A Box of Sand

by Charles Stephenson

  Because Giolitti and San Giuliano were prisoners of the jingo right and nationalist press, Italy could not shift position on absolute sovereignty for Italy over Tripoli even if they had wanted to. Benedetto Cirmeni, whilst contemporaneously complaining about the British acquisition of Sollum, put the matter succinctly in a Vienna newspaper:

  The only peace condition of Italy is the recognition of its complete and absolute sovereignty over the entire African vilayet […] If this condition is not accepted, then Italy will continue the war, even if it were convinced that the continuation would bring the dissolution of Turkey in Europe.37

  Giolitti’s lack of room to manoeuvre translated into Italian intransigence, which in turn inevitably meant that the process of arriving at an agreement was to be tedious and long-drawn.

  If progress in the diplomatic sphere was agonisingly slow, then something fundamentally indistinguishable might be said to apply to the military operations undertaken to ‘disillusion’ the enemy. Perhaps the first step taken towards a more aggressive policy was the replacement of the military commanders and the splitting of the theatre into two separate commands. Frugoni had been recalled in July 1912 and replaced with Lieutenant-General Ottavio Ragni. Caneva was recalled in early September, and following his departure his former command was divided; Ragni became Commander in Chief in Tripolitania whilst Lieutenant-General Ottavio Briccola held the same position in Cyrenaica. Neither of the recalled commanders was held to have been superseded for failure, and Giolitti explained the rationale behind the decision as being necessary because the war had entered a new phase, one requiring a combined military and police style of operation which ‘demanded freedom of initiative and speed.’38 Accordingly, the new commanders, who had control in both the military and civil spheres, had the ‘implicit mandate’ of reversing the ultra-cautious methods of Caneva and Frugoni.39 In the tactical sphere this had, as has been noted, generally manifested itself in the use of ponderous movements in overwhelming force. Frugoni and Caneva were averse to exposing their forces to even the slightest risk, ensuring that they suffered no chance of even a minor defeat or reverse, and if they did then this was concealed by propaganda. According to the press release put out in Rome on 5 September announcing the promotion of Briccola and Ragni; ‘they have been appointed to separate commands […] with a view to pushing on operations in the interior.40

  Changes were made lower down the command structure as well, amongst them being the replacement of Major-General conte Trombi, whose tenure at Derna was not considered to have been creditable, with Major-General Ezio Reisoli in August. The Italian occupation of Derna had always been somewhat uncertain due to the extremely difficult ground to the south of the town and the precariousness of the water supply. The Ottoman forces surrounding them were also large in number, and were of course commanded ultimately by Enver, who reported that he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel (Oberstleutnant) on 17 June.41

  That the relative insecurity of Derna was unacceptable was made evident by it being the place chosen for the first manifestation of the new Italian policy of pushing on operations into the interior with initiative and speed. The garrison there had been depleted somewhat in order to provide troops for the expeditions to Rhodes and Misurata, but early in September it was reinforced by a number of units, many of which had recent battle experience. These included two battalions of Alpini, the Mondovi and Fenestrelle, the 43rd and 34th Infantry Regiments, and an ascari battalion. Also drafted was one of Italy’s most experienced general officers, Tommaso Salsa, who had been occupying an administrative post in Tripoli City. Salsa had been involved in the campaign that terminated at Adua and had commanded the 1st Infantry Brigade during the international intervention in China during the Boxer War. He was put in charge of a mixed brigade consisting of the Alpini and ascari battalions.

  On the morning of 14 September, before first light, Reisoli’s command began to move. On the western side of the Wadi Derna a brigade-strength column of troops under Major General Luigi Capello debouched from the entrenchments near to the fortification known as the ridotta Lombardia (Lombardia Fort) and, extended into line, began spreading out to the west and north-west of this work towards the Wadi Bu Msafer supported by a heavy artillery bombardment. This movement had the effect of drawing enemy forces towards the slowly advancing troops, which was the intent behind it. Having advanced to draw the enemy’s attention to the west of the town, the real operation began in the east about an hour afterwards. Two brigades, one under Major-General Francesco Del Buono and the other under Salsa, moved to the east and south east simultaneously. Salsa’s command marched in column parallel to the shore until it reached the point where it was intersected by the Wadi Bent, then turned right and moved up the river bed until reaching Casa Aronne, a large white house that dominated the surrounding terrain.

  Del Buono meanwhile had moved from the Italian lines slightly to the north-east of the ridotta Piemonte and advanced across the difficult ground to the south-south-west on the position known as Kasr Ras el Leben (Kasr el Leben), where the ruins of an old fortification were sited. Like that at Casa Aronne, this was on high ground that could dominate the local terrain, and both positions were therefore of some importance. By virtue of their manoeuvres the Italians had extended their forward line by some 4.5 kilometres and had, largely through the feint by Capello’s brigade, achieved these objectives without loss or serious opposition. Work was immediately set in motion to consolidate these gains with the construction of strong entrenchments. Thus the left of the Italian position east of the Wadi Derna was held by Salsa’s mixed brigade, with the centre, based on Kasr Ras el Leben, defended by Del Buono’s infantry.

  If Reisoli’s intention was to bring about an offensive-defensive battle then he succeeded. On 17 September the Ottoman forces counter-attacked under the command of Enver and, as always, accounts of the subsequent battle are highly partisan in nature.42 According to Enver’s own account, dated 18 September, his intention was to ‘break through the centre’ of the Italian position. This, he claimed, had been achieved and the Italians were totally surprised; the attackers however were unable to fully exploit their success due to difficulties on the flanks of the attack. After fighting for sixteen hours, they withdrew, but, despite their numerical superiority, the Italians remained on the defensive. He concluded: ‘Our artillery has proved to be excellent [and] it is a pity that the final outcome of the battle has not quite met my expectations.’43 In his diary entry for 21 September however, beginning ‘I will attempt to describe our last battle’ he gives a fuller description of the action from his perspective:

  At 5 o’clock, the appointed hour, the attack was announced on our right wing by brisk infantry and machine gun fire. The Italian artillery replied a few moments later with the utmost severity. Except for the flash of the guns firing we could see nothing, and had to follow the course of the battle from its confused sounds.

  After a quarter of an hour it became relatively quiet, and I concluded that our troops had penetrated into the enemy positions. At first light our artillery opened fire on the small Italian fort opposite. To get a better view of the situation, I went further forward just as the sun rose above the horizon. In the centre everything was good, the Italian position had been pierced. On our right flank however our troops had been forced back into the Italian first line, which was already behind them. Two companies of the Guards with two machine guns brought the enemy counter-attack to a halt.44 The left wing seemed endangered by the enemy forces; around midday however it pressed once more in a furious and dashing assault in order to gain a breathing space. […] As I stood motionless and watched the comings and goings of the battle, I suddenly received from an Italian battery which had been fired upon our artillery, heavy shrapnel fire. […]

  On the right wing the enemy [counter-attacks] gained the upper hand [and] our men were forced to retire somewhat initially. But when I made a quick advance in the centre, which was joined in by the right win
g, the enemy attacks immediately stopped. We also parried the attack on our left wing and our troops took up new positions there, without the enemy venturing to disturb them. […]

  Towards evening we galloped to the right wing, pursued by a hailstorm of Italian shrapnel. Here the attackers had established themselves around 100 meters in front of the Italian positions, after having to give up the trenches following their initial capture. Their position was unfavourable, as they were not only shelled from the flank by an Italian armoured cruiser, but also threatened by Italian forces disembarked from the sea. I realized that any further attacks on this wing were no longer promising of success. Also a telephone call from the commander of the forces west of the Wadi Derna informed me that a large enemy formation, of about brigade strength, was concentrating in front of our right wing. I found myself therefore forced break off the struggle and commanded the attackers to break off and retreat as darkness fell taking along all the dead and wounded.

  It was a bloody day; a new page was written in the history of this war. The outposts remained in touch with the enemy, who with his 24 battalions, four field and 6 mountain guns did not dare to interfere with our movements, and even today still does not show himself. If only such strength available to us!

  Our artillery has stood up to artillery ten times as heavy and silenced a series of hostile batteries. Our casualties were 185 wounded and 98 dead. Unfortunately, these battles have no influence on the outcome of the war.45

  Accounts of the battle appeared in the various newspapers of the European states, and, as has become tediously obvious, reflected the viewpoint of the writer. The Italian General Staff issued a report that, perhaps naturally, magnified the Italian contribution. This was reproduced by Tittoni:

  The battle was composed of three distinct actions: a weak one early in the morning on our extreme left, in which the enemy was easily repulsed; the other two respectively heavy, at the head of the [Wadi] Bent in the morning, and again on our extreme left in the afternoon; but in the evening the enemy was defeated and left the field covered with dead and wounded.

  On that memorable day the Arab-Turk forces, several thousand strong, with plenty of well-commanded artillery, conducted by Enver Bey, arrayed themselves against the solidity, calmness, and vigour of the counter-attacks of our troops, white and native, conducted by the conspicuous ability of our officers and guided by a clear conception of tactics, with harmonious and effectual opportune dispositions of troops.

  Our losses of 10 officers and 174 men, dead and wounded, were small compared with those of the enemy, of whom 1,135 were found dead near our lines.46

  By the time the encounter came to be written up by the pro-Italian correspondents it had turned into a total disaster for the Ottoman forces. McClure had it thus:

  On the extreme left the Arabs advanced with splendid daring, but as they drew near they were staggered by an irresistible counter-attack from a battalion of Alpini and the Eritrean battalion. The Arabs broke and fled, pursued by a steady and pitiless fire, which dropped many of them before they could reach cover. […] By nine o’clock in the morning the battle was virtually over […]47

  It matters little whose version of events was the more accurate, and the battle, both in course and in result, differed hardly at all from any of the other small-scale encounters between the Italian army and the Ottoman forces that occurred during the conflict. However, if it is seen in the context of the ‘new phase’ of the war identified by Giolitti, the type that ‘demanded freedom of initiative and speed,’ and was a step towards ‘pushing on operations in the interior’ then it must be accounted as an Italian failure. Indeed, it is difficult to distinguish it from the style of operation pursued by Caneva and Frugoni. This point is reinforced when considering that further advances in early October around Derna meant that when Italy and the Ottoman Empire finally came to terms, the territory controlled by the Italian army there stretched along the coast some 6.5 kilometres and extended inland some 5 kilometres; a total area of about 30 square kilometres. If the example of Derna were used as a yardstick to compute how long it would take to occupy Cyrenaica, the answer would be a most unfeasibly long time. The point Enver made, that ‘these battles have no influence on the outcome of the war,’ was then undoubtedly correct.

  The same held true in Tripolitania. The operations that took place in June against the area around Zanzur had failed to prevent Ottoman forces from operating there as the oasis itself had not been occupied. Therefore, and as part of the new forward policy, Ragni decided to mount an attack in order to rectify this, thus denying it to the enemy. The advance was to be made in overwhelming force in reinforced divisional strength, and was to take place on 20 September. The core of the force consisted of a Special Division (Divisione special). This comprised two brigades of infantry; one from the 1st Division under Major-General Michele Salazar and one from the 3rd Division under Major-General Massimo Tommasoni. This force was placed under the commander of the 3rd Division, Lieutenant-General Conte Felice de Chaurand. In support were four batteries of mountain guns, a battery of field guns, an engineer battalion, two squadrons of the Lodi cavalry, and an ascari battalion. There was also a reserve force under Major-General Giovanni Maggiotto consisting of the second brigade from the 1st Division supported by an engineer battalion and two field batteries. In addition, a flying, or mobile, column was assembled under the command of Major-General Conte Coardi di Carpeneto. Consisting of the 11th Regiment of Bersaglieri and squadrons of the Lodi Cavalry and Firenze Lancers it was to operate on the left flank of the advance.48

  Lieutenant-General Ragni took tactical command on the day, the whole force amounting to nearly 12,000 infantry, 550 cavalry, and 34 artillery pieces. Naval support was also forthcoming if necessary. Subterfuge had been employed; announcements to the effect that the troops had been concentrated to hold a parade were made. Credence was lent to this by the fact that 20 September was the anniversary of the fall of Rome to the Italian army. Whether anyone was taken in by this seems doubtful, and in any event when the whole force moved off on the morning of the anniversary it was met with attacks from the desert on its left flank. If, as with Reisoli’s tactic at Derna, Ragni’s preferred option was to fight an offensive-defensive battle, then he was disappointed.

  It is not proposed to enumerate the details of this battle, in which the Ottoman forces eventually came to number about 7,000. Suffice to say that at that at the end of the day’s fighting, which was dubbed the Battle of Sidi Balil, the Italians had managed to entrench themselves in and around the Zanzur Oasis and hold onto the ground they had won, albeit after suffering over 500 casualties. These included 115 officers and men killed, including the commander of the Lodi Cavalry Major Giuseppe De Dominicis, and 431 wounded. The Ottoman casualties, as estimated by the Italians, were reckoned to have been over 2,000. The Italian advance had also been marked by errors, inasmuch as the two regiments of Salazar’s brigade lost touch with each other and risked having to fight in isolation.

  The Italians could however award themselves a victory, though, as in Cyrenaica, if this was evidence of the ‘new phase’ of warfare then it was exceedingly difficult to discern any substantial difference between it and the previous version. One may perhaps quote Francis McCullagh, who wrote in the introduction of his 1913 book that: ‘A glance at the map of Tripolitania will show that, at their present rate of progress, the Italians will take about fifty years to get to Gharian [the main Ottoman base, some 80 kilometres to the south].’49 Fortunately, for the Italians, at least they did not have to wait until 1963 to get the Ottoman Empire to agree terms.

  The site of the negotiations had moved on 3 September from Caux-sur-Montreux to the Beau Rivage Palace Hotel at Ouchy, south of Lausanne, on the shore of Lake Geneva, due to the prospect of better weather.50 This had no effect on progress or the lack thereof, but if they were moving at an agonisingly slow pace they were nevertheless advancing more rapidly than the Italian military. The crux of the problem revolved ar
ound Gabriel’s desire to avoid a humiliating peace. Conversely, it was politically necessary for Giolitti to inflict one, or at least be in a position to tell Italian ‘public opinion’ that he had. Whilst it is not proposed to enter into a detailed study of the peace talks (and anyone interested in the definitive account should consult Chapters IX and X of Timothy W Childs excellent work – see Bibliography) it was largely in the area of perception that the necessary ‘wriggle room’ was found.

  Gabriel, and the Ottoman government in general, was also under pressure from the Balkan situation; respected newspapers were captioning their articles on the region with headlines such as ‘The War Cloud’ and ‘The Balkan Peril’ during September and the hugely respected London Times carried authoritative reports of Ottoman excesses against innocent Christians.51 Whether the latter reports were entirely accurate (Childs makes the pertinent point that Christians in the Ottoman Balkans were always considered ‘innocent’ by most Europeans no matter how far from the truth this was) is largely irrelevant.52 What mattered was they were believed, and were merely symptomatic of the inflamed situation in the region.

  Whilst the build-up of tension in the Balkans gave an incentive to Gabriel and the Ottoman government to come to terms, it was also a worry to Giolitti. Should the Italian conflict with the Empire become intertwined with a Balkan conflict, then it was entirely possible that the Great Powers would intervene and propose some means of settling the outstanding issues by negotiation. Such an eventuality could easily lead to Italy getting less than she wanted in respect of Tripoli, which would likely have been the end of the Giolitti government. Accordingly, from the Italian Prime Minister’s perspective, the process had to be terminated in a satisfactory manner as quickly as possible. On 2 October he authorised the negotiators at Ouchy to deliver an ultimatum to the effect that if at least a preliminary treaty had not been signed within eight days, then the negotiations would be suspended.