Vanished Kingdoms of Europe 1: Savoy

Humbert the Whitehead
 Founder of Savoy

Ignorance may be bliss, but once uncovered it can be somewhat embarrassing. If, a few years ago, you had asked what I knew of Savoy, I would have come up with a posh hotel in the Strand, and a George Harrison song on the White Album. I had a feeling there was a town of Savoy in the south west of France – home of Harrison’s ‘truffle’. Chastening, therefore, to discover that a county of Savoy spawned a dynasty and history that lasted nearly one thousand years, more than double the life of our present UK. If you’re in the same space as me, let’s explore this history.

It’s difficult to summarise a thousand years in a single post, for sure.  There seem to me to be three phases worth trying to capture: the first four hundred years; the years of involvement in the major European wars involving the Bourbons then Napoleon, the Habsburgs, Russians, Ottomans and Spaniards; and finally the 19^th century emergence of a unified Italy that suffered through two world wars. These are huge topics of history, but there is a strong Savoy thread running throughout.

1. Origins

After the final demise of the Roman Empire much of Europe regressed into dark ages of instability. Hordes of wandering tribes roamed Europe, crossing the Rhine and exploring into the France and Spain of today – franks, germanics, vandals, goths and visigoths. Charlemagne (748-81) created an Empire remotely comparable to that of Rome, indeed it became the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), which persisted for a thousand years, but by around 1000AD it was unstable, and diminished by feudalism. From the south of the Alps came a leader, Humbert the Whitehanded, who would establish the Savoy dynasty. He came to the aid of a post-Charlemagne Emperor Conrad II, driving back Burgundian expansion towards the Alps, and for his efforts was awarded the lands around Aosta, the area becoming the feudal county of Savoy. Humbert’s family held sway until 1416 when, meeting favour with the HRE, it was elevated to a Dukedom. The rulers of Savoy were pragmatic, often duplicitous and cunning – characteristics that would permeate the dynasty through to the end. Savoyards adopted a black eagle as their symbol before the Habsburgs. They were stolid rather than charismatic, although they had some great names. They gained and lost territory over the years (see map) as a result of different political alliances.

In 1536 a rapacious France, emerging from the 100 Years War with England, occupied Savoy and Piedmont and the Alpine passes between. The next Savoyard hero was … Emmanuel Philibert the Iron Head. After his army scored a remarkable victory against France at St. Quentin in 1553, the ensuing peace treaty saw the establishment of an independent state of Savoy-Piedmont, a buffer state between France and the Spanish ruled Italian peninsula. Emmanuel of the Iron Head was certainly a hard nut. He established absolutist rule; shifted the capital of Savoy to Turin, and instituted merciless persecution of the Jews and the Waldenses (the Savoy equivalent of the protestant Huguenots in France).  

In 1713 Savoy-Piedmont became a kingdom, and soon thereafter acquired Sardinia creating the Union of Savoy-Piedmont-Sardinia, which survived until the 1860s – ironically better known as the Kingdom of Sardinia.

 

The shifting borders of Savoy.
From: The Fall of the House of Savoy. Katz, Robert.
(New York). MacMilllan 1971

2. European Wars

In the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era of 1789-1814 the House of Savoy fared badly. Bonaparte, in his excursions into Italy swept through Savoy and Piedmont, and the King, Victor Emmanuel I, was forced into exile in Sardinia. After the end of Napoleon in 1814, the ‘kingdom of Sardinia’ did well at first, falling in with Austrian leader Metternich’s plans to re-establish the old order in the Italian peninsula, and regaining its lands and more to boot.  But Piedmont railed against Austrian rule, and a subversive nationalist culture developed rapidly.  The important Savoy king at this time was Charles Albert the Magnanimous -probably should have had the soubriquet ‘the Indecisive’. He lurched between promoting his kingdom with Austrian support and then joining with the growing ranks of Italian republicanism. When Milan and Venice rose against Austrian rule he pitched in his lot with them, and led his armies against Austria. He was roundly defeated by the Austrian veteran Radetzky and was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel the Second (VE II). However, the die was cast, and the new king’s Piedmont became the driver for Italian unification.

A new war against the Austrian occupation began in 1859, this time with the support of French armies, led by Napoleon III. The Austrians, while holding on to Venice, were driven back across the whole of the north. Napoleon and VE II incorporated Lombardy into Sardinia and shortly after annexed lesser states – Parma, Tuscany and Romagna – creating a large north Italian entity, controlled by Piedmont, backed by France and ruled over by the House of Savoy.

At this point, enter Giuseppe Garibaldi, probably the best known figure in the struggle for Italian unification. Under the banner of “Italy and Victor Emmanuel” he invaded Sicily with a small force to support peasant uprisings against Bourbon rule. To some general surprise, after succeeding there, he moved on to capture Naples, and to threaten Rome itself, declaring himself the ‘Duce of Naples and Sicily’. VE II, anxious that Garibaldi might tilt towards republicanism rather than monarchy, moved his armies south to meet him. In a famous encounter in October 1860 on the outskirts of Naples Garibaldi conceded his conquests to the king. At this point all of Italy, barring Rome and Venice, became one kingdom under the man of Savoy, VE II.

3. The Emergence of Italy.

Victor Emmanuel wanted Venice and Rome and took his chance to join sides with Bismarck in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.  However, like his grandfather, he was defeated by a smaller Austrian army outside Venice – but then gained it anyway from Bismarck’s demands of Austria at Germany’s victorious peace conference. Rome proved more difficult, protected as it was by the occupying French army. In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 however, French troops were forced to abandon Rome and return to support Napoleon’s failing army. VE II was then able to enter and occupy the Holy City. He had his unified Italy, but the House of Savoy’s way of running things was not popular in the rest of Italy. Civil war, North v South, would follow within a few years (the South was crushed).

When VE II died unexpectedly in 1878 his young son Humbert I succeeded him. His reign saw a halting development of the newly unified country. Republicanism, socialism and liberalism rubbed alongside his constitutional monarchy, and Humbert’s popularity grew gradually. He sought an external alliance to strengthen his authority, and looked towards Germany and Austria. For Germany, Bismarck was dismissive but, surprisingly, Austria was interested. In October 1881 Emperor Franz Josef rolled out the red carpet at Vienna Central station for a melodramatic welcome for Humbert. Kaiser Wilhelm I expressed royal solidarity and the Triple alliance was signed in 1882. This was the high watermark of Humbert’s reign. The Treaty added to the illusion of Italy as a new great power, with pretensions to extend an empire into Africa and the Mediterranean countries. In reality, the next fifteen years ran a complex, violent and bloody course. Humbert, managed these years with characteristic Savoyard pragmatism and compromise, before becoming a victim of the violence himself.  In 1900 he was assassinated at Monza. Ironically, he was en route to vacation in the 900 years old Savoy hunting lands in the Aosta Valley.

Black Eagle of Savoy on the Royal Standard
of Victor Emmanuel III 1905

And so the final player in the House of Savoy drama – Humbert’s son, the Prince of Naples - accede to the throne as Victor Emmanuel III (VE III). He was known as ‘the little king’  (a sickly child who had only attained an adult height of five feet) but showed remarkable stickability. He was a true Savoyard and, almost unbelievably, would rule until 1946 surviving two world wars, revolution and fascism.

In WW1, the Triple Alliance with Austria and Germany failed at the first fence when Italy declined to declare war on France and Britain, later joining on the side the Entente in hopes of gaining lands in the Balkans and North Africa. Through the disaster of Caporetto in 1917 (See WW1 Blog 13/11/2017) and the frustrations of Versailles in 1919 (See WW1 Blog 18/6/2019) VE III proved a source of constancy for the distressed Italian people. He appointed Mussolini as Duce in 1924 and until the outbreak of WW2 in 1939 enjoyed the most stable period of his reign (and probably of most of his predecessors). But it all ended in tears. The end of Mussolini’s fascism came in 1943 as Italy gradually was occupied by the Allies. VE III soon came to be viewed as the remaining symbol of fascism and the knives, never too securely stowed, came out again. Victor fled Rome, and perched himself apprehensively on the coast at Brindisi, on the heel of the occupied Italian boot. Under humiliating pressure to abdicate, his only real supporter was Winston Churchill, who felt a continuing monarchy of Italy would be preferable to a revolutionary republic. VE III won a concession – to abdicate only when Rome was finally occupied. In fact, he remained king in name (delegating all duties to his son Humbert in 1944) until 1946 when the final blow fell on the house of Savoy. A plebiscite voted (narrowly) for republic over monarchy and VEII and his son Humbert sailed into exile.

Thus ended the House of Savoy, a near 1000 years dynasty fashioned from Germanic tribes moving west into France from the foothills of the Alps. Like pseudopodia of some giant amoeba the borders of Savoy moved to and fro across modern France and Italy until the decisive shift of its centre to Piedmont after the Napoleonic Wars. ‘Old Savoy’ became a pawn in negotiations with Napoleon III and was annexed by France in 1860, where most of it remains today, described as a ‘cultural-historic region of France in the Western Alps’. Its capital is Chambéry and its largest town is Annecy. I wrongly thought there was still a town of Savoy. If there was, it has vanished.