It is not only the Italian resistance to Austrian aggression and tyranny that has made this doorway into the lowlands about the Po a vast battlefield. From the Middle Ages onward France and Austria constantly fought out their quarrels here. In 1796, Napoleon, after routing Marshal Wurmser at Lonato and Castiglione, small towns to the south of the Lake of Garda, drove him up the Adige Valley to Trent, and then round the side track already named, the Brenta Valley, by Bassano back to Mantua. In 1848 the Piedmontese Army advanced upon the famous quadrilateral of fortresses, then Austrian, covering the entry--Mantua and Peschiera on the Mincio, Verona and Legnago on the Adige. Charles Albert was far from being another Napoleon; and the three days' battle of Custoza, when four weary and ill-found Italian brigades held out against Radetzky's five army corps, did not serve to turn the tide of the national fortunes. That year saw the first appearance of Garibaldi as a military leader and the accession of the present Austrian Emperor; and it is strange now to recall that in the war of 1859, when Lombardy was liberated by the French and Sardinian Armies, this same Francis Joseph was actually in command of the Austrian forces. The battle of Solferino, fought on a front of five leagues, along the hills to the south of Lake Garda, was a terrible butchery, even by the worst of modern standards, for in twelve hours 25,000 of the 300,000 combatants were killed or wounded. In the war of 1866 Garibaldi took a body of volunteers up the Adige; but the treaty which gave Venetia to the new Kingdom of Italy left the Trentino still to be recovered. The Adige and Brenta Valley roads to Trent and Botzen are, then, clearly marked out for Italian effort in the present juncture; and if the Austrians have the advantage of innumerable defensive positions on the mountain heights, they have the disadvantage of very long and frail lines of supply and reinforcement. It may be supposed that the Alpine regiments, which are in some ways the flower of the Italian Army, will also attempt the lesser approaches to Tyrol from the west, by the Val di Sole and the Valtelline, and from the east from Belluno and Pieve. The Brenner railway, with its twenty-two tunnels and sixty large bridges, is peculiarly vulnerable. With many cities and good railways behind them, and a popular welcome in front, the Italian troops, on the other hand, will face the hill roads, now generally free from snow, with confidence.