End of the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo

On 17 August 1916 General Luigi Cadorna halted the offensive on the Isonzo, which had begun eleven days earlier with the storming of the Gorizia bridgehead. In the first three days of the battle the Italians won their greatest victory of this war: they took Monte Sabotino, Monte San Michele and Gorizia itself, and the Austrians abandoned the Doberdò plateau. The attacks on the new line of defence, to which the Austro-Hungarian 5th Army had fallen back on the night of 8–9 August, brought almost nothing, however.

This line ran from Monte San Gabriele through Santa Caterina hill and the low hills east of Gorizia to the Vipava valley, and further south along the eastern edge of the Vallone valley on the Karst plateau. From 10 August the Italians stormed it with ever larger forces. The heaviest fighting was for Santa Caterina, for hills 171 and 174 by the road east from Gorizia and for San Pietro, and on the Karst for Nad Logem hill and the trenches at Lokvica and Oppacchiasella. On 14 August both Italian armies on the Isonzo attacked along the whole front from Plava to Oppacchiasella, supported even by armoured cars, and on 15 August the last great assault was launched at Gorizia on an eight-kilometre sector. Each time the defenders, strengthened by reinforcements arriving from the Tyrol and from the Eastern Front, retook the lost trenches in hand-to-hand fighting.

On 16 August the Italian 3rd Army made its last great attack on the Karst. According to the Austrian official history, at 9.30 a.m. its artillery opened fire on the whole front of the Austro-Hungarian VII Corps, and from eleven o’clock the infantry stormed it several times, the last time at 9.30 p.m. All the attacks collapsed. At six in the morning on 17 August the Italians surprised the defenders at Oppacchiasella once more and occupied a narrow stretch of trench, from which they were quickly driven out, and at noon their attack on the northern edge of the plateau was repulsed. The Italian supreme command then issued the order to halt the attacks. According to Italian sources, Cadorna had taken this decision as early as the evening of 16 August, after talks with the commanders of both armies, who had asked for a pause. The order explained that the enemy was defending himself not on rearguard positions but on genuine fortified lines, which had to be taken by a methodically prepared attack.

The battle cost both sides very dearly. According to Italian figures, the Italian army lost about 51,000 killed, wounded and missing, and the Austro-Hungarian 5th Army, according to its official history, about 41,000, including the sick. The Italians moved the front forward by 4 to 6 kilometres on a sector of about 24 kilometres, but the new Austrian line proved as hard to take as the old one. The Austrians noted with relief that Trieste remained far from Italian bayonets, and their official history wrote that the Italian press itself had called the capture of Gorizia a “trembling joy”.

There was no silence on the Isonzo, however. The artillery went on firing, and both sides were preparing for the next clash. The victory at Gorizia strengthened Italy’s position among its allies and Cadorna’s position at home. Less than two weeks later Italy declared war on Germany, and in mid-September Cadorna began the seventh battle on the Isonzo.