[1] Originally an Italian patriot and democrat liberal during his first term in office, Crispi went on to become a bellicose authoritarian prime minister and an ally and admirer of Bismarck in his second.

[2] His career ended amid controversy and failure: he got involved in a major banking scandal and fell from power in 1896 after the devastating loss of the Battle of Adwa, which repelled Italy's colonial ambitions over Ethiopia.

In 1842 Crispi wrote about the necessity to educate poor people, about the huge damage caused by the excessive wealth of the Catholic Church and regarding the need for all citizens, including women, to be equal before the law.

Crispi was appointed a member of the provisional Sicilian Parliament and responsible for the Defence Committee; during his tenure, he supported the separatist movement that wanted to break ties with Naples.

[20] After leaving Sicily, Crispi took refuge in Marseille, France, where he met the woman who would become his second wife, Rose Montmasson, born five years after him in Haute-Savoie (which at that time belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia) in a family of farmers.

Then he moved to London where he became a revolutionary conspirator and continued his close friendship with Mazzini, involving himself in the exile politics of the national movement, abandoning Sicilian separatism.

[23] On the evening of 14 January 1858, as the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie de Montijo were on their way to the theatre in the Rue Le Peletier, the precursor of the Opera Garnier, to see, rather ironically, Rossini's William Tell, the Italian revolutionary Felice Orsini and his accomplices threw three bombs at the imperial carriage.

On 3 October 1860, to seal an alliance with King Victor Emmanuel II, Garibaldi appointed pro-dictator of Naples, Giorgio Pallavicino, a supporter of the House of Savoy.

"[17][32] In 1866 he refused to enter Baron Bettino Ricasoli's cabinet; in 1867 he worked to impede the Garibaldian invasion of the papal states, foreseeing the French occupation of Rome and the disaster of Mentana.

By methods of the same character as those subsequently employed against himself by Felice Cavallotti, he carried on the violent agitation known as the Lobbia affair, in which sundry conservative deputies were, on insufficient grounds, accused of corruption.

[34] In 1877 during the Great Eastern Crisis Crispi was offered Albania as possible compensation by Bismarck and the British Earl of Derby if Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia, however, he refused and preferred the Italian Alpine regions under Austro-Hungarian rule.

Crispi, helped by Mancini and Cardinal Pecci (afterwards Leo XIII), persuaded the Sacred College to hold the conclave in Rome,[26] establishing the legitimacy of the capital.

True to his initial progressive leanings he moved ahead with stalled reforms, abolishing the death penalty, revoking anti-strike laws, limiting police powers, and reforming the penal code and the administration of justice with the help of his Minister of Justice Giuseppe Zanardelli, reorganising charities and passing public health laws and legislation to protect emigrants that worked abroad.

[57] Balkan geopolitics and security concerns drove Italy to seek great power status in the Adriatic sea and Crispi viewed a future autonomous Albania within the Ottoman Empire, or an independent one, as a safeguarded for Italian interests.

[58] Crispi believed the Albanians' interests against Pan-Slavism and Austro-Hungarian expansion were best served through a Greco-Albanian union and he founded in Rome a philhellenic committee that worked toward that goal.

However, the decisive event was a document published by the new Minister of Finance Bernardino Grimaldi, who revealed that the planned deficit was higher than expected; after that, the government lost its majority with 186 votes against and 123 in favour.

In December 1893 the impotence of the Giolitti cabinet to restore public order, menaced by disturbances in Sicily and the Banca Romana scandal, gave rise to a general demand that Crispi should return to power.

Consisting of a jumble of traditionalist sentiment, religiosity, and socialist consciousness, the movement reached its apex in the summer of 1893, when new conditions were presented to the landowners and mine owners of Sicily concerning the renewal of sharecropping and rental contracts.

In the three weeks of uncertainty before Crispi formed a government on 15 December 1893, the rapid spread of violence drove many local authorities to defy Giolitti's ban on the use of firearms.

[71] Crispi steadily supported the energetic remedies adopted by his Minister of Finance Sidney Sonnino to save Italian credit, which had been severely shaken by the financial crisis of 1892–1893 and the Banca Romana scandal.

Moreover, Crispi's uncompromising suppression of disorder, and his refusal to abandon either the Triple Alliance or the Eritrean colony, or to forsake his Minister of the Treasury, Sidney Sonnino, caused a breach with the radical leader Felice Cavallotti.

On 13 January 1895 Umberto I dissolved the parliament and Giolitti, who was under trial for the bank scandal, was forced to move to Berlin, because his parliamentary immunity expired, and the risk of being arrested.

[75] On 25 June 1895, Crispi refused a request to allow a parliamentary inquiry into his role in the Banca Romana scandal, saying as a prime minister he felt he was "invulnerable" because he had "served Italy for 53 years".

[78] Crispi took a very belligerent line on foreign policy as he, during a three-month period in 1895, talked quite openly about attacking France, sent a naval squadron to the eastern Mediterranean to prepare for a possible war with the Ottoman Empire in order to seize Albania, wanted to send an expeditionary force to seize a city in China, and planned to send a force to South Africa to forcibly mediate the dispute between Great Britain and the Transvaal Republic.

"[79] Those who knew him by this stage of his life considered Crispi to be almost mindlessly bellicose as he broke off diplomatic relations with Portugal over a supposed slight, saying he deserved more respect from this "entirely unimportant country" ruled over by a "minuscule monarchy".

[83] In response to Crispi's telegram, on the evening of 29 February Baratieri met with his brigadier generals and with their support decided to ignore his own doubts and attacked a much larger Ethiopian force on 1 March 1896 near Adwa.

[83] By contrast, the British military observer stated the ordinary Italian soldiers at Adwa "were as good as fighting material as can be found in Europe", but they had been let down by their officers who had shown no leadership abilities whatsoever.

[88] The ensuing Antonio di Rudini cabinet lent itself to Cavallotti's campaign, and at the end of 1897, the judicial authorities applied to the Chamber of Deputies for permission to prosecute Crispi for embezzlement.

A parliamentary commission of inquiry discovered only that Crispi, on assuming office in 1893, had found the secret service coffers empty, and had borrowed money from a state bank to fund it, repaying it with the monthly instalments granted in regular course by the treasury.

[90] Soon afterwards, however, his health began to give way and he died in Naples on 11 August 1901;[91] according to many witnesses, his last words were: "Before closing my eyes to life, I would have the supreme comfort of knowing that our homeland is beloved and defended by all its sons".