Austrian Victory at Custozza

Johann Strauss the Elder’s ‘Radetzky March’ is the last distant echo of the fame of a man who, when it was written in his honour, was an Austrian national hero. His victory at Custozza and his subsequent Italian operations seemed at the time to have turned back the tide of nationalism and revolution to secure the Austrian Empire’s hold on the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, which stretched across northern Italy from Milan to Venice. The year 1848 saw revolutions against established regimes all over Europe and March brought uprisings against Austrian rule in both cities. Italian patriots in Milan had ostentatiously stopped smoking in January as a blow against the Habsburg regime’s state monopoly of tobacco, and there had been scuffles with the Austrian occupying forces, puffing happily away at their cigars as usual. Now there came a full-scale revolt.

The Austrian commander-in-chief in Italy was the veteran Field Marshal Josef Radetzky, eighty-two years old and a master of tactics, who had learned his trade in campaigns against the great Napoleon Bonaparte himself. He had the confidence and liking of his men – a mixture of Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slavs and Italians – and he was determined to keep Italy for the empire. On March 22nd, after five days of street fighting in Milan, he withdrew his troops to concentrate them in the Quadrilateral, the area between Mantua, Verona, Peschiera and Legnano.

The King of Sardinia, Carlo Alberto, ruler of the Savoy and Piedmont, saw his opportunity and promptly declared war on Austria. His aim was not to support the forces of democracy and republicanism, but quite the contrary, to make sure that they did not control the nationalist movement for a united Italy. From London Lord Palmerston lectured Vienna on the need to abandon its Italian provinces, while the Austrian poet Franz Grillparzer told Radetzky in an ode: ‘In your camp stands Austria.’ Carlo Alberto took Parma and Modena, and advanced on Mantua, but he and his generals were no match for the wily Radetzky, who had the advantage of interior lines. In July he succeeded in concentrating half his troops against a quarter of Carlo Alberto’s army at Custozza, south-west of Verona, and drove the Piedmontese in defeat. The field marshal wrote to Count de Latour, the war minister in Vienna: ‘A decisive victory has been the result of this hot day.’

Another action at Volta two days later sent the Piedmontese scurrying back home and Radetzky reoccupied Milan without striking a blow, ‘amidst general rejoicing’ as he reported, and set siege to Venice, which proclaimed itself a republic. In March of 1849 Radetzky again outmanoeuvred Carlo Alberto at the battle of Novara and the humiliated king abdicated in favour of his son, Vittorio Emmanuele II, who made peace in August and had to pay a substantial idemnity. Venice capitulated and Radetzky remained ruler of Lombardy-Venetia as governor until 1857. He died in Milan the following year, aged ninety-one. He was not to know that the movement for a united Italy would prove irresistible and that Vittorio Emmanuele would be its first king, in 1861.