Salandra resigns

On Saturday 10 June 1916 the Italian Chamber of Deputies refused its confidence to the government of Prime Minister Antonio Salandra. 197 deputies voted against and 158 in favour. According to the American Year Book and the British chronology of the war, the cabinet resigned the next day, 11 June. Italian studies state that it formally submitted its resignation to the king on 12 June, while the Treccani encyclopaedia links the resignation with the vote of 10 June itself. The ministers remained in office until their successors were sworn in. A year earlier Salandra had survived a similar crisis because the king backed him. This time nobody tried to save him.

A government in the shadow of the offensive

Salandra had headed the government since March 1914 and had taken Italy into the war in May 1915. He had counted on a quick victory, and the first year of fighting brought small gains on the Isonzo at the cost of enormous losses and debts. He was criticised both by opponents of the war and by its supporters, who wanted it waged more energetically and in closer agreement with the allies. As late as March 1916 Salandra refused to broaden the government to include the Radicals and to turn it into a cabinet of national unity. His relations with the commander-in-chief, General Luigi Cadorna, who presented his plans to the king rather than to the government, were also bad.

The Austro-Hungarian offensive in Trentino, begun in mid-May, laid these weaknesses bare. Conrad’s troops took Asiago and Arsiero, and in Rome there were fears that the armies on the Isonzo would be cut off. Salandra decided to remove Cadorna. According to Italian historians, on the evening of 30 May he left Rome with the authority of the council of ministers to replace the chief of staff. On 31 May he spoke with King Victor Emmanuel III at Udine, and the next day with Cadorna himself. The king judged that changing the commander-in-chief in the middle of a battle would be too risky, and Cadorna stayed. On 4 June the prime minister also wrote to him that any withdrawal from the Isonzo would have to be approved by the government, because it was not purely a military matter.

The vote of 10 June

The Chamber met on 6 June, after a break of more than a month and a half. It was to pass a provisional budget for the next six months, but everyone was thinking about Trentino. Salandra did not speak until 10 June. He admitted that the shape of the border had made the enemy’s first successes easier, and added: “But it must be manfully admitted that a better prepared defence would have stopped [the offensive] at least for longer and further from the edge of the mountain zone.” These words were taken as an attempt to shift the blame onto the high command at a time when fighting was still going on on the plateaux.

After a short, sharp debate the deputies voted on a motion by the deputy Vito Luciani, divided into two parts. The part expressing confidence in the government was rejected by 197 votes to 158, while the budget bill itself passed without opposition. Against the government voted the followers of Giovanni Giolitti, the Radicals, the Socialists and some of the Nationalists, in other words both those who had not wanted the war and those who thought it was being waged too feebly. By the evening the fall of the cabinet was certain. The Austrian official history notes that as early as 11 June the Italian war communiqué announced the start of a counter-offensive in the mountains, although in reality it did not begin until 16 June. Its authors linked this premature announcement with pressure from Russian headquarters and with the crisis in Rome.

Salandra recommended to the king as his successor the 78-year-old Paolo Boselli, the father of the Chamber of Deputies, who could unite all the supporters of the war around himself. Salandra himself never headed a government again. He was leaving at a moment when the greatest danger at the front was already passing: in the east the Brusilov Offensive had been under way for a week, forcing the Austrians to take troops away from Tyrol.