Conflict between the Kingdom of Naples and the Austrian Empire in 1815
This article is about the military conflict between Austria and Naples in 1815. For the 15th-century French war to capture Naples, see Italian War of 1494–98.
The Neapolitan War, also known as the Austro-Neapolitan War, was a conflict between the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples and the Austrian Empire. It started on 15 March 1815, when King Joachim Murat declared war on Austria, and ended on 20 May 1815, with the signing of the Treaty of Casalanza. The war occurred during the Hundred Days between Napoleon's return from exile and before he left Paris to be decisively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. The war was triggered by a pro-Napoleon uprising in Naples and ended with a decisive Austrian victory at the Battle of Tolentino, after which Bourbon monarch Ferdinand IV was reinstated as King of Naples and Sicily. However, the intervention by Austria caused resentment in Italy, which further spurred on the drive towards Italian unification.
Initially, Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, ruled Naples. Then in 1808, Joseph was made King of Spain, and Napoleon installed his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, as King of Naples.
Murat originally ruled Naples following the same legal and social system used in France, whilst still participating in Napoleon's campaigns. But following the disastrous Battle of Leipzig, Murat abandoned La Grande Armée to try to save his throne. As defeat in the War of the Sixth Coalition loomed, Murat increasingly moved away from Napoleon, eventually signing a treaty with Austria in January 1814 and joining the Allied side.
But as the Congress of Vienna progressed, Murat's position became less and less secure as there was growing support to restore Ferdinand to the throne. The most vocal of all Murat's opponents was the United Kingdom, which had never recognised Murat's claim to the throne and, moreover, had been guarding Ferdinand in Sicily, ensuring he retained the Sicilian throne.
When Murat was informed of Napoleon's plan to escape from exile in Elba on 1 March 1815, Murat sided with him once more and declared war on Austria as soon as he learned of Napoleon's return to France.
War
Neapolitan advance
Joachim Murat declared war on Austria on 15 March 1815, five days before Napoleon's return to Paris and the beginning of his Hundred Days. The Austrians were prepared for war after their suspicions were raised when Murat applied for permission weeks earlier to move his troops through Austrian land in order to attack the south of France. Austria had reinforced her armies in Lombardy under the command of Bellegarde prior to war being declared.
At the start of the war, Murat reportedly had 82,000 men in his army, including 7,000 cavalry and 90 cannon, although this figure was grossly exaggerated to try to encourage Italians to join his cause. The real number was somewhere in the region of 50,000 men.
Leaving behind a reserve Army of the Interior in case of an invasion from Sicily, he sent his two elite Guard Divisions through the Papal States, forcing the Pope to flee to Genoa. With the remainder of his army, Murat established his headquarters at Ancona and advanced on the road towards Bologna. On 30 March, Murat had arrived in Rimini, where he gave the famous Rimini Proclamation, inciting all Italian nationalists to war.
Murat was hoping that an Austrian army in Naples would prove too much and that the Italian population would rise up in support of his cause. However, no such general insurrection occurred, as any unrest was quickly quashed by the Austrian authorities, and Murat found few Italians outside Naples who were willing to take up arms and join his cause. Many saw Murat as a man trying to save his crown rather than a beacon of Italian unification.
By now, the number of Austrian troops in Lombardy had swelled to 60,000, and the commander entrusted with the force to confront Murat was Baron Frimont. The army was originally intended to invade southern France after Napoleon's return, but now had to be diverted to face the approaching Neapolitan army. Frimont moved his headquarters to Piacenza in order to block any potential advance on Milan.
Meanwhile, on the same day that Murat gave the Rimini Proclamation, the Austrian advance guard, under the command of General Bianchi, was beaten back at an engagement near Cesena. Bianchi retreated towards Modena and took up a defensive line behind the River Panaro, allowing Murat to take Bologna on 3 April.
Murat engaged Bianchi again at the Battle of the Panaro; the Austrians were defeated and driven back. The Austrian vanguard was forced to retreat to Borgoforte, allowing the Neapolitans to advance on Modena.
Following the battle, the division under the command of General Carrascosa immediately occupied Modena, Carpi, and Reggio Emilia, while Murat moved against Ferrara. However, the garrison in Ferrara withstood the best efforts of the Neapolitans to take the citadel, tying up a large number of Neapolitan troops in a costly siege.
On 8 April, Murat attempted to cross the Po River and finally set foot in Austrian-controlled Italy. Murat had received little reinforcement from the Italian populace up to this point, but he hoped he would find more support north of the Po River, which was under direct Austrian rule.
The region had once been part of the Kingdom of Italy, a French client republic, and it had been reported that about 40,000 men, mostly veterans of Napoleon's campaigns, were ready to join Murat once he arrived in Milan. He chose a crossing at the town of Occhiobello. It was there that Murat finally engaged with the bulk of the Austrian army under the command of Frimont.
Meanwhile, the two Guard Divisions Murat had sent into the Papal States had passed unmolested into Tuscany, and by 8 April they had occupied Florence, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The Grand Duke fled to Pisa, while the Austrian garrison in Florence, under the command of General Nugent, was forced to retreat to Pistoia, with the Neapolitan army in pursuit.
But with reinforcements arriving from the north and his army in a strong defensive position, Nugent was able to turn and halt the Neapolitan pursuit. Murat and the Neapolitans had reached the zenith of their campaign.
Austrian counterattack
The Battle of Occhiobello proved to be the turning point of the war. Murat's attempts to cross the River Po proved unsuccessful, and after two days of heavy fighting, the Neapolitans fell back after suffering over 2,000 casualties. To make matters worse, the United Kingdom declared war on Murat and sent a fleet over to Italy.
Meanwhile, Frimont had ordered a counterattack to try to relieve the garrison in Ferrara. He ordered a corps under the command of Bianchi to advance on Carpi, which was guarded by a brigade under the command of Guglielmo Pepe.
Another column was ordered to cut off Pepe's line of retreat. However, Carrascosa, who was in command of the Neapolitan troops around Modena, saw the Austrian trap and ordered a retreat to a defensive line behind the Panaro, where he was joined by the remainder of his division, which had been evacuated from Reggio Emilia and Modena.
But even after Carrascosa's retreat, Murat was still in a position to continue the siege at Ferrara. In response, Frimont ordered a corps under the command of General Neipperg to attack his entrenched right flank. On 12 April, after bitter fighting at the Battle of Casaglia, the Neapolitan troops were driven from their entrenched positions.
Murat was forced to lift the Siege of Ferrara and retreat back on the road to Bologna. On 14 April, Frimont attempted to force a crossing of the Panaro but was repelled. However, only two days later, Murat and his army retreated from Bologna, which was quickly retaken by the Austrians.
In Tuscany, meanwhile, Murat's two Guard Divisions also inexplicably retreated without being harassed in any way by Nugent. By 15 April, the Austrians had retaken Florence, and when the news reached Murat, he ordered a general retreat of his main force back to their original headquarters in Ancona.
With the road to Florence now clear and the Italian peninsula opening up in front of him, Frimont ordered two corps south to deal with Murat once and for all. Bianchi's corps was ordered to march towards Foligno via Florence in an attempt to threaten the rear of the Neapolitans and to cut off their line of direct retreat, whilst Neipperg's corps was sent into direct pursuit of Murat as he retired to Ancona.
With the war turning in Austria's favour, Frimont was ordered back to Lombardy to oversee the army that was now amassing in preparation for an invasion of France. A large portion of the Austrian force was also recalled, leaving only three Austrian corps totalling around 35,000 men in Italy.
Murat, who placed too much faith in his Guard Divisions, believing they would be able to halt the advance of Bianchi and Nugent, retreated slowly, even turning to check the pursuit at the Ronco and Savio rivers.
But the Austrian advanced guard caught the retreating Neapolitan force twice by surprise, at Cesenatico and Pesaro. Murat hurried his retreat, and by late April, his main force had arrived safely in Ancona, where he was reunited with his two Guard Divisions.
Meanwhile, Bianchi's corps had made swift progress. Arriving in Florence on 20 April, they had reached their target of Foligno by 26 April and now threatened Murat's line of retreat. Neipperg's corps was still in pursuit, and by 29 April, his advanced guard had arrived in Fano, just two days' march away.
However, the two Austrian armies were separated, and Murat hoped to quickly defeat Bianchi before turning on Neipperg. Much like Napoleon's tactics before Waterloo, Murat sent a division under Carrascosa north to stall Neipperg while his main force headed west to face Bianchi.
Murat originally planned to face Bianchi near the town of Tolentino, but on 29 April, Bianchi's advance guard succeeded in driving out the small Neapolitan garrison there. Bianchi, having arrived first, then formed a defensive position around the hills to the east of Tolentino.
With Neipperg's army approaching from his rear, Murat was forced to give battle at Tolentino on 2 May 1815. After two days of inconclusive fighting, Murat learned that Neipperg had outmanoeuvred and defeated Carrascosa at the Battle of Scapezzano and was approaching. Sensing the inevitable, Murat ordered a retreat.
The battle had severely damaged the morale of the Neapolitan troops, and many senior officers had been casualties in the battle. The battered Neapolitan army fell back in disarray. On 5 May, a joint Anglo-Austrian fleet began a blockade of Ancona, eventually taking the entire garrison of the city as prisoners.
By 12 May, Bianchi, who was now in command of both his and Neipperg's corps, had taken the town of L'Aquila along with its castle. The main Austrian army was now marching on Popoli.
During this time, General Nugent had continued to advance from Florence. Having arrived in Rome on 30 April, allowing the Pope to return, Nugent advanced towards Ceprano. By mid-May, Nugent had intercepted Murat at San Germano (now Cassino).
Here, Murat attempted to check Nugent's advance, but with the main Austrian force under Bianchi in pursuit, Murat was forced to call off the action on 16 May. Soon afterwards, the Austrian armies united near Calvi and began the march on Naples.
Murat was forced to flee to Corsica and later Cannes disguised as a sailor on a Danish ship after a British fleet blockaded Naples and destroyed all the Neapolitan gunboats in the harbour.
On 20 May, Neapolitan Generals Pepe and Carrascosa sued for peace and concluded the Treaty of Casalanza with the Austrians, bringing the war to an end. On 23 May, the main Austrian army entered Naples and restored King Ferdinand to the Neapolitan throne.
Murat, meanwhile, would attempt to reclaim his kingdom. Coming back from exile, he landed with 28 men at Pizzo, Calabria on 8 October 1815. However, unlike Napoleon months earlier, Murat was not greeted with a warm welcome and was soon captured by Bourbon troops.
Five days after he landed at Pizzo, he was executed in the town's castle, exhorting the firing squad to spare his face. This ended the final chapter of the Neapolitan Wars.
Aftermath
Shortly after the end of the war, the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily were finally united to create the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Although the two kingdoms had been ruled by the same king since 1735, the formal union did not happen until 1816. King Ferdinand IV of Naples and III of Sicily would become King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, a Spanish Bourbon monarch. Meanwhile, the Austrians consolidated their gains in Northern Italy into the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia.
Although Joachim Murat failed to save his crown or start a popular nationalist movement with the Rimini Proclamation, he indirecly and unintentionally ignited a desire for Italian unification. Indeed, some consider the Rimini Proclamation to be the start of the Risorgimento. The intervention of Austria only heightened the fact that the Habsburgs were the single most powerful opponent to unification, which would eventually lead to three wars of independence against the Spanish Bourbons Austrians.
Ferdinand I was King of the Two Sicilies from 1816 until his death. Before that he had been, since 1759, King of Naples as Ferdinand IV and King of Sicily as Ferdinand III. He was deposed twice from the throne of Naples: once by the revolutionary Parthenopean Republic for six months in 1799, and again by a French invasion in 1806, before being restored in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
The War of the Third Coalition was a European conflict lasting from 1805 to 1806 and was the first conflict of the Napoleonic Wars. During the war, France and its client states under Napoleon I and its ally Spain opposed an alliance, the Third Coalition, which was made up of the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire, Naples, Sicily, and Sweden. Prussia remained neutral during the war.
The Hundred Days, also known as the War of the Seventh Coalition, marked the period between Napoleon's return from eleven months of exile on the island of Elba to Paris on20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815. This period saw the War of the Seventh Coalition, and includes the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War as well as several other minor campaigns. The phrase les Cent Jours was first used by the prefect of Paris, Gaspard, comte de Chabrol, in his speech welcoming the king back to Paris on 8 July.
Joachim Murat was a French military commander and statesman who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. Under the French Empire he received the military titles of Marshal of the Empire and Admiral of France. He was the first Prince Murat, Grand Duke of Berg from 1806 to 1808, and King of Naples as Joachim-Napoleon from 1808 to 1815.
The Battle of Tolentino was fought from 2–3 May 1815 near Tolentino, Kingdom of Naples in what is now Marche, Italy: it was the decisive battle in the Neapolitan War, fought by the Napoleonic King of Naples Joachim Murat to keep the throne after the Congress of Vienna. The battle occurred during the Hundred Days following Napoleon's return from exile and, like the Battle of Waterloo, resulted in a decisive victory for the Seventh Coalition, leading to the restoration of the previous Bourbon king, Ferdinand I.
The Battle of the Panaro was a victory for King Joachim Murat's Neapolitan forces over a smaller Austrian force under Frederick Bianchi on 3 April 1815 early in the Neapolitan War. This defeat on the banks on the Panaro River, just south of Modena forced the Austrians to retreat behind the Po River.
The Battle of Carpi took place during the Neapolitan War between a brigade of Neapolitan soldiers under the command of Guglielmo Pepe and an Austrian force under the command of Baron Frimont. The battle took place in the town of Carpi and resulted in an Austrian victory, with the Neapolitans being driven from the town.
The Battle of Occhiobello was fought on 8 April – 9 April 1815 and was the turning point of the Neapolitan War. Joachim Murat, King of Naples was repulsed by an Austrian force under the command of Johann Frimont whilst trying to cross the bridge over the Po River at Occhiobello. Following the battle, the Austrians would not lose an engagement for the remainder of the war.
The Battle of Ronco took place during the Neapolitan War on 21 April 1815 in the village of Ronco, just south of Forlì. The main Neapolitan army, retreating following the disaster at the Battle of Occhiobello, was being pursued by an Austrian corps under the command of Adam Albert von Neipperg. The Neapolitans, commanded by their king, Joachim Murat, turned to check the Austrians at the Ronco River. The Neapolitans rear guard was defeated by a smaller advanced Austrian force, compelling Murat to retreat further south to the Savio River. The Austrians suffered light casualties, whereas nearly 1,000 Neapolitans were killed or wounded and more deserted Murat altogether.
Adam Albert, Count von Neipperg was an Austrian general and statesman. He was the son of a diplomat famous for inventing a letter-copying machine, and the grandson of Count Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg. His second wife, Empress Marie-Louise, was the widow of Napoleon and a daughter of Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor and founding Emperor of the Austrian Empire.
Vinzenz Ferrerius Friedrich Freiherr von Bianchi, Duke of Casalanza, was an Austrian Feldmarschallleutnant who notably served during the Napoleonic Wars.
The Battle of Scapezzano was a short engagement during the Neapolitan War on 1 May 1815 between an Austrian corps under Adam Albert von Neipperg and a Neapolitan division under Michele Carrascosa.
The Battle of San Germano was the final battle in the Neapolitan War between an Austrian force commanded by Laval Nugent von Westmeath and the King of Naples, Joachim Murat. The battle started on 15 May 1815 and ended on 17 May, after the remaining Neapolitan force was routed at Mignano.
The Treaty of Casalanza, which ended the Neapolitan War, was signed on 20 May 1815 between the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples on the one hand and the Austrian Empire, as well as the Great Britain, on the other. The signature occurred in a patrician villa, owned by the Lanza family, in what is now the commune of Pastorano, Campania, southern Italy.
The Battle of Campo Tenese saw two divisions of the Imperial French Army of Naples led by Jean Reynier attack the left wing of the Royal Neapolitan Army under Roger de Damas. Though the defenders were protected by field fortifications, a French frontal attack combined with a turning movement rapidly overran the position and routed the Neapolitans with heavy losses. The action occurred at Campotenese, a little mountain village in the municipality of Morano Calabro in the north of Calabria. The battle was fought during the War of the Third Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Rimini Proclamation was a proclamation by Joachim Murat, King of Naples, calling for the establishment of a united, self-governing Italy ruled by constitutional law. Its text is widely attributed to Pellegrino Rossi, later Papal Minister of Interior under Pope Pius IX. While it is primarily considered as a desperate attempt from Murat to retain the Neapolitan throne, the Rimini Proclamation was among the earliest calls for Italian unification.
The Kingdom of Naples was a French client state in southern Italy created in 1806 when the Bourbon Ferdinand IV & III of Naples and Sicily sided with the Third Coalition against Napoleon and was in return ousted from his kingdom by a French invasion. Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, was installed in his stead: Joseph conferred the title "Prince of Naples" to be hereditary on his children and grandchildren. When Joseph became king of Spain in 1808, Napoleon appointed his brother-in-law Joachim Murat to take his place. Murat was later deposed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after striking at Austria in the Neapolitan War, in which he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tolentino.
Michele Carrascosa (1774–1853) was a Neapolitan general and politician.
The Army of the Kingdom of Naples was the primary land defence and offence force of the Kingdom of Naples. It served alongside Napoleon’s Grande Armée in various campaigns and wars across Europe, until its final demise in the Neapolitan War of 1815. It was in service from 1806 to 1815, reborn from the Army of the Two Sicilies after the annexation of Naples. The Army was more known for the splendour of its uniforms rather than the achievements of its troops.
The Italian Campaign of 1813–1814 was the series of military operations fought during the War of the Sixth Coalition, mainly in Northern Italy between the French Empire and the Coalition led by Austrians and British. It represented the last time of the so-called "French period", precisely from the campaign of 1796–1797, in which a French and an Austrian army confronted each other for control of the Italian peninsula. The Austro-Neapolitan War of 1815 was essentially a clash between only Italians and Austrians.
Colletta, Pietro (translated by Horner, Susan) (1858), History of the Kingdom of Naples: 1734-1825, Hamilton, Adams, and Company{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Cust, Edward (1863), Annals of the wars of the nineteenth century
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