Austrians had as nearly perfect a position
of natural defense as a general could choose. On the east of the
Isonzo plain the broken, rocky wall rises in places to 1,000 feet,
seamed with gullies and ravines, and bristling with forest growth
which afforded ideal cover. The action of the rain has pitted the
limestone with funnel-shaped holes which form natural redoubts for
machine guns; and there are larger depressions and caves where heavier
pieces of artillery may be placed in excellent shelter.

But while the Italians were unable to capture this position, when
General Boroevics took his troops out of their defenses and sent them
charging across the open ground, he found that the enemy had made good
use of his precarious hold on the edges of the tableland. Although
they occupied barely more than the rim of the plateau, with the
flooded Isonzo a third of a mile broad beneath them, the Italians had
strengthened their positions with sandbag intrenchments and hauled up
a few pieces of light artillery.

The chief support of the infantry holding these sandbag defenses was
the heavy guns across the river, which searched out the Austrian
columns whenever they left cover. In weight of artillery the Italians
had the advantage, for most of the Austrian 12-inch howitzers were
busy in the Alps, and they had to depend mainly upon 6-inch pieces.

By the second week in July, 1915, the Austrians relaxed their efforts,
and the Italians began a slow advance, working up the hills
overlooking Gorizia by a variety of methods. In the places,
comparatively few, where there was cultivated ground, they practiced
the siege method of sapping forward, but generally their advance was
over bare rock, where trenches could be excavated only by the use of
dynamite, and when a charge was made the troops had to carry sandbags
to build temporary cover from machine-gun fire. This method of
warfare, in fact, was general throughout the whole mountain front,
where the hard rock carried a mere veneer of earth, and sandbags had
to serve for defense until the engineers could blast trenches and
galleries in the flintlike face of the slopes.

The repulse of the Austrian counterattack in the middle of July, 1915,
ended the first phase of the battle of Gorizia. On July 18th, 19th and
20th, General Cadorna delivered a fierce assault aided by knowledge
gained in the first stage of the battle, which, for the Italians, was
little more than a reconnaissance in force.