The Force of Destiny by Christopher Duggan

Author:Christopher Duggan [Duggan, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2007-04-15T07:00:00+00:00

‘THE CRISPI PHENOMENON’

Crispi was not to get his war in Europe and thereby fulfil ‘the destiny assigned to Italy within the projected new European order’, as a senior colleague put it.22 At its best that new order would have seen a territorially enlarged Italy replace France as the dominant power in the Mediterranean, with Germany and Austria supreme on the continental mainland and Britain the ruler of the high seas (and much of the rest of the globe). It would also have created an Italy that was securer at home, for apart from the prestige accruing to the institutions from victory Crispi would certainly have seized the opportunity to tear up the Law of Guarantees and strengthen the state against the Church. But it was not to be, and though Crispi continued to try to engineer diplomatic and military openings – including in the summer of 1890 using a rumour of French plans to annex Tunisia as a pretext for a general war or an Italian invasion of Tripoli – he had to accept that Italy could not hope to achieve anything without greater support from its allies. He felt resentful towards Britain and bitter towards Germany, and in 1890 he put out feelers secretly to France, offering to abandon the Triple Alliance in return for the concession of Tripoli. This alarmed the king greatly and was one of the principal reasons why Crispi was forced out of power early in 1891.

But Crispi’s assertiveness on the international stage earned him many plaudits. The hopes of greatness that the Risorgimento had engendered were resurrected, if only briefly, and old friends and colleagues were effusive in their praise. Antonio Mordini, one of the architects of the revolution in southern Italy in 1860, wrote to him in July 1889 of the ‘honour’ and ‘glory’ that his foreign policy had brought the nation, while another well-known elderly democrat, Luigi Orlando, spoke in the same year of Italy’s new-found ‘dignity and power’. For some the foreign policy simply underlined the prime minister’s status as a great patriot. Giuseppe Verdi told Crispi in November 1889 of the pride that he felt in ‘the man who controls the destinies of our beloved country with wisdom and so much energy. Glory to you!’; and in 1893 he sent him a photograph inscribed with the simple dedication, ‘To Francesco Crispi. The great patriot.’ The poet Carducci was lavish in his praise. In an open letter of February 1889 he called Crispi ‘the grand old patriot’ who had salvaged the dignity of Italy, and a few years later in another open letter he described him as ‘the only truly Italian minister since Cavour’, a man who, like Mazzini, Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, had wanted Italy to be ‘strong and respected’: ‘For otherwise, what was the purpose of unification?’23

Crispi dominated the Italian political scene for nearly a decade, returning for a second term as prime minister in 1893–6, and though he faced fierce opposition from some quarters, particularly on the far left, his popularity in the country was quite astonishing.

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