Italy nears Unification at Solferino in 1859\.

In Lombardy in the North of Italy today, June 24th, in 1859 a few miles South of Lake Garda(a tourist resort) the battle of Solferino was fought.
France and Napoleon III were keen to reclaim lost lands, ceded to The Austrian Empire, under Franz Joseph in 1815, so allied with Italy’s Kingdom of Sardinia(actually in Piemonte, North West Italy)under Victor Emmanuel.
Today would see the culmination of a two month campaign of mobilisation by the two big guns of Europe: France and Austria. The result was an Allied victory. 250000 men would be present and 26000 became casualties.
The Austrians were meant to be the attackers, but their infantry would prove timid in the face of new French rifled cannon. Some of this timidity was a consequence of poor logistics: the army was not well fed, unlike the French one.  Their marksmanship was also inferior to the French, who coukd therefore rely heavily on the bayonet, knowing few would fall before reaching the enemy. The outcome of this bloody battle, to which railways and the telegraph wire were novelties, was the impetus to Italian Unification. 50000  Italians, some 10000 Garibaldi’s Redshirts, fought alongside the French to oust the Austrians from their country.
France was promised and rewarded with Nice and Savoy on the West, Mediterranean coast.
The Red Cross was also begun as a consequence of the casualties, as a Swiss businessman, Henri Dunant went on to write a book of the battle’s horrors, then found it.

Thanks Worsham.
Now, of course, there is a political movement to separate Italy again. The rich industrial North is fed up of paying the poorer agrarian South’s debt.
Solferino is not a battle date I know by heart; I came across it by chance.
The Italian history that I most read was medieval, owing to the literature I studied.