The secret general* has ordered his Guard back to Paris in great 
haste to make his triumphal entry at its head and then have his 
victorious troops parade before him on the Place du Carrousel. In 
the meantime, let us make another review of the main events of 
the war in order to clarify the real merits of the ape Napoleon.*”* 

On April 19 Count Buol committed the childish indiscretion of 
informing the English ambassador” that on April 23 he would give 
the Piedmontese a three-days’ ultimatum, at the expiry of which 
he would begin war and give the order to march in. Buol knew, to 
be sure, that Malmesbury was no Palmerston, but he forgot that 
the time for the general elections was approaching, that the 
narrow-minded Tories, fearful that they might be shouted down 
as “Austrians”, actually became Bonapartists against their will. On 
the 20th the English government hastened to communicate this 
information to Mr. Bonaparte, and the concentration of French troops 
began at once and orders were given to form the fourth battalions 
of reserves. On the 23rd the Austrians did issue the ultima- 
tum ‘—on the eve of the English elections. Derby and Malmesbury 
hastened to label this action a “crime”, against which they 
protested with the greatest energy. Bonaparte had his troops 
cross the Piedmontese border even before the ultimatum 

(supplement), April 26, 1859.— Ed. 

expired; on April 26 the French entered Savoy and Genoa. But 
the Austrians, restrained by the protests and threats of the Tory 
government, conceded two days more and marched into Piedmont 
only on the 29th, instead of on the 27th. 

In this way the secret general was aware of the Austrians’ plan 
a full nine days before they marched in and was able, because of the 
treachery of the English ministry, to arrive on the scene 
three days earlier than the Austrians. But the secret general had 
confederates not only in the English ministry but also in the 
Austrian army command. Everyone expected, and justifiably, that 
Hess would take over the supreme command of the army in Italy. 
Instead, the command was given to Gyulay, who had never 
confronted the enemy in 1848 and 1849—a totally incapable 
mind, with no understanding or will-power, this Gyulay. Hess is of 
middle-class origin and far from friendly to the reactionary 
pro-Jesuit clique of nobles that makes up Francis Joseph’s 
camarilla. The Grunne-Thun-Bach triumvirate incited the feeble 
Francis Joseph, who had worked out with Grunne a strange 
operational plan, which Hess had sharply criticised, against the old 
strategist; and so the blue-blooded dunce Gyulay remained 
commander-in-chief and his plan of operations—invasion of 
Piedmont—was adopted. Hess had recommended remaining 
strictly on the defensive and avoiding any battle until the Mincio 
was reached. The Austrian army, held moreover up by torrential 
rains, first appeared on the Po and Sesia on May 3 or 4 and by 
then it was of course too late to venture a coup against Turin or 
one of the Piedmontese fortresses. The French were massed on 

the Upper Po; this gave the incompetent Gyulay a welcome excuse 
_ for inaction. In order to prove his helplessness beyond doubt, he 
undertook the reconnaissance in force of Montebello. The ensuing 
battle was fought with honour by thirteen Austrian battalions 
against sixteen French battalions until the second and_ third 
divisions of Baraguay d’Hilliers’ corps appeared on the field, at 
which the Austrians, who had achieved their purpose, withdrew. 
But since this reconnaissance was not followed up in any way by 
the Austrians, it is obvious that the whole expedition could just as 
well have been omitted. 

The secret general, meanwhile, had to wait for his supplies and 
his cavalry, and probably spent the time studying his favourite 
Bulow. Being fully informed as to the positions and strength of 
the Austrians, the French could easily draw up a plan of attack. 
There are in general only three ways to attack: either frontally for 
a breakthrough in the centre, or by turning the right or left flank. 

The secret general decided to turn the right flank of the enemy. 
The Austrians were deployed on a long line from Biella to Pavia, 
after they had foraged the entire region between the Sesia and the 
Dora Baltea without hindrance. On May 21 the Piedmontese 
attacked the Sesia line and for several days fought minor 
engagements between Casale and Vercelli, while Garibaldi slipped 
by along Lago Maggiore with his Alpine riflemen, raised an 
insurrection in the Varesotto and advanced to the Comasco and 
Brianza. Gyulay’s troops remained scattered, and he even sent one of 
his six army corps (the Ninth) to the south bank of the Po. On May 29 
the preparations had finally reached the point where the attack 
could begin. The actions at Palestro and Vinzaglio, in which the 
major part of the Piedmontese army was engaged against part of 
the Seventh Army Corps (Zobel), opened the road to the Allies to 
Novara, which Gyulay yielded without resistance. The Piedmon- 
tese, the French Second, Third and Fourth Corps and the Guard 
were dispatched there at once; the First Corps followed. The 
turning of the Austrian right flank was completed; the direct road 
to Milan was open. 

This however put the armies into precisely the situation in 
which Radetzky won the victory of Novara in 1849. The Allies 
rolled on towards the Ticino in long columns on a small number 
of parallel roads. Their advance could only be slow. Gyulay had 
five army corps to work with, even deducting the dispersed Ninth 
Corps. As soon as the attack of the Piedmontese became serious, 
as it did on May 29 and 30, Gyulay had to concentrate his troops. 
Where exactly this took place did not really matter; one cannot 
march past 140,000-150,000 men in a concentrated position; 
moreover, it was essential not to make a passive defence but to 
strike an a tempo* blow at the enemy. If Gyulay had massed 
between Mortara, Garlasco and Vigevano on May 31 and June 1, 
he could for one thing have fallen on the flank of the move to 
turn his own right wing at Novara, cut the enemy’s marching 
columns in two, drive some of them back to the Alps and take 
possession of the road to Turin. If, on the other hand, the enemy 
had crossed the Po below Pavia, Gyulay would still have been able 
to arrive in time to block their road to Milan. 

Actually, concentration was begun. But before it was carried to 
completion, Gyulay was confused by the occupation of Novara. 
The enemy was closer to Milan than he was! In reality, that was 
just what was wanted; the moment for the a tempo blow had come; 

the enemy would have to fight in the most unfavourable 
conditions. But Gyulay, whatever his personal bravery, was a 
moral coward. Instead of going forward quickly, he drew back in 
order to bring his army in an arc around the enemy in forced 
marches and again block their direct road to Milan at Magenta. 
The troops were set in motion on June 2 and the headquarters 
shifted to Rosate in Lombardy. Master of Ordnance Hess came 
there at 5:30 on the morning of June 3. He took Gyulay to task 
for the unpardonable blunder and had all the troops called to a 
halt at once, since he considered it still possible to strike the blow 
in the direction of Novara. Two entire army corps, the Second 
and the Seventh, were already on Lombard soil, having marched 
from Vigevano to Abbiategrasso. The Third Corps had received 
the order to halt right on the bridge at Vigevano; it marched back 
and took up a position on the Piedmontese bank. The Eighth went 
via Bereguardo, the Fifth via Pavia. The Ninth was still far off and 
quite out of reach. 

When Hess had exact information on the distribution of the 
troops, he found that it was too late to be able to count on success 
in the Novara direction; now only the Magenta direction remained. 
At 10 a.m. orders went out to the columns to continue their march 
on Magenta. 

Gyulay blames the loss of the battle of Magenta on_ this 
interference by Hess and the loss of 4'/, hours as a result of 
halting the columns. How groundless this excuse is can be seen 
from the following: The bridge at Vigevano is ten English miles 
from Magenta—a short day’s march. The Second and Seventh 
Corps were already in Lombardy when the order to halt came. They 
could therefore have had at most 7 to 8 miles to march, by and 
large. For all that, only one division of the Seventh Corps got 
to Corbetta and three brigades of the Second Corps to Magenta. 
The second division of the Seventh Corps did not get beyond 
Castelletto near Abbiategrasso on the 3rd; and the Third Corps, 
which received the order to set out from the bridge at Vigevano 
not later than 11 a.m., and so had a good part of the. day still 
before it, does not appear even to have made the 5 or 6 English 
miles to Abbiategrasso, since it came into battle only about 4 p.m. 
on the following day near Robecco (3 miles from Abbiategrasso). 
The columns must have been held up on the roads, slowing down 
the march because of faulty arrangements. If a corps takes 24 
hours and more to cover 8 to 10 miles, 4 or 5 hours more cannot 
be considered as decisive. The Eighth Corps, which had been sent 
via Bereguardo and Binasco, had to go such a roundabout way 

that it could not have arrived on the battle-field in time even using 
the 4!/. lost hours. The Fifth Corps, coming up from Pavia in two real 
forced marches, was able to join battle with one brigade on the 
evening of June 4.°” What it lost in time, it won in intensity of 
movement. Accordingly, the attempt to blame the scattering of the 
army on Hess falls to the ground altogether. 

Strategically, therefore, the initial steps towards the victory of 
Magenta were, in the first place, a positive error made by Louis 
Bonaparte himself by executing a flanking march in the enemy’s 
zone, and secondly an error by Gyulay, who instead of concentrat- 
ing and falling on the long marching columns dispersed his army 
entirely by a countermarch and withdrawal, wretchedly planned at 
that, and brought his troops into battle tired and hungry. This was 
the first phase of the war. On the second phase in our next 
number. 

Il 

We left our real secret Napoleon on the battle-field of Magenta. 
Gyulay had done him the greatest favour a general can do his 
opponent; he had brought his forces up so splintered that he was 
in the most decided minority at every moment of the battle, and 
even by evening did not have the troops on hand. The First and 
Second Corps pulled back towards Milan, the Eighth came from 
Binasco, the Fifth from Abbiategrasso, the Ninth was out on a 
stroll far down on the Po. Here was a situation for a general; here 
was the chance to use the many fresh troops who had arrived 
during the night to penetrate between the isolated Austrian 
columns, to win a genuine victory and force whole units to lay 
down their arms with their flags and artillery! That was how the 
vulgar Napoleon acted at Montenotte and Millesimo, at Abensberg 
and Regensburg. But not the “higher” Napoleon. He is far above 
such crude empiricism. He knows from his Bulow that excentric 
retreat is the most advantageous. And so he appreciated Gyulay’s 
masterly retreat arrangements to the full, and instead of riding 
roughshod over him he telegraphed to Paris: The army is resting 
and reorganising.* He was sure that the world would not be so 
impolite as to regard his amateurish Magenta exercise as anything 
but a “great victory”! | 

Friend Gyulay, who had already made one trial, with such great 
success, of the manoeuvre of marching round the enemy in an 
arc—Friend Gyulay performed this experiment once again, and 
this time on a large scale. He had his army march first southeast 

universel, No. 157, June 6, 1859.— Ed. 

to the Po, then along the Po in three columns on three parallel 
roads until opposite Piadena on the Oglio, then north again to 
Castiglione. He was not in any hurry at all about it. The distance 
he had to march to Castiglione came to something like 120 English 
miles, that is, 10 very comfortable or 8 good days’ march. He 
could have been in position at Castiglione on the 14th, or on the 
15th at the latest; but it was not until the 19th that there was any 
important part of the army on the heights south of Lake Garda. 
However, trust breeds trust. If the Austrians marched slowly, the 
higher Napoleon proved that he was superior to them in this as 
well. The vulgar Napoleon would have held it his most urgent task 
to have his troops advance by forced marches on the shorter, direct 
route to Castiglione, which amounts to hardly 100 English miles, 
in order to reach the position south of Lake Garda and on the 
Mincio before the Austrians and attack the Austrian marching 
columns on the flank again if possible. Not so the improved 
Napoleon. “Ever slowly onward”? is his motto. It took him from 
the 5th to the 22nd to concentrate his troops on the Chiese. 
Seventeen days for 100 miles, or two short hours a day! 

These were the colossal hardships that the French columns had 
to endure and which inspired the English newspaper correspon- 
dents with such admiration for the stamina and imperturbable 
good humour of the pioupious.? Only once was there an attempt at 
a rearguard action. The object was to drive an Austrian division 
(Berger) out of Melegnano. One brigade held the city; the other 
was already behind the Lambro to cover the retreat of the first 
and hardly got into the fighting. Now our secret general showed 
that he knew Napoleonic strategy too when it came down to it: 
Masses at the decisive point! Accordingly he sent two entire army 
corps, ten brigades, against this one brigade; the Austrian brigade 
(Roden), attacked by six brigades, held out for three or four hours 
and withdrew unpursued over the Lambro only after it had lost 
more than a third of its men; the presence of the second brigade 
(Boér) was. enough to hold up the colossal superior numbers of 
the French. We see that the war was waged by the French with the 
utmost courtesy. 

In Castiglione another hero came on the stage: Francis Joseph 
of Austria. Two worthy opponents! The first one has let it be 

known everywhere that he is the most cunning fellow of all times; 
the other takes pleasure in proclaiming himself as chivalrous. The 
first one cannot but be the greatest general of his century, because 
it is his vocation to travesty the original Napoleon—for he has 
taken his original drinking cup and other relics into the field with 
him; the other is bound to secure victory for his banners, being 
the born “supreme war-lord” of his army. The epigone system 
that has been widespread in the intervals between the revolutions 
of the nineteenth century could not have more suitable represent- 
atives on the field of battle. 

Francis Joseph opened his career as generalissimo by first 
having his troops take up a position south of Lake Garda and then 
pulling them back at once behind the Mincio; he had hardly got 
them behind the Mincio before he sent them out on the offensive 
again. Such a manoeuvre could not but surprise even an improved 
Napoleon, as his bulletin is gracious enough to admit openly.* 
Since he happened to be on the march to the Mincio himself with 
his army on the same day, there was a collision between the two 
armies, the battle of Solferino. We shail not go into the details of 
this battle again, since we have presented them in a previous issue 
of this paper’; and especially so because the official Austrian 
communiqué is intentionally couched in very vague terms, in 
order to cover up the strange blunders of the hereditary 
war-lord.© This much emerges from it without any doubt, that the 
loss of the battle was due primarily to Francis Joseph and his 
camarilla. In the first place, Hess was purposefully and intention- 
ally kept in the background. Secondly, Francis Joseph thrust 
himself into Hess’ place. Thirdly, a mass of incompetent people, 
some of them even of dubious courage, were left in important 
commands through the influence of the camarilla. All these 
factors, even if we disregard the original plan, produced such 
confusion on the day of battle that control, interlocking of 
movements, order and sequence of manoeuvre, were quite out of 
the question. In the centre, in particular, hopeless confusion seems 
to have reigned. The three army corps in position there (First, 
Fifth and Seventh) performed such contradictory and discon- 
nected movements and were always so lost to one another at the 

No. 183, July 2, 1859.— Ed. 

early July 1859, Neue Preussische Zeitung, No. 155, July 7, 1859.— Ed. 

moment of decision, while always in each other’s way at other 
times, that the only thing that emerges from the Austrian report, 
but this with certainty, is the following: The battle was lost not so 
much because of numerical weakness as because of disgracefully 
poor leadership. One corps never supported the other at the right 
time; the reserves were everywhere except where they were 
needed; and so Solferino, San Cassiano, Cavriana fell, one after 
the other, whereas if they had been persistently and _ skilfully 
defended all three together, they would have constituted an 
impregnable position. But Solferino, the decisive point, was 
abandoned as early as two o'clock, and with Solferino, the battle; 
Solferino fell to concentric attack, which only offensive blows 
could ward off, but those blows were precisely what was lacking; 
and after Solferino the other villages fell, likewise to concentric 
attacks, which encountered but scanty passive defence. And yet 
there were still fresh troops on hand, for the Austrian casualty lists 
show that of 25 regiments of the line engaged eight (Rossbach, 
Archduke Joseph, Hartmann, Mecklenburg, Hess, Griiber, Wern- 
hardt, Wimpffen), or one-third, lost less than 200 men_ per 
regiment, and so were engaged only insignificantly! Three of them, 
and likewise the Gradiskaner border regiment, did not lose 100 
men per regiment, and of the riflemen most of the battalions 
(five) lost less than 70 men per battalion. Since the right wing 
(Benedek, Eighth Corps) was faced by greatly superior forces and 
had fully to engage all its troops, all these lightly engaged 
regiments and battalions belong to the centre and the left wing, 
and a good part must have been in the centre. This proves how 
wretched the leadership was there. Incidentally, the matter is very 
easily explained: Francis Joseph was there in person with his 
official camarilla, so that everything was bound to be confused and 
disorganised there. The 13 batteries of reserve artillery did not 
fire a single shot! A similar absence of leadership seems to have 
prevailed on the left wing. Here it was particularly the cavalry, 
commanded by old women, which did not come into action. 
Wherever an Austrian cavalry regiment appeared, the French 
cavalry wheeled about, but out of eight regiments only a single 
regiment of hussars made a regular charge and two regiments of 
dragoons and one uhlan regiment made lighter attacks. The 
Prussia hussars lost 110, the two dragoon regiments together 96 
men; the losses of the Sicily uhlans are not known; the remaining 
four regiments lost only 23 men all together! The artillery lost 
only 180 men in all. 

These figures prove, better than anything else, the uncertainty 

and indecision with which the Austrian generals, from the 
emperor down to the corps commanders, led the troops against 
the enemy. If in addition we consider the numerical superiority of 
the French and the moral boost they got from their previous 
successes, we can see that the Austrians could not win. Only one 
corps leader, Benedek, was not cowed; he held the right wing all 
by himself and Francis Joseph did not have the time to interfere. 
The result was that he gave the Piedmontese a proper beating, 
despite their twofold superiority in numbers. 

The higher Napoleon was no longer such a novice in warfare as 
Francis Joseph. He had won his spurs at Magenta and knew from 
experience how he should behave on the field of battle. He left it 
to old Vaillant to calculate the length of front to occupy, from 
which the distribution of the several corps follows automatically, 
and then he left it to the corps commanders to go ahead from 
there, since he could be fairly confident that they knew how to 
lead their corps. As for himself, he betook himself to the spots at 
which he would show up best in next Saturday’s Paris Illustration 
and from there issued very melodramatic but also very indifferent 
orders concerning details. 

Il 

Long ago there was a Russian painter at the academy in 
Dusseldorf, who later was relegated to Siberia for lack of talent 
and laziness. The poor devil was enthusiastic over his Emperor 
Nicholas and would say ecstatically: “Emperor very great! Em- 
peror can everything! Emperor can paint too! But Emperor have 
no time to paint; Emperor buy landscapes and then paint soldiers 
in. Emperor very great! God is great but Emperor is still young!” 

The higher Napoleon has this in common with Nicholas, that he 
believes the landscapes are there only to have soldiers painted into 
them. But as he does not even have the time to paint the soldiers 
in, he contents himself with sitting for the paintings. II pose.* 
Magenta, Solferino and all of Italy are only the accessories, only 
the pretext to get his interesting figure on this occasion in a 
melodramatic posture into the Illustration and the Illustrated London 
News again. Since this can be done with a little money, he has 
succeeded in this too. He told the Milanese: 

“If there are people who do not understand their century” (the century of 
advertisement and humbug) “I am not one of those people.” 

The old Napoleon was great, and the improved Napoleon is no 
longer young! 

This latest realisation, that he is no longer young, put the 
thought into his mind that it was about time to make peace. He 
had now got as far as one can get with mere succes d’estime“ “In 

No. 163, June 12, 1859.— Ed. 

four engagements and two battles”,* with a loss of over 50,000 
men in action alone, not counting the sick, he had conquered the 
foreland up to the Austrian fortresses—the region that Austria 
itself, by the very location of its fortifications, had proclaimed to 
all the world was not to be defended earnestly against superior 
strength and that had been defended on this occasion only in 
order to vex Marshal Hess. The via sacra, along which the 
higher Napoleon had led his army thus far with such classic calm 
and such dubious success, was suddenly completely blocked. 
Beyond lay the promised land, which was not to be seen by today’s 
“Army of Italy” but perhaps only by their grandsons—and 
perhaps not by them either. Rivoli and Arcole were not on the 
programme. Verona and Mantua were about to have a say, and 
the only fortress into which the higher Napoleon has yet entered 
with a military escort is the castle of Ham—and he was glad 
enough to get out of it again without the honours of war. *”’ 
Moreover, the stage effects came out pauvre” enough: he did have 
grandes batailless but not even the telegraph wire believed the 
grandes victoires A war for entrenched camps, against old Hess, a 
war with shifting success and decreasing chances, a war that called 
for serious work, a real war, that was no war for the Napoleon of 
the Porte Saint-Martin and Astley’s Amphitheatre.*** There was 
the additional factor that one step further would have led to a war 
on the Rhine and that would have brought about complications 
which would have immediately put an end to the heroic grimaces 
and melodramatic poses plastiques.. But the higher Napoleon does 
not let himself get involved in such matters—he made peace and 
swallowed his programme. 

When the war began, our higher Napoleon at once brought up 
the Italian campaigns of the vulgar Napoleon,’ the via sacra of 
Montenotte, Dego, Millesimo, Montebello, Marengo, Lodi, Castig- 
lione, Rivoli and Arcole.*’? Let us compare the copy with the 
original a bit. *°° 

The vulgar Napoleon took over the command of 30,000 

Moniteur universel, No. 134, May 14, 1859.— Ed. 

half-starved, barefoot, ragged soldiers at a time when France, 
financially ruined, unable to take out loans, had to maintain not 
only two armies in the Alps but also two armies in Germany. He 
did not have Sardinia and the other countries of Italy for him but 
against him. The army opposing him was superior to his in 
numbers and organisation. Nonetheless, he attacked, beat the 
Austrians and Piedmontese in six blows in rapid succession, in 
each of which he managed to have superior numbers on his side, 
forced Piedmont to make peace, crossed the Po, made a forced 
crossing of the Adda at Lodi and laid siege to Mantua. He 
defeated the first relief army of the Austrians at Lonato and 
Castiglione and, by means of bold manoeuvres, forced them in 
their second advance to take refuge in Mantua. He stopped the 
second relief army at Arcole and held it in check for two months 
until it received reinforcements and went forward again, only to 
be beaten at Rivoli. Thereafter he forced Mantua to surrender 
and the princes of Southern Italy to make peace, and pressed on 
over the Julian Alps to the foot of the Semmering, where he won 
the peace. 

Such was the vulgar Napoleon. And what of the higher? He 
comes into a better and stronger army than France has ever had, 
and a financial situation that at least allows meeting the costs of 
the war easily by loans. He has six months time of complete peace 
in which to prepare for his campaign. He has on his side Sardinia, 
with strong fortresses and a large excellent army; he keeps Rome 
occupied; Central Italy is only waiting for a signal from him to rise 
and join him. His base of operations is not in the Maritime Alps 
but on the middle Po, at Alessandria and Casale. Where his 
predecessor had bridle-paths, he has railways. And what does he 
do? He throws five strong army corps into Italy, so strong that, 
combined with the Sardinians, he is always significantly stronger in 
numbers than the Austrians, so much stronger that he can detach 
the Sixth Corps to the tourist army of his cousin* for a military 
jaunt. Despite all the railways, he takes a full month to concentrate 
his troops. Finally he moves. Gyulay’s incapacity makes him a 
present of the undecided battle of Magenta, which is converted 
into a victory by the fortuitous strategic situation of the two armies 
after the battle—a situation for which by no means the higher 
Napoleon but Gyulay alone is responsible. In gratitude, he lets the 
Austrians escape, instead of pursuing them. At Solferino, Francis 
Joseph almost compels him to win; nonetheless, the result is hardly 

better than at Magenta. Now a situation is taking shape in which 
the vulgar Napoleon would just have begun to develop his 
resources; the war is being waged in a region where there is 
something more real to do, and is assuming dimensions from 
which a great ambition derives its advantage. Arrived at the point 
at which the via sacra of the vulgar Napoleon first begins, first 
opens a grand perspective, at that point— the higher Napoleon sues 
for peace!