Page 103 - 150° Anniversario II Guerra d'Indipendenza - Atti 5-6 novembre 2009
P. 103
the austrian army in the War of 1859 103
The Austrian Army in the War of 1859
Dott. Wolfgang Etschmann
n the diary of Ulrich Ladurner, who served as a soldier in Kaiserjägerbattalion
I Nr. 2 in the campaign in Italy in 1859, many aspects of this war can be
found as a personal experience.
th
For the events on 24 June 1859 he had noted in his diary:
“…We leave this area with sad feelings, because so many comrades were
dead or wounded and we have to leave them back, because 124 men of our
battalion were killed or wounded.” 1
Most of the soldiers were hungry and exhausted for the last days and
nearly crazy from thirst so they had to drink water from dirty puddles on the
fields or on the marching streets, regardless that some dead soldiers were
lying in the puddles and the water was red from their blood. 2
Ladurner also noted exactly, that the Italian civilians in the region of
Solferino showed a remarkable charity for the wounded Austrian soldiers, in
spite of their political deference of the Austrian political and military domi-
nance in Northern Italy. Girls and women treated the wounded soldiers, many
of them in a pitiful condition, for hours with all their power, but for many of
the wounded only death was their ultimate fate after hours or days after ago-
nizing sufferings.
Ladurner, a shoemaker before becoming a soldier, later became a secre-
tary of a small South Tyrolean community and kept his diary until his death
and some parts of this diary can be read in the book his great-grandson pub-
lished in summer of 2009, 150 years after the war of 1859. This testimony is
surely a moving example of the common man´s war in 1859.
Regarding the outcome of the war of 1859, it is interesting to survey some
of the causes and origins of the Austrian defeat, which changed the political
environment not only in Italy and the Habsburg monarchy, but also in the
whole continent of Europe for the subsequent years and decades.
I will also try to give a short account of the violation of the „principles of
1 Ulrich Ladurner, Solferino. Kleine Geschichte eines großen Schauplatzes. St.Pölten-
Salzburg 2009. S.34.
2 Ebda. S.42-43.
