Blood up to the Knees - 2nd Ed.

“There was a battle, there was, there at Solferino, blood flowed thick, blood up to the knees…,” so a song went here one hundred and fifty years ago. The battlefields of Italy were always places where generals from Vienna were fond of sending regiments and battalions from the Kingdom of Bohemia. The war of 1859, which decided the unification of Italy, is proof of this. For example, what does Magenta mean to anyone? This small town, where the Austrian I. Army Corps from Prague bore the brunt of the fighting, is known by name at least to artists as a technical term for the colour of blood. Or Melegnano? This small town was defended against two French army corps by a single regiment, from Písek. Incidentally, the “Eleventh Písek” suffered the heaviest losses of the entire Austrian army in this war. The Battle of Solferino in Italy in June 1859 was the second largest battle after the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig (1813) until the Austro-Prussian bloodshed at Hradec Králové in 1866. The path to unification was then opened for Italy, and Prussia understood that Austria was weak enough to open the question of German unification, leading to Hradec Králové. This war between the Franco-Piedmontese coalition on one side and Austria on the other was remembered everywhere at the time, because “there at Solferino” not a few Czechs and Moravians remained. And their blood and suffering also contributed to the creation of the Red Cross, the founding of which, a few years later, was inspired by the enormous numbers of wounded on both sides of the fighting armies.