Kingdom of Sicily under Savoy

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Victor Amadeus and his wife departing Nice with a British naval squadron for Palermo to be crowned King and Queen of Sicily.

The

Victor Amadeus II. Throughout this period Sicily remained a distinct realm in personal union with the other Savoyard states, but ultimately it secured for the House of Savoy a royal title and a future of expansion in Italy rather than in France.[1]
During this period, the Savoyard monarch used his new title to affirm his sovereign independence.

Victor Amadeus's policy towards Sicily was to bring it more in line with his mainland possessions, but to this end he progressed little in the short span of time he had.[2] His own domain was weakened by the addition of Sicily, becoming more fragmented and extended (geographically), and more composite (legally and socially).[3] He was finally forced to renounce Sicily in exchange for Sardinia.

Acquisition of Sicily by the House of Savoy

The death of

Geertruydenberg, the Dutch pensionary Anthonie Heinsius and the Imperial envoy Karl von Zinzendorf mooted proposals for the Savoyard acquisition of Milan or Sicily. The Savoyard ambassador, the Marchese del Borgo, suggested exchanging the Savoyard state for Naples, Sicily and the Spanish-held State of the Presidi in central Italy.[5]

After a final effort by the British to make Victor Amadeus the King of Spain,

Treaty of Utrecht (11 April 1713) between France and Savoy. In the interim the new king had attempted to exchange it for territory closer to his Piedmontese domains. He rejected a British offer to provide garrisons for the island, and he concluded a treaty on 8 March 1713 confirming to British merchants no more commercial rights than they had exercised under the Spanish.[6] The formal handover of power was conducted on 10 June, and a final treaty of peace between Savoy and Spain was signed on 13 July. Victor Amadeus was made the heir to the Spanish empire if Philip produced no heirs.[7] Philip retained "second sovereignty" over several fiefs in Sicily, lands he had seized from pro-Habsburg vassals during the war, such as the County of Modica.[8][9] The end of the war and Victor Amadeus' rise in status were celebrated in the streets of Turin from 1–3 August, ending in gun salutes, fireworks and a Te Deum.[10]

Rule of Victor Amadeus II

Relief depicting Victor Amadeus' coronation in Palermo, from the southern portico of the cathedral of Palermo.

Personal rule

In October 1713, Victor Amadeus and his wife,

Knights of Malta to their Sicilian overlord.[13]

Among the first things the new king did was improve the defences of the island in light of the threat of the

sumptuary laws.[12]

At the advice of parliament, Victor Amadeus raised a small volunteer army, consisting of two regiments and a bodyguard, and, on a visit in June 1714, restored to

Whigs, the Sicilians could no longer rely on the Mediterranean Fleet to guard their island and the naval buildup became central to Sicilian security.[12] When the Treaty of Rastatt (7 March) made peace between the Habsburgs and France, the threat of a Neapolitan invasion grew. On 8 September 1714, Victor Amadeus left Palermo for Villefranche, leaving behind Maffei as his viceroy.[8] When he laid the foundation stone of the Basilica of Superga
in Turin on 20 July 1717, it read:

Alla Madre del Salvatore
Alla Salvatrice di Torino
Vittorio Amedeo, Re di Sicilia, di Gerusalemme e di Cipro
posava la prima pietra il giorno 20 luglio 1717
To the Mother of the Savior
To the Saving Lady of Turin
Victor Amadeus, King of Sicily, Jerusalem and Cyprus
laid the first stone on 20 July 1717

Rule by viceroys

See also: List of viceroys of Sicily

At Victor Amadeus' leaving, many problems with the government of Sicily remained. The Palermitan bureaucracy, and the aristocracy of which its officials formed a part, had been alienated by the crackdown on corruption. The populace remained pro-Spanish and Spanish propaganda was being disseminated from enclaves like

the endemic brigandage.[8]

In 1717 Victor Amadeus placed the Direttore delle Finanze, the finance minister of Sicily, under the authority of the Generale delle Finanze, the finance minister of his mainland dominions at Turin, and ordered him to adopt Piedmontese accounting practices. This alarmed the baronage, which comprised only about seventy to eighty families. These families controlled both the parliament and the cities, and owned vast tracts of land farmed by a destitute peasantry. The Sicilian system was

feudal. The Savoyard reforms had barely begun when the island was lost in 1718.[14]

List of Savoyard viceroys

Ecclesiastical politics

The kings of Sicily had since

Bishop of Lipari
, ongoing since 1711, which had in turn led to Papal intervention:

In 1711 the bishop had excommunicated some customs officials for levying duty on a couple of pounds of chickpeas belonging to his household. The Tribunal nullified the excommunication, whereupon the bishop imposed an interdict on his diocese and left to seek help in Rome. The Roman Curia issued a declaration denying the Tribunal's power to lift ecclesiastical sanctions, which was published early in 1712 by several Sicilian bishops. Counter-measures duly followed from the Spanish viceroy and the Tribunal, so that by the time Victor Amadeus reached Sicily the

Catania had followed their colleague into exile, the last two leaving their sees under interdict.[8]

The Savoyard king sent envoys to Rome in December 1713, seeking to settle the conflict and minimise the effects of the interdicts. In March 1714 the parliament advised him not to allow the Tribunal's powers to be diminished. Clement XI in turn forbade the clergy to pay the crociata, an ancient tax to the monarch, ostensibly for a

diocese of Agrigento, were imprisoned or exiled (most travelling o Rome), and when the Savoyard government published an anti-papal tract written by two clergyment it ignited a pamphlet war. The island clergy was divided, the populace supported the government, and the French and Spanish governments support Victor Amadeus. In June 1716 Clement offered to rescind his bull of the previous year if he could choose the head of the Tribunal, but as he would still not recognise Victor Amadeus' right to the crown the offer was rejected. The situation was unsettled at the time the Savoyards' lost Sicily.[15]

Loss of Sicily to Spain and Austria

Sicily in negotiations

In February 1716, the British minister

Second Morean War against the Republic of Venice. When John Dalrymple and Carlo Filippo Perrone di San Marino, respectively British and Savoyard ambassadors at Paris, discussed the question of a final agreement between Savoy and the Emperor, Sicily was ignored, as Victor Amadeus had no intention of ceding it.[16]

In June 1716 George I and Charles VI signed a treaty guaranteeing mutual respect for any future acquisitions each might make, Stanhope explained to Trivié that his master might be forced to cede Sicily to Charles. A Savoyard embassy to the British court failed to extract the sought promise of a British defence of Sicily in the event of an imperial invasion. When George I and

Vigevanasco, an imperial-held territory in Italy in return for Savoy's joining the Triple Alliance. Prince Eugene did not even pass it on.[17]

Spanish conquest of Sicily

Main article: War of the Quadruple Alliance

In July 1717 the

a war with the Ottomans. By November the entire island has been subdued. In December Victor Amadeus sent another embassy to Vienna, but the Spanish minister Giulio Alberoni urged him to invade the long-coveted Duchy of Milan, promising Spanish assistance. It was a ruse to distract the Savoyards from the planned Spanish invasion of Sicily.[18]

The Battle of Cape Passaro by Richard Paton.

In January 1718 the Conte Filippo d'Ussolo was sent to Vienna to negotiate an alliance with the emperor, but he exceeded his mandate by broaching the cession of Sicily, and was replaced at the end of April by Gian Giacomo Fontana. Now Victor Amadeus offered to cede Sicily in exchange for Sardinia and Vigevanasco, and Fontana, empowered to make an alternative suggestion, offered to exchange all Savoyard possessions on the mainland for Sardinia and Naples. By the time these offers received a hearing in June the emperor had adhered to the Triple Alliance, and the

Parma and Tuscany, but he was rebuffed. On 11 August, the British fleet defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Cape Passaro, stranding the Spanish troops on Sicily. After numerous failed efforts to avert the inevitable in London and Paris, Victor Amadeus acceded to the Quadruple Alliance on 8 November 1718.[18]

After imperial forces launched a counter-invasion of Sicily, the viceroy Maffei formally handed over control of the island in May 1719. On 17 February 1720 the

viceroy, Filippo Guglielmo di Saint-Rémy, carried aboard a British ship, landed in Sardinia. A British officer had remarked to him that Sardinia was "hardly of any other advantage to the Prince that possesses it than giving him the title of king".[18] It also gave him munitions, which the Savoyards had exhausted in Sicily during the suppression of brigandage and the defence against the Spanish. The Spanish had begun to remove their munitions from Sardinia, but were ultimately forced to pay an indemnity of 100,000 écus, even though Victor Amadeus demanded 150,000.[19]

In September 1726 a British envoy, John Hedges, arrived in Turin to suggest, among other things, that Victor Amadeus be returned Sicily.[20] Victor Amadeus was still asking for compensation for the loss of Sicily as late as November 1729.[21]

Notes

  1. ^ Symcox, 190 ("Under Victor Amadeus Sicily and Sardinia remained separate realms") and 195 ("The department of internal affairs was divided regionally: [the third] under-secretary and his staff ... looked after Sicily"); Storrs, 5 ("[After 1713] the Savoyard state would see its future in Italy") and 313 ("Victor Amadeus secured royal status, founded upon possession of the island realm of Sicily, and later Sardinia")
  2. ^ Storrs, 205 n. 173 ("the policy [Victor Amadeus] had pursued in Sicily ... had alienated the Sicilians").
  3. ^ Storrs, 315 ("the acquisition of Sicily ... made the Savoyard state even more of a 'composite state' ... whose different territories had little in common apart from a duke and dynasty which provided the vital glue").
  4. ^ Symcox, 136.
  5. ^ Symcox, 160–62.
  6. ^ a b c Symcox, 164–65.
  7. ^ Storrs, 4.
  8. ^ a b c d e Symcox, 173.
  9. ^ Storrs, 123.
  10. ^ Symcox, 167.
  11. ^ a b Symcox, 171.
  12. ^ a b c Symcox, 172.
  13. ^ Storrs, 195 n. 120.
  14. ^ Symcox, 175.
  15. ^ a b Symcox, 174.
  16. ^ Symcox, 178.
  17. ^ a b Symcox, 179.
  18. ^ a b c d Symcox, 180–81.
  19. ^ Storrs, 59.
  20. ^ Symcox, 184.
  21. ^ Symcox, 188.

Bibliography

Works cited

Further reading

  • Alfred Baraudon. La maison de Savoie et la triple alliance (1713–1722). Paris: 1896.
  • Carlo Alberto Garufi (ed.). Rapporti diplomatici tra Filippo V e Vittorio Amedeo II di Savoia, nella cessione del regno di Sicilia ... 1712–1720. Palermo: 1914.
  • Isidoro La Lumia. "La Sicilia sotto Vittorio Amedeo di Savoia". Archivo storico italiano, 3rd series, 19, 20, 21 (1874–75).
  • L. La Rocca. "Una proposta di lega italiana al re di Sicilia nel 1719". Archivo storico siciliano, new series, 32 (1907).
  • L. La Rocca. "Relazione al re Vittorio Amedeo II di Savoia sulle condizioni economiche, sociali e politiche della Sicilia alla fine del dominio spagnuolo". Archivio storico per la Sicilia orientale, 11 (1914).
  • Giovanni Raffiotta. Gabelle e dogane a Palermo nel primo trentennio del '700. Palermo: 1962.
  • Paolo Revelli. "Vittorio Amedeo II e le condizioni geografiche della Sicilia". Rivista geografica italiana, 27, 28 (1910–11).
  • Luigi Riccobene. Sicilia ed Europa dal 1700 al 1735. Palermo: 1976.
  • Giuseppe Spata (ed.). "I primi atti costituzionali dell'augusta Casa di Savoia ordinati in Palermo". Miscellanea di storia italian (Turin), 10 (1870).
  • Vittorio Emanuele Stellardi (ed.). Il regno di Vittorio Amedeo II di Savoia in Sicilia dall'anno 1713 al 1719, 3 vols. Turin: 1862.
  • A. Tallone. Vittorio Amedeo II e la quadruplice alleanza. Turin: 1914.

External links


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