War would not be avoided; indeed, after suffering such direct humiliation, it might become even more frenzied.
Did they expect the Ticino River to stop the Austrian advance? Even the French could not manage that, so there was even less reason to expect anything from the Kingdom of Sardinia's pampered soldiers.
The people of Plombières knew their own affairs best. In the Kingdom of Sardinia's army, apart from those bumpkins in the Savoy mountain gullies, who truly dared to risk their lives thanks to their military traditions, everyone else's loyalty was inferior even to that of foreign mercenaries.
The Genoese were a prime example. It would have been one thing if those petty townsfolk had fled on their own, but they had even taught the honest Piedmontese farmers to flee with them.
As for the Kingdom of Sardinia's idealists, every major war had proven them utterly useless. Their discipline was abysmal; they could never resist firing too early, nor could they resist being the first to run.
In the hearts of Piedmontese farmers, the outcome of a war mattered less than the crops in their own fields. So long as an attack on the Kingdom of Sardinia came in spring or autumn, one would always see bands of Sardinian deserters harvesting in the fields.
Back when Napoleon launched his spring offensive, he discovered that the Kingdom of Sardinia's army would always vanish ahead of the French Army without offering any resistance.
Many believed the Kingdom of Sardinia's troops had been scared out of their wits by the French Army, never realizing that the Piedmontese farmers had eyes only for their crops.
Moreover, the Genoese had absolutely no sense of belonging to the Kingdom of Sardinia. After all, when Genoa had been forcibly assigned to Sardinia in 1815, more than a