Victor Emmanuel III of Italy
 | Victor Emmanuel III |
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Victor Emmanuel III of Italy ,
Vittorio Emanuele III in
Italian (
11 November,
1869 â€"
28 December,
1947), was
King of Italy (
29 July,
1900 â€"
9 May,
1946),
Emperor of Ethiopia (
1936 -
1943) and
King of Albania (
1939 -
1943).
Victor Emmanuel III's position as Emperor of Ethiopia was not universally accepted, as Italy had overthrown the native Emperor,
Haile Selassie. The United Kingdom, among many others, refused to recognize Victor Emmanuel's new title (as indeed did many to his claim to be King of Albania) with King
George VI as King of the United Kingdom on the advice of the British government accrediting
ambassadors to Victor Emmanuel as merely "King of Italy". (In contrast in his role as
King of Ireland, and on the advice of the Irish Government, King George accredited Irish Ambassadors to Victor Emmanuel as both king of Italy
and Emperor of Ethiopia.) King Victor Emmanuel III renounced his titles of Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania in 1943.
Victor Emmanuel was the only child of
Umberto I of Italy and
Margherita Teresa Giovanna, Princess of Savoy. In
1896 he married
Elena Petrovic-Njegos (
1873-
1953), daughter of
King Nicholas I of Montenegro (who was dethroned after
World War I) and had many children including:#
Yolanda Margherita Milena Elisabetta Romana Maria (
1901-
1986), married
Giorgio Carlo Calvi, Count of Bergolo (
1887-
1977);#
Mafalda Maria Elisabetta Anna Romana (
1902-
1944), married Philip of
Hesse-Kassel - she died in
Buchenwald, a
Nazi concentration camp;#
Crown Prince Umberto (
1904-
1983) who married (and later following the declaration of the Republic, separated from) Princess
Marie José of Belgium#
Giovanna Elisabetta Antonia Romana Maria (
1907-
2000), married
Boris III of Bulgaria#
Maria Francesca Anna Romana (
1914-
2001), married Prince Luigi of Bourbon-Parma (
1899-
1967)
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Victor Emmanuel III in 1893 |
During his life, Victor Emmanuel III saw two world wars and the birth of Fascism. He remains Italy's most controversial monarch. His early reign showed evidence that, at least by the standards of the Savoyard monarchy, he was a man committed to a form of
democracy. Although his decision in
1922 to appoint
Benito Mussolini prime minister and having rejected formal government advice to fight the Fascist
March on Rome (an act which provoked the resignation of
Luigi Facta's government), and in particular his failure, in the face of mounting evidence, to act against the Mussolini regime's abuses of power (including, as early as
1924, the notorious assassination of
Giacomo Matteotti and other opposition MPs) has lead to much criticism, it is difficult to see what he could have done in the face of the overwhelming popularity of Mussolini at the time.
Defenders of Victor Emmanuel have suggested that his decision not to oppose Mussolini's rise to power was based on the consideration of the economic damages caused by the constant collapse of earlier governments, with Mussolini offering a stability that seemed necessary for the Italian Kingdom. It was in any case fundamentally democratic; as in Germany the far right commanded immense popular support. The King rightly pointed out that his armed forces could not have defended Rome against the fascist march on the city, though then military leaders and surviving military records challenge his claim. The commander in chief of the defending forces for the Capital was finally ordered by the king, it is said, to remove the blocks and let the
camicie nere (
black shirts) pass.
Critics claim that Victor Emmanuel's decisions showed constant poor judgment and undemocratic sentiments. What is not in doubt, however, is that fascism offered a political stability and an opposition to the left-wing politic that appealed to some people in Italia. In many ways the events of the
1920s to
1940s showed that each side, the monarchy, the political elite and the voters, for different reasons, felt Mussolini and his regime offered an option that, after years of political instability and infighting, seemed more appealing than what they perceived as the alternative.
The Italian monarchy enjoyed popular support at the time. Foreigners noted how even as late as the early 1940s, newsreel images of King Victor Emmanuel and Queen Elena, provoked applause, sometimes cheering, when played in cinemas, in contrast to the hostile silence shown toward Fascist leaders. Two of Victor Emmanuel's decisions, however, proved fatal to the monarchy.
His decision to flee Rome in
1943, though perhaps necessary for his safety, shocked many, including foreign observers, who contrasted it with the behaviour of
King George VI and
Queen Elizabeth, who refused to leave London during the Blitz, or Pope
Pius XII, who mixed with Rome's crowds and prayed with them after the popular (i.e. working class) Roman
quartiere of San Lorenzo was bombed and destroyed. His silence in
1938, when the Fascist government issued racial purity laws (a public silence at least: he did criticize these laws in private but could not oppose them, he received treats from Mussolini and Hitler, his life and the stability of the entire nation was at risk. King Victor Emmanuel III removed Mussolini from power as soon as possible, Mussolini was arrested in 1943.
Victor Emmanuel III yielded most of his powers to his son Umberto II in 1944, when Umberto was appointed as Lieutenant General of the Realm, and finally abdicated in 1946.
If the history of monarchy in Europe from the 1940s was made up of strong images like those of King George and Queen Elizabeth in the 1940s,
Michael of Romania's role in overthrowing his own country's fascism, (it should be noted that Romania was in the war on the side of Germany until Russian troops crossed the border in 1944) or Spain's King
Juan Carlos's defence of democracy in the face of a threatened coup d'etat in the
1980s, Victor Emmanuel, according to his detractors, showed no such leadership skills.
Meanwhile he is seldom treated sympathetically by historians. His gallant abdication on the eve of the referendum on the future of the monarchy achieved little, being too little far too late. At worst, it simply reminded undecided voters of the role of the monarchy and of his own actions in the Fascist period, at a time when monarchists hoped voters would have been focusing on the positive impressions made by Crown Prince Umberto and Princess Maria José as the effective monarchs of Italy since 1943. By mis-timed actions (appointing Mussolini, fleeing Rome) and mis-timed inactions (failure to support his government's plan to suppress the 1922 March on Rome, his failure to abdicate in 1943), Victor Emmanuel III weighed down the Italian monarchy with his mistakes, a weight which the 'May' king and queen, King
Umberto II and Queen Maria José were unable to shift in their short but impressive month-long reign. Nevertheless, the whole of the south of Italy, plus Rome and Sicily - more than an entire kingdom - voted solidly for the monarchy; there were allegations of vote-rigging in the parts of the country which vote against.
Victor Emmanuel went to
Egypt in exile and died there in 1947.Other commentators have emphasized that the pragmatic tradition of the House of Savoy, of taking a decision only when unavoidable, a sort of political irresolution, was one of the reasons for their defeat. The
birth of the Italian Republic is more evident indeed than the defeat of Italian monarchy, and was justified by many reasons, also because at a certain time the Church stopped supporting the Royal House (which the Vatican, from 1870, always considered as an invader) and left them alone.
*
Benito Mussolini*
External link: Genealogy of recent members of the House of Savoy
*Denis Mack Smith, Italy and Its Monarchy (Yale University Press, 1989) (ISBN 0300051328)
