Austro-Sardinian War

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Despite repeated Austrian counterattacks along both banks of the canal, the Guard held out in the stone buildings of the Austrian customs post on both sides of the bridge. Whenever the French were driven back, reinforcements arrived to save the day. The village of Ponte Vecchio changed hands no less than six times during the afternoon. At one point, Napoleon’s only reserve was four companies of the 1st Grenadiers, while the Guard artillery was deployed ready to cover a retreat. As at Montebello, however, the Austrians failed to make the most of their numerical advantage–hindered partly by the densely cultivated terrain, and partly by the confusing orders issued by their staff. Some units were less than enthusiastic, the Italian soldiers of the Archduke Sigismund’s Infantry Regiment deserting in droves.

Meanwhile MacMahon’s guns had fallen silent. Realizing the strength of the Austrians around Magenta, he halted to reorganize his own corps, and bring up supports. When he resumed the attack at about 5 p.m., his Algerian troops, including the Foreign Legion, pushed forward rapidly, driving the Austrians into a pocket between Magenta and the Naviglio Grande. There, the Austrians were shelled by 40 guns deployed on the railway embankment north of Magenta. Previously the effect of the French artillery had been limited by the orchards and vineyards, but now it inflicted heavy losses. About 7 p.m. the Austrians retreated, although bitter street fighting continued in Magenta for some hours. One of MacMahon’s divisional commanders was shot down sword in hand, breaking into a house occupied by Austrian riflemen. The body of his aide-de-camp was found nearby riddled with bullets. Exhausted by their hard-fought victory, the French were incapable of pursuit. Casualties were similar–4,400 French, 5,700 Austrians–but an additional 4,000 Austrians became prisoners.

Although Gyulai could have renewed the action next day with an additional two corps brought up from their futile watch on the southern flank, his own surviving troops had been too roughly handled to fight again. The Austrians abandoned Lombardy, falling back upon the fortresses at Verona and Mantua, part of the famous Quadrilateral barring the way to Venice.

By the time the retiring Austrian army halted at Solferino, five miles in front of the Mincio River, Gylai had been relieved of command and replaced by Clam-Gallas, whose I Corps had acquitted itself well against MacMahon’s II Corps at Magenta. While the Austrians entrenched in a series of hills around Solferino, Emperor Franz Josef I arrived to personally take charge of the 100,000-man army.

The pursuing French and Piedmontese armies caught up with the Austrians and deployed to attack on June 24. At that point they, too, were being personally led by their respective monarchs, Napoleon III and Victor Emanuel II, resulting in Solferino also being referred to as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns. In actual practice, however, French generals–MacMahon, Emmanuel de Wimpffen, Adolphe Niel and Achille Baraquay d’Hilliers–who directed the allied assault which, after bloody fighting, managed to break through the Austrian center. Finally conceding defeat, Franz Josef ordered a withdrawal across the Mincio. A dogged rearguard action, commanded by General Lajos A. Benedek, prevented the French from turning the retreat into a rout, but the Austrians left behind some 3,000 troops killed, 10,897 wounded and 8,638 missing or taken prisoner. Allied losses had been equally severe, however–2,491 killed, 12,512 wounded and 2,292 missing or taken prisoner, for a total of 17,295 casualties, of which 5,521 were Piedmontese. Although he telegraphed his empress, Eugénie, that he had won ‘A great battle, a great victory,’ even the glory-seeking Napoleon III was sickened when he reviewed the carnage, which induced him to seek a separate peace with Austria in hopes of bringing the conflict, which had already been decided at Magenta, to a satisfactory conclusion before more blood was shed.

Another man who was sickened by the results of the 15-hour Battle of Solferino was Henri Dunant, a visiting Swiss businessman and active member in the World Evangelical Alliance, who persuaded local peasants and vacationing aristocrats to join him in aiding the wounded. After Dunant returned home to Geneva, he wrote a brief but shockingly frank volume on what he had seen, A Memory of Solferino, and subsequently proposed that a society of trained volunteers be formed to care for the wounded after future battles. In October 1863, Dunant met with four other prominent Swiss citizens in Geneva to form the International Committee of the Red Cross. A few months later, delegates from all over Europe attended the first Geneva Convention to codify Dunant’s humanitarian concepts. During the American Civil War, Clara Barton proposed the formation of an American Association of the Red Cross, which became a reality in 1881, and President Chester A. Arthur made the United States a formal signatory of the Geneva Convention in the following year.

After Solferino, Napoleon III took advantage of an exchange of wounded prisoners to conclude a truce at Villafranca on July 8. Austria ceded Lombardy to France, which then turned around and allowed Piedmont to annex the territory. France received–and kept–Nice and Savoy. Cavour and other Italian patriots were infuritated, however, to see Venetia left in Austrian hands. In spite of the war’s unsatisfactory outcome for the Piedmontese, who felt betrayed by Napoleon’s actions, the Austrians were unable to prevent unification of the rest of the peninsula over the next two years.

The war caused a shakeup among the senior officers in the Austrian army, but little was done to make the more fundamental changes necessary to improve its poor command structure. In spite of their relative competence at divisional or corps level, neither Clam-Gallas nor Benedek would prove capable of handling independent commands when they faced the modern, efficient Prussian army in 1966.

Napoleon III emerged from the conflict with the glory he had sought. The French had once more confirmed their military reputation, showing that modern weapons did not necessarily rule out offensive tactics. In ironic parallel to the Austrians, however, their success bred a complacency that blocked reform of less satisfactory aspects of their performance. Eleven years later, in the Franco-Prussian war, that complacency proved disastrous when the French, too, learned that the Prussians were a more dangerous opponent than the ramshackle Austrian army.

This article was written by Richard Brooks and originally published in the June 1999 issue of Military History magazine.

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Tags: 19th Century, Historical Conflicts

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