Un Savoia sul trono ellenico? Il ruolo di Cavour, Saltara e Mamiani

The process of Italian unification, which reached its decisive phase in the two-year period 1859-60, exerted a great influence in Greece, which was grappling with a dynastic crisis and aspirations for an expansion of the small Kingdom, according to the perspectives of the Megali Idea. In this context, some sectors of Greek society and the patriotic movement viewed the end of the Wittelsbach dynasty and the accession to the throne of Vittorio Emanuele’s second son, the young prince Amedeo of Aosta, in a favourable light. At the end of 1860, Carlo Saltara, an exile from Ancona who had lived in Greece for three decades, was commissioned to present this plan to Cavour, based on a military pronouncement. The Count, who in the spring of 1861 had already independently decided on the appointment of an extraordinary envoy to Athens in the person of Terenzio Mamiani, was convinced that the project could be successful. His sudden death was generally a severe blow to any further developments of the ambitious attempt. In fact, despite the arrival of Mamiani and Saltara in Athens and the positive confirmations in loco for a Savoy candidacy, Bettino Ricasoli, Cavour’s successor at the helm of government, first demonstrated a certain coldness and then a clear opposition to any hypothesis of that kind, believing that it could undermine the relations of the new Kingdom of Italy with the main European Powers, in particular with Great Britain. In 1862, Vittorio Emanuele II himself tried to promote his second son to the Hellenic crown; an idea that arose however independently of the actions of Saltara and Mamiani. These divisions and the crisis of Aspromonte, which had matured two months before the expulsion of King Otto, definitively truncated any Italian possibilities and favoured other candidacies for the throne of Greece, in line with the interests of the Protecting Powers.