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Still Mack clung to his notion that it was the French who were in sore straits; and he forbade the evacuation of Ulm; whereupon the Archduke, with Schwarzenberg, Kollowrath, Gyulai, and all whose instincts or rank prompted and enabled them to defy the madman's authority, assembled 1,500 horsemen and rode off by the northern road.
Delay was disadvantageous to Austria, as it would permit her enemies to complete their preparations, and on April 23, 1859, an ultimatum came from Vienna, demanding that Sardinia should put her army on a peace footing or war would ensue. A refusal came from Turin. Immediately Field-marshal Gyulai received orders to cross the Ticino.
Old Radetzky, the victor in the last war, was dead, but there were other able leaders who were thrust aside in favor of the Hungarian noble Franz Gyulai, a man without experience as commander-in-chief of an army.
The Austrian army to the number of one hundred seventy thousand men besides those remaining in the Lombardo-Venetian fortresses was commanded by General Gyulai, the successor of Radetzky, who had died the year before, at the age of ninety-one. Gyulai meant to attack and rout the Sardinian army before it could join its French allies.
In spite of the delay which the Austrians ascribed to the English peace negotiations, there was time for them to destroy the Sardinian army before the French came up. Gyulai had 100,000 men in the theatre of war, a number increased up to 200,000 during the campaign. Both Sardinia and her ally mustered much fewer men than were spoken of at Plombières.
By his uncertain and dilatory movements Gyulai gave the Sardinians time to concentrate an army of 80,000 men around the fortress of Alessandria, and lost all the advantage of being the first in the field. In early May the French army reached Italy, partly by way of the St.
On the 29th appeared the Emperor Francis Joseph's Declaration of War, and on the same day the first Austrian columns crossed the Ticino. The Austrian commander-in-chief was Count Gyulai, who was in high favour with the aristocratic party, by which his appointment was suggested to, if not forced upon, the Emperor.
The French and Italians slowly pursued the retreating Austrians, and on the 23d of June bivouacked on both banks of the Chiese River, about fifteen miles west of the Mincio. The Emperor Francis Joseph had recalled the incapable Gyulai, and, in hopes of inspiring his soldiers with new spirit, himself took command.
For his services on that day of glory for France MacMahon was made Marshal of France and Duke of Magenta. The prize of the victory of Magenta was the possession of Lombardy. Gyulai, unable to collect his scattered divisions, gave orders for a general retreat.
Still Mack clung to his notion that it was the French who were in sore straits; and he forbade the evacuation of Ulm; whereupon the Archduke, with Schwarzenberg, Kollowrath, Gyulai, and all whose instincts or rank prompted and enabled them to defy the madman's authority, assembled 1,500 horsemen and rode off by the northern road.
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