Italians withdraw behind the Piave

On 9 November 1917, in rain and under low cloud, the last Italian rearguards crossed to the western bank of the Piave, and the engineers blew the bridges behind them. So ended the retreat of the Italian Army from the Isonzo that had been going on since 27 October, first behind the Tagliamento and then across the plain of Friuli and Venetia to the Piave. All day the leading Austro-Hungarian and German units reached the eastern bank of the river and found that on the other side the Italians were digging trenches and had no intention of falling back further. On the same day General Luigi Cadorna, dismissed the previous evening, handed over command of the army to General Armando Diaz.

The last bridges

Cadorna had issued the order to retreat to the Piave on 4 November, when the Central Powers’ troops forced the Tagliamento at Cornino and Pinzano. Over the following days the Italian rearguards delayed the pursuit on successive rivers, the Livenza and the Monticano, while the main forces marched westwards. According to the Austrian official history, by the evening of 8 November the main forces of the 2nd and 3rd Armies were already on the western bank of the Piave, and only the Special Corps and four divisions remained on the eastern bank as a rearguard. As General Alfred Krauss’s group had entered Vittorio that day and cut communications with the Italian troops in the mountains, holding the eastern bank any longer made no sense, and the rearguards were ordered to cross the river on 9 November.

At Susegana, by the Priula bridge on the road from Conegliano to Treviso, the German 117th Division was preparing to attack the Italian bridgehead when its defenders withdrew of their own accord, blew up the railway bridge and set fire to the road bridge. That day the Austro-Hungarian corps of the two Isonzo Armies reached the river along its whole length from San Donà di Piave and the lagoon to Ponte di Piave and Cimadolmo, and the Austro-Hungarian 13th Rifle Division stood opposite the Montello hill. The Italians held out longest, until the night of 10–11 November, in a bridgehead at Vidor, after which they blew the bridge there too. On the new line the Duke of Aosta’s 3rd Army defended the Piave from the sea to the Montello, II Corps occupied the hill, and units of the 4th Army were digging in on the Monte Grappa massif between the Piave and the Brenta.

The trap at Longarone

Things went worse for the troops retreating from the mountains. General Mario Nicolis di Robilant’s 4th Army, which had previously defended the Cadore and the Dolomites, began its retreat too late, and its rearguard was still marching down the upper Piave valley when the Austro-Hungarian 22nd Rifle Division with the Württemberg Mountain Battalion came down on it from the east over the Clautana pass. On the evening of 9 November the leading Austrian and Württemberg companies crossed the swollen river by a flooded weir and closed the road south of Longarone. At dawn on 10 November, after a night battle, according to the Austrian official history about 10,000 soldiers of the Italian I Corps, mainly from the garrisons of the mountain forts, laid down their arms there. The Württemberg Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel distinguished himself in this action. Some of the Italians, however, managed to get across the mountains by side paths during the night.

The toll of defeat

The retreat from Caporetto was the greatest disaster in the history of the Italian Army. According to the figures of the Italian commission of inquiry, cited by the Austrian official history, from 24 October to 10 November Italy lost 10,000 killed, 30,000 wounded and 293,000 prisoners, while about 350,000 scattered soldiers were wandering about in the rear. Lost were 3,150 guns, almost half the Italian artillery, 1,732 trench mortars and about 300,000 rifles. Several hundred thousand civilians from Friuli and Venetia fled with the army, and in Venice itself, a few dozen kilometres from the new front line, preparations for evacuation began as early as the beginning of November. The enemy occupied the lands for which Italy had been fighting since May 1915 and advanced deep into its former territory, and Gorizia and Udine were again in foreign hands.

At the same time, however, the army had escaped from the trap. The 3rd Army withdrew in good order, and the shattered units of the 2nd Army were gathered in camps in the rear to be rebuilt. The new line from the Adriatic along the Piave and over Monte Grappa to the Asiago plateau was more than two hundred kilometres shorter than the old front on the Isonzo and in the Alps. The victors had a long road behind them, destroyed bridges and railways, and too little ammunition and bridging equipment. The Austrians and Germans hoped that with a final blow they would cross the Piave and break out onto the plain towards Treviso and Padua before the French and British divisions reached the front, but the Italians intended to give battle right here.