Boselli resigns

On 25 October 1917, after a stormy debate lasting several days, the Italian Chamber of Deputies refused confidence to the government of Paolo Boselli. According to Italian tallies, 314 deputies voted against the cabinet and only 96 for it, a few abstained, and more than ninety did not vote. The British chronology of the war records the prime minister’s resignation under the same date. According to the Italian Dizionario Biografico, the cabinet formally resigned the next day, 26 October. The government fell at the moment when the greatest defeat in the history of the Italian army was unfolding at the front: the day before, the Germans and Austrians had broken through the front on the upper Isonzo.

The cabinet of national unity, which the 78-year-old Boselli had formed in June 1916, had long been losing support. The supporters of the war, although the prime minister was closest to them, accused him of lacking energy and blamed the government for the stalemate at the front and the discontent at home. Their main targets were the foreign minister Sidney Sonnino and above all the interior minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, who was considered too lenient towards the socialists and neutralists. In June 1917 the commander-in-chief, Luigi Cadorna, in three letters to the prime minister, accused the government of encouraging indiscipline at the front by tolerating subversive propaganda at home. In the same days three ministers from the camp of the democratic supporters of the war, among them Ivanoe Bonomi, resigned in protest against Sonnino’s proclamation of an Italian protectorate over Albania without consulting the rest of the government. The crisis was settled, but in August the bread riots in Turin rekindled the disputes over Orlando. The main argument in Boselli’s favour was that no one knew who could replace him.

When the Chamber reconvened in mid-October, Boselli announced only changes in the composition of the government and made no political statement. A socialist motion on “resolving the extra-parliamentary crisis” was defeated, but the opposition grew by the day. A group of 47 deputies formed the Parliamentary Union, the former minister Francesco Saverio Nitti spoke sharply, and finally the supporters of Giovanni Giolitti joined the attack. The debate formally concerned a motion to extend the provisional budget. On 25 October an order of the day was tabled that combined a vote of confidence with approval of the provisional budget. At the prime minister’s request the two were voted on separately: the Chamber rejected the first part and adopted the second. Boselli had no choice and stepped down.

The fall of the cabinet coincided with the breakthrough at Caporetto, but the government’s fate was decided above all by disputes that had been growing for months, and the full extent of the defeat was to become apparent only in the following days. It soon became clear, however, that at the most difficult moment of the war Italy had been left without a government for several days while the army retreated westwards in disorder. Orlando was entrusted with forming a new cabinet. Boselli returned to his role as the Chamber’s elder statesman. On 14 December 1917 he presented an order of the day of “national concord”, for which all the parliamentary groups voted for the first time.