CHAPTER XXII. RECENT HISTORY
No sovereign ever mounted his throne amid greater tokens of good will on the part of the nation than did King Humbert I on the death of his father, whom he succeeded as quietly as if the Italian kingdom had existed for generations under the princes of the house of Savoy. It was a striking proof how completely that royal house had identified itself with the national cause, which had had no firmer supporter than Victor Emmanuel. His son was no less true to it. He commenced his reign on the 9th of January, 1878, and proved himself one of the best sovereigns who ever governed a free people. He faithfully adhered to those principles of constitutional liberty which have delivered Italy from despotism, revolution, and foreign occupation. He placed himself above party strife and took his place as chief of the nation, leaving to it the exercise of the rights secured by its free institutions. He devoted himself unsparingly to his royal duties, and sympathised by word and deed with the nation’s joys and sorrows. His whole conduct, as that of his queen and his son, justly won the hearts of his people.—Probyn.[b]
[1878-1903 A.D.]
The entry of Francesco Crispi into the Depretis cabinet (December, 1877) had placed at the ministry of the interior a strong hand and sure eye at a moment when they were about to become imperatively necessary. Crispi was the only man of truly statesmanlike calibre in the ranks of the Left. Formerly a friend and disciple of Mazzini, with whom he had broken on the question of the monarchical form of government which Crispi believed indispensable to the unification of Italy, he had afterwards been one of Garibaldi’s most efficient coadjutors and an active member of the “party of action.” Passionate, not always scrupulous in his choice and use of political weapons, intensely patriotic, loyal with a loyalty based rather on reason than sentiment, quick-witted, prompt in action, determined and pertinacious, he possessed in eminent degree many qualities lacking in other liberal chieftains.[c]
Of Crispi, a less moderate opinion is given in the work of Bolton King and Thomas Okey[d]:
“Crispi was a much abler man than Depretis. He had, at all events, grandiose politics, a considerable capacity of leading men, a force and an insistence that fascinated Italy, and for a time made him more worshipped and more hated than any Italian statesman of this generation. He was as unscrupulous as Depretis in his methods, and he had a hardy inconsistency that came not so much from any deliberate dishonesty as from an impulsiveness that made him the slave to the passion of the moment, quite forgetful of the promises and the policy of yesterday.
“At one moment he paraded his friendliness to France, a month or two later he was irritating her by hot and foolish speeches. Now he posed as an anti-clerical and free-thinker; now he spoke as one who longed for reconciliation with the Vatican. In 1886 he said that the ‘workman must be freed from the slavery of capital’; in 1894 he charged socialism with ‘raising the right of spoliation to a science.’ The wildest fancies, madcap adventures, anything that was showy and dazzling stood for statesmanship.
“In 1894 he believed, on the vaguest of forged evidence, that the Sicilian socialists were plotting to surrender the island to France. When the Russian exiles crowded into Italy after the assassination of Alexander II, Crispi, then an ex-minister and over sixty years old, preached a crusade of civilised nations against Russia. He was a savage, passionate fighter, who stuck at no severity, however unjust or unconstitutional, towards a political opponent, and whose intolerance grew till the ex-democrat became essentially a despot.”[d]
Hardly had Crispi assumed office when the unexpected death of Victor Emmanuel II, as previously described, 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 central 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 reorganisation had still to be faced.
Crispi adopted the measures necessary to insure 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, February 7th, 1878, had, as we have seen, 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. Having once let slip the opportunity which presented itself in 1846-1848, of placing the papacy at the head of the unitary movement, he had seen himself driven from Rome, despoiled piecemeal of papal territory, reduced to an attitude of perpetual protest, and finally confined, voluntarily, but still confined, within the walls of the Vatican. 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 of cardinals 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 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 signalised 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, recognised state control over, and made application for, the payment of their temporalities.[c]