page_title: First Italian War of Independence
section_title: The Austrian army
hierarchical_section_title: First Italian War of Independence / Summary of strategic situation and forces / The Austrian army
context_page_description: The First Italian War of Independence was part of the Italian unification or Risorgimento. It was fought by the Kingdom of Sardinia and Italian volunteers against the Austrian Empire and other conservative states from 23 March 1848 to 22 August 1849 in the Italian peninsula.
  The conflict was preceded by the outbreak of the Sicilian revolution of 1848 against the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. It was precipitated by riots in the cities of Milan and Venice, which rebelled against Austria and established their own governments.
  The part of the conflict which was fought by King Charles Albert against Austria in northern Italy was a Royal war and consisted of two campaigns. In both campaigns, the Kingdom of Sardinia attacked the Austrian Empire and after initial victories was decisively defeated, losing the war as a result. The decisive events of the first and second campaigns were the battles at Custoza and Novara, respectively.
  At the beginning of the royal war, the Kingdom of Sardinia was supported by the Papal States and the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, which then withdrew, having barely participated in the fighting at all.
context_section_description: The Austrian army in Lombardy-Venetia was commanded by the 81-year-old General Josef Radetzky, a man whose past experience had earned him exceptional autonomy from the Viennese bureaucracy. He had organised the army in Italy according to his own ideas, including the idea that army training was necessary even in times of peace – a theory that few followed in this period. The result was that when the war broke out his soldiers were ready and, in particular, were familiar with the territory in which they would need to fight.
  Before the insurrections at Milan and Venice, Radetzky had 70,000 men in two armies: the 1st in Lombardy and the 2nd in Venetia, containing a total of 61 battalions of infantry. After the revolt, as a result of casualties, surrenders, and desertions, this was reduced to 41 effective battalions. There were also 35 squadrons of cavalry and 100 pieces of artillery. Given that the average force of the Austrian battalions was around 1,000 men, Radetzky had a total of around 50,000 men at the start of the war. He further ordered that a reserve force of 20,000 soldiers be gathered in a hurry under the command of Laval Nugent von Westmeath from the Austrian side of the Soča and from Carinthia.
caption: General Josef Radetzky, commander of the Austrian army in Lombardy-Venetia, portrait by Georg Decker (1818–1894)
exif: {}