sweden its European pre-eminence in the field. France’s primacy would be uncontested from when it adopted the mass production of the first rifled cannons. The first breech loading cannons would be produced in Swedish workshops in 1848.

England and Russia tried to prevent conflict in Italy, which they feared might spread the war of independence or, most dangerously of all, transmute into a proletarian civil war. Cavour and the House of Savoy despatched a telegram to Paris stating they would submit to the calls to disarm, but meanwhile got parliament to pass special laws preparing for war.

As chance would have it, Vienna drew up an ultimatum on the very same day ordering Piedmont to disarm the free corps and place the army back on a peace-time footing. Cavour notified Paris and requested that 50 thousand French troops be immediately despatched to the Piedmont. And yet, underneath the apparent resolution of France and Austria, much fear and confusion lurked, and this explains the sudden armistice after a few bloody battles in which none of the desired aims were achieved.

[GM113]

On the afternoon of 29 April, Austro-Hungarian troops invade the Piedmont. After just three days the entire Austrian army has got to within fifty kilometres of Turin. Then they stop, and three days later fall back towards the Lomellina fearing an attack from the South by the French which would have cut them off from their four-sided stronghold, the quadrilatero.

On 14 May Napoleon III takes command of the now integrated Piedmontese and French troops. The plan is to head for Milan, liberate it, force the Austrians to pull back beyond the Isonzo and then to march on Vienna. Garibaldi’s troops would form a second front in the Prealpine zone; Marx explains that both Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II secretly counted on Garibaldi’s destruction, which would have freed them of his inconvenient and high profile presence. But that would not happen. In fact, having successfully completed his mission, Garibaldi would see his prestige considerably increased, to the detriment of the two now overshadowed royal personages!

Only Risorgimentalist rhetoric considers the first battles of Montebello and Palestro as worthy of note. The Savoy troops, with their clear numerical advantage, would claim victory at Palestro, but the number of casualties on both fronts was so huge that it has never been conclusively established.

The French plan now envisaged an attack on Magenta. Two fronts with around 60,000 men on each side collide and fight house-to-house battles through the town. In the end the Austrians retreat without the French giving chase, clearing the way to Milan. The losses are heavy with 10,000 dead and wounded, three quarters of them Austrian.

Marx and Engels comment on the strategic errors of the rival commanders, in particular Napoleon III’s, and on the tactic of the Austrian defensive line along the Mincio. The European diplomatic corps take steps to bring the war to an end, fearing it could spark off a proletarian rebellion.

Separated by the low morainic hills to the South of the Garda, and unaware of each other’s presence, the two armies concentrate their forces within 25 kilometres of each other. Entirely unanticipated, and with forces of 260,000 men in play, there would now get underway the biggest open field battle since Lipsia in 1813; bigger even than Waterloo in 1815. It would take the form of a series of distinct battles developing almost simultaneously along a 20 kilometre front, but with no overall plan. The Sardinian troops fought at San Martino, the French at Solferino. The battles, which commenced around 3 or 4 in the morning, were extremely violent and bloody, with neither side gaining a clear advantage. At San Martino, King Vittorio uselessly decimated his troops by ordering repeated bayonet charges, and even the Piedmontese Chief of staff admitted that, despite the courage and sacrifice of the soldiers, the leadership had been badly at fault. Once again, only in the annals of inflated risorgimentalist rhetoric can this battle be considered a brilliant victory.

In the late afternoon, after most of the soldiers had been fighting for14 hours without a meal break, the allied armies finally achieved victory after breaking through the lines of the Austrian army led by the Emperor Franz Joseph, and causing a disorderly retreat. If we consider the casualties, including the dead and wounded, they are pretty shocking: 11% on the winning side, and 14% of the Austrians, that is, around 50,000 soldiers. The wars of young capitalism can already characterised by their enormous destruction of people and resources. It would take two days to clear the battlefield of the dead and wounded.

The speaker referred to Engels’s detailed comments on these battles, and his evaluation that because the outcome of the war was still unclear, the real war would now begin.

But in the end it didn’t begin, because Napoleon III, more concerned about his own borders than what was happening in Italy, cleverly manoeuvred his way out of the tight corner he’d got himself into.

Marx would comment that there was no war of Italian independence, just a dynastic war between a Habsburg and a Napoleon, whilst all a Savoy could do was assume the role of the poor relation at his rich cousin’s table. Italian independence is reduced to Lombardy being a dependency of the Piedmont and the latter a dependency of France.

Cavour manages to convince the European powers of the potential danger of a slide towards republican, Mazzinian and anti-papal solutions, and that the best way of containing these would be, at least for the immediate future, extremely predictable plebiscites on the annexation to the Sabaud State of the territories which rose up at the start of the war. Lombardy, Parma, Modena, Emilia, Romagna and Tuscany would become part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which would now cede, after the farcical, rigged plebiscites, Nice and Savoy to France. Garibaldi was the most dissatisfied of all about this.