End of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto

At 3 p.m. Central European Time on 4 November 1918, in accordance with the armistice signed the day before at Villa Giusti, the war on the Italian front came to an end. In the last hours before that moment Italian, British, French and American troops advanced almost unhindered, because the Austro-Hungarian army had been ordered to cease fighting from the night of 2–3 November. At 3 a.m. the British XIV Corps received word from the Italian Tenth Army that the armistice had been signed but would take effect only at 3 p.m., and that until then all troops were to keep advancing.

At about 7.30 a.m. battalions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers and the Royal Warwickshire Regiment of the British 7th Division waded across the Tagliamento in battle order, waist-deep in water, and the Border Regiment crossed it by the bridge near Gradisca. Alongside them went the American 332nd Infantry Regiment. A barrage had been prepared but was not needed: according to the British official history, only one machine gun offered resistance, and it was quickly taken by the Americans. The Austrians protested that they were being made to surrender just as the armistice was coming into force, but almost an entire division laid down its arms and let itself be led into captivity under a small escort. Only the Austro-Hungarian XXIV Corps near Gemona put up resistance and managed to withdraw. Italian cavalry and armoured cars pushed as much as 50 kilometres beyond the river, disarming the units they met on the way. Italian cavalry also rode into Udine, in enemy hands since Caporetto. According to the British official history the first squadron had already reached it unopposed on 3 November.

In the mountains the British 48th Division, which on 3 November had come down from the Asiago plateau into the Val Sugana, marched from 10 a.m. on 4 November towards Pergine and at 3 p.m. halted on a line a few kilometres from Trento. Italian soldiers had already entered the city itself on 3 November and were now flocking there to celebrate its recovery. In three days, from 2 to 4 November, the 48th Division took more than 22,000 prisoners and several hundred guns. On the same day the Italian navy was occupying the ports and islands of the eastern Adriatic, from Fiume and Zara to Antivari.

At noon General Armando Diaz issued his war bulletin No. 1268, later called the Bollettino della Vittoria (Victory Bulletin). “The war against Austria-Hungary, which the Italian army, inferior in numbers and equipment, began on 24 May 1915 […] is won,” he wrote. He concluded with the words that the remnants of what had been one of the most powerful armies in the world were retreating in disorder and without hope up the valleys they had descended with proud confidence. The bulletin stated that more than 300,000 men had been taken prisoner and at least 5,000 guns captured. According to the Italian command, that many prisoners had been taken in the last 36 hours of the war. The Austrian official history observes that most of them were rear-area troops, since by then no more than 260,000 front-line soldiers remained on the whole Italian front.

The battle, which had begun on 24 October on the Grappa, cost the Italian army, according to Italian figures, about 37,000 killed, wounded and missing, and the British just over 1,600 men. The final number of prisoners exceeded 400,000, and according to Italian returns of 11 November it stood at 436,674. Lord Cavan’s Tenth Army took more than 35,000 of them. According to the Austrian official history, 16 infantry divisions and 3 cavalry divisions were destroyed, while 35 infantry divisions and 2 cavalry divisions escaped captivity. In Italy 4 November became a victory holiday, still celebrated today as National Unity and Armed Forces Day. Austria-Hungary, whose last battle was Vittorio Veneto, was in those same days breaking up into new states.