Gabriele d'Annunzio's march from Ronchi to Fiume on 12 September 1919 was intended to resolve with a bold coup the impasse regarding the definition of the border between Italy and the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The annexation of the port of Carnaro to Italy was not contemplated by the London Pact, but was proclaimed by the Fiume National Council on 30 October 1918, appealing, as the Fiume deputy to the Hungarian Parliament Andrea Ossoinack had done a few days earlier, to the principle of self-determination of peoples. The latter was part of that 14-point program intended to guarantee peace in the world and on the basis of which President Woodrow Wilson had dragged the United States into the First World War. The redefinition of the border in Dalmatia compared to what had been promised in the British capital on 26 April 1915 and the obstacles placed by the other victorious powers regarding the annexation of Fiume (without dwelling on the failure to participate in the partition of the Ottoman Empire and the German colonies) fueled the rhetoric of the “mutilated victory”, which shook Gabriele d'Annunzio from the torpor of his golden Venetian retreat.

Born in a military and nationalist context, the Fiume expedition would later transform Fiume into a “city of life”, the setting for a “fifth season” that would have had to realise the palingenetic ideals that the war had raised and the peace conference had largely frustrated, with particular reference to the new European border arrangements and the autonomy promised to the colonies when France and England had to swell the ranks of their own bloodless armies with robust injections of colonial units. The League of Oppressed Peoples and the Carta del Carnaro were the projects that best embodied the libertarian and revolutionary spirit that some of the Poet's collaborators (Alceste De Ambris, Leon Kochnitzky, Eugenio Coselschi, Ludovico Toeplitz, Giovanni Bonmartini and Henry Furst) tried to impress on an expedition that continually risked being reduced to a lever with which the Kingdom of Italy sought to destabilise the neighbouring Yugoslav state by establishing contacts with Croatian, Slovenian, Montenegrin and Kosovar separatists, starting from agents present in Fiume (Giovanni Giuriati, Corrado Zoli and Giovanni Host Venturi).

Relations with Irish, Indian and Egyptian representatives came to nothing due to the lack of adequate funding with which to fuel revolutionary ferments, where the work on the fragile foundations of the Karađeorđević kingdom began to become threatening, so on 12 November 1920 in Rapallo Rome and Belgrade defined their border. Fiume would become a free state (a similar fate befell Danzig and Memel); of Dalmatia, only Zara together with a few islands would become part of the Kingdom of Italy; the land border was set along the watershed of the Julian Alps, thus meeting the requests of the Royal Army and disappointing the expectations of the Italian Navy, which wanted the whole of Dalmatia to ensure full control of the Adriatic.

Disappointed by this arrangement, d'Annunzio found himself alone in protesting, since Admiral Millo, military governor of Dalmatia who in the preceding months had shown him friendship and had led people to believe that he was equally ready for military insubordination if all of Dalmatia had not been annexed, fell back into line and withdrew his troops from the territories that had passed under Yugoslav sovereignty.

In order to avoid foreign interference, Prime Minister Giolitti committed himself to putting an end to the D'Annunzio sedition which in the meantime, in order to demonstrate its vitality, had occupied the islands of Arbe and Veglia. Some soldiers still deserted to reach Fiume and lend a hand to the Commander, who could count on about 2.500 legionaries, but the troops under the command of General Caviglia were now besieging the capital of Quarnero from the sea and from land. Benito Mussolini urged the Julian squadristi not to intervene, since he had understood that the Fiume cause was destined to succumb, however the government feared repercussions on internal public order if it were necessary to resort to force, therefore it took advantage of the Christmas holidays in the publication of newspapers to proceed with the attack on the defensive positions prepared by the D'Annunzio deserters and the Fiume volunteers.

From 24 to 29 December, what the poet from Abruzzo himself called the Bloody Christmas took place, causing 25 deaths and 139 wounded among the regular troops and 31 deaths and 61 wounded among the insurgents, including many civilians: disheartened by this episode of civil war between Italians, d'Annunzio decided to surrender in order to avoid further deaths and damage to the city, which was being besieged by land and bombarded from the sea. The Commander would hold his last public speech in Fiume, a vibrant funeral oration at the Cosala cemetery, where the fallen of those days were buried.

 

Lorenzo Salimbeni