Luigi Cadorna takes charge of the Italian army

On 23 May 1915, the day Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, King Victor Emmanuel III signed a decree on the manner of transmitting orders concerning military operations. Under the Albertine Statute, the kingdom’s constitution, the monarch was head of the armed forces, and he now formally assumed supreme command. The decree provided, however, that his orders to the army and the navy would be transmitted in the king’s name by the chiefs of staff of the army and the navy, who were to put them into effect and merely inform the ministers of war and of the navy of measures that might concern them. The decree was published in the official gazette the next day. In practice it meant that the army was commanded by its Chief of Staff, General Luigi Cadorna. He did not formally bear the title of commander-in-chief, but for the next two and a half years it was he who directed Italy’s war on land.

Son of the conqueror of Rome

Cadorna was born on 4 September 1850 at Pallanza on Lake Maggiore, today part of the town of Verbania. He was the son of General Raffaele Cadorna, one of the leaders of Italian unification, who in 1870 commanded the troops that captured Rome. He graduated from the military academy in 1868 at the top of his year and joined the general staff corps. In the following decades he commanded a Bersaglieri regiment, a division and a corps. He was regarded as an expert on tactics and a severe, demanding commander.

He became Chief of the General Staff of the army in the summer of 1914, after the sudden death of General Alberto Pollio, and took up the post on 27 July, on the eve of the outbreak of war. At first he prepared plans for a war alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary, but when Italy declared neutrality he began to prepare the army for war with Austria. The armed forces were in a poor state: there was a shortage of guns, machine guns, ammunition and officers. During the ten months of neutrality Cadorna pressed for money for armaments, and in the last weeks before the war he quietly moved units up to the border.

Comando Supremo

With mobilisation came the Comando Supremo, the Supreme Command. Its first headquarters was a villa at Fagagna in Friuli, from which it moved after a few days to nearby Udine. The king stayed close to the front for most of the war but did not interfere in command. Nor did the government have any influence on the operational plans, which Cadorna drew up himself. According to the Treccani encyclopaedia, on 24 May he began operations with 35 divisions, numerically superior to the enemy but inadequately armed for the demands of trench warfare. Cadorna’s counterpart in the navy was the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice-Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel.

Cadorna commanded the army until November 1917. On the Isonzo front he conducted exhausting, costly offensives, ruthlessly punished soldiers and dismissed generals who did not meet his expectations. After the defeat at Caporetto he was replaced by General Armando Diaz.