End of the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo

The British chronology of the war records under 10 December 1915 the end of the fourth battle on the Isonzo. This Italian autumn offensive did not, however, end on a single day; it petered out gradually over two weeks, so works give different dates. The most common is 2 December, and this is the date we adopt on the battle page. The Austro-Hungarian official history regards 1 December, when the last great attacks collapsed, as the last day of the battle, but adds that the Italians went on attacking at individual points until 14 December. Some Italian works give 5 December, some German-language ones 15 December. The date in the British chronology most probably falls on the day after the last major attack, fought for Monte San Michele from 7 to 9 December.

The last attacks

After the great assaults of late November, General Luigi Cadorna did not break off the offensive at once. On 2 December the Italian artillery shelled Gorizia with unprecedented force and did great damage in the town. According to the Austrian official history, from 3 to 6 December there were heavy artillery duels and several attacks on the Gorizia bridgehead and on the Karst plateau. The Italians attacked the area around the church at San Martino del Carso without success, on 4 December again shelled Gorizia heavily, and several times tried to break through the front at Oslavia. All these attempts failed.

On 7 December units of the Italian 22nd and 29th Divisions struck the positions on both sides of Monte San Michele, and the fighting spread beyond San Martino. At one point, on the northern slope of the mountain, the Italians broke into the trenches, but the Hungarian 1st Honvéd Infantry Regiment threw them out with a counter-attack. On 8 December they broke in there again and were again driven back. On 9 December, at night, their last assault on the northern slope collapsed and the fighting began to die down. On the coast an Italian torpedo-boat flotilla began shelling the Austrian positions near Sistiana, but under fire from heavy batteries it soon withdrew.

Quiet on the Isonzo

In the following days the fighting was mainly by artillery and patrols. The Austrians used the lull to relieve, from 11 to 15 December, the exhausted VII Corps, which had been defending Monte San Michele and San Martino since October. Its place was taken by the 6th and 28th Infantry Divisions. By mid-December the battalions borrowed for the fighting from Carinthia and the Tyrol had also returned to their armies. According to the Austrian official history, on 15 December almost complete quiet settled over the Isonzo. From then on snowstorms, rain and the bora troubled the soldiers of both sides more than shells did.

The two-month offensive, that is the third and fourth battles of the Isonzo together, gave the Italians neither Gorizia nor Monte San Michele. In the fourth battle they lost nearly 49,000 men, and since 18 October about 116,000. The Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army of General Svetozar Boroević lost more than 70,000 men in action in the two autumn battles, but the front hardly moved. The Austrians called the fourth battle the “parliamentary” battle, because they believed Cadorna had kept it going mainly on account of the opening of the Italian parliament on 1 December. The next, fifth battle of the Isonzo began only in March 1916.