and soon after their columns were on the move. The men had no breakfast
before starting, beyond a piece of bread or a biscuit taken from the
haversack and eaten as they waited for the order to march off. It was
intended to halt later on for breakfast, but the Italian staff was
anxious to get the march over as early as possible, as it was expected
that it would be a very hot day. So sure were they that the enemy would
not be encountered in force that no cavalry were sent out to scout in
front. In front of each column there was an advance guard; but so badly
was the march arranged, and so loosely was the connection between the
advance guards and those that followed them kept up, that the vanguard
of Sirtori’s division, consisting of some 2,500 men with six guns, took
the wrong road, and got in front of the vanguard of Cerale’s division;
while, by a blunder of the leading portion of Cerale’s column, his main
body wandered on to the road assigned to General Sirtori. Thus there
was the singular spectacle of two advance guards following each other
on one road, while their main bodies calmly marched in long procession
along another.
The start had been made shortly before four o’clock. The march had
proceeded for a little more than an hour, and five had just struck
from the village bell towers, when General La Marmora, who was riding
with centre, was surprised at hearing far away to the right, in the
direction of Villafranca, the roar of guns in action. The two divisions
of the Italian third corps, commanded by the Crown Prince Humbert
and by General Bixio, had been attacked by Austrian cavalry and
horse artillery. The Italians behaved well. The infantry formed into
squares, and beat off three cavalry charges; the artillery galloped
up, unlimbered, and drove away the Austrian guns with a few well-aimed
shells. By six o’clock the fight was over, and the enemy was in
retreat. La Marmora had ridden towards the firing, and when he received
the report of what had happened, he at once made up his mind that the
affair was of very little importance. He felt sure that the Austrian
force consisted only of Pulz’s regiments, the same which had been
watching the river two days before, and had retired through Villafranca
when the Italians advanced on the Saturday.
The divisions of his first corps on the left had now entered the hilly
country, and at half-past six, a good half-hour after the last shot had
been fired at Villafranca, there was a still more startling incident
on the left. Sirtori was marching his division across the deep little
valley through which the Tione flows, and the leading regiment was
ascending the slope beyond its left bank. Sirtori himself rode near the
head of the column. Suddenly a volley was fired at the leading ranks by
riflemen lying in ambush among the trees and enclosures of a farmstead
at the top of the slope. Sirtori, pulling up his horse, looked through
his field-glasses at the wreaths of smoke that hung in the still,
clear morning air; but so well hidden were the riflemen that he could
not make out their uniforms. Nevertheless, he felt so sure that the
Austrians were not in front of him, and he so little suspected that
his vanguard was on another road, that he told those near him that the
ambushed foes must be their own comrades of the vanguard firing on them
by mistake, and he sent two of his officers galloping forward to stop
the fire. They came careering back down the slope to tell him that they
had narrowly escaped being killed or captured by a regiment of Austrian
Jagers, and the next minute the sight of guns unlimbering on the ridge
told the startled Italian general that he had come upon a hostile army
in battle array. A minute more and the deep voice of the first gun
told even La Marmora that he had made a terrible mistake, and that the
Austrians were in action on his left as well as his right.
What had happened? The Italian columns working their way into the
hills--one by this road, another by that, with no connection between
them, with no concerted plan of action, and, what was worse, with the
men fasting and unprepared for a long day’s battle, were one by one
coming into collision with the army drawn up to receive them under
the cover of the first ridges of the hills. Late on the Friday the
Archduke had learned of the Italian advance, and had given orders
for the crossing of the Adige, near Verona. On the Saturday, while
the Italians believed he was still inactive behind the river, he had
got his whole army across it, and he bivouacked for the night within
striking distance of the royal army, in which no one, from the King
to the youngest soldier, had an idea that 60,000 foes were so close
in their front. Considering how densely peopled the whole district
is, it is a marvel that none of the inhabitants warned the Italians
of their danger. If any of them made an effort to pass the Austrian
outposts, the attempt was a failure. At midnight the Archduke received
a telegram from General Scudier, who commanded on the lower Po. It
informed him that Cialdini’s vanguard was crossing the river, and the
Austrians were slowly retiring before his advance. But this made no
change in the arrangements for next day. The Archduke still counted
on smashing up the King’s army before the two Italian armies could
get near enough to help each other. He believed the King’s plan would
be to march direct through the plain of Villafranca to the Adige; and
his own orders for next day were that the various corps were to face
southward and westward, moving from their camps at 2 a.m., gaining
the hills, and then sweeping round, so as to descend on the flank of
the Italian advance. Although he had not completely divined the plans
of the Italians, his own plans were so sound that they met even their
altered arrangements. Instead of falling on their flank, he struck the
heads of their ill-connected columns as they strove to gain the hills.
His own march had begun at 2 o’clock, in the darkness of a midsummer
night. There was soon enough light to move rapidly and surely. At
five the sound of guns engaged in the brief action at Villafranca led
the Austrians for awhile to believe that the main Italian advance was
in the plain; but their scouts soon brought them news of the real
direction in which the enemy was moving, and when the Italians entered
the hills they blundered into a fight for which they were not prepared,
while the Austrians met them with a well-organised battle line, every
unit in which worked well with those to the right and left of it,
and proved once more that even enormous numbers count for less than
discipline and union under one strong will directed by a clear and
well-trained mind.
So far as the Italians were concerned, Custozza was a series of
detached fights; for the Austrian commander it was a tremendous
struggle, of which he controlled and co-ordinated all the parts.
Let us return to the fight at the point where it began on the Italian
left. As soon as Sirtori found that he had an Austrian force to deal
with, he got his division into line on the very unfavourable ground
on which its leading battalion stood when the first shots were fired,
and made repeated efforts to drive the enemy from the farm and the
ridges round Pernisa. Soon he heard firing away to the left and right.
The battle was becoming general. To the left, about a mile and a half
away, his advanced guard, under General Villahermosa, had come upon the
Austrian reserve division holding the slopes of Monte Cricol, a bold
ridge over which the Valeggio road runs about two miles to the south of
Castelnuovo. The fight here had a very important effect on the fortunes
of the day. Villahermosa, believing that he had the whole of Sirtori’s
division close behind him, resolved to clear the way for it by driving
the Austrians from the hill, and sent forward his riflemen--the famous
Bersaglieri--whose ordinary marching pace is a smart run. They made
a gallant dash at the Monte Cricol, but the attack was a failure.
Outnumbered and over-weighted, the Italian riflemen fell back, and then
the Austrians came charging down the hill after them, and began to
drive Villahermosa and his vanguard along the Valeggio road. More than
an hour had passed in this fight in front of Monte Cricol, when again
the tide was turned by the arrival of the leading troops of General
Cerale’s division, which had marched towards the firing. The division
consisted of some 12,000 men, with eighteen guns. First came General
Villarey, a Savoyard soldier, with two battalions of Bersaglieri
as the vanguard. Then came the rest of Villarey’s brigade--eight
battalions--and behind it the guns and a brigade of eight more
battalions under General Dhô. As Cerale brought his division into
action he saw not only the victorious Austrians in front, but other
white-coated columns moving on the hills to his right, beyond the
Tione. These were part of the corps that was attacking his colleague
Sirtori, but they brought their guns to bear even upon the Valeggio
road, so that Cerale had to turn some of his own artillery upon them.
His main force he threw against the Austrians in front, in order to
rescue Villahermosa, and for the moment superior force was on the side
of the Italians. They cleared the road, captured two guns, and, pushing
boldly on, got to the crest of the Monte Cricol, and also turned the
enemy out of Mongabia on the right of the road. It looked as if here,
on the extreme western edge of the battle, the Italians were winning.
[Illustration: ARCHDUKE ALBERT.]
But now came an incident which shows how, even in modern war with tens
of thousands in the field, a handful of brave men can change the whole
aspect of a battle. Across the Tione, to the right of this portion
of the fight, there was a regiment of Austrian cavalry, known as the
Sicilian Uhlans (lancers, who had formerly had the King of the Two
Sicilies for their honorary colonel). Colonel de Berres, who commanded
the lancers, had been watching through his field-glass the fight for
the Monte Cricol, and seeing that the Austrian brigade, which was now
retiring before the Italians, was hard pressed, he thought he could
help his friends by a sudden charge on Cerale’s flank. One Italian
brigade was in line of battle driving in the Austrians; the other was
in a long marching column on the road. Berres called up one of his
captains--Bechtoldsheim--and ordered him to take three troops and
attack the enemy on the road. The three troops numbered exactly 103
officers and men. The brigade of General Dhô was at least 5,000 strong,
but the hundred without a moment’s hesitation trotted off to charge the
5,000. They descended the slope to the Tione, found a ford, got across,
and quietly made their way up the hill to the right of the Italians.
These seem not to have had the least warning of the coming attack.
They were moving slowly forward in column when the handful of splendid
horsemen came rushing down the hill like a hurricane. Generals Cerale
and Dhô, with their staff, were riding at the head of the column. The
Uhlans, falling on the flank of the foremost regiment, crashed through
it with levelled lances, and then rode for the crowd of officers,
and scattered them right and left. The two generals escaped with
difficulty. Cerale was hit by a revolver bullet in the _mêlée_,
and Dhô received three lance wounds. Two guns which were on the road
just behind the staff were galloped back to the rear by their teams,
and battalion after battalion broke and ran as the lancers dashed down
the road cheering and striking right and left with their lances, the
retiring guns being now the main object of their charge. At last the
frightened gunners cut the traces, and the guns were overturned in the
press. But, with the exception of one battalion, Dhô’s division was now
a panic-stricken mob. On both sides of the road the valley was full of
men who had thrown away their arms and were running for their lives.
Two thousand of them did not stop till they had put the bridges of
Monzambano and Valeggio between them and the enemy. And yet that enemy
consisted only of a handful of lancers. If one company had stood its
ground and fired one steady volley the charge would have been stopped.
When the lancers at last pulled bridle and turned to ride back they
had not lost a score of their small number. Captain Bechtoldsheim,
their brave leader, had had his horse killed under him, but close by an
Italian major had just been run through with a lance, and Bechtoldsheim
caught the horse of his fallen foe and again put himself at the head
of his men. But as they rode back they found the one Italian battalion
that had kept together had lined the ditches on both sides of the only
possible track. The lancers had to gallop through a sheet of flame from
the hostile rifles, and the road was strewn with men and horses. When
Bechtoldsheim regained the hill there were only sixteen of his brave
Uhlans beside him. They had left two officers, eighty-four men, and
seventy-nine horses in the valley, killed and wounded; but they had
done their work, and their charge had decided the fortune of the day.
[Illustration: THE CHARGE OF THE AUSTRIAN LANCERS
(_p._ 252).]
Villarey’s brigade was now all that was left of Cerale’s division. The
Austrians had been reinforced, and they promptly attacked and retook
the Monte Cricol, and drove the Italians down the hill and along the
same valley which had just witnessed the charge of the lancers. The
Italians tried more than once to make a stand, but they were driven
from position after position, and their commander, Villarey, was shot
dead while forming the 30th Regiment for a counter-attack on the
victors. After his fall there was nothing but wild confusion on the
Italian left. Here and there, however, handfuls of brave men acted in
a way that did something to redeem the honour of the Italian arms.
A little group of ten officers and thirty men of the 44th Regiment,
finding that they were abandoned by their panic-stricken comrades,
threw themselves into a farmhouse, taking the flag of the regiment
with them. They held it for two hours against the Austrians, and only
surrendered it when the building was set on fire. But their flag was
not captured. They had cut it into forty pieces, and each of them took
a piece. When they came back from Austria after the war the pieces were
sewn together, and the flag was restored to the regiment.
[Illustration:
BATTLE-FIELD
OF
CUSTOZZA.]
The village of Oliosi, between the Valeggio road and the Tione, was
held by the Italians, and afforded some protection to their retreat
from the disastrous fight before the Monte Cricol. It was stormed by
a column of two Austrian regiments under General Piret, which crossed
the river, and cleared the village without much difficulty. In one
house--the presbytery, near the village church--the Italians held out
for nearly two hours. When the house was all but demolished the little
garrison surrendered, and five officers and forty-nine men were made
prisoners.
What was left of Cerale’s division, together with part of Sirtori’s
vanguard, now rallied on the bold ridge of Monte Vento. To their left
General Pianelli’s division, which had just crossed the Mincio, was
coming up from the bridges of Monzambano, bringing some 12,000 fresh
men to support them. The Austrians were pushing in between the hill and
the river; and one of their rifle regiments advancing over-boldly, was
surrounded by Pianelli’s troops, and the 700 Jagers were all either
shot down or captured. The reserve of the Italian 1st corps, consisting
chiefly of Bersaglieri, was also directed upon Monte Vento. On the
possession of this ridge the safety of the whole army depended, for
if the Austrians took it they would be in a position to cut off the
Italians from the bridges over the Mincio.
So far the fight on the left had gone by ten o’clock. On the rest
of the field it was the same. Everywhere the Italians had come into
action piecemeal against solid masses of Austrians, and in every one
of the detached fights that was in progress from left to right they
were being pushed back. In the Tione valley Sirtori had failed to carry
the ridge near Pernisa. He had himself been routed and driven across
the river by the advancing Austrians, and had lost three guns. He had
rallied his men and crossed the stream a second time, only to be a
second time driven back. Still further to the right among the hills
towards Custozza Brignone’s division had come to grief. The Italians
had fought well and lost heavily, Prince Amadeo and General Gozzani
both falling severely wounded at the head of their brigades. About
ten, La Marmora was so alarmed by the reports that reached him from
every side that he told the King he thought it was a lost battle, and
was on the point of giving the order to retire to the bridges when an
encouraging message from Durando, who was bringing the reserves into
action on the left, led him to change his mind, and continue the fight.
Having made at the outset such a terrible mistake as to the position
of the Austrians, he seemed all day to be expecting some new surprise
and disaster; and though really there were only Pulz’s cavalry in the
plain to his extreme right, he was so anxious about a possible attack
in that direction that he kept Bixio and Prince Humbert’s division
inactive all day at Villafranca. They had not fired a shot since the
short skirmish with the cavalry in the early morning, and all through
the blazing heat of the day the men sat or lay stretched in the shadows
of the trees, listening to the roar of the fight in the hills, while
their officers impatiently waited for orders to move. The only order
they got was a message that all was lost, and the moment had come to
retreat. But this was some hours later. By eleven o’clock the Austrians
had disposed of Sirtori’s division, and crossing the river after his
retreating battalions, they stormed the strong position of Santa
Lucia, thus almost interposing between the Italian left and right.
Artillery was massed against Monte Vento, and further westward a column
of attack moved forward to attempt to seize the bridges on the Mincio
at Monzambano. On the right the two fresh divisions of Cugia and Govone
strengthened the Italian line, and delayed for a while the advance of
the Austrians, whose object in this quarter was the capture of the
village of Custozza, which stands on a bold hill overlooking the plain
of Villafranca.
The loss of Santa Lucia made it very difficult for the Italians to
hold on to Monte Vento. General Durando was actually discussing the
question of retiring when he was shot down, and General Chilini, who
had assumed the command in his stead, abandoned the position as soon
as the Austrians advanced upon it. This made the defeat of the whole
Italian army inevitable, for the Austrians could now advance and seize
the ground between Monte Vento and the Mincio, the very ground over
which the Italian army must retire if it was to withdraw to its own
territory, and across which it would have to keep up its communications
with Lombardy, even if it could maintain itself in Venetia.
On the right the Italians had been driven back upon Custozza. It was
near four o’clock. The Austrians had every available man and every
gun in action. Their men were weary with the night march and the long
fight among the hills under the blazing midsummer sun, which shone in
a cloudless sky. But it was worse for the Italians. Most of them had
eaten nothing all day, and they had none of the inspiration of success.
They had been losing ground all day, and they had lost all confidence
in their chiefs and in themselves. Yet they had still forty thousand
men who either had not fired a shot or had not been seriously engaged.
These were the two divisions at Villafranca (Bixio’s and the Crown
Prince’s) and the two reserve divisions of Cucchiari’s corps, which
were struggling along roads so encumbered with a confused mass of
baggage and ammunition waggons that it was only when all was over that
they approached the field. It would be difficult to find more striking
proof of the hopeless incapacity of La Marmora and his staff.
At five o’clock the village and hill of Custozza were stormed with a
fierce rush by the columns on the Austrian left. The hills were now
completely in the possession of the Archduke. He had driven the last of
the Italians on to the low ground, and everywhere they were retiring
towards the river, thousands having already streamed across the bridges
in a confused and disorderly march. The Austrians were so exhausted
with their nineteen hours of marching and fighting that there was no
pursuit. If the Archduke had had a few thousand fresh troops he might
have captured whole masses of the fugitives, who were huddled together
along the Mincio, waiting to cross. Next day the Austrian cavalry
pushed into Lombardy, and such was the impression made on the Italian
army by the collapse of Custozza that La Marmora made no effort to stop
them, but retired first behind the Chiese and then behind the Oglio,
abandoning a considerable part of Lombardy. Meanwhile, the Archduke had
marched from the scene of his victory back to the Adige, in order to be
able to fall on Cialdini if he persisted in his invasion of Venetia.
But the lesson of Custozza was enough to make the second Italian army
withdraw into the Romagna.
The Austrians lost in the battle 960 killed, 3,690 wounded, and some
hundreds of prisoners, chiefly the Jagers captured by Pianelli’s
division. The Italian loss in killed and wounded was not quite so
heavy, the killed being 720 and the wounded 3,112, but they lost in
prisoners and missing 4,315 officers and men. On the Italian side
General Villarey was killed, and Generals Dhô, Durando, Gozzani, and
Prince Amadoe were wounded. But a mere comparison of losses can give no
idea of the effect of the battle on the two armies. The Austrian army
was for all practical purposes intact, full of confidence in itself
and in its leader. A great part of the Italian army had degenerated
into something like an armed mob, all confidence in the generals was
gone, and, instead of talking of a march upon Venice, men were asking
themselves if they could hold Northern Italy against an Austrian
invasion. Custozza had given one more proof of the fact that victory is
not always with the big battalions, and that a skilful leader can bring
to nought the onset of less ably handled troops, though they outnumber
his own by tens of thousands.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _The Taking of Badajoz_
_By D. H. Parry_]
On the 16th of March, 1812, when the poplar trees that fringed the
Guadiana were bending under a tempest of wind and rain, a British
force some 15,000 strong, with a battering train of fifty-two guns,
reached Badajoz--a strongly-fortified Spanish town near the frontier of
Portugal--the bugles of the “95th” playing “St. Patrick’s Day” as they
faced the furious equinoctial gale.
About a year before, the scoundrel Imas had delivered up the place
to Marshal Soult, whose clubfoot did not prevent his being one of
the most active men and fearless riders in the French service; and
although we had made two attempts to retake it, we had failed on each
occasion after heavy losses, our battering train being shamefully
insufficient, and the enemy very much on the alert; the third time we
were successful, and it is of this I am about to tell.
Badajoz was the _pax augusta_ of the Romans, and a granite bridge
with twenty-eight arches, dating from Roman times, still spanned the
sluggish river on the north-west; but, save that the town had been
frequently taken and retaken by Moors, Goths, and Spaniards, and
was the birthplace of Morales, the painter, there was nothing very
remarkable about its quaint, crooked streets and massive cathedral
beyond the natural strength of its position, rising some 300 feet above
the marshy plain, with eight bastions and their connecting curtains to
protect it from attack.
It remained for Philippon and his gallant garrison, and our veteran
troops under the Earl of Wellington--as he was then styled--to render
Badajoz immortal, and bring a flush of pride and a thrill of horror to
future generations who may read the tale.
The General of Brigade Philippon, colonel of the 8th of the French
Line, and member of the Legion of Honour, commanded in Badajoz with a
force of 4,742 men--composed partly of the 9th Light Infantry, the 88th
Regiment, the Hesse-Darmstadt, some dragoons and chasseurs, artillery,
engineers, and invalids, and seventy-seven Spaniards who ought to have
been fighting on the other side.