Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The Second War of Italian Independence

The Italian peninsula, after so many centuries of division and foreign rule since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, would ultimately fight three wars for independence but of these three, none would be so consequential as the second. The first had seen the hope of the existing Italian princely states, Papal, Bourbon and even Habsburg, come together under the leadership of the House of Savoy against the Austrians with the possibility of confederation or federal unity for Italy only to be defeated by the Austrian army of the unflappable Graf von Radestky. King Carlo Alberto of Piedmont-Sardinia, after his defeat, abdicated in favor of his son King Vittorio Emanuele II a monarch who was originally interested only in the unification of northern Italy and that mostly so as to prevent it from occurring under the leadership of the radical republicans. However, with cooperation from the other Italian states now out of the question, he knew he would have to look for an ally against the Austrian Empire. Such an ally was to be found in the person of Emperor Napoleon III of the French.

Vittorio Emanuele II, Napoleon III, Franz Joseph
One benefit the Savoy monarchy had was that the radical republicans had been, in 1848 and after, thoroughly discredited among Italian nationalists. They had failed and in Austria, the Papal States and Naples, reactionary forces had revived in a harsh way. This meant that the Savoy, careful to keep on the side of the nationalist spirit, was looked to for leadership while the republican crowd of Mazzini was discredited. Aside from the King, the most important player on the Savoyard side was his prime minister Count Camillo di Cavour. For Cavour, nationalism was a means to an end rather than an end in itself. His goals were for the financial independence of Turin from British banks, the furthering of industrialization and economic expansion. Ties with British banks were cut, new ties with French banks were established, railroad construction exploded and trade increased. The army was improved as well and in 1855 the Piedmontese participated in the Crimean War as a way of gaining British and French support against Austria. The result was a Savoyard army that was better organized, more easily mobilized, with a better staff system and with greater combat experience.

Obtaining an alliance with France, however, proved rather difficult. The French were willing but Napoleon III extracted a heavy price for his support which included the Savoy ceding their own heartland, the Duchy of Savoy as well as the County of Nice to France. The King also had to give his daughter, the petite Princess Clothilde, to the hulking Prince Jerome Bonaparte, the French Emperor’s cousin. In exchange, France would support the end of Austrian rule over Lombardy and Venice and the creation of an independent Kingdom of Italy on the northern half of the peninsula. This was, however, a defensive alliance and would only take effect if Austria attacked Piedmont. In Naples, the Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies did not figure into the issue. While still possessing a powerful army, it was geared entirely toward suppressing the local population, which had proven very prone to rebellion, and not to defending against foreign invasion. An alliance was proposed between Turin and Naples but King Francesco II of the Two-Sicilies had rejected it out of hand. They would play no part in the ensuing conflict.

Bersaglieri officer, 1850's
The French, more so than the Piedmontese, also took care to ensure that there would be no unwelcome intervention on the part of the Russians. This was not a problem as the Russians were feeling in no way sympathetic to the Austrians. Perhaps even more than the powers that fought against them, the Russians blamed Austria for their defeat in the Crimean War and were particularly bitter given that they had aided the Habsburgs during their time of greatest peril in the Revolutions of 1848. They also did not tend to view Austrian rule over northern Italy as legitimate anyway, going all the way back to the French Revolutionary Wars, Russia’s Czar Paul had been very disappointed by the British and Austrians keeping territory they took from the French rather than restoring it to its previous rulers, be it Malta or Venice. The British could also be counted on to remain on the sidelines given that they had good relations with France (for a change) and had been quite offended by the harshness of Austrian rule in Lombardy-Venetia. Paris and Turin were convinced that they could handle Austria between them and all that was necessary was for Austria to fire the first shot.

The Austrian Empire had come very near to total collapse in the Revolutions of 1848 but, thanks to the leadership of their new, young Emperor Franz Joseph and the victories of Graf Radetzky, they had weathered the storm and the Austrian Imperial Army seemed all the more robust and formidable. Austria did become a constitutional monarchy but it was a constitution that the Emperor accepted on his own terms and he pursued a policy since labeled “neo-absolutism”. There were problems though due to rivalries in the military leadership and a financial crisis which greatly effected military readiness. The politicians in Vienna always seemed prepared to sacrifice spending on the army before anything else and this meant that Austria could not maintain so large an army, or armies, on the Italian peninsula and, in the event of major trouble there, would have to divert forces from elsewhere in the empire if they were to maintain an overwhelming superiority. The Austrian Empire had also simply become overstretched. Aside from their own frontiers to the south and east, garrisons to keep troublesome populations in line within the empire, the Austrians had also been called upon to safeguard the Papal States and the Spanish Bourbons in Naples as well as their own Italian possessions. It was simply too much, particularly with a less than robust economy. The desire of Emperor Franz Joseph to reassert Austrian leadership in Germany also meant that neither Berlin or Moscow were, at the time, looking too favorable toward Vienna.

Garibaldi Meets the King
The French and Piedmontese, on the other hand, were well prepared with a joint-plan for military cooperation in the event of war and the Piedmontese economy was booming. It was the perfect time for a war but it could only happen if Austria made the first aggressive move. Count Cavour, therefore, entered into a number of schemes to encourage trouble in the central duchies such as Tuscany and Modena, nominally independent but ruled by junior members of the House of Habsburg. The famous nationalist revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi was also recruited to lead volunteers in the cause of Italian independence under the Savoy banner. This caused nearly 20,000 Italians to rush to Turin to volunteer, fired by nationalist zeal, so many that Cavour had to suspend his plan before things went off prematurely. The point was for the trouble in the duchies to draw Austrian strength away from Lombardy-Venetia and the government in Turin knew perfectly well that the government in Vienna would blame them for any Italian nationalist unrest and thus the Austrians would be encouraged to attack Piedmont-Sardinia.

King Vittorio Emanuele II also ordered the mobilization of his army, at least gradually, which was sure to attract Austrian attention. The Austrians were certainly alarmed but also unsure how to respond. The Piedmontese had not actually made any aggressive move and a full mobilization of the Austrian Imperial Army was a costly exercise Vienna would wish to avoid if not strictly necessary. The Italians also had to be fully prepared before the war started given that, as per the agreement, they would be responsible for both paying for the French intervention on their behalf and keeping both armies supplied during the war, which would be no small task. The French also began moving their forces into position which alarmed the Austrians all the more. In April, 1859, however, everything almost came to ruin when the British government proposed an international congress to deal with the Italian situation. Thankfully, France and Italy were rescued by their Austrian adversary. Emperor Franz Joseph had sought out the retired elder statesman, Prince Klemens von Metternich, who immediately understood that the French and Italians were trying to provoke Austria into a war and he advised the Emperor that, whatever he did, do NOT send an ultimatum to Turin. The young Kaiser sheepishly had to admit that he had already sent one out.

The ultimatum ordered the King to demobilize his forces or face war and this message was immediately forwarded to Paris. The French and Italians had their threat and could take action in a war of self-defense against Austrian aggression. Lest anyone think that Emperor Francis Joseph was being purely hot-headed in this blunder, he had expected such a conflict to rally the German states in support of Austria. Unfortunately for him, they did not. The Prussians were not sympathetic, seeing the Austrians as rivals with a bizarre obsession with non-Germans and the other states often did not see Austria as a “team player”, partly also because they were necessarily focused on their rebellious non-German territories. They also saw no reason for Austria not to accept the proposal for a congress rather than giving the Italians exactly what they wanted, which was a war. Emperor Francis Joseph, however, feared that any such congress just might say what many Italian nationalists had been saying for ages; leave Italy to the Italians and everyone mind their own business. Austria simply had no real friends at this point and so would have to stand alone. Emperor Francis Joseph, for good or ill, was prepared to and after the Italians did not respond to his ultimatum, issued the declaration of war on April 29, 1859.

Feldzeugmeister Franz Graf Gyulai, commander of the Austrian Second Army in Lombardy, believed that his forces would have at least two weeks to crush the Italians before the French could intervene. He had on hand some 110,235 soldiers as well as another 59,000 deployed throughout Lombardy-Venetia to suppress any popular uprisings. The Italians could field only 77,348 men to meet them, however, they were very efficient and led by men who had learned from the mistakes of 1848. The Franco-Italian leadership had also carefully worked out the train schedules and necessary stockpiles of supplies to move the French into northern Italy as quickly as possible. The Austrians had previously assumed the French were not prepared to move because they had not been stockpiling supplies. However, this was because it had been left to the Italians to handle the logistics and, in the end, the French army was transported quickly with ample stores by the very efficient Piedmontese rail network.

Generale La Marmora
Unfortunately for the Austrians, Gyulai was no Graf Radetzky and no one knew this better than Gyulai himself who was more of a desk general. He had asked to be reassigned but this was refused. With the outbreak of war, his plan was to crush the Italians with his superior numbers and by then be able to take up a good position from which to deal with the French. He would march directly on the Piedmontese capital at Turin. Of course, this is exactly what the Italians expected him to do and the Piedmontese army was deployed to block any such advance and hold up the Austrians until the French arrived at which point they would work together to drive the enemy from Italian soil. The Italian commander, General Alfonso La Marmora was under no apprehension that this would be easy but he was aided by the extensive spy network set up by Lt. Colonel Giuseppe Govone, his chief of military intelligence, who had a constant flow of information on the movements of the Austrian army. La Marmora deployed his five infantry and one cavalry divisions to be in a position to block the advance on Turin and to be able to link up with the five French Corps at their places of deployment which, when they arrived, would be set up to pin down the Austrians at the Dora Baltea line and then, with three of the French Corps coming from Genoa to Alessandria, to threaten the Austrian flank.

Austrian Imperial Army
Austrian naval strength was negligible, being about as large as the Piedmontese navy, far outmatched by the French fleet which was the second-largest in the world. In any event, the commander of the Austrian navy, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, had prepared only for the defense of the Adriatic and had no plans for offensive operations (and keeping in mind most of the sailors in the Austrian navy were Italians). As such, by rail and by sea the French were able to move their forces into Italy rapidly and freely. The Austrian army, likewise, inexplicably remained in place for days while their enemies massed against them. Gyulai claimed that Vienna had ordered him to wait while in Vienna they blamed Gyulai for not seizing the initiative. It is difficult to know who was in the right but it does seem that, having blundered into giving the Italians the war they wanted, Emperor Franz Joseph hoped, at the last minute, to be able to negotiate a solution or for the German states to rally in support of Austria. Of course, neither would be the case nor were such hopes frankly realistic. By May 1, with French deployments proceeding as scheduled, General La Marmora remarked to the commander of the Third Division at Novi, General Giovanni Durando (commander of the Papal Army in the First War) that the Austrian advance was “molto lentamente” (very slow).

The Austrians had their spies too and they reported to Gyulai on the movements of the French army which seems to have intimidated him as they tended to exaggerate French strength. He was unsure of how to deploy his own forces for fear of where they would be when the French reached their own destinations. As it turned out, it was ten days from the time of the ultimatum until Gyulai moved, very slowly, toward Vercelli. King Vittorio Emanuele II, who was in his element on such occasions, wanted to stick to the original plan but the French convinced him to redeploy Franco-Italian forces away from Turin. He did so and, as it happened, a determined Austrian advance would have found little more than one Piedmontese cavalry division blocking their way if they had driven on for the capital but the Austrians were convinced that the French were planning to flank them from the south and so began to pull back. The danger to Turin dissolved faster than it had appeared.

Lt. General Garibaldi
By May 12 the Emperor Napoleon III had arrived in Genoa. Armed with some thoughtful advice from retired General Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini (a veteran of his famous uncle’s army), Napoleon met with King Vittorio Emanuele II at Alessandria to work out their offensive against the Austrians. It would be too much to say the Franco-Italian forces took the initiative from the Austrians as the Austrians never seemed to have held it in the first place but Napoleon III and Vittorio Emanuele II were certainly willing to seize it where it lay. They did, however, pass up an opportunity to strike the Austrians while Gyulai was redeploying his forces but an overall strategy was still being well executed. The famous Giuseppe Garibaldi, given rank as a Lt. General in the Piedmontese army after pledging allegiance to “Vittorio Emanuele and Italy”, was to harass the Austrian right, brushing the Alps. He had originally intended to lead the effort to foment unrest in the central duchies but this job was instead given to Prince Jerome Bonaparte and his French troops, which was deemed preferable to the authorities in Turin as Garibaldi, a lifelong republican and former Mazzinian, was still not regarded as being sufficiently loyal to the Savoy monarchy to be absolutely trusted. Garibaldi in the north and Prince Jerome in the south would threaten the Austrian position from the left and right, they would be intimidating but not part of the major action.

Battle of Montebello
As the French First Corps moved on Voghera, the Austrians thought this the first move in an effort to get around behind them and the Austrian IX Corps under Field Marshal Lieutenant Karl Urban was deployed to stop them. The result was the first engagement of the war that was more than a skirmish, the Battle of Montebello on May 20 between the lead French division of General Elie Frédéric Forey and elements of the Austrian V Corps under General Philipp Graf von Stadion which had been sent in to support Urban. Three Italian cavalry regiments, the Aosta, Novara and Montferrato, also participated. Despite being considerably outnumbered (3 to 1), Forey fought an aggressive action that made Graf Stadion believe that the French had more support behind them, prompting him to retreat and give the victory to the Franco-Italian forces under Forey. This sharp rebuke made Gyulai all the more reluctant to take risks but as he had initiated the action, it also made Napoleon III nervous that the Austrians might be trying to take back the initiative. As it was, Gyulai had been concerned about a move south and his forces had met the enemy so he continued to believe he was on the right track and all forces were shifted toward the south.

Garibaldi occupying Varese
When an armed reconnaissance by General Enrico Cialdini, commander of the Piedmontese fourth division, found minimal Austrian resistance at Vercelli the following day, the French Emperor and Italian King could see that Gyulai was shifting away from the north, giving them an opportunity to come at the Austrians from that direction. Garibaldi was also proving effective at keeping the Austrians off-balance. On May 26 at the Battle of Varese, his Cacciatori delle Alpi routed the Austrians, forcing them to keep more troops deployed in the north as the aggression of the Italians again caused the Austrians to overestimate their strength. The next day Garibaldi and his men defeated another Austrian contingent at the Battle of San Fermo, forcing the Austrians to withdraw from Como.

King Vittorio Emanuele II leads the Zouaves at Palestro
At the same time, while the largely French force was engaged at Montebello, King Vittorio Emanuele II led Cialdini’s division with the addition of some French Zouaves against a smaller contingent of Austrians under General Friedrich Zobel at the Battle of Palestro. The Austrians rushed in reinforcements so that, in the aftermath, they held the numerical advantage yet the threat of French troops on the Sesia caused him to retreat for fear of being cut off. By May 30 the Franco-Italian forces had secured a bridgehead across the Sesia. With efforts to retake Palestro having failed and with Garibaldi keeping control of the northern front in spite of being outnumbered nearly 4 to 1, Gyulai decided that the threat to Milan was too great and he ordered a retreat across the Ticino to concentrate his forces at Mortara. However, the rapid movements of the Franco-Italian armies forced him to abandon that plan. He was correct that they were moving against Milan, the capital of Lombardy, but he did not know what approach they would take. He was coming under intense pressure and no small amount of criticism, particularly after the arrival of Field Marshal Heinrich von Hess with stern orders from the Emperor (who had reached Verona) to defend the frontier and not retreat to the Quadrilateral fortress complex.

The Battle of Magenta
More Austrian reinforcements arrived and Gyulai was finally convinced that the enemy was not trying to maneuver around behind him after all. There was also confusion as Hess outranked Gyulai, yet seemed to be leaving things to him. All of this caused a degree of stagnation on the Austrian side as one commander would fail to do something because he assumed the other commander would do it. Nonetheless, the Austrians did hold a strong defensive position around Magenta after destroying the bridges over the Ticino. Gyulai had about 68,000 men in the area when the Battle of Magenta commenced on June 4. With a little over 50,000 French troops plus 12,000 Italians under General Manfredo Fanti, Napoleon III planned an assault on the front and flank of the Austrian army. The two sides were thus evenly matched as long as the Austrians concentrated on the points of attack and did not remain spread out. Both sides made mistakes and many units blundered into each other, nonetheless, the Austrians took far heavier losses and finally retreated, giving the victory to the French. Napoleon III congratulated Marshal MacMahon with a peerage as Duke of Magenta for this success.

This latest defeat was the last straw for Emperor Franz Joseph who had seen his forces do nothing but retreat, be outmaneuvered and defeated often by forces inferior to their own. He dismissed Gyulai and took command of the Austrian Imperial Army himself. With the Quadrilateral fortress cities secure but the enemy in command of the surrounding countryside, his position was similar to that of Graf Radetzky in 1848. However, “Papa Radetzky” was a veteran, unflappable commander and Emperor Franz Joseph was not. Determined to take the offensive and crush the enemy, he abandoned his strong position and moved out on June 23 to take on the Franco-Italian armies. The result was the bloody Battle of Solferino the following day. Once again both sides were about evenly matched with roughly 130,000 soldiers each.

Emperor Napoleon III at the Battle of Solferino
Each army was basically trying to attack the other and so units ran headlong into combat, often not as they intended. It was a huge brawl that involved a number of separate actions and coordination was difficult. The Austrian position was also undermined on distant fronts by uprisings breaking out in conjunction with Prince Jerome’s arrival in central Italy. Earlier, toward the end of May, his forces entered Florence and soon dispatched units to Parma and Modena. At Solferino, most of the fighting centered around two engagements, one around Solferino itself where the French under Forey pushed the Austrians back into the town itself at which point house-to-house fighting ensued. Despite Austrian reinforcements arriving, French attacks soon succeeded in nearly surrounding the town. Fighting south of town was disconnected from the main engagement and involved a number of cavalry units. There, the French attacks were repulsed by the Austrians but this had no effect on the imperiled Austrian position in town. The fighting was fierce and casualties were heavy, particularly for the Austrians.

King Vittorio Emanuele II at San Martino
The other major action was the battles at San Martino and Madonna della Scoperta which largely involved the Italian forces. The Austrians had a fairly good defensive position and the Italians attacked immediately, hoping to dislodge them before they could strengthen their lines. However, this meant that the Italians attacked piecemeal as they came up rather than being able to throw their entire force at the Austrian position. Field Marshal Lieutenant Ludwig Benedek, considered the best Austrian corps commander by many, had been ordered to attack the French flank and had not been expecting to run into the Italians. However, he was a veteran of this region and kept his cool, responding rapidly to the changing situation. Repeatedly, Italian discipline and determination carried them forward to the cusp of success only to have Benedek adeptly move his men and guns to the imperiled area and throw the Italians back with devastating barrages. However, when word came that the main Austrian army had been beaten at Solferino, he had no choice but to conduct a fighting withdrawal as the Italian attacks continued. With the French having taken Solferino, the Italian seizure of San Martino marked the end of the massive and bloody battle.

Napoleon III & Franz Joseph make their peace
Stunned by the ferocity and chaos of the engagement, Emperor Franz Joseph ordered his forces to fall back to the security of the Quadrilateral fortresses. Losses had been heavy for both sides. The Italians had lost about 5,000 men, the French more than 10,000 and the Austrians about 22,000 in the vicious struggle. Both the French and Austrian emperors were shaken by the extreme loss of life. The carnage would later lead one Swiss observer of the engagement to found the International Red Cross in 1863. Operations continued for a time but Napoleon III and Franz Joseph both agreed that the war should come to an end. Franz Joseph feared that a continuation of the so far disastrous conflict could pose an existential threat to the Austrian Empire itself if other areas rose in rebellion. Napoleon also feared that if Austria seemed near to collapse the other German states might get involved and threaten France itself. Disregarding his earlier promises to the Italians, Napoleon III agreed to make peace with Emperor Franz Joseph at Villafranca on July 8.

The result of this was that Austria gave up Lombardy to the House of Savoy but retained control of Venetia. It was not the total victory that Italian nationalists had wanted and many were bitter about the result. The French had gained Savoy and Nice but had backed out before the total liberation of northern Italy had been achieved. Many, given how close Austria had come to collapse in 1848, thought they would not put up so strong a fight. However, despite being weakened by budget cuts, the Austrian military was much more effective than Austrian diplomacy had been. Things would have gone very differently if the Austrians had not managed to offend the Russians, Prussians, the minor German states and the French all at the same time. Not only did this isolate Austria but it also gave the Prussians room to further gain prestige among the German states, standing as the defenders of German rights while Austria was focused on keeping control of Italians, Slavs and Magyars.

The landing at Marsala
A particular example of this was in 1857 when royalists in the Principality of Neuchâtel had risen in revolt. They favored the King of Prussia for their prince rather than being a part of Switzerland and the German states saw this as an opportunity to strengthen the German Confederation. Emperor Franz Joseph, president of the Confederation as the Head of the House of Habsburg, had, however, refused to give their cause imperial support. Prussia was ultimately forced to back down and many in the German Confederation wondered why they should take any risk to support the Austrian rule over unwilling Italians two years later when the Austrians had been unwilling to support pro-German royalists who wanted to be ruled by a German monarch. It was illustrative of how Austrian interests diverged from those of the rest of the German-speaking people. There were also those in Berlin who realized the implications that Italian independence would have better than the French did. Napoleon expected to gain a subservient northern Italian buffer state but, as Modena, Tuscany, Parma and after Garibaldi’s shockingly successful invasion of the south, all came to be part of the Kingdom of Italy, France instead helped create a rival in the Mediterranean.

The King and Napoleon enter liberated Milan
The result of all of this was that Austria lost Lombardy, which joined with Piedmont-Sardinia, Tuscany, Parma and Modena to form the Kingdom of Italy, soon joined by the south and the Papal States outside of Rome. Austria remained friendless and increasingly overshadowed by Prussia and the French were not seen by the Italians as stalwart allies but as rather fair-weather friends who likewise kept troops in Rome. The French had gained battlefield laurels but would also find themselves without friends going forward just as the Austrians had because of their determination to maintain some level of control over Italy, continuing a cycle which had been going on for many, many centuries and which would continue until the fall of Napoleon himself in 1870. Italy had gained much from the Second War for Independence but not so much as to not require a third war. The Austrian loss did not seem too significant but it actually was. In trying to maintain control of Italy, Austria would ultimately lose their place in Italy and their place at the had of Germany to the Kingdom of Prussia. It would be no coincidence then that the Third War of Italian Independence would see Italy and Prussia on the same side.

Saturday, July 8, 2017

King Carlo Emanuele III

Only the second king of the House of Savoy, Carlo Emanuele III was undoubtedly one of the most ambitious and military-minded of the family. That he was to prove an astute and formidable monarch is all the more noteworthy inasmuch as he was not raised with the expectation of taking on such a responsibility and had been neither very well liked or well prepared by his father. Carlo Emanuele di Savoia was the second son of King Vittorio Amedeo II by his wife Queen Anne Marie d’Orleans. He was born in Turin on April 27, 1701, well before his father was King of Sardinia and was thus only Duke of Savoy. He was nicknamed “Carlino” as a boy for being rather frail and not the strapping, handsome son all fathers wish for. In time, however, his people would give him a more praiseworthy nickname; “the Hardworking” king. As his father became involved in the War of the Spanish Succession and because of the long military tradition of the family, young Carlo Emanuele was given a more thorough education on the subject of warfare though other subjects were neglected.

In 1713 his father became King of Sicily as part of the peace following the War of Spanish Succession but this aroused the jealousy and opposition of other powers so that the first reign of the Savoy over Sicily would be a relatively short one. At the same time tragedy struck the family when Carlo Emanuele’s older brother, Prince Vittorio Amedeo of Piedmont, died from smallpox at the age of only fifteen. His father had adored and doted on the boy, even making him regent during his year long absence from 1713-14 despite his young age. It was a devastating blow for the King and also thrust Prince Carlo Emanuele, Duke of Aosta, into the position of heir to the throne. The throne he would be heir to soon changed though as in 1720 his father finally came to an agreement to appease the other crowned heads of Europe by trading the Kingdom of Sicily for the Kingdom of Sardinia. In previous times, this might have aroused some opposition on the part of the German Emperor as there were supposed to be no other kings in the empire besides himself, however, the Hohenzollern rulers of Prussia had already set a precedent for princes within the empire to be kings of territories outside the empire.

Nonetheless, Vittorio Amedeo II would not rule for long as his life was being overtaken by grief and sadness. His eldest daughter (mother of King Louis XV of France) died in 1712, his second daughter did not survive childhood, his third daughter (wife of King Felipe V of Spain) died in 1714 and his eldest son died in 1715. In 1728 his grief-stricken wife Queen Anne Marie also passed away from heart failure. Trying to flee from his depression, in August of 1730 the King secretly married an old girlfriend with special permission from Pope Clement XII. The following month they made their marriage public and shortly thereafter the King announced his abdication, signing over his powers to his son on September 3, 1730 who then became King Carlo Emanuele III. The whole affair over the new wife and the abdication caused quite a scandal and King Carlo Emanuele III, who had never been his father’s favorite, was less than pleased with having to deal with it. He did his best to keep the former monarch out of sight and out of mind.

After so much gloom and grief, King Carlo Emanuele III tried to restore a more festive atmosphere to his court and Piedmont as a whole. However, his father was soon giving him trouble as, after recovering from a stroke, he tried to reassert himself and possibly retake the throne. This was potentially disastrous as not only had the whole abdication fiasco made Vittorio Amedeo II rather unpopular but father and son had never been on very good terms. For one thing, Carlo Emanuele had never been as good as his older brother as far as his father was concerned, he was not as strong, not as attractive, he did not measure up in the eyes of his father in any way. The new King had also had plenty of heartaches of his own. His father had arranged both of his marriages, the first to a German countess who died in childbirth at only 19 and the second to the Hessian Princess Polyxena with whom he had a successful marriage and six children. However, their domestic life was upset by the King who decided that his wife was too distracting and took up too much of his son’s time so he ordered them to sleep in separate beds.

Although she had only a few more years to live herself, Queen Polyxena was adamant that her husband be firm in dealing with his father. King Carlo Emanuele III gained the support of the Crown Council and managed to have his father arrested and confined to Rivoli castle and probably just in the nick of time as he had been rumored to be plotting an invasion Lombardy with the aim of conquering Milan, which would surely have sparked a war. In any event, that crisis was averted, his father had been dealt with and would trouble him no more and King Carlo Emanuele III could get on with the business of ruling his country. He did not have long to wait before an actual war broke out, once again over a disputed royal succession. The monarchy in dispute was that of Poland with France, Spain and Parma (so the Bourbon family basically) supporting Stanislas I and Russia, Austria, Prussia and Saxony supporting Augustus III. Rather than backing the empire, King Carlo Emanuele III joined the French and quickly led a very successful invasion of Lombardy, conquering Milan with little difficulty.

Unfortunately, the Spanish demanded Milan and Mantua as their reward for joining the coalition and the last thing King Carlo Emanuele wanted was for northern Italy to fall back under Spanish control again. He had ambitions to unite Italy which, though a tall order, he famously said the Savoy could accomplish the same way one eats an artichoke; one layer at a time. In any event, while the diplomats argued, King Carlo Emanuele III proved himself a skillful military leader as the commander of the combined Franco-Spanish-Italian forces in Italy. However, suspecting that the French would take away his gains and hand them over to Spain, he purposely botched the campaign to take Mantua. He did, however, prove himself in command of Franco-Piedmontese forces in victories at the Battle of Crocetta and the Battle of Guastalla. When France and Austria finally came to terms, as expected, the Piedmontese were obliged to withdraw from Lombardy rather than retain their conquests, however, King Carlo Emanuele III did gain Langhe, Tortona and Novara in the final settlement. In the end, the House of Bourbon gained territory but the candidate preferred by Russia, Austria and Prussia, Augustus III, became King of Poland (though he would not have a happy time of it).

This war over the Polish throne had a few significant results for the Savoy monarchy. First, it had secured the reputation of King Carlo Emanuele III as a capable military leader with his campaign which secured several battlefield victories and showed his skill at maneuver in preventing the union of the armies from Austria and Naples. Secondly, it showed that the hope for greater gains to be had by allying with the French were not to be taken for granted. It caused no small amount of frustration in Turin that so much territory which the Piedmontese had fought for and won would be so quickly handed over to another power. Another conflict was soon on the horizon and King Carlo Emanuele III would certainly not be taking the side of the French again. That conflict, the War of Austrian Succession, was the next great crisis of his reign.

The War of Austrian Succession (known as King George’s War in America) was basically an effort by the French and the Prussians to prevent the Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary Maria Theresa from inheriting the Habsburg monarchy. Her father had spent all but his last thaler trying to buy the support of the crowned heads of Europe to ensure a peaceful succession for his daughter but, as soon as he was gone, most opposed her anyway. King Carlo Emanuele III threw his support behind Empress Maria Theresa and the Habsburgs. He brought his own skills and a small but proficient army, however, his small state could not sustain the effort it would take to fight what was effectively a world war. However, the British, who also backed the Austrians as a way of opposing the power of the Bourbon French and Spanish, provided economic support for the House of Savoy, effectively funding their war effort. The war began in 1740 when King Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded Silesia, however Piedmont-Sardinia was not immediately involved.

In 1741 the Spanish and their Neapolitan proxies made a fast and aggressive invasion north with the aim, once again, of taking control of Milan and northern Italy for Spain. Empress Maria Theresa sent her people to talk to King Carlo Emanuele III’s people and work out an alliance. 1742 saw these negotiations concluded and combat begin, though the Habsburg-Savoy alliance was directed at Spain rather than France. At first, the Austrians did well enough and seemed to need no help, however, by early 1743 the Spanish got the better of them. More troops were rushed in from Germany and the Spanish retreated but the scare was enough to involve the French were drawn into a frustrating conflict in the Alps against the Piedmontese troops of the House of Savoy. 1744 promised to be decisive with a major Franco-Spanish invasion planned for the conquest of northern Italy. The French, Spanish and Neapolitan troops, led by the King of Naples who would later be King Carlos III of Spain, won the Battle of Nemi (or First Battle of Velletri) and then a second by thwarting an Austrian raid that intended to capture the future Spanish monarch.

After this, the Austrians wrote off Naples and focused on supporting their Savoy ally in the north against the French forces under the Prince of Conti. King Carlo Emanuele III fought the French as best he could but, though he suffered several defeats, still managed to prevent the French and Spanish forces from uniting against him in battles throughout the summer of 1744. The successful defense of Cuneo was critical to that. The following year, the Republic of Genoa joined the Bourbon side and declared war on Piedmont-Sardinia. The French launched a renewed offensive in 1745 with a combined force of 80,000 men which managed to draw the Austrians away and then pounce upon the small, isolated Piedmontese army at the Battle of Bassignano on September 27, 1745. However, by that time, Prussia had made peace with Austria and more Austrian troops could be committed to Italy. The French and Spanish still fought ferociously and took a huge toll on the Austrians, the Genoese also holding their own surprisingly well against the Habsburg armies.

King Carlo Emanuele III lost a succession of battles against a Franco-Spanish army that outnumbered his roughly 3-to-1, however, in 1746 he was given some Austrian reinforcements to make good his losses and began to turn the situation around. Alessandria and Asti were recaptured from the enemy and in 1747 he won a stunning and decisive victory over the French at the Battle of Assietta. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Italians defeated the French and inflicted 5,300 losses on them while losing only 299 of their own. It was such an overwhelming victory that the Bourbon forces gave up on the Italian front and shifted their main war effort to the Franco-German border and the Netherlands. King Frederick the Great of Prussia famously said that if he had an army like the Piedmontese, he would make himself King of Italy in quick order. King Carlo Emanuele III was not without at least some such aspirations but, as his remark about the artichoke demonstrates, he knew that he would have to play the long game. As it was, he showed his remarkable skill as a negotiator when both sides of the war finally determined to come to terms for peace. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle might not have fulfilled every aspiration but it considerably expanded Savoy territory and recovered all that had been lost at the hands of the French.

When the Seven Years’ War (French & Indian War to Americans) broke out not long after, King Carlo Emanuele III remained neutral. His country had been stretched to the breaking point, invaded, occupied and needed a period of peace to recover its strength. He worked on improving the government, developing Sardinia, making the army more efficient, his fortresses stronger and improving higher education. He was also able to take time to indulge in his love of great works of art, enlarging the Savoy family collection and even establishing a tapestry workshop in Turin. Happiness in his private life continued to be short-lived. In 1737 he had married Princess Elisabeth Therese of Lorraine but, sadly, their life together was to be dominated by heartache. They had three children together, the first two dying in childhood with only their third, a son, surviving to adulthood and Elisabeth Therese died of fever shortly after this third childbirth. King Carlo Emanuele III could only busy himself with his duties, improving his military defenses, strengthening the army and so on, which he did until his death on February 20, 1773.

Friday, July 7, 2017

The First War of Italian Independence

The idea of some sort of a unification of the Italian peninsula was one that long predated the series of wars for Italian independence. Indeed, unification and independence were not the same thing and might not necessarily have been linked. After the downfall of Napoleon and the re-drawing of the map of Europe by the Congress of Vienna, most of northern Italy was handed over to the Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs and their cadet branches of the family. Central Italy was restored to the Pope and the south of Italy was returned to the junior branch of the Spanish Royal Family. However, from the very beginning, there was trouble in the south and Austrian troops had to be dispatched to keep the King of the Bourbon Two-Sicilies on his throne. Between the north and the south, this meant that, fairly early on, Austria was forced to maintain a military force of over 100,000 soldiers on the Italian peninsula to maintain the existing power structure.
Metternich
The Austrian statesman, Prince Clemens von Metternich, knew this was unsustainable in the long-term and so proposed to the allies the creation of an Italian federation under the leadership of the King of Lombardy-Venetia, who not coincidentally happened to be the Emperor of Austria. The allies rejected this proposal and the unrest continued, particularly in the south. Metternich feared that this tendency toward rebellion would spread and threaten those areas recently placed under Habsburg rule. In response, he produced the “Troppau Protocols” in 1821 in which Austria, Prussia, France and Russia agreed that any outbreak of revolution would be met by concerted military force to suppress it. It was unlikely that such cooperation was to be forthcoming but Metternich hoped that the statement alone would be enough to convince potential rebels of the hopelessness of their cause and bolster the King in Naples in particular. To his frustration, however, such hopes by Metternich were dashed.

That same year, rebellions broke out in both Piedmont-Sardinia and the Two-Sicilies and Austrian troops were dispatched to both to suppress them. In Turin, the rebels did not try to bring down the monarchy but demanded a constitution, which Prince Carlo Alberto gave them, as he had taken control of the government when King Vitttorio Emanuele I abdicated in favor of his brother King Carlo Felice who was out of the country at the time. King Carlo Felice, with his loyal regiments and the Austrians, regained control of the country and restored the absolute monarchy, exiling Prince Carlo Alberto to France. In Naples, Austrian troops suppressed the rebels and restored King Ferdinando IV to power. This, however, only strengthened the hand of the radicals who argued against constitutional monarchy and in favor of radical republicanism. This faction was led by Giuseppe Mazzini who had no use for kings at all and would make great use in his propaganda for every time a monarch on the Italian peninsula granted a constitution at a time of weakness only to revoke it once they had an Austrian army behind them.

King Carlo Alberto & Kaiser Franz Joseph
This set the stage for the wars of Italian unification and independence. The momentum was toward that goal but the question remained whether it would be the radical republicans or the constitutional monarchists who reached the finish line first. The two most prominent monarchs involved would be the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, firstly King Carlo Alberto who came to the throne in 1831 and the Emperor of Austria Franz Joseph who would come to the throne in 1848. King Carlo Alberto, despite his earlier reputation, was a monarch of very traditional leanings and had fought, during his exile, for the legitimist cause in Spain as well as supporting other such legitimist causes elsewhere on the continent. He would give Piedmont-Sardinia (and by extension Italy as a whole in due time) her only monarchial constitution but it would be one that reserved considerable authority to the monarch. Nonetheless, once given, it would not be revoked and that garnered the House of Savoy a great deal of popularity. King Carlo Alberto also had a vision for a united Italy, independent of the Austrians but which would consist of a confederation of Italian princely states under the leadership of the Pope. However, the events of 1848 changed the situation and it became, again, a competition between the Italian nationalists who favored a republic and the Italian nationalists who favored a monarchy. King Carlo Alberto knew that if he did not succeed, Mazzini and his cohorts would.

1834 and 1838 had seen revolutionary outbreaks across Italy but in 1848 revolution began to sweep across multiple countries throughout Europe. In January the Sicilians rose up and overthrew the authority of the king in Naples, by March the Austrian Empire was engulfed in rebellion with uprisings in Milan, Venice, Budapest, Cracow, Prague and even Vienna itself. The regime of Kaiser Ferdinand was suddenly threatened by independence movements by the Hungarians in the east and the Italians in the west. In Milan, after five days of bitter struggle, the Austrian authorities were driven out while at the same time the Austrians were expelled from Venice in an uprising led by Daniele Manin. The Habsburg Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Habsburg Duke of Modena, the Bourbon King of the Two Sicilies and the Bourbon Duke of Parma were all forced by popular uprisings to grant constitutions. Likewise, in Rome, political reforms were demanded of Pope Pius IX who had initially favored the nationalist cause, to the point of liberating from prison and appointing to high office a succession of revolutionaries whom his predecessor, Pope Gregory XVI, had arrested.

Graf Radetzky
In Turin, King Carlo Alberto granted a constitution and was urged to take the lead in supporting the independence movement and driving the Austrians from Italian soil. He was very popular with the nationalists though the radical republicans of Mazzini’s faction naturally opposed him as the last thing they wanted was for a king of the most venerable Italian royal house to be the one to secure the unity and independence of Italy. Meanwhile, in Vienna, the Habsburg government was paralyzed and in need of leadership. Kaiser Ferdinand, handicapped from birth, was simply not up to the challenge. Moreover, the strength of the Austrian military had recently been reduced and now, suddenly, there were disasters in practically every part of the empire that needed to be dealt with so that Austrian military strength was severely overstretched. The one bit of good fortune the Austrians did have was the person of their commander on the ground in Italy; Field Marshal Joseph Graf von Radestky. He may not have been the most brilliant general but he was experienced, extremely competent and, most importantly, unflappable. He kept a cool head in the crisis when panic had gripped everyone around him.

So it was that with only 68,000 troops at his disposal and no immediate prospect for reinforcement for Radetzky that the Italian nationalists saw their chance and men such as Camillo di Cavour, Cesare Balbo and Massimo d’Azeglio urged King Carlo Alberto to take the lead and attack the Austrians before the republicans took control of the uprising. The King agreed and on March 29 led his small but highly proficient army of 28,000 men across the Ticino River with the aim of moving on Milan. With so many of their forces tied down all across Lombardy-Venetia trying to suppress rebellion, for the time being, the Austrian and Piedmontese forces would be about evenly matched. Further, as soon as word came that King Carlo Alberto had crossed the frontier, nationalist support for the Savoy monarchy erupted all across the Italian peninsula. Not wanting King Carlo Alberto to claim all the glory of liberating Italy for himself, Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany and King Ferdinando II of the Two-Sicilies likewise dispatched forces to join him in a joint war-effort against the Austrians. Even Pope Pius IX sent his support. The vision of independence and unification by way of a coalition of the princes of Italy seemed to be coming true.

Uprising in Milan
Brigadier General Guglielmo Pepe, a veteran of the Peninsular War and the Battle of Tolentino, commanded the Neapolitan contingent and, even more surprisingly, the Piedmontese and former Mazzinian General Giovanni Durando was given command of the Papal army by Pius IX. Altogether, a combined force of 100,000 Italian soldiers was moving or set to move against the beleaguered Austrians in the north. With such a force arrayed against them, the Austrian position seemed doomed. Any other commander would likely have lost his nerve but not Graf Radestky. He ordered his subordinates to fall back even as he pulled out of Milan. Yet, this was no disorderly retreat. Austrian commanders threatened horrific retaliation to remote areas of Lombardy-Venetia if any disturbances occurred, frightening most into taking no action. Radestky concentrated his forces in the Quadrilateral, the area within the fortresses of Verona, Mantua, Legnano and Peschiera. This would permit the Italian coalition no weak area to exploit. Thanks to the calm determination of Radetzky, the Austrians would soon discover that their position was not so vulnerable as it seemed.

On March 29, to great public fanfare, King Carlo Alberto entered Milan at the head of his troops. He marched on and his army pushed the Austrian rearguard across the Mincio River. The Austrian withdrawal caused the Piedmontese to push ahead before their allies from the south had arrived. Durando and the Papal Army was still south of the Po, Pepe and the Neapolitans were further north and the division from Tuscany was still on the march. King Carlo Alberto, seeing the Austrians retract, was determined to keep up the pressure on them and push forward, crossing the Mincio in mid-April toward Verona. On April 30 he met the Austrians at the Battle of Pastrengo and won a solid victory. Peschiera was besieged and the King was still pushing forward toward Verona. Graf Radetzky was finally compelled by this to take action and do something to take the initiative away from the Italians. An Austrian contingent was ordered to strike out from the city and on May 6 they administered a sharp sting at Santa Lucia that forced King Carlo Alberto to divert to the southwest of Verona, to Villafranca, to wait for further Piedmontese reinforcements and his allies from the south to join him.

Princely solidarity
At first, pan-Italian support only seemed to grow as the fight was underway. Nationalist sentiment in Parma and Modena forced their dukes to join the war effort. However, at this same critical moment, the expected help from the more significant states began to fall away. Tuscany remained pledged to the Italian cause but seemed unwilling to actually engage. Pope Pius IX suddenly sent an order to Durando forbidding him to cross the Po River, causing considerable bewilderment and likewise the commitment of King Ferdinando II of the Two-Sicilies seemed to fade away as April passed. A republican coup tried to unseat the King in Naples and disrupt the royal coalition. They failed at the first goal but succeeded in the second. King Ferdinando retracted the constitution he had earlier granted and recalled his army. General Pepe refused to go but most of the Neapolitan troops abandoned him. The remainder joined with the forces from Tuscany standing watch around Mantua. As for the Papal Army, General Durando argued with the Pope over his sudden about-face and finally simply disregarded the order and took his army across the Po anyway in an effort to cut off Radetzky from Venice.
Sardinian Grenadiers at Goito
Unfortunately for the Italians, Durando did not coordinate with King Carlo Alberto in these operations but the Austrian response of Graf Radetzky was, by contrast, extremely well coordinated. Field Marshal Lieutenant Count Nugent was dispatched with 16,000 men to stop the Italian advance in Venetia, hitting Durando at Cornuda and forcing him back to Vicenza. Throughout June, Durando and the Papal Army would remain there, surrounded by Austrian forces. This allowed Radetzky freedom to maneuver and while the Piedmontese remained at Villafranca, the Austrians flanked them with a march to Mantua. On May 29 they defeated the small contingent of troops from Tuscany and the 2,000 Neapolitan soldiers who had not abandoned Pepe at Curtatone-Matanara. Radetzky then moved his men from Mantua along the west bank of the Mincio with the aim of cutting off King Carlo Alberto from Piedmont. Unfortunately for the Austrians, King Carlo Alberto spotted this move and immediately grasped the enemy plan. He moved quickly to attack the Austrians while they were on the march and at the Battle of Goito on May 30, the Italians were victorious. Peschiera fell on the same day.

The Savoy star was still shining brightly, however, the situation was far from favorable. What little support that had been available from Tuscany, Naples and the Papal States was now completely gone and even with the many volunteers from across Lombardy and reinforcements from Piedmont, King Carlo Alberto had only 75,000 men which would be insufficient to launch a major offensive into Venetia or to mount a proper siege of the fortress cities of Mantua or Verona. King Carlo Alberto had no option but to remain at Villafranca and watch. At the same time, unflustered as usual, Graf Radetzky was methodically carrying on and was also finally receiving reinforcements from the rest of the Austrian Empire. The window of opportunity of Austrian weakness had closed on the Italians and Radetzky was able to launch a serious offensive of his own, descending on the Italians with two armies at the Battle of Custozza .

Austrian attack at the Battle of Custozza
This was the climactic engagement of the war, 33,000 Austrians against 22,000 Italians and the Italians fought valiantly against superior forces for three days from July 23-25. However, in the end, the Italians were forced to retreat. Yet, it was a fighting retreat, the Italians fell back in good order, continued to give resistance until disengaged, abandoned no equipment or anything of the sort. They had also inflicted considerably higher losses on the Austrians than they had suffered and the Austrians had not been able to decisively destroy the Piedmontese army. All the same, King Carlo Alberto would not waste the lives of his men needlessly and knew that without the whole of Italy standing together, he could not defeat the Austrians who would only grow stronger as his own forces grew weaker. The King had seen a chance but that chance was now gone and on August 9 he agreed to an armistice with the Austrians. In due course the Piedmontese abandoned Lombardy, returning to their own territory and the First War of Italian Independence came to an end. The following year, King Carlo Alberto did, briefly, attempt another effort but it was a short-lived disaster and, proud man that he was, this resulted in his abdication in favor of his son who became King Vittorio Emanuele II.

For the Austrians, the war had been one crisis among many. They had gained a new monarch in the young and determined Kaiser Franz Joseph, more laurels for a genuine war hero in Graf Radetzky and though they had come close enough to disaster to look it directly in the eye, that disaster had been averted and the Austrian Empire would survive, though ultimately concessions would be made to the Hungarians. Nothing of the sort would be forthcoming for the Italians however who continued to be ruled in the same manner that they had been before. The Kaiser even became somewhat cross with his younger brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, when, as Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia, he attempted to win over the Italians rather than flog them into submission. There was even talk that the Archduke himself entertained thoughts of uniting the Italian peninsula himself. He was soon put in his place and made no more than a ceremonial figure so that he began to look toward Mexico for a place to prove himself. In short, despite coming so close to defeat, the Austrians were determined to change nothing in regards to Italy.

Abdication of King Carlo Alberto
As for the Italians, the First War of Independence was a major turning point. It represented the one and only time that the monarchs of the existing Italian states, no matter how enthusiastically, came together in common cause as one Italian people. The fact that this fell apart almost as soon as it came together meant that the vision of the more traditional nationalists of an Italian confederation of princely states would not come to be. Going forward, it would be the republicans or the House of Savoy alone who would have to see foreign rule ended on the Italian peninsula. The Savoy would take the lead, initially quite reluctantly, to prevent the republican vision from becoming reality and in the end even many republican nationalists would be swayed to the monarchist side because the Savoy had a record of success and the republicans had only a succession of failures. It would take at least two more wars before Italy was completely independent of foreign rule but the First War of Italian Independence clearly illustrated who would lead them and how they would be fought.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Birth (or Rebirth) of the Kingdom of Italy

It was on this day in 1861 that the first Italian parliament, assembled in Turin, proclaimed the birth of the Kingdom of Italy, the united country as we know it today (though sadly now as a top-heavy, lower tier republic). The timing of this momentous occasion was quite conservative. With revolutions, a declaration of independence or proclamation of a new country generally comes before such a thing is an actual reality, while the struggle is still in progress. With the Kingdom of Italy, however, this was not the case. By the time HM King Vittorio Emanuele II assembled the first Italian parliament in Turin, the Austrians had been expelled from Italian soil everywhere except for the area around Venice, Garibaldi's victorious campaign had united the south with the north, finished off by the final victory by King Vittorio Emanuele's forces at the siege of Gaeta so that, other than Venice, the only other major Italian city that remained out of reach was Rome itself. The Eternal City was then still under the rule of Pope Pius IX, propped up by a French army sent by Emperor Napoleon III. As such, the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy was the recognition of an established fact. The further designation of Rome as the capital city, despite it being under papal rather than Italian national control, was a hopeful expectation.

Nonetheless, with the notable exceptions of Rome and Venice, Italy was at last one united nation under one government for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. It was the culmination of a long struggle that Italian nationalists had been waging to take back control of their own destiny and once again become more than a battleground for foreign powers to fight over. It was a long time coming and might have come about in a number of ways. There were certainly better ways in which it could have happened but none of those came to be. However, that it finally happened at all was thanks to the monarchist faction and that is a truth that should not be ignored. The republicans under Mazzini had tried to do things their own way and had failed completely. Even Garibaldi, a republican by inclination, was obliged to accept that Italy could be united only by the monarchy. It is something to be thankful for that men such as the future prime minister Francesco Crispi were sufficiently nationalist to put the ultimate aim of national unity and national greatness above their own previous political opinions. As Crispi himself said, the monarchy unites while the republic divides. It was true then and it is true now. Hopefully the day will come when the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed on this day in 1861, can be restored as a fully Italian, Catholic monarchy which can regain its place as a major player on the world stage.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

The Second Italo-Abyssinian War

Today the Second Italo-Abyssinian War of 1935-36 is generally viewed as a prelude to World War II but, of course, no one at the time could view it in that way. It was a strange conflict in many ways that brought to light some rather strange bedfellows on the part of the nations of the world at that time. It was one of the last of the colonial wars that had been fairly common in the previous century and yet you had the largest colonial power on earth, Great Britain, denouncing this campaign of colonial expansion. On the other hand, you had the Empire of Japan, which was growing increasingly vocal in denouncing European colonialism in Asia, taking the side of the Italian colonialists. The officially atheist and egalitarian Soviet Union was cheering for Ethiopia, an officially Coptic Christian feudal absolute monarchy. The British, for that matter, who had long been at the forefront of the anti-slavery campaign, likewise cheered for Ethiopia in which slavery was both legal and extremely widespread.

This conflict, which is today usually given little attention and simply mentioned as part of the build-up to the Second World War, one name on a list alongside the Mukden Incident, the occupation of the Rhine and the Sudetenland, the annexation of Austria and the occupation of Albania. However, at the time, it dominated world attention and had far greater implications and ramifications than most people think. It was the great test of the League of Nations, the existential threat to the post-World War I world order and, in a broader sense, it was the conflict which actually determined both the fate of the former monarchy in Austria and the alignment of the Fascist-ruled Kingdom of Italy with the National Socialist regime in Germany. Prior to this war, Italy was still aligned with France, Britain and the other World War I allies. Hitler had long idolized Mussolini but the Duce had until then kept his distance from the Nazi leader. The war between the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Ethiopia changed all of that.

Many misconceptions continue to be held about the conflict and many of the facts will doubtless come as a surprise to most people. Italy did not actually start the war, nor was it a pre-planned event. The Ethiopians were not a horde of ignorant primitives fighting with sticks and stones, despite what you may have heard. The outcome was not a foregone conclusion, indeed many in the international community expected the Italians to be defeated or at least that any victory would be so difficult to obtain that the Fascist regime would be brought down by a combination of a long, drawn-out war with heavy losses and the crippling effect of League of Nations sanctions on the Italian economy. Today, the war is often portrayed as an almost effortless military parade with the Italians crushing the backward Ethiopians like insects with the African natives having no hope for victory. That is certainly not how it looked at the time and the conclusion of the war, far from being preordained, took most people by surprise, certainly in how quickly events unfolded. It was the war which solidified the Fascist hold on Italy and which brought an end to the independence of the last un-colonized corner of Africa.

The war was first sparked, as many people may be at least vaguely aware, by the Wal Wal Incident in 1934 but this requires some background information. Much has been made of the fact that many Italians still seethed with indignation over the stunning defeat of the Italian colonial army at the Battle of Adowa in 1896 which brought down the Crispi government and, it is true, that loss to the Ethiopia of “King of Kings” Menelik II lingered in the Italian national consciousness but much had happened since then. Ethiopia had fallen into civil war, had briefly allied with the Ottoman Turks in World War I after which the ruling emperor, who had converted to Islam, was overthrown. An empress ruled the country but was ultimately surpassed by one chieftain Ras Tafari Makonnen who prompted another civil war with his efforts to centralize power, remove the power of the other chiefs and implement progressive taxation. After crushing the forces who tried to restore the empress, upon her rather mysterious death in 1930 Ras Tafari took the throne outright as Emperor Haile Selassie.

In 1932 Haile Selassie crushed another revolt in Gojjam and waged what some historians have called a genocide against the natives of Azebu Galla, the Oromo people having long been the victims of enslavement and persecution. Earlier, in 1928, Haile Selassie had signed a friendship and trade treaty with Italy but after coming to power made it clear that he was no more interested in friendship than Mussolini was. Some historians question whether his immediate campaign to build up and modernize the armed forces, particularly his personal troops, was intended to suppress internal rivals or to dominate the Horn of Africa and absorb the Italian colony of Eritrea in particular with its port facilities. The Italians, at that stage, had no designs on Ethiopia but simply wished to keep it out of the hands of any other foreign power. Toward that end, it was Italy which sponsored Ethiopia joining the League of Nations, a decision they may have come to regret eventually, because of their fear that the British would bend to the powerful anti-slavery societies in that country to launch an expedition into Ethiopia and annex it to the British empire. The British had no such plans but it was for that reason that Ethiopia, a tribal absolute monarchy that practiced widespread slavery, was brought in to the supposedly liberal and democratic League of Nations.

Once secure on his throne, Haile Selassie sought to modernize and strengthen Ethiopia as quickly as possible and invited in various European powers to help with this though it rankled in Rome that he made a point to exclude the Italians. The latest weaponry was purchased from the French, Belgians, Swedes, Czechs and Swiss. European military officers were brought in as advisors to train the Ethiopian military as Haile Selassie built up his own Imperial Guard that would be armed with the latest modern weapons and he sent Ethiopian officers for these units to train in the military academies of Europe. The colonial army of the Belgian Congo had a particularly formidable reputation and Belgian officers were hired to oversee the modernization of the Ethiopian army. All of this was going on long before there was the slightest hint of any actual trouble with Italy on the horizon. Unlike Hitler and his many speeches about the Germans living outside of Germany that preceded his annexations, one would be hard pressed to find Mussolini ever mentioning Ethiopia as an area of concern or even particular interest.

That only changed with the Wal Wal Incident of 1934. Several years before, the Italians had built a fort at this remote oasis and the Ethiopians said nothing about it. Then, on November 3, 1934 an Ethiopian military force of about a thousand men approached the fort and demanded its surrender, saying it had been built within Ethiopian territory. Why this was not mentioned at any time in the roughly four years since the fort had been built was not explained. In any event, the Italian commander refused. Tensions were raised but nothing immediately happened. That changed when a column of reinforcements for the tiny garrison arrived and on December 5, 1934 fighting broke out between the two sides. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the Italian colonial troops held their own and the Ethiopians retreated. Ethiopia protested to the League of Nations and before the month was out, Mussolini had dispatched one of the leaders of the Fascist “March on Rome”, General Emilio De Bono, to Eritrea to take command of the forces being assembled for an invasion of Ethiopia.

This reveals the little-discussed truth behind one of the major misconceptions of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. It is usually stated or at least implied that the Wal Wal Incident was something instigated by the Italians with the sole purpose of serving as a pretext for Mussolini’s pre-planned conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). However, it is quite obvious that this cannot be true. The Italians did not initiate the engagement nor did it lead immediately to conflict. If this had all been staged, surely Mussolini would have had the Italian army already deployed and ready to attack. Instead, it would take the better part of the following year before the war actually started, before the Royal Italian Army could be transferred to Africa, deployed, equipped and supplied to begin the invasion. Clearly, this was not a pre-planned event. Mussolini did not set this up. However, he was certainly more than willing to take advantage of the situation and use this opportunity to conquer Ethiopia and take revenge for the past defeat at Adowa.

In January of 1935, Mussolini obtained the assurance of the French that they would not intervene in any conflict in East Africa. It was not until July of 1935 that Emperor Haile Selassie announced to his people that a danger of war existed. And, all the while, the League of Nations delegates and the assorted foreign ministers tried to work out some sort of compromise that would prevent the whole thing from happening. The British and French foreign ministers, Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, made a proposal that Mussolini seemed agreeable with which would have seen Abyssinia partitioned, Italy taking one portion and Haile Selassie retaining control of the rest. However, the Abyssinian crisis had become the fashionable cause of the day and public opinion in the liberal democracies of the west was solidly opposed to Fascist Italy and firmly on the side of Emperor Haile Selassie and the proposed agreement was leaked to the press. Immediately there was a huge public outcry and the public in France and Britain denounced this as a shameful caving in to the hated Fascists. The agreement was immediately dropped, Hoare and Laval were both forced by public pressure to resign (Laval would be shot after World War II for having participated in the Vichy regime). Compromise was off the table.

The aim of Hoare and Laval had been to keep Italy on side in a cordon of opposition around Nazi Germany and this, they reasoned, was more important than who ruled Abyssinia. They feared, and rightly so as events unfolded, that British and French opposition to Italy would drive Mussolini into the arms of Adolf Hitler. This would prove to be of particular importance to the British given that the Kingdom of Italy, possessing a powerful fleet, sat astride the primary artery of the British Empire through the Mediterranean to Asia. No one wanted war but all were willing to join in economic sanctions against Italy by the League of Nations. Events there also had a profound impact on world opinion with Emperor Haile Selassie addressing the delegates, appearing regal and dignified, while he was heckled by Italians who came off as childish and bullying. The sanctions were enacted, though oil was not included, and Mussolini was infuriated. The more force the League of Nations leveled, the more belligerent Mussolini became. He denounced the organization as a bunch of elite, liberal hypocrites, particularly singling out the British and French, rulers of the first and second largest colonial empires in the world, for suddenly condemning Italian colonialism. The coming clash would determine whether the League of Nations would govern world affairs or not.

By October of 1935 the Royal Italian Army was in position. The primary force was deployed in Eritrea under General Emilio De Bono. A secondary front was prepared in the south, out of Italian Somaliland, under General Rodolfo Graziani, known in Italy as “the Pacifier of Libya” and in Libya as “the Butcher of Fezzan”. De Bono was an affable, old fashioned old soldier, one of the ‘Quadrumvirs’ who led the Blackshirts “March on Rome” but also a fervent monarchist who only joined the Fascist Party when Mussolini made it clear that he would remain loyal to the King. He planned a cautious, traditional sort of colonial campaign that would be conservative with the lives of his soldiers, advancing slowly, establishing defensive positions as they went, using their superior firepower to decimate Ethiopian attacks on their lines. General Graziani was a highly experienced colonial soldier, had been the youngest colonel in the Italian army in World War I and had a reputation for being a hard man who got results. An ardent Fascist, he said bluntly that, “The Duce will have Ethiopia…with or without Ethiopians”.

On the Ethiopian side, Emperor Haile Selassie mustered his forces, conscripting all able bodied men. Newsreels of the day showed hordes of barefoot Africans wearing loincloths and waving swords and spears. However, Haile Selassie had forbidden his army from wearing shoes and had uniforms but reserved most of these for his personal troops, the Kebur Zabagna, or Imperial Guard which also had the latest weapons. Despite the popular image, most Ethiopians had rifles and the army was equipped with a fair amount of artillery and machine guns. They also had trained officers, European advisors and European officers fighting as mercenaries. One of the most prominent foreigners was the Turkish General Mehmet Wehib Pasha, leader of the Turkish advisory mission to Abyssinia, who referred to himself as the “hero of Gallipoli”. He served as chief-of-staff to Ras Nasibu, Ethiopian commander of the southern front and oversaw the construction of a fortified line nicknamed the “Hindenburg Wall” in reference to the famous Hindenburg Line of World War I. Wehib Pasha was of course a Muslim as were the vast majority of the Eritreans and Somalis in the Italian colonial army. However, he was happy to fight for Abyssinia as he had an intense hatred of Europeans and would fight them anywhere under any flag.

On October 3, 1935 the Italian invasion began, slowly and cautiously. The same day, Ethiopia formally declared war on Italy, Rome never having issued such a declaration. The following day, on the northern front out of Eritrea, Italian forces occupied Adigrat, Inticho and Daro Tacle while on the southern front, out of Italian Somaliland, Graziani occupied Dolo Odo and Maladdaie on the Genale (Jubba) River. On October 6, in a moment of particular satisfaction though no real military significance, the Italians marched into Adowa, site of their former defeat. That historic battle had an impact on both sides. The Italians were being careful, taking nothing for granted, having a healthy respect for the fighting ability of their enemy. The Ethiopians, on the other hand, because of their previous victory, tended toward over-confidence and underestimating their enemy. They reasoned that they had defeated the Italians before and could do so again, having an even larger and better armed army than before. Emperor Haile Selassie planned to let the Italians move in and then overwhelm them in a massive attack with his superior numbers. The Ethiopians did have the advantages of fighting a defensive war on their own ground, they had the advantage of numbers and outside support. However, the Italians had the more modern force, greater discipline and an arsenal which included weapons Ethiopia lacked. Their greatest advantage was the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian royal air force, which the Ethiopians had no answer for. The Ethiopian air force was miniscule and mostly served to move Haile Selassie from place to place.

The international community largely favored Ethiopia. Military experts predicted that, due to Ethiopian superiority in numbers, the harsh terrain, lack of modern infrastructure and the opposition of the general public, it would take the Italians at least two years to conquer the large country, if they could manage it at all. By that time, they were confident that huge Italian losses and the crippling effect of the League of Nations sanctions would bring down the Fascist regime, removing Mussolini from power in much the same way that the defeat at Adowa had brought down Crispi. However, this war would be different from the first. The same day that Adowa fell, Italian forces in the south captured the fortress of Gedlegube and pushed up to the K’orahe minefield in the Ogaden Desert. On the northern front, Italy was handed a propaganda victory when Degiasmacc Haile Selassie Gugsa, son-in-law of Emperor Haile Selassie and commander of the Mek’ele sector, defected to the Italian side. He had been married to the Emperor’s second daughter and after her death the two had fallen out, the Emperor blaming Gugsa for the loss of his daughter and Gugsa resenting the Emperor for not giving him the title of Ras (chief) while a junior cousin was so honored. This was all the more a major event given that Gugsa was a prince of the Imperial Family, a great-grandson of Emperor Yohannes IV who had seized the throne in 1871 following the disgrace and suicide of Tewodros II.

Within five days of this stunning event, the historic capital of Abyssinia, Axum, was taken by Italian forces. The war was going good for Italy, progress was steady and casualties were, so far, minimal. However, it was not happening fast enough to please Mussolini. The sanctions were causing pain at home and the longer the war lasted, the worse things would get. At that point, there was no grumbling, only a shared sense of sacrifice and a determination not to give in to the demands of the international community. Following the example of their Queen, more than half a million Italians donated their golden wedding rings to the war effort, the government replacing them with a band of steel to show their sacrifice for the nation. The Catholic Church joined in as well with the Bishop of Civita Castellana handing over his gold pectoral cross to Mussolini personally, followed up with a Roman salute before a cheering crowd of 12,000. Eventually, however, the sanctions would begin to bite and such stop-gap measures would not be enough to maintain the needs of the country and the war effort.

Meanwhile, in the south, the Italian advance continued, helped by their Somali allies who often had a personal grudge against the Ethiopians. On October 21 the Sultan of Olol Dinle, commanding his own forces, occupied Geladi and by the end of the month Italian and Ethiopian forces were locked in battle along the Dawa River. In November, on the northern front, the Italians captured Mek’ele and then Salaclaca. Again, good progress, but things were still moving too slowly for the increasingly frustrated Duce. By the end of the month, De Bono was ‘kicked upstairs’ with a promotion to Marshal of Italy and replaced with Marshal Pietro Badoglio with orders to shift the offensive into high gear. De Bono had been methodical, certain that Ethiopian forces would soon attack in huge numbers but, while the fighting was fierce and almost constant, such a major attack never occurred. Soon enough, all would learn that De Bono had not been wrong in his estimation of the enemy. Haile Selassie had been massing his forces and planning a major offensive that would split the Italian army, conquer Eritrea and eradicate the Italian presence in the Horn of Africa. On December 15, 1935, with about 200,000 men, the Ethiopians launched what became known as the “Christmas Offensive”.

Massed attack was the preferred fighting method for the Ethiopians and as the offensive began, the Italians were overwhelmed. At the Dembuguina Pass the Italian Gran Sasso Division was forced to retreat and Ethiopian forces recaptured the Scire area. It looked as though the victorious onslaught at Adowa was being repeated on a larger scale. However, toward late December an Italian pilot, Tito Minniti, was captured by the Italians, tortured, mutilated and finally beheaded. The Ethiopians have since denied this but mutilation of captives was an age old custom in the country (as photos of those captured in the first war after Adowa show) and such things doubtless occurred. This happened on the southern front and General Graziani ordered immediate retaliation. Later, this was also used to justify Italian use of poison gas, banned by international law, against the Ethiopians. However, Marshal Badoglio had requested and, indeed, already began using poison gas days before Minniti was shot down. In all likelihood, Minniti was tortured and executed, as were many other Italian and African colonial soldiers, however the use of poison gas also likely had less to do with this than with the ferocity of the Ethiopian offensive that Badoglio had to deal with.

Despite attempts at justification (following denials), the Italians used poison gas for the simple reason that it gave them an advantage (or at least they thought it would), it would mean killing more of the enemy and sparing the lives of more of their own troops. It was ugly and it was brutal but not really different in principle from the British using Maxim guns against spear-tossing natives or the United States using the atomic bomb against the Japanese. If one side has a weapon that will give them an advantage over their enemy, especially a weapon that the enemy cannot defend against, chances are they will use it. When it comes to accusations of cruelty and war crimes in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, the truth is that neither side was blameless nor always guilty. The Italian claim that the Ethiopians used forbidden Dum-dum bullets was likely untrue and simply a reaction to poor quality ammunition. However, Ethiopians did break the rules, killing and mutilating enemy prisoners, trapping Italian soldiers in their tanks and building fires underneath to slowly cook them alive. The noted English Catholic author, Evelyn Waugh, reported that the Ethiopians did use Red Cross insignia to cover themselves and that other reporters, going on only what the Ethiopians told them, reported to their readers Italian attacks on hospitals that did not exist. It is also likely that many of the Italian colonial soldiers practiced the same sort of mutilation on the enemy as some of the Ethiopians did and the use of poison gas by Marshal Badoglio was something he requested, not something prompted by moral indignation.

In any event, while the Italians were being hammered by the Ethiopian “Christmas Offensive” in the north, in the south, General Graziani continued to make steady progress. In early November his forces intercepted and defeated an Ethiopian motorized column (a fact which will doubtless surprise those who think the Ethiopians had no modern means of transportation at all) near Hamaniei. In December, the Sultan of Olol Dinle set his warriors against the Ethiopians at Golle and Italian forces occupied Denan by the end of the month. A major breakthrough followed shortly thereafter when Graziani crushed the southernmost Ethiopian army at the Battle of Genale Wenz in a fight lasting from January 12-16, 1936. The Ethiopians did win a bit of a propaganda victory of their own in the aftermath though, when a number of Italian colonial troops deserted to the Ethiopian side. This was mostly done for religious reasons, African Coptic Christians feeling little solidarity with the largely Muslim Somalis and their Catholic Italian officers. However, by the end of January, the Italian forces had taken Borana and reached the Ethiopian military base at Negele.

In the north, Marshal Badoglio went back on the offensive with the first Battle of Tembien. It was not much of a success but did at least bring the Ethiopian offensive to a halt. The Ethiopians reacted adeptly, moving around to encircle the Italians at Warieu Pass, keeping up relentless assaults. However, before the end of the month, the Italians had fought their way back and the Ethiopian “Christmas Offensive” was stopped for good. Badoglio seized the initiative and intended to keep it. Amba Ardam was taken in early February and in a long and hard fought battle lasting until March 2, the second Battle of Tembien, the Italians captured Worq Amba. This was quite a decisive engagement, shattering the armies of Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum. Responsibility for the defeat on the Ethiopian side remains something of a controversial subject but it left Haile Selassie with only one army of his original four on the northern front. The remnant was crushed in the Battle of Shire under Ras Imru Haile Selassie, the Emperor’s cousin and one of his most trusted subordinates. A royal cousin was also present on the Italian side at the battle in the person of Prince Adalberto, Duke of Bergamo, fourth son of the Duke of Genoa, who commanded the Gran Sasso Division.

Witnessing the situation falling apart, Haile Selassie worked frantically to organize a counter-offensive to halt the Italian advance. On March 31, 1936 the Ethiopian chieftain threw all the forces available to him at the enemy in a desperate gamble known to history as the Battle of Maych’ew. This time, Haile Selassie commanded his troops himself and even committed his prized Imperial Guard to the battle. However, Marshal Badoglio had intercepted a message Haile Selassie sent to his wife, telling of the planned attack. This allowed Badoglio to call off his own planned attack and take up carefully prepared defensive positions. The Ethiopians would be walking right into his trap. The initial Ethiopian attack was bloodily repulsed in hard fighting, after which the main assault shifted to the Italian left flank which was hit repeatedly but all to no avail. Finally, Haile Selassie committed six battalions of his Imperial Guard but despite being the best armed and equipped, they fared no better. In desperation, Haile Selassie ordered all units to attack all along the line but the only result was that they were all wiped out, most already being greatly weakened by that point anyway.

The Ethiopian army broke and began to retreat and it was at that point that insult was added to injury. Prior to the battle, Haile Selassie had tried to buy back the support of the Azebu Galla (the people he had nearly wiped out prior to the war) with a cash bribe for each man and lavish gifts for their leaders. They pledged support but had remained on the sidelines during the battle. Then, when the Ethiopian army began to flee, they suddenly joined in, attacking the Ethiopians and cutting them down as they ran away, only intermittently deterred by Italian bombers who also joined in attacking the fleeing army. Haile Selassie has seen his forces devastated, ordered the remainder to disperse and sent the Crown Prince to Dessie where he hoped to organize a new army to carry on the war. However, the Crown Prince later abandoned Dessie without a fight and the hoped for widespread resistance failed to materialize.

Meanwhile, on the southern front, the Ethiopians attempted to regain the initiative with an attack they hoped would culminate in an invasion of Italian Somaliland. However, this offensive was bloodily repulsed at the Battle of Genale Doria. General Graziani adopted the policy of offense being the best defense and made heavy use of Italian control of the air, decimating the Ethiopian forces with attacks from the sky. Graziani came up with an operation he called the “Milan Plan” and within five days all of his attacking columns had reached their objectives. In the Battle of the Ogaden, the vaunted “Hindenburg Wall” of Wehib Pasha was broken through and the last organized Ethiopian resistance in the south was utterly destroyed, the survivors fleeing into the countryside to wage guerilla war against the invaders. Graziani pushed on for Harar but while he met little Ethiopian resistance, bad weather and a lack of modern roads delayed his advance.

The climax of the war came in the north with what the Fascist propagandists touted as the “March of the Iron Will”. This was a rapid advance by a large mechanized column from Dessie to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. It may have been inspired by a similar advance led by the prominent Fascist leader, the “Panther Man”, Achille Starace on Gondor, covering 120km in three days. The advance on Addis Ababa was swift, powerful but also largely unopposed. Haile Selassie gathered his family and entourage and fled the country prior to the Italian attack and Addis Ababa fell into a state of anarchy and looting before order was restored by the arrival of the triumphant Italian army on May 5 (though advance units of the Eritrean colonial brigade arrived the day before). Marshal Badoglio staged a triumphal entry into the city and sent word to Rome that the war was over and Abyssinia was conquered. As soon as the news hit Italy, widespread celebrations broke out with cheering crowds calling Mussolini back to the balcony no less than ten times. A war that was supposed to be a 2-year long quagmire that would bring down the Fascist regime, which had set Italy against the prevailing international order of the League of Nations, had ended with Ethiopia being conquered in seven months.

King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy was given the title of Emperor of Ethiopia and Mussolini crowed to his Blackshirts, “…lift on high, legionnaires, your standards, your steel and your hearts and salute, after fifteen centuries, the reappearance of the EMPIRE on the fatal hills of Rome!” Of course, the significance of this victory need not have been so great but the importance that the international community had heaped on it made it one that changed the course of history. More than just an Italo-Abyssinian War, the popular fervor for the Ethiopian cause made this a confrontation between the Fascists on one side and the League of Nations on the other. The League was defied by Italy and with the victory in Africa, the League was humiliated. The tragic figure of Haile Selassie went into exile in England, though King Edward VIII refused to meet with him, as he found the League of Nations more objectionable than Mussolini. Of course, he would soon give up his crown and never regain it while Haile Selassie would ultimately be placed back on his former throne by the Allied armies in World War II.

For the time being, however, the Italian victory over Ethiopia changed everything. Mussolini, stung by the opposition of France and Britain in the League of Nations, infuriated by their economic sanctions, broke from their anti-German front and finally accepted the extended hand of Adolf Hitler. On a visit to Germany, Mussolini told a stadium full of people that Italy would “never forget” how Germany had refused to join the sanctions regime when so much of the world had turned against them. His opposition to the German annexation of Austria evaporated and the plan of Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg to restore the Austrian monarchy under Archduke Otto was stopped cold. Previously, Mussolini had approved of the plan, even talking about another Habsburg-Savoy royal marriage to cement their alliance but the reaction of the western powers to the war in Ethiopia changed all of that. In Italy, Fascism was more popular than ever and Mussolini more confident in the military prowess of the armed forces. Soon he would be sending tens of thousands of Italian troops to Spain to aid the nationalist forces of General Franco against the Spanish Republic.

Haile Selassie, perhaps strangely given how the system had failed him, doubled down on his support for collective security and international bodies. In his last appearance before the body, he criticized the League of Nations for not taking more forceful action to stop the Italians, effectively for not using force to see that their rulings were abided by. He ended with the ominous warning that, “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” Perhaps his words were remembered when the League of Nations was succeeded by the United Nations which could and has used military force to see its decisions implemented. However, the same United Nations which he had supported, including sending Ethiopian forces to participate in the Korean War, took no action to save him when he was overthrown and most likely killed in 1975 by communist traitors. It was largely the forces of the British Empire which, in World War II, had seen him restored to his throne after the Italians were defeated and by 1975 the British Empire was no more (and Haile Selassie himself had been more than happy to see it go at the time) and the Soviet Union could be counted on to block any UN move to take action against the Marxist clique that had seen Haile Selassie lose his throne the second time.

For a seven-month colonial war, the second clash of Italy and Abyssinia had proven to be quite consequential. The last un-colonized corner of Africa was conquered, Britain and France made an enemy, Germany gained an ally, the post-World War I world order embodied by the League of Nations was shattered and the last realistic hope for the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy was brought to ruin and Germany gained control of Austria all as a result of this conflict. It is also not a great leap to imagine that had the war ended differently, had Italy lost, there might have been no help for Franco in Spain and the Second Spanish Republic might have carried on, at least until the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Second Italo-Abyssinian War was a conflict that warrants greater study and understanding. It was far more significant and had many more far-reaching consequences than most people realize.