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The Austrians had planned to fall back on the positions which had been prepared in advance in the mountains and to establish themselves, with greatly reduced numbers, on this practically impregnable line, while the transfer of the divisions intended for the Carpathians was effected. But General Cadorna had no intention of letting the Austrians escape so easily.
The attempt after the fall of Gorizia in August 1916 to force a way to Trieste had been checked by the formidable bastion of Mount Hermada, and in May 1917 Cadorna turned to the other great obstacle to his eastward advance, the Selva di Ternova with its peaks M. San Gabriele and M. San Daniele, which dominated the valley of the Vippacco and the railway to Trieste running along it.
From his desk in the Prefecture, General Cadorna, a short, wiry, quick-moving man in the middle sixties, with a face as hard and brown as a hickory-nut, directs the operations of the armies along that four-hundred-and-fifty-mile-long battle-line which stretches from the Stelvio to the sea.
Finally, after a white flag had been displayed for some time on the Pontifical side, almost in vain, General Kanzler had an interview with Cadorna, at the Villa Albani. It can hardly be said that a convention was resolved on. It would be more true to write that the terms of the conqueror were imposed on the vanquished, and, as a matter of necessity, accepted.
The Austrian offensive in the Trentino was dictated by four reasons: first, to divert the Italians from their main objective, Trieste; second, to lessen the pressure which General Cadorna was exerting against the Austrian lines on the Isonzo; third, to smash through to Vicenza and Verona, thus cutting off and compelling the capitulation of the Italian armies operating in Venetia; and fourth, to so thoroughly discourage the Italians that they would consent to a separate peace.
On the Isonzo front the Italian commander, General Cadorna, launched a great offensive while the British were active in Flanders and by August 23 had broken through the whole Austrian line, capturing the town of Selo, which was the pivot of the Austrian defense, and considered impregnable, and inflicting upon the enemy, in this eleventh battle of the Isonzo, the greatest losses he had sustained since the capture of Goritz.
The former sent and the latter promised some batteries of artillery, but no infantry could be spared in view of our commitment to the Flanders campaign and of French caution after the failure on the Chemin des Dames; and in August Cadorna resumed his attack alone.
Our part had been more justly described by General Cadorna, who in a special Order of the Day had said that "amid the roar of battle was clearly heard the voice of British guns," and in his summary of the results of this offensive, which lasted from May 12th to May 30th, after remarking that the number of Austrians taken prisoners was 23,681 men and 604 officers, and that, in addition, at least 100,000 Austrians had been put out of action, continued as follows, "Our brave Infantry fought indefatigably for eighteen days, without pause and without proper food supplies, on difficult ground, in almost mid-summer heat, impetuous in attack and tenacious in defence.
Indeed, so highly developed was the Italian intelligence service that the Austrians were not able to transfer a battalion or change the position of a battery without the knowledge of General Cadorna. Now the Austrians, like the newspaper experts, were convinced that the Italians had their hands full in the Trentino without courting trouble on the Isonzo.
The day following the Pope's interview with Count Ponza, the 11th of September, the Italian troops received the order to enter the Papal states. For several weeks five divisions under General Cadorna had been in course of concentration along the frontier; this force now marched on Rome.
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