User:Mccapra/Naval
By naval operations of the First Italian War of Independence took place between March 1848 and March 1849 and involved the Austrian Empire and the forces opposed to it from the Republic of San Marco with supporting contingents from the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of the two Sicilies. The conflict took place in the northern Adriatic Sea, mostly off the ports of Venice and Trieste.
The Austrian navy in Venice
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The situation of the Italian naval forces
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Background in the Italuan navies. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA296628.pdf
Vecchij P.143 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nu8IAQAAIAAJ&dq=efisio+cugia&pg=PA310&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Xxxiii&f=false
Royal Sardinian Navy it: Giuseppe Albini (ammiraglio)
The surprise effect
[edit]The revolution and the first war of independence in 1848 were a real surprise for everyone. The Austrians were surprised and in just a few days they lost the whole of Lombardy-Veneto (excluding the fortresses of the Quadrilatero and part of the fleet ), the Venetians themselves were surprised as they did not know how to take advantage of the favorable moment, the Kingdom of Sardinia was surprised as it only had a few ships and had to adapt to waging war even on the sea, without any preparation. In Rome then the surprise was greatest when the government sent troops against Austria , while the sovereign pontiff Pius IX disavowed the war . The government of the Two Sicilies where Ferdinand II was surprised he declared war on Austria and then delayed the departure of the troops and the naval fleet to finally think about how to recall them without firing a single shot.
The errors of the Venetian navy
[edit]At the time the Austrian navy made use of the ports of Trieste , Koper , Pula and Fiume , but the main port was Venice and the majority of the crews were made up of Venetians and Dalmatians . As chance would have it, on 22 March only very few units were in port in Venice , thus allowing Austria to maintain the bulk of its navy. Venetians were the majority of those employed in the arsenal . There were two 24-gun corvettes and two 16-gun brigs in port in Venice which went over to the side of the Venetian Government; The story of that war would have been very different if the majority of the imperial fleet had been there . Absolutely no thought was given to this and, when someone did, it was done in a completely naive way as the orders to recall the ships commanded and served by Venetians were entrusted to the commanders of the ships of the Lloyd of Trieste , who evacuated the Austrian troops from Venice to Trieste . Lloyd was an Austrian company, so no one delivered the messages and no ship returned to Venice .
On 17 March 1848, there were 15 warships under construction, repair or maintenance in the arsenal : a 40-gun frigate , four 24-gun corvettes , six 16-gun brigantines , three 10-gun schooners and a 120- horsepower steamer . It was the famous Pius IX which was the only one finished and used as a team (in addition to all the corvettes and brigantines which were only available in the final stages of the siege). For the rest, everything was suspended (one frigate and three schooners), and there was no thought to even arm the merchant ships present in good numbers in the port. Boats were built or adapted as gunboats (about 140) to be used only in the lagoon . All this demonstrated the lack of a person in Venice who understood the need for a real naval force and knew how to use it. Rear Admiral Bua , who commanded the four ships, although equipped with a lot of good will, did not prove up to the task for which he had been promoted.
The Austrian naval force , after a month, having replaced the crews, was able to announce the naval blockade of the city which, however, it would absolutely not have been able to maintain if only the Venetians had thought of preparing an equivalent force. And this was demonstrated when, when the Neapolitan fleet appeared on the horizon , the Austrian ships retreated. They were evidently unaware that the Neapolitan commander Rear Admiral de Cosa , despite having a rather large team (five pyrofregates , or armed steam ships, two frigates, a corvette and a brigantine), having set sail at the beginning of May, had received from the king Ferdinand's order not to open fire saves him from being attacked.
The Piedmontese fleet
[edit]Piedmont at the time certainly could not be defined as a power on the sea and, despite having acquired the former Republic of Genoa in 1814 , it was still early to take advantage of the experience of its workers who, although applied to a good merchant fleet, had lost experience of warrior traditions for years. Despite all this, the Genoese shipbuilding industry performed miracles and, in just two months, built four frigates, a corvette , two brigantines and nine steamships , of which only two could be classified as warships and the remainder as armed transport boats. The small team was entrusted to Admiral Albini , who reached Venice on 22 May 1848 , where he joined up with the Neapolitan team and the Venetian flotilla . The meeting of the three fleets ignited general enthusiasm in Venice , since, together, they were clearly superior to the strength of the Austrian fleet. Finally, there was an admiral, Albini , who arrived with express orders to search for and destroy the Austrian fleet.
The Imperial Regia fleet
[edit]Consistency 1848
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Birch_Dahlerup
(16 operational warships for the blockade: three 40-gun frigates , two 24-gun corvettes , five 16-gun brigs , two 10-gun schooners and four steamers )
Carolina frigate Frigate Medea Warrior Frigate Corvette Leipzig Brigantine Montecuccoli Brigantine Veneto Bellona frigate (Frigate Leipzig then Leipzig ) ( Veneto frigate then Pola ) ( Venice frigate then Trieste ) Vulcano and Adria warwoods 6 Lloyd's steam vessels ( Archduke Frederick , Trieste ,) Operations at sea On May 3, 1848, Austria published the announcement of the naval blockade of Venice but its ships had retreated upon the arrival of the Neapolitan fleet. As soon as he arrived, Albini gathered the admirals and convinced them to carry out a joint action against the fleet. Austrian sailing between the mouths of the Piave and the Tagliamento .
When the three combined fleets reached the mouth of the Piave the wind completely dropped, the Austrians with all the steam ships towed the sailing ships to the port of Trieste under the protection of the coastal batteries and forts thus saving themselves from destruction, but that calm , if providential for the Austrians, will over time mark the end of Venice.
On the 23rd, the Italian fleets dropped anchor in front of Trieste and until the 28th nothing happened except that the consuls of various states of the German Confederation let the Italian commanders know that any acts of war against the port of Trieste would be considered acts of war against their countries, so much so that not even the provocative cannon fire fired on 6 June by an Austrian frigate and the ricochet that hit the San Michele convinced the Italians to open fire.
On 11 June the Sardinian and Venetian admirals signed the blockade of the port of Trieste, but not by the Neapolitan one who had already received the return order from Ferdinand II. The ban, in fact, remained almost a dead letter as it seemed that no one wanted to shoot, many ships with strategic materials and troops violated it, the Austrian fleet remained safe in the port of Trieste until after the armistice of Salasco on 9 August. Albini returned to Venice with the fleet and managed to stay there until after the departure of the Royal Commissioners Colli and Cibrario and with the order to transport to Piedmont, by sea, the Piedmontese expeditionary force commanded by La Marmora , made up of around two thousand men; he managed to stall until September 9th. Austria consequently proclaimed the blockade of Venice again, but was never able to implement it completely and was unable to stop the coastal traffic with the supplies of food to the city, coming from the Papal States .
At the end of October, due to the failure of the Austrians to return the siege materials of Peschiera to Piedmont , the Piedmontese fleet returned to Venice with a quick attack and subsequent stationing in Ancona , where it remained until after the battle of Novara , without being there. 'Albini warned of resumption of war. In the meantime, the Venetian deep-sea fleet had been enriched by the presence of the Pio IX steamer in the fleet, which chased the Austrian ships on the high seas and fired at them from too far away and then returned to take refuge in the port. Equally strange was the behavior of the remainder of the Venetian fleet which did not rush to sink the Austrian steamer Vesuvio which had run aground at the mouth of the Adige , so much so that the following day, two unarmed Austrian steamers actually ran to free it. The Mazzinian Francesco Dell'Ongaro published in the Venetian newspaper " Fatti e Parole " the strange behavior of the Commander of the Pius IX who, having come across an Austrian merchant ship, shelled it from a distance without causing damage and without attempting to capture it, given the total absence of other ships Austrians, but the denunciation of the facts earned Dell'Ongaro his expulsion from the city.
On August 8, 1949 , the Venetian fleet, with forces capable of countering the Austrian fleet very well, went out to sea with the specific order to fight, but when the Austrian fleet retreated into the high seas, the Venetians returned to port on the 9th. without fighting. There were already rumors of a court martial and accusations of treason when, two days later, the Venetian fleet set sail again, returning to port again without fighting and not moving again until it surrendered.
As we have been able to see, the Venetian fleet, despite being of such a size that it could be decisive in the conflict, operated little and badly under the orders of the Sardinian admiral Albini together with the Sardinian fleet. Alone, she never did anything significant, even though the crews were excellent and fierce. The lagoon flotillas participated, however, in all the Venetian sorties on the coast , allowing the capture of prisoners and supplies.
Comment If one consults school textbooks, one is led to think that the first war of independence was initially and almost exclusively a series of operations mostly of a land nature and the emphasis is above all placed on the events which occurred between Austria and Piedmont. Venice and its resistance, although mentioned, remain shrouded in a fog of faded memories so the reader neither finds a way to delve deeper nor is encouraged to do so.
Venice was the first to rebel against the Habsburg Empire , precisely on 17 March 1848. In fact, that day, after the news of the riots in Vienna , the Venetians began to protest in order to obtain the release of Daniele Manin and Tommaseo . The revolt, as well as being Venetian, can be defined, without a shadow of a doubt, also as Italian since, in addition to the citizens of the Venetian cities from the Adige to Tarsia ( better known as Eneo), Dalmatians, Neapolitans, Romans and Swiss also contributed to it. , Poles , Hungarians and even Germans . In short, the defense of the city represented, for all the nationalities oppressed by the empire, the defense of the flag of freedom, but the Venetians, perhaps taken by the joy of regaining freedom, did not reflect sufficiently, forming a government exclusively composed of Venetians and proclaiming the rebirth of the Republic of San Marco , which caused misunderstanding and doubts in Piedmont. Venice refused to form a unitary government of the Lombard Veneto , nor did it form a government with all the other Venetian cities that had rebelled against the Austrian yoke.
Another mistake that we can define as very serious, but not the only one, was to allow the Austrian troops to leave the city with their weapons, on board the Lloyd of Trieste steamers, as well as allowing the removal of the Austrian military and civil governors of the city . These troops, disarmed and held together with their commanders, would have represented excellent hostages that could be exchanged with the Venetian soldiers that the empire used to repress the revolutionary uprisings in Hungary and Germany. Furthermore, absolutely no thought was given to the immediate recall of the ships of the Austrian fleet which had crews and commanders who were mostly Venetians or Dalmatians of Venetian origin so that Austria, once the crews had been replaced, found itself in a position to be able to rebuild a good navy from war.
First, Solera was head of the Ministry of War, while Paolucci was head of the Navy , but there was no admiral in Venice capable of conceiving a global war plan to be used against the Austrian navy. The considerable resources available for the defense of the city were used only in the defense of the lagoon, giving the empire the possibility of arriving within a few miles of the city with its ships, leaving it free to take the initiative, but, as we will see, this will not be just a Venetian mistake. It is well known that the Austrians found themselves truly disbanded after the outbreak of the riots in Vienna and in all the provinces of the Empire, but subsequently regained their breath after the defeat of Custoza .
The following year, after the definitive Piedmontese defeat of Novara on 23 March 1849, with the French covering having failed , Venice still resisted, but had to capitulate on 22 August 1849.