Five Days of Milan

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (November 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Cinq journées de Milan]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Cinq journées de Milan}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Five Days of Milan
Part of the First Italian War of Independence
The Five Days of Milan by Carlo Bossoli
Date 18–22 March 1848 Location Milan, Lombardy–Venetia (present-day Italy) 45°28′01″N 09°11′24″E / 45.46694°N 9.19000°E / 45.46694; 9.19000 Result Milanese revolt victorious[1] Radetzky retreats from Milan[2]
Belligerents
Milanese insurgents	Austria
Commanders and leaders
Carlo Cattaneo Gabrio Casati Luciano Manara [2][3][4][5]	Joseph Radetzky Ludwig von Wohlgemuth [6][7][8][9]
Strength
1,700 barricades[10] armed with 600–650 firearms along with stones, bottles, clubs, pikes and swords [10][11]	12,000 garrison[7][12]
Casualties and losses
409–424 killed[3][6] including 43 women and children 600+ wounded[6]	181 killed[13] including 5 officers 235 wounded[6] including 4 officers 150–180 captured[13]

Provisional Government of Milan Governo provvisorio di Milano (in Italian)
1848–1848
Capital	Milan
Common languages	Italian, Lombard
Government	Republic
President
Historical era	Revolutions of 1848
• Congress of Vienna grants Lombardy–Venetia to the Austrian Empire	9 June 1815
• Insurrection against Habsburg rule	18 March 1848
• Radetzky withdraws to Quadrilatero	22 March 1848
• Battle of Solferino wins Lombardy for Italy	24 June 1859
Preceded by Succeeded by Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia Kingdom of Sardinia

The Five Days of Milan (Italian: Cinque giornate di Milano [ˈtʃiŋkwe dʒorˈnaːte di miˈlaːno]) was an insurrection and a major event in the Revolutionary Year of 1848 that started the First Italian War of Independence. On 18 March, a rebellion arose in the city of Milan which in five days of street fighting drove Marshal Radetzky and his Austrian soldiers from the city.

In 1848, the Milanese launched an anti-Austrian campaign as early as 1 January.^[14] On New Year's Day the Milanese started to boycott gambling and tobacco products, which were government monopolies that brought in over 5 million lire a year.^[10] The boycott culminated in a bloody street battle on 3 January, when Austrian soldiers, in batches of three, were being insulted and pelted with stones by an angry crowd.^[15][3] The soldiers then gathered together in groups of a dozen and charged the crowd with swords and bayonets, killing five and wounding another 59. Radetzky confined his troops to barracks for five days.^[15] The protests were over, but two months later, when news reached Milan of the uprising in Vienna and the fall of Metternich, the Milanese took to the streets again, on 18 March.^[10]

Almost simultaneously with the popular uprisings of 1848 in the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, on 18 March of that year, the city of Milan also rose up. This was the first evidence of how effective popular initiative, guided by those in the Risorgimento, was able to influence Charles Albert of Sardinia.

The Austrian garrison at Milan was well equipped and commanded by an experienced general, Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, who despite being over 80 years old, was energetic and rigid. Radetzky had no intention of yielding to the uprising.

However, the whole city fought throughout the streets, raising barricades, firing from windows and roofs, and urging the rural population to join them. The populace was backed by the archbishop and at least 100 priests joined in the fighting against the Austrians. A bust of Pope Pius IX was hoisted onto the barricades.^[16] A provisional government of Milan was formed and presided over by the podestà, Gabrio Casati and a council of war under Carlo Cattaneo. The Martinitt (orphanage children) worked as message runners to all parts of the town.

Radetzky saw the difficulty of resisting under siege in the city centre, but while afraid of being attacked by the Piedmontese army and peasants from the countryside, he preferred to withdraw after losing control of the Porta Tosa (now Porta Vittoria) to the rebels. On the evening of 22 March, the Austrians withdrew towards the "Quadrilatero" (the fortified zone bounded by the four cities of Verona, Legnago, Mantua and Peschiera del Garda), 120 km eastwards, taking with them several hostages arrested at the start of the uprising. Meanwhile, the rest of Lombard and Venetic territory was free.

In memory of these days, the official newspaper of the temporary government was called simply Il 22 marzo (22 March), which began publication on 26 March at the Palazzo Marino under the direction of Carlo Tenca.^[17] A Monument to the Five Days of Milan by the sculptor Giuseppe Grandi was inaugurated in 1895 at what is now Porta Vittoria.

Almost a century later, in 1943, the uprising of Naples against WWII Nazi occupation was named The Four Days of Naples, in conscious emulation of the earlier Milan event.

• Luisa Battistati
• Carlo Cattaneo
• Enrico Dandolo
• Luciano Manara
• Emilio Morosini
• Guerra regia e guerra di popolo
• Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states

• Olivari, Stefano and Giulia Brasca (2015). Milan 360°: A metropolis to discover, among art, culture, technology and fashion. OlliService Multimedia. pp. 9–11. ISBN 9788899298050.

• (in Italian) Piero Pieri, Storia militare del Risorgimento – volume 1 & 2, Einaudi, Torino, 1962
• (in Italian) Carlo Cattaneo, Dell'insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successiva guerra, e-text Liber liber/Progetto Manuzio
• (in Italian) Antonio Scurati, Una storia romantica, romanzo Bompiani, 2007
• (in Italian) Elena Fontanella, a cura di, Giovani ribelli del '48. Memorie del Risorgimento lombardo , Firenze, Fratelli Alinari, 2011. ISBN 978-88-95849-14-0. Testi di Aldo A. Mola, Giancarlo Lacchin, Roberto Lauro, Maurizio Griffo, Agostino Giovagnoli, Cecilia Dau Novelli, Romano Bracalini, Carlo Cattaneo, Gianni Oliva, Emanuele Bettini, Matteo Sanfilippo, Giuseppe Poletta, Franco Della Peruta, Fulvio Peirone, Gabriella Bonacchi, Anna Maria Isastia, Elena Fontanella, Andrea Vento, Vittorio Nichilo, Giorgio Cosmacini, Roberto Guerri, Lucia Romaniello, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Gian Paolo Caprettini, Gian Mario Benzing, Roberto Cassanelli.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Five Days of Milan.

• (in Italian) "Liceo Berchet di Milano" – a more detailed account of the Five Days
• (in Italian) Monument to the "Cinque Giornate di Milano"
• "Milano, Cinque giornate di". Dizionario di Storia (in Italian). Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. 2010. Retrieved 18 March 2024.