Battle of Solferino

Background

In July 1858 Napoleon III and Cavour, Piedmont-Sardinia's prime minister, met secretly at Plombières. France would back Piedmont in a war against Austria in return for Savoy and Nice, and the alliance was signed in January 1859. Austria answered Piedmontese mobilisation with an ultimatum on 23 April demanding that Piedmont disarm; when it refused, Austria opened the war on 26 April and France declared war on 3 May.

The French came over the Alps by rail and by sea through Genoa, in what has been called the first massive military use of railways, and the Austrian commander Gyulai failed to use his early lead in numbers. After defeats at Montebello on 20 May and Magenta on 4 June, the Austrians fell back across Lombardy towards the fortress zone of the Quadrilateral. Gyulai resigned on 16 June and on 18 June Franz Joseph took personal command, splitting the army into a 1st Army under Wimpffen and a 2nd under Schlick.

The Austrians withdrew behind the Mincio on 20–21 June while the allies came up to the Chiese. Franz Joseph then turned back west to catch the allies crossing the Chiese, believing them still around Montechiaro; by the evening of 23 June his corps were at Pozzolengo, Solferino and Cavriana. Napoleon, for his part, ordered a general advance for the 24th. Each side misjudged where the other was, and the armies met roughly halfway between the two rivers, among the hills south of Lake Garda and on the flat Campo di Medole below them.

The armies

Napoleon III commanded the allied armies in person, with Marshal Vaillant as chief of staff. His Army of Italy had four corps: Baraguey d'Hilliers' I, MacMahon's II, Canrobert's III and Niel's IV, with the Imperial Guard under Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély in reserve. Victor Emmanuel II led four Piedmontese divisions, under Mollard, Cucchiari, Durando and Fanti, on the allied left. The French numbered roughly 90,000–97,000, the Piedmontese 37,000–40,000.

Franz Joseph had about 130,000 men in eight corps: Wimpffen's 1st Army (II, III, IX and XI Corps) in the south and Schlick's 2nd Army (I, V, VII and VIII Corps) in the hills. Command was the weak point. The chief of staff Hess and the adjutant-general Grünne were rivals, and the emperor's orders on the day were often unrealistic and seldom carried out. Benedek of VIII Corps was rated one of the best Austrian corps commanders.

Both infantries carried rifled muskets, the French the Minié and the Austrians the Lorenz. The French had something new: rifled field guns. Their 4-pounder is credited with an accurate range of more than 3,000 yards, nearly twice that of the Austrian smoothbores, and Solferino is often described as the first battle in which rifled artillery was used in the field. The day was intensely hot; many French troops marched on nothing but coffee, and many Austrians had eaten nothing.

The battle

Contact, 3–7 a.m. The French columns left their camps around 3 a.m. Niel's IV Corps struck first, near Medole at about 3.50 a.m., and drove the Austrian infantry and cavalry out of the village; by 7 a.m. they had fallen back to Rebecco. Around 5–6 a.m. Baraguey d'Hilliers' I Corps ran into Stadion's V Corps in front of Solferino, and MacMahon's II Corps met Austrian troops on the plain around Ca' Morino, between Medole and San Cassiano. Each side had misjudged where the other was; the line of contact soon stretched some ten miles.

Solferino, morning to mid-afternoon. Stadion held the hills until about 10 a.m., then fell back into the village and its strongpoints: the walled hilltop with the Spia d'Italia tower, the cemetery and the buildings on the Monte di Cipressi. Baraguey threw in attacks before his artillery was up, and they were repulsed before 11 a.m. Clam-Gallas's I Corps came up to reinforce Stadion. At 11.15 Franz Joseph ordered the 1st Army to wheel right towards Solferino, and at 12.30 Napoleon committed the Imperial Guard. A properly prepared attack with artillery support took the cemetery and the heights in the early afternoon; Solferino fell between about 1 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. (accounts differ). By 3.30 the Austrians had abandoned the hill positions, leaving 1,500 prisoners, 14 guns and two colours.

Cavriana. MacMahon took San Cassiano around 2 p.m. and, with the Guard, pushed on to the next ridge. Franz Joseph left Cavriana at about 4 p.m.; the village fell between about 4.30 and 6 p.m., and from Volta the emperor ordered the retreat behind the Mincio. The Austrian centre was broken.

The Campo di Medole. In the south Niel held a thin line about 5 km long against III, IX and XI Corps, outnumbered roughly two to one. The Austrian attacks came in without co-ordination, and Niel massed his rifled guns in a grand battery on his left to cover the gap to MacMahon. Reinforcements from Canrobert's III Corps arrived in the afternoon, Renault's division reached Rebecco around 3 p.m. Niel then attacked towards Guidizzolo, upsetting a counter-attack Wimpffen was preparing, until the evening storm ended the fighting there.

San Martino and Madonna della Scoperta. On the allied left the Piedmontese came on piecemeal. Durando's division reached Madonna della Scoperta at about 5.30 a.m.; the Savoia Brigade's attacks failed and the Granatieri finally took the village as Stadion withdrew. Further north Mollard's advance guard under Raffaele Cadorna hit Lippert's brigade, and Benedek took a strong position on the heights around San Martino church. At about 9 a.m. the Cuneo Brigade took the lower slopes before Berger's brigade threw it off. At about 10 a.m. Cucchiari's two brigades attacked and were broken by case shot from about thirty massed Austrian guns, falling back towards Rivoltella. The Pinerolo and Aosta brigades renewed the assault at about 4 p.m. The heights changed hands several times. Benedek, who held on despite the order to retreat, withdrew around sunset; one account has a last Piedmontese assault taking the heights at about 8 p.m.

The storm. At about 5.15 p.m. a violent storm of wind, rain and hail broke over the field. It covered the Austrian retreat, and the exhausted allies could not pursue. The Austrians recrossed the Mincio.

Aftermath

The allies lost about 17,000 men and the Austrians about 22,000. Dunant put the killed and wounded at about 40,000, with as many again falling sick in the weeks after. One modern account suggests, from the reburials of 1870, that the true death toll was about double the official one.

The slaughter weighed on Napoleon III, who was also afraid that the German states would intervene. A ceasefire was agreed on 8 July, and the two emperors met at Villafranca on 11 July. Austria gave up Lombardy, which passed through France to Piedmont, but kept Venetia and the fortresses of Mantua and Peschiera. Cavour resigned. Within two years, though, central Italy had joined Piedmont, Savoy and Nice had gone to France, and the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861. Solferino was the last major battle in which all the armies were commanded by their monarchs in person.

Its best-known legacy is humanitarian. Henry Dunant, a Swiss businessman, reached the area as the wounded poured into Castiglione delle Stiviere. In the Chiesa Maggiore he organised volunteers to tend some 500 men on straw, and he recorded the local women saying of the soldiers of every nation, “Tutti fratelli” (all are brothers). His A Memory of Solferino, printed at his own expense in 1862, led to the Committee of Five in 1863, the Red Cross, and the first Geneva Convention of 1864. Since 1992 a torchlight procession has walked the route from Solferino to Castiglione.

Wargaming it

Solferino is a big meeting engagement: something like 300,000 men on a front of about ten miles, each side having misjudged where the other was. At corps and division level it fits on one large table at a grand-tactical scale, with brigades or divisions as units. It also splits naturally into three games, each playable at brigade or regimental scale: the Solferino ridge, the open Campo di Medole, and San Martino.

The key terrain is in the hills: the walled hilltop, cemetery and Monte di Cipressi at Solferino, the San Cassiano and Cavriana ridges behind them, and the San Martino heights. The Campo di Medole is flat and open, the ground where rifled guns could reach out at long range.

The French rifled guns against Austrian smoothbores are the period's new factor. Give the French a real range edge, but remember that Baraguey's early attacks failed because they went in before the guns were up. Austrian command should feel clumsy: two army headquarters, quarrelling staff and an emperor whose orders arrived late or not at all.

The decisions are good ones. When does Napoleon commit the Guard? Can Wimpffen's three corps co-ordinate in time to crush Niel, who is outnumbered two to one, before Canrobert arrives? Can the Piedmontese, attacking piecemeal, ever take Benedek's heights? The storm at about 5.15 p.m., the heat and the long day of more than fifteen hours make natural limits for the game.

Maps and pictures