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Swiftly the new Premier decreed martial law, with a ban against all public gatherings and a dawn-to-dusk curfew, over restive, smoldering Italy. He formed a new cabinet sprinkled with military and professional names. In every action Pietro Badoglio and the aristocratic, clerical faction he represented showed the core of their ambition: They wanted a conservative, disciplined, monarchial Italy. They were not averse to keeping the gains of their league with fascismo. They still spoke of the "King Emperor," a title bestowed on the head of the House of Savoy after the conquest of Ethiopia.
The diminutive, testy, puppetlike Vittorio Emanuele was the symbol of a legality shrewdly wrapped around the fasces. The King could have broken up the March on Rome in 1922; instead, he gave power to Benito Mussolini and to an iron hand against liberalism. The King condoned the assault on Ethiopia with a calculating sentence: "If we win, I shall be King of Ethiopia. If we lose, I shall be King of Italy." Now the contract between his house and the house of fascismo had become dangerous; he had broken it.
It was not the first time that the thousand-year-old House of Savoy (rulers of Italy since 1861) had broken a contract. In 1915 Vittorio Emanuele had shifted Italy from its alliance with the Hohenzollern and the Habsburg into the Allied camp. Now perhaps he was trying to repeat the past, trying to assure the future for himself and his son, tall, fast-living Crown Prince Umberto.
The Rome radio told of popular demonstrations in the Italian cities against Fascism and for the King. This might be propaganda, designed to convince Washington and London that Italy had a truly fresh government. It might be the beginning of a bid for a peace with terms, despite the Allied insistence on "unconditional surrender." Many an allied citizen, still troubled by Darlanism in North Africa, had reason to be troubled lest Savoyism crop up in the Italian peninsula. The U.S. State Department would not say whether it classed the House of Savoy as Fascist; neatly it put that issue up to the Allied military command in Italy.
The Last Week. For Benito Mussolini his seven last days as Duce started somewhere in northern Italy. He met for the 14th time with Führer Adolf Hitler. No one knew for certain what transpired between the two men. Where past meetings had been flamboyant, this one was subdued.
Perhaps, as speculation presented the scene, the haggard, thinning Duce made a last impassioned plea for military aid, then listened to an equally impassioned refusal (see p. 30). Surely it was a rendezvous with frustration. From it the Duce had gone again to Rome.