In its foreign relations the country has also had hard problems. France and Italy ceased to be friends. Italy could not forget that the French had upheld the papal power in Rome, and had defeated Garibaldi at Mentana; and France was indignant that Italy had not come to her rescue in 1870. France also was jealous of a rival in the Mediterranean; while the Italians believed that France favoured a revival of the Temporal Power. This unfriendliness, fostered by the Italian clericals, constituted a most disturbing factor in Italy's foreign relations. The breach was increased by other causes, and Italy in alarm turned to find friends elsewhere. Austria and Germany, who had already made an alliance, were glad to have Italy join, as further security for the peace of Europe against any action by France or Russia. So the three joined and made the Triple Alliance (1882), which was renewed from time to time and still exists. This alliance has given Italy ample security against any attack by France, but has imposed upon her very heavy military burdens in order to keep her army at a certain standard of efficiency.
As time went on the actors of the great age dropped off one by one; Mazzini in 1872, Victor Emmanuel in 1878, Garibaldi in 1882. It is after their departure, their noble desires fulfilled, their noble tasks accomplished, that Italy looks little and inadequate. The parliamentary struggles have certainly been neither noble nor romantic. After the occupation of Rome, the Right, the conservative party, under Marco Minghetti, Quintino Sella, and others, was in power for half a dozen years, and by means of a burdensome taxation succeeded in making receipts equal expenses. But taxes and refusal to extend the suffrage led to its fall from power, and the Left, the progressive party, under Agostino Depretis, assumed the government. Depretis abolished an unpopular tax on grinding corn, made primary education compulsory, and extended the suffrage from 600,000 voters to 2,000,000. After these reforms the dominant party ceased to have a definite programme. There was general confusion, known as Transformism. The deputies split up into little groups under petty leaders and fell to log-rolling. The story is dreary and unimportant.
Depretis, who died in 1887, was succeeded by Francesco Crispi, the most striking political figure since Cavour. Crispi began life as an advocate at Palermo, and took part as a very young man in the early agitations for constitutional reforms. He was successful at the bar, and had moved to Naples to practise before the appellate tribunals there, when the events that led to the uprisings of '48 began to effervesce. Crispi took a leading part. After the uprisings had been suppressed, he lived in exile till the time was ripe to begin again. Then he returned to Sicily and plotted for the revolution which terminated in Garibaldi's expedition. He acquired great influence, took his seat in the Italian parliament, and soon became leader of the radical Left. In spite of vicissitudes and a not unattacked reputation, he was the chief parliamentary figure on the death of Depretis, and dominated Italian politics till 1896. In his youth Crispi had been a follower of Mazzini's republican theories; later, though still a republican in sympathy, he announced the opinion that "the Republic would divide us, the Monarchy unites us," and abandoned his old republican associates. For this reason among others he incurred the animosity of old friends and allies.
During the period of his ascendency the subdivision of the deputies into little groups made government difficult, and for a couple of years he was out of office. In that interval hard times, adding weight to republican and socialist propaganda, caused strikes, riots, and insurrections; and accompanying these disturbances came the "Bank Scandals." Sundry banks, conspicuously the important Banca Romana, had been violating the laws which regulated the government of banks, and had been engaged in most improper dealings with politicians, as, for instance, lending money to deputies on little or no security. These scandals, together with the strikes, wrecked the ministry, and the country called on Crispi, as the one strong man able to take control. He assumed office in December, 1893, and remained till 1896, when he fell with equal suddenness. The cause of his fall requires a separate paragraph.
About 1870 an Italian steamship company established a coaling station on the west coast of the Red Sea, and acquired a certain strip of land which it afterwards ceded to the government (1882). From this beginning the Italian government advanced, upon one pretext or another, to the establishment of a colonial dependency. It occupied Massawa, established the "Colonia Erithrea," and proclaimed a zone of influence along the east coast of Africa. Various battles were fought with the natives; and at last the government sent fifteen thousand men to perform some brilliant exploit for its own political benefit. The Italian troops were badly handled; they walked into a trap set by the Abyssinians, and suffered a terrible rout, losing half their numbers (1896). Crispi fell at once, and the new ministry under Di Rudinì, in spite of cries for revenge, prudently abandoned the colonial policy, and made peace as best it could. Italy renounced her protectorate, and contented herself with a strip of coast by Massawa. Thus ended the scheme of colonial aggrandizement begun in ignorance and folly.
The fall of Crispi removed the last interesting figure of the Risorgimento, and left Italian politics in a confused medley. Since then, various leaders of no marked ability or individuality have struggled with the permanent difficulties of Church and State, North and South, capitalism and socialism, and the shifting difficulties of foreign relations. All this time is too near to present any definite pattern to the casual eye. The century closed sadly with the assassination of King Humbert (1878-1900) by an ignorant workman who called himself a nihilist. Humbert was not a good ruler, but he had a kind heart and many pleasant qualities, which endeared him to the Italian people. He was succeeded by his son Victor Emmanuel III, the present king.
The greatest Italian figure of the last decades of the nineteenth century was not to be found in the service of the State, but of the Church. In 1810 Gioacchino Pecci was born in Carpineto, a dead little village perched on a hillside near Anagni, the town where Boniface VIII was nearly murdered by Sciarra Colonna five hundred years before. His father, Count Lodovico Pecci, had served in Napoleon's army; his mother was said to be descended from Cola di Rienzo. The count was the seigneur of the place, and lived in a somewhat shabby palace which had seen better days. Gioacchino was educated at a Jesuit school in Rome. He soon gave evidence of marked ability, and was taken into the papal service and sent as apostolic delegate to Benevento. Banditti infested the neighbourhood, and the nobility of the town were little better than the banditti. Pecci displayed character. He was promoted, and at the age of thirty-three was sent as papal nuncio to Belgium, with the title of Archbishop of Damietta, an archbishopric that had been in partibus infidelium since the days of St. Louis. In Belgium, where liberal ideas were jostling the old ecclesiastical system, Pecci distinguished himself for tact and address. From Belgium he went to Perugia as bishop, and governed the city for thirty-two years, during the trying time in which (largely at the expense of the Church) Italy was forcing her way to freedom. In 1860 his authority was overthrown by the Piedmontese soldiers, and many tales of brutality and wantonness charged upon the nationalists were brought to his troubled ears, and he unfortunately received a most unfavourable impression of liberals and liberalism. His reputation for ability, character, and diplomacy became so well established, that in the conclave on the death of Pius IX he had no serious competitor. Leo XIII (1878-1903) was already an old man when he was elected Pope, and had had the misfortune to receive his education and training in the narrow school of the old papal régime. Preceded by an incompetent Pope, he found himself confronted by the wreck of the Temporal Power, and by a liberalism which was not only triumphant in Italy, but in nearly all western Europe. He had not far to go to find thoughtful men who expected to see the Papacy collapse and die. Most difficult matters in Germany, in Ireland, in France, in the United States, required delicate and skilful management. It is not too much to say that Leo raised the Papacy higher in the world's regard than it had stood for two hundred years. Had he been a younger man, and trained in a more liberal school, he might, perhaps, have attempted the task of adjusting ecclesiastical conservatism and tradition to the needs of a fast changing world. But he was too old. With a few brilliant exceptions he accepted the conservative policy. He affected to deem himself a prisoner in the Vatican, and claimed the restoration of the Temporal Power; he declared Thomas Aquinas the best teacher for the priesthood, and stood firm on the dogmas of the Council of Trent. Nevertheless, his was a most impressive personality, and he stands in the long list of Popes in a rank inferior only to the highest.
In his old age, as he strolled in the Vatican gardens, meditating Latin verses, or thinking over his encyclical letters, "On the Condition of the Working Classes," "On Christian Democracy," "On the Holy Eucharist," or turning his emaciated, sweet, Voltairean face to the great dome of St. Peter's, he may well have let his mind wander in peace over the outside world, for never since Luther cast off his papal allegiance had the whole Christian world been so united in admiration for a Pope of Rome. All Christians could say amen to the prayer in his last poem, "Suprema Leonis Vota:"—
Expleat o clemens anxia vota Deus,
Scilicet ut tandem superis de civibus unus
Divino aeternum lumine et ore fruar.[25]