Francesco Crispi (4 October 1818 – 11 August 1901) was an Italian revolutionary, statesman, and politician. During his tenure as Prime Minister, he pursued an anti-French foreign policy, promoting the Triple Alliance and the colonial expansion of Italy, while domestically he cracked down harshly on social protest movements. Between 1887 and 1896, Crispi led a total of four governments.
Born in Sicily into a family of Italo-Albanian origin, Crispi became a leading figure of the Risorgimento and was one of the organizers of the Sicilian Revolution of 1848. In the aftermath of the revolution he was forced into exile before returning in 1860 to participate in the Expedition of the Thousand. Initially a follower of Giuseppe Mazzini, he converted to royalist ideals in 1864. Anticlerical and hostile to the Vatican, he served four times as Prime Minister of Italy after the unification of Italy: from 7 August 1887, to 6 February 1891, and then from 15 December 1893, to 14 June 1896. During the first term, he also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Interior; during the second, he was again Minister of the Interior. He was the first Prime Minister from Southern Italy.
His governments were distinguished by significant social reforms (such as the Zanardelli Code, which abolished the death penalty and introduced freedom of strike), but also by a crack down against anarchists and socialists, whose uprisings of the Fasci Siciliani were suppressed by martial law. In foreign policy, he cultivated friendship with Germany, which, along with Italy and Austria-Hungary, was part of the Triple Alliance. He was almost always opposed to France, against which he strengthened the army and navy. Crispi was one of the initiators of the Italian colonial empire and supported a costly expansionist policy in Africa which, after successes in Eritrea and Somalia, led to a disaster at the Battle of Adwa in Ethiopia, an event that ended his political career.
Early life Crispi's paternal family came originally from the small agricultural community of Palazzo Adriano, in south-western Sicily. It had been founded in the later fifteenth century by Orthodox Christian or Greek Catholic Albanians (Arbëreshë), who settled in Sicily after the Ottoman conquest of Albania.Wright, Conflict on the Nile, p. 61 Crispi, Francesco, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 30 (1984)Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy His grandfather was an Arbëreshë Orthodox priest; the parish priests were married men, and Arbëreshë was the family language down to the lifetime of the young Crispi.Stillman, Francesco Crispi, p. 23
Crispi himself was born in Ribera, Sicily, to Tommaso Crispi, a grain merchant and Giuseppa Genova from Ribera; he was baptised as a Greek Catholic. Belonging to a family of Arbëreshë descent, he spoke Italian, alongside Arbëresh (variant of Albanian), Greek and probably Sicilian.The Randolph Churchill of Italy, by David Gilmour, The Spectator, 1 June 2002 (Review of Francesco Crispi, 1818-1901: From Nation to Nationalism, by Christopher Duggan) A philhellene, Crispi wrote in an 1859 diary entry he was Greek due to Greek–Albanian ancestry and attributed part of his origins to Greece. From the original: In an 1885 telegram on the Albanian question, Crispi stated he was "an Albanian by blood and heart" and an Italo–Albanian from Sicily. "Crispi... In accepting the honor, he wired to the congress that as "an Albanian by blood and heart" -he was an Italo-Albanian from Sicily"
At the age of five, he was sent to a family in Villafranca, where he could receive an education. In 1829, at 11 years old, he attended a seminary in Palermo, where he studied classical subjects. The rector of the institute was Giuseppe Crispi, his uncle, who wrote the first monograph on the Albanian language. Crispi attended the seminary until 1834 or 1835, when his father, after becoming mayor of Ribera, encountered major difficulties in health and finances.Christopher Duggan; pp. 8, 10–11, 14–15
In the same period, Crispi became a close friend of the poet and doctor Vincenzo Navarro, whose friendship marked his initiation to the Romanticism. In 1835 he studied law and literature at the University of Palermo receiving a law degree in 1837; in the same year, he fell in love with Rosina D'Angelo, the daughter of a goldsmith. Despite his father's ban, Crispi married Rosina in 1837, when she was already pregnant. In May Crispi became the father of his first daughter, Giuseppa, who was named after his grandmother.Christopher Duggan; pp. 17–19, 21-23 It was a brief marriage: Rosina died on 29 July 1839, the day after giving birth to her second son, Tommaso; the child lived only a few hours and in December, also Giuseppa died.Chiara Maria Pulvirenti, Francesco Crispi, Regione Siciliana
Between 1838 and 1839, Crispi founded his own newspaper, L'Oreteo, from the name of the Sicilian river Oreto. This experience brought him into contact with a number of political figures including the Neapolitan liberal activist and poet, Carlo Poerio. In 1842 Crispi wrote about the necessity to educate poor people, about the huge damage caused by the excessive wealth of the Catholic Church and regarding the need for all citizens, including women, to be equal before the law.Christopher Duggan; pp. 26–27, 32
In 1845 Crispi took up a judgeship in Naples,Sarti, Italy: a reference guide from the Renaissance to the present, pp. 222–23 where he distinguished himself for his liberal and revolutionary ideas.Christopher Duggan; pp. 36, 40, 44
1848 Sicilian uprising
On 20 December 1847, Crispi was sent to Palermo along with Salvatore Castiglia, a diplomat and patriot, to prepare the revolution against the Bourbon monarchy and King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies.Christopher Duggan; pages 55,57
The revolution started on 12 January 1848, and therefore was the very first of the numerous revolutions to occur that year. Three revolutions had previously occurred on the island of Sicily starting from 1800 against Bourbon rule. The uprising was substantially organized from, and centred in, Palermo. The popular nature of the revolt is evident in the fact that posters and notices were being handed out a full three days before the substantive acts of the revolution occurred on 12 January 1848. The timing was deliberately planned, by Crispi and the other revolutionaries, to coincide with the birthday of Ferdinand II.
The Sicilian nobles were immediately able to resuscitate the constitution of 1812, which included the principles of representative democracy and the centrality of Parliament in the government of the state. Vincenzo Fardella was elected president of Sicilian Parliament. The idea was also put forward for a confederation of all the states of Italy.
The constitution was quite advanced for its time in liberal democratic terms, as was the proposal of an Italian confederation of states. Crispi was appointed a member of the provisional Sicilian Parliament and responsible for the Defence Committee; during his tenure, he supported the separatist movement that wanted to break ties with Naples.
Thus Sicily survived as a quasi-independent state for sixteen months, with the Bourbon army taking back full control of the island on 15 May 1849 by force. The effective head of state during this period was Ruggero Settimo. On capitulating to the Bourbons, Settimo escaped to Malta where he was received with the full honours of a head of state. Unlike many, Crispi was not granted amnesty and was forced to flee the country.Crispi and the Archpriest, The New York Times, 10 June 1894
Exile After leaving Sicily, Crispi took refuge in Marseille, France, where he met the woman who would become his second wife, Rose Montmasson, born five years after him in Haute-Savoie (which at that time belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia) in a family of farmers.Christopher Duggan; pages 85, 86
In 1849, he moved to Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, where he worked as a journalist. During this period he became a friend of Giuseppe Mazzini, a republican politician, journalist and activist. In 1853 Crispi was implicated in the Mazzini conspiracy and was arrested by the Piedmontese policy and sent to Malta. Here, on 27 December 1854, he married Rose Montmasson.
Then he moved to London where he became a revolutionary conspirator and continued his close friendship with Mazzini, involving himself in the exile politics of the national movement, abandoning Sicilian separatism.Christopher Duggan; pp. 138–140, 143
On 10 January 1856, he moved to Paris, where he continued his work as a journalist. On 22 August, he was informed that his father had died and that three years earlier also his mother had died, but that news had been hidden by his father who did not want to increase his sorrows.Christopher Duggan; pp. 151–152, 160
Assassination attempt on Napoleon III
On the evening of 14 January 1858, as the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie de Montijo were on their way to the theatre in the Rue Le Peletier, the precursor of the Opera Garnier, to see, rather ironically, Rossini's William Tell, the Italian revolutionary Felice Orsini and his accomplices threw three bombs at the imperial carriage. The first bomb landed among the horsemen in front of the carriage. The second bomb wounded the animals and smashed the carriage glass. The third bomb landed under the carriage and seriously wounded a policeman who was hurrying to protect the occupants. Eight people were killed and 142 wounded, though the emperor and empress were unhurt.
Orsini himself was wounded on the right temple and stunned. He tended his wounds and returned to his lodgings, where police found him the next day.
Of the five conspirators, only one remained unidentified. In 1908 (seven years after Crispi's death) one of them, Charles DeRudio, claimed to have seen, half an hour before the attack, a man approaching and talking with Orsini, and recognized him as Crispi.Christopher Duggan; pp. 165–167 But no evidence has ever been found regarding Crispi's role in the attack. Anyway on 7 August 1858, he was expelled from France.Christopher Duggan; pp. 169–170
In Sicily with Garibaldi Expedition of the Thousand
In June 1859 Crispi returned to Italy after publishing a letter repudiating the aggrandizement of Piedmont in the Italian unification. He proclaimed himself a republican and a partisan of national unity. He travelled around Italy under various disguises and with counterfeit passports. Twice in that year he went the round of the Sicilian cities in disguise preparing the insurrectionist movement of 1860. Crispi briefly visited Greece in October 1859.
He helped persuade Giuseppe Garibaldi to sail with his Expedition of the Thousand, which disembarked on Sicily on 11 May 1860. The Expedition was formed by a corps of volunteers led by Garibaldi, who landed in Sicily in order to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the Bourbons. The project was an ambitious and risky venture aiming to conquer, with a thousand men, a kingdom with a larger regular army and a more powerful navy. The expedition was a success and concluded with a plebiscite that brought Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of Sardinia, the last territorial conquest before the creation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861.
The sea venture was the only desired action that was jointly decided by the "four fathers of the nation" Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II, and Camillo Cavour, pursuing divergent goals. Crispi utilized his political influence to bolster the Italian unification project.
The various groups participated in the expedition for a variety of reasons: for Garibaldi, it was to achieve a united Italy; for the Sicilian bourgeoisie, an independent Sicily as part of the kingdom of Italy, and for the mass farmers, land distribution and the end of oppression.
Garibaldi dictatorship