Italian Victory Day (November 4)

Italian Victory Day (November 4), the anniversary of Italy’s victory over Austria, becomes more than a date of remembrance in the book. It is a stage on which competing political forces seek to claim the nation’s war dead, invoke peace or victory, and influence the struggle over who will govern Italy. The Unknown Soldier’s burial gives the anniversary a powerful commemorative form; in 1922, planned ceremonies around the same date became entangled with the maneuvering that preceded the March on Rome.

The Unknown Soldier and national remembrance

On November 4, 1921, after a special train had carried the body across Italy amid crowds along the route, the Unknown Soldier was buried in what the narrative describes as the most solemn ceremony in unified Italy. Chosen by lot to represent the fallen, the unidentifiable soldier’s body gave collective form to grief that otherwise belonged to individual families. The marble coffin became an altar for the memory of a war in which killing had become mechanical and death impersonal.

The commemoration also acquired an explicitly political setting. While Fascist squads from the North provoked brawls in Rome’s popular districts, the founders of the National Fascist Party, with Benito Mussolini at their head, knelt for more than half an hour before the soldier’s tomb at the Altare della Patria. The juxtaposition placed public mourning and political disorder within the same anniversary. The ceremony’s solemnity did not erase violence; it offered a national ritual through which the Fascists could present themselves as guardians of the nation.

The anniversary as a political stage in 1922

As November 4, 1922 approached, Luigi Facta hoped to make the anniversary a public occasion for peace. In an October 21 letter, he invited Gabriele D’Annunzio to join the Rome commemoration at the Unknown Soldier’s tomb. Facta’s appeal imagined a message of peace emerging from those who had given everything to Italy. D’Annunzio accepted in a brief telegram, saying that he would meet Facta in Rome and expressing his desire for the water of Trevi.

Facta’s plan depended heavily on D’Annunzio’s presence among wounded and disabled veterans. The prime minister was relying on the poet-warrior to help avert a national crisis, while Mussolini was also trying to secure D’Annunzio’s support. Mussolini had met him at Gardone and told his associates that D’Annunzio was with them for the moment. He feared that a highly visible reconciliation between D’Annunzio and Giovanni Giolitti at the November 4 ceremony would give Giolitti renewed political strength. In Mussolini’s calculation, the planned spectacle made the timing of the Fascist action urgent.

A planned ceremony overtaken by events

D’Annunzio’s participation did not hold. After Mussolini sent Aldo Finzi and then his secretary Tom Antongini with proposals, D’Annunzio saw Mussolini’s overtures as an attempt to enlist him in a march whose symbols and slogans had already drawn on his own political example. He had also set strict conditions for cooperation with a possible government: no attack on workers’ organizations and no money from industrialists or agrarians. His anger at the proposed alliance left open the possibility that he might act against Mussolini’s plans.

On October 25, a telegram reporting D’Annunzio’s withdrawal was intercepted and relayed to the government. With the central figure in Facta’s planned defense no longer available, the November 4 ceremony could no longer serve as the government had hoped. At the same time, the Milan prefect reported preparations for a Fascist coup attempt. The anniversary had been imagined as a setting for national reconciliation; before it arrived, it had become part of a race against the approaching insurrection.

The date’s political meaning

The events surrounding November 4 reveal a recurring tension between commemoration and political use. In 1921, the Unknown Soldier’s burial established a ritual of national mourning that the Fascist leaders entered in disciplined formation even as squad violence continued nearby. In 1922, the same anniversary was anticipated as a public test of competing leaders: Facta sought to gather authority around peace and the veterans, while Mussolini feared that a D’Annunzio–Giolitti appearance would strengthen his rivals.

The government’s attempt to prevent the march did not wait for the anniversary. On the morning of October 28, orders for Rome’s defense were sent, arrest instructions were transmitted to prefects, and a state of siege was announced. The king then refused to sign the decree, and the state of siege was revoked. November 4 thus remained an intended political turning point rather than the date on which the planned confrontation took place: its anticipated ceremonies helped shape the calculations that preceded the transfer of power.