Crispi, Francesco

(1819–1901)

   Almost alone of the major figures who created the Italian state, Francesco Crispi was a southerner, from Agrigento in Sicily. He took an active role in the Palermo uprising in 1848 and was subject to political persecution both in Sicily and then in Piedmont (to which he had escaped in 1849) as a consequence of his republican ideals. A Mazzinian, Crispi was forced to live in exile until 1860, when he returned to Italy to organize the voyage of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s “Thousand” redshirts to Sicily. It was Crispi, on 11 May 1860, who proclaimed Garibaldi’s dictatorship over Sicily.

   Crispi became a parliamentary deputy in 1861. In 1864, he broke with the republicans by declaring himself willing to accept the monarchy. His anticlericalism and pro-Garibaldi sentiments, however, ensured the continuation of his radical reputation, although his overweening ambition and violent temperament won him few friends. Following the victory of the constitutional left in 1876, Crispi became first president of the Chamber of Deputies, then minister of the interior. However, he was forced to resign from the latter post within three months, after he was charged with bigamy. He was later acquitted on a technicality.

   A scandal of this magnitude might have been expected to kill Crispi’s career. Crispi, however, became the leading backbench critic of Agostino Depretis’s policy of trasformismo. Nevertheless, when Depretis offered him the post of minister of the interior in 1887, Crispi’s lust for high office proved too strong. After Depretis’s death in July 1887, Crispi finally reached the top of the greasy pole and became prime minister, a post that he held until February 1891. Crispi, anticipating Benito Mussolini, also occupied the posts of foreign minister and interior. As prime minister, he followed a policy of close collaboration with Germany (Crispi had first met Bismarck in the 1870s and was a warm admirer of the German statesman) and of overt hostility to the Catholic Church. Relations between the Church and the Italian government became so bad during Crispi’s premiership that Pope Leo XIII thought seriously of abandoning Rome. Crispi’s second government (December 1893 and March 1896) was characterized by grandiose imperial ambitions, rising social tensions, and the violent repression of the Sicilian peasants’uprising in 1896. From December 1894 to May 1895, Crispi suspended Parliament rather than allow it to vote on a motion condemning his involvement in the Banca Romana scandal. Despite this undemocratic behavior, Crispi won a landslide victory in the eventual general elections. However, Crispi had been politically damaged as a consequence of having antagonized and alarmed every other important figure of the day. The calamitous defeat of the Italian expeditionary force in Ethiopia at Adowa in 1896 brought his career to an ignominious end. He died in Naples in 1901.

   See also Catholicism; Cavallotti, Felice; D’Annunzio, Gabriele; Risorgimento.