SOLARO DELLA MARGARITA, CLEMENTE
Political and diplomatic figure of Piedmont, born on 11 Nov. 1792 in Cuneo, died 12 Nov. 1869 in Turin. From Oct. 1803 to 1806 he was a pupil at the Tolomei College in Siena, then run by the Piarists.
The events of those years, culminating in the French occupation of Piedmont and the deportation of Pius VII, inspired in him a deep and heartfelt attachment to his own dynasty and a lively religious sentiment, and contributed to that firm opposition to the new ideas which he opposed, until his death, with programmatic consistency, the union of throne and altar. He continued his studies in Turin, where he graduated in both civil and canon law in 1812. Attached to the office of the Attorney General of the imperial court in Turin, he did not miss an opportunity to express his opposition to the Napoleonic regime, and in the same year he promoted the Italian Society, a centre for the gathering of all those, mostly young, who wished to react against the stifling of culture. According to the statutes of the association, members, upon admission, assumed the names of illustrious Italians in the field of letters and the arts, excluding any Roman name, not only because the classical age of the "freedom of the fatherland" was considered by the statutes to be that following the fall of the Lombard kingdom, but also probably as a natural reaction to the habit of the Revolution and the Empire of abusing Roman names. Article 4 of the same statutes stated that "the aim of the Society is Italian culture; every language other than Italian is excluded." This, so to speak, national activity was a clear and firm opposition to French usurpation and domination, a profession of legitimism towards the House of Savoy.
After the Restoration in 1816 he was secretary at the legation in Naples, headed by the Marquis of S. Saturnino, whose daughter Carolina he married in 1825; she was a very religious woman. During the Revolution of 1820-21 he was entrusted with the management of the legation during a temporary leave of absence of the Minister. Returning to Turin in 1825 for his marriage, in 1826 he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Madrid. Convinced of the necessity that only a thorough struggle against liberalism could curb that danger to absolute governments, during his Madrid mission he drew close to the Carlists and became a fervent supporter of their cause at his own court and at the Holy See, with whose Secretariat of State he corresponded from the time when the pro-nuncio Cardinal Giustiniani, in 1827, entrusted him with the temporary care of papal interests. Bound by friendship with the Bishop of León, one of the most representative figures of Carlism, Solaro found himself in conflict with the new nuncio Tiberi, whose actions seemed to him prejudicial to the aim of a vigorous struggle against the liberals, and he was much displeased at the failure to restore the Spanish Inquisition. At the same time he also took issue with Metternich’s policy, which he considered weak and hesitant, and deplored the ambiguous conduct of all monarchical Europe, which was not lending sufficient support to absolutism against constitutionalism. His support for the Carlist cause intensified after the death of Ferdinand VII, and when, in February 1835, Solaro became Minister of Foreign Affairs, it conditioned all Sardinian policy towards foreign powers. In full agreement with the thought and will of King Charles Albert, he defended legitimism against liberalism in every part of Europe where the monarchy of "divine right" was threatened by usurpers. Thus he aided the Spanish Carlists, the Miguelists of Portugal and the Bourbons of France, who had been deprived of the throne in 1830. The struggles between the radical and Catholic cantons of neighbouring Switzerland also drew his attention, with particular regard to the neighbouring Valais, not without an eye to deriving some advantage from them.
He was also active in the field of political writing, with works such as *Sguardo politico del conte C. S. d. M. sulla Convenzione italo-franca del 15 sett. 1864* (1864) on the annexation of Savoy and Nice to France (1860) and the September Convention; and finally in the four books of *L'Uomo di Stato indirizzato al governo della cosa pubblica* (Turin 1863-64), in which he sought to demonstrate the possibility of a Catholic government in modern times.