Italians take Trieste

On the afternoon of 3 November 1918 the Italian destroyer Audace came alongside the San Carlo pier in Trieste. From her stepped General Carlo Petitti di Roreto, commander of XXIII Corps, appointed governor of Trieste the day before, who declared: “In the name of His Majesty the King of Italy I take possession of the city of Trieste”. Crowds greeted him on the quayside. For the Italians this was the goal for which they had fought eleven battles on the Isonzo since 1915, and the troops entered the city without a single shot, on the day the Armistice of Villa Giusti was signed.

Trieste, the main port of the Habsburg monarchy, had stopped obeying Vienna a few days earlier. On 30 October, after street demonstrations, a Committee of Public Safety was formed, made up of twelve Italian liberal nationalists and twelve socialists, later joined by four representatives of the Slavs. The Austrian governor, Baron Alfred von Fries-Skene, after consulting Vienna, handed the offices over to the committee and left for Graz. The city was short of food, and units of the Austro-Hungarian army returning from the front were passing through the surrounding area, so on 31 October the committee sent a wireless message to the Allied fleet in Venice asking for help. That same evening three of its representatives sailed in a torpedo boat to meet the Italians.

A squadron set out from Venice and was joined on the way by vessels from Cortellazzo: according to Italian accounts, six destroyers, two gunboats, two torpedo boats, two minesweepers and three lagoon vessels. They carried about 2,600 soldiers, above all from a brigade of Bersaglieri with the 7th and 11th Regiments, as well as Carabinieri and sailors. Audace, built in Britain for Japan and bought by the Italians in 1916 while still on the slipway, was the first Italian warship in the port. Sources give the time of her arrival variously, from 4.10 to 4.30 p.m. In the evening the Bersaglieri marched through the city to the main square on the sea front. Petitti dissolved the committee and assumed power as military governor.

The occupation of Trieste was in accordance with the terms of the armistice, which gave Italy the lands as far as the Julian Alps and Istria, although the fighting was to cease only the following day. But the city was not homogeneous. According to the 1910 census about half the inhabitants spoke Italian and roughly a quarter Slovene. The local Slovenes hoped for union with the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which had declared independence at the end of October. At the end of November Petitti dissolved the local branch of its National Council.

The San Carlo pier was later renamed Molo Audace, and the neighbouring embankment Riva 3 Novembre. Formally Trieste was annexed to Italy only by the Treaty of Rapallo of November 1920.