Anglo-Egyptian authorities. Under Signor Ferdinando Martini’s
able administration (1898–1906) the cost of the colony to Italy
was reduced and its trade and agriculture have vastly improved.
While marked in regard to Eritrea by vacillation and undignified readiness to yield to Radical clamour, the policy of the marquis di Rudini was in other respects chiefly characterized by a desire to demolish Crispi and his supporters. Actuated by rancour against Crispi, he, on the 29th of April 1896, authorized the publication of a Green Book on Abyssinian affairs, in which, without the consent of Great Britain, the confidential Anglo-Italian negotiations in regard to the Abyssinian war were disclosed. This publication, which amounted to a gross breach of diplomatic confidence, might have endangered the cordiality of Anglo-Italian relations, had not the esteem of the British government for General Ferrero, Italian ambassador in London, induced it to overlook the incident. Fortunately for Italy, the marquis Visconti Venosta shortly afterwards consented to assume the portfolio of foreign affairs, which had been resigned by Duke Caetani di Sermoneta, and again to place, after an interval of twenty years, his unrivalled experience at the service of his country. In September 1896 he succeeded in concluding with France a treaty with regard to Tunisia in place of the old Italo-Tunisian treaty, denounced by the French Government a year previously. During the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 Visconti Venosta laboured to maintain the European concert, joined Great Britain in preserving Greece from the worst consequences of her folly, and lent moral and material aid in establishing an autonomous government in Crete. At the same time he mitigated the Francophil tendencies of some of his colleagues, accompanied King Humbert and Queen Margherita on their visit to Homburg in September 1897, and, by loyal observance of the spirit of the triple alliance, retained for Italy the confidence of her allies without forfeiting the goodwill of France.
The home administration of the Rudini cabinet compared
unfavourably with that of foreign affairs. Bound by a secret
understanding with the Radical leader Cavallotti, an able but
unscrupulous demagogue, Rudini was compelled to bow to
Radical exigencies. He threw all the influence of the government
against Crispi, who was charged with complicity in embezzlements
perpetrated by Favilla, managing director of the Bologna
branch of the Bank of Naples. After being subjected to persecution
for nearly two years, Crispi’s character was substantially
vindicated by the report of a parliamentary commission appointed
to inquire into his relations with Favilla. True, the
commission proposed and the Chamber adopted a vote of censure
upon Crispi’s conduct in 1894, when, as premier and minister
of the interior, he had borrowed £12,000 from Favilla to replenish |
the secret service fund, and had subsequently repaid the money
as instalments for secret service were in due course furnished by
the treasury. Though irregular, his action was to some extent
justified by the depletion of the secret service fund under Giolitti
and by the abnormal circumstances prevailing in 1893–1894,
when he had been obliged to quell the insurrections in Sicily
and Massa-Carrara. But the Rudini-Cavallotti alliance was
destined to produce other results than those of the campaign
against Crispi. Pressed by Cavallotti, Rudini in March 1897
dissolved the Chamber and conducted the general election in
such a way as to crush by government pressure the partisans of
Crispi, and greatly to strengthen the (Socialist, Republican and
Radical) revolutionary parties. More than ever at the mercy
of the Radicals and of their revolutionary allies, Rudini continued
so to administer public affairs that subversive propaganda
and associations obtained unprecedented extension. The effect
was seen in May 1898, when, in consequence of a rise in the
price of bread, disturbances occurred in southern Italy. The
corn duty was reduced to meet the emergency, but the disturbed
Riots of
May, 1898.
area extended to Naples, Foggia, Bari, Minervino-Murge,
Molfetta and thence along the line of railway
which skirts the Adriatic coast. At Faenza, Piacenza,
Cremona, Pavia and Milan, where subversive associations
were stronger, it assumed the complexion of a political revolt.
From the 7th to the 9th of May Milan remained practically in
the hands of the mob. A palace was sacked, barricades were
erected and for forty-eight hours the troops under General
Bava-Beccaris, notwithstanding the employment of artillery,
were unable to restore order. In view of these occurrences,
Rudini authorized the proclamation of a state of siege at Milan,
Florence, Leghorn and Naples, delegating the suppression of
disorder to special military commissioners. By these means
order was restored, though not without considerable loss of life
at Milan and elsewhere. At Milan alone the official returns
confessed to eighty killed and several hundred wounded, a total
generally considered below the real figures. As in 1894, excessively
severe sentences were passed by the military tribunals
upon revolutionary leaders and other persons considered to have
been implicated in the outbreak, but successive royal amnesties
obliterated these condemnations within three years.
No Italian administration since the death of Depretis underwent so many metamorphoses as that of the marquis di Rudini. Modified a first time within five months of its formation (July 1896) in connexion with General Ricotti’s Army Reform Bill, and again in December 1897, Pelloux and obstruction. when Zanardelli entered the cabinet, it was reconstructed for a third time at the end of May 1898 upon the question of a Public Safety Bill, but fell for the fourth and last time on the 18th of June 1898, on account of public indignation at the results of Rudini’s home policy as exemplified in the May riots. On the 29th of June Rudini was succeeded in the premiership by General Luigi Pelloux, a Savoyard, whose only title to office was the confidence of the king. The Pelloux cabinet possessed no clear programme except in regard to the Public Safety Bill, which it had taken over from its predecessor. Presented to parliament in November 1898, the bill was read a second time in the following spring, but its third reading was violently obstructed by the Socialists, Radicals and Republicans of the Extreme Left. After a series of scenes and scuffles the bill was promulgated by royal decree, the decree being postdated to allow time for the third reading. Again obstruction precluded debate, and on the 22nd of July 1899 the decree automatically acquired force of law, pending the adoption of a bill of indemnity by the Chamber. In February 1900 it was, however, quashed by the supreme court on a point of procedure, and the Public Safety Bill as a whole had again to be presented to the Chamber. In view of the violence of Extremist obstruction, an effort was made to reform the standing orders of the Lower House, but parliamentary feeling ran so high that General Pelloux thought it expedient to appeal to the country. The general election of June 1900 not only failed to reinforce the cabinet, but largely increased the strength of the extreme parties (Radicals, Republicans and Socialists), who in the new Chamber numbered nearly 100 out of a total of 508. General Pelloux therefore resigned, and on the 24th of June a moderate Liberal cabinet was formed by the aged Signor Saracco, president of the senate. Within five weeks of its formation King Humbert was shot by an anarchist assassin named Bresci while leaving an athletic festival at Monza, where his Majesty had distributed the prizes (29th July 1900). The death of the unfortunate Death of King Humbert. monarch, against whom an attempt had previously been made by the anarchist Acciarito (22nd April 1897), caused an outburst of profound sorrow and indignation. Though not a great monarch, King Humbert had, by his unfailing generosity and personal courage, won the esteem and affection of his people. During the cholera epidemic at Naples and Busca in 1884, and the Ischia earthquake of 1885, he, regardless of danger, brought relief and encouragement to sufferers, and rescued many lives. More than £100,000 of his civil list was annually devoted to charitable purposes. Accession of King Victor Emmanuel III. Humbert was succeeded by his only son, Victor Emmanuel III. (b. November 11, 1869), a liberal-minded and well-educated prince, who at the time of his father’s assassination was returning from a cruise in the eastern Mediterranean. The remains of King Humbert were laid to rest in the Pantheon at Rome beside those of his father, Victor Emmanuel II. (9th August). Two
