Liberal chieftains. Hardly had he assumed office when the
unexpected death of Victor Emmanuel II. (9th January
Deaths of Victor Emmanuel II. and Pius IX.
1878) stirred national feeling to an unprecedented
depth, and placed the continuity of monarchical institutions
in Italy upon trial before Europe. For thirty
years Victor Emmanuel had been the centre point
of national hopes, the token and embodiment of the
struggle for national redemption. He had led the country out of
the despondency which followed the defeat of Novara and the
abdication of Charles Albert, through all the vicissitudes of
national unification to the final triumph at Rome. His disappearance
snapped the chief link with the heroic period, and
removed from the helm of state a ruler of large heart, great
experience and civil courage, at a moment when elements of
continuity were needed and vital problems of internal reorganization
had still to be faced. Crispi adopted the measures necessary
to ensure the tranquil accession of King Humbert with a quick
energy which precluded any Radical or Republican demonstrations.
His influence decided the choice of the Roman Pantheon
as the late monarch’s burial-place, in spite of formidable pressure
from the Piedmontese, who wished Victor Emmanuel II. to rest
with the Sardinian kings at Superga. He also persuaded the
new ruler to inaugurate, as King Humbert I., the new dynastical
epoch of the kings of Italy, instead of continuing as Humbert IV.
the succession of the kings of Sardinia. Before the commotion
caused by the death of Victor Emmanuel had passed away, the
decease of Pius IX. (7th February 1878) placed further demands
upon Crispi’s sagacity and promptitude. Like Victor Emmanuel,
Pius IX. had been bound up with the history of the Risorgimento,
but, unlike him, had represented and embodied the anti-national,
reactionary spirit. Ecclesiastically, he had become the instrument
of the triumph of Jesuit influence, and had in turn set his
seal upon the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Syllabus
and Papal Infallibility. Yet, in spite of all, his jovial disposition
and good-humoured cynicism saved him from unpopularity, and
rendered his death an occasion of mourning. Notwithstanding
the pontiff’s bestowal of the apostolic benediction in articulo
mortis upon Victor Emmanuel, the attitude of the Vatican had
remained so inimical as to make it doubtful whether the conclave
would be held in Rome. Crispi, whose strong anti-clerical convictions
did not prevent him from regarding the papacy as pre-eminently
an Italian institution, was determined both to prove
to the Catholic world the practical independence of the government
of the Church and to retain for Rome so potent a centre of
universal attraction as the presence of the future pope. The
Sacred College having decided to hold the conclave abroad, Crispi
assured them of absolute freedom if they remained in Rome, or of
protection to the frontier should they migrate, but warned
them that, once evacuated, the Vatican would be occupied in the
name of the Italian government and be lost to the Church as
headquarters of the papacy. The cardinals thereupon overruled
their former decision, and the conclave was held in Rome, the
new pope, Cardinal Pecci, being elected on the 20th of February
1878 without let or hindrance. The Italian government not only
Leo XIII.
prorogued the Chamber during the conclave to prevent
unseemly inquiries or demonstrations on the part of
deputies, but by means of Mancini, minister of justice, and
Cardinal di Pietro, assured the new pope protection during the
settlement of his outstanding personal affairs, an assurance of
which Leo XIII. on the evening after his election, took full
advantage. At the same time the duke of Aosta, commander of
the Rome army corps, ordered the troops to render royal honours
to the pontiff should he officially appear in the capital. King
Humbert addressed to the pope a letter of congratulation upon
his election, and received a courteous reply. The improvement
thus signalized in the relations between Quirinal and
Vatican was further exemplified on the 18th of October 1878,
when the Italian government accepted a papal formula with
regard to the granting of the royal exequatur for bishops,
whereby they, upon nomination by the Holy See, recognized
state control over, and made application for, the payment of
their temporalities.
The Depretis-Crispi cabinet did not long survive the opening of the new reign. Crispi’s position was shaken by a morally plausible but juridically untenable charge of bigamy, while on the 8th of March the election of Cairoli, an opponent of the ministry and head of the extremer section of the Cairoli. Left, to the presidency of the Chamber, induced Depretis to tender his resignation to the new king. Cairoli succeeded in forming an administration, in which his friend Count Corti, Italian ambassador at Constantinople, accepted the portfolio of foreign affairs, Zanardelli the ministry of the interior, and Seismit Doda the ministry of finance. Though the cabinet had no stable majority, it induced the Chamber to sanction a commercial treaty which had been negotiated with France and a general “autonomous” customs tariff. The commercial treaty was, however, rejected by the French Chamber in June 1878, a circumstance necessitating the application of the Italian general tariff, which implied a 10 to 20% increase in the duties on the principal French exports. A highly imaginative financial exposition by Seismit Doda, who announced a surplus of £2,400,000, paved the way for a Grist Tax Reduction Bill, which Cairoli had taken over from the Depretis programme. The Chamber, though convinced of the danger of this reform, the perils of which were incisively demonstrated by Sella, voted by an overwhelming majority for an immediate reduction of the impost by one-fourth, and its complete abolition within four years. Cairoli’s premiership was, however, destined to be cut short by an attempt made upon the king’s life in November 1878, during a royal visit to Naples, by a miscreant named Passanante. In spite of the courage and presence of mind of Cairoli, who received the dagger thrust intended for the king, public and parliamentary indignation found expression in a vote which compelled the ministry to resign.
Though brief, Cairoli’s term of office was momentous in regard
to foreign affairs. The treaty of San Stefano had led to the
convocation of the Berlin Congress, and though Count
Corti was by no means ignorant of the rumours concerning
secret agreements between Germany, Austria
Italy and
the Berlin Congress.
and Russia, and Germany, Austria and Great Britain,
he scarcely seemed alive to the possible effect of such agreements
upon Italy. Replying on the 9th of April 1878 to interpellations
by Visconti-Venosta and other deputies on the impending
Congress of Berlin, he appeared free from apprehension lest
Italy, isolated, might find herself face to face with a change of
the balance of power in the Mediterranean, and declared that
in the event of serious complications Italy would be “too much
sought after rather than too much forgotten.” The policy of
Italy in the congress, he added, would be to support the interests
of the young Balkan nations. Wrapped in this optimism, Count
Corti proceeded, as first Italian delegate, to Berlin, where he
found himself obliged, on the 28th of May, to join reluctantly in
sanctioning the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On the 8th of July the revelation of the Anglo-Ottoman treaty
for the British occupation of Cyprus took the congress by surprise.
Italy, who had made the integrity of the Ottoman empire a
cardinal point of her Eastern policy, felt this change of the
Mediterranean status quo the more severely inasmuch as, in
order not to strain her relations with France, she had turned a
deaf ear to Austrian, Russian and German advice to prepare to
occupy Tunisia in agreement with Great Britain. Count Corti
had no suspicion that France had adopted a less disinterested
attitude towards similar suggestions from Bismarck and Lord
Salisbury. He therefore returned from the German capital
with “clean” but empty hands, a plight which found marked
disfavour in Italian eyes, and stimulated anti-Austrian Irredentism.
Irredentism.
Ever since Venetia had been ceded by
Austria to the emperor Napoleon, and by him to Italy,
after the war of 1866, secret revolutionary committees
had been formed in the northern Italian provinces to
prepare for the “redemption” of Trent and Trieste. For
twelve years these committees had remained comparatively inactive,
but in 1878 the presence of the ex-Garibaldian Cairoli
at the head of the government, and popular dissatisfaction at the
