Battle of Solferino

“ While the 1st French corps is actively engaged, the 2d corps engages the 1st Austrian corps. The Austrians capture Cassiano and Carriano, threatening to cut off MacMahon's retreat. But success at Solferino gives the French some men to spare. The assault is again taken up and the Austrians are forced back. General Maneque holds his position on the high ground of Monte Sacre and General Noël advances on San Cassiano. ”

“ He is more successful, and drives the Austrians upon the base of Monte Sacre, where a fierce battle is being waged. Forey with his 2d brigade finds it impossible to turn the Austrian right flank at the tower of Solferino; his ranks are cut by the shot and shell of Austrians who stubbornly hold the position. ”

“ The cost was great; if there is any episode in French military history in which soldiers and officers earned all the praise that can be given to brave men, it is the taking of these Solferino hills. Again and again Forey's division and Bazaine's brigade returned to the [Pg.244] charge; the cemetery and streets of Solferino were piled up with their dead, mingled with the dead of the defenders, who contested every inch of ground. The individual valour of the French soldiers in that six hours' struggle made it possible to win the battle. ”

“ Lamoriciere succeeded in reaching Ancona, but only to prolong, for a few days more, a desperate contest. The available force in the place amounted only to 4,200 effective men, a number quite insufficient to man all the posts of such extensive fortifications. The general did not yet despair of aid from the French at Rome, and he flattered himself with the idea that if he only held out a few days, Austria and the other Catholic States would be shamed into activity. They, however, knew too well the intentions of France, and France had won the battle of Solferino. ”

“ Moreau had been mortally wounded. The dog had remained with his master until his death. While Moreau was conversing with the Emperor Alexander a cannon-shot nearly carried off both [Pg 114] his legs. It is said that throughout the five days during which he lingered he uttered not a murmur of pain." [85]
At the battle of Solferino, where rifled cannon were first brought to bear in warfare, a dog excited great attention by its attachment to the body of its slain master. ”

“ To the simple private, who does not know of diplomatic imbroglios and of political considerations, this sudden retreat means an almost as sudden retracing of steps, because he remembers that this manoeuvre preceded both the attacks on Solferino and on Custozza by the Austrians. To the officer, however, it means nothing else than a fixed desire not to face the Italian army any more, and so it is to him a source of disappointment and despondency. He cannot bear to think that another battle is improbable, and may be excused if he is not in the best of humour when on this subject. ”

“ On the other side the VIII. corps from Monzambano was to reach Lonato, the remainder of the II. Army from Cavriana, Solferino and Guidizzolo to Esenta and Castiglione, and the I. Army from Medole, Robecco and Castel Grimaldo towards Carpenedolo. At 8 A.M. the head of the French I. corps encountered several brigades of the I. Army in advance of Solferino. The fighting was severe, but the French made no progress. MacMahon advancing on Guidizzolo came upon a force of the Austrians at Casa Morino and (as on former occasions) immediately set about deploying his whole corps in line of battle. ”

“ There can be very little doubt that the war will spread. The whole of Germany is burning with ardour to support Austria; and if the French gain a battle on the Po, nothing will prevent the whole strength of Germany from coming to the rescue. [Footnote: Louis Napoleon's fear of this is a sufficient explanation of his ambiguous policy after Solferino.] The position of France is, in reality, most critical, for all her best troops are in Italy, and she would have great difficulty in placing 100,000 men on the Rhine, where she may have to confront half a million of combatants. ”

“ Three days were required for burying the dead who fell in the conflict, but it was fully a week before the peasantry of the country, who had been summoned for the work, had buried or burned the carcases of the cavalry and artillery horses that strewed the ground for long distances. ”

“ By a movement of General Wimpffen the 1st and 2d French corps were separated; the emperor then ordered Wimpffen to combine his forces on Castiglione and to press the French as vigorously as possible. The Austrians moved towards Medola, but were held in check. The 9th Austrian corps attacked Casanuova but did not succeed in capturing it. Opposed to 45,000 French is a force of 65,000 Austrians. ”

“ They are better cared for now, but their torments are not ended.
Here, is one of the heroes of the Imperial Flying Guard, wounded at Solferino. Shot in the leg, he passed several days at Castiglione, where I dressed his wounds for the first time. He is stretched on a straw mattress; the expression of his face denotes profound suffering; his eyes are hollow and shining; his great pallor gives evidence that purulent fever has set in to complicate and increase the gravity of his condition; his lips are dry; his voice trembles; the assurance of the brave man has given place to fear and timidity ”

“ In this obstinate and bloody engagement the Earl of Sandwich man-of-war blew up, and 1000 men were either killed or wounded. Fought, May 28th, 1672.
SOLFERINO, BATTLE OF.—This great battle, one of the most bloody ever fought, took place during the war of Italy and France against Austria. Fought, June 24th, 1859. The loss on both sides was tremendous. The Austrians mustered 250,000 men; the Allies 150,000. The number slain and wounded ranged from 30,000 to 37,000. The result of this battle was the Austrians repassed the Mincio, whilst the Allied headquarters were placed at Cavriana. ”

“ As before, Italy was to be the grave of the French,—only that their grave was to be dug at the very beginning of the war, instead of being made, as in other days, at its close. But it was otherwise ordered. The Austrians lost the advantage which certainly was theirs at the opening of the contest, and, that lost, disaster after disaster befell their arms, until the "crowning mercy" of Solferino freed Italy from their rule, if it did not entirely banish them from her land. ”

“ He might well doubt whether, even against his present antagonist alone, further success was possible. The fearful spectacle of Solferino, heightened by the effects of overpowering summer heat, probably affected a mind humane and sensitive and untried in the experience of war. ”

“ And he gave himself a thump on the breast with his doubled fist. He was the son of a master mason who had come from Limousin to Paris, where the son, not taking kindly to the paternal handicraft, had enlisted at the age of eighteen. He had been a soldier of fortune and had carried the knapsack, was corporal in Africa, sergeant in the Crimea, and after Solferino had been made lieutenant, having devoted fifteen years of laborious toil and heroic bravery to obtaining that rank, and was so illiterate that he had no chance of ever getting his captaincy. ”

“ In this city, where about a thousand wounded have arrived every night for several nights in succession, the martyrs of Solferino are received with great kindness. No longer are rose leaves scattered from the flag-ornamented balconies of the luxurious palaces of the Milanese aristocracy, on shining epaulets and on striped gold and enameled orders, by beautiful and graceful ladies whom exaltation and enthusiasm rendered still more beautiful. To-day, in their gratitude, they shed tears of compassion which are interpreted by devotion and sacrifice. ”

“ Ambuscaded behind the houses, the churches and the walls of Medole, Solferino and Cavriana, they heroically fight on and very nearly win the victory.
The unending combat rages incessantly and in every place with fury. Nothing stops, nothing interrupts the butchery. They are killing one another by the hundreds. Every foot of ground is carried at the bayonet's point, every post disputed foot by foot. From the hands of the enemy are taken villages, house after house, farm after farm, each is the theatre of a siege. ”

“ As one of the bystanders, in reply to Cialdini, alluded to the fact which was announced, of the disembarkation of a new French division at Civita Vecchia, “And to what purpose?” answered one of the higher officers of Cialdini's staff. “France has no need to re-inforce her army of occupation. See these wires, gentlemen (pointing to the telegraph) , if they chose to speak they would suffice to stop us at once.” It would have been impossible to express more plainly the omnipotence at that moment of the conqueror of Solferino, and the fearful stigma which he was preparing for his memory. ”

“ This was the northern extremity of the battlefield of Solferino. It was here that the Sardinians and Piedmontese, forming the left wing of the Franco-Italian Army, attacked and drove back the Austrian right wing. A memorial tower has been erected here, 250 feet high, with great avenues of cypresses radiating outwards from it. The custodian is a handsome boy, who lost a leg at the taking of Gorizia two years ago. There is no stair-case within the tower; one goes up by a spiral inclined plane. ”

“ The Gog and Magog of our Italian pharisees! And are not these the men who fell down and worshipped the divine prosperity of their master’s eighteen years of empire? Have they not claimed it as a miracle of God’s favor, a long and lasting “caress” of Providence, the possible failure of which it would be impious to suspect? Have they not sung and celebrated, time and again, the famous victory of Solferino as a prodigy sent from heaven to show that the Almighty took the side of Italy, and had declared against the Pope? ”

“ The battlefield was strewn with the bodies of men and horses, and with the battered forms of men in whom the spark of life still remained, they filled up the roads, they choked the trenches and the ravines, they lay piled in heaps in the bushes and the fields, everywhere for miles around the village of Solferino. ”

“ Under these sheds are set up tables covered with bread, soup, lemonade, wine, water, lint, linen and bandages. [72] Torches, carried by the young men of the place where the convoy stops, light the darkness. The citizens of Lombardy hasten to present their tribute of gratitude to the conquerors of Solferino; in respectful silence they bandage the wounded whom they have lifted carefully out of the cars to place them on the beds made ready for their use. The women of the country offer refreshing drinks, and food of all kinds, which they distribute on the cars to those who must go on to Milan. ”

“ He now took the command of the Chasseurs des Alpes, aided the royal army in its defence of the territory previous to the arrival of its great French auxiliary, and, following in the upper region a line parallel to that kept in the plain by the conquest of Palestro, Magenta, and Solferino, beat the Austrians at Varese and San Fermo, bewildered his adversary Urban, by the rashness of his movements on the mountains above Como, advanced upon Bergamo and Brescia, and pushed on to the Valtellina up to the very summit of the Stelvia Pass. ”

“ At Solferino, I remember, we spent five hours lying in a carrot-field with our noses on the ground.' And then, like the practical fellow he was, Jean added: 'But what are you complaining of? We are not badly off. There'll always be time enough for us to expose ourselves. Everyone has his turn, you know. If we all got ourselves killed at the beginning there would be no one left for the finish.'
'Ah!' suddenly interrupted Maurice, 'look at that smoke on the Hattoy hill. ”

“ The chief danger of Italy, at present, is wishing to go too fast. She [Pg 504] would run before she can walk steadily: she forgets the past: she ignores that her independence and unity were won for, and not by, her; that each defeat was to her a conquest. She had the greatest statesman in Europe, Cavour; who so disposed his game, opening it in 1854 with the Crimean War, and following it up with a seat for Piedmont amongst the Great Powers in the Congress of Paris, that it led by a mathematical certainty to Solferino in 1859, and to securing Rome for a capital in 1870. ”

“ From this same eyrie, only a few years ago, the hostile armies of France, Italy, and Austria might have been watched moving in dim masses across the plains, for the possession of which they were to clash in mortal fight at Solferino and Magenta. All is peaceful now. It is hard to picture the waving cornfields trodden down, the burning villages and ransacked vineyards, all the horrors of real war to which that fertile plain has been so often the prey. ”

“ The bloody action of Solferino was fought on the 24th of June, but on the 11th of July a treaty of peace was, somewhat unexpectedly, concluded between the French and Austrian Emperors at Villafranca, under which an Italian Confederation was to be erected, Lombardy substantially ceded to Sardinia, the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena reinstated, and Venetia, though included in the Confederation, to remain subject to the Imperial Crown of Austria ”

“ Was it possible that this young fellow whom he was so fond of, who was so highly educated, who had formerly displayed such delicate susceptibility, could have come to entertain such ideas as these? And he rowed on faster, for by this time he had passed the Solferino bridge, and found himself in a broad open space [Pg 515] of water. The light had now become so intense that it seemed as though the river were illumined by the midday sunrays streaming down from overhead without casting a shadow. ”