Battle of Magenta

Background

In late April 1859 Austria went to war with Piedmont-Sardinia and its ally France, and the French Army of Italy hurried into Piedmont to join the Piedmontese. The Austrian 2nd Army under Feldzeugmeister Count Gyulai was at first the stronger, but it moved slowly, and by mid-May the two sides were roughly equal.

After the fight at Montebello on 20 May, Gyulai expected Napoleon III to come round his left, south of the Po, and shifted his weight that way. Instead Napoleon used the Piedmontese railways to swing his army north and east, round the Austrian right, towards Milan. By 30 May most of the allies were at Casale and Vercelli; the Piedmontese won at Palestro on 30–31 May, and on 1 June the French were at Novara.

Gyulai gave up the Lomellina and fell back behind the Ticino. On 3 June, with Feldmarschall Hess at his elbow as Franz Joseph's envoy, he settled on defending the east bank. The ground he chose lay between the river and the Naviglio Grande, a canal with steep banks running a few kilometres east of it, crossed by bridges at Buffalora, Ponte Nuovo (the main Novara–Milan road and the railway) and Ponte Vecchio, with the little town of Magenta behind them.

The French were already over the river. On 2–3 June they bridged the Ticino at Turbigo, upstream, and on the 3rd MacMahon's II Corps beat off the Austrian troops sent against it. Napoleon planned a simple operation for the 4th: the Guard would seize the canal bridges from the west while MacMahon came down from Turbigo on the north. Neither side quite expected a general battle.

The armies

Napoleon III commanded in person. On the 4th his army was strung out along bad roads choked with wagons, and only part of it reached the field. The Imperial Guard under Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély supplied Mellinet's grenadier division, with Cler's brigade of Zouaves of the Guard, and Camou's voltigeur division, which marched with MacMahon. MacMahon's II Corps had La Motterouge's and Espinasse's divisions, with the Turcos, the Algerian tirailleurs, at the head. Canrobert's III Corps and Niel's IV Corps followed from Novara; Canrobert could bring only two brigades into action late in the day, and only Vinoy's division of the IV Corps arrived. Fanti's Piedmontese 2nd Division came up behind MacMahon too late to count.

Gyulai's army was spread out too. In and around Magenta stood Clam-Gallas's I Corps, footsore and hungry after arriving from Austria, Liechtenstein's II Corps, Reischach's and Lilia's divisions of Zobel's VII Corps and Mensdorff's cavalry division. Schwarzenberg's III Corps lay south around Robecco and Abbiategrasso; Stadion's V Corps was further off still. One Italian account counts about 117,000 Austrians on the left bank of the Ticino that morning; Wylly reckoned Gyulai might have had 107,000 infantry and 400 guns at Magenta at some point in the day. In the event the two sides fought with roughly 50,000–60,000 each.

The ground suited a soldier's battle: orchards, streams and irrigation ditches, with farmhouses the Austrians loopholed for defence, and the railway embankment north of the town.

The battle

The canal bridges, late morning to 2 p.m. MacMahon left his bivouacs about 9 a.m. On the Austrian side Clam-Gallas, reading the threat as coming from San Martino on the main road, sent Baltin's brigade to Buffalora only at 9.15, and its bridge was blown, apparently without orders. Mellinet's grenadiers crossed the Ticino and pushed small parties towards the canal, but Napoleon told him not to commit himself until MacMahon's attack had developed. About midday La Motterouge's Turcos ran into the Austrians at Casate, took it and Bernate with a rush and chased the enemy back on Buffalora. Hearing the musketry from the north, Napoleon at about 1.30 p.m. launched Mellinet. The 3rd Grenadiers stormed the small work covering the railway bridge; Cler's Zouaves then carried the road bridge and the houses of Ponte Nuovo intact, and General Burdina fell mortally wounded. At Buffalora the 2nd Grenadiers found the bridge down and were held.

The Guard alone, 2–4.30 p.m. Gyulai and Hess reached Magenta about 2 p.m. and sent Reischach's division to retake Ponte Nuovo. Gablenz's battalions threw the Zouaves back, took a gun and killed Cler, and the Guard was forced back to the houses by the bridge. MacMahon, meanwhile, had lost touch with Espinasse, who was marching slowly by Inveruno and Mesero, and had halted his attack and pulled back his guns. For a couple of hours the Guard held a small bridgehead against superior numbers while Napoleon pressed Canrobert and Niel to hurry. About 3.30 Picard's brigade of Renault's division (III Corps) arrived as one of Kintzl's regiments came up the west bank from Ponte Vecchio, and drove it back; about 4.45 Niel came up with Vinoy's division.

MacMahon arrives, 4–6.30 p.m. Towards 4 p.m. La Motterouge moved straight on Buffalora; Baltin, caught between the Guard and the II Corps, abandoned it, and the two French wings joined. Clam-Gallas threw Baltin's and Reznicek's men at Espinasse near Marcallo and was beaten off. Gyulai rode to Robecco and sent Schwarzenberg's III Corps north up both banks of the canal against Ponte Vecchio, where the fighting swung back and forth with Vinoy. MacMahon wheeled his right and took the farm of Cascina Nuova, with about 1,500 prisoners.

Magenta, 6.30–9 p.m. At 6.30 MacMahon sent La Motterouge in from Buffalora and Espinasse from Marcallo, with Camou in support, while Vinoy's men under Martimprey fought for the church and cemetery. French guns lined the canal and the railway embankment. Towards 7.30 Espinasse's columns broke in from the north and east and La Motterouge from the west; the street fighting went from house to house, and Espinasse was killed. Gyulai ordered a retreat about 6.30–7 p.m., and the Austrians fell back on Corbetta, covered by Lilia, Mensdorff and Lippert's brigade of VIII Corps. Ponte Vecchio changed hands about six times before Schwarzenberg too withdrew on Robecco, his rear covered by the charges of the 10th Hussars, who nearly captured Canrobert.

Aftermath

The French lost about 4,500 men and the Austrians about 10,200, almost half of them prisoners and missing. Two French generals, Espinasse and Cler, were killed. It was not a crushing defeat: the Austrian V and VIII Corps were barely touched, and the French official history says Gyulai first meant to renew the fight on the 5th. But Clam-Gallas withdrew his corps in the night, and the army fell back towards the Lambro. Austrian accounts stress that a good part of the French army was too disorganised to fight again at once.

Milan was lost. Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II rode into the city on 8 June, and Gyulai withdrew east to the Chiese. His command did not survive Magenta: he resigned on 16 June, and Franz Joseph took command himself, which led to Solferino three weeks later. Napoleon made MacMahon a marshal and Duke of Magenta, and Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély a marshal; MacMahon later became president of the Third Republic.

The name spread. The Boulevard de Magenta in Paris commemorates the battle, and so does the colour: the British chemists Nicholson and Maule renamed their new aniline dye, roseine, 'magenta' in 1860. The tale that the shade recalls the blood of the Zouaves is tradition. At Magenta an ossuary for the dead, begun in 1861 and finished in 1872, stands by the station, with a monument to MacMahon from 1895; the Casa Giacobbe still shows the marks of the shot.

Wargaming it

Magenta is a near-ideal one-day game: two armies of 50,000–60,000 apiece, on a compact field a few kilometres across, with most of each army arriving during the day. It works at brigade scale on one table, or at regimental and battalion scale for the bridges or the town on their own.

The terrain is the game. The Naviglio Grande is a linear obstacle with steep banks and few crossings, and which bridges are blown, and when, matters enormously. East of it lie orchards, ditches, loopholed farms like Cascina Nuova, the railway embankment and the town itself, where the last fight goes house to house.

The timing is what makes it tense. The French player has the Guard on the canal from early afternoon and must hold a thin bridgehead until Canrobert, Niel and MacMahon appear, on clogged roads, at times the dice should help decide. The Austrian player has local superiority for hours, and more troops within marching distance than he ever uses: can he crush the Guard before help arrives, or block MacMahon? Clumsy Austrian command, Gyulai and Hess arriving only about 2 p.m. and Clam-Gallas reading the threat wrongly, should feel like a handicap.

What ifs: Gyulai concentrates V and VIII Corps; the canal bridges are all blown in the morning; Urban's division strikes the Turbigo column; Espinasse marches faster.

Maps and pictures