On 3 May 1815, after two days of fighting around the town of Tolentino in the Marche, the Neapolitan army of King Joachim Murat broke off the battle against an Austrian army under Frederick Bianchi and fell back. The defeat ended the Neapolitan War and Murat's reign in Naples. Weeks before Waterloo, one of Napoleon's most famous marshals lost his kingdom, and within months he was dead.
A marshal on a throne
Joachim Murat was a cavalry leader who rose with Napoleon Bonaparte and became one of his marshals. In 1808 Napoleon made him King of Naples. Britannica describes him carrying out real reforms there and even encouraging the secret societies that would later work for a united Italy.1
After Napoleon's disasters of 1812 and 1813, Murat tried to save his crown by changing sides. Britannica says the Austrians signed a treaty with him, but the Bourbons who had ruled Naples before him objected. Italy On This Day adds that the Congress of Vienna ruled that the Bourbon king, Ferdinand IV of Sicily, should be restored. When Napoleon returned to France in March 1815, Murat gambled on his old master and went to war with Austria.2
The march north and the retreat
Murat led his army north into central Italy and appealed to Italians to rise with him against the Austrians. Italy On This Day says he made this call from Rimini at the end of March. The size of his army is given differently. Italy On This Day puts it at about 50,000 men at the start of the campaign, while the Napoleon Guide gives 36,000.3
The rising never came, and the Austrians pushed back. According to Italy On This Day, Murat fell back on Ancona with two Austrian armies following him, sent a division under General Michele Carrascosa to hold one of them, and turned his main force against the other. The army in front of him was led by Frederick Bianchi. The Napoleon Guide puts Bianchi's force at about 10,000 men, much smaller than Murat's. Italy On This Day says the Austrians had already driven a small Neapolitan garrison out of Tolentino at the end of April.4
Two days at Tolentino
The two armies met near Tolentino, a town in the province of Macerata, on 2 May 1815, and the fighting went on into 3 May. The Napoleon Guide dates the battle to 3 May alone, the day it ended. Italy On This Day describes the medieval Castle of La Rancia, a few kilometers from the town, as the center of the battle. The castle stands on the plain beside the river Chienti. Both Italy On This Day and the MuseiOnline guide to the castle record a claim, which they call unconfirmed, that many of the dead were buried in a cistern under its courtyard.5
The two days ended without a clear decision on the field. Then Murat learned that the Austrians were working round him. Italy On This Day says the news was that Carrascosa had been beaten at Scapezzano and the second Austrian army was coming on. The re-enactors who stage the battle each year play this moment with a dispatch warning that the Austrians were outflanking the Neapolitans, and they describe the order to retreat as setting off the confusion that turned it into defeat. The Napoleon Guide gives Neapolitan losses of about 1,700 killed and wounded and 2,400 taken prisoner, against fewer than 800 Austrians. These figures come from a single popular source and should be read as approximate.6
The end of a kingdom
After Tolentino the Neapolitan army no longer counted as a fighting force. The defeat ended Napoleonic rule in the peninsula and opened the way for the Bourbons to return to Naples. Murat fled to Corsica, and Italy On This Day says he went disguised as a sailor on a Danish ship. Napoleon's own campaign ended at Waterloo on 18 June, a story told in our article on Waterloo.7
In the autumn Murat tried to win his kingdom back with a small force, landing at Pizzo in Calabria. He was captured and shot there on 13 October 1815.8
His defeat had a long afterlife. Britannica credits Murat with lending stimulus to Italian nationalism, and Italian writers since have treated Tolentino as the first battle of the Risorgimento, the movement that united Italy in the following decades. The castle now houses rooms on the battle with maps and relics, according to the Italian daily Quotidiano Nazionale, and re-enactors still fight it again in the fields around the castle every spring.9
Also on this day
- 1863: Second Battle of Fredericksburg. While Lee fought Hooker at Chancellorsville, Union troops under Sedgwick attacked the Confederate lines on Marye's Heights above Fredericksburg, Virginia.
