Friedrich Engels

Po and Rhine

Written end of February/beginning of March 1859.

Published in 1859 as an anonymous pamphlet by Franz Duncker, Berlin.

The present text is based on this edition. Corrections of typographical errors altering the sense are noted in footnotes.

I

Since the beginning of this year, the watchword of a large part of the German press has become that
the Rhine must be defended on the Po
.

This watchword was fully justified in view of the Bonapartist armaments and threats. It was instinctively sensed in Germany that if the Po was the pretext for Louis Napoleon, the Rhine must under all circumstances be his final goal. Only a war for the Rhine frontier can possibly serve as a lightning conductor against the two elements threatening Bonapartism within France: the “patriotic superabundance of energy” of the revolutionary masses and the fermenting discontent of the “bourgeoisie”. To the one it would give national occupation, to the other the prospect of a new market. The talk of the liberation of Italy could therefore not be misunderstood in Germany. It was a case of the old proverb: You beat the sack and mean the donkey. If Italy was prompted to present the sack, Germany this time had no desire to play the donkey.

The assertion of the Po, therefore, in the present case simply meant that Germany, threatened by an attack in which the possession of some of its best provinces was ultimately at stake, could not possibly think of giving up one of its strongest, indeed its very strongest military position without striking a blow. In this sense, all Germany was indeed interested in defending the Po. On the eve of a war as in the war itself, one occupies every usable position from which one can threaten and harm the enemy, without entering into moral reflections on whether this is compatible with eternal justice and the nationality principle. One simply defends one’s own skin.

This way of defending the Rhine on the Po is, however, very different from the tendency of many German soldiers and politicians to declare the Po, i.e. Lombardy and Venetia, an indispensable strategic complement and, so to speak, an integral part of Germany. This view has been advanced and defended theoretically, particularly since the campaigns in Italy of 1848 and 1849; for instance, by General
von Radowitz
in the Paulskirche, by General
von Willisen
in his “Italian Campaign of the Year 1848”. In South Germany outside Austria, the Bavarian General
von Hailbronner
, in particular, has treated this theme with a predilection bordering on enthusiasm. The main argument is always political in nature: Italy is totally incapable of remaining independent; either Germany or France must rule in Italy; if the Austrians withdrew from Italy today, the French would be standing tomorrow in the Adige valley and at the gates of Trieste, and the whole southern frontier of Germany would be laid bare, abandoned to the “hereditary foe”. Therefore Austria holds Lombardy in the name and interest of Germany.

As can be seen, the military authorities for this view are among the foremost in Germany. Nevertheless we must firmly oppose it.

But this view becomes an article of faith defended with true fanaticism in the Augsburg “Allgemeine Zeitung”, which has set itself up as the Moniteur of German interests in Italy. This Christian-Germanic paper, despite its hatred of Jews and Turks, would sooner have itself circumcised than cede “German” territory in Italy. What is after all defended by the politically-minded generals only as a splendid military position in the hands of Germany, is in the Augsburg “Allgemeine Zeitung” an essential component of a political theory. We mean that “Central European great power theory” which would erect Austria, Prussia and the rest of Germany into a federal state under Austria’s predominant influence, germanise Hungary and the Slavonic-Romanian Danubian lands by colonisation, schools and gentle force, thereby shift the centre of gravity of this complex of countries more and more to the south-east, to Vienna, and also incidentally reconquer Alsace and Lorraine. The “Central European great power” is to be a kind of rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and appears, among other things, to have the purpose of incorporating the erstwhile Austrian Netherlands as well as Holland as vassal states. The German fatherland will extend about twice as far as the German tongue now sounds; and when all this is fulfilled, Germany will be the arbiter and master of Europe. And that all this may be fulfilled, care is already being taken. The Romance peoples are in a state of acute decay, the Spaniards and Italians have already been totally ruined, and the French are at this very moment also undergoing their dissolution. On the other hand, the Slavs are incapable of true modern state-building and have the world-historical vocation to be germanised, the rejuvenated Austria then again being the principal tool of Providence. The only race which has still preserved moral force and historical capacity is thus the Germans, and among these the English have sunk so deep into insular egoism and materialism that their influence, their trade and their industry must be kept away from the European continent by energetic protective tariffs, by a kind of rational continental system. In this way, German moral earnestness and the youthful Central European great power cannot fail to ensure that the latter before long seizes world supremacy by sea and land and inaugurates a new historical era in which Germany, for a long time, at last plays first fiddle again and the rest of the nations dance to its tune.

Land belongs to the French and the Russians,
The sea belongs to the British;
But in the airy realm of dreams
We hold undisputed dominion.

It cannot occur to us here to enter into the political side of these patriotic fantasies. We have just sketched them in context, so that someone may not later present all these glories anew as further proofs of the necessity of “German” rule in Italy. What alone interests us here is the military question: For its defence, does Germany need permanent rule over Italy and specifically full military possession of Lombardy and Venetia?

Reduced to its purest military expression, the question is: For the defence of its southern frontier, does Germany need possession of the Adige, the Mincio and the lower Po, with the bridgeheads Peschiera and Mantua?

Before we attempt to answer it, we explicitly remark beforehand: When we speak of Germany here, we mean a single power whose military forces and actions, those of a nation, are directed from a single centre—Germany not as an ideal but as an actual political body. Under any other presuppositions, there can be no talk at all of the political and military needs of Germany.

II

Even more than Belgium, Upper Italy has for centuries been the battlefield on which Germans and French have fought out their wars against one another. Possession of Belgium and of the Po valley is for the attacker a necessary condition, whether of a German invasion of France or of a French invasion of Germany; only this possession fully secures the flanks and rear of the invasion. Only the case of a completely assured neutrality of these lands could form an exception, and this case has never yet existed.

If, on the battlefields of the Po valley, the fate of France and Germany was decided indirectly and mediately from the day of Pavia onwards, the fate of Italy was decided there simultaneously directly and immediately. With the great standing armies of modern times, with the growing power of France and Germany, with the political disintegration of Italy, the real old Italy, south of the Rubicon, lost all military significance, and possession of the old Cisalpine Gaul inevitably entailed dominion over the narrow, elongated peninsula. The densest population was settled in the basins of the Po and the Adige, on the Genoese, Romagnol and Venetian coasts; the most flourishing agriculture, the most active industry, the liveliest commerce of Italy were concentrated there. The peninsula, Naples and the Papal States, remained relatively stationary in their social development; their military power had not counted for centuries. Whoever possessed the Po valley cut the land connection of the peninsula with the rest of the continent and could occasionally subjugate it with little trouble. Thus the French twice in the Revolutionary War, thus the Austrians twice in this century. Hence only the basin of the Po and the Adige is significant for war.

Enclosed on three sides by the uninterrupted mountain chain of the Alps and Apennines and on the fourth, from Aquileia to Rimini, by the

Adriatic Sea, this basin forms a tract of land very sharply delimited by nature, traversed by the Po from west to east. The southern or Apennine boundary has no interest for us here; the northern or Alpine one has all the more. Its snow-covered ridge is passable on metalled roads at only a few points; even the number of carriage- and bridle-paths and footpaths is limited; long valley defiles lead to the passes over the high mountains.

The German frontier encompasses Northern Italy from the mouth of the Isonzo to the Stelvio Pass; from there to Geneva stretches the frontier of Switzerland; from Geneva to the mouth of the Var, France is adjacent. From the Adriatic Sea to the Stelvio Pass, reckoned westwards, each succeeding pass leads ever deeper into the heart of the Po basin, thus outflanking all positions of an Italian or French army lying further east. The frontier line of the Isonzo is outflanked at once by the first pass, that of Karfreit (Caporetto) towards Cividale. The pass of Pontafel outflanks the position on the Tagliamento, which is also taken in flank by two non-metalled passes from Carinthia and Cadore. The Brenner pass outflanks the Piave line via the Peutelstein pass from Bruneck to Cortina d’Ampezzo and Belluno, the Brenta line via the Val Sugana to Bassano, the Adige line via the Adige valley, the Chiese via Judicaria, the Oglio on non-metalled roads over the Tonale, and finally all territory east of the Adda via the Stelvio Pass and through the Valtellina.

One should say that, given such a favourable strategic position, the actual possession of the plains as far as the Po could be a matter of comparative indifference to us Germans. Where is the enemy army, assuming equal forces, to take up position east of the Adda or north of the Po? All its positions are outflanked; wherever it crosses the Po or the Adda, its flank is threatened; if it withdraws south of the Po, it endangers its communications with Milan and Piedmont; if it goes behind the Ticino, it risks its connection with the whole peninsula. Should it be bold enough to advance offensively in the direction of Vienna, it can be cut off any day and compelled to deliver battle with its back to the enemy country and its front towards Italy. If it is then defeated, we have a second Marengo with the roles reversed; if it defeats the Germans, the latter would have to behave very clumsily indeed to lose their retreat to Tyrol.

The construction of the road over the Stelvio Pass is proof that the Austrians learned the right lesson from their defeat at Marengo. Napoleon built the Simplon road in order to have a covered ascent to the heart

of Italy; the Austrians completed their system of offensive defence in Lombardy by the road from Stelvio to Bormio. It will be said that this pass is too high to remain practicable in winter; that the whole route is too difficult, running as it does over a distance of at least fifty German miles (from Füssen in Bavaria to Lecco on Lake Como) continuously through inhospitable high mountains, with three mountain passes occurring along this stretch; and that, finally, in the long defile at Lake Como and in the high mountains themselves it can easily be blocked. Let us see.

The pass is certainly the highest carriageable one in the whole Alpine chain, 8,600 feet, and may be heavily snowed up in winter. If, however, we recall Macdonald's winter campaign of 1800-1801 on the Splügen and Tonale, we shall not attach much weight to such obstacles. All Alpine passes snow up in winter and are nonetheless crossed. The transformation of all artillery, which since Armstrong's production of a serviceable breech-loading rifled cannon can hardly be postponed much longer, will also introduce lighter guns into the field artillery and thereby facilitate mobility. A more serious obstacle is the long march in the high mountains and the repeated crossing of mountain ranges. The Stelvio Pass does not cross the watershed between the northern and southern Alpine rivers, but lies between the two Adriatic waters of the Adige and the Adda, and therefore presupposes that the main chain of the Alps has first been crossed at the Brenner or Finstermünz Pass in order to get from the Inn valley into the Adige valley. Now, since the Inn in Tyrol runs roughly from west to east between two mountain chains, troops from Lake Constance and from Bavaria must also cross the more northerly of these two chains, so that in all we have two or three mountain passes on this one route. Arduous though this may be, it is nevertheless no decisive obstacle to leading an army by this route into Italy. A railway in the Inn valley, already partly completed, and the projected railway in the Adige valley will soon reduce this drawback to a minimum. Napoleon's route over the Great St Bernard from Lausanne to Ivrea admittedly led for only about 30 miles through the high mountains; but the route from Udine to Vienna, along which Napoleon advanced in 1797 and along which, in 1809, Eugène and Macdonald joined Napoleon at Vienna, runs for over 60 miles through the high mountains and likewise crosses three Alpine passes. The route from Pont-de-Beauvoisin over the Little St Bernard to Ivrea, the route which, without touching Switzerland, leads directly from France farthest into Italy, and is thus the most suitable for turning movements, extends

for over 40 miles through the high mountains, as does the Simplon road from Lausanne to Sesto Calende. – Finally, as regards blocking the road in the pass itself or at Lake Como, since the French campaigns in the Alps people are no longer so inclined to believe in the effectiveness of blocking points. Dominating heights and the possibility of turning them make them fairly useless; the French took many by storm and were never seriously held up by the fortifications of the passes. The possible fortifications of the pass on the Italian side can be turned via the Cevedale, Monte Corno, and Gavia, and the Tonale and Aprica. From the Valtellina numerous bridle-paths lead into the Bergamasque Alps, and the closing of the long defile at Lake Como can be turned partly by these, partly from Dervio or from Bellano through the Val Sassina. In mountain warfare an advance in several columns is in any case required, and if one gets through, the object is usually attained.

How much the most difficult passes are practicable at almost all seasons of the year, provided only good troops and resolute generals are sent; how much, therefore, minor secondary passes, even ones not carriageable, are to be used as good lines of operations, especially for turning movements; and how little blocking points avail – all this is best demonstrated by the campaigns in the Alps from 1796 to 1801. At that time not a single Alpine pass had been chausséeed, and despite this the armies crossed the mountains in all directions. In 1799, as early as the beginning of March, Loison crossed the watershed between the Reuss and the Rhine with a French brigade on footpaths, while Lecourbe crossed the Bernardino and the Viamala, then crossed the Albula-Julier Pass (7,100 feet high), and as early as 24 March took the defile of Martinsbruck by turning it, sending Dessolle through the Münster valley over the Pisoc and the Worms Pass (footpath, 7,850 feet high) into the upper Adige valley and from there to the Reschen-Scheideck. At the beginning of May Lecourbe withdrew again over the Albula.

In September of the same year Suvorov's expedition took place, in the course of which, as the old soldier put it in his violent figurative language, the Russian bayonet thrust through the Alps (Ruskij štyk prognal cres Alpow). He sent his artillery for the most part over the Splügen, sent a turning column through the Val Blegno over the Lukmanier (footpath, 5,948 feet) and from there over the Sixmadun (about 6,500 feet) into the upper Reuss valley, while he himself crossed the then barely carriageable track of the St Gotthard (6,594 feet). He stormed the blocking point of the Devil's Bridge on 24-26 September; but, having reached Altdorf, with the lake before him and the French on all

other sides, he had no choice but to go up the Schächen valley over the Kinzig-Kulm into the Muota valley. Having arrived there, after leaving all his artillery and baggage in the Reuss valley, he again found the French in superior strength before him, while Lecourbe was at his heels. Suvorov crossed the Pragel into the Klön valley in order to gain the Rhine plain by this route. In the defile of Näfels he met with insurmountable resistance, and had no choice left but to gain the upper Rhine valley, and his connection with the Splügen, by the footpath over the Panixer Pass, 8,000 feet high. The crossing began on 6 October; on the 10th his headquarters were in Ilanz. This passage was, up to that time, the most magnificent of all modern Alpine crossings.

We shall not say much about Napoleon's crossing of the Great St Bernard. It falls short of the other similar operations of that period. The season was favourable, and the only thing worthy of note is the skilful manner in which the blocking point of Fort Bard was turned.

On the other hand, particularly honourable mention is deserved by Macdonald's operations in the winter of 1800/1801. Destined, with 15,000 men as the left wing of the French army of Italy, to turn the right wing of the Austrians on the Mincio and Adige, he crossed
in the depths of winter, with all arms,
the Splügen (6,510 feet). Under the greatest hardships, often interrupted by avalanches and snowstorms, from 1 to 7 December he led his army over the pass and marched up the Adda through the Valtellina to the Aprica. The Austrians showed no less fear of the high-mountain winter. They kept the Albula, Julier, and Braulio (Worms Pass) occupied and even made a surprise attack on the latter, in which they captured a detachment of dismounted French hussars. After Macdonald had crossed the Aprica Pass from the Adda into the Oglio valley, he ascended the very high Tonale Pass on footpaths and on 22 December attacked the Austrians, who had entrenched the defile in the pass with blocks of ice. Driven back both on that day and in a second attack (31 December – he had therefore remained nine days in the high mountains!), he descended the Val Camonica to Lago d'Iseo, sent cavalry and artillery <(
1859
) infantry> through the plain, and crossed with the infantry the three mountain ridges that lead to Val Trompia, Val Sabbia, and Giudicarie, where, at Storo, he arrived as early as 6 January. Baraguay d'Hilliers had simultaneously gone from the Inn valley over the Reschen-Scheideck (Finstermünz Pass) into the upper Adige valley. – If such manoeuvres were possible sixty years ago,

what can we not do now, when we have the finest chaussées in most of the passes!

Already from these sketches we see that of all the blocking points, the only ones that possessed some tenability were those that, through clumsiness or lack of time, were not turned. The Tonale, for example, was untenable as soon as Baraguay d'Hilliers appeared in the upper Adige valley. The other campaigns prove that they were taken either by turning, but often also by storm. The Luziensteig was stormed two or three times, as was Malborgeth in the Pontafel Pass in 1797 and 1809. The Tyrol blocking points held up neither Joubert in 1797 nor Ney in 1805. It is known what Napoleon maintained: that an army could be turned along paths that were practicable for a goat. And ever since war has been waged in this fashion, all blocking points can be turned.

It is therefore not apparent how, given equal forces, an enemy army could defend Lombardy east of the Adda in open country against a German army advancing over the Alps. It would be left only with the chance of taking up position among the existing or newly constructed fortresses and manoeuvring between them. This possibility we shall consider further below.

What passes, then, are open to France for penetrating into Italy? While Germany completely embraces one half of the northern frontier of Italy, the French frontier runs in a fairly straight line from north to south, and embraces and outflanks nothing at all. Only when Savoy and part of the Genoese coastal territory are conquered can turning movements be prepared over the Little St Bernard and a few Maritime Alps passes, the effect of which, however, extends only as far as the Sesia and the Bormida, and thus reaches neither Lombardy nor the Duchies, let alone the peninsula. Only a landing at Genoa, which will nonetheless probably have its difficulties for a large army, could lead to a turning of all Piedmont; a landing farther east, e.g. at La Spezia, could no longer be based on Piedmont and France, but only on the peninsula, and would therefore be turned to the same extent as it itself turned the enemy.

Up to now we have assumed Switzerland to be neutral. In the event of its being drawn into the war, France would have one more pass at its disposal: the Simplon (the Great St Bernard, leading to Aosta like the Little one, would offer no new advantages apart from the shorter line). The Simplon leads to the Ticino and thereby covers Piedmont for the French. The Germans would obtain in the same way the subordinate Splügen, which meets the Stelvio road at Lake Como, and the Bernardino, whose effect reaches as far as the Ticino. The Gotthard could, after

Under these circumstances it would serve both parties, but would open up few new flank advantages for them. Thus we see that the influence of a French turning movement through the Alps on the one hand, and of a German one on the other, extends as far as the present Lombard-Piedmontese frontier, as far as the Ticino. If, however, the Germans stand on the Ticino, if they stand only at Piacenza and Cremona, they bar the French the land route to the Italian peninsula. In other words: If France dominates Piedmont, Germany dominates the whole of the rest of Italy.

A tactical advantage also accrues to the Germans: Along the entire German frontier line, at all the important passes—the Stelvio Pass excepted—the watershed lies on German territory. The Fella, in the Pontafel Pass, rises in Carinthia; the Boite, in the Peutelstein Pass, in the Tyrol. In this latter province the advantage is decisive. The upper Brenta valley (Val Sugana), the upper Chiese valley (Giudicarie), and more than half the course of the Adige belong to the Tyrol. Even if, in individual cases, no decision can be reached without a detailed study of the locality as to whether possession of the watershed in high mountain passes really yields a tactical advantage, so much is certain: on average, the chances of dominating an enemy by superior height as well as of outflanking him lie with the side that holds the mountain ridge and a portion of the slope on the enemy side; and that, furthermore, this makes it possible, already before the outbreak of war, to render the most impracticable stretches of the secondary passes passable for all arms—which, in the Tyrol, can become of decisive importance for communications. When this advance of our territory on to the enemy side attains the extent which the territory of the German Confederation has in the southern Tyrol; when, as here, the two main passes, the Brenner and Finstermünz passes, lie far back from the enemy frontier; when, in addition, decisive secondary passes such as those through Giudicarie and the Val Sugana belong wholly to German territory—then the tactical conditions for an invasion of Upper Italy are so enormously facilitated that in case of war they need only be exploited with intelligence to assure success.

So long as Switzerland remains neutral, the Tyrol is therefore the most direct route for a German army operating against Italy, and as soon as Switzerland’s neutrality ceases, the Grisons and the Tyrol (the Inn valley and the Rhine valley) are that route. On this line the Hohenstaufens pressed forward into Italy; on no other line can a Germany acting as a military and as a state power intervene decisively in Italy with rapid blows. For this line, however, the base of operations is not Inner Austria, but Upper Swabia and Bavaria, from Lake Constance to Salzburg. This held true throughout the entire Middle Ages. Only when Austria consolidated herself on the Middle Danube, when Vienna became the central point of the monarchy, when the German Reich disintegrated and wars in Italy were no longer German but only Austrian wars—only then was the old, short, straight line from Innsbruck to Verona and from Lindau to Milan abandoned; only then did the long, crooked, bad line from Vienna via Klagenfurt and Treviso to Vicenza take its place—a line on which, earlier, a German army would never have relied except in the most extreme emergency of a threatened retreat, never for an offensive.

So long as the German Reich existed as a real military power, so long as it accordingly based its attacks upon Italy on Upper Swabia and Bavaria, it was impelled to strive for the subjugation of Upper Italy for political reasons, but never for purely military ones. In the long struggles for Italy, Lombardy has been now German, now independent, now Spanish, now Austrian; but Lombardy—which should not be forgotten—was separated from Venice, and Venice was independent. And although Lombardy possessed Mantua, it excluded precisely the Mincio line and the territory between the Mincio and the Isonzo, without whose possession, as we are assured nowadays, Germany cannot sleep soundly. Germany (through the mediation of Austria) has only come into the full possession of the Mincio line since 1814. And even if Germany, as a political body, did not exactly play the most brilliant role in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the lack of possession of the Mincio line was certainly not to blame for it.

To be sure, the strategic rounding-off of states and their demarcation by defensible lines has come more to the fore since the French Revolution and Napoleon created more mobile armies and traversed Europe in all directions with these armies. Whereas in the Seven Years’ War the theatre of operations of an army was still limited to a mere province, and months-long manoeuvres revolved around individual fortresses, positions, or operational bases, today in every war the terrain configuration of whole countries comes into consideration, and the importance that was formerly attached to individual tactical positions now attaches only to large groups of fortresses, long river lines, or high, sharply defined mountain chains. And in this respect lines such as those of the Mincio and the Adige are indeed of far greater significance than heretofore.

Let us, then, take a look at these lines.

All the rivers that flow east of the Simplon from the Alps into the Upper Italian plain to the Po, or directly to the Adriatic Sea, form, together with the Po or by themselves, an arc concave towards the east. They are thereby more favourable for the defence of an army standing in the east than for one standing in the west. Consider the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, the Chiese, the Mincio, the Adige, the Brenta, the Piave, the Tagliamento; each river, alone or together with the adjoining stretch of the Po, forms a circular arc whose centre lies towards the east. In consequence, the army standing on the left (eastern) bank is enabled to take up a central position in the rear, from which it can reach any seriously attacked point of the river’s course in a relatively short time; it holds Jomini’s “interior line”, it marches on the radius or the chord, while the enemy has to manoeuvre on the longer periphery. If the army on the right bank finds itself on the defensive, this circumstance will, conversely, be disadvantageous to it; the enemy is supported by the locality in his feint attacks, and the same shorter distances from the various points of the periphery that accrue to its advantage in defence now give its attack a decisive superiority. Thus the Lombard-Venetian river lines are thoroughly favourable for a German army in the defensive and offensive, unfavourable for an Italian or Italian-French army; and if we add the already developed circumstance that the Tyrolean passes outflank all these lines, there is truly no reason to doubt Germany’s security, even if not a single Austrian soldier stood any longer on Italian soil; for this Lombard soil belongs to us as often as we please.

Moreover, these Lombard river lines are for the most part very insignificant and little suited to serious defence. Apart from the Po itself, which we shall discuss further below, there are in the whole basin only two positions really significant for France or Germany; they have been correctly assessed in their strength and fortified by the general staffs concerned, and they will unconditionally play the decisive role in the next war. In Piedmont, a mile below Casale, the Po bends its hitherto easterly course to the south, flows for a good three miles to the south-south-east, and then turns eastwards again. At the northern bend the Sesia flows in from the north, at the southern bend the Tanaro from the south-west. Immediately before their confluence, close to Alessandria, the Bormida, the Orba, and the Belbo join the latter and together form a system of river lines converging radially towards a centre, whose most important nodal point is covered by the entrenched camp of Alessandria. From Alessandria an army can switch at will from bank to bank of the smaller rivers, can defend the line of the Po lying in front of the front, can cross the Po at Casale—which is also fortified—or operate downstream on the right bank of the Po. This position, reinforced by sufficient fortifications, is the only one that covers Piedmont or can serve as a base for offensive operations against Lombardy and the duchies. It suffers, however, from having no depth, and since it can be both outflanked and broken through frontally, this circumstance is very unfavourable; a vigorous and skilful attack would soon reduce it to the still unfinished entrenched camp of Alessandria, and as to how far this would protect the defenders against the necessity of fighting under unfavourable conditions, all indications are lacking, since neither the latest fortification works there nor the degree of their completion are known. Napoleon had already recognised the importance of this position for the defence of Piedmont against attacks from the east, and consequently had Alessandria newly fortified. In 1814 the place did not prove its protective power; how far it is capable of doing so today we may perhaps soon have occasion to see.

The second position, which does the same for the Venetian region against attacks from the west—and far more—than Alessandria does for Piedmont, is that of the Mincio and the Adige. Emerging from Lake Garda, the Mincio flows for four miles, as far as Mantua, in a southerly direction, forms at Mantua a lake-like, swamp-girt bulge, and then flows in a south-easterly direction towards the Po. The stretch of river below the Mantuan swamps down to its mouth is too short to serve an army for a crossing, since the enemy debouching from Mantua could take them in the rear and force them to fight a battle under the most unfavourable conditions. A turning movement from the south would have to make a wider sweep and cross the Po at Revere or Ferrara. From the north, the position on the Mincio is protected against outflanking for a long distance by Lake Garda, so that the actual Mincio line to be defended, from Peschiera to Mantua, is only four miles long and leans on a fortress at each wing, securing a debouchment on the right bank. The Mincio itself is no considerable obstacle, and the banks command each other in varying ways according to the locality; for this reason the line had fallen somewhat into disrepute before 1848, and had it not been considerably reinforced by a special circumstance, it would scarcely ever have attained great fame. This special circumstance, however, is that four miles further back the second river of Upper Italy, the Adige, runs in an arc fairly parallel to the Mincio and lower Po, and thus forms a second, stronger position, reinforced by the two Adige fortresses of Verona and Legnago. The two river lines

but, with their four fortresses, together form for a German or Austrian army attacked from Italy or France a defensive position so strong that no second in Europe can be placed on a par with it, and that an army which, after detaching the garrisons, can still appear in the field may calmly await the attack of a force twice as strong in this position. What this position is capable of was demonstrated by Radetzky in 1848. After the March revolution in Milan, the defection of the Italian regiments and the passage of the Piedmontese across the Ticino, he withdrew with the remainder of his troops, approximately 45,000 men, to Verona. After deducting the 15,000-strong garrisons, he retained somewhat more than 30,000 available men. Opposing him, between the Mincio and the Etsch, stood approximately 60,000 Piedmontese, Tuscans, Modenese and Parmesans. Durando’s army appeared in his rear, approximately 45,000 papal and Neapolitan troops and volunteers. Only the line of communication through the Tyrol remained to him, and even this was threatened, albeit only lightly, by Lombard free corps in the mountains. Radetzky held his ground nevertheless. The observation of Peschiera and Mantua took so many troops away from the Piedmontese that on 6 May, in the attack on the position of Verona (battle of Santa Lucia), they could only appear with four divisions, 40,000 to 45,000 men; Radetzky was able to employ, together with the garrison of Verona, 36,000 men. Equilibrium on the battlefield was therefore already restored, once the tactical strength of the Austrian defensive position is taken into consideration, and the Piedmontese were defeated. The counter-revolution of 15 May in Naples freed Radetzky from the presence of the 15,000 Neapolitans and reduced the army of the Venetian mainland to approximately 30,000 men, of whom, however, only 5,000 papal Swiss and roughly the same number of papal Italian line troops could be employed in the open field; the remainder consisted of free corps. Nugent’s reserve army, which had been formed on the Isonzo in April, fought its way through these troops without difficulty and united with Radetzky at Verona on 25 May, almost 20,000 strong. Now the old field marshal could finally emerge from passive defence. In order to relieve Peschiera, which the Piedmontese were besieging, and to give himself more room to manoeuvre, he undertook the famous flank march to Mantua with his whole army (27 May), debouched from here on the 29th on the right bank of the Mincio, stormed the enemy line at Curtatone and pushed on the 30th towards Goito, into the rear and flank of the Italians. But on the same day Peschiera fell; the weather turned unfavourable, and Radetzky still did not feel strong enough

for a decisive battle. He therefore marched back through Mantua to the Etsch on 4 June, sent the reserve corps to Verona and moved with the rest of his troops via Legnago against Vicenza, which Durando had entrenched and occupied with 17,000 men. On the 10th he attacked Vicenza with 30,000 men; on the 11th Durando capitulated after brave resistance. The second army corps (d’Aspre) subdued Padua, the upper Brenta valley and the Venetian mainland in general, and then followed the first to Verona; a second reserve army under Welden advanced from the Isonzo. During this time and until the decision of the campaign, the Piedmontese concentrated all their attention with superstitious obstinacy upon the plateau of Rivoli, which, since Napoleon’s victory, they seemed to regard as the key to Italy, but which in 1848 no longer had any significance at all, since the Austrians had re-opened a secure connection with the Tyrol through the Vallarsa and, in particular, also the direct connection with Vienna via the Isonzo. At the same time, however, something was also to be undertaken against Mantua; it was therefore blockaded on the right side of the Mincio – an operation that could have no other purpose than to document the perplexity reigning in the Piedmontese camp, to fritter the army away along the whole stretch, eight miles long, from Rivoli to Borgoforte, and to divide it, on top of everything else, by the Mincio into two halves that could not support one another.

When the attempt was now made to blockade Mantua on the left bank as well, Radetzky, who had meanwhile drawn 12,000 men from Welden’s troops to himself, resolved to break through the Piedmontese at their weakened centre and then to beat the assembling forces individually. On 22 July he had Rivoli attacked, which the Piedmontese evacuated on the 23rd; on the 23rd he himself advanced from Verona with 40,000 men against the position of Sona and Sommacampagna, defended by only 14,000 Piedmontese, took it and thereby shattered the whole enemy line. The Piedmontese left wing was completely thrown back across the Mincio on the 24th, and the right wing, which had meanwhile concentrated and was pushing forward against the Austrians, was defeated on the 25th at Custozza; on the 26th the whole Austrian army crossed the Mincio and beat the Piedmontese once more at Volta. With that the campaign was ended; almost without resistance the Piedmontese fell back behind the Ticino.

This brief account of the 1848 campaign proves the strength of the position on the Mincio and the Etsch more strikingly than any theoretical arguments. Once arrived in the quadrilateral between the four fortresses, the Piedmontese were obliged to detach so many troops that their offensive capacity was already broken by this, as the battle of Santa Lucia proves, whereas Radetzky, as soon as the first reinforcements came, could move with complete freedom between the fortresses, base himself now upon Mantua, now upon Verona, threaten the enemy’s rear on the right bank of the Mincio one day, conquer Vicenza a few days later, and continuously exercise the initiative of the campaign. The Piedmontese admittedly committed mistake after mistake; but it is precisely the strength of a position that places the enemy in embarrassment and almost compels him to commit mistakes. The observation, and still more the siege, of the individual fortresses forces him to divide, to weaken his available offensive force; the rivers compel him to repeat this division and make his various corps more or less incapable of coming to each other’s assistance. What forces are needed to besiege Mantua, so long as an army available for the field can break out from the detached forts of Verona at any moment?

Mantua alone was capable of checking General Bonaparte’s victorious army in 1797. Only twice was he overawed by a fortress: Mantua and, ten years later, Danzig. The whole second part of the campaign of [1796 and] 1797: Castiglione, Medole, Calliano, Bassano, Arcole, Rivoli – everything revolves around Mantua, and only after this fortress had fallen did the victor dare to advance eastwards and across the Isonzo. At that time Verona was not fortified; in 1848 only the enceinte on the right bank of the Etsch was completed at Verona, and the battle of Santa Lucia was fought on the terrain where immediately afterwards the Austrian redoubts and, since then, permanent detached forts have been laid out, and only through this does the entrenched camp of Verona become the core, the reduit of the whole position, which thereby gained enormously in strength.

It will be seen that we have no thought of cavilling at the importance of the Mincio line. But let us not forget: this line first became important once Austria began to wage wars in Italy on her own account and once the connection Bozen – Innsbruck – Munich was thrust into the background by the other, Treviso – Klagenfurt – Vienna. And for Austria in her present shape the possession of the Mincio line is indeed a vital question. Austria as an independent state, which wishes to act as a European great power also independently of Germany, must either dominate the Mincio and the lower Po or renounce the defence of the Tyrol; otherwise the Tyrol would be outflanked on both sides and connected to the rest of the monarchy only by the Toblach Pass (the road from Salzburg to Innsbruck runs through Bavaria). Now there does exist a view among older

military men that the Tyrol possesses a great defensive capability and dominates both the Danube and the Po basins. But this view is without qualification based on fantasy and has never been confirmed by experience, for an insurrectionary war such as that of 1809 proves nothing for the operations of a regular army.

The originator of this view is
Bülow
; he expresses it, among other things, in his history of the campaigns of Hohenlinden and Marengo. A copy of the French translation of this book, belonging to an English engineer officer named Emmett, who had been in command on St. Helena at the time of Napoleon, fell into the captive general’s hands in 1819. He made numerous marginal notes in it, and Emmett had the book reprinted in 1831 with Napoleon’s notes.

Napoleon evidently approached the reading with favourable impressions. On Bülow’s proposal to dissolve the entire infantry into tirailleurs, he remarks benevolently: “De l’ordre, toujours de l’ordre – les tirailleurs doivent toujours être soutenus par des lignes.” <“Order, always order – the skirmishers must always be supported by line troops.”> Then come a couple of times: “Bien – c’est bien” <“Good – that’s good”> – and again: “Bien”. But from about the twentieth page onwards it becomes too much for Napoleon, when he sees poor Bülow labouring to explain all the vicissitudes of war out of his theory of eccentric retreats and concentric attacks with rare misfortune and clumsiness, and robbing the most masterly strategic moves of their sense by schoolboyish interpretation. First a few times: “Mauvais – cela est mauvais – mauvais principe” <“Bad – that is bad – bad principle”> – then it reads: “Cela n’est pas vrai – absurde – mauvais plan bien dangereux – restez unis si vous voulez vaincre – il ne faut jamais séparer son armée par un fleuve – tout cet échafaudage est absurde” <“That is not true – absurd – bad, very dangerous plan – remain united if you wish to conquer – one must never divide one’s army by a river – all this scaffolding is absurd”>, etc. And when Napoleon finds, time and again, that Bülow constantly praises bad operations and censures good ones, foists the most foolish motives upon the generals and gives them the most comical advice, and finally proposes to abolish the bayonet and to arm the second rank of the infantry with lances in its place, he exclaims: “Bavardage inintelligible, quel absurde bavardage, quelle absurdité, quel misérable bavardage, quelle ignorance de la guerre.” <“Unintelligible twaddle, what absurd twaddle, what idiocy, what wretched twaddle, what ignorance of war.”>

Here Bülow reproaches the Austrian army on the Danube under Kray for having gone to Ulm instead of to the Tyrol. The Tyrol, this impregnable bastion of mountains and rocks, dominated Bavaria and a part of Lombardy at the same time, as soon as it was occupied by sufficient troops (Napoleon: “On n’attaque pas les montagnes, pas plus le Tirol que la Suisse, on les observe et on les tourne par les plaines” <“One does not attack the mountains, any more than the Tyrol or Switzerland, one only observes them and turns them by the plains”>). Then Bülow reproaches Moreau for having allowed himself to be held fast by Kray at Ulm, instead of leaving him alone and conquering the Tyrol, which was weakly garrisoned: the conquest of the Tyrol would have overthrown the Austrian monarchy (Napoleon: “Absurde, quand même le Tirol eût été ouvert, il ne fallait pas y entrer” <“Absurd, even if the Tyrol had been open, one ought not to have entered it”>).

After Napoleon had finished reading the whole book, he characterised the system of eccentric retreats and concentric attacks and of the domination of the plains by the mountains with the following words: “Si vous voulez apprendre la manière de faire battre une armée supérieure par une armée inférieure, étudiez les maximes de cet écrivain; vous aurez des idées sur la science de la guerre, il vous prescrit le contre-pied de ce qu’il faut enseigner.” <“If you want to learn how to set about having a superior army beaten by a weaker army, just study the maxims of this writer; you will get fine notions of the science of war, he prescribes to you the opposite of what one must teach.”>

Three or four times Napoleon repeated the warning: “Il ne faut jamais attaquer les pays des montagnes.” <“One must never attack the mountain countries.”> This dread of the mountains evidently dates from his later years, when his armies had attained such colossal strength and were tied to the plains for the sake of both supply and tactical deployment. Spain and Tyrol may also have contributed their share to it. Otherwise he was not so very much afraid of the mountains. The first half of his campaign of [1796 and] 1797 was fought entirely in the mountains, and in the following years Masséna and Macdonald sufficiently proved that even in mountain warfare—and precisely there first of all—great things can be achieved with small forces. But on the whole it is clear that our modern armies can bring their strength to bear best in the mixed terrain of plains and low hills, and that a theory is false which prescribes throwing a large army into the high mountains—not just to pass through, but to take up permanent position there—so long as plains such as the Bavarian and Lombard lie free to right and left, in which the war can be decided. How long can an army of 150,000 men be fed in the Tyrol? How soon would hunger drive it down into the plain, where in the meantime it has given the enemy time to establish himself, where it can be forced to fight a battle under the most unfavourable conditions? And where in the narrow valleys could it find a position in which it can deploy its whole strength?

For Austria, as soon as it no longer possesses the Mincio and the Adige, Tyrol would be a lost post, which it would be compelled to abandon as soon as it is attacked from the north or south. For Germany, Tyrol outflanks Lombardy as far as the Adda by means of its passes; for Austria acting separately, Tyrol outflanks Lombardy and the Venetian territory as far as the Brenta. Only so long as Bavaria covers it in the north and the possession of the Mincio line covers it in the south is it tenable for Austria. The foundation of the Confederation of the Rhine made it impossible for Austria seriously to defend even Tyrol and the Venetian territory taken together, and therefore it was entirely consistent when Napoleon, in the Peace of Pressburg, separated both provinces from Austria.

For Austria, therefore, the possession of the Mincio line with Peschiera and Mantua is an absolute necessity. For Germany as a whole, its possession is by no means necessary, although militarily it is still a great advantage. Wherein this advantage consists is obvious. Only in that it secures us from the outset a strong position in the Lombard plain, which we then do not need to conquer first, and that it conveniently rounds off our defensive position, while significantly supporting our offensive.

But if Germany does not have the Mincio line?

Let us assume that the whole of Italy is independent, united, and allied with France for an offensive war against Germany. From everything we have said so far, it follows that in this case the German lines of operations and retreat would be not Vienna–Klagenfurt–Treviso but Munich–Innsbruck–Bozen and Munich–Füssen–Finstermünz–Glurus, and that their debouches in the Lombard plain lie between the Val Sugana and the Swiss frontier. Where, then, is the decisive point of attack? Obviously that part of Upper Italy which provides the link between the peninsula and Piedmont and France, the middle Po from Alessandria to Cremona. But the passes between Lake Garda and Lake Como are fully sufficient to allow the Germans to advance into this region and to keep open their retreat by the same route, in the worst case over the Stelvio Pass. In this case the Mincio and Adige fortresses, which we have assumed to be in Italian possession, would lie far from the decisive battlefield. A garrison of the entrenched camp of Verona with a force adequate and sufficient for the offensive would only be a useless splitting up of the enemy’s troops. Or is it expected that the Italians en masse on the much-favoured plateau of Rivoli would block the Adige valley against the Germans? Since the Stelvio road (over the Stelvio Pass) was built, the debouché from the Adige valley has lost much of its importance. But suppose that Rivoli were once more to figure as the key to Italy and that the Germans were attracted strongly enough by the pulling power of the Italian army stationed there to make the attack—what purpose would Verona then serve? It does not close the Adige valley, otherwise the march of the Italians to Rivoli would be superfluous. To cover the retreat in case of a defeat, Peschiera is sufficient, providing a secure crossing over the Mincio and thereby ensuring the further march to Mantua or Cremona. But a mass deployment of the entire Italian forces between the four fortresses, for instance to await the arrival of the French there without being able to be provoked into battle, would precisely from the very beginning of the campaign divide the forces hostile to us into two halves and make it possible for us, on their line of junction, to advance with concentrated forces first against the French and, after these have been beaten, to undertake the admittedly somewhat protracted process of dislodging the Italians from their fortresses. A country like Italy, whose national army is, with every successful attack from the north and east, immediately placed in the dilemma of having to choose between the Piedmontese base and the base of the peninsula—such a country must obviously have its great defensive works in the region where the army can fall into this dilemma. Here the confluence of the Ticino and the Adda into the Po offer points of support. General von Willisen (“Italienischer Feldzug des Jahres 1848”) wanted both points to be fortified by the Austrians. Apart from the fact that this is impossible for the very reason that the necessary terrain does not belong to them (at Cremona the right bank of the Po is Parmesan, and in Piacenza they have only the right of garrison), both points are also too far advanced for a large defensive position in a country where the Austrians will be surrounded by insurrections in every war; furthermore, Willisen, who can never see two rivers converge without immediately making plans for a large entrenched camp, forgets that neither the Ticino nor the Adda are defensible lines, and therefore, even by his own view, do not cover the land behind them. But what would be useless waste for the Austrians is absolutely a good position for the Italians. For them the Po is the main line of defence; the triangle Pizzighettone–Cremona–Piacenza, with Alessandria on the left and Mantua on the right, would create an effective defence of this line and allow the army both to await, under cover, the arrival of distant allies and, should the occasion arise, to advance offensively in the decisive plain between the Sesia and the Adige.

General von Radowitz stated in the Frankfurt National Assembly that if Germany no longer possessed the Mincio line, it would be placed in the situation into which it now comes only after an entire unfortunate campaign. The war would then be immediately carried to German soil; it would begin on the Isonzo and in the Italian Tyrol, and all the south German territory right into Bavaria would be outflanked, so that the war in Germany, instead of on the Upper Rhine, would then have to be fought out on the Isar.

General von Radowitz appears to have judged the military knowledge of his audience fairly correctly. It is true: If Germany gives up the Mincio line, it gives up as much terrain and as many positions as a whole successful campaign would bring the French and Italians. But that is not yet by a long way to place Germany in the situation into which an unfortunate campaign would bring it. Or is a strong, intact German army, which assembles at the Bavarian foot of the Alps and marches over the Tyrolean passes to invade Lombardy, in the same position as an army ruined and demoralised by an unfortunate campaign, which, hunted by the enemy, hurries towards the Brenner? Is the chance of a successful offensive from a position that in many respects commands the meeting-point of the French and Italians equal to the chance of a beaten army bringing its artillery across the Alps? Before we had the Mincio line, we conquered Italy far more often than since we have had it; who would doubt that in case of need we shall perform the feat once more?

As regards the point that without the Mincio line the war is immediately carried into Bavaria and Carinthia, that too is not correct. Our whole exposition amounts to this: that without the Mincio line the defence of Germany’s southern frontier can be carried out only offensively. To this end leads the mountainous nature of the German border provinces, which cannot serve as a decisive battlefield; to this end leads the favourable position of the Alpine passes. The battlefield lies in the plains before them. There we must descend, and no power on earth can debar us from it. A more favourable introduction to the offensive than the one offered us here for the most unfavourable case of a Franco-Italian alliance is not easily conceivable. It can be supported by improving the Alpine roads and by fortifications at the nodal points of the roads in Tyrol, which must be considerable enough, in the event of a retreat, if not to hold up the enemy entirely, at least to force him to make large detachments for the protection of his communications. As for the Alpine roads, all the wars in the Alps prove to us that even most of the main roads that are not turnpikes and many bridle paths are passable for all arms without excessive difficulty. Under these circumstances a German offensive into Lombardy really ought to be so arranged that it has every prospect of success. To be sure, we may be beaten all the same; and then the case would arise of which Radowitz speaks. What then about the exposure of Vienna and the outflanking of Bavaria through Tyrol?

Firstly, it is clear that no hostile battalion may dare to cross the Isonzo so long as the German army of Tyrol has not been thrown back wholly and irretrievably across the Brenner. From the moment that Bavaria forms the German base of operations against Italy, from that moment an Italian-French offensive in the direction of Vienna ceases to have any purpose; it would be a useless dispersion of forces. But even if Vienna were then still so important a centre that it would be worth the trouble to detach the main force of the enemy army for its conquest, this merely proves that Vienna must be fortified. Napoleon’s campaign of 1797 and 1798, the invasions of Italy and Germany in 1805 and 1809 could have ended very badly for the French had Vienna been fortified. An offensive that has advanced over such distances always runs the risk of shattering its last forces against a fortified capital. Moreover, assuming the enemy has thrown the German army across the Brenner, what measure of superiority is not presupposed to make an effective detachment into Inner Austria possible!

But what about the outflanking of the whole of South Germany via Italy? Indeed, if Lombardy outflanks Germany as far as Munich, how far does Germany then outflank Italy? At any rate as far as Milan and Pavia. The chances are therefore equal for the time being. But owing to the far greater breadth of Germany, an army on the Upper Rhine that is outflanked via Italy towards Munich does not for that reason have to fall back at once. An entrenched camp in Upper Bavaria or a temporary fortification of Munich would receive the beaten Tyrolean army and soon bring the offensive of the advancing enemy to a halt, while the Upper Rhine army would retain the choice of basing itself on Ulm and Ingolstadt or on the Main, i.e., in the worst case, of changing its base of operations. In Italy, by contrast, all this is different. If an Italian army is outflanked through the Tyrolean passes in the west, it need only be driven out of its fortresses, and the whole of Italy is conquered. Germany, in a war against France and Italy combined, always has several armies, at least three, and victory or defeat depends on the overall result of all three campaigns. Italy offers room for only one army; any division would be a mistake; and if this one army is destroyed, then Italy is conquered. For a French army in Italy, the connection with France is in all circumstances the main thing; and as long as this line of communication is not restricted to the Col di Tenda and Genoa, it offers its flank to the Germans in Tyrol – and the more so the further the French advance in Italy. The eventuality of the French and Italians penetrating into Bavaria via Tyrol must, of course, be envisaged from the moment when German wars are again waged in Italy and the base of operations is shifted from Austria to Bavaria. But with appropriate fortificatory installations in the modern sense, where the fortresses exist for the sake of the armies and not the armies for the sake of the fortresses, the point of such an invasion can be broken far more easily than that of a German invasion of Italy. And therefore we need make no bogey out of this so-called “outflanking” of the whole of South Germany. The enemy who outflanks a German Upper Rhine army via Italy and Tyrol must advance as far as the Baltic Sea before he can pluck the fruits of this outflanking. Napoleon’s march from Jena to Stettin, however, can hardly be repeated in the direction from Munich to Danzig.

That Germany, if it abandons the line of the Etsch and the Mincio, renounces a very strong defensive position, we in no way dispute. But that this position is necessary for the security of Germany’s southern frontier, we most emphatically dispute. If, of course, like the advocates of the opposite view seem to do, one starts from the assumption that a German army, wherever it appears, is beaten every time – then one may imagine that the Etsch, Mincio and Po are unconditionally necessary for us. But then, in reality, they can be of no use at all; then neither fortresses nor armies help us; then we had best pass straight through the Caudine Forks. We have other views of Germany’s military strength, and we are therefore quite content to see our southern frontier secured by the advantages it offers for the offensive on Lombard soil.

But here political considerations also come into play, which we cannot leave aside. Since 1820 the national movement in Italy has emerged from every defeat rejuvenated and more powerful. There are few countries whose so-called natural frontiers coincide so closely with the frontiers of nationality and are at the same time so pronounced. When the national movement has once grown strong in such a country, which moreover numbers some twenty-five million inhabitants, it can no longer rest so long as one of the finest, politically and militarily most important parts of the country – and thus almost a quarter of the total population – is subjected to an anti-national foreign rule. Since 1820 Austria has ruled in Italy only by force, by the suppression of repeated insurrections, by the terrorism of the state of siege. In order to maintain its rule in Italy, Austria is compelled to treat its political opponents, i.e., every Italian who feels himself an Italian, worse than common criminals. The manner in which Italian political prisoners have been, and in places still are, treated by Austria is unheard of in civilised countries. The Austrians have sought, with particular predilection, to brand political offenders in Italy with infamy by means of the bastinado, whether to extort confessions or under the pretext of punishment. Much moral indignation has been poured out over the Italian dagger, over political assassination; but people seem to have quite forgotten that the Austrian stick provoked it. The means which Austria is obliged to employ in order to maintain its rule in Italy are the very best proof that this rule cannot possibly be lasting; and Germany, which despite Radowitz, Willisen and Hailbronner does not have the same interest in it as Austria, Germany is certainly placed in the position of having to ask itself whether this interest is great enough to outweigh the many disadvantages connected with it.

Upper Italy is an appendage which Germany, in all circumstances, can only profit from in war, but only harm from in peace. The armies needed to hold it down have grown steadily since 1820 and have, since 1848, exceeded 70,000 men even in the profoundest peace, men who find themselves continually as if in enemy territory and must be prepared for attacks at any moment. The war of 1848 and 1849 and the occupation of Italy to this day – despite the Piedmontese war contribution, despite the repeated Lombard contributions, forced loans and extra taxes – have obviously cost Austria far more than Italy has brought it in since 1848. And yet, from 1848 to 1854, the country was systematically treated as a merely provisional possession, from which one extracts as much as one can before evacuating it. Only since the Oriental war has Lombardy entered a less abnormal state for a few years; and how long will that last, given the present entanglements, when Italian national feeling is again pulsing so fiercely?

But what is far more important: does the possession of Lombardy outweigh all the hatred, all the fanatical enmity it has drawn upon us in the whole of Italy? Does it outweigh the joint responsibility for the measures by which Austria – in Germany’s name and interest, so we are assured – safeguards its rule there? Does it outweigh the continual interference in the internal affairs of the rest of Italy, without which, according to previous practice and Austrian assurances, Lombardy cannot be held fast, and which only makes the hatred of the Italians against us Germans blaze up more fiercely? In all the foregoing military considerations we have always presupposed the worst case, that of an alliance of France with Italy. So long as we retain Lombardy, Italy is unconditionally the ally of France in every French war against Germany. As soon as we give it up, that ceases. But is it our interest to hold on to four fortresses and, in return, secure for ourselves the fanatical enmity and for the French the alliance of 25 million Italians?

The interested chatter about the political incapacity of the Italians and their calling to stand under German or French rule, as well as the various speculations about the possibility or impossibility of a united Italy, strike us as somewhat strange when they come from the mouths of Germans. How long is it since we, the great German nation, which numbers twice as many souls as the Italians, since we escaped the “calling” of standing under either French or Russian rule? And has today’s practice settled the question of the unity or disunity of Germany? Are we not, in all probability, at this very moment on the eve of events that will first bring the question of decision to ripeness in both directions for our future? Have we completely forgotten Napoleon in Erfurt, or the Austrian appeal to Russia at the Warsaw conferences, or the battle of Bronzell?

For the moment we are willing to grant that Italy must be under either German or French influence. In that case, in addition to sympathies, the military-geographical situation of the two influencing countries is decisive. We will assume the armed forces of France and Germany to be equally strong, although Germany could obviously be far stronger. But we believe we have now proved that in the most favourable case, namely when the Valais and the Simplon are open to the French, their immediate military influence embraces only Piedmont, and they must first win a battle in order to extend it to territories lying further afield, whereas our influence extends over the whole of Lombardy and over the point of junction between Piedmont and the peninsula, and we must first be defeated in order to be deprived of that influence. Where, however, such a geographical disposition for rule is given, Germany’s influence has nothing to fear from French competition.

General Hailbronner recently said, roughly, in the Augsburg *Allgemeine Zeitung*: Germany has a different calling than to serve as a lightning conductor for the thunderbolts gathering over the head of the Bonapartist dynasty. With equal right the Italians can say: Italy has a different calling than to serve the Germans as a buffer against the blows France directs at them, and to be rewarded for this by the Austrians with cudgel blows. But if Germany has an interest in preserving such a buffer here, it certainly does so far better by getting on a good footing with Italy, letting the national movement have its due, and leaving Italian matters to the Italians so long as they do not meddle in German matters. Radowitz's assertion that France would have to rule in Upper Italy tomorrow if Austria quits it today was as unfounded in its day as it was three months ago; as things stand today, it seems to be on the way to becoming a truth, but in a sense opposite to Radowitz's. If the twenty-five million Italians cannot assert their independence, the two million Danes, the four million Belgians, the three million Dutch are even less capable of doing so. Yet we do not hear the defenders of German rule in Italy lamenting over French or Swedish rule in those countries and demanding that it be replaced by German rule.

As to the question of unity, our view is this: Either Italy can become united, and then it will have its own policy, which will necessarily be neither German nor French and can therefore be no more harmful to us than to the French; or it remains fragmented, and then this fragmentation will secure us allies in Italy in any war with France.

So much is certain: whether we possess Lombardy or not, we shall always have a significant influence in Italy as long as we are strong at home. If we leave it to Italy to settle its own affairs, the hatred of the Italians against us will cease of its own accord, and our natural influence over them will in any event become much more significant and may, under certain circumstances, grow into real hegemony. Instead, then, of seeking our strength in the possession of foreign soil and in the oppression of a foreign nationality, whose capacity for the future only prejudice can deny, we should do better to see to it that we are united and strong in our own house.

III

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If we demand the Po and the Mincio for protection not so much against the Italians as against the French, we must not be surprised if the French likewise claim river lines for protection against us.

The centre of gravity of France lies not in the centre on the Loire, near Orléans, but in the north, on the Seine, in Paris; and experience on two occasions proves that, with Paris, the whole of France falls. The military significance of the frontier configuration of France therefore depends above all on the protection it affords to Paris.

From Paris to Lyon, Basel, Strasbourg, Lauterbourg in a straight line it is roughly equidistant, about fifty-five miles. Any invasion of France from Italy with Paris as its objective must, however, advance in the area of Lyon, between Rhône and Loire, or further north, unless it wishes to endanger its communications. The Alpine frontier of France south of Grenoble, therefore, does not come into consideration for an advance on Paris; Paris is completely covered from this side.

From Lauterbourg onward the French frontier leaves the Rhine and turns, at a right angle to it, to the north-west; from Lauterbourg to Dunkirk it forms a virtually straight line. The arc we have described with the radius Paris–Lyon via Basel and Strasbourg to Lauterbourg is thus interrupted here; the French northern frontier forms instead the chord to this arc, and the segment of the circle beyond this chord does not belong to France. The shortest connecting line from Paris to the northern frontier, the line Paris–Mons, is only half as long as the radius Paris–Lyon or Paris–Strasbourg.

In these simple geometrical relationships lies the reason why Belgium must be the battlefield of all wars fought in the north between Germany and France. Belgium outflanks the whole of eastern France from Verdun and the Upper Marne to the Rhine. That is to say: an army invading from Belgium can reach Paris sooner than a French army stationed beyond Verdun or Chaumont and facing the Rhine can return; thus, with a successful offensive, the army advancing out of Belgium can always wedge itself between Paris and the French army of the Moselle or the Rhine; all the more so as the route from the Belgian frontier to the points on the Marne decisive for the outflanking movement (Meaux, Château-Thierry, Épernay) is shorter still than that to Paris itself.

Nor is that all. Along the whole line from the Meuse to the sea, the enemy encounters not the slightest obstacle of terrain in the direction of Paris until he reaches the Aisne and the lower Oise, which, however, run in a manner quite unfavourable for the defence of Paris against the north. Neither in 1814 nor in 1815 did they pose serious difficulties to the attack. But even granted that they can be drawn into the sphere of the defensive system provided by the Seine and its tributaries, and were partially so drawn in 1814, this at the same time states as a fact that the actual defence of northern France does not begin until Compiègne and Soissons, and that the first defensive position covering Paris against the north lies only twelve miles from Paris.

A frontier weaker than the French frontier against Belgium is not easily conceivable for a state. It is known what trouble Vauban took to replace the lack of natural means of defence with artificial ones; it is also known how, in 1814 and 1815, the attack broke through the triple belt of fortresses almost without taking any notice of it. It is known how, in 1815, fortress after fortress succumbed to the attacks of a single Prussian corps after incredibly short sieges and bombardments. Avesnes surrendered on 22 June 1815 after being bombarded for half a day from ten field howitzers. Guise surrendered to ten field guns without firing a shot. Maubeuge capitulated after 14 days of open trench on 13 July. Landrecies opened its gates on 21 July after 36 hours of open trench and two hours of bombardment, after only 126 bombs and 52 round shot had been fired by the besiegers. Mariembourg demanded merely pro forma the honours of an open trench and a single twenty-four-pounder ball and capitulated on 28 July. Philippeville held out for two days of open trench and a few hours of bombardment, Rocroi for 26 hours of open approaches and two hours of bombardment. Only Mézières held on for 18 days after the opening of the approaches. There was a capitulation frenzy among the commandants which was not much inferior to that in Prussia after the battle of Jena; and if it is adduced that these places were dilapidated, weakly garrisoned and poorly equipped in 1815, it must not be forgotten that, with a few exceptions, these fortresses must always remain neglected. The triple Vauban belt has nowadays lost all value; it is a positive injury to France. None of the fortresses west of the Meuse covers, by itself, any section of terrain, and nowhere can four or five be found that together form a group within which an army can find cover and at the same time retain manoeuvring capability. This is because not one is situated on a great river. The Lys, the Scheldt, the Sambre only acquire significance for war on Belgian territory; and thus the effect of these fortresses scattered in the open field does not extend beyond the range of their cannon. With the exception of a couple of large depots near the frontier, which can serve as a base for an offensive into Belgium, and a few points on the Meuse and Moselle that have strategic importance, all the other fortified places and forts on the French northern frontier serve only for the most useless splintering of forces. Any government that razed them would do France a service; but what would traditional French superstition have to say to that?

The French northern frontier is therefore in the highest degree unfavourable for defence; it is in fact not to be defended at all, and Vauban's fortress belt, instead of strengthening it, is nowadays merely an admission and a monument of its weakness.

Like the Central European Great Power theorists in Italy, the French also look beyond their northern frontier for a river line that would afford them a good defensive position. Which might this be?

The first line that offers itself would be that of the Lower Scheldt and the Dyle, continued to the junction of the Sambre with the Meuse. This line would attach the better half of Belgium to France. It would enclose almost all the famous Belgian battlefields on which French and Germans have fought each other: Oudenarde, Jemappes, Fleurus, Ligny, Waterloo. But it still forms no defensive line; it would leave a great gap between the Scheldt and the Meuse through which the enemy could penetrate unhindered.

The second line would be the Meuse itself. If France had the left bank of the Meuse, it would not even be as favourably placed as Germany would be if it possessed only the Adige line in Italy. The Adige line gives a fairly complete rounding-off, the Meuse only a very imperfect one. If it flowed from Namur to Antwerp, it would form a much better frontier line. Instead, from Namur it runs north-eastwards, and only beyond Venlo does it flow towards the North Sea in a great arc.

The whole territory situated north of Namur between the Meuse and the sea would in war be covered only by its fortresses; for an enemy crossing of the Meuse would always find the French army in the plain of South Brabant, and a French offensive against the German left bank of the Rhine would immediately encounter the strong Rhine line, and indeed directly the entrenched camp of Cologne. The salient angle of the Meuse between Sedan and Liège further contributes to weakening the line, despite being filled by the Ardennes. The Meuse line thus gives the French too much in one place and too little in another for a good frontier defence. Let us therefore go further.

If we place one point of our compasses on the map again at Paris and describe with the radius Paris–Lyon an arc from Basel to the North Sea, we find that the course of the Rhine from Basel to its mouth follows this arc with remarkable precision. Within a few miles, all the important points on the Rhine are equidistant from Paris. This is the real, solid ground of the French demand for the Rhine frontier.

If France possesses the Rhine, Paris, opposite Germany, is truly the centre of France. All the radii running from Paris to the attackable frontier, whether to the Rhine or to the Jura, are of equal length. Everywhere the convex periphery of the circle is presented to the enemy, behind which he must manoeuvre in detours, while the French armies can move upon the shorter chords and forestall the enemy. The equal length of the lines of operation and retreat of the various armies immensely facilitates a concentric retreat and, with it, the possibility at a given point of uniting two of these armies for a major blow against the still divided enemy.

With the possession of the Rhine frontier, the defence system of France, as far as its natural presuppositions are concerned, would be one of those which General Willisen calls ‘ideal’, leaving nothing further to be desired. The strong internal defence system of the Seine basin, formed by the fan‑shaped rivers which flow into the Seine – the Yonne, Aube, Marne, Aisne and Oise – this river system upon which, in 1814, Napoleon dealt the Allies such harsh strategic lessons, is only thus evenly covered in every direction; the enemy approaches from all sides more or less simultaneously and can be held up at the rivers until the French armies, with united forces, are able to attack each of his isolated columns separately; whereas, without the Rhine line, at the most decisive point, by Compiègne and Soissons, the defence cannot come to a halt until it is 12 miles from Paris. In no region of Europe would the defence, in the sudden concentration of large forces, be so supported by railways as in the country between the Seine and the Rhine. From the centre, Paris, the railway radii run to Boulogne, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Maastricht, Liège and Cologne, to Mannheim and Mainz via Metz, to Strasbourg, to Basel, to Dijon and Lyon. At whatever point the enemy may appear in greatest strength, the full might of the reserve army can everywhere be thrown against him from Paris by rail. The internal defence of the Seine basin is specifically strengthened by the fact that, within it, all the railway radii run through the river valleys (Oise, Marne, Seine, Aube, and partly Yonne). But that is not all. Three concentric arcs of railway, each at least a quadrant in length, run around Paris at fairly equal distances: the first by the left‑bank Rhine railways, which now run almost without interruption from Neuss to Basel; the second goes from Ostend and Antwerp via Namur, Arlon, Thionville, Metz and Nancy to Épinal and is likewise practically completed; the third, finally, runs from Calais via Lille, Douai, St‑Quentin, Reims, Châlons‑sur‑Marne and St‑Dizier to Chaumont. Here, therefore, in every nook and corner, the means are provided to concentrate masses of troops at any desired point in the shortest time; and here, by nature and art and without any fortresses, the defence through manoeuvrability would be so strong that an invasion of France would have to reckon on a quite different resistance from that which it encountered in 1814 and 1815.

Only one thing would be lacking for the Rhine as a frontier river. So long as one bank is entirely German and the other entirely French, neither of the two peoples commands it. A superior army, to whatever nation it belongs, could nowhere be prevented from crossing; we have seen this a hundred times, and strategy gives the reasons why it must be so. In the event of a superior German offensive, the French defence would only come to a stand further back: the northern army on the Meuse between Venlo and Namur; the Moselle army on the Moselle, near the confluence of the Saar perhaps; the Upper Rhine army on the Upper Moselle and Upper Meuse. In order to command the Rhine completely, in order to be able energetically to oppose an enemy river‑crossing, the French would therefore have to have bridgeheads on the right bank of the Rhine. It was thus entirely consistent of Napoleon simply to annex Wesel, Kastel and Kehl to the French Empire. As things now stand, his nephew, to supplement the fine fortresses which the Germans have built for him on the left bank of the Rhine, would in addition have to request Ehrenbreitstein, Deutz and, if need be, the Germersheim bridgehead as well. Then the military‑geographical system of France, as regards both offence and defence, would be complete, and any further appendage could only do harm. And how very much grounded in nature, how self‑evident this system appears, to that the Allies in 1813 bore striking witness. France had barely been arranging this system for seventeen years, and yet it was already so self‑evident that the high allies, despite their superior strength and the defencelessness of France, shrank back from the thought of meddling with it as from a sacrilege; and if the German‑national elements of the movement had not swept them along, the Rhine would still today be a French river.

If, however, we have ceded to the French not only the Rhine but also the bridgeheads on the right bank, then the French have, for their own part, fulfilled the duty which, in the opinion of Radowitz, Willisen and Hailbronner, we are fulfilling towards ourselves by holding the Adige and the Mincio with the bridgeheads of Peschiera and Mantua. But then we have also rendered Germany as totally powerless vis‑à‑vis France as Italy now is vis‑à‑vis Germany. And then, as in 1813, Russia would be the natural ‘liberator’ of Germany (just as France, or rather the French government, now poses as the ‘liberator’ of Italy) and, as a reward for its disinterested exertions, would merely request a few small strips of territory for rounding off Poland – Galicia and Prussia, perhaps; for Poland is, after all, likewise ‘outflanked’ by these!

What the Adige and the Mincio are for us, the Rhine is, and even far more so, for France. Just as the Venetian territory in the hands of Italy, and possibly France, outflanks Bavaria and the Upper Rhine and lays bare the road to Vienna, so Belgium and Germany, with Belgium, outflank the whole of eastern France and lay bare the road to Paris far more effectively. From the Isonzo to Vienna there are still sixty miles, in terrain where the defence can still come to a stand to some extent; from the Sambre to Paris it is thirty miles, and the defensive does not find a somewhat covering river line until twelve miles from Paris, at Soissons or Compiègne. If Germany, according to Radowitz, by giving up the Mincio and the Adige places herself in advance in the situation into which she would otherwise come through the loss of an entire campaign, France is, with her present frontiers, so placed as if she had possessed the Rhine frontier and had lost two campaigns, the first for the fortresses on the Rhine and Meuse, the second in the field in the Belgian plain. Even the strong position of the upper Italian fortresses is, to some extent, repeated on the Lower Rhine and the Meuse;

could not an equally strong system be made out of Maastricht, Cologne, Jülich, Wesel and Venlo, with slight assistance and about two intermediate points, that would completely cover Belgium and North Brabant, and that would allow a French army too weak for the field to pin down a far stronger enemy by manoeuvring on the rivers and finally, by means of the railways, to withdraw unhindered into the Belgian plain or towards Douai?

We have assumed throughout this inquiry that Belgium is completely open to the Germans for an attack upon France and is allied with them. Since we had to argue from the French standpoint, we had the same right to do so as our opponents on the Mincio, when they assumed that Italy – even a free and united Italy – was always hostile to the Germans. In all such matters it is entirely in order first to examine the worst case, first to prepare for it; and so the French must proceed when they now consider the defensibility and the strategic configuration of their northern frontier. That Belgium is, by European treaties, a neutral country, just like Switzerland, we may leave out of account here. First, historical practice must first prove that this neutrality, in a European war, is more than a scrap of paper, and second, France will in no case be able to count on it so firmly that she could treat the whole frontier facing Belgium militarily as if that country formed a protective gulf between France and Germany. The weakness of the frontier thus remains, in the end, the same, whether it is actually actively defended or whether only troops are detached to occupy it against possible attacks.

We have now more or less carried through the parallel between the Po and the Rhine. Apart from the greater dimensions on the Rhine, which would only strengthen the French claim, the analogy is as complete as could be desired. One must hope that, in the event of war, the German soldiers will defend the Rhine on the Po practically with more success than the Central European great‑power politicians do theoretically. On the Po they do indeed defend the Rhine, but – only for the French.

For the rest, in case the Germans should ever be so unfortunate as to lose their ‘natural frontier’, the Po and the Mincio, let us in that event pursue the analogy a little further. The French possessed their ‘natural frontier’ for only seventeen years and have now been obliged to get along without it for almost forty‑five years. During this time their best military men have also come to the theoretical realisation that the uselessness of Vauban’s belt of fortresses against an invasion is rooted in the laws of modern warfare, so that neither chance nor the much‑loved ‘trahison’ (treachery) permitted the Allies in 1814 and 1815 to march unconcernedly between the fortresses. That something had to be done to secure the exposed northern frontier was, accordingly, all the more evident. Nevertheless it was obvious that there was no prospect of obtaining the Rhine frontier so soon. What was to be done?

The French helped themselves in a way that does honour to a great people: they fortified Paris, for the first time in modern history they attempted to transform their capital into an entrenched camp on the most colossal scale. The war scholars of the old school shook their heads over this foolish undertaking. Money thrown away, solely to gratify French grandiloquence! Nothing behind it, pure windbaggery—who ever heard of a fortress nine miles in circumference and with a million inhabitants! How is it to be defended unless half the army is placed inside as garrison? How are all these people to be supplied with provisions? Madness, French presumption, godless sacrilege, a repetition of the Tower of Babel! Thus the military fogey judged the new enterprise, the same fogey who has studied siege warfare on a Vaubanesque hexagon and whose passive method of defence knows no greater offensive riposte than a sortie by a platoon of infantry from the covered way to the foot of the glacis! But the French calmly continued building and had the satisfaction that, although Paris has not yet passed its ordeal of fire, the unfogeyed soldiers of all Europe proved them right, that Wellington drew up plans for fortifying London, that around Vienna, if we are not mistaken, the construction of detached forts had already begun, and that the fortification of Berlin is at least under discussion. They have even had to learn from the example of Sebastopol what enormous strength a colossal entrenched camp has when it is occupied by an entire army and the defence is conducted offensively on the greatest scale. And Sebastopol had only a ring wall, no detached forts, only fieldworks, no masonry escarpments!

Since Paris has been fortified, France can dispense with the Rhine frontier. As Germany in Italy, it will have to conduct its defence on the northern frontier initially offensively. That this has been understood is proved by the disposition of the railway network. Should this offensive be repulsed, the army will come to a halt on the Oise and the Aisne, and definitively so; for any further advance by the enemy would serve no further purpose, since the invading army coming from Belgium would be too weak alone to operate against Paris. Behind the Aisne, in secure communication with Paris, in the worst case behind the Marne, with its left flank resting on Paris, in an offensive flanking position, the French Northern Army could await the arrival of the other armies. The enemy would have no choice but to advance on Château-Thierry and operate against the communications of the French Moselle and Rhine armies. But the operation would be far from having the decisive importance it had before the fortification of Paris. In the worst case the retreat of the other French armies behind the Loire cannot be cut off; concentrated there, they will always be strong enough to become a threat to the invading army, weakened and divided by the investment of Paris, or to fight their way through into Paris. In a word: the turning movement through Belgium has had its sting broken by the fortification of Paris; it is no longer decisive, and the disadvantages it entails and the means to be used against it can be simply calculated.

We would do well to imitate the example of the French. Instead of letting ourselves be deafened by the clamour about the indispensability of a non-German possession that becomes more untenable for Germany day by day, we would do better to prepare for the inevitable moment when we shall give up Italy. The sooner the fortifications then necessary for us are laid out in advance, the better. Where and how they are to be laid out—to say more about this than the hints thrown out earlier is not our office. Only let no illusory centres of gravity be created, and let not the sole fortifications that can bring a retreating army to a halt—entrenched camps and groups of fortresses on rivers—be neglected in reliance upon them.

IV

We have now seen where the theory of natural frontiers, put forward by the Central European great-power politicians, leads. The same right that Germany has to the Po, France has to the Rhine. If France is not to incorporate nine million Walloons, Dutchmen, and Germans for the sake of a good military position, then we have no right to subjugate six million Italians for the sake of a military position. And this natural frontier, the Po, is after all only a military position, and solely for that reason, we are told, Germany must hold it.

The theory of natural frontiers puts an end to the Schleswig-Holstein question with a single cry: Danmark til Eideren! Denmark to the Eider! For what do the Danes demand but their Po and Mincio, called the Eider, their Mantua, named Friedrichstadt?

With the same right on which Germany relies on the Po, the theory of natural frontiers demands for Russia Galicia and Bukovina and a rounding-off towards the Baltic that at least encompasses the entire Prussian right bank of the Vistula. A few years later it will be able, with the same right, to demand that the Oder be the natural frontier of Russian Poland.

The theory of natural frontiers, applied to Portugal, is compelled to extend that country to the Pyrenees and dissolve all of Spain into Portugal.

The natural frontier of Reuß-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein must likewise be extended at least to the border of the territory of the German Confederation and beyond to the Po and perhaps to the Vistula, if the laws of eternal justice are to be satisfied, and Reuß-Greiz-Schleiz-Lobenstein has as much claim that right be done it as Austria.

If the theory of natural frontiers, i.e. frontiers established exclusively by military considerations, is correct, what name shall we then give to the German diplomats who at the Congress of Vienna brought us to the brink of a war of Germans against Germans, let the Meuse line slip away, laid bare the German eastern frontier, and left it to foreign countries to hem in and partition Germany? Truly, no country has as much cause to complain of the Congress of Vienna as Germany; but if we apply the yardstick of natural frontiers, then what becomes of the reputation of the German statesmen of that time? And it is precisely the same people who defend the theory of natural frontiers on the Po who live on the legacy of the diplomats of 1815 and continue the tradition of the Congress of Vienna.

Do you want an example of this?

When Belgium broke away from Holland in 1830, the same people who now make a vital question of the Mincio raised their voices. They cried ‘shame’ over the dismemberment of the strong Netherlandish border power, which was supposed to form a bulwark against France and which had even been obliged—so much superstition after all the experiences of twenty years!—to lay a thin little band of fortresses around the Vaubanesque fortress belt, at least magnificent in its kind. As if the great powers feared that Arras, and Lille, and Douai, and Valenciennes would one fine morning march into Belgium with all their bastions, demi-lunes, and lunettes and settle down there! At that time the representatives of the same narrow-minded tendency we are here combating lamented that Germany was in danger, for Belgium was only a will-less appendage of France, a necessary enemy of Germany, and the valuable fortresses that had been built with German (i.e., taken from the French) money as protection against France were now at the disposal of the French against us. The French frontier had been advanced to and across the Meuse and the Schelde; how long would it be before it was pushed forward to the Rhine? Most of us still remember these lamentations quite distinctly. And what has happened? Since 1848, and especially since the Bonapartist restoration, Belgium has turned away from France ever more decidedly and has drawn closer to Germany. It can now even be considered a foreign member of the German Confederation. And what did the Belgians do as soon as they placed themselves in a kind of opposition to France? They razed all the fortresses which the wisdom of the Congress of Vienna had imposed on the country as *completely useless against France*, and erected around Antwerp an entrenched camp large enough to receive the entire army and, in the event of a French invasion, to await English or German succour there. And rightly so.

The same wise policy that in 1830 wished forcibly to chain Catholic, predominantly French-speaking Belgium to Protestant, Dutch-speaking Holland, this same wise policy has since 1848 wished to keep Italy forcibly under the Austrian yoke and to make us Germans responsible for Austria’s actions in Italy. And all that out of pure fear of France. The entire patriotism of these gentlemen seems to consist in their falling into a feverish excitement as soon as France is mentioned. They seem still not to have recovered from the blows dealt by old Napoleon fifty and sixty years ago. We certainly do not belong to those who underestimate the war power of France. We know very well that, for example, as regards light infantry and experience and skill in petty warfare and certain aspects of artillery science, no army in Germany can measure itself against the French. But when people first throw around the 1,200,000 soldiers of Germany as if they stood there, neat and complete like chess pieces with which Herr Dr. Kollo is playing a game against France for Alsace and Lorraine—and when the same people then display on every occasion a timidity as if it were self-evident that these 1,200,000 men must be cut to pieces by half as many Frenchmen unless the said 1,200,000 creep away into nothing but impregnable positions—then it is truly high time to lose patience. It is time, in view of this policy of passive defensive, to recall that, even if Germany by and large may have to rely on a defensive with offensive ripostes, no defensive is more effective than the active one, the one conducted offensively. It is time to recall that we have often enough shown ourselves superior to the French and other nations in attack.

“For the rest, the genius of our soldiers is to attack; and that is also quite right,” says Frederick the Great of his infantry; how his cavalry understood how to attack, Rossbach, Zorndorf, and Hohenfriedberg may testify. As to how the German infantry was accustomed to attack in 1813 and 1814, the best proof of this is Blücher’s well-known instruction at the opening of the campaign of 1815:

“Since experience has taught that the French army is unable to withstand the bayonet attack of our battalion masses, it is right to carry this out whenever it is a question of overthrowing the enemy or winning a post.”

Our finest battles have been offensive battles, and if the German soldier lacks a certain qualification of the French soldier, it is demonstrably that of ensconcing himself defensively in villages and houses; in attack he can well hold his own beside him and has done so often enough.

As for this policy itself, apart from the underlying motives, it consists in: first, under the pretext of defending alleged German interests or those absurdly exaggerated, making ourselves hated among all the smaller border neighbours, and then becoming indignant that they attach themselves more to France. Five years of Bonapartist restoration were necessary to separate Belgium from the French alliance into which the policy of 1815, continued in 1830, the policy of the Holy Alliance, had driven it; and in Italy we have created for the French a position that truly outweighs the Mincio line. And yet French policy towards Italy has always been narrow-minded, petty, exploitative, so that with any loyal treatment on our part the Italians would unconditionally have held more to us than to France. How they were sucked dry of money, natural produce, art treasures, and men by Napoleon and his governors and generals from 1796 to 1814 is well enough known. In 1814 the Austrians came as “liberators” and were received as liberators. (How they liberated Italy is testified by the hatred that every Italian feels today against the Tedeschi <Germans>.) So much for the practice of French policy in Italy; as for the theory, we need only say that it knows but
one
principle:
France can never tolerate a united and independent Italy.
Down to Louis Napoleon this principle stands firm, and in order to forestall all misunderstandings, La Guéronnière must now once again proclaim it as an eternal truth. And in the face of such a narrow-minded, philistine policy of France, a policy that unhesitatingly claims the right of interference in the internal affairs of Italy—in the face of such a policy should we Germans have to fear that an Italy no longer under direct German dominion will always be France’s obedient servant against us? It is truly laughable. It is the old hue and cry of 1830 over Belgium. Belgium came to us nonetheless, came unbidden, Italy would have to come to us just the same.

It must, moreover, be firmly maintained that the question of the possession of Lombardy is a question between Italy and Germany, not between Louis Napoleon and Austria. In relation to a third party such as Louis Napoleon, a third party who interferes for the sake of his own interests, which are in other respects anti-German, it is a matter of the simple assertion of a province which one yields only under compulsion, a military position which one evacuates only when one can no longer hold it. The political question in this case immediately recedes behind the military one; if we are attacked, we defend ourselves.

If Louis Napoleon wishes to pose as the paladin of Italian independence, he can spare himself the war against Austria. Charité bien ordonnée commence chez soi-même. [Charity well ordered begins at home.] The “département” of Corsica is an Italian island, Italian, despite being the homeland of Bonapartism. Let Louis Napoleon first cede Corsica to his uncle Victor Emmanuel, perhaps then we might be prepared to talk. Until he has done this, he will do well to keep his enthusiasm for Italy to himself.

There is no greater power in all Europe that has not united parts of other nations with its territory. France has Flemish, German, Italian provinces. England, the only country that really possesses natural borders, has overstepped them in every direction, has made conquests in all countries and is now even in dispute with one of its dependencies, the Ionian Islands, after having just suppressed a colossal rebellion in India by genuinely Austrian methods. Germany has half-Slavonic provinces, Slavonic, Magyar, Wallachian, and Italian appendages. And over how many tongues does the White Tsar of Petersburg rule!

That the map of Europe is definitively fixed, no one will maintain. All changes, insofar as they have permanence, must in the main and on the whole result in giving the great and viable European nations more and more their
real
natural borders, which are determined by language and sympathies, while at the same time the fragments of peoples that are still to be found here and there and are no longer capable of a national existence remain incorporated into the larger nations and either are absorbed into them or maintain themselves only as ethnographic monuments without political significance. Military considerations can only rank second.

But if the map of Europe is to be revised, we Germans have
the right to demand that this be done thoroughly and impartially and that it is not, as is the current fashion, demanded that Germany alone should make sacrifices, while all the other nations benefit from them, without giving up the slightest thing. We can dispense with much that hangs about the borders of our territory and entangles us in matters in which we had better not interfere so directly. But exactly the same applies to others too; let them set us the example of unselfishness or be silent. The final result, however, of this whole investigation is that we Germans would make an altogether excellent bargain if we could exchange the Po, the Mincio, the Adige, and the whole Italian jumble for
the unity
that protects us from a repetition of Warsaw and Bronzell and which alone can make us strong within and without. Once we have this unity, the defensive can cease. We shall then need the Mincio no longer; “our genius” will once more be “to attack”; and there are still some rotten spots where this will be quite necessary enough.