Leghorn’s political significance in the narrative rests on two sharply different encounters: a private duel between former socialist comrades and a rupture that weakened socialism as a national force.

A Duel and a Political Rupture

The duel between Benito Mussolini and Francesco Ciccotti Scozzese was arranged at Villa Perti, on the outskirts of Leghorn. When Mussolini and Aldo Finzi arrived, Ciccotti was under guard at the Palace Hotel in the city center; he was subsequently brought to the appointed place. The encounter took place in the basement, on an improvised piste made of sand and resin. Mussolini’s physician tried to blunt the swords, but Mussolini ordered him to stop. The duel was halted after Ciccotti, who had a heart condition, began to struggle physically. Leghorn also marks the setting of the split in the Italian socialist movement: after the break, as many as 100,000 militants failed to renew their membership, while the party’s rejection of parliamentary collaboration left it politically isolated.

The Socialist Split in Leghorn

The split associated with Leghorn followed two years in which socialist leaders had passed up revolutionary opportunities. By October 1921, their refusal even to consider parliamentary cooperation with Ivanoe Bonomi’s government, despite his having once been their comrade, coincided with the Communist International’s decision in Moscow to expel them. The episode therefore marks more than an internal division: it left the socialists isolated at a moment when the political choices before them had narrowed.

A Former Comrade as Opponent

The Leghorn episode also condenses a longer political reversal into a personal confrontation. Francesco Ciccotti Scozzese had supported Benito Mussolini’s rise within the Socialist Party when he replaced him as editor of La lotta di classe in Romagna; after Mussolini crossed to interventionism, Ciccotti remained neutral but did not attack his former colleague. By the time they met at Villa Perti, their shared political past had given way to antagonism: Ciccotti had used his newspaper to accuse the Fascist squads of criminality, and Mussolini treated that charge as an affront that could not be forgiven. The duel thus places the collapse of political solidarity beside the socialist movement’s growing isolation, showing how a former alliance had become a conflict pursued even between parliamentarians.

A Recurrent Political Ritual

The encounter in Leghorn was the third duel of Benito Mussolini’s life. His previous one, in March 1915, had been with Claudio Treves, then his comrade in the Italian Socialist Party and his predecessor as editor of Avanti!; Mussolini had long regarded Treves as a rival. The Leghorn challenge therefore repeated an older pattern of political antagonism, but this time its target was a former friend who had once supported Mussolini’s rise within the party.

Reaching the appointed place became part of the confrontation. With police vehicles following them, Mussolini and Aldo Finzi travelled through a blizzard over the Abetone pass, and the journey took twenty-four hours. Near Piacenza, the pursuing patrol cars collided with a hay wagon. These details place the duel not simply at its destination in Leghorn but within a determined effort to evade police intervention and carry the challenge through.