Royal Italian Navy

The Royal Italian Navy is presented in the Fiume crisis as an instrument of the Italian state’s pressure on Gabriele D’Annunzio’s regime, but also as a force whose sailors he tried to turn against that pressure. The episode culminates in naval gunfire against the city and an unexecuted order to strike back at an Italian battleship, making the navy a direct participant in a conflict between Italians rather than a distant presence at sea.

Blockade and Appeal

In December, General Enrico Caviglia’s forces moved to enforce the Treaty of Rapallo. After ordering D’Annunzio to withdraw his legionnaires from Veglia and Arbe, Caviglia issued a further ultimatum on December 20: the legionnaires were to return within the borders of the Fiume territory recognized by the treaty. The ultimatum was accompanied by a blockade of Fiume by land and sea, placing the Royal Italian Navy within the coercive pressure surrounding the city.

D’Annunzio answered with three proclamations in less than a day. One appealed directly to sailors of the Italian navy who were besieging Fiume, urging them to disobey rather than act against their compatriots. Another framed resistance as the only remaining duty, even at the cost of death; in the third, he invoked the mothers of soldiers who might fire on their countrymen. The appeals cast obedience to state orders and solidarity with the besieged legionnaires as opposing claims on the sailors.

Naval Fire on Fiume

On December 26, after regular troops renewed their attack with artillery support and failed to break through, Caviglia ordered Admiral Simonetti, aboard the battleship Andrea Doria offshore, to fire on military targets in Fiume. The bombardment struck the building where D’Annunzio was in the command room, ending any remaining illusion that the confrontation could be contained without an attack on the city. The episode marks a sharp change from appeals directed at the navy’s sailors to the use of a naval vessel against Fiume itself.

Retaliation and Limits

The bombardment provoked D’Annunzio into a vengeful response. He ordered the battleship Dante Alighieri, then stuck in Fiume’s port, to be torpedoed in retaliation against Italy. That order was not executed. The navy’s role in the account therefore ends with an asymmetry: the Andrea Doria’s guns were used against the city, while the proposed counterstrike against the Dante Alighieri remained an order rather than an action.