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The attack was, however, renewed on the 13th, and the Austrians advanced to within four miles of Valstagna and the railway running down the Brenta valley to Padua. They got no farther, and before the end of June Cadorna began his counter-offensive.
"II General Cadorna Mangiava la bifstecca; Ai poveri soldati Si dava castagna secca," or "Il Re dal fronte Giulio Ha scritto alla Regina, 'Arrivato a Trieste Ti manderò una cartolina," with its sardonic variant or sequel, "Il General Cadorna Ha scritto alla Regina 'Se vuoi veder Trieste, Compra una cartolina."
Austrian armies numbering more than half a million men had driven the Italians back from the territory they had won in 1917 under General Cadorna, and had been brought to a stand on the river Piave, where a deadlock somewhat resembling that in front of Verdun had been maintained many months.
During September, 1915, General Cadorna was able to report progress all along the front occupied, and especially on the Trentino frontier, where Italian troops moved along the three main routes which converge on the Adige Valley from the Italian plain.
No real progress had been made, the partial occupation of the Bainsizza plateau proved useless, the losses had been tremendous, and at the end of September Cadorna reported that his main operations were at an end. Eleven of the sixteen British batteries were recalled, the French were countermanded, and the ball was left at Ludendorff's feet.
Many of the others are for various reasons unprintable, though many are extremely witty and amusing. Even those which I have quoted were nominally forbidden by the High Command to be sung, but the prohibition was not very rigorously enforced. And General Cadorna, after all, had now passed into history.
Italy needed a victory, and Cadorna achieved enough to keep up the illusion of triumphant progress. The bombardment began on 18 August and the infantry attack on the 19th over an extended front of thirty miles from Lom to the north of the Bainsizza plateau to the Hermada and the shores of the Adriatic.
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