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]
IRREDENTISM, THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE AND “TRASFORMISMO”
The partnership of Depretis and Crispi in the cabinet had a short life. Crispi was attacked as a bigamist, and while the courts declared his earlier marriage in 1853 null and void and ratified his later marriage, the popular outcry compelled his resignation. The election of the leader of the Left, Cairoli, who was an enemy of Depretis and who defeated him on a taxation question, led Depretis to resign. Cairoli formed a new cabinet with Count Corti in charge of foreign affairs. He represented Italy at the congress of Berlin in 1878, where he witnessed Austrian triumphs over Italian policy. This caused a fall in his popularity and the activity of revolutionary bodies called irredentists, from their desire for the “redemption” of Trent and Trieste from Austria, provoked an agitation which led Corti to resign in October. In November a wretch named Passanante attempted to assassinate the king at Naples. The king defended himself with his sabre, but there was an outburst of public indignation against the ministry in spite of the fact that Cairoli had bravely thrown himself in front of his sovereign and received a serious dagger-wound.
Cairoli resigned and Depretis came back into power, only to yield again to Cairoli in July, 1879. Cairoli’s foreign policy was again so weak as to merit the epigram of Bonghi,[e] that it was “marked by enormous mental impotence balanced by equal moral weakness.” In November Cairoli was compelled to call Depretis to his aid in the face of a financial crisis, which was made the more dangerous by Depretis’ plan for spending over forty million pounds on the building of railways.
It was a railway which brought about a misunderstanding with France, and gave Italy another humiliation in her foreign affairs. Italian influence in Tunis was threatened by French aggression, and a railway built there by an English company was the subject of a rivalry between the two countries. The English courts prevented the French from buying it, whereupon the Italians secured it at a price estimated at eight times its value. The next year, 1881, the French, after some difficulties with a Tunisian tribe, seized Tabarca and Biserta, compelling the bey of Tunis, who had protested in vain to the powers, to accept a French protectory. This caused great excitement in Italy, and Cairoli was forced to resign by a vote of want of confidence.