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Updated: May 8, 2025
From Pavia to Mantua, from Como to Brescia, the streets ran blood like the arteries of one great body. At Pavia and Padua the universities were closed. The frightened vice-roy was preparing to withdraw from Milan to Verona, and Radetsky continued to pour his men across the Alps, till a hundred thousand were massed between the Piave and the Ticino. And now every eye was turned to Turin.
Radetsky disapproved of Welden's movements on Bologna, and ordered him not to return to the assault. Had the Austrians returned and massacred half the population of Bologna, the Pope might have been saved. When Rome heard that the stormy capital of Romagna was up in arms, once more, for a moment, there were united counsels.
On the 24th, the King succeeded in dislodging the Austrians from Custozza after four hours' struggle; but next day, which was spent entirely in fighting, Radetsky retook Custozza, and obliged the King to fall back on Villafranca.
On the 27th of May, Radetsky, taking the offensive with about 40,000 men, marched towards Mantua, near which was stationed the small Tuscan corps, whose commander only received when too late General Bava's order to retire from an untenable position.
If, instead of playing at sieges, Charles Albert had cut off these reinforcements, Radetsky would have been rendered powerless, and the campaign would have had another termination. Never was there a war in which the adoption of Napoleon's system of crushing his opponents one by one, when he could not outnumber them if united, was more clearly indicated.
As always happens with street-fighting, the number of the slain has never been really known; the loss of the citizens was small compared with that of the Austrians, who, according to some authorities, lost 5000, between killed and wounded. Radetsky ordered the evacuation of the town and citadel on the night of Wednesday, the 22nd of March.
On the twenty-third Radetsky had fled from Milan, to face Venice rising in his path. On the twenty-fourth the first Piedmontese had crossed the Ticino, and Charles Albert himself was in Pavia on the twenty-ninth. The bells of Milan had carried the word from Turin to Naples, from Genoa to Ancona, and the whole country was pouring like a flood-tide into Lombardy.
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