Villa Nazionale, Naples
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.