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The Battle of Sarzana sent the Genoese into a sudden panic. They had anticipated that the Autro-Sardinian armies might attack them from the north, but an invasion from the direction of Massa and Lucca was totally unexpected. Quite without warning, more than ten thousand Austrian soldiers had appeared at Sarzana, defeated a Spanish army, and had seized a bridge over the Magra, which brought them within ten miles of Spezia. Spezia was no mere coastal village; it was the primary port of debarkation for soldiers, munitions, and provisions coming from Naples and the Papal States. The Genoese forces in the vicinity amounted to just over 1,000 Genoese and Corsican soldiers,[1] and Nicolò Alessandro Giovo, the commander of the garrison of Spezia, reported that the city’s fortifications were critically short of artillery.[A] No assistance could be expected from the battered Spanish-Neapolitan army of General Fernando de la Torre y Solís, Marqués de Campo Santo, which was quickly retreating past Spezia to reach Genoa as soon as possible.

The Austrian commander, FZM Ludwig Ferdinand, Graf von Schulenburg-Oeynhausen, was certainly aware of the strategic importance of Spezia. But his orders were to defend the Milanese, not to invade Genoa, and circumstances probably precluded him from seizing the opportunity even if Vienna had approved. He had no artillery, and to wait for a siege train to be brought over the mountains was quite impossible given that the grand Gallispan army was at that very moment marching eastwards through Liguria towards Genoa. British naval bombardment was a possible alternative, but they too would take time to summon, and given how thinly the Ligurian fleet was stretched it may not have been practicable for Vice-Admiral William Rowley to amass a sufficient force to bombard Spezia while also attempting to interfere with the ongoing Gallispan invasion. The possibility of attacking the fortress of Sarzanello, which overlooked and protected Sarzana, was dismissed for the same reasons. After pursuing the Spanish as far as was practicable, Schulenburg recalled his forward units and scorched the Magra valley before withdrawing, letting the Catalans and Croats plunder the local villages and setting fire to the outskirts of Sarzana. The Austrian army skirted around Sarzanello with no interference from the Genoese garrison and proceeded northwards into the Lunigiana, and thence into Parma by way of the Brattello pass.

The Bourbon host which marched into Liguria in May of 1745 was the largest army yet fielded in the Italian theater. The main Gallispan armies totaled approximately 68,000 men; Campo Santo led another six or seven thousand men, although they would not be available immediately, and the Genoese had agreed to contribute around 4,000 men to operations outside their territory, while the remainder of the Genoese army would be relegated to garrison duty within the Republic. In all, this force approached a paper strength of 80,000. Against this force were approximately 40,000 Sardinians and nearly 20,000 Austrians, although neither of these armies could commit their full strength in the field as they were obligated to garrison fortresses along the Ligurian frontier.

With a sizable advantage in numbers, arguably the greatest impediment to the Bourbon cause in Italy that year was not the enemy but the continued disunion between the French and Spanish. The French commander, Marshal Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, was a man of numerous talents; although he had been recently rehabilitated after a few years of political disfavor, he was both a skilled military leader and an influential diplomat whose policy in Germany had been principally responsible for leading France into war in the first place. He regarded his Spanish counterpart, General Jaime Miguel de Guzmán, Marquis de la Mina, with considerable disdain, and the feeling appears to have been mutual. The two men bickered over which one of them actually held supreme command, and in the end the question had to be referred to the Bourbon monarchs. The matter was resolved by King Louis XV, whose lingering guilt over not fully supporting his Spanish uncle made him determined to bow to Spanish wishes in the matter. He informed Belle-Isle that he was to be subordinate to the Infante Felipe de Borbón, the nominal leader of the Spanish army, and thus to la Mina, Felipe’s military advisor and the de facto supreme commander.

This formal arrangement did not resolve all the fundamental disagreements in strategy between the two commanders and their respective governments. Belle-Isle, alarmed by the Sardinian reconquest of Ceva and concerned by the prospect that the Sardinians would fall upon the Gallispan army as it passed through Liguria or its supply routes once the army was through, insisted that retaking Ceva had to be the allies’ first priority. He was backed up by his government, which - notwithstanding Belle-Isle’s subordination to the Spanish - had given the marshal clear instructions to lead the French army into the Milanese only once Piedmont was pacified and the army’s line of communication and supply through Liguria was secure. La Mina too had royal instructions, which differed very little from those he had acted upon in the previous year - to prioritize the Milanese and take this province at all costs. In Madrid, the failure of the previous year’s campaign was attributed to a general insufficiency of forces (which in turn was blamed upon Gages’ failure at Monterosi), not any deficiency in strategy. For the moment, the commanders were able to agree; their primary attack would be towards Tortona and Alessandria so as to divide the Sardinians from the Austrians, and then resources would be shifted towards Ceva and southern Piedmont. Yet Belle-Isle feared, not without reason, that once Tortona and Alessandria were taken the Spanish would abandon him in another headlong rush for Milan.

Belle-Isle’s concern about a Sardinian counterattack was sensible, but misplaced. Carlo Emanuele considered striking at the Gallispan army while on the move, but the mountains of Liguria proved too difficult and devoid of forage for the Sardinian army to operate in. The French and Spanish were left free to advance to Genoa save for the interdiction of the British fleet. This certainly slowed the pace of the invasion, and reports from John Birtles, the British consul at Genoa, indicated that the Spanish army suffered from shortages of fodder and artillery on account of the blockade, but naval pressure could only delay and degrade the invasion, not stop it outright. In July, the French and Spanish converged on southeastern Piedmont with an incredible concentration of force, and Sardinian fortresses fell one by one as the season progressed. By mid-September, Novi, Acqui, and Tortona had fallen. A strong Sardinian garrison remained at Alessandria, and the united Austro-Sardinian army awaited at the strong defensive point of Bassignana at the junction of the Po and Tanaro rivers.

Belle-Isle was confident that with his superior numbers he could continue to force back the Sardinians by siege and maneuver, but the Spanish were not having it. La Mina was being bombarded with orders from Elisabetta Farnese, the Queen of Spain, to stop wasting time and invade Lombardy. Belle-Isle insisted that to divide their forces in the face of a united enemy army would be to repeat the errors of 1744. To satisfy the Spanish, it was agreed that a diversionary force would be sent eastwards to capture Parma and then move into the Milanese. This would accomplish both political and military ends: It would take the pressure of la Mina by giving the Queen some satisfaction, and it would put pressure on Schulenburg to withdraw from Piedmont and protect the Milanese, for the Queen of Hungary was as desperate to keep Lombardy as the Queen of Spain was to have it. The Spanish would then double back, and together they would annihilate the isolated Sardinians.

This strategy worked as well as could be anticipated. A corps of 7,000 Spanish troops quickly captured Parma and Piacenza, then crossed the Po and took Pavia, which placed them between the Austrian army and Milan. Schulenburg had remained in place as Parma fell, but he could not allow the capital of the Milanese to be endangered, and decamped from Bassignana despite Carlo Emanuele’s pleas. As soon as he was gone, the French and Spanish began consolidating their forces for an attack on Bassignana, gathering some 44,000 men to attack a mere 30,000 Sardinians. As it happened, among those soldiers present at Bassignana on October 6th was a single battalion of Corsican infantrymen.[2]

In late March, Major Pietro Giovan Battaglini had arrived in Livorno with a battalion of Corsican troops (nominally 600 men). After obtaining provisions from the Livornesi authorities, the battalion proceeded to Florence, where they were met by Feldmarshall-Lieutenant Johann Ernst, Freiherr von Breitwitz, commander of Austrian forces in Tuscany. Breitwitz had something of a history with the Corsicans, or at least some of them - a few soldiers in Battaglini’s unit were former members of the “Free Battalion” which had deserted from Tuscan service. Vienna’s attitude towards the “malcontents” had since evolved, however, and in any case these were notionally Sardinian troops. The British ambassador in Florence, Horace Mann, was not impressed; he described the Corsicans to his friend Horace Walpole as “ill-dressed, ill-equipped, and ill-mannered,” which was at least somewhat accurate. Although “uniformed” by Corsican standards, their uniforms were rather mismatched and of generally poor quality. King Theodore, aware that Sardinia was generally in the practice of arming its mercenary regiments from its own magazines, had made only a perfunctory effort to equip the battalion; most had muskets, but these were mismatched and often old-fashioned pieces, many men lacked bayonets, and they had only a scant supply of ammunition. It was probably for the best that they narrowly missed involvement in the match between Schulenburg and Campo Santo, marching through Modena less than two weeks before the Spanish arrived on the scene.

Their service in Piedmont did not have an auspicious beginning. The unit suffered from poor morale, probably exacerbated by their shoddy equipment and uniforms (evidently many of their boots were completely worn out by the time they reached Piedmont), and got in brawls with other soldiers. In one incident at Asti, where the Corsicans were garrisoned, a Corsican and a Croat got into an argument with ended in both of them drawing their knives. The Corsican was killed, and the dead man’s company started a riot which injured 14 people, some seriously.[3] When the Sardinian authorities jailed some of those responsible, Battaglini threatened to desert with the entire battalion, complaining that Sardinia’s other mercenary regiments (particularly the Swiss) were permitted to administer their own justice. Whether or not Battaglini’s demands were met is uncertain, but he seems to have backed off from his threats after the Sardinians released their Corsican prisoners. Nevertheless, the access of the Corsicans to weapons was restricted thereafter despite their status as regular soldiers, and 41 Corsicans deserted the unit within the first few months of service.

Despite these problems, the Corsicans were not as foreign to military instruction as the Sardinian officers had feared, and morale appeared to improve with the acquisition of new boots and muskets (and the removal of the Croats, who returned to Lombardy). Carlo Emanuele was advised that, while the Corsicans were probably unreliable soldiers, they would probably be serviceable as a garrison unit which could free up a more dependable Piedmontese battalion for front-line use.

Had Sardinia’s military commitments remained limited, this may have been how they spent the entirety of the war. The Gallispan thrust towards Tortona, however, required the mobilization of all available units. Nearly three quarters of the kingdom’s soldiers were mustered in the vicinity of Bassignana, including the Waldensian militias of the Piedmontese Alps who had even less instruction in proper line warfare than the Corsicans. In September, the Corsicans were moved to Valenza, and subsequently to the army encampment at Bassignana. As fate would have it, the first continental engagement of the Corsican Army would be no mere skirmish, but the largest battle on Italian soil in the entire war.

Taking advantage of the low water level of the Tanaro, the Gallispan army crossed the river under cover of their artillery and mounted an attack against Bassignana on the 6th of October. Belle-Isle had done a marvelous job of preparing the attack and bringing his army across the river, but in the battle itself the Bourbons relied upon the weight of their numbers to break the Sardinian lines. Carlo Emanuele’s army certainly proved itself capable; the infantry mounted a stalwart and unflinching defense against repeated attacks, and his cavalry performed admirably in their task to relieve the pressure on the infantry by a constant harassment of the Gallispan lines. The Bourbon numerical superiority, however, could not be long denied, and soon the Sardinians were buckling.

When Carlo Emanuele realized that an enemy assault was imminent, he had sent an urgent message to Schulenburg pleading for him to return. For the moment disregarding the danger to Milan, the Austrian marshal promptly turned around and raced back towards Bassignana with all possible haste. The river Po separated Schulenburg from Bassignana, but the Spanish - who made up the right flank of the Gallispan army - had failed to seize and destroy the single bridge over the river. That afternoon, as the Sardinians were nearly spent, Schulenburg’s advance units seized the crossing. The main body of his force was still too far away to make any decisive impact upon the battle, but the arrival of several squadrons of Austrian dragoons and hussars forced the Spanish to break off their attack against the Sardinians and reposition themselves to deal with this new threat from the north. This had a cascading effect, for with the pressure relieved on his left flank, Carlo Emanuele reinforced the rest of his line and drove the French back with a counterattack. The Spanish eventually succeeded in repelling the Austrians and captured the bridge over the Po, but in the waning hours of daylight Carlo Emanuele was able to extricate his army from the field in good order while his cavalry ran interference. His opponents were too disorganized to launch a serious pursuit in the days ahead.

Bassignana was a Bourbon victory. They had won in a technical sense by holding the field, and they had gained a strategic victory by dividing the Sardinian and Austrian armies. Although they would remain in communication by way of a bridge erected further up the Po, thereafter the Sardinians withdrew into Piedmont and the Austrians fell back upon the Milanese. The sudden reappearance of the Austrians, however, probably turned what could well have been a crushing Bourbon victory into a marginal one. Although the main body of the Austrian army arrived too late to be of assistance, the attack over the bridge by the Austrian advance columns and the failure of the Spanish to take control of the crossing in time gave Carlo Emanuele an opening in which to disengage. The Sardinians suffered more casualties than their enemies (about 2,300 Sardinians and perhaps 400 Austrians compared to 2,000 Gallispani), but only because of captured stragglers; Belle-Isle had more dead.[B]

Unfortunately, information about the order of battle at Bassignana is too limited for us to know precisely what the involvement of the Corsican battalion was. Although in theory a reserve unit, the Sardinians were stretched too thin to keep many battalions in reserve, and even the militiamen saw combat. Battaglini reported 11 dead, 15 wounded, and 10 missing from his unit, a figure which (assuming a battalion strength of 550) is only slightly less than the average casualty rate of the army. The Corsicans won no special honors or distinctions on that day, yet among such esteemed company as the Sardinian army, one of Europe’s more efficient and disciplined military establishments, being unremarkable was itself something of an accomplishment. Their brigade commander, General Bricherasso, offered a terse but positive assessment after the battle: “As for the Corsicans, they fought, and did not run.”

The Bourbon cause was not everywhere successful. A French attack against Ceva failed owing to the lack of artillery (the Spanish had refused to let any of the heavy artillery be diverted there) and the effect of raiding by Piedmontese irregulars, while an attempt by 9,000 French and Spanish troops under Lieutenant-General Jean-Baptiste François Desmarets, Marquis de Maillebois to open a “back door” into Piedmont by attacking from the Dauphiné towards Exilles was likewise rebuffed. The victory at Bassignana, however, easily overshadowed these minor frustrations. Belle-Isle now thought it quite plausible that he could gain enough territory in eastern Piedmont and Montferrat to supply his army over the winter, which would free him from the troublesome Ligurian supply route and thus render the capture of Ceva far less important. These conquests were accomplished even without the assistance of the Spanish, who - as Belle-Isle had feared - decamped and marched for the Milanese almost as soon as the battle was over.

Despite Belle-Isle’s misgivings, the disjunction of the Spanish and French armies did not lead to any immediate negative consequences. Reinforced with soldiers redirected from Ceva and a number of Genoese battalions, the French retained the initiative in Piedmont and lay siege to Alessandria, while the Sardinians withdrew to defensive positions around Turin. The Spanish were even more successful. Schulenburg was forced to abandon Milan and the rest of the Milanese without a fight. While retreating, he was relieved by Feldmarschall Josef Wenzel Lorenz, Fürst von Liechtenstein, who had been sent by Vienna to take over as theater commander. As Vienna had not sent any more reinforcements, however, Liechtenstein was likewise compelled to retreat. He divided the Austrian army, personally leading one corps north to Novara where he would assist the Sardinians in their defense, while Schulenburg led a second corps east over the Oglio to protect whatever part of Austrian Lombardy they might yet be able to hold. By the time the armies went into winter quarters, only the Duchy of Mantua remained to them, while the Spanish seized all of Parma and the Milanese. With great fanfare and celebration, Prince Felipe was crowned as King of Lombardy in Milan, despite the fact that Milan’s citadel remained in the hands of an isolated Austrian garrison.




There was jubilation in Madrid, where it was firmly believed that the 1746 campaign season would see the final expulsion of the Habsburgs - only a mopping-up operation, really - and the full establishment of a northern Italian kingdom which between itself and its brother-kingdom of Naples would secure Bourbon power in Italy once and for all. The long struggle of King Felipe V of Spain to secure his dynasty’s rightful patrimony as heirs of the Spanish Habsburgs, begun nearly half a century ago, would finally be complete. Yet the dysfunctional relationship between the French and Spanish had not been healed by victory - if anything, it had grown worse - and the wisdom of dividing their forces would be tested in the opening weeks of 1746 by Maximilian Ulysses, Graf von Browne, who with 30,000 men at his back would descend on Italy like a lightning bolt.


Footnotes
[1] Genoa still retained two Corsican infantry regiments with a nominal combined strength of 2,000 men, although records suggest that many of the Corsican companies were significantly under-strength at this time owing to obvious problems with recruitment.
[2] Three Genoese infantry battalions also took part in this battle. Another two battalions were part of the “diversionary force” which invaded Parma and the Milanese to draw off Schulenburg.
[3] The Croats were not actually Sardinian soldiers, but Austrian units on loan to Sardinia. For whatever reason, the Corsicans and Croats seem to have not gotten along well at Asti. It probably did not help that the Corsicans referred to them as “Turks,” a term which they applied rather indiscriminately to all southeastern Europeans, including the Corsican Greeks.

Timeline Notes
[A] The Genoese feared an attack by sea against Spezia or other ports, which was not entirely unwarranted - the British indeed considered attacking Spezia to capture and use it as a naval base, but ultimately the idea was scrapped as impractical. They were desperately short on artillery, however, and scraped together whatever guns they could find to bolster the defenses. Spezia was reinforced, but apparently Spezia’s guns came courtesy of the wreck of the San Isodoro, the Spanish ship which burned and sank in the Gulf of Ajaccio. ITTL, of course, the Corsican rebels took Ajaccio and reclaimed the San Isodoro’s guns, and as a consequence the Genoese are even more hard up for cannon than they were IOTL.
[B] The Battle of Bassignana was a real battle which took place in 1745, albeit slightly earlier in the year than OTL. Despite the changed history of the war thus far, I consider a confrontation at Bassignana to be extremely likely on account of the strategic importance of the position; there's really no better place for the Sardinians to defend against the Gallispan attack. The key difference is that IOTL the Spanish succeeded in seizing and destroying the bridge over the Po just before the Austrian advance columns could reach it. ITTL, the smaller numbers of Spanish troops and the absence of the very competent General Gages allows the Austrians to gain the bridge first and interfere with the Spanish attack. Nevertheless, the overall result is not much different from OTL: historically, the Gallispan army wore down the Sardinians and eventually broke their center, but Carlo Emanuele was nevertheless able to retreat with most of his army intact, losing some 2,500 men compared to 1,000 Gallispani. ITTL, Carlo Emanuele is still forced to withdraw, but his center holds and he is able to disengage more cleanly after the Spanish pull back and the French are fought to a standstill. The battle IOTL lasts longer and thus the Sardinians suffer nearly as many casualties as OTL, but the Gallispani pay a higher cost for their victory. In the aftermath, Schulenburg holds somewhat more territory than the Austrians did at the end of 1745, but not so much as to be really consequential.