On 23 March 1849 the Austrian army of Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky attacked the Piedmontese army drawn up just south of Novara, in north-western Italy. The Piedmontese were led in the field by a Polish exile, General Wojciech Chrzanowski, with King Charles Albert of Sardinia at his side. By nightfall their army was beaten and streaming back through the city, and before the night was over the king had given up his crown. The campaign that ended there had lasted only a few days.
A war resumed
In 1848 Charles Albert had gone to war with Austria in support of the revolt in Lombardy and had been defeated at Custoza by Radetzky. An armistice followed. In March 1849, as the party that wanted a new war gained the upper hand in Turin, the king, by now of the same mind, denounced it. According to the Enciclopedia Italiana, the truce expired at noon on 20 March.1
This time Charles Albert did not take supreme command himself. He gave it to Chrzanowski, a veteran of Napoleon's campaigns and of the Polish rising of 1830 to 1831. According to the Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions, in the rising he rose to general of division and was made governor of Warsaw. The Treccani encyclopedia judges him harshly: he did not speak the language of his army, he had little gift for command, and he never won the trust of his subordinates. The Enciclopedia Italiana adds that rivalry among Piedmontese generals had left the king with little choice but to appoint a foreigner.2
Four days of campaign
Radetzky moved fast. He crossed the Ticino from Pavia into the Lomellina, and on 21 March his troops beat the Piedmontese at Mortara and fought them at La Sforzesca near Vigevano. During the night before 22 March Chrzanowski pulled the bulk of his army, about 50,000 men by the Enciclopedia Italiana's count, back to a ridge of about three kilometers in front of Novara, with three divisions in line and two in reserve.3
The Austrian II Corps made contact around 11 in the morning of 23 March near the farm of La Bicocca, on the Piedmontese left. The farm changed hands several times. The Piedmontese generals Perrone and Passalacqua were killed, and the king's younger son, the Duke of Genoa, led counterattacks in person. In the afternoon Austrian reinforcements kept arriving. When the I Corps came up just as Chrzanowski was launching his own counterattack, Radetzky ordered a general assault, and La Bicocca fell for good. The reserve division of the crown prince, Victor Emmanuel, held off the Austrians south-west of the city after dark, so that the beaten army could get through Novara's crowded streets.4
A king abdicates
That night Charles Albert asked the Austrians for terms. The Treccani Biographical Dictionary records that General Hess, Radetzky's chief of staff, demanded the occupation of the Lomellina and of the fortress of Alessandria. Convinced that the war could not go on, the king abdicated in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel II in the night of 23 to 24 March and left for exile; the same dictionary says he traveled as the Count of Barge. He reached Oporto in Portugal in April and died there on 28 July 1849.5
The new king met Radetzky at Vignale on 24 March, and their meeting laid the basis of the armistice that ended the war. Chrzanowski resigned his command and returned to Paris, where the complete 48-sheet map of the pre-partition Polish lands that he had long worked on was published in 1859. Britannica sums up Radetzky's victories at Custoza and Novara as having crushed the Italian forces and suppressed the revolution.6
Date and aftermath
Treccani's Enciclopedia Italiana and its biographical dictionary both date the battle to 23 March 1849. The Piedmontese had taken up their positions in front of Novara in the night of 21 to 22 March.7
Novara was not the end of the story: the Enciclopedia Italiana notes that the defeat opened a decade of reform in Piedmont that made possible the renewed war of 1859.8
Also on this day
- 1862: First Battle of Kernstown. At Kernstown near Winchester, Virginia, Stonewall Jackson attacked Union troops under Nathan Kimball, opening his Shenandoah Valley campaign in the American Civil War.
