In the Chamber there was only the extreme Left
which opposed the war policy, and the order of the day which was
accepted by the government as the war programme was presented by the
Marquis di Rudin?, then head of the opposition, and carried by an
enormous majority. As I was present at the sitting of the Chamber at
which the vote was taken I do not speak uncertainly.
Baratieri had been recalled to Rome on the suspicion that he was
intending to extend the conquest unduly, and I met him at a breakfast
arranged by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to enable me to discuss
the subject with the general. He then made the most unqualified
declarations that he was opposed to all extension of operations, and
that he did not ask for a man or a lira more than had been accorded
to him by Crispi. Baratieri was a Garibaldian general, a daring and
brilliant commander of a brigade at most, without a proper military
education, but with some experience. He was a political general,
however, a partisan of Zanardelli, who had been the most insistent
rival of Crispi at the formation of a ministry in 1893, and he had
been Zanardelli's candidate for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
his nomination having been protested against by Austria on the well
understood ground that he was an Irredentist, that is, in favor
of taking the Tyrol from Austria. In the battle of Coatit, which
inaugurated the hostilities, he had shown brilliant qualities as a
partisan commander and had become very popular, so that to remove
him, as Crispi had intended when he was recalled to Rome, was very
difficult, the more as he protested his strict adherence to the
defensive policy imposed on him by the ministry; but on his return it
soon became evident that he cherished more ambitious plans than he
had owned up to when in Rome, and Crispi soon saw that his recall was
necessary.
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