Brenner Pass 1,371 m). Completion of the railway enabled the Austrians to move their troops more efficiently; the Austrians had hoped to secure their territories of Venetia and Lombardy (south of the Alps), but lost them to Italy following the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and Austro-Prussian War in 1866. At the end of World War I in 1918, the control of Brenner Pass became shared between Italy and Austria under the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The Treaty of London (1915) secretly awarded Italy the territories south of Brenner Pass for supporting the Entente Powers. Welschtirol/Trentino, along with the southern
Brenner Pass in 268 AD, but they were stopped in November of that year at the Battle of Lake Benacus. The Romans kept control over the mountain pass until their end of the empire, in the 5th century. During the High Middle Ages, Brenner Pass was a part of the important "Via Imperii", an imperial road linking the Kingdom of Germany north of the Alps with the Italian March of Verona. In the carolingian "Divisio Regnorum" of 806 the Brenner region is called "per alpes Noricas", the transit through the Noric Alps. Since the 12th century, Brenner Pass was controlled by the