Gorizia

“ In the lower town what little interest there is gathers round the pieces of street arcades; the churches go for next to nothing. Yet Gorizia ranks as an ecclesiastical metropolis, and it has its metropolitan church no less than Canterbury or Lyons. Nor is this merely one of those arrangements of the present century which have stripped Mainz and Trier of their immemorial dignity, and which have given us archbishops of such unexpected places as Munich and Freiburg-im-Breisgau. ”

“ But there is no grand church, no grand municipal palace; the castle itself is not what on such a site it ought to be. The castle is the kernel of the whole place. Gorizia is not a hill-town, nor can we call it a river-town. There is the castle on the hill, and the town seems to have gathered at its foot. The castle soars so commandingly over the country round that we wish here, as at Udine, that there was something better to soar than the ugly barrack which forms its uppermost stage. There are indeed better things within Count Leopold's gateway. ”

“ The style of Archbishop of Gorizia is at least several generations older than the style of Emperor of Austria. The church of Gorizia rose to metropolitan rank, at the same time as the church of Udine, when the patriarchate of Aquileia came to an end, and its province was divided between the two new metropolitans thus called into being. But the seat of the modern primacy is hardly worthy of a simple bishopric. There is nothing in the building of any antiquity but a choir, German rather than Italian, and of no great antiquity either. The rest of the church is of a gaudy Renaissance ”

“ But long after the beginning of that union, the distinction between Austria and Gorizia was still strongly drawn. How much Gorizia still thought of itself, how much its prince still thought of himself in his local character, is made plain by the most prominent feature of the chief building of the place. Over the gateway of the castle is an inscription recording repairs done in the year 1660 by the reigning Count Leopold. 46 That Count bore higher titles, and he does not fail to record them on the stone ”

“ We could defend ourselves there indefinitely in the face of overwhelming numbers."
"But," interrupted Hal, "it is not necessary to capture Gorizia to take Trieste?"
"No," said the Austrian with a smile, "but it is necessary to take Gorizia to hold Trieste. The mountains that overhang the city are fortified with our great guns, which could rain shells upon the city without danger of a successful reply. The Italians know this, which is the reason they have not struck at Trieste before. The same goes for Trent, the other point coveted by the enemy." ”

“ We must not spare ourselves the realisation of the bitter truth that the greater part of Styria and Carinthia, and the whole of Carniola, Gorizia, Gradisca, and Istria, with the avenue to the Adriatic, are lost to us. ”

“ Well, Barzini and I got off without undue delay, and I soon discovered that with him there would be no “holding up” the car on the way. We made straight for Mossa, which is close to the Gorizia bridgehead. There we got some great news.
During the early part of the night detachments of the Casale and Pavia brigades had crossed the Isonzo and consolidated themselves on the left bank, and the heights west of Gorizia were completely occupied by the Italian infantry. The enemy was in full retreat, and had abandoned large quantities of arms, ammunition and materiel. ”

“ During the next few days the advance was pushed across the Doberdo plateau, south of Gorizia, and beyond the Vallone on to the western end of the forbidding and formidable Carso. By the 15th the Italian line ran from Tivoli, north-east of Gorizia, down the river Vertoibizza, across the Vippacco and along the Carso east of Nad Logem, Opacchiasella, and Villanova. No such victory had yet been won by unaided Italian troops against their hereditary foes, and it did much to stimulate Italian confidence and enthusiasm for the war. ”

“ Once Gorizia falls, the Italian problem in so far as Trieste is concerned, will be near solution. The Italians have made notable advances in Cadore and along the Isonzo, on the plateau of Carso. But Gorizia must be taken before a decided local victory can be recorded. The fighting has not progressed as yet to the point where definite information is available, but in late July it seemed to have reached the culminating stage. ”

“ On June 9, 1915, the capture of Gradisca completed the Italian control of the lower Isonzo, and Cadorna prepared for a general (p. 411) attack on all the strongholds guarding Trieste. Of these the most important were the Carso tableland on the south, Gorizia barring the river-valley of the Vipacco between the Carso and the foothills of the Julian Alps, the fortified system of heights north of Gorizia surrounding the town of Tolmino, and the great intrenched camp of Tarvis above Tolmino extending to Malborghetto and the other Alps of Carinthia. ”

“ While regular siege operations were being carried on against Tolmino and Gorizia, the Italians were putting forth great efforts (p. 394) to secure possession of the Carso Plateau, which dominates the rail and carriage road between Monfalcone and Trieste, as well as the Isonzo Valley up to Gorizia. The plateau had to be completely occupied before any advance could be made along the coast road into Istria and before Gorizia could be attacked from the south. ”

“ The Carso, therefore, presented the chief point of interest after the fall of Gorizia, as every advance there means progress towards the main objective, Trieste. Scarcely a day passed now without a car from the Censorship going in the direction of the fighting line. I was therefore constantly able to make excursions, and was gradually filling up my sketch book with interesting subjects. ”

“ But Gorizia is absolutely unknown till the beginning of the eleventh century, and it does not seem even to have supplanted any earlier city. It is thus a marked peculiarity of this district that the chief towns, with Venice itself at their head, have not lived on continuously as chief towns from Roman or earlier times. West of Venice the rule does not apply. Padua and Verona are old enough for the warmest lover of antiquity, and Vicenza, going back at least to the second century B.C., must be allowed to be of a respectable age. ”

“ We pass a frontier where it is not at first sight easy to see why any frontier should be there. We journey from Udine to Gorizia, still keeping within the old Lombard Austria, but between Udine and Gorizia lies Cormons, and after Cormons we find ourselves in a new Austria. We speak with geographical accuracy. We might not say, as some would, that we were in Austria if we were at Cattaro or at Tzernovitz, but in the land which we have now entered, we are, not indeed in the archduchy of Austria, but within the circle of Austria according to the arrangements of Maximilian. ”

“ While the Italian Third Army in massed assault was making its unsuccessful fight for possession of Gorizia with Trieste as its ultimate objective, warfare was in progress in a hundred places in the Julian, Carnic, Dolomite, Trentino and Tyrolean mountains. ”

“ If it succeeded the Trieste railway would be cut and Gorizia must fall.
AREA OF CADORNA'S OPERATIONS
Showing the Isonzo Valley and the town of Gorizia which fell to the Italians August 9, 1916.
Long and confused fighting followed. The center and the right of the Italian army slowly advanced their line, taking over one thousand prisoners. For days there was continuous bombardment and counter-bombardment. The fighting on the left was terrific. In the neighborhood of Plava the Italian forces found themselves opposed by Hungarian troops, unaccustomed to mountain warfare, who at first fell back. ”

“ The richly wooded undulating plain of Friuli, dotted with villages, stretched away from below the terrace.
In the distance, a couple of miles or so away, was the Podgora Ridge, bristling with gaunt tree-stumps; beyond it you could just distinguish the houses of Gorizia. To the right was the Carso and Monte San Michele, some five miles away.
It may be mentioned here that the word “Monte” in Italian does not necessarily signify a “mountain” as it is understood in English. The Italian “Monte” is a very elastic term, and, according to the dictionary, may mean a mountain, a hill, or a heap. ”

“ The larger part of Gorizia and eastern Istria, after passing for centuries from one German princeling to another, have been under the Hapsburgs since the close of the Middle Ages.
Ethnographically, Venetia Julia seems to show a slight Yugo-Slav majority (52%) . In Gorizia there were in 1910 155,000 Slovenes against 90,000 Italians; in Trieste 119,000 Italians against 59,000 Yugo-Slavs; in Istria 203,000 Yugo-Slavs against 147,000 Italians. ”

“ The defense of Verdun remains, of course, the supreme and sublime achievement of defensive action, but the taking of Gorizia is thus far the most splendid work of the Allied offensive.
I do not propose, however, to speak in detail of the Italians' military service. Suffice it to say that they have proved themselves excellent fighters who combine the rare qualities of dash and endurance. I wish to speak of the vital contribution Italy has made from the beginning of the War to the Great Cause—the cause of Democracy and of Civilization. ”

“ Just here we met the cavalry division advancing dismounted in Indian file. A fine lot of well-equipped men with very serviceable looking horses.
It may be of interest to mention here that most of the Italian cavalry officers who, as is well known, are magnificent horsemen, ride thoroughbreds of Irish descent.
When we got back to Udine we learned that Gorizia was being heavily shelled from Monte Santo, so it looked as if the Austrians were attempting to destroy it by degrees, as the Huns are doing with Rheims in revenge for losing it. ”

“ It is a drive of about a couple of hours from Gorizia to Aquileja. The country is perfectly flat, but teeming with vegetation, and it is not until the end of the journey is reached that one realizes under what baleful conditions life or existence is endured here. A Roman capital and a fragment or two of Roman columns or mouldings are all that one sees at first to show that one is driving into one of the greatest of the old Roman seaports. ”

“ On a front of thirty miles from the Alps to the Adriatic, their flanks secured by the mountains and the sea, the Austrians had erected a formidable system of trenches which closed the Italian road to Austria and to Trieste, twenty miles to the south. (Vol. V, 288-290.) Monte Sabotino on the north, Podgora Hill in the (p. 501) center, Monte San Michele on the south at the edge of the Carso Plateau were the main features of this position, and Gorizia lay in the cuplike valley of the Wippach behind Podgora. ”

“ Most scholars will agree, I think, that geographically these territories belong to Italy, and that the Julian Alps and the Karst Mountains, which come down to the sea on the Quarnero, mark the natural frontier of Italy on the northeast.
Historically, Venice held the larger part of Istria and a small part of Gorizia for many centuries down to the fall of the republic in 1797. Trieste was an independent commune until in 1382 it came under Hapsburg rule. ”

“ White disks carried high above the heads of the men showed the Italian gunners how far the infantry had advanced and enabled them to gauge their protecting curtain of fire. Though smothered with shells, and swept by machine-guns, nothing could stop them. "Avanti Savoia!" they roared. "Viva! Eviva Italia!"
[126] Meanwhile, under a heavy fire, the Italian engineers were repairing the iron bridge which carried the railway from Milan and Udine across the Isonzo to Gorizia and so to Trieste and Vienna. ”

“ My lucky star happened to be in the ascendant, for shortly after my good friend, Colonel Clericetti, turned up, beaming with good humour, and on seeing me exclaimed:
“You are the very man I am looking for; Barzini is leaving in a car I am letting him have, as his own has broken down, and if you like I will put you with him. I thought you would want to get some sketches as the troops will be entering Gorizia this morning.” ”

“ And finally, she would fain round off her possessions by annexing from Austria the Trentine, the county of Gorizia, the peninsula of Istria, including the chief emporium, Trieste, and even the kingdom of Dalmatia.
"It was not a little amusing to note the expression of simple amazement with which the general Press of England acknowledged the discovery that Italy 'actually contemplates' this extension of territory. Would they be surprised to hear that such has been her object for the last six hundred years; that in her darkest hour she has never abandoned her claim ”

“ A modern army given the advantages of time and preparation should be able to close and hold it with ease.
Although the maps show few natural difficulties on the third section of the frontier to compare with those farther west, it is not the obvious avenue of attack a hasty survey would seem to suggest. It is only twenty miles wide and behind it is the line of the River Isonzo with hills along its eastern bank. The upper part of this stream, above Salcana, is a ravine; then comes six miles of comparatively level ground in front of Gorizia ”

“ The surrounding country is very picturesque. Gori has a high school for girls, and a school for Russian and Tatar teachers. At one time celebrated for its silk and cotton stuffs, it is now famous for corn, reputed the best in Georgia, and the wine is also esteemed. The climate is excellent, delightfully cool in summer, owing to the refreshing breezes from the mountains, though these are, however, at times disagreeable in winter. Gori was founded (1123) by the Georgian king David II., the Renovater, for the Armenians who fled their country on the Persian invasion. ”