As Austria-Hungary fell apart at the end of October 1918, local bodies took power in the Littoral for a few days. In Gorizia a Slovene regiment guarded a Slovene administration; in Trieste a joint committee of Italians, socialists and Slovenes ran the city. Thirty days later neither was left.
“I take possession of Trieste in the name of the King of Italy.”
Before the collapse: three paths for one city
According to the 1910 census, the territory of the later Julian March had 407,911 inhabitants whose language of daily use was Slovene or Croatian and 354,908 whose language was Italian. Italians predominated in Trieste and the coastal towns; the countryside was almost entirely Slovene and Croatian. The ethnic boundary ran from the mouth of the Timavo across Doberdò, south of Gorizia along the Soča and along the edge of the Brda hills and Venetian Slovenia towards Resia.
The Austrian census did not ask who you were, but which language you usually spoke. A Slovene maid in an Italian household in Trieste could be counted as Italian.
The language of daily use (Umgangssprache) was the language of everyday communication, neither the mother tongue nor nationality. Only one could be given; in the towns employers, landlords and census-takers often influenced the answer. The censuses therefore undercount Slovenes in Trieste and the coastal towns. The Italian census of 1921 went further: the question on the use of Italian was put first.In 1918 three ideas of the city's future took shape in Trieste. The Slovene nationalists of the political society Edinost demanded Trieste for Yugoslavia: on 30 May 1918, at the anniversary of the May Declaration, Josip Vilfan declared that Slovenes saw no compromise on Trieste. The Italian socialists led by Valentino Pittoni proposed an independent Trieste under the League of Nations, as did Henrik Tuma and Ivan Regent. The Italian liberal nationalists saw the city in Italy.
In September 1918 a local National Council was formed in Trieste (chairman Otokar Rybář) and a provincial branch of the National Council for Gorizia (chairman Karel Podgornik). In October the Gorizia Slovenes demanded in a memorandum that the Slovene part of the province, Gorizia included, should go to Yugoslavia and the land west of the ethnic boundary to Italy, and they began collecting signatures in the municipalities.
Gorizia: eight days in the State of SHS
On 31 October the provincial branch of the National Council declared itself the supreme authority in the Gorizia region and on 1 November took over the administration of its Slovene part, including Gorizia. It appointed Bogomil Berbuč as district governor. The next day about 1,500 soldiers of the 2nd Rifle Regiment under Dinko Puc swore allegiance to it and occupied the railway station, the post office, the telegraph and the food stores. Village committees and national guards formed to keep order as the disintegrating army withdrew. Archbishop Frančišek Borgia Sedej supported the National Council in a pastoral letter.
Italian citizens set up a provisional government (governo provvisorio) at the same time. For a few days Gorizia had two authorities, but in fact it was part of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. When Italian cavalry arrived on 6 November, General Ugo Cei demanded that the Slovene soldiers leave. Their commander replied that Ljubljana had given him no instructions for such a case. The provincial branch also refused to hand over the stores, arguing that a neutral state had taken them over from Austria. A hint to give way evidently came from Ljubljana: on 8 November the regiment marched off towards Ajdovščina.
Trieste: the Committee of Public Safety
Events in Trieste took another course. On 30 October Italian nationalists, united in the Fascio nazionale, and socialists founded the Committee of Public Safety (Comitato di salute pubblica) with 24 members, twelve from each camp. The next day the imperial governor Fries-Skene handed power to it. His farewell proclamation, which spoke of Trieste's future in connection with its hinterland, was printed only by the Slovene daily Edinost.
The National Council secured four Slovene seats on the committee, for Josip Vilfan, Edvard Slavik, Josip Ferfolja and Rudolf Golouh, but only on condition that the “Slav question” be left to the peace conference. The committee appointed Italian commissioners to all key posts. Among 23 commissariats, Vilfan as commissioner for public security was the only Slovene in an important position. The city was hungry, shops were looted, criminals had been released from the prisons. Slovenes even took their own flag down from the Narodni dom so as not to provoke clashes.
“Now we were good enough … Just as the Italians wear theirs, we too wear our tricolour cockade on our chests! And the Italians do not tear it off.” Pavla Hočevar on the first days of November 1918 · after Kacin-Wohinz 1972, p. 51
A torpedo boat to Venice
On 31 October the National Council offered a torpedo boat belonging to the National Council in Zagreb, so that a delegation of the committee could sail to Venice and ask for help. It set clear conditions: the delegation should include a representative of the Italian nationalists, of the socialists and of the National Council, and it should ask for occupation by the Entente, not by Italy alone.
In Venice the vice-president of the Fascio, Marco Samaja, asked Admiral Marzolo, in the name of his own party, for Italian troops to occupy Trieste. The socialist Callini proposed occupation by the Entente, or at least by Italy in agreement with it. Josip Ferfolja held to the written mandate: Italy could occupy the city temporarily only on the Entente's explicit order. Italian sailors did not let Dr Tomašić, the Zagreb representative, go ashore. General Diaz's reply was short: “I shall send immediate help to Trieste.”
Henrik Tuma later wrote that they had gone “begging to Venice”. The author argues that the Slovenes had little choice: after four years of war the workers were not ready to rise, Italy was a member of the Entente, and a “Trieste Maister” would have stood no chance against a victorious power.
3 November: the landing
Two hours after the delegation returned, at 4 p.m. on 3 November, the Italian army landed in Trieste. The armistice of Villa Giusti had been signed that same day but came into force only the next day. The crowd greeted the first ships on their knees, but its enthusiasm was not only national: people hoped for bread. The ships brought soldiers; the first food shipment arrived only on 7 November.
That same day General Petitti di Roreto became governor of the Julian March. He dissolved the Committee of Public Safety and restored the pre-war city council with its Italian majority. He based the occupation on the right of conquest (diritto di conquista), although the armistice provided for Allied occupation and administration by local authorities.
“It took our breath away; disappointed, we looked at one another, fell silent and went our ways. But we did not yet despair.”
The demarcation line and the march on Ljubljana
The armistice set the line for the Austro-Hungarian withdrawal from Peč over the Predil, Mangart and Triglav, along the watershed past Podbrdo, Podlanišče and Idrija to Mount Snežnik and on to the sea, leaving Kastav, Matulji and Volosko to the west. Italy interpreted it in its own way: it occupied Tarvisio for the Predil mines, Idrija for its mercury mine and the Pivka basin up to Logatec, although the watershed runs elsewhere. Of the 19 municipalities of the Logatec district, only six remained outside the occupation.
Near Logatec Italian troops crossed the line on 13 November and advanced to Vrhnika. Lieutenant Colonel Švabić, commander of the Serbian units in Slovenia, handed them an ultimatum. On 16 November an Italian patrol even reached Ljubljana and apologised for having “mistaken it for Vrhnika”. The next day the Italian army entered Rijeka, which not even the Treaty of London had promised.
The “people's plebiscite”
The signature campaign begun before the monarchy's collapse continued after the Italian army arrived. By mid-November 84,985 of the 96,772 inhabitants of 81 Gorizia municipalities and 4,500 of the 9,000 inhabitants of Gorizia had signed for union with Yugoslavia. In about twenty municipalities the army prevented the signing. By April 1919, 289 municipalities had signed protests against the occupation. The occupying authorities dissolved the National Councils in Gorizia and Trieste on 14 and 23 November 1918.
Sources
- Kacin-Wohinz, M. (1972): Primorski Slovenci pod italijansko zasedbo 1918–1921 [The Slovenes of the Littoral under Italian Occupation 1918–1921]. Maribor: Obzorja; Trieste: ZTT, pp. 13–68, 69–74, 91–93.
- Romano, S. F. (ed.) (1968): Trieste, ottobre–novembre 1918. Raccolta di documenti del tempo. Milan.
- Marušič, B. (1968): Dokumenti iz »prevratnih dni« na Goriškem. Goriška srečanja 15–16.
- Žorž, G. (2016): Italijanska zasedba slovenskih krajev v novembru 1918. Zgodovinski časopis 70, pp. 364–380.