In the autumn of 1917 at the Battle of Caporetto, the Germans and Austrians had defeated the Italians who fell back to the Piave. The Royal Italian Army lost over 300,000 men. Italy reorganizes the army under the new commander General Armando Diaz and receives reinforcements of the Allied powers.
British and Italian troops passing abandoned Austro-Hungarian artillery on the Val d'Assa mountain road 2 November 1918
June 15–23 – Battle of the Piave River, the last major Austro-Hungarian attack on the Italian Front, which fails. The Battle of the Piave is the decisive battle of World War I on the Italian Front.
August 13-September 3 – Battle of San Matteo on the Punta San Matteo (3678 m) where Austro-Hungarian troops had set up a fortified position with small artillery pieces, from which they were able to shell the road to the Gavia Pass and thus harass the Italian supply convoys. Italian troops conquer the top but it is retaken by Austro-Hungarian troops.
November 9 – After the Austrian defeat, Italian troops unilaterally occupied territories of Austria-Hungary promised to Italy by the secret 1915 Pact of London. The city of SplitinDalmatia was not one of those areas and was placed under Allied military occupation; but the Italian minority publicly demanded the annexation of the city into Italy, supported by some Italian political circles. Two French destroyers entered the port of Split. The Italians displayed the flag of Italy in the windows of their homes to give the impression citizens supported Italy's bid for annexation. This however incited a riot and the flags were torn down. The incident would lead to a series of violent fights in Split in the next two years between Croats and Italians.
^Burgwyn, H. James (1997). Italian foreign policy in the interwar period, 1918–1940. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 4. ISBN0-275-94877-3.
^Pasoletti, Ciro (2008). A Military History of Italy. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 150. ISBN0-275-98505-9. ... Ludendorff wrote: In Vittorio Veneto, Austria did not lose a battle, but lose the war and itself, dragging Germany in its fall. Without the destructive battle of Vittorio Veneto, we would have been able, in a military union with the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, to continue the desperate resistance through the whole winter, in order to obtain a less harsh peace, because the Allies were very fatigued.
