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March on Rome

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For the movie by Dino Risi, see March on Rome (film)

The March on Rome was a pseudo-coup d'état by which Mussolini's National Fascist Party came to power in Italy. It took place from October 27 to October 29, 1922.

Context

Benito Mussolini founded the first Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in March 1919 at the beginning of the biennio rosso ("two red years"). He suffered a defeat in the November 1919 elections, but gained entrance to Parliament in 1921. Out of his party the squadristi (Blackshirts) was formed. It was used to break the general strike which had started at the Alfa Romeo factory in Milan in August 1920. After the assassination of Giordani, a right-wing municipal counsellor in Bologna, in November 1920, the squadristi were used as a repression tool by the state to crush the socialist movement (which included a strong anarcho-syndicalist component), especially in the Po Valley.

Trade unions were dissolved while left-wing mayors resigned. The fascists, included on Giolitti's "National Union" lists at the May 1921 elections, then won 36 seats. Mussolini then withdrew his support to Giolitti and attempted to work out a temporary truce with the socialists by signing a "Pacification Pact" in summer 1921. This provoked a conflict with the most fanatized part of the movement, the squadristi and their leaders the ras. In July 1921, Giolitti attempted without success to dissolve the squadristi. The contract with the socialists was then broken at its turn in November 1921, Mussolini adopted a nationalist and conservative program and founded the National Fascist Party, which boasted 700,000 members in July 1922. In August, an anti-fascist general strike was triggered, but failed to rally the Partito Popolare Italiano and was repressed by the fascists. When Mussolini learned that Prime Minister Luigi Facta had given Gabriele d'Annunzio the mission to organize a large demonstration on November 4, 1922 to celebrate the national victory during the war, he decided on the March to accelerate the process and sidestep any possible competition.

March

The quadrumvirs leading the Fascist Party, General Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo (one of the most famous ras), Michele Bianchi and Cesare Maria de Vecchi, organized the March while the Duce stayed behind. Generals Gustavo Fara and Sante Ceccherini assisted to the preparations of the March of October 18. Others militaries who organized the march included the Marquis Dino Perrone Compagni and Ulisse Igliori.

On October 24, 1922, Mussolini declared before 60,000 people at the Fascist Congress in Naples: "We want to become the state!", and then retired to Milan. Meanwhile, the Blackshirts, who had occupied the Po plain, took all strategic points of the country. On October 26, former prime minister Antonio Salandra warned current Prime Minister Luigi Facta that Mussolini was demanding his resignation and that he was preparing to march on Rome. However, Facta did not believe Salandra and thought that Mussolini would govern quietly at his side. To meet the threat posed by the bands of fascist troops now gathering outside Rome, Luigi Facta (who had resigned but continued to hold power) ordered a state of siege for Rome. However, the King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign the military order and, on October 28, handed power to Mussolini, who was supported by the military, the business class and the liberal right-wing.

The march itself was composed of less than 30,000 men, but the king in part feared a civil war since the squadristi had already taken control of the Po plain and most of the country, while Fascism was no longer seen as a threat to the establishment. Mussolini was asked to form his cabinet on October 29, 1922, while some 25,000 Blackshirts were parading in Rome. Mussolini thus legally reached power, in accordance with the Statuto Albertino, the Italian Constitution. The March on Rome was not the conquest of power which Fascism later celebrated but rather a transfer of power within the framework of the constitution, a transfer made possible by the surrender of public authorities in the face of fascist intimidation and the complicity of the bourgeoisie, who thought it would be possible to manipulate Mussolini. The latter had declared himself a member of the Manchester School in favour of free market and laissez faire economics. He also feigned to be ready to take a subalternate ministry in a Giolitti or Salandra cabinet, but then demanded the presidency of the Council. Fearing a conflict with the fascists, the ruling class thus handed power to Mussolini, who went on to install the dictatorship after the June 10, 1924 assassination of Giacomo Matteotti, who had finished writing The Fascist Exposed: A Year of Fascist Domination, by Amerigo Dumini and others agents of the Ceka secret police created by Mussolini.

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