THE OTHER ITALIAN STATES

Like all wars the war of Italian independence is now covered in the glory of nationhood but it was sparsely supported in Italy.

estense brigade

The peasant class turned their backs on it from the start;things moved along O.K with the austrians and no one in those poorer classes wanted to change that status -quo that or the fact that nothing was worth changing.
So the war became one of the new liberal classes who had seen their chance of economic success with the revolutions in Austria and many European states; the liberal class once in position of power would suck the blood of the peasant class much more than any Hapsburg royal had ever done.
 If we look at Italy today it is a country where a minority live off the backs of the workers and do hardly anything for their sumptuous pay packet.
 Berlusconi apart from being dangerously close to the underworld according to many and head of a state that could go bankrupt in any moment (if the uk call their debt in) is the patron saint of these blood suckers so we may say that the peasants of 1848 were right all along.People need
myths to make them feel that not all is wrong in the world; the photo  montage of Iwo Jima , the sainthood of Mother Teresa,Gandhi as liberator,Martin Luther King as not being the things that Hoover taped, Edgar Hoover himself in high heels, Kennedy,the charge at Omdurman and above all the fact that (in our case here)the Italian war of Independence meant anything as regards change.

jagers of modena

Forgotten archives of the mind. It was Che who said."A nation that cannot read or write is easily fooled"=hence the myth. A well known toy soldier dealer from New York once quoted as fact the line from Liberty Valance="when the myth becomes history believe the myth".I prefer getting as near to the truth as possible as the truth means reason and logic. (And this particular dealer had
lets say an "original idea" on business , lets be honest a complete arsehole)


The muster to the Piedmont cause was nearly zero as regards the other Italian states.The troops they sent had in the main little bearing on the war's outcome. It was an Italy made by Piedmont and Lombardy

tuscan grenadier

The war against Austria is not covered in plastic as regards 54mm (although I am bringing out some pieces soon if my contact manages to cast them ; these will be in boxes of 20 figures all in the same position and will enable one to create a unit either standing firing or advancing with bayonet). Until that happens the Timpo figures available from Harfields are easily converible plus other plastic 54mm ones




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Here are some Garibaldi in Ho/OO


Troops from the Kingdom of Sardinia



Parma troops .This state/duchy sent only 1026.200 National Guards mostl. The Parma contingent allowed Charles Albert to keep Piedmontese troops in Piedmont to stop French republicans from Lyons who were invading Piedmont.y unharmed.Two guns and a little cavalry










Parma troops







Modena troops . Modena sent 1000 troops to join Charles Albert on April 4th. They produced good officers though.Two companies of regulars=225. Thirty two dragoons and thirty gunners.Major Fontana led them. He entrenched and barricaded them at Governolo thus forming a link between the Tuscans at Montanara and Durando's papal troops at Ferrara. They also watched Mantua .

The Tuscan regulars .

TUSCANY :Nearly two million people with no military tradition.They were frightened by possible Austrian aggression so armed in 1847.The army was two regiments.one depot battalion plus a regiment of Dragoons.4,ooo men and 136 officers. the Grand Duke of Tuscany was forced into the war by the poulation but after not many went. By April the 24th tjhe Tuscans who had joined Charles Albert numbered 7771. Their misasion to block Mantua. Their right was at Montanara and their left in the village of Curatone. Their H.Q was at Castelluchio 5 kilometres in the rear. See above in the next post for a map

Tuscan troops

A view of Parma's army just before the outbreak of war

Thisb is an illustration of the Pope's army in 1860 12 years after Goito. I am still researching what their army looked like in 1848 . We'll be talking about them in a post that will show them at the Battle of Cornuda

Types of the Naples army in the period

Parma's army was very small.

These are finance police from Mode4na and Tuscany

Here are some Pontifical (the Pope's army) that I think represent his troops in 1848 but I'm not sure

THE MAIN CONTIGENTS WERE lOMBARDS AFTER PIEDMONT.HERE ARE SOME TROOP TYPES