Victor Emmanuel III of Italy

Early years

Victor Emmanuel III was born in Naples in the Kingdom of Italy to King Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy, the Queen consort. He was named after his grandfather, Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia and later King of Italy. Unlike his paternal first cousin's son, the 1.98 m (6 ft 6 in) tall Amedeo, 3rd Duke of Aosta, Victor Emmanuel was short of stature even by 19th-century standards, standing a diminutive 1.52 m (5 ft 0 in) tall, probably due to the consanguinity of his parents (Umberto and Margherita were first cousins, as were his paternal grandparents Vittorio Emanuele II and Adelaide of Austria).

From birth until his accession, Victor Emmanuel was known as "The Prince of Naples". On 24 October 1896, he married Princess Elena of Montenegro.

Reign

Accession to the throne

On 29 July 1900, at the age of 30, Victor Emmanuel acceded to the throne upon his father's assassination. The only advice that his father Umberto ever gave his heir was "Remember: to be a king, all you need to know is how to sign your name, read a newspaper, and mount a horse." His early years showed evidence that, by the standards of the Savoy monarchy, he was a man committed to constitutional government. Even though his father was killed by an anarchist, the new king showed a commitment to constitutional freedoms.

Although parliamentary rule had been firmly established in Italy, the Statuto Albertino, or constitution, granted the king considerable residual powers. For instance, he had the right to appoint the prime minister even if the individual in question did not command majority support in the Chamber of Deputies. A shy and somewhat withdrawn individual, the King hated the day-to-day stresses of Italian politics, though the country's chronic political instability forced him to intervene on no fewer than ten occasions between 1900 and 1922 to solve parliamentary crises.

World War I

When the First World War began, Italy at first remained neutral, despite being part of the Triple Alliance (albeit it was signed on defensive terms and Italy objected that the Sarajevo assassination did not qualify as aggression). In April 1915, Italy signed the secret Treaty of London committing itself to enter the war on the side of the Triple Entente. Most of the politicians opposed the war, and Italy's Chamber of Deputies forced Prime Minister Antonio Salandra to resign. At this juncture, Victor Emmanuel declined Salandra's resignation and personally made the decision for Italy to enter the war. The king possessed the right to do so under the Statuto, which stipulated that ultimate authority for declaring war rested with the crown.

Demonstrations in favour of the war were staged in Rome, with 200,000 gathering on 16 May 1915, in the Piazza del Popolo. The war effort was widely considered corrupt and disorganized, while the unexpected loss of life suffered by the Royal Italian Army, especially at the great defeat of Caporetto, and the post–World War I recession turned the King against what he perceived as an inefficient political bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, the King visited the various areas of Northern Italy suffering repeated strikes and mortar hits from elements of the fighting there, and demonstrated considerable courage and concern in personally visiting many people, while his wife, the queen, took turns with nurses in caring for Italy's wounded. It was at this time, the period of World War I, that the King enjoyed the genuine affection of the majority of his people. Still, during the war he received about 400 threatening letters from people of every social background, mostly members of the working class. On 8 November 1917, he met with the prime ministers of Britain (Lloyd George) and France (Paul Painlevé) at the Peschiera conference, where he defended Italy's strategic decisions.

Support for Mussolini

The economic depression which followed World War I gave rise to much extremism among Italy's sorely tried working classes. This caused the country as a whole to become politically unstable. Benito Mussolini, soon to be Italy's Fascist dictator, took advantage of this instability for his rise to power.

In 1922, Mussolini led a force of his Fascist supporters on a March on Rome. Prime Minister Luigi Facta and his cabinet drafted a decree of martial law. After some hesitation the King refused to sign it, citing doubts about the ability of the army to contain the uprising without setting off a civil war.

Fascist violence had been growing in intensity throughout the summer and autumn of 1922, climaxing in rumours of a possible coup. On 24 October 1922, during the Fascist Congress in Naples, Mussolini announced that the Fascists would march on Rome to "take by the throat our miserable ruling class". General Pietro Badoglio told the King that the military would be able without difficulty to rout the rebels, who numbered no more than 10,000 men armed mostly with knives and clubs whereas the Regio Esercito had 30,000 soldiers in the Rome area armed with heavy weapons, armoured cars, and machine guns. During the "March on Rome", the Fascist squadristi were halted by 400 lightly armed policemen, as the squadristi had no desire to take on the Italian state.

The troops were loyal to the King; even Cesare Maria De Vecchi, commander of the Blackshirts, and one of the organisers of the March on Rome, told Mussolini that he would not act against the wishes of the monarch. De Vecchi went to the Quirinal Palace to meet the king and assured him that the Fascists would never fight against the king. It was at this point that the Fascist leader considered leaving Italy altogether. But then, minutes before midnight, he received a telegram from the King inviting him to Rome. Facta had the decree for martial law prepared after the cabinet had unanimously endorsed it, and was very surprised when he learned about 9 am on 28 October that the king had refused to sign it. When Facta protested that the king was overruling the entire cabinet, he was told that this was the royal prerogative and the king did not wish to use force against the Fascists. The only politician Victor Emmanuel consulted during the crisis was Antonio Salandra, who advised him to appoint Mussolini prime minister and stated he was willing to serve in a cabinet headed by Mussolini.

Building of the fascist dictatorship

The King failed to move against the Mussolini regime's abuses of power (including, as early as 1924, the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti and other opposition MPs). During the Matteotti affair of 1924, Sir Ronald Graham, the British ambassador, reported: "His Majesty once told me that he had never had a premier with whom he found it so satisfactory to deal as with Signor Mussolini, and I know from private sources that recent events have not changed his opinion". The Matteotti affair did much to turn Italian public opinion against Fascism, and Graham reported to London that "Fascism is more unpopular by the day" while quoting a high Vatican official as saying to him that Fascism was a "spent force". The fact that Matteotti had been tortured by his killers for several hours before he was killed especially shocked Italian public opinion, who were much offended by the gratuitous cruelty of the squadristi killers. Given the widespread public revulsion against Mussolini generated by the murder of Matteotti, the king could have dismissed Mussolini in 1924 with a minimum of trouble and broad public support. Orlando told the king that the majority of the Italian people were tired of the abuses of the squadristi, of which the murder of Matteotti was only the most notorious example, and were hoping that he would dismiss Mussolini, saying that one word from the king would be enough to bring down his unpopular prime minister. The newspaper Corriere della Sera in an editorial stated the abuses of the Fascist government such as the murder of Matteotti had now reached such a point that the king had both a legal and moral duty to dismiss Mussolini at once and restore the rule of law. During the Matteotti affair, even pro-Fascist politicians like Salandra started to express some doubts about Mussolini after he took responsibility for all the Fascist violence, saying he did not order Matteotti's murder, but he did authorise the violence of the squadristi, making him responsible for the murder of Matteotti. The king affirmed that "the Chamber and the Senate were his eyes and ears", desiring a parliamentary initiative, according to the Statuto Albertino. The knowledge that the king and the Parliament would not dismiss the prime minister led to the Mussolini government winning a vote of no confidence in November 1924 in the chamber of deputies by 314 votes to 6 and in the Senate by 206 votes to 54. The deputies and the senators were unwilling to risk their lives by voting for a no-confidence motion as the king had made it clear that he would not dismiss Mussolini even if the motion did carry the votes of the majority.

Victor Emmanuel remained silent during the winter of 1925–26 when Mussolini dropped all pretence of democracy. During this time, the king signed without protest laws that eliminated freedom of speech and assembly, abolished freedom of the press, and declared the Fascist Party to be the only legal party in Italy. In December 1925, Mussolini passed a law declaring that he was responsible to the King, not Parliament. Under the Statuto Albertino Italian governments were legally answerable to Parliament, but politically answerable to the monarch. However, it had been a strong constitutional convention since at least the 1860s that they were legally and politically answerable to Parliament. In January 1926, the squadristi used violence to prevent opposition MPs from entering Parliament and in November 1926, Mussolini arbitrarily declared that all of the opposition MPs had forfeited their seats, which he handed out to Fascists. Despite this blatant violation of the Statuto Albertino, the king remained passive and silent as usual. In 1926, Mussolini had violated the Statuto Albertino by creating a special judicial tribunal to try political crimes with no possibility of a royal pardon. Even though the right of pardon was part of the royal prerogative, the king gave his assent to the law. However, the king did veto an attempt by Mussolini to change the Italian flag by adding the fasces symbol to stand beside the coat of arms of the House of Savoy on the Italian tricolour. The king considered this proposal to be disrespectful to his family, and refused to sign the law when Mussolini submitted it to him. By 1928, practically the only check on Mussolini's power was the King's prerogative of dismissing him from office. Even then, this prerogative could only be exercised on the advice of the Fascist Grand Council, a body that only Mussolini could convene.

Lateran Treaty

Victor Emmanuel was anti-clerical, being greatly embittered by the refusal of the Catholic Church to recognize Rome as the capital of Italy, but he realized that as long as the Catholic Church remained opposed to the Italian state, that many Italians would continue to regard the Italian state as illegitimate and that a treaty with the Vatican was necessary. However, when Orlando attempted to open negotiations with the Vatican in 1919, he was blocked by the king who was furious at the way in which the Catholic Church had maintained pro-Austrian neutrality during World War I. Aside from championing the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, which belonged to the House of Savoy, the king had little interest in religion. In private Victor Emmanuel regarded the Catholic Church with a jaundiced eye, making remarks about senior clerics as being greedy, cynical and oversexed hypocrites who took advantage of the devout faith of ordinary Italians.

In 1926, the king allowed Mussolini to do what he prevented Orlando from doing in 1919, giving permission to open negotiations with the Vatican to end the "Roman Question". In 1929, Mussolini, on behalf of the King, signed the Lateran Treaty. The treaty was one of the three agreements made that year between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See. On 7 June 1929, the Lateran Treaty was ratified and the "Roman Question" was settled.

Popular support

The Italian monarchy enjoyed popular support for decades. Foreigners noted how even as late as the 1930s newsreel images of King Victor Emmanuel and Queen Elena evoked applause, sometimes cheering, when played in cinemas, in contrast to the hostile silence shown toward images of Fascist leaders.

On 30 March 1938, the Italian Parliament established the rank of First Marshal of the Empire for Victor Emmanuel and Mussolini. This new rank was the highest rank in the Italian military. His equivalence with Mussolini was seen by the king as offensive and a clear sign that the ultimate goal of the fascist was to get rid of him.

As popular as Victor Emmanuel was, several of his decisions proved fatal to the monarchy. Among these decisions was his assumption of the crowns of Ethiopia and Albania and his public silence when Mussolini's Fascist government issued German-style racial purity laws.

Colonial expansion

Prior to his government's invasion of Ethiopia, Victor Emmanuel travelled in 1934 to Italian Somaliland, where he celebrated his 65th birthday on 11 November. In 1935, the Italian Army invaded Ethiopia, an aggression condemned by the League of Nations. Sanctions were imposed against Italy. As a result of the conflict, known as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, the Italians overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie, who went into exile; Ethiopia (Abyssinia) was annexed into the colony of Italian East Africa and Victor Emmanuel assumed the crown as Emperor of Ethiopia. The League of Nations adopted an ambiguous and weak policy on the issue of Italian East Africa, ending the sanctions against Italy in July 1936, and leaving the matter of recognition to individual countries without taking a strong collective position; by November 1938, 47 countries (at the time the majority of sovereign states) recognized the new Imperial titulature of Victor Emmanuel III. Greate Britain and France were among those.

In 1941, Italy's possession of Ethiopia came to an end, as a British offensive in East Africa resulted in the fall of Italian East Africa and the return of Haile Selassie to the throne. The term of the last acting Viceroy of Italian East Africa, including Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, ended on 27 November 1941 with surrender to the allies. In November 1943 Victor Emmanuel renounced his claims to the title of Emperor of Ethiopia.

The crown of the King of the Albanians had been assumed by Victor Emmanuel in 1939 when Italian forces invaded the nearly defenceless monarchy across the Adriatic Sea and caused King Zog I to flee.

In 1941, while in Tirana, the King escaped an assassination attempt by the 18-year-old Albanian patriot Vasil Laçi. Later, this attempt was cited by Communist Albania as a sign of the general discontent among the oppressed Albanian population. A second attempt by Dimitri Mikhaliov in Albania gave the Italians an excuse to affirm a possible connection with Greece as a result of the monarch's assent to the Greco-Italian War.

World War II

Under the terms of the Pact of Steel signed on 22 May 1939, which was an offensive and defensive alliance with Germany, Italy would have been obliged to follow Germany into war in 1939. As the Pact of Steel was signed, the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, told Mussolini that there would be no war until 1942 or 1943, but the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Baron Bernardo Attolico, warned Rome that the information he was hearing from sources in the German government suggested that Hitler was intent on seeing the Danzig crisis escalate into war that year. Between 11 and 13 August 1939, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, visited Hitler at the Berghof, and learned for the first time that Germany was definitely going to invade Poland later that same summer. Mussolini at first was prepared to follow Germany into war in 1939, but was blocked by Victor Emmanuel. At a meeting with Count Ciano on 24 August 1939, the king stated that "we are absolutely in no condition to wage war"; the state of the Regio Esercito was "pitiful"; and since Italy was not ready for war, it should stay out of the coming conflict, at least until it was clear who was winning. More importantly, Victor Emmanuel stated that as the king of Italy he was the supreme commander-in-chief, and he wanted to be involved in any "supreme decisions", which in effect was claiming a right to veto any decision Mussolini might make about going to war. On 25 August, Ciano wrote in his diary that he informed a "furiously warlike" Mussolini that the king was against Italy going to war in 1939, forcing Il Duce to concede that Italy would have to declare neutrality. Unlike in Germany where officers from 1934 onward took an oath of personal loyalty to Hitler, officers of the Regio Esercito, Regina Marina and the Regia Aeronautica all took their oaths of loyalty to the king, not Mussolini. The vast majority of the Italian officers in all three services saw Victor Emmanuel as opposed to Mussolini as the principal locus of their loyalty, allowing the king to check decisions by Mussolini that he disapproved of.

Italy declared neutrality in September 1939, but Mussolini always made it clear that he wanted to intervene on the side of Germany provided that this would not strain Italy's resources too much (the costs of the wars in Ethiopia and Spain had pushed Italy to the verge of bankruptcy by 1939). On 18 March 1940, Mussolini met Hitler at a summit at the Brenner Pass and promised him that Italy would soon enter the war. Victor Emmanuel had powerful doubts about the wisdom of going to war, and at one point in March 1940 hinted to Ciano that he was considering dismissing Mussolini as Ciano wrote in his diary: "the King feels that it may become necessary for him to intervene at any moment to give things a different direction; he is prepared to do this and to do it quickly". Victor Emmanuel hoped that a vote against Italy entering the war would be registered in the Fascist Grand Council, as he knew that the gerarchi Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Italo Balbo and Emilio De Bono were all anti-war, but he refused to insist upon calling the Grand Council as a precondition for giving his consent to declaring war. On 31 March 1940, Mussolini submitted to Victor Emmanuel a long memorandum arguing that Italy to achieve its long-sought spazio vitale had to enter the war on the Axis side sometime that year. However, the king remained resolutely opposed to Italy entering the war until late May 1940, much to Mussolini's intense frustration. At one point, Mussolini complained to Ciano that there were two men, namely Victor Emmanuel and Pope Pius XII, who were preventing him from doing the things that he wanted to do, leading to state he wanted to "blow" the Crown and Catholic Church "up to the skies".

Efforts to save the monarchy

As Italy's fortunes worsened, the popularity of the King suffered. One coffee-house ditty went as follows:

By early 1943, Mussolini was so psychologically shattered by the successive Italian defeats that he was mumbling incoherently that the war would soon turn around for the Axis powers because it had to. Even Victor Emmanuel was forced to concede that Mussolini had taken a turn "for the worse", which he blamed on "that woman" as he called Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci. On 15 May 1943, the king sent Mussolini a letter saying Italy should sign an armistice and exit the war. On 4 June 1943, Grandi saw the king and told him that he had to dismiss Mussolini before the Fascist system was destroyed; when the king rejected that course under the grounds that the Fascist Grand Council would never vote against Mussolini, Grandi assured him that it would, saying the majority of the gerarchi were now against Mussolini. Using the Vatican as an intermediary, Victor Emmanuel contacted the British and American governments in June 1943 to ask if they, the Allies, were willing to see the House of Savoy continue after the war.

On 19 July 1943, Rome was bombed for the first time in the war, further cementing the Italian people's disillusionment with their once-popular King. When the King visited the bombed areas of Rome, he was loudly booed by his subjects who blamed him for the war, which caused Victor Emmanuel to become worried about the possibility of a revolution which might bring in a republic. By this time, plans were being discussed within the Italian elite for replacing Mussolini. Victor Emmanuel stated that he wanted to keep the Fascist system going after dismissing Mussolini, and he was seeking to correct merely some of "its deleterious aspects". The two replacements that were being mooted for Mussolini were Marshal Pietro Badoglio and his rival, Marshal Enrico Caviglia. As Marshal Caviglia was one of the few officers of the Regio Esercito who kept his distance from the Fascist regime, he was unacceptable to Victor Emmanuel who wanted an officer who was committed to upholding Fascism, which led him to choose Badoglio who had loyally served Mussolini and committed all sorts of atrocities in Ethiopia, but who had a grudge against Il Duce for making him the scapegoat for the failed invasion of Greece in 1940. In addition, Badoglio was an opportunist who was well known for his sycophancy towards those in power, which led the king to choose him as Mussolini's successor as he knew that Badoglio would do anything to have power whereas Caviglia had a reputation as a man of principle and honour. The king felt that Badoglio as prime minister would obey any royal orders whereas he was not so certain that Caviglia would do the same. On 15 July 1943, in a secret meeting Victor Emmanuel told Badoglio that he would soon be sworn in as Italy's new prime minister and the king wanted no "ghosts" (i.e. liberal politicians from the pre-fascist era) in his cabinet.

Post war and fall of the monarchy

Abdication

Within a year of the war's end, public opinion forced a referendum on whether to retain the monarchy or become a republic. In hopes of helping the monarchist cause, Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated in favor of his son, who ascended to the throne as Umberto II on 9 May 1946.

Abolition of the monarchy

This move failed. In the referendum held a month later, 54 per cent of voters favoured a republic, and the Kingdom of Italy was no more. Some historians such as Sir Charles Petrie have speculated that the result might have been different if Victor Emmanuel had abdicated in favour of Umberto shortly after the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, or at the latest had abdicated outright in 1944 rather than simply transferring his powers to his son. Umberto had been widely praised for his performance as de facto head of state beginning in 1944, and his relative popularity might have saved the monarchy. The Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini declared that he would not come back to Italy as a subject of the "degenerate king" and more generally as long as the house of Savoy was ruling; Benedetto Croce had previously stated in 1944 that "as long as the present king remains head of state, we feel that Fascism has not ended, …that it will be reborn, more or less disguised."

Exile and death

In any event, once the referendum's result was certified, Victor Emmanuel and all other male members of the House of Savoy were required to leave the country. Taking refuge in Egypt, where he was welcomed with great honour by King Farouk, Victor Emmanuel died in Alexandria a year later, of pulmonary congestion. He was interred behind the altar of St Catherine's Cathedral. He was the last surviving grandchild of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy. In January 1948, Time magazine published an article about "The Little King".

Legacy

The abdication prior to the referendum probably brought back to the minds of undecided voters the monarchy's role during the Fascist period and the King's own actions (or lack of them), at the very moment monarchists hoped voters would focus on the positive impression created by Umberto and his wife, Maria José, over the previous two years. The "May" King and Queen, Umberto and Maria José, in Umberto's brief, month-long reign, were unable to shift the burden of recent history and opinion.

Victor Emmanuel III was one of the most prolific coin collectors of all time, having amassed approximately 100,000 specimens dating from the fall of the Roman Empire up to the Unification of Italy and in 1897 becoming honorary president of the new Italian Numismatic Society, of which he was a founding member. On his abdication, the collection was donated to the Italian people, except for the coins of the House of Savoy which he took with him to Egypt. On the death of Umberto II in 1983, the Savoy coins joined the rest of the collection in the National Museum of Rome. Between 1910 and 1943, Victor Emmanuel wrote the 20-volume Corpus Nummorum Italicorum, which catalogued each specimen in his collection. He was awarded the medal of the Royal Numismatic Society in 1904.

After World War I, Avenue Victor-Emmanuel III in Paris was named after him in honour of Italy's alliance in that war, but the king's support of the Axis Powers led the road to be renamed Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue in 1946 following the end of World War II.

In Florestano Vancini's film The Assassination of Matteotti (1973), Victor Emmanuel is played by Giulio Girola. In the television series Mussolini: Son of the Century (2024), he is played by Vincenzo Nemolato.

Honours

National orders and decorations

Kingdom of Italy:

Knight of the Annunciation, 1 January 1887; Sovereign, 29 July 1900

Grand Cross of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, 1 January 1887; Sovereign, 29 July 1900

Grand Cross of the Crown of Italy, 1 January 1887; Sovereign, 29 July 1900

Sovereign of the Military Order of Savoy

Sovereign of the Civil Order of Savoy

Sovereign of the Colonial Order of the Star of Italy

Founder and Sovereign of the Order of the Roman Eagle, 14 March 1942

Mauritian Medal for Military Merit of 10 Lustrums

War Merit Cross

Commemorative Medal for the Italo-Austrian War 1915–1918

Commemorative Medal of Campaigns of Independence Wars

Commemorative Medal of the Unity of Italy

Italian Albania:

Sovereign of the Order of Besa, 1939–1943

Sovereign of the Order of Skanderbeg, 1939–1943

Sovereign Military Order of Malta: Bailiff Grand Cross of Honour and Devotion, 10 February 1891

Family

On 21 October 1896, Victor Emmanuel married Princess Elena of Montenegro, daughter of King Nicholas I of Montenegro. Their issue included:

Yolanda (1 June 1901 – 16 October 1986), married Giorgio Carlo Calvi, Count of Bergolo on 9 April 1923. They had five children.

Mafalda (19 November 1902 – 28 August 1944), married Prince Philipp of Hesse on 23 September 1925. They had four children. She died in the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald.

Umberto, later Umberto II, King of Italy (15 September 1904 – 18 March 1983) married Princess Marie José of Belgium on 8 January 1930. They had four children.

Giovanna (13 November 1907 – 26 February 2000), married King Boris III of Bulgaria on 25 October 1930. They had two children including Simeon II, King and later Prime Minister of Bulgaria.

Maria Francesca (26 December 1914 – 4 December 2001), married Prince Luigi of Bourbon–Parma on 25 January 1939. They had four children.