History Since The Year 1882

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

THE year of Garibaldi's death, recorded in the last chapter, was also the year when Italy entered upon a new er in her relations with foreign powers. Although no record of the fact was published, it was subsequently known that Italy entered into an alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary concerning the attitude to be assumed toward France and Russia. Connected with this event was the colonization policy pursued for the next fourteen years by the government, which sent expedition after expedition to Abyssinia and Western Africa. This will be noticed later. The formation of the Triple Alliance, though it would bring to Italy the help of two powerful nations in case of war with France, was strongly opposed by a large popular party, the Irredentists. The results of this treaty have been in some respects very unfortunate for Italy. By the terms of the agreement all the contracting parties to the treaty were obliged to maintain large standing armies. The year 1882, also, saw fresh activities in the building up of the navy. The great expense of this military and naval enterprise has had the result of so increasing the taxes in Italy as to be almost intolerable to the middle class and peasantry, and has naturally driven enormous numbers of the people to emigrate to France, where the price of labor was higher, and particularly to the United States of America. The Triple Alliance was not published until 1888. The German government was then forced to reveal the text of its treaty with Austria, which formed part of the alliance, in order to quiet the public apprehension as to the apparently warlike and menacing attitude of Russia. The text of the treaty with Italy was not made public even at that time, but it was understood that if France should attack Italy or Germany she would find them both allied against her. If Russia and France should join to make war upon any one of the three parties to the Triple Alliance, the former coalition would be obliged to deal with Germany, Italy and Austria combined.

Much of the interest in the history of Italy since 1882 centers in her unfortunate African policy of colonization. In 1869 an Italian steamship company bought the bay of Assab in the Red Sea to the east of Abyssinia. In 1882 the Italian government succeeded in getting certain rights defined, concerning the country surrounding the bay, and in getting the privilege of constructing fortifications there to protect the Italian colony which had sprung up. Assab was made .a free port, and the government could concede land to companies. In 1885 an expedition, military and naval, was sent to the west shore of the Red Sea to found a colony there between the port of Massowah and the French colony at Obock. Italy's aim was thereby to gain a footing in Africa, which she thought would be, as many colonies are and all should be, a source of wealth. It would tend to divert the stream of emigration into lands within the sphere of Italian influence. England at the same time agreed to help Italy found colonies on the west coast of Africa, as well as stand by her in case any trouble arose between Tripoli and Italy. In return for this, Italy was to side with England in her enterprises in Egypt. The expedition occupied. Massowah, and, though immediately questioned by Turkey as to what were their intentions on the Red Sea, succeeded in showing that there was nothing unprecedented in occupying the port in a commercial spirit and not as conquering.

In 1886 another expedition was sent under Count Giupietro Porro, and met with a disastrous fate at the hands of the Abyssinian natives. His mission, though really one of peace, was, on account of its too military appearance, misunderstood by the emir of the district of Harrar in which the Italians had settled some years before. The whole force of Count Porro was accordingly surrounded in a narrow pass, separated from the protection of the coast, and massacred.

In 1887 Count Salimbeni conducted a scientific mission into the interior of Abyssinia. His plans were frustrated by a military demonstration in Massowah on the part of the Italian troops there. This irritated the natives, who captured the count and demanded the immediate evacuation of Massowah. A few days later the battle of Dogali took place, which cost the Italians 23 officers and 407 soldiers.

In the following year Italy found herself on the verge of a disagreement with France over a brush between the consuls in Massowah concerning the tax which had been imposed on foreigners by the Italian government. Bad news also came that another Italian force had been destroyed by an Abyssinian leader, and that the Sultan of Zanzibar was in a quarrelsome mood.

The year 1889 was marked by the treaty between King Menelek of Shoa, a division of Abyssinia, and the Italian representative; the treaty, among other provisions, defining the boundary between the Italian colony and Abyssinia. In the following year this colony was, by a royal decree, given the name of Eretria, and in 1891 an agreement was signed by the English representative in Rome, Lord Dufferin, and the Italian prime minister defining the Italian sphere in Abyssinia.

In 1894 Colonel Baratieri defeated a large force of dervishes at Kassala, their chief stronghold in Eastern Soudan; and in the following year severely defeated Ras Mangascia, who had attacked him with a large force of dervishes, a victory which was repeated in a few months at another place. These victories were to a certain extent offset by the victorious onslaught of the Shoan army, in December of the same year, under King Menelek, upon a force of Italians and allied natives.

Italy was destined, however, to receive a severe blow in her East African possessions, in the defeat of the troops of General Baratieri at Adowa. Baratieri was but newly made a general, and the rules of the Italian army made it impossible for him to continue any longer than necessary in command of so large an army as had been assembled in Italian East Africa. There were 44,000 men, including the allies levied from the natives. General Baldissera had been sent from Italy to take command. Baratieri, realizing that his chance of making a great victory all his own would, upon the arrival of the other general, be gone, resolved to attack the Abyssinians under Menelek. They were 80,000 strong and well armed. Prudence, which should have counseled him to wait for a better opportunity, was over-come by the thought of possible glory. On March 1, 1896, Baratieri advanced against the Shoans, but met with a terrible repulse. Fifteen hundred Italians were taken prisoners, two generals were killed. After this disaster, however, a treaty of peace was arranged with Menelek which liberated all prisoners, assured the freedom of Ethiopia, and called for an amicable settlement of the boundaries. General Baratieri was tried by court-martial and acquitted of every charge except that he committed a grave error of judgment.

The flower of the Italian army had been crushed, and the news of this calamity had a bad effect upon popular feeling toward the government. At Milan, Turin, and other large cities, the sentiment against the colonial policy, which had terminated so disastrously, rose to such a pitch that troops destined for the relief of the army in Africa had to be sent off from the Italian garrisons during the night, so as to attract as little attention as possible. The Crispi ministry fell, and Rudini was again called to take the Ministry of the Interior. In 1897 the new Italian boundary was pro-posed by Menelek, and, although it diminished the area of the Italian possessions, it was nevertheless accepted by Italy. Kassala, won in 1894, was given up. Such is the unhappy outcome of the policy of colonization on the part of the Italian government.

In 1882 the question of reform in the franchise was taken up and a bill was introduced into the parliament to confer the privilege of voting upon all Italians of the age of twenty-one years and over who knew how to read and write. In addition to these conditions, they had to show that they had received the lawful amount of elementary education ; unless they were members of academies of sciences, letters or arts; members of chambers of commerce or of agricultural societies; professors or instructors in any branch of learning; possessors of university degrees, and many other professions which it would here be tedious to mention. These exceptions further included the army and entire civil service and rail-road employés. In addition to the above, the franchise was given to all those who paid taxes to the amount of 19.80 lire (— about $3.80). The bill became a law on April 28, 1882. In 1883 a series of new laws was adopted giving autonomy to the Italian universities and handing over secondary education to provincial authorities ; reserving, however, to the state the complete control of all primary education. But legislation in Italy, as in other constitutional monarchies, suffers in the National Assemblies from the opposition of its many political parties. The power to make laws in Italy is given to the king, assisted by two parliaments, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, the former consisting of members appointed for life by the king, and of princes of the royal house. The Senators are not limited. The Chamber of Deputies is re-elected every five years by the suffrage known as scrutin de liste. In this chamber every 57,000 people in Italy are rep-resented by one deputy. The two chief political parties in the Chamber of Deputies are the Ministerial Left and the Opposition Left or Pentarchy, which has been weakened by discords between the deputies composing it so that the ministerial party has usually had the majority and the controlling voice in the legislation. To Signor Depretis, who died in 1887, is due in large part the firmness of the ministerial position, and his successors have endeavored to carry out his principles. The plans of the ministerial party are often hindered and delayed by the demonstrations of a popular party by the name of Irredentists.

Irredentism, or the political sentiment which favors Italia Irredenta, or "unredeemed Italy," is directed against the alliance with Austria and Germany, particularly the former, on account of feelings of hatred aroused in the war with that country. The Irredentists, in addition to their opposition to the Triple Alliance, have a great desire to regain for Italy the Italian-speaking provinces which were taken from her in the last war by Austria, and even the district of Ticino, which has not belonged to Italy for hundreds of years, and is now a canton of Switzerland, situated to the south of the Alps, and extending from the St. Gotthard Pass almost to Como. It should be said, however, that the inhabitants of Ticino, though they speak the language of Italy, are in no wise anxious to return to her. The Irredentists on the other hand, who look upon this part of the country with longing eyes, are a strong party in Italy and are numerous in Ticino. Trieste is another province that the Irredentists would like to see returned to Italy. The Italians in this part of the Austrian territory are in the majority of the population only on the seacoast. In 1889 the estate of an Italian who died in Trieste was taken possession of by the Austrian officials. This caused extreme jealousy on the part of the Irredentists in that city, and was followed by much more stringent measures of repression against them, taken by the Austria-Hungarian government.

The foreign policy of Italy, during the period under review in this appendix, has been directed not alone to the colonization of parts of Africa, but to the strengthening of Italy's interests in Tunis. France had agreed in 1884 that the relations between Italy and the Bey of Tunis should remain unaltered even after the withdrawal of privileges of consulship in that country. The death of a Tunisian general, Hussein Pasha, in Florence, was followed by the French consul's presuming to take possession of his papers. A Tunisian lawyer was named by the authorities in Florence to receive them, but the French consul would not give them up. The lawyer in his turn got the help of the police, forced his way into the house of the French consul and appropriated the documents. This incident recalled the occupation of Tunis by the French and their pushing the Italians out of the country. The question of international law immediately arose whether the documents in question really belonged to the custody of the French consul, and whether the rights of France as a nation were not infringed by the action of the Italian magistrate and lawyer.

Italy has suffered less, however, at the hands of other nations than from the unfortunate management of her internal affairs. Even if her colonies in Africa were not as prosperous there as could be wished she certainly got a foothold.

But when looking at her internal history we see that Italy has been visited during the period now under consideration by numerous calamities for which she deserves the commiseration of the civilized world. Important among the misfortunes of the Italian peasantry is the agrarian trouble. In 1885 the northern provinces suffered from a famine, and uprisings of the starving peasants were with difficulty suppressed. Particularly was this the case in Mantua and in Lombardy, where the field laborers struck and were incited by socialists to commit violent acts. A report upon the agricultural state of the country, ordered by the parliament in 1877, had shown that the profits of farming were steadily declining and that the difficulties of successful agriculture were increasing. Disease of silk worms contributed to render the production of silk small, and blight had fallen upon the fruits and vines. Importation of silk and rice had lowered the prices of these commodities. Harder than all this to bear was the enormous taxation upon land. Twenty-two different kinds of taxes were levied upon land, and these were, in northern Italy, more than could be borne, the chief burden being the municipal tax, sometimes nearly ten times as much as the State tax. In the province of Cremona an instance of excessive taxation showed an assessment of more than one-half the revenue of the property. Bread riots occurred in Milan in 1886, and much damage was done to shops and other buildings by workmen, who thus protested against the new octroi duties. In the same year the land-tax was subjected to a complete reconstruction, although the finances of the nation were and remained in an unfortunately low condition. New disturbances arose in Pavia over the strike of laborers. In 1889 Lombardy was the scene of still greater rioting on the part of ignorant peasants, who had been incited to make violent demonstration which ended in robbery and murder. Tariff war with France had so reduced the price of wine as to cause great suffering among the vine growers. In 1890 workers in the rice fields of Ravenna appealed for more wages, but were answered only by the calling out of the military. The soldiers were stoned by the laborers, who in turn were fired upon and several killed. In 1893 the peasantry in Sicily arose. Sicily, though one of the most fertile regions of the world, and for so many centuries the source of the grain supply of the Roman empire, was at this time so mismanaged as to produce almost nothing, and the poor people were starving to death. Here again the taxes added to the bur-dens, and profits were annihilated by the number of hands through which every commodity had to pass. The uprising in Sicily finally assumed such grave pro-portions that the soldiers were called out and several war vessels were placed in the harbor of Palermo. A state of siege was kept up in Palermo. The following year all Sicily was under martial law, and the insurrection passed over to Calabria, Ancona, and Lombardy on the mainland, and took the form of violent attacks upon the quarters of the military. As this movement was on the point of spreading over the whole of Italy, it was successfully checked by the royal authorities.

This just saved the deposition of royalty for the establishment of a republic in Italy. In 1895 the condition of the Sicilian peasants was no better. Their burdens were heavier and their strength to bear them less. The sulphur and pyrites mines, which had given employment before to numerous miners, had now to be left unworked, the products being driven out of the market by the importation of these minerals from America. This drove the miners to the fields, which could not afford subsistence to the peasants already engaged there. In 1896 the people of Sardinia were suffering as badly as the Sicilians. They were forced to eat grass, and were at the same time hounded by the tax-gatherers; so that they were driven to either one of two evils, emigration, or, in case of failure in that direction, to crime. In other parts of Italy brigandage had revived. A German prince was robbed by the brigands even at the outskirts of the Imperial City.

Throughout this period increased demands for money were made by the government. The costly steps taken in joining the Triple Alliance and in the fatal scheme of colonizing Africa could not be retaken, and the country was becoming worse and worse involved. The government was blamed, too, for the costliness of its fetes in Rome and Naples. The Roman festival in 1895 was held at the same time that the peasants in Sicily were starving. Much dissatisfaction had been expressed with the expenses attending the marriage of the Crown Prince in 1896, and one member of the parliament proposed "that as the monarchy was use-less its maintenance by the nation was unnecessary, and that the king's civil list should be reduced."

In 1897 the agrarian troubles again broke out, the price of bread steadily went higher and higher, and the contadini in various parts of the country, chiefly the vine growers, took forcible possession of unfilled estates in Latium. They rushed in upon pasture lands and commenced to sow them with seed. The blood that would have been spilled by the soldiery who were then called in was saved only by allowing many of the peasants to remain on the estates in the capacity of farmer tenants.

In the same year the distress of the country was marked by a protest of butchers against the increasing consumption of horse flesh. The only efforts on the part of the government to remedy the state of affairs was to help large numbers of the contadini to emigrate to the Dobrudscha. This was not the first time, moreover, that the government resorted to encouragement of emigration as a means of lessening the poverty at home. In the same year the shopkeepers in Rome became aware that a large portion of the tax upon personal property had, through negligence or corruption on the part of the tax gatherers, failed to be collected, that a new tax had been imposed which would fall upon them, and still more heavily than the other. They decided to make a public protest and petition the government to remove the supplementary tax. A day, October 11th, was appointed on which all shops should be closed and delegates from the shopkeepers should march behind a grand procession to the place where they were to be received by Signor di Rudini, the Prime Minister. This procession was the occasion of a riot in which the troops fired upon the people. This caused great alarm to the government and prompted them to admonish their tax-collectors to be more careful in the future.

Italy has been an unfortunate nation in the last fifteen years, having been visited both by cholera and earthquake. In 1884, during the exposition at Turin, cholera decimated many villages in Tuscany and Piedmont, and visited Naples with direful ravages; such, indeed, that there was no way of disposing of the dead fast enough and the bodies were allowed to remain in the streets. Even the sick were abandoned, as in the great plague in London two centuries ago. As many as three hundred died in a week. In September the disease had reached Genoa. In 1894 Southern Italy suffered from a terrible earthquake. In the provinces of Catanzaro, Calabria and Reggio the repeated shocks destroyed whole villages, and many hundred families were crushed beneath falling buildings. Thousands were made homeless. An official was sent to the devastated country by the government for the purpose of rendering assistance. He was empowered to grant the non-payment of taxes by particularly needy persons.

In the year 1888 a fresh incident occurred which contributed to a misunderstanding with France. As early as 1881 hard feeling was aroused between the two nations by the riots which had occurred in Marseilles, in which some Italian subjects took part. In the same year a rupture had taken place in Tunis between the French and Italian consuls there; and in 1888 an infringement of international law on Italy's part, in the matter of the action of her Tunisian consul, was followed by the withdrawal of the Italian and French ambassadors from Paris and Rome respectively, with-out, however, leading to any military display. The irritation against France, which has already been spoken of, will have to be mentioned again in speaking of the relations between the Pope and the King; the former, as will be seen, having more sympathizers in France than in Italy in his desire to be released from his captivity in the Vatican and to regain once more the temporal power which the Church has lost.

In all her internal and international projects Italy has been hampered by the state of her finances. The people, taxed beyond endurance, have yet the church to support, as the majority of them are Roman Catholics ; and social conditions are such that pauperism, beggary and labor troubles are increasing instead of diminishing.

A source of the financial weakness of the country was the corruption of those who had the direction of the national banks of Italy, six of which are empowered by the government to issue bank notes. An investigation into the methods of managing these banks was called for in 1893, ostensibly as a precautionary measure taken before granting a six years' renewal of the privilege of issuing notes. It was at the same time known that the Banca Romana had gone far beyond its legal prerogatives in issuing notes sixty-four million lire in excess of what was permitted by the government. The investigation showed that several members of parliament and others had been allowed by the bank to open false accounts, and that counterfeiting had been carried on by the president of the bank. Several members of the Cabinet, including Giolitti, Rudini and Crispi, were said to have received large sums, illegally, from the bank. The king is believed to have devoted four million lire of his own personal property to aid public men in paying their debts and thus averting the great bank scandal. Other banks were, implicated, and a criminal court sitting in June, 1893, sentenced the cashier of the bank of Naples, and another private individual, to a long term of imprisonment. In the following year Bernardo Taulongo, governor of the Bancà, Romana, was tried for the excessive issue of notes. In 1895 the ex-premier, Giolitti, who had given evidence against Crispi in the bank scandals, was accused of having come illegally by his information. His appeal for a trial by the Senate was granted, resulting in the abandonment of action against him ; and in 1897 the charges against Crispi were withdrawn on the legal technicality that a minister could not be tried after leaving office for what he had done while in office.

In 1892 Italy and the United States suffered a diplomatic rupture in which the ministers of the respective countries left Washington and Rome. On March 14, 1891, several Italian subjects were lynched by a mob at New Orleans, La. This incident was soon closed, however, by the offer to Italy of $25,000 on the part of the United States Secretary of State, which sum was to be devoted to the families of the victims. This money was promptly accepted, and Ministers Porter and Baron Fava immediately returned to their respective offices.

The Church and State came to blows in 1886, in the persons of clerical and royal sympathizers, on the occasion of a procession of Liberals in Naples in celebration of the entry of Italian troops into Rome. This was followed by anti-church riots in many of the larger Italian cities. Laws were also passed making it criminal for any churchman to use words in his preaching which could be construed as against the interests of the unity of Italy under King Humbert. In 1889 Leo XIII. made an appeal to all the European courts to aid him to regain his temporal sovereignty. It had been impossible in previous years to make any rapprochement between the Church and the Italian State, and in view of this the Pope asked help from the other European nations. This was refused by all of them, even by France, which was supposed more than the others to favor the Roman Church. A great popular expression of hostility to the Pope's request took place m Rome this year, in the shape of a procession celebrating the unveiling of a statue of Giordano Bruno, whom the Church burned in 1600.

The year 1891 attracted attention to the question of the relation of the Papacy to the Italian government.

The present Pope, Leo XIII., who succeeded Pius IX. In 1878, though not less zealous than his predecessor for the return of the temporal power to the Church of Rome, has been more politic and less demonstrative than Pius IX. The fact that the Pope does not recognize the rights of the present king of Italy, and that the Catholic clergy in that country were forbidden by the head of the church to avail themselves of the franchise granted by the royal government in national elections, places Italy, in which there are ninety-nine per cent Catholics and one per cent Protestants, in a curious position. The present Pope has undertaken a diplomatic compromise in removing the prohibition of the clericals to vote in national elections and to hold seats in parliament, on the condition that he will be aided in regaining possession of the city of Rome, either by the complete removal of the Italian government to some other city, or by the exclusive papal use of the city for certain periods of the year in which the Pope could hold court. The good will of France in this direction was gained; but in Italy an expression of popular hatred between French and Italians, on the occasion of a pilgrimage of a number of French Catholics to Rome in October, 1891, precipitated a practical consideration of the compromise of the Pope. The French pilgrims spat upon the register of visitors in the Pantheon where the body of Victor Emmanuel lies. They also cursed the present king and shouted "Long live the Pope." This was the signal for a strong anti-French demonstration in Rome. The affair was terminated, however, by the arrest of the insulting persons and their deportation to the French frontier.

In the spring of 1898 the increased poverty and inability of the masses to buy bread led to great distress and manifestations of popular discontent in Rome, Pisa, Naples, Ravenna, Bari, and other places, where bread riots of serious nature occurred. On May 2d, three rioters were killed by a volley from the troops in a place called Bognia Cavallo, and on the following day the government called upon reserve troops to sup-press the rioters in many other parts of the country. This was shortly followed by the proclamation of a state of siege in the province of Florence. So great was the despair of the people that the Swiss government had to take decisive steps to prevent bands of the poor people from crossing the Italian frontier into Switzerland.