Victor Emmanuel III

Victor Emanuel III
King of Italy, Emperor of Ethiopia, King of Albania
Reign	July 29, 1900 - May 9, 1946
Coronation	July 29, 1900
Predecessor	Umberto I
Successor	Umberto II
Issue	Yolanda Mafalda Umberto Giovanna Maria Francesca
House	House of Savoy
Father	Umberto I
Mother	Queen Margherita

Victor Emmanuel III (Italian: Vittorio Emanuele III; 11 November, 1869 – 28 December, 1947) was King of Italy (29 July, 1900 – 9 May, 1946), Emperor of Ethiopia (1936–43) and King of Albania (1939–43). During his long reign, Victor Emmanuel III saw two world wars and the birth, rise and fall of Fascism.

Biography

Early years

Victor Emanuel was born in Naples, the only child of Umberto I, King of Italy and his consort, Princess Margherita of Savoy, daughter of the duke of Genoa. He ascended the throne in 1900 upon his father's assassination.

The only advice that his father Umberto ever gave his heir was that "Remember: to be a king, all you need to know is how to sign your name, read a newspaper, and mount a horse". His early years showed evidence that, by the standards of the Savoy monarchy, he was a man committed to constitutional government. Indeed, even though his father was killed by an anarchist, the new king showed a commitment to constitutional freedoms.

Though Italy was a parliamentary democracy, the monarchy possessed considerable residual powers, including the right to appoint the Prime Minister, even if the individual in question did not command majority support in the Chamber of Deputies. A shy and somewhat withdrawn individual, the King hated the day-to-day stresses of Italian politics, though the country's chronic political instability forced him to intervene no less than ten times between 1900 and 1922 to prevent parliamentary crises.

When World War I began, Italy remained neutral at first. However, in 1915, Italy signed several secret treaties committing to enter the war on the side of the Allies. Most of the people opposed war, however, and the Italian Chamber of Deputies forced Prime Minister Antonio Salandra to resign. Victor Emmanuel, however, declined Salandra's resignation and made the decision to enter the war himself. He legally had the right to make this decision under the Statuto Albertino, popular opposition to the war notwithstanding. However, the corrupt and disorganised war effort, the stunning loss of life suffered by the Italian army, especially at the great defeat of Caporetto, and the economic depression that followed the war turned the King against what he perceived as an inefficient political bourgeoisie.

Support to Mussolini

The economic depression had given rise to much extremism among the sorely-tried working classes of Italy causing the country to become politically unstable. Benito Mussolini, soon to be Italy's Fascist dictator, took advantage of this instability for his rise to power. In 1922, Mussolini led a force of his Fascist supporters on a March on Rome. Prime Minister Luigi Facta and his cabinet drafted a decree of martial law. But the King refused to sign it. The King suggested that his Royal Army (Regio Esercito) could not have defended the city against the Fascist march. However, testimony from the military leaders and surviving military records challenge his claim.

Fascist violence had been growing in intensity throughout the summer and autumn of 1922, climaxing with the rumours of a possible coup. Victor Emmanuel had all the means at his disposal to sweep Mussolini and his rag-tag Blackshirt army to one side. General Badoglio told the King that military would be able to rout the rebels, who numbered no more than 10,000 men, without any difficulty. Thereupon, Victor Emmanuel could have ordered Facta to protect Rome and could have supported a decree proclaiming martial law.

The troops were totally loyal to the King. Even Cesare Maria De Vecchi, commander of the Blackshirts, and one of the organisers of the March on Rome, told Mussolini that he would not act against the wishes of the monarch. It was at this point that the Fascist leader considered leaving Italy altogether. But then, in the minute before midnight, he received a telegram from the King inviting him to Rome. By midday on 30 October, he had been appointed Prime Minister, at the age of 39, with no previous experience of office, and with only 35 Fascist deputies in the Chamber. Thus it was that Italian democracy died.

Later, the King's failure, in the face of mounting evidence, to move against the Mussolini regime's abuses of power (including, as early as 1924, the notorious assassination of Giacomo Matteotti and other opposition MPs) led to much criticism. Though the King claimed in his memoirs that it was the fear of a civil war that motivated his actions, it would seem that he received some 'alternative' advice, possibly from Antonio Salandra, an ultra conservative politician and former Prime Minister, and General Armando Diaz, that it would be better to do a deal with Mussolini. There were also pro-Fascist elements in his immediate family, including Margherita of Savoy, his mother.

Whatever the circumstances, Victor Emmanuel showed weakness in a position of strength, with dire future consequences for Italy and for the monarchy itself. It has been alleged that Victor Emmanuel's decisions showed not only poor judgment but also undemocratic sentiments. What is not in doubt is that Fascism offered political stability and opposition to left-wing radicalism. This appealed to many people in Italy at the time, and certainly to the King. In many ways, the events from 1922 to 1943 demonstrated that the monarchy and the moneyed class, for different reasons, felt Mussolini and his regime offered an option that, after years of political chaos, was more appealing than what they perceived as the alternative: socialism and anarchism. Both the spectre of the Russian Revolution and the tragedies of World War I played large roles in these political decisions.

Victor Emmanuel III in 1893

The Italian monarchy enjoyed popular support for decades. Foreigners noted how even as late as the 1940s newsreel images of King Victor Emmanuel and his strikingly beautiful Queen Elena, born a Princess of Montenegro, evoked applause, sometimes cheering, when played in cinemas, in contrast to the hostile silence shown toward images of Fascist leaders.

However, several of Victor Emmanuel's decisions proved fatal to the monarchy. Among these decisions were his assumption of the crown of Ethiopia and his public silence when Mussolini's Fascist government issued its notorious racial purity laws.

In 1936, Victor Emmanuel assumed the crown of the Emperor of Ethiopia. His decision to do this was not universally accepted. Victor Emmanuel was only able to assume the crown after the Italian Royal Army invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia) and overthrown Emperor Haile Selassie during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. The League of Nations decried Italy's participation in this war the use of chemical warfare against the Ethiopian forces was well documented.

In 1938, Victor Emanuel kept a public silence when the Fascist government, under pressure from Nazi Germany, issued its notorious racial purity laws. These laws left his Jewish subjects open to persecution and constituted a clear violation of both his Coronation oath and his oath to the constitution. The fact that large numbers of Italians risked their lives to save not only their Jewish fellow citizens but also Jewish refugees from other countries only deepened their contempt for a King who had dragged them into an alliance with the Germans that they had never wanted. Victor Emanuel's private complaints to Mussolini did little to lessen this contempt.

Final efforts to save crown and country

On 10 June 1940, Mussolini made the fatal decision to heve Italy enter World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. Italy was not prepared for war and, almost from the beginning, disaster followed disaster. In 1940. Italian armies in North Africa and in Greece suffered humiliating defeats. In late 1941, Italian East Africa was lost. In 1942, Libya was lost. Early in 1943, the ten divisions of the "Italian Army In Russia" (ARMIR) were crushed as an aside to the Battle of Stalingrad. Before the end of 1943, the last Italian forces in Tunisia had surrendered and Sicily fell. After a series of setbacks, the Royal Navy (Regia Marina) became no more than a "fleet in being." The Mediterranean Sea was hardly "Italy's Sea" (Mare Nostrum). The Royal Air Force (Regia Aeronautica), while generally doing better than the Army and the Navy, was chronically short of modern aircraft and even it was politely uninvited to participated in the Battle of Britain.

Victor Emmanuel called Mussolini to the palace on July 25, 1943; removed him from office, and named Marshal Pietro Badoglio as Mussolini's replacement. The King then renounced the usurped Ethiopian and Albanian crowns in favor of the legitimate monarchs of those states, Emperor Haile Sellassie I of Ethiopia and King Zog I of Albania.

Victor Emmanuel then made something of a blunder when he negotiated a surrender to the Allies without ordering the Royal Army to defend Rome. Left without orders, the army virtually disintegrated; those who did not surrender joined forces with the Germans. Fearing a German advance, Victor Emmanuel and his government fled south to Brindisi. This choice, though perhaps necessary for his safety, shocked many, including foreign observers. They drew contrasts to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who refused to leave London during the Blitz, and of Pope Pius XII, who mixed with Rome's crowds and prayed with them after the working class Roman neighborhood of Quartiere San Lorenzo was bombed and destroyed.

Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his powers to his son, Crown Prince Umberto, in April 1944, then appointed him Lieutenant General of the Realm after Rome was liberated in 1944, (relinquishing his remaining power while retaining the royal title). Within a year, public opinion forced a plebiscite to decide between retaining the monarchy or becoming a republic. In hopes of influencing the vote, Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated on May 9, 1946. It did not work; 54% of the voters favored declaring a republic in the referendum held less than a month later (although widespread irregularities in the vote have been alleged, particularly in southern Italy), and the Savoy family was required to leave the country.

Taking refuge in Egypt, Victor Emmanuel died in Alexandria in 1947 and was buried there.

Legacy

Victor Emmanuel III by Libero Prosperi

He has been seldom treated sympathetically by historians. His almost forced abdication on the eve of a referendum on the future of the Italian monarchy achieved nothing — being too little, far too late. At worst, it reminded undecided voters of the role the monarchy and the King's own actions (or inactions) had played during the Fascist period, at precisely the moment when monarchists were hoping that voters would focus on the positive impression created by Crown Prince Umberto and Princess Maria José as the de facto monarchs of Italy since 1944. The 'May' King and Queen, Umberto and Maria José, in their brief, month-long reign, were unable to shift the burden of recent history and opinion.

Ancestors

Victor Emmanuel III's ancestors in three generations

Victor Emmanuel III of Italy	Father: Umberto I of Italy	Paternal Grandfather: Victor Emmanuel II of Italy	Paternal Great-grandfather: Charles Albert of Sardinia
			Paternal Great-grandmother: Maria Teresa of Tuscany
		Paternal Grandmother: Maria Adelaide of Austria	Paternal Great-grandfather: Archduke Rainer of Austria
			Paternal Great-grandmother: Princess Elisabeth of Savoy-Carignan
	Mother: Margherita of Savoy	Maternal Grandfather: Ferdinand, 1st Duke of Genoa	Maternal Great-grandfather: Charles Albert of Sardinia
			Maternal Great-grandmother: Maria Teresa of Tuscany
		Maternal Grandmother: Princess Elizabeth of Saxony	Maternal Great-grandfather: John of Saxony
			Maternal Great-grandmother: Princess Amalie Auguste of Bavaria

Family

In 1896 he married princess Elena of Montenegro (1873–1953), daughter of Nicholas I, King of Montenegro. Their issue included:

1. Yolanda Margherita Milena Elisabetta Romana Maria (1901-1986), married to Giorgio Carlo Calvi, Count Bergolo, (1887–1977);
2. Mafalda Maria Elisabetta Anna Romana (1902–44), married to Prince Philip of Hesse-Kassel (1896–1980) with issue; she died in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald;
3. Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria, later Umberto II, King of Italy (1904–1983) married to Princess Marie José of Belgium, with issue.
4. Giovanna Elisabetta Antonia Romana Maria (1907–2000), married to Boris III, King of Bulgaria, and mother of Simeon II, King and later Prime Minister of Bulgaria.
5. Maria Francesca Anna Romana (1914–2001), who married Prince Luigi of Bourbon-Parma (1899–1967), with issue.

References

• Mack Smith, Denis (1989). Italy and its Monarchy. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05132-8.

External links

• Genealogy of recent members of the House of Savoy
• King Vittorio Emanuele III

Template:Persondata