House of Savoy
The House of Savoy is a royal house of Franco-Italian origin that was established in 1003 in the historical region of Savoy, which was originally part of the Kingdom of Burgundy and now lies mostly within southeastern France. Through gradual expansions, the family grew in power, first ruling the County of Savoy, a small Alpine county northwest of Italy, and later gaining absolute rule of the Kingdom of Sicily. During the years 1713 to 1720, they were handed the Kingdom of Sardinia and would exercise direct rule from then onward as Piedmont–Sardinia, which was the legal predecessor state of the Kingdom of Italy and the Italian Empire, which in turn are the predecessors of the present-day Italian Republic.
From rule of a region on the French–Italian border, by the time of the abolition of monarchy in Italy, the dynasty's realm grew to include nearly all of the Italian peninsula. Through its junior branch of Savoy-Carignano, the House of Savoy led the Italian unification in 1861, and ruled the Kingdom of Italy until 1946. They also briefly ruled the Kingdom of Spain during the 19th century. The Savoyard kings of Italy were Victor Emmanuel II, Umberto I, Victor Emmanuel III, and Umberto II. Umberto II reigned for only a few weeks, as the last king of Italy, before being deposed following the 1946 Italian institutional referendum, after which the Italian Republic was proclaimed.
History
Early history
The name derives from the historical region of Savoy in the Alps between what is now France and Italy. Over time, the House of Savoy expanded its territory and influence through judicious marriages and international diplomacy. The house descended from Humbert I, Count of Sabaudia, also known as Umberto I "Biancamano". The ancestry of Humbert is uncertain, as contemporary documents make no mention of his father. His family was traditionally believed to have come from Saxony; more recent investigations into the 21st century pointed to the County of Vienne, where both Humbert and his relatives held extensive possessions, as a more plausible origin.Although Sabaudia was originally a poor county, later counts were diplomatically skilled, and gained control over strategic mountain passes in the Alps. Two of Humbert's sons were commendatory abbots at the Abbey of St. Maurice, Agaunum, on the river Rhône east of Lake Geneva, and Saint Maurice is still the patron of the House of Savoy. Humbert's son, Otto of Savoy, succeeded to the title in 1051 after the death of his elder brother Amadeus I of Savoy. Otto married the Marchioness Adelaide of Turin, bringing the Marquessate of Susa, with the towns of Turin and Pinerolo, into the House of Savoy's possession. They once had claims on the modern canton of Vaud, where they occupied the Château of Chillon in Switzerland; their access to it was cut by Geneva during the Protestant Reformation, after which it was conquered by the Canton of Bern. Meanwhile, Piedmont was later joined with Sabaudia, and the name evolved into Savoy.
Expansion, retreat, and prosperity
By the time Amadeus VIII came to power in the late 14th century, the House of Savoy had gone through a series of gradual territorial expansions and he was elevated by Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor, to the Duke of Savoy in 1416. In 1494, Charles VIII of France passed through Savoy on his way to Italy and Naples, which initiated the Italian War of 1494–1495. During the outbreak of the Italian war of 1521–1526, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V stationed imperial troops in Savoy. In 1536, Francis I of France invaded Savoy and Piedmont, taking Turin by April of that year. Charles III Duke of Savoy, fled to Vercelli.When Emmanuel Philibert came to power in 1553, most of his family's territories were in French hands, so he offered to serve France's leading enemy the House of Habsburg in the hope of recovering his lands. He served Philip II of Spain as Governor of the Netherlands from 1555 to 1559. In this capacity, he led the Spanish invasion of northern France and won a victory in the battle of St. Quentin in 1557. He took advantage of various squabbles in Europe to slowly regain territory from both the French and the Spanish, including the city of Turin. He moved the capital of the duchy from Chambéry to Turin.
The 17th century brought about economic development to the Turin area and the House of Savoy took part in and benefitted from that. Charles Emmanuel II developed the port of Nice and built a road through the Alps towards France, and through skillful political manoeuvres the territorial expansion continued. In the early 18th century during the War of the Spanish Succession, future King Victor Amadeus II switched sides to assist the Habsburgs, and via the Treaty of Utrecht they rewarded him with large pieces of land in northeastern Italy and a Crown in Sicily. Savoy rule over Sicily lasted only seven years.
Kingdom of Italy
The crown of Sicily, the prestige of being kings at last, and the wealth of Palermo helped strengthen the House of Savoy further. In 1720, they were forced to exchange Sicily for the Kingdom of Sardinia as a result of the War of the Quadruple Alliance. On the mainland, the dynasty continued its expansionist policies as well. Through advantageous alliances during the War of the Polish Succession and War of the Austrian Succession, King Charles Emmanuel III gained new lands at the expense of the Austrian-controlled Duchy of Milan.In 1792, Piedmont–Sardinia joined the First Coalition against the French First Republic. It was beaten in 1796 by Napoleon and forced to conclude the disadvantageous Treaty of Paris, giving the French army free passage through Piedmont. In 1798, Barthélemy Catherine Joubert occupied Turin and forced Charles Emmanuel IV to abdicate and leave for the island of Sardinia. In 1814, the kingdom was restored and enlarged with the addition of the former Republic of Genoa by the Congress of Vienna.
In the meantime, Italian nationalist figures like Giuseppe Mazzini were influencing popular opinion. Mazzini believed that Italian unification could only be achieved through a popular uprising. After the failure of the Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states, the nationalists began to look to the Kingdom of Sardinia and its prime minister Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour as leaders of the unification movement. In 1848, King Charles Albert conceded a constitution known as the Statuto Albertino to Piedmont–Sardinia, which remained the basis of the kingdom's legal system even after Italian unification was achieved and the Kingdom of Sardinia became the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
The Kingdom of Italy was the first Italian state to include the Italian peninsula since the fall of the Roman Empire. When Victor Emmanuel was crowned King of Italy in 1861, his realm did not include the Venetia region, Lazio, Umbria, Marche, and Romagna. Yet the House of Savoy continued to rule Italy for several decades through the Italian independence wars as Italian unification proceeded and even as the First World War raged on in the early 20th century.
Massacres
In April 1655, based on perhaps false reports of resistance by the Waldensians, a Protestant religious minority, to a plan to resettle them in remote mountain valleys, Charles Emmanuel II ordered their general massacre, which became known as the Piedmontese Easter. The massacre was so brutal it aroused indignation throughout Europe. Oliver Cromwell, then ruler in England, began petitioning on behalf of the Waldensians, writing letters, raising contributions, calling a general fast in England, and threatening to send military forces to the rescue. The massacre prompted John Milton's famous sonnet, "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont".In 1898, the Bava Beccaris massacre in Milan involved the use of cannons against unarmed protesters during riots over the rising price of bread. King Umberto I of the House of Savoy congratulated General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris for the massacre and decorated him with the medal of Great Official of Savoy Military Order, greatly outraging a large part of the public opinion. As a result, Umberto I was assassinated in July 1900 in Monza by Gaetano Bresci, the brother of one of the women massacred in the crowd, who had traveled back to Italy from the United States for the assassination. The king had previously been the target of failed assassination attempts by anarchists Giovanni Passannante and Pietro Acciarito.
Fascism and end of monarchy
When the First World War ended, the Treaty of Versailles fell short of what had been promised in the London Pact to Italy. As the economic conditions in Italy worsened after the war, popular resentment and along with it the seeds of Italian fascism began to grow and resulted in the March on Rome by Benito Mussolini. General Pietro Badoglio advised King Victor Emmanuel III that he could easily sweep Mussolini and his rag-tag Blackshirt army to one side but Victor Emmanuel decided to tolerate Mussolini and appointed him as prime minister of Italy on 28 October 1922. The king remained silent as Mussolini engaged in one abuse of power after another from 1924 onward, and did not intervene in 1925–1926 when Mussolini dropped all pretense of democracy. By the end of 1928, the king's right to remove Mussolini from office was, at least theoretically, the only check on his power. Later, the king's failure, in the face of mounting evidence, to move against the Mussolini regime's abuses of power led to much criticism and had dire future consequences for Italy and for the monarchy itself.After their invasion in 1935, Italy conquered Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and Victor Emmanuel was crowned as Emperor of Ethiopia. He also added the Albanian crown 1939 but lost Ethiopia as part of the East African campaign in 1941; however, as Mussolini and the Axis powers failed in the Second World War in 1943, several members of the Italian court began putting out feelers to the Allies of World War II, who in turn let it be known that Mussolini had to go. After Mussolini received a vote of no confidence from the Fascist Grand Council on 24 July, Victor Emmanuel dismissed him from office, relinquished the Ethiopian and Albanian crowns, and appointed Pietro Badoglio as prime minister. On 8 September, the new government announced it had signed an armistice with the Allies five days earlier; however, Victor Emmanuel made another blunder when he and his government fled south to Brindisi, leaving his army without orders.
As the Allies and the Italian Resistance gradually chased the Nazis and fascists off the peninsula, it became apparent that Victor Emmanuel was too tainted by his earlier support of Mussolini to have any postwar role. Accordingly, Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his powers to his son, Crown Prince Umberto, in April 1944. Rome was liberated two months later, and Victor Emmanuel transferred his remaining powers to Umberto and named him Lieutenant General of the Realm. Within a year, public opinion pushed for a referendum to decide between retaining the monarchy or becoming a republic. On 9 May 1946, in a last-ditch attempt to save the monarchy, Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated in favour of his son, who became Umberto II. It did not work as the 1946 Italian institutional referendum was won by republicans with 54% of the vote. Victor Emmanuel went into exile in Egypt, dying there a year later.
On 12 June 1946, the Kingdom of Italy formally came to an end as Umberto II transferred his powers to the prime minister Alcide de Gasperi and called for the Italian people to support the new republic. He then went into exile in Portugal, never to return; he died in 1983. The Constitution of the Italian Republic includes the entrenched clause that the republican form of government cannot be changed by constitutional amendment, thus forbidding any attempt to restore the monarchy short of adoption of an entirely new constitution. The Constitution of Italy also forbade male descendants of the House of Savoy from entering Italy. This provision was removed in 2002; as part of the deal to be allowed back into Italy, Vittorio Emanuele, the last claimant to the House of Savoy, renounced all claims to the throne. He died in 2024.