strength. On the other hand, Lequio's quickness had locked a
door upon which the enemy had his eye.
Meanwhile the II. and III. Armies were on the move. Frugoni with two corps (5 divisions and 14 battalions of Alpini) attacked along the line of the Isonzo from Saga to opposite Gorizia. The Duke of Aosta, with a single corps and two cavalry divisions, was to force the passage of the lower Isonzo and push on towards the Carso, his other divisions following rapidly as their preparations for movement were completed. The II. and III. Armies were in theory organized for quick movement; their artillery, except for 12 batteries of i49-mm. guns, consisted entirely of field-guns, mountain-guns and I4g-mm. field-howitzers (19 batteries), and the proportion of guns to men and shells was very low. Speed and initiative were essential to the success of the opening moves, and at various points speed and initiative were lacking.
The Austrians had withdrawn beyond the line of the Isonzo, except at the two bridgeheads opposite Tolmino and Gorizia, which were held in force, and S. of Gorizia the line of defence chosen was the Carso plateau, only a few covering troops being disposed along the lower reaches of the river, which leaves the Carso at Sagrado. For the II. Army the first obstacle was the river line and the two bridgeheads, and the main initial attack was to come from the II. Army, whose preparations were further advanced and which was echeloned forward; but the I. Cavalry Division, which was attached to the III. Army, was to dash for the Pieris bridges and secure the crossing for the infantry. The cavalry were inexplicably slow, and the bridges were destroyed just before they arrived. This failure would have mattered less, and might have mattered not at all, but for a sudden and violent flood which filled the wide bed of the Isonzo with a deep and rapid stream and made the fords impassable. And the pontoon trains were far away. Cadorna had counted on passing the lower reaches of the river by bridge and ford, and his very inadequate supply of bridging material had been designed for later use or use in other sectors of the front. It was not until June 4, when the river was falling, that it was possible for the right wing of the III. Army to throw troops across in force. Meanwhile the left wing had advanced from Cormons against the northern half of the Carso, where the Isonzo flows like a moat under the plateau, and farther N. the II. Army had come in touch with the enemy all along its front. The long ridge which separates the valleys of the Judrio and the Isonzo from Kolovrat to Verhoolje, was occupied without resistance, but the Austrians had fortified the bridgeheads opposite Tolmino and Gorizia, and here an unexpected opposition was found. Both bridgeheads were naturally very strong. In neither case, owing to the course of the river, did the Austrian position form a salient. The defence of the hills of Santa Lucia and Santa Maria opposite, Tolmino, and of Monte Sabotino and Podgora, N. and W. of Gorizia, was supported by direct flanking fire from the positions to the N. and S. on the left bank of the river. The right wing and centre of the II. Army were quickly brought to a standstill in front of the bridgeheads; tentative attacks, carried out by small detach- ments, were readily repulsed, and a pause followed. The bridge- heads were invested, and here too, perhaps, the theory of " fixed positions," the old rule that these could not be ignored, had too much weight with the attacking forces. For every day lessened the chance of breaking through the thin enemy line, strong only at selected points. On the other hand, the country is extra- ordinarily difficult, and roads were few and mostly bad. And those which were suitable for the movement of troops and guns led only to the points where the enemy was holding in some force. On the left wing of the army the IV. Corps under Gen. Di Robilant crossed the Isonzo N. of Tolmino and pushed up into the mountains E. of the river, hoping to turn the Tolmino position. Appalling weather made movement in the mountains impossible during the critical week, and when the chance of a surprise had gone the great barrier of the Julian Alps was an, insuperable obstacle to such forces as the Italians could bring against it. Guns, shells, machine-guns and transport were lacking.
The Austrians were rushing troops to the Italian front, and by the middle of June Boroevich had eight divisions to put
against the II. and III. Italian Armies. Rohr's Carinthian army had been reenforced by two divisions and a mountain brigade from the Russian front. Dankl's Trentino army, which was not organized in divisions, but in groups assigned to various defensive sectors, had been increased to 96 battalions, including the Bavarian Alpenkorps which had come into line by the end of May. The Austrians were greatly inferior in numbers they had on the front some 20 divisions against Cadorna's 35 but they held positions which were naturally ideal for defence, and these were well fortified by art, too well for the limited means of destruction at the disposal of the Italians.
Cadorna had counted upon surprising the enemy, but this advantage had been partly denied him. When he heard of the denunciation of the treaty with Austria-Hungary he pressed for an immediate declaration of war, which would allow him to move at once and reach the positions he had designed as his first objective. A striking force was ready then there were nearly as many troops available for immediate movement in the first week of May as there were at the outbreak of war and he would have gained between 15 and 20 precious days. Political considerations stayed his hand, and the initial delay was length- ened by the Biilow-Giolitti crisis. Bad weather and hesitation on the part of junior generals did the rest. The operations N. of Tolmino were practically stopped by the fierce mountain storms, and the advance of the III. Army only reached Monfalcone on June 6. Nor even then was it possible to attack the plateau in force. By blowing out a bank of the Sagrado-Monfalcone canal and closing the dam across the river, the Austrians had used the flood waters of the Isonzo to inundate a great stretch of low- lying ground below the Carso. It was not until June 1 1 that the dam near Sagrado was destroyed and the flooded area ceased to be fed by the waters of the river. During the following days the Italians succeeded in throwing troops across the Isonzo near Sagrado and by June 27, after prolonged and heavy fighting, they had pushed the Austrians up the slopes S. of Monte San Michele and established the bridgehead that was necessary for a general attack on the whole front of the Carso. Meanwhile a small bridgehead had been established at Plava, a few miles N. of Gorizia. The quick-flowing waters of the Isonzo, which here run pent in a narrow gorge, were crossed on June 9, 10 and n, with great difficulty. The bridgehead won was very limited in area, and dominated by the mountains on the eastern bank; it was long before it could be enlarged to any great extent. Attacks were made along the greater part of the front from Tolmino to the sea at the end of June and during the early days of July, but these hardly reached the standard of a methodical, organized offensive on the scale that was now clearly necessary. There was some very stiff fighting during these days, and both sides lost heavily, especially on the slopes of the Carso, where the Austrians gave ground here and there and on more than one occasion were very hard pressed to maintain their lines intact. Two fresh divisions were brought from Carinthia to strengthen the threatened h'ne between Gorizia and the sea, while another division was brought from the Balkan front and a mountain brigade from Pola. The Italian attacks had hitherto been conducted at " long range ": that is to say, the point of departure for the infantry advance was at a consider- able distance from the enemy entrenchments. In many cases the attacking infantry was checked before it reached the wire entanglements; too often when the wire was reached it was found nearly intact, for the destructive power of the Italian guns was insufficient to clear the way for the infantry, and many gallant attempts with wire-cutters and gelatine tubes were inevitably condemned to failure. Gradually it became evident that the hopes of a war of movement must be given up, that only the slow processes of trench warfare could lead to success. Sporadic attacks continued during the first half of July, and though the Austrians held on to most of their positions the Italians established themselves at much better jumping-off places than those which they had occupied before.
On July 18 the Italian III. Army attacked in the most determined manner, and after three weeks' hard fighting, during
