Albertine Constitution

The Albertine Constitution is presented as the constitutional order that Fascist ambitions might overturn, rather than as a text whose clauses or everyday operation the book explains in detail. Its appearances frame a widening conflict over whether political power would remain bounded by the existing institutions or be remade through force. The narrative follows that conflict from rumors surrounding Fiume to Fascism’s entry into parliament and the growing weakness of state authority.

The Constitution as a threatened order

In October 1919, Benito Mussolini arrives in Fiume amid competing reports about Gabriele D’Annunzio’s intentions. One rumor describes a westward march through Pula, Trieste, and Venice, then onward to Rome, where D’Annunzio would terminate the Albertine Constitution, bring down the monarchy, and establish a military dictatorship. The account attributes this plan to reports about discussions with collaborators and officers, but stresses that its purpose and even its existence remain uncertain. Other observers believe D’Annunzio’s aim is instead to topple Francesco Saverio Nitti’s government and install a soldiers’ executive that would proclaim Fiume’s annexation to Italy.

The distinction matters: the Constitution is named as the target of a reported plan, not as the object of an accomplished overthrow. D’Annunzio has not moved, the army has not acted beyond individual defections, and Nitti remains in office. The Crown Council declines to support annexation; Nitti dissolves parliament and calls new elections, while an embargo tightens around Fiume. The threatened constitutional rupture thus remains suspended between rumor and political pressure.

From insurrectionary language to parliamentary entry

The book later places Fascism’s parliamentary advance beside its continuing celebration of violence. In 1921, the acceptance of Fascists into the national blocs marks a leap from the trenches into parliament. That route does not amount, in the evidence presented, to a direct constitutional abolition. It does show how a movement associated with force can gain access to established political institutions through electoral alliances.

At the founding of the National Fascist Party, Benito Mussolini presents a program that casts Fascism as capable of absorbing liberalism after violence has displaced earlier methods. He describes a state identified with the movement, national unification, imperial ambition, and the conquest and education of the masses. The program places the state at the center of political life, but the book does not identify these proposals with specific amendments to, or provisions of, the Albertine Constitution. Their relevance is the pressure they put on the distinction between preserving an institutional framework and transforming political power within it.

Legal forms under pressure

The deterioration of state authority becomes especially clear in the account of Prime Minister Bonomi’s attempts to regulate Fascist armed organization. A circular sought to classify truncheons as weapons requiring licenses and to treat Fascist paramilitary groups as illegal formations. Michele Bianchi, secretary general of the National Fascist Party, countered that party sections and combat squads were an inseparable unit, and the directive appeared publicly in Il Popolo d’Italia. Bonomi’s subsequent circular complained that prefects had not complied with earlier public-order instructions. These episodes do not describe a formal change to the Constitution; they depict enforcement faltering while a party publicly asserted the unity of political organization and armed action.

During the crisis of 1922, the proposed state of siege makes the constitutional stakes more explicit. The measure is described as suspending constitutional guarantees and transferring power to military authority. Orders for Rome’s defense and arrests are transmitted, a telegram announcing the state of siege is drafted, and a manifesto is posted in the streets. The sequence shows the machinery of emergency government being prepared in response to the Fascist march, but the cited account does not establish that the measure took effect. It presents constitutional authority as a possible defense against the march, not as a settled outcome.

Parliament as both institution and spectacle

Fifteen days after the March on Rome, the Chamber of Deputies is still the setting for the new government’s public appearance. The crowded chamber receives Benito Mussolini with an ovation from all deputies except those of the left, even as the narrative recalls that the preceding fifteen days in Rome had brought 19 deaths and 20 serious injuries. Parliament remains visibly in session, but its ceremony unfolds under the shadow of violence and popular acclaim.

On May 30, 1924, Giacomo Matteotti is granted the floor in the Chamber. The opening of his speech is accompanied by murmuring, and he is portrayed as isolated and disliked even by some members of his own party. This appearance confirms that parliamentary procedure persists as a venue for opposition; the evidence here does not supply the speech’s substance or establish what constitutional consequences followed from it. Across these episodes, the Albertine Constitution signifies an order repeatedly invoked as vulnerable, while institutions associated with that order continue to operate amid mounting coercion and political transformation.