History
The endless cycle of
invasion and bloodshed, eras of profound artistic creativity, and of
influential tribes or city that mark the course of Italian history has its
real beginnings in the first millennium before Christ. To the north of the
Tiber lived the Etruscans, a people who probably migrated from western Asia
minor and who, in the 7th and 6th centuries, dominated the western
Mediterranean with their confederation of 12 city‑states in most of central and
northern Italy.
They left no literature
but the later Romans were indebted to them for much of their knowledge of
building, draining marshes, irrigating land and for their belief in foretelling
the future by observing birds in flight and studying the organs of animals.
These gifted tribesmen,
who even succeeded in making bridges of false teeth, were influenced by the
east and by Greek artists, with whom they traded their iron in exchange for
Precious metals and jewels and art. But although they seized Rome in 616 BC,
even providing the last three kings of Rome, the increasing invasions of the
Barbarians from the north began to sap their spirits. By 397 BC their southern
stronghold of Veii fell to the advancing might of Rome. A century later they
had all but disappeared as a distinctive people.
While the Etruscans
were at the height of their power another People were imparting influence of
equal importance to the rising power of Rome. They were the adventuresome
Greeks who had sailed from their mainland in the 8th century BC in
search of wealth and to escape the fear of famine and a land shortage at home.
Settling on the southern coast, notably at Taranto, Metaponto, Crotone, Sibari,
Paestum, Cuma (near Naples) and in many parts of Sicily, they quickly raised
stupendous temples, built huge theaters and minted their own silver coins as a
sign of their economic boom.
Sibari, by the 7th
century, had a population of nome 300.000 but it was completely destroyed by
Crotone after a battle in 510 BC. Soon the colonies had to set asile their
local antagonisms to defend themselves from theindigenous population pressing
down from inland Around 400 BC sonie of the colonies founded the Italiot
Leagueand before long they were joined by the other colonies However, the
members of the League, which soue came to be known as Magna Graecia succumbed
one by one, When Rome decided to end all Carthaginian influence in the
Mediterranean the days of the colonies were numbered and Tarante was the last
to fall, despite ail from Pyrrhus Few buildings remain today apart from the
white‑columned temples at Paestum, Metaponto and the temples and theaters in
Sicily. But through the Greeks the Romans came to know the Mediterranean world,
learned of the Greek Gods, which they adopted by other narres and, must
important of all, the Romans came to know the alphabet.
The Romans overthrew
the last of the tyrannical Etruscan kings in 509 BC then steadily conquered one
tribe after another. Her temperament became bent on expansion and the
safeguarding of her new frontiers. She decided that she would rule the western Mediterranean,
which spelt confrontation with Carthage over control of Sicily. Thus the first
Punic War broke out in 264 BC and the Senate regained its influence, evolving
from an opinion‑making body into one, which issued decrees. The Romans won sea
battles and evicted Hamilcar from Sicily. Meanwhile they also annexed Corsica
and Sardinia and subjected the people of the Po Valley. By the time the second
Punic War flared up in 218 BC Rome had won the allegiance of her Italian
allies. Even though Hannibal crossed the Alps and lived in the Italian
countryside for 14 years, he had little success in winning over Rome's allies.
This Rome was able to rally, retake Syracuse, defeat Hasdrubal, occupy pain and
finally defeat Hannibal on his home ground at Zama in 202 BC. Carthage made a
final long for expansion by retaking Numidia but was defeated in 146 BC in the
last Punic War after the writer/statesman Cato insisted that "Carthage
must be destroyed".
The Punic Wars had
settled the question of who was to master of the Mediterranean. Rome now
created provinces Macedonia, Syria and Greece, suppressed Spain and dominated
Provence and Egypt. The Romans could justifiably call the Mediterranean
"Mare Nostrum ‑ Our Sea".
But power abroad did
rot bring stability at home. Morals declined. The Latin translation of Homer's
Odyssey changed the popular taste of heroes from Cato's ideal of a dutiful rte
servant to that of the dashing, lively Scipio Africanus, victor over Hannibal
at Zama. Civil liberties were among the first of the casualties as generals at
the head of triumphant armies held the reins of power. Sulla returned from
foreign victories to install a dictatorship (82‑79 BC). A corrupt Senate
appeared more interested in gaining individually from exploitation of the
provinces.
Cicero's pleas for an
end to corruption and dedication to the State fell on deaf ears as people on
the dole began to sell their votes and military leaders were lionized.
The Senate looked on
aghast as Julius Caesar's power grew during nine years in which he subdued
France, Belgium, Switzerland and a part of Germany. When he defied a Senate
order to disband his army and crossed the Rubicon, he lit the torch of civil
war. Although he scattered his opponents, led by Pompey, he packed the Senate
with loyal followers and installed a dictatorship. Caesar ignored counsel to
beware of his enemies, chiding "it is better to die once than to be always
in fear of death". Not long after, in 44 BC, he was stabbed to death in
Rome by Cassius and Brutus, the last of whom had been pardoned after fighting
on the side of Pompey. The triumvirate of Marc Antony, Octavius and Lapidus
that succeeded Caesar robbed the Senate of all its remaining influence, Cicero
was murdered, and the Republic was drenched in a new bloodbath. The end came
when the leaders fell out with each other. Octavius defeated Antony at the
battle of Actium in 31 BC and Rome, which had started off so enlighteningly,
gave way to an autocracy.
Octavius, later known
as Caesar Augustus, restored the old values mainly because the people wanted
him to succeed. There was a new devotion to the State and to the gods.
Bacchanalias were banned. After Augustus restored peace in Spain and Gaul the
Ara Pacis Augustae, still standing in central Rome, was built. It was the first
of many of the monumental buildings erected during the following 300 years.
The new spirit abroad found
expression through the writings of Virgil, Horace, Livy and Ovid. Augustus even
reorganized the military, ordering them to police the borders and in time the legionnaires,
recruited from the provinces, spread Roman culture through their roads, camps, administration
and form of justice.
Generally the first two
centuries of the empire were peaceful although Rome was never able to snuff out
completely the spirit of independence of the Jews in Palestine, despite the
draconian laws against Hebraic religions practices.
Rome also was unnerved
by the rise of Christianity whose adherents appeared to be preaching a state
within a state, pacifism, and to be paying less homage to the temporal rulers
than to their spiritual ores. By the 3rd century the emperors decreed
persecution, with Septimus Severus banning baptism and Decius demanding forced
sacrifices to pagan gods. But the elevation of Constantine to the imperial seat
saw neutrality prevail as he himself was a Christian. By 378 AD Christianity's
enemies were the target of attack in efforts to unify the empire.
However, by the 3rd
century anarchy had set in, with the military, as in the last days of the
Republic, being able to make or break leaders. Septimus Severus warned his son,
Caracalla: "Be pleasant with the soldiers and make fun of everything
else".
The army began to be
recruited from tribes formerly considered enemies while hostile tribes again
invaded Italy, Gaul and Dacia. Taxes soared to meet military expenditure and
the provinces no longer looked at the Roman genius but labored under the burden
of financial austerity.
In 395 AD Theodosius'
sons divided the sprawling empire with Arcadius ruling in the east at Byzantium
and Honorius in the west. Nevertheless, the Barbarian invasions continued into
Britain, Spain, Portugal and Gaul and in 410 the Visigoths briefly occupied
Rome. In these, the twilight years of the empire, individual freedom was a far
cry from the Augustan age. Corruption had spread like a cancer and there was
increasing reliance on mercenaries
to defend the
frontiers. The empire finally buckled under in 476 when Odoacer, a commander of
German mercenaries in the imperial service, overthrew the last emperor of the
west, Romulus Augustulus.
Many still eyed Italy
with covetous eyes and Odoacer was defeated at Ravenna in 488 by Theodoric,
sent by the eastern Emperor Zeno. This heralded a burst of artistic revival,
notably with the mosaics in the churches at Ravenna.
Italy, however, groaned
under the weight of successive invasions with the Lombards brutalizing the
Romans even though the intruders of Germanic origin adopted the local language
and Catholicism. When the Lombards moved on Rome in 751 Pope Stephen appealed
to Pepin the Short, king of the Franks. Pepin's victory was a milestone in
Italian history for the captured territory was handed to the pope, laying the
foundations for the Papal States. Of more importance, though, was the victory
20 years later of Charlemagne, Pepin's son, when he routed the Lombards who had
taken up arms against Pope Adrian I. When Charlemagne was crowned emperor by
the pope in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on Christmas Day, 800, the Holy Roman
Empire had taken shape and Italy, by offering the crown to foreigners, put a
brake on her own political independence and unity.
On Charlemagne's death
his dominions fell asunder and the Saracens, kept at bay when he was alive, now
conquered Sicily. There was a succession of petty kings, none of whom exercised
control over any large portion of Italy. The papacy became the prize sought by
Roman nobles with the state of affairs characterized by Marozia, the daughter
of a Roman aristocrat, who was the mistress of one pope, the mother of another
and the grandmother of a third.
Once more it was a
foreigner who brought a measure of stability to Italy. In 962 Pope John XII
called in Otto I of Germany, setting the seal on German rights to the imperial
title for the next few centuries.
-Rise of the Papacy
The 11th century popes
were the first of the so‑called reformers. They freed themselves from the Roman
nobility and sought to impose a church hierarchy independent of lay control. It
led to inevitable conflict with the emperors in a struggle that dominated the
11th century. But the Council of Lateran in 1059 placed the task of papal
elections in the hands of the clergy. This did not deter the emperor from
investing an archbishop of Milan with the seals of office and in 1075 Pope
Gregory VII excommunicated him. The denouement was one of the most humiliating episodes
in history as Henry IV stood for three winter days in the courtyard of the
castle of Canossa, begging absolution. Although the pope relented and forgave
him, the enmity continued with Henry being excommunicated once more. The pope
then recognized Rudolph of Swabia as king, to which clerical elements opposed
to papal omnipotence reacted by electing an anti‑pope who crowned Henry in
Rome. The catastrophic outcome was the sacking of Rome by the Normans who came
to the aid of Pope Gregory.
The papacy had
triumphed but it was clearly a pyrrhic victory. Not until the Concordat of
Worms in 1122 was a compromise reached on the question of investiture whereby
the emperor retained a measure of control over episcopal election while
relinquishing the right of investiture itself.
Popes and emperors
continued to cross swords. When Frederick I of Hohenstaufen, otherwise known as
Barbarossa because of his red hair, came to Rome for his coronation in 1154, he
challenged papal supremacy by refusing to lead the popes horse and to hold the
stirrup. Thereafter the Lombard League of northern communes, with the backing
of the pope, defeated Frederick's army and the emperor had no choice but to
kneel before the pope in St. Mark's Basilica, Venice, to give the kiss of
peace.
One of the results of
the clash between emperors and popes was the formation of partisan groups known
as Ghibellines and Guelphs. The names derived from an early 12th century affair
between two German princely houses, the Hohenstaufens of Swabia and the Welfs
of Bavaria. Partisans of the former were known as Ghibellines and supporters of
the latter as Guelphs. When the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick I invaded Italy,
his partisans were also known as Ghibellines while supporters of the Lombard
League and of the pope were known as Guelphs. With the death of Frederick II in
1250, and his successors within two decades, the struggle for power between the
papacy and the empire came to an end.' But factions had grown up in central and
northern Italian cities and therefore the feuds were prolonged long after they
had ceased to represent the ideas for which they came into being.
-The Communes
In the north and center
of the country the communes began to take shape while feudalism became
entrenched in the south with the arrival of the Normans.
The communes, or city‑states,
were the outgrowth of the beginnings of trade and industry and the conquest of
the country by the city in early medieval Italy. Once the private fortresses
and castles had been destroyed and feudalism diluted, the individual cities
embarked on vast land reclamation schemes. Foremost among the communes were
Venice, Genoa and Pisa whose private fleets drove the pirates out of the
Adriatic and the Saracens from Sardinia. By the 12th century Milan and Verona
were prospering from commerce and trade as they lay at the foot of the Alpine
passes. Bologna, with the oldest university in Europe, grew wealthy by virtue
of being the most important city on the ancient Via Emilia. Florence capitalized
on her control of two roads leading to Rome and on the route to the sea along
the river Arno.
The city-states had, by
the 13th and 14th centuries, grown powerful and rich. Merchants and tradesmen
were firmly established with Florence dominating the money market. Genoa had
earned the appellation of "superba" with her houses several stories
high. Venetian merchants were thriving on trade with Constantinople, Lebanon
and Egypt. Milan was exceedingly wealthy with her weaving, textile and armor-manufacturing
industries but she, along with other northern Italian cities, were ruled by
tyrants of the likes of the Visconti.
There was intense
rivalry between these flourishing cities and each was wary of the other's
military and financial might. Because the communes were the most urbanized
societies in Europe they also witnessed a spurt of artistic patronage. In part
trying to outdo each other in embellishing their cities with more splendid
edifices than their neighbors, they witnessed the beginnings of the great cathedrals
and churches which remain the magnetic attractions of Pisa, Assisi, Padua,
Siena, Florence, Verona, Venice and many other cities. They periodically went
to war with one another while trying to enlarge their spheres of influence
within vast regional boundaries. Venice and Genoa were locked in battle while
Florence and Venice finally succeeded in holding Milan in check.
Simultaneously with the
growth of the city‑states was the subjection of Sicily and southern Italy to
the Normans who had arrived as pilgrims in 1015. From brief beginnings as
mercenaries they began to demand land instead of money unacceptable demands
that set them on their course of conquest. In a curious incident in 1053 they
took Pope Leo IX captive, knelt to receive his blessing, freed him and
continued with their plunder. Before the 11th century was out the
popes allied themselves with the militarily‑skilled Normans, in their ongoing
conflict with the emperors, and legitimized the Norman's conquests of southern
Italy. By 1130 the Normans had extended their dominion to Sicily where Roger II
was crowned in Palermo, the exotic capital of the Arab emirate.
All of Italy was
affected by the dreaded Black Death bubonic plague, which struck down about one
third of the population of England, France and Italy in the 14th century. For
decades there was famine and epidemics, interspersed with a wide range of
social disorders from peasant revolts to banditry by demobilized armies. The
plague devastated the countryside, leaving in its wake deserted villages and
regions that lapsed into malarial swamps for want of farmers.
-Religion
Arnold of Brescia
epitomized all the medieval heretical movements by railing against the
degeneration and corruption of the church. His death at the stake did not put
an end to the call for a restoration of religious purity.
Instead, the church
responded with the Inquisition. Yet the 13th century saw the founding of the
Franciscan order by St. Francis of Assisi. It was to affect profoundly the
masses of people in much of Italy. There was a new emphasis on direct emotional
experience in religion. St. Francis, instead of attacking corruption of the
clergy and the church, preached a natural, spontaneous religion, to be lived
more than believed or meditated. People became as interested in this world
rather than exclusively in the next. They wanted to know more about themselves
and their world. There was a new emphasis on the importance of the individual
and on more human and emotional feelings, which paralleled the rise of the communes
and the universities, where individual initiative was rewarded. No one man felt
this sense of change more acutely than the painter, Giotto, who was much patronized
by the Franciscans.
The popes ‑ in Avignon,
France from 1305‑1376 ‑ far from rejoicing in this mood, instead schemed for
papal territory With a capital in Rome. This in fact became a reality in the
14th century when the individually powerless cities and seignories of central
Italy, wracked by wars and levelled by plagues, were brought together under
papal leadership. They embraced the whole of central Italy with the exception
of the regions dominated by Florence and Siena, and a few enclaves. What it
amounted to was autonomy under local leaders and certain taxes being siphoned
off to Rome.
In the 14th and 15th
centuries powerful families arose within the cities. Their leaders ruled with
much of their authority ceded by the populace in exchange for freedom from
external agression and internal strife. The Visconti and Sforza families ruled
in Milan, the Medici in Florence, the Gonzaga in Mantua, the Estes in Ferrara, and
the Montefeltro in Urbino and the Malatestas in Rimini.
During the first half
of the 15th century they were engaged in enlarging and consolidating their
borders and spheres of influence. But by the Treaty of Lodi, in 1454 peace was
restored. The Italian League of 1455 brought Milan, Florence and Venice
together as the most powerful of the Italian states. Naples and the Papal
States gave the League their blessing. The League forbade the greater states
from increasing their power and borders at the expense of the weak. But it also
represented an alliance against external attack. Basically it was upheld and
brought 40 years of respite from calamitous wars, enabling commerce and
industry, and above all the arts, to flourish in the golden age of the
Renaissance.
The fall of the eastern
provinces of the empire, with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in the mid‑15th
century, gradually led to the great voyages of discovery for new trade routes
away from the Mediterranean. The discovery of America was in time to weigh h
heavily in the decline of Venice, which had hitherto been the funnel through
which far‑eastern goods were channeled to Europe. However, the peace in Italy
generated wealth and the historian, Francesco Guicciardini, was able to picture
Italy as the richest, most cultured and illustrious land of western
Christendom. A building boom filled these tranquil years: mare than 30 palazzi
and villas rose in Florence, the Doges Palace in Venice was completed and
others were erected in Mantua, Rome, Ferrara and centers where Renaissance
courts were re enriched by a parade of scholars, esthetes and artists.
There was a competitive
instinct to employ the finest minds and artists in the service of the courts,
yet Florence under the Medici emerged as the pre‑eminent wonder of this splendid
age. The Tuscan Italian language even came to predominate in written usage and
in commerce. Similarities of commercial and administrative functions led to
similar attitudes of mind and the forms of the Catholic faith brought about a
common rhythm in daily life.
However, the last
decade of the 15th century rubbed away this veneer of unity. So absorbed were
the states in their own ambitious projects that they failed to prepare measures
to counter the formation of powerful national states rising on their borders.
Thus, when Milan wooed France during a quarrel with Naples, the French invasion
released all the latent jealousies and fears. Venice stood aloof from the
hostilities. Naples and the papacy resisted, as did Florence, preferring
Italian unity rather than the traditional Guelph alliance between her and
France. The French and Swiss, under Charles VIII, were driven from Italy in
little more than a year but the results were pitiful for Italy. In the
aftermath of the French retreat the Neapolitan barons again wrestled for power,
the Venetians seized Apulia, and Pisa successfully threw off the yoke of Florence.
In Florence itself the Medicis were expelled and a rule of religious bigotry
set in under the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola. It took four years for
popular sentiment to turn against him and when it did Savonarola was burned at
the stake.
More disastrous for
Italy was the way in which some Italian states now looked to outsiders to
reinforce their own political ambitions. In 1498 Venice and the pope allied
themselves with the French king who seized Milan. In the ensuing treaty Naples
was divided between France and Spain, although it was not long before Spain
wrested the entire Sicilian kingdom for herself.
Niccolo Machiavelli's
two great books, "The Prince" and the "Discourses", which
called for internal cohesion and strength to drive out the foreigners, fell on
deaf ears. Italy was now destined to be the battlefield between French and
Habsburg rivalries.
The election of Charles
V of Habsburg as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1519 drew Italy once more
into the vortex of wars initiated by outsiders. Charles viewed the strength of
the empire on good relations between the church and empire, and on domination
of Italy. The emperor, who had also inherited the Spanish crown, quickly
defeated the French in Pavia in 1525 and then faced the leading Italian states
brought together by the pope, and under the leadership of France. The outcome
was disastrous for Rome: 40,000 German and Spanish troops, leaderless after the
death of their commander, descended on the eternal city and pillaged, burned,
raped and desecrated churches for four days. At the end of it the French
renounced claims to Italy and Charles was crowned emperor by the pope. Some
historians maintain that the sack of Rome marked the true end of the
Renaissance while others hold that this took place later in 1542, when the
conference of Catholics and Protestants failed to resolve their differences.
With Charles'
abdication and the transfer of his Italian possessions to Phillip II of Spain,
the country entered what has been described as "150 years of the dullest
period in Italian history". War and taxation had drained the energy of the
people and the papacy, with its oppressive Inquisition, added to the decline of
liberty. The Index of Prohibited Books included the "Decameron",
Dante's "de Monarchia" and the works of Machiavelli. Many
intellectuals fled the country in the wake of the counter‑Reformation. The
cities lost their ruling families and with it their freedom. Venice's notorious
Council of Ten instilled terror into the populace and its aristocracy lapsed
into corrupt practices.
A new target of
hostility was introduced with the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, which assigned most
of the Spanish possessions in Italy to the Austrians. Austrian domination was
new and, because of this, rankled even more.
By the time the French
invaded Italy, after declaring war on Austria and Sardinia in 1793, Italy lay
defenseless, ill-equipped and there for the taking.
Napoleon took command
of the French army in Italy in 1796 and swept the Austrians aside. A year later
France was in control of all of northern Italy, handing Venice over to the
Austrians. Republics mushroomed in the wake of Napoleon's victories but they
collapsed just as suddenly when an AustroRussian army counter‑attacked in 1799,
routing the French amid scenes of wild national rejoicing.
The experience of
French domination had bred widespread nationalism among the Italians. They had
gone through the common experience of anticipating liberty and equality, only
to suffer disillusionment by witnessing brutality, sacrilege and spoliation of
their art treasures. Secret societies sprang up with members pledging their
lives for independence.
A few months of Austro‑Russian
occupation debilitated the people and when Napoleon re-conquered Italy within
two years his promise of stability and order instead of liberty, equality and
revolution was welcomed. For more than a decade Italy benefited from the French
program of public works. Napoleon also did away with the feudal system by
equalizing everyone before the law and by imposing the Code Napoleon.
While France detached
huge chunks of Italy for her empire she also created the Italian Republic,
later to be the kingdom of Italy with Napoleon as the monarch. Comprising
Milan, Brescia, Reggio, Bologna, Venice, Ferrara, Ancona and other cities, it
adopted the tricolor. This later became the national flag and the people within
this area developed a deeper sense of national unity. Meanwhile Naples became a
kingdom under French rule and the Papal States and the city of Rome were
annexed to France.
The downfall of
Napoleon opened the way for the Congress of Vienna and the restoration of the
dethroned dynasties of Italy. Bigoted nationalism returned and Austrian
influence deepened, especially as she possessed the two richest Italian
territories of Lombardy and Venetia. Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister
and later chancellor, met the new movements of nationalism, romanticism and
industrialism head on, refusing to grant constitutional governments.
Inevitably secret
societies flourished, one of which briefly usurped power in Naples before being
mercilessly crushed by Austrian troops. In addition, Austria had to quash a
rebellion in Piedmont and an uprising in Bologna. The states of the church were
also seething.
Several men appeared on
the scene between 1831‑1846 to try and guide this restlessness. Guiseppe
Mazzini reached the middle classes, preaching that Italians should look to
themselves and to no outside power for their salvation. His credo of
"thought and action", expressed in a society founded by him in 1831,
advocated popular insurrections as a final goal. But the secret cells were
discovered and decimated and Mazzini was one of many who found sanctuary in
London. All classes of Italians were soon caught up in the ferment of opinion
being expressed in historical‑romantic novels, patriotic drama, paintings and
music. In 1843 the Piedmontese abbot, Vincenzo Gioberti stirred even more
lively discussion with the publication of his "Primato", in which he
envisaged a restoration of Italian primacy among the nations once the church
had been reformed. His proposal for a confederation of Italian princes under
the chairmanship of the pope represented a definite step ahead. However, it now
became clear to all that Austria would relinquish her Italian possessions only
if she were driven out by force of arms.
The election of Pope
Plus IX in 1846 created a new momentum, with demonstrations in his favor
spreading across Italy after he granted a sweeping amnesty to political
prisoners. The pope followed this up with a relaxation of press censorship ‑ a
move soon duplicated in Florence and Turin.
Austrian reaction was
swift. Her troops occupied the citadel in the papal town of Ferrara, thus
igniting anti‑Austrian demonstrations among liberals and papists.
Simultaneously, the Sicilians drove out the Neapolitan army and Naples received
a constitution. Sardinia and Tuscany, then Rome, followed suit. In March 1848
the Milanese and the Venetians overcame Austrian garrisons and the first War of
Independence had begun.
But it was short‑lived.
The pope dissociated himself from the struggle, Ferdinand II reclaimed Naples,
Venice capitulated to the Austrians and the Piedmontese was pushed back.
French troops crushed
Garibaldi's army in Rome. The war was lost but Italian determination to be free
had passed the point of no return.
Center‑stage now shifted
to Piedmont, the sole Italian state with a constitutional monarchy, a liberal
political and parliamentary life, a free press and freedom of associations.
Thousands of Italian political refugees settled in Turin and the National
Society swelled with patriots.
Count Camillo Cavour,
premier of Piedmont from 1852, became the guiding figure of the years preceding
independence. The most astute diplomat in Europe, he sought war with Austria
but realized that the backing or assistance of another big power was a
prerequisite for success. This accounts for Piedmonts dispatch of troops under
the allied banner against Russia at Crimea. Although Piedmont won only sympathy
for her cause from her victorious allies at the subsequent Congress of Paris,
Cavour was now convinced that France would back him in a war against Austria.
The French did consent
and in the second War of Independence in 1859 the Austrians were defeated. Yet
the Peace of Villafranca dashed all hopes and led to Cavour's resignation
because the unfavorable terms foresaw Italy as a federation under the papacy
while Venetia was to be retained by Austria.
The stalemate was
broken in April 1860 when the Sicilians took up arms against the Neapolitan
forces on the island. They appealed to Garibaldi who hesitated because there
were 20,000 enemy troops to face. Finally, on 6th May he set sail from Genoa
with his famous Expedition of the Thousand (1100 volunteers). Before the month
was out he had decisively whacked the enemy, following up his success on mainland
Naples. Victor Emanuele of Piedmont had meanwhile overcome papal forces during
his march south. The unity of Italy, apart from Rome and Venetia, was now a
fait accompli and the first national parliament was opened by Victor Emanuele ‑
now king – in February 1861.
At the moment of
triumph Italy suffered a grievous loss through the sudden death of Cavour.
Italy nevertheless acquired Venetia, albeit through the most humiliating
episode in the struggle for independence. Her numerically superior army and
navy were defeated by Austria but because Prussia Italy's ally ‑ had bruised
Austria in battle, the overall peace treaty ceded Venetia to Italy.
Attention focused on
Rome, which the incautious Garibaldi had several times been forcibly prevented
from storming. International sympathy for the Italians improved when the pope
further exacerbated public opinion with his doctrine of Papal Infallibility.
The go‑ahead was finally given to Italian troops when the French army was
withdrawn from Rome during the Franco‑Prussian war. The pope had no choice but
to submit when the troops rolled in on 20th September 1870. In a
final flash of defiance he excommunicated all who had a part in seizing his
temporal power and declared himself "the prisoner of the Vatican",
outside of which no pope was to step for half a century afterwards.
The country was
territorially free and united with the eternal city as its capital. But new
divisions hardened, particularly the breach between the church and the secular
world of liberal reformism.
Parliamentary democracy
suffered in the aftermath of total independence. The liberals were amorphous
and the right was disintegrating. Agostino Depretis, premier almost
continuously from 1876‑1887, indulged in what became known as 'transformismo',
whereby bribery secured necessary votes for passage of parliamentary bills.
On his death a new
figure emerged, the Sicilian‑born Francesco Crispi. It fell to him to crack
down on the rash of violence, fostered by the rise of socialist ideas. But
Crispi was driven from office by the disastrous defeat of the Italian army at
the hands of the King of Abyssinia.
Lawlessness was rampant
and by 1898, 30 of the country's 59 provinces had their civil governments
suspended and the military in charge. Unemployment, bad harvests and hunger had
much to do with it but there was a widespread bitterness at the quality of
life. In 1900 King Humbert was assassinated while visiting Monza, just north of
Milan, and Victor Emanuele III succeeded to the throne.
Giolitti held the reins
of power in Italy from this time until the outbreak of World War I but, like
Depretis before him, he juggled with bases of power and manipulated votes,
thereby further eroding the democratic spirit and the interest of the people in
parliamentary government.
Meanwhile Marxism and
its rival creed of the superstate and superman, were influences seeping down to
Italy from their northern birthplaces, while within Italy itself there were
those who dreamed of greatness, with Italy a feared and powerful empire.
Italy sided with the
allies in World War I with a secret promise of territorial gains after victory.
Although she gained the longed‑for Trento area and Trieste she was slighted by
her allies. She had lost 600,000 men in the conflict and the aftermath saw the
survivors returning to poverty, inflation, social and political unrest and
acute unemployment. Then, as in Germany, the right's victory was made all the
more easy by the fragmentation of the forces of the left. The fascists, formed
by Benito Mussolini in 1919, after his clamorous exit from the Socialist Party,
instilled a reign of terror around the country, using arson, and ransacking and
physical violence to humble their opponents. As with Hitler's rise to power,
Mussolini won over the industrialists with a mixture of blandishments and
promises of economic liberalism. He even abandoned his former anti‑clericalism.
Then, on October 24th, 1922, alter a meeting in Naples, the fascists decided to
march on Rome. The monarch refused to declare martial law and Mussolini came
down from Milan, was invited to form a government and won an overwhelming vote
of confidence in Parliament.
What was left of civil
liberties was battered in 1924 when the body of a socialist deputy, Giacomo
Matteoti, was found in a country thicket near Rome after he had spoken out
against the climate of illegality and oppression. The press was another
casualty and the unions were monopolized by the fascists. Mussolini drew huge
crowds before the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, where he harangued them from the
balcony of this, his official residence.
Like all dictators, he
saw himself as the embodiment of Italian glory resurrected. Under his rule the
forums were dug up and rickety houses bulldozed away to make way for the Via
dei Fori Imperiali. Marble buildings in EUR were also constructed in the
capital for his planned World's Fair.
His great achievement
was the signing of the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican in 1929, which
normalized relations with the Church. Under it Italy recognized papal
sovereignty over territory named the Vatican, and declared the Catholic faith
the national religion. The treaty won his regime considerable prestige and
broadened his base of support.
In 1935, in an effort
to bolster his prestige, he embarked on a colonial war, the following year
capturing Addis Ababa and proclaiming the foundation of the Italian Empire.
Then he took up arms with Germany on the side of the fascists in the Spanish
civil war. Four years later, with the fall of France appearing to him as the
end of the conflict, he went to war against the allies.
World War II was a
disaster for Italy, despite the early victory in British Somaliland. The
Italians were resoundingly defeated in Greece and in Russia. The Italian towns
were pulverized by allied bombing raids and many of the glories of medieval and
Renaissance art and buildings were destroyed.
In July 1943 the Grand
Council stripped Mussolini of his powers and the king dismissed him. Not long after,
the king and the new premier, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, fled to Pescara and then
into the hands of the allies, who were advancing on Salerno. The allies promise
of modified peace conditions gave rise to the first partisan units, 46,000 of
whom were to lose their lives before the end of the war.
Mussolini himself, who
had been freed by the Germans in the north in 1943, and who headed a puppet
government there, was caught by partisans as he tried to reach the Swiss border
disguised as a German. He was shot and his corpse later strung up by the feet
in a Milan piazza. Such was the inglorious end of fascist rule in Italy.
The monarchy was
abolished in a popular referendum after the war and the new constitution,
approved in 1947, expressly forbade the reorganization of the fascist party
"under any form whatsoever".
Since then the
Christian Democrats have been the dominating factor in the succession of 37
coalition governments. They took Italy into Nato and the Common Market and have
held at bay the Italian Communist party, the largest in the west.
Italy in the mid‑seventies
is consumed with the problem of rising inflation and the weakening of the lira.
And with the overwhelming success of the forces of the left in opposing the
Vatican and the Christian Democrats in the 1974 referendum on divorce, she now
seems set for an even more intense internal struggle over the right versus the
left.