FIRST ENGAGEMENTS

Owing to the nature of the scene of hostilities the first days of the Austro-Italian campaign brought a series of engagements between small groups of combatants. Artillery played a large part, and here the Austrians, with their big guns already in carefully studied positions, had a decided advantage. Viewed as a whole only does the campaign at this stage take on an importance and dignity that ranks with the great battles on other fronts of the Great War. Never before had two great powers fought in territory so absolutely ill adapted to the movement of large bodies of troops. For the same reason the story attains a picturesqueness absent from the dreary plains of Galicia and Poland and Flanders. Austrians, Hungarians and Italians fought in a land known throughout the world to tourists for its grandeur of scenery, its towering, snow-clad peaks, and idyllic lakes and valleys. It was warfare where the best soldier was the man most able to surmount the natural difficulties and take advantage of the natural protection of the ground. The official statements of the Italian and Austrian war offices told of feats of mountaineering, and of hand-to-hand struggles, of dripping bayonets and of combatants locked in last embrace with hands clutching each other's throats.

On both sides of the boundary were thousands of men who had spent their lives exploring the trackless mountainsides, climbing with ropes and ice axes and staves. Both nations had encouraged the formation of Alpine clubs.

Soon after midnight on May 23, 1915, the Alpini and Bersaglieri of the Italian army, supported by a few battalions of first line troops and gendarmes, crossed the mountain frontier. Soon the peaks resounded with the popping of rifle fire and the louder detonations of the Austrian mountain guns. Along the whole Trentino front that night a hundred skirmishes drove back the Austrian outpost. Only a few thousand men in all were engaged. The Italian cyclist sharpshooters advanced swiftly up the steep mountain roads until greeted by musketry fire. Then they sought shelter, pushing forward from rock to rock and from tree to tree. Often the light infantry and Alpini foot soldiers were able to skirt the enemy's posts and catch them in the rear.

By May 26, 1915, all Italy was thrilled by the news that all the lower passes of the Dolomites were won and breaches made at Tonale Pass along the northwest and in the Carnic and Julian Alps along the northeast front. Among the points occupied were the Montozzo Pass, 9,585 feet high, Ponte Caffaro, running into southwestern Trentino, the ridge of Monte Baldo, extending northward fifteen miles toward Arco and Roverto in southern Trentino, some of the heights looking westward toward Trento, all the valleys in the labyrinth of the Dolomites, and several footholds in the Alps of Carinthia. The eastern army was well inside Austrian territory, its left at Caporetto on the Isonzo just under Monte Nero, its center looking down on Gorizia from the heights between Indria and the Isonzo, and its right between Cormons and Terzo. Losses on both sides were surprisingly small considering the extent of territory covered by the fighting. The Austrians, after slight resistance, withdrew into their fortresses and waited behind their guns, grimly conscious that the real struggle was still before them. Then, through the holes pierced by the mountain troops, the Italian engineers began to move forward their artillery and building emplacements and constructing trenches. Skirmishing on the mountain frontier continued until the end of May, 1915. By that time Italian forces attacking Trentino had crossed the Lessini Mountains north of Verona, captured the Austrian town of Ala on the Adige, and penetrated nearly ten miles into Austrian territory. They held high ground on the south commanding the forts of Roverto, and had begun to bring up their heavy guns against this important stronghold. Roverto is one of a number of strongly fortified places girdling Trent and commanding the converging routes to this center of the Austrian defensive. Other lesser fortresses in this girdle are Laredo on the Chiese, Levico on the Brenta, and Riva at the head of Lake Garda. Upon these the Italians closed in, and there they consolidated their positions awaiting the support of the first-line troops advancing in heavy detachments, and of their artillery.

While Italy struck the first blow on land, the first offensive operation of the Italo-Austrian conflict by sea came from Austria. This was an extensive raid on Italy's Adriatic coast. Its object was to delay the Italian concentration by attacking vital points on the littoral railway from Brindisi to the north.

The Austrian fleet began its attack early on the morning of Monday, May 24, 1915. The ships engaged were a squadron from Pola, consisting of two battleships, four cruisers, and eighteen destroyers, strongly supported by aircraft. The assault extended from Brindisi to Venice, and covered a large extent of coast territory hard to defend. At Venice the Austrian air raiders dropped bombs into the arsenal and the oil tanks and balloon sheds on the Lido. The priceless relics of art and architecture, all that remained to recall the city's proud position as ruler of the Adriatic, were uninjured, but the attack from the air caused an outcry from the nations of the Entente almost equal to that which rang through the world when the Germans shelled the cathedral at Rheims and destroyed Louvain. The Austrians replied that the attack was a serious military operation, and by no means the wanton outrage their enemies had tried to make it appear.

The Austrian naval raid lasted barely two hours, but in that time the cruiser Novara and several destroyers attacked Porto Corsini, north of Ravenna, in a vain effort to destroy the Italian torpedo base; the cruiser St. Georg shelled the railway station and bridges at Rimini; the battleship Zrinyi attacked Sinigaglia, and wrecked the railway station and bridge; south of Ancona the battleship Radetzky destroyed a bridge over the River Potenza. In the south the cruisers Helgoland and Admiral Spaun with destroyers shelled a railway bridge and station and several signal stations in the neighborhood of Manfredonia and Viesti, and caused some damage in small coast towns. The raid was well planned and swiftly executed, and it accomplished much of its purpose. The Italian fleet was taken by surprise, and the marauders were back in safety at Pola by six o'clock in the morning, unharmed.

While Italian Alpine troops were driving in the Austrian outposts on the frontiers of Trentino and the Tyrol, General Cadorna advanced his main infantry force, the Third Army, across the Friuli Plain through Udine, Palmanova, and St. Georgio toward the Isonzo. Here the covering troops on May 24 and 25 had captured nearly all the small towns and villages between the frontier and the river from Caporetto in the north just below Monte Nero to Belvedere in the south on the Gulf of Trieste. Cadorna feared lest his opponent, General von Hofer, would launch his main attack from Gorizia against the Italian city of Palmanova, fourteen miles to the west. But Von Hofer, so it developed, had a subtler plan of campaign than a direct attack through Gorizia. What he did was to place a strong force on the mountain of Korada between the Isonzo and the Judrio. This height commanded the middle course of the Isonzo, and it had been transformed into a network of permanent trenches, protected by strong wire entanglements.

The Austrian general believed that by the time the Italians could bring up their heavy artillery and begin to smash the entanglements with their field guns, supports could be pushed across the river. Realizing that Korada must be captured, if at all, by dash and surprise, the Italian brigadier in charge of the attack gathered a herd of fierce bulls, which are numerous in that part of Venetia, and penned them in a hollow out of sight of the enemy, while his artillery began to bombard the hostile trenches. When the animals were wrought to a frenzy of rage and fear by the noise of the guns, they were let loose and driven up the mountain against the Austrian positions. Their charge broke through many strands of the wire entanglements, and before the last of them fell dead under the Austrian rifle fire, Italian troops with fixed bayonets had crowded through the gaps in the wires and captured the position.

By the end of May, 1915, the Third Army had reached the Isonzo River, but had not crossed. Its advance was slow and cautious. Operations were hampered by the heavy rains, which caused the river to overflow its banks and added greatly to the difficulties put in the path of the advancing army by the Austrians, who, as they withdrew, left not a bridge behind them.

Grado, a fishing town of about 5,000 inhabitants, but important on account of its strategic situation, was occupied by the Italians with no great difficulty. Grado lies at the head of the Adriatic, and is twelve miles from Trieste and sixty from Pola. The waters of the lagoons in this neighborhood were valuable to the Italians as a safe shelter for submarines and other small war-craft, and as a base for a prospective attack later upon Pola itself. The inhabitants, most of whom preserved their Italian traits and sympathies, although the town had been under Austrian rule since 1809, hailed the conquerors enthusiastically. Cannon and military carriages were decorated with flowers. Thousands of Italian flags appeared as if by magic. The entering troops were greeted with shouts of "All our lives we have been waiting for this moment when we can cry 'Viva Italia!'" The possession of Grado gave the Third Army virtual control of the mouth of the Isonzo, but the main Austrian position of defense at Gorizia remained apparently unweakened.

Scenes like those at Grado were witnessed at Ala, the first Austrian town of any size and the first railroad center captured by the Italians in the Trentino. Ala was occupied May 27, 1915. Three days before this the Italian light infantry had massed behind the boundary line, and when they began their advance along the main highway their first act was to pull down the yellow and black pole that marked the frontier.

The next day, May 28, 1915, the commanding general with his chief of staff and two guards motored to the spot, cut a passage-way through the barricade, and, encountering no opposition, kept on until they reached Ala, seven miles beyond.

The Italian troops were ordered to advance next day, May 29, 1915, and as they marched into the town, officers shouted: "Open your windows. Long live Italy!" The Mayor of Ala called out his townsmen and set them at work removing the barricades on the main road.

In the midst of these rejoicings the sharp rattle of musketry was heard, and the Italians rushed to cover. A reconnoitering party reported that the Austrians were intrenched in a large villa beyond a stream outside the town. The Italian troops began an attack upon this position, and a skirmish party sought to take a position in a house on a near-by hill commanding the villa held by the enemy. Although the way to this house was exposed to the Austrian fire, the Italian officer decided to risk an attempt to reach it. But as he raised his sword to signal an advance, a young girl ran to his side and told him of a path sheltered from the Austrian fire. This girl, Signorina Abriani, whose name will go down in Italian history as one of the first heroines of the war, guided the detachment safely. The Austrians holding the villa were strongly intrenched, and they held out against superior forces until late in the afternoon, when four shells crashed into the building, bringing it down about their ears. The Italians had brought up a battery on the opposite side of the Adige River and opened fire at long range. The Austrians made good their retreat, leaving all their ammunition and three dead. Later fifty-seven Austrians were taken prisoners.

That night the Italian general took the precautions, usual on entering a newly occupied town, of ordering that all the windows in town be kept open and illuminated, and kept patrols about the town. The mayor was reconfirmed, and his first act was to announce to the citizens that "the royal military authorities, knowing the needs of the inhabitants, have with affectionate solicitude and great generosity placed 5,000 rations of bread and 2,000 of rice at the disposal of the poor." Thus Ala became Italian.

The incidents of these first advances into Austrian territory were reported in detail in Italy, and are set down here as typical of events that accompanied the irruption of Italian troops over the border into the country which once had been Italian and where, despite more than a century of Austrian occupation, a large proportion of the inhabitants in spirit was Italian still. Such reports spread through Italy naturally increased enthusiasm for the restoration of the "unredeemed" provinces.

Although, as a rule, the Austrians retired before the first Italian advance into Trentino, they did not depart until they had left every possible obstacle. Roads were barricaded, bridges destroyed, and mines were laid, cleverly concealed on hillsides where it was intended their explosion would overwhelm the Italians under masses of rock and earth. But this was just what the Alpini and Bersaglieri had been trained to anticipate. According to the official Italian accounts, their scouting was so excellent that the wires connecting these mines with Austrian hiding places were discovered and cut, and hardly a mine was exploded. All this took place while the Austrians were drawing in their outposts and consolidating their forces in the great strongholds where later they held the Italians in absolute check. The Italians advanced cautiously in small groups, and the Austrians abandoned the frontier villages soon enough to avoid serious encounters, but not a minute sooner.

In the Alps in these days of May, 1915, the Great War was fought much as wars have been fought in times we are accustomed to regard as the age of true romance. The Italian King visited the Alpine troops and surprised his men and redoubled their devotion by showing his skill as a mountain climber. "You forget," he told an officer who remonstrated with him as he was about to scale a particularly difficult position to examine a gun "chamois hunting is my favorite sport." If certain portions of the Italian population seemed lukewarm toward the war during the period of diplomatic negotiations, there was no doubt of the temper of the nation after hostilities actually began. The chord of national feeling was struck by King Victor Emmanuel in an order issued upon taking supreme command of the army and navy.

"Soldiers on land and sea," said the order, "the solemn hour of the nation's claims has struck. Following the example of my grandfather, I take to-day supreme command of Italy's forces on land and sea, with the assurance of victory which your bravery, self-abnegation, and discipline will obtain.

"The enemy you are preparing to fight is hardened to war and worthy of you. Favored by the nature of the ground and skillful works, he will resist tenaciously, but your unsubdued ardor will surely vanquish him.

"Soldiers, to you has come the glory of unfurling Italy's colors on the sacred lands which nature has given as the frontiers of our country. To you has come the glory of finally accomplishing the work undertaken with so much heroism by our fathers."

The stormy scenes which followed the resignation of the Salandra cabinet gave way to a confident calm. From his seclusion in the Vatican the pope addressed a letter to Cardinal Vannutelli, breathing a spirit of resignation and faith, but carefully refraining from any expression of partisanship in the great struggle.

"The hour which we are traversing is painful," he said, "but our prayers will go out more frequently and more fervently than ever to those who have in their hands the fate of nations." The pope recalled that in his first Encyclical issued at the beginning of the war he exhorted the belligerent nations to make peace, but his voice was unheeded and the war continued "until the terrible conflagration has extended to our beloved Italy. While our hearts bleed at the sight of so much misery," he wrote, "we have not neglected to continue our work for relief and the diminution of the deplorable consequences of war. I wish that the echo of our voice might reach to all our children affected by the great scourge of war, and persuade all of them of our participation in their troubles and sorrows. There is little of the grief of the child that is not reflected in the soul of the father."

The greatest enthusiasm, naturally, was manifested in the cities of the north nearest the scene of war. The Master Workers' Guild of Milan voted unanimously to give up one day's pay each month to be devoted to the relief of the families of men at the front. Many business houses carried soldiers' names on their payrolls and remitted their wages to their families.

In all cities within range of the enemy's aircraft precautions were taken to guard public buildings, and especially the famous objects which for centuries had made Italy the Mecca of lovers of art. In Venice the bronze horses of St. Mark's were taken down from their pedestals and hidden in the subterranean caverns of the cathedral. The gilded statue of the Virgin surmounting the celebrated white marble cathedral at Milan was covered with cloth, so that it might not serve as a guide to Austrian raiders. The stained glass windows of the edifice were removed as a precaution against possible bombardment. After the first Austrian sea and air raid along the Adriatic coast orders were issued that lights should be darkened in all Adriatic ports. This order was extended also to certain inland cities, such as Milan, Bologna, Verona, Brescia, and Udine. A special watch for aeroplanes was kept at Bologna on account of the location there of an important factory for the manufacture of explosives. Watches were set on the crests of the Appenines ready to notify Rome of approaching danger from the air.

The attitude of Germany toward Italy at this period of the war is best indicated by the speech delivered at the session of the Reichstag by Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Imperial Chancellor. He imputed the Italian declaration of war to a combination of mob dictation, bad faith on the part of the cabinet of Premier Salandra, and, to a certain degree, to the money of the powers of the Entente. The greater part of the Italian people, the chancellor asserted, and a majority in the Italian Parliament had not wanted war, and were even kept in ignorance of the extent of the concessions which Austria-Hungary was willing to make for the sake of peace. The Salandra cabinet, he declared, long before the Triple Alliance had ceased to exist, aligned itself with the Triple Entente and "unchained the mob spirit and intimidated the advocates of peace."

On the eve of leaving Rome, Prince von BÜlow gave out a statement in which he declared that Italy was led into the war by a "noisy minority," and that even if in the end she obtained what she asked she would not get much more than what Austria already had offered. "It should be understood," he explained, "that it was impossible to deprive the central empires of Trieste, their only outlet to the Adriatic in the Mediterranean."

Turkey regarded the entrance of Italy into the war on the side of the Entente with apparent equanimity. "We will not declare war on Italy," announced Talaat Bey, the Turkish Minister of the Interior. "We can wait. What can Italy do to us?"[Back to Contents]