Siege of Turin

For other uses, see Battle of Turin (disambiguation).

The Siege of Turin (14 May–7 September 1706) was undertaken by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans and General Louis d'Aubusson de la Feuillade against the Savoyard city of Turin during the War of the Spanish Succession. The French Royal Army was unable to break down Turin's defences or obtain the city's surrender. The besiegers were attacked on 7 September by a Habsburg Austrian relief column under Prince Eugene of Savoy and Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy and routed at the Battle of the Stura. The siege of Turin was broken and the withdrawal of French forces from northern Italy began. Coupled with its twin disaster in Flanders—the destruction of a French army at the Battle of Ramillies—Turin marked 1706 as the annus horribilis for Louis XIV of France.

Background

At the outbreak of the conflict, Victor Amadeus, backed by his cousin Eugene, generalissimo of the Imperial troops, had taken the risk to side with Austria's Habsburgs since they were the sole power in Europe that could grant his state a total independence after a final victory. However, in case of defeat, Piedmont and Savoy would be wiped off the European maps.

King Louis XIV of France, allied with Spain, replied by invading first Savoy and then Piedmont itself. As the Spanish armies occupied Lombardy, Piedmont found itself surrounded from every side. Attacked by three armies, the Savoyards lost Susa, Vercelli, Chivasso, Ivrea and Nice (1704). The last stronghold was the Citadel of Turin, a fortification built in the mid-16th century.

In August 1705 the French-Spanish armies were ready to attack, but La Feuillade deemed his troops insufficient and waited for reinforcements. This choice turned out to be wrong, as it allowed the Piedmontese to fortify the city up to the neighbouring hills and to prepare for a long siege.

The siege

In May, the Franco-Spanish army approached Turin with more than 40,000 men. Marshal Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, expert of siege techniques, volunteered for the campaign but was dismissed due to his age. Vauban persisted in counselling the French command, proposing a side assault on the city and pointing out that the wide net of countermine galleries set by the defenders would present a tenacious obstacle to any other operation. But La Feuillade had different ideas and, dismissing Vauban's counsel, ordered his 48 military engineers to draw up plans for the excavation of a long series of trenches. Old Vauban vocally condemned La Feuillade's methods from Paris, publicly offering to have his throat cut if the French succeeded in taking Turin on La Feuillade's chosen point of attack.

Pietro Micca, a Piedmontese hero

Digging began 14 May, although La Feuillade's lines never fully surrounded Turin. The siege began in June and was pursued for three months against dogged resistance. The besieged, supported by the active participation of the population to the battle, offered a strenuous defence, inflicting heavy losses on the attackers. Fighting continued during the whole summer of 1706.

Relief

On 17 June Victor Amadeus left Turin to meet Eugene, who was marching from the Trentino with Austrian troops under his command. The heroic deeds of the defenders, including the famous sacrifice of Pietro Micca who had himself exploded in a gallery together with a French party in order to save the citadel, seemed however in vain at this point, with the city totally surrounded and heavily shelled, and the French lines nearing the first bastions of the citadel.

Epilogue

On 2 September the two Savoyards analyzed the tactical situation from the hill of Superga, which commands Turin and the neighbouring area. While the defenders pushed back the last attack fuelled only by desperation, they decided to outflank the besiegers with the bulk of the Austrian army, including part of the cavalry, in the north-western part of the city, which was deemed the most vulnerable part of the Allied front. The manoeuvre succeeded and the Austrians managed to set up camp between the Dora Riparia and the Stura di Lanzo rivers. Eugene declared: "These men are already half defeated."

The final clash began at 10 AM on 7 September with an attack against the entire front of the besiegers. After three failed attacks, the Prussian infantry led by Leopold I, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau was able to break the French right wing because the La Marine Regiment ran out of ammunition. Two attempts to relieve the pocket formed in this way were driven back and the Allied army began to collapse the French position. When Count Wirich Philipp von Daun ordered the city's garrison to break out against the left wing of the French-Spanish army, it started to break up, with soldiers plunging into the Dora Riparia in an attempt to save their lives. Hundreds of these men drowned. The advance of the Allied army towards Pinerolo started in the early afternoon of the same day.

Franco-Spanish losses totaled 9,800, including 6,000 captured. Marshal Ferdinand de Marsin, adviser to the Duke of Orleans, was fatally wounded and died in Allied custody. The Allies reported a total of 3,246 casualties, including 52 officers and 892 men killed and 182 officers and 2,120 men wounded. They captured 146 siege guns, 40 field guns, 50 mortars, and much other equipment.

Victor Amadeus and Eugene entered the liberated city and assisted a Te Deum issued to celebrate the victory. On the Superga Hill the Savoyard dynasty built a Basilica where, every September 7, a Te Deum is still held.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough wrote of the relief of Turin:

It is impossible to express the joy it has given me; for I not only esteem, but I really love that Prince [Eugene]. This glorious action must bring France so low, that if our friends could but be persuaded to carry on the war with vigour one year longer, we cannot fail, with the blessing of God, to have such a peace as will give us quiet for all our days.

To the east, a French victory over a Hessian corps at Castiglione was not enough to regain initiative or to check the allied advance, and the French retreat from Turin effectively left the allies free to invade southern France. After the failed Siege of Toulon in the following year, no significant military event took place on the Italian front until the Treaty of Utrecht.

New research

2006 was the third centenary of the siege and the battle of Turin. Three important study congresses and up to forty books were published on this occasion. One of them, Le Aquile e i Gigli. Una storia mai scritta, is particularly important, since it gives for the first time a realistic account of the military operation, eliminating the traditional, but unreliable, account of those events. In particular it points out how the firepower of the Prussian infantry and the shortcomings of the French logistics were the major causes of the defeat of the French-Spanish alliance. Another important work was written by P. Bevilacqua and F. Zannoni, "Mastri da muro e piccapietre al servizio del Duca", rebuilding, on the basis of unpublished documents, the construction of the fortress countermine systems, fully realized in the months preceding the beginning of the siege.

References

• Lynn, John A. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714. Longman, (1999). ISBN 0-582-05629-2

External links

• Pages about the siege (Italian) (English) (German)
• Pietro Micca and Siege of Turin Museum (Italian)