Right around the southeast corner of the former Royal Palace in Torino stands an old Roman gate, repurposed on the west side into the Palazzo Madama, the first Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and today a museum of art dating back to the late Middle Ages.  The museum opens up onto Piazza Castello to the west with a statue dedicated to the army of Sardinia which played a significant role in the Risorgimiento.  On the east side, past the two remaining Roman towers, stands a large monument mounted by two groups of four soldiers with a large, somewhat brooding man standing alone, fists clenched, looking to the east.  This man depicted is Emanuele Filiberto Vittorio Eugenio Alberto Genova Giuseppe Maria di Savoia, Duke of Aosta and a a cousin of Italy’s king Victor Emanuel III.  

Filiberto, during World War One, led the Italian Third Army against the Austro-Hungarian forces on the Carso for two years from June 1915 until October 1917.  Erected between 1933 and 1937 after the general’s death in Torino in 1931, the bronze statue stands cast from four captured artillery pieces, the “Statue in a Coat” – “statua in un cappotto”.  The monument memorializes the “Undefeated Duke” of the “Undefeated Third Army” – “la armatta invitta”.

The Young Duke

Filiberto, as a young boy, also briefly claimed the Spanish title of Prince of Asturias – the title given to the heir apparent to the Spanish throne.  His father, Amadeo I, briefly ruled as King of Spain from 1870 to 1873 before abdicating pronouncing the Spanish people to be ungovernable on the way out.  The Duke of Aosta gained the title given to various second sons of the House of Savoy.  The office had disappeared when another second son, Victor Emmanuel I, rose to gain the throne of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1802 from his childless brother Charles Emmanuel.  Charles Albert, King of Sardinia from 1831 to 1849, reinstituted the title in 1845 giving it to his brother Amadeo, the second son.

royal doubts

Victor Emmanuel II’s relationship with his cousin, Filiberto, remains somewhat of a mystery.  The two men contrasted with each other dramatically.  It started with appearance, something probably lying near the heart of their differences.  The king only stood at just over five foot tall – 1.53 meters – while the duke towered over his cousin rising to six foot three inches – 1.90 meters.  The Duke of Aosta simply seemed more kinglike, an expert horseman, seemingly always concerned for the welfare of his troops and the nation.  The King would stand in the shadow, at least in the King’s mind, as long as Filiberto lived.

Victor Emmanuel, the heir apparent to the Italian throne as the Prince of Naples, married Princess Elena of Montenegro in 1896, an attempt by his mother to broaden the restrictive gene pool of Italian aristocracy.  Elena converted from her natal Orthodox faith to Roman Catholicism in the process.  

Victor Emmanuel and Elena lived a long and happy life together raising five children.  She preferred a quiet life focusing on her family, helping when needed to care for earthquake victims, to advance medicine and provide help for orphans of rail workers and soldiers.  She was given the honor of the Golden Rose by Pope Pius XI in 1930 and 1937 for her works, the highest honor at the time for a woman given by the Catholic Church.  Fifty years after her death, given the title of Servant of God, Elena is on the first rung of the beatification process for possible sainthood.

The Duke finds a wife

Filiberto married the beautiful Hélène Louise Henriette d’Orlèans a year earlier.  Hélène earlier received marital intentions from Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of the Prince (future King Edward VII) and Princess of Wales and grandson of Queen Victoria.  Their attempts at marriage failed due to her father’s rejection of her converting from Catholicism to the Anglican faith needed for a possible future king of England.  She also was on a short list for possible partners for Victor Emmanuel.  In the honor of the unity of the family, Victor Emanuel served as his cousin’s witness.

As colonel of the 5^th Field Artillery Regiment, Filiberto requested assignment to the war in Abyssinia.  The king – Victor Emanuel II – and prime minister Francesco Crispi both ruled against him on reasons of inexperience and ignorance of “the things of Africa”.  Yet two years later, he gained promotion to major general and given command of all artillery in Torino.  In 1902, Filiberto gained another promotion to lieutenant general in command of the entire military division of Torino. 

The Duke finds a court

Hélène and Filiberto had two children, Amedeo and Amione – both with interesting futures of their own.  Filiberto was shunted off to Naples as a corps commander in 1905 settling into the Reggia di Capodimonte, the former home to the King of Two Sicilies. 

Some sources mention the couple had an unhappy marriage and maybe after a time, they did drift apart.  Hélène before World War One seemed to be always traveling somewhere.  She disappear for ten months at a time traipsing through Africa.  Her travels proved useful as she wrote articles for Harper’s Weekly and later produced books about her adventures including an around-the-world trip taken in 1913-1914.

Being second in line for the throne, Filiberto and his family did not go south to Naples alone.  He was attended by his own court by this time, and everyone left for the sun.  The move was made by the now King Victor Emanuel III – his father assassinated in 1900 – for Hélène’s health.  The drier and warmer climate was better for her, an asthmatic.  The Capodimonte court of the Duke of Aosta became noted for pomp and ceremony becoming an important stop for southern Italian nobility.

Military Realization

In 1911, the duke’s desire to see military action – this time in Libya against the Turks – was set aside by the king and government.  Hélène had trained as a student nurse with the Italian Red Cross between 1909 and 1911.  After passing an exam, she left for Libya – against her husband’s wishes – on the hospital ship Menfi to help assist and transport wounded back from the war.  Just before Italy entered World War One, she became the Inspector General for volunteer nurse in the Red Cross, a position she maintained from April 1915 until March 1921.  While coordinating ten thousand nurses, her nickname became the Generalissima earning several medals for her efforts.

Filiberto, on the other hand, entered the war as commander of the Third Army, a command given to him only four days before hostilities began.  The former commander, Lieutenant General Luigi Zuccari, saw dismissal by Italian commander Luigi Cardona, the result of a longstanding tiff between the two men.  The Third Army already heavily involved moving towards the Carso region just west of the Isonzo River.  Their goal was to help conquer Gorizia from the south and capture Trieste in the opposite direction.   At the time of his accession to command of the Third Army, Filiberto was recovering from an illness.  The lateness in command change amidst his recovery did not bode well in the initial stages of the war as the Third Army crept towards the Isonzo instead of leaping.

The Problem of Industrial Warfare

Lack of artillery, artillery munitions and a general lack of understanding of modern warfare led to hardship and carnage over some eleven separate Italian offensives launched between June 1915 and October 1917.  The army did make some small gains, especially after the sixth offensive in August 1916, but all of the gains found themselves wiped out by the collapse further to the north of the Italian Second Army during the Battle of Caporetto.  The Duke was able to extricate his army from possible entrapment retreating orderly to take up new positions on the Piave River sixty miles to the west of the Isonzo where they helped solidify the Italian line.  The Third Army claimed to never suffer defeat while Filiberto was the “Undefeated Duke”.

The Duke, never seen as a tactical genius, was a loyal, committed general, always ready to persevere.  He launched his troops forward in the eleven battles of the Isonzo, sometimes gaining, sometimes not.  Even though he came from an artillery background, the use of artillery on the battlefield left much to be desired for in many of the initial bloody battles on the Carso.  His strength, a constant presence on the battlefield felt by many of his men with his many visits to frontline units. 

The Duke and discipline

Discipline was something that came naturally to him, as it did to most upper-ranking Savoy officers.  After he ordered the execution of six of his men for mutiny in 1916, Cadorna seized upon this act to forward his own ideas of re-instituting the ancient Roman tradition of decimation. This rule demanded one of every ten men in a force deemed to have failed in its goal arbitrarily executed, an example of what happens with failure.  

While the Duke supported Cadorna’s decision, he also showed leniency on occasion.  Once, at the front, he met a young 20-year-old soldier about to be executed for mutiny.  The young man already supported five children back in southern Italy and the Duke granted the young man amnesty. 

alternative perspective

While the Duke appears to have gained respect from most of the men in his command, the feeling was not universal.  A young officer, Emilio Lussu, serving in the Sassari Brigade – two regiments from Sardinia with longstanding reputations earned in both the armies of both Italy and Savoy before that – wrote in his novel Un anno sull’altipano – One Year on the High Plateau:  “The Duke had little military ability, but considerable literary enthusiasm.  He and his Chief of Staff complemented each other:  one wrote the speeches and the other delivered them. 

Having learned them by heart, the Duke recited them in the oratorical manner of an ancient Roman, with impeccable diction.  Every important ceremony (and they were frequent enough) was crowned with one of these orations.  Unfortunately, the Chief of Staff possess no great talent for composition.  So that in the end the army remembered the speeches for the Duke’s delivery of them rather than for what they contained.  He had a fine voice, too.  But otherwise he was pretty unpopular.”

The Sassari had been fighting on the Carso front from 1915 into 1916 as part of the Third Army.  Word came the brigade finally would rotate out of the front line for needed rest.  “The men were jubilant, and cheered the Duke.  At long last it appeared that there was some advantage in having a prince of the royal house as army corps commander. … For the first time since the beginning of the war he became quite popular …”

Caporetto

Cardona finally was sacked by the King after the defeat at Caporetto.  Most men in the army and his Allies saw the Duke as the most logical replacement.  The King, however, chose Armand Diaz, another former artillery officer like the Duke and an officer who served under the Duke.  Victor Emanuele was certainly not keen on putting a potential – in his mind – threat to the throne in such a high prestige job.  He used the excuse that the Duke might be needed to serve as a regent for the thirteen-year-old Umberto if Italy suffered further defeats forcing a possible abdication.

Postwar on the Adriatic

The Duke entered Trieste finally on 17 November 1918 – three years late – and stayed until the end of the following July.  In his last months, Filiberto openly supported Italian claims on Fiume at odds with the government of Francesco Nitti which was in the middle of difficult peace talks at the time.  Even after returning to Torino, his new home, the Duke returned several more times to the border speaking in favor of an Italian Fiume.  He would live at the former Austrian castle of Miramare from 1921 until 1926.  

d’annunzio and the aosta’s

The Duchess went one better.  She went to Rijeka on 4 November 1919 attending in the uniform of the Red Cross a funeral of one of the legionnaires of Gabriele D’Annunzio who died at the hands of border patrolmen.  On her visit, she took time to visit the poet who had taken command in Fiume.  She expressed praise for the actions of D’Annunzio and his legion in the occupation of the port.  Her praise mirrored by the Duke’s feelings.

These actions made the King and Prime Minister Nitti very upset.  The Duke got sent on a long journey out of the country with the press interpreting the government moves a result of fear of his popularity with his troops.  The press were not incorrect either about fears the King had for his cousin.  Tall, seemingly more commanding, popular, the Duke always kept a place in the back of the King’s mind when it came usurpation.  Unease before the war, reared into something much bigger in Victor Emmanuel’s fears as he strove to maintain his position at the head of the postwar tittering government. 

The Duke and Fascism

The Duke aligned himself early with the Fascist-Nationalist wing and indeed thoughts of replacing the little King with the Duke if the March on Rome saw opposition, drifted in the air.  One account has the King crying out, “The Duke of Aosta, the Duke of Aosta, that’s what they want!”

In the end, the King did not oppose the Fascists when they came to Rome and power.  He found common ground with Mussolini.  The Duce paid respect to the office of the King while ruling in his stead.  The Duke remained involved with the Army for a while becoming one of Italy’s Marshals in 1926.  He remained close to Mussolini in whom he saw the essence of his war veterans and unrequited dreams of nationalism.  

His journey came to an end after a couple of bouts of pneumonia killed him at the age of 62 in 1931.  According to his wishes, the Duke’s tomb lies in front of the massive ossuary at Redipuglia just east of the Isonzo River.  “My tomb is in the Cemetery of Redipuglia in the midst of the Heroes of the Third Army. I will be, with them, vigilant and safe to the borders of Italy, in the presence of that Karst that saw epic deeds and countless sacrifices, near that sea that welcomed the bodies of the sailors of Italy”.

Royal Endings

The King went on until he finally abdicated in favor of his son Umberto II in 1945.  Umberto II reigned for a month before Italians voted out the monarchy.  Both Victor Emanuel III and Umberto II died outside Italy.  The Re soldato – Soldier King – died in exile in Egypt at the end of 1947.  His remains came back to the Santuario della Natività di Maria in 2017 alongside those of his Queen Elena who died in a French exile.  Umberto lies at the Abbaye de Hautecombe in France. 

And while the Duke lies at the head of his men in the far northeast of Italy, his Hélène would quietly remarry in 1936.  They lived at the Capodimonte palace until after the war when it became a museum.  She, ever popular especially in Naples died early in 1951 lying in a family chapel at the Basilica dell’Incoronata Madre Buon Consiglio in Capodimonte. The Duke stands remembered near the old Royal Palace looking to the east at the head of his Third Army. No such monument dedicated to the memory of the King, Sciaboletta, the “little sabre” matches the Duke.  Upped in death as the King was in his mind during their lives.

THE MONUMENT

Controversy swirled around the Duke after death.  A competition took place a year after his death to place an equestrian statue in the Piazzale Duca d’Aosta west of the train station.  That fell through, but in the next year, a committee including the mayor of Torino formed to see the statue erected.   Another competition attracting just over 100 competitors ensued with an eye on either the Piazza Vittorio Veneto in Torino or at the Redipuglia where the Duke was buried.

Eugenio Baroni and Arturo Martini became finalists, producing new sketches of their ideas for a suitable monument for the Duke.  Finally, 20 March 1935 Baroni’s plans gained selection. 

However, Baroni died in June and the work fell to Publio Morbiducci, whom Baroni selected as the man to see his plans through.  Placement in the Piazza Vittorio Veneto were changed by the committee in late July to Piazza Castello possibly because the streetcar lines ran down the center of the large square, though there could have been other reasons to replace the monument site back down the Via Po to within eyesight of the Royal Palace.

A NEW SITE

The area on the east side of the Palazzo Madama was re-paved and street car lines re-routed.  Trees and gardens were planted behind the monument which stood on a rectangular platform 33.9 meters wide with a 28 meter wide base representing a conquered trench.  The Duke stands 4.5 meters high cast from bronze of four Austrian cannons. 

At the edges of the trench are two strongholds 4 meters high around which eight figures of infantrymen – 2.5 meters high – stand, four men in each stronghold.  The soldiers represent different aspects of Third Army life:  young Bersaglieri lookout waiting for the Duke’s command; an infantryman taking off his gas mask; a citizen infantryman, cheery and ready for fun; a peasant soldier reaching for grenades in a pocket hanging from his neck; a bold infantryman ready for action and an Alpino turning to the Duke for instructions.  The monument was dedicated on 4 July 1937, the sixth anniversary of the duke’s death.  Inauguration speech offered up by King Vittorio Emanuele III with the entire ceremony broadcast live to the nation over the radio.  A YouTube video also offers up a condensed look at the ceremonies.