The plebiscite of Veneto of 1866, officially known as the Plebiscite of Venetian Provinces and Mantua (Italian: Plebiscito di Venezia, delle province venete e di quella di Mantova), was a plebiscite that took place on Sunday 21 and Monday 22 October 1866 to sanction the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy of the lands ceded to France by the Austrian Empire following the Third War of Independence.
Historical context
Third Italian War of Independence
In April 1866, the Kingdom of Italy entered into a military alliance with Prussia, aiming to unite Veneto and Trent to its territory. The alliance was maintained despite the Austrian offer to cede Veneto to Napoleon III's France (Austria officially had no diplomatic relations with Italy), which in turn would hand it over to Italy.. The Third War of Independence, unleashed by the Italian side within the larger framework of the Austro-Prussian war, saw, after the initial defeat at the Battle of Custoza that occurred four days after the declaration of war on 20 June, military successes by Garibaldi in Trentino, at Bezzecca, and by Cialdini, who reached as far as Palmanova and won the Battle of Versa. The Italian navy's defeat at the Battle of Lissa on 20 July convinced the Kingdom of Italy to accept a truce starting on 25 July and begin negotiations that led to the end of hostilities on the Italian-Austrian front with the Armistice of Cormons, signed on 12 August.
The 25 July truce froze troop movements and, by that date, the entire remaining territory of the former Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia was liberated from Austrian rule, with the exclusion of only the fortresses of the Quadrilatero: Verona, Legnago, Mantua and Peschiera del Garda, as well as Palmanova and Venice, the latter city characterized by strong unitarian symbolism and the memory of its uprising during the Revolutions of 1848.
Peace of Prague Austria, defeated by Prussia (armistice of Nikolsburg), ceded by the Peace of Prague of 23 August 1866, the remaining territoriesLombardy had been ceded to the Kingdom of Sardinia by the Treaty of Zurich in 1859. of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia to France, on the understanding that Napoleon III would hand them over to Victor Emmanuel II after organizing a consultation, which formally confirmed the will of the people to the liberation of Veneto from Austrian rule. The terms of the treaty, as far as the plebiscite was concerned, did not meet with the favor of the king and the Italian government:
The plebiscite was also opposed by the Venetian Central Committee, which in this regard cited the request of the Venetians in 1848 in favor of a merger with Piedmont of their provinces by staying under the Savoy dynasty,By 1848 in the province of Padua alone, 62259 votes had been collected for immediate merger, and 1002 for deferred merger. a request renewed when the war ended in 1859.On 11 January 1860 Gloria had written, "It is asserted that many municipalities of the Venetian provinces renewed in the past days the fusion to Piedmont made in 1848. The fact is that our Podestà, the Aldermen and the Secretary signed a printed form bearing this renewal. The civic courage of these representatives of the city shows the spirit of the citizens toward the Austrian government..
Treaty of Vienna
The Treaty of Vienna of 3 October 1866, concluded between Austria and Italy, laid down the conditions of the surrender and stated in its preamble that the Emperor of Austria had ceded the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia to the Emperor of the French, who, in turn, had declared himself ready to recognize the reunion of the “Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia to the states of His Majesty the King of Italy, subject to the consent of the duly consulted populations.”See Peace of Vienna - 3 October 1866. Article 14 of the treaty allowed the inhabitants of the region, who so desired, to move with their property to the states that remained under the rule of the Austrian Empire, thus retaining their status as Austrian subjects. The evacuation of the territory ceded by Austria, detailed in Article 5, would begin immediately after the signing of the peace, the date of which would coincide with the day of the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Vienna, as stated in the first article of the treaty.
Convocation of the plebiscite
On the part of the Italian government was presented to Victor Emmanuel II the Report of the President of the Council and the Minister of Grace and Justice and Cults to H.M. the King concerning the plebiscite of the Venetian Provinces: the report began with a preamble stating that the Kingdom of Italy "grew and enlarged with the spontaneous consent of the peoples anxious to give the national idea a form, which would ensure its unfolding, and be to Europe a guaranty of order and civilization"; the events of 1848 and the related manifestations of intentions of union with the Kingdom were then recalled,On 4 July 1848, in Venice, the National Assembly had approved by 127 votes to 6 the proposal for the immediate merger of Venice into the Sardinian States with Lombardy and on the same conditions as the same, and a few days later the Turin parliament decreed the immediate union with the kingdom of Lombardy, and the provinces of Treviso, Padua, Vicenza and Rovigo; the shortly following Piedmontese defeat and the armistice of Salasco would render all these attempts at union null and void, see p. 22 in which were followed by "seventeen years of resistance and suffering". In response to the report the sovereign issued Royal Decree No. 3236 on Oct. 7 to convene the plebiscite, unbeknownst to the French, published in the Official Gazette only on 19 October.
In those days, the official handing over of fortresses and cities by the French to local authorities had begun, followed by the entry of Italian troops: Borgoforte on 8 October, Peschiera del Garda on 9 October,. Mantua and Legnago on 11 October, Palmanova on 12 October, and Verona on 15 October, while Venice was handed over last on 19 October. On 17 October, the decree convening the plebiscite was issued and its procedures were announced: voting would take place on 21 and 22 October, while ballot counting would take place from 23–26 October; on 27 October, the court of appeals in Venice, meeting in public session, would add up the data and communicate the results to the Ministry of Justice in Florence (at that time the capital of Italy), and a deputation of notables would leave to take the results to Victor Emmanuel II. At the same time, it was indicated that Venice, Padua, Mantua, Verona, Udine and Treviso would be the seat of military intendencies..
News of the convocation decree, circulated in the press on 17 October, provoked the reaction of French plenipotentiary general Edmond Le Bœuf, who protested that “in the face of royal determinations, his handing over of Veneto to three notables so that they might organize a plebiscite becomes derisory ... and on the other hand, the Royal Decree being a violation of the treaty, he protested that he was reporting it to his government, and that without further order from the Emperor he would not remit Veneto."Letter from the military commissioner in the Venetian provinces Genova Thaon di Revel to Foreign Minister Emilio Visconti Venosta, in . Genova Thaon di Revel succeeded in convincing him that these were only preparatory instructions given to the municipalities, causing him to withdraw his protest,Letter from the minister of foreign affairs to Costantino Nigra, in. . but he admitted that "he was right after all".
19 October cession
The Austrian garrison had begun its abandonment of the city of Venice as early as the night of 18 October, with the first units embarking on Lloyd Triestino shipping vessels and the rest of the troops gathered, awaiting embarkation, on the Lido.. On the morning of 19 October General Le Bœuf, who was staying at the Europa Hotel, brought together the Austrian military commissar General Karl Möring, Italian General Thaon di Revel, the municipality of Venice, the commission in charge of receiving Veneto, the consul general of France M. de Surville and M. Vicary to carry out the procedures for the handover of power. The formalities took place in four stages:. at 7:00 a.m. Möring handed over the fortress of Venice to the French representative Le Bœuf; at 7:30 a.m. General Le Bœuf placed the fortress of Venice back in the hands of the city municipality and aldermen Marcantonio Gaspari, Giovanni Pietro Grimani and Antonio Giustiniani Recanati;. then Möring handed over the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia to the French representative Le Bœuf; at 8:00 a.m. General Le Bœuf finally "redelivered" Veneto to Luigi Michiel and Edoardo De Betta, representatives of Venice and Verona, respectively, chosen at the suggestion of Thaon di Revel,. who signed the redelivery minutes; Achille Emi-Kelder, representative of Mantua, was momentarily absent due to a sudden indisposition, however, and signed the deed of cession later..
The redelivery of Veneto was presented by Le Bœuf with the following statement:
The latter ceremony was originally scheduled to take place in the hall of the Great Council of the Doge's Palace; according to Dubarry, Le Bœuf thought it more appropriate to concentrate all the various handovers in a single event and place, in order not to leave long intervals of time between one transfer of power and another. Immediately after the signing, Michiel had the tricolor raised on the flagpoles of St. Mark's Square, while volleys of artillery rang out and rumbled; later, according to the agreements made, he asked Thaon di Revel to let the Italian troops enter the city. The Italian general, who went to the railway station together with the aldermen, thus welcomed his troops, who paraded through the city divided into three columns, each preceded by a civic band: the first went along the Cannaregio street, the second along the Tolentini street, and the third sailed along the Grand Canal in barges.. After crossing the city all in celebration and paved with tricolors, at 3 p.m. the three processions converged on St. Mark's Square in a parade that went on for another two hours.
On the same day, the Oct. 7 decree for the plebiscite was published in the Official Gazette.
According to some sources, Veneto was instead ceded directly from Austria to the Kingdom of Italy on 19 October: the newspaper Gazzetta di Venezia reported in very few lines that: “This morning in a room of the Europa Hotel the cession of Veneto was made.” On 20 October, royal commissioner Giuseppe Pasolini, who had already been appointed since 13 October, arrived in Venice.
Voting
Voting for the plebiscite took place on 21 and 22 October 1866; in Venice, the election offices remained open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days. The plebiscite was held under universal male suffrage. Voting instructions, established by the decree of 7 January, were disseminated to the population through posters, as in the case of the city of Mantua:
It was therefore possible to vote by handing in any paper containing the text of the question, adding either Yes or No. Those who were eligible to vote as males over the age of 21 constituted about 28 percent of the resident population; this approximate figure is obtained by considering those over the age of 21 as equal to 55 percent of the inhabitants and excluding the female population (50 percent), according to data taken from the 1871 census. According to the Austrian census of 1857, compared to the total population, men over 21 years of age were 27% in the Venetian provinces (624 728 out of 2 306 875) and 28% in the five districts of Mantua that remained in the empire after 1859 (40 461 out of 146 867). The question concerned the accession of the Venetian provinces (which at the time included the provinces of today's central-western Friuli) and Mantua to the Kingdom of Italy.