Monarch Profile: King Victor Amadeus III of Piedmont-Sardinia

Prince Victor Amadeus Maria, Duke of Savoy, was born in Turin on June 26, 1726 the son and heir of King Carlo Emmanuel III by his second wife Princess Polyxena of Hesse-Rotenburg. A son from the King’s previous marriage had died the year before so the birth of Victor Amadeus, a new heir to the throne, was widely celebrated in the Savoy lands of Piedmont-Sardinia. His childhood and upbringing were very typical for the house of Savoy and the same descriptions would be used for Italian royal sons right to the last king to ever reign. His private tutor was quite strict and his education stressed military subjects, Catholicism and history, particularly the history of the House of Savoy. The emphasis on the army was doubtless even more so given that, even in the ranks of a family with an extremely long martial history, King Carlo Emmanuel III was most known as a “warrior-king”, earning laurels in the wars over the Polish and Austrian successions. Prince Victor Amadeus had an upbringing that greatly stressed the importance of the army and, like other Savoy royal heirs, he was kept away from politics until the day he actually came to the throne.

However, Prince Victor Amadeus did not waste his time with frivolity but, as a young man, surrounded himself with scholars, statesmen and various, highly esteemed ‘wise men’ whose company he could benefit from. Many of this men would go on to serve him when he became king. A man of very conservative politics and with religious views that were very traditionally Catholic, Victor Amadeus nonetheless fostered an atmosphere of openness around him and was gentleman enough to get along well with people who did not share his views. He was confident in his own positions that he had nothing to fear from hearing all sides of an issue. He was also, of course, expected to marry and secure the future of the royal succession. King Fernando VI of Spain reached out to him to arrange a marriage between the Savoy heir and his sister Infanta Maria Antoinetta, the youngest daughter of King Felipe V, the first Bourbon Spanish monarch. The couple were married in 1750 and they had a very happy marriage with the pair growing quite attached to each other. So attached in fact that they had twelve children, so the future of the Savoy dynasty was safe and sound.

In 1773, with the passing of his father, the Duke of Savoy became King Victor Amadeus III of Piedmont-Sardinia on February 20. From day one the administration of his country and the military were his top priorities but that does not mean that he neglected other areas. Because of his conservative and religious nature he has often been accused of being reactionary to the point of being averse to change of any kind, but this is not so. In fact, he was very keen on improving a number of things that needed it. Beneficial change was never a problem for him but change for the sake of change alone, naturally would not be tolerated. For all of the emphasis he placed on the army, he was also certainly not a warmonger and aimed at ensuring the security of his country by peaceful, diplomatic means first and foremost. His marriage to a member of the Spanish Royal Family was part of this, to secure a marriage alliance with Spain after the two powers had been enemies in the War of Austrian Succession (the Savoy having backed the Hapsburg side).

Similarly, he arranged a marriage for his own son and heir with the sister of King Louis XVI of France and several daughters were also married into the French Royal Family. His second son was married into the Hapsburg family (Austria-Este), another daughter to the Electoral Prince of Saxony and his youngest son married a daughter of the Naples branch of the Spanish Bourbons. As such, Piedmont-Sardinia had strong to ties to all its neighbors and several other lands farther a field and his offspring included three future Kings of Sardinia and one, at least nominal, Queen of France (another would have also been a Queen of France but she died before Charles X came to the throne). Because of this, the army that so many claim was his sole focus, had little to do until the very end of his reign. In other, peaceful pursuits, he improved the bureaucracy of his country, improved the infrastructure with new roads, new dams and upgrades to the port of Nice. He established botanical and agricultural institutions with the aim of making the country more self-sufficient and undertook a number of public works projects.

Overall, he carried on with the changes first set in motion by his grandfather which were aimed at making the aristocracy less corrupt and more socially-minded (a common problem of the time) and encouraging greater social mobility for the common people so that they could lift themselves out of poverty by their own talents. In terms of the army though, he did spend a great deal, carrying on the effort to renovate the Piedmontese military along the lines of that of the Kingdom of Prussia which was the example that all small, resource-poor states naturally wished to follow. Given the events of his reign, some have dismissed this as a failure but that requires taking a very narrow view. In fact, the military “culture” of the country was changed and even as late as World War II, a German general serving in Italy remarked on how similar Piedmont was to Prussia in the emphasis placed on the army and in the many years in between not a few foreign observers would refer to Piedmont as ‘the Prussia of Italy’. The King is also remembered as the founder of the Gold Medal of Military Valor, the highest Italian combat decoration which is still awarded to this day. He also followed this example himself at home by adopted a more Spartan lifestyle so that the British historian Gibbon, on traveling through the area, wrote about how the Savoy royals lived “with decent and splendid economy”.

King Victor Amadeus III would take daily walks, set time aside every Saturday to receive visitors from his humblest subjects and showed his piety when, on every Holy Thursday, he would wash the feet of twelve poor men and then see them off with a gift of money for a fine supper. All in all, life under his rule was good and steadily improving. However, all of it was thrown into the gravest peril by the outbreak of the French Revolution. Being a very traditional, conservative and religious man with several of his children married to French royals, he could not but be appalled by what was happening in neighboring France. Without hesitation he gave safe haven to his sons-in-law the Count of Artois and Count of Provence, fleeing the worsening chaos and repression in their homeland, though this immediately caused cries from the revolutionaries in Paris for retribution against the House of Savoy. Even though the odds against them would be impossibly long, he also did not hesitate to pledge his small, prized army to the royalist cause in 1793, working in cooperation with the Austrians as part of the First Coalition.

The French republicans were quick to attack Piedmont, vowing to make northern Italy a satellite republic, but the Savoyard troops, along with a contingent of Austrians, fought fiercely and succeeded in repelling the initial invasion. The French met a similar fate on other fronts and when they tried to enlist the United States to come in on their side, the American government flatly refused and considered the alliance made with the late King Louis XVI to have died with him. Royalist counter-revolutionaries were also rising up and achieving successes. However, the French responded by ordering the conscription of every adult male in the country and soon they had turned the war situation around, swamping their enemies with what was often simply a huge, armed and radicalized mob.

After four years of fighting off superior forces, in 1796 the Savoyard troops of King Victor Amadeus III finally met a foe they could not defeat in the person of a young, up-and-coming French commander named Napoleon Bonaparte. In the Montenotte campaign the “Little Corporal” was able to outmaneuver his foes, separate the Austrian and Piedmontese armies and eventually defeat them both. The Austrians had positioned themselves at too great a distance from the Piedmontese, despite the urgings of the Italian general Michelangelo Alessandro Colli-Marchi and the result would lead to the domination of northern Italy by republican France. After the Battle of Mondovi on April 21, there was no choice left but capitulation and King Victor Amadeus III, in the most painful moment of his life, was forced to sign the Armistice of Cherasco on April 28, 1796, removing the Savoy domains from the First Coalition. The following month he signed the Treaty of Paris, handing over the key fortresses of the country to France, allowing French troops passage through the country to carry on the Italian campaign and ceding Nice and Savoy to France.

In the wake of this fiasco, King Victor Amadeus III was a broken man and his health and spirits only worsened from that point on. Within a year he had an apoplexy and finally died on October 16, 1796 at Moncalieri. A reign that had began with such promise and which had seen many beneficial reforms, had been reduced to ruin in the final years by the horror and bloodshed that were the fruits of the French Revolution. However, the House of Savoy was down but not out and the next three kings to succeed him would all be sons of Victor Amadeus III and they would ultimately see the French defeated, the Savoy flag raised again over Turin and the monarchy restored completely along with some additional lands. The French revolutionaries had won the first round but the sons of Victor Amadeus III would be the ones returning home in triumph while Allied armies marched down the boulevards of Paris.

Anti-Papal Profile: Anti-Pope Felix V (Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy)

Once upon a time in Europe there was a major Catholic embarrassment known as “the Great Schism”. It came as a result of what is known as “the Babylonian Captivity” or the “Avignon Papacy” when the papal court moved from Rome to Avignon in France which produced a succession of French pontiffs who were seen as little more than the tools of the French Crown. That ended with Pope Gregory XI and when he died the people of Rome were determined to have a Roman pontiff rather than a French one. They were quite forceful about it and so the cardinals elected a rather unpleasant fellow (not exactly a Roman but a southern Italian deemed ‘close enough’) who took the name Pope Urban VI. The French, however, did not like that and so declared his election invalid, the cardinals electing another pope, a warrior-cardinal (Robert of Geneva), who took the name Pope Clement VII. He is what is known as an “Anti-Pope” or an invalid pope. This was the beginning of the “Great Schism” which saw Catholic Europe split into feuding factions, at one point with three different men all claiming to be the “true” Pope at the same time. It was a major embarrassment and it is not surprising that anti-Popes tend to be viewed as ‘bad guys’ in Catholic history.

Popes, popes, everywhere a pope!

However, that is not necessarily true. Pope Urban VI, for example, while undoubtedly the valid, legitimate pontiff, was a rather unsavory character and most who had to deal with him found him a rather vindictive, bullying jerk. Pope Clement VII, on the other hand, though nicknamed “the butcher” in his earlier, military career just because of a trifling incident involving the massacre of a few thousand people, was widely considered the much better man, a very nice fellow who treated people well, was forgiving toward his enemies and genuinely considered himself the valid pontiff. Practically any Catholic history will, in fact, relate that while Urban VI was the correct pope, Clement VII would have made a better one. Not every anti-Pope was an ambitious usurper, thirsty for power but rather were sometimes men of sincere piety who, in a confusing and tumultuous time, were prevailed upon to accept the papal crown as a duty to the Church and Christendom. The “Great Schism” was, thankfully, mostly ended with the election of Pope Martin V in 1417, however one rival remained and there would be a couple more before it was all over. The man regarded by history as the last of the anti-Popes is an illustration of a good, devout man being caught up in a situation not of his making which left him on the wrong side of Church history but still with a good reputation.

That man was Amadeus VIII, Count and later Duke of Savoy. He was born on September 4, 1383 to Count Amadeus VII of Savoy and Bonne of Berry (granddaughter of King Jean II of France). His father died in 1391 leaving him Count of Savoy at an early age but his mother acted as his regent until he was old enough to rule in his own right. As the Count of Savoy he was quite a successful ruler. He enlarged his domains, oversaw economic prosperity, earned a reputation for being mild-mannered and just as well as being quite religious. With the Hundred Years War still raging between England and France, he tried several times to arrange a negotiated end to the conflict though to no avail. When the “Great Schism” broke out, he was very troubled by it, more so than most because of his pious nature. He had been such a success and had such a great reputation that, in 1416, Sigismund of Luxembourg, the Holy Roman (German) Emperor gave him an aristocratic promotion, raising him to the status of Duke of Savoy. Later, he also conferred on him the title of Count of Geneva. Earlier he had married Mary of Burgundy and had a happy home life, fathering nine children. However, his world fell apart when his beloved wife died in 1422 and Duke Amadeus VIII turned his back on the world.

Amadeus VIII retired, though he retained his title, handing power over to his son Louis, to live a contemplative life as a hermit in Ripaille on the shores of Lake Geneva. He took five knights with him to live by a monastic code he devised as the Order of St Maurice, which, combined with another, is still one of the senior chivalric orders of the Italian Royal Family today. He was thus mostly out of touch from that time on though he had kept up with the events of the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence. It was this council, in opposition to Pope Eugene IV, which elected him (Anti-)Pope on October 30, 1439. It was not a position he had sought for himself and it took a period of negotiations before he could be prevailed upon to accept the papal crown. The primary motivation of the electors seems to have been the wealth and prestige they thought Amadeus would bring with him to their cause. He finally accepted and was duly installed as Pope Felix V on November 5, 1439.

"Pope" Felix V

Anti-Pope Felix V renounced his secular titles and was crowned by Cardinal d’Allamand in 1440. For the first few years of his pontificate his secretary was Aeneas Sylvinus Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II. The actual pope, Eugene IV, excommunicated him of course and he found no widespread popular support for his position beyond his own lands in Savoy and across Switzerland. Those who did acknowledge him as the rightful pope included the Dukes of Austria, Tyrol, Bavaria-Munich, the Count-Palatine of Simmern, the Teutonic Order and a handful of religious orders and universities in Germany. Most of those who appointed cardinals refused to take their places and as Pope Eugene IV gave way to Pope Nicholas V support for Felix V fell away further. He was also frequently at odds with the Council of Basel over financial matters which is the one area that tends to taint his reputation. Still, no one could find that he had acted in bad faith or could show any evidence of serious defects in his character. His position continued to deteriorate though through 1442 and 1443 after which he increasingly became isolated and ignored. Efforts to establish a papal court and control over the Church bureaucracy ended in frustration and finally the pretense came to an end in 1449 when he submitted to the authority of Pope Nicholas V on April 7.

Nonetheless, it was not all that bad an end for anti-Pope Felix V. Because of his good name and recognition that he had been misled rather than acting purposely malicious, Pope Nicholas V was inclined to be forgiving. He appointed Amadeus of Savoy Cardinal of St Sabina and made him his permanent Apostolic vicar-general for the lands of the House of Savoy as well as the dioceses of Basel, Strasbourg, Chur and others. The papal schism had ended and there seemed to be few hard feelings about it, so a happy ending all in all. Amadeus VIII carried on in ecclesiastical office, under the legitimate pontiffs, until his death on January 7, 1451 at the age of 67.

Monarch Profile: King Carlo Emanuele IV of Piedmont-Sardinia

A monarch with a tragic but immensely gallant personal story was Carlo Emanuele IV. He was born Prince of Piedmont Carlo Emanuele Ferdinando Maria di Savoia at the Royal Palace in Turin on May 24, 1751, the first-born son of the Duke of Savoy, later King Vittorio Amadeo III and his Queen consort the Infanta Maria Antoinetta of Spain. Even in his youth he had many trials to endure. He health was fragile, he was often unwell and was possibly epileptic. As usual, he was taught extensively of the very long and colorful history of the venerable House of Savoy. The stories of warrior princes and crusader knights must have seemed an impossibly difficult example to follow for the young Prince of Piedmont but he seized on the cases of those Savoy princes with a reputation for great faith and piety, such as Blessed Amadeo IX, as examples he could follow. Despite his physical frailties, or perhaps in part because of them, he grew into a refined, handsome young man of deeply sincere Catholic faith. He was well mannered, courtly and a man who felt his emotions intensely.

When his father became King of Piedmont-Sardinia, he immediately began political negotiations for an appropriate marriage for his son Carlo Emanuele. Through his sisters the House of Savoy had already forged marital ties with the French royal House of Bourbon and King Vittorio Amadeo III wanted to strengthen these ties even further. In 1775 he arranged a marriage for his son to Princess Marie Clotilde of France, the sister of King Louis XVI. She was sixteen and had been prepared for this and from the time she was very young had been taught to speak Italian in preparation for her marriage to the heir of the House of Savoy. The marriage, however, was not without some unkind gossip. At the French court of Versailles, where beauty and a glamorous image was paramount among the status-conscious aristocrats, Marie Clotilde did not fit in, being rather reserved, shy and somewhat overweight. Cruel French elites mocked her for her size, saying that the Prince of Piedmont was getting two brides instead of one. However, if she had any fears about the court in Turin, they were quickly dispelled. She was, like her husband, a devout Catholic of sincere faith and this mattered more to him than her dress size. When someone commented to him about his bride’s reputation for being overweight, Carlo Emanuele was not bothered, saying that he had, “more to worship”.

Marie Clotilde was accepted with sincere affection by her Italian husband and was warmly embraced into the family by her new sisters-in-law as well. The only misfortune, as far as King Vittorio Amadeo III was concerned, was that the couple were never able to have any children. Nonetheless, they had a happy marriage and both were equally devoted to the happiness of the other and loved each other completely and totally. Their religious faith was the backbone of their marriage and they lived a modest but contentedly fulfilled life together. Their shared faith was something they would need for beyond the borders of Piedmont, trouble was brewing as Revolution began to break out in France. The Savoy monarchy opened its doors to refugees from the Terror and the political turmoil and religious persecution in France affected Carlo Emanuele deeply. In 1794 he joined the Third Order of St Dominic as Carlo Emanuele of St Hyacinth. Meanwhile, his father had declared war on republican France in an act of monarchist solidarity but the small Piedmontese army was quickly defeated and forced to cede territory in the armistice of Cherasco.

On October 16, 1796 Vittorio Amadeo III died and his son succeeded him as King Carlo Emanuele IV of Piedmont-Sardinia. It was not an enviable position which he inherited. The economy was in ruins, the army was in shambles and French agents were doing everything possible to encourage republican revolution in the country. The new monarch had no romantic illusions about being king and referred to his crown as a “crown of thorns”. Under the leadership of Napoleon, France also made renewed efforts to dominate Piedmont and King Carlo Emanuele IV was powerless to resist. Eventually the French seized control of all of the ancestral lands of the Savoy, reducing their holdings to the island of Sardinia. The King and Queen went into exile in Tuscany but French troops soon set about the conquest of the entire Italian peninsula. The royal couple moved to Sardinia and remained there for six months. During that time the King enacted a number of reforms and opened his ports to the British fleet to give what support and cooperation he could to the Allied cause. At last Turin was liberated from the French by the Imperial Russian Army and the legitimist Czar Paul I invited King Carlo Emanuele IV to return to his capital city. However, upon landing, the King found that the Russians had departed and Piedmont was occupied by the Austrians who were not supportive of his return and hoped to retain control of as much of Italy as possible.

The Savoy King and Queen were forced to relocate to a new residence near Florence but were under constant threat, particularly as Napoleon gained more and more control over France. They had to move to various cities and in 1802, after coming down with typhus, Queen Maria Clotilde died and King Carlo Emanuele IV was inconsolable with grief at the loss of his beloved wife. Unable to carry on without her, at the Palazzo Colonna in Rome Carlo Emanuele IV abdicated his throne on June 4, 1802. His younger brother then became King Vittorio Emanuele I. The former monarch decided to devote the rest of his life to God and as he had long been a passionate supporter of the restoration of the Jesuits he joined the Society of Jesus as a novice in 1815, six months after the order was restored. He lived at the Jesuit house near the church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome until his death on October 6, 1810. There was a small group far from Italy that marked his passing as well as his own former subjects. In 1807 he inherited the Jacobite claim to the thrones of England, Scotland, Ireland and France and was regarded by die-hard Jacobites as “King Charles IV”. He had been good friends with and a frequent guest of his cousin Prince Henry, Cardinal York, the last of the Stuart line but never made any public acknowledgement of this inheritance or any claim on the British throne.

First Savoy Reign over Sicily

The island Kingdom of Sicily was first under the reign of the House of Savoy from 1713 to 1720 during the reign of King Vittorio Amedeo II. It came about as a result of Piedmontese participation in the War of Spanish Succession alongside Great Britain and Austria. At first, it was proposed to give the House of Savoy both Naples and Sicily (at the time separate kingdoms) but as the Hapsburgs still ruled in Naples this was finally dropped. King Vittorio Amedeo II was more interested in gaining Milan which the Savoy had been reaching for over many years but his Dutch and Austrian allies objected to this. The British, under Queen Anne, finally took decisive action and, being in command of the Mediterranean thanks to the success of the Royal Navy, announced that Sicily would be given to the House of Savoy and King Felipe V of Spain had little choice but to agree and renounce his claim on the island. The British tried to maintain a commanding influence but King Vittorio Amedeo II refused to grant British merchants any additional favors than they had known previously under the Spanish. Still, Britain was convinced that Sicily would be better off and the region more stable under the Savoy.

The King & Queen depart for Sicily

King Vittorio Amedeo II and Queen Marie d’Orleans arrived in October of 1713 to formally take possession of their new kingdom and were given a joyous welcome from the local population when they were delivered to Palermo by a British naval squadron. Early the next year the Sicilian parliament was assembled to officially swear their allegiance to the new king and the Savoy Crown. The Kingdom of Sicily was to remain legally separate from the continental realms of the House of Savoy but in personal union through King Vittorio Amedeo II. However, there did arise some complaints that the King was putting Piedmontese officials in positions of importance after being less than impressed with the state of affairs that he found on the island with widespread waste and corruption. Still, the Sicilians could not complain too much since financial aid also poured in from Turin to allow Sicily to balance its budget. A census was taken of all people and livestock and the King introduced beneficial reforms to the tax system and the customs office which had been riddled with corruption. Still, many groaned at the additional ‘special taxes’ that had to be implemented to carry out these changes.

The Hapsburgs did not recognize the treaty, the Treaty of Utrecht, by which the Savoy gained the Kingdom of Sicily and so, being just across the straights in Naples, King Vittorio Amedeo II placed priority on improving the coastal defenses of Sicily and raising a new army which consisted of two regiments of volunteers and a unit of royal guards. When King George I came to the British throne and the Royal Navy was withdrawn from the Mediterranean, King Vittorio Amedeo II also took care to expand the Sicilian navy to pick up the slack. The King, of course, ultimately had to return to Turin but left behind a Viceroy to rule in his place. The Viceroys had plenty of problems to deal with as, despite the renunciation of Felipe V, the Spanish maintained agents on the island who spread pro-Spanish and anti-Savoy propaganda and encouraged resistance. The reconciliation between France and Austria also posed a potential threat. There was also a ridiculous and frustrating dispute with the Holy See over Savoy rule of the island.

King Vittorio Amedeo II

Problems with the Church came about when a local bishop objected to having to pay an import duty on chickpeas. He excommunicated the local customs officials, which some might call just a slight overreaction, but the Tribunal of the Monarchy, which was set up to exercise the special ecclesiastical authority traditionally given to the kings of Sicily since the Norman era, nullified the excommunications. The bishop then placed his entire diocese under the interdict and left to ask help from Rome. The issue was further complicated by the fact that the Pope, Clement XI, did not recognize the authority of the tribunal because he did not recognize the right of King Vittorio Amedeo II to the throne of Sicily because, claiming it as a papal fief and the King of Sicily his vassal, the change in royal leadership had happened without his approval. The King sent agents to Rome to reach an amicable agreement but the Pope refused to consent to the clergy paying any taxes or import duties and ordered the tribunal abolished. The King refused to disband the tribunal and refused to be invested as a vassal of the Pope, on the grounds that Sicily was a sovereign kingdom. The Pope then re-issued the excommunications and interdict as well as placing spiritual restrictions on the local clergy who were loyal to the King while the King had pro-papal clergy arrested. Finally, the Pope did consent to the existence of the tribunal if he could control it but as he still refused to recognize the King, there was no agreement.

The era of Savoy rule over Sicily started to come to an end in 1717 when the Spanish attacked Sardinia which was then ruled by the Hapsburgs. This set off the War of the Quadruple Alliance with Spain on one side and the British, French, Dutch, House of Hapsburg and House of Savoy on the other. The following year the Spanish also invaded Sicily. The British navy won a victory that stranded the Spanish forces and the Austrians sent troops in from Naples. Spain was finally forced to concede defeat but Savoy rule over Sicily would not be restored. Instead, the allied powers essentially forced King Vittorio Amedeo II to take the Kingdom of Sardinia in exchange for Sicily. Although his forces had held no control over the island since 1718, the official hand-over did not occur until 1720 and the King did not relinquish his title as ‘King of Sicily’ until 1723 and was still seeking compensation for the loss as late as the autumn of 1729. 

Did World War II Doom the Italian Monarchy?

It seems a very simple question. Did World War II doom the Italian monarchy? Italy entered the war, lost, and the monarchy fell. Surely the answer is, “yes”. Yet, it is not quite that simple. What if the Kingdom of Italy had won the Second World War? Would it still have fallen? The end of the monarchy did not coincide with defeat in the war as in Germany or Austria in the first war. In fact, it survived a short time after the war was over. There is actually quite a diversity of views on this subject. Some critics of the monarchy state with absolute assurance that republicanism was inevitable and that the reign of the House of Savoy was doomed no matter what happened. Others, think that the monarchy was doomed in 1921 when the Fascists came to power and that, after that, it was only a matter of time. Still others do make the case that the monarchy always held the upper hand up until Italy entered the war and that this was the critical mistake that ended any hope of monarchy surviving on the Italian peninsula. Losing a war, particularly in the age of “total war” such as the world wars certainly brought down many monarchies, most younger than the House of Savoy but which, outwardly at least, seemed more secure. However, there was certainly significant support for the monarchy remaining even after 1945. That the republicans had to resort to chicanery to squeak out even a narrow victory in the referendum is proof enough of that.

Mussolini & his monarch

The first issue to look at is whether the Italian monarchy was on stable ground before the war. More than one historian has asserted that it would only the outbreak of war that prevented the Italian monarchy from being abolished even earlier. Benito Mussolini had been, for most of his life, a socialist and staunch republican who only lately embraced the monarchy and was viewed by not a few as being insincere in that conversion (rather like his baptism in the Catholic Church which was viewed almost universally as something purely for show and political convenience). There are a number of comments and actions on the part of the Duce to reinforce this view. As far as actions go, his attempt to take control of the succession (no doubt to disinherit Prince Umberto of Piedmont who was disliked by the Fascists) prompted a confrontation with the palace and Mussolini, ultimately, had to back down. An attempt to assassinate King Victor Emmanuel III in 1928 was blamed on republicans in the Fascist Party and Mussolini was clearly uncomfortable at public functions when he had to surrender pride of place to the monarch. According to Mussolini himself, his regular meetings with the King were “cordial but never friendly”. Yet, as insulting as Mussolini could speak about the King and monarchy, when the two met he was always respectful and polite.

Although he complained about having to deal with the monarchy such as when Hitler visited the country (and Hitler, who was adamantly opposed to monarchy, warned Mussolini that the Royal Family was against him and that the monarchy should be abolished at the first available opportunity), the Duce always seemed willing to make use of the monarchy as a dynastic tool for the advancement of Italian interests. When the so-called Austro-fascists sounded him out about the possibility of restoring the House of Hapsburg he made no objection and even spoke of another Hapsburg-Savoy dynastic alliance to cement the ties between Italy and Austria. During the Italian intervention he also proposed Prince Amadeus, Duke of Aosta, as a potential Spanish monarch (as his ancestor had briefly been). The King disliked this idea and, no doubt to his relief, Franco turned it down. Yet, there were other confrontations when Mussolini tried to interfere with the army, confrontations which the King always won such as the proposal to abolish the carabinieri (the prestigious and very royalist military police) and another to fuse the army and the MVSN (the Fascist militia or Blackshirts). Were these simply efforts to expand the much-boasted totalitarianism of the regime or part of an on-going anti-monarchist agenda?

Re-Imperatore & Duce

Not long before the war, Mussolini was heard more than once to say that he would get rid of the King and the Pope as well when the time was right. Some suggest that it was only the outbreak of war that prevented this from becoming reality. However, could Mussolini have abolished the monarchy if he had really wanted to? In 1938, when many viewed Mussolini as being at the height of his power and prestige, some observers noted that the monarchy remained just as popular if not more so. In the anonymous darkness of the cinema, watching newsreels, crowds were silent when Mussolini appeared but cheered the King when he came on the screen. It may have been the fact that the monarchy was keeping pace with or even surpassing his own popularity that prompted his occasional republican outbursts. This would mean that while he may have increasingly wanted to get rid of the monarchy, the facts which most encouraged this feeling were also those which would prevent his ever making good on his threats. In terms of monarchist sentiment, the highest echelons of the Fascist Party were being won over by the King just as many were grumbling about the leadership and decisions of the Duce.

After Mussolini, there was no more elite group among the Fascists than the “Quadrumvirs”, men who had led the ‘March on Rome’ in 1921; Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono, Cesare De Vecchi and Italo Balbo. Of these, Bianchi was dead by 1930, De Bono and De Vecchi had always been staunch monarchists and only joined the Fascist bid for power after Mussolini endorsed the monarchy and even Italo Balbo, previously an ardent republican, had become a monarchist after becoming disillusioned with Mussolini’s leadership. Balbo, like the King, had been particularly distressed at the decision to ally with Nazi Germany. Count Dino Grandi, president of parliament and a member of the Fascist Grand Council also remained supportive of the monarchy and increasingly dubious in his attachment to Mussolini (he would ultimately raise the motion in the Grand Council to restore the King to his full powers, thus removing Mussolini). Given all of that, and the fact that the army remained staunchly royalist, later proven by the fact that only one Marshal of Italy followed Mussolini in his Nazi-backed puppet republic in the north after 1943, would indicate that even if there had been an effort to abolish the monarchy before the war it almost certainly would have failed disastrously.

Prince Umberto & Mussolini

So, if the war did not save the monarchy; did the war doom the monarchy? Would it have made a difference if Italy had won or lost in the course of the war? There are quite a few mentions in histories of this period that Mussolini, who never liked having to share public acclaim with the monarchy during moments of triumph, wanted to abolish the monarchy and take the supreme position for himself. Such people point out that, had World War II ended in an Italian victory, it would have been the perfect time for Mussolini to carry out such ambitions. As usual, there is some circumstantial evidence to support such an idea. Mussolini seemed very determined to allow no high-profile royal figures to have the chance to achieve any military glory. He had kept Prince Umberto out of the Abyssinian War and, though he was commander of the initial invasion of France (which was far from successful anyway), never allowed him to command any major military operation. Kept out of the campaigns in North Africa, Greece, Yugoslavia and Russia, Prince Umberto was forced to spend most of his time inspecting second-line forces in Calabria. It is at least possible that this was part of a plan on Mussolini’s part to make sure that he received all the credit for victory if Italy had managed to win.

Yet, again, even if that had been the Duce’s plan, it may not have been successful. For one thing, Mussolini was never able to have the purely Fascist military victory that he always longed for. The invasion of Abyssinia is illustrative of this. The original commander was Emilio De Bono who (though a staunch monarchist) was one of the Fascist Quadrumvirs and the Blackshirt legions were set to play the dominant role in the fighting. However, De Bono’s cautious advance was taking too much time and he had to be replaced by Marshal Badoglio who was seen at least as being more the King’s man as a traditional Piedmontese army officer (though, oddly enough, De Bono was probably more attached to the monarchy in fact than Badoglio was). The MVSN is often wrongly considered the Italian equivalent of the German SS but, in fact, it would have been more similar to the SA. It was a militia, not an elite force and mostly consisted of men who were “weekend warriors” rather than professional soldiers. Even then, by the time of World War II, many of its commanders were monarchist former army officers rather than committed Fascists.

Marshal Giovanni Messe

During the course of the war, even while Mussolini kept the Savoy princes from important commands, the army continued to be dominated by men loyal to the King before they were loyal to the Duce. In Africa, early on, the most successful commander had been the Duke of Aosta who certainly would not have backed any attack on the monarchy. During the height of Axis success in North Africa the Italian commander was Marshal Ettore Bastico who put loyalty to the Crown before the Fascist Party. General Mario Roatta, commander of Italian forces in the former Yugoslavia, though regarded as an unsavory figure by many, remained with the Badoglio government rather than Mussolini after 1943, an indication of where his ultimate loyalty was and in Russia the Italian commander was General (later Marshal) Giovanni Messe who, aside from being probably the most capable Italian commander of the war, was a staunch monarchist who even got involved in politics as a royalist after the monarchy was abolished. Furthermore, during the course of the war, regardless of his motivations, Mussolini had continued to make use of the monarchy such as by going along with the elevation of the Duke of Spoleto as King of Croatia. This would certainly have complicated matters if there had been any post-war move against the monarchy by Mussolini.

Given how many monarchists remained in positions of authority in government, even within the Fascist Party itself, as well as the prevalence of royalist sentiment in the army, it is hard to see how Mussolini could have abolished the monarchy even if Italy had won the war. Part of the problem, for the Duce at least, with the royalist figures such as De Vecchi, De Bono, former leader of the predominately royalist nationalist party Luigi Federzoni (who was also on the Grand Council) was precisely that Mussolini had appointed them all to high positions. Previously, he had stated that there would, in the future, be “another” Fascist revolution and this time, “without contraceptives” (taken by most to mean casting aside the monarchy and Church) and that he was “plucking the chicken feather by feather to lessen its squawking” (referring to his diminishment of royal powers) which could certainly be added to the column of evidence that Mussolini intended to move against the monarchy at some point. However, if part of that “plucking” involved the removal of royalists from positions of power, particularly non-military officials like those mentioned above, it would have been all but impossible to do without destroying the Fascist myth of the Duce as the man who was “always right”. After all, if Mussolini is never supposed to make a mistake, how could he purge such men at the very highest echelons of the Fascist state without admitting the he had been spectacularly wrong on numerous occasions over so many years?

Victor Emmanuel III

The whole thing would have revealed just how empty was the oft-repeated boast that Mussolini had made Italy a totalitarian state. It would have shown that despite decades in power, neither the government or the army were purely Fascist and absolutely loyal to him. It would have also hurt his “always right” line of propaganda simply because Mussolini had kept the monarchy in place for so long. His slights against the monarchy were always out of public view and the public never saw the Duce being anything but formal and correct towards the King so as to maintain the image of the “diarchy”. It would have shown him, in dramatic fashion, to be a liar and a hypocrite. Of course, we can also see what happened when Mussolini did turn on the monarchy after 1943 and the result was a shambles. With only the Nazis and die-hard republican Fascists supporting him, he was forced to back peddle and try to reach out to the radical leftists. This, of course, did him no good as they continued to view him as the socialist “heretic” they always had since his split from them over World War I. Had he been Duce of a country victorious in war, he certainly would have had a much stronger position to do as he pleased but it is hard to see how he could manage to pull off such a dramatic break with the past as abolishing the monarchy without destroying his own reputation in the process.

That, however, was never an option though as Italy lost the war and so the only question left is whether losing cost the House of Savoy their crown. It certainly made a huge difference. Contrary to the popular perception (based mostly on World War II), losing wars was not something Italians were used to. Ties between the military and the monarchy were old and strongly held but, prior to World War II, Italian military operations had been overwhelmingly successful, from the war in Abyssinia, the intervention in Spain, the pacification of Libya, World War I and the war against Ottoman Turkey. The Italian military had been extremely over-hyped by Mussolini but given the recent history, the stunning losses in World War II came as quite a shock to the public and as a terrible morale blow to the royal army in particular. Of course, we know that losing the war did not automatically bring down the monarchy but there were several key points about the loss that certainly undermined the monarchy and left it in mortal danger. Examples include the German alliance, the Salo Republic and the blundering of the Allies. There was also one way in which Mussolini himself actually benefited the monarchy, albeit inadvertently.

Italian Co-Belligerent Force soldiers

The problem with the German alliance was that Germany was not willing to cut ties and allow Italy to sit out the rest of the war. It was German intervention which caused the resulting Italian civil war within World War II that proved so damaging to the Italian nation on every level. The 1943 armistice was supposed to take Italy out of the fighting but because of the German reaction the country was forced back into the conflict on both sides, the Italian Social Republic forces fighting with the Nazis in the north and the Italian Co-Belligerent forces fighting with the Allies in the south. To the extent that ill-will towards the monarchy did arise in the Italian military, this was almost invariably the cause. Even some of those who put loyalty to the King first still felt very bad about suddenly being called upon to fight their former allies alongside those who had previously been their enemies and who had stripped Italy of all its pre-war possessions, even those gained long before the Fascists came to power. This was one of the major blunders of the Allies which went a long way to damaging the monarchy and destabilizing Italy. The Allies, trying to cling to their “unconditional surrender and nothing else will be accepted” strategy basically gave Italians who wanted to end the war absolutely no encouragement and every reason to go on fighting. Yet, with every passing day, the German grip on Italy grew stronger and so the need for some level of at least cooperation from the Italians became more and more imperative. The result was a situation that benefited no one.

Another problem caused by the Germans and their Salo puppet state was that it provided a huge shot in the arm to all the most anti-monarchy elements in Italy. It attracted the most diehard Fascists as well as attracting even more leftist opposition. Communist partisan guerillas were rampant and could count on strong backing from the Soviet Union. Inevitably, some aid from the western Allies to other non-communist partisans found their way into communist hands. So, while anti-monarchy elements gained a stranglehold on northern Italy thanks to the state of affairs caused by Germany, in the rest of the country, short-sighted Allied policies did nothing to bolster the monarchy which was the best defense against a communist takeover of Italy. Were it not for this confused situation and the Allied occupation there may well have never been a referendum at all. Finally, Mussolini inadvertently helped the monarchy by the previously discussed efforts of him to keep the Royal Family out of the war as much as possible. He did this because he did not want them to share any of the glory but, as it turned out, it meant that they could not be blamed for the ultimate defeat and most of the military remained loyal to the monarchy. This is evidenced by the efforts taken to keep as many members of the armed forces as possible from participating in the referendum by its republican organizers.

Did the war play a major part in the downfall of the Italian monarchy? Undoubtedly, and if Italy had stayed out of the war the monarchy would likely still be here. However, I don’t think the war doomed the Italian monarchy. Those who wanted King Victor Emmanuel III to abdicate, which he proved reluctant to do, was mostly because he had been too long associated with the Fascists rather than the war, though it was certainly unpopular, particularly after all hope of victory was lost. If the Allied Control Commission had not been so unrealistic in their demands on the Italian government, things might have been very different -but of course they would not have been there in the first place were it not for the war. It is also true that the part played by the Allies in the lead-up to the referendum is often exaggerated, after a certain point (certainly after the first post-Fascist elections brought so many communists to power) they took a “hands-off” attitude, refusing to hinder or help either side. They certainly did harm the monarchist cause overall, but probably not as much as some (seeking a convenient scapegoat) like to think. The war did not doom the Kingdom of Italy but losing the war certainly made the fall of the monarchy possible and probable yet not inevitable.

If Italy had stayed out of the war, the monarchy would almost certainly have survived. There were too many monarchists in high places to make abolition of the monarchy in any way easy. If Italy had won the war, the monarchy would probably have survived, even with Mussolini triumphant, it was still too interwoven with the fabric of society and the regime to get rid out without trouble and a great deal of embarrassment. If, upon exiting the war, Germany had stayed out of Italy, it certainly would have made the retention of the monarchy more likely. If the Allies had enacted a coherent policy towards the Kingdom of Italy which was seeking an armistice, the monarchy could have survived. If Italy had been given some tangible benefit for joining the Allied cause, the monarchy might have been saved. It, of course, also goes without saying that if the Allies had behaved differently and if the referendum had been conducted fairly and by impartial authorities the monarchy could have been saved. I dislike saying so but if King Victor Emmanuel III had abdicated and left the country at the time of the defeat, it may also have made preserving the monarchy easier. As it was, the Fascist era and World War II managed to at least make possible the downfall of one of the oldest Royal Families in the world so that, for the first time in over a thousand years, there was no patch of ground over which a Savoy reigned.

Savoy-Bourbon Reconciliation

In response to a question from a concerned reader, I will be addressing here the relationship between the House of Savoy and the House of Bourbon Two-Sicilies. Evidently, some anti-Italian, anti-Savoy people have been spreading some misinformation on this subject, suggesting that there was never any reconciliation between the Bourbons and Savoys and that nothing improved for the Bourbon Two-Sicilies family until the unlawful creation of the republic when they (unlike the Savoy) were allowed to return to Italy to promote their interests and the regional history of Sicily and southern Italy. These people then actually make the case that it was better that the republic be forced on the Italian people as they can see no farther than their own narrow interests and not recognize the wider damage to the monarchist cause this did. They seem to be doing this in an effort to carry on a quarrel that no one else is fighting, indeed that no longer exists. I want to be clear about this point because, while such alleged partisans of the House of Bourbon Two-Sicilies miss no opportunity to slander and defame the venerable House of Savoy, I will not be responding in kind. I have too much respect and admiration for the Bourbon Two-Sicilies to sink to that level, I do not like monarchists "shooting inside the tent" and because I see no reason to carry on such bitterness. 

This is a point I want to make clear: such vitriol and misinformation is not coming from the actual members of the House of Bourbon Two-Sicilies but rather from some of their misguided supporters who seem to want to tear Italy apart and go back to the days of the country being a patchwork of feuding states ruled by foreign powers. Let there be no misunderstanding and no misguided ill-will on this issue: neither of the two royals claiming leadership of the House of Bourbon Two-Sicilies have ever called for the break-up of Italy, the secession of the south or the restoration of the pre-1860 Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies. No member of the family alive has ever done such a thing and it is completely untrue that the Bourbon Two-Sicilies only ever recognized Italy after the victory of a republic, in effect, recognizing a united Italy only so they could be free to try to divide it. On the contrary, the Houses of Savoy and Bourbon were reconciled years before the republican ascendency when the country was still the Kingdom of Italy as it had been originally founded.

It was something many had hoped for to further cement national unity, especially at a time when the Kingdom of Italy seemed to be moving up to the top tier of the great powers. Appropriately enough, the reconciliation started with a romance, a romance between a member of the House of Savoy and a child of the head of the House of Bourbon Two-Sicilies. The couple in question was HRH Prince Eugenio, Duke of Ancona (son of the Duke of Genoa) and HRH Princess Lucia Maria Raniera of Bourbon Two-Sicilies (daughter of Prince Fernando Pio, Duke of Calabria -the last undisputed head of the House of Bourbon Two-Sicilies). The couple obtained the permission of their parents to be married in 1938 in Munich, Germany (the mother of the bride was Bavarian). Prior to this happy occasion, Prince Fernando Pio came to Rome and was received by HM King Vittorio Emanuele III. He recognized the place of the House of Savoy and the authority of the Kingdom of Italy at that time. What did happen later, after the republican victory, was a further show of reconciliation between the two families when, in 1948, HM King Umberto II bestowed on the Duke of Calabria the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, the oldest and most prestigious chivalric order of the House of Savoy. The Duke later reciprocated by bestowing on the exiled King of Italy the collar of the Constantinian Order. their most prestigious order of chivalry.

Obviously, these are not the actions of a man holding a grudge about things that happened in 1860 or a man who preferred a republic to the Kingdom of Italy. The House of Bourbon Two-Sicilies, under Prince Fernando Pio, Duke of Calabria, recognized the unified Kingdom of Italy, the authority of King Vittorio Emanuele III and later King Umberto II in their exchange of honors. The two families were reconciled and no member of the Bourbon Two-Sicilies family since has called for the break-up of Italy or wished for any internal strife for the Italian nation. That should be remembered by people on both sides of the issue. I hope that these facts will clarify the situation and allow for all Italian monarchists to come together in common cause against the republic that has shackled the Italian people in mediocrity for far too long. The past should be remembered, the past should be honored but it should not be used as a weapon to do damage to the present and future. Viva l'Italia!

Monarch Profile: King Victor Emmanuel I of Piedmont-Sardinia

HRH Prince Victor Emmanuel, Duke of Aosta, was born at the Savoy Royal Palace in Turin on July 24, 1759, the second son of King Victor Amadeus III and Queen Maria Antoinetta of Spain. He had the looks of his father and the religious conservatism of his mother. Being a second son would normally make a prince destined for a military career but in the House of Savoy this went without saying as probably nowhere outside of Prussia was the army given a higher status in society than in the Piedmontese region of northern Italy. It was no surprise that he gained a life-long fascination with the military and served as an army officer as a young man. If anything, he would surpass his father in terms of being a very traditional legitimist royal. When his father, full of righteous indignation at the French Revolution, declared war on republican France, the Duke of Aosta went with the army to wage a hopeless fight against the revolutionary forces. When his father died shortly after being forced to make peace with France it was left to the Duke’s older brother, King Charles Emmanuel IV, to preside over the disastrous aftermath in December of 1798. Eventually, all the Savoy lands on the continent would be occupied and annexed by France, forcing the Royal Family to relocate to the safety of the island of Sardinia.

The new king spent most of his time in Rome, leaving Victor Emmanuel in charge in Sardinia and when his beloved queen died in 1802, the grief-stricken monarch abdicated in favor of his younger brother to join the Society of Jesus. So, on June 4, 1802 the Duke of Aosta came to the throne as King Victor Emmanuel I, ruling Sardinia, all that remained of the Savoy patrimony, from Cagliari. To carry on the struggle against France, he gave great attention to reinvigorating the army. This included the institution of the Military Order of Savoy, the formation of the famous Grenadiers of Sardinia as well as the Carabinieri, a special gendarme corps that is still the official military-police force of Italy today. He instituted some administrative reforms on Sardinia but remained greatly attached to the way things had been before the wave of revolution swept Europe. He rebuffed all French attempts at a compromise peace and was determined to see his kingdom restored to exactly what it had been which meant that he would spend the first twelve years of his reign ruling in Sardinia until the fortunes of war turned against Napoleon. His focus on military matters was also not confined to the army and, ruling from an island, was the monarch responsible for the formation of the Department of the Navy.

It was a time of hardship and waiting for opportunities. Victor Emmanuel I, however, was a man who understood enduring misfortune. In 1789 he had married the Hapsburg Archduchess Maria Teresa of Austria-Este, daughter of Duke Ferdinand of Modena (who was the son of the Austrian Emperor Francis I). She was as ardently conservative and traditional as her husband was and the two were a very well-matched couple and had a very happy marriage. However, securing the succession remained a problem. While his older brother had never been able to have children, King Victor Emmanuel I fathered seven children, all but one of whom were daughters. The eldest ultimately married her uncle, Duke Francis IV of Modena, the next did not survive childhood, the third lived an even shorter time. The next eventually married the Duke of Parma, the fifth married Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria and the sixth married King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies. There was only one boy among them, Prince Charles Emmanuel, born in 1796 and sadly he died of smallpox in 1799. Once again, the Savoy crown would have to pass from brother to brother rather than father to son (and a brother who would be childless as well). They knew personal tragedy with the loss of two children, one a potential heir, yet their shared faith and values allowed them to endure it as they later endured their exile on Sardinia. But, that was something that would change.

When Napoleonic France was finally defeated and King Victor Emmanuel I was able to return in triumph to the Savoy citadel of Turin in 1814, it was the start of a gloriously reactionary era. This wasn’t just a restoration of the monarchy as all monarchists hope for, this was the sort of restoration that ardent, hardcore monarchists imagine in their wildest dreams. It is an oft-quoted truism that one cannot turn back the clock, but if the clocks stayed the same, King Victor Emmanuel I managed to turn back just about everything else. It was a matter of principle and if that meant showing up to Turin wearing fashions nearly twenty years old, he would do it. The Code Napoleon was abolished and the legal system of Victor Amadeus II was restored. Education ceased to be secular and was handed back to the Catholic Church. All the hereditary posts at court were restored, everyone entitled to a position was given one and if that meant having “page boys” that were forty-year-old alongside teenagers, so be it! The Queen did her part as well, making sure that anyone who had anything to do with the French regime was excluded from high society. Even then there were also those who were pushing for a constitution but, needless to say, King Victor Emmanuel I was having none of that. He also restored the old religious laws which placed restrictions on Jews and the Protestant Waldensians. The Catholic, absolute monarchy was back in full force.

In short, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, under the restored Savoy monarchy, was as close to perfection for a reactionary monarchist as one could get. Victor Emmanuel I also ruled over a somewhat larger kingdom than had his father and older brother as the Congress of Vienna awarded Piedmont the territory of the old Republic of Genoa with the port becoming the base of the new Piedmontese navy. As a side note, interesting to legitimist monarchists at least, when his brother died in 1819, King Victor Emmanuel I also became heir of the Stuart claims for the diehard Jacobites. For them, he became “King Victor I of England, Scotland, Ireland and France” though, of course, he never pressed such a claim in any way. There is a well known anecdote that, when Victor Emmanuel I died, the British Prime Minister wrote to a friend (presumably in a joking way) that there should have been public mourning in the UK since quite a few people recognized the Savoy monarch as their “true” king. He was probably wrong about the number but it is slightly humorous the way the British government continued to worry about the Jacobites so long after they ceased to be relevant. In any event, King Victor Emmanuel I had enough to concern him with the government of Piedmont-Sardinia. His campaign of total, absolute restoration may have cheered old fashioned monarchists but the years of French rule had also left their mark and not everyone was happy about things going back to the way they had been.

This was the beginning of the rise in secret societies, plots and conspiracies in northern Italy (spreading of course throughout the whole peninsula soon enough). The Carbonari would become the most prominent but there were many conspiratorial groups with many different agendas. Some were nationalists pushing for Italian unity, others were liberals who wanted constitutional monarchy and free trade, others were radical revolutionaries who wanted what amounted to socialist republics. Some had elements of all of these but common themes included a desire for a constitution in Piedmont-Sardinia, some sort of unity amongst the Italian people and war against Austria to liberate the lands of Lombardy-Venetia that the Hapsburgs had gained through a deal with republican France. King Victor Emmanuel I was not favorable toward any of these grand schemes and was not about to even consider granting such agitators a single concession. The problem was how popular many of these ideas were. The reach of the secret societies spread even into the army which really proved to be the crucial point as it meant that the primary instrument of force available to the Crown was not entirely reliable. King Victor Emmanuel I responded strongly against such conspiracies in the civilian population but if the military could not be entirely relied upon, that was a more serious matter and more difficult to deal with.

It was, finally, a mutiny in the army that signaled the end of the reign of Victor Emmanuel I. Rebel troops seized control of the citadel in Turin and demanded that the King grant a constitution with guaranteed civil rights and a war against Austria to liberate Milan and Venice. Anyone at all familiar with the character of King Victor Emmanuel I would know intuitively that he would never agree to any such demands. The content of them really did not even matter as he would never have agreed to anything put forward by mutinous troops and riotous subjects making demands on their sovereign. The political issues he was absolutely opposed to and while he had no great love for Austria (because of their shifting policies in the war and territorial acquisitions) and would have been as pleased as anyone to restore northern Italy to Italian rule, he was certainly not going to be coerced into a specific action and would never stand for being dictated to by a riotous mob. Yet, with the mobs in the streets and the loyalty of the army being either absent or questionable; what could he do? There seemed to be no choice but to give in, yet, for the King, that was out of the question. If King Victor Emmanuel I could not rule as he saw fit, he decided that he would not rule at all and preferred to abdicate rather than give in to pressure from disloyal elements. So, on March 21, 1821 he formally abdicated his throne in favor of his brother, who was away in Modena, with his nephew Prince Charles Albert on hand to oversee things in the interim. The Queen (who some even blamed for the crisis) had offered to act as regent but in the event went with her retired husband to Nice (then part of Piedmont-Sardinia). He died at Moncalieri castle a few years later on January 10, 1824.

King Victor Emmanuel I is often portrayed in a tragic light, as a sad, gloomy man who endured kingship and whose reign has been described as one long Lenten period. Most modern historians have not been kind to him, describing his policies as harmful and out of date while at best admitting that he was well-intentioned and an upstanding gentleman in his private life. Actually, he was a man of firm principles, a dutiful monarch, a man of integrity and firm convictions. Given how his reign ended, some of his decisions may have been mistakes but that does not mean they were wrong. His determination to set everything back to the way it had been before the revolution, to do what most have always held to be impossible, was a decision based on his values and sense of right and wrong rather than political considerations. In the end, it did not work and it may be that, from a practical standpoint, he should have tempered this policy to take into account in some way what thinking had taken root during the French occupation but that is something known with certainty only in hindsight. The old system had worked well enough before so there was no reason why it absolutely could not have worked again. Victor Emmanuel I deserves to be remembered as a dutiful monarch, a monarch who tried always to do what was right as his faith guided him. It is also just plain inaccurate to portray his reign as some sort of purgatory to be endured; his reign saw the restoration of the venerable Savoy monarchy, the end of French domination and the expansion of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in both territory and international esteem. It was, until the end, a success by any measure.

Monarch Profile: King Tomislav II of Croatia

Ever since the end of World War II, during which it was created, lived and died, everything about the Independent State of Croatia is subject to controversy and that has extended to the nominal King of the newly freed Croatia; the Italian Duke of Spoleto who was, on paper at least, His Majesty Tomislav II. He has been accused of being a puppet for puppets, a fascist (what a surprise) and probably more than anything else that he was an uninterested playboy who was a never a real king. However, because he is not often remembered, and when he is it is mostly as the nominal King of Croatia during World War II, it is easy to allow opinion to overtake the facts and much of what is assumed about the last King of the Croats may not be anywhere near the truth at all. He was born Prince Aimone Roberto Margherita Maria Giuseppe Torino of the Italian royal house of Savoy on March 9, 1900 in Turin. He was the second son of Prince Emanuele Filiberto, 2nd Duke of Aosta and Princess Helene. His paternal grandparents were the controversial King Amadeus I of Spain and Princess Maria Vittoria and his maternal grandparents were Prince Philippe of Orleans and the Infanta Maria Isabel of Spain. King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy was his great grandfather and, as such, on September 22, 1904 he was given the title of Duke of Spoleto to be held for the rest of his life.

An avid outdoorsman, the Duke of Spoleto made the news when he tried to climb K2 in Karakorum in the Himalayas, the second highest mountain on earth in 1929. His uncle, the Duke of the Abruzzi had tried twenty years before and Prince Aimone decided to focus his efforts purely on scientific research rather than a race for the top. He also became known, in his adulthood, as something of a ladies man. The tall, handsome prince was considered quite a prize by most women and there were numerous rumors about him, especially concerning a relationship with the daughter of King Alfonso XIII of Spain the Infanta Beatriz. However, he did finally settle down when he married Princess Irene of Greece on July 1, 1939 in Florence. This brought about some new family connections for the House of Savoy as Princess Irene was the daughter of the Greek King Constantine I and Princess Sophie of the German Imperial Family of Prussia. The couple eventually had one son, Prince Amedeo, who was born on September 27, 1942. Little did he know on his wedding day in 1939 that in a few years he would be declared the reigning monarch of a new country.

In April of 1941 the Axis forces of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy invaded and conquered the Serbian dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Of the many minority nationalities who had been handed over to Serbia after the Allied victory in World War I none were so eager for liberation as the Croatians and they quickly set up the Independent State of Croatia under the leadership of the Ustashe party of Head Man Ante Pavelic. A new government was quickly established under Italian supervision as southern Europe was considered by the Axis to be within the sphere of the Kingdom of Italy and the new Roman Empire Benito Mussolini dreamed of creating around the Mediterranean. The following month Ante Pavelic went to the Quirinal Palace in Rome to meet with His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, Albania and Emperor of Ethiopia, to request that he appoint a member of the House of Savoy to be the king over the new Croatian State recently established. On May 18, 1941 the ceremony was held in which the Italian monarch named his cousin Prince Aimone as the new King over Croatia, which also included what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This is where the story becomes really interesting since many enemies of Croatia, especially enemies of the Ustashe but really enemies of a free Croatia period, like to state that Aimone was never really a true Croatian monarch. However, that argument is obviously false and these people contradict their claim by their own arguments as we shall see. The ancient Crown of Zvonimir was solemnly given to Prince Aimone who took as his reigning name King Tomislav II in honor of the heroic Tomislav who was the first King of an independent Croatia in ancient times. This in itself shows that Aimone or Tomislav II was serious about his new position. Enemies like to repeat the story that when Aimone first heard of the appointment he thought his cousin the King was playing a joke on him, implying that he never considered the job anything more than that himself, but such an implication is obviously false. By taking the name of an honored hero from Croatian history Tomislav II was obviously making an effort to adopt the culture of his land and illustrate that a new period of greatness was upon them again and that free Croatia had been reborn.

The enemies of Tomislav II and Croatia also like to point out that the reigning monarch never actually set foot in Croatia, trying to make the case that his reign was never more than a matter of titles which he nor anyone else gave the slightest thought to. This is an argument that is a lot like rat poison; mostly good food but just enough strychnine to kill you. It is true that Tomislav II never resided in Croatia yet it was specifically because he took his job so seriously and was committed to being a truly Croatian monarch for his people and not simply an Axis puppet for Italy. Everything was set up for him to be given a formal Catholic coronation in Duvansko Polje in Bosnia but he refused to do so out of protest to the seizure of certain coastal areas of Dalmatia by Italy. He refused on the grounds of the sovereignty and national integrity of the country over which he was king! Tomislav II stated that this land was never going to be able to be fully integrated into Italy and by the Italian seizure of the territory it only served as an obstacle to better Italian and Croatian friendship. His refusal to enter the country was well thought out and based on a principled stand of putting his new country first, even before Italy.

This was based on agreement by which Mussolini would support Pavelic in restoring Croatian independence, in exchange for which the Italians would receive territorial concessions on the coast, basically consisting of Dalmatia. As compensation, the new Croatia was to include all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it did. And, actually, Italian and Croatian nationalist collaboration actually had a history behind, united as they were by a shared opposition to Yugoslavia and the extensive territorial concessions to Serbia after World War I. When Gabriele D’Annunzio and his Italian nationalists had seized Fiume, on the Dalmatian coast, they gave their moral support to the Croatian nationalists of the region, encouraging them to rise up against the Serbs to reclaim their independence. It is also true that, in the past, even under the Empire of Austria-Hungary (Croatia being a part of the Kingdom of Hungary) that Dalmatia and Croatia were always identified separately. So, there was certainly grounds for a legitimate difference of opinion over who Dalmatia should belong to. However, King Tomislav II, an Italian by birth and by blood a member of the proud Italian House of Savoy, took his new title seriously and refused to automatically take the Italian point of view and instead insisted that Dalmatia was Croatian and would not just be instantly turned over to Italy.

Enemies of the Croatian King also like to say that Tomislav II was simply a powerless figurehead who had nothing to do with Croatian life, cared nothing about it and was only a symbol of the Ustashe regime of Ante Pavelic which held the real power in the country (and which has the worst reputation). An easy response to that allegation is simple: Well So What?! Was King George VI of the UK and the British Empire no less a real monarch because he reigned while a government ruled in his name? What other monarch in any European country at the time actually ruled his country personally in an absolutist manner during World War II? He reigned but did not rule and this was the accepted practice of all monarchs of his time and still is today. He was, like any monarch then or now, a symbol of Croatian unity and tradition and was never meant to be a political administrator. However, that does not mean he did nothing or took no interest in his country. In the areas for which the monarchy was responsible he was quite active. For instance, while King he granted 60 titles of nobility such as duke, marquis, count, viscount and baron for Croatia; something he certainly would not have done if he considered his position purely honorary and nothing more than an additional title. He had enough of those anyway as one year after becoming King his full title was extended to: His Majesty Tomislav II (or Zvonimir II) King of Croatia, Prince of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Voivode of Dalmatia, Tuzla and Temun, Duke of Aosta, Prince of Cisterna and of Belriguardo, Marquess of Voghera and Count of Ponderano.

The final change came on March 3, 1942 when he inherited the title of Duke of Aosta from his elder brother Prince Amedeo, Third Duke of Aosta who died in Tanzania as a British prisoner of war after having been taken in the fighting in Italian East Africa. His time as King of Croatia came to an end the following year though when the fortunes of war forced the Italians to seek an armistice and King Tomislav II abdicated the throne on July 31, 1943. One of the absurd things about the enemies of the King and Croatia is that they will claim he was never really king and yet know by heart and openly talk about the date of his abdication. They never care to explain how someone who was never really a king can abdicate his throne. In any event, Prince Aimone, now Fourth Duke of Aosta, went on doing his duty as best he could for his native land. Before World War II ended he took command of the important Italian naval base at Taranto however he was soon labeled as “too fascist” by the new powers that be when he expressed his disapproval of the judges who had handed a guilty verdict to General Mario Roatta. The Duke of Aosta, by then a Squadron Admiral in the Royal Italian Navy, was dismissed and at the end of the war pressure forced him to move to South America. He died in Buenos Aires in 1948. As far as Axis military figures go he was mostly forgotten but he is still widely remembered today as the last King of the Croatian people and their first (and so far only) independent monarch of modern times.