proved fruitless, since Kalnóky, somewhat Clerical-minded,
was averse from guaranteeing the integrity of all Italian
territory, and Mancini was equally unwilling to guarantee to
Austria permanent possession of Trent and Trieste. Mancini,
moreover, wished the treaty of alliance to provide for reciprocal
protection of the chief interests of the contracting Powers,
Italy undertaking to second Austria-Hungary in the Balkans,
and Austria and Germany pledging themselves to support
Italy in Mediterranean questions. Without some such proviso
Italy would, in Mancini’s opinion, be exposed single-handed
to French resentment. At the request of Kalnóky, Mancini
defined his proposal in a memorandum, but the illness of himself
and Depretis, combined with an untoward discussion in the
Italian press on the failure of the Austrian emperor to return in
Rome King Humbert’s visit to Vienna, caused negotiations to
drag. The pope, it transpired, had refused to receive the
emperor if he came to Rome on a visit to the Quirinal, and
Francis Joseph, though anxious to return King Humbert’s
visit, was unable to offend the feelings of his Catholic subjects.
Meanwhile (11th May 1882) the Italian parliament adopted the
new Army Bill, involving a special credit of £5,100,000 for the
creation of two new army corps, by which the war footing of the
regular army was raised to nearly 850,000 men and the ordinary
military estimates to £8,000,000 per annum. Garibaldi, who,
since the French occupation of Tunis, had ardently worked for
the increase of the army, had thus the satisfaction of seeing his
Death of Garibaldi.
desire realized before his death at Caprera, on the 2nd
of June 1882. “In spirit a child, in character a man
of classic mould,” Garibaldi had remained the nation’s
idol, an almost legendary hero whose place none could aspire
to fill. Gratitude for his achievements and sorrow for his death
found expression in universal mourning wherein king and
peasant equally joined. Before his death, and almost contemporaneously
with the passing of the Army Bill, negotiations
for the alliance were renewed. Encouraged from Berlin, Kalnóky
agreed to the reciprocal territorial guarantee, but declined
reciprocity in support of special interests. Mancini had therefore
to be content with a declaration that the allies would act in
mutually friendly intelligence. Depretis made some opposition,
but finally acquiesced, and the treaty of triple alliance was signed
on the 20th of May 1882, five days after the promulgation of
the Franco-Italian commercial treaty in Paris. Though partial
Signature
of the
Treaty,
1882.
revelations have been made, the exact tenor of the
treaty of triple alliance has never been divulged.
It is known to have been concluded for a period of
five years, to have pledged the contracting parties
to join in resisting attack upon the territory of any one of them,
and to have specified the military disposition to be adopted by
each in case attack should come either from France, or from
Russia, or from both simultaneously. The Italian General
Staff is said to have undertaken, in the event of war against
France, to operate with two armies on the north-western frontier
against the French armée des Alpes, of which the war strength is
about 250,000 men. A third Italian army would, if expedient,
pass into Germany, to operate against either France or Russia.
Austria undertook to guard the Adriatic on land and sea, and
to help Germany by checkmating Russia on land. Germany
would be sufficiently employed in carrying on war against two
fronts. Kalnóky desired that both the terms of the treaty and
the fact of its conclusion should remain secret, but Bismarck
and Mancini hastened to hint at its existence, the former in the
Reichstag on the 12th of June 1882, and the latter in the Italian
semi-official press. A revival of Irredentism in connexion with
the execution of an Austrian deserter named Oberdank, who
after escaping into Italy endeavoured to return to Austria with
explosive bombs in his possession, and the cordial references to
France made by Depretis at Stradella (8th October 1882),
prevented the French government from suspecting the existence
of the alliance, or from ceasing to strive after a Franco-Italian
understanding. Suspicion was not aroused until March 1883,
when Mancini, in defending himself against strictures upon his
refusal to co-operate with Great Britain in Egypt, practically
revealed the existence of the treaty, thereby irritating France
and destroying Depretis’s secret hope of finding in the triple
alliance the advantage of an Austro-German guarantee without
the disadvantage of French enmity. In Italy the revelation
of the treaty was hailed with satisfaction except by the Clericals,
who were enraged at the blow thus struck at the restoration
of the pope’s temporal power, and by the Radicals, who feared
both the inevitable breach with republican France and the
reinforcement of Italian constitutional parties by intimacy
with strong monarchical states such as Germany and Austria.
These very considerations naturally combined to recommend
the fact to constitutionalists, who saw in it, besides the territorial
guarantee, the elimination of the danger of foreign interference
in the relations between Italy and the Vatican, such as Bismarck
had recently threatened and such as France was believed ready
to propose.
Nevertheless, during its first period (1882–1887) the triple alliance failed to ensure cordiality between the contracting Powers. Mancini exerted himself in a hundred ways to soothe French resentment. He not only refused to join Great Britain in the Egyptian expedition, but agreed to suspend Italian consular jurisdiction in Tunis, and deprecated suspicion of French designs upon Morocco. His efforts were worse than futile. France remained cold, while Bismarck and Kalnóky, distrustful of the Radicalism of Depretis and Mancini, assumed towards their ally an attitude almost hostile. Possibly Germany and Austria may have been influenced by the secret treaty signed between Austria, Germany and Russia on the 21st of March 1884, and ratified during the meeting of the three emperors at Skierniewice in September of that year, by which Bismarck, in return for “honest brokerage” in the Balkans, is understood to have obtained from Austria and Russia a promise of benevolent neutrality in case Germany should be “forced” to make war upon a fourth power—France. Guaranteed thus against Russian attack, Italy became in the eyes of the central powers a negligible quantity, and was treated accordingly. Though kept in the dark as to the Skierniewice arrangement, the Italian government soon discovered from the course of events that the triple alliance had practically lost its object, European peace having been assured without Italian co-operation. Meanwhile France provided Italy with fresh cause for uneasiness by abating her hostility to Germany. Italy in consequence drew nearer to Great Britain, and at the London conference on the Egyptian financial question sided with Great Britain against Austria and Germany. At the same time negotiations took place with Great Britain for an Italian occupation of Massawa, and Mancini, dreaming of a vast Anglo-Italian enterprise against the Mahdi, expatiated in the spring of 1885 upon the glories of an Anglo-Italian alliance, an indiscretion which drew upon him a scarcely-veiled démenti from London. Again speaking in the Chamber, Mancini claimed for Italy the principal merit in the conclusion of the triple alliance, but declared that the alliance left Italy full liberty of action in regard to interests outside its scope, “especially as there was no possibility of obtaining protection for such interests from those who by the alliance had not undertaken to protect them.” These words, which revealed the absence of any stipulation in regard to the protection of Italian interests in the Mediterranean, created lively dissatisfaction in Italy and corresponding satisfaction in France. They hastened Mancini’s downfall (17th June 1885), and prepared the advent of count di Robilant, who three months later succeeded Mancini at the Italian Foreign Office. Robilant, for whom the Skierniewice pact was no secret, followed a firmly independent policy throughout the Bulgarian crisis of 1885–1886, declining to be drawn into any action beyond that required by the treaty of Berlin and the protection of Italian interests in the Balkans. Italy, indeed, came out of the Eastern crisis with enhanced prestige and with her relations to Austria greatly improved. Towards Prince Bismarck Robilant maintained an attitude of dignified independence, and as, in the spring of 1886, the moment for the renewal of the triple alliance drew near, he profited by the development of the Bulgarian crisis and the
