and socialists was concerned. Strikes diminished.
Any danger the left had posed was rapidly van-
ishing. But the low government profile also
created a power vacuum which the Fascists filled
until they themselves openly defied law and order
and even threatened the state itself. Without gov-
ernment weakness, without the parliamentary
paralysis which prevented the liberal centre from
forming a stable coalition, the Fascists could
never have gained power. While the politi-
cians connived and jockeyed for power, divided
as much by ambition as policy, administration
throughout the country was becoming anarchic.
The Fascists chose the month of October 1922
to seize power from the unstable Liberal admin-
istrations. Their plan was first to stage uprisings
in the provinces which would capture prefectures
and post offices and cut off Rome from the sur-
rounding countryside thus paralysing govern-
ment, and then to march on Rome with armies
of ‘blackshirts’ and throw out the government by
force if intimidation did not suffice. Conveniently
for Mussolini, his one rival duce, D’Annunzio,
who might have claimed the leadership, fell on his
head from a balcony after quarrelling with his
mistress. It was rumoured that the poet’s fall had
been assisted. A touch of opera was never entirely
absent from the dramatic moments of Italian
history.
Yet a Fascist victory was far from certain. It was
a great gamble, as Mussolini knew while he
waited in Milan, a Fascist stronghold not too far
from the Swiss frontier, in case of failure. The
king, Victor Emmanuel III, held the key to the
situation. Loyalty to the dynasty was strong and
it seems most probable that the army, though
infiltrated by Fascists from the highest-ranking
officers to the most junior, would have responded
to his lead and command. But there was nothing
heroic about Victor Emmanuel. He did not put
army loyalty to the test. Although a constitutional
monarch, he must increasingly have lost confi-
dence in the jockeying politicians and in the
corruption of the electoral system. When his min-
isters finally found the courage to resist the
threats of the Fascists, the king refused them
his backing and, in doing so, handed Italy over
to Mussolini.
The government in Rome, after receiving news
of the Fascist uprising, of the seizure of govern-
ment buildings in the provinces, was at first unde-
cided how to act. It had already resigned in the
process of another reshuffle but in the interim
remained in charge. After a night of alarm, Luigi
Facta, the temporary prime minister, having
secured assurances of the loyalty of the army gar-
rison in Rome, decided with the support of his
ministers on a firm stand. The army was ordered
to stop the Fascist attempt to seize Rome. Early
on the morning of 28 October 1922 an emer-
gency decree was published that amounted to a
proclamation of martial law. The king refused his
assent to this decree and so it was revoked. The
way was now open to Mussolini to state his terms.
He demanded that he be asked to head the new
government. The king’s action had left the state
without power at this critical moment. The gov-
ernment was discredited and so was the Crown
when Mussolini, arriving comfortably in Rome in
a railway sleeping-car on the morning of 30
October, accepted from the king the commission
to form a new government. Thus, the march on
Rome occurred after and not before Mussolini’s
assumption of the premiership. There was never,
in fact, a ‘seizure’ of power – though Fascist his-
toriography embroidered and glorified the event
- only a threat to seize power. The Fascists also
did not march on Rome but were conveyed in
special trains to the capital and there reviewed by
the king and the duce before being quickly
packed off home on 31 October. Yet without the
threat of seizing power Mussolini would not have
achieved his ends. The threat was real, though
whether he would have succeeded if he had
attempted to seize control of Rome is another,
much more debatable, question.
Now that Mussolini was in power he had no pro-
gramme to place before parliament. He had con-
cerned himself solely with the problem of how to
attain power. Should he complete the ‘revolution’
now, as the Fascist militants expected, or should he
manipulate the parliamentary system and seek to
govern at least pseudo-constitutionally? Should the
Fascist Party replace the state or should it be sub-
ordinated to the state? These important questions,
1
ITALY AND THE RISE OF FASCISM 147
