Carlo Sforza
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Count Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...
Carlo Sforza (24 January 1872 – 4 September 1952) was an Italian diplomat and anti-fascist
politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...
.


Life and career

Sforza was born at
Lucca Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one ...
, the second son of Count Giovanni Sforza (1846-1922), an archivist and noted historian from
Montignoso Montignoso is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Massa and Carrara in the Italian region Tuscany, located about northwest of Florence and about southeast of Massa. Montignoso borders the following municipalities: Forte dei Marmi, M ...
,
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, and Elisabetta Pierantoni, born in a family of rich silk merchants. His father was a descendant of the Counts of
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, an illegitimate branch of the House of Sforza who had ruled the Duchy of Milan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At the death of his older brother in 1936, Carlo inherited the hereditary title of
Count Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...
granted to their father in 1910. The Count was a member of the ancient Sforza dynasty, descendant from a branch of the Dukes of Milan, and related to the Pallavicini family as well as other Italian families such as the Medici and Orsini. His wife Valentina Errembault de Dudzeele (1875 - 1969) was from an old and noble Belgian family. After graduating in law from the
University of Pisa The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe. History The Origins The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...
, Sforza entered the diplomatic service in 1896. He served as consular
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in
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(1896) and
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(1897), then as consular secretary in
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(1901) and
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. He was then appointed chargé d'affaires in
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in 1905, but a diplomatic incident caused him to resign in December of the same year. Nevertheless, he was sent as private secretary of Marquis Emilio Visconti-Venosta, the Italian delegate to the Algeciras Conference. Visconti-Venosta's recommendation earned him the post of first secretary of legation in
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(1906-1907), before being sent as chargé d'affaires in Constantinople (1908-1909) where he witnessed the
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. Counsellor of Embassy at
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in 1909, he then made his first experience of government as cabinet secretary of the Italian foreign minister for some months in the Fortis cabinet. From 1911 to 1915, he was sent back to
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where he witnessed the collapse of the Chinese Empire and renegotiated the statute of the
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with the new Chinese authorities. Sforza was in favour of an Italian intervention in the First World War on the side of the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
. From 1915 to 1919, he was sent as ambassador in Corfu to the exiled Serbian government. After the
First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
he became Italian foreign minister under Giovanni Giolitti. In 1921 Sforza upset nationalist right-wing forces by signing the Rapallo Treaty which recognised the important port of
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as a free city. As minister of Foreign Affairs he was instrumental in breaking the proto-fascist feud led by poet Gabriele D'Annunzio in Fiume. He remained foreign minister until the fall of the Giolitti cabinet on 4 July 1921. Sforza was appointed ambassador to
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in February 1922 but resigned from office nine months later on 31 October after Benito Mussolini had gained power. He led the anti-fascist opposition in the Senate until being forced into exile in 1926. While living in exile in Belgium, the native country of his wife, Sforza published the books, ''European Dictatorships'', ''Contemporary Italy'', or ''Synthesis of Europe'', as well as many articles where he analysed the fascist ideology and attacked its many well-wishers as well as different "appeasers" in England, France and elsewhere. After the murder in France in 1937 of Carlo Rosselli, leader of the Giustizia e Libertà movement (non-marxist left), Count Sforza became the de facto leader of Italian antifascism in exile. Sforza lived in Belgium and France until the German occupation in June 1940. He then settled in
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where he lived until moving on to the
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, where he joined the antifascist
Mazzini Society The Mazzini Society was an antifascist political association, formed on a democratic and republican basis, situating itself within the tradition of the Risorgimento, and created in the United States by Italian-American immigrants in the late 1930s. ...
. Attending the Italian-American Congress in Montevideo, Uruguay, in August 1942, he presented an eight-point agenda for establishment of an Italian liberal democratic republic within the Atlantic Charter. The conference approved Sforza's agenda and acclaimed him "spiritual head of the Italian antifascists." After the
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in September 1943, he returned to his country and in June 1944 he accepted the offer of
Ivanoe Bonomi Ivanoe Bonomi (18 October 1873 – 20 April 1951) was an Italian politician and journalist who served as Prime Minister of Italy from 1921 to 1922 and again from 1944 to 1945. Background and earlier career Ivanoe Bonomi was born in Mantua, I ...
to join his provisional antifascist government. Sforza in 1946 became a member of the
Italian Republican Party The Italian Republican Party ( it, Partito Repubblicano Italiano, PRI) is a liberal and social-liberal political party in Italy. Founded in 1895, the PRI is the oldest political party still active in Italy. The PRI has old roots and a long hist ...
. As foreign minister (1947–1951) he supported the European Recovery Program and the settlement of
Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into prov ...
. He was a convinced advocate and one of the designers of Italy's pro-European policy and with De Gasperi he led Italy into the Council of Europe. On 18 April 1951 he signed the Treaty instituting the European Coal and Steel Community, making Italy one of the founder members. Count Carlo Sforza died in Rome in 1952.


Family

On 4 March 1911 in Vienna, Sforza married a Belgian aristocrat, Countess Valentine Errembault de Dudzeele et d'Orroir ( Bern 4 March 1875 - Rome, 31 January 1969), whose father, Count Gaston (1847-1929), was Belgian ambassador to Constantinople and later to Vienna, and whose brother, Count Gaston Errembault de Dudzeele, would marry in 1920 the
widow A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died. Terminology The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed ''widowhood''. An archaic term for a widow is "relict," literally "someone left over". This word can so ...
of
Prince Mirko of Montenegro Prince Mirko Dimitri Petrović-Njegoš of Montenegro ( sr-Cyrl, Мирко Петровић-Његош; 17 April 1879 – 2 March 1918) was born in Cetinje, the second son of King Nicholas I of Montenegro and Milena Vukotić. Prince Mirko p ...
, himself a brother-in-law of the
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. As a child, Countess Valentina had been educated with the twin sons of a chambermaid of her mother: they were rumored to be the illegitimate sons of her father and one of them would become the father of
Hergé Georges Prosper Remi (; 22 May 1907 – 3 March 1983), known by the pen name Hergé (; ), from the French pronunciation of his reversed initials ''RG'', was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating ''The Adventures of Tintin'', ...
, creator of
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. Sforza and his wife had a daughter, Fiammetta (
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3 October 1914 – 2002), who married Howard Scott ("a divorced father-of-two non-Catholic and penniless Englishman"), and a son, Count Sforza-Galeazzo («Sforzino») Sforza ( Corfu 6 September 1916- Strasbourg 28 December 1977), a sculptor, for a time the lover of Argentine painter Leonor Fini, and later Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe (1968-1978). The latter first married Corinne Simon (1927-2011) and then Anne Spehner, but did not leave a son and at his death the title of Count passed to a cousin. Carlo Sforza was also the alleged biological father of
Konstanty Jeleński Konstanty Aleksander Jeleński (2 January 1922 - 4 May 1987) was a Polish essayist. Biography Konstanty Aleksander Jeleński (in French: Constantin Jelenski) was born on 2 January 1922 in Warsaw, Poland. He died on 4 May 1987 in Paris, France. At ...
.


Honors

Grand cordon of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus – December 21, 1919 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy - February 29, 1920 Knight of the
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- December 21, 1920 Knight Grand Cross of the
Colonial Order of the Star of Italy The Colonial Order of the Star of Italy ( it, Ordine coloniale della Stella d'Italia ) was founded as a colonial order of chivalry on 18 June 1914 by Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, to reward soldiers deployed to the colony of Libya. The orde ...
- November 25, 1920''Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia'' n.94, April 26, 1926, p.1702. Cross of Liberty for Military Leadership, Grade I


Notes


Further reading

* Liebmann, George W. ''Diplomacy between the Wars: Five Diplomats and the Shaping of the Modern World'' (London I. B. Tauris, 2008) * Miller, Marion. "The Approaches to European Institution-Building of Carlo Sforza, Italian Foreign Minister, 1947–51." ''Building Postwar Europe'' (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1995) pp. 55–69.


External links


Photos of Carlo Sforza in ''Immaginario Diplomatico'' - collection of historical photos of Italian Diplomats
by Stefano Baldi {{DEFAULTSORT:Sforza, Carlo 19th-century Italian politicians 1872 births 1952 deaths Counts of Italy Italian nobility People from the Province of Massa-Carrara Carlo Italian Republican Party politicians Members of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy Members of the Constituent Assembly of Italy Senators of Legislature I of Italy Politicians of Tuscany Ambassadors of Italy to France Ambassadors of Italy to Serbia Exiled Italian politicians Members of the National Council (Italy)