Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy

VITTORIO EMANUELE II, king of ITALY. — Born in Turin on 14 March 1820, died in Rome on 9 January 1878. The firstborn of Carlo Alberto di Savoia-Carignano, later king of Sardinia, and of Maria Teresa d’Asburgo-Lorena, he spent his early childhood in Florence, with his paternal grandfather, and then moved to Turin, where King Carlo Felice arranged for the boy, heir presumptive to the throne, to receive a careful education, especially from the religious and political point of view.

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V. E

whom his father, immediately after ascending the throne (1831), appointed duke of Savoy — gained little from his studies, since his exuberant character inclined him rather to physical exercise and military life. Although nourished by a sincere and profound faith, he soon yielded to the overmastering sensuality of his nature, hence the serious shortcomings of his private life. Married, from 12 April 1842, to Archduchess Maria Adelaide d’Asburgo-Lorena (d. 1855), who bore him six children (Clotilde, Umberto, Amedeo, Oddone, Maria Pia and Carlo Alberto), in 1869, when in danger of death, he regularized through a morganatic marriage his twenty-four-year relationship with Rosa Vercellana, created countess of Mirafiori. Kept, in accordance with Savoyard traditions, apart from politics during his father’s lifetime, he devoted himself passionately to the military commands entrusted to him and in 1848 behaved courageously at the head of his troops, especially on the day of Goito. It is calumnious to claim that he had brought about the defeat at Novara in March 1849 through his inaction in order to assume the crown more swiftly. Having become king through the abdication of Carlo Alberto (23 March 1849), the following day he met the victorious Marshal Radetzky at Vignale and concluded an armistice with him on severe but not dishonourable terms, nobly refusing to abrogate the Statuto granted by his father. V. E. thus became the only European sovereign to keep in force the Constitutions granted in 1848.

The events of his thirty-year reign are too well known: firmly resolved to secure Italy’s independence and unify it under his own sceptre, he knew how to direct towards this goal both the legal and revolutionary forces and to place the question of Italian liberty within the framework of international politics, thanks above all to Cavour’s diplomatic skill; thus his name remains inseparably linked to the so-called “decade of preparation” (1849–59), the Crimean expedition of 1855, the second war of independence, won with the support of Napoleon III (1859), the annexations of the Duchies, the Legations and the Mezzogiorno (1859–60), the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy (1861), the campaign of 1866 which led — despite Custoza and Lissa — to the liberation of Venetia, and finally the capture of Rome in 1870. A constitutional sovereign, he often claimed the right to pursue a personal policy: such was the case with the skilful clause inserted in the approval of the preliminaries of Villafranca, designed to leave the future arrangement of central Italy undecided; with the direct relations he maintained with Garibaldi during the Expedition of the Thousand; and with the agreements secretly concluded with Mazzini in 1864 for the purpose of fomenting revolts against Austria in Galicia and in the Danubian Principalities. A courageous soldier rather than a skilful commander, he fought personally at Palestro and played a leading part in the victory of S. Martino, but his command proved entirely ineffective at Custoza. After 1870, for the good of the country, he did not hesitate to sacrifice his sentiments and travel to Vienna and Berlin to seal the new policy of friendship with the Central Empires, just as he accepted the accession to power of the Left (1876), although his sympathies lay rather with the defeated party.

What is of particular interest here is the part he played in the ecclesiastical policy of his reign and his personal attitude towards the Pope: matters for which the correspondence published by Fr. Pirri has provided fundamental testimony. Despite the weaknesses of his private conduct, V. E. was always sincerely religious; consequently, the measures of his government that infringed upon the rights of the Church and the Papacy were constantly painful to his Catholic conscience and to the filial devotion he always felt for Pius IX. He was reluctant to sanction in 1850 the law abolishing the ecclesiastical forum in the Sardinian States and was induced to do so only with difficulty, after an acute crisis of conscience, bound as he was by his duties as a constitutional king. Two years later, while the d’Azeglio ministry persisted in its laicist legislation, V. E, encouraged in this by the direct intervention of Pius IX, refused to give the royal signature to the introduction of civil marriage, although it had been approved by Parliament, thereby causing the cabinet’s resignation. He then entrusted the task of forming a government to Cavour, after having unsuccessfully sought to bring into being a Balbo-Revel government, more respectful of the rights of the Church. His inner drama became particularly acute in 1855, when it became necessary to promulgate a new law aimed at suppressing certain religious congregations, especially since the grievous bereavements that struck him during that period and his own dangerous illness appeared to many to be a divine punishment for the offence committed against religion: but the King, considering the measure appropriate on this occasion, signed it, obtaining only that the Suore Sacramentine be exempted, since his mother the Queen had shown a special predilection for them. Subsequently, however, there is no evidence that he opposed the legislation of the Kingdom of Italy, which was all the more subversive of the Church.

The events of autumn 1859 confronted V. State. Bitterly torn between the demand for Italian unification and respect for the Pontiff, after energetically preventing Garibaldi from crossing into the Marches, he appealed directly to Pius IX (the Stellardi mission) in the hope that the Pope might be induced to grant him spontaneously, in the form of a vicariate, the government of the provinces of central Italy. This was the first in a series of attempts pursued by the King — often without his ministers’ knowledge — to achieve the unity of Italy with papal consent. The secret correspondence between Pius IX and V. E, besides documenting the enduring cordiality of the personal relations between the Pontiff and the Sovereign, would seem to testify to the King’s sincere anxiety “not to offend the immutable principles of Religion.” Some historians, however, have believed they could observe that V. E. had made an abundance of commitments and promises in order to calm the Pope’s apprehensions, although resolved later to shelter behind the easy excuse of his constitutional duties; and this suspicion of duplicity does indeed occasionally emerge in Pius IX’s letters. In any case, these secret contacts were repeated even after the occupation of the Marches and Umbria (1860), leading to the highly confidential missions of Vegezzi and Tonello in 1865 and 1866 and to the confidential assignment entrusted by the King concerning the Pope to Lord Clarendon in December 1867, immediately after Garibaldi’s attempt at Mentana, which V. E. had tried to prevent or at least contain through the energetic action of General Menabrea, whom he had called to the government through an audacious extra-parliamentary solution to the ongoing ministerial crisis. Even on the eve of 20 September, V. E. hoped to induce Pius IX to renounce Rome peacefully; and while General Ponza di S. Martino was delivering to the Pope the King’s letter with

(phot. Alinari)

the invitation to the Pontiff not to obstruct Italy’s aspirations, another envoy delivered to him a second, confidential letter, in which the King, after once again explaining the political reasons that compelled him to conquer Rome by force of arms, implored the Pope to take measures to limit as much as possible the inevitable shedding of blood. Nor did V. Pope, expressing to him the anguish caused by this assault upon the pontifical prerogatives. Although Card. Antonelli had to prevent the bearer of the letter, the Marquis Spinola, from speaking with the Pontiff, just as in 1871 he opposed, on instructions received, Gen. Bertolè-Viale’s conveying to Pius IX V. E.’s good wishes for his papal jubilee, on both occasions the Pontiff had the King informed of his paternal gratitude for the two filial gestures. With A. Monti, it should be added that « all V. E.’s relations with the Holy See after 1870... are veiled by the King’s great, intimate sorrow, compelled as he was to distress the Pontiff, silencing (for reasons of State) the impulses of his heart and of his frank soul as a Catholic sovereign ». This view of the spiritual problem of V. E. is nevertheless contradicted by that of other historians, such as, for example, Jemolo, who, while acknowledging V. E.’s constant « desire for reconciliation », believes that every « crisis of anguish » can be ruled out and instead emphasizes the « very strong and very harsh » words that he sometimes used with Pius IX in defence of the prerogatives of the State. For his part, the Pope did not deny the sovereign very clear proofs of benevolence: he refrained from naming him expressly in the encyclical Respicientes of 1 November 1870 against the despoilers of the temporal domain, and when he learned that the King was at the point of death, he absolved him from every canonical censure, granting that he might receive the last Sacraments, and comforted him with his apostolic blessing.

Extremely popular for his generosity of spirit, his genuinely democratic manners, and his tireless charity, V. E. earned the noble title of Father of the Fatherland, and his premature

death constituted a genuine national mourning. His remains rest in the Pantheon of Rome, in a monument cast from the bronze of cannons wrested from the enemy.