Week 115

 

Gabriele D'Annunzio moved from Ronchi – a small town nearby Monfalcone, where he had arrived during the previous night, awaited there by his volunteers and future “legionnaires” - on September 12^th 1919, at the early lights, with a few hundred men. His intention was to make his way to Fiume, to reverse the course of the inter-Allied deliberations and ensure the annexation of the city to Italy, and then, perhaps, to provoke the formation of a new government willing to sanction the situation he had created, or else, to see the great nation stir, and rise, again led by her Vate, as Italy had been in those “radiant days of May”. And, indeed, he did make his way to Fiume.

In the meantime, the Italian Prime Minister, F.S. Nitti, was preparing for a busy parliament session – as the Italian Chamber had been going through an electoral reform, the discussion of the inquest over the military disaster of Caporetto, the examination of the Treaty of Versailles, awaiting ratification, and the early stages of discussion of the Treaty of St.Germain, signed on September 10^th – and there, sitting at his place, with a remarkable and almost painful tardiness, he learned the news from the nationalist Giornale d'Italia. It took half an hour for the first official communication – a telegram from gen. Pittaluga (sent at 13.15 pm) which provided a tentative reconstruction of the first part of D'Annunzio's march

Today the city, at 10.00 am, in order to mourn the departure of the Italian soldiers and of the Royal Navy, called a strike. In the meantime, rumors have reached us that the Grenadiers would be on march to return to Fiume and that 150 youth of Fiume's Battalion had left to meet them on their way. I heard rumors that a grenadiers battalion has moved from Monfalcone and is directed here with trucks. I'm going to meet them in order to stop them. No action has been take here against the Allies. I published a statement forbidding any sort of manifestation or assembly and I'll take resolute action against Fiume's Battalion as well. I need Carabineer reinforcements and I asked for them from the High Command, upon which I ask V.E. to make the necessary solicitations.

Reinforcements would not be necessary though, as Pittaluga's telegram was immediately followed by a second one, sent after the Italian commander had returned to Fiume.

Grenadiers and arditi with guns and armored trucks led by D'Annunzio at hours 11.45 am managed to sweep every resistance and reached Fiume. Order is being reestablished and I maintain command.

Pittaluga's later (before 21.00 pm) communication to the High Command was more detailed.

Around hours 10.00 am, a line of trucks with grenadiers of Reina's battalion led by D'Annunzio was reported on march towards Fiume. Along the way the column recruited a few arditi. Cavalry and infantry troops sent to halt their way were swept through. My personal intervention, as well as those of Chief of Staff, col. Roncaglia and of lt.col. Castelli of the RR.CC, who had come to the Castua [Kastav] crossroad, were of no effect.

The only thing I have obtained is the leaders' reassurance that no hostile act will take place against the Allies and that discipline will be maintained. I recommended to gen. Savy [French] and to lt.col. Peck [British] the utmost care, and to keep the troops confined. I obtained their reassurances on this point.

At hours 13.00 pm a column of about a few thousands of military and civilians, arrived to the governor's palace, demanding loudly for the English, French and American flags to be removed, and threatening to invade the palace in order to have them removed. Sure as I was that this was going to happen, I ordered for the flags to be taken down with military honors. The crowd cheered.

[…] Grossich, president of the National Council and […] Vio, major of the city, exhorted the population to keep their composure. In the evening D'Annunzio will make a speech. I keep my command and I am confident I can control the situation. A detailed report will follow.

On the following day (sent on the 13^th – 16.00 pm), further information was provided to Nitti, this time from the civilian authority of Trieste, the recently appointed Commissary of Venezia-Giulia, Augusto Ciuffelli.

Around hours 8.00 am of yesterday, the 12^th […] news reached Abbazia [just across the armistice line, a hour walk from Fiume] that a column led by D'Annunzio, formed of Grenadiers led by a major, had reached Castel Nuovo [Podgrad – half way, the short way, from Trieste] Five armored trucks with guns joined spontaneously, like a few groups of arditi, which appear to have subsequently [persuaded] whole battalions of the Assault Division led by one Colonel to take part to the movement.

The Commander of the XXVI Army Corp, located in Abbazia, tried to halt the column at the armistice line with assault corps, and believed he could rely on the Sesia Brigade as well, which was on her way from Fiume to Bisterza [Ilirska Bistriza] in execution of previous orders. The assault corps didn't obey to his orders and joined D'Annunzio's column, together with two battalions from the Sesia Brigade.

The column led by D'Annunzio crossed the armistice line and continued towards Fiume, at the entrance of which gen. Pittaluga went to meet D'Annunzio ordering him to halt. It seems that D'Annunzio refused to obey and invited them to fire on him. And that, confronted with his demeanor, he was let through in order to avoid bloodshed. In the meantime a crowd of citizens had broken into the governor's palace, the seat of the inter-Allied Command, from which the Allied flags had been removed and the Allied guards driven away, apparently though, without acts of violence.

In the meantime D'Annunzio had reached the palace and made a first speech for the crowd. The British and French commanders confined their troops to their respective barracks […] and it appears that no incidents have occurred between those forces and the population or the grenadiers. The land troops were joined by 400 mariners from the Royal Ships Alessandro Poerio and Milto, which were therefore prevented from departing as they had been preciously instructed.

Within the city of Fiume a double police service has been arranged, one by gen. Pittaluga with carabineers and men from the “Regina” Brigade, the other by volunteers from Fiume supported by arditi. Throughout the day no acts of violence took place. At 18.00 pm D'Annunzio spoke again from the governor's palace, a great crowd in attendance with the largest part of the troops which had come to Fiume with him. D'Annunzio proclaimed the annexation of Fiume to Italy […]

 

While D'Annunzio's exact plans had remained – as was to be expected – somewhat inscrutable, rumors of his future “action” had begun circulating, at least among those “in the know”, since the diplomatic crisis of April-May 1919, with the Italian withdrawal from (and return to) the Peace Conference in Paris, to take more serious connotations, and especially the definitive form of his fateful march over Fiume, by the end of August, when the perspective of an unfavorable definition of the international issue begun to appear day by day more concrete, and more threatening, to the “national” public.

It had been indeed the diplomatic tension with the Allies and Associate which had determined D'Annunzio's specific investment with the issue of Fiume. If, since the last months of the war, the famed herald of the Italian intervention had supported Italy's Adriatic aspirations in their full extent – that is, the annexation of the whole coast, down to Kotor, and therefore also of Fiume – his focus had been of a more literary-historical fashion (Fiume was conspicuously absent in his famous “Letter to the Dalmatians”, of January 14^th 1919, despite the Italian occupation and the appeal of the National Council taking place two months before). The first, concrete reference to the “city of Carnaro” occurred in his Pentecoste d'Italia, on June 9^th 1919, where Fiume appeared, as a sacrifice to the Motherland, “Holocaust, perfectly consumed by fire”, not only ardent: engulfed in the fire of her own passion.

“He breathed on them, and said to them: receive the Spirit” - these the words of John's Gospel. And Fiume now breaths on all we Italians, and tells us: receive the Spirit, receive the Fire. […]

Thus Fiume comes now to our sight as the only one city truly alive, truly ardent, truly of spirit, all breath and fire, all pain and fury, all purification and consummation: a holocaust, the most beautiful holocaust ever offered in centuries to an indifferent altar. […]

There has never been, in the face of human conscience, a spectacle more sorrowful or more glorious, nor one as lonely.

The Great War had freed all the most sublime essences of men; torn down the known boundaries of courage and suffering; above all the atrocities of hatred it had shone its incomparable light on the face of Love. In truth, heroic beauty was rushing and flowing onto the world like a gushing spring of May. […]

This ill-conceived armistice fell upon us like an inexorable plague. Out of the sudden, everything was perverted, spoiled, corrupted. The twilight of heroes came swiftly, like fog over a swamp. Blood lost all its splendor, and its worth. […]

The Italians know that, even in the dusk of all our ideal forces, there is one place in the world where heroic beauty has continued to shine […]