Central Powers on the Piave

By 11 November 1917 the troops of Austria-Hungary and Germany were standing on the Piave along its whole length, from the Venetian lagoon to the mountains above Belluno. Two days earlier the last Italian rearguards had crossed the river and blown the bridges, and on 10 and 11 November the main bodies of the divisions that had pursued the Italians from the Isonzo for two weeks came up to the bank. That same day the Austro-Hungarian command of the South-Western Front issued orders for a further offensive, and on the Asiago plateau the first fighting for the new Italian defensive line had been going on for two days. The pursuit after Caporetto was turning into a new battle.

On the river

On 10 November the two Isonzo armies of General Svetozar Boroević’s army group occupied the embankments along the lower Piave from near its mouth to Cimadolmo, and the Austro-Hungarian 28th Division occupied several islands in the river. On the sector of General Otto von Below’s German Fourteenth Army, opposite the Montello hill and further upstream, the German 12th Division tried to surprise the Italian bridgehead at Vidor, but on the night of 10/11 November the Italians abandoned it themselves and blew up the bridge. In the upper Piave valley the Austro-Hungarian 22nd Rifle Division, having taken about 10,000 Italians prisoner at Longarone, reached Belluno late on the evening of 10 November, while other units of General Alfred Krauss’s group were approaching Feltre. On 10 November Below moved his headquarters to Vittorio, and the headquarters of Boroević’s armies and army group moved west, to Pasiano, Portogruaro and San Vito al Tagliamento.

Lively Italian artillery fire answered from the other bank, and observers could see the Italians digging trenches. According to the Austrian official history it soon became clear that the enemy meant to make a stand here, and there was no question of crossing the river on the march. Bridging equipment and ammunition were lacking, and the railway reached only the old frontier, a hundred kilometres or more behind the front. So for the time being only small detachments were sent across the river: from 10 November the Austrians ferried patrols and individual companies onto the large island of Grave di Papadopoli, and some accounts mention a few minor crossings as early as 11 November. The first bridgehead on the west bank of the lower Piave, at Zenson, was won by Austro-Hungarian mountain troops only on 12 November.

Asiago

In the mountains the fighting began earlier. Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, commander of the army group in the Tyrol, had dreamed for years of striking from the Asiago plateau onto the plain at Bassano, into the rear of the Italian army. Now the Italians were shortening the front themselves: by dawn on 10 November the First Army had pulled its right wing back to previously prepared positions in the Meletta massif. On 10 November, in thick snow, the Austro-Hungarian III Corps followed them through the ruins of Asiago, and the 6th Division broke into the small town of Gallio, but an Italian counter-attack threw it back to its starting positions. On 11 November the same division twice took Monte Longara and twice lost it, when the Italians threw a reserve brigade into the fight. Success came only on the northern wing, where after dark the Austrians pushed alpini battalions off the Barricata ridge. That evening the commander of the Eleventh Army, General Viktor von Scheuchenstuel, had to report to Conrad that the great attack planned for 12 November would have to be postponed. That same day units of the Austro-Hungarian 18th Division crossed the old frontier at Tezze in the Brenta valley. As the Austrian official history stresses, the whole frontier of 1915 from that point to the sea was now once again in Austrian hands.

Plans for further fighting

On 11 November Archduke Eugen, commander of the South-Western Front, ordered the armies on the Piave to prepare a methodical crossing of the river if it could not be crossed by surprise, and Krauss’s group to strike between the Brenta and the Piave, through the Monte Grappa and Monte Tomba massif, towards the plain. The Austrians and Germans were in a hurry, because they knew that British and French divisions were already on their way to Italy. On the other side of the front the new chief of staff, General Armando Diaz, who had replaced Cadorna, took over his plan of defence and rejected ideas of a further retreat to the Adige. He ordered the Fourth Army to occupy also the forward summits on the northern edge of the Grappa massif, to keep the enemy away from the main line for as long as possible. A few days later the heaviest fighting of that autumn began there.