An Italian King of Spain

On this day in 1871 Amedeo I, son of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy, became the King of Spain. Although a rather reluctant monarch, he accepted the Spanish throne out of a desire to restore Spain as a country and to fulfill the vision of his father to spread the House of Savoy across the Mediterranean area, to make Italy the heart of a new sort of Roman empire consisting of allied kingdoms united by the Savoy dynasty. It seemed to be coming together with King Amedeo's sister Maria Pia across the border as Queen consort of Portugal and another sister, Maria Clotilde, married into the Bonaparte family of the French Second Empire (though it had recently fallen). A great deal of attention and Italian support was also being given to the Greeks in their struggle for independence from the Turks. At the time, the Savoy star was rising without doubt and with Spain in such trouble, many saw an Italian monarch as the ideal solution. The idea was to bring Spain together on the path of moderate, constitutional government and economic progress. Unfortunately, the deep divisions in Spanish society proved impossible to overcome, particularly after the death of General Juan Prim, the chief support of the Duke of Aosta to be King of Spain. When King Amedeo I declared Spain "ungovernable" and abdicated his throne to return to Italy, Spain fell victim to its first republic which, thankfully, was so inept that it died a quick death.

Messaggio di fine anno del Principe Amedeo di Savoia Duca d'Aosta

Italiani,

l’anno che sta per concludersi verrà ricordato anche perché, dopo secoli, un Pontefice ha rinunciato al suo ministero manifestando umiltà ma anche determinazione e senso di responsabilità, di cui i governanti tutti dovrebbero tenerne conto, gesto che collego al Re Umberto II che, dopo gli anni della Luogotenenza e del Regno,affrontò la via dell’esilio, con spirito di sacrificio, nell’interesse supremo della Nazione.

Quello che maggiormente mi preoccupa è la crisi economica che attanaglia e rende difficile la vita politica e sociale del nostro popolo. Auspico che il Governo decida di affrontare, senza indugi, le inderogabili necessità di tante famiglie in difficoltà,dei giovani disoccupati, dei pensionati ridotti alla miseria e abbia la volontà politica di rilanciare la produzione, sì da creare nuovi posti di lavoro e, con essi, una maggiore tranquillità economica. E’ quanto mai necessaria la pacificazione nazionale, ancora latente, in modo da consentire al Parlamento di fare tutte quelle indispensabili riforme di cui la Nazione abbisogna per renderla al passo con i tempi ed in linea con le democrazie più progredite. Auspico venga meno l’esilio per i Re e le Regine d’Italia, memoria storica per tutta la Nazione, tuttora sepolti all’estero.

Italiani, è necessario cooperare fraternamente. Il Governo deve essere attento e responsabile nella gestione della spesa pubblica ed essere a disposizione dei cittadini senza gravarli con tassazioni inique. L’avvenire della nostra Patria è sempre nei miei pensieri. La Casa che ho l’onore e l’onere di rappresentare è vicina a tutti voi, non dimenticando i Soldati che, all’estero, sono impegnati in difficili operazioni

di pace e, anche a nome di mio figlio Aimone, desidero far pervenire a tutti i più fervidi auguri, auspicando che il 2014 possa essere l’anno della rinascita morale e materiale dell’Italia.

Buon Natale e Buon Anno 2014 !

Da Castiglion Fibocchi, 25 dicembre 2013

 Amedeo di Savoia

Messaggio di fine anno del Principe Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia

Cari Italiani,

seguendo una consuetudine particolarmente cara al mio Augusto Genitore, S.M. il Re Umberto II, esco dal silenzio per condividere alcune riflessioni e soprattutto per formulare a Voi e alle Vostre famiglie l’augurio più sincero per un felice e prospero anno nuovo.

La crisi e il disagio sociale recentemente manifestatosi nel nostro Paese attraverso nuove forme di protesta ci pongono davanti alla necessità di un governo forte e di una maggioranza sufficientemente coesa per intraprendere le riforme attese da troppi anni, senza avere timore di ricorrere a elezioni anticipate qualora ve ne fosse necessità.

Travolti dalla frenesia della contemporaneità, non dobbiamo dimenticare che le risorse del nostro popolo sono infinite e lo abbiamo dimostrato in tanti momenti difficili della nostra storia. Per questo, è più che mai necessario che la politica riconsegni la parola «speranza» al nostro vocabolario, come ci ha recentemente ricordato il Santo Padre Francesco.

La speranza è il nutrimento della nostra giornata: un importante messaggio che sarà doveroso richiamare anche in vista di Expo2015.

Il Santo Natale è trascorso senza che i nostri due marò Massimiliano Latorre e Salvatore Girone abbiano avuto la possibilità di riabbracciare i propri cari, sopportando nell’adempimento del proprio dovere l’umiliazione e il sacrificio.

Desidero far giungere loro, attraverso queste poche righe, il mio memore saluto: Casa Savoia vi è vicina e attende con trepidazione il giorno del vostro ritorno in Patria!

Con l’inizio del nuovo anno, inizieranno in Europa le celebrazioni per il centenario della Prima Guerra Mondiale che per il nostro Paese cadranno nel 2015.

Non posso sottrarmi da un appello affinché questa ricorrenza non sia trascurata, augurandomi che la nostra classe politica non rimanga insensibile nei confronti delle precarie condizioni dei numerosi sacrari

militari oggi dimenticati. Questi sacelli, infatti, sono un memoriale di pietre vive della nostra storia e dei nostri valori.

La Grande Guerra è presente in tutte le case attraverso i ricordi e le testimonianze dei nostri padri. Siamo dunque orgogliosi di Vittorio Veneto e del Piave! Nessuno può pensare di cancellare queste pagine di sofferenza e di gioia.

In vista di queste celebrazioni, a nome di tutta la mia Famiglia, concorde nella richiesta, rivolgo un fervido appello affinché, entro il 2015, il Re della Vittoria, S.M. Vittorio Emanuele III, possa finalmente riposare nel Pantheon di Roma, insieme agli altri Sovrani che ancora sono sepolti in terra d’esilio.

Rivolgo un particolare pensiero alla Sardegna, recentemente colpita da una drammatica alluvione e ringrazio quanti, nel nome della mia Casa, si sono immediatamente mobilitati per portare assistenza, conforto e sollievo ai più bisognosi. Forza Paris!

Non posso concludere questo messaggio senza rivolgere uno speciale augurio all’Arma dei Carabinieri, voluta dal mio Avo Vittorio Emanuele I, nei secoli fedele, che quest’anno celebrerà il bicentenario della propria fondazione. In loro, l’Italia migliore.

A Voi ed a tutte le Vostre famiglie, ai militari in Patria e all’Estero, ai Servitori dello Stato Civili e Militari, a tutti i miei cari concittadini, formulo i migliori auguri di prosperità e di felicità per il nuovo anno.

Vittorio Emanuele

King Odoacer and Ancient Irredentism

It was on this day in 480 AD that Odoacer, King of Italy (who had earlier forced the abdication of the last emperor Romulus Augustulus and pensioned him off) occupied Dalmatia in what is now Croatia. The area then became part of his Kingdom of Italy but, of course, that was only the beginning. The irredentist cause in this area in particular is often not understood by outsiders or even many Italians, mostly because, unlike other areas farther north, the Italian population in Dalmatia has not been very large in modern times. However, the idea that Dalmatia should be Italian has very deep roots and, despite being interrupted on various occasions, recurs throughout history. Of course, originally, it was part of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire who were the first to give it the name Dalmatia after a local tribe (Emperor Diocletian even had a magnificent palace there). After the fall of the Roman Empire it became part of the original Kingdom of Italy under Odoacer on December 9, 480 AD. Later this became the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy under King Theodoric the Great who replaced Odoacer and Dalmatia was included in that as well. Later it was contested by the Croats, Hungarians, Byzantines and even raided by the Mongols. However, it had been part of the Kingdom of Italy in the Dark Ages and was restored to Italian rule in the Middle Ages when it became part of the maritime empire of the Republic of Venice. After the decline and defeat of Venice it became part of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy and when that fell was absorbed by the Austrian Empire, later Austria-Hungary and grouped with Croatia. However, even in Austria-Hungary it was always listed separately from Croatia in the list of the territories of the Kingdom of Hungary (in union with the Austrian Empire). It was then occupied by the modern Kingdom of Italy during World War II but the final status of it was still disputed during the short-life of the Independent State of Croatia under the nominal reign of Prince Aimone of Aosta. Since then it has been part of Yugoslavia and now Croatia.

General Alessandro Pirzio Biroli

Alessandro Pirzio Biroli was one of the most accomplished (and later controversial) Italian soldiers of World War II. He was born in Bologna on July 23, 1877 into a family of noted explorers. An athletic youth, he was a particularly skilled swordsman and won the silver medal in fencing at the 1908 Olympic Games in London. He joined the army as a young man, served in the First World War and by 1918 was promoted to commanding officer of the 8th Bersaglieri Regiment. In 1921 he was assigned to the General Division in Padua and has his first experience with the new Fascist movement. A short time later, however, he was sent to head the military mission to Ecuador, remaining there until 1927. After returning to Italy he was made commander of the Monte Nero Division in 1932 and in 1933 was promoted to command the V Trieste Corps, a post he held until 1935. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War he commanded the colorful Eritrean Colonial Corps. His men fought with such vigor that they were often employed as assault troops during the campaign, in spite of their training being somewhat outdated and the fact that they were often poorly equipped. This was due to a combination of the skill of their general and the tenacity of the Eritrean colonial troops who had a particular zeal for fighting the Ethiopians, their traditional enemies, who were always threatening to conquer them. For Biroli, the high point of the campaign was his capture of Dese which had formerly been the military headquarters of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.

Emerging from the war with a military record of success, though with some the fact that he commanded African troops meant he might not always have the reputation he deserved, General Biroli continued in the colonies, serving for a year as Governor of Amhara province, the native land of the original Ethiopians, in Italian East Africa (the combined name for Eritrea, Somalia and Abyssinia). When the Kingdom of Italy entered World War II, General Biroli saw action on the Balkan front, taking command of the Ninth Army in 1941, leading it in the latter stages of the war with Greece. After the Greek surrender, General Biroli entered the most controversial phase of his career, being assigned as military governor of the Kingdom of Montenegro, a post he held until 1943. A firm believer in the imperial legacy and destiny of Italy, Biroli was convinced that it was their duty to bring Roman civilization to the backward lands of the Balkans and he would tolerate no opposition to this mission. He was also disgusted by the contrasting reputations of the German and Italian soldiers with the Germans always viewed as the harsh, brutally efficient warriors and the Italians as the casual, fun-loving “nice guys”. As far as the locals were concerned, the appointment of Biroli as governor certainly meant, ‘no more mister nice guy’.

In a pamphlet distributed to his men, General Biroli encouraged his Italian troops to deal with any opposition harshly, reminding them that “It is the same people against whom we fought for centuries on the shores of the Adriatic.” He did not see only the present conflict but also the Slavs who had fought for Austria-Hungary against Italy in the First World War, the Turks and their Slavic subjects who fought the Italian city-state of Venice and all the way back to the barbarian tribes first subdued by the Roman legions thousands of years earlier. Enemy partisans were dealt with severely and their friends, family and associates often suffered along with them. Adolf Hitler was certainly impressed and awarded General Biroli the Knight Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a rare award for anyone much less a foreigner not of the highest military rank. However, in all fairness to General Biroli, it should also be remembered that World War II in the Balkans was an extremely brutal affair all around. Throughout history, even to our own time, it is a region where mercy is so rarely given that few expect it. The communist enemies he was fighting were every bit as brutal as he was and quite often much more so.

The Italian armistice of 1943 marked the end of his military career. The general who had fought red guerillas in Montenegro and led African troops to victory in Ethiopia retired to private life and died in Rome on May 20, 1962.

Italian Air Offensive in the Middle East

Many may not be aware of this (I have an entire shelf full of books on Italian military history in my library and I was unaware of it) but in the early days of World War II, planes of the Regia Aeronautica carried out a record-breaking, long-range bombing raid on British installations on the east side of the Arabian peninsula in the Persian Gulf. Stripped down and loaded with extra fuel and launched from the Italian-held island of Rhodes in the eastern Mediterranean, on October 19, 1940 a force of four Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.82 bombers attacked the British Protectorate of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, damaging the local American-operated oil refineries. The bombers also hit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia but that had very little impact. These areas were taken by complete surprise as the British certainly never expected an attack to come so far from the front-lines. The planes made their bombing run and were able to return successfully to land in Italian East Africa, setting down in Eritrea. It was not an extremely crucial attack as there was not much damage that only four bombers could do and those stripped down to be flying fuel cans, however, in did cause a panic and sent the message to the British high command that there were no safe areas and that the armed forces of Italy could reach out over incredible distances to strike at them wherever they were. Because of this, Allied forces had to divert resources to defend areas that they never would have thought would have been in any danger -and most honestly were not, but still, because of the raid on Bahrain, the Italians had proven that they could reach the British in some of their most vulnerable areas so that action had to be taken.

On This Day in History

On this day in 1812 the Servant of God Maria Cristina of Savoy, daughter of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia and Queen consort of the Two-Sicilies was born. Support her cause for canonization!

Queen Maria Cristina

Her Cause Started

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