2019 · Battles Magazine
A game about an encounter battle of gargantuan proportions in north Italy...
On a brutally hot day in June 1859, on the 24th, three armies clashed. The French, under the command of Napoleon III, the Piedmontese under Victor Emmanuel II and the Austrians under Franz Josef (the famous husband of the Empress Sisi!). A quarter of a million men.
The largest battle on European soil since Waterloo.
Each of them unaware of the enemy’s positions, that they all expected to be further away, the three armies were to fight an encounter battle of gargantuan proportions.
The battle took place on three fronts. In the north, between the Piedmontese and the talented Benedek’s VIIIth Corps; in the centre around the village of Solferino, place of terrible, bloody, hand to hand fighting; and in the south, on the plains of Medole and Guidizzolo, where the French would try in vain to turn the Austrians’ left wing.
Broken off by a storm of a rare intensity, the battle was to end in a gigantic human tragedy. Europe had not seen as much bloodshed for more than 40 years. 30,000 dead and wounded, 10,000 missing or prisoners of war, another 40,000 sick after the battle due to the makeshift hygienic conditions and lack of provisions.
