Battle of Hill 383 | |||||||
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Part of the Italian Front (World War I) | |||||||
Austrian illustration of fighting on the hill 383 in June 1915 (1915) | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Kingdom of Italy | Austria-Hungary | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Luigi Cadorna (Chief of Staff of the Italian Army) Gustavo Reisoli (Commander of 2nd Army Corps) |
Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf (Chief of the General Staff) Archduke Eugen of Austria-Teschen (Commander of Southwest Front) Svetozar Boroević von Bojna (Commander of Fifth Army) Guido Novak von Arienti (Commander of 1st Mountain Brigade) |
The Battle of Hill 383 was a military engagement between the armies of Austria-Hungary and Italy on the Italian front of World War I, lasting from June 1915 to July 1917. The battle took place on a hill later called Mount Prižnica (italian Poggio Montanari), located near the town of Plave in present Slovenia. The Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies clashed for two years in an attempt to occupy it; the bloodiest clash occurred on 17 June 1915 when General Luigi Cadorna wanted to offer king Victor Emmanuel III a conquest which he could witness in person. This "demonstration" caused the death of over 8,000 men who were massacred in a frontal attack against Austrian machine guns. The fighting was continuing for the next two years,[1] until Mount Prižnica was took by Italians during the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo.