Territorial conformation and morphology have always constituted elements indispensably connected to any war action. If roads represent the arteries necessary to convey armies, rivers, basins, bodies of water and outlets to seas (navigable and in some places fordable) have instead frequently constituted important obstacles, sometimes becoming true crossroads of history. Exemplary in this sense are the events of the Mincio, a river that flows from Lake Garda within the morainic hill system, which merges on one side with the Lugana marshes in lower Garda and on the other with those of Mantua and again with those of Tione and Adige. Thanks to the regularity of its flow, it has always played an important and unequivocal defensive role, becoming one of the undisputed protagonists of the war events that shocked northern Italy over the centuries. The Mincio has, in fact, represented for centuries the natural border of state possessions and entities which, based on different and renewed defensive needs, led to the construction of important fortified works. Towers, walls, bridges, fortified enclosures, forts and bastions, organized in chessboards, which over the centuries gave rise to increasingly complex defensive systems, always updated to the progress and evolution of the art of war, which reached their maximum configuration in the second half of the 19th century with the creation of one of the major defensive systems on a territorial scale of the modern era, the Quadrilateral. A system born from the intuition of FML Josef Radetzky which combined the defensive potential of the Mincio and Adige river lines with those of the fortresses of Peschiera, Mantua, Verona and Legnago.

Historical-strategic importance of the moraine hills and the Mincio river

In both periods in which the southern Garda hills were mostly the scene of fierce fighting, that is, let us remember, between 1380 and 1440 and between 1796 and 1866, we can observe that the same political-strategic situation occurred. Without necessarily bringing into play a Vicoan conception of history, such as a more or less cyclical repetition of the same mechanisms, it can nevertheless be noted that in both contingencies we find ourselves faced with two powers that find themselves facing each other in an east-west direction along a line of the front which soon coincides with that of the Mincio river and the surrounding hills. From a geographical point of view, the Lake Garda – Mincio – Po system undoubtedly constitutes the most important barrier in the Po Valley in both a longitudinal and transversal sense, an obstacle that can only be overcome using boats, bridges or the few fords of the Mincio, whose constant regime, thanks to the influx of water coming from the lake, it prevents easy crossing. The Mincio, in particular, can essentially only be crossed in its northernmost stretch, i.e. north of Goito, given that just south of this location the river first opens into a vast swamp, then reaches the stronghold of Mantua. And between Goito and Peschiera here is the morainic hilly shield, which surrounds the entire southern side of Lake Garda for about ten kilometres. It should be added that right to the north of Goito, not surprisingly, the Via Postumia passed, an ancient road that connected Genoa with Aquileia, that is, the most important port of the West with that of the East. The French military topographical engineer Jean Jacques Germain Pelet provides us with a description of this line in September 1803, in which the role of the hilly part clearly emerges: “The Mincio line begins in Peschiera and ends at the Po. The upper part, the more exposed to enemy attacks, it is 28-30 km long. It does not offer many fording possibilities and only in two places can the enemy cross it without difficulty. The hills, with their zigzag layout, are particularly suitable for defense. In the lower part, the woods, the pastures, the marshy terrain, the proximity of Mantua make it almost invulnerable”. The only other line comparable in effectiveness to that of the Mincio was that of the Adige river, which however had notable disadvantages, first of all a decidedly longer front and therefore the presence of fords and bridges along its course. Furthermore, the Adige does not have the same characteristics of strategic symmetry as the Mincio: if the latter can in fact be defended from both the east and the west, precisely due to the presence of the hills, a defender placed on the left bank of the Adige would find himself in obvious difficulty due to the fact that we have the mountains behind us for a long front. Furthermore, in the event of defeat, he would find himself forced to direct his forces towards Vicenza or towards Tyrol, that is, along two divergent lines. For those who attacked from the west, they found themselves having to manage the left flank, exposed, along the axis of the Val d’Adige, to attacks coming from Trento. Another succinct description, which underlines the importance of the communication and escape routes of the Mincio line, comes to us from Mugge, immediately after the Second War of Independence: “The strategic importance of the Mincio lies in this , which constitutes the shortest transversal between the Alps and the Po, whose overall length is only 6 and a half miles; the distance of Peschiera from Mantua is 5 miles. On the left bank there are, at some distance, some hills which ensure that an army stationed there has the advantage of knowing the situation at all times in order to use it and break the advancing enemy; for the defender there are many retreat routes open, while the attacker has a marshy river behind him, to the south the Adige and Po marshes, and at the ends Mantua and Peschiera”. In short, in a word, that Quadrilateral that we all read about in school history books. Well, the Quadrilateral, this defensive system based on the presence of four fortresses arranged roughly in the shape of a rectangular trapezoid with Peschiera and Mantua at the north-west and south-west corners, Verona and Legnago at the north-east and south-east corners, and on the presence of the Mincio, also sees in the presence of the hilly area south of Garda, from Lonato to Rivoli and Custoza, a further element of barrier and difficulty in the movements of the troops, an element which influences choices and timing. But as we have seen, even before the creation of the Quadrilateral by the Austrians, the hilly area has always been the scene, due to its geographical specificity, of multiple and sometimes decisive war events, which allow us to truly carry out a historical journey through centuries of history.