The fall of Cairoli, and the formation of a second Depretis cabinet in 1878, brought no substantial change in the attitude of the government towards Irredentism, nor was the position improved by the return of Cairoli to power in the following July. Though aware of Bismarck’s hostility towards Italy, of the conclusion of the Austro-German alliance of 1879, and of the undisguised ill-will of France, Italy not only made no attempt to crush an agitation as mischievous as it was futile, but granted a state funeral to General Avezzana, president of the Irredentist League. In Bonghi’s mordant phrase, the foreign policy of Italy during this period may be said to have been characterized by “enormous intellectual impotence counterbalanced by equal moral feebleness.†Home affairs were scarcely better managed. Parliament had degenerated into a congeries of personal groups, whose members were eager only to overturn cabinets in order to secure power for the leaders and official favours for themselves. Depretis, who had succeeded Cairoli in December 1878, fell in July 1879, after a vote in which Cairoli and Nicotera joined the Conservative opposition. On 12th July Cairoli formed a new administration, only to resign on 24th November, and to reconstruct his cabinet with the help of Depretis. The administration of finance was as chaotic as the condition of parliament. The £2,400,000 surplus announced by Seismit Doda proved to be a myth. Nevertheless Magliani, who succeeded Seismit Doda, had neither the perspicacity nor the courage to resist the abolition of the grist tax. The first vote of the Chamber for the immediate diminution of the tax, and for its total abolition on 1st JanuaryFinance.1883, had been opposed by the Senate. A second bill was passed by the Chamber on 18th July 1879, providing for the immediate repeal of the grist tax on minor cereals, and for its total abolition on 1st January 1884. While approving the repeal in regard to minor cereals, the Senate (24th January 1880) again rejected the repeal of the tax on grinding wheat as prejudicial to national finance. After the general election of 1880, however, the Ministerialists, aided by a number of factious Conservatives, passed a third bill repealing the grist tax on wheat (10th July 1880), the repeal to take effect from the 1st of January 1884 onwards. The Senate, in which the partisans of the ministry had been increased by numerous appointments ad hoc, finally set the seal of its approval upon the measure. Notwithstanding this prospective loss of revenue, parliament showed great reluctance to vote any new impost, although hardly a year previously it had sanctioned (30th June 1879) Depretis’s scheme for spending during the next eighteen years £43,200,000 in building 5000 kilometres of railway, an expenditure not wholly justified by the importance of the lines, and useful principally as a source of electoral sops for the constituents of ministerial deputies. The unsatisfactory financial condition of the Florence, Rome and Naples municipalities necessitated state help, but the Chamber nevertheless proceeded with a light heart (23rd February 1881) to sanction the issue of a foreign loan for £26,000,000, with a view to the abolition of the forced currency, thus adding to the burdens of the exchequer a load which three years later again dragged Italy into the gulf of chronic deficit.
In no modern country is error or incompetence on the part of administrators more swiftly followed by retribution than in Italy; both at home and abroad she is hemmed in by political and economic conditions which leaveTunisia.little margin for folly, and still less for “mental and moral insufficiency,†such as had been displayed by the Left. Nemesis came in the spring of 1881, in the form of the French invasion of Tunisia. Guiccioli, the biographer of Sella, observes that Italian politicians find it especially hard to resist “the temptation of appearing crafty.†The men of the Left believed themselves subtle enough to retain the confidence and esteem of all foreign powers while coquetting at home with elements which some of these powers had reason to regard with suspicion. Italy, in constant danger from France, needed good relations with Austria and Germany, but could only attain the goodwill of the former by firm treatment of the revolutionary Irredentist agitation, and of the latter by clear demonstration of Italian will and ability to cope with all anti-monarchical forces. Depretis and Cairoli did neither the one nor the other. Hence, when opportunity offered firmly to establish Italian predominance in the central Mediterranean by an occupation of Tunisia, they found themselves deprived of those confidential relations with the central powers, and even with Great Britain, which might have enabled them to use the opportunity to full advantage. The conduct of Italy in declining the suggestions received from Count Andrássy and General Ignatiev on the eve of the Russo-Turkish War—that Italy should seek compensation in Tunisia for the extension of Austrian sway in the Balkans—and in subsequently rejecting the German suggestion to come to an arrangement with Great Britain for the occupation of Tunisia as compensation for the British occupation of Cyprus, was certainly due to fear lest an attempt on Tunisia should lead to a war with France, for which Italy knew herself to be totally unprepared. This very unpreparedness, however, rendered still less excusable her treatment of the Irredentist agitation, which brought her within a hair’s-breadth of a conflict with Austria. Although Cairoli, upon learning of the Anglo-Ottoman convention in regard to Cyprus, had advised Count Corti of the possibility that Great Britain might seek to placate France by conniving at a French occupation of Tunisia, neither he nor Count Corti had any inkling of the verbal arrangement made between Lord Salisbury and Waddington at the instance of Bismarck, that, when convenient, France should occupy Tunisia, an agreement afterwards confirmed (with a reserve as to the eventual attitude of Italy) in despatches exchanged in July and August 1878 between the Quai d’Orsay and Downing Street. Almost up to the moment of the French occupation of Tunisia the Italian government believed that Great Britain, if only out of gratitude for the bearing of Italy in connexion with the Dulcigno demonstration in the autumn of 1880, would prevent French acquisition of the Regency. Ignorant of the assurance conveyed to France by Lord Granville that the Gladstone cabinet would respect the engagements of the Beaconsfield-Salisbury administration, Cairoli, in deference to Italian public opinion, endeavoured to neutralize the activity of the French consul Roustan by the appointment of an equally energetic Italian consul, Macciò. The rivalry between these two officials in Tunisia contributed not a little to strain Franco-Italian relations, but it is doubtful whether France would have precipitated her action had not General Menabrea, Italian ambassador in London, urged his government to purchase the Tunis-Goletta railway from the English company by which it had been constructed. A French attempt to purchase the line was upset in the English courts, and the railway was finally secured by Italy at a price more than eight times its real value. This pertinacity engendered a belief in France that Italy was about to undertake in Tunisia a more aggressive policy than necessary for the protection of her commercial interests. Roustan therefore hastened to extort from the bey concessions calculated to neutralize the advantages which Italy had hoped to secure by the possession of the Tunis-Goletta line, and at the same time the French government prepared at Toulon an expeditionary corps for the occupation of the Regency. In the spring of 1881the Kroumir tribe was reported to have attacked a French force on the Algerian border, and on the 9th of April Roustan informed the bey of Tunis that France would chastise the assailants. The bey issued futile protests to the powers. On the 26th of April the island of Tabarca was occupied by the French, Bizerta was seized on the 2nd of May, and on the 12th of May the bey signed the treaty of Bardo accepting the French protectorate. France undertook the maintenance of order in the Regency, and assumed the representation of Tunisia in all dealings with other countries.
Italian indignation at the Frenchcoup de mainwas the deeper on account of the apparent duplicity of the government of the Republic. On the 11th of May the French foreign minister, Barthélémy Saint Hilaire, had officially assured the Italian ambassador in Paris that France “had no thought of occupying Tunisia or any part of Tunisian territory, beyond some points of the Kroumir country.†This assurance, dictated by Jules Ferry to Barthélémy Saint Hilaire in the presence of the Italian ambassador, and by him telegrapheden clairto Rome, was considered a binding pledge that France would not materially alter thestatus quoin Tunisia. Documents subsequently published have somewhat attenuated the responsibility of Ferry and Saint Hilaire for this breach of faith, and have shown that the French forces in Tunisia acted upon secret instructions from General Farre, minister of war in the Ferry cabinet, who pursued a policy diametrically opposed to the official declarations made by the premier and the foreign minister. Even had this circumstance been known at the time, it could scarcely have mitigated the intense resentment of the whole Italian nation at an event which was considered tantamount not only to the destruction of Italian aspirations to Tunisia, but to the ruin of the interests of the numerous Italian colony and to a constant menace against the security of the Sicilian and south Italian coasts.
Had the blow thus struck at Italian influence in the Mediterranean induced politicians to sink for a while their personal differences and to unite in presenting a firm front to foreign nations, the crisis in regard to Tunisia might not have been wholly unproductive of good. Unfortunately, on this, as on other critical occasions, deputies proved themselves incapable of common effort to promote general welfare. While excitement over Tunisia was at its height, but before the situation was irretrievably compromised to the disadvantage of Italy, Cairoli had been compelled to resign by a vote of want of confidence in the Chamber. The only politician capable of dealing adequately with the situation was Sella, leader of the Right, and to him the crown appealed. The faction leaders of the Left, though divided by personal jealousies and mutually incompatible ambitions, agreed that the worst evil which could befall Italy would be the return of the Right to power, and conspired to preclude the possibility of a Sella cabinet. An attempt by Depretis to recompose the Cairoli ministry proved fruitless, and after eleven precious days had been lost, King Humbert was obliged, on the 19th of April 1881, to refuse Cairoli’s resignation. The conclusion of the treaty of Bardo on the 12th of May, however, compelled Cairoli to sacrifice himself to popular indignation. Again Sella was called upon, but again the dog-in-the-manger policy of Depretis, Cairoli, Nicotera and Baccarini, in conjunction with the intolerant attitude of some extreme Conservatives, proved fatal to his endeavours. Depretis then succeeded in recomposing the Cairoli cabinet without Cairoli, Mancini being placed at the foreign office. Except in regard to an increase of the army estimates, urgently demanded by public opinion, the new ministry had practically no programme. Public opinion was further irritated against France by the massacre of some Italian workmen at Marseilles on the occasion of the return of the French expedition from Tunisia, and Depretis, in response to public feeling, found himself obliged to mobilize a part of the militia for military exercises. In this condition of home and foreign affairs occurred disorders at Rome in connexion with the transfer of the remains of Pius IX. from St Peter’s to the basilica of San Lorenzo. Most of the responsibility lay with the Vatican, which had arranged the procession in the way best calculated to irritate Italian feeling, but little excuse can be offered for the failure of the Italian authorities to maintain public order. In conjunction with the occupation of Tunisia, the effect of these disorders was to exhibit Italy as a country powerless to defend its interests abroad or to keep peace at home. The scandal and the pressure of foreign Catholic opinion compelled Depretis to pursue a more energetic policy, and to publish a formal declaration of the intangibility of the Law of Guarantees.
Meanwhile a conviction was spreading that the only way of escape from the dangerous isolation of Italy lay in closer agreement with Austria and Germany. Depretis tardily recognized the need for such agreement, if only toGrowth of the Triple Alliance.remove the “coldness and invincible diffidence†which, by subsequent confession of Mancini, then characterized the attitude of the central powers; but he was opposed to any formal alliance, lest it might arouse French resentment, while the new Franco-Italian treaty was still unconcluded, and the foreign loan for the abolition of the forced currency had still to be floated. He, indeed, was not disposed to concede to public opinion anything beyond an increase of the army, a measure insistently demanded by Garibaldi and the Left. The Right likewise desired to strengthen both army and navy, but advocated cordial relations with Berlin and Vienna as a guarantee against French domineering, and as a pledge that Italy would be vouchsafed time to effect her armaments without disturbing financial equilibrium. The Right also hoped that closer accord with Germany and Austria would compel Italy to conform her home policy more nearly to the principles of order prevailing in those empires. More resolute than Right or Left was the Centre, a small group led by Sidney Sonnino, a young politician of unusual fibre, which sought in the press and in parliament to spread a conviction that the only sound basis for Italian policy would be close alliance with the central powers and a friendly understanding with Great Britain in regard to Mediterranean affairs. The principal Italian public men were divided in opinion on the subject of an alliance. Peruzzi, Lanza and Bonghi pleaded for equal friendship with all powers, and especially with France; Crispi, Minghetti, Cadorna and others, including Blanc, secretary-general to the foreign office, openly favoured a pro-Austrian policy. Austria and Germany, however, scarcely reciprocated these dispositions. The Irredentist agitation had left profound traces at Berlin as well as at Vienna, and had given rise to a distrust of Depretis which nothing had yet occurred to allay. Nor, in view of the comparative weakness of Italian armaments, could eagerness to find an ally be deemed conclusive proof of the value of Italian friendship. Count di Robilant, Italian ambassador at Vienna, warned his government not to yield too readily to pro-Austrian pressure, lest the dignity of Italy be compromised, or her desire for an alliance be granted on onerous terms. Mancini, foreign minister, who was as anxious as Depretis for the conclusion of the Franco-Italian commercial treaty, gladly followed this advice, and limited his efforts to the maintenance of correct diplomatic relations with the central powers. Except in regard to the Roman question, the advantages and disadvantages of an Italian alliance with Austria and Germany counterbalanced each other. Arapprochementwith France and a continuance of the Irredentist movement could not fail to arouse Austro-German hostility; but, on the other hand, to draw near to the central powers would inevitably accentuate the diffidence of France. In the one hypothesis, as in the other, Italy could count upon the moral support of Great Britain, but could not make of British friendship the keystone of a Continental policy. Apart from resentment against France on account of Tunisia there remained the question of the temporal power of the pope to turn the scale in favour of Austria and Germany. Danger of foreign interference in the relations between Italy and the papacy had never been so great since the Italian occupation of Rome, as when, in the summer of 1881, the disorders during the transfer of the remains of Pius IX. had lent an unwonted ring of plausibility to the papal complaint concerning the “miserable†position of the Holy See. Bismarck at that moment had entered upon his “pilgrimage to Canossa,†and was anxious to obtain from theVatican the support of German Catholics. What resistance could Italy have offered had the German chancellor, seconded by Austria, and assuredly supported by France, called upon Italy to revise the Law of Guarantees in conformity with Catholic exigencies, or had he taken the initiative of making papal independence the subject of an international conference? Friendship and alliance with Catholic Austria and powerful Germany could alone lay this spectre. This was the only immediate advantage Italy could hope to obtain by drawing nearer the central Powers.
The political conditions of Europe favoured the realization of Italian desires. Growing rivalry between Austria and Russia in the Balkans rendered the continuance of the “League of the Three Emperors†a practical impossibility. The Austro-German alliance of 1879 formally guaranteed the territory of the contracting parties, but Austria could not count upon effectual help from Germany in case of war, since Russian attack upon Austria would certainly have been followed by French attack upon Germany. As in 1860-1870, it therefore became a matter of the highest importance for Austria to retain full disposal of all her troops by assuring herself against Italian aggression. The tsar, Alexander III., under the impression of the assassination of his father, desired, however, the renewal of theDreikaiserbund, both as a guarantee of European peace and as a conservative league against revolutionary parties. The German emperor shared this desire, but Bismarck and the Austrian emperor wished to substitute for the imperial league some more advantageous combination. Hence a tacit understanding between Bismarck and Austria that the latter should profit by Italian resentment against France to draw Italy into the orbit of the Austro-German alliance. For the moment Germany was to hold aloof lest any active initiative on her part should displease the Vatican, of whose help Bismarck stood in need.
At the beginning of August 1881 the Austrian press mooted the idea of a visit from King Humbert to the emperor Francis Joseph. Count di Robilant, anxious that Italy should not seem to beg a smile from the central Powers, advised Mancini to receive with caution the suggestions of the Austrian press. Depretis took occasion to deny, in a form scarcely courteous, the probability of the visit. Robilant’s opposition to a precipitate acceptance of the Austrian hint was founded upon fear lest King Humbert at Vienna might be pressed to disavow Irredentist aspirations, and upon a desire to arrange for a visit of the emperor Francis Joseph to Rome in return for King Humbert’s visit to Vienna. Seeing the hesitation of the Italian government, the Austrian and German semi-official press redoubled their efforts to bring about the visit. By the end of September the idea had gained such ground in Italy that the visit was practically settled, and on the 7th of October Mancini informed Robilant (who was then in Italy) of the fact. Though he considered such precipitation impolitic, Robilant, finding that confidential information of Italian intentions had already been conveyed to the Austrian government, sought an interview with King Humbert, and on the 17th of October started for Vienna to settle the conditions of the visit. Depretis, fearing to jeopardize the impending conclusion of the Franco-Italian commercial treaty, would have preferred the visit to take the form of an act of personal courtesy between sovereigns. The Austrian government, for its part, desired that the king should be accompanied by Depretis, though not by Mancini, lest the presence of the Italian foreign minister should lend to the occasion too marked a political character. Mancini, unable to brook exclusion, insisted, however, upon accompanying the king. King Humbert with Queen Margherita reached Vienna on the morning of the 27th of October, and stayed at the Hofburg until the 31st of October. The visit was marked by the greatest cordiality, Count Robilant’s fears of inopportune pressure with regard to Irredentism proving groundless. Both in Germany and Austria the visit was construed as a preliminary to the adhesion of Italy to the Austro-German alliance. Count Hatzfeldt, on behalf of the German Foreign Office, informed the Italian ambassador in Berlin that whatever was done at Vienna would be regarded as having been done in the German capital. Nor did nascent irritation in France prevent the conclusion of the Franco-Italian commercial treaty, which was signed at Paris on the 3rd of November.
In Italy public opinion as a whole was favourable to the visit, especially as it was not considered an obstacle to the projected increase of the army and navy. Doubts, however, soon sprang up as to its effect upon the minds of Austrian statesmen, since on the 8th of November the language employed by Kállay and Count Andrássy to the Hungarian delegations on the subject of Irredentism was scarcely calculated to soothe Italian susceptibilities. But on 9th November the European situation was suddenly modified by the formation of the Gambetta cabinet, and, in view of the policy of revenge with which Gambetta was supposed to be identified, it became imperative for Bismarck to assure himself that Italy would not be enticed into a Francophil attitude by any concession Gambetta might offer. As usual when dealing with weaker nations, the German chancellor resorted to intimidation. He not only re-established the Prussian legation to the Vatican, suppressed since 1874, and omitted from the imperial message to the Reichstag (17th November 1881) all reference to King Humbert’s visit to Vienna, but took occasion on the 29th of November to refer to Italy as a country tottering on the verge of revolution, and opened in the German semi-official press a campaign in favour of an international guarantee for the independence of the papacy. These manÅ“uvres produced their effect upon Italian public opinion. In the long and important debate upon foreign policy in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (6th to 9th December) the fear was repeatedly expressed lest Bismarck should seek to purchase the support of German Catholics by raising the Roman question. Mancini, still unwilling frankly to adhere to the Austro-German alliance, found his policy of “friendship all round†impeded by Gambetta’s uncompromising attitude in regard to Tunisia. Bismarck nevertheless continued his press campaign in favour of the temporal power until, reassured by Gambetta’s decision to send Roustan back to Tunis to complete as minister the anti-Italian programme begun as consul, he finally instructed his organs to emphasize the common interests of Germany and Italy on the occasion of the opening of the St Gothard tunnel. But the effect of the German press campaign could not be effaced in a day. At the new year’s reception of deputies King Humbert aroused enthusiasm by a significant remark that Italy intended to remain “mistress in her own houseâ€; while Mancini addressed to Count de Launay, Italian ambassador in Berlin, a haughty despatch, repudiating the supposition that the pope might (as Bismarckian emissaries had suggested to the Vatican) obtain abroad greater spiritual liberty than in Rome, or that closer relations between Italy and Germany, such as were required by the interests and aspirations of the two countries, could be made in any way contingent upon a modification of Italian freedom of action in regard to home affairs.
The sudden fall of Gambetta (26th January 1882) having removed the fear of immediate European complications, the cabinets of Berlin and Vienna again displayed diffidence towards Italy. So great was Bismarck’s distrust of Italian parliamentary instability, his doubts of Italian capacity for offensive warfare and his fear of the Francophil tendencies of Depretis, that for many weeks the Italian ambassador at Berlin was unable to obtain audience of the chancellor. But for the Tunisian question Italy might again have been drawn into the wake of France. Mancini tried to impede the organization of French rule in the Regency by refusing to recognize the treaty of Bardo, yet so careless was Bismarck of Italian susceptibilities that he instructed the German consul at Tunis to recognize French decrees. Partly under the influence of these circumstances, and partly in response to persuasion by Baron Blanc, secretary-general for foreign affairs, Mancini instructed Count di Robilant to open negotiations for an Italo-Austrian alliance—instructions which Robilant neglected until questioned by Count Kalnóky on the subject. The first exchange of ideas between the two Governmentsproved fruitless, since Kalnóky, somewhat Clerical-minded, was averse from guaranteeing the integrity of all Italian territory, and Mancini was equally unwilling to guarantee to Austria permanent possession of Trent and Trieste. Mancini, moreover, wished the treaty of alliance to provide for reciprocal protection of the chief interests of the contracting Powers, Italy undertaking to second Austria-Hungary in the Balkans, and Austria and Germany pledging themselves to support Italy in Mediterranean questions. Without some such proviso Italy would, in Mancini’s opinion, be exposed single-handed to French resentment. At the request of Kalnóky, Mancini defined his proposal in a memorandum, but the illness of himself and Depretis, combined with an untoward discussion in the Italian press on the failure of the Austrian emperor to return in Rome King Humbert’s visit to Vienna, caused negotiations to drag. The pope, it transpired, had refused to receive the emperor if he came to Rome on a visit to the Quirinal, and Francis Joseph, though anxious to return King Humbert’s visit, was unable to offend the feelings of his Catholic subjects. Meanwhile (11th May 1882) the Italian parliament adopted the new Army Bill, involving a special credit of £5,100,000 for the creation of two new army corps, by which the war footing of the regular army was raised to nearly 850,000 men and the ordinary military estimates to £8,000,000 per annum. Garibaldi, who, since the French occupation of Tunis, had ardently worked for the increase of the army, had thus the satisfaction of seeing hisDeath of Garibaldi.desire realized before his death at Caprera, on the 2nd of June 1882. “In spirit a child, in character a man of classic mould,†Garibaldi had remained the nation’s idol, an almost legendary hero whose place none could aspire to fill. Gratitude for his achievements and sorrow for his death found expression in universal mourning wherein king and peasant equally joined. Before his death, and almost contemporaneously with the passing of the Army Bill, negotiations for the alliance were renewed. Encouraged from Berlin, Kalnóky agreed to the reciprocal territorial guarantee, but declined reciprocity in support of special interests. Mancini had therefore to be content with a declaration that the allies would act in mutually friendly intelligence. Depretis made some opposition, but finally acquiesced, and the treaty of triple alliance was signed on the 20th of May 1882, five days after the promulgation of the Franco-Italian commercial treaty in Paris. Though partialSignature of the Treaty, 1882.revelations have been made, the exact tenor of the treaty of triple alliance has never been divulged. It is known to have been concluded for a period of five years, to have pledged the contracting parties to join in resisting attack upon the territory of any one of them, and to have specified the military disposition to be adopted by each in case attack should come either from France, or from Russia, or from both simultaneously. The Italian General Staff is said to have undertaken, in the event of war against France, to operate with two armies on the north-western frontier against the French armée des Alpes, of which the war strength is about 250,000 men. A third Italian army would, if expedient, pass into Germany, to operate against either France or Russia. Austria undertook to guard the Adriatic on land and sea, and to help Germany by checkmating Russia on land. Germany would be sufficiently employed in carrying on war against two fronts. Kalnóky desired that both the terms of the treaty and the fact of its conclusion should remain secret, but Bismarck and Mancini hastened to hint at its existence, the former in the Reichstag on the 12th of June 1882, and the latter in the Italian semi-official press. A revival of Irredentism in connexion with the execution of an Austrian deserter named Oberdank, who after escaping into Italy endeavoured to return to Austria with explosive bombs in his possession, and the cordial references to France made by Depretis at Stradella (8th October 1882), prevented the French government from suspecting the existence of the alliance, or from ceasing to strive after a Franco-Italian understanding. Suspicion was not aroused until March 1883, when Mancini, in defending himself against strictures upon his refusal to co-operate with Great Britain in Egypt, practically revealed the existence of the treaty, thereby irritating France and destroying Depretis’s secret hope of finding in the triple alliance the advantage of an Austro-German guarantee without the disadvantage of French enmity. In Italy the revelation of the treaty was hailed with satisfaction except by the Clericals, who were enraged at the blow thus struck at the restoration of the pope’s temporal power, and by the Radicals, who feared both the inevitable breach with republican France and the reinforcement of Italian constitutional parties by intimacy with strong monarchical states such as Germany and Austria. These very considerations naturally combined to recommend the fact to constitutionalists, who saw in it, besides the territorial guarantee, the elimination of the danger of foreign interference in the relations between Italy and the Vatican, such as Bismarck had recently threatened and such as France was believed ready to propose.
Nevertheless, during its first period (1882-1887) the triple alliance failed to ensure cordiality between the contracting Powers. Mancini exerted himself in a hundred ways to soothe French resentment. He not only refused to join Great Britain in the Egyptian expedition, but agreed to suspend Italian consular jurisdiction in Tunis, and deprecated suspicion of French designs upon Morocco. His efforts were worse than futile. France remained cold, while Bismarck and Kalnóky, distrustful of the Radicalism of Depretis and Mancini, assumed towards their ally an attitude almost hostile. Possibly Germany and Austria may have been influenced by the secret treaty signed between Austria, Germany and Russia on the 21st of March 1884, and ratified during the meeting of the three emperors at Skierniewice in September of that year, by which Bismarck, in return for “honest brokerage†in the Balkans, is understood to have obtained from Austria and Russia a promise of benevolent neutrality in case Germany should be “forced†to make war upon a fourth power—France. Guaranteed thus against Russian attack, Italy became in the eyes of the central powers a negligible quantity, and was treated accordingly. Though kept in the dark as to the Skierniewice arrangement, the Italian government soon discovered from the course of events that the triple alliance had practically lost its object, European peace having been assured without Italian co-operation. Meanwhile France provided Italy with fresh cause for uneasiness by abating her hostility to Germany. Italy in consequence drew nearer to Great Britain, and at the London conference on the Egyptian financial question sided with Great Britain against Austria and Germany. At the same time negotiations took place with Great Britain for an Italian occupation of Massawa, and Mancini, dreaming of a vast Anglo-Italian enterprise against the Mahdi, expatiated in the spring of 1885 upon the glories of an Anglo-Italian alliance, an indiscretion which drew upon him a scarcely-veileddémentifrom London. Again speaking in the Chamber, Mancini claimed for Italy the principal merit in the conclusion of the triple alliance, but declared that the alliance left Italy full liberty of action in regard to interests outside its scope, “especially as there was no possibility of obtaining protection for such interests from those who by the alliance had not undertaken to protect them.†These words, which revealed the absence of any stipulation in regard to the protection of Italian interests in the Mediterranean, created lively dissatisfaction in Italy and corresponding satisfaction in France. They hastened Mancini’s downfall (17th June 1885), and prepared the advent of count di Robilant, who three months later succeeded Mancini at the Italian Foreign Office. Robilant, for whom the Skierniewice pact was no secret, followed a firmly independent policy throughout the Bulgarian crisis of 1885-1886, declining to be drawn into any action beyond that required by the treaty of Berlin and the protection of Italian interests in the Balkans. Italy, indeed, came out of the Eastern crisis with enhanced prestige and with her relations to Austria greatly improved. Towards Prince Bismarck Robilant maintained an attitude of dignified independence, and as, in the spring of 1886, the moment for the renewal of the triple alliance drew near, he profited by the development of the Bulgarian crisis and thethreatened Franco-Russian understanding to secure from the central powers “something more†than the bare territorial guarantee of the original treaty. This “something more†consisted, at least in part, of the arrangement, with the help of Austria and Germany, of an Anglo-Italian naval understanding having special reference to the Eastern question, but providing for common action by the British and Italian fleets in the Mediterranean in case of war. A vote of the Italian Chamber on the 4th of February 1887, in connexion with the disaster to Italian troops at Dogali, in Abyssinia, brought about the resignation of the Depretis-Robilant cabinet. The crisis dragged for three months, and before its definitive solution by the formation of a Depretis-Crispi ministry, Robilant succeeded (17th March 1887) in renewing the triple alliance on terms more favourable toFirst renewal of the Triple Alliance.Italy than those obtained in 1882. Not only did he secure concessions from Austria and Germany corresponding in some degree to the improved state of the Italian army and navy, but, in virtue of the Anglo-Italian understanding, assured the practical adhesion of Great Britain to the European policy of the central powers, a triumph probably greater than any registered by Italian diplomacy since the completion of national unity.
The period between May 1881 and July 1887 occupied, in the region of foreign affairs, by the negotiation, conclusion and renewal of the triple alliance, by the Bulgarian crisis and by the dawn of an Italian colonial policy, wasInternal reforms.marked at home by urgent political and economic problems, and by the parliamentary phenomena known astrasformismo. On the 29th of June 1881 the Chamber adopted a Franchise Reform Bill, which increased the electorate from 600,000 to 2,000,000 by lowering the fiscal qualification from 40 to 19.80 lire in direct taxation, and by extending the suffrage to all persons who had passed through the two lower standards of the elementary schools, and practically to all persons able to read and write. The immediate result of the reform was to increase the political influence of large cities where the proportion of illiterate workmen was lower than in the country districts, and to exclude from the franchise numbers of peasants and small proprietors who, though of more conservative temperament and of better economic position than the artizan population of the large towns, were often unable to fulfil the scholarship qualification. On the 12th of April 1883 the forced currency was formally abolished by the resumption of treasury payments in gold with funds obtained through a loan of £14,500,000 issued in London on the 5th of May 1882. Owing to the hostility of the French market, the loan was covered with difficulty, and, though the gold premium fell and commercial exchanges were temporarily facilitated by the resumption of cash payments, it is doubtful whether these advantages made up for the burden of £640,000 additional annual interest thrown upon the exchequer. On the 6th of March 1885 parliament finally sanctioned the conventions by which state railways were farmed out to three private companies—the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Sicilian. The railways redeemed in 1875-1876 had been worked in the interval by the government at a heavy loss. A commission of inquiry reported in favour of private management. The conventions, concluded for a period of sixty years, but terminable by either party after twenty or forty years, retained for the state the possession of the lines (except the southern railway, viz. the line from Bologna to Brindisi belonging to the Società Meridionale to whom the Adriatic lines were now farmed), but sold rolling stock to the companies, arranged various schedules of state subsidy for lines projected or in course of construction, guaranteed interest on the bonds of the companies and arranged for the division of revenue between the companies, the reserve fund and the state. National control of the railways was secured by a proviso that the directors must be of Italian nationality. Depretis and his colleague Genala, minister of public works, experienced great difficulty in securing parliamentary sanction for the conventions, not so much on account of their defective character, as from the opposition of local interests anxious to extort new lines from the government. In fact, the conventions were only voted by a majority of twenty-three votes after the government had undertaken to increase the length of new state-built lines from 1500 to 2500 kilometres. Unfortunately,The railway conventions.the calculation of probable railway revenue on which the conventions had been based proved to be enormously exaggerated. For many years the 37½% of the gross revenue (less the cost of maintaining the rolling stock, incumbent on the state) scarcely sufficed to pay the interest on debts incurred for railway construction and on the guaranteed bonds. Gradually the increase of traffic consequent upon the industrial development of Italy decreased the annual losses of the state, but the position of the government in regard to the railways still remained so unsatisfactory as to render the resumption of the whole system by the state on the expiration of the first period of twenty years in 1905 inevitable.
Intimately bound up with the forced currency, the railway conventions and public works was the financial question in general. From 1876, when equilibrium between expenditure and revenue had first been attained,Finance.taxation yielded steady annual surpluses, which in 1881 reached the satisfactory level of £2,120,000. The gradual abolition of the grist tax on minor cereals diminished the surplus in 1882 to £236,000, and in 1883 to £110,000, while the total repeal of the grist tax on wheat, which took effect on the 1st of January 1884, coincided with the opening of a new and disastrous period of deficit. True, the repeal of the grist tax was not the only, nor possibly even the principal, cause of the deficit. The policy of “fiscal transformation†inaugurated by the Left increased revenue from indirect taxation from £17,000,000 in 1876 to more than £24,000,000 in 1887, by substituting heavy corn duties for the grist tax, and by raising the sugar and petroleum duties to unprecedented levels. But partly from lack of firm financial administration, partly through the increase of military and naval expenditure (which in 1887 amounted to £9,000,000 for the army, while special efforts were made to strengthen the navy), and principally through the constant drain of railway construction and public works, the demands upon the exchequer grew largely to exceed the normal increase of revenue, and necessitated the contraction of new debts. In their anxiety to remain in office Depretis and the finance minister, Magliani, never hesitated to mortgage the financial future of their country. No concession could be denied to deputies, or groups of deputies, whose support was indispensable to the life of the cabinet, nor, under such conditions, was it possible to place any effective check upon administrative abuses in which politicians or their electors were interested. Railways, roads and harbours which contractors had undertaken to construct for reasonable amounts were frequently made to cost thrice the original estimates. Minghetti, in a trenchant exposure of the parliamentary condition of Italy during this period, cites a case in which a credit for certain public works was, during a debate in the Chamber, increased by the government from £6,600,000 to £9,000,000 in order to conciliate local political interests. In the spring of 1887 Genala, minister of public works, was taken to task for having sanctioned expenditure of £80,000,000 on railway construction while only £40,000,000 had been included in the estimates. As most of these credits were spread over a series of years, succeeding administrations found their financial liberty of action destroyed, and were obliged to cover deficit by constant issues of consolidated stock. Thus the deficit of £940,000 for the financial year 1885-1886 rose to nearly £2,920,000 in 1887-1888, and in 1888-1889 attained the terrible level of £9,400,000.
Nevertheless, in spite of many and serious shortcomings, the long series of Depretis administrations was marked by the adoption of some useful measures. Besides the realization of the formal programme of the Left, consisting of the repeal of the grist tax, the abolition of the forced currency, the extension of the suffrage and the development of the railway system, Depretis laid the foundation for land tax re-assessment by introducing a new cadastral survey. Unfortunately, the new survey was made largely optional, so that provinces which had reasonto hope for a diminution of land tax under a revised assessment hastened to complete their survey, while others, in which the average of the land tax was below a normal assessment, neglected to comply with the provisions of the scheme. An important undertaking, known as the Agricultural Inquiry, brought to light vast quantities of information valuable for future agrarian legislation. The year 1885 saw the introduction and adoption of a measure embodying the principle of employers’ liability for accidents to workmen, a principle subsequently extended and more equitably defined in the spring of 1899. An effort to encourage the development of the mercantile marine was made in the same year, and a convention was concluded with the chief lines of passenger steamers to retain their fastest vessels as auxiliaries to the fleet in case of war. Sanitation and public hygiene received a potent impulse from the cholera epidemic of 1884, many of the unhealthiest quarters in Naples and other cities being demolished and rebuilt, with funds chiefly furnished by the state. The movement was strongly supported by King Humbert, whose intrepidity in visiting the most dangerous spots at Busca and Naples while the epidemic was at its height, reassuring the panic-stricken inhabitants by his presence, excited the enthusiasm of his people and the admiration of Europe.
During the accomplishment of these and other reforms the condition of parliament underwent profound change. By degrees the administrations of the Left had ceased to rely solely upon the Liberal sections of the Chamber, and“Trasformismo.â€had carried their most important bills with the help of the Right. This process of transformation was not exclusively the work of Depretis, but had been initiated as early as 1873, when a portion of the Right under Minghetti had, by joining the Left, overturned the Lanza-Sella cabinet. In 1876 Minghetti himself had fallen a victim to a similar defection of Conservative deputies. The practical annihilation of the old Right in the elections of 1876 opened a new parliamentary era. Reduced in number to less than one hundred, and radically changed in spirit and composition, the Right gave way, if not to despair, at least to a despondency unsuited to an opposition party. Though on more than one occasion personal rancour against the men of the Moderate Left prevented the Right from following Sella’s advice and regaining, by timely coalition with cognate parliamentary elements, a portion of its former influence, the bulk of the party, with singular inconsistency, drew nearer and nearer to the Liberal cabinets. The process was accelerated by Sella’s illness and death (14th March 1884), an event which cast profound discouragement over the more thoughtful of the Conservatives and Moderate Liberals, by whom Sella had been regarded as a supreme political reserve, as a statesman whose experienced vigour and patriotic sagacity might have been trusted to lift Italy from any depth of folly or misfortune. By a strange anomaly the Radical measures brought forward by the Left diminished instead of increasing the distance between it and the Conservatives. Numerically insufficient to reject such measures, and lacking the fibre and the cohesion necessary for the pursuance of a far-sighted policy, the Right thought prudent not to employ its strength in uncompromising opposition, but rather, by supporting the government, to endeavour to modify Radical legislation in a Conservative sense. In every case the calculation proved fallacious. Radical measures were passed unmodified, and the Right was compelled sadly to accept the accomplished fact. Thus it was with the abolition of the grist tax, the reform of the suffrage, the railway conventions and many other bills. When, in course of time, the extended suffrage increased the Republican and Extreme Radical elements in the Chamber, and the Liberal “Pentarchy†(composed of Crispi, Cairoli, Nicotera, Zanardelli and Baccarini) assumed an attitude of bitter hostility to Depretis, the Right, obeying the impulse of Minghetti, rallied openly to Depretis, lending him aid without which his prolonged term of office would have been impossible. The result was parliamentary chaos, baptizedtrasformismo. In May 1883 this process received official recognition by the elimination of the Radicals Zanardelli and Baccarini from the Depretis cabinet, while in the course of 1884 a Conservative, Signor Biancheri, was elected to the presidency of the Chamber, and another Conservative, General Ricotti, appointed to the War Office. Though Depretis, at the end of his life in 1887, showed signs of repenting of the confusion thus created, he had established a parliamentary system destined largely to sterilize and vitiate the political life of Italy.
Contemporaneously with the vicissitudes of home and foreign policy under the Left there grew up in Italy a marked tendency towards colonial enterprise. The tendency itself dated from 1869, when a congress of the Italian chambers ofColonial policy.commerce at Genoa had urged the Lanza cabinet to establish a commercial depôt on the Red Sea. On the 11th of March 1870 an Italian shipper, Signor Rubattino, had bought the bay of Assab, with the neighbouring island of Darmakieh, from Beheran, sultan of Raheita, for £1880, the funds being furnished by the government. The Egyptian government being unwilling to recognize the sovereignty of Beheran over Assab or his right to sell territory to a foreign power, Visconti-Venosta thought it opportune not then to occupy Assab. No further step was taken until, at the end of 1879, Rubattino prepared to establish a commercial station at Assab. The British government made inquiry as to his intentions, and on the 19th of April 1880 received a formal undertaking from Cairoli that Assab would never be fortified nor be made a military establishment. Meanwhile (January 1880) stores and materials were landed, and Assab was permanently occupied. Eighteen months later a party of Italian sailors and explorers under Lieutenant Biglieri and Signor Giulietti were massacred in Egyptian territory. Egypt, however, refused to make thorough inquiry into the massacre, and was only prevented from occupying Raheita and coming into conflict with Italy by the good offices of Lord Granville, who dissuaded the Egyptian government from enforcing its sovereignty. On the 20th of September 1881 Beheran formally accepted Italian protection, and in the following February an Anglo-Italian convention established the Italian title to Assab on condition that Italy should formally recognise the suzerainty of the Porte and of the khedive over the Red Sea coast, and should prevent the transport of arms and munitions of war through the territory of Assab. This convention was never recognized by the Porte nor by the Egyptian government. A month later (10th March 1882) Rubattino made over his establishment to the Italian government, and on the 12th of June the Chamber adopted a bill constituting Assab an Italian crown colony.
Within four weeks of the adoption of this bill the bombardment of Alexandria by the British fleet (11th July 1882) opened an era destined profoundly to affect the colonial position of Italy. The revolt of Arabi Pasha (September 1881)The Egyptian Question.had led to the meeting of an ambassadorial conference at Constantinople, promoted by Mancini, Italian minister for foreign affairs, in the hope of preventing European intervention in Egypt and the permanent establishment of an Anglo-French condominium to the detriment of Italian influence. At the opening of the conference (23rd June 1882) Italy secured the signature of a self-denying protocol whereby all the great powers undertook to avoid isolated action; but the rapid development of the crisis in Egypt, and the refusal of France to co-operate with Great Britain in the restoration of order, necessitated vigorous action by the latter alone. In view of the French refusal, Lord Granville on the 27th of July invited Italy to join in restoring order in Egypt; but Mancini and Depretis, in spite of the efforts of Crispi, then in London, declined the offer. Financial considerations, lack of proper transports for an expeditionary corps, fear of displeasing France, dislike of a “policy of adventure,†misplaced deference towards the ambassadorial conference in Constantinople, and unwillingness to thwart the current of Italian sentiment in favour of the Egyptian “nationalists,†were the chief motives of the Italian refusal, which had the effect of somewhat estranging Great Britain and Italy. Anglo-Italian relations, however, regained their normal cordiality two years later, and found expression in the supportlent by Italy to the British proposal at the London conference on the Egyptian question (July 1884). About the same time Mancini was informed by the Italian agent in Cairo that Great Britain would be well disposed towards an extension of Italian influence on the Red Sea coast. Having sounded Lord Granville, Mancini received encouragement to seize Beilul and Massawa, in view of the projected restriction of the Egyptian zone of military occupation consequent on the Mahdist rising in the Sudan. Lord Granville further inquired whether Italy would co-operate in pacifying the Sudan, and received an affirmative reply. Italian action was hastened by news that, in December 1884, an exploring party under Signor Bianchi, royal commissioner for Assab, had been massacred in the Aussa (Danakil) country, an event which aroused in Italy a desire to punish the assassins and to obtain satisfaction for the still unpunished massacre of Signor Giulietti and his companions. Partly to satisfy public opinion, partly in order to profit by the favourable disposition of the British government, and partly in the hope of remedying the error committed in 1882 by refusal to co-operate with Great Britain in Egypt, the Italian government in January 1885 despatched an expedition under Admiral Caimi and Colonel Saletta to occupy Massawa and Beilul. The occupation, effected on the 5th of February, was accelerated by fear lest Italy might be forestalled by France or Russia, both of which powers were suspected of desiring to establish themselves firmly on the Red Sea and to exercise a protectorate over Abyssinia. News of the occupation reached Europe simultaneously with the tidings of the fall of Khartum, an event which disappointed Italian hopes of military co-operation with Great Britain in the Sudan. The resignation of the Gladstone-Granville cabinet further precluded the projected Italian occupation of Suakin, and the Italians, wisely refraining from an independent attempt to succour Kassala, then besieged by the Mahdists, bent their efforts to the increase of their zone of occupation around Massawa. The extension of the Italian zone excited the suspicions of John, negus of Abyssinia, whose apprehensions were assiduously fomented by Alula, ras of Tigré, and by French and Greek adventurers. Measures, apparently successful, were taken to reassure the negus, but shortly afterwards protection inopportunely accorded by Italy to enemies of Ras Alula, induced the Abyssinians to enter upon hostilities. In January 1886 Ras Alula raided the village of Wa, to the west of Zula, but towards the end of the year (23rd November) Wa was occupied by the irregular troops of General Gené, who had superseded Colonel Saletta at Massawa. Angered by this step, Ras Alula took prisoners the members of an Italian exploring party commanded by Count Salimbeni, and held them as hostages for the evacuation of Wa. General Gené nevertheless reinforced Wa and pushed forward a detachment to Saati. On the 25th of January 1887 Ras Alula attacked Saati, but was repulsed with loss. On the following day, however, the Abyssinians succeeded in surprising, near the village of Dogali, an Italian force of 524 officers and men under Colonel De Cristoforis,Disaster of Dogali.who were convoying provisions to the garrison of Saati. The Abyssinians, 20,000 strong, speedily overwhelmed the small Italian force, which, after exhausting its ammunition, was destroyed where it stood. One man only escaped. Four hundred and seven men and twenty-three officers were killed outright, and one officer and eighty-one men wounded. Dead and wounded alike were horribly mutilated by order of Alula. Fearing a new attack, General Gené withdrew his forces from Saati, Wa and Arafali; but the losses of the Abyssinians at Saati and Dogali had been so heavy as to dissuade Alula from further hostilities.
In Italy the disaster of Dogali produced consternation, and caused the fall of the Depretis-Robilant cabinet. The Chamber, eager for revenge, voted a credit of £200,000, and sanctioned the despatch of reinforcements. MeanwhileAbyssinia.Signor Crispi, who, though averse from colonial adventure, desired to vindicate Italian honour, entered the Depretis cabinet as minister of the interior, and obtained from parliament a new credit of £800,000. In November 1887 a strong expedition under General di San Marzano raised the strength of the Massawa garrison to nearly 20,000 men. The British government, desirous of preventing an Italo-Abyssinian conflict, which could but strengthen the position of the Mahdists, despatched Mr (afterwards Sir) Gerald Portal from Massawa on the 29th of October to mediate with the negus. The mission proved fruitless. Portal returned to Massawa on the 25th of December 1887, and warned the Italians that John was preparing to attack them in the following spring with an army of 100,000 men. On the 28th of March 1888 the negus indeed descended from the Abyssinian high plateau in the direction of Saati, but finding the Italian position too strong to be carried by assault, temporized and opened negotiations for peace. His tactics failed to entice the Italians from their position, and on the 3rd of April sickness among his men compelled John to withdraw the Abyssinian army. The negus next marched against Menelek, king of Shoa, whose neutrality Italy had purchased with 5000 Remington rifles and a supply of ammunition, but found him with 80,000 men too strongly entrenched to be successfully attacked. Tidings of a new Mahdist incursion into Abyssinian territory reaching the negus induced him to postpone the settlement of his quarrel with Menelek until the dervishes had been chastised. Marching towards the Blue Nile, he joined battle with the Mahdists, but on the 10th of March 1889 was killed, in the hour of victory, near Gallabat. His death gave rise to an Abyssinian war of succession between Mangashà , natural son of John, and Menelek, grandson of the Negus Sella-Sellassié. Menelek, by means of Count Antonelli, resident in the Shoa country, requested Italy to execute a diversion in his favour by occupying Asmarà and other points on the high plateau. Antonelli profited by the situation to obtain Menelek’s signature to a treaty fixing the frontiers of the ItalianTreaty of Uccialli.colony and defining Italo-Abyssinian relations. The treaty, signed at Uccialli on the 2nd of May 1899, arranged for regular intercourse between Italy and Abyssinia and conceded to Italy a portion of the high plateau, with the positions of Halai, Saganeiti and Asmarà . The main point of the treaty, however, lay in clause 17:—