Italico Valore - A more successful 1848 revolution in Italy - a TL

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21. EYES SOUTHWARD

The Italian peninsula had been divided for a decade by the Confederation in the North and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the South. Industrialized, liberal and internationally recognized the former, reactionary, agrarian and isolated the latter. In 1859 Ferdinand II died of septicemia leaving the kingdom to his son Francesco II who inherited a backward and obscurantist kingdom, in which the first industrial and social progress had been frozen by the decade of reaction to the riots of '48 and Sicilian independence, in distinct disadvantage compared to the Italian Confederation. The young king understood the gravity of the situation and from the first moment he tried to find a solution to the stalemate of the kingdom by raising taxes and expropriating land from the church and landowners, making them resent the central power in Naples.

As the king tried to bring the kingdom into the modern age, the city elites were already plotting against the Bourbon monarchy: the unification of the North had raised great hopes for a future unity between the two nations, fueled by the liberal ideas of Italian nationalism propagated by the Confederation. These bourgeois had already made first contacts with their counterparts in Turin, finding the favor of the Count of Cavour who saw the destiny of the Confederation in the unity of Italy and thus the first seeds of rebellion were planted in the south.

Naples was the crown jewel of the Two Sicilies,​

The other thorny issue was the continuous stay of Pius IX in Gaeta who, for ten years now, had refused to return to Rome, transferring the papal see to the south. For the Confederate peoples, the Pope's refusal was just another proof of his greed and desire to rule on earth as a sovereign not as a shepherd of Christian souls and consequently the Siccardi laws, although not adored, were accepted by the population as necessary as the Pope seen as one of the many reactionaries opposed to the unification of Italy.

Cavour had spent the previous years modernizing and preparing the North for the eventual conquest of the South: he knew that the region was lagging behind and would have been much more so after the social and industrial developments that the Confederation was experiencing. The Prime Minister's final goal was to complete what started in 1848 and unite the peninsula under a single government that would allow her to become the Great Power that Italy should be. So it was that the count contacted the only man capable of destabilizing the Bourbon kingdom: Giuseppe Garibaldi, currently general of the Roman and Confederate armies. Between the two there was no good blood especially because of political ideas but the two men both had the same goal: the unity of the peninsula and so it was that, after some discussions, Garibaldi agreed to start sowing the seeds of rebellion in the south to give the Confederation a casus belli to intervene and restore order.

Garibaldi, accompanied by Nino Bixio and nearly a thousand volounteers coming from both the Confederation and in form of exiles from Two Sicilies who would be the spearhead of the plan. The irregulars crossed the border between the Confederation and Two Sicilies in April 1860 and started spreading across the kingdom, using the contacts with liberals and anti-bourbon rebels that Cavour had carefully crafted after the London Conference. Among them the men delivered arms and started ro make plans for a general insurrection in the summer, expanding the network and preparing themselves for the general revolt.

When summer came, the efforts of Garibaldi and his men payed off as in July a general insurrection, stroked by the heat and inability of the government to cope with the troubles of the kingdom, erupted in the major cities and in the coutryside, led in the former by liberals and in the latter landowners alienated by the taxes that Francis had to impose in order to reign in the finances of the kingdom. Quickly the army was occupied with putting down the rebellion that had devolved in street fighting in Naples where Garibaldi's mastery of guerrilla warfare payed off as the volounteers and insurrectionists defeated the garrison and forced to flee the city, with the urban elite establishing a regency council under the protection of Garibaldi and invited the Confederation to restore order to the south that was rebelling. The news of the first successes of the expedition spread rapidly throughout the peninsula, while Europe watched without interfering: the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had very few friends and of these nobody was willing to threaten an intervention to preserve their territorial integrity.

An expert in guerrilla warfare and insurgency, Garibaldi was the best men to stir up chaos in Two Sicilies​

Seeing that his plan was successful, Cavour gave orders to the Confederate armies (two Sardinians and one Roman) to cross the border with the south to restore order in the kingdom that was collapsing into total chaos due to the revolt. The Confederate army advanced along the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts, finding little opposition as the army of the Two Sicilies was deployed within the kingdom to counter the riots. At the head of the army was Vittorio Emanuele II who was warmly welcomed by the population, of Naples where he met Garibaldi and the regency council offered him the crown of the kingdom, which Vittorio Emanuele accepted.

When Francis II learned of the Piedmontese invasion he understood that there was nothing more to do and, together with his wife Maria Sofia of Bavaria, he took refuge in Bari where, together with a small group of loyalists, he embarked on a steamer to Zara, in the Austrian Empire, where Maximilian I, married to Maria Sofia's sister Elizabeth, would offer him protection in his exile.

Having all but taken over the kingdom, Cavour started making plans to split the kingdom in smaller entities but this proved to be too much for Vittorio Emanuele which dismissed Cavour after two weeks of debate, ending the first Cavour government and replacing him with Rattazzi who agreed on preserving the integrity of the kingdom but argued for reduced centralization in order to export the Confederate model in the south. In the meantime, while the authorities met with notables, liberals and republicans, the army would occupy the region bringing back the order that had vanished at the time of the fall of the royal power, especially in the mountainous regions where gangs of bandits terrorized the population and slowed down the Confederate efforts.

Pius IX was arrested in Gaeta, unable to flee anywhere, and brought back to the Papal Palaces in Rome from where he declared to be a prisoner of Italy, but his statements fell on mostly deaf ears in the rest of Europe. For the first time since the Roman Empire the Italian peninsula was united under a single banner and at last the goals of 1848 were reached.

 

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22 A TALE OF TWO GERMANIES

The German situation during the early 1860s was quite eventful: more than a decade after the revolutions, the Austrian Empire, led by Maximilian I and the popular Sissi, had reconfirmed itself as the foremost power of southern Germany and the confederation: although it was slightly less industrialized than Prussia, the regions of Austria and Bohemia had experienced a strong industrial development that had allowed the Empire to fill its economic and productive gaps. Trieste had become one of the largest ports in the Adriatic, where the Italian majority mixed together with the other ethnic groups of the Empire that had come during the economic boom of the city, Prague had become one of the main industrial centers, favored by the proximity of resources such as coal and iron that had allowed the Czechs to rapidly develop a heavy industry. With this industrialization there was also a sort of national awareness of the population that, observing how Hungary had "detached" from Austria obtaining a semi-independence strengthened by Maximilian's liberal ideas, began to ask for some recognition for it's industriousness . The imperial authorities were always reluctant to grant any autonomy also because Bohemia had risen during the '48, but the Emperor took the warning that, going on with the years and developing the Empire, the various nations within it could be acting as catalysts for its implosion therefore began to think, together with his experts, of a method to create a unique national identity for the peoples of the Empire, to avoid the social bomb that was about to explode. The armed forces had been reorganized with more emphasis on training and professionalism, with the introduction of a selective conscription among the inhabitants of the empire especially for those of German, Czech and Slovenian languages, while Hungary had its "Defense Forces" commanded by an Austrian general and which responded to the Emperor himself. Austria possessed one of the best armies and one of the largest industrial bases in Germany, but was stuck in an arm wrestling with Prussia for the domination of the confederation.

Otto Von Bismarck, Prussian chancellor and inventor of Realpolitik, believed that Prussia should rule Northern Germany as a single entity, rather than separate states​

Prussia had emerged rather shaken by the events of 1848-1849, suffering a serious humiliation in the Schlesweig war, being defeated by the Nordic nations, but also because of its failed attempt to create a more centralized union of the North German states. Although Germany was now divided into two spheres of influence, the Prussian one was weaker than the Austrian, which caused Berlin politicians a lot of envy towards the imperials. The defeats had spurred King William I to reorganize his army in search of the military standards of Frederick the Great, when Prussia possessed the best army in Europe. The training and discipline were brought back to ancient standards and the Prussian military model was rationalized which in the mid-60s was able to mobilize most of its reservists and regulars in a short time and transfer them over long distances thanks to the experiments carried out on the mobility of the railways that were springing up everywhere in the kingdom and in northern Germany. The railways and the army were just one of the many symbols of the rebirth of Prussia, another was the establishment of an industrial area in the Ruhr valley, led by Alfred Krupp and his industries which became the main suppliers of war material for the army. Thus began to develop a military industrial complex that provided a clear image of the pillars of Prussia. But it was not only these things that favored the rebirth of the kingdom: he was a man above all, Otto Von Bismarck. Bismarck had spent an interesting decade, initially in the Frankfurt parliament where his reactionary ideology had turned into a pragmatic conservatism influenced by the liberal ideas of the time, then as ambassador of Prussia to St. Petersburg and Paris where he had had the opportunity to study the ways of the two nations. In 1862 he was recalled to Prussia and appointed Minister President by William I with the agreement that would pass the military budget, essential for carrying out the reforms of the army. Bismarck, thanks to his great oratory and political skills, managed to force a compromise between the liberals and the conservatives of parliament, cementing his position as prime minister in the eyes of the king who had always had reservations about man.

Von Bismarck's real test occurred three years later in 1865 when Denmark, under Christian IX, passed a law with which he annexed the territories of Schleswig Holstein to the kingdom of Denmark despite these being an integral part of the German Confederation. He quickly contacted the Austrians and the North German allies to jointly request a repeal of the law which, as he had foreseen, did not happen, giving the German nations a casus belli to declare war on Denmark, a war that saw Prussia in the forefront eager to test its new army against the Danes who this time received no help from the Swedes, kept under control by Bismarck because of the commercial ties between the two nations. The Prussian armies failed to deploy as quickly as believed due to the scarce use of railways and disorganization in the transfer, allowing the Danes to regroup around fortified and defensible positions that gave the Prussians a bloody nose when they tried to take them. The Austrian advance was null as their troops were far away and still deploying to the front, being in Central Germany when the first battles begun. The Danish forces were unable to stop Prussian and north German numbers, retreating to Schlei. There, after a week of consolidation the first Austrian units joined the battle, giving the Germans more men to force the Danes out of Holstein, as they did due to superior numbers and some small improvements in strategy especially by Prussia, while Austria was still operating with outdated tactics despite their ongoing army reform. This shocked Moltke and Bismarck, showing them the weaknesses of their main regional adversary. The most important battle of the war was that of Flensburg where about 20,000 Danes had fortified the city with rudimentary trenches and guns. This set of static defenses and artillery caused heavy losses to the Prussians who for two weeks failed to take the city. Only thanks to an intuition of Moltke to concentrate the attack in one point of the fortifications the German armies managed to take the city inflicting heavy losses to the Danes who did not use the railway to retreat, being cut off shortly after by the Austrians. Having lost the army and without the help of France and Great Britain, Christian IX had to ask the Confederation for peace and so, after four months of war, the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein returned to German hands, the first in those Prussian and second in Austrian, as enshrined in the 1866 Gastein convention. In exchange for the transfer of the duchies, Denmark would recieve Prussian investment, in a political plot of Bismark to sweeten defeats and turn enemies in allies, but also to gain control of the crucial access to the North Sea, with German ports mainly located in Stettin, Danzig and Königsberg.

Outgunned and outmatched, the Danes proved to be brave soldiers against their foes​

 

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23. UNITED ITALY

With the south now under control, the whole Italian peninsula was united in a single political entity and the Confederate and Piedmontese governments moved quickly to consolidate this position. On October 15th 1860, Vittorio Emanuele II was crowned king of Naples in Naples, in presence of many Neapolitan nobles and notables, taking for his family the last independent crown in Italy. He and his wife Maria Adelaide were then paraded through the city and brought to the Palace of Caserta where the king and his family spent the rest of the month.

Even though the borders moved south, the heart of the Confederation remained Milan, it's capital and main industrial and railway hub, which was booming in this period due to the concentration of power and wealth, rapidly becoming one of Europe's most important cities. Plans were drawn up for moving the capital to Rome after the annexation of Two Sicilies, but those were scratched by Cavour who believed them to be too premature and decided to keep the capital in Milan while making allusions to a future transfer of the capital to Rome to satisfy the most nationalistic proponents of the idea.

A few days before the crowning of the King of Naples, Rattazzi had resigned after Cavour had expressed the desire to return to the political arena after three months of rest in his estate. After a week of vacancy, the position of Prime Minister was assumed by Cavour, starting his second term. From the first moment he got back into action, knowing that speed was essential in a decade as eventful as the 1860s. He extended the Siccardi laws to the South by expropriating acres from the church and placing them under state control, using them as insurance to obtain other low-cost loans from England which had become the financier of the young kingdom. In the north the agrarian reform was proceeding swiftly, with the power of the large estates increasingly restricted and the rationalization of the lands, but in the south, the landowners were a big problem: the landowners had rebelled against Francis II and expected some remuneration from di Cavour who was reluctant to grant it, as it would not have been functional to have an economically dysfunctional south as the local economy was based on agriculture. The count decided to stall for a few years, leaving the landowners in peace while he planned structures, collected money and commissioned administrators to extend land reform into the kingdom of Naples.

A southern farmer. Povery was widespread in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies due to archaic economic models and resistance to reform​

The "Southern Question" had been shelved for the time being, extending the Confederation's basic administrative laws to the region to create a substrate to be modeled later when the time was right. Therefore the government moved on to the other thorny issue of the moment: the Pope. Pius IX had shut himself up in the Vatican palaces from which he had declared himself a prisoner of Italy, burning up the few sympathies that remained among the conservatives. The power of the Catholic Church was still very strong in Italy and the count aimed to strongly reduce it according to his dogma "free church in a free state". The solution was the Laws of Guarantees, a series of compromise articles between the conciliatory and extremist factions of the federal parliament: the Pope could enjoy the Vatican palaces and remain bishop of Rome, would have the inviolability of correspondence and the possibility of entertaining relations with foreign states, as well as being protected by a detachment of Swiss guards while the Italian state would have reserved the bishops' oath of loyalty. The law was accepted by the king and the parliament but Pius IX categorically rejected it as it limited papal power, humiliating himself more and more in the eyes of the Italian Catholic masses who had turned their gaze towards the kingdom, abandoning the church.

The industrialization of the north proceeded swiftly with the financing of further railway lines that were beginning to sprout like mushrooms along the Po Valley, facilitated by the flat terrain and the presence of the main productive centers of the nation. Lombardy had become the economic engine of the peninsula, thanks to a large, educated and industrious population, in which many national investments were concentrated, followed by Piedmont and Tuscany which was slowly abandoning its character as an idyllic agricultural province for an urbanized and industrialized one, especially around Florence and the coast. The United Provinces and Veneto experienced a start of industrialization during this period, in the first case financed by Lombard investors and in the second by Venetian investors with Venice becoming the main port of the Adriatic, in direct competition with Trieste for hegemony, concentrating a quantity of wealth that has not been seen since the days of the Serenissima, which was reinvested in the mainland on the basis of the capitalist spirit of the republic. Rome and Adria still remained mainly agricultural together with the South but Sicily, led energetically by Alberto Amedeo I, had created a thriving naval industry and was becoming one of the most developed states of the Federation.

Milan and Lombardy were well on their way to become Italy's main industrial region at the end of the 1860s
​

The Confederation was also consolidated from an international point of view: according to Cavour the best way to do it was through a marriage between Umberto, son of Vittorio Emanuele, and a scion of a European reigning house, such as the Romanovs or the Coburg-Gotha. In 1855, at the time of the first universal exposition in London, Vittorio Emanuele and his family were in the city and were invited to Buckingham Palace where the king met his "friend" Victoria again, and presented his eldest son Umberto to the British court, who introduced him to the sons of Victoria and Albert, including Alice. Vittoria noticed that the young Umberto reminded her of her father, but more cultured. The young prince had received both a conservative and liberal upbringing thanks to his mother Maria Adelaide's insistence that she wanted a son who could rule, not a soldier like her husband. When it was time to look for a wife for the young Umberto, Cavour immediately thought of turning to the Coburg-Gotha family, in particular to Princess Alice, third-born and a few months older than Umberto. The count, through the ambassador in London, managed to arrange a meeting between him, Vittorio Emanuele, Umberto, Victoria, Alice and Albert at Buckingham Palace where the prime minister presented the heir to the throne to the princess. The two spent a few days together and, although they diverged on some views, they greatly appreciated each other, with Umberto and Alice exchanging a photo upon his return to Italy. Victoria, linked to Vittorio Emanuele by a friendly relationship deepened over the years (the queen considered the king of Italy the bravest man she had ever known), consented to the marriage despite the Savoy's Catholic faith. The wedding was celebrated in 1864, when Umberto was 20 and Alice 21. The young couple embarked on a long honeymoon in Italy and in the British imperial possessions.

Marriage aside, Cavour's return to the international scene at the head of a nation that could very well be considered a Great Power allowed him to strengthen traditionally existing ties with France and England, but also to open friendly diplomacy with Prussia. seen as a counterweight to Austria and Russia, linked to Italy by an ancient historical and cultural link. Diplomacy with France was particularly important because Cavour found himself contending the parliament with the increasingly powerful colonial lobby that advocated for the expansion in Africa and Asia of Italian possessions, starting from Tunisia, heavily indebted to Italy. Cavour gained a sphere of influence over Tunisia while the French were more interested in colonizing and consolidating Algeria. The opportunity for the capture of Tunisia came in 1864 when the bey declared bankruptcy, attracting the ire of the Italian financiers who asked the government to intervene to get their money back. The intervention consisted in sending a fleet that shelled Tunis and landed a contingent of 5000 men under general Domenico Cocchiari who defeated the 4000 strong Tunisian army and occupied the city capturing the Bey. He then signed a treaty surrendering foreign, economic and military powers to Italy, along with granting more rights for Italian settlers and people in the region, becoming a protectorate directly administered by the Confederation with the newly minted Ministry of the Colonies, although it was formally under Ottoman rule. The Sublime Porte protested the Italian move but in the middle of Tanzimat reforms who were being opposed by the more conservative members of the court and without allies as France and Britain were on friendly terms with Italy also thanks to the construction of the Suez Canal. So itcould do little to prevent it and by the end of the year Tunisia was in Italian hands.

With the peninsula under the control of the Confederation, Italy was now able to expand it's views outside, mainly towards Italian majority regions still in Austria and along the Adriatic. With the construction of the Suez Canal in progress, led by French, British and Italians, a new way to Asia was about to be opened and Italian company Rubattino was searching for a strategic spot in which they wanted to place a coaling station for ships that will flow through the Red Sea. The buyout between the Italians and the local sultan happened in 1865. Rubattino was sponsored by the Italian government which, after the establishment of a protectorate over Tunisia, wanted to keep a low profile in colonial dealings.

 

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Credits to @Drex for this map

 

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25. BRIGANTAGE

With the annexation of the South to the Confederation, new problems quickly emerged in the new territories acquired, so different from those previously under the control of the Confederation: the North had been united in the iron and blood of the patriotic struggle against the Austrians and the willing union of the various states while the South had been taken after a popular revolt which arose both thanks to the Piedmontese actions and thanks to the exacerbation of the discontent of the population under the Bourbons and who saw a better life in the Confederation.

Unfortunately, that better life failed to materialize quickly as the burocratic nightmare of incorporating another kingdom in the Confederation begun to take place. The south needed to be brought up to speed with the north and that meant extending measurements, documents, currency and trade laws to the Kingdom of Naples, but also extending the Siccardi laws. Due to the Pope's hostility to the Confederation and high esteem of the southern church, many paesants saw the expropriation and suppression of church orders as ungodly. More attention was given to southern industry, usually accustomed to protectionist duties and now being introduced in a free market regime. The government ensured state subsides to prevent an industrial collapse, allowing factiories to keep most of their workers and in some cases, even expand business. The most pressing thing was the land reform that Cavour had decided to postpone while he needed the collaboration of local landowners, but tne Neapolitan government, elected soon after Vittorio Emanuele was crowned king, started using it's huge treasury to buy off the land of the smaller nobles and impoverished landowners, sowing the first steps of land reform.

Southern brigands pose for a photo​

The combination of remaining pro-Bourbon sentiment, economic hardships due to the sorry state of the southern economy and the lack of land reform caused resentment towards the work of the Confederation, pushing the inhabitants already incited by Bourbon loyalists still in contact with Francis II who from Vienna provided money and weapons to the population who wanted to resist the occupiers from the north, to go into hiding by joining irregular bands of brigands (some made up of real criminals, others of Bourbon stragglers and deserters with combat experience) whose purpose was to counter the Nordic takeover. The movementnever gathered widespread participation but nontheless managed to recruit many men in the countryside but not in the cities where the liberals and the bourgeois had consolidated their power, making the urban environments hostile to the cause of the brigands. These, out of spite, carried out raids and murders in the main urban centers, hitting the "collaborators" with the Confederation.

The disorder that arose in the south in the period 1861-62 prompted the Cavour government to take measures to seriously combat the problem, starting with the sending of General La Marmora and 60,000 men, including many Bersaglieri, to the south with the order to re-establish the state control in the provinces. 20,000 Sicilian and 10,000 Adriatic soldiers participated in the operations, the first in Calabria and the second in the Abruzzi, one of the regions most affected by banditry and which saw many clashes between regulars and criminals. The armies quickly took control of the cities and averted the raids of the brigands who suffered many losses during these attempts, which discouraged them from attacking the urban centers, retreating into the mountains and countryside. Usually the army performed police duties to ease the burden on the southern police and Carabinieri who were still being reorganized and were still low on numbers, non managing to cover all the land assigned to them.

In the meantime, the Pope had shut himself up in the Vatican palaces to criticize the work of the Confederation and to strongly oppose any Italian political union. Eager to undo the Confederation, the Pope secretly provided what little support he could to the southern brigands, angered by the continuing repression of religious privileges with the extension of the Siccardi laws, also acting as a link between their leaders and the king in Austria.

In 1863 the turning point of brigandage was reached, with the initiative that passed into the hands of the regular soldiers: La Marmora had devised a strategy aimed at vigorously countering the brigand bands composed of former soldiers and trained personnel, by far the most effective and lethal as well as the most faithful to the cause of Bourbon restoration. The major clashes between the army and the Bourbons took place in Basilicata and Puglia and ended with the extirpation of the gangs, chased out of their caves and hiding places in the hills and countryside.

With the annihilation of the expert brigands, the suppression of the revolt turned into a police action led by Carabinieri units, both local and from all the Confederation which went on to hunt down the criminal gangs that remained hidden along the Sila and the Apennines. They were still aided by the Army but most units were being gradually retired and moved north along the border with Austria.

Carabinieri ambushed by brigands. The Carabinieri gained their reputation as ruthless no-nonsense law enforcement officers during the repression of the brigands​

Brigands still threatened the lines of communication between the three armies, consisting of narrow mountain passes or along the coasts: the construction of telegraph stations was still in progress and telegraphic line were easily cut off by brigands taking down the poles or cutting the wires, forcing La Marmora to rely on messengers on horseback easily intercepted by brigands lurking along the roads. Despite these disadvantages in 1864 the activity of the brigands was reduced considerably also by the ceased economic and legitimist support of Francis II to the cause that he had been able to observe how the Confederation had not collapsed under the friction of the war (a mere illusion from the beginning), but also pushed by emperor Maximilian who had begun to adopt a more conciliatory tone with Italy. In 1865 the south of Italy was declared pacified after for years of banditry and tens of thousand of deaths, mostly people killed by brigands or brigands themselves killed by the army and police.

The end of brigandage is also to be attributed to the actions of the Confederate government which, in the last years of the struggle, passed from an uncompromising position to one that favored repentance and improved the living conditions of the inhabitants to dissuade them from joining the gangs: the land reform was initiated, rationalizing the largest estates and ceding land to small farmers, using state finances to compensate landowners, but also financing the construction of railways and the development of extractive activities to diversify the southern economy.

 

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25 THE END OF AN AGE

Cavour during his late years. He was one of the most well known and respected politicians in Europe and Italy, as the man had built the Confederation​

The remainder of 1860 was spent by the Confederation trying to put its finances in order: the rapid industrial, railway, military and social expansion had dramatically increased the expenses of both the Confederation and the individual states. For the management and monitoring of these expenses, in addition to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the First Confederal Bank was established, a banking institution controlled by the government with the task of preparing the ground for the future union of currencies (as in the single states were still using old currencies but with a fixed exchange rate that saw the Piedmontese Lira in a position of dominance over other currencies), but also to grant, control and collect the numerous loans that the state made to its companies, many of the which occurred with foreign money, especially British.

Foreign loans were covered by the numerous properties expropriated by the church. These were often used either as a pledge or converted into public utility structures if buildings, redistributed to peasants if land plots. Although excellent as guarantees, the government saw in Italy's dependence on foreign capital a serious problem for the political and financial integrity of the nation as its capital was held in London and not in Milan and the increase in loans increased its interests and charges of Italy abroad. Thus Cavour began to work on a liberal economic reform: previously Italy had traded in a free market but protectionist regime, with numerous constraints for companies which, although they were necessary at the dawn of industrialization, now limited Development. With the economic reform of 1868 the way of doing business in the country was revolutionized by embracing a capitalist model of free market and free enterprise with the government acting as an entrepreneur in essential sectors. The rights of the workers were not ignored or repressed however, as the work laws were not changed for the worse but amended for the better with the introduction of moderately higher wages, more safe working environments, especially in mines, and further restriction to child labour with kids now unable to work in factories.

Another aspect of Cavour's economic reform was that many loans were paid off and other loans started to be repaid more recently. The money for these actions was found by cutting the budget by reducing bureaucracy and by imposing new taxes especially on the middle classes who were enjoying industrialization most of all. Cavour did not want to hit the poorer classes too hard so as not to exacerbate discontent, especially in the regions affected by banditry. Cavour's policy was successful and in 1872 the Confederation would have reached a balanced budget, overcoming it and going into profit.

Despite the rapid industrial expansion along the Po valley, the Italian economy was still based on agriculture which, although of decreasing economic importance, remained the main national export. The agrarian reform had been carried out in the north in the Po Valley and in the Maremma, compensating the large landowners and redistributing the land to small and medium farmers who worked directly on the land. In the south, agrarian reform was still stalled on a large scale by the support that the large landowners provided to the kingdom of Naples, making the local government reluctant to implement an integral reform but laying solid foundations for future change. In Adria, where the landowners power was minimal, there were few resistance to the reform which was carried out thoroughly

In addition to the economic reforms, the 1860s were also a period of national standardization with the issuing of four fundamental codes: the confederal penal code, the confederal civil code, the commercial code and the navigation code. These codifications were carried out by commissions of experts from various states with the aim of creating a single law throughout the Confederation, especially in the most important sectors such as criminal and commercial law. The publication of these codes at the end of the 1860s was a great step forward for the political unity and the approach of the various bodies to the confederation which with the passage of time was slowly accumulating power. The various states still held legislative power over issues such as security, taxation, administration and rights, although uniform Confederal laws existed throughout Italy.

By 1867 Cavour had already understood that he did not have many years to live: malaria had become more persistent than it once was and the medicines he was taking were starting to have less and less effect. For this reason the count began to look for a successor among the ranks of the Liberal-Confederate party, who was identified in the figure of Bettino Ricasoli, a Tuscan patriot, former mayor of Florence and member of the Constituent Assembly already previously noted by the count for his political ability. Ricasoli was introduced to the government with a cabinet position, from which he could begin to get an idea of how the policies in the Confederation's button rooms worked.

Although old and ill, the count was still one of Europe's shrewdest statesmen and managed to add one last success to his long list of conquests for Italy: in 1868 in Spain there had been a liberal rebellion that had ended with the ousting of the unpopular Isabella II and the creation of a provisional revolutionary government which, in addition to writing a constitution inspired by that of 1812 and the Sicilian one, undertook to find a new monarch for Spain, reluctant to become a republic. Through the skilful diplomatic maneuvers of the count who from the first moment had recognized the government and had contacted them through the embassy, the Spanish government rejected both Isabella's son, Alfonso, and Leopoldo Hohenzollern, choosing Amedeo di Savoia, son of Vittorio Emanuele II as king. Crowned in 1869, Amedeo had difficulties initially: new language, new people, new traditions, which led him to comment "the Spaniards are ungovernable" but with the help of Juan Prim, prime minister, his ally who recently escaped an attack, the young king learned to move in the Spanish political environment, pursuing a policy of close relations with Italy.

On 6 June 1871 Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, died in Milan during the exercise of his functions as Prime Minister. Faithful to the last, he had held the confederation for more than 20 years and his efforts had allowed Italy to rise from a jumble of divided states to the level of a Great European Power. Known and adored by the population, respected and feared by political opponents, Cavour's funeral with the procession to Turin, his hometown, was followed by hundreds of thousands of people who came to give their last farewell to the Architect of Unity. With Cavour's death, Bettino Ricasoli became Prime Minister and an era ended for Italy.

 

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27. JOURNEY TO THE BALKANS

The Balkan peninsula had remained incredibly silent during the last twenty years: no rebellion, no revolt, no ethnic violence (of noteworthy dimensions at least), it seemed as if the different peoples who cohabited the peninsula had, all of a sudden, learned to live together in peace.

The Tanzimat reforms had begun to bring the empire into the modern age, investing in education, strengthening the formal equality of all the sultan's subjects, proclaimed freedom of worship, reformed the army bringing it to a European professional model and revitalized the Ottoman economy which had entered an early stage of industrialization. The long peace that reigned in Europe for at least 20 years, without major conflicts, had allowed the empire to concentrate its resources internally, reforming and modernizing itself with positive effects: the Arab and Balkan peoples had become more receptive to the Turks and they were starting to show some willingness to cooperate with each other. The empire had lost sovereignty over Egypt and Tunisia, keeping Libya but cashing in an alliance with Great Britain which was now convinced that the Russian Empire, after years of calm, was just waiting for a chance to strike its old enemy.

Most of the Balkans, especially Greeks, Montenegrins, Serbs and Bulgarians, still dreamed of a independent state from the Ottomans and capable of autonomously deciding its internal and foreign policy. However, the struggle for independence would not have been easy: their enemies had a strong army and a very efficient police and administration system, with the addition of civilians inclined to cooperate with the enemy and irregular militias composed of Turkish inhabitants in the Balkans. A foreign sponsor was needed to be able to become free and most of the Balkans turned to Russia.

Russia was the traditional enemy of the Ottomans, the two empires had fought countless times, with mixed results. Now Russia was completing the first period of reform with Alexander II: among the most important achievements of the Tsar there is certainly the abolition of serfdom, freeing about 30 million people from the land and making them free. Economic reforms aimed at improving the fiscal conditions of the empire, the beginning of industrialization in Moscow, St. Petersburg and along the Don, the expansion of the rights of nationalities cohabiting with the Russians and the improvement of educational systems had propelled the Russia almost to reach parity with the Western states. Russia was also the bastion of Orthodoxy and was led by a council of ministers who supported the Pan-Slav cause calling for a unitary Slavic state. The obstacle to this state was the Ottoman Empire but until now the two empires had maintained cordial relations.

All this changed, but the change did not come from the Balkan Peninsula but from outside, from Romania. In 1866 the new constitution had made no reference to Ottoman sovereignty over the state but at the time that was ignored, with Bucharest making the usual gestures of submission to the Sublime Porte. In 1871 Domnitor of Wallachia and Moldova Carol I announced the independence of his nation from the Ottoman Empire to the assembled chambers of the Romanian parliament, ordering the expulsion of the Turkish garrisons, their administrators and all Turks loyal to the sultan present in Romania, asking for help from the European Powers in the struggle for independence.

The Ottomans were surprised at this unilateral proclamation and sent an ultimatum to the Romanians: to renounce independence and re-establish Ottoman sovereignty over their state or to face the Ottoman army that was already gathering to march on Bucharest. The Romanians wavered at the request, they were not strong enough to defeat the empire, but the Russian ambassador made it clear to the king that whatever happened, they would enjoy Russian support. Strengthened by this guarantee, the Romanians refused and the Turks crossed the Danube on April 27th. The Balkan War had begun.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

28. THE BALKAN WAR

The Balkans at the beginning of the war
​

Before starting to detail the events of the war it is necessary to have some background on the Balkan situation and its peoples in order to better understand future events. There were three independent Balkan nations, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro, which had freed themselves from Turkish control through rebellions or, in the case of Greece, foreign interventions. These nations stared hungrily at the territories inhabited by their compatriots still controlled by the Ottomans and for years they had been waiting for an opportunity to reclaim these lands, sending weapons and equipment to the numerous groups of insurgents who operated clandestinely. The Turks had spread sufficiently in the Balkans, although never sufficiently to form a majority or a large minority within the regions they settled in, however polarizing nationalities against them who also saw them in the process of colonizing their own. lands and pouring fuel on the Balkan fire.

A 50,000-strong Ottoman army under Ahmed Muhtar's command crossed the bridges over the Danube, disarming or dispersing the few hundred Romanian guards guarding the bridges, marching straight to Bucharest in hopes of besieging the city and forcing the Domnitor to retract the its position and re-establish dependence with the Empire. The main body crossed the Danube at Ruse but the inadequacy of the infrastructure to handle such a massive flow of soldiers meant that Muhtar's army arrived on the opposite bank of the Danube on May 5th, ready to move to Bucharest where Carol I had had time to prepare some defenses, fortifying the city and concentrating the 40,000 men of the united army of Wallachia and Moldavia there.

On 8 May the siege of the city began: the Romanians resisted tenaciously for three weeks in the hope of being joined by the Russian armies that rumors spread to keep morale high wanted to be in Moldova and headed for the capital. In reality Russia was still gathering its forces from the vast empire and the bad condition of local infrastructure made this operation long and tedious, making the time gained by the Romanians essential to allow the organization of a Russian army.

When Bucharest fell, Carol fled first to Ploiesti and then to Iasu, accompanied by the 15,000 survivors of the principality's army, where she arrived in mid-June. Here he met with the First Russian Army commanded by Pyotr Vannovsky, with 150,000 men ready to drive the Turks back across the Danube. Receiving no proposal to surrender, the Ottomans sent reinforcements to Ahmed Muhtar, increasing his strength to 80,000 men who were dispersing along Wallachia to keep the area under control and suppress the partisans who were popping up like mushrooms.

The Wallachian campaign began on June 24, 1871 with the Battle of Galati where 25,000 Russians defeated 10,000 Ottomans garrisoning the city. Having conquered the port on the Danube, the Russian army, with 25,000 Wallachian and Moldovan volunteers, split into two armies, the first directed towards Slobozia and the second towards Focsani and Buzau. Muhtar did not waste his forces in trying to counter the enemy, letting them advance by exchanging time for land, during which time his forces fortified Budapest, Slobozia and Ploiesti, where they would meet the enemy.

The first major battle of the war was that of Slobozia where about 90,000 Russians and Romanians clashed against 40,000 Ottomans. Despite the numerical inferiority, the Ottoman forces managed to resist for two weeks, well entrenched and supported by most of the cannons present in Wallachia, attracting the Russian troops in prepared death zones and mowing them down, but in the end the Russian numerical superiority, as well as to the skill of their general, he won the day by driving the Ottomans out of the city. Vannovsky decided to ignore Ploiesti, ordering the army from Buzau to aim directly at Bucharest, where about 140,000 soldiers descended in early September. At the sight of the Russians the city rose up and what should have been a heroic resistance turned into a ferocious urban battle with the Ottomans squeezed between the population and the enemy army outside the city, suffering heavy losses but managing to not be completely annihilated.

With the fall of Bucharest on September 10th, Muhtar managed to bring 30,000 men back to the other side of the Danube, taking refuge in Bulgaria where another 50,000 men mobilized from central Anatolia were waiting for him. The Ottoman army was much better organized than in the past and the introduction of a primordial form of conscription allowed it to fill the ranks more easily than before. The new army of 80,000 Turks entrenched themselves along the Danube, foiling four Russian attempts to cross the river, all of which ended in un bloody failure for attackers who were unable to cross the river under enemy fire. At the end of November both powers entrenched themselves along the Danube looking from opposite banks and the war fell into a stalemate: the Russians had completed their goal, which is to preserve the independence of the United Principalities, but had not yet sent requests to the Ottomans. . The St. Petersburg court was determined to continue the war and unleash an insurrection in the Balkans, to realize the Pan-Slavic ambitions of the policy makers.

During the first year the war was seen as a localized event in the Balkans that would have no repercussions on the continent in general: it was after all a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, but the European Great Powers had their own agenda regarding the crisis. Oriental now degenerated into a real war. For Great Britain it was essential to prevent the Russians from entering the Mediterranean, as well as the conquest of the Dardanelles. France saw the Ottoman Empire as an effective balance for the Russians and had an interest in preserving the Turkish territorial integrity and Austria was on excellent terms with the Russians but had not yet intervened in the conflict despite numerous requests from St. Petersburg, Maximilian preferred to wait for an auspicious moment.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

29. THE LONG YEAR

During the remainder of 1871 the Russian troops tried twice more to cross the Danube, the first attempt failed, the second was a success with the creation of a bridgehead in Douruja, with the Russian advance reaching Constance before being stopped by the Ottoman reinforcements which quickly flowed into the region to plug the holes. At the end of the year there were, along the Danube, about 300,000 Russians and 180,000 Ottomans, entrenched on both sides. The winter brought the fighting to an end but in St. Petersburg the more hawkish voices were pressing on the Tsar for an escalation of the war. Alexander II was sympathetic to the most warlike voices, wishing to strike at his ancient rival and extend the influence of the Empire to the shores of the Mediterranean, which has always been Russia's strategic objective. The Tsar ordered his high command to prepare plans for a new offensive against the Ottomans and ordered the ambassador to Austria to lobby for Austrian intervention in the conflict.

The situation at the beginning of 1872: with Moldova recaptured, the Russians were stalled on the Danube until they managed to cross into northern Dobruja​

Great Britain looked at the conflict in the Balkans with anxiety: the British and Russian Empire had been engaged for two decades in what was called the Great Game, a series of diplomatic, military and colonial moves carried out by the two empires with conflicting objectives : for the Russians it was to reach India and the Mediterranean, for the British it was to maintain their dominion over these areas and repel Russian incursions. The Ottoman Empire was only a pawn in this global chessboard but it was a crucial pawn: its fall would have led to the opening of the Bosphorus to Russian ships and their entry into the Mediterranean. It was therefore crucial that England support the "sick man of Europe" with loans, weapons and instructors, as the Empire was at risk. But if the situation became critical, a limited military intervention, perhaps together with France or Italy, was kept on the cards at Westminster.

In the spring, the 120,000-strong Russian Second Army led by Grigol Dadiani attacked along the Caucasus Mountains from Georgia to Armenia, surprising Ottoman troops who did not expect a Russian attack. The garrisons had been reduced to send to reinforce the Balkans, trusting that the war would remain localized along the Danube and that the Russians would not launch an offensive from the Caucasus given the difficulty of the terrain. Despite this, numerous positions resisted the Russian attack for days but this did not prevent the attackers from breaching numerous points from which they could encircle the Turkish defenses, forcing the defenders to retreat.

The Russian navy had its moment of glory off the coast of Trebizond when a squadron of 10 ships among the most modern of the Black Sea fleet, ambushed a convoy of Ottoman ships consisting of 12 merchant ships and 6 warships, two steam frigates built by England and four sailboats. In half an hour the Ottoman fleet had been sunk by the Russian ships that had approached covered in fog and opened fire. The Tsar was pleased with the victory, which raised the morale of the army, stalled along the Danube and stopped in Anatolia. By early June the Russians had reached Kars in the Eastern Anatolian plateau and advanced to the port of Rize along the coast, before being stopped by the terrain which prevented the Russians from using their mass tactics, allowing the Ottoman defenders. to concentrate forces in a few strategic points to stop the enemy advance, causing the offensive to degenerate into a high-altitude position war in which rudimentary trenches were dug.

Frustrated by the lack of success, the Russian High Command decided on another offensive before the winter, to take place in Dobruja. On July 2, 1872, 150,000 Russians charged into the Ottoman trenches between Mangralia and Silistra, covered by artillery and ships where possible. The Turks who had one man for every three Russians but had had almost a year to entrench themselves, managed to inflict heavy losses on the attackers, making them pay dearly for every meter of land, but the Russian numbers won the battle in the end, managing to break through and advancing in Bulgaria, headed for Varna. The Ottoman command moved everything they had to Bulgaria but as soon as the Turkish troops left the Danube unguarded the Russians launched another assault which was successful without too many casualties. The Ottomans panicked and began a disorganized retreat to the Balkan mountains where, thanks to the coming winter, they stopped the Russian advance 100 km from Sofia.

Russian Cavalry smashing Ottoman defences on the Bulgarian plain​

With the Russian advance the Balkan peoples also rose, causing many distractions to the Ottomans: the Bulgarians disturbed the lines of communication between the front line and Constantinople, the Serbs started a guerrilla war in the areas of their majority, hitting the Ottoman garrisons and the administrative functions inciting the population to revolt. This work was particularly successful with the Serbs in Bosnia who rose up in autumn, driving out the Ottoman garrisons and hunting down collaborators. Greece was hesitant: the Russian advance was too far from its borders which were always guarded by numerous Ottoman troops and without Serbia and Montenegro they did not want to risk entering into conflict alone against the Empire.

The Sublime Porte begged England to send further aid and reinforcements, unable to contain the Russian invasion on two fronts and to preserve the integrity of the Empire in its outlying areas. Seeing the writing on the wall, Prime Minister Disraeli began sending troops and ships to Turkey and the Black Sea but also testing the terrain between the European embassies to build an anti-Russian expeditionary force, especially between France and Italy.

In late 1872 the Russian army broke through the lines on the Danube and advanced in southern Dobruja and Bulgaria, towards the Balkan mountains, while the Turks had to retreat to avoid being encircled ​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

30. ESCALATION

The Ottoman situation in early 1873 was not the best: the natural barrier of the Danube had been breached and now an exhausted and undersupplied army stood between nearly half a million Russians and central Bulgaria, already in revolt like most of the Balkans: in Bosnia the Ottoman authority had even been expelled while in Montenegro and southern Serbia the army was helping the gendarmerie in the suppression of the revolts but with little effectiveness. The terrain of Eastern Anatolia had slowed the Russians but did not stop them, sooner or later they would break through the defenses using their numbers being able to take losses that the Ottomans could not afford. After two years of war the Sublime Porte had difficulty in finding manpower to swell the ranks, the population had begun to suffer the central authority for the death of loved ones and some fringe voices in the privy council had supported ideas of decentralization and revocation of various previously implemented reforms, putting the war effort of Europe's sick man at serious risk.

Fortunately for them, they were not alone. Britain had sent an expeditionary force of 50,000 men which arrived in Bulgaria in the early spring, with more reinforcements arriving from across the empire, along with supplies and weapons the Ottomans desperately needed. British efforts to build an anti-Russian coalition had been in vain: Austria had a good relationship with Russia and was watching the Balkans with interest. Prussia was busy consolidating its control over northern Germany and France had more interest in colonial adventures in Africa than in Europe. Italy was the only one to accept England's request, made sweeter by the stipulation of various treaties that guaranteed Italians access to British ports along the route to China, but also British diplomatic support for the creation of a future colony in Asia. Thus it was that the Italian Confederation sent an expeditionary force of 40,000 men, whose peculiarity was to belong not to the armies of the individual nations but to the Confederate Army. Italian troops along with British reinforcements would be used in a daring plan to distract Russian forces and take pressure off the Ottomans, an operation planned for the summer.

Unfortunately for the Allies the Russian position improved considerably during the spring of 1873: after months of skirmishes the Tsarist army attacked Sofia in force, taking the city after four days of fighting. In this battle the recently arrived British troops faced off with the Russian veterans but the training and quality of the equipment allowed the British not to be overwhelmed like the Turks, who were starting to be demoralized. But the most radical change of the war came in May, when Austria exploited the state of lawlessness and order in Bosnia to justify a military intervention aimed at protecting the German minority and stabilizing the borders of the Empire. The result was the de facto annexation of Bosnia to Austria, an event that amazed many international observers now sure of Austria's non-interventionist foreign policy but the real reason lay in the loss of influence in Northern Germany, along with the control over local principles increasingly linked to Prussia thanks to the machinations of Bismarck, which had determined a loss of imperial prestige that was to be restored with a Balkan expansion.

Russian soldiers recieved a hero's welcome in Sofia after it's liberation​

The entry of Austria into the Balkan disaster did nothing but inflame relations between great powers: the United Kingdom and Italy had not yet declared war on Austria and decided to wait for the next move by the Empire before attacking it or asking a withdrawal. In the meantime, Italy had moved most of its troops to Veneto along the border with Austria in case there was a further escalation to the war, cutting the second planned expeditionary force from 40,000 men to 20,000. Russia congratulated its ally for the intervention and hoped for its descent into the Balkans to free the oppressed populations, but Austria actually had no intention of continuing with the advance: the war was an excellent opportunity to expand its own domains and good relations with Russia would have meant a sure support for the annexation, but now the Empire also had to exercise caution with Great Britain in order not to attract it's ire and those of their Italian lackey, so Maximilian replied to the ambassador that the Austrian army was busy restoring order in Bosnia and, due to the cuts in the military budget, would not have been ready for further advances, but made vague allusions to future interventions that were enough to appease the Russians, confident in the intervention of their ally.

After the capture of Sofia, General Vannovsky and his staff decided to devise a new strategy to defeat the Ottomans: instead of dislodging the enemy and from the Balkan mountains, the Russian army would strike the flanks of the empire, inciting or favoring the local populations already in revolt who saw their protector in the Russian army. Therefore an army corps that numbered more than 150,000 men was set up between Sofia and the Danube, with the aim of advancing towards Nis and Montenegro. The Russians did not want to abandon their Bulgarian allies but Vannovsky wanted to capitalize on the greater intensity of the revolts in the western part of the empire but also in the probable intervention of Serbia and Montenegro in support of their compatriots. The offensive began in early June, weakly opposed by the Ottoman army, always outnumbered, and by the irregular militias who were worse soldiers than the Russian conscripts, and reached Nis on the 16th and began the its penetration into central Serbia while the Principality of Serbia, after an exhausting Russian lobbing, declared war on the Ottoman Empire and sent its small army beyond the borders, towards the Russian one.

The Russian offensive took the Allies by surprise who expected a war of attrition along the Balkans where they could use their equipment to block the Russians, forcing the military leaders to anticipate the Crimean landings scheduled for early August to early July, with half the men and the ships. On July 6, 20,000 British and 10,000 Italians landed near Sevastopol covered by the Royal Navy and Confederate Navy which in the previous six months had contended for domination of the Black Sea with the Russian Imperial Navy which was now on the seabed or safe in its ports. first of all Sevastopol which was the base of the Black Sea Fleet. Occupying it was of vital importance for the Allies who could not reinforce the landed army without a port.

British commander Appleyard led the Allied expeditionary force to Bakalava to secure a port from which to deliver the supplies on which the invasion depended. The city fell on July 26, but then the Russians had received reinforcements from Galicia with whom they had begun to attack the expeditionary force to drive it back into the sea, but the English and Italians resisted tenaciously, managing to besiege Sevastopol. At the beginning of September there were about 50,000 Italians and 40,000 British in the Crimea who managed to distract 150,000 Russians by opening a new front in a strategic area. The flow of Russian divisions in the Crimea eased the pressure on the Balkan front where Vannovsky had to stop the offensive in Central Serbia, but managed to rejoin the Serbian army coming from the north.

With the arrival of winter, both sides reduced their military operations, limiting themselves to skirmishes along the border. The Russians had been contained to the north of the Balkan mountains but had reached the Serbs and extended the front line to the east, super-extending the already small Ottoman manpower that had to leave large sections of the Bulgarian front to the now 120,000 British from all over the empire that were taking on more and more of the war effort. The Italians were holding Sevastopol under siege, forcing the Russians to diverge more and more men on the peninsula. Great Russia had no manpower problems, but after three years of fighting it was losing many veterans and rapidly consuming previously accumulated reserves of war material. Russia's bad logistical situation had only recently begun to improve but not fast enough to ensure a continuous flow of supplies to the million men in the field, forcing commanders to conserve resources. The Russian high command told the Tsar that supplies for next year were not enough for a major offensive but that they would have to stay on the defensive until they resolved the situation or found an opening. The initiative thus passed into the hands of the allies.

The Balkans in late 1873​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

31. COUNTERATTACK

The approximately 70,000 Italian troops deployed in Crimea spent their first Christmas in Russia besieging Sevastopol and exchanging shots with the Russians from their positions. Under the command of Alfonso La Marmora and his deputy Alfonso Cialdini, the expeditionary force was composed of men from all over the peninsula but framed in units all from the same state, divided into 8 divisions plus cavalry and Bersaglieri. Most of the troops came from the Kingdom of Sardinia with three divisions and most of the support, followed by Tuscany, Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples. The supplies of the corps were guaranteed by the Confederate navy which had a presence of fifty ships in the Black Sea, mainly stationed in Constantinople. These patrolled the waters protecting the convoys from Russian blockade runners who tried to sink them, exploiting the holes in the joint Italian-British blockade.

In the absence of fighting until the snow melted, Britain used the time gained to direct as many resources as possible into the conflict, increasing its military presence in the Balkans and the Mediterranean in view of the effort to be made. At the same time, British diplomacy was working to prevent Austria from entering the Balkan war, which began with the military occupation of Bosnia. Disraeli was willing to exchange the region for Austrian neutrality in the conflict; the Ottomans would not object, losing a peripheral province was preferable to having their empire dismantled. Therefore diplomatic channels were opened with Vienna still handling the aftermath of the invasion, mainly partisan activity by the more nationalist Serbs which was costing the army precious resources which forced the high command to concentrate much of the forces in the region. Unaware of all this, the British went to Vienna to negotiate with their Austrian counterparts.

With the arrival of spring, the Allies took the offensive on almost all fronts: on April 13, 1874, the English expeditionary force began its advance along the Black Sea towards Varna, while the Ottomans launched a pincer attack towards Sofia. About 600,000 Russians and 500,000 Allies clashed from the Black Sea to Southern Serbia in the largest military operation to date. Varna fell after four days of street fighting, the British suffered heavy losses while the Russians managed to retreat in order to their fortified lines along the Sumen-Constance line. The British advanced rapidly covered on the flanks by the cavalry which proved fundamental in the repression of the Bulgarian partisans. Dobric had been identified as the weakest point of the fortifications and therefore Lord Chelmsford directed his troops there. The goal of the British was to draw on them as many Russian troops as possible to facilitate the Ottoman attack on Sofia which began on May 25 when two armies, one from Macedonia and one from central Bulgaria, broke through the Russian lines in two places and began. to advance. Vannovsky realized too late that the British offensive was a distraction but by the end of June the damage was done: Sofia was surrounded along with 70,000 Russians, while 350,000 men were deployed on the Black Sea. The general ordered a redeployment of forces which moved about 150,000 men in Central Serbia who stopped the Ottoman advance in Nis with the help of the Serbian army and pulled the enemy back 50 km before the resistance was too strong. In six months Russia had lost almost everything it had gained the previous year plus parts of Bulgaria, suffering about 200,000 losses, while those of the allies stood at 150,000. The Russian high command decided to ignore the possibility of a British landing in the Baltic and sent the Belarusian and Baltic armies to the Balkans but reinforcements would arrive in late autumn.

Italian Bersaglieri battle Russian Cossacks during the battle of Yarke, one that would remain in the collective imagery of the unit's history​

The Italians had their moment of glory in the summer of 1874 when the tenacity and steadfastness of the Confederate army were tested by the second Russian attempt to break the siege of Sevastopol: on July 2, 15,000 men of the Sevastopol garrison attempted a sortie while 85,000 soldiers of the Crimean Army pressed on the Italian lines to the north. Simferpool was the location of a month-long battle for the control of the city in which the Sicilian and Tuscan troops distinguished themselves for the courage and resourcefulness with which they defended the city preventing a collapse of the Italian flank. The Piedmontese sector was the scene of hard and mobile clashes in which the Cossacks clashed with swords against Carabinieri on horseback as in a battle of a century ago and the Bersaglieri cemented their reputation as elite infantry and experts in charging cavalry as they did to the battle of Yarke. With the arrival of September the Russians ended their offensive actions: they had only managed to advance a few kilometers and the sortie of Sevastopol had failed, halving an already tried garrison. The Italians, on the other hand, had managed, albeit at a high price, to keep up with the Russians by gaining prestige, with newspapers comparing Sevastopol to Alesia.

With the massacre of the Spring Offensive and the Battle of Crimea taking place before its eyes, the world was shocked by the massacre and numerous anti-war organizations in their infancy began to shout their dissent to the conflict. Others, however, moved by more humanitarian purposes, had organized funds and associations to provide relief to soldiers wounded in combat whose photos filled the newspapers. It was the first large-scale intervention of the Red Cross whose symbol quickly filled the rear of the armies. The great promoter of the association was Princess Alice, wife of Umberto, who did her utmost to provide support to the soldiers' families and making donations to the Italian section of the organization. France was the great neutral of the conflict: the Republic had preferred not to intervene in a great international conflict by concentrating its attention on West Africa. In October, Leon Gambetta, president of the French Republic, published the Gambetta manifesto which in its four points saw an agreement for the end of the war. The points were: The freedom of navigation along the Danube, the independence of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Balkans and the demilitarization of the Black Sea. Russia proved itself in favor of only the first two points, rejecting any diplomatic action until the manifesto was corrected.

On October 16, Austria came out in favor of the manifesto, announcing that there will be no further military intervention in the Balkans after the capture of Bosnia. This news infuriated the Russians, who had always hoped for an Austrian intervention to end the war and was a big blow to allied diplomacy that had neutralized the threat of an attack on the Italian flank, allowing the Confederation to redeploy its troops. part of which was sent to the Crimea to strengthen the siege. On November 24, after repeated assaults that cost the Italians numerous losses, a breach was opened between the walls that was exploited by the Bersaglieri who ran into the city, followed by regular troops and at sunset the tricolor was hoisted on the highest bastion .

After this series of defeats Alexander II summoned his generals and gave them a year to reverse the situation in the Balkans and Anatolia, before the Tsar agreed to negotiate a peace with England. The army's goal would have been to deliver a devastating blow, not to win the war, but to have a better hand in the peace negotiations. The Russian economy had begun to suffer the strain of being at war for four consecutive years: the British naval blockade on the Baltic left only land routes for trade, but the Austrian protectionist tariffs had greatly restricted Russian potential trading partners and the internal market was not yet developed with the largely poor population. Economists predicted that the nation could endure another year of war before struggling to find the funds to continue it so it was vital to end the conflict within the next year.

The Balkans after the allied counterattack ​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

32. ONE LAST ATTEMPT

Both sides prepared for a decisive 1875: for similar reasons both sides knew that at the end of the year there would be a winner and a loser and of course both wanted to win. The war had become unpopular in Italy above all for the nebulous reasons of participation which strengthened the political weight of the Historical Left which was more tending to European neutrality and favorable to colonial expansion. Few saw the benefit of keeping the Ottoman Empire on its feet, especially against the Russians for whom Italy had no reason to fear or hate.

The Russian counter-offensive was not long in coming, and in March some 600,000 Russians and 400,000 Ottoman Anglo soldiers clashed along the Danube plain in fierce relentless fighting. The Russian impetus was irresistible, however, and the allies, after losing Varna and Veliko Tarnovo in early April, began to retreat to the Balkan mountains from which they planned to stop the Russian advance. The 60,000 Russians besieged in Sofia seized the opportunity to attempt a sortie and rejoin the rapidly advancing army and, on 24 April 1875, the vanguards of the Danube Army met the besieged at Botevgrad. The English flank remained steadfast although under heavy pressure but the Ottoman troops, especially those in Southern Serbia and Montenegro, could not resist the ferocity of the Serbs, Montenegrins and Russians and collapsed under their pressure, starting to withdraw towards Albania and Macedonia.

An Italian expeditionary force in Albania was organized in a hurry; made up of 75,000 men directly under the command of Vittorio Emanuele II, eager to prove his worth in war like his father. At the end of May the Italian troops managed to hold the line in northern Albania and part of Kosovo and the front stabilized in the western Balkans but in central Bulgaria the Russians and the British continued to fight each other in Plovdiv which was destroyed in the month and a half of fighting that took place inside and near the city. The only positive implication for the allies during the spring was the success of the Ottoman offensive in Eastern Anatolia against the weakened Russian army that now only garrisoned the region but the Turkish attack ran aground in Georgia and Armenia, hampered by the terrain and the population that in the face of the arrival of the Turks gathered around the Tsarist army which opposed a more fierce resistance.

For the rest of the summer both sides were involved in the battle of Bulgaria during which the Russian troops repeatedly tried to make their way to Constantinople and the Mediterranean but the Anglo-Ottoman troops opposed a fierce resistance that drove the Russians back to the Balkan mountains. in September, with heavy losses from both sides that were now exhausted in the clashes. Disraeli's government contacted French President Gambetta to promote a conference of great powers on the Eastern question now that the front had stabilized, a task that Gambetta accepted without reservation and promoted a congress in Paris in the spring of 1876 to end the war once and for all.

In St. Petersburg Alexander II was all in all satisfied with the progress of the war: although they had not managed to liberate all of Bulgaria and Greece had never intervened in the conflict, a large part of the northern Balkans was free from the Ottoman clutches and had found in Russia their protector. On the other hand, Russia was no longer able to fight the war which had now lasted four years and had exhausted the nation's resources. The army had fought well but failed to overwhelm the Western armies, making reform of the armed forces the new goal of Alexander II who until then had only dealt with bureaucracy, the economy and society.

The winter passed without clashes, both sides had now been in a state of truce since October and no one wanted to risk reopening hostilities after four years of incessant fighting and in the spring all the representatives of the great European powers met in Paris to redesign the map of the Balkans bringing about the first major change of the continent after the Vienna congress 61 years ago.

The Balkans after the end of the Russian counterattack​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

33. THE PARIS CONFERENCE

The Paris Conference was the largest gathering of international political power since the Vienna Conference of 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars. Like that of Vienna, the Paris Conference had taken place following a great destructive event, in this case the Balkan War, which in its four years of fighting had caused more deaths than the entire duration of the Napoleonic wars. Most of these casualties were caused by diseases that moved with the armies, the destruction of the land and of course the fierce clashes that saw the baptism of fire of the Italian army which fought in a completely respectable way, giving the young nation a leading position in the conference.

The delegates present at the conference represented the great powers involved: Great Britain, Russia, Italy and the Austrian Empire, plus the Ottomans as a minor power, Prussia as a representative of Northern Germany, Spain which had begun to be considered a medium power again on the continent and of course France, host of the conference and neutral arbiter between the factions, on which the task of obtaining a peaceful resolution to the conflict would fall and failure was not an option as French prestige was on the line.

The first to make demands were the Russians who demanded the independence of Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Bulgaria, plus some parts of eastern Anatolia around Kars. The British responded with the withdrawal of all Russian troops across the Danube and the occupation of Sevastopol, as well as the closure of the Black Sea to any form of Russian military and civilian traffic. The Great Game that would unfold at this table had just begun. Tempers began to heat up quickly as both factions were convinced they had won and the French delegation must be acknowledged for having maintained an incredible aplombe during the negotiations.

The first point that was really discussed was Bosnia: behind kilometers of territory controlled by the Russians, its annexation to Austria was a fait accompli and was considered such: Great Britain had secretly pledged to support Maximilian in the occupation and Italy did not object to the motives of its powerful ally. The Russians gave their reluctant approval but by now the damage between Russia and Austria was done: the Russians were isolated at the conference, their only ally was Prussia against Austria but no one felt like wasting capital in Bosnia. The second point was Romania: as stated in Gambetta's manifesto, France sided in favor of Russia in the independence of the Kingdom. This too was a fait accompli and nothing could be done about it.

With the initial questions over, they moved on to the heart of the matter: the Balkans. During the war, Montenegro and Serbia had successfully expelled the Ottomans from the territories they now controlled together with the Russians but failed to completely expel the allies with the Italians who garrisoned much of Kosovo. Bulgaria was divided in half and Sofia, the capital of the region, had been in the hands of the Russians since they captured it in 1873, with the siege failing. However, the allies had an ace up their sleeves: the Italians controlled much of Crimea and the allied fleets had control of the Black Sea and blocked the Baltic, stopping Russian agricultural exports on which the Tsarist economy still depended and causing economic turmoil. France began to mediate between the parties and what followed was, for the Ottomans, a horror. Serbia and Montenegro would become independent, Montenegro under Italian influence and Serbia Russian, Kosovo together with Albania and Macedonia would remain Ottoman. Greece was rewarded for its neutrality with Thessaly, bringing it under strong British influence. The Bulgarian area occupied by the Russians would become the Kingdom of Bulgaria, whose independence was guaranteed by Russia, Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire, which would act as a buffer between the two states.

The allies would have withdrawn from the Crimea and the Russian trade readmitted in the Bosphorus, but not the military one, the Russians would have surrendered all claims on Eastern Anatolia and carried out small border corrections in Georgia and Armenia in favor of the Ottomans. The Black Sea would be open to trade as well as the Danube along which trade would be regulated by the nations through which it flows. Russia could continue to maintain a fleet in the Black Sea as well as the Ottoman Empire. Italy was granted a sphere of influence and freedom of economic initiative as well as legislative extraterritoriality in Albania and Montenegro as a reward for its participation in the war.

Peace succeeded in satisfying the aims of both sides: The Russians had dismantled much of the Ottoman Empire in Europe while the British had stopped the Russian advance before it could reach Constantinople and force the strait, keeping the Mediterranean safe. The Ottoman Empire had paid the price for the Great Game by seeing its Western possessions eroded by the same people who once inhabited them, its elite in revolt against the Sultan and the weakening of the state, to which the Ottoman Debt Organization, a commission established by France, England and Italy to control the payment of loans made to the empire, added to their misery. But this was a price that the great powers were willing to pay to pursue their goals.

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1876, peace returned to the continent and the attention of the Great Powers could turn outside the continent, towards the Americas, Africa which was being explored for the first time and Asia, whose riches were instead ripe dor the taking by someone ambitious and organized enough to do so.

Post War Balkans, Romania gained northern Dobruja to have access to the Black Sea, Serbia and Montenegro doubled their territory and half of Bulgaria is an independent state. Together this nations form a buffer between the three empires, which would fight for influence inside their borders

 

[Deleted member 147289]

34. A HOUSE DIVIDED


The United States spent the 1860s as one of the most politically polarized periods of its short history: every day abolitionists and slavers clashed verbally and physically in congress and in the streets of America having forgotten the moderation on which the republic was founded and falling into extremism. Political instability was heightened by the death of Stephen Douglas in 1861, after only six months in office, who left the reins of the country to his friend and vice president John Breckenridge.

John C. Breckinridge, 17th President of the United States​

The premature end of Douglas' mandate definitively extinguished the hopes of the Northern Democrats to unite the party and overcome the differences that had seen them in opposition to the southern delegates, definitively handing the party over to the southern clique which, with Breckenridge in the oval office, moved quickly to reassign cabinet positions to sympathetic members. Breckenridge's much less neutral stance on slavery was not well received in the Northeast, a traditional abolitionist stronghold where Democrats were wiped out in the 1862 midterm elections, bolstering the Republican presence in the Senate but failing to wrest the majority needed to force an abolition.

Frustrated by the inability to carry on their battle, the Republicans began to turn to the more radical faction led by John Freemont, Charles Sunmer and Thaddeus Stevens who advocated extremist policies and more than once threatened an anti-slavery secession in the Senate. On March 4, 1863, after nearly a year of preparation, the three radical leaders went to Philadelphia at the congress called by Abraham Lincoln in a desperate attempt to bring together the moderate and radical wings of the party to form a common front. Faced with senators, representatives and governors, Lincoln's idea failed terribly when Freemont managed to convince delegates of the need to secede from a union that no longer respected the values on which it was founded. Convinced that they respected the will of the founding fathers and moved by the liberal idea of resisting tyranny, the Philadelphia delegates wrote a declaration of independence which was presented in congress by the three main Republican exponents on April 14, proclaiming the birth of the Free States of America. However, no one took them seriously and the event did not have the significance that was expected, although the governors of the North East had mobilized local militias to disarm the regular military units present on their territory.

John C. Fremont, leading radical republican​

The actual secession began on April 28 when an army detachment that had been sent to Philadelphia to arrest the secessionist leaders in their provisional capital was routed by a detachment of the Pennsylvania National Militia. As news of the clash spread among the population, the United States fell into chaos: the states of the great lakes and the great plains of the north declared themselves in favor of the secessionist government based in Philadelphia and chaired by its president Sunmer and his deputy Lincoln after this had managed to stand up to the federal government, while along the Pacific coast the local independence movements regained strength with the decrease of federal authority following the setbacks suffered by the govrnment.

Despite everything, the United States still remained a strong nation: most of the army and navy remained loyal to the union and trade with the outside world, especially to France and England, remained open allowing a constant flow of industrial and military equipment.to the union that allowed it to bridge the industrial gap that separated it from the Free States, owners of the two most industrialized regions of the nation: New York and Pennsylvania. The north began a recruiting campaign by expanding national militias and laying the foundation for a modern, national army under the leadership of John Sedgwick, Ulysses Grant, and William Sherman.

Union soldiers resting after combat​

The war between the union and the rebels was fought in two main theaters: the Atlantic one that ran from the coasts to the Appalachians, characterized by narrow spaces and large concentrations of infantry that clashed head-on; and the central one from Ohio to Nebraska, with very wide plains that allowed a war of movement and fewer concentrations of men. The first move was up to the rebels who tried to quickly take over Washington DC with a lightning attack led by John Sedgwick in an attempt to immediately end the war. Waiting for him were Robert Lee's 100,000 men who had entrenched themselves along the Potomac: the rebels suffered catastrophic losses trying to cross the river and retreated to Maryland after a month of fighting. Their attempt to end the war early had failed and the initiative returned in Federal hands.

Both sides sent men to Maryland, convinced of the inevitability of an attack by the enemy. Aware of this tactical error, JEB Stuart proposed a new conduct of the war: Missouri was strongly divided by unionist and rebel loyalties and was on the verge of collapsing into civil war: if the Unionist army had entered the state it would have kept it in the federal camp and it would have had the perfect springboard for an Illinois invasion, which could have split the FSA in two. Breckenridge gave his assent and 200,000 men entered Missouri on their way to St. Louis in the spring of 1864, greeted by cheering civilians along the way. The Unionists noticed Stuart's advance too late but managed to prevent Illinois from being invaded thanks to the presence of Grant and 150,000 men in the state who stopped the Unionist aims.

Northern guns come under fire during the Battle of Hampstead​

The most important clash of the War took place in 1866 at Hampstead in Maryland: Lee had by now pushed the rebels to Pennsylvania but Sherman, who had replaced Sedgwick after his death, had attracted about 1/3 of the Unionist army to the town where he planned to surround them. and annihilate them with his numerical superiority. When Lee learned of the danger his troops were in, he ordered the advance to be halted and reinforcements sent to the unit under attack. About 300,000 men fought in Hampstead, making it one of the largest battles ever fought to date, and the losses exceeded 80,000. The battle was inconclusive for both sides: Sherman had prevented Lee from entering Pennsylvania but had suffered such losses that a counterattack was impossible; Lee had been stopped and had used up most of his supplies to win the battle, making an advance north impossible at the moment.

Sensing the weakness of the union and the FSA both stuck in a meat grinder from the Atlantic to the great lakes, the Pacific states proclaimed their independence from the union in late 1866 by sending their national militias east to the uncolonized territories that they fell peacefully under nominal Pacific control as far as Utah, where the separatist armies stopped and assumed defensive positions. Unable to react as there were no men to send west, Breckenridge limited himself to recognizing the secession of the Pacific as a fact, persisting in putting an end to the Northern rebellion.

Losses and warfare were beginning to weigh on both sides that were depleted after four years of continuous warfare, consuming men and materials that were becoming scarcer. Worried that the riots against conscription in New York and Philadelphia could become a national phenomenon and permanently undermine the rebel war effort, Lincoln convinced Fremont to desist from the hard line and seek diplomatic contact with the Union which was experiencing a similar situation but from an economic point of view since its debts to the European powers had increased dramatically to finance the war and buy war material.

After the first modest diplomatic contacts between the sides, a real peace conference was reached, which was to be held in Washington DC in 1867, which was attended by representatives of the federal government and the secessionist states, those of the north and those of the west. During the conference, in the general sadness, the dissolution of what was once the United States of America into three separate entities was recognized: the American Republic to the north, the Republic of Pacifica to the west, and the Southern Confederation. After the conference, John C. Freemont called a constituent assembly in Philadelphia to give the new American Republic a new order. Privately he noted in his diary that "One day our descendants will finish the job"

The division of America: the Republic of Pacifica in gold, the American Republic in blue and the Southern Confederation in gray​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

35. THE RISING SUN

In 1862, Tokugawa Yoshinobu became the 14th Shogun of Japan after weeks of political intrigue in the Edo court between the various branches of the Tokugawa family struggling to name a member for the role of Shogun. Iesada survived the cholera epidemic that spread among the population of Edo in 1858, allowing him to extend his reign until 1862, the year of his death.

The election of Yoshinobu in place of Shogun brought great change in the land of the rising sun: the new Shogun did not spend a day in Edo for the next four years, preferring to rule with a traveling court that moved throughout Japan, allowing Yoshinobu to get a clear idea of what Japan's problems were, but also by inviting foreign experts to help rationalize the administration of the shogunate.

The first reforms undertaken were the bureaucratic ones with the extension of the national administrative machine in an attempt to centralize even more the central power of Edo, trying to eclipse the emperor who, since the opening of Japan, had begun to play an active role in the national politics, shaking the foundations of the Shogun's power. Agricultural reforms and a principle of proto-industrialization, with the first railways and factories on the Kanto plain marked the beginning of Japan's modernization. Another sector that received numerous improvements was that of the armed forces, which were trained and equipped by the French and the Russians in the newly created Yokosuka concession from which the French started all trade with Japan.

The wave of social, economic and technological modernization did not come without its critics, however: the domains of Satsuma, Chosu and Tosa resented the Shogun for the modernization and opening of the nation, coalescing with the Emperor in following the doctrine of Sonnō jōi and starting attacks on foreigners in Japan. These attacks did nothing but anger more and more the great powers that, in the inability of the Shogun to protect them, intervened militarily to suppress the rebel dominions, whose end came with the bombing and occupation of Sasebo in 1864 which became a British concession.

The radical anti-Western factions were ousted from power but, after an absence of three years, they returned to power and also infiltrated the imperial court, forcing the fifteen-year-old Meiji Emperor to proclaim the imperial restoration. By 1868, two factions had formed within Japan: the imperial one made up of the southern dominions and the emperor with British support from Kagoshima; and allies of the Shogun, supported by the French and the Russians. Yoshinobu refused to accept the restoration proclamation and mobilized his forces.

The Shogun army immediately moved against Kyoto, the seat of imperial power, where they met the troops of Chosu and Satsuma waiting for them. Both armies were modernized, equipped with modern rifles, cannons and uniforms, with some irregular units armed in the traditional way. In the battle of Fushimi the Shogun troops outnumbered 3: 1 their enemies and, thanks to the modern equipment of the troops and the French military mission that had accompanied them quickly defeated the forces of the rebel dominions, taking Kyoto before the emperor could escape.

Yoshinobu forced the young Meiji Emperor to revoke the Restoration Proclamation, replacing it with the Kyoto Edict, written by Yoshinobu, which consecrated the Shogunate as Japan's form of government with the Emperor's blessing. This gave much legitimacy to the Shogun who now enjoyed the support of the emperor, depriving the southern dominions of any legitimacy in their opposition to the Shogun. Undeterred and receiving substantial British help, the Dominions sent their fleet to Osaka, shelling the city and sinking the four of Yoshinobu's steam frigates in the bay.

In response, the forces of the Shogun advanced to the castle of Hagi, where the Daimyo Mōri Motonori resided, besieging and conquering it thanks to the superiority of the French artillery supplied to the troops of the Shogun. The end of the Boshin War was the Battle of Kagoshima, the last stronghold of the Satsuma rebel forces. It was the largest battle of the war with 70,000 troops and about twenty Shogun ships clashing with 40,000 rebels and a small fleet comprising two battleships, delivered by the United States before the conflict began. The clash was fierce and lasted for a week and ended with the fall of the castle where the Daimyo had committed seppuku. The fall of Kagoshima marked the end of the Boshin War and the definitive consolidation of the Shogunate as Japan's form of government, now with imperial backing.

Edo was renamed Tokyo to indicate where the true power of the nation lay and the southern dominions were assimilated and placed under the care of the Shogun bureaucracy. The surviving rebels fled to the British concession of Sasebo, where they found refuge from the army that had begun to hunt them.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

Guess who's back!

36. THE FIRST LIBERAL GOVERNMENT


With the end of the Balkan War, the bill of the war reached the eyes of the Italians: dead, wounded, missing and money squandered in an enterprise in which Italy had no interest. Although this was not true, in the elections of 1876 the Italian Liberal Party, the evolution of the Historical Left, won which led Agostino Depretis to the position of prime minister of both the Confederation and Sardinia-Piedmont

The fall of the Liberal Federal party, which had ruled Italy for twenty-five years, marked the end of the post-unification era, ushering in a new period in Confederate politics. Depretis had a narrow majority in both chambers, with which he managed to pass a reform that increased the age of children's education to 10, allocated additional funds to education, and created a national faculty, as well as strengthening the education system. increasing its presence on the national territory in a widespread manner. However, the narrow majority prevented Depretis from passing more powerful legislation, leading the prime minister to invent the concept of "parliamentarism" and apply it in the chambers. Parliamentarism consisted of personally seeking the support of opposition MPs through small concessions and agreements so that they could count on their vote in the next laws and fracture the unity of the opposition. The success of this strategy allowed Depretis to initiate his foreign policy.

Great Britain had promised Italy its diplomatic support in the creation of a colony in Asia and the Confederation, already from the opening of Suez, had begun to establish a presence in the Horn of Africa, in Eritrea and Somalia, preparing the bases for a crossing of the Indian Ocean. The adventurer Nino Bixio had returned from the sultanate of Aceh in 1874 with a request for a protectorate from the local sultan, obtained thanks to the help of an Italian expatriate in contact with the court. Taking the opportunity, Depretis sent a fleet to Aceh led by Bixio in 1876 with the aim of establishing a protectorate with British support from Singapore. The Dutch were not happy with the move, with the island of Sumatra in their sphere of influence, but British diplomacy silenced any Dutch protests allowing the establishment of the Italian protectorate to proceed smoothly.

Established a naval base in Sumatra and obtained the green light from the British to take the parts of Malaysia adjacent to the border with Siam, Italy overlooked the Gulf of Siam and from there the Kingdom of Dai Viet. Dai Viet had remained without excessive foreign influence in the last twenty years, except for the French, Italian and Spanish missionaries present on the national territory who, initially operating without too much opposition from the government, freely proselytized converting a large minority of Vietnamese, especially in the south. When this minority became large enough to cause problems for the imperial government that had always resisted Westernization, Emperor Tu Duc ordered a repression that affected European missionaries, many of whom were killed. As this atrocity unfolded before their eyes, the Italians, French and Spaniards, the only Catholic nations to have a presence in Southeast Asia, assembled an expeditionary force to restore order in Vietnam.

Led by Nino Bixio, the Italian corps made up of 20,000 men landed in Cochincina supported by the 50 ships present there, covered on the flanks by 15,000 Spaniards and 20,000 French who accompanied them. The Vietnamese population was not enthusiastic about the landing of foreigners and the Catholic insurrection that many expected did not come true. Therefore the troops had to resign themselves to a forced march towards Saigon in a hostile environment: disease, heat, rain and the local population. Despite this Saigon fell on February 17, 1878 and the attempt to retake the city failed miserably with thousands of casualties among the Vietnamese and a few hundred among the defenders. Happy with the progress of the war, the French and Italian governments sent reinforcements and supplies to the troops who had been ordered to advance to Hue, the imperial capital, and force the Emperor to surrender. The Franco-Italian fleet set sail for Hue, leaving the Spanish army in garrison the conquered territory. Spain was unwilling to further escalate the war, content with teaching a lesson to the Vietnamese, contrary to Italy and France, eager to expand their grip on Southeast Asia.. The imperial capital was shelled in one of the most famous examples of gunboat diplomacy which, in four hours, destroyed part of the city, leading the Emperor to ask for peace, signed in the Saigon treaty.

The Saigon Treaty required Vietnam to pay compensation in the face of the killing of missionaries, to legitimize Christianity as a religion and not to persecute it, also guaranteeing Christians numerous posts in the public administration and Vietnam would open its ports to foreign trade . Finally, the Italian Confederation would gain direct control over Cochincina and the Annam up to the Song Ba river, while France would have annexed the Tonkin, restricting the Dai Viet to Annam as a neutral buffer. With the signing of the treaty on May 27, 1878, the Italian colony of Cochincina was born, with Saigon as it's capital..

 

[Deleted member 147289]

37. THE XIAMEN CONCESSION

The Italians had always had a long tradition of exchanges with China: the Roman Empire, the travels of Marco Polo and, after the unification of the peninsula, the intervention of the Italian expeditionary force in the Taiping Rebellion in favor of the Chinese Emperor. paved the way for a new season of trade with Italian merchants, hunting for silk, porcelain, tea and other precious goods produced in China, crowding the coastal ports of the South China Sea as far as Shanghai, with emissaries at the court of the emperor in Beijing.

Empress Cixi, the gray eminence behind the throne of Emperor Guangxu, was eager to establish good relations with some Western powers after the losses she suffered in the two Opium Wars and the incompetent reign of Emperor Tongzhi. She saw in the Italians the right candidates to try to establish friendly relations with the great powers, in order to have a friendly voice among the great powers. The Italians were also the only ones who had not yet fought a war against China, making them more appealing to the court than others.

Upon hearing of the Chinese interest to cultivate a friendly relation with Italy, Depretis gave orders to his emissaries in the Forbidden City to enter into negotiations with the Chinese for the extraction of commercial concessions, extraterritoriality and a port, considered by the Italians a basic condition for the continuation of the negotiations. The Chinese were not happy with the starting condition, but after threatening military intervention to get what they were negotiating for by force, Chinese diplomats proved more malleable and agreed to resume negotiations.

The treaty of Xiamen was concluded in 1884 and handed over the island of Xiamen to the Italians as a treaty port, guaranteed the extraterritoriality of Italians in China and their exclusive trading rights in Fujian. The concession of Xiamen soon became a destination for merchants, especially from the republic of Venice, soldiers and bureaucrats who went to the island to establish a bureaucratic and commercial base from which to control the Strait of Formosa.

Xiamen rapidly became a hub of Italian culture in the Far East, favouring the mix of Italian and Chinese customs and people​

 

[Deleted member 147289]

38. A NEW KING

On the 9th of January 1878 Vittorio Emanuele II, king of Sardinia and president of the Confederation, died feverish in Turin. The king's funeral was attended by the European nobility, with participants even from Austria and Russia who, given the disagreements with the first and recent conclusion of the war with the other, gave a signal of diplomatic detente between the Confederation and the empires of the east.

The crown of Sardinia and the presidency of the Confederation were inherited by the eldest son Umberto I and his wife Alice. Since the coronation they actively engaged in confederal politics and culture, transforming the Savoy family and its image among the citizens. Umberto and Alice had had four children, three boys and one girl: Emanuele, Amedeo, Carlo and Margherita, who often accompanied their parents in public functions increasing their fame among the population.

Despite being a political match, Umberto and Alice cared for each other and eventually fell in love as their diaries and correspondence revealed​

Umberto and Depretis had an interesting working relationship as Umberto, despite his wife's liberal and sometimes extravagant influences, was of a conservative nature while the Prime Minister was an expression of Italian liberalism, making the king's intrusions into the government of the Confederation somewhat annoying for Depretis who would have preferred to conduct his work undisturbed: the king had grown up with the myth of his grandfather and the victorious figure of his father and was an ardent nationalist, intent on reclaiming the so-called "Irredent Lands" under Austrian rule while the prime minister preferred to keep peace in Europe and focus on colonial businesses now that they had Britain's support. Apart from the disagreements of foreign policy, the two had the situation of the average Italian at heart and the king supported many initiatives of the prime minister such as the expansion of the school system and the creation of an embryo of the national health service aimed at improving sanitation and health care in the nation. Umberto and Depretis were also the force behind the agrarian reform of 1881 which definitively concluded it in the north and reached an advanced stage in the south with the destruction of the estates and the introduction of a capitalist model in local agriculture and industry.

The south received a strong industrial push during the liberal era, with the development of a naval industry in Taranto and the progressive industrialization of Campania with Naples which became an important manufacturing center and port in the south, also thanks to the investments of the northern industrialists who acted supported by the government with tax cuts and the signing of numerous trade agreements with other European nations including Prussia, who was cultivating stronger ties with Italy in order to encircle Austria.

Culturally, Italy experienced a continuous expansion, thanks to the constant increase in the literate population and the development of the middle class that could allow its children to study, creating fertile ground for the emergence of new artistic and literal styles and the conditions necessary for the continued technological development that progressed in tandem with the industrialization that was beginning to envelop the peninsula. The death of Manzoni in 1873 had left a void in the Italian novel landscape, which was filled by a re-emergence of poetry, led by positivist groups or the Scapigliatura, but also great poets such as Giosuè Carducci. Verdi's opera continued to conquer the world, with the famous composer always at La Scala, his main stage, and in the best operas of Europe and America, making Italian the lingua franca among operas. Of great note is the publication, in 1883, of the novel “the tigers of Mompracem”, written by the novelist Emilio Salgari who drew inspiration for the setting of the story from the period spent in the navy in Southeast Asia; the book was a success and inspired subsequent Italian generations to throw themselves into colonial adventures, dazzled by the charm and mystery of what existed outside the peninsula.

In 1884 the electoral reform of Depretis was carried out which lowered the voting age from 25 to 21, reduced the income necessary for voting and introduced the requirement of elementary education, provided to all Italians since the creation of the Confederation, extending the electorate but still remaining far from universal male suffrage although the population continued to educate itself and to be aware of its dual national identity, both the regional and the Italian, which by now had supplanted the previous parochialism and, added to the international and economic success, had created strong social cohesion among Italians.

Queen Alice was a source of great curiosity and admiration on the part of the people, both for her Italian with a slight English accent, and for her great commitment to society and the last ones, such as her active support for the Red Cross and her having served in hospitals as a nurse. The queen was admired by the population, so much so that Giosuè Carducci, future poet, dedicated the “Ode to the queen of Italy”, which struck the queen to the point of inviting the man to the palace to discuss poetry. The love of the Italians for their queen resulted in the creation of the very famous Alice pizza in 1888 following a royal visit to the city of Naples. Alice, in addition to social commitments, along wth her husband, decided to dedicate as much time as possible to the education of their children and their youth. Umberto was an austere father but capable of showing love, distancing himself from his father and grandfather who were always rigid with their children, but it was his wife who cared more for the heirs who were educated and influenced by the liberal ideas of the mother.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

39. AFRICAN ADVENTURES

With the rise of the first liberal government to the reins of the Confederation, Italian foreign policy became more assertive than in the past, with liberals demanding a stronger stance on the colonial question and on the expansion of the area of Italian influence, finding great support in the navy and industrial bourgeoisie.

The intense industrialization of the North-West in the so-called "Industrial Triangle" between Turin, Milan and Genoa, together with a dense railway and capital-supported network had led to the creation of the first industrial conglomerates that guided economic development in the rest of the peninsula with their enormous capital due to the large orders that were entrusted to them by the state. This mixture of political and economic power, especially military, also came with a certain influence of the business sector on the confederal parliament and on the liberal party in general, regarded as the expression of these interests. The creation of this military-industrial complex pushed colonial expansion in search of scarce or precious resources to fuel Italian industrial development.

The Italian navy experienced a period of strong growth driven by the need to be able to count on safe lines of communication with the colonies of the Italian colonial empire that now spread to Asia and Africa, but also to maintain a strong naval presence in the Mediterranean as agreed with Great Britain, which left naval superiority in the region to the Italians. The shipyards of Genoa, Livorno and Palermo worked at full speed during this period, producing destroyers, cruisers and battleships, including eight of the “Caio Duilio” class, considered among the most powerful warships in service in a navy.

Italian poster celebrating ascaris, the caption reads "I'm for your flag too". Colonial troops were a large part in the local administration especially in areas under military command, as Italian was made mandatory for them many learned it in service and passed it to others​

Tunisia had been exploited for twenty years by now, and had a solid Italian community that represented about 1/3 of the inhabitants of the region, a state-of-the-art railway system and a solid military presence to watch the colony from raids by tribal populations from the Sahara and from Libya. It was towards Libya that Italian investors directed their main interest in the Mediterranean: having fought together with the Ottomans against the Russians, it was easy for the Italians to get a green light to start investing in Libya, starting with a railway from Tunis to Tobruk. which would then go to Alexandria in Egypt. Under the pretext of the railway, the first economic penetration into the coasts began, especially in cities such as Tripoli and Benghazi.

In the Horn of Africa, the Italians had established the colony of Eritrea and had expanded inland by coming into contact with the empire of Abyssinia, whose emperor Johannes II asked Italy for help in its fight against the Dervish from Sudan. Italy accepted the request and sent troops to the border with Sudan, providing support to the Abyssinians with modern artillery and weapons. As a reward for the help, the Italians began a political and economic penetration of the empire, undertaking personal relationships with the various nobles who made up the court of the emperor where the Italians had a special representative and starting to probe the nation in search of precious resources or opportunities for economic development, with the primary objective of building a railway from Asmara to Mogadishu, the capital of the recently pacified Italian Somalia, passing through Addis Ababa. The Italian army had about 60,000 troops located in East Africa, most of them in Abyssinia, slowly occupying the country and preparing it for the creation of a protectorate which took place in 1894 with the Treaty of Rome, signed by Umberto I and Johannes II.

 

[Deleted member 147289]

40. THE DRUMS OF WAR

The opportunistic intervention of Austria in the Balkan War to occupy Bosnia had unexpected consequences for Vienna: instead of receiving support from London and Paris, after sacrificing the Russian one in favor of non-intervention in the war, Austria remained completely isolated on the European continent, surrounded by hostile or apathetic nations.

The diplomatic condition of the empire did not go unnoticed by Otto Von Bismarck, chancellor of the kingdom of Prussia for more than a decade now, who saw in the international isolation of Austria the opportunity he had always expected to expel Austrian influence from north Germany. and place the local principalities under the control of Berlin. The chancellor needed only a pretext for war and an ally with which to divide the Austrian armies, and he knew where to find both.

The pretext was found in the division of the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, whose northern half belonged to Prussia and the southern half to Austria. Prussian public opinion, incited by Bismarck, had begun to make claims to the king for the possession of the whole of Holstein, demanding the expulsion of the Austrian troops who had been stationed in the duchy for several years; the Prussian army had also begun maneuvering near the border in hopes of setting off an incident that would provide the necessary pretext for war. Meanwhile, the chancellor would forge political ties with the smaller German states in order to gain their support or at least their neutrality in the future conflict.

A more substantial military alliance, however, was made with Italy: since the end of the Balkan War, the Italian ruling class had realized that Austria was beginning to lose much of its influence in northern Germany, withdrawing more and more into the Catholic south. and taking more and more interest in the Balkans. The empire still occupied many "unredeemed" lands considered Italian by patriots and nationalists, chief among all King Umberto I who wished to wage a victorious war like his father and grandfather as was now tradition for the Savoy monarchs. The Italian hostility to Austria made it the perfect ally for Prussia which began to cultivate friendly relations with the Confederation from the beginning of the 1870s, culminating in the defensive alliance signed in Berlin on March 3, 1882 between Bismarck and Depretis himself.

With the southern front secure and the northern German duchies in favor of Prussia, Bismarck felt confident that he could start the war. Following numerous Prussian provocations on the border with Holstein, Austria demanded a resolution on the state of the duchies from the German Confederation. Prussia viewed such requests as in violation of the Gastein treaty and, faced with Austria's refusal to desist, sent a division to occupy Holstein, defeating the handful of garrisoned Austrian soldiers who offered little resistance. With the occupation of Holstein, Italy began the mobilization of the army while Prussia stalled for a week any negotiations with Austria for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Given the impossibility of obtaining a peaceful solution, Austria declared war on Prussia on June 3, 1882 and Italy joined the conflict, revealing the secret defensive alliance with Prussia on June 6.