Clash of Monarchies: The Third War of Italian Independence

The last of the three wars to secure the unity and independence of the Kingdom of Italy requires more than the usual background information. The preliminaries took longer than the war itself. The Second War of Italian Independence had seen the Austrian Empire beaten by the French and Italians at the bloody Battle of Solferino in 1859. Austria was forced to cede Lombardy to the King of Piedmont-Sardinia as well as the conquest of Modena, Parma, Tuscany and most of the Papal States in 1860 which were united with the rest of the northern half of the peninsula under the House of Savoy of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. However, the French ultimately won few friends and, by the time the smoke had cleared, came to be seen as duplicitous by both the Austrians and many Italians. Moreover, the Prussians had mobilized during the conflict but had not taken part. They too were pursuing a nationalist goal of reunifying all of the German states into one empire (Reich). Austria, rather than lead, stood opposed to this and the war in Italy was used by the Prussians as proof of both Austrian weakness and a greater concern for maintaining their rule over non-Germans than for resuming leadership of the German nation on the part of Austria.

Franz Joseph, Wilhelm I, Vittorio Emanuele II

All of that was simmering and would ultimately come to a boil when Bismarck was to provoke Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph into a war (just as Napoleon III had done in 1859 and others would do yet again). In the meantime, however, the unification of the Italian peninsula continued apace and in a shocking way. The famed Italian nationalist, Giuseppe Garibaldi, renowned for his exploits in South America and his defeat of the French in front of Rome in 1849, was as eager as ever to go on the attack. In 1849, Garibaldi, a lifelong republican and Freemason, had fought for the radical republicans of Giuseppe Mazzini. However, he had seen them prove totally incapable of governing and witnessed how easily they were defeated. Since then, he had seen King Vittorio Emanuele II and his royalists, deliver actual victories for the nationalist cause and Garibaldi was that rare case of a nationalist who did not put his own ideology before all else. If the republicans, who he favored, could not get the job done, he would fight his battles on behalf of a monarch if that meant the furtherance of the nationalist cause. However, given his background, his politics and his aggressiveness, the government of King Vittorio Emanuele II, led by Count Camillo Cavour, had to be careful in how it dealt with Garibaldi, to make use of him while not being seen too blatantly to make use of him in case his far-fetched scheme might fail.

The scheme he had in mind was nothing short of the conquest of the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies, ruled, at that time, by the cadet branch of the Spanish Royal Family. In May of 1860, with only a thousand volunteers, Garibaldi sailed out to take on the Bourbon monarchy which possessed a large army and a bigger navy than Piedmont-Sardinia. He and his little force of men, garishly dressed in red shirts, landed in Sicily, the garrison of which had been reinforced from 21,000 to 40,000 men when word of Garibaldi’s plan reached Naples. Garibaldi should have had no chance at all, however, he was a master at misdirection and the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies proved far less formidable in fact than it appeared on paper. Particularly in Sicily, the repeated rebellions of the previous decades had taken their toll and the King, Francesco II, had wiped out his Swiss mercenaries, his best troops, when they went on strike over better pay and conditions.

Battle of Calatafimi

Garibaldi could never have conquered Sicily with only a thousand men but many Sicilian peasants rushed to join his cause and more reinforcements would be arriving by ship later on. The first decisive action was the Battle of Calatafimi on May 15, 1860. If the Neapolitans had beaten Garibaldi there, he would have been ruined and his local support would have melted away. Yet, though outnumbered 3-to-1, Garibaldi managed to win, or at least not lose which was good enough for his purposes. Emboldened by this, and attracting a little over a thousand more local volunteers in the aftermath, Garibaldi launched a direct assault on the coastal fortress city of Palermo. He let prisoners out of jail which enlarged his forces and had little trouble rousing the city to rebellion (Palermo had a history of this) but the Neapolitan general, the elderly Ferdinando Lanza, managed to drive them back after which he and his offshore naval support shelled the city for three days, killing hundreds of civilians. This, obviously, did nothing to help the Bourbon cause in the long-run. Many have since accused Lanza of having been paid off by the British but I would be hesitant to believe such a thing without hard evidence. He did surrender the city to a force smaller than his own and which was practically out of ammunition but he did so only after his own counter-attack had failed. The enemy were in the city and it seemed impossible to dislodge them. He also had permission from his King to withdraw and on July 7 the Neapolitan army did just that.

Garibaldi & the King meet at Teano

Earlier that month King Francesco II had granted a(nother) constitution but it did him no good. Those who wanted one no longer believed the Bourbon monarchy trustworthy on this subject while the more reactionary supporters of the monarchy were put off by it. After Garibaldi’s forces won another victory at Milazzo, the Neapolitan commander surrendered the key fortress city of Messina less than a week later. The remaining Neapolitan garrisons on the island surrendered soon after. Garibaldi was master of Sicily and controlled access to the mainland. The next month he and his forces crossed over to Calabria, against the direct wishes of Cavour who had conspired with Garibaldi to make the invasion of Sicily possible. In Calabria there was little effective resistance as the large Bourbon armies simply melted away, many simply deserting and not a few even crossing over to join Garibaldi. In the meantime, the Piedmontese had invaded the remaining Papal States on the pretext of suppressing disorder. Pope Pius IX deployed his own army but held them back, certain that France or Austria would come to his aid. Neither did. Further south, the gallant, young, King Francesco II barricaded himself inside the coastal fortress of Gaeta with his few remaining loyal troops. The Piedmontese army and the army of Garibaldi linked up with Garibaldi handing all of his conquests over to King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy. The siege of Gaeta dragged on to its inevitable conclusion, showing at least what an inspiring leader King Francesco II was and what he might have accomplished if he had taken to the field to defend his kingdom personally.

After 100 days of resistance, Francesco II surrendered and went into exile, the south was reunited with the north for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire and Vittorio Emanuele II was proclaimed King of Italy. Of the major Italian territories, only Rome and Venice remained out of reach. Rome was occupied by the French and Venice by the Austrians. Peaceful efforts to gain these came to nothing. The new King of Italy offered to purchase Venice from Emperor Franz Joseph, but was refused. Likewise, Pope Pius IX refused to hear of the offer of Cavour for absolute sovereign immunity for the pope and total power for him in all Church matters. The status quo, however, could not endure as the nationalist movement which had taken hold in Italy would never abide separation from Venice and Rome. Not long after, Count Cavour suddenly died and though the King had never liked him much, the two had learned how to work together and a period of some political instability ensued. Garibaldi, seeing his work still unfinished, recruited some more volunteers and made to attack Rome. The French and Austrians both threatened war if he was not stopped and so the Italian army did the job, halting the nationalist volunteers at the Battle of Aspromonte in August of 1862, even wounding Garibaldi himself in the process.

King Wilhelm I & Bismarck

This was what we would call today a public relations nightmare for the Italian government and to an extent broke the nationalist-monarchist coalition. The royalists accused the nationalists of being rash and foolhardy while the nationalists accused the King of caring more for the Pope than for Italy, taking the side of the French occupiers over the Italian people. All of this added pressure on the new Kingdom of Italy to take any chance that presented itself to regain its nationalist credentials. The government saw hope for regaining Venice when, also in 1861, Otto von Bismarck became chancellor of the Kingdom of Prussia. Bismarck was well known as a man who was determined to have a united Germany and if Austria would not lead, he would push them out of the way and Prussia would assume leadership. However, when Napoleon III proved not so positive toward Prussia and negative toward Austria as Bismarck had hoped, Prussia and Austria renewed ties under the German Confederation (just in time for a war with Denmark). Italian hopes for an alliance were dashed, but the reunion did not last long.

Conflict began to bubble up over disagreements between Austria and Prussia over the administration of the lands taken in the war with Denmark. Among German nationalists, there had also been a long standing division over whether or not the united Germany would include Austria due to the fact that Austria also ruled over so many non-German peoples that German nationalists cared nothing about. With the Austro-Prussian dispute, that matter was settled; Austria would be excluded and, as far as Bismarck was concerned, could go on having fun in her ‘majority minority’ empire. If Prussia were to take on Austria, there would be no better time as Habsburg foreign policy had managed to alienate just about everyone by this stage. Austria was sore at the French for allowing the incorporation of the central Italian states into the Kingdom of Italy and so, naturally, the French were sore at Austria in return. The Italians, naturally, wanted Venice back and so were certainly not going to take the side of Austria and, most importantly, the Russians were still furious at Emperor Franz Joseph for threatening to side against them in the Crimean War, effectively forcing them to concede defeat. The Prussians had also stood by the Russians in a recent rebellion in Poland, whereas the Austrians had not. The British, for their part, had no great love for either side and had no reason to care who won.

Bismarck, von Roon & von Moltke

Bismarck had only to prod Austria with the right words for Emperor Franz Joseph to demand a resolution of the Holstein issue by the German Imperial Diet which violated a treaty between Austria and Prussia, which was all Bismarck needed to go to war. Many have since pondered why the Austrian Emperor did such a thing after having been previously baited into a failed war with France and Piedmont-Sardinia not so long before. The most common explanation is that Austria was still not really looking toward the German states so much as the other ethnicities within the Austrian Empire, which were rather restive. The Hungarians, who had come under much more strict control since the Revolution of 1848, were looking particularly troublesome. The Emperor may have been hoping that a war with Prussia and Italy would unite the ethnic groups behind Austrian leadership and strengthen the empire.

In any event, on June 14, 1866 the war began with Prussian troops marching into Saxony and Bohemia. The Prussian army had mobilized rapidly thanks to the adept leadership of war minister Graf von Roon and the army commander Graf von Moltke. The Italian Royal Army was less well prepared, with elements of the north and south still not having coalesced very well. Some of this was due to personality issues, some due to organizational differences and sometimes simply the differences between the dialects of Turin and Naples. The Italian war plan was for the army of General Alfonso La Marmora to strike while the army of General Enrico Cialdini remained on the defensive. They would have superior numbers but the Austrians, with their powerful fortress cities of the Quadrilateral, would be able to concentrate their troops against any threat. The Italians, in typical fashion, came straight on with a bold offensive by the troops of La Marmora, accompanied by King Vittorio Emanuele II himself, who loved nothing better than being on campaign.

Archduke Albrecht

The Austrians were led by Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen, the Emperor’s cousin and a veteran of Radetzky’s victorious army from the First War of Italian Independence. He was not content to remain on the defensive but moved his army around to the north in an effort to get behind the Italians, cut them off from their base of operations and assault them from the rear. As it happened, the Italian army turned at just the right moment and the two sides collided at the Battle of Custoza on June 24. It was a very confused fight. The Austrian cavalry charged in, were mostly wiped out but spread confusion that stymied a sizeable number of Italian units. The Austrians drove the Italians out of Oliosi and seemed to be winning the day, yet were then met by an Italian division that exploited the gaps in their lines and refused to be dislodged, repelling fierce and repeated Austrian attacks at Monte Croce. The Austrians thought they were beaten, yet the Italians did not immediately reinforce Monte Croce and finally the forces there began to fall back. When reinforcements were sent and the Austrians moved to match them, the Austrians left another gap in their lines but the Italians failed to exploit it.

The Battle of Custozza

Each army believed they had been beaten, though neither actually had been. However, it was La Marmora who was the first to take action on this mistaken assumption and he ordered a retreat. As his forces moved back to secure the bridges over the Mincio, gaps in the Italian lines opened up which the Austrians were quick to exploit and Italian losses were heavy. By the end of the day, the Italians had retreated across the river after losing 8,147 men compared to losses of 5,650 for the Austrians. However, Archduke Albrecht did not follow up to destroy the Italian army, viewing his army as too bloodied and too exhausted to continue. As it was, most of the Italian losses had been men who were captured, as far as the number of dead and wounded alone went, Austrian losses were considerably higher. The Archduke retired to Verona, fearful of exposing his forces in case the French decided to get involved. Emperor Franz Joseph had advised him to ignore any political consideration and focus on annihilating the Italians, however, Archduke Albrecht seemed more concerned in not repeating the disaster that had befallen Franz Joseph himself at Solferino. As it was, Austria had won a solid victory and removed itself from immediate danger on the Italian front.

Battle of Bezzecca

In fact, the Austrian Empire seemed to be doing exceedingly well in the opening weeks of the conflict. They had defeated the Italians at Custoza and soon after halted the Prussians at Trautenau and the Austrian-allied forces of the Kingdom of Hanover also defeated the Prussians at Langensalza. However, at that point, everything began to go wrong. Only two days later the Hanoverians surrendered and the Prussians bested the Austrians at Gitschin on June 29. Most devastating of all for Austria was the decisive Prussian victory at the Battle of Koeniggraetz (Sadowa) on July 3. Subsequent defeats followed and in Italy, a small force under Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was still full of fight, was on the attack in the Trentino while the Italian high command planned their own counter-offensive. On July 21, Garibaldi and his “Hunters of the Alps” were attacked by two Austrian columns led by Major General Franz Baron von Kuhn at the town of Bezzecca. The Italians immediately counter-attacked and though they took heavier losses, managed to drive the Austrians out, providing a much needed morale boost for the Italian forces.

Battle of Lissa

The Italian war effort seemed to be on the rebound. General Cialdini was on the advance, this time with La Marmora holding back to cover the Austrian fortresses, Garibaldi had won a hard fought victory at Bezzecca and the Italian navy, widely regarded as the vastly superior force, was preparing to land troops on the Adriatic island of Lissa off the Dalmatian coast. However, it was then that everything was spoiled by the greatest disaster of the war for Italy. To the surprise of all, the much smaller Austrian fleet of Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, attacked the Italian fleet while they were preparing to land their forces. The Italian commander, Admiral Count Carlo di Persano, was caught off guard and seemed totally bewildered. Two Italian ironclad warships were sunk while the Austrians lost none of their own, though one unarmored steamer was badly damaged. The Italians retreated and the Austrian sailors cheered. Ironically, most of the “Austrian” sailors were actually Italians, from Venice. It was a humiliating blow for Italy which was not helped by the fact that Persano first reported that he had won a great victory. This made it very awkward, needless to say, and all the worse when the truth came out.

The outcome of the war had, for all intents and purposes, mostly been decided at the Battle of Sadowa with the Prussians crushing the Austrian army there. However, the Austrian reinforcements on their way to Italy, combined with the stunning loss at Lissa, prompted Italy to come to the peace table too, in spite of the advances of Garibaldi and Cialdini and the hopes riding on them to make good on the loss at Custoza. It was not the glorious victory that had been hoped for, nor would the resulting peace treaty be easy for anyone. Italy was on the winning side but Prussia had been the ones to force Austria to the negotiating table. Even then, it was only thanks to the intransigence of Bismarck as most of the Prussian officers wanted to carry on and capture Vienna and perhaps more. Bismarck would not hear of it. All he wanted was a war to shove Austria out of the way so that Prussia could create a united Germany. He had no desire to see Austria humiliated or destroyed.

King Vittorio Emanuele II enters Venice

However, the Austrians were still Austrian and while they could grudgingly accept being beaten by Prussia, they would still insist on being condescending to the hated Italians. They refused to concede anything to Italy, yet Prussia was bound by their alliance not to make peace unless Venice was restored to Italy. However, the Austrian Empire refused to budge on this and so Prussia and Italy had to turn to Emperor Napoleon III of the French, who had been on side but taken no part in the conflict. The result was rather ridiculous. Austria finally agreed to make peace but by ceding Venice to the French Empire at which point the French then handed Venice over to the Kingdom of Italy. In a way, however, it was rather fitting given that Austria had first acquired Venice by originally dividing the Venetian territories with the first French Republic. So it was that Prussia proved to the minor German states that Austria would not be looked to for leadership and, after the appropriate referendum, Venice was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.

An unfortunate result of the Austrian intransigence during the peace process was to perpetuate the false impression that Italy had accomplished nothing during the war. The Italians had won battles and the naval engagement of Lissa was the only truly embarrassing loss. The battle of Custoza was two armies that basically fought each other to exhaustion, both thought they had lost and the Italians were simply the first to do anything about it and as they began to pull back the Austrians pounced. Garibaldi had won a hard fought victory in the north, the Italians had not been destroyed and were in the process of counter-attacking, were advancing back into Venetia, when the crushing victory of the Prussians brought the war to a close. The Austrians had not ‘run away with it’ so to speak. In any event, Italy had at least regained Venice, leaving only Rome still under foreign occupation. Prussia was clearly established as the leading German state, only one further step away from unification whereas the Austrian Empire had been humbled and was soon thereafter forced to make vast concessions to the Hungarians, leading to the compromise which turned the Austrian Empire into the “Dual Monarchy” of Austria-Hungary.

A Brief Word on Titles

Today we are quite used to titles being sort of honorary and nothing more, particularly, I think, in the English-speaking world but, certainly after the French Revolution, in most of the west as well. The British monarchs, for example, became fond of awarding titles to victorious generals which reflected their success such as Viscount Allenby of Megiddo (a place in the Middle East) or Baron Napier of Magdala (a place in Ethiopia) in addition to some actual location in the U.K. but while they may have had some traditional privileges associated with the place in the U.K. mentioned in their title, it certainly was not their own to rule as they pleased. In the old days, more so the farther back prior to the French Revolution one chooses to go, this was not the case. A title more often meant that the holder of that title actually controlled and ruled the land in question. William the Conqueror, for example, was the Duke of Normandy and he ruled Normandy. So, in the past, a title could mean there were actual lands and people and those lands that the holder of the title actually controlled, sometimes, even then, it was more in name than in fact.

Coronation of Otto the Great of Germany

One area that often causes confusion is the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”. You will, for the sake of being easily understood, see the ruler of this entity be referred to as the ‘Holy Roman Emperor’ but his actual imperial title was “Emperor of the Romans”. His primary subsidiary titles were “King of the Germans” or “King of Germany” (the one which mattered the most), “King of Italy” and later “King of Burgundy”. Usually the Emperor held these titles prior to or upon becoming “Emperor of the Romans” but this was not always the case. Usually, whoever became King of Germany was confirmed by the Pope and could then be crowned Emperor of the Romans though not many actually were. Eventually, papal-imperial relations became such a touchy subject that this stopped being done which is why every emperor after Charles V were technically only entitled to be called “Emperor-elect” as they did not officially become “Emperor of the Romans” until crowned by the pope and no emperor after Charles V ever was.

This issue of titles can be very confusing but it is rather important in understanding why certain historical events were so important when, on the surface, it may seem as though there should have been no difficulty about them. Even the title at the very top, “Emperor of the Romans” was rather complicated. Technically, a Roman was and is simply a native of the city of Rome, however the title could be seen, and was, to refer to “Romans” in the broader sense of basically all Europeans or at least all Christian Europeans which, eventually, they all were. Maps might show the actual city of Rome as being part of the Holy Roman Empire but the emperors did not usually rule Rome but rather the popes ruled the city of Rome and part of the reason why there was so much ‘storm and stress’ between the popes and the emperors was because, originally, the popes were supposed to be superior to the emperor in their spiritual capacity but subjects of the emperors in the temporal sphere. It did not usually work out this way in practice though as neither wished to be overruled by the other on any issue.

Emperor Romulus surrenders his crown

Similarly, the title of “King of Italy”, falsely regarded by many as an innovation of the Nineteenth Century, was a title which had been in use consistently ever since the fall of the Western Roman Empire when Emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed by Odoacer who was then proclaimed “King of Italy”. You then had the Ostrogoth kings of Italy, then the Lombard kings of Italy and finally it was the German emperors who came to hold the title and would often be crowned King of Italy, after being crowned King of Germany, while on their way from Germany to Rome to be crowned Emperor of the Romans. However, because the Holy Roman Empire was more like a collection of small countries than one, united, powerful country, this did not mean that the emperors, as kings of Italy, actually ruled Italy.

In the first place, relatively soon after Odoacer became King of Italy, the Eastern Roman Empire invaded and recaptured the southern half of the peninsula and later other conquerors did as well so that different political entities were established there and the King of Italy only actually held even nominal rule over the northern half of the peninsula. Yet, even then, the German emperor who was King of Italy did not usually rule even northern Italy himself because of the nature of the empire. Northern Italy was ruled by people like the Doge of Venice, the Duke of Milan, the Duke of Savoy and so on who may or may not have been loyal to the German emperor and their nominal king depending on the situation. Quite often, to prevent the emperors from ruling Italy, the pope would form a coalition of the rulers of the northern Italian states to band together in opposition to the emperors. Sometimes they succeeded, such as under Pope Alexander III, and sometimes they did not, such as under Pope Clement VII. His defeat, by the way, is what resulted in the victorious Charles V being the last Emperor to be crowned by the Pope himself.

Crown of Prussia

Most of the time, the most significant title of the emperors was their position as King of the Germans as that is where they held the most actual power, though most still had to negotiate with the princes and nobles under them in order to accomplish anything. However, this is why there were supposed to be no other kings within the empire other than the Emperor himself who was King of Germany as that would conflict with his title. This is why it was significant when the Elector of Brandenburg demanded to be ‘upgraded’ to King of Prussia as it was seen as being a challenge to the authority of the Emperor who was King of the Germans. Eventually, because the Prussian heartland was outside the borders of the empire, and the Emperor really needed the help of the Prussians, it was decided to allow the Elector of Brandenburg to be called “King in Prussia” but not “King of Prussia”. Later, under Frederick the Great, all pretense would be dropped and he simply adopted the title “King of Prussia” anyway and there was nothing the Emperor could really do about it.

At the very end of the life of the Holy Roman Empire, this ban on more than one king was thrown completely out the window as the victorious Napoleon Bonaparte began to redraw the map of central Europe as he negotiated a new continental order centered around France. This is when, in addition to the King of Prussia, you suddenly had a King of Saxony, a King of Bavaria and a King of Wurttemberg within the historic lands of Germany and different imperial electors than there had been before. Ultimately, however, none of that really mattered as by then the Empire had become so nominal as to be practically nonexistent anyway. Even before the time of Napoleon, when one spoke of the “Emperor” they actually meant the ruler of Austria as he clearly did not rule the whole of the German nation. In 1804 the Emperor Francis II, wishing to end the charade as well as preventing Napoleon himself from being elected, abolished the Holy Roman Empire of the Germans and declared himself Emperor Francis I of Austria, which later became the “Dual-Monarchy” of Austria-Hungary under Francis Joseph.

Emp. Ferdinand wearing the Crown of Italy

Nonetheless, once someone has a title, they usually want to keep it. As such, those German princes who had been elevated to royal status by Napoleon, were allowed to keep their titles as part of the means of encouraging them to turn against Napoleon and join the Allies. So, after that whole affair, there was no longer a King of Germany but instead kings of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurttemberg as well as the Emperor of Austria who was also a king several times over in his own empire. The Kingdom of Burgundy had been broken up centuries before any of this so that left only the Kingdom of Italy. Napoleon had revived the Kingdom of Italy and actually made it a reality, intending it to be his secondary title after Emperor of the French, taking a great interest in it and naming his step-son viceroy. However, after his downfall, the Kingdom of Italy was no more as most of the territory was handed over to the Austrian Empire rather than being restored to its previous rulers. The Crown of Italy was also held by the Habsburgs but they created a new title to use with it, “King of Lombardy-Venetia”. The title King of Italy would not be revived until 1860 with the accomplishment of Italian independence and unification.

The subject can be much more complicated if one chooses to go into all of the details and all of the changes over time but, I hope this little summary will at least give those unfamiliar a better grasp of the titles associated with the Holy Roman Empire and perhaps make certain past (and future) articles easier to understand.

Clash of Monarchies: The Second War of Italian Independence

The Italian peninsula, after so many centuries of division and foreign rule since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, would ultimately fight three wars for independence but of these three, none would be so consequential as the second. The first had seen the hope of the existing Italian princely states, Papal, Bourbon and even Habsburg, come together under the leadership of the House of Savoy against the Austrians with the possibility of confederation or federal unity for Italy only to be defeated by the Austrian army of the unflappable Graf von Radestky. King Carlo Alberto of Piedmont-Sardinia, after his defeat, abdicated in favor of his son King Vittorio Emanuele II a monarch who was originally interested only in the unification of northern Italy and that mostly so as to prevent it from occurring under the leadership of the radical republicans. However, with cooperation from the other Italian states now out of the question, he knew he would have to look for an ally against the Austrian Empire. Such an ally was to be found in the person of Emperor Napoleon III of the French.

Vittorio Emanuele II, Napoleon III & Franz Joseph

One benefit the Savoy monarchy had was that the radical republicans had been, in 1848 and after, thoroughly discredited among Italian nationalists. They had failed and in Austria, the Papal States and Naples, reactionary forces had revived in a harsh way. This meant that the Savoy, careful to keep on the side of the nationalist spirit, was looked to for leadership while the republican crowd of Mazzini was discredited. Aside from the King, the most important player on the Savoyard side was his prime minister Count Camillo di Cavour. For Cavour, nationalism was a means to an end rather than an end in itself. His goals were for the financial independence of Turin from British banks, the furthering of industrialization and economic expansion. Ties with British banks were cut, new ties with French banks were established, railroad construction exploded and trade increased. The army was improved as well and in 1855 the Piedmontese participated in the Crimean War as a way of gaining British and French support against Austria. The result was a Savoyard army that was better organized, more easily mobilized, with a better staff system and with greater combat experience.

Obtaining an alliance with France, however, proved rather difficult. The French were willing but Napoleon III extracted a heavy price for his support which included the Savoy ceding their own heartland, the Duchy of Savoy as well as the County of Nice to France. The King also had to give his daughter, the petite Princess Clothilde, to the hulking Prince Jerome Bonaparte, the French Emperor’s cousin. In exchange, France would support the end of Austrian rule over Lombardy and Venice and the creation of an independent Kingdom of Italy on the northern half of the peninsula. This was, however, a defensive alliance and would only take effect if Austria attacked Piedmont. In Naples, the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies did not figure into the issue. While still possessing a powerful army, it was geared entirely toward suppressing the local population, which had proven very prone to rebellion, and not to defending against foreign invasion. An alliance was proposed between Turin and Naples but King Francesco II of the Two-Sicilies had rejected it out of hand. They would play no part in the ensuing conflict.

Austrian Imperial Army, 1859

The French, more so than the Piedmontese, also took care to ensure that there would be no unwelcome intervention on the part of the Russians. This was not a problem as the Russians were feeling in no way sympathetic to the Austrians. Perhaps even more than the powers that fought against them, the Russians blamed Austria for their defeat in the Crimean War and were particularly bitter given that they had aided the Habsburgs during their time of greatest peril in the Revolutions of 1848. They also did not tend to view Austrian rule over northern Italy as legitimate anyway, going all the way back to the French Revolutionary Wars, Russia’s Czar Paul had been very disappointed by the British and Austrians keeping territory they took from the French rather than restoring it to its previous rulers, be it Malta or Venice. The British could also be counted on to remain on the sidelines given that they had good relations with France (for a change) and had been quite offended by the harshness of Austrian rule in Lombardy-Venetia. Paris and Turin were convinced that they could handle Austria between them and all that was necessary was for Austria to fire the first shot.

The Austrian Empire had come very near to total collapse in the Revolutions of 1848 but, thanks to the leadership of their new, young Emperor Franz Joseph and the victories of Graf Radetzky, they had weathered the storm and the Austrian Imperial Army seemed all the more robust and formidable. Austria did become a constitutional monarchy but it was a constitution that the Emperor accepted on his own terms and he pursued a policy since labeled “neo-absolutism”. There were problems though due to rivalries in the military leadership and a financial crisis which greatly effected military readiness. The politicians in Vienna always seemed prepared to sacrifice spending on the army before anything else and this meant that Austria could not maintain so large an army, or armies, on the Italian peninsula and, in the event of major trouble there, would have to divert forces from elsewhere in the empire if they were to maintain an overwhelming superiority. The Austrian Empire had also simply become overstretched. Aside from their own frontiers to the south and east, garrisons to keep troublesome populations in line within the empire, the Austrians had also been called upon to safeguard the Papal States and the Spanish Bourbons in Naples as well as their own Italian possessions. It was simply too much, particularly with a less than robust economy. The desire of Emperor Franz Joseph to reassert Austrian leadership in Germany also meant that neither Berlin or Moscow were, at the time, looking too favorable toward Vienna.

Officers of the Savoyard army

The French and Piedmontese, on the other hand, were well prepared with a joint-plan for military cooperation in the event of war and the Piedmontese economy was booming. It was the perfect time for a war but it could only happen if Austria made the first aggressive move. Count Cavour, therefore, entered into a number of schemes to encourage trouble in the central duchies such as Tuscany and Modena, nominally independent but ruled by junior members of the House of Habsburg. The famous nationalist revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi was also recruited to lead volunteers in the cause of Italian independence under the Savoy banner. This caused nearly 20,000 Italians to rush to Turin to volunteer, fired by nationalist zeal, so many that Cavour had to suspend his plan before things went off prematurely. The point was for the trouble in the duchies to draw Austrian strength away from Lombardy-Venetia and the government in Turin knew perfectly well that the government in Vienna would blame them for any Italian nationalist unrest and thus the Austrians would be encouraged to attack Piedmont-Sardinia.

King Vittorio Emanuele II also ordered the mobilization of his army, at least gradually, which was sure to attract Austrian attention. The Austrians were certainly alarmed but also unsure how to respond. The Piedmontese had not actually made any aggressive move and a full mobilization of the Austrian Imperial Army was a costly exercise Vienna would wish to avoid if not strictly necessary. The Italians also had to be fully prepared before the war started given that, as per the agreement, they would be responsible for both paying for the French intervention on their behalf and keeping both armies supplied during the war, which would be no small task. The French also began moving their forces into position which alarmed the Austrians all the more. In April, 1859, however, everything almost came to ruin when the British government proposed an international congress to deal with the Italian situation. Thankfully, France and Italy were rescued by their Austrian adversary. Emperor Franz Joseph had sought out the retired elder statesman, Prince Klemens von Metternich, who immediately understood that the French and Italians were trying to provoke Austria into a war and he advised the Emperor that, whatever he did, do NOT send an ultimatum to Turin. The young Kaiser sheepishly had to admit that he had already sent one out.

Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria

The ultimatum ordered the King to demobilize his forces or face war and this message was immediately forwarded to Paris. The French and Italians had their threat and could take action in a war of self-defense against Austrian aggression. Lest anyone think that Emperor Francis Joseph was being purely hot-headed in this blunder, he had expected such a conflict to rally the German states in support of Austria. Unfortunately for him, they did not. The Prussians were not sympathetic, seeing the Austrians as rivals with a bizarre obsession with non-Germans and the other states often did not see Austria as a “team player”, partly also because they were necessarily focused on their rebellious non-German territories. They also saw no reason for Austria not to accept the proposal for a congress rather than giving the Italians exactly what they wanted, which was a war. Emperor Francis Joseph, however, feared that any such congress just might say what many Italian nationalists had been saying for ages; leave Italy to the Italians and everyone mind their own business. Austria simply had no real friends at this point and so would have to stand alone. Emperor Francis Joseph, for good or ill, was prepared to and after the Italians did not respond to his ultimatum, issued the declaration of war on April 29, 1859.

Feldzeugmeister Franz Graf Gyulai, commander of the Austrian Second Army in Lombardy, believed that his forces would have at least two weeks to crush the Italians before the French could intervene. He had on hand some 110,235 soldiers as well as another 59,000 deployed throughout Lombardy-Venetia to suppress any popular uprisings. The Italians could field only 77,348 men to meet them, however, they were very efficient and led by men who had learned from the mistakes of 1848. The Franco-Italian leadership had also carefully worked out the train schedules and necessary stockpiles of supplies to move the French into northern Italy as quickly as possible. The Austrians had previously assumed the French were not prepared to move because they had not been stockpiling supplies. However, this was because it had been left to the Italians to handle the logistics and, in the end, the French army was transported quickly with ample stores by the very efficient Piedmontese rail network.

General Alfonso La Marmora

Unfortunately for the Austrians, Gyulai was no Graf Radetzky and no one knew this better than Gyulai himself who was more of a desk general. He had asked to be reassigned but this was refused. With the outbreak of war, his plan was to crush the Italians with his superior numbers and by then be able to take up a good position from which to deal with the French. He would march directly on the Piedmontese capital at Turin. Of course, this is exactly what the Italians expected him to do and the Piedmontese army was deployed to block any such advance and hold up the Austrians until the French arrived at which point they would work together to drive the enemy from Italian soil. The Italian commander, General Alfonso La Marmora was under no apprehension that this would be easy but he was aided by the extensive spy network set up by Lt. Colonel Giuseppe Govone, his chief of military intelligence, who had a constant flow of information on the movements of the Austrian army. La Marmora deployed his five infantry and one cavalry divisions to be in a position to block the advance on Turin and to be able to link up with the five French Corps at their places of deployment which, when they arrived, would be set up to pin down the Austrians at the Dora Baltea line and then, with three of the French Corps coming from Genoa to Alessandria, to threaten the Austrian flank.

Austrian naval strength was negligible, being about as large as the Piedmontese navy, far outmatched by the French fleet which was the second-largest in the world. In any event, the commander of the Austrian navy, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, had prepared only for the defense of the Adriatic and had no plans for offensive operations (and keeping in mind most of the sailors in the Austrian navy were Italians). As such, by rail and by sea the French were able to move their forces into Italy rapidly and freely. The Austrian army, likewise, inexplicably remained in place for days while their enemies massed against them. Gyulai claimed that Vienna had ordered him to wait while in Vienna they blamed Gyulai for not seizing the initiative. It is difficult to know who was in the right but it does seem that, having blundered into giving the Italians the war they wanted, Emperor Franz Joseph hoped, at the last minute, to be able to negotiate a solution or for the German states to rally in support of Austria. Of course, neither would be the case nor were such hopes frankly realistic. By May 1, with French deployments proceeding as scheduled, General La Marmora remarked to the commander of the Third Division at Novi, General Giovanni Durando (commander of the Papal Army in the First War) that the Austrian advance was “molto lentamente” (very slow).

Feldzeugmeister Gyulai

The Austrians had their spies too and they reported to Gyulai on the movements of the French army which seems to have intimidated him as they tended to exaggerate French strength. He was unsure of how to deploy his own forces for fear of where they would be when the French reached their own destinations. As it turned out, it was ten days from the time of the ultimatum until Gyulai moved, very slowly, toward Vercelli. King Vittorio Emanuele II, who was in his element on such occasions, wanted to stick to the original plan but the French convinced him to redeploy Franco-Italian forces away from Turin. He did so and, as it happened, a determined Austrian advance would have found little more than one Piedmontese cavalry division blocking their way if they had driven on for the capital but the Austrians were convinced that the French were planning to flank them from the south and so began to pull back. The danger to Turin dissolved faster than it had appeared.

By May 12 the Emperor Napoleon III had arrived in Genoa. Armed with some thoughtful advice from retired General Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini (a veteran of his famous uncle’s army), Napoleon met with King Vittorio Emanuele II at Alessandria to work out their offensive against the Austrians. It would be too much to say the Franco-Italian forces took the initiative from the Austrians as the Austrians never seemed to have held it in the first place but Napoleon III and Vittorio Emanuele II were certainly willing to seize it where it lay. They did, however, pass up an opportunity to strike the Austrians while Gyulai was redeploying his forces but an overall strategy was still being well executed. The famous Giuseppe Garibaldi, given rank as a Lt. General in the Piedmontese army after pledging allegiance to “Vittorio Emanuele and Italy”, was to harass the Austrian right, brushing the Alps. He had originally intended to lead the effort to foment unrest in the central duchies but this job was instead given to Prince Jerome Bonaparte and his French troops, which was deemed preferable to the authorities in Turin as Garibaldi, a lifelong republican and former Mazzinian, was still not regarded as being sufficiently loyal to the Savoy monarchy to be absolutely trusted. Garibaldi in the north and Prince Jerome in the south would threaten the Austrian position from the left and right, they would be intimidating but not part of the major action.

French line infantry

As the French First Corps moved on Voghera, the Austrians thought this the first move in an effort to get around behind them and the Austrian IX Corps under Field Marshal Lieutenant Karl Urban was deployed to stop them. The result was the first engagement of the war that was more than a skirmish, the Battle of Montebello on May 20 between the lead French division of General Elie Frédéric Forey and elements of the Austrian V Corps under General Philipp Graf von Stadion which had been sent in to support Urban. Three Italian cavalry regiments, the Aosta, Novara and Montferrato, also participated. Despite being considerably outnumbered (3 to 1), Forey fought an aggressive action that made Graf Stadion believe that the French had more support behind them, prompting him to retreat and give the victory to the Franco-Italian forces under Forey. This sharp rebuke made Gyulai all the more reluctant to take risks but as he had initiated the action, it also made Napoleon III nervous that the Austrians might be trying to take back the initiative. As it was, Gyulai had been concerned about a move south and his forces had met the enemy so he continued to believe he was on the right track and all forces were shifted toward the south.

When an armed reconnaissance by General Enrico Cialdini, commander of the Piedmontese fourth division, found minimal Austrian resistance at Vercelli the following day, the French Emperor and Italian King could see that Gyulai was shifting away from the north, giving them an opportunity to come at the Austrians from that direction. Garibaldi was also proving effective at keeping the Austrians off-balance. On May 26 at the Battle of Varese, his Cacciatori delle Alpi routed the Austrians, forcing them to keep more troops deployed in the north as the aggression of the Italians again caused the Austrians to overestimate their strength. The next day Garibaldi and his men defeated another Austrian contingent at the Battle of San Fermo, forcing the Austrians to withdraw from Como.

King Vittorio Emanuele rallies the Zouaves at Palestro

At the same time, while the largely French force was engaged at Montebello, King Vittorio Emanuele II led Cialdini’s division with the addition of some French Zouaves against a smaller contingent of Austrians under General Friedrich Zobel at the Battle of Palestro. The Austrians rushed in reinforcements so that, in the aftermath, they held the numerical advantage yet the threat of French troops on the Sesia caused him to retreat for fear of being cut off. By May 30 the Franco-Italian forces had secured a bridgehead across the Sesia. With efforts to retake Palestro having failed and with Garibaldi keeping control of the northern front in spite of being outnumbered nearly 4 to 1, Gyulai decided that the threat to Milan was too great and he ordered a retreat across the Ticino to concentrate his forces at Mortara. However, the rapid movements of the Franco-Italian armies forced him to abandon that plan. He was correct that they were moving against Milan, the capital of Lombardy, but he did not know what approach they would take. He was coming under intense pressure and no small amount of criticism, particularly after the arrival of Field Marshal Heinrich von Hess with stern orders from the Emperor (who had reached Verona) to defend the frontier and not retreat to the Quadrilateral fortress complex.

The Battle of Magenta

More Austrian reinforcements arrived and Gyulai was finally convinced that the enemy was not trying to maneuver around behind him after all. There was also confusion as Hess outranked Gyulai, yet seemed to be leaving things to him. All of this caused a degree of stagnation on the Austrian side as one commander would fail to do something because he assumed the other commander would do it. Nonetheless, the Austrians did hold a strong defensive position around Magenta after destroying the bridges over the Ticino. Gyulai had about 68,000 men in the area when the Battle of Magenta commenced on June 4. With a little over 50,000 French troops plus 12,000 Italians under General Manfredo Fanti, Napoleon III planned an assault on the front and flank of the Austrian army. The two sides were thus evenly matched as long as the Austrians concentrated on the points of attack and did not remain spread out. Both sides made mistakes and many units blundered into each other, nonetheless, the Austrians took far heavier losses and finally retreated, giving the victory to the French. Napoleon III congratulated Marshal MacMahon with a peerage as Duke of Magenta for this success.

This latest defeat was the last straw for Emperor Franz Joseph who had seen his forces do nothing but retreat, be outmaneuvered and defeated often by forces inferior to their own. He dismissed Gyulai and took command of the Austrian Imperial Army himself. With the Quadrilateral fortress cities secure but the enemy in command of the surrounding countryside, his position was similar to that of Graf Radetzky in 1848. However, “Papa Radetzky” was a veteran, unflappable commander and Emperor Franz Joseph was not. Determined to take the offensive and crush the enemy, he abandoned his strong position and moved out on June 23 to take on the Franco-Italian armies. The result was the bloody Battle of Solferino the following day. Once again both sides were about evenly matched with roughly 130,000 soldiers each.

Emperor Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino

Each army was basically trying to attack the other and so units ran headlong into combat, often not as they intended. It was a huge brawl that involved a number of separate actions and coordination was difficult. The Austrian position was also undermined on distant fronts by uprisings breaking out in conjunction with Prince Jerome’s arrival in central Italy. Earlier, toward the end of May, his forces entered Florence and soon dispatched units to Parma and Modena. At Solferino, most of the fighting centered around two engagements, one around Solferino itself where the French under Forey pushed the Austrians back into the town itself at which point house-to-house fighting ensued. Despite Austrian reinforcements arriving, French attacks soon succeeded in nearly surrounding the town. Fighting south of town was disconnected from the main engagement and involved a number of cavalry units. There, the French attacks were repulsed by the Austrians but this had no effect on the imperiled Austrian position in town. The fighting was fierce and casualties were heavy, particularly for the Austrians.

Battle of San Martino

The other major action was the battles at San Martino and Madonna della Scoperta which largely involved the Italian forces. The Austrians had a fairly good defensive position and the Italians attacked immediately, hoping to dislodge them before they could strengthen their lines. However, this meant that the Italians attacked piecemeal as they came up rather than being able to throw their entire force at the Austrian position. Field Marshal Lieutenant Ludwig Benedek, considered the best Austrian corps commander by many, had been ordered to attack the French flank and had not been expecting to run into the Italians. However, he was a veteran of this region and kept his cool, responding rapidly to the changing situation. Repeatedly, Italian discipline and determination carried them forward to the cusp of success only to have Benedek adeptly move his men and guns to the imperiled area and throw the Italians back with devastating barrages. However, when word came that the main Austrian army had been beaten at Solferino, he had no choice but to conduct a fighting withdrawal as the Italian attacks continued. With the French having taken Solferino, the Italian seizure of San Martino marked the end of the massive and bloody battle.

French & Austrian Emperors meet at Villafranca

Stunned by the ferocity and chaos of the engagement, Emperor Franz Joseph ordered his forces to fall back to the security of the Quadrilateral fortresses. Losses had been heavy for both sides. The Italians had lost about 5,000 men, the French more than 10,000 and the Austrians about 22,000 in the vicious struggle. Both the French and Austrian emperors were shaken by the extreme loss of life. The carnage would later lead one Swiss observer of the engagement to found the International Red Cross in 1863. Operations continued for a time but Napoleon III and Franz Joseph both agreed that the war should come to an end. Franz Joseph feared that a continuation of the so far disastrous conflict could pose an existential threat to the Austrian Empire itself if other areas rose in rebellion. Napoleon also feared that if Austria seemed near to collapse the other German states might get involved and threaten France itself. Disregarding his earlier promises to the Italians, Napoleon III agreed to make peace with Emperor Franz Joseph at Villafranca on July 8.

The result of this was that Austria gave up Lombardy to the House of Savoy but retained control of Venetia. It was not the total victory that Italian nationalists had wanted and many were bitter about the result. The French had gained Savoy and Nice but had backed out before the total liberation of northern Italy had been achieved. Many, given how close Austria had come to collapse in 1848, thought they would not put up so strong a fight. However, despite being weakened by budget cuts, the Austrian military was much more effective than Austrian diplomacy had been. Things would have gone very differently if the Austrians had not managed to offend the Russians, Prussians, the minor German states and the French all at the same time. Not only did this isolate Austria but it also gave the Prussians room to further gain prestige among the German states, standing as the defenders of German rights while Austria was focused on keeping control of Italians, Slavs and Magyars.

King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia

A particular example of this was in 1857 when royalists in the Principality of Neuchâtel had risen in revolt. They favored the King of Prussia for their prince rather than being a part of Switzerland and the German states saw this as an opportunity to strengthen the German Confederation. Emperor Franz Joseph, president of the Confederation as the Head of the House of Habsburg, had, however, refused to give their cause imperial support. Prussia was ultimately forced to back down and many in the German Confederation wondered why they should take any risk to support the Austrian rule over unwilling Italians two years later when the Austrians had been unwilling to support pro-German royalists who wanted to be ruled by a German monarch. It was illustrative of how Austrian interests diverged from those of the rest of the German-speaking people. There were also those in Berlin who realized the implications that Italian independence would have better than the French did. Napoleon expected to gain a subservient northern Italian buffer state but, as Modena, Tuscany, Parma and after Garibaldi’s shockingly successful invasion of the south, all came to be part of the Kingdom of Italy, France instead helped create a rival in the Mediterranean.

The result of all of this was that Austria lost Lombardy, which joined with Piedmont-Sardinia, Tuscany, Parma and Modena to form the Kingdom of Italy, soon joined by the south and the Papal States outside of Rome. Austria remained friendless and increasingly overshadowed by Prussia and the French were not seen by the Italians as stalwart allies but as rather fair-weather friends who likewise kept troops in Rome. The French had gained battlefield laurels but would also find themselves without friends going forward just as the Austrians had because of their determination to maintain some level of control over Italy, continuing a cycle which had been going on for many, many centuries and which would continue until the fall of Napoleon himself in 1870. Italy had gained much from the Second War for Independence but not so much as to not require a third war. The Austrian loss did not seem too significant but it actually was. In trying to maintain control of Italy, Austria would ultimately lose their place in Italy and their place at the had of Germany to the Kingdom of Prussia. It would be no coincidence then that the Third War of Italian Independence would see Italy and Prussia on the same side.

The Italian Submarine Campaign of World War II

As detailed previously on these pages (see here), none of the military forces of the major participant powers in World War II have been as unjustly maligned as those of the Kingdom of Italy. Italian defeats have been exaggerated and Italian successes often downplayed or ignored entirely. Because of this, the details of the Italian submarine campaign will no doubt come as a surprise to a great many people. However, the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy) entered the war with the largest submarine fleet in the world by tonnage and while most tend to think of the “Battle of the Atlantic” as solely a fight between German U-boat “wolf packs” and Allied convoys, the Italians participated as well, in fact, at one point there were more Italian submarines operating in the Atlantic than German ones. Italian boats also saw extensive service in the Mediterranean (naturally) and the Indian Ocean as well as undertaking operations to East Asian waters and the South Atlantic; areas beyond the range of the smaller, typical Type-VIIC German U-boats. Finally, Italian submarines did a great deal of damage, despite facing many difficulties, against the Allies.

The Smeraldo

When the Kingdom of Italy entered World War II with the declarations of war against Britain and France in June of 1940 the Regia Marina possessed 84 operational submarines under the overall command of Admiral Mario Falangola, succeeded at the end of the following year by Admiral Antonio Legnani. At the outset, their failures outnumbered their successes, which is not too surprising as, aside from some secretive operations in support of Franco in the Spanish Civil War, they had never been tested and both men and boats had bugs that needed working out. However, they had a spirit and determination that would prove formidable. The Smeraldo, for example, a Sirena-class boat of the short to medium range 600 series made the first torpedo attack on British shipping by an Italian submarine but the heavy seas caused the torpedo to miss. However, this same boat later endured the most intense anti-submarine warfare attack of any boat in history with British ships dropping 200 depth charges on her, and she still survived (ultimately this boat was sunk by running into a British mine some time later).

Capt. Enzo Grossi decorated by Adm. Doenitz

After the conquest of France and the establishment of German naval bases on the French west coast, Italian submarines were invited to participate in the campaign to strangle the British Isles. This, of course, meant a dangerous passage through the Straits of Gibraltar under the very noses of the British Royal Navy. Many German U-boats were lost in the straits but, though few are aware of it, no Italian submarine was ever sunk slipping through these dangerous waters. The Italians established themselves at Bordeaux under the name BETASOM (Beta [Bordeaux] Som [Sommergibili]) with 27 submarines in early 1941. Originally, the idea was the German and Italian submarines would work together in coordinated attacks against Allied shipping, however, this soon proved to be more troublesome than effective and few seem to understand why. Ultimately the cause was a difference in training and how German and Italian boats operated as well as the Germans not being what we would call “team players”.

Fairly quickly in the war, German submarines developed a preferred tactic of attacking on the surface at night, submerging to escape counterattack. Italian submarines, however, usually made underwater attacks during the daytime. This was one of the differences that made cooperation difficult. Probably the most significant, however, was the unwillingness of the Germans to place a German communications officer on Italian submarines, though they held overall command of joint-operations. The result of this was that an Italian submarine making contact with the enemy would have to signal Bordeaux which would then have to send the message to Paris to the German naval command which would then relay the message out to the German submarines in the area. Needless to say, this meant that by the time the Germans were told of an enemy convoy, it was too late for them to do anything about it.

Capt. Primo Longobardo

There was also an unwillingness on the part of the Germans to train the Italians to fit in with their preferred way of doing things and what training they did provide was inadequate, expecting the Italians to learn in only two months what it had taken the Germans years to develop and become proficient at. There is evidence that when Italian submarine captains were allowed to train with the Germans, the results were obvious. One such officer was Commander Primo Longobardo, one of the few to train with the Germans, and he proved one of the most successful Italian submarine commanders of the war. As captain of the submarine Torelli he once sank four Allied ships on a single patrol and ultimately accounted for 42,000 tons of Allied shipping sunk. In any event, when coordinated training was finally agreed to, joint operations had already been canceled and each submarine force operated on their own with the Italians mostly hunting in waters around the Azores and some boats dispatched for the South Atlantic, such as in the Brazilian shipping lanes, which they were able to reach more easily because of their greater range.

A lack of cooperation was also evident in the reluctance of the Germans to share their torpedo technology with the Italians. The Germans tried many innovations with their torpedoes, causing some problems as certain designs didn’t work but ultimately resulting in a more effective weapon. The Italians, on the other hand, simply stuck to their older but more reliable model which was not as effective and the Germans would not share their magnetic trigger technology with Italy until it was too late to be of best use. It is for this reason that Italian submarines frequently engaged in surface action as quite often they would make a successful underwater attack using their torpedoes but the target would be badly damaged but not sunk at which point the Italian submarine would surface and finish off the enemy with their deck gun. Italian sub crews also became, out of necessity, quite adept anti-aircraft gunners and this came about due to the nature of their boats.

A submarine on the surface is vulnerable and aircraft are a particularly dangerous enemy. They can be upon you very quickly and do immense damage, making it a life or death matter for a submarine to be able to submerge as fast as possible. As Italian submarines tended to be larger than their average German counterpart, this meant that they were slower to dive. A typical German submarine could submerge in about 20 seconds, whereas the average Italian submarine took between 60 and 120 seconds to get below the waves. One result of this was that, by the time an enemy aircraft was spotted, it was often better to take your chances shooting it out on the surface than be shot full of holes while trying to dive. It was not an enviable situation but it did make Italian AA fire more effective than in other navies. In fact, it was an Italian submarine, which had been shifted to the Germans after 1943 and then to the Japanese after the German surrender, which fired the last shots of World War II, using her AA battery against American bombers while in port in Japan.

Victory for the Leonardo DaVinci

In spite of their boats having their limitations, torpedoes that were not the best and a less than fully cooperative ally, Italian submarines still did a great deal of damage thanks to having some extremely skilled commanders. None was more famous than Gianfranco Gazzana-Priaroggia, captain of the Leonardo DaVinci, the most successful Italian submarine of the war. Nicknamed “Ursus atlanticus”, Gazzana-Priaroggia would ultimately sink over 90,000 tons of Allied shipping, his biggest score being the massive British troopship the Empress of Canada. He was even set to lead a special forces submarine attack on New York harbor but this was postponed and ultimately never carried out due to the 1943 armistice. Earlier that year, Gazzana-Priaroggia was sadly killed in action but was posthumously awarded both the Gold Medal for Military Valor by the King of Italy and the Knights Iron Cross by the Germans for his achievements. By most accounts (there is some dispute as the U.S. ‘updated’ their stats several times after the war) Gazzana-Priaroggia was the most successful non-German submarine commander of all time.

Todaro, the humane hunter

It is also worth noting, given that the Allies later justified their use of unrestricted submarine warfare by retroactively pointing to its use by Italian subs in the Spanish Civil War, that Italian submarines also had a reputation for gallantry and compassion. Every major participant of the war that made extensive use of submarines; the Germans, Americans, Japanese and British, were guilty of sometimes committing atrocities, invariably killing survivors of sunken ships. Japan had by far the most, the British and Americans extremely few and the Germans, well, given the details of the “Laconia Incident”, it is hard for anyone to blame them. However, the Italians were never accused of such cruelty and, indeed, came away from the war with a reputation for actually showing some basic humanity when it was not required. The most famous example of this was Captain Salvatore Bruno Todaro of the Commandante Cappellini which went above and beyond to rescue survivors of sunken ships and put them safely ashore on the Azores. At the same time, Todaro and his boat had multiple victories to their credit and were among the most successful of the Italian submarine fleet. When all was said and done, the Italian submarines sank over a hundred Allied ships in the Atlantic.

However, the Mediterranean Sea was, of course, always supposed to be the primary area of operations for all units of the Regia Marina and it was an enclosed sea of hazards with major British naval installations at Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and Cyprus. Italian submarine commanders pulled off some extremely daring victories against the British in these waters and aside from merchant shipping also took a heavy toll on Royal Navy warships. Notable successes include the cruisers HMS Bonaventure, HMS Calypso and HMS Coventry which were all sunk by Italian submarines in 1940-41. However, Italian industry could not produce new boats fast enough and the Allied breaking of Axis codes was also a huge blow to the submarine campaign. Nonetheless, Italian submarines in the Mediterranean would open up a new type of undersea warfare which had dramatic results, producing a new type of warrior who could be seen as the precursor of America’s feared SEAL teams.

X-MAS infiltrating the enemy harbor

A special unit, composed of both fast-attack surface craft and undersea weapons known as “human torpedoes” was formed known as the Decima Flottiglia MAS (for Mezzi d’Assalto) or X-MAS (in English, ‘Tenth Assault Vehicle Flotilla’). One man very much associated with this new unit was Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, captain of the submarine Sciré. The “human torpedoes”, as they are often called, were actually nothing of the sort as no torpedoes were involved and, while highly dangerous, were not suicide weapons. The Italians referred to them as ‘maiale’ or ‘pigs’ because these were basically miniature submarines that Italian sailors would ride ‘piggy-back’ into an enemy harbor after being brought into the vicinity by a submarine making a submerged approach. They would cut through any anti-submarine nets, approach the underside of major ships in the harbor and attach mines to the hull. Once they were safely away the mines would detonate and the ships would be crippled or sunk. The sailors would have no hope of returning to their submarine and so could either try to make it to neutral territory or simply surrender after accomplishing their mission.

In December of 1941 such an attack was launched on the British naval base at Alexandria, Egypt with the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant being crippled, a Norwegian tanker sunk and a destroyer, HMS Jervis, being badly damaged. Men of the X-MAS, brought in by the submarine Sciré, launched a similar attack on Gibraltar in September, sinking three enemy ships. Later, operating out of an old tanker in the Spanish port of Algeciras more attacks on Gibraltar were made in December of 1942, sinking two ships and damaging two more. Two more British freighters and an American Liberty Ship were sunk in 1943 prior to the armistice. These attacks, which were almost impossible to guard against, caused considerable panic in the Allied naval forces operating in the Mediterranean. Even after the war, exploits of the Italian undersea warriors were featured in British films such as “The Silent Enemy” of 1958 and the 1962 Anglo-Italian film “The Valiant”. The X-MAS also continued its service with the Italian Social Republic after Mussolini was restored to power by the Germans and would go on to have a reputation as fiercely loyal Fascists. Their commander, Prince Borghese, would ultimately become a pariah among his fellow members of the Roman nobility for attempting a neo-Fascist coup against the post-war Italian Republic.

Capt. Carlo Fecia di Cossato

Ultimately, the armistice, division of Italy and finally the end of the war all caused confusion among the Italian submariners. Most remained loyal to the King and followed orders, turning their boats over to their former enemies, some were seized and forced into the German and later Japanese navies and some, like Prince Borghese, cast their lots with Mussolini and the Germans, to carry on to the bitter end. A most tragic case was that of Captain Carlo Fecia di Cossato, the man who sank more ships than any other Italian submarine commander at the helm of the Tazzoli. Loyal to his King above all, when the armistice came, he followed orders and even sunk seven more ships, German this time, in his new command. However, the abrupt change troubled him, becoming worse as it became clear that the Allies still considered Italy a defeated enemy and would strip Italy of her empire, even territory gained well before the Fascist Era. He was torn apart by conflicting feelings of loyalty and dishonor until he committed suicide in Naples in 1944.

When the war was finally over, with all of the confusion, bitterness and divisions which that caused, the feats of the Italian submarine campaign stand out as further proof of how wrong the popular misconception is of the Royal Italian military in World War II. Italian submarines sank about a million tons of Allied shipping from mid-1940 to 1943. This was almost as much, indeed somewhat more according to some statistics as the ultimately far larger submarine force the Imperial Japanese Navy sunk from the end of 1941 to 1945, the disparity in numbers all the more significant given that over-worked Italian industrial capacity meant that Italy could only commission 30 new boats during the war years whereas Japan commissioned 126 additional subs (not counting midget boats) during the conflict. Italy was also not very far behind the tonnage sunk by the British Royal Navy during the entire course of the war from 1939 to 1945. They played a significant part, did considerable damage to the Allied fleets and did so with skill, heroism and gallantry in the face of immense odds.