There, as elsewhere, some Austrian parties advanced with the object of
watching the movements of the Garibaldians, who occupy the hilly ground,
which from Castiglione, Eseuta, and Cartel Venzago stretches to Lonato,
Salo, and Desenzano, and to the mountain passes of Caffaro. In the last-
named place the Garibaldians came to blows with the Austrians on the
morning of the 28th, and the former got the best of the fray. Had the
fait d'armes of the 24th, or the battle of Custozza, as Archduke Albrecht
calls it, been a great victory for the Austrians, why should the imperial
army remain in such inaction? The only conclusion we must come to is
simply this, that the Austrian losses have been such as to induce the
commander-in-chief of the army to act prudently on the defensive. We are
now informed that the charges of cavalry which the Austrian lancers and
the Hungarian hussars had to sustain near Villafranca on the 24th with
the Italian horsemen of the Aorta and Alessandria regiments have been so
fatal to the former that a whole division of the Kaiser cavalry must be
reorganised before it can be brought into the field main.
The regiment of Haller hussars and two of volunteer uhlans were almost
destroyed in that terrible charge. To give you an idea of this cavalry
encounter, it is sufficient to say that Colonel Vandoni, at the head of
the Aorta regiment he commands, charged fourteen times during the short
period of four hours. The volunteer uhlans of the Kaiser regiment had
already given up the idea of breaking through the square formed by the
battalion, in the centre of which stood Prince Humbert of Savoy, when
they were suddenly charged and literally cut to pieces by the Alessandria
light cavalry, in spite of the long lances they carried. This weapon and
the loose uniform they wear makes them resemble the Cossacks of the Don.
There is one circumstance, which, if I am not mistaken, has not as yet
been published by the newspapers, and it is this. There was a fight on
the 25th on a place at the north of Roverbella, between the Italian
regiment of Novara cavalry and a regiment of Hungarian hussars, whose
name is not known. This regiment was so thoroughly routed by the
Italians that it was pursued as far as Villafranca, and had two squadrons
put hors de combat, whilst the Novara regiment only lost twenty-four
mounted men. I think it right to mention this, for it proves that, the
day after the bloody affair of the 24th, the Italian army had still a
regiment of cavalry operating at Villafranca, a village which lay at a
distance of fifteen kilometres from the Italian frontier. A report, which
is much accredited here, explains how the Italian army did not derive the
advantages it might have derived from the action of the 24th. It appears
that the orders issued from the Italian headquarters during the previous
night, and especially the verbal instructions given by Lamarmora and
Pettiti to the staff officers of the different army corps, were either
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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