Christopher Duggan - The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796

The Force of Destiny

CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN

A History of Italy since 1796

ALLEN LANE

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

ALLEN LANE

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First published 2007
1

Copyright Christopher Duggan, 2007

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EISBN: 9780141908342

For J.

Cela est bien dit mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.

PART ONE:
Awakening, 17961815

PART TWO:
Preaching, 181546

PART THREE:
Poetry, 184660

PART FOUR:
Prose, 186187

PART FIVE:
War, 18871918

PART SIX:
Fascism, 191943

PART SEVEN:
Parties

Photographic acknowledgements are given in parentheses.

An allegory of the invasion of Italy, 1796 (Museo Centrale del Risorgimento)

The horses of St Marks being shipped off to France, 1797 (University of Reading Library)

Antonio Canovas monument to Vittorio Alfieri (Alinari Archives, Florence)

Pietro Rossi, Lord of Parma, by Francesco Hayez (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan)

Peter the Hermit Preaching the Crusade, by Francesco Hayez (Giulio Einaudi Editore/private collection)

A meeting of Carbonari, 1821 (Museo Centrale del Risorgimento)

An engraving celebrating Pope Pius IXs allocution, 10 February 1848 (Museo Centrale del Risorgimento)

La Meditazione, by Francesco Hayez (Civica Galleria dArte Moderna, Verona)

Giuseppe Mazzini (Alinari Archives, Florence)

Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (Istituto Mazziniano, Genoa)

King Victor Emmanuel II and Rosa Vercellana (Giulio Einaudi Editore/private collection)

The bandit leader Nicola Napolitano (Editori Riuniti)

Giuseppe Garibaldi wounded, 1862 (Museo Centrale del Risorgimento)

Francesco Crispi meeting Bismarck at Friedrichsruh, 1887 (Rizzoli Editore)

The Battle of Adua, 1896 (Fototeca Storica Nazionale Ando Gilardi)

An emigrant family from southern Italy, New York, 1905 (Giulio Einaudi Editore/private collection)

Giovanni Giolitti (UTET, Turin)

Gabriele DAnnunzio (Alinari Archives, Florence)

The fascist squad of Fermo (Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome)

The Madonna del manganello, Monteleone Calabro (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

Jumping over bayonets in the Mussolini Forum (Alinari Archives, Florence)

The entrance to the exhibition for the bimillennium of Augustus (Alinari Archives, Florence)

Camel troops parading before the Vittoriano, Rome (Alinari Archives, Florence)

Hitler and Mussolini at Florence railway station (Alinari Archives, Florence)

The front cover of the first number of the La difesa della razza, 1938 (Biblioteca Nazionale, Rome)

Piazzale Loreto, 29 April 1945 (PA Photos/Empics)

A Christian Democrat electoral poster, 1948 (Archivio Storico Fotocroce, Piacenza)

The advent of television, Carpi, 1956 (Giancolombo/Contrasto/eyevine)

The launch of the new FIAT 500,1957 (Archivio Storico Fiat, Turin)

Ravenna, May Day, 1961 (Berengo Gardin/Constrasto/eyevine)

A southern immigrant arriving in Milan, 1969 (Uliano Lucas)

The murder of Benedetto Grado, Palermo, 1983 (Franco Zecchin/Picturetank)

Silvio Berlusconi, 2004 (Renato Franceschin/Grazia Neri)

Italy before 1796

The unification of Italy 181570

Italy since 1919

The composer Giuseppe Verdi was not a man with particularly strong or sophisticated political views, but he was almost unerringly alert to the mood of his audiences; and when, at the beginning of 1861, just a few months after the extraordinary chain of events that had led, in what many observers felt had been a providential fashion, to the unification of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel II of PiedmontSardinia and his prime minister, Count Camillo Cavour, he was approached by the Imperial Theatre of St Petersburg to write a new opera, he quickly alighted for his subject on a play that had been written nearly thirty years earlier by a well-known Spanish writer and politician, the Duke of Rivas, Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sinoDon Alvaro, or the Force of Fate. Verdi worked on the opera in the late summer and autumn of 1861, and in November 1862 La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny), as it was now called, received its premier in St Petersburg. It was a considerable success, and the composer was rewarded by the Tsar with the Order of St Stanislas though the third performance was marred by a demonstration staged, it seems, by Russian musical nationalists who were unhappy at the official accolades being meted out to a foreign work.

La forza del destino was not an overtly political opera though it contained invocations to war against the Austrians (the eternal plague of Italy and her sons) that were guaranteed to excite Italian audiences when it toured the peninsula: a large part of north-eastern Italy was still under the rule of Austria in 1862 and there was much talk at the time of the need for a fresh military offensive to finish the work of unification. But running through Verdis opera (the only one to which he gave an abstract title) was an idea that appeared to many patriots to encapsulate the essence of the political drama that had unfolded in 185960: that, irrespective of human intentions and actions, there was a force, a hidden hand, which was directing the course of history towards predetermined goals. Was this not the best explanation for how the country had been unified in the teeth of so many seemingly insurmountable obstacles? There had been the indifference or outright hostility of much of the Italian population, the bitter antagonism between the moderate and democratic wings of the national movement, the existence of deep-rooted regional divisions, the absence of strong economic, cultural and linguistic bonds, and the vehement opposition of the three greatest powers on the continent: the Roman Catholic Church, Austria and France (the emperor Napoleon III had been happy to see an enlarged Piedmont, but the last thing he had wanted was to bring about a united Italy that might rival France in southern Europe).

That the unification of Italy had been in large measure fortuitous had been underlined for many Italians by the sudden death in June 1861, just a few weeks after the formal proclamation of the new kingdom, of Count Cavour, the man who more than any other had appeared to have a sense of the direction in which affairs in the peninsula were moving and some degree of mastery over them. Verdi had called him the Prometheus of our people; and when news came through of his demise, he wept, he confessed, like a child. The impression that the country now faced an extremely precarious future was reinforced by the rapid deterioration of law and order in the south of the peninsula in the second half of 1861, mounting insolvency and a slide towards civil war. And when, shortly after completing the score of