Battle of Custoza

Austrians thwart Italy’s hopes of unifying the peninsula

The Polish painter Juliusz Kossak's depiction of the Austrian
13th regiment attacking Italian bersaglieri during the battle.

An army of the recently unified Kingdom of Italy was driven out of Custoza in the Veneto region by Austrian troops on this day in 1866.

Although the Italians had twice the number of soldiers, the Austrians were victorious strategically and drove the Italians back across the Mincio river and out of the area then known as Venetia.

King Victor Emmanuel II’s younger son, Amadeo, was severely wounded in the battle but he survived his injuries and went on to reign briefly as King of Spain from 1870 to 1873.

The German Kingdom of Prussia had declared war on the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy seized the opportunity to join forces with Prussia, with the intention of annexing Venetia and uniting the Italian peninsula. The Austrian Imperial army joined up with the Venetian army.

The Italians divided their troops into two armies, one led by General Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora, accompanied by the King, and the other led by Enrico Cialdini.

The Italian General Alfonso Ferrero La Mormora

La Marmora’s troops crossed the Mincio river and invaded Venetia. The Austrians led by Archduke Albrecht of Habsburg marched west from Verona to the north of the Italian position, so as to cut them off from the rear.

But on June 24, La Marmora changed the direction of his front and ended up colliding head on with the Austrians.

When the Austrians reacted by attacking them, the Italians panicked and took up a defensive position. By the middle of the day La Marmora had ordered a retreat, little realising that by then another Italian division had captured Belvedere Hill, overlooking Custoza. The troops on the hill found themselves isolated and after a bombardment by Austrian guns were driven out of Custoza.

However, for a number of reasons the Austrian did not pursue the Italians, squandering the chance to destroy their army. Only a month later the Austrians were forced to surrender to the Prussians and give up Venetia.

Scenes from the Italian side of the Battle of Custoza were recreated in the 1954 Luchino Visconti film, Senso.

The Ossario di Custoza

Travel tip:

Custoza is a village in the province of Verona in the Veneto. In memory of the two famous battles fought there during the wars for Italian independence, a memorial building, the Ossuary of Custoza - Ossario di Custoza - was built on the Belvedere Hill in 1879. Today, June 24, a ceremony will be held there to remember the soldiers who died on this day in the Battle of Custoza. For more information about the memorial, visit www.ossariodicustoza.com.

The village of Custoza in the Veneto

Travel tip:

Custoza is also famous for producing the prestigious white wine, Bianco di Custoza, which is sometimes referred to as the white equivalent of the red wine, Bardolino, produced nearby in the town of Bardolino on the shores of Lake Garda. Bianco di Custoza is dry and smooth with flowery and fruity notes, with hints of apples, lemon peel and peaches that linger on the tongue. The wine is best drunk within a year of the grape harvest.

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Francesco Faà di Bruno - advocate for poor

Entered priesthood after appeal to pope

Francesco maintained his faith
through difficult times in Italy

The blessed Francesco Faà di Bruno, a talented academic from a wealthy family who devoted much energy to helping the poor, disadvantaged and elderly, was born on this day in 1825 near Alessandria in Piedmont.

He was a supporter of Italian unification and indeed was wounded in the cause as a commissioned lieutenant in the Piedmontese Army during the First Italian War of Independence. Yet he could not accept the anti-Catholic sentiments of many of the movement’s leaders.

At the age of 51 he became a priest, although only after the intervention of Pope Pius IX, who stepped in to overrule the Archbishop of Turin, who had rejected Francesco’s credentials on the grounds that he was too old.

He was beatified 100 years after his death by Pope John Paul II.

Francesco was the youngest of 12 children born to Lady Carolina Sappa de' Milanesi of her husband, Luigi, a wealthy landowner whose various titles included Marquis of Bruno, Count of Carentino, Lord of Fontanile, and Patrizio of Alessandria.

His family were of a strong Catholic faith and encouraged a concern for the poor among all their children. Two of his sisters became nuns and one of his brothers built the church of St Peter in Hatton Garden for Italian immigrants living in London.

Francesco was wounded at the Battle
of Novara in 1849

Francesco, whose mother died when he was nine years old, was educated at home until he was 11 and entered the Royal Military Academy of Turin in 1840. One of the skills he developed was topography, which he used to draw up battlefield maps.

He was wounded during the Battle of Novara in 1849, where the Piedmontese were defeated by the Austrians. Afterwards, Victor Emmanuel, who had been his commander in the battle and succeeded his father, Charles Albert, as King of Sardinia, invited Francesco to become tutor to his two young sons but was forced to withdraw the offer because his supporters, including the revolutionary leader Giuseppe Garibaldi and the future prime minister of Italy, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, were opposed to the influence of Catholics in education and put him under pressure to make a secular appointment.

Francesco then sought his release from the army and moved to Paris to study mathematics and astronomy at the Sorbonne, where his tutors included Augustin Cauchy and Urbain Le Verrier, who jointly discovered the planet Neptune.

Returning to Italy, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the University of Turin and at the same time began to devote increasing amounts of his time and money to helping the poor and disadvantaged. Despite it being a difficult time for the Catholic Church, he worked closely with the priest Giovanni Bosco, who set up a church grammar school, and also founded a society to promote Sunday observance and protect workers forced to work on Sundays.

The huge number of initiatives Francesco took up began with providing food for the poor during the icy cold Turin winters. Later he founded the Society of Saint Zita for maids and domestic servants, later expanding it to include unmarried mothers.

Pope John Paul II beatified Francesco
in 1988, 100 years after his death

He helped establish hospitals and boarding houses for the elderly, poor and disabled and, profoundly moved by the death of his brother Emilio in 1866 in the Third Italian War of Independence, he oversaw the construction of the church of Nostra Signora del Suffragio in Turin, completed in 1869 and dedicated to the memory of Italian soldiers who had lost their lives in the struggle for the unification of Italy.

Wishing to broaden and deepen his commitment to the poor, Francis studied for the priesthood, although his bid to be ordained was at first blocked by the Archbishop of Turin on the basis that he was too old. Traditionally, men began their preparation for Holy Orders in their teens.

However, after appealing directly to Pope Pius IX, he was ordained at the age of 51. As a priest, he continued to work on behalf of the disadvantaged and among his achievements was to create a refuge for prostitutes.

Remarkably, he still had the energy to pursue academic activities, contributing many articles to mathematics periodicals, designing several scientific instruments, writing a book about Catholic beliefs aimed at non-Catholics, and even composing a number of sacred melodies.

He died suddenly in Turin in 1888, two days before what would have been his 63rd birthday, from an intestinal infection.

Travel tip:

The village of Bruno in Piedmont is situated just over 20km (12 miles) southwest of Alessandria and a similar distance southeast of Asti. Formerly the seat of Francesco Faà di Bruno’s family, it falls within the area of Piedmont best known for the production of Nizza wine, a DOCG red made from the Barbera grape.

The church's bell tower is the
fifth tallest building in Turin

Travel tip:

The neo-Romanesque church of Nostra Signora del Suffragio e Santa Zita, the church that Francesco built in part to honour the Italians killed in the struggle for independence, is located in the San Donato district of Turin. It is notable for its bell tower, which at 83 metres is the fifth tallest structure in the city, after the Mole Antonelliana, the Intesa SanPaolo skyscraper, the Lingotto skyscraper and the Littoria Tower. Adjoining the church is a museum dedicated to the life of the priest.

More reading:

The death of unification leader Giuseppe Garibaldi

Giuseppe Mazzini - hero of the Risorgimento

The inspirational figure of Giovanni (John) Bosco

Also on this day:

1888: The birth of Enea Bossi, disputed creator of the world's first human-powered aeroplane

1939: The birth of Don Matteo actor Terence Hill


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The death of Giuseppe Garibaldi

Unification hero spent last days on his island off Sardinia

The revolutionary general Giuseppe Garibaldi

The Italian revolutionary and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi died on this day in 1882 on the Sardinian island of Caprera.

The 74-year-old former military general and left-wing politician, whose Expedition of the Thousand was a major factor in completing the unification of Italy, had spent much of the last 27 years of his life on the island.

Increasingly confined to bed because of crippling arthritis, he was living on his farm with his third wife, Francesca Armosino, when he passed away.

Knowing he was fading, in the days before his death Garibaldi had asked for his bed to be moved close to a window, from which he could gaze at the emerald and sapphire sea.

He has asked for a simple funeral and cremation, and had even nominated the place on the island where he wished his body to be burned, in an open coffin, with his face to the sun.

He had hoped his ashes would be handed over to ordinary Italians, to be mixed with the earth in a place where a garden might grow as a symbol of the new Italy.

Garibaldi with his third wife, Francesca

But his wishes were ignored. His body at first remained in his four-poster bed, guarded by a soldier and a sailor, while a succession of people filed past to pay their respects.

Garibaldi’s body was then placed in a tomb in the gardens of his farmhouse, although his great-granddaughter Anita Garibaldi, named after Giuseppe’s Brazilian first wife, believes his body may have later been removed by supporters eager to honour his wishes and have it cremated.

His association with the island of Caprera goes back to what is thought to have been his first visit in 1849. In 1855 he bought half the island using his legacy from his brother, Angelo.

After the Expedition of the Thousand concluded with his handing over of Sicily and Naples to Victor Emmanuel II in November, 1860, he retired there, although his military campaigning was not over and he made two further attempts to capture Rome for the new Italy.

A depiction of Garibaldi's body after his death

On both occasions, however, in 1862 and 1867, the French support for the Papal army proved too much.  On the second occasion he was arrested and held prisoner and his release was effectively conditional on him going into exile on Caprera.

Garibaldi remains an Italian hero and statues of him stand in many Italian squares and around the world. There is a bust of him directly outside the old Supreme Court Chamber in the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC.

He is even commemorated in Nottingham, England, in the colours worn by the football club Nottingham Forest, whose red shirts were based on the uniform worn by Garibaldi’s followers. Indeed, one of the club’s nicknames is the Garibaldi Reds.

Garibaldi's house is now a museum dedicated to his memory

Travel tip:

The island of Caprera, off the northern tip of the much larger island of Sardinia, was populated in the early days of the Western Roman Empire, as was evidenced by the discovery of the remains of Roman cargo ships there. It was unoccupied for centuries thereafter and the pinewoods that cover the island today began with trees planted by Garibaldi. Today it is a natural reserve for the royal seagull, the cormorant and the peregrine falcon. Garibaldi’s house nowadays is open to the public as a museum.

The harbour at La Maddalena

Travel tip:

The island of La Maddalena, which is connected to Caprera by a causeway, is renowned for its beaches and attracts many wealthy tourists to anchor their yachts in the harbour.  Like Caprera it was deserted for many centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but began to develop in the late 18^th century when a town of the same name was established under the occupation of the Savoy-Piedmontese kingdom.  The road linking the town’s port area with the central Piazza Umberto is named Via Garibaldi.

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The Expedition of the Thousand

Garibaldi's Spedizione dei Mille launched from Genoa

Giuseppe Garibaldi had the support of
King Victor Emmanuel II

The Expedition of the Thousand, the military campaign to unite Italy led by the soldier and revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, was launched on this day in 1860.

The campaign, in some ways the climax of the Risorgimento movement, began in response to an uprising in Sicily, when Garibaldi set sail from Genoa, with a makeshift army of volunteers, hoping his support would enable the rebels to overthrow the Bourbon rulers of the island.

The greater purpose, though, was to achieve another step towards his ultimate goal, which he shared with his fellow nationalist revolutionary, Giuseppe Mazzini, and which was supported by King VictorEmmanuel II of Sardinia-Piedmont and his prime minister, Camillo Benso di Cavour, that of creating a united Italy.

The revolutionary leader in Sicily, Francesco Crispi, had all but guaranteed that substantial numbers of Sicilians would fight on the side of Garibaldi’s troops.

Some accounts suggest Garibaldi, who had commanded military campaigns in Europe and South America and was a charismatic figure, had wanted to lead his followers into an attack on the French occupiers of Nice, his home city, but was persuaded to turn his attention to Sicily by Cavour, who feared a war with France would result.

A painting by an unknown artist shows soldiers boarding a boat
on the shore at Quarto with the steamships in the background

Whatever the truth of that story, after another revolutionary, Nino Bixio, had requisitioned two steamships from the Rubattino shipping company in Genoa, Garibaldi summoned his volunteers to nearby Quarto, where they were to embark.

The exact number who had enlisted is not known, although 1,089 is the number often quoted.  They are said to have included 434 from Lombardy, 194 from Venetia, 156 from Genoa, 78 from Tuscany, around 45 from each of Sicily and Naples and 33 foreigners. The cities of Genoa and Bergamo were thought to have supplied one third of the force between them.

Nearly all were said to be from middle-class backgrounds. Many were teachers, writers or traders. There were 150 lawyers and law students, 100 physicians, 50 engineers, 20 chemists, ten painters and sculptors, three priests and 30 naval officers.  Armed with outdated muskets, the group were poorly equipped, but their simple uniform of red shirts and grey trousers helped foster a strong sense of unity.

Italy at the time was made up of five states - the Austrians in Venetia, the Papal States, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (which by then included Tuscany), the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and San Marino.

The Piemonte, one of the two steamships that carried
Garibaldi's men from Genoa to Sicily 

Piedmont-Sardinia and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which essentially encompassed all territories south of Rome, were by far the largest and it was felt that a new state uniting both could justifiably be called the Kingdom of Italy.

After renaming the two steamships Il Piemonte and Il Lombardo, Garibaldi took to the seas on the evening of May 5. On reaching Sicilian waters, he was almost ambushed by the Bourbon fleet but, with cover provided by the British Royal Navy, who had ships in the area monitoring the activities of the French, his armies landed at Marsala on May 11.

Garibaldi’s force was tiny compared with the number of soldiers at the Bourbon leader King Francis II’s disposal, yet in the face of public support for the invaders, who disliked their rulers and hoped Garibaldi would seize land from the wealthy and give it to the poor, the Bourbon defences at Marsala quickly crumbled. 

After the Thousand moved into Palermo, the city came under heavy bombardment from the Bourbon general, Ferdinando Lanza, and 600 civilians were killed. But those who survived never wavered in their resolve and Lanza eventually surrendered the city to Garibaldi.

A painting by Sebastiano de Albertis shows the famous
meeting at Teano between Garibaldi (left) and the King

After proclaiming himself the ruler of Sicily on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel II, Garibaldi led his army across the Straits of Messina and headed north towards Naples.  All along their route, the red shirts were hailed as heroes and resistance was so sparse that Garibaldi was able to arrive in the city by train.

In the meantime, the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont invaded the Papal States, conquering Umbria and Marche and reducing the reach of the pope’s territory to just Lazio and the Vatican. In the decisive Battle of the Volturnus in October, Garibaldi’s army had grown to 24,000 men, although it was only with the help of the Sardinian army that the 25,000-strong Neapolitan Army was defeated.

The end of the expedition is traditionally seen as the meeting in Teano in northern Campania between Victor Emmanuel II and Garibaldi on October 26, when Garibaldi formally handed over the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the monarch, whom he declared to be the King of Italy.  This conclusion disappointed such as Mazzini, who wanted Italy to become a republic, but Garibaldi believed that unity was the primary requirement. Following the historic ‘handshake’, Garibaldi returned to his home in Caprera, a small island off the northern coast of Sardinia.

Baroni's sculpture at Quarto is a monument to the expedition

Travel tip:

The former fishing village of Quarto al Mare, now a residential area to the east of Genoa, was renamed Quarto dei Mille in 1911 in honour of Garibaldi’s expedition. The road that runs along the sea front is called Via V Maggio (May 5 Street) and passes, on either side of the small inlet from which the boats carrying his men set sail, a couple of commemorative statues, a sculpture by Eugenio Baroni erected in 1915 and opened by the writer and patriot Gabriele D’Annunzio, and a more recent obelisk by Fabrizio Pezzoli, which marks the exact rock from which the Red Shirts climbed into rowing boats to take the to the steamships anchored off the shore.  The nearby Villa Spinola, where the participants gathered, now houses a Garibaldi museum.

The remains of the Roman theatre at Teano, near Caserta

Travel tip:

Teano in Campania, scene of Garibaldi’s meeting with King Victor Emmanuel II, is a town in the province of Caserta, north of Naples, that is built on the site of the important Roman city of Teanum Sidicinum. Roman remains include a theatre, once one of the largest in Italy, some statues and Roman houses. Other sights in the town, which sits at the foot of the extinct Roccamonfina volcano, include a 12^th century cathedral, in front of which is a portico containing two red granite sphinxes that originated in a pagan temple on the same site.  There is a statue in bronze by Oreste Calzolari depicting the handshake on horseback of the monarch and the revolutionary, although this currently resides in Piazza Mino da Fiesole in Fiesole, outside Florence. 

More reading:

Giuseppe Mazzini - ideological inspiration behind Risorgimento

How Camillo Benso Cavour became Italy's first prime minister

Kingdom of Italy proclaimed

Also on this day:

1998: Mudslides kill 161 in Campania

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Charles Emmanuel I – Duke of Savoy

Rash ruler who led catastrophic attack on Geneva 

A portrait of Charles Emmanuel I by the Dutch
Renaissance painter Jan Kraeck

Charles Emmanuel I, who developed a reputation for being hot-headed, was born on this day in 1562 in the Castle of Rivoli in Piedmont.

Renowned for his rashness and military aggression in trying to acquire territory, Charles Emmanuel has gone down in history for launching a disastrous attack on Geneva in Switzerland.

In 1602 he led his troops to the city during the night and surrounded the walls. At two o’clock in the morning the Savoy soldiers were ordered to dismount and climb the city walls in full armour as a shock tactic.

However the alarm was raised by a night watchman and Geneva’s army was ready to meet the invaders.

Many of the Savoy soldiers were killed and others were captured and later executed.

The heavy helmets worn by the Savoy troops featured visors with the design of a human face on them. They were afterwards called Savoyard helmets and the Swiss army kept some of them as trophies.

The Savoyard armour featured a helmet
with eyes and a mouth

Geneva’s successful defence of the city walls is still celebrated during the annual festival of L’Escalade, in which confectionary shops sell a cauldron known as a marmite made from chocolate.

Charles Emmanuel, from whom Victor Emmanuel II and the subsequent Italian kings are descended, had become Duke of Savoy in 1680 after having had a good education, which had made him multilingual.

He married a distant cousin, Infanta Catherine Michelle of Spain, who bore him ten children.

Charles Emmanuel tried to expand his duchy in a bid to become King and occupied French territory during the reign of his cousin, Henry III. When Henry IV became King he demanded the return of the land, but Charles Emmanuel refused and so they went to war.

Eventually the area of Saluzzo, now in the provinces of Cuneo and Turin, went to Savoy in exchange for Bresse, which they had also occupied.

A shop in Geneva selling chocolate marmites - cauldrons - at
the time of the festival of L'Escalade

Charles Emmanuel supported France against Spain in 1610 but later changed sides and supported Spain against France in order to continue his policy of expansion. When Philip II of Spain sent an invasion force to Italy, Charles Emmanuel declared himself neutral. However, a French army then marched into Savoy and defeated the Savoy army.

In 1630, Charles Emmanuel died of a stroke at Savigliano and was succeeded by his son, Vittorio Amedeo.

Travel tip:

The ninth-century Castle of Rivoli in Piedmont, where Charles Emmanuel I was born, was a former residence of the Royal House of Savoy in Rivoli, which is in the province of Turin. The Castle is now home to the museum of contemporary art of Turin, Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporaneo.

The triumphal arch in Savigliano, erected
in honour of Charles Emmanuel I

Travel tip:

Savigliano, where Charles Emmanuel I died, is a comune of Piedmont in the Province of Cuneo, about 50 kilometres south of Turin. Now an industrial centre, it retains some traces of its ancient walls and has a triumphal arch, which was erected in honour of the marriage of the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I, with Infanta Catherine Michelle of Spain.

More reading:

Victor Emmanuel II proclaimed first King of the united Italy

How Savoy Queen Margherita came to have a pizza named in her honour

Victor Emmanuel II given prestigious burial despite excommunication from the Catholic Church

Also on this day:

1848: The Sicilian uprising against the Bourbons

(Picture credits: Savoyard helmet by Golden Hound; shop window by Schutz; Savigliano arch by Davide Papalini; all via Wikimedia Commons)



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Victor Emmanuel II dies

Christian burial for the King excommunicated by the Pope

Victor Emmanuel II: a portrait from 1860 

Victor Emmanuel II, the first King of Italy, died on this day in 1878 in Rome.

He was buried in a tomb in the Pantheon in Rome and was succeeded by his son, who became Umberto I, King of Italy.

Victor Emmanuel II was allowed to be buried in the Pantheon by Pope Pius IX, even though he had previously excommunicated him from the Catholic Church.

Before becoming King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel, as King of Sardinia-Piedmont, had secretly encouraged Garibaldi in the conquest of Sicily and Naples. He had then led his Piedmontese army into papal territory to link up with Garibaldi, despite the threat of excommunication.

In his quest to become King of a fully united Italy, Victor Emmanuel achieved two notable military triumphs. He managed to acquire the Veneto after linking up with Bismark’s Prussia in a military campaign in 1866. Also, after the withdrawal of the French occupying troops, his soldiers were able to enter Rome through a breach in the walls at Porta Pia and take over the city.

A painting by Sebastiano de Albertis shows Garibaldi hailing
Victor Emmanuel II as King of Italy at Teano, near Naples 

This had antagonised Pius IX so much that he refused all overtures from the new King, when he attempted a reconciliation.

The first King of Italy had been born Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Tommaso in 1820 in Turin.

In 1842 Victor Emmanuel married his cousin, Adelaide of Austria, and was styled as the Duke of Savoy, before becoming King of Sardinia-Piedmont after his father, Charles Albert, abdicated the throne following a humiliating military defeat by the Austrians at the Battle of Novara.

After he was proclaimed King of a united Italy in 1861 by the country’s new Parliament, the monarch styled himself Victor Emmanuel II, perhaps implying that Italy had always been ruled by the House of Savoy. This immediately provoked criticism from some factions.

Pope Pius IX

Victor Emmanuel II could trace his ancestry back to Victor Emmanuel I, who had been King of Sardinia from 1802 until his death in 1824.

Victor Emmanuel II had become King of Sardinia in 1849 after his father’s abdication. His father had succeeded a distant cousin to become King of Sardinia in 1831.

The Kingdom of Sardinia is considered to be the legal predecessor to the Kingdom of Italy.

As King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II had appointed Count Camillo Benso of Cavour as Prime Minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, who had then masterminded a clever campaign to put him on the throne of a united Italy.

Victor Emmanuel II had become the symbol of the Risorgimento, the Italian unification movement in the 19th century.  He had supported Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand in 1860, which resulted in the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, giving him control over the southern part of the country.  But when he ascended the throne there were still two major territories left outside the new Kingdom, the Veneto and Rome.

The scene outside the Quirinale Palace at the start of Victor
Emmanuel II's funeral procession

He acquired the Veneto in 1866 and, in 1870, after the French had withdrawn from Rome, he set up the new Italian capital there and chose as his residence the Palazzo del Quirinale.

The Italian people called him Padre della Patria - Father of the Fatherland.

Travel tip:

Porta Pia is a gate in Rome’s ancient walls, named after Pope Pius lV, who commissioned Michelangelo to design it just before his death in Rome in 1564. You will find it at the end of Via XX Settembre, which goes off Piazza di San Bernardo, not far from the Quirinale Palace, which Victor Emmanuel II had chosen as his residence, and the Trevi fountain. A marble and brass monument, the Monumento al Bersagliere, commemorating the liberation of Rome, was put up near the place where the Italian troops found a way through the walls.

The Pantheon has been standing in the Piazza della Rotonda
 since AD118 and is one of Rome's finest ancient buildings

Travel tip:

Victor Emmanuel II is buried in the Pantheon in Piazza della Rotonda in Rome. Considered to be Rome’s best preserved ancient building, the Pantheon was built in AD 118 on the site of a previous building dating back to 27 BC. It was consecrated as a church in the seventh century and many other important people are buried there, including Victor Emmanuel II’s son, Umberto I, and his wife, Queen Margherita.

More reading:

How the capture of Rome completed Italian unification

First Italian parliament convenes to proclaim Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy

Victor Emmanuel I - King of Sardinia

Also on this day:

1878: Umberto I is proclaimed Italy's new monarch

(Picture credit: Pantheon by Klaus F via Wikimedia Commons)

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Errico Malatesta - anarchist

Middle-class boy who became notorious revolutionary

Errico Malatesta in a picture taken in 1890

Errico Malatesta, one of the most prominent figures in the anarchist movement that flourished in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was born on this day in 1853 in the province of Caserta, in what is now Campania.

A committed revolutionary who was arrested for the first time at the age of 14, he spent more than 10 years of his life in prison and about 35 years in exile.

Apart from his activity in his own country, Malatesta helped organize anarchist revolutionary groups in several European countries, as well as in Egypt, and in North and South America, including Argentina, where he helped bakers form the country's first militant workers' union.

Born into a family of middle-class landowners in Santa Maria Capua Vetere in what was then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Malatesta was arrested aged 14 for sending an "insolent and threatening letter" to King Victor Emmanuel II.

Although he would become closely associated with the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Malatesta drew his first inspiration from Giuseppe Mazzini, the Italian revolutionary who was a driving force in the Risorgimento movement that culminated in the unification of Italy in 1871.

He studied medicine at Naples University until he was expelled in 1871 for taking part in a demonstration, after which he joined the Naples section of the International Workingmen's Association, A year later, met Bakunin for the first time at a congress of international socialist, communist and anarchist groups in Switzerland.

Giuseppe Mazzini was an early
inspiration for Malatesta

Malatesta's ideals were based on the abolition of all government and all organisations that seek to create and impose laws, plus the end of private ownership of land, raw materials and work tools.  He proposed that societies function through the establishment of collective associations of producers and consumers working for the common interest and that patriotic nationalism and rivalries between countries be abolished by the removal of international borders.

To achieve these aims, however, required the overthrow of state rule and capitalism, and Malatesta fervently believed this would be best achieved by armed insurrection, which is why he spent much of his life trying not always successfully to avoid arrest.

After being imprisoned twice for spreading internationalist propaganda, Malatesta joined with fellow Italian anarchist Carlo Cafiero and the Russian Sergius Stepniak and others 1877 in leading an insurrection in the province of Benevento in Campania, which briefly gave them control of two villages, Letino and Gallo, and was greeted with approval by many residents, especially when they made a bonfire of taxation records.

However, they were soon captured by government troops and held in custody for 16 months.  By the time Malatesta was released the state's attitude to anarchism had hardened, particularly after an assassination attempt against King Umberto 1, and after a year of invasive surveillance he decided to live in exile.

He spent time in Egypt, Switzerland, Romania and France before establishing a home in London in 1881, to which he would periodically return for the next 40 years.

Rioters mounted barricades when troops were sent
to quell the food riots in Milan in the late 1890s

His periods in Italy were usually terminated by arrest, notably in 1898 when he was drawn to join a growing anarchist movement among dockworkers in Ancona.  During street fights, he was quickly identified by police and spent much of 1898 and 1899 in jail, unable to participate in a period of prolonged social upheaval in Italy characterised by food riots, a massacre of demonstrators by troops in Milan and the beginnings of Fascism.

Malatesta was ultimately sent to a prison on the island of Lampedusa, but escaped and returned to London, where he lived a relatively quiet life as an electrician but gained notoriety by supplying oxyacetylene cutting equipment to a gang of Latvian revolutionaries so that they could break into the safe at a jewellers in Houndsditch.

The Houndsditch robbery, which resulted in the deaths of three policemen, led indirectly to the Siege of Sidney Street, where two of the robbers were tracked down and eventually killed at a house in Stepney.  Malatesta's cutting gear is on permanent display at the City of London Police Museum.

After the First World War, Malatesta returned to Italy for the final time. Soon arrested and imprisones again, he was released just before the Fascists came to power. However, Malatesta then defied Mussolini's ban on independent newspapers by publishing the journal Pensiero e Volontà - Thought and Will.  The publication was closed and Malatesta placed under house arrest.

He spent his final years earning a living as an electrician. He died in Rome from bronchial pneumonia in July, 1932, aged 78.

The remains of the Roman amphitheatre at Santa Maria
Capua Vetere, where Malatesta was born

Travel tip:

Santa Maria Capua Vetere, by which the oldest part of the city of Capua, north of Naples, is known, is notable for being the site of the second largest of all known Roman amphitheatres, with a length of 170 metres (560ft) and a width of 140m (460ft). Only the Colosseum in Rome (188m by 156m) is bigger.  Built in the time of Augustus, restored by Hadrian and dedicated by Antoninus Pius, the amphitheatre originally had 80 Doric arcades of four stories each, but only two arches now remain.  The interior is better preserved and beneath the arena is a complex system of subterranean passages.


Travel tip:

The island of Lampedusa, where Malatesta was imprisoned before escaping to London in 1899, is the southernmost part of Italy. It is part of the Sicilian province of Agrigento, although the nearest landfall is Tunisia, about 113km (70 miles) away. It has a historic claim to be part of Malta when that island was a British colony.  Lampedusa's Rabbit Beach was once voted as the world's best beach by the travel website, Tripadvisor. In recent years, Lampedusa has become a primary European entry point for migrants from Africa.

More reading:

Giuseppe Mazzini - hero of the Risorgimento

How Republican activist Giovanni Passannante tried to kill Umberto I

Giuseppe Pinelli - anarchist whose 'accidental death' inspired Dario Fo play

Also on this day:

1784: Birth of Maria Antonia, Neapolitan princess who lived sad, short life

(Photo of amphitheatre by Nicolo d'Orta via Wikimedia Commons)

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Armando Diaz - First World War general

Neapolitan commander led decisive victory over Austria

General Armando Diaz in 1918

Armando Diaz, the general who masterminded Italy's victory over Austrian forces at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in 1918, was born on this day in 1861 in Naples.

The battle, which ended the First World War on the Italian front, also precipitated the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ending more than 200 years of Austrian control of substantial parts of Italy.

The general's announcement of the total defeat of the Austrian Army at Vittorio Veneto sparked one of the greatest moments of celebration in the history of Italy, with some Italians seeing it as the final culmination of the Risorgimento movement and the unification of Italy.

Diaz was born to a Neapolitan father of Spanish heritage and an Italian mother. He decided to pursue his ambitions to of a military career despite the preference for soldiers of Piedmontese background in newly formed Royal Italian Army.

After attending military colleges in Naples and Turin, Diaz served with distinction in the Italo-Turkish War.

In 1914, when the First World War broke out, General Count Luigi Cadorna promoted Diaz to major general and made him Chief of Operations.

Italian troops on the move in Val d'Assa
during the Battle of Vittorio Veneto

The disastrous Battle of Caporetto, which took place near what is now the Slovenian town of Kobarid, saw the Royal Italian Army overwhelmed in the face of the Austrian advance, losing 300,000 men. It spelled the end for General Cadorna and Diaz was appointed to replace him as Chief of Staff.

Diaz had to rebuild the army and restore morale after Caporetto, while at the same time making progress against the Austrians.  Yet he proved to be enormously astute. His strategy was defensive but well-timed tactical strikes inflicted significant losses on the enemy.

When the Austrians launched their next offensive, Diaz's forces repelled them and some 150,000 Austrians were killed or wounded.

Diaz was under pressure from the Allies to make gains for Italy to ensure the territorial concessions promised by France and Britain were granted but was determined to bide his time. He did not want to move until what he considered the most opportune moment against a weakened enemy in which unity was beginning to fragment.

That moment came on October 23, 1918, when the Italian offensive was launched against Austro-Hungarian forces at Vittorio - later Vittorio Veneto - the point chosen because Diaz reasoned that the capture of the town, at the midway point of the Austro-Hungarian line across northern Italy, would split the enemy forces in two and make it much more likely their resistance would crumble.

An attack was launched along a line that stretched from Venice through Treviso, Vicenza and Bormio and within seven days Vittorio Veneto had fallen. The Austrians lost 35,000 dead, 100,000 wounded and a further 300,000 to 500,000 were captured as prisoners of war.

By contrast, only 5,800 Italians were killed and 26,000 wounded.

Austro-Hungarian troops captured
at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto

As bad as Caporetto had been for Italy, Vittorio Veneto was worse for the Austrians, and not just in terms of casualties. During the offensive, Hungary broke away from Austria and ordered the Hungarian troops on the Italian front to stop fighting.  Czechoslovakia then declared itself independent of Austria, as did Yugoslavia.

Diaz was given much of the credit and in 1921 was appointed to the Senate by King Victor Emmanuel III and given the title 'Duke of Victory'.  In the same year he became the first Italian general to be honoured with a ticker tape parade in New York City when he and other Allied commanders visited the United States.

Diaz became a somewhat controversial figure in the years after the First World War, persuading Victor Emmanuel III against the military action that might have prevented Mussolini's Fascists coming to power.

The King had wanted his soldiers to be ready to fire on Mussolini's armed Blackshirts if they went ahead with their planned 'march on Rome' in October 1922 but Diaz, aware of significant support for Mussolini's nationalistic ambitions within the army's rank and file, feared there might be a mutiny if the order was given.

As a result, the Blackshirts were unopposed and Mussolini was invited to form a government.

Diaz was then appointed Minister of War in the first Fascist cabinet and later promoted to the rank of Marshal of Italy.

He retired in 1924 in failing health and died in Rome in 1928 at the age of 66.  He was buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri. 

Travel tip:

Vittorio Veneto is a town of some 28,000 people in the Province of Treviso, in Veneto, situated between the Piave and Livenza rivers at the foot of the mountain region known as the Prealpi.  It was formed from the joining of the communities of Serravalle and Ceneda in 1866 and named Vittorio in honour of Victor Emmanuel II.  The Veneto suffix was added in 1923 to commemorate the decisive battle.

Hotels in Vittorio Veneto by Hotels.com

The Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri
off Rome's Piazza della Repubblica

Travel tip:

The Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, which was built inside the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian off Rome's Piazza della Repubblica to a design by Michelangelo, was the official state church of the Kingdom of Italy (1870-1946). It hosts the tombs of both General Armando Diaz and Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, the First World War naval commander, and is today used for funerals of Italian soldiers killed abroad.

Hotels in Rome by Expedia

More reading:



Villa Giusti armistice formerly ends the First World War in Italy

Mussolini and the rise of Italian Fascism

The abdication of Victor Emmanuel III

Also on this day:

1443: Birth of Julius II - the pope who commissioned Michelangelo's greatest works

(Picture credit: Basilica by Bgabel via Wikimedia Commons)





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Capture of Rome

Troops enter the capital in final act of unification

Bersaglieri soldiers storm through the walls of Rome in
this 1880 painting by Carlo Ademollo

Crack infantry soldiers from Piedmont entered Rome and completed the unification of Italy on this day in 1870.

Rome had remained under French control even after the first Italian parliament had proclaimed Victor Emmanuel of Savoy the King of Italy in 1861.

The Italian parliament had declared Rome the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy even though it had not yet taken control of the city.

A French garrison had remained in Rome on the orders of Napoleon III of France in support of Pope Pius IX.

An 1860 portrait of
 Victor Emmanuel II

But after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, Napoleon III had to withdraw many of his troops. Italian soldiers from the Bersaglieri regiments in Piedmont led by General Raffaele Cadorna seized their chance and after a brief bombardment were able to enter Rome through a breach in the Aurelian Walls near Porta Pia.

King Victor Emmanuel II was then able to take up residence in the Quirinale Palace and Italy was declared officially united.

The date of 20 September, which marked the end of the Risorgimento, the long process of Italian unification, is commemorated in practically every town in Italy with a street named Via XX Settembre.

Porta Pia, designed by Michelangelo in 1564, stands at the
end of Via XX Settembre, not far from the Villa Borghese

Travel tip:

Porta Pia is a gate in Rome’s ancient walls, named after Pope Pius lV, who commissioned Michelangelo to design it just before his death in Rome in 1564. You will find it at the end of Via XX Settembre, which goes off Piazza di San Bernardo, not far from the Quirinale Palace and the Trevi Fountain. A marble and brass monument - the Monumento al Bersagliere - commemorating the liberation of Rome was erected near the place the Italian troops breached the walls, opposite the external façade of the gate.

Travel tip:

One of Italy's many Via XX Settembre can be found in the beautiful city of Bergamo in northern Italy. Bergamo's Via XX Settembre is one of the main thoroughfares in the lower town and has been dubbed ‘the shopping street’ by the locals because of the wealth of smart shops that line both sides, from department stores, book and gift shops to jewellery and fashion stores. Top names gracing the elegant street include Calvin Klein, Stefanel, Benetton, Max Mara, Luisa Spagnoli, Marina Rinaldi and Sisley.

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