When was the Battle of Caldiero?

From 29 to 31 October 1805. The main fighting was on 30 October; on the night of the 30th the Austrians began their retreat, covered by a rear guard on the 31st.

Who commanded at Caldiero?

Marshal André Masséna led the French Army of Italy; Archduke Charles, Austria's leading general and the emperor's brother, led the Austrian army in Italy, with Count Heinrich Bellegarde among his senior commanders.

How many men fought at Caldiero?

Thiers gives Masséna about 50,000 men against 80,000 Austrians in their entrenched camp; the Larousse encyclopedia puts the Austrian army in northern Italy at some 50,000.

Why did Archduke Charles retreat after Caldiero?

Because the war was being lost on the Danube. After Mack's surrender at Ulm on 20 October, Charles had to fall back to cover the heart of the monarchy, and he withdrew east toward Hungary with Masséna pursuing him.

Why is it called the second Battle of Caldiero?

The same ground had been fought over in November 1796, when the young Bonaparte attacked the Austrians there, and there was another clash in 1813.

In the Veneto, northern Italy, about 13 kilometers east of Verona at the foot of the Lessini hills, on the main road toward Vicenza. It is known for its thermal springs.

Battle of Caldiero, 1805: Masséna against Archduke Charles

Q: Who won the Battle of Caldiero in 1805?

Historians disagree. French sources and the 1911 Britannica call it Masséna's victory; the modern Britannica says Archduke Charles crushed Masséna, the German national biography calls it an Austrian defensive victory, and HistoryOfWar.org an indecisive Austrian victory. All agree that Charles then withdrew east.

Karl von Blaas, Die Schlacht bei Caldiero 1805 (cropped). Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Quick answer

Who won the Battle of Caldiero in 1805?

Historians disagree. French accounts and the 1911 Britannica make it Masséna's victory, the Larousse encyclopedia says the French held their ground, and the Napoleon Series lists it as French while noting that some call it indecisive. The modern Britannica says Archduke Charles crushed Masséna, the German national biography calls it an Austrian defensive victory, and HistoryOfWar.org an indecisive Austrian victory. What is not in doubt is the result: Charles withdrew eastward after the battle, with the French following him.¹

Two of the best generals of the age met at Caldiero, a village of thermal springs east of Verona, in a three-day battle that both sides could claim. While Napoleon was destroying one Austrian army on the Danube, Marshal Masséna and Archduke Charles fought for the line of the Adige. The battle settled nothing by itself; the war was being decided elsewhere.²

Background: the war of 1805 in Italy

In 1805 Austria went to war with Napoleon again, in the Third Coalition. Archduke Charles, the emperor's brother and Austria's leading soldier, had tried in vain to dissuade Emperor Francis from going to war, the Fondation Napoléon writes, and was given the command in Italy, a theater the Fondation calls secondary.³

Dark locator map with a gold star in a glowing circle marking the approximate site of the Battle of Caldiero, the coasts, rivers and lakes of the region, and a small world map inset with the area boxed — The Battle of Caldiero: the star marks the approximate site, and the inset shows the area on a world map. Drawn for this article from Natural Earth data, with no modern borders. Location map: © Echoes of Battle (data: Natural Earth, public domain)

Napoleon meant to win the war in Germany. His orders to Masséna, as both the Larousse encyclopedia and the 1911 Britannica put it, were to hold the Austrian army in Italy in check while the Grande Armée marched to the Danube. On 20 October 1805 Napoleon forced the surrender of General Mack's Austrian army at Ulm, where some 27,000 men laid down their arms after the rest of the army had been cut to pieces or scattered in the preceding days. The road to Vienna lay open.⁴

In Italy the two armies faced each other across the Adige, which ran through Verona. On the night of 17 to 18 October Masséna ended the armistice and seized a crossing in the city itself, and his divisions under Duhesme and Gardanne fought their way into the Austrian side of the river. Then he waited for news from the Danube. When word of the success at Ulm reached him, he went over to the attack.⁵

Armies and commanders

André Masséna, born in Nice, had enlisted in the Royal Italian regiment in 1775 and risen to general of division in the wars of the Revolution. He was Bonaparte's most trusted lieutenant in Italy in 1796 and 1797 and won the Battle of Rivoli, from which he later took his ducal title; in 1799 he beat the Russians at Zürich and in 1800 held out at Genoa. Napoleon called him the darling child of victory (l'enfant chéri de la victoire in Britannica's version, l'enfant gâté, the spoiled child, in the 1911 edition's), and in 1804 made him one of the first marshals of the Empire.⁶ › Napoleon Bonaparte

Engraved portrait of a curly-haired French marshal in a dark coat with an embroidered collar, with the name Masséna beneath — André Masséna, who led the French army on the Adige, in a nineteenth-century steel engraving by Carl Mayer of Nuremberg, published in Stuttgart by J. Scheible. Public domain (CC0). Carl Mayer, steel engraving, between 1808 and 1868, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-P-1920-1753, via Wikimedia Commons.

His opponent, born in Florence in 1771, was a son of the future Emperor Leopold II. Charles had made his name in 1796 by beating Jourdan and Moreau on the Rhine, and after 1801, as president of the Austrian war council and war minister, he had begun to reform the army. Britannica calls him one of the few Allied commanders capable of defeating the French generals of the age.⁷

Painted portrait of a young Austrian field marshal in a white coat with gold embroidery and a red and white sash, his hand on a map beside a plumed hat — Archduke Charles in field marshal's uniform with the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, painted by an unidentified artist around 1801 to 1804, a few years before Caldiero. Public domain. Unidentified painter, oil on canvas, about 1801 to 1804 (Dorotheum sale), via Wikimedia Commons.

The strength of the two armies is uncertain. Thiers, the French historian, writes that Masséna attacked with 50,000 men an entrenched camp held by 80,000; the Larousse encyclopedia puts the Austrian army in northern Italy at some 50,000. Among Charles's senior commanders were Count Heinrich Bellegarde and, at the head of the grenadiers, Count Colloredo-Mansfeld.⁸

The battle, in phases

29 October: the advance. Masséna took the divisions of Gardanne, Duhesme and Molitor across the Adige, pushed the Austrians back and spread out across the plain between Verona and the Austrian camp at Caldiero. Duhesme's column, Rickard writes, tried to turn the Austrian left early on the 29th before the fighting spread along the whole front.⁹

The position. Caldiero lies where the last slopes of the Lessini hills come down to the plain, on the main road from Verona toward Vicenza and Austria. Thiers describes entrenched heights at Colognola on the Austrian right, the village and its walled enclosures in the center astride the highroad, and on the other side the marshy, ditched banks of the Adige.¹⁰

Engraved map of the plain east of Verona with the Adige winding through it, the Lessini hills along the top and the villages around Caldiero, with a title cartouche in the lower left — Plan of the battlefield of Caldiero, engraved by Ambroise Tardieu after a drawing made on the spot by Jean-Jacques Pelet: Verona and the Adige on the left, Caldiero where the hills meet the plain right of center, and the marshy banks of the river below it. Public domain. Jean-Jacques-Germain Pelet (drawing) and Ambroise Tardieu (engraving), Plan du champ de bataille de Caldiero, early nineteenth century, Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons.

30 October: who attacked whom. The accounts do not even agree on that. The Larousse encyclopedia and Nathan Jensen of FrenchEmpire.net both have Archduke Charles launching an attack on the French at Caldiero on the 30th. Thiers and Rickard tell it the other way round, with Masséna attacking the Austrian camp. The two versions meet in the center: in Thiers's account the French drove up the highroad toward Caldiero until Charles counterattacked down it with his grenadiers, and Rickard has the Austrian grenadiers under Colloredo-Mansfeld beating off several French attempts to take the village.¹¹

The heights and the center. In Thiers's French account, General Molitor's men climbed toward the redoubts on the Colognola heights, where Bellegarde came out to meet them, and in the center Masséna stopped the Austrian grenadier column with guns massed on the road and drove it back with the bayonet. Rickard's version has the grenadiers holding the village against the French. Both agree that Bellegarde commanded part of the Austrian army and that the Austrian grenadiers bore the weight of the fight in the center.¹²

Turning point: night falls on the 30th

Night ended the fighting, with the two armies bivouacked close together on the field. Neither had broken the other. Thiers claims heavy Austrian losses, many of them prisoners; Rickard, for his part, writes that the French attacks ended in failure and Masséna pulled back. No casualty figures in the sources consulted for this page are confirmed by a second account, so none is given here.¹³

The decision came from far away. Charles had heard of the disaster at Ulm, and with Napoleon's main army marching on Vienna he could not stay on the Adige. During the night, Thiers writes, he sent off his baggage and artillery, and on the 31st, covering himself with a rear guard, he began his retreat. Larousse puts it the same way: the French held their ground, but the Austrians gained time to prepare their withdrawal to the east.¹⁴

Aftermath and consequences

Masséna followed. The Larousse encyclopedia writes that he pursued and harassed the Austrians energetically and slowed their march, and FrenchEmpire.net that the harassment kept them from joining the Austrians in the Danube theater. Thiers adds that Charles, with the best troops of Austria, winter weather and swollen rivers on his side, could not be brought to disaster, but that the pursuit kept him from maneuvering freely against the Grande Armée. The archduke withdrew east, into Hungary according to his entry in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie.¹⁵

On 2 December 1805, before Charles could intervene, Napoleon defeated the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz, and the war ended with the Peace of Pressburg. Masséna was sent south to conquer the kingdom of Naples for Joseph Bonaparte.¹⁶ › The Battle of Austerlitz, 1805

Large battle painting of Napoleon on a white horse among his staff while a general gallops up with captured standards and prisoners — The war was decided at Austerlitz, five weeks after Caldiero: François Gérard's painting of 1810 shows General Rapp bringing Napoleon the captured standards and prisoners of the Russian Imperial Guard. Palace of Versailles. Public domain. Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, via Wikimedia Commons.

For Charles, Caldiero came at the start of his greatest years. In February 1806 he was made generalissimo with wide powers and launched a second round of army reforms. In 1809 he beat Napoleon at Aspern-Essling and lost to him at Wagram, and at Aspern-Essling Masséna was once again in the opposing army.¹⁷

Legacy and memory

Caldiero is one of those battles that each side remembered as its own. The 1911 Britannica wrote that Masséna defeated the archduke on 30 October; the modern Britannica says that Charles again crushed Masséna. The Neue Deutsche Biographie calls it an Austrian defensive victory and the older Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie says Charles held his ground for three days; the Fondation Napoléon speaks of a minor victory for Charles. Rickard calls it an indecisive Austrian victory that was negated by Mack's surrender at Ulm.¹⁸

Painters remembered it too. The picture at the top of this page, Karl von Blaas's Battle of Caldiero 1805 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, shows Austrian grenadiers charging the French, with the dates of all three days, 29, 30 and 31 October, written in gold beneath.

Hand-colored print of French grenadiers in blue coats firing on Austrian infantry in white before smoking hills topped by guns, with a mounted French general on the left and a long printed title below — Bataille de Caldiero, gagnée par le Maréchal Masséna: a hand-colored print published in Paris by Basset after 1805 that presents the battle as a French victory, as the French accounts did. Public domain (CC0). Anonymous engraver, published by Basset, Paris, hand-colored etching, after 1805, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, G.34134, via Wikimedia Commons.

The ground itself had a long military history. The Enciclopedia Italiana lists clashes between French and Austrians at Caldiero in November 1796, October 1805 and November 1813; the first of them, on 12 November 1796, was a rare French defeat in Bonaparte's Italian campaign, Rickard writes, in which Masséna himself had attacked the Austrians at Colognola.¹⁹ › The Greatest Napoleonic Battles

Caldiero today

Caldiero is a small town in the province of Verona, about 13 kilometers from the city, best known for the thermal springs that gave it its name, from the Latin calidarium; both the Larousse and the Enciclopedia Italiana mention its waters. It lies at the foot of the Lessini hills beside the busy route from Verona to Vicenza.²⁰