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Special pages :
Charles Albert’s Betrayal
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 77-78, August 17, 1848
The newspapers of Turin, Genoa etc. are loudly complaining that the cause of Italy’s freedom and independence has been betrayed by him and by those who up to the very last moment were repeatedly swearing under oath that they would win or die for Italy. What was earlier uttered only by a small handful of men — that Charles Albert is a traitor — is now loudly repeated day after day by the mass of the people and by all those newspapers that have not completely sold out to the perfidious King of Sardinia. This insight will later bear its fruit; this time, however, it has come too late. Since the battles of Goito[1] and Mozambano[2] it became more and more clear to many people as the days went by that the Sardinian was either plotting a betrayal or was totally incapable of carrying out the task that he has undertaken. He lapsed into complete inactivity and whatever was done was against all the rules of common sense, of politics and of the art of war. For a long time now many questions have been obtruding themselves on the public’s attention. Some of the answers to these questions have in fact already been given, and others will shortly come to light. Who, for example, constantly obstructed the arrangements for the arming of the whole people? Who distributed and dispersed the Italian army over so many points and neglected to form a reserve-line, with the result that every defeat was bound to lead to ruin? Why did Charles Albert not advance on Vicenza? Why did the army in Valleggio lack bread? Why did the Modenese desert? How did it happen that the Lombardian volunteers did not find a single cannon on the banks of the Mincio? How was it that the cartridges distributed during the battle to several Piedmontese corps could not be used because the bullets were too big? And lastly: how could Charles Albert, who had long since decided to retreat, still order the destruction of a large number of houses in the suburbs of Milan, to the value of 30 million lire? There is only one answer to these questions, unless we are prepared to assume the most lamentable and incredible incompetence, and that is that Charles Albert behaved just as treacherously and perfidiously in the year 1848 as he did in the year 1821, when he shamelessly betrayed his fellow conspirators and helped to deliver them up to the hangman’s rope, to the galleys and to banishment. [3]
- ↑ The battle of Goito (May 30, 1848) was part of the hostilities between the allied Italian forces and Austrian vassals, which started with the battle of Curtatone. In the battle of Curtatone (five kilometres from Mantua) on May 29, 1848, the Austrian troops forced the Tuscany corps, which fought on the side of the Piedmont army, to retreat. The resistance offered by this corps, however, enabled the Piedmont troops to regroup their forces and on May 30, in the battle of Goito, to hurl back the Austrians to their former positions. Nevertheless, the Piedmont command failed to make rise of this success.
- ↑ The battle of Mozambano (July 24, 1848) was an episode in the battle of Custozza between the Piedmont and Austrian armies (under the command of Radetzky). In both cases, the Piedmont Command proved incapable of energetic action against the enemy and of taking advantage of successes achieved at separate sectors along the front. The battle of Custozza, near Verona, went on for three days, from July 23 to 25, without bringing decisive victory to either side. Eventually the Austrian command mustered superior forces and dealt a heavy blow at the Piedmont troops, who were scattered largely due to poor generalship which doomed them to inaction at the decisive moment.
- ↑ Carbonari — members of bourgeois and aristocratic revolutionary secret societies which appeared in Italy in the early nineteenth century. They fought for national independence and unification of Italy and at the same time demanded liberal-constitutional reforms. The Carbonari played an important role in the revolutionary developments in the kingdoms of Naples and Sardinia early in the 1820s and also during the revolutionary struggle in Italy against Austrian rule and local feudal monarchies in the 1830s. During the revolution of 1821 in Piedmont, Prince Charles Albert of Carignano made overtures to the Carbonari and they appointed him regent. However, afraid to lose his right to the Sardinian Crown if events took an unfavourable turn, he fled from Turin, abdicated his regency and helped to suppress the movement.