Minghetti, Marco

(1818–1886)

   Born in Bologna, Marco Minghetti was a close collaborator and friend of Camillo Benso di Cavour. He served as minister of the interior under Cavour in 1860–1861 and rose to be prime minister in March 1863. In this role, he signed, in 1864, the treaty with Napoleon III that led to the withdrawal of all French forces from Italy in exchange for a guarantee of the pope’s authority over Rome. The treaty also established Florence as the capital of Italy. This treaty was wildly unpopular with Italian nationalists and radicals, notably Giuseppe Garibaldi, and with the deputies of the parliamentary left. Popular feeling against the treaty brought Minghetti’s administration to an end in September 1864. Minghetti occupied no further cabinet posts until July 1873, when he succeeded Giovanni Lanza as premier and also held the key post of finance minister. In office, Minghetti followed a policy of unremitting rigor that balanced the nation’s books within three years. This financial rectitude naturally had political costs: Minghetti’s unpopular policies were one of the principal causes of the so-called parliamentary revolution that brought Agostino Depretis and the left to power in 1876.

   Minghetti led the parliamentary opposition from 1876 to 1882. In that year, however, he and his faction in Parliament shifted their support to Depretis, allowing the premier to “transform” the political situation by forming a centrist majority. Minghetti died in Romein 1886.