When General Bonaparte, in 1796, descended from the 
Maritime Alps, the great week of Dego, Millesimo, Montenotte 
and Mondovi, sufficed to conquer the whole of Piedmont and 
Lombardy. His columns advanced without resistance until they 
reached the Mincio. But there the tables turned. The walls of 
Mantua arrested them, and it took the greatest general of his age 
nine months to conquer this obstacle. The whole second part of 
the first campaign of Italy turns upon the conquest of Mantua. 
Rivoli, Castiglione, Arcole, and the march through the Brenta 
valley, are all subordinate to that grand object.' Twice was 
Napoleon arrested by a fortress; the first instance was Mantua, 
Danzig being the second.’ Napoleon knew very well that Mantua 
was the key of Italy. After he once got hold of it, he never parted 
with it until he parted with his crown, and his sway over Italy was 
never seriously endangered till then. 

From the geographical configuration of Italy, it is clear that 
whichever power can hold the Northern portion, the Gallia 
Cisalpina of the Romans, that power rules in all Italy. The basin of 
the Po has ever been the battle-field in which the fates of the 
peninsula were decided. From Marignano and Pavia, through 
Turin, Arcole, Rivoli, Novi and Marengo, down to Custozza and 
Novara, all the decisive struggles for mastery in Italy have been | 
fought there.'“ It is quite natural. French or German, whoever 
drives his opponent from the valley of the Po, isolates him from 
the long-stretched peninsula, and isolates that peninsula from its 
allies. Reduced to its own resources, this peninsula, the least 
populated and least civilized portion of Italy, is soon subdued. 
Now, in this basin of the Po, Mantua is the most central position. 

It is equidistant from both Adriatic and Mediterranean, about 70 
miles from either; it thus effectually shuts up, if defended by an 
army in the field, all access to the peninsula. Add to this the 
immense tactical advantages of its position, in the middle of a lake, 
with three bridge-heads to debouch from, surrounded on all sides 
by ground intersected by rivers, and tending to isolate from each 
other the various portions of a besieging army—and no wonder 
that it should be a traditional saying that who holds Mantua is 
master of Italy. 

These few considerations will suffice to show that it would not 
be so very easy to drive the Austrians out of Italy, even if they 
held nothing but Mantua. What it took the first captain of the age 
nine months to do, a late captain of the Swiss artillery will not 
do under the same time. But the military aspect of Lombardy has 
changed immensely since 1796, nay, even since 1848. The 
campaign of 1848 is in a manner the reverse of that of 1796. If 
1796 showed what Mantua could do when on the defensive, 1848 
showed what Mantua, Peschiera, Legnago and Verona together 
can do in offensive warfare; and since then, this splendid position, 
about the finest in Europe, has been worked out and prepared in 
every possible way, and with a predilection, a study, and an 
ensemble which do the highest credit to the Austrian staff and 
engineers. 

Look at the map. From the Lago di Garda to the Po runs the 
Mincio, a not very considerable river, fordable in Summer in many 
places, but, on the whole, not unfit for a defensive position. The 
length of the line, which must be measured from Peschiera to 
Borgoforte, though this is beyond the river, is about thirty miles, 
so that an army, placed in the middle of it, can reach either 
extremity in one day’s march. Flanked on the right (north) by the 
lake and the Tyrolese Alps, and on the left by the Po, this short 
line of thirty miles is the first defensible line which an Austrian 
army can find against an enemy from the west. But this is not its 
only merit. Nearly parallel with the lake, the Mincio and the Po, at 
a distance of from ten to thirty miles to the rear, runs the Adige, 
forming a second and far stronger line of defense, and offering at 
all times an obstacle which must be overcome by bridges. This 
double line, as a glance on the map will show, naturally rounds off 
the Tyrol and the adjoining Austrian Provinces into a compact 
whole; it is, militarily speaking, their necessary complement; and 
upon this is founded the Austrian political maxim that the line of 
the Mincio is necessary to the defense of Germany, and that the 
Rhine must be defended on the Po. 

This position, naturally strong, has been rendered stronger still 
by art. The line of the Mincio is cut in two by Mantua. This 
fortress is so near to the mouth of that river, that the portion 
below it may be left entirely out of the calculation. Thus the line is 
shortened by some seven or eight miles more; and its southern 
extremity strengthened by a fortress of the first rank, forming 
bridge-heads on either side of the river. The other extremity, 
where the river leaves the lake, is defended by a small fortress, 
Peschiera. This place is certainly not very strong, and was taken by 
the Piedmontese in 1848; but it is sufficient to resist an irregular 
attack, and can therefore be held while the Austrians hold the 
field; while it allows them to debouch on the western side of the 
Mincio. 

The line of the Adige, up to 1815, had been neglected. From 
1797 to 1809, it formed the boundary of Austria and Italy; but 
since 1815, Austria became possessed of both banks of the river. 
Behind Mantua, about 25 miles distant, lay the small fortress of 
Legnago, on the Adige; but behind Peschiera, the nearest town, 
Verona, was not fortified. The Austrians, however, were not slow 
to find out that, to make the position really what it ought to be, 
Verona must be fortified. And so it was. Only, with the usual sloth 
of antediluvian Austria, the execution was so neglected that in 
1848, when the revolution broke out, the portion on the left or 
eastern bank of the river, that which might be turned against 
Austria, was tolerably fortified, while the side toward the enemy 
was comparatively defenseless. 

Radetzky and his chiefs of the staff, Hess and Schonhals, at once 
set to work, when the revolution had driven them from Milan, to 
remedy this defect. The hights surrounding Verona to the west 
were crowned with entrenchments, and by these the ramparts of 
the town were covered from a commanding fire. And well for 
Austria they did so. The line of the Mincio had to be abandoned. 
Peschiera was besieged by the Piedmontese, and they advanced to 
the very ramparts of these redoubts. But here they were brought 
to a standstill. The day of Santa Lucia (May 6, 1848) showed them 
that every further attempt on the defenses of Verona was quite 
useless. 

Still, the whole of Upper Italy was in the hands of the 
revolutionary army. Radetzky held nothing but his four fortresses, 
using Verona as an entrenched camp for his army. His front, 
flanks and almost his rear were in the power of the enemy; for 
even the communication with the Tyrol was menaced and 
sometimes interrupted. Still, a division under Gen. Nugent 

succeeded in making its way through the insurged Venetian 
country, and joined him toward the end of May. Then it was that 
Radetzky showed what could be done with that splendid position 
-he had just been organizing for himself. Unable to live any longer 
in the exhausted neighborhood of Verona, too weak to take the 
field in a decisive battle, he removed his army, by a bold and 
skillful flank-march, by Legnago to Mantua; and, before the 
enemy had any certain knowledge of what was going on, Radetzky 
advanced from Mantua to attack them on the western bank of the 
Mincio; he drove in their line of blockade, and compelled the 
main army of the Piedmontese to retreat from before Verona. 
Still, he could not prevent the fall of Peschiera, and, having 
attained all the results from his march to Mantua he could possibly 
expect, he again collected his troops, marched by Legnago to 
Vicenza, and took it from the Italians, thereby subduing the whole 
of the Venetian territory on the continent, recovering his 
communications, and securing the resources of a large and rich 
district in his rear, after which he again retired to his stronghold 
of Verona, from which the Piedmontese were so much at a loss 
how to drive him, that they lost a whole month in doing nothing. 
In the mean time, however, three strong Austrian brigades had 
arrived, and then the tables were turned. In three days, Radetzky 
swept the Piedmontese from the hights between the Adige and the 
Mincio, turning, at the same time, their right flank by Mantua, 
and gave them such a lesson that they never showed fight again 
until they were behind the Ticino. 

This campaign of Radetzky’s shows what a general can do with 
an inferior army if supported by a well-defended system of 
river-lines. No matter where the Piedmontese stood, or which way 
they tried to make front, they could not attack the Austrians; and 
the groping in the dark to which all their military operations were 
confined for the last five weeks before their ultimate defeat, shows 
clearly how helplessly fast they were. Now, in what consisted the 
strength of Radetzky’s position? Merely in this, that the fortresses 
not only sheltered him from an attack, but that they compelled the 
enemy to divide his forces, while Radetzky, under their shelter, 
could operate with the whole of his forces at any given point 
against that portion of the enemy he might happen to find against 
him. Peschiera neutralized a good many troops; while Radetzky 
was in Verona, Mantua neutralized another portion, and no 
sooner did he go to Mantua, than Verona compelled the 
Piedmontese to leave a corps of observation there. But more than 
this: the Italians had to operate with separate corps on either side 

of the rivers, none of which could rapidly support the other, while 
Radetzky, by his fortresses and bridge-heads, could at pleasure 
remove the whole of his forces from one bank to the other. 
Vicenza and the Venetian Main would never have fallen had it been 
in the power of the Piedmontese to support them. As it was, 
Radetzky took both, while the Piedmontese were kept in check by 
the garrisons of Verona and Mantua. 

When ‘the French, in Algeria, have to march a column through 
a hostile district,’ they form four squares of infantry and place 
them on the four corners of a rhomboid;*the cavalry and artillery 
is placed in the center. If the Arabs attack, the steady fire of the 
infantry repels them, and, so soon as they are broken, the cavalry 
dash among them, and the artillery unlimber to send them their 
balls. If repulsed, the cavalry finds safe shelter behind the squares 
of the infantry. What the solid infantry is against such irregular 
hordes, such is a system of fortresses for an inferior army in the 
field; especially if these fortresses are situated on a network of 
rivers. Verona, Mantua, Peschiera, Legnago, form the four 
corners of a square, and so long as not three, at least, of them are 
taken, an inferior army cannot be compelled to leave the position. 
But how are they to be taken? Peschiera, indeed, will always fall 
easily, if the Austrians cannot hold the field; but Mantua, in 1848, 
was not even attempted to be blockaded on all sides, much less to 
be besieged. To blockade Mantua, three armies are required; one 
on the western, one on the eastern bank of the Mincio for the 
siege, and one to cover the siege against the Austrians at Verona. 
By skillful maneuvering among the rivers and fortresses, each of 
these three armies can be attacked, ad libitum, by the whole of the 
Austrian forces. How is a siege to be kept going, under such 
circumstances? If Mantua, alone, took General Bonaparte nine 
months to starve out, how strong will it be if supported by an 
army resting upon Verona, Legnago and Peschiera, capable of 
maneuvering with united forces, on either bank of the Mincio or 
Adige, and to which the retreat can never be cut off, as it has two 
lines of communication, one through the Tyrol, and the other 
through the Venetian Main? We have no hesitation in saying that 
this position is one of the strongest in Europe, and as it is not only 
fully prepared, but also fully understood by the Austrians, we 
believe that 150,000 Austrians, in it, need not fear double their 
number of opponents. 

But suppose they get beaten out of it. Suppose they lose Mantua 
and Peschiera and Legnago. So long as they hold Verona, and are 
not totally driven from the field, they can render very risky the 

march of any French army toward Trieste and Vienna. Keeping 
Verona as an outpost, they can retire into the Tyrol, recruit their 
strength, and again compel the enemy to divide his forces. One 
portion must besiege Verona, another defend the valley of the 
Adige; will there remain enough to march toward Vienna? If so, 
the Tyrolese army can fall upon them by that valley of the Brenta, 
the strategic importance of which Gen. Bonaparte taught the 
Austrians in 1796 by such a severe lesson. Such an experiment, 
however, would be a decided fault, unless there was another army 
for the defense of the direct road to Germany; for if the main 
body of the Austrians was to be thrown into the Tyrolese Alps, the 
enemy might still march past, and arrive in Vienna before the 
Austrians could extricate themselves from the hills. But suppose 
Vienna fortified (which, we believe, is now being done), this 
consideration ceases. The army would still arrive in time to relieve 
it, and might confine the defense of the Carinthian frontier to a 
constant hovering in the Alps, on the left flank of the invader, 
threatening to fall upon him either by Bassano or Cornegliano, 
and seizing his communications so soon as he marched past. 

This indirect defense of the South-German frontier is, by the 
bye, the best answer to the Austrian defense of their occupation of 
Italy—that the line of the Mincio is the natural frontier of 
Germany in the south. Were it so, the Rhine would be the natural 
frontier of France. Every argument that holds good in one case, is 
fully applicable to the other. But, fortunately, France does neither 
require the Rhine, nor Germany the Po and Mincio. Who turns, is 
turned. If the Venetian Main turns the Tyrol, the Tyrol turns all 
Italy. The Pass of Bormio leads straight to Milan, and may be 
made the means of preparing a Marengo to an enemy attacking 
Trieste and Gradisca, as much as the Great Saint Bernard was to 
Melas attacking the line of the Var. In war, after all, he who 
holds the field longest and best is sure to win. Let Germany hold 
the Tyrol with a strong hand, and she can very well afford to let 
the Italians of the plain have it all their own way. So long as 
her armies can hold the field, it matters little. to her whether 
the Venetian Main belongs politically to her. Militarily speaking, 
it is commanded by her Alpine frontier, and that should be 
enough. 

This, of course, is a question between Italy and Germany alone. 
So soon as France steps in, things are different; and if France 
throws all her weight into the scale, it is but natural that each of 
the two combatants should secure its position as much as possible. 
Germany can afford to part with the line of the Mincio, and of the 

Adige, too; but part with them to Italy only, and not to any other 
nation. 

So far, we have considered the chances of a defensive war only 
on the part of the Austrians. But if it should come to war, their 
position is such that an offensive plan of campaign is imperatively 
imposed upon them—and of this, more hereafter. 

Tribune, No. 5575, March 4, 1859