(Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture) Anthony L. Cardoza-Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy - The Piedmontese Nobility, 1861-1930-Cambridge University Press (1998)

This book provides the first full account of the Italian nobility in the post-unifi-
cation era, from the height of the Risorgimento to the period following World
War I. It challenges recent scholarship which has stressed the rapid fusion of old
and new elites in Italy, and the marginality of the nobility after 1861. Instead it
highlights the continuing economic strength, social power, and political influ-
ence of Italy's most prominent regional aristocracy.
In Piedmont the nobles developed more indirect forms of influence that re-
flected not only their wealth and prestige, but also a hunger for leadership based
on something older than constitutions or electoral politics. They remain a largely
separate group within local society, distinguished by their attachment to the
values of lineage, military service, landownership, and social exclusivity. This
aristocratic exclusivity and influence survived the agricultural depression of the
nineteenth century before succumbing finally to the devastating effects of World
War I. After 1918, the surviving noble families abandoned finally their old way of
life and merged with Italy's industrial elites.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ITALIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY

Edited by GIGLIOLA Universita degli Studi, Parma

FRAGNITO,
CESARE MOZZARELLI, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan
ROBERT ORESKO, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
and GEOFFREY SYMCOX, University of California, Los Angeles
This series comprises monographs and a variety of collaborative volumes,

including translated works, which concentrate on the period of Italian history
from late medieval times up to the Risorgimento. The editors aim to stimulate
scholarly debate over a range of issues which have not hitherto received, in
English, the attention they deserve. As it develops, the series will emphasize
the interest and vigour of current international debates on this central period of
Italian history and the persistent influence of Italian culture on the rest of
Europe.
For a list of titles in the series, see end of book

ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS
ITALY
THE P I E D M O N T E S E N O B I L I T Y , I86I-193O
ANTHONY L. CARDOZA
Loyola University of Chicago
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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http://www.cambridge.org
© Anthony L. Cardoza 1997

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1997

First paperback edition 2002
Typeface Bembo 10/1 lipt.
A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Cardoza, Anthony L., 1947-
Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy: the Piedmontese nobility, 1861-1930 / Anthony L. Cardoza /
p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in Italian history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 52159303 4
1. Nobility - Italy - Piemonte - History.
2. Piemonte (Italy) - History. 3. Nobility - Italy - Piemonte - Political activity.
4. Nobility - Italy - Piemonte - Economic conditions.
5. Elite (Social sciences) - Italy - Piemonte.
I. Title. II. Series.
HT653.I8C35 1997
305.5'223'09451-dc21 97-1848 CIP
ISBN 0 521 59303 4 hardback

ISBN 0 52152229 3 paperback
FOR CATHERINE AND MICHAEL
CONTENTS
List of tables page xi

Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction i
The making of the Piedmontese nobility: 1600-1848 13

From feudal aristocracy to service nobility: 1600-1790 16
Survival and adaptation in the French revolutionary era 26
The Indian summer of aristocratic primacy: 1815-1848 33
Internecine conflict and the end of aristocratic primacy 42
The long goodbye: aristocrats in politics and 55

public life: 1848-1914
The place of the aristocracy in the new political order 56
The slow retreat from political office 64
The survival of aristocratic influence in public life 71
Aristocrats and Catholic lay politics in Piedmont 77
Informal networks of aristocratic influence 82
Old money: the scale and structure of aristocratic 89

wealth
The distribution of wealth within the nobility 92
The structure of aristocratic wealth 104
The preservation and transfer of aristocratic wealth 114
Aristocratic wealth and symbolic power 122
Perpetuating an aristocratic social elite 126

The character and dimensions of the aristocratic family 128
Aristocratic education within the family fortress 136
Private schools and aristocratic education 139
An officer and a gentleman: aristocratic career patterns 149
Aristocratic sociability: the Societa del Whist 155
IX
X CONTENTS
5 The limits of fusion: aristocratic-bourgeois 162

relations in nineteenth-century Piedmont
Mingling in the public realm 163
The limits of economic interpenetration 169
Lineage, wealth, and intermarriage 177
Cultivating difference: patterns of residence and display 181
The limits of fusion: gentlemen's clubs and high society 187
6 Retreat and adaptation in the twentieth century 196

The agricultural crisis and the Piedmontese aristocracy 197
Changing patterns of aristocratic investment and social behavior 204
World War I and the economic crisis of the nobility 212
Aristocratic social reconversion in the inter-war period 219
Bibliography 226
Index 241
TABLES
3.1 Hierarchy of wealth: aristocracy and bourgeoisie page 91

3.2 Distribution of wealth: aristocracy vs. bourgeoisie 91
3.3 Wealth distribution: general population vs. aristocracy 93
3.4 Aristocratic wealth distribution 94
3.5 Wealth distribution: aristocratic women vs. men 99
3.6 Wealthy women: aristocrats vs. bourgeois 101
3.7 Aristocratic men: first sons vs. cadets 101
3.8 Top aristocratic wealth holders: family lineage 103
3.9 Structure of wealth: nobles vs. non-nobles 105
3.10 Aristocratic urban property, 1862-1885 no
4.1 Aristocratic lineage and family size 131
4.2 Aristocratic celibacy: nineteenth century 133
4.3 Social origins of students 145
4.4 Career patterns of graduates 149
4.5 Piedmontese aristocratic officers 151
4.6 Lineage and Whist membership 158
4.7 Wealth and Whist membership 158
4.8 Wealth, lineage, and Whist membership 159
5.1 Aristo cratic marriages 178
5.2 Aristocratic lineage and endogamy 178
5.3 Nineteenth-century nobility: distribution of mixed
marriages 179
5.4 Old nobility: mixed marriages 181
5.5 Bourgeois members of Whist 188
6.1 Distribution of wealth within nobility by period 199
6.2 Changing structure of aristocratic wealth 203
6.3 Aristocratic elite: lineage 207
6.4 Aristocratic elite: spouse's lineage 208
6.5 Aristocratic elite: family position 208
6.6 Aristocratic elite: demographics 210
xi
Xll LIST OF TABLES
6.7 Large estates in probate 215

6.8 Distribution of wealth within nobility 216
6.9 Changes in the distribution of large fortunes 216
6.10 Aristocratic higher education 221
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A great many individuals and institutions helped me in the preparation

of this book. A special thanks goes to Arno J. Mayer of Princeton Uni-
versity. The questions he posed in his own scholarship helped inspire
me to study the role of aristocrats in modern Italy, while his unstinting
interest and encouragement of my work have helped to sustain me over
the long years of research and writing.
Most of the research for this book was carried out in Turin, Italy,
between 1987 and 1989. During my frequent visits to that city, I bene-
fited immensely from the exceptional hospitality and generosity of
Giovanni Levi and his wife Luisa Accati, whose beautiful house in the
foothills of Turin became my home away from home. Professor Levi
not only provided me with an invaluable introduction to the academic
and research institutions of the city, but also made critical suggestions
that fundamentally shaped the trajectory of my research. Outside Turin,
I have profited greatly from the friendship and stimulating discussions
with Raffaele Romanelli of the European University Institute in Flor-
ence and Alberto Banti of the University of Pisa. In addition, my
warmest thanks are due to Professor Mayer, Alexander DeGrand of
North Carolina State University, Marion Miller of the University of
Illinois Chicago, Geoffrey Symcox of the University of California at Los
Angeles, and Cesare Mozzarelli of the Universita Cattolica del Sacro
Cuore of Milan who read earlier drafts of the manuscript.
A number of institutions have been most cooperative. First and fore-
most, I must express my gratitude to Dr. Isabella Massabo Ricci and her
staff at the Archivio di Stato di Torino for their knowledge, patience,
and assistance in the face of my relentless quest for documents. Dr.
Barbara Bertini, in particular, greatly facilitated my research in the
largely unexplored probate records of Turin. My thanks are also due to
Dr. Guido Gentile of the Sovraintendenza Archivistica and to the staffs
of the Archivio Comunale di Torino, the Biblioteca Nazionale di
xiii
XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Torino, the Biblioteca Comunale, the Biblioteca Provinciale, and the

Biblioteca Reale. Closer to home, I must record my gratitude to Loyola
University of Chicago for the paid leaves of absence in 1987 and 1991
that allowed me to do much of the research and initial writing on this
book.
Both my time and my research were enriched by the friendship and
assistance of a few old-line Piedmontese families who took an interest in
my work. Especially helpful were Lodovico and Gabriella Salvi del Pero
and Gregorio and Nicole tta De Siebert who took me into their homes
and provided me with invaluable insights and introductions. Filippo
Beraudo di Pralormo, Admiral Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, and
Maria Balbiano di Aramengo kindly permitted me to consult their
family papers, while Gustavo Figarolo di Gropello, Emilio Avogadro di
Cerrione, and Maria Beraudo di Pralormo (nee Incisa della Rocchetta)
allowed me to see unpublished memoirs from their families' archives.
A final word of appreciation goes to my wife Catherine Mardikes and
our son Michael who have enormously enriched my life during the
period of writing. This book is dedicated to them.
INTRODUCTION
This study examines the evolution of aristocratic identities and roles in

an ostensibly post-aristocratic society, namely that of Italy from the
middle of the nineteenth century to the decade following World War I.
As such, it aspires to contribute not only to our understanding of tradi-
tional elites, but also to the ongoing scholarly discussion of the social
contours and characteristics of the Italian bourgeoisie at its upper
reaches. The changing relations between old aristocratic and new bour-
geois elites has long been viewed as one of the central themes in the
larger processes of modernization in Europe. Indeed, historians have
used this relationship to explain England's extraordinary political stabi-
lity (and more recently its industrial decline), Germany's authoritarian
path to modernity, the failure of liberal polity in Italy, and the crisis of
the late Czarist regime in Russia.
Most scholars would agree that at some time between the early nine-
teenth century and the end of World War II the aristocracies and upper
middle classes of Europe became so intertwined and intermarried that
they no longer functioned as separate groups and effectively merged
into a single upper class. There has been considerably less agreement,
however, on the pace, mechanisms, terms, and consequences of this
fusion of aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Older approaches strongly influ-
enced by the French revolutionary experience have either stressed the
overwhelming political triumph of the capitalist bourgeoisie or else
argued that the old nobility lost its distinctiveness and disappeared into
the ranks of a new class of propertied notables in the course of the nine-
teenth century. Developments in central Europe have shaped a second
approach that emphasizes the relative weakness of the middle classes and
the resilience of aristocratic elements who blocked or distorted demo-
cratic advances by dominating both politics and society into the twenti-
eth century. The English experience has suggested a third vision of
aristocratic-bourgeois relations as a mutually beneficial compromise or
2 INTRODUCTION
what Perry Anderson has called a "deliberate, systematized symbiosis"

in which the landed elite remained the senior partner.
Despite the interpretive weight that has been attached to relations
between new and old elites, until quite recently European nobilities,
with the exceptions of the English and Russians, have remained rela-
tively uncharted territory in the modern era.1 Both Marxist and liberal
historiographical traditions as well as newer theories of modernization
led historians to focus on the great agents of change in the nineteenth
century. Accordingly, the rise of the factory system, the growth of
cities, the formation of the working class, and middle-class triumphs
provided the main themes of scholarly research and debate. Nor did the
explosion of social historical research initially alter this picture, since it
was devoted chiefly to illuminating the lives of the lower classes.
As Arno Mayer argued in his Persistence of the Old Regime, however,
concentration on the agents of modernization results in a neglect of
those forces of tradition and continuity that, in his view, continued to
shape and condition all aspects of European society at least until World
War I.2 Such neglect has been strikingly evident in the case of the
nobility in Italy. While the past decade and a half have seen a number of
new works on the Italian middle classes in the nineteenth century, vir-
tually all studies of the local nobilities have stopped with the French
Revolution.3 Aristocrats appear in the historical literature on Italy after
1815, but chiefly as exceptional individuals in an essentially bourgeois
drama. As a social group, the old titled elites have been left largely to
genealogists, novelists, and the society pages of the popular press.
What little work has been done on the role of noble groups in Italian
1
On the limits of the work done on the European nobility, Dominic Lieven has ob-
served that "many German historians and social scientists share with some of their
European and more of their North American peers the conviction that in the modern
world aristocracy is an irrelevant and politically suspect area of study, to which only
scholars tainted by social snobbery and attracted by a love for superficial glitter will
dedicate themselves." See The Aristocracy in Europe, pp. xix-xx. For the most recent
work on the British aristocracy, see Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aris-
tocracy. O n the Russian case, see Manning, The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia,
Hamburg, Politics of the Russian Nobility, and Becker, Nobility and Privilege in Late Im-
perial Russia.
2
Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime.
3
Romanelli, "Political Debate, Social History, and the Italian Borghesia," pp. 717-39
provides the most recent survey of the work done on the Italian middle classes. For
the most recent and most complete study of Italy's middle classes in the nineteenth
century, see Banti's Storia della borghesia italiana. For the literature on the Italian nobi-
lity in the early modern period, see Visceglia (ed.), Signori, patrizi, cavalieri nelVeta
moderna, pp. v-xxxiii. T h e paucity of scholarship on the Italian nobility in the nine-
teenth century is clearly evident in Petersen's survey "Der italienische Adel von 1861
bis 1946."
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY 3
society has grown out of the lively debate on the supposed weaknesses
and peculiarities of Italy's bourgeoisie. Older Marxist approaches closely
associated with the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Emilio Sereni
underscore both the backwardness of the middle classes and their predis-
position to compromise with "semi-feudal'' aristocratic and landowning
elements during the Risorgimento. The result, in their view, was a
socially conservative power bloc that promoted parliamentary transfor-
mism, economic protection, and increasingly authoritarian domestic
policies which paved the way to Fascism.4
Recently, this interpretation has come under heavy attack on both
theoretical and empirical grounds. Raffaele Romanelli, for one, has
argued that the concept of feudal vestiges is a holdover from political
and ideological debates of the nineteenth century and rests upon
German sociological models that simply do not fit the Italian situation.5
At the same time, a new body of revisionist scholarship has challenged
the picture of bourgeois subordination in favor of one that emphasizes
the vitality of the middle classes and the corresponding marginality and
decorative impotence of old aristocratic groups. According to this view,
the varied and checkered nobilities in Italy lacked the necessary mon-
archical, caste, and landed traditions of their German and British coun-
terparts to survive for long as autonomous and influential forces in the
new nation state that emerged after 1861. Once legal distinctions
between the nobility and commoners had disappeared, nobles suffered a
crisis of identity and either declined rapidly or else fused into a larger
and more heterogeneous class of landed proprietors. The results of this
revisionist scholarship have led to the conclusion that although aristo-
cratic values continued to model the path of upward mobility for the
middle classes, "nobility as such did not play an important role in the
Italian nineteenth century social structure, because it did not constitute
a well-defined group in itself, due to its regional more than national
status."6
4
See Sereni, U capitalistno nelle campagne (1860—1900) and La questione agraria; for Grams-
ci's views, see Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds.), Selections from the
Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York 1971).
5
Romanelli, "Political Debate, Social History, and the Italian Borghesia" pp. 717-721.
6
Romanelli, "In search of an Italian bourgeoisie: trends in social history," paper pre-
sented to Round Table n. 1 "The Bourgeoisie. Structures and Cultures in 19th
Century Europe" of the 18th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Montreal,
September 1995, p. 9. The principal revisionist works are Rumi, "La politica nobi-
liare del Regno d'ltalia 1861-1946", Banti, "Note sulle nobilta nell'Italia dell'Otto-
cento"; Di Gregorio, "Nobilta e nobilitazione in Sicilia"; Jocteau, "Un censimento
della nobilta italiana", Romanelli, "La nobilta nella costituzione dell'Italia contem-
poranea."
4 INTRODUCTION
The fate of traditional elites has been attributed in part to the charac-
teristics they inherited from the past. Various scholars have stressed, for
instance, how important segments of the Italian nobility were, in fact,
patrician aristocrats with strong urban, commercial, and republican
rather than feudal, monarchical traditions. Even before the French
Revolution, these patriciates defined themselves less in legal than
economic terms, and were largely open to the more successful members
of the propertied middle classes.7 The political and legal reforms of the
Napoleonic Era greatly accelerated the processes of social osmosis,
especially in the south where the abolition of feudal entails greatly accel-
erated the decline of the old Neapolitan nobility and its coalescing with
a new class of bourgeois galantuomini.s
Amalgamation continued apace in the decades after 1815 as the
growth of a wealthy bourgeois propertied class and the resultant lure of
large dowries and financial assistance led increasing numbers of nobles
into marriages with non-noble families. Politically, aristocratic—bour-
geois fusion found its highest expression in the middle decades of the
century in the moderate liberal party that guided the campaign for
national unification and then forged a new governmental order based
on property rather than birth or privilege. The story of aristocratic
decline and fusion typically concludes with the exodus of the old elites
from both public life and the countryside in the wake of electoral
reforms and agricultural depression in the last decades of the nineteenth
century. As a separate and distinct component of the Italian upper
classes, the nobility disappears completely from the historical literature
on the period after the 1880s.9
While these revisionist historians have greatly enriched our under-
standing of Italy's middle classes, in their treatment of the old nobilities,
they have relied largely on legalistic and positional notions of social for-
mation and political power. As a result, they have tended to underesti-
mate the role of cultural values, symbolic practices, and more
specifically those informal mechanisms of prestige and influence that
7
See Meriggi, "La borghesia italiana," pp. 180-182; Romanelli, "Political Debate,
Social History, and the Italian Borghesia," pp. 726-727. For a regional case in point,
see Giacomelli, "La dinamica della nobilta bolognese," pp. 55 — 112.
8
Pasquale Villani has written that with the elimination of "baronial privileges and
feudal bonds, there was no real difference between nobility and haute bourgeoisie and
the two classes tended to merge." See Villani, "Ricerche sulla proprieta fondiaria,"
pp. 240-241, as well as Lyttelton, "Landlords, Peasants, and the Limits of Liberalism,"
pp. 120—121; Davis, "The Napoleonic Era in Southern Italy," pp. 133-148; Bar-
bagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto, p. 514. For a general discussion of the French Revolution's
impact on the Italian peninsula, see Capra, "Nobili, notabili, elites," pp. 12—42.
9
Banti, "I proprietari terrieri nell'Italia centro-settentrionale," pp. 45-103.
serve to perpetuate consensual hierarchies and inequalities. In the

process, they wind up resuscitating, at least implicitly, an old-fashioned
and rather teleological vision of nineteenth-century developments as the
inexorable triumph of the bourgeoisie and decline of the aristocracy.
Most of the arguments for the fusion of old and new elites, in fact,
focus on four major developments: the juridical reforms that eliminated
the legally privileged status of old nobles, the growth of non-noble land-
ownership, the new forms of political collaboration based on propertied
status and gradual change, and the shrinking numbers of nobles within
the political institutions of the new national state.10 As John Davis has
observed, however, one should not infer changes in cultural and social
values and practices from changes in economic behavior and political
organization. Paolo Macry's study of Neapolitan patrician families, for
instance, shows how old elites could come to terms with economic
changes without losing their sense of caste or their aristocratic preten-
sions.11 Even the most outspoken proponents of aristocratic marginality
concede that "the actual paths of this process of osmosis remain to be
investigated in depth at the level of matrimonial alliances, social net-
works, and elite associational life."12
It is in this context that my work addresses a number of basic ques-
tions: What did it mean to be a noble in the nineteenth century and did
individual nobles continue to constitute a distinctive and self-conscious
nobility? To what extent and in what ways did they remain a ruling
status group exercising social, cultural, and political sway on the society
as a whole? More specifically, to what degree and at what levels did
nobles continue to share a common moral ethos? What was the fre-
quency and nature of social contacts and relationships within the
nobility? In what settings and how often did aristocrats interact with
new men from commerce, finance, and industry? How successful were
nobles in adapting to an increasingly industrialized society and demo-
cratic polity, and what did they sacrifice in the process? In order to
provide answers to these questions, I have explored changes and conti-
nuities in political roles, wealth, economic behavior, educational and
professional preferences, residential and marriage patterns, and processes
10
The principal exception to this generalization is the recent work on elite associational
life. See, for example, the issue of Quaderni Storici devoted to the theme of "Elites e
associazioni nellTtalia delTOttocento," 77: n. 2 (August 1991), and Meriggi, Milano
borghese.
11
Macry, Ottocento. For Davis's comments, see his essay, "Remapping Italy's Path,"
p. 301.
12
Banti, "I proprietari terrieri," pp. 56-57. For Banti's most recent views on the role
of the nobility in Liberal Italy, see his "Note sulle nobilta," pp. 13-27.
6 INTRODUCTION
of social assimilation and exclusion within a prominent regional aristoc-

racy over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A regional study offers both advantages and limitations as an approach
to the issues of aristocratic survival and influence in the Italian setting.
On the one hand, it provides a social group that is sufficiently circum-
scribed geographically and numerically to allow the type of comprehen-
sive treatment that would be inconceivable at the national level. The
tangled history of the Italian peninsula greatly accentuates the difficulties
inherent in a national study. At the end of the eighteenth century there
really was no cohesive Italian nobility. The geography, history, and the
economic features of the various states produced a number of nobilities
that "differed from one another in organization, in custom and taste, in
the wealth they possessed, and in the power they exercised."13 On the
other hand, this enormous variety of circumstances necessarily limits the
scope of the generalizations that can be made on the basis of a single
region. Indeed, quite different conclusions can be drawn from the study
of different regional nobilities.14
Thus, I have chosen to focus on the Piedmontese nobility not because
they were somehow typical or representative of all titled elites on the
peninsula, but rather because of the prominent and influential role they
played in the life of the country in the nineteenth century. The region of
Piedmont, situated in the northwest corner of Italy, lends itself to a local
study of aristocracy for a variety of reasons. Over the centuries, the nobi-
lity's close association with the ruling House of Savoy and their strong
martial traditions gave them a high degree of cohesion and continuity
that helped them adjust to the loss of privileged status and enhanced
their role in the unification of the Italian peninsula in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Headed by Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, they
contributed key ideas, models, and leadership to the campaign that suc-
cessfully brought the new national state into existence in 1861. After
unification the Piedmontese nobles continued to account for more
parliamentary deputies, senators, statesmen, and army officers than any
of the other old titled elites. At the same time, Turin, the capital city of
Piedmont, began to emerge as one of the most dynamic business centers
of Italy at the end of the nineteenth century. As a result, the city offers
an ideal setting for exploring the impact of industrial development and
urbanization on aristocratic status, comportment, and values.
13
Roberts, "Lombardy," p. 60.
14
On the difficulties of making national generalizations on the basis of regional experi-
ences, see Romanelli, "La nobilta nella costituzione dellTtalia contemporanea,"
pp. 11-12, paper delivered to the conference, Anciennes et nouvelles aristocraties,
de 1880 a nos jours, Toulouse, France, September 21-24, J994-
In my examination of the Piedmontese nobility, I have attempted to

avoid the limitations of much of the literature on elites in Italy which
has either adopted ideal types that tend to mask the complexity of social
identities or else generalized on the basis of the experiences of a single
prominent, but exceptional individual or family.15 Accordingly, I have
utilized both quantitative and qualitative source materials to examine
the attitudes and practices of a comparatively large body of aristocratic
families. This book rests, first and foremost, on an exhaustive explora-
tion of all surviving probate records in Turin from unification to World
War I. These records have yielded an abundance of information not
only on the changing structure and distribution of aristocratic and large
bourgeois fortunes, but also on family networks, inheritance strategies,
patterns of landownership, and investment practices. Probate materials
have been supplemented by a wide range of other primary sources that
include genealogies, luxury tax records, electoral and urban property
owners' rolls, private school class rosters, as well as the membership lists
of corporate boards, professional societies, civic, cultural, and charitable
organizations, and local gentlemen's clubs. With the assistance of the
state archivists in Turin and a few of the surviving old-line families, I
have also consulted a large number of family archives. In addition to
legal and financial records, these archives include some private corre-
spondence that illuminate more intimate aspects of aristocratic family
life and values.
The predominantly quantitative approach I have taken in this book
has been largely dictated by the taciturn character of the Piedmontese
nobility. Unlike their French or British counterparts, they left virtually
no published memoirs or diaries that might have shed light on how they
saw themselves or experienced the great challenges and problems that
confronted them in the post-1861 era. The very few memoirs that I did
locate were private documents written for the immediate family. In the
absence of an impressionistic literature, I have tried to interpret values
and attitudes from the collective practices and actions of large numbers
of aristocratic families.
As Dominic Lieven has recently written, "blurred definitions and
15
For an example of the former, see Sereni, La questione agraria, pp. 76—99. There have
been a number of excellent studies of individual aristocratic families. See, for in-
stance, Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo; Pescosolido, Terra e nobilta; Biagioli, "Vicende
e fortuna di Ricasoli imprenditore," pp. 77—102; Girelli, Le terre dei Chigi; Coppini,
"Aristocrazia e finanza in Toscana," pp. 297-332; Petrusewicz, Latifondo; Massa
Piergiovanni, I Duchi di Galliera; Romanelli, "Famiglia e patrimonio nei comporta-
menti della nobilta borghese delTOttocento," 9-27. The new book by Montroni,
Gli uomini del Re; attempts to provide a broader treatment of the nobility, but much
of its argument rests on examples drawn from only a few families.
8 INTRODUCTION
unclear dividing lines" are inevitable in virtually any study of Europe's
aristocracies.16 The case of Piedmont is certainly no exception. Here a
wide range of groups could advance some legal claim to noble status in
the nineteenth century. Moreover, there was no necessary correspon-
dence between titles and wealth or status in Piedmont, since some of
the oldest, richest, and most prestigious families could be found in the
ranks of the lesser titles. Consequently, I have not attempted to provide
a formal legalistic definition of nobility. Instead I have relied on a more
fluid sociological concept that involves not only the possession of her-
editary titles, but also a set of social and economic values and practices
that collectively distinguished aristocratic families from other segments
of the Piedmontese propertied classes.
In a similar vein, the terms aristocratic, noble, blue blood, old-line,
and titled have been used interchangeably for stylistic variety to describe
the subjects of this book. I have given the most attention to a core
group of families who already possessed titles and fiefs and played
leading roles in the Savoyard state and army in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. I have done so because it was these families who
continued to enjoy the greatest wealth, prestige, and influence after
1848 and who set the standards and tone for the nobility as a whole up
to the Great War. As a group, this titled elite conformed to Benedict
Anderson's description of traditional aristocracies as pre-bourgeois social
formations whose concrete, rather than imagined, solidarities were the
products of kinship, friendship, and personal acquaintance.17
The portrait of the Piedmontese aristocracy that emerges from my
study challenges those interpretations that have stressed the rapid fusion
of old and new elites and the resultant marginal importance of nobilities
in Liberal Italy. In the case of Piedmont, the pace of aristocratic decline
was slower and the extent of fusion with newer business, professional,
and bureaucratic elites less complete than recent scholarship has sug-
gested. Here dominance was followed not so much by decadence and
disappearance as by the development of more indirect forms of aristo-
cratic influence that exploited a hunger for leadership based on some-
thing older and deeper than abstract principles or electoral politics. The
enduring importance of a nobility of pedigree and patent in public life
resulted less from social accommodation with new elites than from the
appropriation of new economic arrangements and ostensibly bourgeois
forms of sociability based on statutory institutions and voluntary access
to bolster their wealth as well as their traditional way of life. Far from
16
Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, p. xiv.
17
Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 76-77.
fusing with other elements of the propertied classes, Piedmontese nobles

remained a largely separate and distinct group within local upper-class
society at least up to World War I, distinguished by their attachment to
the values of lineage, military service, landownership, endogamy, patri-
archy, and social exclusivity. Distinctive patterns of investment, mar-
riage, profession, residence, and life-style demonstrate that the social
gulf separating old-line aristocrats from other segments of the propertied
classes in Piedmont remained pronounced, and may well have actually
widened in the decades prior to 1914.
In this respect, the case of aristocratic persistence in Piedmont also
diverges from Arno Mayer's model of ancien regime elites who diversified
their presence, modernized their influence, and spread their cultural
model by selectively coopting and assimilating new men from the
worlds of finance, industry, and the professions. Piedmont's old-line
titled families responded to the challenges of civil equality and parlia-
mentary politics by closing ranks socially; they showed relatively little
interest in absorbing elements of the bourgeoisie or winning their
support for an aristocratic forms of behavior. For their part, Turin's
business elites showed less and less of an inclination to imitate aristo-
cratic values, let alone assimilate into or seek the social acceptance of the
aristocracy in the last decades preceding World War I. While a few
prominent industrial and banking families continued to pursue heredi-
tary titles of nobility, most wealthy non-nobles seemed increasingly
content to remain within their own social circles and to follow a "bour-
geois" way of life. This situation suggests an alternative vision of upper-
class relations to the view that in Italy there existed a contrast between
those regions with a strong aristocracy and a subordinate bourgeoisie
and those where the bourgeoisie emancipated itself. In Piedmont aristo-
cratic prestige co-existed with bourgeois autonomy so that upper-class
social relations, much as in pre-war Germany, were characterized by the
presence of two parallel but separate elites before 1914.18
The experience of the aristocracy in the heartland of the "industrial
triangle" before World War I certainly lends credence to the view that a
status system distrustful of private enterprise and based less on wealth
than older forms of social distinction may well have continued to exer-
cise a powerful and widespread hold on Italian society into the early
twentieth century.19 In this context, enduring aristocratic exclusivity
18
Lyttelton, "The middle classes in Liberal Italy," p. 231. On the issue of "bourgeois
autonomy" in Germany, see Kaelble, "Borghesia francese e borghesia tedesca.
1870-1914," pp. 127-160 and Augustine-Perez, "Very wealthy businessmen in im-
perial Germany," pp. 299-321.
19
Lyttelton, "The middle classes in Liberal Italy," pp. 227-228.
10 INTRODUCTION
and influence both reflected and helped to perpetuate a more diffuse

culture of deference, traditional patronage, and territorial parochialism,
a culture that still conditioned in subtle but significant ways social rela-
tions and political allegiances in pre-war Piedmont.
At the same time, a set of special circumstances contributed to the
capacity of Piedmontese aristocratic families to resist social fusion. To
begin with, they had constituted Italy's only feudal, martial, service
nobility, which imbued them with a stronger set of pre-bourgeois
values and traditions than most of their counterparts on the peninsula.
Accordingly, the cultural ideal of the proud and aloof "cavalier and man
of honor," who disdains commerce and trade, flourished among them,
buttressing their strong sense of hierarchy and separateness from the rest
of society. Piedmontese nobles, much like the Prussian Junkers, also
benefited from the capitalist transformation of their country estates,
which ironically made it easier for them to perpetuate a view of society
based on status and obligation. Most titled families continued to enjoy a
level of wealth sufficient to sustain a dignified, if not opulent, standard
of living without recourse to intermarriage with the new rich or
demeaning involvement in trade and industry.
The longstanding ties of the nobility in Piedmont to the House of
Savoy and the state apparatus of the Kingdom of Sardinia further paral-
leled the situation of the Prussian Junkers, providing local titled families
with a host of advantages not shared by other aristocratic groups on the
Italian peninsula. From the outset, the allegiance and service of
Piedmontese nobles to a single dynastic family, for instance, gave them a
degree of continuity and cohesion as well as a tradition of exercising
state power that contrasted sharply with the more polyglot noble groups
in Lombardy and the Kingdom of Naples which were the accretions of
successive waves of foreign rulers. More importantly, their special rela-
tionship with the dynasty that unified Italy and became the national
monarchy after 1861 assured the old titled elite of Piedmont a secure
place in the army and civil service of the new state and thus another
way of perpetuating caste traditions. These conditions were largely
absent in the case of other regional nobilities who either lacked a state
of their own or, worse yet, had supported regimes and dynasties that
opposed unification and had fallen from power between 1859 and
1870.20 The enduring prominence and active presence of the royal
family in Piedmontese society helped mightily to legitimize and perpe-
20
On the weaknesses and shortcomings of the regional nobilities in the nineteenth
century, see Meriggi, "La borghesia italiana," pp. 167-168.
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY II
tuate traditional social hierarchies in which old-line aristocrats still

occupied a preeminent position of leadership and prestige.
Such advantages, however, should not lead automatically to the
conclusion that the experience of Piedmontese nobility is simply the
exception that proves the rule of aristocratic marginality in nineteenth-
century Italy. On the contrary, new work on southern titled elites sug-
gests that many attitudes and practices of Piedmontese aristocratic
families were echoed elsewhere on the Italian peninsula. In Naples, for
instance, nobles remained far and away the wealthiest social group prior
to the Great War, while in certain provinces of the south a shrinking
group of titled families actually increased their share of the wealth in the
late nineteenth century. Moreover, much like their Piedmontese coun-
terparts, Neapolitan nobles displayed a pattern of increasing social rigidi-
fication and exclusivity after i860 that found expression in high levels of
endogamy, separate forms of sociability, and life styles. Their wealth and
distinctive identity permitted southern nobles to conserve a notable
prestige and influence in public life into the new century. 21
Finally, the experience of Piedmontese aristocrats underscores the
importance of World War I as the great watershed in the history of
Italy's traditional elites. Pierre Bourdieu has observed how strategies of
reconversion designed to safeguard or improve family or individual
positions in social space become especially important "at a stage in the
evolution of class societies in which one can conserve only by changing
- to change so as to conserve."22 For the old titled families of Piedmont,
World War I and its aftermath constituted just such a stage. Indeed, the
war proved to be a considerably more pivotal event than the agricultural
depression of the late nineteenth century in the transformation of the
local aristocracy. Its consequences posed formidable new problems and
challenges that few old families were able to surmount without sub-
stantial changes in attitude and behavior. In this regard, the very prac-
tices that contributed so much to the cohesion and prestige of aristocrats
in Piedmont before 1914 - reliance on caste-like exclusivity, land-
ownership, and military service, together with a decided reluctance to
enter the board rooms of industry and high finance - proved to be
handicaps after 1918 as they delayed social accommodation with new
entrepreneurial elites and thus limited the role of noble families in the
greatly transformed society that emerged from the Great War. Much as
elsewhere in Europe, the war and its aftermath seriously eroded the
material foundations of the old aristocratic way of life at the same time
21
For these arguments, see Montroni, Gli uomini del Re.
22
Bourdieu, Distinction, p . 157.
12 INTRODUCTION
that they undermined the prestige and glamour associated with the offi-
cers' corps and military service. As a result, when the economic pres-
sures for adaptation greatly intensified in the inter-war decades,
accommodation tended to take place in Piedmont on terms that were
relatively unfavorable to titled families. Those nobles, who avoided
decline and disappearance by entering the worlds of business and
finance, did so rather late and thus wound up less as partners and equals
than as employees of the new industrial dynasties. And even that modest
success came at a high price, namely the abandonment of most of the
customs and traditions that had defined and distinguished the Piedmont-
ese nobility.
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OF THE PIEDMONTESE

NOBILITY: 1600-1848
A remarkably consistent image of Piedmont's titled nobility emerges

from contemporary accounts of both the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, an image which suggests they were respected, but seldom
loved. Observers invariably commented on the arrogance, bigotry,
narrow-mindedness, and self-satisfaction of the second estate. In the
1760s, for instance, Giuseppe Baretti noted an "excessive pride of birth"
among Piedmontese aristocrats, the majority of whom "disdain any
familiarity" with persons of less exalted lineage. On those rare occasions
when they agreed to speak to outsiders, Baretti claimed that "their kind-
ness is such a bizarre mixture of courtesy and haughtiness that it is
impossible for a man of substance not to be offended."1 Nearly a
century later, Vincenzo Gioberti observed in the 1840s how "the
concept of their own superiority is inborn in the Piedmontese aristo-
crats; they make you feel it although they are courteous; they dominate
while they bow; they show that they are your masters while professing
themselves your servants."2 In the 1860s, one of the nobility's most dis-
tinguished figures, Massimo d'Azeglio, provided a striking confirmation
of these outsiders' impressions:
My dear reader, I feel sure that more than once it has fallen to your lot to
have to do with someone who, in his attitude towards you, failed in
nothing due to courtesy, who uttered no word to which you could
object without being ridiculous or absurdly punctilious, and yet at the
same time gave forth from his whole person such a clear "keep your dis-
tance," such an obvious "I'm what I am and you don't count," that, as
there was reason to get angry and no possibility of putting up with it,
one simply longed to get out of range, and, if possible, never let oneself
1
Giuseppe Baretti, Gli italiani, as cited in Bianchi, Storia delta monarchia piemontese, vol.
1, p. in.
2
Vincenzo Gioberti, Introduzione allo studio deltafilosojia,as cited in Cognasso, Life and
Culture in Piedmont, p. 298.
13
14 THE PIEDMONTESE NOBILITY: 16OO-1848
be caught again. Such was the effect produced by the Piedmontese
nobility . . . 3
At the same time, most observers recognized that the subalpine
nobility was not without its virtues. The Piedmontese aristocrat was
supposed to have a resolute character, an unswerving devotion to duty,
and a rare energy that clearly distinguished him from his purportedly
effete and decadent counterparts elsewhere on the Italian peninsula.
According to Cristina Morozzo della Rocca, the mother of d'Azeglio,
the nobility of her youth in the late eighteenth century displayed "a
sense of honor, based on faith in God and loyalty to King, probity and
loftiness of soul/' 4 Even a much less sympathetic commentator like
Baretti conceded that the Piedmontese aristocrats had the qualities of
character that gave them an exceptional "martial spirit" and assured
their "great military superiority."5 These images of aristocratic virtues
continued to inform historical and popular accounts throughout the
nineteenth century. Historians like Cibrario and Manno wrote admir-
ingly of the nobility's dedication to state service, their tenacity, and
their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the country.
Likewise, Leandro Carpi, in his survey of Italian elites in the late 1870s,
still spoke of the Piedmontese aristocrat's "courage, loyalty, unselfish-
ness, sincerity, and deep sense of honor." 6
Of course, the stereotype of the honorable but arrogant nobleman
concealed considerably more complex legal and social realities. At one
level, the nobility was a body with a legally defined composition, privi-
leges, and obligations prior to the nineteenth century. In the ancien
regime, a wide range of groups had some claim to noble status in Pied-
mont; they included holders of fiefs, members of ancient consortia or
factions of nobles, descendants of certain urban patriciates, men who
belonged to knightly military orders, designated office holders, and
those families who had customarily enjoyed noble status and maintained
a vita more nobilium? The members of this large and amorphous estate,
which may have numbered as many as 5,000 families in the early
eighteenth century, claimed a special status, but they certainly did not
constitute a single, homogeneous social formation. Much like the privi-
leged estates elsewhere in Europe, the structure of the nobility in Pied-
mont resembled more a pyramid, with descending levels of wealth,
3 4
D'Azeglio, Things I Remember, pp. 6 - 7 . Ibid.,ip. 6.
5
See Bianchi, Storia della monarchia piemontese, vol. 1, p. 391.
6
Carpi, L'Italia vivente, p. 149. See Genta, Senato e senatori, pp. 98-99, for a discussion
of the judgments of nineteenth-century historians.
7
See Cibrario, Notizie genealogiche difamiglie nobili, p. 57. O n the difficulties of defining
the nobility, see Genta, "II concetto di nobilta."
power, and influence, as well as sizeable differences in lineage, custom,

taste, values, and prestige.8
In the broadest terms, the Piedmontese nobility could be divided into
a noblesse d'epee and a noblesse de robe. A proud old feudal aristocracy pro-
vided the central core of the former; this group consisted of probably no
more than 100 families by the seventeenth century who maintained
strong military traditions and close ties to court. These families
accounted for most of the great landowners of the realm and set the
tone for those members of the nobility who fulfilled military functions
or whose status had a military provenance. With their pride of caste,
warrior virtues, and chivalric code of honor, they also conformed most
closely to the popular image of the Piedmontese nobleman. Predictably,
they played a dominant role in the army, diplomatic corps, and the
court. Alongside of the old feudal-military aristocracy was a second
group of nobles whose status came originally from tenure of office
rather than patent or prescription. These titled officials supposedly
represented a culture that glorified the values of service, professional
competence, and merit. Their strongholds within the Savoyard state
tended to be in the administration of justice and finance. In theory, if
not always in practice, these office holders were of more recent origins,
less haughty, and more educated than their military counterparts.9
On the whole, the Piedmontese nobility differed in important
respects from the other privileged elites on the Italian peninsula. To
begin with, they never constituted an independent ruling class of mer-
chant origins with a monopoly of political power like the relatively
closed patrician oligarchies that dominated Milan, Venice, Genoa, and
Florence until the end of the eighteenth century. Although some
families came from the urban nobilities of Turin and other provincial
cities, the bulk of the old aristocracy was feudal in origin. As a result,
they were more open to the effects of social mobility and constant
renewal than their northern counterparts.10 At the same time, the sub-
alpine nobles differed in their privileges, relations to royal authority, and
military traditions from the feudal baronages of Naples and Sicily.
8
On the size of the Piedmontese nobility, see Stumpo, "I ceti dirigenti in Italia
nell'eta moderna," p. 194.
9
Carpi, LItalia vivente, pp. 149-151 provides a discussion of the differences between
the two sectors of the nobility in Piedmont. On the size of the old feudal aristocracy
in the seventeenth century, see Stumpo , "I ceti dirigenti in Italia," p. 168. For the
culture of the service nobility, see Ricuperati, I volti delta pubblica felicita, p. 242.
Rosso, Una burocrazia di antico regime provides a detailed examination of one group of
civil servants.
10
See Stumpo, "I ceti dirigenti in Italia" for an illuminating comparison of the
Piedmontese nobility and the Florentine patricians.
Unlike their southern counterparts, they enjoyed neither vast landhold-

ings and sizeable feudal revenues nor a prolonged period of weak
central government in the late middle ages that might have accustomed
them to direct political power.
These circumstances helped to give the Piedmontese their striking
distinctiveness in the Italian setting: a feudal baronage that embraced
service to the state as its principal vocation and as the defining ingre-
dient of its status.11 Not surprisingly, the transformation of their feudal
ethos into a military-bureaucratic ethos of army and state service was
inseparably linked to the ambitions and policies of the ruling dynasty of
the area, the House of Savoy. Indeed, the growth of the absolute mon-
archy played a decisive role in shaping the composition and mentality of
the Piedmontese nobility in the two centuries preceding the French
Revolution.
FROM FEUDAL ARISTOCRACY TO SERVICE NOBILITY: 1 6 O O - I 7 9 O
Much like hereditary elites elsewhere in Europe at the end of the anden
regime, most Piedmontese nobles in the 1790s were relatively recent
creations, the beneficiaries of an enormous expansion of the ruling class
that had taken place during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It
has been estimated that the ranks of vassals rose from roughly 1,800 in
the era of Emanuele Filiberto (1559-1586) to between 5,000 and 5,800
two centuries later. The old feudal aristocracy continued to enjoy great
prestige and, in many cases, substantial wealth, but they clearly consti-
tuted a small minority within this much more heterogeneous hereditary
noble estate. By the late 1770s, there were only four families whose
titles went back to the tenth century; no more than fifty could trace
their noble status to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.12 The bulk of
families owed their position to less distant ancestors - bankers, mer-
11
I am grateful to Professor Geoffrey Symcox of the University of California at Los
Angeles for sharing these insights with me. Astarita, The Continuity of Feudal Power,
pp. 1-18 provides a useful summary of the situation in the south. For more general
comparative treatments of the Italian nobilities in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, see Roberts, "Lombardy," pp. 60—61; Borelli, "II problema della
nobilta," 486-503; Ricuperati and Carpenetti, Italy in the Age of Reason, pp. 54-74;
Donati, L'idea di nobilta.
12
Cibrario, Notizie genealogiche difamiglie nobili as cited in Bianchi, Storia della monarchia
piemontese, vol. 1, p. 352. For general developments in Europe, see Blum, The End of
the Old Order, pp. 15-16. Woolf, "Studi sulla nobilta piemontese," p. 137 and
Stumpo, Finanza e stato moderno, p. 278 provide estimates on the size of the nobility;
for the lower figure of 5,000, see note 40.
chants, officials, and free professionals who had gained their titles
through their offices, royal favor, or the purchase of fiefs.
These drastic changes in the size and social composition of the
second estate appear to have generated surprisingly little friction and did
not give rise to sharp internal distinctions or divisions. The fusion of old
and new families took place quickly in one or two generations through
intermarriage and the adoption of common values and prejudices. The
relative cohesiveness of the nobility stemmed from a number of factors:
the absence of extreme disparities between rich and poor titled families,
a unifying commitment to state service, and a shared sense of loyalty to
the dynasty. Rapid fusion was more difficult in the eighteenth century,
however, when established families closed ranks against a flood of new-
comers.13
The extraordinary growth in the size of the titled nobility coincided
with the development of a centralized absolutist monarchy in the terri-
tories ruled by the Dukes of Savoy. The old feudal aristocracy, which
had monopolized office holding prior to 1559, saw its commanding role
in the Savoyard state shrink steadily during the following two centuries.
Beginning with the reign of Carlo Emanuele I, the Dukes of Savoy
pursued with varying success a strategy designed to enhance their own
authority by weakening the privileged orders.14 Accordingly, the feudal
nobility were gradually ousted from much of the state administration
and replaced by able and ambitious new men in the course of the seven-
teenth century. Between 1600 and 1648, the middle classes accounted
for more than three-quarters of the purchasers of statefinancial,judicial,
and administrative offices. By the beginning of the next century, nearly
90 percent of the central and local offices were in the hands of non-
nobles.15
These changes in personnel, however, did not mean that the bour-
geoisie controlled the Savoyard state system. While feudal aristocrats
gradually, and often reluctantly, accepted the dominance of the state,
they remained the core of the highest order in Piedmontese society, a
wealthy and powerful elite that still dominated the army, diplomatic
corps, church hierarchy, and high court posts. Great "thoroughbred"
13
Woolf, "Studi sulk nobilta piemontese," pp. 137-138; Stumpo, "I ceti dirigenti in
Italia," pp. 163 — 169. The vision of rapid fusion advanced by Woolf has been chal-
lenged recently by Rosso, who has found that a small percentage of his ostensibly
noble segretari di stato ever acquired the feudal status, let alone access to the titled no-
bility. See Rosso, Una burocrazia di antico regime, pp. 213—223.
14
See Quazza, he riforme in Piemonte, p. 93.
15
O n the purchase of state offices, see statistics provided by Stumpo, Finanza e stato
modemo, pp. 230-233; percentages for the early eighteenth century are from Quazza,
Le riforme in Piemonte, pp. 93-95.
l8 THE PIEDMONTESE NOBILITY! 16OO-1848
families like the Cacherano di Bricherasio, Costa della Trinita, Ferrero

della Marmora, and Valperga di Masino continued to provide the com-
manding officers of the cavalry and infantry, generals, provincial gover-
nors, and viceroys. The same families also furnished every archbishop of
Turin from 1632 to 1814.16 Above all, the officers' corps became the
principal means of reinforcing the collective identity of the traditional
nobility. The old families began to compensate in part for the gradual
loss of direct political power in the seventeenth century by monopo-
lizing the command structure of the army which they transformed into
an institution that reaffirmed their exclusivity and distinguished the
"authentic" nobility from the newly ennobled.17
At the same time, the eagerness of new men to seek noble status
and imitate aristocratic behavior helped to preserve the social power of
the old families. Two groups in particular furnished the bulk of the
recently ennobled: a wealthy urban economic elite and a much larger
bloc of state officials. Of the eighty-six merchants and bankers in
Turin in 1625, thirty-six attained noble status in the course of their
careers. Most of them followed a similar path, one that entailed loans
to the Dukes of Savoy in times of war, followed by substantial invest-
ment in land and castles that carried with them titles and feudal prero-
gatives.18 The House of Savoy opened a second path into the
aristocracy through the rapid expansion of state office holding which
created a kind of noblesse de robe of magistrates and upper-level bureau-
crats who accounted for most of the other newly titled families in this
period. Their ranks included the Beraudo di Pralormo, Nicolis di
Robilant, Coardi di Carpeneto, and Gabaleone di Salmour — all
families that would play leading roles in Piedmontese society and poli-
tics by the nineteenth century. The growing identification of noble
rank with state service helps to explain, in turn, the ability of these
new families to merge with and become virtually indistinguishable
from the old feudal nobility.19
As the experiences of the Perrone di San Martino, Turinetti di
Priero, and Nicolis di Robilant suggest, great wealth, state service,
intermarriage, demographic good fortune, and the adoption of a mili-
16
Stumpo, I ceti dirigenti in Italia, p. 168; Rosso, Una burocrazia di antico regime,
pp. 222—223. F ° r a complete list of the archbishops of Turin, see Chevallard and
Frova, Cronaca di Torino, pp. 5 - 7 , 16.
17
Barberis, Le armi del Principe, pp. 103 — 106.
18
Stumpo, Finanze e stato moderno, pp. 300-301.
19
Rosso's recent work suggests that the process of fusion was considerably more diffi-
cult than Woolf suggests. See in particular his discussion of the top families who pro-
vided segretari di stato, the Carron, Pasero, and Claretti in Rosso, Una burocrazia di
antico regime, pp. 282—301.
tary-aristocratic way of life all contributed to this process.20 The ten-

dency of these three families to conform to a traditional aristocratic
code of behavior appears to have been typical of the newly ennobled in
the seventeenth century. The very fact that the middle classes continued
to dominate financial and judicial administration in the Savoyard state
strongly suggests that as new families moved into the nobility they were
quick to abandon these less socially prestigious offices.21
The Savoyard rulers launched a more formidable assault on the privi-
leged position of the nobility in the first half of the eighteenth century.
In particular, the great financial reforms of Vittorio Amedeo II in the
1720s and 173 os confronted the old families with an unprecedented
challenge to their wealth. Upon becoming king in 1713, the Duke of
Savoy embarked on an aggressive campaign to recapture lands and rev-
enues that his predecessors had alienated in the past. This campaign cul-
minated in two key measures: the confiscation of about 800 "illegally"
grantedfiefsin 1720 and the introduction of a new land measurement in
1731, the perequazione, which sought to eliminate many of the tax
exemptions of the privileged orders.22 Among those hardest hit by the
edict revoking thefiefswere some of the oldest and wealthiest families
of the realm, while the nobility lost nearly a third of their fiscal immu-
nities as a result of the perequazione.23
Affluent and socially ambitious commoners were the chief benefici-
aries of the reforms. Nearly two-thirds of the initial buyers of fiefs
between 1722 and 1725 were parvenu vassals, lawyers, merchants, and
bankers; a pattern that became even more pronounced in the years that
followed. In little more than seventy years, Vittorio Amedeo II, and
his successors Carlo Emanuele III and Vittorio Amedeo III, sold
approximately 1,300 patents of nobility to a horde of eager supplicants.24
20
For genealogical information o n the Perrone di San Martino and Nicolis di Robilant
families, see M a n n o , "II patriziato subalpino." See also Dagna, " U n diplomatico ed
economista del Settecento," p p . 9 - 1 1 . O n the triumphant social ascension of the
Turinetti di Priero, see Stumpo, "I ceti dirigenti in Italia," pp. 163-165.
21
See Stumpo, Finanza e stato moderno, pp. 2 9 9 - 3 0 5 , for a discussion of bourgeois as-
pirations in the seventeenth century.
22
For a general treatment of these developments, see Symcox, Victor Amadeus II,
pp. 190-225.
23
A m o n g the families hit by the edict were the Avogadro, Arborio, Dal Pozzo, Falletti
di Barolo, Morozzo, San Martino d'Aglie, and Valperga di Masino, ibid., p . 203. For
the fullest treatment of the confiscations, see Quazza, Le riforme in Piemonte,
pp. 164—171. O n the damage done to certain families by the perequazione, see
Woolf, "Economic Problems of the Nobility," pp. 2 7 4 - 2 7 5 .
24
See Bianchi, Storia della monarchia piemontese, p. 353; Quazza, Le riforme in Piemonte,
p. 173. According to Quazza, 61 percent of the buyers in the first three years were
new men. Of the thirty-six individuals who purchased fiefs between 1725 and 1728,
Ironically, the legal intervention of the state in the affairs of the nobility
that resulted in the creation of so many new titled families also led to
the demotion and decline of the old, but untitled "generic" nobility
whose claims to special status had rested upon custom and a distinctive
way of life.25
Possession of a fief and title, however, did not translate automatically
into immediate or enduring social benefits. On the contrary, the
"nobility of '22", the disparaging label attached to the new families,
found the path to full social acceptance somewhat more difficult than
their seventeenth-century predecessors. Although they were noble in
juridical terms, they received a predictably hostile reception from the
established aristocratic families who snubbed and ridiculed them at
court and in high society.26 As late as the 1780s, the virtual absence of
the newly ennobled from the list of the 200 cavaliers who belonged to
the exclusive Patriotica Nobile Societa del Casino attested to the persis-
tence of an unofficial hierarchy within the second estate that ascribed a
subordinate status to the post-1722 nobility.27 Even when a recently
ennobled family did win acceptance from the old elite, the prestige
expenditures that accompanied the acquisition of a fief and titled status
could lead to financial ruin.28
More importantly, the reform initiatives of the Savoyard rulers did
not permanently weaken the aristocracy or result in any sweeping
embourgeoisement of the second estate. On the contrary, the trials and
tribulations of the first half of the eighteenth century actually revitalized
the nobility with new wealth and talent, and enhanced aristocratic
power and prestige within both the state and society, precisely at a time
when the urban patriciates elsewhere in northern Italy were heading
toward political and demographic decline. Above all, the reluctance of
only t w o w e r e old nobles. For the estimate o n the total n u m b e r of titles sold during
the century, see Davico, "Peuple et notables" (1730-1816), p p . 5 1 - 5 2 .
25
See Genta, Senato e senatori, p p . 94—100.
26
Ibid., p . 93 and Quazza, Le riforme in Piemonte, vol. m , p . 343.
27
Founded in 1784 by a group of Turin's foremost aristocrats, w h o saw the need for a
locale w h e r e " o u r large and flourishing nobility" could gather, the Casino was i n -
tended t o provide an elegant setting for "conversation, gaming, and dancing." I n
fact, the statutes of the Casino explicitly restricted daily access to the small and select
circle of old-line aristocrats w h o were members; the rest of the nobility could enter
its rooms only o n t w o designated days each week. For m o r e information o n the
origins, structure, membership, and policies of the Casino, see Archivio di Stato di
T o r i n o (hereafter cited as AST), Sezione R i u n i t e , Archivio privato Villa di Villastel-
lone, busta 15, "Carte e sottoscrizioni originali relative alia formazione ed al regola-
m e n t o della Patriottica Nobile Societa del Casino," April 17, 1784.
28
See, for example, Giovanni Levi's detailed study of the Sibaldi, a patrician family
from Alessandria in "Strutture famigliari e rapporti sociali," p p . 6 1 7 - 6 3 0 .
the Savoyard rulers to abolish privilege altogether, allowed Piedmont's

titled elite to still possess disproportionate economic weight, enjoy some
fiscal immunity, control local administration, and dominate the officer
class of the army and diplomatic corps in the last quarter of the
century.29
As the wave of royal reforming zeal receded in the latter half of the
eighteenth century, the second estate in Piedmont still found itself
headed by a small elite of no more than ioo prominent old families.
These families had weathered the crises occasioned by the confiscation
of the fiefs and the perequazione with limited damage. With few excep-
tions, they had sufficient liquid assets and alternative sources of income
needed to buy back their possessions and fiefs in the 1720s. In fact, they
went on to monopolize purchases of the largest and most valuable fiefs
in the ensuing decades. Likewise, the loss of some fiscal exemptions in
the 173 os had less of an impact on the wealthier families than aggregate
statistics might indicate, since the perequazione did not alter the distri-
bution of propertied wealth or eliminate seigneurial rights over the land
and labor.30
Family strategies clearly contributed to the enduring economic
primacy of the old titled elite throughout the century. While the
leading titled families did expand their landed properties through new
acquisitions, they also relied increasingly on such traditional devices as
strict legal ties and intermarriage to maintain and consolidate their
landed estates. By the late eighteenth century, most patrimonies were
effectively tied up in primogeniture and trust deeds (fidecommesst) that
prohibited alienation. In this fashion, possessions previously in the hands
of collateral branches of the families were consolidated, the rights of
younger sons nearly eliminated, and inheritances concentrated in the
hands of the first sons, who were obligated, in turn, to transfer to their
first born male heirs the entire estate they had received. Such legal
devices, combined with astute marriage alliances, appear to have
worked very effectively for families like the Falletti di Barolo who
tripled their landed possessions in the two centuries after 1550.31
29
Serfdom in Savoy had to be abolished, but it did n o t operate in Piedmont. See, for
instance, Woolf, ''Economic Problems of the Nobility," p . 283; Symcox, Victor
Amadeus II, p . 207; Quazza, he riforme in Piemonte, vol. 11, pp. 341—346. O n t h e
dominant role played by the nobility in Savoyard diplomacy, see Frigo, Principe, am-
basciatori e "jus gentium,>y pp. 119—166.
30
For a list of fiefs purchased between 1722 and 1797, their prices, and their buyers, see
M a n n o , U patriziato subalpino, vol. 1, pp. 3—72. Symcox, Victor Amadeus /I, p . 203
provides a brief discussion of the limited impact of the perequazione.
31
Woolf, "Economic Problems of the Nobility," p . 277 and "Studi sulla nobilta pie-
montese," pp. 2 5 - 5 0 .
Aristocratic landowners not only consolidated and expanded their

properties; they also found various ways to increase their profitability,
and thereby compensate themselves for the loss of their old fiscal
exemptions. Initially, their response took the form of a feudal reaction
entailing intensified exploitation of the peasant labor force. In the wake
of the perequazione, they raised rents, revived seigneurial dues, shortened
leases, and appropriated large tracts of common lands.32 In the second
half of the century, however, many aristocratic landowners were also
taking steps to increase the efficiency of their estates in order to exploit
the growing European demand for cereal products. The great landed
grandees of the eastern plains, in particular, were in the forefront of agri-
cultural modernization in Piedmont, replacing the old sharecropping
system with more lucrative, large-scale lease holding contracts, investing
in land reclamation and the development of canals and irrigation net-
works, introducing new livestock breeds and methods of farming, and
expanding the lucrative cultivation of rice. 33 The nobility's interest in
development of their land also found additional expression in the
leadership they provided to the Royal Academy of Agriculture,
founded in the 1780s to encourage scientific research and promote
improved methods of farming.34
In an era of prolonged peace and stability, such initiatives made most
of the old landed aristocratic families considerably wealthier than they
had been a century earlier. In the province of Vercelli, for instance, the
territory devoted to rice cultivation quadrupled over the course of the
century, lease rates nearly tripled in the same period, while prices rose
70 percent after 1750.35 Not surprisingly, the scions of the most illus-
trious feudal families monopolized a list of the richest men in the realm
compiled at the end of the century by the French authorities. With the
exception of the Turinetti di Priero and the Coardi di Carpeneto who
were ennobled in the seventeenth century, those on the list with estates
valued at over L. 1 million all belonged to families whose roots lay in
the medieval period, with the Falletti di Barolo, Solaro del Borgo, and
Valperga di Masino at the top. 36
The same great old families also belonged to a legal estate that con-
32
See Symcox, Victor Amadeus II, p p . 2 0 3 - 2 0 5 ; Woolf, "Studi sulla nobilta p i e m o n -
tese," p p . 1 6 9 - 1 7 0 .
33
See Pugliese, Due secoli di vita agricola. For statistics o n the stockpiles of rice in the city
of Vercelli, see Davico, "Peuple et notables 1730—1816/' p p . 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 .
34
See D o n n a d'Oldenico, L'Accademia di Agricoltura di Torino, p p . 1 5 - 1 8 , 3 6 - 3 7 ;
Woolf, "Studi sulla nobilta piemontese," p p . 169-170; Marchisio, "Ideologia e p r o -
blemi delTeconomia familiare," 9 8 - 1 0 1 .
35
See Pugliese, "Produzione, salari e redditi," p p . 21—88.
36
Bulferetti, " I piemontesi piu ricchi," p p . 7 7 - 7 9 .
tinued to enjoy a range of exclusive rights and privileges. The reforms

of Vittorio Amedeo II effectively destroyed any lingering pretensions of
the nobility to independent political power, but they did not eliminate
all their fiscal exemptions; in fact, the nobility and clergy still owned
more than a fifth of the land in Piedmont taxfree after 1731. Moreover,
in many areas of Piedmont, titled landowners were able to maintain
some of their judicial and chancellory powers, their old monopolies of
milling and ovens, their authority to collect tolls and feudal dues, and
their exclusive hunting, fishing, and water rights. Similarly, only nobles
were permitted to establish primogenitures and Jidecommessi.37 The
nobility benefited as well from the outward symbols of their superior
status. Only titled gentlemen were admitted to a court, displayed coats
of arms, and used special seals. They and their wives alone held boxes at
the Teatro Regio in Turin and sat in the places of honor at church ser-
vices. Even at balls attended by the general public, the nobility danced
and socialized separately from the rest of the guests.38
Like aristocratic elites elsewhere, the dominant position of the old
families in late eighteenth century Piedmont also rested on their ability
to dictate the values and patterns of behavior that defined the terms of
social acceptance or exclusion of new men. In the case of Piedmontese
society, the extraordinary prestige associated with service in the officer
class of the army and observance of a feudal-chivalric code of comport-
ment testified most eloquently to the abiding preeminence of the tradi-
tional aristocracy.
The reliance of the old families on the military and diplomatic corps as
measures of social distinction became even more accentuated in the
eighteenth century when the crown seemed to be sellingfiefsand titles to
the highest bidders and opening court to all nobles irrespective of their
social origins or pedigree. In a context where titles no longer provided an
accurate measure of status, the army afforded a clear system of precedence
to help allay the anxieties of the old established families and give focus to
the newly ennobled's mania for emulation.39 Service in the military -
particularly as a cavalry or infantry officer - became virtually de rigueur for
Piedmontese aristocrats in the eighteenth century, since it represented, in
37
Bianchi, Storia delta monarchia piemontese, v o l . 1, p p . 113 —119, and Prato, La vita eco-
nomica in Piemonte, pp. 407-413. On the fiscal exemptions enjoyed by the nobility,
see S y m c o x , Victor Amadeus II, p. 2 0 3 .
38
Carutti, Storia delta diplomazia, vol. iv, p p . 5 1 3 - 5 1 4 ; Bianchi, Storia delta monarchia
piemontese, v o l . 1, p p . 3 5 8 - 4 0 3 .
39
S e e Barberis, Le armi del Principe, p p . 1 7 0 - 1 8 7 ; Loriga, " L ' i d e n t i t a m i l i t a r e , "
4 4 7 - 4 4 9 . O n t h e social role o f t h e d i p l o m a t i c corps, see F r i g o , Principe, ambasciatori e
"jus gentium, "pp. 119—123.
the words of Count Corrado Alfieri, the only option "by which a person,
who is well-born, educated, and connected, can succeed in all sorts of
positions."40 The distribution of noble officers within the armed forces
reflected their underlying social values. While the nobility accounted for
nearly two-thirds of the entire corps in 1769, they provided over 90
percent of the cavalry officers and nearly three-quarters of the infantry,
but little more than a quarter of the artillery and engineers, the less presti-
gious branches of the army.41 Aristocratic officers, especially those from
the old families, also dominated the most important posts at court. 42 In
this fashion, the integration of new and old nobles continued to take
place within an institutional and ideological framework largely dictated
by the more traditional elements of the aristocracy.43
Such a strong feudal-military ideology had its costs. For one thing, it
encouraged a certain reluctance on the part of the nobility to accept
new cultural and commercial developments in the last decades of the
eighteenth century. Thus, the vision of the military life as the highest
expression of aristocratic values, prestige, and power led the blue-
blooded top commanders and the bulk of the officer class to prefer the
virtues of ignorance and high birth over those of merit and work, and to
oppose the introduction of scientific innovations and a more modern
technical training into the army as threats to their supremacy and tradi-
tions.44 Intellectual life and specialized professional training, in general,
continued to enjoy little status among the great majority of titled
families. Although the aristocratic presence within the student popu-
lation at the University of Turin more than doubled in the six decades
from 1729 to 1789, no more than twenty young noblemen ever enrolled
in any given year.45
40
See Loriga, "L'identita militare," 457. I n 1776 there w e r e 5,000 aristocratic males
between the ages of 15 and 60 in Piedmont, 3,000 of w h o m served the state in some
capacity while another 1,000 either w e r e in training for it or had retired from it. T h e
overwhelming majority of these titled servants of the state - some 2,500 — w e r e e n -
rolled in the army. T h e y included 87 generals of various grade, 86 governors or c o m -
mandants o f forts, and 225 other high-ranking officers. See Bianchi, Storia della
monarchia piemontese, 1, p. 431.
41
See Loriga, "L'identita militare," 445.
42
See Barberis, Le armi del principe, p p . 1 8 8 - 1 9 0 . For a m o r e general statistical analysis
of the military courtiers, see Loriga, "L'identita militare," 457.
43
See Barberis, "Continuita aristocratica e tradizione militare," p p . 5 8 8 - 5 8 9 .
44
For a fuller treatment of the aristocratic resistance to late-eighteenth-century military
reforms, see Barberis, Le armi del principe, p p . 170—205, "Continuita aristocratica e
tradizione militare," p p . 5 8 1 - 5 8 9 , "La nobilta militare sabauda fra corti e accademie
scientifiche," p p . 5 5 9 - 5 6 9 ; Pinelli, Storia militare del Piemonte, vol. 1, p p . 3 3 - 4 1 ;
Ferrone, "L'apparato militare sabaudo," p p . 1 7 7 - 1 8 5 .
45
Balani, Carpanetto, a n d Turletti, "La popolazione deU'Universita di T o r i n o , "
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY 2$
The same feudal-military ideology also tended to accentuate tradi-

tional aristocratic prejudices against manufacturing and commerce. The
Savoyard rulers effectively recognized the strength of these prejudices
by their frequent efforts to combat and overcome them.46 Such royal
initiatives appear to have had only limited success. On the whole, the
investments of aristocratic families in industry or commerce were quite
marginal, especially given the economic importance of the nobility in
the kingdom.47
Yet resistance to intellectual and economic innovation did not
weaken or threaten the position of the Piedmontese nobility in the
short run. The leading old families, in particular, emerged at the end of
the eighteenth century with their political, social, and economic power
essentially undiminished and perhaps even enhanced, in contrast to their
urban patrician counterparts elsewhere on the peninsula. Their land-
holdings were relatively modest when compared to those of the Roman
or Neapolitan aristocracy, but they were sufficient to make them the
unchallenged wealthy elite in the Kingdom of Sardinia.48 These families
also continued to dominate local administration and to control the
highest and most prestigious offices at court and in the army, diplomatic
corps, and church. At the same time, successful commoners effectively
recognized the social supremacy of the nobility through their pursuit of
fiefs and titles and their emulation of aristocratic values and comport-
ment. The anti-aristocratic reforms of Vittorio Amedeo II contributed
in no small way to this state of affairs by leaving the nobility's privileged
status largely intact, by leavening their ranks with fresh wealth and
talent, and by forcing them to employ more efficient methods of estate
management. In the late eighteenth century, the position of the
Piedmontese nobility may well have been comparable to that of the
Junkers, the dominant element in the militaristic and bureaucratic
society of Brandenburg-Prussia.49
pp. 8 4 - 5 , 1 0 4 - 5 , 1 2 0 - 1 . This is not t o say that the Piedmontese nobility did not
produce any intellectuals. See Bianchi, Storia della monarchia piemontese, vol. 1,
pp. 4 3 3 - 4 3 4 for some of the patrician academicians and savants.
46
See Prato, La vita economica in Piemonte, p. 269.
47
See ibid., pp. 2 6 9 - 2 7 0 ; Woolf, "Economic Problems of the Nobility," 2 8 0 - 2 8 1 ,
and "Studi sulla nobilta piemontese," pp. 1 2 - 1 3 ; Bianchi, Storia della monarchia pie-
montese, vol. 1, pp. 410, 432—433.
48
For a comparative analysis of landholding o n the Italian peninsula at the end of the
eighteenth century, see Zangheri, "La proprieta in Italia," p p . 9 - 1 6 . O n the difficul-
ties experienced by the patriciates of Venice, Milan, and Florence, see Davis, " T h e
Decline of the Venetian Nobility," pp. 3 4 - 1 2 5 ; Roberts, "Lombardy," pp. 6 0 - 8 3 ;
Stumpo, " I ceti dirigenti in Italia," pp. 191-197; Bulferetti, " I piemontesi p i u
ricchi,"pp. 57-83.
49
Woolf, "Economic Problems of the Nobility," p . 283.
SURVIVAL AND ADAPTATION IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY

ERA
The situation of Piedmontese aristocrats, however, differed from that of

their Prussian counterparts in at least two key respects: first, in the
limited power they exercised over their peasants and, second, in their
geographical and cultural proximity to France. To begin with, the sub-
alpine nobility lacked the strong tradition of private and personal domi-
nation on their estates that was so vital to the Junkers' sense of
superiority and notions of authority.50 For their part, Piedmontese aris-
tocrats grew up in a bilingual society bordering on France which made
them more cosmopolitan than the East Elbian nobility, but which also
exposed them much more directly and intensely to French political and
cultural developments. The importance of these differences became
especially pronounced in the turbulent era after 1789.
The old view that the French Revolution swept away the last rem-
nants of feudalism and produced a decisive victory of the capitalist bour-
geoisie over the landed aristocracy not only in France, but also in much
of Western Europe no longer enjoys much credibility. It now appears
that shared incomes, interests, and styles of life linked the nobles and
upper bourgeois in France both before and after 1789. Revolution
resulted less in a victory of either one or the other than in a compromise
in which the nobility absorbed the bourgeoisie into a new and broader
ruling class of conservative landed notables in the early nineteenth
century.51
In the case of northern Italy, in general, and Piedmont in particular,
underlying social and economic continuities were even more pro-
nounced than on the other side of the Alps. Here the nobility suffered
less than their French counterparts from the social upheavals of the
revolution. No great transfers of land took place in Italy; whatever gains
non-nobles made came at the expense of the church. As a result, the
leading aristocratic families were better able to maintain their position as
a dominant group in society.52
Still, such continuities should not obscure the extent to which the
revolutionary war and the ensuing Napoleonic occupation disrupted
50
See Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility.
51
See, for instance, Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution; Lucas,
"Nobles, Bourgeois, and the Origins of the French Revolution," pp. 84—126; Furet,
Interpreting the French Revolution; Chaussinand-Nogaret, Une histoire des elites,
1700—1848.
52
For a summary of the arguments and evidence, see Capra, "Nobili, notabili, elites,"
pp. 12-42.
the Piedmontese nobility's collective confidence and sense of security.

In rapid succession titled families experienced military defeat, the loss of
their monarchy, economic deprivation, petty humiliations, and in some
cases exile. More importantly, the French regime introduced egalitarian
legal reforms that undermined the privileged status of the nobility. The
resulting combination of lost prerogatives and newly acquired opportu-
nities weakened in turn the cohesion of the old nobility by accentuating
economic and ideological divisions within its ranks.
A combination of circumstances in the 1790s made the Savoyard state
particularly vulnerable to the repercussions of the French Revolution.
The years from 1791 to 1797 saw mounting discontent in the country-
side brought on by a combination of long-term structural changes in the
agricultural economy and short-term price and wage movements. Rural
folk reacted to the crisis by attacking both new commercial leasing con-
tracts and traditional feudal rights and prerogatives.53 At the same time,
the nobility became the favorite targets of propaganda spread by a
nascent Jacobin movement drawing support from the middle classes and
poor clergy in the towns and cities.54 While these developments, in
themselves, did not constitute a serious challenge to the established
order in Piedmont, they did demoralize the monarchy and weaken its
will to resist the invading French armies.
From its beginning in September 1792, the intermittent war with the
French went badly for the Piedmontese army. Almost immediately, Vit-
torio Amedeo Ill's forces had to abandon Nice and Savoy, where revo-
lutionary assemblies denounced the claims of the House of Savoy and
abolished the titled hierarchy.55 While the next major confrontation did
not take place until the spring of 1796, it also ended quickly in a devas-
tating defeat for the Piedmontese army. In April Vittorio Amedeo sur-
rendered and accepted a humiliating separate peace with General
Bonaparte at Cherasco that ensured French primacy in Piedmont.56
53
Prato, Uevoluzione agricola nel secolo XVIII, p. 41; Davico, "Peuple et notables
(1750-1816)," p p . 9 6 - 1 1 3 .
54
See Bianchi, Storia della monarchia piemontese, vol. 11, pp. 5 3 8 - 5 8 4 , Carutti, Storia della
Corte di Savoia, vol. 1, p p . 2 6 9 - 2 8 5 , and Davico, "Peuple et notables (1750-1816),"
pp. 6 8 - 7 1 . R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, p p . 1 7 - 1 8 provides a good portrait
of the prevailing m o o d of Piedmontese aristocrats in these years.
55
O n the French occupation of N i c e and Savoy and its impact o n aristocratic fortunes
in these provinces, see R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, p . 16; Carutti, Storia della
Corte di Savoia, vol. 1, pp. 194—211; Bianchi, Storia della monarchia piemontese, vol. 11,
pp. 1 - 5 2 .
56
See Ferrero, The Gamble: Bonaparte in Italy, pp. 1-28; Bianchi, Storia della monarchia
piemontese, vol. 11, pp. 115-167, 190-213, 269-300, provides a detailed account of
the course of the war.
The nobility, which had borne the brunt of defeats on the battlefield
as the officer class of the Savoyard army, also suffered sizeable losses in
the ensuing peace. Under pressure from the French authorities and their
radical supporters within Piedmont, the new king, Carlo Emanuele IV,
eliminated the last vestiges of aristocratic privilege. On July 27, 1797, a
royal decree made all feudal lands allodial and free of all bonds, abolished
most feudal rights and prerogatives, and prohibited the creation of pri-
mogenitures and jidecommessi.57
These difficulties paled, however, in comparison to the indignities
endured by virtually all strata of the subalpine nobility after the resump-
tion of warfare in the summer of 1798, and the subsequent abdication of
Carlo Emanuele, and French military occupation in December of that
year. The winter of 1798/9 marked the nadir of aristocratic fortunes
during the entire era of French domination. Two days after the king
had gone into exile, the provisional government abolished all noble
titles and distinctions, and prohibited the use of livery, weapons, or
coats of arms.58 Additional decrees ordered the complete elimination of
any remaining feudal privileges, rights, and monopolies regardless of
their origins or legal status, canceled all ongoing litigation, and denied
title holders the right to compensation or even payment of back taxes
and dues. Those families who possessed feudal titles and deeds were
required to turn them over immediately to local authorities.59
Persecution of ex-nobles in the winter of 1798/9 assumed a variety of
other forms as well. In several communes, officials newly appointed by
the French army seized a number of castles, mills, and farms, claiming
that they had been illegally usurped by the nobility.60 Military authori-
ties and the republican provisional government also made sure that they
shouldered the heaviest burden of taxes and military exactions.61 Some
aristocrats were not only deprived of wealth, but also of their freedom.
The provisional government arrested Marchese Solaro del Borgo,
57
See Arnone, Diritto nobiliare italiano, pp. 6 3 - 6 4 . O n the political and social climate in
Piedmont during this period, see Bianchi, Storia delta monarchia piemontese, vol. n ,
pp. 5 8 5 - 6 2 8 . For some titled families, the abolition of feudal privileges translated
into substantial economic sacrifices. For the case of the Benso di Cavour family, see
R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, pp. 2 1 - 2 2 .
58
Decrees of December 10 and December 17, 1798, cited in Bianchi, Storia delta mon-
archia piemontese, vol. in, p . 6 1 .
59
Decree of March 2, 1799, cited in ibid., p . 61; o n the destruction of the feudal docu-
ments, see p p . 134-139.
60
See ibid., pp. 185-186; Nada, Roberto d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p . 36; and R o m e o , Cavour e il
suo tempo, vol. 1, p . 22.
61
See, for instance, the Decree of December 23, 1798, cited in Bianchi, Storia delta
monarchia piemontese, vol. in, p. 186.
Marchesa Asinari di San Marzano, and Marchese Mazzetti di Frinco on

charges that they had been the chief instigators of anti-French insurrec-
tions; eventually all three were found innocent. The same winter
French military authorities took as hostages an additional eighty-six
prominent aristocrats, many of whom had been members of the old
government, and deported them to Grenoble.62 The nobles who
remained in Piedmont had to endure public ridicule and insults. This
abuse became so excessive that the French commander in Turin inter-
vened in early January, warning that "aristocrats, when they respect
the law, must be respected in turn, and therefore mockery and insults
against them in the theaters are forbidden."63
A new Austro-Russian offensive brought to a close this traumatic
period for the nobility, but it did not result in a return to the status quo
ante. In May 1799, the French were expelled from Turin and the short-
lived Piedmontese Jacobin republic collapsed. But the continued pres-
ence of foreign troops on Piedmont's soil translated into new financial
impositions and other inconveniences for noble landowners. For their
part, the Savoyard ruling family showed little regard or consideration
for its most loyal and devoted aristocratic supporters during the brief
interregnum before the return of the French in the summer of 1800.64
After Napoleon's decisive victory at Marengo in June 1800 and the
French reoccupation of northern Italy, many of Piedmont's most distin-
guished aristocrats chose to go into voluntary exile in Tuscany or at
least sent their children there in order to escape the ravages of war and
foreign occupation.65
The abolition of feudal privilege, recurrent warfare, and Jacobin per-
secution may have caused the nobility a great deal of discomfort and
humiliation, but they did not destroy overnight century-old positions of
wealth and prestige. Indeed, most of the old titled families managed to
hold on to the lion's share of their landed wealth, while even at the
height of the anti-aristocratic campaign, the middle classes continued in
their private dealings with ex-nobles to treat them deferentially and to
62
See ibid., pp. 183-189.
63
O r d e r of the Day, January 5, 1799, cited in ibid., p . 184.
64
I n regard t o the continued economic difficulties, see, for example, the situation o n
the estates of the d'Azeglio family in the winter of 1799—1800, as reported in Nada,
Roberto d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p p . 3 6 - 3 7 ^ T h e attitude of the royal family and the discon-
tent it aroused within aristocratic circles is explored in Vaccarino, "La classe politica
piemontese," p . 37; Bianchi, Storia delta monarchia piemontese, vol. 11, p p . 531—534;
Perrero, I Reali di Savoia, p p . 37—99; and R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, p . 42.
65
Between 1799 and 1806, forty-nine boys from old titled families enrolled in the pres-
tigious Collegio T o l o m e i in Siena. See Lovera and Rinieri, Clemente Solaro delta Mar-
garita, vol. 1, p p . 2 4 - 2 5 , and Nada, Roberto d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p p . 4 2 - 4 9 .
address them by their old titles.66 As a result, the nobility were well situ-
ated to take advantage of the more favorable situation that emerged after
the return of Piedmont to the French Empire in 1802.
With the appointment of General Menou as the first consul in Turin
in 1803, the French authorities pursued policies that clearly favored the
conservative propertied classes and the old nobility in particular.
Leading aristocrats received preferential treatment in the distribution of
the lucrative new public offices, posts at court, and titular honors
created by Napoleon. Such treatment also extended to their sons, who
were given prestigious appointments as cadets to the French military
school of Saint-Cyr, auditors to the Council of State, or pages at the
court of Prince Camillo Borghese, the French governor of Piedmont,
Parma, and Liguria. In this fashion, nobles who transferred their loyalties
from the House of Savoy to the French emperor soon found themselves
in a position to regain much of their old social and political influence.67
The Napoleonic regime's blend of rewards and threats eventually
persuaded many prominent aristocrats to put aside their old Savoyard
loyalties and assume important offices in the Napoleonic state.68 These
men were rewarded in turn with the most prestigious positions in the
new social hierarchy which Napoleon attempted to forge after 1808.
French authorities made certain that representatives of the old aristoc-
racy accounted for a disproportionately large share of imperial nobility
and members of Napoleonic knightly orders created between 1808 and
1814. 6 9
At the same time, the Napoleonic regime gave enterprising
Piedmontese nobles, and the major landed grandees in particular, extra-
ordinary opportunities not only to recoup financial losses suffered
during the brief Jacobin interlude, but also to increase their wealth and
property holdings. Many of them took advantage of the new land
market created by the partial expropriation of the property of the
Roman Catholic Church. In aggregate terms, the nobility's presence in
the sales was comparatively modest, especially in relation to their
66
Bianchi, Storia della monarchia pietnontese, vol. in, pp. 181-182.
67
Ibid., vol. iv, p p . 7 - 8 ; R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, p . 44; Nada, Roberto
d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p p . 5 6 - 5 8 .
68
See Bianchi, Storia della monarchia piemontese, vol. iv, pp. 368—374; Nada, Roberto
d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p p . 56—66; R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, p . 50. For an
account of those nobles w h o emigrated with their Savoyard sovereign t o the island
of Sardegna, see Perrero, vol. 1, Reali di Savoia, p p . 2 0 2 - 2 5 3 .
69
For the names of Piedmontese inducted into the n e w Imperial Order, see Bianchi,
Storia della monarchia piemontese, vol. iv, p p . 366—367; M a n n o provides a complete list
of all those individuals w h o received hereditary imperial titles in Upatriziato subalpino,
vol. 1, pp. 107-113.
economic weight in the society.70 There were significant variations in

the amount of land acquired by aristocratic buyers, however, variations
that perhaps reflected the growing gap between rich and poor within
the former privileged estate. A small group of twenty-five old landed
families, or 6 percent of all titled buyers, accounted for 55 percent of the
total acreage acquired by the nobility in these years. The six biggest
buyers alone took over a quarter of this acreage.71 The experience of
the Avogadro di Casanova family provides a classic illustration of how
the sale of church properties could help the old rich get richer in Napo-
leonic Piedmont. Already the largest landed family in their ex-fief of
Casanova, they purchased an additional 211 hectares in the commune in
1806 that had been seized from the Order of Malta. This purchase,
when added to their former feudal estates, gave the Avogadro di Casa-
nova ownership of 75 percent of all the land in the commune by
1812. 7 2
Many of the same families also took advantage of the profitable in-
vestment opportunities that emerged after 1800. For families like the
Benso di Cavour, whose economic situation had been severely shaken
during the late 1790s, these investments proved a godsend, elevating
them in a brief span of years to the ranks of the wealthiest elite in Pied-
mont.73 In a similar fashion, the abolition of restrictions on crop cultiva-
tion and the elimination of overseas competition by the Continental
System ushered in a golden age for great aristocratic landowners of the
eastern plains who were already among the leading rice growers of
northern Italy. These men, who had converted thousands of hectares to
rice production during the previous half century, were uniquely well
placed to benefit from the dramatic rise in the price of their chief crop,
especially after 1802.74
70
Some 388 ex-nobles purchased over 4,000 hectares of land and 63 urban properties
seized from the church and auctioned off by French authorities between 1800 and
1814. They represented 17 percent of the buyers, but purchased a mere 14 percent of
the acreage sold, a state of affairs that has been ascribed to their enduring religious
loyalties and their lack of liquid assets. See Notario, La vendita dei beni nazionali in Pie-
monte, pp. 255-257, 265-267.
71
T h e Magnacavallo di Varengo, Falletti di Barolo, Colli di Felizzano, Luserna di
Rora, Arborio di Gattinara, and Avogadro di Casanova families purchased 1,093 of
the 4,243 hectares sold to the nobility between 1800 and 1814. Ibid., pp. 317-583,
provides a virtually complete listing of all properties sold, the names of the buyers,
and the prices they paid.
72
In 1812, the Avogadro di Casanova owned 1,102 of the 1,472 hectares of land in the
commune of Casanova. See AST, Sez. Riunite, "Catasto Francese," Mandamento di
San Germano, C o m m u n e of Casanova, f. 448.
73
See R o m e o , Cavour e il sus tempo, vol. 1, pp. 4 7 - 5 2 .
74
See Davico, "Peuple et notables," pp. 112-113, 139. O n the dramatic expansion of
The results of the land survey carried out by the French in 1812 gra-
phically testify to the continued economic predominance of these old
titled families in a society in which land remained the chief form of
wealth. Analysis of data drawn from sixty-eight communes in the plains
of Vercelli and Cuneo reveals a virtual aristocratic monopoly of large-
scale landholdings. Nobles accounted for the five biggest estates in Ver-
celli, each measuring over 1,000 hectares, as well as sixteen of the
twenty estates that exceeded 200 hectares. A similar pattern prevailed in
the province of Cuneo. Although their properties did not measure up
to those of their Vercellese counterparts, titled families owned all four-
teen of the estates over 200 hectares and three-quarters of those over
100 hectares in twenty-one communes of the Cunese plains. New men
clearly took advantage of the opening of the land market and the sale of
church properties to become landowners in the years after 1800, but
their possessions still paled in comparison to the estates of the old feudal
nobility.75
Despite the wealth, power, and prestige the great aristocratic families
continued to enjoy under the Napoleonic regime, their positions now
rested upon new circumstances that were antithetical to the old
institutional status of the nobility. First and foremost, their role as a sepa-
rate and privileged hereditary estate with special juridical rights and pre-
rogatives had been seriously eroded, both in eyes of the law and in the
opinion of important segments of the middle-class public. With their
emphasis on efficiency, personal achievement, and equality, agents of
the French Revolution embodied values that were inimical to tradi-
tional forms of aristocratic power based on birth, rank, privilege, and
ascriptive status. Thus, while the Revolution did not abolish the aristoc-
racy, it had fundamentally altered the legal and social framework within
which nobles operated.
This new framework not only lowered some of the barriers separating
aristocrats from bourgeois; it also accentuated economic and ideological
divisions within the nobility. The elimination of the old mechanisms
that protected their estates, for instance, left less enterprising titled
families far more exposed to the risks and uncertainties of a market
economy, in which they now had to compete on more equal terms
rice cultivation in Vercelli, see Pugliese, Due secoli di vita agricola, p. 156, and Bullio,
"Problemi e geografia della risicoltura," pp. 54-58.
75
The five biggest landowners in the province of Vercelli were the Falletti di Barolo,
Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Avogadro di Casanova, Valperga di Masino, and Mossi di
Moirano. Some of the major landed families in the Cunese included the Costa della
Trinita, Seyssel d'Aix, and Oreglia di Novello. For data on landownership, I have
consulted AST, Sez. Riunite, "Catasto Francese," provinces of Vercelli and Cuneo.
with non-nobles. At the same time, the French occupation introduced

new ideological divisions, pitting diehard aristocrats who remained
tenaciously loyal to the Savoyard royal family against those who came to
terms with the new Napoleonic order. Such divisions prefigured, in
turn, a growing polarization of attitudes on how the nobility should
respond to the challenges posed by the new egalitarianism.
THE INDIAN SUMMER OF ARISTOCRATIC PRIMACY: 1 8 1 5 - 1 8 4 8
Compromise with egalitarian ideas did not figure prominently on the

monarchical agenda in Piedmont after the collapse of the Napoleonic
Regime in 1814. While collaboration with the French temporarily tarn-
ished the reputation of certain families, the position of the nobility as a
whole was enhanced in the political climate of the Restoration. The
composition of the provisional government appointed by the victorious
powers to administer the country prior to the return of the king pro-
vided a clear indication of things to come. It was headed by one of the
most distinguished figures of the nobility, Marchese Filippo Asinari di
San Marzano, and consisted exclusively of well-known titled gentle-
men.76
The resurrection of monarchical absolutism and aristocratic influence
was strikingly evident in both the form and content of the new Savoy-
ard regime that supplanted the regency council in the late spring. When
Vittorio Emanuele I made his triumphant reentry into the city of Turin
on May 20, 1814, even his physical appearance betokened a return to
the good old days for the more tradition-minded nobility. He and his
entourage, recalled Massimo d'Azeglio who stood in Piazza Castello
that day, "were all dressed in antiquated style, with powdered hair in
pigtails, and eighteenth-century tricorn hats a la Frederick II." 77 His
first royal edict, issued the following day, aimed to turn the clock back,
abrogating all legislation and legal codes introduced by the French and
restoring the Royal Constitutions of 1770 and any subsequent revisions
and additions decreed by his predecessors prior to June 1800. As a result,
the legal equality of all citizens was abolished, while distinctions based
on social condition and religious faith were reestablished.78
The mechanisms governing the political and administrative order that
emerged in the restored Kingdom of Sardinia ensured the dominance of
high office by the aristocracy. Although Vittorio Emanuele I and his
76
See Brofferio, Storia del Piemonte, p . 10.
77
D'Azeglio, Things I Remember, p. 70.
78
See Astuti, "Gli ordinamenti giuridici degli stati sabaudi," pp. 538-539.
inner circle of titled advisors did not go so far as to restore feudal bonds,
they did reinstate the aristocratic primogenitures and jidecommessi as well
as pursuing policies that openly favored the nobility in the selection and
promotion of public officials. Their special status received official recog-
nition in the royal edict of November, 1817 which designated the
nobility as "the order which by its very nature is closer to the
throne." 79 The status of the nobility as a separate order received
additional confirmation five years later when Carlo Felice took his
brother's place on the throne. Among his first acts, the new king called
upon all his nobles to take a special oath of loyalty as members of a body
that was legally distinct from the rest of Piedmontese society.80
In theory, the Restoration regime maintained the Napoleonic prin-
ciple of equal access of all classes to state offices, but in practice a general
clause, concerning the wealth and "civilized" condition of the appli-
cant's family, served to give preference to the nobility. Not surprisingly,
personal influence and aristocratic family connections proved essential
to advancement in the decades after 1814. In his memoirs, Count Lodo-
vico Sauli d'Igliano recalled that it was "known to everyone how
among the noble and powerful of Turin every other factor has to lower
humbly the flag in the presence of family considerations."81 Aristocratic
status and kinship were especially useful for advancement within the
military hierarchy. Thus, Massimo Taparelli d'Azeglio attributed his
own appointment as a cavalry officer in 1816 to the historical circum-
stance that "in 1240 or '60 or '80 . . . a certain man-at-arms of the
family of Brenier Capel happened to take a wife from Savigliano and
had the good fortune to be the actual progenitor of that long line of
Taparellis, of which I have the honor to be the last but one." 82
At the local level, the nobility enjoyed once again official corporative
representation after 1814. Turin's municipal administration was put
back into the hands of the General Council of sixty decurions who
were chosen for life; the decurions were divided into two categories,
with the first coming from the nobility and the second from the other
79
For a complete version of the edict, see Raccolta di Regi Editti, Manifesti, ed altreprovvi-
denze, vol. vm (Turin, 1817), pp. i64ffas cited in Genta, "Eclettismo della Restaura-
zione,"p. 358.
80
See Genta, "Eclettismo giuridico della Restaurazione," pp. 352—356.
81
Sauli d'Igliano, Reminiscenze della propria vita, vol. 1, p . 361. O n the mechanisms of
preferment and the nobility, see Cognasso, "Nobilta e borghesia," pp. 2 2 8 - 2 2 9 . O n
the family connections of C o u n t Clemente Solaro della Margarita and his rapid rise
within t h e Ministry of Foreign Affairs after 1814, for instance, see Lovera and
Rinieri, Clemente Solaro della Margarita, vol. 1, p . 48. For Solaro's support of d'Aze-
glio, see Nada, Roberto d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p . 259.
82
classes of citizens. While the offices were supposed to be divided equally

between the two, in reality a majority of the decurions came from the
ranks of the aristocracy.83
Analysis of the social origins of high office holders in the Kingdom of
Sardinia between 1814 and 1847 reveals the extent to which these
arrangements insured aristocratic dominance. In the absence of any
representative institutions, all power rested in the royal family and the
central administration.84 Predictably, members of the old feudal nobility
maintained a stranglehold on all offices at court and in the royal house-
hold from the lord chamberlain and grand master to the gentlemen-in-
waiting and major-domos, some 152 positions in all that gave them pri-
vileged access to the king. In the case of Count Filiberto Avogadro di
Collobiano, a military officer and close confidante of Carlo Felice, such
access translated into an influence that surpassed even that of the top
government ministers.85
The same families also provided the great majority of men who con-
ducted the business of government at the highest levels of the state. At
the apex of the administrative hierarchy were the ministers of state and
first secretaries who oversaw the chief branches of government.
Although the number of ministers of state rose from nine in 1820 to
seventeen by 1845, these top posts remained the exclusive preserve of
titled aristocrats such as Marchese Filippo Asinari di San Marzano,
Ottavio Thaon di Revel, Luigi Provana di Collegno, and Venceslao
Arborio Gattinara di Breme, all men with strong connections at court as
well. Indeed, only two outsiders — Giuseppe Barbaroux and Stefano
Gallina — achieved ministerial rank prior to 1848, and both of them did
so only after they had been ennobled and absorbed into the titled
nobility. After 1831, a new body, the state-council, became the center
of all important discussions, but it too remained a patrician stronghold;
in 1836, for instance, fourteen of the nineteen councilors were nobles.86
83
O n the structure of the municipal council, see R a u m e r , Italy and the Italians, p . 241
and Cognasso, Storia di Torino, p . 245.
84
As C o u n t Carlo Ilarione Petitti di R o r e t o noted in the 1831, " t h e influence of the
court is total in the current government, since the primary management of things r e -
ceives impetus from it alone." See Petitti di R o r e t o , Opere scelte, p . 143.
85
T h e radical journalist, Angelo Brofferio went so far as to claim that Avogadro di C o l -
lobiano actually "ruled over Piedmont while Charles Felix lived, and continued after
his death to rule over Maria Cristina." See Brofferio, Storia del Piemonte, p . 107.
86
Barbaroux received the title of count in 1815 and his son married into one of the old
noble families, Baudi di Selve. Gallina was ennobled in 1834; both his daughters
married noblemen in the 1870s. See M a n n o , U patriziato subalpino, vols. 11 and x n .
For a complete listing of office holders in the Kingdom of Sardinia, see AST, Prima
Sezione, the annual Palma Verde for the years 1815 to 1824, and the Calendario
Generale del R e g n o from 1825 to 1847.
The aristocracy also continued to account for most of the provincial

governors, top diplomats, and military commanders throughout the
Restoration.87
The nobility once again enjoyed a dominant place within the army
officer corps after 1814 as well. In his description of the Piedmontese
military in the earlier years of the Restoration, Ferdinando Pinelli noted
that the highest ranks were occupied by "haughty generals, all of noble
birth, who . . . presumed to have the right to their celebrity because
their grandfather or great-grandfather had served with honor beside his
sovereign."88 The published Elenco Militare, 1818 reflected a command
structure within the army that remained firmly in the hands of men
from a few old-line families, who simultaneously occupied powerful
positions in the civilian administration and at court. More importantly,
90 percent of the new generation of future officers admitted to the
Royal Military Academy of Turin in the first years of the Restoration
came from the titled nobility. Once they were admitted to the
Academy, young nobles enjoyed a much greater chance of being com-
missioned than non-nobles. Between 1835 and 1844, 96 percent of all
noble cadets who entered received their officer's bars as opposed to 65
percent of their untitled colleagues. While pressures to enlarge and pro-
fessionalize the army brought about gradual changes in the social com-
position of the Military Academy, the aristocracy continued to account
for a majority of all the newly commissioned officers prior to 1848.89
And those officers of middle-class origins who did manage to reach the
higher levels of the military hierarchy were often ennobled by the king;
46 men attained titled status in this fashion between 1815 and 1847.90
Many of the great aristocratic families who occupied the command-
ing heights of the Piedmontese state also played a prominent role in
87
As late as 1845, all four governors - the officials in whose hands rested the full p o w e r
of government at the provincial level in Piedmont - came from the old-line patrician
families. T h e same year the titled nobility was still furnishing the entire corps o f
Savoyard ambassadors, special envoys, and ministers plenipotentiary t o the other
Italian states, the rest of Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. See the Calen-
dario Generate del Regno 1843.
88
Pinelli, Storia militare del Piemonte, vol. 11, as cited in Gerbore, Dame e cavalieri del Re,
P- 23.
89
According to Del Negro, Eserdto, stato, societa, pp. 61—4, the nobility accounted for
66 percent of the commissioned officers from the Academy in the 1830s and 55
percent in the 1840s. O n the aristocratic presence within the Academy in 1816, see
Rogier, La R. Accademia Militare di Torino, vol. 11, pp. 1 —19. For an analysis of the
command structure in t h e army, see Barberis, "La nobilta militare sabauda,"
pp. 5 6 1 - 6 2 .
90
For a list of the m e n ennobled in this period, see M a n n o , Upatriziato subalpino, vol. 1,
PP- 7 5 - 9 3 -
local administration, especially in the major urban centers of the

kingdom. Although representation was supposed to be divided equally
between the nobility and the other classes of citizens, the former typi-
cally accounted for thirty-nine to forty-six of the sixty decurions and
the majority of important committee posts in the city of Turin
throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Similarly, both of
the sindaci, the chief municipal officials, were often titled aristocrats.91
Even these figures do not fully measure the extent of aristocratic influ-
ence in Turin, since many of the most important bourgeois decurions
such as Barbaroux, Rignon, Ricciolio, Pansoya, Borbonese, and Nigra
had themselves already embarked on a path that would lead to their
ennoblement and eventual absorption into the old titled elite. 92
Such political dominance helped aristocratic families in turn to reas-
sert their social identity as a separate and superior caste in Piedmont in
the decades after 1815. While the French occupation eliminated the last
vestiges of feudalism in most of the Kingdom of Sardinia, it hardly
destroyed the caste consciousness of the Piedmont's titled nobility. On
the contrary, the loss ofjuridical privileges accentuated the social preju-
dices and pretensions of old families who now tended to treat the
middle classes with even greater condescension.
Contemporary observers in the first half of the century commented
frequently on the persistence of old social barriers which they attributed
to aristocratic arrogance and snobbery. Writing in the 1830s, for
instance, Niccolo Tommaseo accused the Piedmontese nobility of
being "stubbornly resistant to any innovation." Gioberti came to a
similar conclusion a decade later, charging that "the tyranny and arro-
gance of the nobility have enslaved and humiliated the bourgeoisie and
the people . . . " 9 3 These views were echoed in the reports of foreign
diplomats stationed in Turin in these years. The British ambassador
91
I n 1835, for example, C o u n t Pallio di R i n c i o and Baron Martin di S. Martino occu-
pied these posts, while five years later, it became the turn of C o u n t Pochettini di Ser-
ravalle and C o u n t Marchetti Melina; Pochettini di Serravalle continued t o occupy
the same office in 1845 alongside of C o u n t Bosco di Ruffino.
92
For the role o f the nobility i n the administration of Turin, I have relied o n data
drawn from the Archivio C o m u n a l e di T o r i n o (hereafter cited as A C T ) , Amminis-
trazione, b.2, Decurioni e Uffici decurionali, for the years 1820, 1825, 1830, 1835,
1840, and 1845. A similar pattern prevailed in the main provincial centers. As late as
1845, aristocrats still headed the municipal administrations in Biella, Ivrea, C u n e o ,
M o n d o v i , Saluzzo, Alessandria, Acqui, Casale, and Vercelli. N o r was it u n c o m m o n
for big titled landowners t o b e the mayors o f the villages that were tied t o their
estates. See Calendario Generate del Regno, 1845, p p . 48off. for lists of mayors in the
provincial capitals and the rural c o m m u n e s of Piedmont.
93
For the critical judgments o f T o m m a s e o and Gioberti, see Niccolo T o m m a s e o ,
Dell'Italia (1833), ed. G. Balsamo Crivelli (Turin, 1921), vol. 11, p . 166 and letter of
underscored aristocratic resistance to the notion of allowing "people not

belonging to the nobility to share in the royal favors." In somewhat
stronger terms, the Neapolitan ambassador claimed that the aristocracy
took "no account" of the bourgeoisie and "kept themselves entirely
separated from the [bourgeoisie], from whom they are distinguished
. . . by their way of speaking."94 Even a prominent local aristocrat like
Count Ruggero Gabaleone di Salmour conceded the social gulf separ-
ating the nobility from the bourgeoisie in Piedmont, which he attrib-
uted to the importance attached to the fact that "the one has a more or
less old parchment. . . [and] the other does not." 95
The House of Savoy reinforced such aristocratic caste-consciousness
in the opening decades of the Restoration. Its highly traditional court
once again provided both a focal point and an exclusive setting for
much of the nobility's social activities. Indeed, the rigid etiquette
observed at the courts of Vittorio Emanuele I and Carlo Felice ensured
that titled status remained a virtual prerequisite for admission to royal
festivities. Years later, Count Charles Arrivabene claimed that the Sardi-
nian court was so strict in these matters that "no one would have been
admitted to the balls of the Court, had he not been able to show at least
two centuries of nobility."96 In a similar vein, Luigi Des Ambrois recol-
lected how in Turin "the Court represented a sort of caste, which had
the privilege of approaching the sovereign, and which formed, at least
in appearance, a barrier between him and the mass of subjects."97
The aristocratic social order that prevailed in these years was most
clearly represented in the Teatro Regio. Much like the Teatro San
Carlo in Naples, the Regio was built adjacent to the royal palace and
was dominated the presence of the king, whose central box was sur-
rounded by those of the nobility.98 Distribution of boxes, especially
during carnevale, the high point of Turin's social season, reflected the
aristocracy's supremacy and exclusivity. A strict, hierarchical formula
governed the seating arrangements, with status measured by one's rela-
tive proximity to the royal box. Accordingly, the most important
government ministers and military officers, the chief foreign ambassa-
Vincenzo Gioberti to Vieusseux in F. Orlando, Carteggi italiani (Florence, 1896), vol.

in, p. 63 as cited in Rodolico, Carlo Alberto negli anni 1843-1849, p. 10.
94 95
See ibid., p p . 7—8. Gabaleone di Salmour, Le riforme e ilpatriziato, p . 17.
96
Arrivabene, Italy under Victor Emanuel, vol. 1, p . 20. For additional descriptions of Sar-
dinian court life i n this period, see Gerbore, Dame e cavalieri del Re, p p . 1 6 - 2 5 ,
2 9 - 3 2 , 3 4 - 4 4 ; Falletti, Saggi, p p . 1 7 6 - 1 7 7 .
97
L. Des Ambrois, Notes et souvenirs (Bologna, 1901) p . 52, as cited in R o d o l i c o , Carlo
Alberto negli anni, 1843—1849, p. 11.
98
O n the San Carlo, see R o b i n s o n , Naples and the Neapolitan Opera. For a general dis-
cussion of the social role of opera, see M c D o n o g h , Good Families of Barcelona.
dors, and top court officials, or more commonly their wives, occupied
the stalls in the second tier on either side of boxes of the members of the
royal family as well as those on the tiers immediately above and below.
Each fall the king and his Grand Chamberlain personally oversaw the
assignment of the keys to the remaining boxes, a process in which other
high state officials and the wives or widows of "cavaliers of the knightly
orders, grandees of the crown [and] ministers of state" were given the
highest priority." These criteria, which emphasized lineage and service
rather than wealth, ensured that participation in the social rituals of the
Teatro Regio remained the virtually exclusive preserve of the older
titled families, especially in the first two decades of the Restoration.
Caste barriers appear to have softened somewhat by the late 1830s and
1840s when the newly ennobled and bourgeois notables managed to
occupy a number of boxes. But even then their inferior status continued
to be marked by the size, number of occupants, and location of their
boxes. They were invariably the smallest, most crowded, and furthest
removed from the royal box in the highest and most remote tiers of the
theater.100
There appears to have been equally little informal mingling between
the aristocracy and other social groups in the decades after 1815. As the
French ambassador reported in the 1820s, between nobles and the non-
nobles "the separation that defines social customs is complete, profound,
and without exception."101 In her memoirs of her childhood in
Restoration Turin, Baroness Olimpia Savio recalled that the "only
point of contact allowed then between one class and the other" came
on Sundays and holidays when the nobles and "those who were among
the better sort in the city touched elbows" as they promenaded under
the arcades near the royal palace. As late as 1840, Cavour lamented how
just the idea of "mixed balls, half noble, half bourgeois" created a
scandal in aristocratic circles. Still, even politically liberal nobles like
99
When the number of former key holders exceeded the available supply of boxes in
the winter of 1825/6, for instance, the Grand Chamberlain at the time, Marchese
Carlo Emanuele Alfieri di Sostegno, recommended that preference be given to
certain women because of "the prominent positions of their husbands and their
seniority in the assignment of stalls." See AST, Prima Sez., Archivio Alfieri di
Sostegno, b. 31, "Carte relative alia destinazione dei palchi nel Teatro Regio
(i8i4-i84i),"f. 1, 1825-26.
100
In the w i n t e r of 1 8 4 0 / 1 , w o m e n from newly ennobled or bourgeois families o c c u -
pied 24 of the 137 boxes i n the theater. All 24 w e r e located in the fifth tier. T h a t
tier contained 30 boxes as compared to the second tier w h i c h had only 22 M o r e -
over, boxes o n the fifth tier w e r e shared by 4 people, those o n the second by 1 or 2.
See ibid., "Distribuzione d e ' Palchi del R . Teatro fatta d'ordine di S. M . pel C a r n e -
vale 1 8 4 0 - 4 1 " for list of boxes and their occupants.
101
Q u o t e d in Gerbore, Dame e cavalieri del Re, p p . 3 1 - 3 2 .
Cavour were not exempt from caste prejudices in their social

relations.102
As in the previous century, the monarchy continued to allow certain
"new" families an entree into this aristocratic social hierarchy through
the mechanism of ennoblement. In fact, the House of Savoy granted
some 400 hereditary titles in the years from i8i4to 1861.103 During the
Restoration, however, access to the ranks of the titular nobility became
much more tightly regulated and restrictive than in the past. The simple
buying of noble titles, a widespread practice in the eighteenth century
when a lively market in feudal jurisdictions existed, became virtually
impossible in the decades after 1814.
This did not mean that enormous wealth was an obstacle to ennoble-
ment.104 As a rule, court officials considered a sizeable personal fortune
"sufficient to sustain the dignity of the noble position with a sumptuous
life style" as an essential asset for those seeking elevation. By the 1830s,
patrimonial requirements for each rank existed, ranging from L. 100,000
for the simple title of nobile to L. 300,000 for that of count, largely to
ensure that the throne did not "bestow titles on so many poor families."
In fact, insufficient resources proved to be a fatal obstacle to a number
of aspirants to titled status.105
Nevertheless, the House of Savoy placed greater emphasis on the
102
For m o r e o n Cavour's aristocratic sensibilities, see ibid., p . 73 and M a c k Smith,
Cavour, p p . 1 9 3 - 1 9 4 . For Savio's comments, see Ricci (ed.), Memorie delta Baronessa
Olimpia Savio, vol. 1, p . 11. O n the question of mixed balls, see sources cited i n
R o m e o , Cavour e ilsuo tempo, vol. 1, p p . 791—792.
103
See Carpi, U Italia vivente, p p . 7 5 - 7 7 for statistics o n the n u m b e r of hereditary titles.
104
Stefano Gazzaniga is a clear case in point. Officials estimated Gazzaniga's personal
fortune to b e m o r e than L. 9 million. In supporting Gazzaniga's appeal for the title,
C o u n t of Pirocco, the procurate generale claimed that while hereditary titles ought
to b e limited t o those w h o had performed exceptional services t o the state, such
criteria should n o t "preclude i n fact t h e path t o it for those w h o possessed
extraordinary riches, provided o f course that they sufficient civility of birth and
c o m p o r t m e n t that conforms t o the rank t o w h i c h they want t o b e elevated . . . "
Gazzaniga appears t o have encountered few difficulties. See A S T , Prima Sez.,
"Titoli di Nobilta," b . 9, R e p o r t s dated July 7 and 22, and September 18, 1831.
105
D o m e n i c o Barile, for instance, saw his hopes for elevation to the status of nobile in
1836 dashed as a result of debts o n his estate that reduced it to a level insufficient " t o
sustain with the necessary d e c o r u m the implored title of nobilta." Similarly, a major
in the cavalry, Carlo Giovanni Alberti, had his petition for a baronial title rejected
in 1840 due t o " t h e insufficiency of his material resources," w h i c h were "a long
w a y " from the L. 200,000, " o n e of the conditions that are required." See A S T ,
Prima Sez., "Titoli di Nobilta," b . 2, F. Barile, D o m e n i c o , 1836 and b . 1, procura-
tore generale di S. M . , n o date, 1840. For similar examples, see the dossiers of Vit-
torio Asti, n o date, 1825, and Major General Maurizio Bacchiglieri, b . 2, n o date,
1843. For a m o r e general discussion of the patrimonial criteria for ennoblement, see
Genta, "Introduzione allo studio delle nobilitazioni sabaude della restaurazione
lineage and services of those men whom it chose to elevate to the titular
nobility. As a rule, supplicants had to provide documentation of their
family's "civilized" or respectable status for at least a century and of
their "personal good services or those of their ancestors."106 Whenever
possible, would-be nobles relied on their purportedly close ties to old
titled families to buttress their status claims.107 Personal wealth and
talent alone were rarely sufficient to overcome a lack of civilized lineage
as many supplicants discovered. Indeed, royal officials thoroughly
investigated the backgrounds of men seeking titles and did not hesitate
to reject those who, in their judgment, lacked an acceptable pedigree.108
Similarly, aristocratic disdain for the worlds of trade and commerce con-
tinued to influence the process of ennoblement even in the last decade
of absolutism.109
Those postulants who successfully combined wealth, lineage, and
service to enter officially into the ranks of the nobility found that a her-
editary title did not translate into rapid social acceptance. From the
outset, most of the families ennobled after 1815 were visibly separated
from the older nobility by their lack of a feudal predicate. Social practice
confirmed their separateness. Intermarriage between old and new
(1814-1847)," in Atti della Sodeta Italiana di Studi Araldici (Turin, 1990),

pp. 101-107.
106
Ibid., b . 5, p r o c u r a t o r e generale, 1844.
107 rp^g procuratore generale supported t h e petition o f Carlo Danese i n 1826, o n t h e
grounds that o n e of Danese's ancestors h a d b e e n t h e Tesoriere della Provincia di
Pinerolo in 1650 a n d that his family had lived civilly for t w o centuries. F o r his part,
the wealthy Novarese l a n d o w n e r , Francesco Basilico, argued in his successful b i d
for e n n o b l e m e n t i n 1832 that his rank o f c o m m e n d a t o r e i n t h e knightly O r d i n e
Militare di San Maurizio e Lazzaro as well as his " n o b l e alliances b y w a y of m a r -
riages contracted w i t h t h e aristocratic Tarsis a n d Caccia families p r o v e . . . t h e dis-
tinguished civility o f [his] lineage." See ibid., b . 7, F. Danese, A w . Carlo, 1826 a n d
b . 2, F. Basilico, Francesco, 1832.
108
Despite Gioanni Cervetti's successful legal career and his i m p e n d i n g marriage t o t h e
daughter of C o u n t N e g r i di Sanfront, h e was refused a title i n 1829 because, t h e
procuratore generale reported, " t h e Cervetti family cannot b e considered genteel
(civile) in any real sense." Similarly, t h e fact that t h e father-in-law o f M a t t e o M e r -
ialdi h a d w o r k e d as a miller p r o v e d fatal t o his hopes of a title i n 1836. See ibid., b .
5, F. Cervetti, Gioanni, 1829 a n d b . 14, F. Merialdi, M a t t e o , 1836.
109
I n 1846, for instance, Major General M a r i o G i a c o m o Barabino's petition for eleva-
tion t o baronial status m e t w i t h rejection after t h e procuratore generale learned that
"his father was contractor, his m o t h e r [was] o f l o w lineage . . . . " O n t h e basis o f
this information, t h e procuratore c o n c l u d e d that Barabino was n o t suitable for ele-
vation t o t h e nobility, since h e did n o t possess " o n e of t h e most essential p r e r e q u i -
sites that must b e present for t h e concession of an honorific title, namely a h u n d r e d
years o f gentility i n t h e family." See ibid., b . 2, F. Barabino, Maggiore Generale
M a r i o G i a c o m o , 1846.
nobles remained fairly limited.110 Likewise, the few women from

recently ennobled families who managed to gain access to a box at the
Teatro Regio were confined to the highest and most remote tiers, to-
gether with the prominent middle-class women.
INTERNECINE CONFLICT AND THE END OF ARISTOCRATIC

PRIMACY
The virtual monopoly of political and social leadership enjoyed by

Piedmontese nobles in the first half of the century rested upon fragile
foundations, however. To begin with, the values and mechanisms that
perpetuated aristocratic political dominance and social exclusivity
aroused increasing resentment from other segments of the propertied
classes who, in the words of Angelo Brofferio, "no longer wanted to be
second best."111 In the face of egalitarian pressures from below, the pre-
servation of the nobility's hegemonic role depended upon a combin-
ation of at least three circumstances: (1) a relatively unified aristocratic
political outlook; (2) the determination of successive Savoyard rulers to
defend aristocratic privileges and prerogatives; (3) the willingness of the
middle classes to compromise and accept a subordinate role in Pied-
mont's governmental order. By late 1840s, all three of these circum-
stances had largely disappeared.
Much like their counterparts in France and England, the nobility in
Piedmont were united more by a shared pride of rank and a distinctive
style of life than by any single political program or strategy. The
Restoration accentuated this lack of political unity by ushering in an era
of bitter ideological controversy and political discord within the subal-
pine nobility. Such divisiveness was less the result of internal differences
in wealth and lineage than of divergent views on how to respond to the
problems left in the wake of the French Revolution. While virtually all
segments of the nobility abhorred social revolution and wished to avoid
radical change at all costs, there was little agreement on how to achieve
110
Only 2 percent of the nobles from older (pre-1722) feudal families in my probate
survey ever wed individuals belonging to the Restoration nobility. While a third of
the newer nobles in the same survey did establish marital ties with the pre-revolu-
tionary nobility, most of those marriages involved daughters. Both new noblemen
and their sons were considerably more likely to draw their spouses from the middle
classes than from the ranks of the established nobility. See chapter 4, table 1 for mar-
riage statistics. An additional survey of the genealogies of another fifteen families en-
nobled in the decades between 1815 and 1848 also reflects the rarity of marriages
between new and old families. See Manno, Ilpatriziato subalpino, vols. 11, v, xn, xv,
XVI, XVIII, XIX, XXII, XXIV, XXV, XXVII.
111
Brofferio, Storia del Piemonte, p. 84.
this goal. On the contrary, the very dominance of the nobility in

Piedmontese political life meant that struggles over constitutions, repre-
sentative government, and egalitarian reform were largely played out
between and within aristocratic families, at least until the 1840s.
These issues tended to divide the nobility between two poles that
paralleled, in many respects, the division between Bourbonists and
Orleanists in France, or Tories and Whigs in England. At one extreme
were the traditionalists who, in the words of Angelo Brofferio, formed a
"compact, strong, and obstinate party that, clinging to the past, wanted
to make no compromises with the present." Their chief opposition
came from moderate proponents of innovation, who were themselves
divided into "reformers," "constitutionalists," and "radicals." 112
The most outspoken representative of the arch-conservative and
ultramontane nobility was Count Clemente Solaro della Margarita.
Born in 1792 into an old feudal family from Cuneo, Solaro experienced
the trauma of the French Revolution first hand and it remained for
him, as well as for many other aristocrats of his generation, a decisive
formative experience.113 That, and their hatred of the Enlightenment,
combined with an intense devotion to both the Catholic Church and
royal absolutism, were to provide the cornerstones of their political
vision.
Aristocratic conservatives started from the premise that all political
authority derived from God and the people thus owed unswerving obe-
dience to their legitimate rulers. As Solaro proudly affirmed in one of
his tracts, he was "an aristocrat... a defender of divine right, an enemy
of the sovereignty of the people."114 Solaro and his friend Count Emi-
liano Avogadro della Motta viewed all modern revolutions as an undi-
luted evil, rooted in the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment
notions of popular sovereignty, liberty, and equality. In this vision, the
French Revolution represented a form of divine punishment, while the
period after the fall of Napoleon became a temporary "respite granted
by God . . . so that men, corrected and punished, might walk the
straight and narrow."115
112
See ibid., Storia del Piemonte, pp. 16-17. For analogies with the situation in England
and France, see Rodolico, Carlo Alberto . . . 1831—1843, pp. 36-37.
113
For the most detailed treatment of Solaro's family, education, and adolescent experi-
ences, see Lovera and Rinieri, Clemente Solaro della Margarita, vol. 1, pp. 2-38.
114
Solaro della Margarita, Gli avvedimenti politici, p. 67. Solaro and his allies drew much
of their intellectual inspiration from such early-nineteenth-century conservative
thinkers as Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald; de Maistre, in particular, played
a direct role in the early governments of the Restoration in Piedmont. See Lebrun,
Joseph de Maistre, pp. 26-35, 246-257.
115
Solaro della Margarita, Uuomo di stato, vol. 1, p. 279. For Solaro's views on revolu-
To prevent any repetition of the "great catastrophes" of the revolu-

tionary era, Solaro and his allies advocated an integral restoration of the
traditional principles associated with absolute monarchy, the Catholic
Church, and the nobility. From the outset, they saw the pressing need
for legitimate rulers to reassert that their authority derivedfromGod,
not the people, and to be prepared to use whatever means necessary,
including force, in its defense. Above all, Solaro vehemently opposed
any compromise with liberalism, a movement that he saw as paving the
way for all forms of subversion by "allowing everyone to make them-
selves as they please according to their own whims" without regard for
the "the will of the Creator." Even the smallest concessions to propo-
nents of reform represented symptoms of royal weakness that would
only embolden troublemakers and dishearten the king's faithful
supporters.116
The political prescriptions of aristocratic conservatives rested, in turn,
upon an avowedly hierarchical and corporative vision of social relations,
one that maintained an exclusive role for the titled nobility in the gov-
ernance of society. Indeed, Solaro insisted that differences in wealth,
talents, and responsibilities which separated the various classes reflected
the will of God: "He wants there to be those who obey and those who
command, those who rule and those who serve, those who are rich and
those who are poor." 117 While each class had a necessary part to play,
the nobility had to remain in a position of superiority as the essential
bulwark of the monarchy as well as the exclusive intermediary between
the king and his subjects. In his view, aristocrats alone combined the
social rank, wealth, and sense of honor needed to carry out the royal
will and maintain the respect and deference of the lower classes.118
While Solaro favored the ennoblement of able commoners, he saw little
room for the non-nobles at the upper levels of government. As he
expressed it, "I honor doctors and I hold engineers in high regard, but I
am moved to pity when I see them deal with matters of state in the cabi-
nets of princes, where neither the aphorisms of Hippocrates, nor Bra-
mante's rules of architecture . . . have any application."119
At the opposite end of a rather narrow aristocratic political spectrum
stood a small but influential group of nobles who questioned the
tion, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, see ibid., p. 276, Gli avvedimentipoli-
tid, p. 134 and 147, Questioni di stato, p. 98. For the ideas of Avogadro della Motta,
see his Saggio intorno al socialismo, 2 volumes.
116
Solaro della Margarita, Gli avvedimenti politid, p. 136; L'uomo di stato, vol. 11, p. 12.
117
Solaro della Margarita, Gli avvedimenti politid, p. 63.
118
See ibid., pp. 68-69; Solaro della Margarita, L'uomo di stato, vol. 11, pp. i n - 1 1 2 .
119
Solaro della Margarita, L'uomo di stato, vol. 1, p. 283.
wisdom and practicality of Solaro's intransigent hostility to new ideas

and movements.120 In terms of wealth and lineage, little separated mod-
erates from their conservative counterparts who in some cases were
their own fathers and brothers. Many moderates were products of a set
of distinctive generational experiences that included a relatively positive
exposure to new French ideas and institutions; most came from families
who had figured prominently in the Napoleonic Empire and then been
excluded, at least temporarily, from political life under the Restoration.
For others, like Camillo Cavour and Massimo d'Azeglio, their difficult
position as cadets contributed both to their impatience with the tradi-
tional conventions of their class and to their relative openness to innova-
tion. As a group, they also tended to be somewhat more cosmopolitan
than the conservatives, with an intellectual preparation and extensive
travel experiences that gave them an appreciation of political develop-
ments in France and Great Britain.121
Aristocratic moderates were just as concerned as their conservative
adversaries with avoiding revolutionary change and preserving the
power and influence of the old nobility. But in contrast to men like
Solaro, they believed that the traditional order of monarchical abso-
lutism and noble privilege had perished with the French Revolution. As
Count Guglielmo Moffa di Lisio expressed it: "The world changes; the
models that have come down to us from the Middle A g e s . . . no longer
serve us now." Echoing these sentiments, Count Ruggero Gabaleone
di Salmour insisted that any viable political program in the nineteenth
century had to accept that "the aristocratic structure of our old society
has collapsed."122 For the moderates, the reactionary policies favored by
Solaro and his legitimist allies were actually harmful to the established
social order, since they only increased the likelihood of new revolu-
tionary upheavals.123
In order to forestall radical change, reestablish social harmony, and
120
Included in this group were members of some of the most distinguished old families
of the realm like the Alfieri di Sostegno, Taparelli d'Azeglio, Benso di Cavour,
Balbo di Vinadio, Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Asinari di San Marzano, and Provana di
Collegno.
121
O n t h e experiences o f these aristocratic reformers as a generation, see Gerbore,
Dame e cavalieri del Re, p p . 25—28; Nada, Roberto d'Azeglio, vol. 1; R o m e o , Cavour e
il suo tempo, vol. 1; Briano, U Marchese Cesare Alfieri di Sostegno; Ottolenghi, La vita e i
tempi di Giacinto Provana di Collegno; Berti, Cesare Alfieri; Passerin d'Entreves, La gio-
vinezza di Cesare Balbo.
122
See A S T , Prima Sez., Archivio Alfieri di Sostegno, letter from Moffa di Lisio, as
quoted in Manzone, H Conte Moffa di Lisio, p p . 175-178; Gabaleone di Salmour, Le
riforme ed ilpatriziato, p . 12.
123
A n y attempt t o restore t h e old order without any changes " i n t h e nineteenth
century o n the borders of France and with these ominous clouds in the sky," w r o t e
safeguard the position of the nobility, moderates advocated instead a

strategic retreat through a program of gradual civic and political progress
that avoided the extremes of reaction and revolution. This meant, in
practical terms, the adoption of a some form of limited constitutional
monarchy that, in the words of Moffa, "takes the initiative and gives
today what might be seized . . . tomorrow" by diffusing popular dis-
content and slowly broadening the base of the Piedmontese political
class.124 The views of moderates on the type of constitutional order and
the nature of the nobility's role in it evolved over time. Initially, Count
Cesare Balbo envisioned a new parliamentary order in which the
nobility continued to enjoy an official status as the political class par
excellence in Piedmont. Drawing his inspiration from the British House
of Lords and ostensibly open aristocratic class, Balbo favored a bicameral
system of government that "legally constituted" the hereditary political
position of the titled nobility in an upper chamber.125
By the 1830s, however, developments in France and the pressures of
middle-class opinion at home had led many prominent moderates to
abandon altogether the idea of exclusive political privileges for the
nobility. In the immediate aftermath of the Revolutions of 1830, they
began to envision instead a new and transformed role for old titled
families, namely as Piedmont's great landlords whose political power lay
in property rather than privilege. For Marchese Cesare Alfieri di Sos-
tegno, landed property represented the vital "neutral factor" that would
"confer vigor to democracy and increase the authority of the aristoc-
racy" by tying "the citizen to the patriotic soil, made fertile by his
sweat, [and] to the monarchy which protects it." 126 In his enthusiastic
endorsement, Moffa pointed out how Alfieri's plan would "succeed in
pleasing many people." The middle classes, as landowners, could "take
part in the business [of government] with the same rights as nobles,"
while the entire population would be contented "since they will have
Moffa, demonstrated only "the infinite power of stupidity." See Manzone, H Conte
Moffa di Lisio, p. 178.
124
Ibid.
125
Balbo, Pensieri ed esempi, p . 265. For a m o r e general discussion of Balbo's political
views, see Passerin d'Entreves, La giovinezza di Cesare Balbo, p p . 243—250. In a
similar vein, most other aristocratic reformers i n the early years o f t h e Restoration
were partisans o f t h e French constitution, w h i c h also preserved a corporative role
for t h e nobility through a chamber of peers. See Brofferio, Storia del Piemonte,
pp. 1 7 - 1 8 and R o m e o , Dal Piemonte sabaudo all'Italia liberate, pp. 2 2 - 2 6 .
126
Alfieri di Sostegno proposed a tri-level plan of constitutional reform based o n land:
small landowners w o u l d participate in municipal councils, m e d i u m ones in provin-
cial councils, a n d t h e large landowners in a central state council. See Alfieri t o
Sclopis, quoted in Berti, Cesare Alfieri, p p . 4 5 - 4 6 .
what every class of people wants today, namely a constitution." Above

all, moderates like Moffa emphasized the benefits to the titled elite who
could dominate the state, since "nobility and property are things that
still sustain each other in Piedmont, the soil being, in general, owned by
the nobles/' In this way, the social base of the established order could
be broadened without sacrificing the aristocracy's leading role. As Moffa
expressed it, "if the nobility exits from power by one door, it reenters
immediately through the other by means of property." 127
These contrasting moderate and conservative visions of state organi-
zation and of the role of the titled nobility in public life largely defined
the terms of intra-aristocratic political struggles in the decades after
1814, struggles that pitted father against son and brother against brother.
As Angelo di Saluzzo recalled in his memoirs, ideological and private
conflicts in this era became so intertwined that "the discord [was] often
within the family [and] the diversity of political principles became a
motive for personal animosities and even a pretext . . . for hurting a
rival [or] a personal enemy." 128 Indeed, in no other state on the Italian
peninsula did tensions within the old privileged orders give rise to so
much bitterness and acrimony as in Piedmont, where they erupted into
open rebellion, criminal prosecution, and forced exile of young men
from some of the most prominent aristocratic families. Ultimately, these
internal struggles produced no real winners, since they weakened the
nobility as a whole precisely at a time when new forces were challen-
ging their monopoly of political leadership.
The most dramatic and best-known instance of intra-elite conflict
came only seven years after the return of the House of Savoy from Sar-
dinia: the ill-fated Piedmontese Revolution of 1821. In the political
climate that prevailed in Piedmont after the fall of Napoleon, the reac-
tionary policies of the government as well as the mistreatment of those
families associated with the French imperial regime soon angered and
frustrated a group of idealistic, young aristocrats, for the most part army
officers, led by Santorre Derossi di Santarosa, Carlo Asinari di San
Marzano, Giacinto Provana di Collegno, and Moffa di Lisio. Motivated
by a contradictory blend of Italian nationalism, Piedmontese military
expansionism, constitutionalism, and loyalty to the House of Savoy,
these men spearheaded a military revolt in March 1821 to force the
127
Moffa to Alfieri, quoted in M a n z o n e , II Conte Moffa di Lisio, p p . 1 7 5 - 1 7 8 . For
similar views, see the comments of Gabaleone di Salmour in his Le riforme ed il
patrizi, p . 13 as well as those of Cavour, quoted in R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo,
vol. 1, p . 575.
128
Zucchi (ed.), " I m o t i del 1821 nelle m e m o r i e inedite di Alessandro Saluzzo,"
p . 526.
abdication of Vittorio Emanuele I and the enthronement of the suppo-

sedly sympathetic Prince of Carignano, Carlo Alberto. While virtually
all the titled rebels favored a constitution similar to that of the French or
English which guaranteed the nobility a privileged role in government,
they wound up supporting a more democratic program modeled on
that of Spain under the pressure of events.129
The aristocratic rebels achieved the first objective and initially
enjoyed the sympathy of the younger generation of nobles like Roberto
d'Azeglio. Nonetheless, the new regime lasted only a week before its
lack of popular support, its failure to win over more moderate aristocrats
like Cesare Balbo, and its abandonment by Carlo Alberto, who
remained obedient to the new king, Vittorio Emanuele's brother Carlo
Felice, left it isolated and vulnerable to forces loyal to the monarchy.
The internecine character of the conflict emerged clearly in early April
when royal troops led by their noble officers under the command of
Marshal Vittorio Sallier de la Tour, supported by Austrian forces,
defeated the rebels on the battlefield of Novara. 130 The titled leaders of
the insurrection fled into exile in Geneva, while at home Count Ignazio
Thaon di Revel oversaw a sweeping purge of suspected sympathizers in
the army and bureaucracy. The events of 1821, and the repression and
disillusionment that followed them, not only strengthened the position
of the most conservative elements in the state; they also left deep divi-
sions that continued to poison relations between and within many of
the leading families of the nobility throughout the 1820s.131
The following decade, divisions between aristocratic moderates and
conservatives resurfaced in less violent forms in the more open political
and economic climate of Carlo Alberto's reign.132 Chastened by the
experiences of 1821 and alarmed by the Revolution of 1830 in France,
moderates such as Cesare Alfieri, Roberto d'Azeglio, and Camillo
Cavour began to carve out a new role for themselves by promoting a
number of educational, charitable, and cultural initiatives that prepared
the social terrain for those political reforms that, according to Alfieri,
129
See R o m e o , Dal Piemonte sabaudo all'Italia liberate, pp. 2 2 - 2 8 .
130
See ibid., p p . 1 7 - 2 9 .
131
See ibid. p p . 2 9 - 3 5 ; Nada, Roberto d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p p . 1 0 1 - 1 4 4 . A m o n g t h e
nobles w h o w e n t into exile w e r e Santarosa, Lisio, Turinetti di Priero, D a l Pozzo
della Cisterna, Asinari di San Marzano, and Provana di Collegno. Massimo d'Aze-
glio provides some indication of the impact of his brother's marginal role in the R e -
volution o f 1821 o n family life in his memoirs. See d'Azeglio, Things I Remember,
P- 173-
132
These years saw the creation of a C o u n c i l of State, judicial and military reforms, and
the cautious liberalization of Piedmontese trade policies. See R o m e o , Cavour e il suo
tempo, vol. 1, p p . 7 7 2 - 7 7 3 .
were needed "to combat revolution." D'Azeglio, his wife Costanza,

and other female relatives from the Costa della Trinita and Luserna di
Rora families took the lead in these areas, sponsoring new workhouses
and poor relief shelters in the wake of the Cholera epidemic of 1834.
Cavour's similar concerns led him to collaborate with Count Carlo
Beraudo di Pralormo in the reorganization and reform of the Opere pie
in 1838.133 At the same time, the moderates became involved with the
problems of popular education, founding in 1839, for instance, a new
organization to promote the diffusion of children's shelters and schools
throughout the realm.134
Moderates included bourgeois spokesmen in these initiatives to
achieve a larger objective: the breakdown of traditional caste barriers
and the forging of new political ties with influential sectors of the
middle classes. Their strategy found expression in a number of new
voluntary associations which they sponsored in these years. In 1839, for
example, they founded a Societa di ballo to encourage mixed socializing
between nobles and bourgeois.135 Two years later, Cavour and his titled
friends took an additional step in this direction by launching the Societa
del Whist, an English-style gentlemen's club that provided a gathering
place for all currents of respectable society in Turin: "old names of the
ancient aristocracy, young hopefuls from the arts [and] sciences, and
established figures from the banking and business worlds."136
In the rigidly hierarchical social world of Turin, these modest
leisure, charitable, and educational activities encouraged the growth of
new reference groups while sharpening divisions within both the titled
aristocracy and the middle classes. Angelo Brofferio recalled a decade
later how the mixed balls and socially integrated associations fueled
two schisms: the one between "the blue-blooded aristocracy that did
not want to merge . . . and the less thick-skinned aristocracy that
would consent to touch the hand of bankers," and the other between
"the money men who, calling themselves the buona borghesia, wanted
133
See Nada, Roberto d'Azeglio, vol. 1, p p . 2 3 0 - 2 3 5 ; d'Azeglio, Things I Remember,
p . 306. For Alfieri's views o n the need for reforms to combat revolution, see letters
cited i n Berti, Cesare Alfieri, p p . 4 3 - 4 7 . Cognasso, "Nobilta e borghesia," p . 240,
mentions Cavour's involvement in the reform.
134
See R o d o l i c o , Carlo Alberto . . . 1831—1843, p p . 3 6 8 - 3 7 7 .
135
See Cavour to Paul-Emile Maurice, February 5, 1839, as cited in R o m e o , Cavour e
il suo tempo, vol. 1, p . 792.
136
I n fact, the list of the Whist's founding members contained the names n o t only of
influential patricians, b u t also distinguished bourgeois professional m e n , wealthy
bankers as well as a n u m b e r of prominent magistrates, army officers, philanthropists,
and diplomats. See Societa Camillo di Cavour, Un secolo di vita del Whist, p p . 19,
3 2 - 3 8 ; A C T , b . 93, Societa del Whist, soci fondatori, M a r c h 1, 1841.
50 THE PIEDMONTESE NOBILITY.* 16OO-1848
to be accepted, and intellectuals and professionals who did not want to

be second."137 Predictably, the moderates encountered strong oppo-
sition from both radical democratic elements and aristocratic tradition-
alists.138
The values and aspirations that underlay moderate social initiatives
also informed the Associazione Agraria Subalpina, an organization
launched by Cesare Alfieri and a small group of prominent nobles and
bourgeois notables in the spring of 1842 to unite "all . . . the various
elements of agricultural progress."139 Much like comparable bodies else-
where in northern and central Italy, the new association aimed to
promote improved methods of farming and stock raising by dissemi-
nating the latest scientific information. At the same time, the association
had a broader social mission of encouraging practical collaboration
between nobility and the middle classes. Its founders achieved rapid
success in this latter endeavor, attracting not only landowners and
farmers, but also men who had little or no connection to agriculture.140
Despite the Agraria's egalitarian pretensions and heterogeneous mem-
bership, its titled founders displayed little inclination to share leadership
with their non-noble colleagues. Indeed, aristocrats controlled most of
the key offices.141 Even so, conservatives like Solaro della Margarita
denounced the Agraria and its congresses as "a pretext, a means of dis-
guising ideas that subvert the established order." 142 These warnings did
not sway Carlo Alberto who virtually guaranteed its success by sup-
137
Brofferio, Storia del Piemonte, p . 84.
138 p o r j 1 j s p a r t ^ B r o f f e r i o attacked the n e w associations as Trojan horses o f the "most
sublime aristocracy o f P i e d m o n t , " ridiculing the very idea of class collaboration as
" t h e b r o t h e r h o o d b e t w e e n t h e wolf and t h e l a m b , " see ibid. Titled conservatives
w e r e even m o r e sweeping i n their denunciations o f the moderate initiatives. O n
their opposition t o t h e n e w charitable agencies, see R o d o l i c o , Carlo Alberto . . .
1831-1843, p p . 3 7 0 - 3 7 8 .
139 A S T , Prima Sez., Istruzione Pubblica, Accademie ed altri Istituti Scientifici, Societa
Agraria, b . 8, letter of transmission o f the proposed statute to C o u n t Gallina, M a y
31, 1842, cited in R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 11, p . 8 3 .
140
T h e moderates' initiative also received an enthusiastic reception from influential
middle-class spokesmen like Lorenzo Valerio. Such sweeping support quickly trans-
lated into a massive influx of members. See Prato, Fatti e dottrine economiche, p . 159.
For the views o f Valerio, see Letture difarniglia, vol. 1, n.44, N o v e m b e r 5, 1842, as
cited in R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 11, p . 86.
141
Ibid., p . 159. Despite their avowed commitments to ideas of progress and social c o -
operation, m e n like C a v o u r and Alfieri remained, t o some extent, the products o f
their class a n d its particular values. F o r Cavour's views, in particular, see his Sui
voyages agronomiques di F. Lullin de Chateauvieux, in Scritti di economia, p. 66 as cited
in R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, p . 575.
142
Solaro della Margarita, Memorandum storico-politico, p. 201; Uuomo di stato, vol. 11,
p. 226.
porting the first proposal and then recognizing the association as an

official institution.143
The evolution of the Subalpine Agrarian Association quickly demon-
strated, however, the enormous difficulties confronting moderates in
their attempt to broaden the social base of participation in public life to
the middle classes and, at the same time, preserve aristocratic leadership.
In fact, the association developed less as the embodiment of harmonious
social collaboration than as a forum for the expression of deep-seated
class antagonisms and resentments. As Francesco Predari recalled some
two decades later, "the mixture of so many varied elements with such
distinct social backgrounds, wealth, education, [and] political aspira-
tions, necessarily had to produce in short order conflicts of interest and
aims."144 The Agraria gave bourgeois spokesmen like Lorenzo Valerio
an organizational base to advance their own projects and, perhaps more
importantly, their own claims to equal leadership status.
These larger social tensions fueled the emergence of two rival factions
within the Subalpine Agrarian Association by 1845: the one led by
Valerio, the so-called "democrats," and the other appropriately named
the "aristocrats" - a group led by Alfieri, Cavour, Petitti di Roreto, and
Gabaleone di Salmour. The two factions soon clashed over the former's
proposals to decentralize and democratize the operations of the associ-
ation, as well as over the selection of a new president to replace Alfieri
who resigned early in the spring of 1845.145 Factional strife came to a
head in the first months of 1846 when Cavour and his allies were voted
out of the ruling council of the association, followed by governmental
intervention after Cavour's father denounced the Agraria as a center of
political subversion. The association was drastically restructured with
royal officials nominating the president and vice-presidents and regu-
lating all meetings and topics of discussion.146
The evolution of the Agrarian Association dramatically illuminated
the political vulnerability of Piedmont's aristocratic ruling class on the
eve of 1848. The unalloyed hostility of men like Solaro della Margarita
to the idea of voluntary associations underscored how profound were
the ideological differences separating titled arch-conservatives from
143
Prato, Fatti e dottrine economiche, p. 159.
144
Predari, Iprimi vagiti della liberta, p. 41.
145
O n the views of Cavour, see his letter to Corio, M a r c h 5, 1846, cited in Prato, Fatti
e dottrine economiche, p . 42on and his letter t o Costa de Beauregard, October, 1847
cited i n R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 11, p . iO7n. For Petitti's rather critical
j u d g m e n t of the "aristocrats," see his letter to Michele Erede, March 25, 1846, cited
in ibid., vol. 11, p . H 4 n .
146
R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 11, p p . 1 0 7 - 1 1 5 .
their moderate fellow nobles. Even those aristocrats who chose to join
the association did not necessarily share a common political outlook. 147
Not surprisingly, such differences precluded any coherent strategy or
unified action in defense of the nobility's corporative power and privi-
leges. At the same time, the aggressive challenge advanced by Valerio's
democratic faction to aristocratic domination of the Agrarian Associ-
ation showed that influential segments of the middle classes no longer
accepted unquestioningly the nobility's right to lead. As a result, aristo-
cratic reformers found themselves in the 1840s engaged in a two-front
war against a rigidly traditional nobility opposed to any compromises,
on the one side, and increasingly assertive and impatient middle-class
proponents of more radical reform, on the other.
Above all, Piedmontese aristocrats continued to be the subordinate
partners of an absolute monarch whose support was ultimately decisive
to whatever power they might enjoy. While Carlo Alberto remained a
profoundly ambiguous and contradictory figure with policies that oscil-
lated between liberal reform and ultramontane reaction, he did display a
certain willingness in the late 1840s to sacrifice aristocratic prerogatives
in order to curry the favor of middle-class public opinion and broaden
the base of support for the throne. The nobility's ability to oppose or
dilute royal policies that threatened their power was hamstrung by their
longstanding tradition of unwavering service to the House of Savoy.
JVlarchese Cesare Taparelli d'Azeglio, a bitter foe of constitutional
government, eloquently captured the dilemma facing traditional conser-
vatives in an era of institutional change:
What would happen if Piedmont became a constitutional state? Through
rebellion? . . . I should certainly oppose the rebels with all I had of mind,
strength, and influence . . . Should it happen with royal assent, whether
obtained by persuasion or through fear of worse evil, I should conform
to the royal command. Once the new constitution was established I
should be its tenacious supporter. To obey the ruler is a duty with but
few exceptions. Had the King agreed to any other form of monarchy,
mixed or constitutional as might be, there would be no limitation to this
duty.148
Dynastic loyalty gave defenders of aristocratic corporative power little
choice but to obey their king, even when that meant their own political
extinction as a separate caste.
147
Marchese Massimo C o r d e r o di M o n t e z e m o l o and C o u n t Giambattista Michelini,
for instance, became leading spokesmen for the democratic faction and harsh critics
of Cavour. See R o m e o , Cavoure il suo tempo, vol. 11, p p . 9 5 - 9 7 .
148
Q u o t e d in d'Azeglio, Things I Remember, p . 273.
Significantly, conflicts within the Agrarian Association in 1846 prefi-

gured a much more decisive political setback for the entire Piedmontese
nobility in 1848. Under mounting pressure from restive democratic
forces to embrace the cause of Italian unification and adopt sweeping
changes at home, Carlo Alberto slid reluctantly in the direction of
reform in the second half of 1847. Reform demands coincided with an
intense public campaign against the nobility. Even respectable non-
nobles like Pier Alessandro Paravia, a frequent presence in aristocratic
salons, began to speak of the "dislike that boils up in us bourgeois
against the nobility," a view echoed by foreign observers like the British
ambassador who warned in November 1847 that a "class war . . . [is]
not far off."149 Anti-aristocratic sentiments took a variety of forms from
wall graffiti proclaiming "death to the nobles" to anonymous pamphlets
that violently attacked the hereditary nobility and demanded their
immediate elimination as "dangerous enemies of constitutional liberty"
and as sources of "civil discord."150
In the face of this aggressive reform movement, Piedmont's foremost
aristocratic families displayed no more unity of outlook than they had in
the past. Hardliners like Solaro della Margarita steadfastly favored a
policy of royal intransigence even at the risk of a head-on collision with
new forces. Other conservatives like Marchese Vittorio Amedeo Sallier
de la Tour and Count Carlo Beraudo di Praiormo recognized the need
for the king to introduce a constitution, but advocated one that
included a chamber of hereditary peers based on wealth and "those
families which have rendered significant services to the state."151 The
foremost moderate nobles - Cavour, Cesare Alfieri, Roberto d'Azeglio,
and Count Pietro De Rossi di Santa Rosa - dismissed the idea of an
"aristocratic high chamber" as antiquated and no longer unacceptable
to middle-class opinion; they called instead for a constitution that guar-
anteed genuinely representative institutions as the only way to avoid
violent insurrections, diffuse demands for an "ultra-democratic consti-
tution," and insure a peaceful renewal of the country's ruling classes.152
This moderate position, which Alfieri, Count Giacinto Borelli, and
Count Federico Sclopis di Salerano argued before the king carried the
149
O n t h e views o f Paravia, see V. Cian, "Vita e coltura nel periodo albertino,"
p. 335; the British ambassador is cited i n R o d o l i c o , Carlo Alberto . . . 1843-1849,
p. 7.
150
See the anonymous tract, Nonpiu nobilta ereditarie (Turin, 1848), p . 121.
151
See R o m e o , " U n a iniziativa costituzionale," vol. 1, pp. 3 6 8 - 3 7 0 .
152
See the speech of Piero D e Rossi di Santa R o s a in Risorgimento, February 7, 1848, as
well as Cavour's letter to Giovanetti, February 1848, b o t h cited in R o m e o , Cavour e
il suo tempo, vol. 11, p p . 287, 291.
day in the wake of the February Revolution in France. In a setting of

public dinners, street demonstrations and petitions at home, and
mounting nationalist and democratic unrest elsewhere on the peninsula,
Carlo Alberto promulgated on February 8, 1848 a new constitution, the
Statute.153 Although the document left a number of questions unan-
swered, it clearly envisioned a government that was monarchical and
representative, with legislative power shared by the king and two cham-
bers: an elective lower chamber and an upper chamber whose members
were appointed for life by the throne.
The Statute, which had been co-signed by such titled luminaries as
Count Ottavio Thaon di Revel, Count Ermolao Asinari di San
Marzano, and Count Mario Broglia di Casalborgone, effectively demol-
ished the position of the hereditary nobility as a legally privileged caste
within the Piedmontese body politic. The new constitution recognized
the existence of titles of nobility and the king's right to confer new
ones, but it explicitly proclaimed the equality of all citizens before the
law "regardless of their title or rank." As a result, apart from the titles at-
tached to their names, nobles ceased to enjoy any distinctions or rights
that were denied to other classes in the society. Thus, the Statute attrib-
uted no official public functions of any sort to the nobility nor did it
make titled status a prerequisite for any state office.154 At least in the
eyes of the law, aristocratic gentlemen now had to compete on equal
terms with their former legal and social inferiors for the prizes and
honors of public life.
153
See ibid., p p . 287—291 for a chronology of events leading u p to the proclamation of
the Statuto.
154
For the articles comprising the Statuto, see R o d o l i c o , Storia del parlamento italiano,
vol. 1, p p . 4 2 1 - 4 2 8 ; o n their implications for the status of the nobility, see R u m i ,
"La politica nobiliare del R e g n o d'ltalia," p p . 5 7 8 - 5 7 9 .
CHAPTER 2
THE LONG GOODBYE: ARISTOCRATS

IN POLITICS AND PUBLIC LIFE:
1848-1914
The Revolution of 1848 fundamentally transformed the political and

legal framework within which Piedmont's titled nobility had long exer-
cised leadership and exerted power. The triumph of constitutional
government and full civil equality that year not only ended the aristo-
cracy's virtual monopoly of high state office in the Kingdom of Sardinia;
it also eliminated their last remaining institutional privileges. Indeed, the
nobility ceased to exist as a separate corporative body in the new parlia-
mentary order that emerged from the Statute. Officially, only individual
noble families remained and they now represented at best just one com-
ponent of a much larger and heterogeneous ruling class, defined more
by wealth and education than birth and privilege. Such changes un-
avoidably entailed a significant reduction in the direct political power
wielded by the old nobility in the decades after 1848.
The loss of their formal institutional status in the state, however, did
not mark the end of aristocratic involvement in politics. On the con-
trary, Piedmont's titled families managed to keep some of their old roles
while carving out new ones for themselves that together still assured
them an influential place in public life both locally and at the national
level in the second half of the nineteenth century. They were able to do
so in part by exploiting the more informal advantages afforded by their
wealth and by the prestige they derived from generations of public
service and political leadership. Especially in the system of limited suf-
frage that prevailed in the Kingdom of Sardinia, aristocratic landowners
were well situated to exploit older loyalties in the countryside in order
to become the standard-bearers of rural religious and particularist values.
The ascension of their own monarch, Vittorio Emanuele II, to the
throne of the new Italian Kingdom in 1861 assured Piedmontese nobles
a special status in court circles and a prominent role in key institutions
of the national state that emerged in the following decade. Finally, long-
standing networks based on kinship and clientele relations gave old-line
55
56 THE LONG GOODBYE
titled families the personal influence and patronage power to remain

"unofficial" leaders at the provincial and village levels, even as their
names ceased to feature prominently on electoral slates or on published
rosters of government ministers, parliamentary deputies, and municipal
councilors. In this fashion, nobles were able to perpetuate an older way
of life while contributing to and benefiting from a distinctive political
culture that rested upon local allegiances rather than stable party
organizations.
THE PLACE OF THE ARISTOCRACY IN THE NEW POLITICAL ORDER

From the outset, the nobility assumed a much more modest role in the
new parliamentary institutions that arose in the course of 1848. The
change was immediately evident in the elections of April of that year,
the first of the constitutional era. Few titled nobles chose to stand for
election; those who did emerged triumphant in a mere 32 of the 204
colleges represented in the Chamber of Deputies. A sharply reduced
aristocratic political presence was no less striking at the local level. The
elections of November 1848 in the city of Turin, for instance, produced
a new Municipal Council that included only 22 aristocrats among its 80
members, a far cry from the two-thirds majority of the decurioni they
had enjoyed only a year earlier.1
Still, despite the loss of their old privileges and prerogatives, even tra-
ditional defenders of the titled nobility were inclined to accept the new
constitutional arrangements, if only as the lesser of evils in the turbulent
political climate of 1848. Commenting on the attitudes of the "die-
hards," the moderate Marchesa Costanza d'Azeglio observed how they
became "all partisans of the Constitution, overcome as they are by fear
and because they hope that in this manner they can save themselves
through the upper chamber." This possibility found confirmation in the
disappointed comments of radical democrats like Brofferio who com-
plained that "representative government with two chambers has always
been the best government for the aristocratic castes to become arbiters
. . . between the people and the throne." 2 In fact, the new political
order offered three potential avenues for the nobility to reassert their
leadership: (1) as the closest advisors and favorites of a powerful mon-
archy; (2) as the dominant element in the Senate; (3) as the leaders of a
1
For results of the first elections to the Chamber of Deputies, see Rodolico, Storia del
parlamento italiano, vol. 1, pp. 445-452. Data on the social makeup of Turin's municipal
council is from ACT, Amministrazione, Consiglieri comunali, b. 3, vols. 7 and 8.
2
Brofferio, Storia del Piemonte, parte terza, capo secondo, p. 30. For D'Azeglio's views,
see Souvenirs historiques de la marquise Constance d'Azeglio, p. 195.
conservative party in the Chamber of Deputies closely allied to the
Catholic hierarchy and with a solid base of rural support.
To begin with, the Statuto attributed sweeping powers to the
monarch, powers that could be used to limit and, perhaps, roll back the
reforms in defense of the values and institutions of the old order. The
king remained "the supreme head of the state" and as such he enjoyed a
monopoly of executive authority, commanded the armed forces, con-
trolled foreign policy, and made nominations to all state offices.3 In the
exercise of their powers, it was expected that the monarchs would go
on relying on the counsel of their oldest and closest tutors and advisors
who came from the ranks of the nobility. The introduction of a consti-
tution did nothing to alter the privileged access to the throne enjoyed
by great titled families who continued to monopolize the key sinecures
in the royal household and at court. Moreover, in the first decade after
1848, the nobility found a sympathetic patron and powerful ally on the
throne. Vittorio Emanuele II was reluctant to give up his family's tradi-
tional autocratic prerogatives and resisted the restrictions that came with
the introduction of constitutional government. In particular, he was
hostile to any understanding with democratic elements and did not hesi-
tate to impose his ministers of war, intervene directly in the electoral
process, and engage in extra-parliamentary intrigues.4
The willingness of the king to use his enormous authority to ensure
the nobility a prominent place in the new political order translated, in
institutional terms, into de facto aristocratic control of the Senate. While
the Statuto made no specific mention of the nobility among the twenty-
one categories of citizens eligible for royal appointment to the Senate,
the old aristocratic families confidently expected to monopolize at least
four - namely those for top diplomats, high-ranking military officers,
wealthy tax payers, and men whose "eminent services or achievements
will have added lustre to the patria."5 Initially, their expectations
proved to be justified. The first group nominated in April 1848 read like
a "Who's Who" of the titled nobility with names like Alfieri di Sos-
tegno, Colli di Felizzano, Ferrero della Marmora, Provana di Collegno,
and Taparelli d'Azeglio featuring prominently. Over the course of the
year, most of the leading figures of Piedmont's old governing class were
elevated to the Senate. By December 1848, the nobility accounted for a
majority of the newly appointed members of the upper chamber. In
accordance with the decidedly aristocratic makeup of the Senate, the
3 4
Ibid. See Mack Smith, Italy and its Monarchy, pp. 3—5.
5
For a complete list of the categories of eligibility for the Senate, see Article 3 3 of the
Statuto, as reprinted in Rodolico, Storia del parlamento italiano, vol. 1, p. 424.
58 THE LONG GOODBYE
king picked Count Gaspare Coller as the first president of the body and
nominated Marchese Cesare Alfieri di Sostegno, Marchese Antonio
Brignone Sale, and Baron Giuseppe Manno to assist him as vice-presi-
dents.6 Despite the presence of a few prominent moderates like Alfieri
and Petitti di Roreto, the more conservative landed and military
nobility dominated the upper chamber from its inception. As Petitti
complained in April 1848, his nomination now required him to keep
"the company of a large number of reactionaries" who, he claimed,
comprised "no less than five-sixths" of the Senators."7 Since the consti-
tution dictated that all legislation have the approval of the upper
chamber, aristocratic dominance made that body a potentially important
bulwark of the old ruling class and monarchical authority against the
more liberal Chamber of Deputies.
In the case of the lower chamber, the nobility accounted for only a
small minority of the deputies, but these deputies were well situated to
play a prominent role there. At first, the various noble factions achieved
an exceptional degree of political unity in response to the militancy and
verbal extremism of the democratic left in 1848—1849, which drove
moderates to positions virtually indistinguishable from those of the con-
servative old guard. More importantly, aristocratic politicians were able
to dominate two of the major parliamentary groups that emerged after
1848. On the one hand, noble reformers like Cavour, Alfieri, and
Massimo d'Azeglio continued to furnish both the leadership and ideas
of the moderate center-right group that headed most of the govern-
ments in the ensuing decade. In fact, titled moderates accounted for all
but a few of the aristocratic ministers who occupied forty-two of the
seventy-one cabinet offices and provided seven of the prime ministers
in the first eight governments of the constitutional era.8
At the same time, the majority of titled deputies and old aristocratic
families identified more with the rightist coalition of royalists and cleric-
alists led by Count Ottavio Thaon di Revel, which included in its ranks
Cavour's older brother, Marchese Gustavo Benso di Cavour.9 With its
6
See ibid., pp. 408-409; Segretariato Generate del Senato, Elenchi storici e statistid dei
senatori, provides data on nobles in the Senate. Nobles accounted for forty-six of the
eighty-seven new senators.
7
Petitti's comments are from a letter to Michele Erede which is quoted in Romeo,
Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 11, p. 375.
8
For the composition of the governments during the legislative sessions of the
Subalpine parliament, see Rodolico, Storia del parlamento italiano, vol. in,
pp. xxix—xxxii. During this period, all but one of the eight prime ministers were aris-
tocrats.
9
For Gustavo di Cavour's place in Piedmontese political life, see Monale, "Lineamenti
generali per la storia dell'Armonia" 475-482.
close ties to the Catholic Church and the court, and its solid base of
support in the countryside, Thaon di Revel's group seemed to offer the
best prospects for becoming a genuine conservative party that institu-
tionalized aristocratic influence in the Chamber of Deputies in a way
similar to that of the Tories in England or the agrarian conservatives in
Prussia. Members of this group were, for instance, among the strongest
advocates of expanded suffrage, convinced that, in the words of Count
Luigi Torelli, it would lead to "the parties [which] have until now had
to deal with eighty or one hundred electors for each deputy, losing the
game with the entire population, over which will prevail the influence
of the landowners."10
The possibilities of a conservative party guided by aristocrats and sup-
ported by the church found their clearest expression in the elections of
November 1857. After a campaign in which priests and prelates aggres-
sively mobilized the faithful, voters elected a substantial bloc of con-
servative deputies that included more than fifty nobles. Cavour, for one,
recognized the potential benefits of these results: "Although the larger
part of these counts and marquises are personally hostile to me, I rejoice
to see them in the bosom of Parliament. Practical acquaintance with
affairs will enlighten them, will moderate them, and in a given time will
transform them into Tories from the Clericalists they are now." 11
The elections of 1857, however, proved to be the exception rather
than the rule. The Piedmontese nobility achieved considerably less
success than their Prussian counterparts in carving out an institutional
role for themselves in the new constitutional order. Indeed, events in
the first decade after 1848 revealed the inability of the throne, the upper
chamber, or the parliamentary right to provide a stable and enduring
base for reasserting the political authority of the nobility. Early on,
various factors tended to limit the value of the Senate as a vehicle of
aristocratic power. While the upper house was theoretically equal in
status to the Chamber of Deputies, in practice it quickly assumed a sub-
ordinate and secondary role in the legislative and governing process. To
begin with, the advanced age and conservatism of its members pre-
vented the Senate from developing into an arena of significant conflict
10
See Torelli to Pinelli, April 26, 1849, as cited in Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, 11,
p. 38411. Even notorious die-hards like Solaro accepted the legitimacy of the Statuto
as a royal decree; what they sought was a narrow interpretation of its articles that
guaranteed "the protection of religion, the independence of the Monarchy, the
peace and the prosperity of the country." See Solaro della Margarita, Agli elettori del
collegio di Borgomanero, p. 46; Discorso secondo alia nazione, p. 5, both titles cited in
Monaco, Clemente Solaro della Margarita, pp. 333-336.
11
Luigi Chiala, ed., Lettere edite ed inedite di Camillo Cavour (Turin, 1882-1887), vol. 11,
pp. 506-507, quoted in Thayer, The Life and Times of Cavour, 1, p. 466.
60 THE LONG GOODBYE
and debate. More importantly, the upper chamber failed to win the
power to compel the resignation of a government or the right of finan-
cial initiative enjoyed by the Chamber of Deputies. As a result, by 1861
the Senate possessed little more than the power to delay legislation, a
power that did not give its aristocratic members a particularly construc-
tive role in the political process.
More importantly, the political influence of the nobility suffered as a
consequence of the mounting conflicts between church and state in the
1850s. These conflicts not only divided the nobility, but they also effec-
tively disrupted the traditional alliance of throne, sword, and altar in
Piedmont, limited the influence of clerical aristocrats at court, and
forced an otherwise autocratic Vittorio Emanuele II to accept the
mechanisms and methods of parliamentary government. The king's
anti-Austrian policies and his territorial ambitions in Italy as well as the
efforts of successive governments to abolish the unconstitutional privi-
leges still enjoyed by the church in Piedmont put him on a collision
course with the Vatican and its conservative Catholic supporters from
1850 onwards. Steadfast clerical intransigence, on the one hand, and a
growing anti-clericalism in parliament, on the other, sabotaged efforts
to settle this conflict in 1854 and relations between the House of Savoy
and the Vatican deteriorated dramatically in the second half of the
decade. The resulting crusade of the Vatican against the Risorgimento
proved, in the long run, to be especially damaging to the political for-
tunes of the traditionalist right not just in Piedmont, but throughout
Italy. In the absence of the church's support, conservatives were unable
to link the powerful ideological appeals of nationalism and religion to
mobilize a vast Catholic electorate against progressive legislation and in
favor of authoritarian rule.12
In the short run, the crisis in church—state relations put Piedmontese
aristocratic conservatives in an untenable position. What should have
been their primary source of strength — the enormous influence of the
church — became increasingly directed against royal authority and thus
evolved into a political liability. Weakened by royal resentment of the
clericalists and torn by contending dynastic and religious loyalties,
Thaon di Revel's parliamentary right never achieved any enduring poli-
tical cohesion largely as a result of divisions that found personal expres-
sion in clashes between Thaon di Revel and hardliners such as Solaro
della Margarita and Avogadro della Motta. 13 In fact, the split between
12
See Woolf, A History of Italy, 1700-1860, pp. 438-439; Thayer, Italy and the Great
War, pp. 107-124.
13
See Monaco, Clemente Solaro della Margarita, pp. 128-131.
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY 6l
church and state accentuated divisions within the nobility as a whole;

some men such as Count Roberto Beraudo di Pralormo, the son of one
of Carlo Alberto's most trusted ministers, resigned from their posts and
withdrew into internal exile, while others merged into a larger and
more heterogeneous liberal ruling class.14
Ironically, the policies and tactical brilliance that made Count
Camillo Benso di Cavour the foremost aristocratic political figure of the
era also contributed significantly to limiting aristocratic leadership in the
new parliamentary order. While Cavour shared many of the prejudices
of his class, he was committed to the renewal of Piedmont's political
elite through a judicious merger of the liberal-minded nobility with
moderate elements of the middle classes. Accordingly, he viewed aristo-
cratic leaders of the right as among his chief adversaries and sought to
reduce their power and influence. Cavour was the key figure in the
various parliamentary maneuvers in the mid-1850s that sabotaged plans
for a conservative government headed by Thaon di Revel and led to
the rupture of relations between Vittorio Emanuele II and the largely
aristocratic forces of clerical conservatism in Piedmont. His commit-
ment to political renewal, however, found its most important expression
already earlier in the decade in what Thaon di Revel denounced as the
Connubio: Cavour's coalition with the left center.15 To enhance his own
personal power and to forge a more solid parliamentary base for both a
constitutional monarchy and liberal reform, Cavour engineered in 1852
an unprecedented parliamentary alliance of the right center and left
center in support of a program of "civil and political progress." As a
result of this alliance, he succeeded in dividing the left and freeing the
government from its dependence on the votes of the traditional conser-
vatives. But, in the process, he also condemned those nobles who did
not share his views to political isolation and impotence and created
another obstacle to the development of an organized stronghold of
aristocratic political influence.16
Students of Italian history have long considered the Connubio as the
pivotal event that inaugurated a "transformist" system of parliamentary
government based on constantly shifting majorities composed of small
groups rather than on two major parties, one progressive and the other
conservative, which alternate in power as in Great Britain and the
14
Count Roberto Beraudo di Pralormo was a member of the diplomatic corps who
was elevated to the ambassadorship in Rome in 1853. Two years later, his "Catholic
cavalier's faith" led him to resign his position. See Archivio privato Beraudo di
Pralormo, funeral oration of Professor B. Bona, 1857.
15
See Thayer, The Life and Times of Cavour, vol. 1, p. 142.
16
See Perticone, "II regime costituzionale," 719-737.
62 THE LONG GOODBYE
United States.17 Whatever were its consequences for the cause of liber-
alism and national unification, Cavour's broad centrist coalition struck
an immediate blow to aristocratic political pretensions by making it
considerably more difficult for the nobility to build and lead a genuine
conservative party. Aristocrats were certainly not excluded from politics,
but their participation became that of local notables engaged in the
pursuit of immediate political advantages rather than that of leaders of
an organized party committed to the defense of the traditional interests
and values associated with the nobility.
These developments in the decade after 1848 shaped the active, but
decidedly ambivalent role played by the Piedmontese aristocracy in the
events leading to the creation of a unified Italian state between 1859 and
1861. On the one hand, as any textbook notes, Vittorio Emanuele II
and a small core of largely patrician moderates were the chief architects
of unification. Moreover, the nobility as a group participated in dis-
proportionately large numbers in the struggles for national indepen-
dence. Thus, 148 men or roughly half the membership of the
aristocratic Societa del Whist, served as officers in the military cam-
paigns of 1859, while another 80 took part in the expeditions into
Central Italy in 1860-61.18 The old titled nobility, in general,
accounted for most of the high-ranking army officers and diplomats
who implemented Cavour's initiatives in these years. Indeed, they
contributed two-thirds of the lieutenant-generals and nearly all the top
commanders who led the Piedmontese army in the campaigns of
1859—60 as well as 36 of the 43 ranking members of the diplomatic
corps who handled the delicate negotiations with the Great Powers that
accompanied the military operations.19
On the other hand, aristocratic enthusiasm for the House of Savoy's
leading role in the campaign to unify the Italian peninsula was far from
unalloyed or unanimous, especially after the transfer of Nice and Savoy,
the cradle of the dynasty, to France in i860. While some titled members
of Thaon di Revel's party made a show of reassuring foreign visitors
that all segments of the nobility were "tous maintenant un cceur et une
ame" in support of Cavour, other nobles voiced considerably more
negative and pessimistic views of the new situation in their private cor-
respondence. Count Edoardo Crotti di Costigliole, for instance, warned
in a letter to Count Emiliano Avogadro della Motta in April i860 that
17
For a discussion of the issues of the Connubio and transformist tradition in Italian poli-
tical life, see Romeo, Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 11, pp. 572-577.
18
See Societa Camillo Cavour, Un secolo di vita del Whist, p. 84.
19
See Calendario Generate del Regno di 185Q and Boldrini and Alberti, "II patriziato
italiano," p. 219.
"the political horizon is becoming ever darker."20 In a similar vein,

Countess Sofia Valperga di Masino complained to her brother Marchese
Alessandro Compans di Brichanteau the following year how "it would
be impossible to carry out a program blacker . . . than that [of
Cavour]."21 Even after the premature death of Cavour in 1861, Solaro
della Margarita referred to him as the "man who destroyed the old
monarchy and left the one which presumed to replace it more
uncertain, more imperiled."22
Such private judgments confirm the portrait of an obedient, but
frightened and resentful aristocracy that emerges from the memoirs of
the neo-noble and liberal sympathizer, Baroness Olimpia Savio di Bern-
stiel. In her account, old feudal traditions of duty and loyalty to the
throne led noble officers to "struggle through months under fire, shed-
ding their own blood and sacrificing their lives for a political goal they
detested." In fact, more traditional elements of aristocratic society in
Turin in i860, according to the Countess, saw their intimate little
world of "family, legation, regiment, and court" threatened by the
moderates' campaign to unify the peninsula; they considered the tre-
mendous influx of emigres from other regions as little more than "an
intrusion from Italy . . . into our house." For them, Piedmont's little
ship of state was being pushed by "new men into unknown waters in
the midst of a great storm" and consequently they were "openly hostile
to an enterprise [they] considered as demagogic madness, convinced
that the ship, crew, and captain would sink." Baroness Savio found evi-
dence of their displeasure not so much in any public pronouncements as
in their ostracism of emigres, ostentatious refusal to speak Italian, and
constant mockery of those nobles like Cavour and d'Azeglio who had
embraced the cause of liberalism.23
Developments that followed Piedmont's fusion into a unified Italian
state in 1861 seemed to confirm some of the worst fears of the more tra-
ditional aristocratic families and justify the Countess Balbo Bertone di
Sambuy's nostalgic lament that "we in our little Piedmont used to be
20
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Avogadro della Motta, B.156, letter from Crotti di
Costigliole, April 7, i860. T h e positive appraisal of the political situation was attrib-
uted t o a parliamentary deputy of the right w h o was an in-law of C o u n t T h a o n di
Revel by Francois Marcet in letter to Edward Rommily, date June 4, 1859. See
Carew Hunt, "Cavour e Francois Marcet," p. 339.
21
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Compans di Brichanteau, c. 5, b . 14, f. 2, letter from
Sofia Valperga di Masino, no date 1861.
22
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Avogadro della Motta, b . 156, letter from Solaro della
Margarita, July 10, 1861.
23
See Ricci (ed.), Memorie, vol. 1, pp. 293-297.
64 THE LONG GOODBYE
quite happy without these brothers from another bed." 24 From the
outset, the limited material and human resources of the House of Savoy
and the Piedmontese governing classes, whose old territories had repre-
sented no more than one-eleventh of the peninsula, made it virtually
impossible for them to exercise a dominance in Italy comparable to that
enjoyed by the Prussian monarchy and Junker aristocracy in Germany.25
As a result, the process of state-building in the new Kingdom of Italy
entailed a far greater number of concessions to the political elites of the
old regional states, concessions that only further eroded the subalpine
nobility's already fragile claims to preferential treatment and govern-
mental leadership. Thus, Vittorio Emanuele's practice of not appointing
too many high public officials from his old Sardinian kingdom to posi-
tions in the new state helped to blunt any accusations of regional favor-
itism, but came largely at the expense of the nobility . 26
Piedmont's titled nobility suffered a far more direct and permanent
blow to its collective prestige and claims to leadership with the transfer
of the capital from Turin to Florence in the mid-i86os. Old-line
families with a long history of state service were uprooted from their
ancestral homes and cherished way of life, while those who remained
saw their territorial base of power suddenly reduced to a provincial
backwater as the international diplomatic corps and the court, the
familiar centerpiece of aristocratic society, abandoned the city. Not sur-
prisingly, the scions of such ancient titled families as the Luserna di
Rora, Asinari di San Marzano, and Cavalchini Garofoli became the
most outspoken proponents of "Piemontesismo" and led many of the
protests and demonstrations that greeted the decision in the soon to be
abandoned capital.27 After the transfer, the feudal families who had tra-
ditionally served the Savoyard dynasty, now found themselves an even
smaller minority within the new and considerably larger national poli-
tical class that slowly emerged in the ensuing decades.
THE SLOW RETREAT FROM POLITICAL OFFICE
The introduction of a constitutional parliamentary system of govern-

ment into the new Kingdom of Italy fundamentally altered and reduced
24
T h e Countess di Sambuy is quoted in Castronovo and d'Orsi, Torino, p . 14.
25
For a more general discussion of the role of the nobility in Italian life after 1861, see
Meriggi, "La borghesia italiana," pp. 167-170, 180-182.
26
O n the changing role and political significance of the Piedmontese nobility, see
Villari, Italian Life, p p . 1 8 - 1 9 .
27
O n the role of the nobility in the local reaction to the transfer of the capital to
Florence, see Ricci (ed.), Memorie, pp. 1 2 2 - 1 3 1 ; and more generally, Castronovo
and d'Orsi, Torino, pp. 5 - 1 7 , 3 4 - 3 5 .
the role played by many of the old elites in political life after 1861.
Between unification and World War I, direct aristocratic involvement
in parliament and government declined inexorably as the size of the
electorate grew and the clerical or "black" nobility retreated into inter-
nal exile. This decline at the political level, however, was neither rapid
nor cataclysmic.
Initially, there was a sizeable contingent of Italian aristocrats in
national government. In 1861, for instance, 171 or 38 percent of all the
men elected to the Chamber of Deputies were nobles.28 The presence
of the blue bloods within Italy's governing classes remained pronounced
in the era of the Destra Storica (1861-1876) when titled army officers
and landowners accounted for 43 percent of the top office holders.29 At
the cabinet level, nobles occupied the post of prime minister in six of
Italy's first eleven governments and filled nearly a third of all the minis-
terial posts in the opening fifteen years of national life.30 Vittorio Ema-
nuele and his successors also assured a sizeable aristocratic presence in
the upper house of parliament. In the last four decades of the nineteenth
century, the House of Savoy elevated 440 nobles, or nearly 40 percent
of the total, to lifetime seats in the Senate.31
From the outset, the families of the Piedmontese nobility contributed
a disproportionately large share of the titled deputies and officials who
served in Italian political life after unification. While they no longer
enjoyed their monopoly of high office, they were better placed than
any of the other old regional elites to assume an active role in national
government. In sharp contrast to most of the other old patrician or
feudal classes on the peninsula, who either had long been excluded from
government by foreign rulers or else had linked their political fortunes
to defeated dynastic houses and actively opposed unification, the
Piedmontese aristocratic families enjoyed close ties to the new national
monarchy as well as longstanding traditions of governmental leadership
and service that favored them after 1861.32 Not surprisingly then, they
furnished a third of the nobles who occupied ministerial posts in the
governments of the Destra and over a fifth of the aristocratic senators
appointed between i860 and 1900. The subalpine nobility also achieved
28
See Boldrini and Alberti, "II patriziato italiano," p . 215; Baldi Papini, La nobilta e il
diritto nobiliare, pp. 7 0 - 7 1 .
29
Farneti, "La classe politica," pp. 2 8 5 - 2 8 9 .
30
See Missori, Governi, vol. in, p p . 1 5 - 3 9 . I n a v e included undersecretaries as well as
ministers in m y totals.
31
Statistics o n nobles in the Italian Senate were compiled o n the basis of data drawn
from Segretariato Generale del Senato, Elenchi storici e statistici dei senatori.
32
For a discussion of the limited political role played by the old regional nobilities after
1861, see Meriggi, "La borghesia italiana," pp. 167-168.
66 THE LONG GOODBYE
some success at the ballot box and thereby continued to be over-repre-

sented in the Chamber of Deputies. An average of sixteen nobles, or
roughly a third of the entire Piedmontese contingent, served in the
lower house of parliament during the first five legislatures.33
Of course, the large number of Piedmontese aristocrats among the
elected officials in Rome did not signify the presence of any aristocratic
party. Likewise, those nobles who held elective offices at the national
level in the late nineteenth century did not advance an "aristocratic"
political strategy or even display a pattern of voting that distinguished
them from their untitled governmental colleagues. While they tended
initially to concentrate in the ranks of the Destra, the most successful of
Piedmont's noble deputies were no different from other segments of the
lower chamber in having to engage in the politics of compromise and
concession. Indeed, survival in Italy's turbulent parliamentary arena
made it imperative that they, like any other notables, build up personal
bases of power and pursue policies that yielded immediate political
advantages. As a consequence, their social position appears to have had
little impact on the specific stances they assumed in the Chamber of
Deputies.
The absence of any aristocratic political consensus in Piedmont
emerges clearly from a comparison of the voting records of five titled
deputies in the 1870s: Marchese Carlo Compans di Brichanteau, Count
Cesare Valperga di Masino, Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy,
Baron Annibale Marazio, and Count Cesare Saluzzo di Monterosso.
The proposal to abolish the highly controversial macinato tax, for
example, enjoyed the support of Compans and Saluzzo, but was
opposed by Valperga and Marazio, while di Sambuy abstained.
Compans and Saluzzo found themselves on opposite sides when the
chamber voted on Zanardelli's internal policies. Compans backed the
government, while Saluzzo joined the other four in opposition. Simi-
larly, on the proposal to modify income tax rates, Compans and Saluzzo
parted company. Compans joined Valperga and di Sambuy in
abstaining; Marazio and Saluzzo voted in favor of the change. Only the
plan to alter the tax on sugar generated any sort of agreement. Saluzzo
abstained and the other four voted against the proposal.34 Despite
mounting social unrest and the emergence of a socialist party, little had
33
D a t a o n aristocratic d e p u t i e s from P i e d m o n t is d r a w n from Malatesta (ed.), Endclo-
pedia biograjica e bibliografica italiana, 3 vols. F o r t h e P i e d m o n t e s e n o b l e s w h o served i n
t h e g o v e r n m e n t s o f t h e Destra, see Missori, Governi, vol. i n , p p . 15—39; f °r t n e titled
senators from P i e d m o n t , see Segretariato G e n e r a l e del S e n a t o , Elenchi storici e statistici
dei senatori.
34
F o r t h e v o t i n g r e c o r d s o f these deputies see, La Gazzetta Piemontese, M a y 17, 1880.
changed two decades later when Piedmont's leading aristocratic depu-

ties, Compans di Brichanteau and Marchese Cesare Ferrero di Cam-
biano, stood at opposite ends of the Liberal party, voting differently on
fourteen of twenty-two parliamentary resolutions between 1896 and
1903- 3 5
Aristocratic status, however, was certainly not irrelevant to the poli-
tical identities of Piedmont's titled deputies. On the contrary, the
emphasis given by both friends and foes to the exalted social position
and distinctive traditions of noble candidates and their families strongly
suggests that such status continued to exercise a powerful, but double-
edged hold on the public imagination in late-nineteenth-century
Piedmontese society. On the one hand, supporters of an aristocratic
candidate made a point of highlighting the past leadership and accom-
plishments of their man's family as well as his sense of style and those
character traits of his which ostensibly expressed the traditional ethos of
the nobility. Patrician political figures were praised not only for their
elegance, refinement, and sense of dignity, but also for their integrity,
devotion to duty, military prowess, and special deep attachment to the
country. According to his admirers, Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di
Sambuy was one of Turin's "most elegant and decorative mayors," a
"cultivated and refined" gentleman with "noble, chivalrous ideals."36
One of the supposed virtues of Arturo Perrone di San Martino, a
deputy of the Destra who served in parliament between 1870 and 1895,
derived, in the words of his backers, from his belonging "to that old and
glorious Piedmontese patriciate that has given so much . . . to the
rebirth of Italy"; his family was "one of Piedmont's most renowned." 37
The electoral propaganda of Marchese Cesare Ferrero di Cambiano,
another deputy of the Destra and an undersecretary in two different gov-
ernments, used remarkably similar language, noting that he belonged to
the "old Piedmontese aristocracy which has already given our fatherland
so many men of great talent and strict scruples."38 In like fashion, the
clerical backers of Baron Alessandro Cavalchini Garofoli in the parlia-
mentary elections of 1896 portrayed him as a "perfect gentleman who
worthily carries on the Catholic traditions of the old nobility."39 On
other occasions, the manipulation of the prestige associated with aristo-
cratic status was more subtle, but no less evident. Thus, Marchese Carlo
35
See "Prospetto dei principali voti p e r appello nominale dati dagli ex onorevoli di
T o r i n o e provincia," It Qrido del Popolo, O c t o b e r 30, 1904.
36
See La Stampa, February 25, 1909.
37
La Gazzetta Piemontese, N o v e m b e r 2 2 - 2 3 , 1890.
38
See A C T , Collezione Simeom, C , n. 5412, La Bandiera Liberate, N o v e m b e r 5, 1904.
39
See ibid., C , n. 5415, Associazione degli Elettori Torinesi, 1896.
68 THE LONG GOODBYE
Compans di Brichanteau belonged to a family that had "performed ben-

eficial deeds in the college of Caluso for more than 300 years," Count
Carlo Felice Nicolis di Robilant was an "excellent soldier [and] a
perfect gentleman," Count Emilio Gromis di Trana represented "the
perfect specimen of a Catholic gentleman," Genova Thaon di Revel
stood for "morality, a sense of duty, devotion to the patria, and loyalty
to the king," while Marchese Vittorio Scati Grimaldi di Casaleggio dis-
played a "chivalrous loyalty" and descended from an "eminent family
in which a tradition of duty has been consecrated in service to the king
and the country."40
On the other hand, proud aristocrats who chose to compete for elec-
tive office in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had to
pay a high personal price in the form of public abuse and vilification
from political adversaries who also made an issue of their social status.
As the Gazzetta Piemontese lamented in 1880, rival candidates sought to
revive memories of the earlier divisions between aristocrats and demo-
crats, exploiting "the old antagonism with all its caste prejudices."41
Not surprisingly, certain negative stereotypes of the nobility were
evoked in order to depict blue bloods in politics as arrogant, caste
conscious, autocratic reactionaries. The enemies of Count Balbo
Bertone di Sambuy, for instance, portrayed him as a "disdainful, dog-
matic . . . feudal authoritarian, locked into a dream of anachronistic oli-
garchy." According to his campaign rivals, Marchese Compans di
Brichanteau had transformed the college he represented in parliament
into a "refuge where [he] imposes the feudal yoke of olden times."
Likewise, the adversaries of Marchese Ferrero di Cambiano denounced
his "arrogance" which they attributed to his "high lineage" and accused
him, a large landowner in his college, of maintaining a "fief — over
which he exercises his high sovereignty."42
This anti-aristocratic rhetoric does not appear to have been especially
efficacious in the cases of Compans, Balbo Bertone, and Ferrero, who
all enjoyed long and rather successful careers in politics. Nevertheless, it
40
For the descriptions of Gromis and Scati, see L'ltalia Reale-Corriere Nazionale, J u n e
9 - 1 0 , 1895; for T h a o n di Revel and Compans di Brichanteau see respectively, AST,
Sez. Riunite, Archivio T h a o n di Revel, electoral leaflet, Chivasso, 1867 and
Archivio Politico Compans, b . 1, campaign poster 1904; for Nicolis, La Gazzetta Pie-
montese, N o v e m b e r 10, 1870.
41
See Gazzetta Piemontese, M a y 15, 1880.
42
For criticisms of Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, see La Stampa, February 2, 1909. T h e
attack o n Compans di Brichanteau appeared in a leaflet distributed by his foe, Cesare
Facelli, during the parliamentary electoral campaign of 1904; see AST, Sez. Riunite,
Archivio Politico Compans, b . 1. T h e attack on Ferrero di Cambiano appeared in H
Grido del Popolo, October 30, 1904.
does indicate part of the costs paid by men from old-line families who
chose to participate directly in a parliamentary system characterized by
petty, vulgar, and often personally demeaning political contests.
Piedmontese nobles were especially ill suited and ill disposed by tradi-
tion and training to the rough and tumble of electoral campaigns or the
crude interest bargaining in Rome. Much like their Junker counterparts,
their arrogance, caste-consciousness, and disdain for machine politics
tended to make them less effective as parliamentary politicians.43
Marchese Roberto d'Azeglio anticipated the difficulties confronting
aristocrats in the new political order as early as 1849 when he com-
plained of feeling "continually jostled by this crude, vulgar, boring,
bruising element that is steadily infiltrating the social body and that will
end by canceling the refined style and distinguished manners which
reveal education [and] le rang."44 Especially after the electoral reform of
1882 which quadrupled the size of the electorate and required candi-
dates to actively court the voters, the pursuit of elective office became a
decidedly less attractive and socially acceptable avocation for men from
the subalpine nobility.
In fact, the decades after 1876 saw a general retreat of nobles from
Piedmont and other regions of the country from direct participation in
national political life. The fall of the Destra and suffrage reform led to a
noticeable decline in the number of Italian aristocrats in high elective
office, although there were some significant fluctuations at the end of
the century. Nobles from all regions made up a mere 16 percent of the
governing class in the three decades after 1876. Only fifteen of them
served in the governments of Depretis and Crispi between 1876 and
1896. The number of nobles at the cabinet level rose sharply again in
the turbulent years between 1896 and 1900 when more of them occu-
pied ministerial posts than during the entire reign of the Destra. Still the
number of nobles in high office was rather modest, especially when
compared with the government of Germany and Great Britain in the
same era, when virtually all chancellors or prime ministers were aristo-
crats. Aristocratic involvement in the Chamber of Deputies proved to
be somewhat more stable. Throughout the second half of the nine-
teenth century, the number of noble deputies serving in the lower
house of parliament fluctuated between 117 and 155; they accounted
for between 23 and 31 percent of the total. Not until the elections of
43
For the case of the Junkers in politics, see Retallack, Notables of the Right.
44
See Souvenirs historiques de la marquise Constance d'Azeglio nee Alfieri, p. 448, as cited in
Falletti, Saggi, pp. 155-157.
70 THE LONG GOODBYE
1904 did their numbers fall below 100 and only thereafter did the aristo-
cratic presence in the Chamber of Deputies drop off steadily.45
On the whole, the Piedmontese nobility conformed to this general
pattern of retreat from the national political arena after 1876. Only thir-
teen men from local titled families served in any of the Italian govern-
ments from the fall of the Destra to the outbreak of World War I, and
four of them were new nobles who had acquired their titles in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Similarly, the advent of the
Sinistra witnessed a precipitous drop in the number of nobles elected to
parliament. In the five legislative sessions between 1876 and 1892, an
average of eight titled deputies out of approximately forty-eight, or half
as many as in the previous fifteen-year period, represented the provinces
of Piedmont. Still, Piedmontese nobles proved to be somewhat more
reluctant to abandon national political office than their titled counter-
parts elsewhere on the peninsula. Their numbers actually rose again
after 1892, averaging around twelve per session in the next two decades;
in the last pre-war elections, held in 1913, they accounted for over a
fifth of all aristocrats elected to parliament.46
The same decades also saw the Piedmontese nobility slowly dis-
engage from positions of direct political leadership at the local level.
Prominent old-line aristocrats like the Marchese Emanuele Luserna di
Rora, Count Cesare Valperga di Masino, and Count Ernesto Balbo
Bertone di Sambuy were among the group of nobles who virtually
monopolized the mayor's office in Turin until World War I, but in-
creasingly these men were drawn from the ranks of the newly ennobled;
four of the last seven mayors of Turin before 1914 had received their
titles after 1861.47 As a rule, nobles occupied a quarter of all the seats in
the municipal council until the early 1880s and typically dominated the
committees concerned with finance, education, charitable activities,
and local cultural institutions. Thereafter, their numbers began to
shrink. The nobility accounted for only about a fifth of the council in
the 18 80s and 1890s, although they continued to preside over the com-
mittees that regulated local taxes and managed the Civil Museum,
Teatro Regio, the charitable Opera Pia San Paolo, and the Royal Work
45
See Boldrini and Alberti, "II patriziato italiano," p . 215; Baldi Papini, La nobilta e il
diritto nobiliare, pp. 7 0 - 7 1 ; Missori, Governi, p p . 4 0 - 1 0 1 ; Farneti, "La classe politica,"
pp. 2 9 0 - 2 9 2 .
46
See Rivista Araldica, November, 1913, for names of the ten Piedmontese nobles
elected t o t h e Chamber of Deputies. T h e y were part of a national contingent of
seventy-eight nobles; see Baldi Papini, La nobilta, p . 71.
47
For a complete list of the mayors in T u r i n from 1848 until 1913, see Annuario del Mu-
nicipio di Torino, igi2—igij (Turin, 1913), p . i n .
House.48 By the last decade before the war, old titled families had
largely disappeared from local political office in Turin. In the municipal
elections of 1914, for instance, only six nobles won seats on the city
council and four of them were newly ennobled men with few ties to
traditionally prominent aristocratic families.49 The situation varied
somewhat in smaller provincial centers like Cuneo where the ranks of
nobles serving on the municipal council swelled during the Giolittian
era, but even here their numbers remained relatively modest.50 Judging
by these patterns of office-holding, it would appear that the Piedmont-
ese nobility had lapsed into irreversible decline and ceased to be a signif-
icant component of the governing classes, either in Rome or at the local
level by the beginning of World War I.
THE SURVIVAL OF ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE IN PUBLIC LIFE
Direct participation in the formal electoral process, however, provides

only one measure of the political role played by Piedmontese nobles in
the half century after Italian unification. Even as men from old aristo-
cratic families ceased to serve as deputies and municipal councilors, they
continued to enjoy less contentious and more dignified forms of influ-
ence through their entrenched positions in the court, army, and diplo-
matic corps, their patronage of the arts and charities, their leadership of
a host of new voluntary societies, and their activities as power-brokering
notables in political clubs and organizations at the local level. At the
same time, titled families also benefited from participation in an exclu-
sive network of kinship and friendship relations, reinforced by shared
school, club, and professional affiliations that offered them informal, but
perhaps equally important channels of private influence.
The Italian state continued to offer the nobility various institutional
bases of power that were less vulnerable than parliament or municipal
government to the vagaries of the ballot box. First and foremost was the
monarchy itself which played an obscure but powerful role in the
formulation of both foreign and military policies, and enjoyed a strong
influence over the choice of government ministers. In the exercise of
their prerogatives, both Vittorio Emanuele II and his successor
Umberto I relied on a small group of close and trusted advisors drawn
48
See Archivio C o m u n a l e di T o r i n o , b . 3, vols. 7 - 8 , "Elenco C o m p o n e n t i Consiglio
C o m u n a l e " for the years, 1861, 1865, 1870, 1875, 1881, 1885, 1890, 1895, 1900.
49
See Annuario del Munidpio di Torino, igi^-14 (Turin, 1914), p p . v i - x x .
50
See Mola, Storia dell'amministrazione provinciate di Cuneo, p . 535. In 1894 there were
six nobles on the municipal council; in 1913, eleven were elected.
72 THE LONG GOODBYE
almost exclusively from their old nobility. On the whole, the House
of Savoy viewed with suspicion "that assorted antipasto of nobles of all
shapes and descriptions" which they had acquired with unification,
preferring to rely on those families who had served them for cen-
turies.51 As a result, aristocratic courtiers from Piedmont were in a pri-
vileged position to affect royal policy throughout the second half of
the nineteenth century. While the paucity of documentation on the
monarchy precludes any precise measure of their clandestine activities,
they certainly alarmed foreign and domestic critics alike, who fre-
quently warned of the "secret and unconstitutional influences" of a
"court party" that, in their view, disdained parliamentary procedures
and bore special responsibility for royal support for reaction at home
and imperialism abroad.52
Much like the new monarchy, the Italian state that emerged in the
1860s was also largely an extension of the institutions of the Kingdom of
Sardinia to the rest of the peninsula. Accordingly, the same titled
Piedmontese generals and diplomats, who spearheaded the program of
unification, proceeded to occupy comparably high stations in the Italian
military and diplomatic services which served as bastions of aristocratic
values and traditions after 1861. In the case of the Italian army, a rela-
tively small group of aristocratic officers assumed a disproportionately
large share of the command responsibilities. Nearly a decade and a half
after unification, Piedmontese nobles accounted for less than 5 percent
of the army officer corps, but still featured prominently among the
senior commanders. Indeed, two of the three genemli d'armata, 2L third of
the lieutenant generals, more than a quarter of the major generals, and
roughly a third of the military staff attached to the royal family came
from their ranks. The dominant position of titled officers from the old
Sardinian kingdom was especially striking in the cavalry where they
commanded five of the six brigades and half the regiments.53 The same
small group of aristocratic military men was also actively involved in the
political life of the country. Titled army families from the region contri-
buted fifty-three men to the Chamber of Deputies and sixty-three to
51
T h e expression is Luigi Barzini's i n his From Caesar to the Mafia, p . 103.
52
See M a c k Smith, Italy and its Monarchy, p p . 34, 86, 123, 141 for references t o this
court party. M a c k Smith explores t h e paucity o f documentary evidence concerning
the activities of the H o u s e of Savoy, p p . i x - x . O n court life a n d organization, see
Antonelli, U Ministero della Real Casa.
53
For the army c o m m a n d structure, see U Palmaverde. Almanaco universale per Vanno 1874
(Turin, 1874), pp. 143-153. Lucio Ceva estimates that nobles from all regions of the
peninsula supplied only 6.5 to 7 percent of the army officers in 1863 and 3 to 4
percent in 1887; see his "Forze armate e societa civile," p. 285.
the Senate, while another thirteen occupied high cabinet posts in

various governments between 1861 and 1914.54
Of course, the Piedmontese could not maintain such a dominant
presence in the armed forces in the face of organizational expansion,
technological innovation, and political change in the decades before
World War I. Nonetheless they remained influential at the command-
ing heights of the military establishment and in the cavalry into the early
twentieth century. In 1905, for example, ten of the forty-eight lieuten-
ant generals came from a restricted circle of old-line military families.
The same families also furnished the commanders of the cavalry school
and three of the eight cavalry brigades on the eve of the Great War. 55
In a similar fashion, men from the Piedmontese nobility continued to
play an important role at the upper levels of the Italian diplomatic estab-
lishment after the fall of the Destra and the aristocratic exodus from
direct participation in the electoral process. Between 1870 and 1900, for
instance, they filled nearly a third (30 percent) of the ambassadorial
posts, including those in London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow.
More importantly, they largely defined the values, standards of com-
portment, and language for the diplomatic corps as a whole. 56
At the same time, the scions of many aristocratic families, who no
longer ran for political office, continued to exercise cultural and social
leadership in other areas of public life at the local level, where such
assets as leisure, connections, and prestige stood them in good stead.
Here they were able to reassert their status within the community by
cultivating an image of themselves as dignified and disinterested symbols
of order and continuity who stood above the sordid battles of the poli-
tical arena. In this guise, they directed much of Turin's religious and
secular philanthropy and presided over or served on the boards of most
of the city's leading cultural and public health institutions as well as a
host of new voluntary sporting and leisure-time associations that
emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, perhaps the leading patron
of the arts in Turin at the turn of the century, represents a classic case in
point. After retiring from the Chamber of Deputies and the mayor's
office, Count Ernesto went on to contribute his time, prestige, and
54
Segretariato Generate del Senato, Elenchi storici e statistici dei senatori, and Malatesta
(ed.), Ministri, deputati e senatori dal 1848 al 1Q22.
55
See Annuario Militare del Regno df Italia 1905, vol. 1, pp. 3 - 7 ; ibid., 1914, vol. 1, pp. 4 - 8 .
56
Data o n the social composition of Italian ambassadors is drawn from the Calendario
Generale del Regno d'ltalia for t h e years 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900. See R o m a n o ,
" L e nobilta, lo stato," p p . 529—540, for a discussion of the influence of t h e nobility
within the diplomatic establishment.
74 THE LONG GOODBYE
glamour to a wide range of civic activities. In the last decade of his life,
he still sat on five municipal commissions, chaired the boards of the
Circle of Artists, the Royal Albertine Academy of Fine Arts, the Society
for the Promotion of the Fine Arts, and the Friendship Choral Circle,
served as a founding member of the Society for Archeology and Fine
Arts, and was honorary president of the Subalpine Photography Society.
Nor did di Sambuy neglect his philanthropic and recreational responsi-
bilities. During the same period he also presided over the board of the
Hospital for Infectious Diseases (Ospedale delle Malattie Infettive) and
the local hunting society, Societa dei Paper-Hunts, and served as vice-
president of the Turinese Horse-Racing Association and honorary pre-
sident of the Royal Botanical-Agricultural Society of Piedmont. As
Turin's leading daily newspaper, La Stampa, observed in its obituary
notice in 1909, "Count di Sambuy was justly considered by the Turi-
nese as one of the most eminent personalities of the city." 57
Although few aristocratic gentlemen could boast of such an
impressive range of activities, many followed a similar itinerary. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, there was still scarcely a hospital,
orphanage, asylum, or shelter that did not have aristocrats chairing and
sitting on its board. The same men or their wives and daughters featured
prominently as the chairmen, directors, and chief patrons and patron-
esses of most other charitable agencies in the city, including the Red
Cross, the Congregation of Charity, and the royal institutes for the deaf,
dumb, and blind. In 1900, for example, Baron Orazio Galleani di S.
Ambrosie and Marchese Filippo Morozzo della Rocca di Bianze served
respectively as the president and vice-president of the local branch of
the Italian Red Cross and members of the Della Chiesa della Torre,
Luserna di Rora, Valperga di Masino, Ferrero di Cambiano, and Radi-
cati di Brozolo families served on its board, while a dozen titled ladies
directed its Women's Auxiliary.58
As the interlocking directorships of Balbo Bertone di Sambuy
suggest, aristocrats also played a prominent role as patrons of the arts in
Turin. The city's major cultural institutions recruited heavily from the
ranks of the nobility for their trustees, presidents, and directors. In 1900,
for instance, titled gentlemen concentrated in their hands all but three
of the more important cultural directorships in the city. In addition to
Count Ernesto, Count Luigi Avogadro di Quaregna and Count Ales-
57
F o r i n f o r m a t i o n o n C o u n t E r n e s t o ' s m a n y activities, see La Guida di Torino, for t h e
years 1895 a n d 1900. A l e n g t h y o b i t u a r y a p p e a r e d i n La Stampa, F e b r u a r y 2 5 , 1909.
58
I n 1900, aristocrats p r e s i d e d o v e r half o f these societies a n d w e r e w e l l r e p r e s e n t e d o n
t h e b o a r d s o f all b u t o n e o f t h e fifty-two listed i n t h e Guida di Torino, 1900,
pp. 489-545.
sandro Baudi di Vesme served respectively as the directors of the Royal

Armory and Royal Picture-Gallery, while Baron Domenico Carutti di
Cantogno and Count Edoardo Scarampi di Villanova chaired the boards
of the Royal Deputation for the Study of the History of the Fatherland
and the Concert Society.59
The old families played an equally visible role at the turn of the
century in the new world of sports and recreation clubs whose boards
were littered with aristocratic luminaries. Count Roberto Biscaretti di
Ruffia, alone, was president of the local chapter of the Italian Rowing
Club and of the Cyclists Club, and sat on the boards of the Gymnastics
Society and Club d'Armi. Other patrician dignitaries like Marchese
Carlo Compans di Brichanteau, Count Emanuele Cacherano di Bri-
cherasio, Count Paolo D'Oncieu de la Batie, Casimiro Faa di Bruno,
and Giuseppe Lovera di Maria presided over the hunting, horse-racing,
tennis, and veterans' social associations such as the Circolo Militare and
the Circolo Ufficiale a Riposo ed in Congedo. Likewise, the nobility
were well represented on the boards of the clubs devoted to mountai-
neering, gymnastics, skating, soccer, skeet-shooting, chess, and bird-
watching.60
It is difficult to assess what sort of power aristocrats actually enjoyed
as a result of the leadership they exercised in these various civic activ-
ities. On the one hand, such leadership offered the possibility of a new
and potentially influential role for the traditional upper classes in an in-
creasingly egalitarian society. On the other hand, their involvement in
this area can also be dismissed as frivolous and purely decorative in char-
acter, and thus as further proof of the nobility's growing marginalization
and trivialization.61
In the case of Piedmont, civic leadership does seem to have enhanced
the stature of aristocrats as "natural leaders" in the community and
thereby made it easier for them to continue acting as influential behind-
the-scenes "king-makers" at the local level. They were clearly favored
in this role by a parliamentary system that lacked large, organized, and
disciplined parties. The so-called Liberal party, which dominated Italian
parliamentary life, was itself little more than a loose-knit federation of
local political clubs. The predominance of such small informal groups
held together by the prestige of notables and municipal or village loyal-
ties rather than by clear principles, worked decidedly to the advantage
of respected members of old titled families who exploited their image of
59 60
Ibid., pp. 559-671. Ibid., pp. 672-678.
61
For a brief discussion of the meaning of these activities in the British context, see
Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, p. 152.
76 THE LONG GOODBYE
non-partisan public service to orchestrate electoral campaigns long after

they distanced themselves from personal involvement as candidates.
In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, aristocratic nota-
bles commonly chaired the assemblies of liberal-monarchist electors who
selected candidates. They also featured prominently on the ad hoc elec-
toral committees that set the agendas and coordinated the campaigns.
Weeks before the parliamentary elections of November 1870, for
example, Count Cesare Ponza di San Martino was picked to preside
over a gathering of monarchist electors in the province of Turin who,
according to press accounts, voted unanimously to give him the mandate
to form a "committee to coordinate the electoral movement." 62 Simi-
larly, the two top officials of the Constitutional Association of Turin in
1880 were Count Ferdinando Avogadro di Collobiano and Count Carlo
Boncompagni di Mombello; the same year Marchese Carlo Compans di
Brichanteau and Count Guido Valperga di San Martino sat on the ruling
council of the Turinese Progressives Association. Nor was the organiza-
tional presence of the nobility in electoral politics limited to the
Piedmontese capital. In the 1890s, Marchese Tommaso Ferrero della
Marmora was a key political mediator in the province of Vercelli, while
in Cuneo men like Count Lanfranco Lunel di Cortemiglia, Count Ferdi-
nando Galli della Mantica, and Baldassero Incisa di Camerana played a
leading role on the local electoral committees. 63
The ascendance of a fellow Piedmontese, Giovanni Giolitti, to
national leadership appears, if anything, to have enhanced the influence
of nobles behind the scenes in the first decade and a half of the
new century. In 1900, Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy and
other titled notables took the lead in promoting the Unione Liberale-
Monarchica in Turin to overcome, in the words of Count Ernesto,
"divisions within the grand old constitutional party" and to combat the
socialist "anti-constitutional party." 64 During the campaign prior to the
parliamentary elections of 1904, Marchese Rinaldo Tornielli di Borgo-
lavezzaro, ex-deputy and "one of the most eminent personages of that
college," chaired the campaign committee of the constitutional forces
in Novara, while his cousin, Count Giuseppe Tornielli Brusati di
62
Gazzetta Piemontese, November 8, 1870.
63
For accounts of the activities of these aristocratic power brokers, see Gazzetta Pie-
montese, April 19, May 10 and 11, 1880 and N o v e m b e r 3 - 4 , 1890.
64
La Stampa, May 25, 1900. It was C o u n t di Sambuy w h o called a meeting of some
200 liberal-monarchist electors that month, at which he launched the idea of such a
political association. Another gathering two months later officially proclaimed its
founding. See A C T , Collezione Simeom, n. 4566, for printed documents pertaining
to the origins of the U n i o n e Liberale.
Vergano served as president of the Unione Liberale Monarchica in the

third electoral college of Turin. In its coverage of the parliamentary
campaigns of 1909, the local press listed the names of a half dozen
nobles as being among the most influential electors in the province of
Cuneo. The same year and again during the elections of 1913, titled
notables like Marchese Vincenzo Ricci, Count Carlo Arborio di
Gattinara, Count Max Leonardi, Marchese Ernesto Del Carretto di
Moncrivello, and Alessandro Arborio Mella provided much of the
organizational leadership for the anti-socialist political forces in both the
provinces of Vercelli and Novara.65
As these many examples indicate, emphasis on the shrinking number
of aristocratic office holders in the late nineteenth century partially
obscures the extent to which prominence in public affairs at least on the
local level continued to be associated with inherited titles and the lineal
qualifications of the nobility to community leadership. At least up to
1914, some of the old aristocratic families were able to adapt fairly effec-
tively to new circumstances in ways that delayed and cushioned the
political decline of their social class. They were able to do so, in large
part, by exploiting the prestige, glamor, and respect attached to their
names to retain influence within a still fragmented and loosely organized
liberal political order.
ARISTOCRATS AND CATHOLIC LAY POLITICS IN PIEDMONT
The involvement of prominent aristocrats in Liberal-Monarchist poli-

tics paled in comparison to the central role they played in the slow and
difficult construction of a Catholic movement in the region during the
second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the
twentieth. A new alliance between the sword and altar had already
begun to take shape in the decades before unification. Although the
names of old titled families appeared more rarely within the ranks of the
high clergy after 1815, nobles were in the vanguard of the organizations
of laity that arose during the Restoration in support of the church.
Marchese Cesare Taparelli d'Azeglio, for instance, was the moving spirit
behind Catholic Friendship (Amicizia cattolica), an influential society
set up in the 1820s to provide a militant defense of religious orthodoxy
and monarchical legitimacy, whose founding members also included
several illustrious local nobles. After the closing of Catholic Friendship,
its work was continued by the Laity of the Virgin Mary (Oblati di Maria
65
See La Stampa, October 19 and November 1, 1904; March 3, 4, and 5, 1909; and
October 5 and 9, 1913.
78 THE LONG GOODBYE
Vergine) in which Count Solaro della Margarita, Count Rodolfo de

Maistre, Marchesa Giulia Falletti di Barolo, Baron Charles Hubert De
La Tour, and the father and brother of Cavour featured prominently.66
These early initiatives set the stage for the titled nobility to act as the
principal defenders of the Catholic Church in the decade after 1848. In
1850, for instance, such renowned moderate conservatives as Count
Ottavio Thaon di Revel and Count Cesare Balbo di Vinadio withdrew
their support from the government and joined the largely aristocratic
clerical opposition to the Siccardi Laws, which aimed to abolish ecclesi-
astical courts and the right of asylum, to limit the number of religious
holidays, and to restrict the property rights of church bodies.67 Two
years later, an impressive array of titled dignitaries that included the
brothers of two government ministers, Alberto Ferrero della Marmora
and Marchese Roberto Taparelli d'Azeglio, as well as Thaon di Revel,
Balbo, and the intransigents, Solaro della Margarita and Marshal Vittorio
Sallier de la Tour, spearheaded the victorious resistance in the Senate to
Cavour's civil marriage bill. During the same period, aristocratic cour-
tiers used their influence to urge the king to make peace with the
Vatican. Again, when the government moved to reform the religious
corporations in the Kingdom of Sardinia in the winter of 1854/5, the
prime minister's brother, Marchese Gustavo Benso di Cavour, Count
Giorgio De Viry, Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-Mossi, and Count
Solaro della Margarita led the parliamentary opposition.68 Aristocratic
political engagement on behalf of the church continued in the first
decade after unification when another old Piedmontese noble, Count
Edoardo Crotti di Costigliole, served as one of the last two Catholic
deputies to sit in parliament before his expulsion in 1867.69
The Vatican's loss of temporal power in 1870 and the ensuing church
boycott of domestic Italian politics, embodied in Pius DCs non expedit of
1874, did not fundamentally alter the Catholic loyalties of the bulk of
Piedmont's old titled families. In a survey carried out in the mid-1870s,
for instance, Leandro Carpi found that a large part of the Piedmontese
nobility "and especially the younger generation" were "enrolling in the
black international [and] associating with that party which hopes to res-
66
See D e Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico, p p . 2 5 - 3 5 . O n the limited presence of the
nobility within the local church hierarchy, see Chevallard and Frova, Cronaca di
Torino, p . 7. After 1814, only o n e archbishop o f Turin, Alessandro Riccardo di
N e t r o (1867-1870) came from a titled family, while Stanislao Gazelli di Rossana
served as vicar of the Cathedral between 1883 and 1897. For the life of the latter, see
di Robillant, Un prete di ieri.
67
Thayer, The Life and Times of Cavour, vol. 1, p p . 120—122.
68
Ibid., p p . 2 1 4 - 2 1 6 , 311, 335, 341.
69
See D e Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico, p . 129.
urrect theocratic absolutism on the ruins of constitutionalism and

national independence."70 The prefect of Alessandria voiced similar
concerns the following decade when he warned of the strength of the
"clerical party" in his province which he attributed in part to the "not
negligible influence exercised by the clergy over . . . the Piedmontese
aristocracy."71
While Carpi and state officials accurately captured the political sym-
pathies of probably most subalpine nobles, they exaggerated the intransi-
gence of their views on church—state relations, which in fact diverged
from those of the Vatican and clerical hardliners in other regions. In the
decades after 1870, the Catholic movement in Piedmont continued to
be dominated by the old landed aristocratic families who were linked to
larger strata of artisans and peasants through the mediation of the
clergy.72 Under the leadership of men like Count Cesare Valperga di
Masino, Count Alessandro Provana di Collegno, and Count Cesare
Trabucco di Castagnetto, the Piedmontese Catholic forces took a con-
servative but distinctively conciliatory approach to relations with the
monarchical state, one that reflected the nobility's traditional allegiance
to the House of Savoy. Count Ernest Balbo di Sambuy captured the
essence of this approach in a testamental epistle to his oldest son:
Unfortunately we live in difficult times when human passions are
seeking to dig a deep abyss between Religion and Patria. You must be at
the same time a good Christian and an exemplary patriot. For only this
way, will you belie such a fatal prejudice and contribute to that necessary
and beneficial peace which will make our country great and respected
without disturbing your conscience.73
The relatively accommodating approach of Piedmontese nobles led
them to take an active part in various political initiatives as well as in the
creation and development of a wide range of Catholic lay organizations
in the region after 1870. In 1878, for instance, Count Valperga di
Masino launched the idea of mobilizing Catholic voters within a
national Conservative party, the goal to "correct and improve [liberal
institutions], but not destroy them." 74 While his proposal initially won
70
Carpi, L'Italia vivente, vol. 1, p . 152.
71
Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Gabinetto di Prefettura, "Spirito pubblico," Alessan-
dria, July 15, 1884, b . 2, £ 1.
72
See Traniello, "Le origini del movimento cattolico," pp. 3 7 - 3 8 .
73
Ufficio di Successioni b . 788, f. 17, testament of C o u n t Ernesto di Sambuy, dated
N o v e m b e r 2, 1889.
74
See Valperga di Masino's letter in the Turinese paper, Risorgimento, N o v e m b e r 30,
1878 as quoted in De Rosa, Storia del movimento cattolico, p. 227.
80 THE LONG GOODBYE
support from various Catholic luminaries, intransigent elements

managed to prevent its realization.
Piedmontese "black" aristocrats met with greater success closer to
home where four of them - Baron Antonio Manno, Marchese Vittorio
Scati Grimaldi di Casaleggio, Count Francesco Arnaldi di Balme, and
Count Vittorio Roberti di Castelvero — set up the Unione Conserva-
trice in Turin a few years later. The Union in turn promoted the crea-
tion of the Lega di Difesa Agraria, the lobbying organization largely
responsible for the introduction of agricultural tariffs in the late 1880s.
In the following decades, the Unione Conservatrice became the
institutional bastion of clerical conservatives, whose simultaneous
control of the Catholic banks in Piedmont gave them a powerful
economic and political hold over a much larger bloc of small peasant
farmers.75
These larger organizational initiatives rested in turn upon the grass-
roots activities of aristocratic families who became the chief patrons and
financial backers of Catholic associations of laborers and mutual aid soci-
eties at the local level, especially in those areas where their landed estates
were situated. Count Carlo Broglia di Casalborgone, for instance, estab-
lished and, until his death in 1891, served as honorary president of the
Workers and Farmers Society (Societa Operai ed Agricoltori) of Casal-
borgone, an organization intended to "promote the instruction, mor-
ality, and well-being" of its members. Likewise, Count Giulio Cesare
Balbiano di Aramengo was a founding member and promotor of the
Catholic Workers Union of Chieri, while Count Ferdinando Avogadro
di Collobiano acted in a similar capacity on behalf of the Workers'
Society of Carisio.76
Such involvement forged a network of loyalties and alliances
that helped assure aristocratic dominance of the Piedmontese clerical-
moderate movement which emerged in the considerably more favorable
political climate of the Giolittian era. In fact, a group of prominent
Catholic nobles, united in the so-called Circolo del Tiipinet, were the
chief financiers and leaders of a much wider range of organizational
initiatives in the years after 1895. That year, Baron Carlo Ricci des
Ferres oversaw the creation of the "Secretariat for the People" with the
75
F o r an account of the history of the U n i o n e Conservatrice, see A C T , Collez.
Simeom, C, n. 4568, H Motnento, April 22, 1907.
76
See A S T , Archivio Broglia di Casalborgone, b . 3, letter of condolence, Soc. Operai
ed Agricoltori di Casalborgone, September 25, 1891; for the activities of Balbiano
and Avogadro di Collobiano, see respectively Archivio privato Balbiano di Ara-
mengo, b . 19, letter dated January 20, 1878 and Gazzetta del Popolo, October 10,
1904.
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY 8l
aim of providing free legal consultation. The following year another

member of the Tiipinet Circle, Count Luigi Caissotti di Chiusano, who
was scion of a wealthy landed family from Cuneo, founded and served
as the president of the Turinese Agricultural Federation (FAT), which
soon guided the activities of 139 rural unions and cooperatives of small
peasant proprietors and sharecroppers.77 By 1914, the FAT was part of a
much larger regional network of approximately 1,000 Catholic banks,
credit unions, and cooperatives that specialized in providing assistance
to urban artisans and small merchants as well as to peasant farmers in the
countryside. Significantly, Caissotti and some twenty men from titled
families were founding members, stockholders, and top officers.78
Other prominent nobles from the Tiipinet occupied commanding
positions within the local clerical-moderate propaganda apparatus.
Thus, in 1903, Baron Romano Gianotti, Baron Carlo Gamba, Count
Giulio d'Harcourt, and Baron Carlo Ricci des Ferres provided the
initial financing for a new newspaper, II Momento, which became the
principal organ of the Turinese Catholic movement before World War
I. Under the overall direction of Baron Ricci des Ferres and Cardinal
Agostino Richelmy, U Momento assumed an editorial stance in favor of
active Catholic participation in political life, collaboration with other
"constitutional" forces, energetic resistance to the Socialist party, and
nationalist positions in foreign policy.79
The leadership exercised by aristocratic notables in these economic
and social initiatives virtually guaranteed them a prominent role in the
resurgence of Catholic political activity that began after the relaxation of
the non expedit in 1904. Indeed, many of the same men chaired and sat
on the boards of the organizations that formulated electoral policies and
strategies in the decade before World War I, namely, the Conservative
Union, the Catholic Electoral Union, and the Diocesan Directorate for
Catholic Social Works (Direzione Diocesana delle opere sociali catto-
liche).80 These organizations became especially important after the suf-
77
See Zussini, Luigi Caissotti di Chiusano, pp. 53—66. O n the social makeup and activ-
ities of the Circolo del Tiipinet as well as the founding of the Segretariat, see Salva-
dori, H movimento cattolico a Torino, pp. 141, 159—160.
78
Falco, "L'organizzazione bancaria cattolica," p p . 6 4 3 - 7 0 9 . For statistics o n Catholic
social institutions in Piedmont, see Salvadorr, It movimento cattolico a Torino,
pp. 74-75-
79
Salvadori, H movimento cattolico a Torino, pp. 9 0 - 9 1 ; Frassati, Torino come era, p. 242.
80
C o u n t Cesare Balbo di Vinadio and Baron Ricci des Ferres were the principal repre-
sentatives of the nobility o n the board of the Conservative U n i o n ; while Marchese
Crispolti, C o u n t Caissotti di Chiusano, and Marchese Rovasenda di Rovasenda sat
o n the board of the Catholic Electoral U n i o n . Rovasenda along with C o u n t A v o -
gadro della Motta and Marchese Corsi also were directors of the Diocesan Directo-
82 THE LONG GOODBYE
frage reform of 1911 which resulted in an enormous expansion of the

electorate. First in the parliamentary elections of November 1913 and
then again in the municipal elections in the summer of 1914, the Catho-
lic political associations proved to be far more effective than their
Liberal allies at mobilizing mass constituencies and challenging the
Socialists.81 Accordingly, at least some old-line nobles were once again
enjoying substantial political influence as patrons and paymasters of an
increasingly important segment of the "constitutional" forces in Pied-
mont on the eve of World War I.
INFORMAL NETWORKS OF ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE

In addition to their role as behind-the-scenes power brokers within the
Liberal-monarchist and clerical-moderate political camps, Piedmontese
nobles also continued to have access to informal means of influence that
co-existed with and often worked through the official institutional
channels of power. Indeed, such largely invisible forms of influence
gave a much wider network of old established families, who had largely
abdicated the responsibilities of government for sports or other leisurely
pastimes, the possibility of affecting the political and bureaucratic deci-
sion-making processes and thereby of exercising patronage within their
communities. These families were still able to do so because they
remained part of a cohesive and self-conscious social elite united by ties
of kinship as well as by shared backgrounds, education, ideals, and pre-
judices that put them on close, if not familiar terms, with a smaller
number of individuals who did continue to hold official positions of
power in the Italian state. Accordingly, intra-family ties, school friend-
ships, and exclusive professional and club affiliations all combined to
give well-connected aristocratic families privileged access to a wide
range of powerful figures in the military hierarchy, the political class,
and at court.82
Of course, such patronage and clientele relations were not the
unique and exclusive preserve of the titled nobility. The dominant
political force in Italy in the pre-war era, the Liberal party rested upon
rate. See Soave, "Las nascita della Democrazia Cristiana," p . 6 1 ; Salvadori, II movi-
tnento cattolico a Torino, pp. 150-160; Falco, "L'organizzazione bancaria cattolica",
pp. 6 4 3 - 7 0 9 .
81
Salvadori, H movimento cattolico a Torino, pp. 2 2 9 - 2 4 9 provides a detailed description
of the electoral campaigns and outcomes.
82
For a m o r e theoretical discussion of the importance of these informal networks, see
C o h e n , Two-Dimensional Man, p p . no—114; Hansen and Parrish, "Elites versus the
State," pp. 2 5 7 - 2 7 7 .
organizations of local notables who, regardless of their own social status,

personally dispensed favors and exercised influence on behalf of their
dependents and constituents. Such arrangements, however, benefited
some groups more than others. Old-line aristocratic families, in
particular, were well suited to take advantage of these unofficial and in-
direct mechanisms as a result of their social cohesion as well as their rare
concentration of wealth, prestige, and important political connections.
Marchese Carlo Compans di Brichanteau stood at the center of one
of the more stable of these largely invisible networks of aristocratic
power and influence. Compans was perhaps the most prominent noble
politician of his generation in Piedmont. After a brief stint as a cavalry
officer in the 1870s, he embarked upon a parliamentary career that
extended over five decades and included appointments as a ministerial
under-secretary in four governments; in the Chamber of Deputies he
presided over the Agrarian Parliamentary Group and participated in a
number of other important governmental commissions. As the scion of
an old subalpine feudal family, he also enjoyed excellent connections at
court, where he was a frequent presence, both at public functions and in
private audiences with the king and queen. At the same time, Compans
was one of the most influential power brokers on the provincial level
whose support was eagerly sought out by other political hopefuls. He
had several terms on both the municipal and provincial councils of
Turin and either chaired or sat on the boards of a long list of institutions
that included the leading civic association, the association of urban
property-owners, a large insurance company, four agricultural societies,
and three philanthropic agencies as well as the fencing, hunting and
mountain-climbing, and horse-racing clubs.83
The power exercised by Compans di Brichanteau both in Rome and
at the local level directly benefited a circle of over sixty aristocratic
families between 1889 and World War I. Significantly, family ties and
exclusive social contacts took precedence over political or ideological
allegiances within this circle. While Compans was associated with the
left faction of the Liberal party throughout his career, his titled clients
included more traditional conservatives like General Carlo Nicolis di
Robilant and Catholic aristocrats such as Baron Carlo Ricci des Ferres.
The most immediate beneficiaries were a more close-knit group of
eighteen families, a large "cousinhood" linked to the titled notable by
extended maternal and paternal kinship ties. In the quarter century
83
For information on Compans' many offices and activities, see AST, Sez. Riunite,
Archivio di famiglia Compans, b. 4, f. 8 and Archivio Politico Compans, b. 1,6, 29,
142; Guida di Torino, 1900; and Consiglio Provinciate di Torino. Estratto di verbale
dett'Adunanza, 22 dicembre 1925 (Turin, 1926), pp. 2 - 6 .
84 THE LONG GOODBYE
before the war, Compans was constantly intervening on behalf of an

army of cousins who, in the words of Rolando Pallavicino "have taken
advantage of the affinity that runs between your family and mine" to
request and receive his protection and assistance.84 Some cousins like
Stanislao Nicolis di Robilant, relied on Compans' influence within the
local Liberal-monarchist associations to advance their own political
careers at the municipal level. More commonly, Compans used his con-
nections to help relatives gain entry into the officers' or diplomatic
corps or other state offices, and then later to win choice assignments,
promotions, and timely transfers. In 1912, for instance, his support of his
cousin Ferdinando Pallavicino's candidacy for admission to the Military
School of Modena proved crucial, leading his sister-in-law to express
her "gratitude for [his] affectionate and very efficacious protection in
such a difficult competition." Pallavicino's case was far from excep-
tional; Compans had already performed similar services for dozens of
other relatives during the previous two decades. And judging by their
effusive letters of gratitude, his intervention was usually quite
effective.85
Favors and assistance did not flow exclusively in one direction within
this cousinhood. In 1887, for instance, Compans advanced the career of
one of his clients by seeking the help of his cousin and a former foreign
minister, Count Carlo Felice Nicolis di Robilant, who for his part
promised "to do everything possible on his behalf."86
Compans di Brichanteau's correspondence also reveals the presence
of a much wider group of aristocratic families who entered into his
network of influence through friendships and connections developed in
select private schools, the army officers corps, and the gentlemanly
Societa del Whist. Thus, when Compans helped launch the diplomatic
career of his oldest son, Alessandro, in 1902, he relied on contacts and
friendships that originated in the Reale Collegio Carlo Alberto, the pre-
ferred educational institution of the Piedmontese nobility in the second
half of the nineteenth century. In other instances, such as the one
brought to the titled notable's attention by Count Remigio Panissera di
Veglio in 1890, it was a matter of coming to the aid of an "old comrade
84
For Pallavicino comments, see his letter t o C o m p a n s , September 2, 1896 i n A S T ,
Archivio di famiglia C o m p a n s , cat. 5, b . 14, f. 1. T h e concept of cousinhood is e x -
plored in greater detail in C o h e n , Two-Dimensional Man, p p . n o - 1 1 8 .
85
A S T , Archivio di famiglia C o m p a n s , b . 4, f. 5, letter from S. di Robilant, J u n e 2,
1905; letter from Nellina (Leontina) Pallavicino (nee Pallavicino-Mossi), September
5, 1912. Cat. 5, b . 14, f. 1 in t h e same archive contains a large n u m b e r of letters from
various cousins regarding diplomatic careers and military advancement.
86
See ibid., Archivio Politico C o m p a n s , b . 56, letter Nicolis t o C o m p a n s , April 30,
1887.
in arms" in the cavalry.87 Informal interaction among schoolmates and

fellow officers continued within the dining and sitting rooms of the
Whist, which provided a screen of privacy far from the public view and
the formal structures of power. As their letters indicate, both Count
Carlo Cordero di Vonzo and Count Paolo Rati Opizzoni, for example,
made use of the club's exclusive confines to meet with Compans to
discuss matters of common concern and to arrange favors.88 For yet
others like Countess Maria di Viry and Count Guido San Martino Val-
perga, more casual encounters in urban palaces and country houses
provide the settings to discuss problems and seek assistance from the
powerful parliamentary notable. In November 1892, Countess di Viry,
for instance, wrote to remind Compans of "the subject of our conversa-
tion at the Pallavicini ball and [your] kind promises that have encour-
aged me to rely on your influence at the highest levels . . . knowing
that for you volere epotere."89
More importantly, access to the influence and connections of
Compans di Brichanteau also permitted aristocratic families to preserve
some of the halo of social custom in those communities that had once
been their fiefs well after they had ceased to exercise any police or judi-
cial powers. Above all, with his aid they were able go on playing their
traditional role as benevolent patrons who protected the residents of
their old rural enclaves and mediated their relations with the legal
system and state administration. In fact, most of Compans' correspon-
dence with other nobles involved favors for third parties of more
modest social origins. Not surprisingly, most of the beneficiaries of
aristocratic contacts resided in areas where the titled petitioner's family
had its estates and where it had long exercised predominant influence.
Assistance assumed a variety of forms. On occasion, it simply
involved soliciting the aristocratic leader's support for the bestowal of an
honorary title on some village notable. After he was approached by
Count Giulio d'Harcourt d'Azeglio in 1891, for example, Compans
intervened on behalf of a certain Ippolito Negro from the village of
87
A S T , Archivio Politico C o m p a n s , b. 57, letter from C o u n t R . Panissera di V e g l i o ,
n o date, but 1890. For Compans' efforts o n behalf o f his o w n son, see letter dated
N o v e m b e r 9, 1902 in ibid., Archivio di famiglia Compans, cat. 4, b. 11, f 1.
88
In D e c e m b e r 1889, for instance, Cordero w r o t e C o m p a n s that he had planned to
m e e t h i m at the club "in order to refer to y o u w h a t I have learned about the
" k n o w n business." T h e same m o n t h C o m p a n s w r o t e back, asking Cordero to re-
m e m b e r h i m to "d'Aglie, Dalla Valle, and are m a n y friends w h o help y o u kill time
in y o u r elegant . . . W h i s t - C l u b . " See A S T , Archivio Politico C o m p a n s , b. 60. For
C o u n t R a t i O p i z z o n i , see his letters to C o m p a n s in February and March 1890 in
ibid.,B.$6.
89
Ibid., Archivio di famiglia C o m p a n s , b. 4, f. 5, letter N o v e m b e r 20, 1892.
86 THE LONG GOODBYE
Azeglio who wished to be decorated with the Cross of the Knights of

the Crown of Italy. In his letter to d'Harcourt announcing a favorable
outcome, Compans wrote that he was moved to act chiefly by "the
affectionate esteem which you have always professed for . . . Negro."
For his part, d'Harcourt responded that the decoration "has given me a
great pleasure as it has for the entire village of Azeglio and the sur-
rounding villages." It was only fitting then that d'Harcourt, as the key
go-between and the principal local landowner, presided over the public
luncheon which took place later in the village to celebrate the event. 90
On other occasions, blue-blooded patrons intervened on behalf of
their local clients who had legal difficulties or who needed help in
matters of hiring, transfers, and promotions within the state administra-
tion. When a petty merchant in the village of Monforte forgot to renew
a state license in 1889 and, as a result, faced a heavy fine, Marchese
Alberto Scarampi del Cairo, whose family had long been prominent
landlords in the territory, intervened with his "affectionate cousin."
Compans, in turn, immediately contacted the appropriate authorities;
they assured him that they had suspended the fine on the basis of his
recommendation.91 Countess Irene San Martino di Strambino invoked
"the already ancient friendship that links our families" in order to get
Compans' help in winning a transfer of the local station master to
another locale whose climate was healthier for his sick wife.92 Conver-
sely, Count Vittorio San Martino d'Aglie sought the "protection" of
Compans for his client who wished to avoid a job transfer. Countess
Costanza Ricardi Lomellini requested similar protection for a local
mailman who had been fired for criticizing the postal system.93 Citing
his "influence with Prime Minister Crispi," Marchesa Maria Radicati di
Brozolo solicited Compans' backing for the request of "my little village
of Camerano-Casaco which desires to see Marco Bersano nominated as
mayor."94 A host of other aristocratic relatives, friends and acquain-
tances like Duke Alfonso Arborio Gattinara di Sartirana, Countess
90
See AST, Archivio Politico Compans, letters Compans to d'Harcourt, January 31,
1891 and d'Harcourt to Compans, February 4, 1891. At the request of his cousin,
Adele di Villanova, Compans performed a similar service for the mayor of Valperga,
where her family went in the summer to their castle. See ibid., Archivio di famiglia
Compans, c. 5, b. 14, f. 1, letter A. di Villanova to Compans, August 6, 1905.
91
Both Scarampi's letter to Compans and the letter Compans received in response to
his intervention are in ibid., Archivio Politico Compans, b. 55.
92
Ibid., b. 55, letter, I. di Strambino, October 17, 1889.
93
AST, Archivio Politico Compans, b. 56, letter Ricardi Lomellini, no date, but late
1889; ibid., b. 60, letter S. Martino d'Aglie, November 26, 1890.
94
Ibid., b. 56, letter Radicati to Compans, December 1889.
Edmena Nicolis di Robilant, Marchesa Aurelia Di Saluzzo di Paesana

(nee Cacherano di Bricherasio) took the same approach, writing to
Compans to push their candidates for vacant state posts in their respec-
tive rural bailiwicks.95
In this fashion, well-connected nobles were able to use the
institutional framework of the state not only to preserve some of their
traditional influence and prestige, but also to perpetuate older cultural
patterns of paternalism and deference — at least outside of the big cities
- into the first decade of the twentieth century. In the rural hinterlands
of Piedmont, the leadership of old-line families proved to be par-
ticularly resistant to erosion, especially in those localities where their
country houses and estates were located. As late as 1910, nobles still
served as the mayors of more than forty rural communes, which in
many cases had once been their family fiefs. That year in the province
of Alessandria, for instance, the mayors of Rocchetta Tanaro, Pomaro
Monferrato, and Francavilla Bisio were respectively Marchese Enrico
Incisa della Rocchetta, Marchese Luigi Dalla Valle di Pomaro, and
Marchese Alessandro Guasco di Bisio, while in the province of Cuneo
a similar pattern of family continuity prevailed in more than half a
dozen communes.96 In fact, a few old families in the Cunese, like the
Falletti di Villafalletto and Beccaria Incisa di Santo Stefano, forged local
dynasties in their former fiefs that extended from the late 1850s to the
mid-io2os.97
As these cases attest, the political influence and power enjoyed by
aristocratic families in Piedmont in the last decades before World War I
combined elements of the old and the new, the traditional and the
modern. While nobles lost their corporative privileges and domination
of high office with the introduction of civil equality and parliamentary
government after 1848, they were still able to take advantage of deeply
embedded social patterns and cultural values to redefine older political
roles and to carve out new ones for themselves in the second half of the
century. Thus, they were able to convert their longstanding ties with
the House of Savoy, the Catholic Church, and their rural dependents
into vital support for the conquest of important positions within the
new national army and diplomatic corps, leadership in the rapidly
expanding world of voluntary associations, and new forms of local
power brokering and patronage in an increasingly democratic political
95
Ibid.,b. 56 and 60.
96
See Calendario Generate del Regno d'Italia (Rome, 1910) for a complete list of all
mayors in Piedmont.
97
See Mola, Storia delV amministrazione provinciate di Cuneo, pp. 577-587.
88 THE LONG GOODBYE
arena. Significantly, these roles did not require nobles to abandon those
customs and practices that had traditionally defined the collective iden-
tity of the Piedmontese nobility. On the contrary, they often allowed
old-line aristocrats to represent themselves in public in ways that
enhanced and reinforced the prestige and dignity associated with heredi-
tary titled status.
CHAPTER 3
OLD MONEY: THE SCALE AND

STRUCTURE OF ARISTOCRATIC
WEALTH
The success of the nobility in perpetuating their leadership and

influence in public life in the second half of the nineteenth century
depended to no small extent on their ability to also remain a part of the
wealthy upper class within Piedmontese society. Much as elsewhere in
Europe, inclusion in the hereditary nobility of Piedmont had tradition-
ally implied wealth, if only because an aristocratic way of life pre-
supposed a certain level of affluence. As a high court official expressed it
in the 1840s, a respectable aristocrat needed "a patrimony sufficient to
sustain with splendor the decorum of the noble title."1
Such wealth, however, became even more essential in an era when
nobles no longer enjoyed corporative privileges. To begin with, a size-
able unearned income made possible the extensive leisure time that
titled ladies and gentlemen required in order to occupy honorary offices
and take part in the activities of voluntary political, religious, philan-
thropic, cultural, and recreational associations and clubs. More concre-
tely, wealth was a prerequisite for old aristocratic families who wished
to play the roles that gave them the greatest prestige and influence in
the decades after 1848, namely those as organizational founders, patrons,
and financiers.
This chapter will examine the issue of aristocratic wealth by addres-
sing the following questions: How rich were Piedmontese nobles?
What was the range of wealth-holding within the nobility? What forms
did aristocratic wealth take? How successful were titled families at pre-
serving and/or enlarging their material assets? The answers to these
questions rest principally on data drawn from a survey of all surviving
probate returns in the city of Turin for the estates left by both men and
1
AST, Prima Sez., Titoli di Nobilta, b. 5, procuratore generate del re, criteria for enno-
blement, 1844.
89
90 OLD MONEY
women from titled aristocratic families as well as by a more select group

of bourgeois, wealthy but untitled individuals, for the periods 1862 to
1885 and 1901 to 1912. Probate returns have been supplemented in turn
with information from family papers, luxury tax records in Turin,
Piedmontese land registries, biographical sources, and both published
and unpublished genealogies.2
What place did old line titled families occupy within the wealthy
elite of Piedmont? Great wealth had been synonymous with aristocratic
status at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the wealthiest
individuals in the realm were virtually all nobles.3 Probate returns
reveal, however, that this situation began to change in the second half
of the century. Indeed, the years from 1862 to 1912 saw the titled
nobility lose their position of absolute preeminence within the local
elite of wealth as the comparative statistics in table 3.1 attest.
Aristocratic families still dominated the upper reaches of the wealthy
class in the first decade after unification. Titled nobles enjoyed a pre-
ponderance of the largest fortunes, accounting for over half their
number and two-thirds of their total value in the period from 1862 to
1873. Thus, wealthy blue bloods, and not businessmen, merchants, and
bankers, remained the richest individuals in Piedmontese society.
During the following decade, the mean value of fortunes of nobles con-
tinued to exceed that of wealthy non-nobles, but it had declined
slightly. Moreover, aristocrats now represented a minority of the richest
Turinese in probate. The agricultural depression of the 1880s and early
1890s accelerated these trends by temporarily slashing farm incomes and
property values. As a result, the dominance of the bourgeois wealthy
had become firmly established by the first decade of the twentieth
century. After 1900, rich non-nobles not only far outnumbered the old
families within the ranks of the very wealthy, but also they accounted
for most of the total value of large-scale wealth and the bulk of the
largest fortunes in probate.
Still the increasingly bourgeois background of large-scale wealth
holders did not mean that the old nobility succumbed to financial ruin
2
For a full discussion of the probate records in Turin, see the Bibliography. As far as
the luxury tax records, I have consulted the ACT, Ruolo tasse vetture private and the
Ruolo tasse domestici for the years 1899, 1906, 1912, and 1913. Data on land-
ownership came from the AST, Sez. Riunite, Catasto Rabbini, Provincia di Torino
and Provincia di Novara. I have relied primarily on the twenty-six volumes of
Manno, H patriziato subalpino for additional genealogical information on Piedmontese
aristocratic families.
3
See Bulferetti, "I piemontesi piu ricchi," pp. 77-79.
T a b l e 3.1 Hierarchy of wealth: aristocracy versus bourgeoisie
Estate size 1862-1873 1874-1885 1901-1912

(%)
L. 250,000-500,000
Aristocracy 52 (41) 52 (27) 32 (14)
Bourgeoisie 74 (59) H i (73) 190 (86)
L. 500,001-750,000
Aristocracy 19 (45) 21(31) 10 (14)
Bourgeoisie 23 (55) 48 (69) 61 (86)
L. 750,001-1,000,000
Aristocracy 7(4i) 6 (30) 5(31)
Bourgeoisie 10 (59) H (70) 11 (69)
L. 1,000,001-2,000,000
Aristocracy 12 (63) 12 (30) H (30)
Bourgeoisie 7(37) 28 (70) 32 (70)
More than L. 2,000,000
Aristocracy 8(73) 5(38) 5(29)
Bourgeoisie 3(27) 8(62) 12 (71)
Table 3.2 Distribution of wealth: aristocracy versus bourgeoisie (>L.75O,ooo)
Category 1862-1873 1874-1885 1901-1912
Numbers
Aristocracy 27 (57) 23 (32) 24 (30)
Bourgeois 20 (43) 50 (68) 55 (70)
Total value
Aristocracy L. 49,551,307 L. 41,591,572 L. 41,004,246
Bourgeois L. 27,919,290 L. 73,583,296 L. 105,464,438
Percentage of total (%) (%) (%)
Aristocracy 64 36 28
Bourgeois 36 64 72
and disappeared from the scene in the last decades of the nineteenth
century. On the contrary, aristocratic families continued to contribute a
disproportionately large share of the local rich at least up to 1914. They
certainly maintained a much stronger presence within Turin's elite of
wealth than their titled colleagues managed to do in Paris or Naples in
the last decade and a half before World War I. At a time when
Piedmontese aristocrats continued to account for nearly a third of the
individuals in the city who left estates over L. 750,000 and more than a
quarter of their wealth, nobles were largely absent from the ranks of the
92 OLD MONEY
wealthy in Naples, while less than i percent of the fortunes in Paris
above i million francs still belonged to nobles.4
THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH WITHIN THE NOBILITY

Those aristocrats who left estates over L. 750,000 constituted a small and
exclusive elite at the summit of a much larger and more diverse class of
nobles. The custom of primogeniture, together with the practice of
ascribing aristocratic status to cadets and the inevitable variations in
family fortunes over time, had long ensured that the second estate was
not simply a collection of wealthy families, but rather a heterogeneous
body whose ranks included both rich landed magnates as well as people
of comparatively modest means. Probate returns confirm the existence
of substantial disparities of wealth within the Piedmontese nobility in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same time, they
also show that the nobility remained, on the whole, a decidedly affluent
and economically privileged segment of Italian society up to the Great
War.
These figures show that not all nobles who resided in Turin enjoyed
great wealth, but that the vast majority of them were considerably more
prosperous than the rest of the local population. In fact, over half of the
nobles ranked in the top 1 percent of wealth-holders in Turin, while all
but a few of them were well-to-do by the standards of smaller provinces
such as Piacenza and Lucca. As a group, Piedmontese noble families
conformed to an "aristocratic distribution" pattern, characterized by
few very low values, a relatively high frequency of big estates, and a dis-
proportionately large number of intermediate fortunes.5
In broad terms, the nobles who passed through probate in the
decades after 1862 fit into one of four categories: (1) a poor nobility
with less than L. 100,000 in assessed value; (2) a middling or respectable
nobility whose estates ranged from L. 100,000 to 500,000; (3) an affluent
nobility, with between L. 500,000 and 999,999 in assessed value; (4) a
4
For statistics on Paris, see Daumard, "Wealth and Affluence in Paris," p. 105. In
Macry's survey of the probate records of Naples in 1900, he found only one noble
among the individuals who left estates over L. 100,000. See Macry, Ottocento, pp.
xxiv-xxv. The nobility in Piacenza appear to have fared even better than the
Piedmontese titled elite. In the years 1902-1905, they accounted for 34.4 percent of
the estates over L. 20,000 and 39 percent of the total value, while the mean value of
their fortunes continued to exceed that of the bourgeois elite. See Banti, Terra e
denaro, pp. 29-32.
5
See Daumard, "Wealth and Affluence," pp. 98-101. For data on wealthy elites in
Piacenza and Lucca, see Banti, Terra e denaro, pp. 29-30 and "Ricchezza e potere,"
pp. 385-432.
Table 3.3 Wealth distribution: general population versus aristocracy (percent)
Total value Gen. Pop. Aristocracy

Less than 1,000 44 1
1,001-2,000 16 1
2,001-5,000 17 2
5,001-10,000 14 2
10,001-20,000 4
20,001-50,000 8 14
50,001-100,000 1 17
Less than 100,000 (sub-total) 99 4i
100,001-250,000 28
250,001-500,000 16
500,001-750,000 1 6
750,001 -1,000,000 2
1,000,001-2,000,000 5
More than 2,000,000 0.05 2
Total 100.05 100
Note: The figures on the wealth of the general population of Turin are based on statistics
compiled by F. S. Nitti for the years from 1900-1901 to 1902-1903. See Nitti, Scritti di
economia e jinanza, 1, p. 280. The data on the aristocracy refer to the entire period
covered by the survey, namely the periods 1862—1885 and 1901-1912.
wealthy nobility of millionaires and multi-millionaires. Table 3.4 shows

the pattern of distribution when the probate returns of the nobility are
grouped according to these categories.
At the bottom of this hierarchy of wealth was a substantial group of
individuals who seem to lend credence to the standard view that Italy,
and Piedmont in particular, were territories over-run by impoverished
or modestly endowed title-holders.6 These "poor" nobles were poor to
the extent that their assets at the time of their death were below the
L. 100,000 minimum which the House of Savoy considered necessary
to maintain "the dignity" of a noble title in the nineteenth century.7
Although they accounted for two-fifths of all nobles in the survey, they
held collectively a minuscule portion of the total aristocratic wealth that
passed through probate. They did not possess, in their own right, the
luxuries and material amenities traditionally associated with the aristoc-
racy such as substantial landholdings, country houses, urban palaces,
large staffs of servants, and splendid carriages. In fact, three-fifths of
6
See Bush, Rich Noble, Poor Noble, p. 39.
7
From the documents in AST, Prima Sezione, Titoli di Nobilta, it is evident that the
government in the first half of the nineteenth century required that individuals who
aspired to the lowest level of nobility possess a patrimony of L. 100,000.
94 OLD MONEY
Table 3.4 Aristocratic wealth distribution (1862-1883; 1901-1912)
Category Number (%) Share (%)

Poor 345 41 5.3
Respectable 368 44 29.7
Affluent 68 8 15.5
Wealthy 56 7 49.5
Total 837 100.o 100.o
them were completely landless; less than 7 percent possessed any urban
real estate. In the majority of cases, paper assets supplied more than
three-quarters of the assessed value of the estate, with private credits
being the single most important factor.
The poverty of this group of nobles should not be exaggerated,
however. To begin with, most of the poor nobles were comparatively
well off by the standards of the rest of society. A mere 85 titled
individuals, for instance, or about a tenth of the entire survey, fell below
the L. 20,000 in patrimony considered necessary for inclusion in the
provincial elites of Lucca and Piacenza. Nor did many of these nobles
appear to be over burdened with debts. In only 41 out of 345 estates did
liabilities amount to more than three-quarters of the gross assets.
More importantly, poor nobles were often sustained, in various ways,
by the collective wealth of their families. As a result, many of them
were able to enjoy a standard of living far higher than their modest
personal patrimonies would ordinarily have allowed. In practical terms,
this meant that they had access to financial assistance from their weal-
thier relatives, resided in comfortable suites or apartments in their
family's urban palace and country house, enjoyed the services of the
staff of servants in residence, and generally shared in a luxurious way of
life that was subsidized by the head of the family.
The middling or respectable nobility constituted the largest single
group of aristocrats in probate with 43 percent of the total, although
they contributed less than a third of the value. They were not as
dependent as the titled poor on the kindness and generosity of relatives,
since they possessed sufficient wealth in their own right to maintain a
style of life that was, if not extravagant, at least quite comfortable and
consonant with their social positions. Like their poorer brethren, most
respectable nobles (68 percent) did not own any urban real estate in
Turin though they might have a villa in the provinces. But nearly three-
quarters of them (70 percent) had some landed property and they were
considerably less likely to leave estates heavily burdened with debt; only
eight respectable nobles had liabilities that exceeded 75 percent of the

value of their assets. They enjoyed an unearned income that, if well
managed, allowed them to devote themselves to such traditional aristo-
cratic pursuits as state service, politics, sports, and charitable works
without having to worry about making a living.
The material resources available to the respectable or middling
nobility paled, however, in comparison to those in the possession of
affluent and wealthy titled families who together constituted the real
aristocratic elite of Piedmont. Indeed, throughout most of the nine-
teenth century, these families furnished most of the region's greatest
landowners, its richest magnates, and its most prominent public figures.
Thus, Cavour, Alfieri di Sostegno, d'Azeglio, Thaon di Revel, and
Solaro della Margarita - to mention only the best known statesmen and
political leaders - fell into one of these two top categories of wealth.
By themselves, the affluent nobility supplied just 8 percent of the
aristocratic estates in probate, but accounted for 16 percent of the total
value or nearly three times as much as the poor nobility. Virtually all (91
percent) of the individuals in this category had rural properties that
often included a country house. A majority of them owned substantial
acreage, with landed estates in the countryside representing more than
half of the assessed value of their wealth.8 In contrast their less-well-
endowed fellow nobles, they were also more likely to own a residence
in Turin; a solid majority of them (63 percent) held urban real estate in
the regional capital. Finally, the estates of the affluent nobility tended to
have relatively low levels of debt. In only two cases did liabilities
consume more than 75 percent of the gross value.
At the summit of the aristocratic pyramid of wealth was a small and
exclusive group of individuals with very large fortunes valued at over
L. 1 million. Although this "wealthy" nobility represented a modest
percentage of the nobles in the survey (7 percent), their estates collec-
tively contributed half of the total value of all aristocratic assets in
probate. At least until the 1880s, they were the richest individuals in
8
The relative importance of rural properties as a proportion of the gross value of estates
among the affluent can be seen in this table:
Percentage value Number %
0 6 8.8
O.OI-25 7 10.2
25.01-50 19 27.9
50.01-75 21 30.9
75.01-high 15 22.2
Total 68 100.0
96 OLD MONEY
Piedmontese society. In fact, their ranks contributed slightly less than

half (45 percent) of all the millionaires as well as seven of the ten largest
fortunes to pass through Turin's probate office in the first two and a half
decades after unification.9
How wealthy were these "wealthy" aristocrats? In an era when the
salaries of the most successful managers in the cotton industry ranged
from L. 4,000 to L. 10,000 a year and an annual income of L. 2,500 was
sufficient to be considered "bourgeois," they were certainly well-off.
Nonetheless, it has long been a commonplace to insist on the modesty
of the material resources possessed by the Piedmontese nobility,
especially in comparison with those of the other regional nobilities on
the Italian peninsula.10 The paucity of information on aristocratic
wealth holding elsewhere in Italy makes it rather difficult to test this
claim.
On the one hand, the Piedmontese nobility lacked the enormous
concentrations of wealth found in some other regions in the nineteenth
century. No aristocrat in Turin, for instance, possessed a fortune even
remotely comparable to that of Prince Tommaso Corsini with a total
value of over L. 22 million in 1856, let alone that left by Genoese finan-
cier, Raffaele De Ferrari, Duke of Galliera, which was estimated at
L. 140 million in 1876. The largest estate bequeathed by a noble in
Turin belonged to Marchesa Giulia Falletti di Barolo; it amounted to
slightly under L. 6.4 million in 1864.11
On the other hand, both the number and the size of the fortunes left
by the top titled wealth holders in Turin in the first decades after Italian
9
I have located eighty-three estates valued at over L. 1 million in the period prior to
1885; thirty-seven were left by nobles, forty-six by non-nobles. The ten largest for-
tunes were:
1. Marchesa Giulia Falletti di Barolo - L. 6,390,781
2. Giovanni Priotti - L. 4,955,696
3. Marchese Paolo Solaroli di Briona - L. 4,709,790
4. Prince Emanuele Dal Pozzo della Cisterna - L. 4,660,933
5. Marchese Aynardo Benso di Cavour - L. 4,346,087
6. Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-Mossi - L. 4,283,649
7. Princess Beatrice Dal Pozzo di Cisterna - L. 3,999,034
8. Count Carlo Costa della Trinita - L. 3,452,490
9. Vittorio Lanza - L. 3,450,506
10. Carlo Ogliani - L. 3,112,724
10
See Woolf, "Studi sulla nobilta piemontese," p. 138; Cognasso, "Nobilta e bor-
ghesia," p. 230. On the annual salaries of managers, see Romano, L'industria cotoniera
lombarda, pp. 438-439; for the bourgeois minimum, see Ellero, La tirannide borghese,
pp. 29-30.
11
For information on the fortunes of De Ferrari and Corsini, see Massa Piergiovanni,
"Eredita, acquisti e rendite," vol. 1, pp. 398-400 and Moroni, "Le ricchezze dei
Corsini," pp. 284.
unification were considerably greater than those found in smaller prov-

incial centers and compared favorably with those of the richest Floren-
tine patricians, although they lagged somewhat behind those of the
Milanese nobility. Thus, the combined value of the three largest aristo-
cratic estates in probate in the late 1870s easily surpassed that left by the
entire Piacentine elite and more than doubled that of the Lucchese elite
in these years.12 In the years from 1862 to 1875 the probate office in
Florence registered nine estates over L. 1 million left by patricians, with
the largest being that of the banker Emanuelle Fenzi whose estate was
valued at L. 4,583,494. During the same period, Marchesa Falletti di
Barolo topped a list of twenty titled Piedmontese millionaires and
multi-millionaires in probate.13 On the other hand, seven aristocrats in
Milan left estates valued at over L. 5 million in the three decades after
unification, four of which were larger than that of the Marchesa di
Barolo. Likewise, the mean value of the estates of nobles in Turin
between 1874 and 1885 was 23 percent less than that of their Milanese
patrician neighbors which averaged L. 385,119 in the early 1880s.14
Regardless of their comparative dimensions, such material resources
permitted wealthy aristocrats in Piedmont to lead a very luxurious way
of life that separated them from the vast majority of their fellow nobles.
As a rule, this entailed dual residences with a palace in Turin and a
number of country houses, extensive foreign travel, the attentions of a
large staff of servants, elegant carriages, and many other amenities that
were beyond the means of most nobles. When Prince Emanuele Dal
12
The three largest fortunes that changed hands by inheritance in Turin between 1876
and 1879 were those of Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi, Marchese Paolo
Solaroli di Briona, and Marchese Aynardo Benso di Cavour; their total value was
L. 13,813,525. The total values of all inheritance over L. 20,000 in Lucca and
Piacenza during this period were respectively L. 5,973,694 and L. 11,542,429. See
the two studies by Banti, "Ricchezza e potere," pp. 385-432 and Terra e denaro,
pp. 59-60.
13
Professor Raffaele Romanelli was kind enough to allow me to see his raw data, from
which I compiled a list of nobles with estates valued at over L. 1 million for the
period prior to 1875. Romanelli has subsequently continued his exploration of the
probate records in Florence up to 1904. See Romanelli, "Urban patricians and
'bourgeois' society," pp. 3—21.
14
Between 1862 and 1890, 70 aristocrats left estates over L. 1 million. The top titled
wealth holders in probate were: Raimondo Visconti di Modrone (L. 9,541,597),
Antonio Busca Arconati Visconti (L. 9,126,774), Antonio Litta Visconti Arese
(L. 7,805,859), Vitaliano Borromeo (L. 7,705,425), Lodovico Melzi d'Eril
(L. 6,338,234), Cesare Massimiliano Stampa Soncino (L. 6,355,397), Francesco Arese
(L- 5,830,578), and Filippo Ala Ponzoni (L. 5,469,110). For data on wealth holding
in Milan, see Licini's Milano nell'800, pp. 61-62, as well as her "Entita e composi-
zione delle fortune ambrosiane secondo le dichiarazioni di successione degli anni
1871 e 1881" (unpublished typescript, 1992).
98 OLD MONEY
Pozzo della Cisterna died in 1864, he left legacies to a staff of thirty-

three servants. During the same decade Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-
Mossi maintained a fleet of five two-horse carriages and enjoyed the
attentions of a staff of a dozen servants in his palace in Turin that
included five men in livery.15 Predictably, the names of rich aristocrats
like Count Ferdinando Avogadro di Collobiano, Count Cesare Val-
perga di Masino, Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, and
Marchese Emanuele Coardi di Bagnasco featured prominently on the
luxury tax rolls. At the end of the nineteenth century, for example, all
but six of the thirty-seven largest contributors on the servant tax rolls in
Turin were from noble families. The same titled elite also accounted for
twenty-six of the thirty-four top contributors to the carriage tax in
1899.16
The distribution of wealth within the Piedmontese nobility clearly
recapitulated the values of patriarchy, primogeniture, and pedigree. Not
surprisingly, men and women did not share equally in the material assets
possessed by titled families, as Table 3.5 reveals. While fewer than a
third of the noblemen left estates of less than L. 100,000 in the decades
after 1861, half of all aristocratic women who passed through probate
were below this benchmark and thus fit the profile of the poor noble.
In fact, they accounted for a majority of all poor nobles in the survey.
Even these statistics over-estimate the real material resources of such
women, since often their wealth existed mostly on paper in the form of
claims on the estates of their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Still, such
arrangements probably meant dependence rather than real poverty for
most "poor" noble women who shared the high standard of living
enjoyed by most titled families.
At the same time, this unequal distribution of wealth also left nearly
half of the women from titled families financially well-off and in a
decidedly privileged position vis-a-vis the rest of the population. They
clearly benefited from new inheritance laws modeled on those of the
Napoleonic Code which guaranteed that all legitimate heirs, including
women, received a share in the legacy. Given the wealth of the nobility,
the shares of titled women were often fairly substantial.17 Over two-
fifths of the aristocratic women in probate were "respectable" in so far
as they possessed personal fortunes of between L. 100,000 and
L. 500,000 which placed them among the top 1.5 percent of wealth
15
See the copy of Dal Pozzo's will in Uffido di Registro di Successioni di Torino (hereafter
cited as URST) 1864, 5-V5, £ 346. On the staff and carriages of Marchese Lodovico,
see AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b. 17.
16
See ACT, Ruolo tasse vetture private, 1899; Ruolo tasse domestici 1900.
17
See Banti, "Una fonte per lo studio delle elites," 86-87.
Table 3.5 Wealth distribution: aristocratic women compared with men

(1862-1885, IQ01-IQ12)
Category Women Men
Poor 51 32
Respectable 43 44
Affluent 3 12
Wealthy 3 12
Totals 100.0 100.0
holders in Turin. Moreover, the wealth of these women was seldom

just paper assets, as the case of Marchesa Cristina Sant'Amour de
Chanaz illustrates. In 1863, the Marchesa died at the age of 72, leaving
an estate valued at L. 322,844. While claims on her husband's patrimony
for her dowry amounted to L. 59,125, most (81 percent) of the estate's
value derived from a building she owned in Turin and two farms in the
rural commune of Cherasco.18
Daughters, wives, and sisters were much less likely to possess large
fortunes in their own right. Only fourteen aristocratic women in the
thirty-three years covered by my survey left estates worth over L. 1
million. As the cases of the three top female wealth holders attest, these
dowagers owed their fortunes to the absence of a male heir. Marchesa
Giulia Falletti di Barolo, the single richest titled individual to pass
through probate, was a childless widow. She came into her fortune in
1838 when she inherited all of the vast possessions of her late husband,
Marchese Tancredi, who was himself a second generation only child
without any close male relatives. Marchesa Giulia lived for another
quarter century and was therefore able to exercise genuine control over
her vast wealth.19
On other occasions, women served more as legal conduits for the
transfer of wealth within the family. The second largest estate held by a
noble woman belonged, on paper, to Beatrice Dal Pozzo della Cisterna,
one of two daughters, who were the only off-spring of the third richest
aristocrat in the survey, Prince Emanuele Dal Pozzo della Cisterna.
18
See URST, 1863, vol. 3, n. 368.
19
See Archivio Opera Pia Barolo, b. 1 for the conditions of the Falletti di Barolo estate
in the nineteenth century. On the genealogical background of the family see,
Manno, Ilpatriziato subalpino.
100 OLD MONEY
Beatrice was in fact a teenager who died shortly after she inherited
nearly L. 4 million from her father and, as a consequence, never really
controlled the fortune that technically belonged to her.20 The third
female multi-millionaire, owed her great wealth to even more unusual
circumstances. According to the probate office, Olimpia d'Harcourt
possessed a personal fortune of over L. 2.3 million at the time of her
death in 1876. In reality, she was the spinster sister of Count Giuseppe
d'Harcourt, the fourth wealthiest noble in the survey, who exercised
total control over herfinances.A subsequent judicial inquiry concluded
that Count Giuseppe had used her estate to conceal part of his own
enormous assets in a scheme to avoid inheritance taxes.21 Even in the
case of rich heiresses then, great wealth often remained an essentially
male preserve in the patriarchal world of the Piedmontese nobility.
Despite their subordinate position to the men in their families, aristo-
cratic women were still more likely to be well off than their bourgeois
counterparts. While titled families contributed only slightly more than a
third (37 percent) of the estates in probate over L. 750,000, they
accounted for nearly half of all the women with fortunes on this scale
(see Table 3.6). As these statistics attest, aristocratic dowagers out paced
rich women from non-noble families in virtually all major categories of
wealth holding. They owned more real estate, their investment portfo-
lios were thicker, and the average value of their estates was substantially
larger.
The unequal sexual division of wealth within the titled families of
Piedmont did not benefit all men the same, as Table 3.7 reveals. The
steadfast observance of the traditions of primogeniture and lineal conti-
nuity ensured that first sons possessed the lion's share of the family
wealth. In fact, they accounted for nearly three-quarters of the largest
aristocratic fortunes in probate and over 90 percent of those in the
hands of men.22 Their importance as key links in a family line was
evident not just in the scale of their wealth. It also found expression in
the composition of their estates which almost invariably included the
20
See URST, 1864, 6-V.5, £ 401. Beatrice passed away at the age of 13, later in the
same year as her father.
21
For the circumstances surrounding the estate of Olimpia D'Harcourt, see AST, Sez.
Riunite, Archivio D'Harcourt, Atto di rinuncia ad eredita, N o v e m b e r 29, 1892.
22
Within the category of wealthy nobles, the distribution by family position was:
Family position Number %

First sons 50 90.9
Cadets 5 9.1
Table 3.6 Wealthy women: aristocrats versus bourgeois

(1862-1883, igoi-igi2)
Category Aristocracy Bourgeoisie
Number 15 (48) 16 (52)

Total estate 26,989,132 21,285,649
Total property 17,181,839 11,043,194
Personalty 8,095,328 6,828,384
Average estate 1,799,275 1,330,353
Average property 1,145,456 690,200
Average personalty 539,689 426,774
Note: The category, "Total estate," includes all assets; "Property" refers to both urban
and rural buildings as well as landholdings; "Personalty" includes all mobile assets such
as stocks, bonds, credits, and savings.
Table 3.7 Aristocratic men: first sons versus cadets (1862-1885, 1901-1912)
Category First sons Cadets
Poor 23 43
Respectable 42 48
Affluent 17 6
Wealthy 17 3
Totals 100 100
ancestral villa or castle in the countryside as well as the most important

family heirlooms and archives.
Only in exceptional circumstances did younger sons control great
patrimonies. A mere five cadets left fortunes valued at over L. 1 million.
Marchese Federico Asinari di San Marzano, for instance, became the
principal heir to his family's substantial estate as a result of his older
brother's premature death from cholera during the Crimean War. The
even more fortunate Count Filiberto Avogadro di Collobiano was the
last offivesons, but three of his older brothers never married, while the
one who did died childless. As a result, the vast possessions of his family
were concentrated in his hands and he died a multi-millionaire in 1868.
In the case of another cadet, Marchese Alessandro Dalla Valle di
Pomaro, who inherited virtually all of his family's sizeable landholdings
in 1891, preference for a younger son seems to have been the result of a
paternal decision to protect the position of the family patrimony by
102 OLD MONEY
keeping it out of the hands of a less competent first son.23 But whenever
possible, these wealthy titled cadets themselves returned to the practice
of primogeniture. Accordingly, Count Filiberto Avogadro di Collo-
biano ensured in his will that the bulk of his fortune passed to his first
son, Count Ferdinando, who in turn gave similar preference to his third
child, but only surviving male heir, Count Augusto.24
The concern for family continuity was understandable, since most of
Turin's wealthiest aristocrats were also distinguished by their ancient
lineage. Old "thoroughbred" families who traced their titles to the
medieval or early modern period - rather than newly ennobled civil ser-
vants, bankers, and businessmen - continued to furnish the great
majority of the richest nobles in Turin before World War I (see Table
3-8).
There were, of course, remarkable success stories of men like
Marchese Paolo Solaroli di Briona who rose rapidly to fame and
fortune. Born in 1796 into a humble family from Novara and with little
formal education, Solaroli had an extraordinary career that took him
from mercenary soldiering in India to the highest ranks of the
Piedmontese army, the inner circles of court, and the world of high
finance. Ennobled in the 1840s by Carlo Alberto, he was elevated to the
title of Marchese of Briona by Vittorio Emanuele II in the 1860s. When
he died in 1878, Solaroli left an estate of over L. 4.7 million, the seventh
largest in the entire probate survey.25 Conversely, there were instances
of once wealthy old families like the Delia Chiesa di Cinzano and the
Ferrero della Marmora who had lost most, if not all, of their patrimonies
by the end of the nineteenth century.26
23
Marchese Alessandro Dalla Valle di P o m a r o left an estate in 1905 with a gross value
of L. 1,658,150.72. See URST, b . 694, f. 5, for a copy of his father's will, which
specifically designated h i m as the principal heir, despite the fact that h e was still a
bachelor at the time, while his older brother Luigi was already married. For the
estates of Marchese Federico Asinari and C o u n t Avogadro di Collobiano, see URST,
b. 1-2 £ 38 a n d b . 8 f. 36 respectively.
24
See URST, b . 655, £ 38, for the probate records pertaining to the estate of C o u n t
Ferdinando Avogadro di Collobiano. T h e oldest of four sons and a daughter, he left
one of the t w o largest aristocratic fortunes in probate during the last decade before
W o r l d W a r I, o n e estimated at L. 3.9 million. W h i l e his daughter received
L. 900,000, the rest w e n t to his son and included 2,041 hectares of prime farm land
in Vercelli.
25
Information o n the life of Marchese Paolo Solaroli di Briona comes from a privately
published pamphlet in the possession of the family. I a m grateful to Mrs. Flavia
Adami (nee Solaroli di Briona) for access to the pamphlet. D r . Alessandro Polsi has
kindly furnished m e with material o n Solaroli's role in the banking world from his
o w n research o n the major stockholders in the joint-stock banks from 1853 to 1878.
26
Marchese Lodovico Delia Chiesa di Cinzano and Marchese T o m m a s o Ferrero della
Marmora were scions of distinguished old aristocratic families in economic decline.
Table 3.8 Top aristocratic wealth holders:family lineage (>L. 750,000)

(1862—1885, igoi—igi2)
Titled Lineage Wealth-holder Spouse
Pre-1722 nobility 77 64
Post-1722 nobility 8 3
Restoration nobility 7 0
Post-1861 nobility 8 2
Non-Pied, nobility - 23
Bourgeois _ 8
Such cases of rapid upward and downward mobility stand out,

however, precisely because they were so exceptional. New families
ennobled after 1815 like the Solaroli and the Rignon accounted for
only a tiny fraction of the wealthy nobility.27 The prominence of the
oldest families is most striking at the highest levels of wealth, which
were monopolized by the bearers of the most venerated names of the
anden regime nobility like Solaro, Avogadro, Arborio, Alfieri, Balbo,
Provana, Falletti, and Dal Pozzo whose fortunes predated the French
Revolution.28 Such a strong correlation between antiquity of noble
title and large-scale wealth contrasts with the supposedly more "tradi-
tional" situation in the south where some of the richest nobles were
comparatively new men like Barracco, Torlonia, or Pavoncelli, who
amassed enormous fortunes and acquired their titles after the Napo-
leonic Era.29 The enduring presence of the same names at the top of
the aristocratic pyramid of wealth over the course of a century that
witnessed the destruction of the anden regime and the loss of hereditary
T h e Delia Chiesa had been among the ten wealthiest in 1799; Marchese Lodovico
left only debts t o his heirs. Similarly, while Ferrero della Marmora's father had been
one of the largest landowners in the province of Turin during the first half of the
nineteenth century, Marchese Tommaso possessed landed assets valued at a mere
L. 1800 at his death in 1901. See AST, Sez. Riunite, Insinuazioni, 221854, libro 7,
vol. 1, pp. 381-490; URST, 1901, vol. 557, n. 24.
27
C o u n t Felice R i g n o n , whose father had been ennobled in 1826, left t h e fourth
largest estate in the survey, L. 5,523, 647.
28
Thirteen of the eighteen titled families designated as t h e richest in Piedmont b y
French authorities in 1799 were still among the elite of wealth in the second half of
the nineteenth century. See Bulferetti, " I piemontese piu ricchi," pp. 7 7 - 7 9 .
29
O n the Baracco family, see Petrusewicz, Latifondo; for the case of the Pavoncelli, see
Snowden, " T h e City of the S u n , " p . 202. T h e Rivista Araldica, vol. x , N o v e m b e r
1912 provides a brief summary of the rise of the Torlonia family.
104 OLD MONEY
privileges offers eloquent testimony to the economic strength and stabi-
lity of the Piedmontese nobility's inner core of old-line "feudal"
families.
Two main conclusions can be drawn from probate data on the distri-
bution of wealth within the Piedmontese nobility in the second half of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, old-line titled
families remained a large, if no longer dominant, component of Turin's
wealthy upper classes at least up to World War I. Such wealth provided
the financial resources and leisure to maintain their status and to play a
prominent and highly visible role as patrons and leaders in local public
life. Second, the data belie the stereotype of a nobility polarized
between a small elite of very rich magnates and a large mass of impover-
ished nobles. While differences in wealth did exist, there was little
abject poverty and a majority of nobles possessed the material assets
necessary to live in conformity with the standards of their class. The
absence of extremes of rich and poor contributed in turn to the group
cohesion within the nobility.
THE STRUCTURE OF ARISTOCRATIC WEALTH

The wealth of aristocratic families in nineteenth-century Piedmont was
distinguished not only by its size, but also by its composition. Although
the estates of the nobility as a whole included every imaginable type of
real and personal asset, the estates of rich aristocrats (those with more
than L. 750,000 in assets) were typically quite different from those left
by rich non-^r obles and helped to mark them as a separate and distinct
elite in Piedmontese society. Above all, the wealthy aristocrats con-
tinued in the decades after 1862 to follow traditional avenues of wealth
holding and investment, while largely avoiding the commercial and
industrial activities that produced a host of new bourgeois millionaires
in this period.
The distinctiveness of aristocratic patterns of wealth and investment
emerges clearly from a comparison of the structure of estates left by rich
nobles and non-nobles after 1861 (see Table 3.9). To begin with, these
figures show how real estate remained considerably more important in
aristocratic fortunes than personal assets, with landed wealth, the age-
old marker of noble status, constituting the largest single factor. Only
two rich aristocrats in the entire survey left estates in which rural prop-
erty amounted to less than L. 100,000; one-third of them possessed
landholdings valued at more than L. 1 million. This characteristic
sharply distinguished their patrimonies from those of wealthy non-
Table 3.9 Structure of wealth — nobles versus non-nobles (>L. 750,000)

(1862—1885, 1901—1912)
Category Noble Non-noble Noble % of Total

Real property 74% 43% 52
Rural property 56 16 68
Urban property 18 27 29
Personal property 19 50 20
Stocks 7 19
Bonds 5 12
Bank deposits 2 2
Farm equipment 1 0
Credits 5 13
Cash 0 1
Inter vivos gifts 4 5
Other 3 2
Total 100 100 40
nobles, for whom rural property assumed only secondary importance.

In fact, nearly a third (32 percent) of the untitled rich left less than
L. 1,000 in landholdings, while only 8 of the 125 wealthiest non-nobles
in probate were great landowners with properties in the countryside
worth more than L. 1 million.30
Such a pronounced preference for rural property ensured that
large-scale landownership remained a predominantly aristocratic
phenomenon in the Piedmontese countryside before World War I. Rich
bourgeois rentiers, businessmen, and professional people represented
only a small minority of the "large landowners" - those individuals
whose rural properties had a capital value of more than L. 400,000 or
measured over 300 hectares at the time of their death. Both the probate
records and land registries of the nineteenth century confirm this reality.
Of the eighty-six largest landowners whose estates went through probate
between 1862 and 1885, sixty-seven or 78 percent came from the ranks
of the titled aristocracy. Even after the agricultural depression of the late
nineteenth century, the situation had not changed dramatically. In the
30
At least two of the non-nobles with substantial wealth in rural property, Alessandro
Martini and Giovanni Battista Biglia, hardly qualified as landed gentlemen. For the
most part, their properties in the countryside were part of their industrial activities -
liquor processing in the case of Martini and the construction of aqueducts in the case
ofBiglia.
106 OLD MONEY
first decade of the twentieth century, titled families still accounted for
two-thirds of the large landed estates.31
Aristocratic predominance was even more striking at the very highest
levels of landownership. The twenty-three greatest landed magnates,
with estates of over 1,000 hectares, were all nobles; I have not been able
to locate a single bourgeois landowner who owned more than 900 hec-
tares before 1914. The data from the mid-nineteenth century land
survey, the Catasto Kabbini, show a similar pattern. In the province of
Turin, for instance, all of the landed estates over 300 hectares in the
richest communes of the plains belonged to titled families like the Ferrero
Fieschi della Marmora, Beraudo di Pralormo, and Thaon di St. Andre,
while nobles accounted for two-thirds of the remaining properties
between 100 and 300 hectares. Likewise, in the plains of Novara, aristo-
cratic landowners owned seven of the nine largest rural estates in 1850s.32
Geographically, the biggest properties were concentrated in the rich
plains of Vercelli and Novara. It was not uncommon for the major land-
owning families to have estates in more than one province; Marchesa
Falletti di Barolo, for instance, owned properties in the provinces of Ver-
celli, Turin, and Cuneo. 33 Conversely, Piedmontese landed aristocrats
rarely had property outside of the region. Those who did either possessed
estates in areas that immediately bordered on Piedmont like Marchese
Alessandro Dalla Valle di Pomaro (Lombardy) and Marchese Domenico
Del Carretto di Balestrino (Liguria) or else had acquired them late in the
nineteenth century as in the case of Count Giuseppe d'Harcourt's prop-
erties in the province of Ferrara.34 In this respect, they differed from the
great titled families of Florence and Rome such as the Corsini, Borghese,
and Torlonia who had estates scattered across the peninsula.
By the standards of the British peerage or the Prussian Junkers, the
landed estates of even the wealthiest Piedmontese nobles were rather
modest in scale. Only twenty-three old-line families in the region had
31
The group of individuals in probate who left rural property valued at over L. 400,000
had the following social composition:
Period Aristocracy Bourgeoisie Total

1862-1873 42 8 50
1874-1885 25 11 36
1901-1912 25 13 38
32
See note 2.
33
See Archivio Falletti di Barolo, Opera Pia Barolo, b . 51, f. 1, Beni stabili 1864.
34
D ' H a r c o u r t came into the possession of some 1550 hectares in the province of
Ferrara in the 1880s as a result of the default o n a loan. See AST, Archivo D ' H a r -
court, b . 165, f. 10—11. For the properties of Dalla Valle di Pomaro and Del Carretto
di Balestrino, see URST, b . 694, f. 5, 1905 and b . 179, f. n o , 1869.
sufficient acreage to have been included in the ranks of the "greater

gentry" of British landed society; none were anywhere near the
peerage. Likewise, landed estates between 950 and 1,500 acres, which
were the norm among the Prussian Junkers, were the exception in the
Piedmontese plains.35 The rural properties of the richest Piedmontese
nobles were also considerably smaller than those of the great southern
latifondisti and Roman princes. I have located only four titled families
in nineteenth-century Piedmont whose rural estates measured over
2,000 hectares — Falletti di Barolo, Asinari di San Marzano, Dal Pozzo
della Cisterna, and Avogadro di Collobiano - and none above 5,ooo.36
Baron Alfonso Barracco, probably the biggest landlord in southern Italy
in the nineteenth century, owned a latifondo that spread over some
30,000 hectares in Calabria, while the greatest landed family of Rome,
the Borghese, possessed more than 23,000 hectares in central Italy. In
Piedmont, only the royal family could claim comparable landholdings.37
But estate size was not always the best guide to its real worth. When
capital values and income figures are substituted for acreage, the
economic gap between wealthy Piedmontese aristocrats and their
Roman or Southern counterparts narrows considerably. Although the
estates of the princely Chigi family in Lazio were more than three times
the size of those held by Falletti di Barolo, their capital value was only
10 percent greater. Similarly, Baron Barracco's huge latifondo generated
annual revenues in the 1860s that were just slightly superior to those
yielded by Marchesa Falletti di Barolo's properties.38
35
For the size of aristocratic landed estates in England and Prussia, see Beckett, The
Aristocracy of England, pp. 50-51 and Berdahl, The Politics of the Prussian Nobility,
p. 15.
36
At the time of her death in 1864, Marchesa Giulia Falletti di Barolo's estates measure
4,210 hectares; see Archivio Opera Pia Barolo, b.51, £ 1 . In 1829, Marchese Antonio
Maria Filippo Asinari di San Marzano left landed estates that amounted to 2,511 hec-
tares (AST, Prima Sezione, Archivio Asinari di S. Marzano, b. 30, "Inventario della
eredita . . ."). The estate of Prince Emanuele Dal Pozzo della Cisterna included
2,147 hectares of land, concentrated for the most part in the plains of Vercelli. Count
Ferdinando Avogadro di Collobiano left 2,040 hectares to his son in 1904 (URST,
1904, b. 655, f 38).
37
In 1815, the royal patrimony was measured at 23,254 hectares: see AST, Prima
Sezione, "Carta geografica di una parte degli stati di Sua Maesta dove si trovano i
beni componenti attualmente il Regio Patrimonio." For the Barracco and Borghese
family properties, see Petrusewicz, Latifondo, p. 63 and Pescosolido, Terra e nobilta,
pp. 13—15 as well as Villani, "Ricerche sulla proprieta e sul regime fondiario nel
Lazio," pp. 240—241.
38
Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the Chigi princes owned roughly
15,000 hectares of land. The capital value of their properties in 1885 was estimated at
L. 6,382,753.7; the estimated value of Falletti di Barolo's rural estates in 1864 was
L. 5,704,280. The annual revenues of the Barracco latifondo in 1868 were 68,499.7
108 OLD MONEY
These comparisons reflect the relative success of Piedmontese nobles

in exploiting economically their rural properties. As their comparatively
high annual yields and incomes suggest, they tended to supervise their
estates with great care and attention. Much like their British counter-
parts, Piedmontese noble landowners played a role which John Beckett
has aptly likened to that of a corporate director, making vital decisions
on crop selection, appointing and overseeing the management team,
assessing grievances, and smoothing over relationships on the estates.39
The productivity of their estates reflected, in turn, the ongoing
involvement of aristocratic landowners in commercial agricultural activ-
ities. Building on practices that had begun in the eighteenth century,
titled families continued in the decades after 1815 to provide much of
the leadership for the two most important agricultural improvement
societies, the Royal Academy of Agriculture and the Subalpine Agrarian
Association. More concretely, they were the major investors in canal
building projects and crop and livestock experimentation.40 Count
Camillo Benso di Cavour has long enjoyed a deserved reputation as the
most prominent aristocratic agricultural entrepreneur, but he was cer-
tainly not an isolated figure within the nobility. Already at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, for instance, other titled families like the
Tornielli and Leonardi played a key role in the construction of huge
irrigation reservoirs in the plains of Novara that dramatically increased
yields and rental incomes. In a similar fashion, two of the leading landed
families in the province of Turin, the Beraudo di Pralormo and the
Ferrero della Marmora, made a major capital investment in the 1820s,
jointly financing the construction of a large reservoir that permitted the
irrigation of over 700 acres in the commune of Pralormo.41
Support for agricultural improvements of this sort helped to transform
the estates of wealthy nobles into some of the most valuable and pro-
ductive farm land in the entire country in the third quarter of the nine-
teenth century. The financial rewards were significant. These years
ducati or L. 291,125. In 1864, the revenues of the Falletti di Barolo were L. 285,214.
See Girelli, Le terre dei Chigi, p . 11; Petrusewicz, Latifondo, p . 58; Archivio Opera Pia
Barolo, b. 51, f. 1.
39
See Beckett, The Aristocracy in England, p. 6.
40
See D o n n a d'Oldenico, L'Accademia di Agricoltura di Torino, pp. 1 5 - 1 8 , 3 6 - 3 7 ,
4 4 - 8 9 ; Prato, Fatti e dottrine economiche. For the commercial agricultural activities of
the nobles in the previous century, see Chapter 1.
41
Donna d'Oldenico, L'Accademia di Agricoltura, pp. 166-170. T h e Beraudo di Pra-
lormo and the Ferrero della Marmora together owned 48 percent of the land in the
c o m m u n e of Pralormo; see AST, Sez. Riunite, Catasto Rabbini, f. 95. O n Cavour's
numerous initiatives in the area of agricultural modernization, see R o m e o , Cavour e
il suo tempo, vol. 1, pp. 607-707 and vol. 11, pp. 117-191.
represented something of a golden age for Piedmontese agriculture as

prices for virtually all the cereals soared. Rising farm prices in turn
drove up both land values and rental rates which reached unparalleled
heights in the 1860s and 1870s.42
Landed nobles clearly shared in the prosperity of this period,
especially those who owned farm properties in the plains of Vercelli.
Count Emiliano Avogadro della Motta, for example, was able to raise
the lease rate on his 800 acre estate in Collobiano from L. 28,000 per
year in the 1830s to L. 60,000 per year in the late 1860s. Similarly,
Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-Mossi saw the annual income from the
largest of his three estates in the province of Vercelli rise from L. 36,154
in the first half of the 1840s to L. 93,847 per year in the second half of
the 1860s.43 As their experiences suggest, the growth of commercial
agriculture in the Piedmontese plains hardly came at the expense of the
wealthy old nobility which only became richer as a consequence. Much
as the British landed elite, families like the Pallavicino-Mossi and Avo-
gadro della Motta managed to enjoy the best of both worlds, combining
the profits of agricultural businessmen and the prestige of aristocrats.44
Like other landowners, Piedmontese aristocrats were certainly not
exempt from the effects of the world-wide agricultural crisis of the late
nineteenth century. Its length and duration made it difficult for the
families who lived exclusively on the rents from their estates.45 But, on
the whole, titled nobles do not appear to have suffered catastrophic losses
as a consequence of falling farm prices. Above all, the depression did not
provoke any immediate or massive flight of the nobility from the
countryside comparable to what took place in certain provinces of
Emilia-Romagna where the average size of aristocratic landholdings fell
sharply.46 The value of aristocratic rural property in probate, which had
averaged around L. 235,000 in the period from 1874 to 1885, declined a
42
W h e a t prices, for instance, w h i c h had averaged around L. 20.8 p e r hectoliter i n the
1860s, j u m p e d t o L. 24.49 i n the years between 1871 and 1875. Similarly, the price
of rice in t h e 1870s reached a level unmatched since t h e first years of the century,
while productivity rose dramatically. See Pugliese, Due secoli di vita agricola, p p . 131,
177-178.
43
See A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Avogadro di Collobiano e della Motta, b . 69 and
70, affittamenti-Collobiano, 1837-1868; Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 29, Saletta
Granaglia, 1841-1869.
44
For the case of England, see Stone and Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite?, p . 190.
45
For a fuller discussion of the agricultural depression and its impact in Piedmont, see
Chapter 6.
46
In the province of Ravenna, for instance, the average size of their properties dropped
from 474 hectares in 1835 t o 224 in the years 1898-1900. Titled nobles saw their
land holdings contract even m o r e dramatically in t h e province of Piacenza, w h e r e
they w e n t from an average of 171 hectares before t h e crisis t o a mere 71 at t h e
110 OLD MONEY
Table 3.10 Aristocratic urban property, 1862-1883

(fortunes >L. 730,000)
Value urban property 1862-1873 1874-1885

Less than L. 100,000 7 8
L. 100,001-200,000 5 3
L. 200,001—300,000 5 4
L. 300,001-400,000 3 3
L. 400,001-500,000 2 o
More than L. 500,000 5 5
Totals 27 23
mere 5 percent to L. 224,500 in the first decade of the new century. For
wealthy nobles, land remained far and away the most important asset in
their estates prior to World War I.
Urban real estate played a more modest role than rural property in
fortunes left by wealthy nobles (see Table 3.10) Only four of the
twenty-seven nobles with fortunes over L. 750,000 in probate during
the quarter century after unification had more than half of their wealth
in palaces and other buildings in Turin. Only a fifth of the wealthy aris-
tocrats owned substantial urban properties (over L. 500,000), and for
most of those who did, such assets still accounted for under half the total
worth of their fortunes. Even the second largest titled urban proprietor
in probate, Prince Emanuele Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, who possessed
buildings worth over L. 1 million at the time of his death in 1864,
derived the bulk of his great fortune from the 5,500 acres of rich farm
land he owned in the Vercellese plains, which was valued at more than
L. 3 million. Much the same could be said for the fortunes of the other
top noble landlords in the city, the Falletti di Barolo and the Benso di
Cavour.47
The subordinate place of urban real estate as a component of aristo-
cratic wealth did not prevent a few very prominent old families from
beginning of the twentieth century. See Banti, "I proprietari terrieri nelTItalia
centro-settentrionale," p. 14.
47
See URST, 1864, b. 2, fasc. 346 for the probate file of Dal Pozzo della Cisterna.
Marchesa Falletti di Barolo owned some ten dwellings in Turin, including an histor-
ical palace, valued at L. 656,990 when she died in 1864; her rural properties had an
estimated value of over L. 5 million. The last surviving male in the Benso di Cavour
family left a palace worth some L. 350,000 at the time of his death in 1876; his rural
properties were estimated at nearly L. 3 million. See Archivio Opera Pia Barolo,
b. 51, f. 1 and URST, 1876, b. 174, n.2.
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY III
being major property owners in Turin during the middle decades of the
nineteenth century.48 Many of the same families also benefited from the
wave of real estate development that swept the city in the early 1860s.
The big aristocratic landlords saw their buildings appreciate as a result of
the general increase in urban rents and property values. The annual net
income the Pallavicino-Mossi family derived from their palace in via
Santa Teresa, for instance, rose from L. 18,291 per year in 1850 to
L. 26,495 in 1880; the capital value of the building climbed from
L. 350,000 to an estimated L. 588,788, a 68 percent increase.49
These gains, however, did not keep pace with the urban real estate
investments of wealthy bourgeois proprietors in the second half of the
nineteenth century. In contrast to the situation in the countryside, the
urban propertied elite in Turin had already become much less aristo-
cratic after the mid-i87os. Indeed, property in the city contributed
much of the realty held by rich non-nobles and was the single largest
component of their total wealth in probate between 1874 a n d 1885.50
The core of large-scale aristocratic properties in the city followed a
pattern established in the late seventeenth century when political
centralization and the attractions of court life triggered competition
among nobles for the construction of very expensive palaces. From the
outset, the palaces in Turin were designed to give their owners both
profits and social prestige. Typically, the aristocratic family occupied the
grand piano nobile, while the apartments on the upper floors and the shop
and office spaces on the ground floor were rented out. In the 1850s,
most of the important baroque palaces remained in the hands of nobles,
in many cases (the Cavour, Asinari di San Marzano, Valperga di Masino,
and Saluzzo di Paesana palaces) the same families who had them built
still owned them.51 Other substantial aristocratic properties arose in the
decades after 1815 when a number of titled families moved to an area
48
See Mantegazza, Guida alle case della citta, pp. 127-259 provides a complete list of all
owners of buildings in the city in that period. At that time the biggest landlords
were: Luserna di Rora (13), Balbo Bertone di Sambuy (12), Falletti di Barolo (11),
Benso di Cavour (10), Saluzzo di Paesana (10), Natta d'Alfiano (9), and D'Harcourt
(8). During the same period, the Gromis di Trana, Francesetti di Hautecour, and the
recently ennobled Rignon family were among the six largest landowners in the
commune of Turin, each possessing over 250 acres there. See AST, Sez. Riunite,
Catasto Rabbini, f. 118.
49
AST, Sezione Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b. 15, Palazzo: Via S. Teresa, 11.
50
For a fuller discussion of urban real estate in Turin, see Cardoza, "Elites patrimoniali
e proprieta urbana."
51
See Boggio, Lo sviluppo edilizio di Torino, pp. 1 9 - 2 9 for a list of the major baroque
palaces, their original owners, and those in possession of them in 1909. O n the c o n -
struction of the palaces in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, see
Woolf, "Some notes on the cost of palace building," pp. 299-306.
112 OLD MONEY
closer to the Po River along streets like via della Rocca where they built
neo-classical rental palaces. Although these edifices were not as sump-
tuous as their baroque counterparts, they were often linked to adjoining
apartment buildings to constitute large mixed residential-commercial
complexes that occasionally occupied a city block. 52
The semi-commercial character of most palaces in Turin assured top
proprietors a comfortable rental income from their buildings, but one
that seldom did more than supplement the much larger revenues from
their rural estates. Family account books indicate that few of them
received a substantial share of their income from urban rents. During
the 18 50s, for instance, Count Carlo Costa della Trinita, scion of a
prominent old-line family, averaged L. 32,881 in gross rental revenues
from his palace and two adjoining buildings, which together absorbed
most of an entire block in a fashionable area of the city. The actual net
income from this substantial urban property was considerably less, about
L. 16,629, after taxes and maintenance expenses had been deducted.
Sizeable as this sum was, it paled in comparison to the annual income
from the vast landed estates of the Costa della Trinita which netted
some L. 100,000 a year in the 1850s.53 During the same period, another
prominent aristocratic landlord, Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-Mossi,
owned a large palace in the center of the city with 4 courtyards and 194
rooms. Pallavicino-Mossi leased out a total of 155 of the rooms to 47
tenants, including the Banca di Sconto and the Banca di Sete, who col-
lectively paid a rent of between L. 15,000 and L. 20,000 per year or
slightly more than a tenth of his total annual revenues in the 1860s.54
Count Costa della Trinita and Marchese Pallavicino-Mossi do not
appear to have been unique figures within the Piedmontese titled elite.
Marchesa Falletti di Barolo, for example, owned several buildings in
Turin in the early 1860s, but rented only one of them at L. 10,530 per
year, a sum that amounted to less than 4 percent of her total annual
income. Most of the other buildings she leased, rent-free, to various
institutions of the Catholic Church. Similarly, the revenue from the
enormous palace built by the Asinari di San Marzano in the 1680s
contributed no more than about 7 percent of the family's yearly income
in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.55 Count Giuseppe
d'Harcourt was probably a more unusual figure. His rural properties
52
Boggio, Lo sviluppo edilizio di Torino, pp. 2 9 - 3 0 .
53
See A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Costa di Polonghera, b . 12.
54
A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 15, 17, and 19.
55
See Archivio O p e r a Pia Barolo, b . 5 1 , £ 1, " B e n i stabili, 1864"; A S T , Prima Sez.,
Archivio Asinari di San Marzano, b . 3 1 . O n the construction of the Asinari di San
Marzano palace, see Woolf, " S o m e notes o n the cost of palace building," p . 303.
were relatively modest by the standards of the old nobility, so he had to
rely on the residential dwellings he owned in Turin for a larger portion
of his income. Still, even d'Harcourt received only about two-fifths of
his annual revenues from urban rents in the late 1860s.56
The estates of wealthy Piedmontese nobles were further distinguished
by the paucity of their personal assets - stocks, bonds, credits, and bank
deposits. While virtually all nobles (96 percent) in the survey possessed
at least some personalty, they contributed, on average, less than a fifth of
the total value of big aristocratic fortunes in probate as compared to
nearly half of the value of those left by rich non-nobles. Among these
assets, stocks and bonds, in particular — the forms of wealth most closely
associated with industrial development and the growth of the state - oc-
cupied a decidedly inferior place in the composition of bigger aristo-
cratic fortunes. On average, they contributed together about 10 percent
of the total value of the estates left by wealthy nobles as opposed to
about 28 percent in the case of the untitled rich. Moreover, their contri-
bution to aristocratic wealth actually seemed to decrease among the
largest patrimonies. Thus, of the fifty-nine greatest noble estates that
passed through probate between 1862 and 1885, forty-four contained
no stock portfolios at all.
Not surprisingly then, the nobility accounted for only 16 percent of
the estates with personal assets valued at over L. 400,000. Those few
large aristocratic fortunes that did rest primarily upon non-landed
investments tended to be the result of exceptional circumstances.
General Alfonso Ferrero della Marmora, a major protagonist of the
Risorgimento, represents a clear case in point. General Alfonso left a
sizeable fortune estimated at L. 1,692,479 in 1878, but one that con-
tained no rural or urban real estate. As the seventh of the eight sons in a
family that also numbered five daughters, he did not owe his substantial
wealth to his own aristocratic lineage. Unlike his oldest brother who
had come into the bulk of the family's wealth in his teens upon the
death of their father, General Alfonso became a rich man in his own
right very late in life and only as a result of the death of his English wife,
Bertie Matthews, whose portfolio of stocks and bonds he inherited in its
entirety in 1876.57
The marginal importance of personal assets in the structure of aristo-
cratic patrimonies was also evident in the way they were distributed
56
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio D'Harcourt, b. 74, f. 13, "Consegna dei redditi, 1867."
57
For the estate left by Marchese C. E. Ferrero della Marmora, see AST, Insinuazioni,
1854, libro 7, vol. 1, pp. 381-490. RafFaele Romanelli has provided m e with infor-
mation on the estate of Bertie Matthews which was probated in Florence; a copy of
Alfonso Lamarmora's probate return can be found in URST, 1878, b.136, f.3.
OLD
114 MONEY
within titled families. As a rule, the heads of noble households preferred
to use these more mobile forms of wealth rather than real property to
pay daughters' dowries and to satisfy the claims of their sisters, younger
brothers and sons to portions of the family patrimony. This practice
clearly shaped the structure of their estates. A majority of cadets from
noble families (55 percent) left patrimonies, in which personal assets
accounted for from a quarter to a half of the total value, while 28
percent of them had over three-quarters of their wealth in this form.
This pattern was even more pronounced in the case of aristocratic
wives, sisters, and daughters. Of the 371 women from titled families
who passed through probate, 229 or 62 percent had more than half their
wealth in personalty; for 186 of them, such assets furnished more than
75 percent of the total value of their estates. Two-thirds (67 percent) of
the first born, on the other hand, had less than a quarter of the value of
their holdings in personal assets.
In general, analysis of the probate returns for the second half of the
nineteenth century reveals a structure of wealth among noble families
that remained considerably more traditional than that of the prosperous
bourgeoisie in Turin. On the one hand, Piedmont's titled rich con-
tinued to be overwhelmingly a landed aristocracy. Rural property occu-
pied far and away the most important place in the composition of big
aristocratic fortunes in a period when it was becoming a factor of stea-
dily decreasing significance in the patrimonies of rich non-nobles. On
the other hand, the patrimonies of wealthy nobles contained relatively
modest personal assets in general, and of stocks and bonds in particular.
Neither the agricultural crisis of the late nineteenth century nor the
industrial take-off after 1896 fundamentally altered this pattern.
Although they resided in one of the centers of Italy's industrial triangle,
prominent old-line nobles were slow to invest in those newer, more
mobile forms of wealth that were fueling the enterprising business
milieu of Piedmont. To a certain extent, the composition of the wealth
possessed by titled families was the result of the ways it had been
acquired and thus reflected its origins, transmission, and strategies of
preservation.
THE PRESERVATION AND TRANSFER OF ARISTOCRATIC WEALTH
Piedmont's most renowned aristocrat in the nineteenth century, Count

Camillo Benso di Cavour, came from an old feudal family that had lost
much of its patrimony in the wake of the French occupation during the
late 1790s. During the Napoleonic era, the Benso di Cavour began a
remarkable recovery that continued into the Restoration, when they
amassed a vast new landed fortune that put them solidly among the
country's elite of wealth by the second half of the century. Indeed, the
estate left by the last male member of the family, Count Camillo's
nephew Marchese Aynardo, was the twelfth largest fortune to pass
through probate. The Benso di Cavour owed much of their new-found
wealth to their ability to act as aggressive, risk-taking, agricultural entre-
preneurs who invested heavily in the purchase and modernization of
farm land in the plains of Vercelli.58
The great aristocratic fortunes in the second half of the nineteenth
century and the first decades of the twentieth, however, were rarely the
result of such active entrepreneurial endeavors or major purchases of
property. On the contrary, most rich aristocrats continued in the nine-
teenth century to acquire their wealth the old-fashioned way: they
inherited it. As we have already seen, many of their fortunes were in
place before the French Revolution. Most were the product of a com-
bination of circumstances that included not only outright purchases of
property, but also various forms of inheritance, fortunate marriages,
royal favors, as well as careful planning and good luck.
In some cases, these fortunes consisted of palaces and rural properties
that had been transferred in a regular sequence from father tofirstson
for generations. Such continuity of ownership found expression in the
number of wealthy nobles who carried the same name as the areas
where their estates were located. The vast patrimony of the Costa della
Trinita, for instance, still included in the 1890s what had once been
their fiefs of Polonghera, Trinita, Carru, and Arignano - possessions
that had been in the hands of the family since the end of the fifteenth
century.59 Similarly, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Avo-
gadro di Quinto, Avogadro di Casanova, Caresana di Carisio, Beraudo
di Pralormo, Coardi di Carpeneto, Mazzetti di Saluggia, Della Villa di
Villastellone, and Provana di Collegno still had their principal estates in
the communes that had once been their fiefs.60
While direct transfers from fathers to first sons represented the ideal,
more complex forms of intra- and inter-family inheritance also could
58
R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, pp. 46—53, 130-179, 6 0 7 - 6 9 2 . For the estate
left by Marchese Aynardo, see URST, 1876, b.174, £2.
59
See AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Costa della Trinita, b . 3 1 , petition of Countess Er-
nestina Costa della Trinita to the Consulta Araldica Reale, 1879.
60
See AST, Catasto Francese, Mandamento di Santhia, C o m m u n e di Carisio, f. 443;
Mandamento di Vercelli, C o m m u n e di Q u i n t o , £ 457; Mandamento di Livorno,
C o m m u n e di Carpenetto, £ 437, C o m m u n e di Saluggia, £ 442.2; Mandamento di
San Germano, C o m m u n e di Casanova, £ 448; Catasto Rabbini, Province di Torino,
C o m m u n e di Pralormo, £ 95; C o m m u n e di Villastellone, £ 132; C o m m u n e di
Collegno, f. 43.
Il6 OLD MONEY
play a crucial role in the acquisition of aristocratic wealth as the estates

of Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-Mossi, Marchese Emanuele Thaon
di St. Andre, and Count Luigi Valperga di Masino - three of the
wealthiest nobles in the late nineteenth century - graphically illustrate.
All three men came from old titled families, but inherited the bulk of
their patrimonies in the first half of the century. Pallavicino-Mossi came
into his wealth in 1829 when he became the principal heir of his mater-
nal cousin, Archbishop Vincenzo Mossi di Morano, the last member of
one of the richest families in Piedmont in the eighteenth century.
When he himself died in 1879, Marchese Lodovico passed on to his son
and two daughters a patrimony valued at L. 4,560,000 — the eleventh
largest in the entire survey.61 Thaon di St. Andre, scion of one of the
more distinguished families of the service nobility, acquired the center-
piece of his sizeable patrimony, the 2,500 acre estate of Ternavaso, only
in 1849 when it was left to him by Vittoria De Sellon d'Allemand,
Cavour's aunt and the childless widow of the previous owner Baron
Luigi Blancardi Roero de la Turbie.62 The Valperga di Masino were
one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most prestigious families of the subal-
pine nobility, but the head of the family in the middle of the nineteenth
century, Count Luigi, had been born into a modestly endowed collater-
al branch, the Valperga di Borgomasino. In 1845, the last of the prin-
cipal line, Count Carlo Francesco Valperga di Masino, died without
descendants. His wife and heir, Countess Eufrasia, then passed away
four years later, leaving much of the land, the castle of Masino, and a
palace in Turin as well as the family titles to Count Luigi who assumed
the name Valperga di Masino.63
As a rule, marriage, however, remained the quickest and most impor-
tant means employed by the nobility to amass great wealth. The richest
titled family in nineteenth-century Piedmont, the Falletti di Barolo, for
instance, could trace a large portion of their tremendous fortune to the
marital alliance forged by their ancestor Gerolamo IV to the last descen-
dant of the Provana di Druent, one of the greatest landed families in the
realm at the beginning of the eighteenth century. As a result of this
alliance, they acquired in the 1720s the bulk of an estate that included a
magnificent palace in the capital city and nearly 5,000 hectares in the
61
See Manno, Ilpatriziato subalpino, vol. x v n , pp. 484-486. Marchese Tommaso Mossi
di Morano, the older brother of the archbishop, possessed a patrimony valued at L.
i>345>553> t n e tenth largest in Piedmont in 1799; see Bulferetti, "I piemontesi piu
ricchi," p . 77—79. For estimates of Marchese Lodovico's fortune, see AST, Sez.
Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 17.
62 63
Ibid., vol. 11, pp. 319-320. See Spreti, vol. vi, pp. 8 0 0 - 8 0 1 .
provinces of Turin and Vercelli.64 Likewise, Marchese Maurizio

Luserna di Rora more than doubled the patrimony of his family thanks
to his marriage in 1813 to Adelaide Oreglia di Novello. After her death
in 1847 and that of her husband in 1854, their four children shared in a
parental fortune worth nearly L. 7 million, of which about L. 3.7
million came from the mother's estate.65 Even that family of aristocratic
entrepreneurs par excellence, the Benso di Cavour, owed part of their
rapid economic recovery in the early nineteenth century to a strategic
marriage. In 1805, Camillo's father wed Adele de Sellon, whose large
dowry lifted the Benso di Cavour out of the indebtedness into which
they had sunk during the revolutionary period.66
In the case of the Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, lucrative marital alliances
became something of a family tradition in the late eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. Count Carlo di Sambuy's marriage in 1791 to
Marchesa Daria Ghilini proved to be a real financial windfall for the
next generation. The last of a wealthy titled family from Alessandria,
Daria divided an estate valued at L. 1,387,944 in 1836 among her four
sons. While the largest portion of her estate, about two-fifths, went to
the oldest son, Count Vittorio di Sambuy, who had already inherited
the principal family seat, "San Salva," upon the death of his father in
1828, the three cadets also received shares that assured them quite
respectable rental incomes.67 Count Vittorio, in turn, further enlarged
his family's patrimony through his marriage in 1825 to Luisa, one of
two daughters and the only heirs of Marchese Marco Adalberto Pallavi-
cino delle Frabose. Though Luisa was nowhere near as wealthy as her
mother-in-law, she still received a substantial inheritance from her
father (L. 632,697), most of which she then passed on to her sole sur-
viving son, Count Ernesto di Sambuy.68 For his part, Count Ernesto,
one of the last great aristocratic public figures in Turin, also married
quite well. His wife, Bona de Ganay, was from a well-endowed French
64
See Woolf, "Studi sulla nobilta piemontese," p p . 1 8 8 - 1 9 1 .
65
See AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Costa della Trinita, b . 11. These patrimonial docu-
ments most likely found their way into this archive because one of the heirs, Cost-
anza, married C o u n t Paolo R e m i g i o Costa della Trinita.
66
See R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, pp. 2 3 - 2 4 , 5 8 - 5 9 .
67
See Archivio Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, c. 96, 3, b . a., "Patrimonio della Contessa di
Sambuy al 1 gennaio 1836." This archive is in the possession of retired Admiral
Ernesto di Sambuy w h o kindly gave m e permission to consult it. According to B u l -
feretti, Dana's father, Marchese A. Ghilini, had been one of the richest m e n in the
province of Alessandria at the end of the eighteenth century. See " I piemontesi piu
ricchi," p. 79.
68
Archivio Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, c. 96, 3, b . a., testament and patrimony of
Countess Luigia di Sambuy (nee Pallavicino delle Frabose), 1846.
Il8 OLD MONEY
aristocratic family. In addition to an enormous dowry (L. 400,000),

Bona brought into the di Sambuy family assets worth over L. 1.4
million by 1913 that included two palaces in Turin, sizeable agricultural
properties in France, and a healthy portfolio of stocks and bonds. 69 The
cumulative effects of three generations of such fortunate marriages was
to make the last generation of di Sambuy born before World War I con-
siderably wealthier than their eighteenth-century ancestors.
While marriage and other forms of inheritance remained the most
important means of amassing large concentrations of aristocratic wealth,
maintenance of such wealth in the nineteenth century required more
than ever before considerable managerial skills, the cooperation of all
family members, and a healthy dose of good luck. The great political
upheavals of the late eighteenth century ushered in an era of change that
swept away many of the traditional juridical safeguards that had pro-
vided rich nobles some protection from their own excesses and incom-
petence. During the Napoleonic era and then again on more permanent
basis during the 1830s, legal reforms were introduced that prohibited
the traditional noble practice of entailment, severely restricted the
founding of binding primogenitures, and allowed for the sale of noble
properties or their seizure in payment of debts. At the same time, a new
inheritance law modeled on that of the Napoleonic Code guaranteed all
heirs a share in the legacy. As a result, the property left to the first son
and bearer of the family titles tended to diminish, since a legally desig-
nated portion of every noble estate now had to pass with each gener-
ation to the younger sons and daughters.70
In this less favorable juridical environment, those wealthy aristocratic
families who were able to survive and flourish after 1815 did so by
relying increasingly upon an unparalleled degree of voluntary coopera-
tion and self-sacrifice by family members. On the whole, traditional
kinship loyalties appear to have worked fairly effectively as substitutes
for legal devices in the case of the subalpine nobility. Commenting on
the situation of titled families in Piedmont in the 1850s, for instance,
one Italian commentator observed how:
The abolition of the law of primogeniture is only less ruinous to old
houses in this country, owing to this instinct of union and concord. The
eldest son steps into the place of the lamented parent, the rightful head of
the family; his younger brothers affect a taste for celibacy, lest, by too
69
Ibid., Cart. X V I I I - C , bb., £ 5., "Beni della Contessa Bona di Sambuy-De Ganay,
caduti in propriety degli e r e d i . . . " February 1913.
70
See R a u m e r , Italy and the Italians, p p . 2 5 0 - 2 5 2 for a description of some of the legal
reforms of the 1830s in Piedmont. O n the changes in inheritance laws, see Banti,
" U n fonte per lo studio delle elites," pp. 8 6 - 8 7 .
great an increase in the family, they should make too wide a breach in
the common patrimony. The daughters are portioned off; the younger
sons live in unconscious dependence, yielding, either from a feeling of
love or from family pride, or from custom, to their eldest brother those
privileges which the law allows to thefirst-bornin aristocratic England
and Germany.71
Much as in Spain, inheritance laws in Piedmont still allowed a great deal
of freedom in drawing up the bequests. Thus, the first son could receive
as much as three-quarters of the entire estate and all the rural property,
provided that the lesser heirs were willing to accept their portions in
non-landed forms of wealth, paid in installments spread out over a
couple of decades. Baron Pietro Antonio Guidobono Cavalchini had
precisely such a solution in mind when he urged his sons in his testa-
ment "to reduce their legal portion to a proportionate life-time pension
by means of suitable contract with their first-born brother, my principal
heir," assuring them that "they themselves would benefit by obtaining a
larger net income that [was] secure and more suited to their station and
career."72 Accordingly, the rights of cadets could be satisfied without
liquidating or fragmenting the family's primary propertied assets.
Demographic good fortune and an aristocratic tradition of state service
clearly facilitated the success of this sort of strategy for the protection of
large patrimonies. Not surprisingly, the families who had the greatest
success produced a small number of male children, with the younger ones
either remaining unmarried or dying without heirs. The family back-
ground of the titled multi-millionaires in probate underscores the crucial
role played by fecundity in the preservation of great wealth within the
nobility. Of the twelve men in this category who had inherited from
their fathers, ten were the sole male heir, one had a single brother; only
one came from a family where there were three or more sons.73
The case of the Avogadro della Motta illustrates how the most
71
Gallenga, Country Life in Piedmont, pp. 47—48.
72
AST, Sez. Riunite, Testamenti Pubblicati, vol. 42, p . 69, Testament of Baron Pietro
Antonio Guidobono Cavalchini, July 24, 1848. For the situation in Spain, see Mala-
fakis, Agrarian Reform, p. 68.
73
T h e case of the latter, C o u n t Filiberto Avogadro di Collobiano, has been discussed
earlier in the chapter as an example of a wealthy cadet. T h e immense estate h e left in
1868 as well as the even greater wealth of his sons could be traced in part to the fact
that three of his older brothers were career officers in the army w h o never married,
while the fourth, a diplomat, produced n o heirs. As a result, they spent m u c h of their
lives away from the ancestral estates and their portions remained within the family
and were passed d o w n to the next generation, represented by C o u n t Filiberto's sons,
Ferdinando and Vittorio. See M a n n o , H patriziato subalpino, vol. 1, p p . 1 2 3 - 1 2 5 . O n
the estates left by Filiberto, Ferdinando, and Vittorio, see URST, 1868, vol. 8, £ 36;
1905, vol. 655, f. 38; and 1907, vol. 736, f. 46.
120 OLD MONEY
successful of the old titled families combined all these factors — inherit-
ance, lucrative marital alliances, cooperation, careful management, judi-
cious acquisitions, and luck - not only to maintain, but actually to
increase their wealth in an era when they no longer enjoyed special pri-
vileges or legal protection. In the eighteenth century, the Avogadro
della Motta were already long-established members of the titled nobility
in Vercelli, with patrimony that included their palace in the provincial
capital as well as an ancestral castle in Masazza surrounded by an estate
which measured over 2,000 acres in 1748.74
The following 100 years saw the family add substantially to this patri-
mony which more than doubled in value by the 1860s. Count Ignazio
Avogadro della Motta, the head of the family in the last decades of the
ancien regime, began the process by developing the cultivation of rice on
his estates. On the eve of the French invasion, he had become one of
the principal growers of this lucrative crop in the province of Vercelli.
Count Ignazio's commercial agricultural initiatives were favored by his
marriage in the 1790s to Teresa Avogadro di Casanova, the daughter of
one of the two largest rice growers, Giuseppe Maria Avogadro di Casa-
nova.75 This alliance entailed more than a handsome dowry; it also
paved the way for profitable collaboration between Count Ignazio and
his father-in-law under the Napoleonic regime. The devout Catholi-
cism of the Avogadro della Motta did not prevent the two men from
forming a partnership for the purchase of former church properties
between 1801 and 1811, which then passed to the son-in-law after the
death of Giuseppe Avogadro di Casanova. Count Ignazio continued to
enlarge his property holdings in the Vercellese plains during the first
decade of the Restoration by buying the Castle of Montemagno and the
farm surrounding it.76
The chief beneficiary of these economic and marital initiatives was
Count Emiliano Avogadro della Motta, Ignazio's first son and the
primary heir of both his parents. Although the marriage produced six
children, only Count Emiliano and his sister Agnese survived to adult-
hood. When their mother passed away in 1816, she settled two-thirds of
an estate valued at L. 240,000 on Count Emiliano and the rest on
74
See A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Avogadro di Collobiano e della Motta, b . 8, estate
of C o u n t Carlo Ignazio Avogadro della Motta, O c t . 26, 1748.
75
See Davico, "Peuple" et notables (1730—1816), pp. 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 .
76
A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Avogadro della Motta, b . 63, land purchases, Collo-
biano, 1 8 0 1 - 1 8 1 1 ; b . 141, land purchase, Viverone, 1801; b . 142, properties in
M o n t e m a g n o . T h e most important j o i n t purchase was in the latter c o m m u n e w h e r e
the t w o m e n acquired over 600 acres. See Notario, La vendita dei beni nazionali in Pie-
monte, p . 530.
Agnese. Seventeen years later, when their father died, he also left the
preponderance of his considerably larger estate to his first son, providing
his daughter with a legacy of only L. 60,000. Agnese completed the
process of concentrating the family wealth in the hands of Count Emi-
liano with her premature death in 1838. According to the terms of her
will, Agnese's older brother became the principal heir to her estate,
while her husband, Count Felice Avogadro di Quinto received only
half of her dowry. Finally, the new head of the Avogadro della Motta
family received an additional L. 75,000 upon the death of his aunt, Mar-
ianna, in 1845.77
Count Emiliano proved to be an extremely able administrator of the
patrimony he had inherited. Not content simply to manage what he
already possessed, he became an active participant in the Piedmontese
land market after 1833, selling detached properties in order to realize
capital for acquisitions closer to home. In the province of Vercelli, for
instance, he sold off the castle and surrounding estate of Montemagno
in 1841 for twice the price his father had paid in 1815. He used some of
the profits to enlarge his ancestral estates in Collobiano with seven sepa-
rate land purchases between 1837 and 1863 that made them the single
most valuable family asset by the time of his death two years later.78 At
the same time, Count Emiliano also began to invest in rural property in
the province of Turin, where the Provana di Collegno, the family of his
wife and first cousin Teresa, were major landowners. Thus, in 1845 he
bought from Count Ottavio Thaon di Revel the Tenimento delTIsola,
an estate of over 800 acres in the communes of Settimo Torinese and
Gassino. Five years later, he purchased a villa surrounded by 21 acres in
the foothills above the city of Turin. 79
The estate left by Avogadro della Motta in 1865 eloquently testified
to the success of his family's inheritance, marriage, and management
strategies as well as to their good luck in the nineteenth century. The
seventeenth largest aristocratic fortune to pass through probate in the
decades after 1861, it was valued at L. 2,275,160 and included some
4,100 acres of rich farm land mostly in the plains of Vercelli or more
than twice what his grandfather had inherited a century earlier.
77
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Avogadro della Motta, b . 8, Testament of Countess
Teresa Iffigenia Avogadro di Casanova, 1816; Testament of C o u n t Ignazio Avogadro
della Motta, 1818; Testament of Countess Agnese Avogadro di Q u i n t o (nee
Avogadro della Motta), 1838; Estate of Marianna Avogadro della Motta, 1845.
78
Ibid., b . 142, properties Montegmagno, 1815-1841; b . 63, land purchases Collo-
biano, 1801-1863.
79
Ibid., b . 143, T e n i m e n t o dell'Isola, 1836-1851; b . 148b, villa in t h e foothills of
Turin, 1850. C o u n t Emiliano paid L. 46,091 for the villa and surrounding property.
122 OLD MONEY
Significantly, Count Emiliano and his father had expanded their family's
wealth without altering its basic structure, which continued to reflect a
traditional aristocratic preference for land over personal assets.80 More-
over, they had not over-extended themselves financially in the process
like some newer nobles such as Baron Vincenzo Bolmida who had to
borrow heavily from banks to make their large purchases of rural prop-
erty. As a result, the next generation of the Avogadro della Motta inher-
ited a patrimony that was virtually free of any debt. 81
ARISTOCRATIC WEALTH AND SYMBOLIC POWER
Quantitative analysis of the structure and composition of the estates left

by nobles captures only part of the distinctive character of aristocratic
wealth, in which economic and symbolic elements were inseparably
linked. The patrimonies of old-line families provided more than hand-
some incomes. They also testified to the status of the family, its antiquity,
and even its role in history. Aristocratic possessions often carried with
them a prestige rooted in ancestral traditions of patronage and patern-
alism that could not be bought or sold, and thus gave those who possessed
them a unique connection to particular territories and populations. In
this respect, Piedmontese aristocrats were abundantly endowed with
what Bourdieu has described as "a social power over time," namely the
possession of "those things whose common feature is that they can only
be acquired in the course of time . . . by inheritance or through disposi-
tions which, like the taste for old things, are likewise only acquired with
time and applied by those who can take their time." 82 It was these less
tangible elements of aristocratic wealth that were critical both to the col-
lective identity of the nobility and to their continued prominence in
public life in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Above all, wealthy nobles derived great symbolic value from the
80
A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Avogadro della Motta, b . 9, estate of C o u n t Emilio.
M o r e than 90 percent of the value of the estate came from rural properties. T h r e e -
quarters of the landed assets w e r e located in the Vercellese plains, with the remainder
in the province of Turin.
81
Ibid., b . 9. T h e only liabilities in C o u n t Emiliano's estate consisted of claims by his
o w n children to legacies left by their m o t h e r and their great aunt Marianna, and the
dowry of the o n e daughter, Assunta. Baron Vincenzo Bolmida, a banker and advisor
to Cavour w h o received his title in 1861, o w n e d 7,560 acres in the province of
M o d e n a w h i c h h e had purchased after unification. By the time of his death, h e still
o w e d L. 919,640 to the seller as well as L. 1,134,283 to the Banca Nazionale, a
burden of debt that far exceeded the total value of his estate (L. 1,235,902). See
URST, 1877, vol. 74, f. 30.
82
Bourdieu, Distinction, p p . 7 1 - 7 2 .
possession of large rural estates with villas and lands carrying the family
name. Unlike many of their newer bourgeois neighbors in the country-
side, old noble families had a profound attachment to their property
which was considerably more than a simple material possession. Most of
them spent roughly four to six months each year on their rural estates
which remained the primary physical embodiments of ancestral tradi-
tions, lineal antiquity, and continuity. Much like the country seats of
the English gentry, their villas provided the site for the family residence,
its memories, its heirlooms, and often its name. The legacy of the past
was also evident in the censi perpetui still paid to titled families by munici-
palities that had once been their fiefs as well as in the exclusive fishing
and hunting rights that continued to appear among their assets in
probate into the twentieth century.
In his recollections of his childhood passed in a country house in the
commune of Rocchetta di Tanaro before World War I, Marchese
Mario Incisa della Rocchetta gave voice to the nobility's deeply felt
sense of place:
I was happy knowing that a part of our property was still called "the
fief" . . . I was proud to know that when there used to be mills along
the Tanaro [River], they were all ours, and that the right to fish in the
river still belonged to us. This entire way of feeling and thinking had
been maintained, coined, and stored up thanks to the physical surround-
ings in which I lived . . . For seven or eight months of the year, I lived
in Rocchetta, cradle of our family and its seat for nine centuries.83
On estates like that of the Incisa di Rocchetta, old-line families were
able to perpetuate symbolically an exceptional status that no longer
existed in law. The aristocratic patriarch was known by the villagers
who lived near his property, his presence was often required at festivals
and other customary rituals that linked his family to the village. Predic-
tably, their attachment to ancestral properties led most landed nobles to
request in their last wills and testaments that they be buried on their
family estates rather than in Turin.
Such stability and continuity on the land gave the old titled families a
rather special relationship with the rural population in those districts
where they remained the principal employers and patrons. Even in the
absence of police and judicial powers, nobles could still exert social
power of a traditional kind in the nineteenth century within a voluntary
83
Mario Incisa dell Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi di 'altri tempi'" (typescript, no
date), pp. 27, 171 —172. I would like to thank Incisa's sister, Maria Beraudo di
Pralormo and his niece Gabriella Salvi del Pero for permission to quote from the
manuscript.
124 OLD MONEY
framework of reciprocal rights and duties. Prominent aristocratic

families like the Avogadro di Collobiano and Pallavicino-Mossi did
more than help celebrate local holidays, assist the poor and the sick in
their villages, and mediate disputes between villagers. They also took an
active interest in the religious and moral education of the villagers by
supporting country parishes, providing school houses, and subsidizing
their operations. Paternalistic concern for the villages linked to ancestral
estates continued even after death; aristocratic testaments invariably
included charitable bequests to the "most needy" in their family's tradi-
tional rural enclaves.84
These activities, which conformed to an aristocratic ideal of noblesse
oblige, seemed to bring some titled landowners a certain local popularity
and deference. They found their most obvious expression in the fre-
quent election of nobles as mayors in the communes where their estates
were located. But they were also evident in less official ways, especially
during important moments in the lives of aristocratic families such as the
birth of the first son, weddings, and funerals which all became occasions
for joyful celebration or seemingly genuine mourning in the local vil-
lages. When the daughter of Count Ferdinando Avogadro di Collo-
biano got married in 1896, for example, the people of Vigliano, where
the family had one of its castles, collected a "substantial sum" by public
subscription to provide the newly weds with a "splendid" bouquet of
flowers as an expression of their "feelings of profound veneration for he
who has given generously for so many years . . . " After the death of
Count Ferdinando eight years later, his funeral procession from Vigliano
to the family vault near Carisio included not only the mayors of half a
dozen villages, but also "a very long file of tenant farmers, school chil-
dren, and clergy."85
While country estates remained the symbolically most important
component of aristocratic wealth, the urban properties also represented
more than sources of income. In fact, considerations of prestige and
family image often took precedence over those of profit in the way
wealthy nobles treated their property in Turin. Most of the great titled
families used their ancestral palaces, first and foremost, as prestigious
residences near court and suitable settings for the exclusive dinner
84
O n the charitable activities of the Avogadro di Collobiano in the c o m m u n e of
Vigliano, for instance, see La Tribuna Biellese, February 23, 1896. Marchese Lodovico
Pallavicino-Mossi founded and maintained at his o w n expense a school for girls in
the c o m m u n e of Frassineto-Po w h e r e h e o w n e d a large estate. See A S T , Archivio
Compans di Brichanteau, c. 4, ua.9, f. 5, funeral speech, July 22, 1879.
85
See La Tribuna Biellese, February 23, 1896 and La Gazzetta del Popolo, October 10,
1904.
parties, balls, and fetes that structured the rituals of Turinese high
society.86 For these purposes, the Pallavicino-Mossi family occupied
thirty-nine rooms of their palace. Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-
Mossi's expenditures for a staff of a dozen servants and the maintenance
of his carriages and stables alone absorbed 85 percent of the rental
income from his palace. Count Carlo Costa della Trinita, for his part,
dispensed with L. 8,200 a year in potential rental income from his urban
properties by occupying the most spacious apartments in the main
palace and by providing additional free lodging for the family priest, his
personal secretary, and four doormen.87
The symbolic element in aristocratic wealth found expression not
only in their possessions, but also in the size and distinctive form of their
outstanding debts and liabilities. On the whole, the burdens on the for-
tunes of rich nobles were greater than on those of wealthy non-nobles.
Although aristocrats made up only a third of the richest individuals in the
probate survey, they contributed more than half (59 percent) of the total
value of their liabilities. Especially in the first decades after unification,
the greater debt burdens facing heirs of wealthy titled families resulted
largely from their responsibility for generations of family charity and
paternalism in the form oflegatipii, annualita perpetue, andpensioni vitalizie
provided to various religious institutions, relatives, and dependents. 88
As the heavily symbolic character of aristocratic wealth suggests, the
survival of the nobility as a separate, exclusive, and influential elite in
Piedmontese society involved more than their being simply rich pluto-
crats. In purely monetary terms, old-line aristocratic families no longer
monopolized the ranks of the richest individuals in probate by the last
quarter of the nineteenth century. Rich nobles remained a large and
important component of Turin's wealthy upper classes, but they were
increasingly overshadowed by new men and new fortunes made in com-
merce and industry. The cohesion and collective identity of the nobility
also required innovative strategies of social reproduction and reinvention
in order to preserve and transmit distinctive customs and rituals as well as
to maintain their distance from other segments of the propertied classes.
86
See Ricci (ed.), Memorie, vol. 1 and Gerbore, Dame e cavalieri del Re.
87
See AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 15 and 19; Archivio Costa di
Polonghera, b . 12.
88
T h e estate of Marchese R o b e r t o Taparelli d'Azeglio, for example, included among
its liabilities four assegni perpetui and nine censi, with many of them dating back to the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Similarly, the heirs of Marchese Federico
Asinari di San Marzano were responsible for paying five censi, sixteen legati, anf four-
teen pensioni vitalizie. For d'Azeglio, see URST, b . i - v . 2 , f.92, 1863; for Asinari,
ibid.,b. i - v . 2 , f.38, 1863.
CHAPTER 4
PERPETUATING AN ARISTOCRATIC
SOCIAL ELITE
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Piedmontese aristocrats

and their blue-blooded counterparts elsewhere on the Italian peninsula
confronted a world in which many of the old social boundaries and bar-
riers had been dismantled or blurred. With the disappearance of the
absolute monarchy and the abolition of the last remnants of feudalism,
nobles ceased to be members of a legally distinct order possessing any
exclusive rights and prerogatives. Old-line families still had a legal right
to sport their titles as symbols of their antiquity and to pass them from
generation to generation, but these titles no longer afforded special pri-
vileges or significant economic advantages. Henceforth the prestige and
influence of the nobility would have to rest chiefly on their status as a
social elite.
The loss of privileges unavoidably raised, however, fundamental
questions about what it now meant to be a noble and about the extent
to which individual nobles still constituted a coherent group, separate
from other elements of Piedmont's propertied classes. Once titles ceased
to carry with them tangible and exclusive benefits, they also ceased to
provide even the appearance of unity to an "estate" that, in fact, had
always encompassed sizeable variations in wealth, origins, and family
lineage. In the absence of shared privileges, there existed a natural ten-
dency for the divisions between the nobility and bourgeoisie to dis-
appear as the diverse interests and abilities of individual nobles drew
them inexorably closer to other like-minded individuals across old class
and caste boundaries.1
The extent to which aristocratic families in Piedmont managed to
avoid or postpone this fate in the second half of the nineteenth century
depended in large part on their ability to preserve and exploit not only
1
This argument has been advanced recently in Harris and Thane, "British and Eur-
opean Bankers," pp. 215-219.
126
their inherited wealth, but also their enduring social distinctions. As I
have argued at the end of the previous chapter, many old titled families
possessed an abundance of social and symbolic resources in addition to
their wealth. They still enjoyed, for instance, the prestige and renown
attached to their family names. Likewise, they had powerful kinship
connections and extensive networks of alliances and relationships that
had been forged over several generations, as the case of the families
linked to Marchese Carlo Compans di Brichanteau illustrates. These
social resources, when accompanied by sufficient wealth, allowed a
portion of the old nobility to reinvent a collective identity for them-
selves, an identity that helped to preserve their cohesion and exclusivity,
and to legitimize their influential role in public life.
Aristocratic social reproduction in Piedmont after 1848 entailed a
combination of conservation and innovation. Perhaps more than any-
where else in the country, titled families here reaffirmed in word and
deed a set of ancestral values and customs. Accordingly, they steadfastly
exalted loyalty to throne and altar, the honor of military service, and the
importance of lineage, patriarchy, paternalism, and social exclusivity.
The perpetuation of these traditions, however, took on a new meaning
in the absence of legal privileges in the second half of nineteenth
century. Now, for instance, they were intended to highlight continu-
ities with an aristocratic past precisely because that past was inaccessible
to those newer segments of the propertied classes who were beginning
to overshadow titled families in the political arena and in the economic
life. Recourse to old values and customs helped, in this fashion, to foster
a sense of superiority in an era when the nobility, as such, did not
possess any formal organization or constitute a separate class based on
privilege or economic position.
Nobles also relied increasingly on newly founded private schools and
gentlemen's clubs to inculcate traditional values and conventions of
behavior, and to enhance their cohesion and exclusivity. While none of
these institutions was purely aristocratic in its membership, they all
tended to be dominated by blue-blooded families who set the tone for
the rest. In any case, no one institution guaranteed prestige and accept-
ance. Rather it was the combination of pedigree, wealth, and shared
associations that ensured high status and distinguished the aristocratic
elite from the rest of the wealthy, propertied classes in the decades after
1848.
The same blend of traditional customs and modern institutional set-
tings that helped to perpetuate aristocratic prestige and distinctiveness in
Piedmont, also served to redraw social lines in new ways that excluded
or marginalized segments of the pre-1848 nobility. More than ever
128 PERPETUATING AN ELITE
before, hereditary titles were of little value to those families who lacked
the wealth, pedigree, or inclination to maintain these customs and prac-
tices. To the extent that they were unable or unwilling to conform,
such families tended to lose contact and drift away from the core of the
elite — a small and closely integrated community bound together by
shared experiences, acquaintances, and personal connections. In this
respect, the internal hierarchies of the nobility can be compared to a
series of concentric circles. At the center was the cultural ideal: the old,
titled, affluent, landed family whose members divided their time
between their urban palace in Turin and the ancestral estate in the
country. Sons attended one of a few select private schools and served,
like their fathers before them, in the regiments as well as in some hon-
orary capacity at court; they were members of the Societa del Whist and
married a women from families of comparable wealth and lineage.
Mothers and daughters, for their part, participated in the ceremonies of
the House of Savoy, represented their families in the boxes at the Royal
Theater and the pews of the more fashionable churches of Turin, and
were active in Catholic charitable activities. While great wealth or
ancient pedigree always permitted a certain degree of eccentricity, those
individuals and families who strayed too far or for too long from this
ideal-type and the code of conduct it embodied, tended to find them-
selves in the outer circles. The further they strayed, the less value their
titles possessed and the more indistinguishable they became from other
segments of the propertied classes.
THE CHARACTER AND DIMENSIONS OF THE ARISTOCRATIC

FAMILY
Like the members of old elites elsewhere on the continent in the nine-
teenth century, the Piedmontese aristocrat's sense of identity and his
ascriptive status were deeply rooted in his family, its past, and territorial
base. Family membership remained the central social and cultural reality
for most nobles, who tended to organize their world into meaningful
categories on the basis of it. If anything, the loss of legally privileged
status only accentuated the importance of the family as the primary
vehicle of elite solidarity and social reproduction.
The memoirs of Piedmontese nobles clearly attest to a keen interest
in the history of their families and great pride in their achievements.
From their earliest years, children were steeped in the lore and traditions
of their ancestors. In his recollections of his boyhood in the late 1790s
and early 1800s, Count Clemente Solaro della Margarita, for instance,
recalled how his "ancestors had collected a large number of memoirs
and books about the Solaro, a great family from Asti, and I read them
assiduously."2 Similarly, Carlo Alberto Costa di Beauregard wrote how
in his family the grandmothers passed "long winter evenings narrating
the history of the lineage . . . and [their] good works became legendary
in the minds of the children."3
The memories of Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta of his child-
hood in the years before 1914 suggest that the dramatic changes that had
taken place in the century following did not eroded the nobility's sense
of connection to the past nor their pride in belonging to distinguished
old lineages. As Marchese Mario recollected, "already when I was eight
or ten years old, I thirsted for news of our ancestors."4 Significantly,
two of the Piedmontese nobility's most famous iconoclasts, Camillo
Benso di Cavour and Massimo Taparelli d'Azeglio, were not immune
to the appeal of family traditions. Despite their notorious impatience
with the more stifling aspects of aristocratic society, both paid implicit
homage to these traditions through their preference for their feudal
appellations, Cavour and d'Azeglio.5
This cult of ancestors reinforced a vision of family or casata (house)
that was both deep and broad in the sense that it linked members to a
long chain going back in time as well as to a much broader kinship
group. Aristocratic family archives, with their accounts of the past and
their detailed genealogies familiarized children with their lineal past and
helped to locate them among their peers in larger cousinhoods and
social networks. Similarly, the material possessions that were transmitted
from generation to generation - the homes, portraits, coats-of-arms,
and other souvenirs - reinforced a consciousness of identity and social
belonging among family members who lived in the same spaces and
were surrounded by the same objects as their ancestors. Country houses,
in particular, both linked the living family members to the past and pro-
vided settings for traditional reunions in the summer where relatives
reassembled and family unity was reasserted.6
As marriage contracts and testaments show, the basic rites of passage
in the lives of nineteenth-century nobles also continued to nourish a
sense of family and of connection to the past. Thus, aristocratic mar-
riages were presented as more than a coming together of two indi-
2
See Archivio Solaro della Margarita, Diario, 1799, as cited in Lovera and Rinieri,
Clemente Solaro della Margarita, vol. 1, pp. 7—21.
3
Costa di Beauregard, Un uomo d'altri tempi, pp. 12-13.
4
Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi," p. 27.
5
Cognasso, "Nobilta e borghesia," p. 227.
6
For an exploration of these characteristics within French noble families, see Mension-
Rigau, Aristocrates et grands bourgeois.
viduals; they also explicitly linked two lineages and two patrimonies.
When Count Cesare Valperga di Masino wed Cristina San Martino di
San Germano in 1855, for example, the marriage contract drawn up by
their parents not only defined economic arrangements between the
bride and groom, but also emphasized how the two "illustrious houses
[casati\ . . . as an expression of their mutual esteem and cherished mem-
ories of ancient kinship, wished to see their bonds of friendship recon-
firmed by new ties of kinship."7 The press reinforced this emphasis on
lineage in their accounts of aristocratic weddings. The announcement of
the engagement of Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi to Countess
Irene Avogadro di Collobiano in the winter of 1895-1896, for instance,
inspired La Stampa to write of the impending marriage as a union of
"the descendants of two illustrious families" and to note how the bride's
family, in particular, was "related by marriage to the entire Piedmontese
aristocracy so that the joy of the young countess Irene finds a sympa-
thetic echo among our most eminent families."8
A similar preoccupation with the family line, past and future, typically
informed the testaments of prominent nobles. Aristocratic scions con-
tinued throughout the century to reaffirm the custom of primogeniture
in both the language and instructions of their wills in order to, in the
words of Count Augusto Salino, "conserve for the . . . family and the
name that represents it the bulk of its ancestral patrimony."9 As Count
Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy told his children, this practice meant
not only that the first son received the lion's share of the wealth, but
also that he assumed "the special duties that the status of head of the
house imposes on the first born son." In recognition of his unique role,
the first son's portion included the symbolically most important assets of
the lineage: the ancestral home in the countryside and "all the papers
and documents that constitute the family archives."10 Decades later,
Count Luigi Valperga di Masino's final testament stressed the import-
ance of "safeguarding the continuity of the family line," and urged his
only son and principal heir to follow "the traditions of your grandfather
Cesare and of so many of our ancestors who have held high the honor
and prestige of the House of the Valperga di Masino." 11 When possible,
7
See URST, 1903, v. 601, f. 17, dowry contract between Cristina S. Martino di S.
Germano and Count Cesare Valperga di Masino, 1855.
8
See La Stampa, December 26, 1895 and February 9, 1896.
9
URST, 1878, v. 86, f. 12, Testamento di Count Augusto Salino.
10
URST, 1909, v. 788, f. 17, Testamento of Count Ernesto di Sambuy, November 2,
1889.
11
URST, b. 1629, f. 26, Testament of Count Luigi Valperga di Masino, January 31,
1923.
Table 4.1 Aristocratic lineage andfamily size (percent)
Children Old nobility i700-1800 1800-1900 New nobility
None 21 24 21 20
One 21 17 16 10
2 to 4 43 44 46 45
>4 16 16 18 25
Totals 100 101 101 100
most nobles also sought to be buried with their ancestors, following the
example of Count Luigi Seyssel d'Aix di Sommariva, who expressed his
wish to be laid to rest "in the church of Santa Maria in Sommariva del
Bosco, beside the other members of my family in the customary way
and with the usual ceremonies."12 Likewise, heirs were reminded to
celebrate masses each year in memory of their ancestors and to carry on
their family's longstanding traditions of charity in the form of legati pii,
annualita perpetue, and pensioni vitalizie in favor of religious institutions,
relatives, and dependents.13
Despite the importance attached to the family name and its antiquity,
lineage did not have much impact on the actual size of noble families in
the nineteenth century. Data on the number of surviving children of
the titled individuals in probate show little variation between the
families of old and new nobles. As the figures in Table 4.1 indicate, a
majority of married couples of noble origins had from one to four chil-
dren survive them, while very large families were comparatively rare.
On the whole, the aristocratic couples who passed through probate had
relatively small families. From a third to two-fifths of them had no more
than one child, while at the other end, a mere three couples produced
seven sons; in only one case was there a family with seven daughters. In
sharp contrast, nearly one-sixth of the households in the eighteenth
century had enormous families with eight or more children surviving to
adulthood.14
The decline in the size of noble households, which suggests the
12
URST, b. 115, f. 26, 1881, Testament of Count Luigi Seyssel d'Aix.
13
See, for examples of this, Chapter 3, note 88.
14
If anything, this figure errs on the conservative side. The information provided by
Manno is, in many cases, not complete or somewhat sketchy. I have counted as sur-
viving children only those for whom Manno indicates the years of birth and death of
the child or else a description of their professional activities. See Upatriziato subalpino,
vols. I-XXVII.
possibility of conscious family limitation, was, at least in part, a response

to new inheritance laws that abolished primogeniture and fidecommessi
and eroded respect for the social obligations governing the marriage
customs of cadets and daughters. In the eighteenth century, large
Piedmontese titled families had tended to follow a traditional aristocratic
strategy practiced elsewhere on the peninsula and in Europe, a strategy
that involved limitation of marriage in order to keep the patrimony
intact and still preserve the lineage. Ideally, the first sons married and
attempted to have at least one son to assure the continuity of the male
line, while, for their part, younger sons and a portion of the daughters
were expected to remain celibate so that as much as possible of the
family inheritance passed through a single line. 15
Much as in neighboring Lombardy, the introduction of partible
inheritance laws with the arrival of the French in the late 1790s brought
about gradual, but important changes in the marriage practices of the
nobility in Piedmont.16 The increased financial autonomy which these
reforms provided to all heirs clearly weakened the authority of the
aristocratic patriarch to impose the interests of the lineage on his
progeny. In the absence of legal restrictions, the perpetuation of tradi-
tional dynastic strategies depended upon an unparalleled degree of
voluntary cooperation and self-sacrifice by family members. Entrenched
customs and abiding family loyalties reduced some of the impact of the
reforms in the short run. At least this was the view of contemporary
observers like Antonio Carlo Napoleone Gallenga.17
The statistical evidence provided by the probate records only partially
supports Gallenga's impressions. It does indicate that cadets in the nine-
15
For a fuller discussion of the aristocratic ideology of family in eighteenth-century
Piedmont, see Marchisio, "Ideologia e problemi dell'economia familiare,"
pp. 67—130. A survey of 392 eighteenth-century nobles, for whom Manno has pro-
vided information, reflects this pattern, especially in regard to the male members of
prominent old families:
Aristocratic celibacy - eighteenth century
Family position Total number % celibate

First sons 54 12
Cadets 117 68
Daughters 139 18
The high percentage of married first sons and celibate younger brothers clearly attests
to the attention which titled families in Piedmont gave to dynastic considerations in
determining matrimonial policies prior to the French Revolution.
16
For the situation in Lombardy, see Zanetti, "The patriziato of Milan," pp. 745—760.
17
See Gallenga, Country Life in Piedmont, pp. 47—48.
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY I33
Table 4.2 Aristocratic celibacy: nineteenth century
Family position Total numbers (%) celibate
First son 264 12

Cadet 209 39
Daughter 371 13
teenth century were less inclined than their predecessors to renounce

the pleasures of domestic life for the sake of the lineage. While most
first sons still took their dynastic responsibilities seriously and continued
to be much more likely than their younger brothers to marry, only a
minority of aristocratic cadets remained celibate. As a result, the pros-
pect of large numbers of younger branches and the consequent fragmen-
tation of family wealth greatly increased. In this context, smaller
households conformed to the logic of the lineage by reducing the
number of heirs with whom the first born had to share the family
patrimony.
Exclusive emphasis on parents and children, however, provides only
a partial view of the reality of domestic life within the Piedmontese
nobility. Memoirs and family papers reveal a considerably larger and
more complex household that also might include grandparents, unmar-
ried relatives, priests, governesses, tutors, and a wide variety of servants.
Count Clemente Solaro della Margarita, for instance, spent the better
part of his early years at home, but mostly in the company of his uncle
Gasparo and the family priest Father Illuminato Salvaia.18 Several
decades later, the son of one of the signers of the Statute, Count Carlo
Broglia di Casalborgone and his wife, resided in a luxurious apartment
in Turin along with their four children as well as the Count's widowed
mother, his two younger brothers, a governess, two maids, and a man
servant.19 The considerably wealthier Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-
Mossi and his wife headed a domestic menage in the same period that
included his three children, his mother-in-law, and a resident staff of
four maids and nine man servants.20 For his part, Count Giovanni Fig-
arolo di Gropello recollected his childhood in a spacious residence of
"Belle Epoque" Turin, which he, his parents, and two sisters shared
18
See Lovera e Rinieri, Clemente Solaro della Margarita, vol. 1, pp. 18—20; Barbagli,
Sotto lo stesso tetto, pp. 310-311.
19
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Broglia di Castelborgone, b . 3, Census form, 1861 and
b. 31, inventory of the family residence in via dei Mille 16, 1885.
20
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 17, lists of persone di servizio,
1867 and 1873.
with "the personnel (wet-nurses, nurse maids, and similar types) who
dealt exclusively with the children," as well as a valet, maid, cook,
apprentice cook, washerwoman, coachman and the family's French
governess, Mademoiselle Gillotte. 21
In his memoirs, Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta provides a
detailed description of the dimensions and dynamics of his parents'
household. Born at the end of the nineteenth century, Incisa della R o c -
chetta grew up in a sprawling family of six children whose needs were
met by a "well-supplied platoon of governesses, nurse maids, nurse
aides, 'trusted' persons and the 'old women of the house' . . . those
responsible for overseeing our well-being, upbringing, and the begin-
ning of our education." The dominant figure among the latter was a
certain "Madama Cristina," the widow of a great uncle's agent, who
acted as a sort of housekeeper as well as confidante to the children's
mother. Another set of "internal" servants, "with whom it was impor-
tant to maintain good relations," ran the rest of the household. They
included the Marchesa's personal maid, who remained with her mistress
for more than fifty years, a valet "in livery", a younger servant who
played with the children, and finally a cook and his assistant. Growing
up in the ancestral castle in La Rocchetta, the family also had need of an
"external" staff that included a gardener, an all-purpose repairman, a
grounds keeper, who had been the grandfather's orderly, and a
coachman.
As Marchese Mario recalled, the children considered both the inter-
nal and external staff as being very much a part of the family:
All of them together constituted the "house staff": familiari, as they were
called then, with a term that unfortunately no longer has meaning,
having derived from the old "family", when the head of the house and
the absolute despot was . . . the father. We were on very familiar terms
with all the "internal and external" staff. . . and used to engage them in
long conversations that we would never have been able to do with our
parents and our other "elders". The "familiari" . . . listened to us and
discussed things with us frankly and calmly; and we, instinctively, felt
them to be our equals, "subordinates" like us and we understood them
better than we did our own parents and their "betters".22
For his part, Figarolo di Gropello described a similar relationship
between children and servants in his parents' home in the early years of
the twentieth century. In particular, his mother's maid, who had fol-
21
"Diario dell'Ammiraglio di Divisione, Conte Giovanni di Gropello," January to
June 1986, pp. 4 - 5 .
22
See Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi", pp. 36—41.
lowed her from her family, was especially attached to them, providing
in the words of Count Giovanni, some "of the sweetest and dearest
memories of our childhood and adolescence."23
The Piedmontese nobility may well have been less inclined to
abandon a traditional model of parent-child relations than their titled
colleagues elsewhere in northern Italy. It has been argued that the nine-
teenth century witnessed a profound transformation in the internal
dynamics of aristocratic families. An older model of household relations
based on deference, subordination, and fear entered into crisis with the
generation of nobles who were born between 1821 and 1845. As a
result, the cold and respectful formalism that had once governed rela-
tions between noble parents and children gave way to a new model
characterized by greater intimacy and informality.24
Little of this intimacy and informality appears to have penetrated
noble families in Piedmont, judging by the Incisa della Rocchetta
household. On the whole, their father, Marchese don Enrico, remained
aloof from his progeny, intervening only "when there were big prob-
lems or major domestic crises." Deference and fear dominated the sons'
relations with their father. When he took them with him on horse rides
to survey the family estate, for example, Marchese Mario recalled: "we
knew that we must follow him at a distance of ten paces, in silence; it
was out of the question to ask him anything, if only because we would
have had to raise our voice and we would have never dared to do that."
On those rare occasions when Marchese don Enrico went out of his
way to please his sons, they were "astonished and deeply moved, but
knowing him well, we avoided showing him our gratitude in words; he
would have responded to us with a cold shower (docciafredda)."25 While
Figarolo di Gropello's father, unlike Marchese don Enrico, was willing
on occasion to display great affection toward his children, he was also
prone, in the words of Count Giovanni, to "explosions of anger that
terrified us"; their mother was more even tempered, but less inclined to
"noisy displays of affection."26
The memoirs of both Incisa della Rocchetta and Figarolo di Gropello
point then to the apparent survival of older hierarchies and patterns of
subordination within aristocratic families long after the Restoration and
the ostensible triumph of modern forms of conjugal domesticity. Such
survivals did not mean that nothing had changed. Noble households in
the nineteenth century tended to have fewer children than in the past,
23
Figarolo di Gropello, Diario, p . 4.
24
See Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto, p p . 3 0 3 - 3 2 8 , 3 3 9 - 3 4 2 .
25
Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi", p p . 32—33, 36, and 48.
26
Figarolo di Gropello, Diario, p . 7.
I36 PERPETUATING AN ELITE
while cadets displayed a new independence in their marital practices.

Nonetheless, as both marital statistics and personal recollections indicate,
the authority of the family patriarch and loyalty to the lineage remained
strong and continued to exercise a powerful influence on young nobles
well into an era when all were equal before the law. The family still
acted as the first and most important instrument for the perpetuation of
traditional values and modes of comportment within the Piedmontese
nobility.
ARISTOCRATIC EDUCATION WITHIN THE FAMILY FORTRESS
The initial learning experiences of aristocratic children continued in the

nineteenth century to take place within the relative social isolation of
the family's ancestral palace and/or country estate. Such settings per-
mitted parents, governesses, and tutors to instill early on in the children
an awareness of belonging to a special group, separate and distinct from
the rest of society. Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta's recollec-
tions provide some insight into the rather secluded environment in
which aristocratic children were raised:
It would never have entered their minds [his parents] to have us attend
the local public school; they would have been even less inclined to
permit us to go about in the village by ourselves or take part in the games
of the "ragazzacci" of Rocchetta. We crossed the village without stop-
ping . . . During our early years, we used to spend the days at Rocchetta
always in the house and the garden and always in the same way: for "lo-
gistical" reasons, because we "big" kids had to adapt to the needs of the
"little ones." But what we always called the "garden" is basically a true
park: small (about 4 hectares), but a "park" because it has all the charac-
teristics of one: variety and sizes of trees, the absence of flowers and
flower beds . . . ; namely an (artificial) appearance of "natural" scenery.
Thus, we did not feel constrained as we would have been in a true
garden.27
Social isolation, however, did not mean extravagant luxuries or
indulgent treatment for the children of noble families. O n the contrary,
virtually all aristocratic commentators stressed the importance of severe
discipline, strict obedience, and austerity in their upbringing. In his
autobiography, for instance, Massimo d'Azeglio described the daily
regimen of his childhood in the first years of the nineteenth century, a
regimen designed to instill in him "the strength to make sacrifices and
to learn how to suffer." D'Azeglio spelled out in some detail what his
27
Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi," pp. 28-29.
parents' educational philosophy entailed. D'Azeglio himself remained
an enthusiastic supporter of his father's "excellent authoritarian
methods" which, he wished "could be the general rule throughout
Italy."28
If the recollections of Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta and
Count Giovanni Figarolo di Gropello provide any indication, the
approach to the early education of children in the d'Azeglio household
remained popular with the families of the Piedmontese nobility a
century later. Marchese Mario remembered how he and his brothers
and sisters spent their childhood "in an authoritarian regime. That
which happened to us, for us, and around us, was not debated: thus it
had to be and thus it was. And that was enough." 29 In a similar vein,
Figarolo di Gropello thanked "heaven and my parents" for the way he
and his sisters had been "very strictly raised" in the opening decade of
the twentieth century.30
An approach to child-rearing that unabashedly stressed hierarchy,
discipline and obedience conformed perfectly to the traditional values
that titled families sought to perpetuate and instill in their progeny: a
rigorous sense of duty, unwavering obedience to the monarchy, and
devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. The Alfieri di Sostegno and
Taparelli d'Azeglio provided perhaps the most articulate exponents of
this Piedmontese aristocratic ethos. Early in the century, for instance,
Marchese Carlo Emanuele Alfieri di Sostegno instructed the younger
generation: "Cherish your high birth, since it imposes duties; cherish
your ancestors, since they are examples for you; but guard yourself from
believing that nature has transmitted to you the glories [of the family] as
an inheritance, which you have only to enjoy . . . " 31
Similar concerns reappear in the letters and testimonials that other
members of the two families directed toward their sons, nephews, and
grandchildren in the decades prior to 1848. After the death of her
husband, Marchese Cesare d'Azeglio in the 1830s, Cristina Morozzo
della Rocca di Bianze held him up to her sons as a model of what she
considered the essence of nobility: "a sense of true honor, based on faith
in God and loyalty to King, probity and loftiness of soul." 32 She urged
her grandson, Marchese Emanuele d'Azeglio, to live up to the same
standards, insisting that his "name, discrete patrimony, [and] uncommon
intelligence" required him "to be useful to the fatherland" and to
28
D'Azeglio, Things I Remember, pp. 34-37.
29
Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi," p. 48.
30
Figarolo di Gropello, Diario, p. 7.
31
Quoted in Masi, Asti egli Alfieri, pp. xiii-xiv.
32
Quoted in d'Azeglio, Things I Remember, p . 6.
achieve a "good reputation [and] public esteem . . . " 3 3 Marchese Ema-

nuele received similar admonitions from his father and his aunt,
Marchesa Luisa Costa della Trinita. Marchese Roberto d'Azeglio wrote
to his son in 1832 to express the hope that he would become a man
"capable of occupying with the dignity of the nobility and the loftiness
of its views that honorable place that his birth has designated for him in
the state." For her part, Marchesa Luisa advised her nephew: "endeavor
to be rigorous in the execution of your duties and those of your state,
respect and care for our religion, serve your King with zeal and
loyalty."34
Such values continued to find expression in the missives that promi-
nent aristocrats directed to their children in the decades after national
unification. Count Emiliano Avogadro della Motta implored his chil-
dren in 1865 to consider his "faith," and not his vast wealth, as "the best
inheritance that I can leave to you . . . " 3 5 Count Ernesto Balbo
Bertone di Sambuy urged his oldest son Vittorio in the late 1880s to
remember "in every moment our old motto, Fair devoir, so that all your
actions will carry the imprint of the perfect gentleman." For their part,
his younger sons were expected to honor the duty that "is incumbent
upon all to serve their own country."36 In the same period, Marchese
Giuseppe Dalla Valle di Pomaro recommended to his two sons and one
daughter "as a norm and secure guide in their lives, those religious prin-
ciples that from infancy were diligently inculcated in them by their
parents."37
Like their titled counterparts elsewhere on the peninsula, Piedmont-
ese aristocrats attached a great deal of importance to the religious
dimension of their progeny's education. Many of them maintained in
residence a trusted priest who typically served as the children's first
tutor. Massimo d'Azeglio recalled that when he was a child, "all noble
families who were religious had to have their domestic chaplains."38
Count Paolino Gazelli di Rossana, for example, invited his old curate in
the Citadel of Turin in the 1820s to reside in the family's palace and en-
33
Archivio Taparelli d'Azeglio, Saluzzo, carteggio private Marchese Emanuele, corris-
pondenza varia, 1828-1887, as cited in Maldini Chiarito, "Trasmissione di valori e
educazione familiare," p . 51.
34
B o t h letters are cited in ibid., p p . 4 8 - 4 9 .
35
A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Avogadro di Collobiano e della Motta, b . 9, Testament
of C o u n t Emiliano Avogadro della Motta, n.d. 1865.
36
URST, b . 788, f. 17, Testament o f C o u n t Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy,
N o v e m b e r 2, 1889.
37
URST, b . 694, f. 5, 1905, testament of Marchese Giuseppe Dalla Valle di Pomaro,
n.d., 1888.
38
trusted him with the classical education of his son Stanislao. The priest
must have had a profound influence on Stanislao who at the age of thir-
teen chose to enter the priesthood.39 Count Giuseppe Ignazio Avo-
gadro della Motta provided his family's curate, Don Giacomo Toso,
with a life-time pension as well as permanent board and lodging in the
family's palace in recognition of what he had done "for the education of
my son."40 Of course, the efforts of clerical tutors could also backfire on
them. Massimo d'Azeglio, for one, attributed his lack of respect for reli-
gious authority, in part, to "the limitations and misplaced zeal of my
priest."41
Exclusive reliance on priests, nannies, and preceptors for the instruc-
tion of aristocratic children within the familiar confines of the country
house or urban palace became more difficult in the nineteenth century.
In an increasingly competitive society, nobles were under mounting
pressure to provide at least their sons with the formal education that was
becoming necessary to pass public examinations and gain access to posi-
tions of power and influence. Especially in the decades after 1848, titled
families had to adapt their sons' educations to a world that was no
longer based so much on birth and inherited privilege as on wealth,
talent, and certain standards of culture and civilization.
PRIVATE SCHOOLS AND ARISTOCRATIC EDUCATION

A number of new or restructured educational institutions began to
appear during the Restoration to meet those needs. These mostly
private schools represented both a challenge and an opportunity for
aristocratic families. In general, secondary schools represented, by their
very nature, a threat to hereditary transmission of status and profession,
since they "sought to replace the titles of nobility with others like the
laurea or the diploma, which conferred privileges on those who acquired
them." 42 At the same time, exclusive private schools also offered the
hereditary nobility not only competitive skills, but also a much needed
opportunity to strengthen group identity and cohesion and to inculcate
traditional values and attitudes into the younger generations.
From the outset, the interaction among youths within these institu-
tions reinforced and broadened alliances and connections already based
on marriage, family contacts, and more casual encounters in urban
39
diRobilant, Unprete di ten, pp. 18-22.
40
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Avogadro di Collobiano e della Motta, Testament of
Count Giuseppe Ignazio Avogadro della Motta, n.d., 1818.
41
D'Azeglio, Things IRemember, pp. 50-53.
42
Barbagji, Educatingfor Unemployment, p. 60.
palaces or country houses. Shared experiences and daily rituals in board-

ing school encouraged a web of friendships and camaraderie to develop
among the students that often carried over into their adult lives. The
structure, discipline, and curricula of these schools also served to glorify
and promote the values of "Religion, Fatherland, Family,"43 and, in
this fashion, helped perpetuate and reaffirm the ideals and traditions that
had long defined the aristocratic ethos in Piedmont.
This blend of new and old functions was clearly evident in the two
most important elite educational institutions that appeared in the
decades after the fall of Napoleon: the Royal Military Academy of
Turin (1816) and the Royal Carlo Alberto College of Moncalieri
(1838). Although the Academy was founded by the monarchy while the
Barnabite religious order ran the College, both schools had their roots
in the ancien regime and in shared ideals, goals, and methods that reaf-
firmed older models of aristocratic comportment. In fact, the new
academy inherited the name and seat of the original Accademia Reale
which had provided military training to young men from the
Piedmontese nobility in the century preceding the French Revolu-
tion.44 Similarly, the Royal Carlo Alberto College was the successor to
an older educational institution, the Collegio dei nobili di Torino,
which had been administered by the Jesuits before 1773 and then by the
Barnabites in the 1790s.45
Despite these elements of continuity with the ancien regime, the two
schools were also very much institutions of the nineteenth century that
were designed by founders and sponsors to combat new threats to throne
and altar. Thus, Vittorio Emanuele I and his army commanders con-
ceived of the Academy not just as an institution of education in military
science, but also as an instrument to inoculate young officers against the
subversive and heretical ideas that had ostensibly flourished during "the
long fifteen year dream" of French occupation.46 A couple of decades
later, the Royal Carl Albert College was founded with two primary
objectives: first, to help insure the loyalty of the next generation of "boys
of noble and refined status" to the crown and tradition after a number of
officers had become involved in the Mazzinian uprisings of 1833 and,
second, to prepare for an ambitious program of national unification.47
43
H Real Collegio Carlo Alberto di Moncalieri. New LXXVanno, p. 2 1 .
44
S e e R o g i e r , La R. Accademia Militare, v o l . 1, p p . 2 3 - 4 2 .
45
he scuole dei Barnabiti (1533-1933) (Florence, 1933), p. 174.
46
Q u o t e d i n R o g i e r , La R. Accademia Militare, v o l . 1, p . 4 8 ; o n t h e larger ideological
functions o f t h e A c a d e m y after 1816, see also Barberis, Le armi del principe,
pp. 286-87.
47
S e e Tabboni, H Real Collegio Alberto, p. 29.
In their daily rituals, the Royal Military Academy and the Royal
Carlo Alberto College promoted the same traditional ideals and virtues
that aristocratic families like the Taparelli d'Azeglio and Alfieri di Sos-
tegno were already attempting to instill in their offspring. Not surpris-
ingly, the two schools attached special importance to religious faith and
practice. Cadets of the Academy, for instance, were told that among
their duties, "those of religion are the first." Institutional regulations
and constant exhortations from commanders called for monthly confes-
sions, daily attendance at mass, and strict observance of all religious
duties.48 Similarly, prayers opened and closed every day as well as every
activity of what had previously been the Convent of San Francisco of
Moncalieri, while religious observances of the students were carefully
prescribed and regulated down to the smallest detail.49
Devotion to the monarchy went hand in hand with religion in the
educational agenda of both schools. From the outset, commanders of
the Royal Military Academy encouraged cadets to view the monarch as
the "venerated head of the military family" and to work hard and
behave well in order to "deserve Royal Favors" and "the paternal ten-
derness of the King." To reinforce these sentiments, Vittorio Emanuele
I made special trips to the Academy to inspect the cadets and show his
interest in their progress.50 For their part, the Barnabite superiors
exalted their school's tradition of "Piedmontese discipline [and] loyalty
to the House of Savoy," a tradition that found expression in everything
from the portraits of members of the dynasty that graced the walls of
school to the elaborate rituals surrounding the annual presentation of
student awards by the king or other members of the royal family.51
Their shared devotion to throne and altar did not keep the two
schools from pursuing different emphases in their respective curricula.
The Military Academy initially made the study of Latin the base of its
curriculum like other schools of the time, but from the outset a much
greater emphasis was put on mathematics than the humanities. From
1839 onward, entering students had to be between the ages of 14 and
16, with a basic knowledge of Latin, Italian, arithmetic, elementary
geometry, and the fundamental principles of the Catholic religion. The
course of studies for students bound for service in the infantry and
48
Rogier, La R. Academia Militare, vol. 1, pp. 4 8 - 4 9 .
49
H Real Collegio Alberto di Moncalieri, 1838—1938, p. 103. For a fuller discussion o f the
role of religion in the educational experience of the college, see Tabboni, H Real Col-
legio Alberto, p p . 8 9 - 9 0 .
50
Rogier, La JR.. Accademia Militare, vol. 1, p p . 5 0 - 5 1 .
51
See Vico d'Arisbo, Quand'ero in Collegio (Milan, 1928), p . x; U R. Collegio Carlo
Alberto, 1838-1938, p. 64.
cavalry lasted five years; for those headed to artillery, engineering, and
the General Staff, six years. During the first two years, all students took
the same set of courses, which included arithmetic, algebra, geometry,
French language and grammar, Italian literature, design, and military
regulations. In the succeeding years, both groups of students continued
to study French and Italian, along with geography, history, and military
regulations. Future infantry and cavalry officers studied advanced
algebra, trigonometry, topography, statistics, physics, fortification, and
other military-related courses. Students training for the more technically
specialized branches also took these courses as well as more advanced
courses in calculus, mechanics, chemistry, and cosmography.52
The Royal Carlo Alberto College, on the other hand, maintained a
curriculum which was modeled after the Jesuit ratio studiorum and in
conformity with the programs of the Ministry of Education. Accord-
ingly, precedence was given to the humanities, Latin, Greek, and Italian
over all other subjects. The program of studies began with four years of
elementary school, followed by an external public examination for
admission to the next level. The program of humanities occupied the
next four years and included three years of grammar, two years of
rhetoric, and two years of philosophy, or in its place a two year prepara-
tory program for aspirants to the Military Academy.53
In general, the Military Academy and the Royal Carlo Alberto
College were concerned not only with imparting a specific body of
knowledge to their charges, but with shaping and molding their overall
character. The two schools actively promoted a code of comportment
that embodied the traditional ideals of the Piedmontese nobility. As one
nineteenth-century critic later complained, the titled commanders of
the Military Academy attempted "to instill in those tender young minds
all the attitudes of that aristocratic intolerance and petulance which
were reputed then to be inseparable from the nature of the gentle-
man."54 The written orders constantly made implicit reference to the
precept of noblesse oblige by emphasizing the special duties of cadets who
were a "chosen youth" and belonged to a "most noble corps." Exem-
plary punishments awaited those cadets guilty of "behavior contrary to
the dignity of well born youths" or lacking in "that level of honor
which shapes the proper character and sentiments of a true military man
. . . " 55 Likewise, the first program of the Royal Carlo Alberto College
52
See Rogier, La Real Accademia Militate, vol. I, p p . 6 6 - 6 8 , 9 0 - 9 1 , 1 3 6 - 1 3 9 , 154.
53
S e e T a b b o n i , II Real Colkgio Alberto, p p . 5 2 - 5 5 .
54
See Pinelli, Storia militate del Piemonte, vol. 11, Chap. 4, as cited in Rogier, La R. Acca-
demia Militate, p. 54.
55
Ibid., p p . 5 4 - 5 5 .
promised to provide "boys of noble and refined rank" with an educa-

tion not only in the standard academic subjects, but also in piety and
social sophistication (urbanita sociale) in order to prepare them for the
admission to the Academy and a military career. Nearly a century later,
the College's regulations still spoke of instilling in the "youths from
select families . . . a noble demeanor, dignified and companionable,
which is proper to persons of high rank."56 In this fashion, the two
schools reinforced in their students an awareness of belonging to an
exclusive and distinguished elite that had special prerogatives and duties.
Commandants and headmasters paid more than lip-service to these
goals. The social isolation, strict discipline, and austerity that character-
ized child-rearing practices within Piedmont's titled families also typi-
fied the educational philosophies of the Military Academy and the
College of Moncalieri. Both institutions took virtually total control
over the lives of their students whom they kept almost completely iso-
lated from the outside world. One alumnus of the Carlo Alberto
College recalled approvingly in his memoirs how the school "wanted to
be a great family and . . . did not tolerate interruptions of any sort, con-
sidering them, not wrongly, as harmful." Even the reading of newspa-
pers was rigorously forbidden. The schedule of the College until 1906
allowed students no overnight absences and only three lunches a year
with their families so that some became "strangers in their homes and in
their country"; the Academy, for its part did not provide for any official
vacation time.57
From dawn to dusk, school authorities regimented every aspect of
the students' daily lives and employed a variety of punishments for any
misbehavior to encourage unwavering obedience and self-abnegation.
Cesare Saluzzo di Monesiglio, commandant of the Academy in the
1820s and 1830s, imposed on them a spartan regimen that required boys
as young as nine years of age to spend much of their time outdoors in all
kinds of weather, drilling, marching, performing physical exercises, and
engaging in aggressive, violent forms of sport. All this was intended, in
the words of one alumnus, to "inculcate in those youths a masculine,
soldierly character."58
The Barnabite superiors of the Royal Carlo Alberto College sought
56
See II Real Collegio Carlo Alberto 1838—1938, pp. 1 5 - 1 6 ; Regolamento per i convittori
(Turin, 1929), p . 35.
57
See II Real Collegio Carlo Alberto 1838-1938, p. 16. For the comments of the former
student, see L. Segala t o Vico d'Arisbo, in Quand'ero in collegio, p . 239. See Rogier,
La JR.. Accademia Militare, vol. 1, p p . 58—61 w h o describes the strict regimen followed
by the cadets.
58
Rogier, La R. Accademia Militare, vol. 1, p p . 9 1 - 9 2 .
to encourage in their charges the same military, ascetic virtues with a

strict uniform code and a rigid schedule that allowed no privacy and
structured virtually every minute of their day from 6 a.m. to bedtime at
8.45 p.m. Students were expected to remain in uniform awayfromthe
College, since as one father wrote to his son, it "distinguishes and
honors you everywhere, in contrast to the bourgeois coat which fits
well even on the shoulders of a scoundrel (manigoldo); the uniform of a
student of the Barnabites is a guarantee of honesty."59 Emphasis on
discipline and duty extended even to time set aside for play which had,
in the words of former students, "the appearance of a regulation to be
observed, of a duty to be discharged. It was an obligation to enjoy
oneself." The task of enforcing such regimentation fell to the rector and
a hierarchy of prefects who required students to "accustom themselves
to obey blindly."60
The ethos of the Royal Carlo Alberto College, in particular, also
exalted careers that reflected the aristocratic ideals of honor and public
leadership rather than the pursuit of production and profit. In the
words of one history teacher, the school aspired to train students "to
observe a constant love for their own country, to be inspired to fulfil
all their duties and in this way to become perfect citizens who are
truly of assistance, consolation, and glory to their own family and city,
but even more to the great Italian Fatherland."61 For their part, the
Barnabite superiors proudly trumpeted their role in the formation of
"thousands of illustrious citizens in the armed forces, diplomacy,
courts, politics." Conversely, the worlds of commerce and industry
were largely ignored. In 1913, the school's chroniclers, for instance,
gave only passing reference to the graduates who achieved prominence
in these sectors.62
The aristocratic ethos of the Military Academy and the Royal Carlo
Alberto College was evident not only in their rituals and educational
philosophy, but also in the social backgrounds of their students and, in
the case of the Academy, the institutional leadership. In fact, all ten of
its commandants between 1816 and 1859 came from old titled families
like the Nicolis di Robilant, Saluzzo di Monesiglio and Faa di
59
It Real Collegio Carlo Alberto, 1838-1938, p. 15.
60
See ibid., p . 166. Regolamento dei Prefetti (Turin, 1884), p . 46, quoted in Tabboni, II
R. Collegio Alberto, p. 92.
61
Declaration of a Barnabite history teacher from the school's program of 1897, quoted
in Tabboni, U Real Collegio Alberto, p. 61.
62
C o m m e n t s of Padre Semeria in the preface to V. d'Aristo, Quando ero in collegio, p . x.
For indications of the lack of status which the school attributed to careers in business,
see H Real Collegio Carlo Alberto di Moncalieri nel LXXV anno, pp. 84-87 as well as
Tabboni, II Real Collegio Alberto, pp. 114-122.
Table 4.3 Social origins of students (Royal Carlo Alberto College)
Category 1838-1857 1858-1877 1878-1897 1898-1917

(%) (%)
Nobility 52 49 29 22
Professions 9 13 16 21
Landowners 29 30 49 50
Commerce 2 7 3 1
Banking 6 - -
Military 1 0.3 3 2
Industry - 1 0.6 4
Bureaucracy — 0-5 0.2 0.4
5o«rce: Tabboni, 22 Real Collegio, p. 75.
Bruno.63 More importantly, the large number of young aristocrats

who passed through their doors testifies eloquently to the importance
which Piedmont's nobility attached to these elite schools in the nine-
teenth century. Roughly 90 percent of the first class of recruits to the
Military Academy in 1816 came from the ranks of the aristocracy.
Over 600 more blue-blooded youths followed suit in the decades up
to 1870. Led by the Asinari di San Marzano, Morozzo della Rocca,
and Galli della Loggia, a core group of some 20 titled families alone
sent 102 sons to the Academy in these years.64 Pressures to enlarge and
professionalize the army, however, necessitated a much broader base of
recruitment into the officer corps and thereby worked to erode gradu-
ally the social exclusivity of the Military Academy. Even before unifi-
cation, the social makeup of the Academy had changed noticeably.
Titled families, which had accounted for 66 percent of the recruits in
the 1820s, were contributing only 30 percent of the total by the
1850s.65
The Royal Carlo Alberto College proved to be somewhat more
resistant to bourgeois penetration. Indeed, the social composition of its
student population remained predominantly aristocratic into the last
quarter of the nineteenth century. From its founding in 1838 until 1917,
the College took charge of the education of 846 young men from titled
families. Table 4.3 provides some quantitative measure of how signifi-
cant this aristocratic presence was. As these statistics show, boys from
63
F o r a c o m p l e t e list o f t h e c o m m a n d a n t s , see A c c a d e m i a Militare, Annuario per Vanno
scolastico 1887-1888 (Turin, 1887).
64
F o r a c o m p l e t e list o f all cadets as w e l l as b r i e f b i o g r a p h i c a l sketches, see R o g i e r , La
R. Accademia Militare, v o l . 11, p p . 1 - 1 9 , 4 1 3 - 4 3 9 .
65
D e l N e g r o , Eserdto, stato, societa, p p . 6 3 - 6 4 . O n t h e m o d e r n i z a t i o n o f t h e a r m y , see
Whittam, The Politics of the Italian Army, pp. 26-49.
noble families continued to make up far and away the largest single
group within the college until the late 1870s; in the decades immediately
preceding World War I, they were outnumbered only by the sons of
non-noble landowners, a considerably larger and less close-knit segment
of Piedmontese society.
The declining aristocratic presence in the Royal Carlo Alberto
College in the last decades of the nineteenth century was due in part to
increased competition from other private educational institutions in
Turin such as the Jesuit Collegio delTlstituto Sociale di Istruzione ed
Educazione Privata and the Christian Brothers' Collegio San Giuseppe
which also catered to the sons of prominent families. Although the
former opened its doors only in 1881, its founding rector, Father Luigi
Asinari di San Marzano, came from one of Piedmont's most prestigious
old families; that plus the long tradition of upper-class, Jesuit education
in the region going back to the seventeenth century ensured the Istituto
Sociale immediate acceptance, especially in the more ultra-montane
circles of the nobility.66 While the 484 blue bloods who enrolled in the
school before World War I represented less than a fifth of the total
student population, their ranks included the sons of many of Piedmont's
oldest and wealthiest aristocratic families. Indeed, the presence of names
like Pallavicino-Mossi, San Martino di San Germano, and Cacherano di
Bricherasio eloquently testified to the prestige and status the Istituto
Sociale enjoyed within the nobility. Much like their counterparts in
Moncalieri, these students had to wear uniforms at all times and
received a strict Catholic education, but they were much less socially
isolated. In contrast to the Royal Carlo Alberto College, the Istituto
Sociale had a substantial number of day students and even those who
boarded were allowed weekly visits with their families.67
Founded in 1867, the Collegio San Giuseppe ranked slightly below
the Barnabite and Jesuit schools in the hierarchy of elite private institu-
tions favored by Piedmont's titled families in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Like the other two, the Collegio San Giu-
seppe openly asserted its elitist character, promising "families of refined
status" to cultivate in their sons "the forms of comportment that are
appropriate to well-born young men." 68 Despite these claims, the
regimen of the school was less all-encompassing and the student popu-
66
See Istituto Sociale di T o r i n o , L'Istituto Sociale, p p . 1 —17, 4 0 - 4 2 .
67
See ibid., p p . 8 6 - 1 3 3 f °r a list of the students w h o entered the school between 1881
and 1915. T h e school ceased to provide facilities for boarders in 1923.
68
See A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Broglia di Casalborgone, b . 10, f. 1, "Collegio San
Giuseppe c o n Semiconvitto per le scuole, elementari, ginnasiali e techniche (Torino,
via S. Francesco da Paola, 2 3 ) " (Turin, 1895).
lation less socially exclusive than the Royal Carlo Alberto College.
Most were day students and even the full-time boarders spend only nine
months a year in collegio. While the names of some of the oldest titled
families appear on the school's class rosters, young nobles represented a
tiny minority of the students enrolled in the San Giuseppe. In the years
from 1901 to 1915, for instance, they accounted for less than a tenth of
the total enrollment which consisted predominantly of the sons of
industrialists, merchants, and bankers.69
Aristocratic young women did not fare as well educationally as their
brothers. Indeed, the virtual exclusion of women from public life in
Liberal Italy reinforced the inclination of titled families to devote con-
siderably less attention and resources to the education of their daughters.
In this respect, they appear to have followed the advice of one of their
own, Count Cesare Balbo, who had recommended earlier in the
century that "the education of the girls . . . can and should be done in
the home by the mothers."70 Significantly, information on the formal
schooling of aristocratic young women is almost completely absent from
family papers and other available sources. The few indications that do
emerge from the documents suggest that the nobility invested much less
in their education. In the 1870s, for example, Marchese Lodovico Palla-
vicino-Mossi annually spent more than twice as much on his son's
instructional expenses than on those of his two daughters.71 When they
chose to go beyond the teaching of good manners and comportment at
69
Archivio del Collegio San Giuseppe, Elenco dei studenti, 1901-15. These hand-
written lists not only provide the names of the students enrolled each year, but also
the names and professions of the parents. The following table indicates the distribu-
tion of the students for whom the list offers information on the profession or status of
their fathers:
Category 1901—1902 1905-1906 1910—1911 1914-1915

Nobility 30 24 35 19
Industry 28 50 53 45
Merchants 4i 38 50 58
Proprietari 20 14 11 14
Administration - 14 7
Military 8 14 8 9
Landlords 7 H 11 14
Finance 7 11 2 6
70
Cesare Balbo, Le speranze d'Italia (Paris, 1844), cap. xi, "Come si possano aiutar tutti
gli Italiani," quoted in Alighiero Manacorda, "Istruzione ed emancipazione della
donna," p. 13.
71
See AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b. 12, "Estratto generale dei
redditi e delle spese" 1875, 1876, 1877, a n d 1878.
home, aristocratic families seem to have shared with other segments of

the propertied classes a decided preference for private Catholic girls'
schools that emphasized the traditional values of obedience and devo-
tion to the family.72
It is easier to describe the aims and aspirations of the all-male elite
private schools than to measure the results they achieved. How effective
were they at instilling traditional aristocratic values and modes of com-
portment in the sons of noble families? Camillo Cavour's experiences in
the Royal Military Academy suggest that, in some cases, they failed
utterly in their ostensible mission.73 Still, analysis of the career paths fol-
lowed by the titled graduates of the Academy and the Royal Carlo
Alberto College indicates that the example of Cavour was far from
typical. In the 1830s and 1840s, for instance, 96 percent of all noble
youths who entered the Academy received their officer's bars. Indeed,
the nobility accounted for 65 percent of all the commissioned officers
from the Academy in the 1830s and 55 percent in the 1840s. More than
a quarter of the cadets from the core group of old aristocratic military
families ended their careers at the rank of general.74
Most graduates of the Royal Carlo Alberto College also pursued a
path in life that conformed to the ideals and traditions of the
Piedmontese nobility, judging by a survey of 414 alumni the school's
officials carried out in 1913. Their findings reveal the distribution of
careers as shown in Table 4.4. Young men from the titled nobility, in
particular, tended to fulfill the expectations of their families and Barna-
bite mentors once they entered the outside world. Although aristo-
cratic students made up only 37 percent of the total enrollment in the
College of Moncalieri between 1838 and 1913, in the survey they
monopolized court offices and contributed 81 percent of the high
ranking army officers, 79 percent of the diplomats, and two-thirds of
the alumni in public administration and politics. Conversely, blue
bloods were decidedly under-represented in those potentially more
lucrative areas strongly associated with the middle classes: the profes-
sions and the business world. At a minimum, these figures strongly
suggest that elite schools like the Royal Carlo Alberto, working in
harmony with the old families, contributed significantly to the perpe-
72
See Covato, "Educata ad educare," p . 135.
73
See R o m e o , Cavour e il suo tempo, vol. 1, p p . 189—222.
74
O f t h e 102 boys from t h e core group of 20 families w h o entered t h e Military
Academy between 1816 and 1870, 29 attained t h e rank of lieutenant o r major
general. See Rogier, La R. Accademia Militate, vol. 11, p p . 1 - 4 1 1 . O n the percentages
of nobles w h o received their commissions, see D e l N e g r o , Esercito, stato, societa,
pp. 61-64.
Table 4.4 Career patterns of graduates (Royal Carlo Alberto College)
Profession All alumni Aristocratic alumni
1. Army 156 -
a. Generals 25 20
b. Colonels 27 21
c. Majors 20 17
2. Diplomacy 33 26
3. Public Administration 3i 21
4. Court Posts 6 6
5. Politics 30 20
6. Professions 65 12
7. Agriculture & Industry 21 6
Source: R. Collegio Carlo Alberto, 1838—1913, pp. 32-56.
tuation of traditional values and the reproduction of a distinctive aristo-

cratic ethos in nineteenth-century Piedmont.
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN: ARISTOCRATIC CAREER

PATTERNS
As the data on the graduates from the Royal Carl Albert College
suggest, a significant part of the Piedmontese nobility's sense of their
own enduring distinctiveness continued to derive from their socially
conditioned choice of careers. Indeed, the loss of legal privileges greatly
accentuated the importance of the officers corps in maintaining and
revitalizing traditions critical to the nobility's social cohesion and sense
of purpose in the nineteenth century.
Of course, the military establishment, which young men from
Piedmontese titled families entered, changed from a "feudal" force to a
modern "industrial" army during the century. Organizational expan-
sion, technological innovation, and political change all combined to
erode the nobility's traditional domination of the officer corps. As early
as the 1830s, a serious shortage of officers created irresistible pressures
on the House of Savoy to broaden the social bases of recruitment. At
the same time, the increasing pace of technological change in Piedmont,
especially with the spread of the railroads in the 1850s, favored the
modernization of the army and the formation of an officer corps that
viewed wars as "something more than the extension of hunting."75
Efforts to enlarge and professionalize the army encouraged major
changes in the social composition of the cadets at the Military Academy,
75
See Whittam, The Politics of the Italian Army, pp. 26, 49, 146-147.
where the nobles had become a decided minority by the 1850s. While
the Piedmontese military establishment and its traditions provided the
model for the Italian army that emerged the following decade, the
passage of a third of the officers from Savoy to France in i860 and the
entrance of large numbers of Lombards, central Italians, and southerners
into newly formed mixed brigades after unification further reduced the
aristocratic make-up of the officers corps. By the late 1880s, the corps
was a overwhelmingly middle-class body, with only 3 percent to 4
percent of the officers coming from noble families.76
Nonetheless, the continued prominence of the old Piedmontese elite
at the top of the military hierarchy and its close ties to the House of
Savoy made it possible for the new Italian army to still perform tradi-
tional social functions. In this respect, neither professionalization nor
the increasing social heterogeneity of the officer corps appears to have
diminished the prestige of military service for young men from titled
families in the decades after national unification. Indeed, the actual
number of aristocratic officers from the region remained relatively con-
stant between 1861 and World War I. A survey of various years of the
Annuario Militate del Regno d'ltalia reveals that Piedmontese noble
families contributed from 200 to 248 officers on active service at any
given moment throughout the period. Such continuity is especially
striking, since the total number of aristocratic officers from all regions of
the peninsula dropped substantially in the second half of the nineteenth
century.77
Social considerations still seem to have dictated the distribution of
titled officers within the armed forces. As table 4.5 indicates, Piedmont-
ese nobles tended to concentrate in the traditionally prestigious cavalry
and elite infantry regiments, where roughly three-quarters of them
served. Another fifty nobles, on average, appear to have given prece-
dence to duty and professionalism by serving in the ostensibly more
bourgeois artillery. By and large, Piedmontese nobility avoided the Car-
abinieri and Engineers Corps.
A variety of sources attest to the fact that the military remained the
preferred choice of most nobles who pursued careers in the second half
of the nineteenth century. According to the electoral rolls, for instance,
the army was the designated profession of more aristocratic voters in
Turin than all other professions combined in the mid-i87os.78 Nor had
76
See ibid., p p . 6 1 - 6 8 ; D e l N e g r o , Eserdto, stato, sodeta, p p . 6 3 - 6 4 ; Ceva, "Forze
armate," p . 285.
77
According t o Lucio Ceva, the n u m b e r of noble officers w e n t from 855 in 1863 t o
430 in 1887. See his "Forze armate," p p . 2 8 4 - 2 8 5 .
78
A C T , Lista elettorale amministrativa, 1875.
T a b l e 4.5 Piedmontese aristocratic officers
Branch 1875 1885 1895 1905 1914
Cavalry 88 87 114 102 IOI

Infantry 65 82 68 68 51
Artillery 33 47 56 65 52
Carabin. 6 11 7 3 3
Engineers 8 4 3 4 0
Total 200 231 248 242 207
Note: The data on distribution of Piedmontese aristocrats within the survey is drawn
from lists in the Annuario Militare for the years 1875, 1885, 1895, 1905, 1914.
this pattern changed four decades later. On the eve of World War I,
noble families resident in the regional capital had 214 men serving in the
army officers corps as compared to only 19 in the legal profession, 18 in
the judiciary, and 8 in engineering or architecture. The same families
had virtually no presence in the church or professoriate.79 A very similar
picture emerges from the membership lists of the Societa del Whist.
From its founding in the 1840s until World War I, a substantial majority
of the titled members of Turin's most exclusive and aristocratic men's
social club held commissions and had served on active duty in the offi-
cers corp. Included in their ranks were some forty-four generals and
admirals.80
The enduring prestige and status which the Piedmontese nobility
continued to attach to military service also made the officer corps a
primary route of access for new men to aristocratic circles in the second
half of the nineteenth century. Although the king no longer routinely
bestowed hereditary titles on officers who had entered the high
command, distinguished service in the army remained one of the surest
paths to ennoblement after 1861. Of the 106 new nobles created
between unification and World War I whose professions can be identi-
fied, 38, or more than a third, came from the officer corps. In the last
decade and a half before the war alone, fifteen officers received heredi-
tary titles.81
More importantly, the military profession remained a crucial ingre-
dient in a larger process of aristocratic socialization of young men from
newly ennobled families who lacked a tradition of service in the army.
79
See La Guida commerdale ed amministrativa di Torino, lgij (Turin, 1913), pp. 624-676,
749-766, 905-923, 977-1043.
80
See Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, pp. 111-218 for biographical sketches of the
members.
81
See Bertini Frassoni, Provvedimenti nobiliari, pp. 3 - 3 5 .
Much as in the past, the acquisition of a patent of nobility in nine-

teenth-century Italy rarely produced immediate social rewards for its
recipient; a title was an investment that could be realized only by the
sons and grandsons of the original successful merchant, banker, or sta-
tesman. In Piedmont, this process typically involved the younger gen-
erations pursuing commissions and embracing careers in the military.
Over the course of the century, a number of newly ennobled families
began to develop their own modest military traditions. The Barel di
Sant'Albano, for instance, a prominent banking family whose title came
shortly before the French Revolution, sent six sons to the Royal Mili-
tary Academy between 1816 and 1870, and produced four generations
of army officers prior to World War I. Another family of bankers and
merchants, the Rignons, had four men serving in either the artillery or
cavalry between the 1820s and 1914. Other newly ennobled banking
families like the Gonellas (1845), the Casanas (1852), and the Ceriana-
Mayneri (1881) as well as families from the professions and administra-
tion like the Nasi (1836), the Fassini-Camossi (i860), and the Voli
(1899) followed a similar pattern of involvement in the military. On the
eve of the Great War, these families still had ten of their men serving in
the fashionable units of the cavalry and infantry, alongside the sons of
old titled families.82
In an era of increasing professionalization and meritocratic reform
within the Italian army, Piedmontese aristocrats owed their strong
attachment to military service to a combination of social, cultural, and
economic circumstances. The importance of rural culture and social
inheritance have long been recognized as crucial factors in the making
of career officers in both Europe and the United States. Rural life
encouraged an out-of-doors existence and a concern with sports,
weapons, and the virtues of physical prowess that were well suited to
the requirements of the traditional military establishment.83
In his memoirs, the cavalry officer, Marchese Mario Incisa della Roc-
chetta testified to the crucial formative role played by family tradition
and country life. As he recalled it, "when I was quite little, I had firmly
decided that I would be a soldier just as had been my father, his father,
and his father's father: in the Cavalry, of course . . . " 8 4 The rituals of
everyday life in the countryside recapitulated and revitalized this tradi-
82
For information o n the careers o f the members o f s o m e forty families ennobled in
the nineteenth century, I used M a n n o , U patriziato subalpino, vols. I - X X V I I . O n the
numbers serving in 1914, see Annuario militare, 1914, pip. 136—197.
83
See Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait ( N e w York,
i960).
84
Incisa della R o c c h e t t a , "Impressioni e ricordi," p. 51.
tion. At an early age, for example, Incisa della Rocchetta and his
brothers learned the intricacies of horsemanship, 'first on a donkey, then
on a 'pony', then on a 'country horse' and finally on a real horse."
Before they were in their teens, the boys were already accompanying
their father on two to three-hour rides several times a week to oversee
the various seasonal agricultural activities. Special events such as the
passage of a cavalry regiment through Rocchetta or the two royal visits
by Vittorio Emanuele III to the family estate made a tremendous
impression on the young Incisa della Rocchetta and confirmed his com-
mitment to military service.85
Once young men from old titled families made the decision to enter
into officers' training, their special social connections often ensured
them benevolent attention from their superiors as the case of Count
Eugenio De Genova di Pettinengo illustrates. When Count Eugenio
decided in 1889 to abandon the "comfortable, but lazy and deleterious
life of the society and porticos of Turin" and followed the "most noble
example of his father" by enrolling in the Military School of Modena,
he came into contact with a number of career officers who had served
under his father, General Ignazio De Genova di Pettinengo, one-time
Commandant of the Military Academy of Turin and then general direc-
tor of the Ministry of War. The value of family connections emerges
clearly from the letters of one of the general's former subordinates who
wrote to assure him that "in taking an interest in your son I am obeying
longstanding sentiments of devotion and respect for you so that for me
it is almost like looking after another of my own sons." 86 It is difficult
to evaluate the impact of these mechanisms of informal influence on the
subsequent military careers of men from noble families. They were
probably of little help to the incompetent wastrel, no matter how
exalted his family name and social contacts. Still, the careers of the
twenty-nine youths from titled backgrounds who entered the Military
Academy of Turin between 1861 and 1870 suggest that aristocratic
status remained a decided asset in the Italian army. Although this group
made up less than 4 percent of the cadets who passed through the
Academy that decade, fourteen generals and seven colonels eventually
emerged from its ranks.87
In Piedmontese aristocratic circles, a career in the army not only
meant a gentlemanly pursuit; it also provided much needed employ-
ment for sons who might otherwise divide and fragment the family
85
Ibid., pp. 12-20,29-33.
86
AST, Prima Sezione, Archivio D e Genova di Pettinengo, b . 8, f. 2, letter to General
Ignazio D e Genova di Pettinengo, n o date 1890.
87
Rogier, La R. Accademia Militate, vol. 11, p p . 279—411.
patrimony. Especially, in the era of more egalitarian inheritance laws,
the military profession offered titled families an honorable way of pre-
serving intact much, if not all, of their patrimony as it passed from one
generation to the next. As officers, the younger sons earned a steady
income that allowed them to receive their share of the inheritance in
annual installments over decades rather than in one lump sum. This was
precisely the strategy that Baron Pietro Antonio Guidobono Cavalchini
urged in the 1850s on his four younger sons, three of whom did pursue
military careers, while the fourth entered the diplomatic corps. 88
Nearly four decades later, the economic value of a military career was
not lost even on a wealthy nobleman like Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone
di Sambuy. Although he would die a multi-millionaire in 1909, Count
Ernesto insisted as early as the 1880s that his four sons had "to work out
of necessity if they want to be in a position to support their families
. . ." Appropriately, all four wound up in the armed forces, three as
cavalry officers and one in the navy.89
Varying combinations of social prestige, family traditions, and
economic necessity explain the enduring attraction of both the aristo-
cratic first-born and their brothers to service in the army officers corps.
While the majority of noble officers, whose families resided in Turin in
1913, were cadets, nearly half (48 percent) were oldest sons who often
stood to inherit the lion's share of their fathers' estates.90 Of course,
military service did not necessarily have the same meaning for all con-
cerned. The principal heirs of wealthy old families like Marchese Maur-
izio Luserna di Rora, Marchese Emanuele San Martino di San
Germano, or Count Emanuele Cacherano di Bricherasio seemed to
treat the cavalry as a congenial pursuit and an obligatory rite of passage
before they married or stepped into their fathers' shoes. Others, like
Marchese Carlo Compans di Brichanteau, used the military as a stepping
stone to a career in politics.
These men may have fitted the aristocratic stereotype of the dilettante
officer, but they were not necessarily typical. In fact, many of the first
born, especially those from old military families, retained their commis-
sions long after they had come into their inheritances. Count Ferdi-
nando Avogadro di Collobiano, for instance, inherited a large fortune
88
For the inheritance strategy advanced by Baron Guidobono Cavalchini, see his last
will and testament in AST, Testamenti pubblicati, vol. 42, p . 69. O n the careers
pursued by his sons, see Manno, Upatriziato subalpino, vol. x m , pp. 666ff.
89
URST, b. 788, f. 17, testament of Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, F e b -
ruary 11, 1889. O n the military careers of his sons, see Manno, Upatriziato subalpino,
11.
90
See Guida di Torino, 1913, pp. 638-674.
from his father in the 1860s, but remained an officer for an additional
two decades in the cavalry where he retired at the rank of major
general.91 Roughly two-fifths of a sample of aristocratic officers, whose
names reappear on the active rolls of the Cavalry or Artillery in the
Annuario militare over a period of two to four decades between 1875 a n d
1914, were first sons. On the eve of World War I, the ranks of oldest
sons in the armed forces still included a large number of career officers:
fifteen generals, three admirals, nine colonels, and ten majors.92 Such
numbers attest to the enduring efficacy of family customs and elite edu-
cation in reproducing the distinctive aristocratic military ethos of the
Piedmontese nobility.
Not surprisingly, the officer corps enjoyed a prominent place in the
social life of Turin before World War I. As Marchese Incisa della Roc-
chetta recalled, in that era the genuine "gentlemen, that is to say . . .
the only social category that * counted' then [were] officers and people
that lived off of rents."93 The prestige enjoyed by the officer corps in
the Piedmontese capital both reflected and depended, in turn, upon the
survival of a strongly aristocratic high society with its own distinctive
values, institutions and patterns of sociability.
ARISTOCRATIC SOCIABILITY: THE SOCIETA DEL WHIST
The blend of tradition and innovation that helped to perpetuate the

army officer corps as a marker of social position for the sons of
Piedmontese titled families was also strikingly evident in a new gentle-
men's club, the Societa del Whist, which increasingly gave structure to
aristocratic social rituals in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Such an institution developed, in part, in response to the transformation
of court life in the Kingdom of Sardinia, especially after 1848.
In the first decades of the Restoration, the nobility had been able to
rely once again upon the House of Savoy and its highly traditional court
to provide both a focal point and an exclusive setting for many of their
social activities. Indeed, the rigid etiquette observed at the courts of Vit-
torio Emanuele I, Carlo Felice, and Carlo Alberto ensured that titled
status remained a virtual prerequisite for admission to royal festivities.
91
C o u n t Ferdinando Avogadro di Collobiano, the principal heir of an estate valued at
over L. 2 million in 1868, continued to pursue his military career into the late 1880s.
See Annuario militare, 1885, vol. 11, p . 25. O n the dimensions of the fortune h e had in-
herited from his father, C o u n t Filiberto, see URST, b . 13, f. 36, 1868.
92
See Guida di Torino, 1913, p p . 6 3 8 - 6 7 4 ; o n the length of service of noble officers, see
sources indicated in Table 4.5.
93
Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi," p p . 1 6 1 - 1 6 3 .
Years later, Count Charles Arrivabene recalled how the Sardinian

Court was so strict in such matters that, he claimed, <4no one would
have been admitted to the Court balls, had he not been able to show at
least two centuries of nobility." While Arrivabene probably exaggerated
the importance of lineage, the House of Savoy and its court were un-
questionably the centerpiece of a traditional high society in Turin in the
first half of the nineteenth century, a society that continued to be over-
whelmingly aristocratic in character and membership.94
The Piedmontese-Sardinian Court, however, no longer played this
role for the nobility in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848, the procla-
mation of the Statute, and the accession of Vittorio Emanuele II to the
throne. From the outset, the introduction of parliamentary elections
and equality before the law required the new limited monarchy, which
gradually took shape in the following decade, to open its court to a
much broader and more socially heterogeneous political class. For his
part, Vittorio Emanuele II showed little interest in maintaining the tra-
ditional etiquette of court, most of which he abolished in 1848. The
new king's preference for a life of hunting and horseback riding at his
castles at Stupinigi and Moncalieri led him largely to abandon the royal
palace in Turin. Well before his court transferred south to Florence and
then Rome, it had ceased to serve as the center of an aristocratic high
society.95
The social vacuum created by the disappearance of traditional court
life was at least partially filled in the decades after 1848 by a new gentle-
men's club which had first appeared in Turin only in 1841. That club,
the Societa del Whist, traced its origins to an informal gathering of
wealthy young men at the Caffe Fiorio, a fashionable coffee house in
the heart of Turin. In March 1841, the future architect of Italian unifica-
tion, Count Camillo Cavour, launched the idea of a club similar to the
ones he had frequented in London during travels abroad, a club that
would provide a much needed gathering place away from the "queru-
lous and noisy promiscuity" of the varied clientele at the Caffe Fiorio
where he and his friends often gathered.96 Although Cavour began with
a narrow conception of the club as an entity "dedicated to the game of
whist and that of chess," the Societa del Whist that finally emerged had
a broader scope, namely "the gathering together, in an appropriate
setting, of persons of education and refinement who can keep each
94
A r r i v a b e n e , Italy under Victor Emanuel, v o l . 1, p . 20. F o r additional descriptions o f Sar-
d i n i a n c o u r t life i n this p e r i o d , see G e r b o r e , Dame e cavalieri del Re, p p . 1 6 - 2 5 ,
29~3 2 > 3 4 - 4 4 ; Falletti, Saggi, p p . 1 7 6 - 1 7 7 .
95
See G e r b o r e , Dame e cavalieri del Re, p p . 65—71.
96
See Societa C a v o u r , Un secolo di vita, p p . 19—20.
other company there with conversation, with permissible games, and

with the reading of books and magazines." In line with these aims, the
physical layout of the new club, which occupied the "noble floor" of a
palace designed by the great baroque architect Juvara, included suitably
furnished rooms as well as a dining area for the daily "social dinner." 97
Ironically, this new but highly selective gentlemen's club became in
the second half of the nineteenth century the most exclusively aristo-
cratic institution in the region and thus one of the strongest bulwarks of
the old traditions associated with the Piedmontese nobility. From its
inception, the Whist was popularly referred to as the "circolo dei
nobili" and rumors circulated in Turin that it represented "an aristoc-
racy within the aristocracy," admission to which required "proofs of
four quarters of titled status."98 A rapid glance at the names that appear
in the club's published membership lists confirms the substance of these
rumors. Of the 1,100 men who belonged to the Whist between 1841
and 1914, 995 or 90 percent came from titled families. Aristocratic pre-
dominance became even more striking when we consider that a third of
the 105 untitled members were admitted in the first decade of the club's
existence. More than any other single factor, it was noble birth that
defined the members of the Whist.99
Titled status may have been a virtual prerequisite, but it did not auto-
matically guarantee admission to the Whist. In fact a more detailed
analysis of 459 men from noble families whose estates went through
probate between 1862 and 1912 suggests that traditional values and
older hierarchies with their subtle gradations of status remained impor-
tant determinants of acceptance. Only a minority of these men, some
164 or little more than a third, were ever club members. This select
group was distinguished from the rest of the hereditary nobility in a few
key respects.
Ancient lineage appears to have counted for more than wealth or per-
sonal achievements. Club men were much more likely to come from
old established families with generations of tradition and large networks
of relatives than from recently ennobled families. There was a very
marked correlation between antiquity of family title and membership in
the Whist as the following table shows. These figures suggest that the
club's admissions policies reaffirmed an older value system, one that
ascribed the highest status to those families with the greatest stability and
continuity over time. Accordingly, men who lacked the genealogical
97
Ibid., pp. 3 2 - 3 8 .
98
Q u o t e d in the essay o n men's clubs by Giuseppe Gloria in Torino, p p . 2 7 7 - 2 8 9 .
99
These statistics are based o n t h e detailed biographical information contained in
Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, p p . 111-218.
Table 4.6 Lineage and Whist membership
Antiquity of title Percentage in Whist
Pre-1723 48
Post-1723 25
Restoration 18
Post-1861 10
For genealogical information, I have relied on Manno, II patriziato subalpino, vols.

I-XXVI.
Table4.7 Wealth and Whist membership
Wealth groups % of group in Whist
Below L. 100,000 3i
L. 100,001-250,000 28
L. 250,001-500,000 30
L. 500,001-1,000,000 39
Above L. 1,000,000 70
attributes to go along with their titles found the path to acceptance con-
siderably more difficult.
On the other hand, wealth per se did not seem to be a crucial deter-
minant of membership in the Whist. Only in the case of the very
richest individuals, did it seem to make a dramatic difference (see Table
4.7). The limited importance of wealth, especially when unaccompa-
nied by a sufficiently lengthy pedigree, becomes strikingly evident
when we compare the percentage of members among the men from
old and new noble families with roughly the same levels of wealth. Pre-
dictably, those men who enjoyed both great wealth and ancient family
titles were most likely to be members of the Whist. But as Table 4.8
shows, the prestige associated with pedigree was such that relatively im-
poverished men from old aristocratic families found access to the club
easier than considerably wealthier nobles who had acquired their titles
in the nineteenth century. Even when personal income and property
holdings had become quite negligible, as in the cases of men like
Marchese Tommaso Ferrero della Marmora and Marchese Lodovico
Delia Chiesa di Cinzano, ancient descent might prove sufficient to
ensure inclusion.100
100
At the time of their deaths, both men left estates in which debts exceeded the total
capital value of their assets.
Table 4.8 Wealth, lineage and Whist membership (percent)
Total value Pre-1723 titles 19th C.Titles
Below L. 100,000 40 4
L. 100,000-250,000 40 20
L. 250,001-500,000 35 16
L. 500,001-1,000,000 50 25
Above L. 1,000,000 83 22
With such a pronounced emphasis on lineage, it is hardly surprising

that the close ties of blood, marriage, and genealogy that characterized
Piedmont's aristocratic elite also played a major role in the processes of
selection of members. From the outset, the nucleus of men who
founded the Whist had all been related to each other as cousins or in-
laws. The consanguinity of the founders remained a basic feature of the
Whist's membership in the ensuing decades. More than two-thirds of
the club men in the probate survey were linked by marriage to other
old families of the Piedmontese nobility. In general, relatives of
members far outnumbered those without prior connections among men
taken into the Whist. Of the 1,475 individuals who belonged to the
Whist between 1841 and 1940, roughly 800 came from a comparatively
small group of 164 families with three or more members each. An even
tighter circle of some 15 families accounted for over 10 percent of all
members in the club prior to World War II. 101
The Societa del Whist not only reflected and reenforced the ties of
blood and marriage, but also developed ties based on the members'
involvement in certain traditional areas of public service. Relatively few
of the club men in the probate survey (11 percent) conformed to the
aristocratic stereotype of the detached gentleman of leisure. Most dis-
played a strong sense of duty to the House of Savoy in accordance with
the longstanding military traditions of the Piedmontese nobility. The
army officers corps far outdistanced all others combined as the preferred
profession of the members prior to World War I. In fact, a solid
majority (94 individuals or 57 percent) of the club men in the probate
survey served in the army.
101
See Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, pp. 273-282 for an alphabetical listing of all
members. On the families ties among the Whist's founders, see ibid., p. 29.
Roughly a quarter of the Whist members in my survey were bachelors. Of those
who were married, 68 percent had spouses from pre-nineteenth century noble fa-
milies, while 17 percent married women from aristocratic families outside of Pied-
mont. Only fifteen titled members had spouses from non-noble backgrounds.
The aristocratic ethos of the Whist also found expression in the club's
particular institutional way of life. As the Whist's rituals, customs, and
traditions developed over time, they did little to encourage what
Nelson Aldrich Jr. has referred to as "hot commerce in goods, services,
and selves." On the contrary, they were designed to make the club a
privileged refuge and a "quiet zone of belonging" for members, distin-
guished by its exclusivity and its distance from the pressures and strains
of the vulgar world outside.102
In accordance with these aims, the Whist embraced a code of com-
portment that emphasized, in the words of Count Ignazio Thaon di
Revel, "a genuine cordiality, great tolerance, respect for other opinions,
and a mutual esteem." Members were expected to behave in the dining
room with "that dignified demeanor that is normally maintained . . . in
the most distinguished private families." To encourage this behavior,
there was an unwritten prohibition against any discussion of politics or
religion. Within the confines of the club, all members were supposed to
be on an equal footing, with no special privileges or prerogatives to
anyone regardless of his public prominence. Indeed, it was considered
extremely bad form for members to flaunt their standing in the outside
world. General Enrico Morozzo della Rocca, one of the most decorated
men in the country, could still claim: "when I enter the Club I am no
longer a knight of the Annunziata (highest of the royal orders), but
Cavalier della Rocca and nothing more." 103
The events and activities sponsored by the Whist also reflected its
role as an aristocratic refuge. More than half a century after the club's
founding, the president, Count Massimo Biandra di Reaglie, proudly
affirmed in 1901 that the Whist was "an entirely private association
adverse to external displays" that had never "taken part in any public
demonstration."104 Such views perfectly suited a club whose mostly
old-line members felt no need to prove or publicize their high status.
The avoidance of public display by the Whist carried over to seemingly
innocuous symbolic actions. Until 1911, for instance, it was policy
never to display the national flag from the central balcony of the club
even on the most important national holidays.
The few external activities supported by the Whist tended to be of a
sporting nature, usually involving enthusiasts of horse racing, cycling,
hunting, and race cars. The club almost never sponsored official ban-
quets that involved outsiders; the few that did take place commemo-
102
Aldrich, Old Money, pp. 5 0 - 5 1 .
103
Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, pp. 6 0 - 7 6 . O n the importance of courtesy within
the club, see Gloria, Torino, pp. 277-289.
104
Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, p. 58.
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY l6l
rated some war or military hero. Those group events that occurred with
some regularity inside the Whist tended to be of a smaller, more inti-
mate character and were associated with other primarily aristocratic
institutions. Thus, the club provided a setting for annual reunions of
prestigious cavalry regiments and the alumni of the Royal Carlo Alberto
College of Moncalieri.105 In this fashion, the Whist's organized initia-
tives, much like its admissions policies and rituals, helped to perpetuate
and transmit an older set of aristocratic values that exalted birth over
achievement, status over profit.
The Societa del Whist offers then a graphic illustration of how in the
nineteenth century newly created institutions could serve to patch up
and reconstruct elements of an old order well after those elements had
been ostensibly abolished by statute. With the disappearance of the
nobility's legally defined hereditary superiority and the traditional life of
court, the Whist emerged as the most visible institutional embodiment
of an enduring aristocratic establishment. As such, the club not only
strengthened social contacts and relationships within the nobility; it also
helped to perpetuate a set of common values and modes of comport-
ment. In the process, the Whist provided its members with the final
confirmation of an ascriptive social status and identity already firmly
grounded in their sense of lineage, family upbringing, education, and
state service.
At the same time, the pretensions of aristocratic families to continued
elite status also required the development of fresh strategies of selective
emulation, assimilation and/or exclusion to meet the unavoidable chal-
lenges that came from emerging new power groups in the nineteenth
century. Above all, after the introduction of complete civil equality in
1848 and the impressive mobilization of capital in industry, trade, and
banking the following decade, the hereditary nobility no longer stood
alone as the sole ruling elite in Piedmont. Instead they became just one
component of a much larger and heterogeneous class of wealthy nota-
bles who collectively dominated political and economic life in the
second half of the nineteenth century. In this context, the survival of
aristocratic families as a coherent and distinct group depended not only
on their internal integration, but also on the forms and limits of inter-
action that developed between them and wealthy non-titled land-
owners, successful businessmen, and professionals.
105
Ibid., pp. 57-70.
CHAPTER 5
THE LIMITS OF FUSION:

ARISTOCRATIC-BOURGEOIS
RELATIONS IN NINETEENTH-
CENTURY PIEDMONT
As old juridical and institutional barriers disappeared in the course of the

nineteenth century, the degree to which the aristocracy survived as an
identifiably separate group at the upper reaches of Piedmontese society
depended on more than recasting and reproducing traditional values,
customs, and practices. It also entailed a restructuring of relations with
other wealthy and influential non-noble elements who emerged to chal-
lenge the primacy of the old titled families within a new and greatly
expanded ruling class. In this arena, aristocratic survival involved a
mixture of flexibility and rigidity. From the stand point of the law,
nobles had become only one among the various strata of the bourgeois
world by the second half of the century. Moreover, changing political
and economic realities in Piedmont and on the Italian peninsula necessi-
tated an unprecedented level of cooperation and collaboration between
nobles and non-nobles in virtually all areas of public life, especially after
1848. Rubbing elbows on elective municipal councils or on the boards
of voluntary associations, however, did not automatically lead to more
intimate connections in private life. On the contrary, the persistence of
relatively closed social networks at least in Piedmont served to reinforce
a caste consciousness and isolation that delayed genuine integration of
old and new elites.
Contemporary observers tended to embrace the view that noble and
bourgeois groups merged easily and relatively quickly in nineteenth-
century Italy to form a new class of notables in which property sup-
planted birth and privilege as the measure of social distinction. Less than
twenty years after unification and the definitive abolition of all legal
status distinctions on the peninsula, one old conservative aristocrat
informed the social investigator, Leandro Carpi, in 1878, that "castes no
longer exist; there are those who are richer and those who are less rich,
those who are poorer and those who are less poor . . . But there are no
162
more castes."1 Two decades later, Luigi Villari noted how the Italian
word aristocrazia had come to mean something quite different from its
English counterpart, aristocracy: "The [former] does not signify the
titled classes alone, or those who are of old family. It is best translated by
'good society.' The nobility are, of course, included in it, but so are a
certain number of higher Government officials, most of the wealthy
business men . . . and a few professional men." 2 These contemporary
perceptions have found a clear echo in the recent interpretations of
social historians who argue that Italian noble groups either declined
rapidly or else lost their old distinctiveness by blending into a more het-
erogeneous class of landed proprietors.3
The case of the Piedmontese aristocracy challenges this vision of
rapid assimilation. In Piedmont contact between old and new elites was
restricted largely to the public sphere and rarely occasioned more inti-
mate relations at least prior to World War I. In fact, distinctively aristo-
cratic and bourgeois patterns of investments, marriage partners,
professions, residences, and life styles all point to the persistence of paral-
lel but socially separate elites in the region.
MINGLING IN THE PUBLIC REALM
The turbulent years of the late 1840s appear to have marked a watershed
in relations between the titled nobility and other segments of Pied-
mont's educated and propertied classes. With the introduction of the
Statute and additional egalitarian legal reforms in the early 1850s, the
anti-aristocratic rhetoric that had so captured the attention of con-
temporary observers in 1848-1949 largely disappeared from public dis-
course. Indeed, the very distinction between noble and bourgeois,
which had been such a fundamental issue during the Restoration, no
longer received much attention at all in the second half of the century
either in the political debates or in the popular press.
Changes in rhetoric accurately mirrored certain shifting realities of
state organization and public life. Much like the old privileged classes
elsewhere on the Italian peninsula, those Piedmontese aristocrats who
did not wish to withdraw completely from the public realm had little
choice but to recognize and associate with their fellow citizens on terms
1
See Carpi, L'Italia vivente, p. 52.
2
Villari, Italian Life, p. 17. Foreign commentators like Roberto Michels tended to
agree with Villari, stressing the comparative weakness of social distinctions in Italy.
See R.. Michels, U proletariate e la borghesia nel movimento socialista italiano (Turin, 1908),
pp. 298-310.
3
See Introduction, pp. 3-5.
I64 THE LIMITS OF FUSION
of relative equality in the decades after 1848. To begin with, the

growing size and complexity of the Savoyard state entailed a level of
expertise and professionalism that unavoidably required officials from an
aristocratic background to work with men recruited from the middle
classes. This progressive mingling of patrician and plebeian was
nowhere more strikingly evident than in the army officers corps. As we
have seen in Chapter 4, this last bastion of the nobility had become a
predominantly bourgeois institution, at least in its social composition,
by the last decades of the nineteenth century.4
The special status that the military enjoyed within the Piedmontese
aristocracy meant that a commission in the cavalry or artillery made it
easier for middle-class men to overcome caste barriers and engage in
more intimate forms of sociability with members of the old nobility. In
Turin they were incorporated into the ceremonies and social rituals of
the city's high society and ducal court life, provided of course that they
had the suitable income and manners. Dashing young officers were a
necessary presence at the costume balls, charitable benefits, and solemn
state occasions that marked Turin's winter season. Cavalry officers of
non-noble origins enjoyed additional social opportunities in the spring
and fall through their participation in the favorite sports of the old titled
elite. While Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta insisted that fencing
was "the only sport played by 'gentlemen' and officers," equestrian
sports and hunting parties probably afforded the most important occa-
sions for extensive interaction.5
Middle-class officers could meet and have regular contact with their
aristocratic colleagues not only in military schools, barracks, and playing
fields, but also in more leisurely and informal settings. Incisa della Roc-
chetta recalled that prior to World War I there were a number of tables
at the fashionable Caffe Fiorio in Turin that "were in tacit but uncon-
tested possession of the 'clan' of cavalry officers, a few men from artil-
lery admitted 'ad personam' and their carefully selected friends."6
Shared experiences in the officers corp could provide the basis for
lasting friendships and social contacts between bourgeois and aristocrats
as the experience of Giovanni Agnelli indicates. The future giant of the
Italian automobile industry began his public life as an officer in the
cavalry in the late 1880s, where he established solid ties with young
nobles like Count Giulio Figarolo Tarino di Gropello, with whom he
first discussed his entrepreneurial aspirations. The social connections
4
See Chapter 4.
5
Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi," pp. 161-163.
6
Ibid., pp. 165-166.
Agnelli made in the military paid off in the summer of 1899 when he
joined with Count Emanuele Cacherano di Bricherasio, another cavalry
officer and automobile enthusiast, and other men from the aristocratic
and financial communities of Turin, to found Fiat.7
Nor was Agnelli's experience unique. In fact, the officer corps
became the single most important path of access for non-nobles to the
aristocratic Societa del Whist and even to marriage into a titled family.
The army furnished three times as many of the bourgeois members of
the Whist as the other two fashionable professions, law and diplomacy,
combined in the years between 1841 and 1915.8 The relationships
developed in the barracks and the Whist could lead in turn to visits to
ancestral palaces and country homes that afforded introductions to other
members of aristocratic families. Although hardly a commonplace, such
encounters occasionally resulted in the most intimate form of social
fusion with bourgeois officers actually becoming in-laws to some of
Piedmont's oldest and most prominent lineages in the decades leading
up to World War I.9
The officer corps also remained the primary institutional path for
new men to official noble status in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Although the king no longer ennobled on a regular basis bour-
geois officers who had entered the high command of the army, the mili-
tary service still represented an extremely valuable asset for aspirants to
an hereditary title. Of the 106 new nobles created between 1861 and
1915 whose professions can be identified, 38 or more than a third came
from the ranks of the officers corps. The army appears to have lost little
of its importance in this respect with the passage of time. On the con-
trary, in the last decade and a half before World War I, the king
ennobled fifteen military men. 10
The army officers corps, however, represented only the tip of the
iceberg of new shared experiences linking the titled nobility to the
propertied, educated middle classes. The dismantling of the old absolu-
tist regime and its hierarchical, corporative bodies opened the way to an
7
See Biscaretti di Ruffia, U cinquantesimo anniversario, pp. 37-41.
8
Of the 106 bourgeois members of the Whist before 1915, 44 were army officers. See
Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, pp. 111—218.
9
A partial list of the families with a bourgeois son-in-law in the officers corps included
the Biscaretti di Ruffia, Cacherano di Bricherasio, Castellani Varzi de'Merlani, Del
Carretto di Moncrivello, Gozani di San Giorgio, Lovera di Maria, Martini di Cigala,
Mella Arborio, and Morozzo della Rocca di Brianze, Ripa Buscetti di Meana, Rova-
senda di Rovasenda, and Tornielli-Bellini. See Manno, U patriziato subalpino, vols.
I-XXVI.
10
See Cardoza, "Ennoblement," pp. 600—601 and "An officer and a gentleman,"
p. 196.
166 THE LIMITS OF FUSION
extraordinary flowering of voluntary associational activity that progres-

sively structured public life in the urban centers of Italy during the
second half of the nineteenth century. These years witnessed in Turin
the founding of an array of new philanthropic and charitable societies,
cultural institutions, sports and recreational clubs, and economic
interest-group associations. By 1900, the Quida di Torino listed more
than fifty societies working on behalf of hospitals, the poor, sick, and
dying; over twenty recreational clubs that promoted everything from
chess and bee keeping to tennis, cycling, and football; and at least
another dozen institutions concerned with maintaining the city's
museums and monuments or promoting the fine arts.11
Individuals from all segments of the local propertied classes sat side by
side on the boards and jointly participated in the activities of these orga-
nizations. The Turinese women's section of the Italian Red Cross, for
instance, brought together grand damesfromsome of Piedmont's oldest
aristocratic families like the D'Oncieux de la Batie and Luserna di Rora
with the matrons of leading financial and manufacturing families such as
the De Fernex, Denina, and Geisser. Likewise, the twin passions of
Arturo Ceriana, a member of one of the city's top banking families, for
classical music and horse racing led him to sit on the boards of both the
Societa di Concerti and the Societa per le Corse di Cavalli where he
came into regular contact with not only Giuseppe Engelfred, heir to a
larger manufacturing and real estate fortune, but also the prominent,
old-line aristocrats Count Emanuele Cacherano di Bricherasio,
Marchese Giovanni Guasco di Bisio, and Marchese Fernando Scarampi
di Villanova. In this fashion, these voluntary associations encouraged the
development of new social configurations based less on ascriptive status
than on shared interests and enthusiasms.12
Steadily widening access for the children of merchants, industrialists,
and bankers to the educational opportunities afforded by elite Catholic
schools represented a potentially more powerful instrument of aristo-
cratic—bourgeois cohesion; here students from all segments of the
propertied classes received a set of early, common educational and social
experiences. From their founding in the middle decades of the nine-
teenth century, these institutions depended upon the patronage not
only of the old titled elites, but also of leading bourgeois families. As a
result, wealth as much as birth came to guide the admissions policies of
the schools whose doors were open to boys from all segments of the
11
See Laguida commerciale ed amministrativa di Torino, 1900 (Turin, 1901), pp. 489-545,
559-678.
12
For lists of board members, see ibid.
propertied or "civilized" classes. In the case of both the Jesuit Istituto

Sociale and the Collegio S. Giuseppe, aristocratic youths never
accounted for more than a small percentage of the total enrollments.
Even the most socially exclusive of the academies, the Royal Carlo
Alberto College, was drawing the majority of its students in the last
quarter of the century from bourgeois landed, professional, and business
families. This often meant that, from as early as the age of ten, young
nobles lived in close and virtually constant contact with affluent middle-
class boys, sharing classrooms, living spaces, and the rituals of life in
boarding school.13
Physical presence in the same institutional spaces, however, did not
automatically translate into genuine social mixing. As the work of Gary
Wray McDonogh on the "good families" of Barcelona has shown, the
presence of middle-class students in elite schools can just as easily
confirm as erase social distinctions and boundaries. Giovanni Agnelli's
recollections of his time in the least aristocratic of the local private
schools, the Collegio San Giuseppe, strongly suggests that the former
was the case in Turin. Despite his respectable background as the son of a
wealthy landowner, Agnelli found as a student there in the 1880s that
"the majority of the boys, being nobles, were not permitted to greet
someone who was not one." 14 Social distance was thus expressed not
only in the differences between institutions, but also in the hierarchies
within each institution that limited meaningful contact between
students. Even stronger reservations could be advanced regarding the
social impact of the voluntary associations which afforded considerably
less constant and intimate contacts between nobles and other segments
of the propertied classes.
Where the possibilities of real social mingling did exist, as was the
case in the army officer corps and the Societa del Whist, it tended to
take place on terms that reenforced the role of the old titled families as
arbiters of elite conduct, education, and modes of consumption.
Acceptance within these institutional settings tended to require non-
nobles to accept and imitate aristocratic values and life-styles. Aristo-
cratic models of comportment, for instance, continued to inform the
etiquette manuals that were designed to guide middle-class officers in
their dealings outside of the garrisons.15 The same officers were also
expected to follow an unwritten code of honor that found its most
13
See Chapter 4 for information on the social composition of the student bodies of the
three leading elite schools in Piedmont.
14
See Agnelli, Vestivamo alia marinara, p. 79. For the elite schools in Barcelona, see
McDonogh, Good Families of Barcelona, pp. 122-126.
15
See Mazzonis, "Usi della buona societa," pp. 229—253.
dramatic expression in the enduring knightly custom of the duel. In his

memoirs, Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta recalled how in his
youth in the opening decades of the twentieth century duels still typi-
cally took place between gentlemen, "namely between recognized and
esteemed members of the only category that 'counted' then: officers and
people who lived from rents." Aristocratic traditions rather than consid-
erations of military professionalism continued to dictate appropriate
behavior in settling "questions of honor." Officers who engaged in
duels faced immediate arrest, but those who refused to fight, Incisa
claimed, "were compelled to resign from their position and even from
their profession."16
A similar pattern of adaptation and emulation characterized the social
mixing that took place within the Societa del Whist. Most of the tiny
minority of bourgeois members seemed to have gained acceptance to
the club by embracing the dominant values and pastimes of the aristo-
cratic majority. Much as in the case of his noble colleagues, wealth
alone was decidedly not the key to an untitled gentleman's admission
into the Whist. Of the eighty-one wealthiest bourgeois men in the
probate survey, those with estates valued at over L. i million, only two
were ever members of the Whist. Both of them were sons of members
who were distinguished less by their enormous wealth than by great
landed status in one case and by marriage into a prestigious Milanese
aristocratic family in the other.17
A bourgeois gentleman's involvement in certain "honorable" occu-
pations appears to have counted for more than wealth in the eyes of
club men. As we have already seen, the special prestige and status
enjoyed by the officers corps within the Piedmontese nobility made the
military profession the single most important avenue of access to the
Whist for the untitled before 1914. Those bourgeois members without
a military background were most often "men of the world" (uomini del
mondo) who divided their time between philanthropic activities and
leisured events such as hunts and races.18
16
Incisa della Rocchetta, "Impressioni e ricordi," pp. 161-163. Mazzonis, "Usi della
buona societa," pp. 249-253 provides a fuller discussion of the meaning of questions
of honor and duels in the Italian military.
17
The two wealthy bourgeois members in the survey were Cesare Vitale and Giuseppe
Engelfred. At the time of his death in 1906, Vitale left a landed estate of 615 hectares
in the province of Cuneo. Engelfred, one of the six wealthiest individuals in my
survey, was married to N. D. Beatrice Falco dei Principi Pio di Savoia. See URST,
1906, b. 700, f. 39 and 1912, b. 824, f. 22.
18
See Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, pp. 111-218; 45 of the 105 untitled members
had a military background, 12 were lawyers and 8 belonged to the diplomatic corps,
while 20 were designated as "uomini del mondo."
As the cases of the officers corps and the Societa del Whist attest,
what little social mingling that did take place was on terms that favored
the aristocratic element. For their part, the old titled families did not
display much of a corresponding willingness to embrace or emulate the
behavior and pastimes associated with the emerging new elites of
industry and commerce. The old nobility's reluctance to adapt con-
tributed significantly to maintaining social distance between the two
elites, and thus to limiting the process of aristocratic-bourgeois fusion in
Piedmont prior to World War I.
THE LIMITS OF ECONOMIC INTERPENETRATION

Georg Simmel observed in 1908 how "the full measure of the elegance
and exclusiveness" of the nobility's situation lay not so much in their
exclusive privileges as in what was "forbidden" to them. Simmel chose
as his primary example "the prohibition on trading that runs through
the whole history of the nobility."19 Accordingly, one way of measur-
ing the merging of old and new elites involves looking at the degree to
which men from aristocratic families were prepared to abandon their
traditional caste prejudices and become involved in the business world.
In the case of England, for instance, F. M. L. Thompson has argued that
the agricultural crisis of the late nineteenth century triggered a funda-
mental shift in the outlook of the aristocracy and gentry toward wealth
generated by non-landed sources. As agricultural incomes fell, wealthy
landowners began to depend increasingly upon the profits of urban real
estate and their investments in joint-stock companies. This shift coin-
cided with a massive influx of peers on to the boards of directors of
these companies. In Thompson's view, such developments encouraged
a growing identity of outlook and interest between landowners and
businessmen, paving the way for aristocratic alliances with wealthy new
families.20
Case studies of various prominent Tuscan, Roman, and Genoese
aristocratic families have led students of Italian history to argue that a
similar process of economic interpenetration was taking place in the
peninsula in the second half of the nineteenth century. One of the
wealthiest titled families on the peninsula, the Corsini, liquidated most of
their old prestige investments in the decades after unification and instead
became heavily involved in railroad development and high finance. Sig-
nificantly, this major change in investment strategy coincided with the
19
Simmel, " T h e Nobility," pp. 2 0 1 - 2 0 3 .
20
See Thompson, English Landed Society, pp. 299-307.
Corsini forging marital alliances with two of Italy's leading banking

families, the Bastogi and Fenzi.21 The same years saw Baron Bettino
Ricasoli follow a like path with substantial investments in agricultural
processing and marketing operations as well as in railroad companies,
investments that brought the Florentine aristocrat into close contact
with the banker Pietro Bastogi. By the time of his death in the late
1870s, Ricasoli's portfolio of stocks and bonds had grown dramatically,
accounting for about a third of his estate.22 Great Roman aristocratic
landowners such as Prince Paolo Borghese and Prince Don Prospero
Colonna also came to rely increasingly on non-landed sources of
income and to expand their activities in the business world. Financial
investments and urban rents surpassed rural estates in importance for
Prince Borghese in the last decades of the century; by the 1890s they
were providing the bulk of his family's revenues. On the eve of World
War I, Prince Colonna chaired the board of a large chemical company
and sat on the board of another firm engaged in real estate development.
These initiatives paled in comparison to the activities of the Genoese
patrician, Marchese Giacomo Durazzo Pallavicini, who presided over
the boards offivejoint-stock companies: two in mining, one each in
the metallurgical, automotive, and real estate sectors.23
On the surface, the early history of the automobile industry suggests
that a similar process of aristocratic infiltration into the business world
took place in Piedmont at the turn of the century. From the outset,
men from a few prominent titled families were heavily involved in this
new sector of production. In fact, the key figure, along with Giovanni
Agnelli, in the launching of Turin's automotive industry was the scion
of one of Piedmont's older aristocratic lineages, Count Emanuele
Cacherano di Bricherasio. It was Count Emanuele who first advanced
in February 1899 the idea of building a modern new industrial complex.
In the ensuing months, he took the initiative in establishing relations
with banking interests and in rounding up a group of wealthy investors.
Appropriately, the elegant Bricherasio palace provided the setting for
the official founding of the Fabbrica Italiana Automobile di Torino or
Fiat in July of the same year. Count Emanuele not only served as the
first vice-president of the company's board of directors, but also
21
See Moroni, "Le ricchezze dei Corsini," 7 9 - 1 0 6 ; Coppini, "Aristocrazia e finanza
in Toscana," p p . 2 9 7 - 3 3 2 .
22
See Biagioli, "Vicende e fortuna di Ricasoli imprenditore," p p . 7 7 - 1 0 2 .
23
For changes in the distribution of the Borghese family's annual revenues, see Pesco-
solido, Terra e nobilta, pp. 304—305. For information o n the positions held by both
Colonna and Durazzo Pallavicini, see Credito Italiano, Societa Italiane per Azioni:
Notizie Statistiche, igi6 ( R o m e , 1917).
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY I7I
supplied the land that was initially chosen as the site for the new
factory.24 Nor was Cacherano di Bricherasio alone. Count Roberto
Biscaretti di Ruffia was also a founding partner and member of the
board, while the ranks of early stockholders in Fiat and other local auto-
mobile companies included more than a dozen titled nobles.25
Aristocratic enthusiasm for the automobile, however, did not neces-
sarily signify undiluted acceptance of capitalist, profit-oriented attitudes
on the part of the nobles involved. For the most part, men like
Cacherano di Bricherasio and Biscaretti di Ruffia were essentially dilet-
tantes whose commitment to the automobile sector expressed less a
burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit than a fascination with sports in
general and the racing car, in particular, as a new source of adventure
and leisurely diversion. Count Emanuele, who seems to have viewed
the automobile as an extension of his equestrian interests, quickly
emerged as an advocate of high-performance sports cars, while Biscaret-
ti's interest grew out of his own direct participation in an automobile
race between Turin and Alessandria in 1898. Not surprisingly, this
sporting attitude did not translate into an enduring commitment to cor-
porate life. By 1908, the names of old-line nobles had disappeared from
the board of directors of Fiat.26
More importantly, the involvement of blue bloods in the automobile
industry, such as it was, appears to have been the exception rather than
the rule. Indeed, the composition of boards of directors, the minutes of
stockholders' meetings and other corporate organizational proceedings
all confirm that the worlds of finance and industry continued to be
largely alien territories to Piedmont's aristocratic families in the second
half of the nineteenth century. Much as in the case of the old patrician
families of Milan, the security of their landed incomes and the paucity
of non-agricultural sources of revenue on their estates reinforced tradi-
tional caste prejudices to keep them away.
Few aristocrats from the region followed Prince Corsini's path into
the realm of high finance. The names of a mere fifteen Piedmontese
nobles appear in the survey recently carried out by Alessandro Polsi of
24
See Biscaretti di Ruffia, "Origini, nascita," pp. 3 7 - 3 9 and Castronovo, Giovanni
Agnelli, pp. 10—11. Zoning problems led the board to drop its plans to buy Brichera-
sio's property and instead to purchase a plot of land elsewhere in the city, owned by
the newly ennobled Peracca family. See / primi quindid anni della Fiat, vol. 1,
pp. 6 7 - 8 9 .
25
See Castronovo, Storia del Piemonte, p. i87n. For the activities of Biscaretti di Ruffia,
see Biscaretti di Ruffia, I cinquantesimo anniversario, pp. 39—40.
26
O n the attitudes of Cacherano di Bricherasio and Biscaretti di Ruffia, see I cinquante-
simo anniversario, pp. 37-40 and I primi quindid anni della Fiat, vol. 1, p. 80 and vol. 11,
pp. 450-451.
all major investors (over L. 10,000) in Italian joint-stock banks founded

in the quarter century from 1853 to 1878, and most of them did not
have particularly extensive investments. Moreover, the three men with
a substantial involvement in more than one bank — Baron Ernesto
Casana, Marchese Paolo Solaroli di Briona, and Baron Ignazio Weil-
Weiss — were, in fact, from newly ennobled banking families.27 The
only financial institution in which aristocrats played a prominent role
was the Cassa di Risparmio. Between the 1850s and World War I, titled
families like the Alfieri di Sostegno, Thaon di Revel, and Valperga di
Masino furnished all but one of the presidents and twenty-two of the
Cassa's directors. Their presence, however, was more a reflection of the
bank's philanthropic traditions than of any entrepreneurial enthusiasm
on the part of the nobility.28
Aristocratic gentlemen were no more likely to be found on the boards
or among the major stockholders of Turin's joint-stock companies in
the last two decades of the century. In 1884, for instance, the names of
only sixteen old-line nobles appeared in the public records concerning
business activity in the city of Turin. These few titled corporate directors
and stockholders tended to shun the more dynamic and modern sectors
of local industry and to concentrate instead in two older and well-
established areas: insurance and public utilities. Thus, more than a dozen
prominent nobles sat on the general council of the Royal Company for
Insurance against Fire, while the board of the local water company was
chaired by Marchese Vittorio Del Carretto and included among its
directors Count Cesare Valperga di Masino, Marchese Luigi Cisa di
Gresy, and Count Alessandro Pernati di Momo. Conversely, the names
of only two nobles appear as major stockholders in railroad companies
in 1884; none show up in the documents relating to textiles, metallurgy,
chemicals, or the machine industry. The same pattern of marginal
aristocratic involvement in business enterprises continued into the
1890s. In 1894, just thirteen old-line nobles appear to have been actively
involved in the city's companies, and they were concentrated almost
exclusively in one insurance company and two public utilities firms.29
27
Alessandro Polsi kindly furnished me with a list of Piedmontese nobles based on his
ongoing research on major stockholders in Italian joint-stock banks. His list included
some nineteen individuals, but four of them were residents in Turin from other
regions. Weil-Weiss was a big investor in five banks, Solaroli in three, and Casana in
two. O n the reluctance of the Milanese patriciate to become involved in industrial
activities, see Zanetti, La demografia delpatriziato milanese, pp. 4 2 - 4 4 .
28
See La Cassa di Risparmio, pp. xxxvii-xxxxv, for a list of officers and directors.
29
AST, Sez. Riunite, Atti di Societa, 1884, vols. I - V I and 1894, vols. I - V I bis. O n the
prominent role of aristocrats in the Royal Company for Mutual Insurance, see the
brochure in AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Thaon di Revel, b. 112.
At first glance, the extraordinary industrial take-off that began to

transform Turin in the following decade and a half does seem to have
sparked a dramatically expanding involvement of Piedmontese nobles in
the corporate world. By 1905, the number of titled gentlemen sitting on
company boards or in assemblies of stockholders had tripled. Further-
more, they could now be found in what were becoming some of the
most dynamic industrial sectors. Count Edoardo Barel di Sant'Albano,
for example, was the fourth largest stockholder in the Itala automobile
company as well as a founding partner and major stockholder in the
Societa Anonima Carrozzeria Automobile Alessio and a director of the
S.A. Industrie Metallurgiche Torino, while Count Paolo Costa della
Trinita, patriarch of one of the oldest and wealthiest feudal families in
the province of Cuneo, chaired the board of the Navigazione Alta
Italia, sat on the board of the Societa Veneziana di Navigazione a
Vapore, and was the sixth largest stockholder in the Cantiere Navale di
Muggiano.30
Yet a closer examination of corporate boards and lists of large stock-
holders or officials of trade associations during the Giolittian era reveals
a persistent reluctance on the part of the established aristocratic families
to participate in the business world. The great majority of titled
corporate directors and stockholders, and virtually all of thosefromthe
old-line families like Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy and
Marchese Maurizio Luserna di Rora, still limited their activities to the
traditional sectors of insurance, public utilities, mining, and food proces-
sing. A few other nobles became early investors in more glamorous, but
marginal enterprises involving the performing arts. Count Guido
Arnaldi di Balme and Alessandro Canera di Salasco, for example, were
founding partners and the two largest stockholders in the Societa
Generale Italiano il "Cinematografo" in 1905. But on the whole, it was
recently ennobled banking and business families like the Rebaudengo,
Boarelli, and Ceriana-Mayneri who furnished the nobles actively
involved in the newer and more dynamic sectors of heavy industry.31
Old-line nobles were no more likely to be found serving as officers or
sitting on the boards of Turin's leading commercial and industrial
interest-group associations. In 1900, not a single noble was acting in an
30
Ibid., Sez. Riunite, Atti di Societa, 1905, vols. I - I V for names of aristocratic directors
and major stockholders. See Credito Italiano, Societa Italiane per azioni. Notizie sta-
tische, 1914 ( R o m e , 1915) for Costa della Trinita's role in the shipping sector.
31
AST, Sez. Riunite, Atti di Societa, 1905, vols. I - X I , and 1914, vols. I - V I . For addi-
tional information on the role of Piedmontese nobles in 1914, see Credito Italiano,
Societa per Azioni, 1914, which lists thirty-six Piedmontese nobles as being on corpo-
rate boards.
official capacity within the Chamber of Commerce, the Societa

Promotore delTIndustria Nazionale, the Lega Industriale e Commer-
ciale Torinese, the Confederazione fra Industriali e Commercianti, or
the Associazione delTIndustria Meccanica.32
The aristocratic investment patterns that emerge from the probate
records and local tax rolls provide additional proof of the relative social
distance from the business world that Piedmont's old-line nobles stead-
fastly maintained in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As
the tables in Chapter 3 illustrate, investments by rich aristocrats in
personal assets, and stocks and bonds in particular, were considerably
smaller than those of other affluent non-noble groups, both as a factor
in their own estates and as a contribution to the total wealth of Turin's
wealthy upper classes in the decades from 1862 to 1912. More than a
third (35.7 percent) of the top aristocratic wealth holders in probate left
less than L. 1,000 in stocks and bonds; only nine nobles possessed over
L. 500,000 in such assets at the time of their death.33
The rolls of the municipal tax on ricchezza mobile or personal income,
which provide another window on the business community in Turin in
the first years of the new century, tell a similar story. They show that in
1903, for instance, a total of 370 individuals or businesses had declared
personal incomes that exceeded L. 1500. Heading this list were the
leading cotton manufacturers, Mazzonis (L. 205,000) and Wild and
Abbegg (L. 181,670), followed by the liquor distiller, Martini and
Rossi (L. 162,000), and the military supplier Giovanni Gilardini
(L. 112,044).34 The same list included the names of only twenty-two
nobles, half of whom were women. All but six of these titled individuals
had declared taxable incomes below L. 10,000. Of the top six, three
owed their personal income to marital ties to wealthy bourgeois
families. Two of the other three, Count Felice Rignon and Baron
Ignazio Weil-Weiss, came from banking families ennobled in the
middle of the nineteenth century, while the third, Adolfo Baudi di
Selve, had a lucrative legal practice. For their part, the wealthy old titled
families were mostly absent from the personal income tax rolls.35
The experiences of more adventurous nobles like Count Giuseppe
d'Harcourt and Count Carlo Beraudo di Pralormo in the rough and
tumble world of industry did little to encourage a shift in aristocratic
attitudes. In the mid-1870s, Count d'Harcourt, who already possessed a
sizeable fortune based primarily on real estate and money lending,
32
See Guida di Torino, 1900, pp. 7 0 7 - 7 8 0 .
33
See Chapter 4 as well as Cardoza, "La ricchezza e i ricchi," pp. 2 9 9 - 3 4 0 .
34 35
A C T , "Imposta sulla Ricchezza Mobile, 1903." Ibid.
became involved with the industrialist Giuseppe Allemano, owner of a

machine factory in Turin. 36 An initial loan to Allemano of L. 250,000
by the wealthy noble in 1875 led to more intimate collaboration three
years later when the two formed a partnership jointly to operate the
factory and market its products. According to the terms of their agree-
ment, d'Harcourt furnished an additional L. 200,000 in capital and
handled the finances of the company, while Allemano supplied the
plant and equipment, and managed the processes of production. In ex-
change for his already substantial investment, Count Giuseppe was sup-
posed to get all the net profits of the company; Allemano was to receive
only a salary of L. 6,000 per year. Within months it became clear that
d'Harcourt had made a very unwise commitment. He had to provide
more of his own capital to pay off Allemano's debts assumed by the
partnership, while according to his lawyer "not a dime (un soldo) of
profit entered into the [company] coffers."37 Although d'Harcourt
moved quickly to dissolve the partnership in March 1879, he had
already invested nearly three-quarters of a million lire with virtually no
return, a figure that climbed to over a million by the end of that year.
Allemano's reluctance to honor his obligations resulted in a court case
that dragged on for years and provided the aristocrat with only partial
compensation. As late as the mid-1880s, d'Harcourt had still not recov-
ered over L. 400,000 that he had put into the industrial venture. 38
Two decades later, Count Carlo Beraudo di Pralormo suffered pro-
portionately greater losses because of his overly enthusiastic forays into
the stock market. The largest single landowner in the commune of
Pralormo in the 1860s, Count Carlo began to liquidate his estate, farm
by farm, to his tenants between 1881 and 1909. While he retained his
family's ancestral castle overlooking the village, his rural properties were
reduced to one-fifth of what they had been in i860. Enthralled by the
new investment opportunities in industry, Beraudo di Pralormo used
the capital from these sales to amass an impressive and diversified port-
folio that included shares in a number of textile, railroad, shipping, and
sugar refining companies which accounted for nearly half of all his assets
in early 1907. Unfortunately for his heirs, Count Carlo underestimated
the risks of the stock market and suffered heavy losses as a result of the
financial crisis of 1907. The value of his portfolio, which was worth
36
In 1867, d'Harcourt had a gross income of L. 107,604, with the largest portion
coming from apartment buildings in the city of Turin. See AST, Sez. Riunite, Ar-
chivio D'Harcourt, b. 74, f. 13, "Consegne dei reditti, 1867.
37
Ibid., Sez. Riunite, Archivio D'Harcourt, b. 74, f. 29, "Causa sommaria del appello
commerciale, 1879."
38
Ibid., Sez. Riunite, Archivio D'Harcourt, b. 95, f. 8, b. 96 f. 13.
L. 416,899 at the time of purchase, collapsed; his heirs estimated its

value at under L. 250,000 after his death in 1909.39
Significantly, the nobility's marginal involvement in the worlds of
industry and commerce was matched in the last decades of the nineteenth
century by a growing reluctance on the part of the rich bourgeoisie to
invest in land, the Piedmontese aristocracy's traditional source of wealth
and status. As the survey of probate records shows, bourgeois investments
in rural properties, which were already comparatively modest in the first
years after Italian unification, provided a steadily shrinking share of the
total value of estates possessed by rich non-nobles in the ensuing decades.
In the period after 1900, a full quarter of the wealthiest bourgeois in
probate left no landed assets at all. Conversely, the place of stocks and
bonds in their fortunes grew steadily in importance, so that by the last
decade before the war such assets accounted for three-quarters of the
value of the personalty owned by rich non-nobles.40
These contrasting patterns of investment and productive activity indi-
cate that, in one of the pillars of Italy's industrial triangle, no great con-
vergence of economic interests or outlook had come to link the old
nobility with the newer business elites in the decades before World
War I. Indeed, the material interests of the two may well have become
even more divergent in the late nineteenth century. Despite the host of
new challenges and opportunities that emerged in the years after 1880,
the composition of the nobility's fortunes and their role in the region's
economic life remained considerably more traditional than those of
other segments of the wealthy propertied classes. Much as in the past,
the bulk of aristocratic wealth in Piedmont stayed solidly rooted in the
countryside and in inherited landownership, while most titled
gentlemen continued to eschew any significant personal involvement in
business activities. Conversely, the same years also witnessed the trans-
formation of Turin's bourgeoisie from a class of largely propertied
rentiers to one composed increasingly of entrepreneurs and merchants
actively involved in industry, commerce, and finance.41 The resulting
39
Information o n land sales and stock holdings are contained in the Archivio private
Beraudo di Pralormo w h i c h is in t h e possession of the family. I a m grateful to C o u n t
Filippo Beraudo di Pralormo for the opportunity t o consult his family's papers.
40
In the period 1862—1873, rural property accounted for 26 percent o f the total value
of grand bourgeois wealth i n probate. That figure fell t o 18 percent the following
decade, and to 13 percent in t h e period 1901-1912. Stocks and bonds, which p r o -
vided 15 percent of bourgeois wealth in the decade after unification, contributed 38
percent of the total value in the period after 1900. Cardoza, "La ricchezza e i ricchi,"
pp. 297-340.
41
See ibid., pp. 319-328 for data on the composition of aristocratic fortunes and the
occupational distribution of wealthy non-nobles who passed through probate.
absence of much real contact on corporate boards or in stockholders'

assemblies delayed the development of new affinities and thereby
helped to perpetuate the social distance between the old titled aristoc-
racy and the upper bourgeoisie.
LINEAGE, WEALTH, AND INTERMARRIAGE
Anthropologists, social historians, and social theorists have long

emphasized the importance of studying marriage patterns to understand
changes in status hierarchies. As Weber expressed it, when marriages
take place between groups, they are "the typical characteristics of
mutual esteem among status equals; their absence signifies status differ-
ences."42 Accordingly, one of the most reliable indicators of the social
fusion of old and new elites is intermarriage: the degree to which
established aristocratic families were prepared to accept the sons and
daughters of wealthy industrialists, bankers, and merchants as suitable
partners for their own children.43
In the case of the Piedmontese, contemporary observers insisted that
even after the elimination of all legal privileges and distinctions after
1848, aristocratic prejudices against marrying outside the ranks of the
old titled families remained very powerful. Count Charles Arrivabene,
for example, saw little change in their mentality in the early 1860s:
The proud aristocracy of the Piedmontese capital, far from mixing with
the commonality, as in other Italian towns, does not associate or marry
with any lower class. A Turinese . . . nobleman would think himself
humiliated were his daughter to marry a gentleman without title. With
few exceptions, the nobility of Turin are very bigoted . . . 44
Echoing these sentiments the following decade, Leandro Carpi praised
those Piedmontese nobles who "honor the new aristocracy of talent
that is emerging from all social classes," but concluded that "unfortu-
nately . . . the number of these is still restricted and not enough to allow
individual merit to outshine caste."45
On the whole, the available quantitative evidence provided by the
probate records and published genealogies for the period 1862-1912
confirms the impressions of contemporary observers about the strongly
endogamous tendencies of the Piedmontese nobility. In a period when
42
Weber, From Max Weber, p . 300.
43
For a fuller discussion of the issue of marriage patterns and intermarriage, see Stone
and Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite?, p p . 156-157.
44
Arrivabene, Italy under Victor Emanuel, vol. 1, p . 17.
45
Carpi, L'Italia vivente, p . 1 5 1 .
Table 5.1 Aristocratic marriages

(all married nobles)
Spouse's Social Status Number Percentage
Piedmontese nobility 382 68

Non-Piedmontese nobility 63 11
Bourgeoisie 117 21
Totals 562 100
T a b l e 5.2 Aristocratic lineage and endogamy

(all married nobles: 1862—1885, 1901—1912)
Lineage of spouse Pre-1722 Post-1722 Restoration N e w nobility
Nobility
Pre-1722 62 (197) 26 (41) 16 (13) o (o)
Post-1722 10 (31) 35 (54) 19 (15) 5 (1)
Restoration 2 (7) 8 (12) 15 (12) 10 (2)
New 1 (3) 1 (1) 1 (1) 10 (2)
Non-piedmontese 13(41) n (17) 6(5) 5(1)
Bourgeois 12(37) 20(31) 43(34) 70(14)
Totals 100 101 100 100
it became more usual for young aristocrats elsewhere on the peninsula

to marry outside of their class, the pattern of the Piedmontese remained
quite traditional.46 As the data indicate (Table 5.1), the substantial
majority of all married nobles who passed through probate after 1862
honored the traditions of caste by finding their spouses within the ranks
of titled families; barely a fifth wed non-nobles. Even this latter figure
exaggerates the extent of intermarriage between old-line nobility and
bourgeoisie, since it includes a large number of newly ennobled indi-
viduals who were themselves not fully accepted in more established
aristocratic circles.
A more delineated analysis reveals significant variations in marital pat-
terns and propensities within the nobility, above all between the ancien
regime families and those who had acquired their titles in the nineteenth
century (Table 5.2). The data that emerge from this table indicate first
of all a strong correlation between aristocratic lineage and endogamy.
On the one hand, those nobles whose families had acquired their titles
46
See for example, Zanetti, "The Patriziato of Milan," pp. 745-760.
Table 5.3 Nineteenth-century nobility: distribution of mixed marriages

(by wealth group)
Estate value Restoration nobility Post-1861 nobility

(%)
Less than 100,000 21 29

100,001-250,000 32 22
250,001-500,000 35
500,001-750,000 12 14
750,001-1 mill 0 0
More than 1 million 0 21
Totals 100 100
only in the nineteenth century accounted for a disproportionately large

share of the mixed marriages in the survey. In fact, as a group, they
were more likely to intermarry with non-nobles than with other aristo-
crats. Only in the case of the very richest individuals, who were also
second-generation nobles, was there much variation in the selection of
marital partners (Table 5.3). Such a propensity was, however, less a sign
of aristocratic-bourgeois fusion than an indicator of the obstacles
encountered by the newly ennobled in gaining social acceptance by
established noble families. For the most part, alliances between old and
new titled families were rare, suggesting that individuals, who lacked
the requisite genealogical attributes to go along with their titles, found
access to the inner circles of the aristocracy illusive.
The behavior of old-line families, on the other hand, revealed a
considerably more traditional attitude toward intermarriage with non-
nobles. As the data in Table 5.2 show, less than an eighth of the married
individuals in the probate survey, who could trace their family's titles
back before 1722, wed outsiders. In fact, richly pedigreed nobles were
more likely to marry into titled families from other countries or other
regions of Italy before they let a "commoner" into their midst. The
Avogadro di Cerrione, for example, were linked by marriage to such
prominent Milanese and Genoese patrician families as the Trotti
Bentivoglio, Visconti d'Aragona, Durazzo, and Grimaldi.47 This did not
mean, of course, that there were not scions of distinguished old titled
families who conformed to late-nineteenth-century stereotypes by mar-
rying wealthy, but unpedigreed heiresses. Marchese Lodovico Delia
Chiesa di Cinzano could trace his family's titles back to the fourteenth
47
See the family tree compiled by Lodovico Avogadro di Cerrione in the typescript
"MS Avogadro" which the family has kindly allowed me to consult.
century, but ancient lineage did not prevent him from marrying the
daughter of Baron Ignazio Weil-Weiss di Lainate, a rich and newly
ennobled Jewish banker in 1870.48 Still, in Piedmont, men like
Marchese Lodovico were decidedly the exception. As a rule, the older
its pedigree, the more likely a family was to eschew alliances with non-
titled elements and instead to establish marital links with another aristo-
cratic family of comparable antiquity.
The classic coalescence of new wealth and old status that character-
ized so much of late-nineteenth-century high society in Milan, Rome,
and most European capitals appears to have been largely absent in
Turin. If the people who passed through probate after 1862 are any
indication, intermarriage between wealthy bourgeois and aristocrats
continued to be a true rarity in the Piedmontese capital. Of the 125
richest non-nobles in my survey (with fortunes over L. 750,000), only 6
- 3 men and 3 women - forged marital alliances with noble families and
none of these were with the old titled elite of wealth. Four of the noble
families involved in these marriages had only gained their titled status in
the nineteenth century or else came from outside Piedmont. 49 Nor did
the situation change dramatically in the following generation. The
children from these wealthy bourgeois families were not much more
likely to marry into the nobility than their parents. My survey uncov-
ered just fourteen cases of mixed marriages involving heirs of rich non-
nobles. Such results strongly suggest that, in the absence of lineage,
wealth alone still did not provide the social acceptance and high status
that "good" marriages with old stock confirmed.
Economic considerations, however, appear to have played a promi-
nent role in the calculations of that tiny minority of men and women
from anden regime aristocratic families who did break with tradition and
wed outside their class (Table 5.4). Titled gentlemen from the wealthiest
of these families virtually never married outside their caste; only three
old-line nobles with estates over L. 750,000 had non-noble spouses. In
sharp contrast to the pattern displayed by more recent nineteenth-
century aristocrats, nearly two-thirds of the marriages linking old titled
and bourgeois families involved relatively poor nobles who left estates
under L. 100,000; a quarter of them had less than L. 20,000 in total assets
at the time of their death.
48
See Manno, Ilpatriziato subalpino, vol. vn.
49
T h e seven individuals involved in mixed marriages were: Giuseppe Engelfred (Bea-
trice Falco dei Principi Pio di Savoia, from Milan), Severino Grattoni (Delfina Baudi
di Selve), Giovanni Racca (nob. Giuseppina Ceppi), Baroness Palmira Andreis (nee
Molino), Countess Giuseppina Gallina (nee Vicino), and Countess Augusta Rosa
Ricardi di Netro (nee Gattino).
ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY l8l
Table 5.4 Old nobility: mixed marriages

(by wealth group)
Estate value Pre-1722 nobility Post-1722 nobility

(%)
Less than L. 100,000 60 61

100,001-250,000 27 23
250,001-500,000 5 10
500,001-750,000 3 3
750,001-1 mill. 3 3
More than 1 million 2 0
Totals 100 100
The marital patterns that emerge then from the probate and genealo-
gical records indicate that the elimination of legal status distinctions and
increased public interaction in the mid-nineteenth century did not lead
to more intimate familial ties between most segments of the nobility and
other sectors of Piedmont's propertied classes. Titled families continued
to exchange marital partners with each other; mixed marriages remained
more the exception than the rule in the second half of the century.
When such marriages did take place, they tended to be confined to
titled families of lesser status and prestige, due either to their relative
poverty or to their lack of a sufficiently lengthy pedigree.
The meaning of this persistent endogamy is of course ambiguous. In
part, it may have reflected the new self-confidence and social autonomy
of the wealthy business elite that had little or no interest in being
accepted. More likely, it attested to the stubborn refusal on the part of
the Piedmontese nobility to treat even the wealthiest merchants and
industrialists as social equals. But regardless of who rejected whom, the
rarity of mixed marriages meant that aristocratic and bourgeois kinship
networks continued to develop along quite distinct and mutually exclu-
sive lines. As a result, the economic and social alliances and exchanges
so vital to the consolidation of a dynamic and cohesive upper class
remained relatively undeveloped in the late nineteenth century.
CULTIVATING DIFFERENCE: PATTERNS OF RESIDENCE AND

DISPLAY
The social distance that continued to characterize relations between old

and new elites in Piedmont found expression not only in the persistence
of endogamous practices, but also in more symbolic ways involving dis-
tinctive life-styles, leisure-time activities, and patterns of sociability.

Tastes and preferences displayed in these areas reflected important dif-
ferences in values and attitudes within the propertied classes. Moreover,
they acted as visible signs of distinction and social position that defined
informal borders between old stock and new wealth.50 Especially for a
small group of rich titled magnates, high levels of expenditures on ser-
vants and carriages, traditional patterns of residence and the maintenance
of dual residences, and a preference for country life helped to distinguish
them from other equally wealthy elements of the propertied classes. At a
purely social level, gentlemen's clubs, private parties and receptions, as
well as vacation locales provided additional settings to display and rein-
force the legally invisible barriers that separated old aristocratic families
from the new fortunes being made in commerce and industry.
First of all, the upper tiers of the nobility who possessed the requisite
resources still showed a stronger proclivity toward certain traditional
forms of conspicuous display than other elements of the propertied
classes in the decades leading up to World War I. Judging by the luxury
taxes they paid, for example, the scions of titled houses were much
more likely than rich industrialists to maintain a large staff of servants
and a number of elegant carriages, which of course prominently dis-
played their family crests. In 1900, sixty-two of the seventy-six biggest
contributors to the municipal tax on servants (those paying over L. 40)
came from the ranks of the nobility. Their presence was even more
dominant at the very highest levels. With Count Cesare Valperga di
Masino heading the list, the eminent old-line aristocrats Count Ernesto
Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, Marchese Emanuele Thaon di Revel di
St. Andrea, Marchese Emanuele Coardi di Bagnasco, and Marchese
Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi, together with the newer nobles Count
Carlo Conelli de'Prosperi and Baron Ignazio Weil-Weiss di Lainate,
accounted for all but one of top eight contributors (those paying L. 70
or more). Moreover, the only non-noble to compete with these titled
gentlemen in this arena of display, Giuseppe Engelfred, embraced an
aristocratic ethos in most other respects, through his marital ties with a
Milanese titled family and through his status as a substantial landowner,
member of the Societa del Whist, and leading philanthropist. Generally,
the few bourgeois families with large staffs of servants tended to be a
part of the old business elite of Piedmont that had long emulated the
nobility's patterns of conspicuous leisure.51
50
See Lamont, Money, Morals, and Manners, p p . 1 7 4 - 1 8 7 and Charle, "Noblesse et
elites," p p . 4 2 7 - 4 3 2 .
51
See A C T , R u o l o : tasse domestici, 1900. T h e original tax rolls for that year list alpha-
betically the names of 8,746 contributors w h o paid a total of L. 63,015. According to
Private carriages provided a more highly visible means of aristocratic

display. In his memoirs, Count Giovanni Figarolo di Gropello recalled
that rides in his family's carriages in the early years of the century were
still surrounded with great pomp and ceremony. Count Giovanni was
struck in particular by the constant presence of a coachman, dressed "in
livery and truely very stylish." Whenever members of the family
entered the carriage, he "did a 'present-arms' with his whip raised and
held vertically in front of him." 52 Not surprisingly, many of the same
blue bloods with large domestic staffs also featured prominently on the
carriage tax rolls, where they accounted for three-quarters of the major
contributors at the turn of the century.53
As the account books of Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi attest,
luxury tax contributions represented only a small portion of the expen-
ditures involved in maintaining an aristocratic family in the grand style.
In the 1890s, when the annual salary of the most established managers in
the cotton industry ranged from L. 4000 to L. 10,000, Pallavicino-Mossi
spent on average over L. 4,000 per year on the physical upkeep of his
family's palace in Turin, nearly L. 8,000 to stock its kitchen and wine
cellars, about L. 5,700 on livery and servants, and another L. 2,300 on
horses and carriages. All this came in addition to the expenses for the
family's villa in Rivoli and the ancestral country house in the province
ofVercelli.54
Such conspicuous expenditure and display was more than just a
reflection of the substantial wealth of these families, whose patrimonies
had in fact already been surpassed by new business fortunes; it was also
an expression of their distinctively aristocratic values. As a result, the
industrial "take-off" experienced by Turin in the opening years of the
new century did not fundamentally alter these patterns. After a decade
in which nearly two-thirds of the millionaires to pass through probate
came from outside the ranks of the nobility, titled families still domi-
nated Turin's luxury tax rolls in the last years before the war. In 1912,
for instance, they accounted for two-thirds of the individuals paying
more than L. 30 in servant taxes and nine of the top eleven contributors
the regulations enacted i n 1898, the tax o n each male domestic was L. 10, L. 5 for
each female domestic. D o o r m e n and servants hired specifically t o care for the sick
were excluded from the tax.
52
"Diario dell'Ammiraglio di Divisione, C o u n t Giovanni di Gropello," p . 5.
53
A C T , " R u o l o : Tassa vetture private 1899." O n e - h o r s e carriages paid a levy of L. 40,
two-horse L. 50. Carriages emblazoned with a family coat-of-arms paid double.
54
These estimates are based o n data from A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Pallavicino-
Mossi, b . 19, "Ragguaglio delle Entrate e delle Spese" for the years 1890, 1891, and
1892. O n t h e salaries earned b y managers in t h e cotton industry, see R o m a n o ,
L'industria cotoniera lombarda, pp. 438—439.
(over L. 70). In a year in which Count Luigi Valperga di Masino and

Count Eugenio De Genova di Pettinengo paid L. 80 and L. 90 respec-
tively, the two leading figures in Turin's automobile industry, Giovanni
Agnelli and Dante Ferraris, were each assessed a mere L. 20 for their
considerably more modest domestic staffs.55
Wealthy nobles also did not hesitate to embrace the new form of
luxury consumption represented by the automobile, which quickly
supplanted the carriage as the preferred mode of transportation for the
Turinese upper classes in the last years before the war. The Figarolo di
Gropello family, for example, replaced their horses and carriages in 1911
with an elegant Fiat limousine that had a "convertible roof in the back"
and sat five people, separated with fixed glass from the chauffeur "with
whom one communicated by means of a small portable telephone." 56 A
few prominent industrialists and bankers like Giovanni Battista Biglia
and Luigi Marsaglia did show a new willingness to outspend their aristo-
cratic counterparts in the consumption of luxury automobiles, but even
in this arena twenty-seven of the thirty-six biggest contributors (over
L. 100 annually) to the private vehicle tax were titled nobles in 1913.57
Thus, the greater wealth enjoyed by successful businessmen did not
seem to increase their inclination to compete with the titled nobility. At
least in terms of these forms of luxury and display, the old and new
elites remained socially distinct.
Changing elite residential patterns in the last decades before World
War I created an additional obstacle to aristocratic-bourgeois fusion by
physically accentuating the social distance between the nobility and the
newly rich business class. These changes marked a decisive break from
the previous era when most segments of the propertied classes had lived
in close proximity to each other within the vertically stratified residen-
tial buildings of the old and relatively compact historical center of
Turin. Virtually all the city's aristocratic palaces had been designed to
generate at least some income from commercial leases on the ground
floor and rental units on the higher floors, providing the owners in this
fashion with prestige and profits. Well into the nineteenth century,
Piedmont's most exclusive titled families as well as its leading bankers,
manufacturers, and merchants were still concentrated in a zone sur-
rounding the royal palace that could easy be traversed on foot in a half
55
A C T , " R u o l o Tassa Domestici 1912." T h a t year 10,224 individuals paid a total o f
L. 74,375. O u t of this n u m b e r 187 w e r e assessed over L. 30 - 60 non-nobles and 127
nobles.
56
"Diario Figarolo di Gropello," p . 2 1 .
57
Ibid., " R u o l o tassa vetture private 1913." That year 320 people contributed
L. 24,811. O f that total 36 paid assessments over L. 100, 27 nobles and 9 bourgeois.
hour. The family of Count Giuseppe d'Harcourt, for example, occupied

the "noble floor" of the building they owned in via della Prowidenza,
but leased out spacious apartments on the floors immediately above
theirs to the families of the bankers Giuseppe Bolmida and Giuseppe
Arduino.58 The residential intermingling of old and new elites,
however, became increasingly less common in the decades before
World War I.
The rapid expansion of the city in the late nineteenth century
ushered in an era of significant change both in the form and location of
the residences of Turin's prosperous bourgeoisie. Indeed, the last years
of the century witnessed an exodus of wealthy business families from
apartments in the historical center of the city toward newly developed
neighborhoods on the periphery like the Crocetta, where many of them
constructed their own imposing mansions. By 1914, this exodus was
well under way as a sample study of the residences of thirty wealthy
businessmen and industrial leaders in the last decade before the war
reveals. All but four of these men lived outside of the old historical
center, most having made the move to the newly fashionable Crocetta
district. In this area of broad avenues and spacious mansions could be
found on the eve of war the addresses of the better part of Turin's
business elite. The key figures in the Lega Industriale di Torino and the
Confederazione Italiana delTIndustria, Luigi Craponne-Bonnefon and
Gino Olivetti, the banker and insurance executive Eugenio Pollone, the
automotive executive Dante Ferraris, the distiller Enrico Cora, and the
textile magnates Rodolfo De Planta, Napoleone Leumann, and Emilio
Wild all had homes in the Crocetta.59
The most prominent elements of the aristocracy did not participate in
this exodus and were thus largely absent from these elegant new neigh-
borhoods before World War I. The great majority of old-line titled
families continued to live in what amounted to Turin's aristocratic
quarter, an area encompassing a small number of streets like Via della
Rocca, Via Bogino, and Via Cavour as well as the elegant piazzas San
Carlo, Maria Teresa, and Bodino, all in close proximity to the old royal
palace. In the last decade before the war, for example, 70 percent of the
membership of the Societa del Whist and virtually all the heads of the
58
A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio d'Harcourt, b . 67, f. 7, lists of tenants at via della P r o v -
videnza, 31.
59
This sample included the largest n o n - n o b l e contributors t o the luxury tax rolls in
1907 and 1912 as well as the list of the leadership of the top industrial associations in
the city i n 1913, published in La guida, 1913, p p . 1174-1175. For similar develop-
ments in Germany, see Augustine, "Arriving in the upper class."
old families had their primary residence in this zone of the city. The
same families also still occupied twenty-five of Turin's forty-four oldest
and most important aristocratic palaces prior to 1914.60
Aristocratic and business elites were separated not only by the
location of their residences, but also by the number and function of the
residences they possessed. On the one hand, virtually all the top old-line
titled families continued to maintain at least one second home outside
the city, usually an ancestral castle or villa in the Piedmontese country-
side. As a rule, these country houses were attached to landed estates that
provided the site of the family residence. In addition to a rent palace
that occupied the better part of a city block in Turin, the Valperga di
Masino also still possessed their ancient castle, located appropriately in
the commune of Masino in the Turinese countryside. Even more
imposing were the residences of Count Ferdinando Avogadro di Collo-
biano. At the time of his death in 1904, he owned three ancestral castles
in the Vercellese countryside as well as a palace in Turin's elegant Piazza
San Carlo.61 These aristocratic country houses represented more than
luxurious retreats for their owners; they were also an important embodi-
ment of lineage and tradition crucial to a titled family's identity and
status, as well as vital bases of operations for the effective management
of their landed estates.
The wealthy bourgeois elite, on the other hand, were much less
likely to possess castles, manors, or landed estates. In fact, fully a third of
the richest non-nobles in probate had no second home outside of the
city. Those who did have another home usually chose one in close
proximity to their primary residence in Turin in order to conciliate lux-
urious display with business responsibilities. Typically, they owned villas
located in the foothills immediately flanking the city along the eastern
side of the Po River. Since they were in easy reach of their owners'
place of work, these villas could serve as full-time residences or else as
weekend retreats.62 In either case, they carried with them none of the
rituals and obligations traditionally associated with the country houses of
the titled nobility.
The increasing physical separation and divergent functions of Turin's
60
See Societa del Whist, Elenco dei sod per Vanno 1907 (Turin, 1907). Boggio, ho sviluppo
edilizio di Torino, p p . 1 9 - 3 0 , provides a list of the palaces and the families that o w n e d
t h e m in 1907.
61
See URST, m . 648, f. 42, 1904, C o u n t Cesare Valperga di Masino; m . 655, f. 38,
1905, C o u n t Ferdinando Avogadro di Collobiano.
62
Nearly a third (32 percent) of the non-nobles with estates over L. 750,000 possessed
property in the countryside valued at less than L. 1000. See Cardoza, "La ricchezza e
i ricchi," p p . 3 2 8 - 3 2 9 .
aristocratic and bourgeois residential neighborhoods unavoidably had

the effect of widening the social gap between old and new elites by
reducing the opportunities for informal, face-to-face sociability. Mutual
isolation encouraged in turn the persistence and even the strengthening
of separate patterns of social networking and friendship that found ex-
pression in the clubs, balls, and private engagements that defined "high
society" in Turin.
THE LIMITS OF FUSION: GENTLEMEN S CLUBS AND HIGH SOCIETY

Much like the changes in residential patterns, the evolution of the
Turin's two leading gentlemen's clubs, the Societa del Whist and the
Accademia Filarmonica, in the late nineteenth century served to
obstruct rather than facilitate the fusion of aristocratic and bourgeois
elites. Despite the intentions of its founders, who wanted the club to
reduce the gap between the nobility and other segments of the proper-
tied classes, the Societa del Whist never displayed more than a very cau-
tious and tentative opening to the untitled. Between 1841 and 1870,
sixty-five non-nobles gained admission; they represented about 12
percent of all entrants to the club. The high point of assimilation came
in the decade after the creation of the Kingdom of Italy, when the bour-
geoisie contributed nearly one-fifth of the new members.63
Significantly, the aristocratic club became even less inclined to accept
"new men" as social equals in the decades after 1870. Between 1871
and 1914, the bourgeois minority within the club fell, both in numbers
and percentage terms, as the Table 5.5 shows. The narrowness and caste
consciousness that underlay this pattern of recruitment stood in sharp
contrast to the Whist's closest counterpart in Milan, the Societa
dell'Unione, which drew nearly two-fifths of its membership from
outside the titled nobility in the early 1890s.64 The non-nobles who did
enter the Whist after 1890 came largely from one of two categories;
they were either relatives of members or military officers.
Noticeably absent from the club roster were business magnates
actively engaged in industry and commerce. Of the 383 men listed as
directors or top officers of joint-stock companies in Turin in the early
years of World War I, just 8 were members of the Whist, and all of
them were from titled families. Likewise, none of the leadership of the
Lega Industriale di Torino, the Federazione Industriale Piemontese, the
63
See Societa Camillo Cavour, Un secolo di vita del Whist, pp. 111-163 for a chronolo-
gical listing of members in the order of their admission to the club.
64
See Meriggi, "Lo 'spirito di associazione'," p. 416.
Table 5.5 Bourgeois members of Whist
Period Entrants Percentage

1861-1870 23 17
1871-1880 11 9
1881-1890 8 7
1891-1900 7 6
1901-1910 6 5
Confederazione Italiana dell'Industria or the Associazione Generale fra

Industriali e Commercianti in Torino belonged to the aristocratic club.
The few members who did come from prominent business families like
Severino Denina and Vittorio Sella had long since distanced themselves
from the economic responsibilities and social milieu of their predeces-
sors and had adopted most of the traditional markers of an aristocratic
style of life.65
As the data in Table 5.5 attest, the Societa del Whist, far from acting
as an agent of social fusion, had become by the turn of the century an
increasingly impregnable and caste-like enclave of titled society that
actually made for less contact between the classes than had been the case
a half century earlier. Contemporaries were aware of the changes.
Already in 1877, a group of respectable but untitled young gentlemen
formed a new association, the Giovine-Club, largely because they were
convinced, according to Giovanni Gloria, that in the case of the Whist
"access to postulants was extremely difficult." Four years later, Gloria,
himself a member of the Whist, lamented the lack of "cohesion" and
"fusion" in local high society, a situation that he attributed primarily to
the "orgogliuzzi di casta."66
It is not altogether clear that the other major gentlemen's club,
Accademia Filarmonica, managed to provide the interaction and inter-
mingling denied by the Whist. Titled nobles always represented a
distinct minority within the former musical society, accounting for 18
percent of all members between 1814 and World War I. Moreover,
many of these nobles lacked the ancient lineage so highly esteemed by
65
T h e data o n the paucity of businessmen in the Whist is derived from a comparison of
the names o n t h e complete roster of the members in Societa Camillo Cavour, Un
secolo di vita with t h e lists of corporate boards in Credito Italiano, Societa per azioni,
1916 and list of officers in the "Associazioni p e r la tutela degTinteressi industriali e
commerciali" in Laguida, 1913, p p . 1174—1175.
66
See the essay o n the men's clubs by Gloria in Torino, p p . 2 7 5 - 2 7 7 .
the Whist; nearly half of them had acquired their titles in the nineteenth
century.67
The Filarmonica developed along decidedly different lines from the
aristocratic club, evolving into the premier social retreat of Turin's
business elite. In sharp contrast to the Whist, wealth and success in the
business world counted for more than birth in gaining a membership in
the former musical society. Forty-one of the eighty-one bourgeois
millionaires who passed through probate had been members, a figure
considerably higher than the two found in the Whist. Similarly, nine of
the eleven biggest non-noble luxury taxpayers in 1899—1900 belonged
to the club.68 In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the great
cotton manufacturing families — Mazzonis, Poma, Rolle, Tabasso,
Leumann — and major distillers such as Enrico Cora and Teofilo Rossi
all became members. At the onset of World War I, members presided
over the boards of twenty-six corporations in the city and sat on the
boards of another seventy-nine. The ranks of the Filarmonica also
included such notables as Luigi Craponne-Bonnefon, the president of
the Lega Industriale and the Confindustria, Felice Piacenza, head of the
Lega Industriale Biellese, and the influential automobile executive,
Dante Ferraris.69
It appeared for a brief period that the Accademia Filarmonica might
also become an agent for upper-class fusion, a role rejected by the
highly exclusive Whist. The 1880s, in particular, saw a sudden influx of
aristocrats into the former musical society. Of the 163 members from
titled families in the Filarmonica between 1840 and 1915, 70 joined that
decade, and more than half of these men were also members of the
Whist. The year 1882 alone saw 27 nobles assume dual-membership
status.70
These developments, however, failed to produce any significant low-
ering of social barriers. Titled gentlemen might attend the dances and
concerts offered by the Filarmonica or enjoy the sporting activities of its
chalet on the Po, but this did not translate into more intimate familial or
business relations with non-nobles. Moreover, whatever interaction and
67
See Cronistoria delV'Accademia, p p . 129-145. O f the 1,078 m e n w h o belonged to the
Filarmonica between 1814 and 1915, 191 came from titled families. O f these, 89
were newly ennobled. See M a n n o , Ilpatriziato subalpino, vol. 1, for list of n e w nobles
in the nineteenth century.
68
See A C T " R u o l o tasse vetture private, 1899" and "R.110I0 tasse domestici, 1900."
69
O n the presence of industrial leaders in the Filarmonica, see Cronistoria delVAccademia,
pp. 129-145; Castronovo, "Formazione e sviluppo," p p . 7 7 3 - 8 4 9 ; La guida, 1913,
pp. 1174-1175; Credito Italiano, Societa per azioni, IQI6.
70
See Cronistoria dell'Accademia, pp. 139-145; Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita,
pp. 174-218.
networking did take place in the 1880s did not establish any enduring
precedent. On the contrary, after 1890, the number of nobles who
entered the club dropped sharply. In the following two and a half
decades, only twenty-three titled men joined. As a result, the Filarmo-
nica became steadily less successful at bringing together and blending
men from Turin's new and old elites before World War I. 71
The patterns of social isolation and exclusion displayed by the gentle-
men's clubs carried over to the less institutionalized forms of upper-class
sociability in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Long
after the transfer of the royal court away from Turin in the 1860s, the
resident members of the House of Savoy continued to serve as the
centerpieces and chief arbiters of local high society. The presence of the
Duke and Duchess of Aosta, the Duke and Duchess of Genoa, or the
heir to the throne, the Count of Turin, at a society event added signifi-
cantly to its luster and virtually guaranteed its success, while the most
sought after invitations were those to the grand balls and receptions
hosted by members of the royal family. The enormous prestige enjoyed
by the House of Savoy in the city provided the nobility with advantages
that no other old elite on the peninsula enjoyed in the late nineteenth
century. Royal family members with their inevitable aristocratic entou-
rage gave Turinese high society a distinctively traditional cast that
tended to relegitimize and reinforce both the rituals and status of the
hereditary titled establishment.72
The social calendar in Turin displayed a certain regularity each year
with a fairly predictable series of semi-public and private events and
entertainments. Much as in other urban centers of Italy, the year began
with Carnevale in late January and early February which marked the
busiest period of the season. As an enthusiastic chronicler for the local
society weekly, H Venerdi della Contessa, reported in February 1891
*'these nights, one dances with indescribable abandon everywhere; in
families, theaters, clubs."73 That year, for instance, the paper provided
accounts of some twenty private house parties as well as larger gatherings
at the Circolo degli Artisti and Accademia Filarmonica in a two week
span that culminated with a grand ball sponsored by the Duke and
Duchess of Genoa at Palazzo Chiablese.74 February also marked the
beginning of the sporting calendar as well with a series of weekly
hunting parties that continued into May, typically presided over by the
71
Ibid.
72
O n the special status enjoyed b y the H o u s e of Savoy i n T u r i n and Piedmont in
general, see Levra, " T o r i n o traprimazia risorgimentale," p p . 8 1 - 1 7 2 .
73
U Venerdi della Contessa, n. 6, February 6, 1891.
74
Ibid.,n. 5-7, 1891.
Duke of Aosta in the countryside surrounding the city. During the

months of March, April, and May, social life tended to revolve around
concerts and other musical events. In June, the race track became the
favorite locale for upper-class display and socializing. In accordance with
the longstanding traditions of Piedmont's aristocratic elite, the social life
of the regional capital came to a halt in July with the summer exodus of
Turin's upper classes to their country homes or to fashionable retreats in
the mountains or by the seaside. As the H Venerdi della Contessa noted in
mid-August 1904, "our city exhibits a strange dreariness . . . deserted
squares, cheerless streets and avenues . . . everyone gone."75 Nor was
Turin's social calendar much more lively in the autumn months when
about all the society paper had to report on were hunting parties.
Throughout the year, theater premieres and even services at the city's
more fashionable churches provided additional opportunities to see and
to be seen. H Venerdi della Contessa regularly reported the names and
attire of the socially prominent women who attended opening nights in
the Regio, Carignano, Alfieri, Balbo, and Vittorio Emanuele Theaters
or who had been seen at mass in the Churches of San Filippo, SS.
Martiri, Sant'Agostino, Angioli Custodi, and Madonna degli Angeli.76
Of course, the regularity of Turinese high society was occasionally
disrupted by special events such as weddings and funerals. The recep-
tions and ceremonies surrounding the wedding of Marchese Giuseppe
Pallavicino-Mossi and Countess Irene Avogadro di Collobiano, for
instance, marked the high point of the winter season of 1895—1896 and,
as such, attracted large crowds of onlookers as well as receiving exten-
sive coverage in the local press. The prenuptial reception given by the
bride's family in their palace in Piazza San Carlo a week before the
wedding had a guest list that included, La Stampa reported, "the names
of almost all the Turinese aristocracy" and members of the royal family.
The Church of Santa Teresa, where the wedding itself took place in
mid-February, had "never embraced," according to U Venerdi della Con-
tessa, "so much of the Turinese aristocratic world."77 The death of
Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy in February 1909 was a sadder
75
Ibid., August 17, 1904.
76
In its issue of March 26, 1904, for example, U Venerdi della Contessa listed the names
of thirty-six society ladies w h o had attended mass at the C h u r c h of San Filippo that
week. T h e list included some of the most prominent families of the old nobility as
well as newer families like Mazzonis, Ceriana, and Poma. For similar lists, see ibid.,
March 12, 1904.
77
See La Stampa, February 9, 1896 and II Venerdi della Contessa, February 14, 1896. T h e
wedding was also covered by Italia Reale, La Tribuna Biellese, La Patria of Turin as
well as L'ltalie: Journal Politique Quotidien of Rome. For clippings, see AST, Sez.
Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b. 16.
but no less major event which attracted the cream of high society as
well as large crowds of mourners. Participating in the huge funeral pro-
cession, which wound its way along the main avenues of the city, were
the Duke of Aosta, the mayor, military commanders, church officials,
representatives from the Senate, Chamber of Deputies, judiciary, and
"numerous patrician families."78
While those aspects of high society associated with semi-public or
public institutions continued to be dominated by the great titled
families, they did offer at least the physical possibility of social contact
between Turin's old and new elites. Both aristocratic women and non-
titled matrons could be found, for instance, at theater premieres and
concerts or in the fashionable churches on Sunday. Opening night at the
Carignano Theater in January 1912, for example, was attended not only
by old-line aristocrats such as Countess Irene Avogadro di Collobiano,
but also by the wife of the prominent business magnate Giuseppe Durio
and one of the leading lights of the local Jewish elite, Baroness Faustina
Levi de Veali.79 The guest lists of the "charitable" balls given by the
Accademia Filarmonica, the Circolo degli Artisti, and members of the
royal family reflected a similar heterogeneity. Thus, the dance given on
behalf of the Congregazione di Carita during Carnevale in 1904 brought
together, according to the society press, "the aristocracy of blood, that
of talent, and the aristocracy of money." Likewise, the boxes at the race
track included not only old-line nobles, but also members of prominent
bourgeois families like Ceriana, Denina, Voli and Sella.80
The circles of the nobility and the haute bourgeoisie, however, rarely
intersected in the more intimate receptions, house parties, summertime
diversions, and rural sporting events that filled much of the leisure time
of Piedmont's upper classes in this period. Social isolation was especially
evident during Carnevale. As the U Venerdi della Contessa expressed it,
"every social class has its own parties."81 Judging by the accounts that
appeared in the society weekly, private parties and receptions continued
to be largely segregated along social and religious lines before World
War I. On the whole, the families of the old-line nobility preferred to
remain in splendid isolation and maintained a low profile. The soirees
that took place in aristocratic town houses were extremely exclusive
78
See La Starnpa, February 27, 1909 for a detailed account of the funeral.
79
See H Venerdi della Contessa, January 9 - 1 0 , 1912.
80
These conclusions are based u p o n a careful reading o f the lists of names o f those
people in attendance at these receptions and sporting events that appear in U Venerdi
della Contessa during the years 1891 and 1904. For the account of the charitable ball
for the Congregazione di Carita, see ibid., February 10, 1904.
81
Ibid., n. 6, February 6, 1891.
affairs that rarely included any bourgeois guests. When the Countess
Riccardi di Lantosca, for example, gave a private party during Carnevale
in 1891, the paper provided the names of some twenty-five aristocratic
men and women in attendance, including the heir to the throne, the
Count of Turin, but mentioned not a single non-noble. Little had
apparently changed more than a decade later when // Venerdi della Con-
tessa reported in February 1904 on an "extraordinarily elegant reception
at Palazzo di Rora" hosted by Marchesa Luserna di Rora that was
attended exclusively by women from old titled families like the Del
Carretto di Moncrivello, Thaon di Revel, and Perrone di San
Martino.82 At the same time, aristocratic families continued to hold
themselves as aloof as possible from the other cliques and coteries.
Accordingly, the names of prominent nobles rarely appeared on the
guest lists of receptions, parties, and concerts that industrial or banking
families hosted in their homes or in the city's major hotels. These
groups, in turn, rarely took part in the private gatherings given by
prominent members of Turin's Jewish community.83
Traditional rural sports, associated with the equestrian and military
customs of the nobility, served as additional mechanisms of social differ-
entiation. Hunting, in particular, received extensive coverage in the
society press which characterized it as the most "aristocratic sporting
event."84 Hunts still took place with surprising regularity in the first
decade of the new century on royal domains and parks near Turin, or
else on the estates of titled nobles. The Duke and Duchess of Aosta
were invariably in attendance, along with a coterie of old-line nobles
and cavalry officers. After the rides, the family hosting the hunt usually
invited participants to a lunch at their country house or ancestral castle.
Few if any bourgeois riders took part. In 1904, for instance, the only
non-nobles mentioned by II Venerdi della Contessa in its accounts of the
hunts were from a few prominent, old families like the Nasi, Engelfred,
Ceriana, and Bonvicino, most of whom also had members in the
Societa del Whist.85
Even less social mingling between old and new elites took place
during the summer months. Titled families tended to follow their tradi-
tional custom of passing the summer as well as the better part of the fall
at their ancestral estates in the provinces. Here they renewed ties with
82
Ibid., February 13, 1891 and February 10, 1904.
83
See, for example, ibid., January 16, 1904 for the party given b y Debenedetti. C o n c l u -
sions regarding the social composition of the parties given by non-nobles are based
o n the lists of guests in the society weekly.
84
Ibid., O c t o b e r 26, 1904.
85
That year II Venerdi della Contessa had reports o n a dozen hunting parties.
T H E
194 LIMITS OF FUSION
local notables, oversaw the harvests, enjoyed their favorite outdoor

sports, and exchanged visits with other old families from neighboring
estates. The Compans di Brichanteau, for example, left their town
house in July each year and went to their castle overlooking the village
of Mercenasco in the province of Turin, where they remained until
November. Once there, younger members of the family helped to
harvest the grapes and took trips to the castles of cousins like the
Valperga di Masino and the Seyssel d'Aix, while the parents, for their
part, hosted a steady stream of relatives and intimate friends such as the
Scarampi di Villanova, Oreglia d'Isola, and Maffei di Boglia.86 Similarly,
as late as 1904, all the members of the Figarolo di Gropello clan, with
their respective wives, husbands, and off-spring were still gathering to-
gether each summer at Beltondino, site of the family's principal country
house and most extensive properties in the province of Alessandria.87
Bourgeois families, for their part, were more inclined to vacation at
fashionable resorts in the mountains or else in the new grand hotels that
sprang up along the Italian Riviera in the late nineteenth century.
During the summer months, H Venerdi della Contessa kept a running
account of the locales where Turinese notables had been sighted. The
familiar names of Piedmont's old aristocratic elite remained largely
absent from these accounts. In August of 1904, for example, while old
titled families retreated to their ancestral estates, the society weekly
reported that only prominent bourgeois families like the Denina, Voli,
Bonvicino, Nigra as well as Cesare and Teofilo Rossi of the liquor
dynasty were vacationing at the Hotel Royal in Courmayeur. In such
resorts, the city's upper-middle class was more likely to meet and socia-
lize with wealthy American, British, and French tourists than with
Piedmontese nobles.88
Taken together, these various indicators of social interaction between
Piedmont's old and new elites reveal a situation that differed noticeably
from other regions of Italy where a new hybrid ruling class emerged in
the nineteenth century through the fusion of the hereditary aristocracy
with influential segments of the haute bourgeoisie. The interaction that
did take place among the various segments of the propertied classes in
Piedmont was largely restricted to the public sphere and did not lead to
more intimate relations prior to World War I. On the contrary,
86
T h e A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio C o m p a n s di Brichanteau contains a n u m b e r o f
letters written by family members in Mercenasio between 1865 and 1918.
87
See "Diario Figarolo di Gropello," February 4, 1986, p . 9.
88
Ibid., August 6, 1904. In that issue, the society weekly reported that, in addition t o
the local families in residence, there was a " n u m e r o u s colony of Americans, British,
and F r e n c h m e n . "
contrasting attitudes toward industry and commerce, separate patterns
of investment, marriage partners, residences, and lifestyles all point to
the persistence of parallel but socially distinct elites. In fact, there are
indications, such as the evolving recruitment policies of the gentlemen's
clubs, that caste consciousness and barriers became more rather than less
pronounced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The
few bourgeois families who gained some measure of acceptance did so
only by adopting the values and culture of the old-line nobility.
The evolution of aristocratic—bourgeois relations in Piedmont proved
to be something of a mixed blessing for old-line families. On the one
hand, as the apparent hardening of social barriers in the late nineteenth
century indicates, the survival of the titled nobility as a prominent,
influential, and wealthy element in Piedmontese society did not depend
upon any significant social or economic accommodation with the
industrial or commercial middle classes. Subalpine nobles were able to
maintain so much of their traditional caste consciousness and exclusivity
without sacrificing influence largely because of two circumstances. First,
they proved to be very skillful at accepting new institutions and then
using them to bolster their own wealth and old way of life. Second,
they benefited from being members of a regional society that still exhib-
ited a strong sense of social hierarchy and deference, a society where the
monarchy, church, and military continued to enjoy widespread prestige
and respect.
On the other hand, social isolation and exclusivity also had their
costs, since they limited the ability of old-line families to coopt or
convert newer elements of the propertied classes to an aristocratic way
of life. While some local industrialists continued to pursue hereditary
titles and to ape the nobility in other respects in the last decades before
World War I, most of Turin's new entrepreneurial families appear to
have found the terms of social acceptance by the nobility to be too diffi-
cult and/or too humiliating. Instead, they increasingly accepted and
perhaps even preferred to participate in a "good society" of their own
making with institutions, neighborhoods, and social rituals separate and
distinct from those of the nobility. As a result, the aristocracy became
increasingly cut off from new centers of wealth, leadership, and power.
The reluctance or inability of old-line families to diversify and moder-
nize their presence in society and to continue absorbing talented and
wealthy new men as in the past not only contributed to the impoverish-
ment of their own ranks, but it also condemned them to a not-so-
splendid isolation in the twentieth century.
CHAPTER 6
RETREAT AND ADAPTATION IN THE

TWENTIETH CENTURY
As the preceding chapters have argued, the Piedmontese aristocracy

proved to be more successful than their titled counterparts elsewhere on
the Italian peninsula at maintaining a combination of landed wealth,
social exclusivity, cultural traditions, and political influence in the
second half of the nineteenth century. The same cannot be said for the
following century. The extraordinary growth of industry in Piedmont,
the rapid advance of mass politics, recurrent problems in the agricultural
sector, demographic weakness, two wars, and ultimately the fall of the
monarchy combined to transform irrevocably the identity, status and,
material circumstances of the nobility in Piedmont by the middle of the
twentieth century.
Old-line aristocratic families responded to these challenges in a
variety of ways. Some conformed to popular stereotypes by squandering
the remains of the ancestral patrimony on gambling, mistresses, and the
high life or by retreating to their decaying country houses and palaces
where they led a proud, but increasingly impoverished existence before
simply dying off. For others, preeminence was followed not so much by
decadence and disappearance as by adaption and survival. In fact, a
number of titled families became active participants in a process of
adjustment to the difficult circumstances that confronted them par-
ticularly after 1914. As a result, they remained an affluent and prominent
component of Piedmontese high society in the decades that followed.
But even successful adaptation unavoidably transformed most of these
nobles into plutocrats and industrial-financial managers who lost much
of their distinctive identity and cohesion as they merged into a broader
and more diverse upper class.
World War I and its aftermath were clearly the decisive developments
in this process of decline and transformation. From the perspective of
the late twentieth century, however, the first signs of a change in aristo-
cratic values and patterns of behavior appeared before 1914. Titled
families already began to experience new economic challenges in the
196
last decades of the nineteenth century as a direct consequence of a pro-

longed world-wide depression in agriculture. The resultant drop in
prices, incomes, and rents did not necessarily spell disaster for the
nobility as a whole, but it did have the effect of reducing their wealth,
widening the gap between rich and poor nobles, and forcing old families
to begin to alter their way of life and to reconsider some of their tradi-
tional values and social customs.
THE AGRICULTURAL CRISIS AND THE PIEDMONTESE

ARISTOCRACY
Both contemporary observers and subsequent scholarly opinion have

tended to view the great agricultural depression of the late nineteenth
century as a watershed in the history of Europe's landed elites. From the
corn regions of Britain to the Russian steppes, the structure of agri-
cultural society was severely shaken in these years and the power and
prestige of landowners permanently undermined. With the importation
of cheap grains from overseas in the 1870s and the resultant prolonged
decline in farm prices, many landowners saw their agricultural incomes
fall dramatically. In order to maintain a semblance of their former style
of life and occasionally to avoid bankruptcy, they often had to choose
between drastic retrenchment and the pursuit of new sources of income
in the world of finance and industry. In either instance, their responses
diminished the social prestige traditionally associated with the land and
led to fundamental changes in rural social habits.1 In the case of Italy,
the depression in the countryside has been linked both to the impover-
ishment of the old nobility and to their flight from the land as a result of
increased indebtedness, the liquidation of rural property, and a new pro-
pensity to invest in state bonds and corporate stocks.2
As I have argued in Chapter 3, Piedmont's landed aristocracy also felt
the effects of the crisis.3 Its impact was especially pronounced in the rice
growing areas of Vercelli and Novara where some of the largest aristo-
cratic estates were located. The price of wheat fell 31 percent between
1880 and 1895; the price of rice dropped 20 percent already in the first
half of the 1880s. In the short run, the big absentee landowners were pro-
tected from the worst effects of depression by their relatively long-term
(nine to twelve years) leases with the tenants who were still obligated to
1
See Thompson, English Landed Society, pp. 308-324; Spring (ed.), European Landed
Elites', Lieven, The Aristocracy in Europe, pp. 74-100.
2
See Banti, "I proprietari terrieri nellTtalia centro-settentrionale," pp. 14-15;
Coppini, "Aristocrazia efinanzain Toscana," pp. 297-332; Petrusewicz, Latifondo.
3
See Chapter 3, pp. 109-110.
I98 RETREAT AND ADAPTATION
pay rents established in the economic climate of the previous decade. As

a result, the commercial leaseholders and other tenant farmers initially
bore the brunt of the situation brought on by falling prices, reduced
production, tight credit, and increased expenses. But as leases expired or
tenants dropped out, rental rates began to fall (Pugliese estimates by
about 35 percent between 1881 and 1890) and the income of the large
estate owners suffered accordingly.4
The estate records of the Pallavicino-Mossi, Gazelli di Rossana, and
d'Harcourt families provide a good indication of the agricultural depres-
sion's delayed impact on aristocratic landed incomes. Gross farm rev-
enues from the Pallavicino-Mossi properties in the provinces of Vercelli
and Turin, which had averaged around L. 170,000 per year in the
second half of the 1870s, fell only slightly (8 percent) in the first four
years of the following decade. The situation changed drastically in the
five years after 1884 when annual farm income dropped another 38
percent to L. 97,000, a trough in which the properties would remain for
the rest of the century. The more modest land holdings of the Gazelli di
Rossana family, some 350 hectares in the provinces of Cuneo and Asti,
followed a similar pattern of decline. Their farm revenues remained
relatively unchanged through the first half of the 1880s, but then began
to drop steadily. Their average annual income in the years 1889 to 1894
was roughly half (52 percent) what it had been a decade earlier. Count
Giulio d'Harcourt fared little better in the management of his father's
estate in the province of Turin where average net revenues dropped 3 5
percent in the second half of the 1880s.5
Not all segments of the nobility shared equally the economic hardships
and losses associated with the agricultural depression. Grouped by time
period, aristocratic probate returns reveal an increasing polarization of
wealth in the wake of the crisis in the countryside. One apparent con-
sequence of the agricultural slump was that the ranks of "poor" nobles
(less than L. 100,000) expanded steadily in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, especially at the very lowest levels. While there had
been no really impoverished nobles (those who possessed less than L.
1,000 in total assets) in probate prior to 1886, in the twelve years after
1900 they accounted for about 4 percent of all the titled individuals in the
survey. More importantly, the same period also witnessed a decline in the
4
See Pugliese, Due secoli di vita agricola, pp. 178—208; Castronovo, H Piemonte,
pp. 93-108 provides a general treatment of the agricultural depression in the region.
5
See AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b. 19, entrate e uscite,
1879-1900; Archivio d'Harcourt, b. 75, f. 18, reddito: Tenuta d'Azeglio, 1880-1902;
Archivio Gazelli di Rossana (Biblioteca Provinciale di Torino) b. 50-20, entrate e
uscite 1880-1902.
Table 6.1 Distribution of wealth within nobility by period (percent)
Category 1862—1873 1874—1885 igoi—1912
Less than 100,000 37 4i 46

100,001-250,000 27 29 26
250,001-500,000 19 16 13
500,001-750,000 7 7 4
750,001-1,000,000 3 2 2
1,000,001-2,000,000 4 4 7
More than 2,000,000 3 2 2
numerical importance of the intermediate or middling nobles (between

L. 100,000 and L. 500,000). By the opening decade of this century, they
accounted for less than two-fifths of the aristocratic fortunes in probate.
The length and severity of the agricultural depression created prob-
lems for those nobles who depended exclusively on the rental income
from their estates and some ancient families actually went under as a
result. The case of Count Carlo Broglia di Casalborgone shows how
financial catastrophe might await those landowners who were already in
difficulty before the slump in farm revenues. The first son of the former
Minister of War and signer of the Statute, Lieutenant General Count
Mario Broglia di Casalborgone, Count Carlo inherited the ancestral
family seat and over 250 hectares of attached farm land in Casalborgone
in the late 1850s. Even before the downturn of the 1880s, rentsfromthe
estate were not sufficient to support a large household that included six
children, two younger brothers, and a staff of six in the luxuriously
aristocratic style favored by Broglia and his wife. By 1880, interest pay-
ments on a debt of L. 221,400 were already absorbing a large chunk of
their annual income. The collapse of farm prices in the ensuing decade
made a difficult financial situation impossible. By 1891, the family's total
indebtedness had reached over L. 367,000 with interest payments ex-
ceeding annual revenues, despite the decision to give up the elegant
residence in Turin and retreat to the family castle. After the death of
Count Carlo in 1893, the entire Casalborgone estate including the castle
had to be sold to pay off debts, and the family disintegrated. The only
surviving male heir, Count Mario, died in 1896 at the age of thirty-
three as a miner in Brazil; his unmarried sisters ended their days in the
Regio Convitto delle Vedove e Nubili di Civile Condizione, an institu-
tion in Turin that cared for destitute women from good families.6
6
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Broglia di Casalborgone, b. 31 and 34, carte varie di
200 RETREAT AND ADAPTATION
In a similar if less dramatic vein, Marchese Tommaso Ferrero della

Marmora, the scion of one of Piedmont's most distinguished titled
families and the principal heir to a large landed fortune in the middle
decades of the century, died in 1900 virtually propertyless and in debt.
The land registry carried out in 1850s listed Marchese Tommaso as the
second largest landowner in the commune of Pralormo with nearly 500
hectares of property. At the time of his death in 1900, the capital value
of all Marchese Tommaso's land holdings amounted to a mere L. 1,800;
his total estate was valued at L. 87,021.58, while there were over L.
100,000 in claims against it.7
Wealthy aristocrats, however, appear to have weathered the
economic crises of the late nineteenth century with considerably less
difficulty than their more modestly endowed colleagues. There is little
indication that the great landed magnates suffered catastrophic losses as a
consequence of the agricultural depression. Even in the worst yeai;s of
the early 1890s, Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi's annual income,
for instance, still exceeded L. ioo,ooo.8 Although the average value of
their estates fell slightly (5.5 percent), the rich titled elite (over L.
750,000) actually accounted for a larger share of the nobles in probate
after 1900 than they had in the period before 1886. Likewise, the
average level of indebtedness among the large titled landowners in
probate did not show any significant change in the wake of the crisis.9
Finally, the depression did not provoke any immediate or massive flight
of the nobility from the countryside comparable to what took place in
certain provinces of Emilia-Romagna where the average size of aristo-
cratic landholdings fell sharply.10 For the large titled landowners in par-
carattere patrimoniale (1881-1904). On the fate of Count Carlo's children, see b. 9

and 11.
7
See Catasto Rabbini, f. 95 and AST, Sez. Riunite, Insinuazioni, 1854, Inventario del
Marchese C. E. Ferrero della Marmora for the landed property of the family at mid-
century; for the impoverished circumstances of Marchese Tommaso at the time of
his death, see URST, vol. 557, 1901, f. 24.
8
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b. 19, Entrate e spese negli anni
1893, 1894, and 1895.
9
See note 3. The average level of indebtedness among the 319 aristocrats in probate
between 1874 and 1885 was L. 54,538 or 21 percent of the gross value of the estate.
Ten estates were in the red. In the period from 1901 to 1912, the average indebted-
ness among the 247 aristocrats was L. 35,805 or 22 percent; twelve estates were in
the red.
10
In the province of Ravenna, for instance, the average size of their properties dropped
from 474 hectares in 1835 to 224 in 1898-1900. Titled nobles saw their land holdings
contracted even more dramatically in the province of Piacenza, where they went
from an average of 171 hectares before the crisis to a mere 71 at the beginning of the
twentieth century. See Banti, "I proprietari nell'Italia centro-settentrionale," p. 14.
ticular, rural properties remained far and away the most important assets
in their portfolios prior to World War I. Despite the trials and tribula-
tions of the 1880s and 1890s, two-thirds of the large landed estates and
nine of the eleven wealthiest landowners to pass through probate
between 1901 and 1912 still came from the ranks of the aristocratic
elite.11
Nor did the agricultural slump lead to any sudden or drastic decline
in the standard of living enjoyed by the great landed families, if a large
staff of servants and elegant carriages are any indication. As Chapter 5
has shown, the luxury tax records attest to how they continued to main-
tain a lavish style of life that clearly distinguished them from the vast
majority of bourgeois families.12
Yet beneath this facade of stability and continuity, the agricultural
depression had affected the competitive position of the great noble
families and encouraged subtle changes in their attitudes toward the
estates. Most wealthy aristocrats survived the crisis with their fortunes
largely intact, but they still had experienced a relative impoverishment.
While they had been largely marking time, new fortunes were being
made in commerce and industry that noticeably altered the social com-
position of the region's wealthiest class by the first decade of the twenti-
eth century. Between 1901 and 1912, little more than a third of the
millionaires in probate still came from the old aristocratic families.
Furthermore, the new wealth was on a scale without parallel. The
fortune left by Alessandro Martini of the "Martini and Rossi" vermouth
dynasty in 1905, for example, was nearly twice that left by the richest
aristocratic family in the nineteenth century, the Falletti di Barolo. 13
The slump and the challenge to their status from new wealth may not
have driven the old families to abandon the countryside, but it did lead
them to regard their estates less as a trust to be passed to future genera-
tions and more as an economic asset to be judged in the cold light of in-
vestment returns. And in this light, large rural properties seemed to have
lost some of their attraction. Most of the great landed magnates ceased
to acquire new land in the 1880s, a trend that continued after the
depression had ended. Indeed, I have not found a single noble family
whose landed estates actually increased because of land purchases after
11
Data drawn from materials cited in note 3.
12
ACT, Ruolo tasse vetture private, 1899; Ruolo tasse domestici 1900. For a more de-
tailed discussion of aristocratic spending, see Chapter 5.
13
Between 1901 and 1912, there were seventeen aristocratic fortunes over 1 million
lire and six over 2 million; during the same period there were thirty bourgeois mil-
lionaires and twelve multi-millionaires. The estate left by Martini was valued at
L. 11,854,133, that of the Marchesa Falletti di Barolo at L. 6,390,781.
the 1880s. The economic motives are not hard to deduce. As the lawyer
for Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi noted, in 1893, the family's
estates were barely yielding 2 percent per year of their capital value,
while Marchese Giuseppe was paying 5 percent interest on his loans
from the Cassa di Risparmio and on his sisters' portions of their father's
estate. These circumstances led the young title holder to break with
family traditions and pressure one of his sisters into accepting land
instead of the standard cash settlement for her portion of their father's
inheritance.14
Aristocratic landowners with estates in the plains were also encour-
aged to take a less romantic view of their rural properties by the erosion
of traditional patterns of peasant deference and subservience, a tendency
which the agricultural depression accentuated in the last decades of the
century. Although the change did not, for the most part, assume the
form of agricultural unions and strikes as in other regions of the Po
Valley, it was evident to the landed magnates and their agents. Accord-
ing to the priest in the parish supported by the Pallavicino-Mossi family
near their estate of Torrione in the province of Vercelli, religious obser-
vance had declined sharply "in the villages infected by socialism such as
ours." For his part, Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi became less
inclined to follow his father's paternalistic treatment of the local popu-
lation. Thus, in the 1890s he informed local authorities that he no
longer would furnish as in the past the "premises for the school in Tor-
rione." 15 The break with aristocratic tradition was even more evident
the following decade when prominent nobles like Marchese Vincenzo
Ricci and Carlo Arborio di Gattinara played leading roles in the militant
new agrarian associations that emerged in the rice growing areas after
1900 to "stem the . . . absurd demands of the workers."16
Elsewhere old titled families saw signs of declining deference in the
minor disputes with the villages that tended to estrange them from their
rural dependents. The experience of the Figarolo di Gropello, one of
the most prominent aristocratic families of Alessandria, is illustrative. In
1901, Vittorio Figarolo di Gropello inherited a large estate in the locality
of Zinasco. During the nineteenth century, his grandfather had been the
chief patron of the locality, investing in the construction of irrigation
canals and even building the local church at his own expense. Nonethe-
14
See AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Compans di Brichanteau, category 4, b. 9, f. 6,
letter from aw. Cattaneo to Marchesa Leontina Pallavicino, no date 1893 as well as
b. 28, f. 14, Pallavicino pro-memoria, Rome, 1905.
15
Ibid., b. 12, correspondence regarding the estates of Saletta and Torrione. On the
issue of strikes and rural unions, see Castronovo, Piemonte, p. 104.
16
See Confederazione Nazionale Agraria, Atti del II Congress, pp. 32—36.
Table 6.2 Changing structure of aristocratic wealth (>L. 750,000)
Category 1862-1873 1901-1912
Real property 84 69
Rural property 66 50
Urban property 18 19
Personal property 12 20
Stocks 0-5 8
Bonds 3 7
Ban deposits 3 1
Farm equipment 0.5 1
Credits 5 3
Intervivos gifts 2 9
Other 2 1
Totals 100 100
Liabilities 21 9
less, Vittorio sold the estate in the first decade of the new century
because, his nephew later recalled, he was "disgusted by the constant
disputes with the peasants and petty local authorities, ungrateful for all
the good done in the village by the house of Gropello." 17
The probate records reflect a subtle shift in the attitudes of the
Piedmontese aristocracy toward landownership in the wake of the crisi
agraria. The percentages in Table 6.2 confirm that no sweeping restruc-
turing of aristocratic wealth or large-scale exodus from the countryside
took place in late-nineteenth-century Piedmont. Indeed, the fortunes
that belonged to the titled rich in Turin continued to be fairly tradi-
tional in structure into the last decade before the war. Real property
remained considerably more important than mobile assets. Land hold-
ings, in particular, were still the largest single component of the estates
belonging to noble families who accounted for three-fifths of the total
value of all elite rural property in probate between 1901 and 1912.
These older forms of wealth, however, no longer enjoyed the same
popularity and importance in aristocratic circles by the first decade of
the twentieth century. The contribution of rural property to the for-
tunes of the wealthy nobility fell by about fifteen percentage points,
while the share of rich aristocrats with over L. 1 million in landed assets
dropped from 48 percent in the first decade after unification to 29
percent in the last decade before the Great War. The departure from
tradition also was evident in the reduced importance of the old legacies,
pensions, and annuities that had previously burdened most aristocratic
17
"Diario delTAmmiraglio di Divisione, Conte Giovanni di Gropello," p. 33.
estates. As a result, liabilities absorbed a considerably smaller portion of
the noble fortunes in probate after 1901, but at a price - the abandon-
ment of centuries-old charitable and paternalistic customs.
The diminished economic attractiveness and social appeal of landed
estates encouraged a gradual shift in the habits and values of the younger
generation of Piedmontese aristocrats who emerged from the crisis.
Skepticism about the value of landed status and the country life came
precisely when attractive investment opportunities and new life-styles
seemed to be presenting themselves on the urban frontier.
CHANGING PATTERNS OF ARISTOCRATIC INVESTMENT AND

SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Chapter 5 has argued that Piedmontese nobles tended on the whole not
to follow the movement of their patrician counterparts in Florence,
Rome, and Genoa in the direction of increased economic interpenetra-
tion with new business elites. In fact, as Table 6.2 shows, real property
continued to be considerably more important than mobile assets in the
fortunes of aristocratic families in Turin before World War I, with land
holdings still the largest single component of their estates. Nonetheless,
this apparent traditionalism should not obscure the gradual changes that
had begun to take place in the investment strategies of wealthy titled
families before 1914. Indeed, the success of the titled rich in weathering
the hard times of the 1880s and 1890s can be traced in part to their
responding to the opportunities offered by urban real estate and new
forms of financial capitalism.
A few old-line families were well situated to exploit the urban real
estate market. Well before the agricultural downturn of the 1880s, great
landed aristocrats were also, some of the leading landlords in the city of
Turin as well as among the principal property owners in the sur-
rounding commune in the 1850s.18 Investment in urban rent palaces
offered some wealthy aristocrats distinct advantages, with the drop in
rents and income from land. The rental income from the huge palace
owned by Count Gustavo Ferrero d'Ormea in Piazza Carlina, for
instance, more than made up for the reduced revenues from his farm
properties, accounting for nearly half of the family's annual revenues by
1892.19 Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi's palace in via Santa
Teresa, which he had inherited from his father in 1879, produced an
18
See Chapter 3, pp. 110-111.
19
AST, Prima Sez., Archivio Ferrero d'Ormea, b. 95, list of revenues for the year
1892. While rural rents totaled L. 32,472 that year, the rent palace yielded L. 41,566.
annual rental income that exceeded 4 percent of its capital value in the
late 1880s and the early 1890s, more than twice the return on his landed
estates in Vercelli. Such economic considerations led Marchese Giu-
seppe to purchase two additional commercial buildings adjoining his
palace in 1892, which he turned around and sold to the Banca Cotnmer-
ciale in 1898. He then invested the profits from that sale in three more
buildings, including a large and lucrative rental palace on the newly
developed Corso Vittorio Emanuele. By the last years of the pre-war
era, income from these urban properties accounted for approximately
two-fifths of his family's annual revenues.20 Other prominent aristocrats
such as Count Paolo Costa della Trinita, Marchese Carlo Compans di
Brichanteau, and Count Saverio Capris di Ciglie followed a similar
strategy that made them some of the principal property owners in the
city in last years before World War I.21
For men like Pallavicino-Mossi, real estate in the city came to mean
something quite different from what it had for the previous generation
of wealthy old-line aristocrats. Although they and their families con-
tinued to reside in elegant palaces, considerations of status and prestige
played a secondary role in their urban investment strategies. Their
buildings now represented an important source of rental income as well
as an increasingly valuable investment. Accordingly, they became more
inclined to exploit them as purely economic assets, buying and selling
them as market conditions dictated.
Still, this aristocratic interest in urban real estate development was
rather modest in scale, especially when compared to the investments of
wealthy non-nobles. It certainly did not entail any massive transfer of
assets. Overall, both the average value of urban real estate and its
importance within the portfolios of the wealthier noble families in my
survey were only slightly higher (about 6 percent) in the first decade of
the new century than they had been in the period before 1885. Few
nobles figured prominently among the big urban proprietors in probate.
A mere four rich aristocrats in the decade after 1900 had more than L.
500,000 invested in buildings in Turin, only one had more than L.
750,000, and none over L. 1 million. During the same period, the urban
property bequeathed by rich non-nobles registered an impressive 56
percent increase, while the average value of their urban assets rose by
nearly a third (30 percent).22
20
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 11, "Entrate e Uscite," 1912. For
information on purchases and sales of buildings in the 1890s, see b . 13.
21
See Chapter 3 for sources o n urban properties. For lists of owners of buildings in
Turin, see La Guida commerciale ed amministrativa di Torino, 1913.
22
Between 1874 and 1885, twenty-three wealthy aristocrats left a total of L. 6,897,313
The more successful titled families also began to take advantage of

new opportunities in business and commerce as the statistics in Table
6.2 reveal. Not only did the share of personal assets in their fortunes in-
crease, but the composition of those assets showed important modifica-
tions. The place of stocks and bonds in the estates of wealthy aristocrats
in probate quadrupled in importance, while more old-fashioned forms
of mobile wealth such as credits and bank deposits declined. In this
respect, they differed sharply from the nobility in less industrialized areas
such as Piacenza, who still had 85 percent of their wealth in rural prop-
erty at the beginning of the century.23
Count Gustavo Ferrero d'Ormea and Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone
di Sambuy embodied the moderate investment strategy of gradual diver-
sification pursued by some of the more prosperous aristocratic families.
Both men were heirs to large fortunes that included substantial rural
properties, but virtually no liquid assets. Neither man displayed any in-
terest in abandoning his country estates or family seat as a result of the
agricultural crisis. On the contrary, they held on to most of their rural
properties throughout the difficult years and well beyond, selling off
only outlying farms and unconnected patches of land to pay off their
younger siblings' portions in the estate and to reduce their debts.
But at the same time both men curtailed any further purchases of land
and began to invest their surplus income in an array of paper assets.
Count Gustavo started cautiously, buying a limited number of shares
mostly in the Banca Nazionale and the Ferrovie Vittorio Emanuele that
had a total capital value of L. 155,451 by 1890. Over the course of that
decade, he greatly expanded his shareholdings in other railroad com-
panies so that his stock portfolio was worth L. 410,430 in 1898. The
economic expansion and relative prosperity of the Giolittian era
encouraged Ferrero d'Ormea to increase the range and value of his
stockholdings. Less than two years before the war, Count Gustavo not
only held stock in nine railroad companies, but also had substantial
investments in the hydro-electric, mining, and machine firms. Together
these stocks had a capital value of well over L. 800,000 in 1912, making
in urban properties with an average value of L. 299,883. In the years 1901 to 1912,
twenty-four of them bequeathed L. 7,601,500 for an average of L. 316,729. The
wealthiest aristocratic urban proprietor in the later period, Count Alberto Brondelli
di Brondello left L. 798,650 in fixed assets in Turin in 1902; his total fortune was
valued at L. 1,365,541. See URST, 1903, b. 239, f. 24. Between 1901 and 1912, the
fifty-five wealthiest non-nobles in probate left L. 29,985,018 in urban properties, up
form L. 19,183,325 in the period 1874-1885.
23
See Banti, Terra e denaro, p. 29.
Table 6.3 Aristocratic elite: lineage (>L. 730,000)
Category 1862-1873 1874-1885 1901-1912
Pre-1722 92 70 67
Post-1722 4 13 8
Restoration 4 9 8
Post-1861 o 9 17
them the single most important component of the Ferrero d'Ormea

patrimony.24
Count Ernesto Balbo Bertone di Sambuy followed a similar, if some-
what more conservative, program of diversified investments. While
Count Ernesto sold a few small properties in the province of Alessandria
in order to extinguish inherited debts, he left untouched the old family
estate, San Salva, as well as two other estates he had inherited from his
mother and grandmother; these rural possessions remained the primary
assets and main sources of revenues at least until his death in 1909. At
the same time, Count Ernesto, whose public image was that of "the
ultimate personification of aristocratic and feudal traditions," slowly
began to diversify his assets, building up a securities portfolio that
included stockholdings in railroad, machinery, automotive, and che-
mical fertilizer firms. By the time of his death, his stocks and bonds
were worth L. 342,000 or roughly one-seventh of his total patrimony.25
These slight alterations in the structure of aristocratic fortunes coin-
cided with and perhaps reflected gradual changes in the social origins
and customs of the people who comprised the wealthiest segment of the
nobility in Turin. Before World War I, there were initial signs that
ancient lineage, endogamy, and primogeniture — classic elements of the
noble ethos — had begun to lose some of their importance as the defin-
ing features of the aristocratic wealthy. As Table 6.3 indicates, the old
families continued to provide the bulk of large fortunes within the
nobility before World War I, but increasingly they had to make room at
the top for new nobles like the bankers Count Felice Rignon, Baron
Ernesto Casana, and Marchese Paolo Solaroli di Briona, and the cotton
manufacturer Baron Paolo Mazzonis, all men who possessed titles but
24
See Archivio Ferrero d'Ormea, b . 98, Successioni: Tancredi Ferrero d'Ormea, 1877
and b . 96, Gustavo, crediti e valori, anni diversi.
25
Archivio Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, Cart. x v m - C , b . b , £ 4, patto di famiglia, 1 N o -
vember 1909 includes a list of all C o u n t Ernesto's stocks and bonds. For his public
image, see the lengthy obituary in La Stampa, February 25, 1909.
Table 6.4 Aristocratic elite: spouse's lineage (>L. 730,000)
Category 1862-1873 1901-1912
Pre-1722 79 57
Post-1722 4 o
Restoration 0 o
Post-1861 0 5
Bourgeois 4 10
Non-Piedmontese nobility 13 29
Table 6.5 Aristocratic elite: family position (>L. 730,000)
Category All periods 1862-1873 1874-1885 1901-1912

(%) (%) (%)
First Son 66 70 74 54
Cadet 10 7 9 13
Collateral 4 4 9 0
Daughter 20 19 9 33
remained actively involved in the worlds of urban real estate, finance,

and industry.
The more varied pedigree of the titled rich carried over only partially
to their choice of marriage partners. Wealthy aristocrats in the last
decades before the war were less likely to limit their choice of spouses
to the same small circle of old Piedmontese families, although endo-
gamy remained strong (see Table 6.4).
The drop in the percentage of spouses from local titled families and a
corresponding rise in marital alliances with noble families from outside
the region can be traced in part to the effects of Italian unification
which reduced provincial isolation and brought the heavily service-
oriented Piedmontese aristocracy into frequent contact with prominent
regional elites elsewhere on the peninsula. In this respect, they offer evi-
dence for the gradual emergence of a genuinely national high society in
the decades after 1861. At the same time, the data in Table 6.4 suggest
that most wealthy aristocrats were still reluctant to abandon caste taboos
and marry women from untitled families.
The commanding position of first sons within the wealthy titled elite
also began to erode in the last decades before the war as the data in
Table 6.5 shows. The retreat from the practice of primogeniture
apparent in these statistics suggests that certain changes in the structure
and values of aristocratic families were taking place. The shrinking
number of first sons in the ranks of the wealthy reflected in part a dis-
tinct lack of demographic vitality. In fact, the specter of biological
decline confronted a number of prominent old families who failed to
reproduce themselves and accordingly died out in the decades after 1862
(see Table 6.6). The threat of extinction seems to have been especially
acute at the very top of the aristocratic pyramid of wealth where ten of
the eighteen richest old families in probate produced no sons and dis-
appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their ranks
included some of the most prestigious names in Piedmont: Benso di
Cavour, Alfieri di Sostegno, Taparelli d'Azeglio, Dal Pozzo della Cis-
terna, and Falletti di Barolo.
Whatever the reasons may be - an excessively small pool of suitable
marriage partners, late marriages, the failure to marry at all, or some
form of birth control - the resultant demographic decline had a devas-
tating impact on a number of large aristocratic patrimonies. In virtually
every case, failure to find a male heir led to the fragmentation and sale
of much of the estates, often to the benefit of the institutions of the
Catholic Church. When the Marchesa Giulia Falletti di Barolo died
childless in 1864, for instance, her entire estate with its vast landholdings
passed to the Opera Pia Barolo. Administrators of the Catholic chari-
table organization wasted no time liquidating a large part of the landed
patrimony; between 1864 and 1871 they sold over 2,500 hectares.26
A similar course was followed by the last male members of three of
Piedmont's most famous aristocratic families: Marchese Emanuele
Taparelli d'Azeglio, Marchese Aynardo Benso di Cavour and Marchese
Carlo Alfieri di Sostegno. All three men owed their great wealth and
landholdings primarily to the fact that they had been only sons and
therefore had inherited most if not all of their respective family estates.
At the same time, it was precisely this singular status and their failure to
provide male heirs that condemned their families to extinction and their
landed patrimonies to dispersion. Ironically, in the case of Marchese
Emanuele Taparelli d'Azeglio, aristocratic caste traditions may have
been a contributing factor. After a youthful romance was effectively
sabotaged by his parents who deemed the young woman socially inap-
propriate, d'Azeglio never married. When he died in 1890, his sizeable
rural properties passed to the newly founded Opera Pia Taparelli in
Saluzzo which had as its primary mission the care of the sick and home-
26
Archivio Falletti di Barolo, b. 51, f. 1. Sales netted L. 2,519,388. For a brief discussion
of some of the factors that contributed to the crisis of family continuity in the nine-
teenth century, see Stone and Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite?, p. 282.
Table 6.6 Aristocratic elite: demographics (>L. 750,000)
Category 1862-1873 1874-1885 1901-1912

(%) (%) (%)
Celibate 7 17 4
Married 93 83 96
Total 100 100 100
No children 16 26 29
W/children 84 74 71
Total 100 100 100
No sons 36 37 39
One son 24 37 22
More than one son 40 26 39
Total 100 100 100
less from the communes of Lagnasco, Genola and Maresco, "ancient

fiefs of the Taparelli family/' 27
Much like d'Azeglio, the last Marchese di Cavour was a life-long
bachelor who as an only son had inherited the great bulk of his father's
estates as well as those of his famous uncle. His death in 1875, however,
resulted in the rapid division of the family's landed patrimony. Accord-
ing to the terms of his will, Marchese Aynardo distributed his rural
properties among seven legatees, with the largest and most valuable
portion (the 1,215 hectare estate of Leri in the Vercellese plains) going
to the Ospizio di Carita in Turin.28 Marchese di Cavour's brother-in-
law, Marchese Carlo Alfieri di Sostegno, made a considerably more
valiant effort to carry on his family name, but two marriages, to Ernes-
tina Doria di Cirie and Giuseppina Benso di Cavour, yielded only two
daughters. As a result, Marchese Carlo in his last will and testament
distributed his large family patrimony between his daughters and the
Istituto di Scienze Sociali Cesare Alfieri in Florence.29
27
Borbonese, Gli ultimi Azeglio, p. 53; Maldini Chiarito, "Trasmissione di valori e e d u -
cazione familiare," p p . 5 4 - 5 5 .
28
URST, 1876, vol. 68, f. 2. Marchese Aynardo left the remainder o f his rural proper-
ties to his cousins, Ortensia D e - S e l l o n and C o u n t E u g e n i o di R o u s s y di Sales, his
t w o nieces, Luisa and Adelina Alfieri di Sostegno, his private secretary, and the city
o f Turin. Significantly, the only thing h e left to his sister, Giuseppina Alfieri di S o s -
t e g n o was part o f the family silverware and linen and then only o n the condition that
she n o t "interfere i n the division . . . o f said personal effects."
29
A S T , Prima Sez., Archivio Alfieri di Sostegno, b. 19, f. 8, testamenti del Marchese
Carlo Alfieri di Sostegno.
In other cases where there was a number of sons, the skills increas-
ingly required to maintain and manage family patrimonies led wealthy
nobles to abandon the principle of primogeniture to ensure that their
ablest offspring would be in charge. This appears to have been the logic
behind the decision of Marchese Giuseppe Dalla Valle di Pomaro to
leave the bulk of his large estate to his second son, Marchese Alessandro,
despite the fact that he was still single at the time of his father's death. 30
The rising number of cadets and women with large fortunes may
have also resulted from a growing reluctance on their part to subordi-
nate their individual economic interests and rights to the dynastic inter-
ests of the family as embodied in the first son. Marchesa Albertina
Compans di Brichanteau and her husband Marchese Carlo, for instance,
waged a bitter court battle with her mother and only brother, Marchese
Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi, over the value and division of the huge
fortune left by their father in 1879. Marchese Lodovico Pallavicino-
Mossi, who passed on an estate valued at around L. 4.5 million, failed to
make clear in his will whether he wanted the disponibile or freely dispo-
sable half to go exclusively to his son or to be divided equally among his
children. The widow and son claimed the disponibile, citing views
expressed by Marchese Lodovico before his death. Marchesa Albertina
and her husband, for their part, challenged that claim and demanded a
third of the estate.31
Still, changes in the structure and social composition of aristocratic
wealth did not add up to any radical transformation of Turin's titled
elite in the period from unification to World War I. On the contrary,
the upper levels of the Piedmontese nobility steadfastly maintained a
certain balance between continuity and innovation that permitted cau-
tious adaptation, but avoided any real abandonment of tradition. Aristo-
crats continued to follow a way of life that entailed social exclusivity,
traditional pastimes, and the maintenance of dual residences with large
staffs of servants. New interest in stocks and bonds and the growing
presence of women, cadets, and the newly ennobled in their ranks
30
For the last will and testament of the father, see Marchese Alessandro's probate file in
URST, b . 694, f. 5, 1905.
31
See the records in AST, Sezione Riunite, Archivio Compans di Brichanteau, Cate-
gory 6, b . 6 and b . 28, f. 14, Pallavicino Pro-Memoria, R o m e 1903, for various ac-
counts of the ensuing court battles. According to the terms of the final settlement,
Albertina and her husband gave u p their claim to a third of the total value of the
estate. In exchange, Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi and his mother accepted
the larger estimate of the total value of the estate which had been advanced by the
Compans di Brichanteau. As a result, Albertina's total share of her father's estate (in-
cluding the dowry) came to L. 720,000. She then received another L. 120,000 after
the death of her mother. See ibid., f. 17.
should not obscure the fact that on the eve of the Great War most
affluent nobles were still the first sons of old pedigreed families whose
wealth lay predominantly in the land. In this respect, the composition of
their fortunes remained considerably more traditional than those of the
wealthy bourgeoisie.
Despite the laments of some landed magnates and their agents, the
strong presence of the old-line families on the land also enabled them to
continue playing an important leadership role in the countryside. As I
have argued in Chapters 2 and 3, this role helped preserve vertical ties
and local loyalties among certain strata of their rural dependents, combat
the growth of more modern forms of class solidarity, and bolster tradi-
tional notions of "natural" leadership. In this fashion, they may well
have contributed to the stability and social peace that so distinguished
the Piedmontese countryside from other areas of the Po Valley in the
late nineteenth century. They rarely had to contend with the militant
agricultural unions and bitter strikes that beset their counterparts in
Emilia and Lombardy. Between 1880 and 1901, the strike propensity of
farm workers in Piedmont remained low, especially when compared to
these neighboring regions. Socialist labor organizers encountered con-
siderably greater difficulties founding peasant leagues in the Piedmont-
ese plains, where provincial federations came late, were small in size,
and proved to be short lived.32 And even in those provinces such as
Vercelli and Novara, where the leagues did manage to establish a base
among rice workers, they met strong resistance in the fields and at the
ballot box from a coalition of anti-socialist forces commanded by titled
nobles.33
WORLD WAR I AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS OF THE NOBILITY
In his last will and testament before his death in 1923, Marchese Carlo
Alberto Scarampi del Cairo sadly informed his heirs that although he
had never wasted "a dime (un soldo) . . . of our patrimony . . . it has
been reduced by now to little value." 34 As his words suggest, the years
after Italy's entrance into World War I were not easy ones for the local
aristocratic elite. Indeed, the war proved to be a considerably more
pivotal event than the agricultural depression of the 1880s and 1890s in
32
For comparative data o n strikes and rural labor militancy, see Charles Tilly, Louise
Tilly, and Richard Tilly, The Rebellious Century, 1830-1930 (Cambridge, M A , 1975),
pp. 158—161; Giuliano Procacci, La lotta di classe in Italia agli inizi del secolo XX
( R o m e , 1970), pp. 7 8 - 8 1 , 302-305.
33
See note 16 in this chapter.
34
URST, b . 1389, f. 19, Marchese Carlo Alberto Scarampi del Cairo, 4 February 1923.
the decline of Piedmont's nobility. As the previous section has shown,

most aristocrats had managed to avoid any catastrophic financial collapse
in the late nineteenth century. On the whole, they had charted a course
of limited diversification that enabled them to preserve much of their
wealth and the way of life that it made possible. The pace of economic
and social change accelerated dramatically for the old families after Italy
officially became a belligerent in May 1915. Even the most careful plan-
ning could not prepare the titled nobility for what now confronted
them. World War I and its aftermath proved to be especially formidable
challenges that few old-line families were able to surmount without
substantial changes in attitude and behavior.
It is hardly surprising to find Piedmontese nobles actively involved in
most aspects of the war, given their strong martial traditions and deep
sense of loyalty to the House of Savoy. Even before Italy had officially
entered the war, aristocratic notables like Count Emanuele Costa di
Polonghera, Count Alessandro Rovasenda di Rovasenda, and Alfonso
Ferrero di Ventimiglia played leading roles in the Comitato di Prepara-
zione founded in early 1915 to promote and prepare for Italian inter-
vention in the hostilities.35 After the "radiant days of May," older titled
gentlemen like Lt. General Alberto Morelli di Popolo, president of the
Comitato della Mobilitazione Industriale per il Piemonte, bolstered the
war effort on the domestic front, while younger nobles either volun-
teered or pursued their natural career choices on active duty in the
armed forces. Between 1915 and 1918, some 300 aristocratic members
of the Societa del Whist alone were in uniform. Many honored the tra-
ditions of their lineages by serving with distinction; eighty-eight
Piedmontese nobles were decorated for valor. Such bravery exacted a
disproportionately heavy price. More than a dozen officers from local
titled families were killed or crippled, another thirty were wounded in
combat, and countless others were emotionally debilitated by the
experience.36
World War I proved to be no less difficult for the Piedmontese
nobles on the home front. Vera Zamagni and Adeline Daumard have
argued that the war and its aftermath provoked a general loss of private
wealth in Italy and France as a result of material destruction and "the
forced diversion of private resources to the state."37 The structure of
35
See Castronovo, II Piemonte, p . 283.
36
For information o n the role o f local nobles i n the w a r effort, see Elenco dei nobili
caduti, decorati (Turin, 1918). O n the n u m b e r of members of the Whist i n the w a r
and their activities, see t h e Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, p p . 9 4 - 9 6 , 1 8 6 - 2 5 7 .
37
See Zamagni, " T h e R i c h i n a Late Industrialiser," p . 135, and D a u m a r d , " W e a l t h
and Affluence in France," p p . 1 1 1 - 1 1 2 .
aristocratic fortunes in Piedmont, with their emphasis on real property

and land holding, were particularly vulnerable to the worst effects of the
war. Like absentee landowners elsewhere on the peninsula, they were
hard hit by the effects of new economic conditions, military conscrip-
tion, and state intervention during the war years. Government decrees,
tax policies, and price trends all worked decisively to the disadvantage
of those landowners who had leased out their lands prior to 1915.
Because of the freeze on rents, they received none of the financial bene-
fits of rapidly climbing farm prices, while they had to shoulder the
burdens of increased property taxes and rising costs of living. Arrigo
Serpieri has estimated that absentee landlords in the Po Valley saw their
real income fall by as much as a third, leading to what he characterized
as a massive "shift of wealth from the landowner to the leaseholder."38
The wartime revenues of the Pallavicino-Mossi estates in Vercelli
provide a graphic example of the war's impact on landed income of the
nobility in Piedmont. Between 1915 and 1920, the gross rental income
from their farms remained frozen at L. 151,500 per year, while their net
revenues fell from L. 98,186 in 1916-1917 to a low of L. 62,301 in
1919—1920. When inflation is taken into consideration, the actual net
losses suffered by the family's agricultural properties were even more
dramatic, since the real value of the post-war Italian lira was only about
37 percent of what it had been in 1914. In the case of the Pallavicino-
Mossi family, these losses were counterbalanced by their dairy opera-
tions, whose annual revenues went from L. 44,317 in 1914 to L.
152,837 in 1919 and by their urban rents which rose about a third
during the same period.39 Few nobles, however, had so much land or
lucrative non-agricultural sources of income to weather the war years as
comfortably as Marchese Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi, who according to
the Municipal Tax Commission headed a family that was "among the
wealthiest in Piedmont." 40
A survey of the roughly 4,250 estates that passed through probate
during the years 1922—1923 confirms that both a general loss of wealth
in Turin and an especially severe drop in the fortunes of the old titled
families had taken place during the war and immediate post-war years.
When inflation is taken into account, the data show that the number
38
Serpieri, Laguerra e le classi rurali, pp. 116-118.
39
Information o n the wartime finances of the family comes from AST, Sez. Riunite,
Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 11, Entrate e Uscite, 1912—1930; b . 10, wartime rev-
enues declared for the Contribute straordinario di guerra.
40
AST, Sez. Riunite, Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 10. T h e comments of the C o m -
missione were in response to C o u n t Giuseppe Pallavicino-Mossi's appeal for a reduc-
tion in his tax assessment in 1918.
Table 6.7 Large estates in probate" (annual average in igi4 lire)
Category 1901-1912 1922-1923

L. 250,001-500,000 19 13
500,001-750,000 6 2
750,001-1,000,000 2 1
More than 1,000,000 5 0.5
a
In order to convert post-war monetary values into 1914 lire, I have relied on the tables
published in Istituto Centrale di Statistica, // valore della lira dal 1861 al ig6s (Rome,
1966), p. 66, which cites as the coefficients for converting into 1914 lire the years 1922
and 1923 as respectively 0.2414 and 0.2428.
and scale of the large estates in 1922 and 1923 were substantially smaller
than they had been during the Giolittian era (Table 6.7). Great concen-
trations of wealth became exceedingly rare in the wake of the war. In
fact, measured by the monetary values of the pre-war years, only one
millionaire and no multi-millionaires passed through probate in the
years 1922-1923.
At the same time, the wealth-holdings of the nobility, in general, fell
dramatically from their pre-war levels (Table 6.8). The nominally
"poor" (those titled individuals with less than L. 100,000 in assets) now
constituted the vast majority of the nobles in probate, while the per-
centage of those who were truly impoverished (less than L. 1,000) was
more than twice what it had been before 1912.
Not surprisingly, the old aristocratic families contributed a much
smaller share of the large fortunes in probate after the war, even when
the effects of inflation are not taken into account (Table 6.9). At least in
terms of its wealth-holding, the Piedmontese upper class that emerged
from the war was an overwhelmingly non-noble social formation in
which the old families, with their titles and ancient lineages, occupied a
rather marginal position.
The sharp decline in the nobility's share of the large fortunes coin-
cided with important changes in the composition of their wealth.
Above all, what had been a gradual and strategic withdrawal by aristo-
cratic families from the countryside before 1914 became a full-scale
exodus in the early 1920s. For many of them, the war and immediate
post-war conditions in the countryside created extraordinary new pres-
sures and incentives to sell their land holdings. On the one hand, a
number of new factors made continued landownership extremely disad-
vantageous: increased death duties and steadily mounting tax burdens, a
shortage of agricultural laborers as a result of high wages offered in
industry and the cities, and an explosion of political radicalism and labor
2l6 RETREAT AND ADAPTATION
Table 6.8. Distribution of wealth within the nobility (1914 Lire)
Category 1901-1912 1922-1923
Less than L. 100,000 46 70

100,001-250,000 26 17
250,001-500,000 13 9
500,001-750,000 4 4
750,001 -1,000,000 2 0
More than 1,000,000 9 0
Table 6.9 Changesin the distribution of large fortunes (post-war lire)
Category 1901-1912 1922-1923
Estate Size Arist. Bourg. Arist. Bourg.

(%) (%)
L. 250,001-500,000 14.4 85.6 8.2 91.8

500,001-750,000 34-4 65.6 8-5 91.5
750,001 -1,000,000 27.8 72.2 10.5 89.5
More than 1,000,000 30.6 69.4 17.1 82.9
militancy in the countryside that seemed to challenge the basic rights of

private property. On the other hand, there were substantial financial
advantages to selling landed assets in the immediate post-war period.
The continual devaluation of the lira and a flood of eager buyers from
the ranks of peasant tenants, who had done well during the war, drove
up the price of farm lands to levels that had little relationship to their
actual profitability. Under these circumstances, the selling off of rural
properties represented a very attractive business proposition to landed
families, since it provided immediate capital that could be invested else-
where at a much higher rate of return.41
The results are evident in the probate returns for 1922—1923, which
registered a significant drop in both the value and size of aristocratic
rural properties. Of the fifty-two nobles in the survey, twenty-two left
no land holdings at all, while another ten had landed assets with a capital
value of less than L. 12,000 when corrected for inflation. Although farm
land still constituted an important source of wealth for three of the
seven richest aristocrats in the post-war survey, none qualified as a large
landowner by pre-war standards.42
41
See Istituto Nazionale di Economia Agraria, Inchiesta sulla piccola proprieta, pp. 5 3 - 5 4 .
42
Marchese Lorenzo Del Caretto di Torre Bormida and Marchesa Luisa Incisa di C a m -
The cases of two of the wealthier nobles, Baron Roberto Casana and
Count Calisto Gay di Quarti, indicate how the paucity of aristocratic
rural properties in probate was probably the result of land transfers made
during and immediately after the war. In 1917, Casana, the principal
heir of his father Baron Ernesto Casana, inherited an estate that included
over 300 hectares of prime farm land mostly in the province of Novara.
By the time of his own death in 1921, Baron Roberto had disposed of
all of his land either by sale or transfer to his younger brothers. His size-
able estate consisted exclusively of urban rental palaces and stocks and
bonds. In a similar fashion, Count Calisto Gay di Quarti held on to the
family castle and park, but sold his last remaining rural properties in
1919 for a handsome sum that he then proceeded to invest in corporate
stocks and government bonds.43
This aristocratic exodus from the land continued in the following
two decades which saw a number of Piedmont's oldest landed families
desert their ancestral properties in the countryside. The Costa della
Trinita family offers a particularly striking case in point. In the pre-war
era, Count Paolo Costa della Trinita had inherited a huge landed estate
of over 1,300 hectares in the provinces of Cuneo and Turin. The estate
he left to his son and daughter in 1930 included a mere 15 hectares of
rural property; the chief asset of the family was an entire square block of
rent palaces in the fashionable Borgo Nuovo quarter of Turin. Marchese
Maurizio Luserna di Rora, whose predecessors had been major land-
owners in the late nineteenth century, followed a similar course. Of the
several hundred hectares his family had owned in the 1870s, only
twenty-one remained in his possession at the time of his death in 1929.
Much like his cousin, Count Paolo Costa della Trinita, Marchese Maur-
izio preferred to hold on to his family's urban properties, which to-
gether with his securities portfolio, made up the bulk of his substantial
fortune.44
Marchese Carlo Compans di Brichanteau, perhaps the greatest aristo-
cratic financial success story of his generation in Piedmont, best demon-
erana each left properties totaling 171 hectares with a capital value of approximately
L. 250,000 (1914 lire); 192 fortunes in the pre-war probate survey included rural
properties with a greater capital value.
43
For the estates of Baron Ernesto Casana and his son Baron R o b e r t o , see respectively
URST, b . 1076, f. 2, 1917 and b . 1340, f. 47, 1922; that of C o u n t Calisto Gay di
Quarti is in b . 1358, f. 19, 1922.
44
For the estates of C o u n t Paolo Costa di Trinita and Marchese Maurizio Luserna di
R o r a , see URST, b . 1503, f. 55 and b . 1474, f. 17. Information of the nineteenth-
century landholdings of the t w o families can b e found in AST, Sez. Riunite, Ar-
chivio Costa della Trinita, b . 5, Certificato di Denunzia, successioni C o u n t Carlo
Costa della Trinita, 1893; b . 11, Eredita Luserna di R o r a .
2l8 RETREAT AND ADAPTATION
strated what it took for the scions of old titled families to amass and then
preserve substantial wealth in the first decades of the twentieth century.
While both his parents came from old-line families, neither was
especially affluent. As a result, the inheritance Marchese Carlo received
upon the death of his father in 1873 was a rather modest one, amounting
to little more than L. H5,ooo.45 After his marriage to Albertina Pallavi-
cino-Mossi in 1876, the ambitious young aristocrat's financial prospects
began to improve dramatically. Between her dowry and the portions of
her parents' estates, Albertina brought L. 840,000 into her husband's
household. With his excellent connections in the worlds of politics and
business, Compans proved to be an astute investor of this new found
wealth. In the 1880s and 1990s, he sold off much of his rural property
and used the proceeds from the sales (and his wife's money) to purchase
a number of rental buildings in Turin. 46 The following decades also saw
him expand his family's investments in corporate stocks and treasury
bonds. Despite the war and its aftermath, Marchese Carlo died a very
wealthy man with a personal fortune estimated at L. 16,887,743 m the
mid-1920s.
The estate he left to his heirs was distinguished not only by its size,
but also by its structure which bore scant resemblance to the great
aristocratic patrimonies of the previous century. An extremely diversi-
fied portfolio of stocks and bonds constituted the single largest com-
ponent, accounting for nearly half (49 percent) of the total gross value
of the estate. Urban rental palaces represented the second largest com-
ponent (43 percent). Significantly, rural property, the traditional
measure of noble wealth and status, played a negligible part in the
Compans di Brichanteau fortune. While Marchese Carlo still owned his
family's castle in Mercenasco as well as villas in Andrate and Massa
(Tuscany), together they were valued at only L. 998,000 or less than 6
percent of the total.47
45
A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Compans di Brichanteau, Cat. 8, u.a. 28, f. 10. T h e
entire estate was valued at L. 210,950, with t h e most valuable assets being t h e
Castle of Mercenasco and scattered properties in Cirie, Rivarolo and in Tuscany
that together amounted t o little m o r e than 100 hectares. O f little economic value,
but as testaments t o the ancient lineage o f the family were the annualita perpetue
o w e d the family b y the communities of Ala (1724) and Lombriasco (1580). See
ibid., Cat. 4, u.a. 6, f. 24, denuncia di successione di C o n t e Alessandro Compans di
Brichanteau.
46
At the beginning of this century, C o m p a n s and his wife o w n e d nine buildings in Turin,
six in his name and three in hers. See La Guida di Torino, igoo. Albertina's dowry was
w o r t h L. 320,000; her share of her father's estate came to another L. 400,000, and she
received L. 120,000 from her mother. A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , Archivio Compans, c. 8,
u.a. 28, f. 17, R e p o r t of Ragioniere Ferroglio, D e c e m b e r 15, 1926.
47
Ibid. C o m p a n s o w n e d stock in some twenty different companies. Their estimated
Of course, not all aristocratic families liquidated completely their

landed patrimonies. Those grandees like Marchese Giuseppe Pallavi-
cino-Mossi and Count Augusto Avogadro di Collobiano, who had the
bulk of their estates in the rich rice-growing areas of the Vercelli and
Novara, remained big property owners. Yet even their rural properties
and agricultural interests diminished significantly in the inter-war
period. During the 1920s, Count Giuseppe, for instance, sold off his
family's dairy operations and virtually cut his land holdings in half. As a
result, agricultural revenues, which had provided 57 percent of his
annual income in 1920, accounted for only 18 percent in the last years
of the decade. By 1930, Count Giuseppe derived the major part (58
percent) of his sizeable annual income from his various financial opera-
tions.48 Avogadro di Collobiano, who had inherited perhaps the largest
single landed patrimony in Piedmont in the early twentieth century,
appears to have followed a similar course. At the time of his death in the
mid-i93os, Count Augusto was still a major landlord in the province of
Vercelli, but his rural estates had dwindled to roughly two-fifths what
they had been before World War I.49 Titled families might still make
annual pilgrimages to their country houses, but they had largely ceased
to be the chief employers, patrons, and arbiters of a hierarchically orga-
nized rural society by the end of the inter-war period. Much like their
country houses, they now stood in splendid isolation in the countryside
without any concrete, ongoing connection to the population of the sur-
rounding farms or villages.
ARISTOCRATIC SOCIAL RECONVERSION IN THE INTER-WAR

PERIOD
Pierre Bourdieu has observed how reconversion strategies designed to

safeguard or improve family or individual positions in social space
become especially important "at a stage in the evolution of class societies
in which one can conserve only by changing — to change so as to con-
serve."50 For the old titled families of Piedmont, the decades after 1918
constituted just such a stage. The war did more than hurt these families
value was L. 8,260,557. His estate also included four buildings in Turin valued at
L. 7,334,818. Adjusted for inflation, t h e total value of his estate (in 1914 lire) was
L. 3,526,161.
48
See Archivio Pallavicino-Mossi, b . 11, conti di casa 1920-30; b . 10, imposta sul pa-
trimonio 1920; b . 6 f. 5, denuncia di successione 1945.
49
For the estate of C o u n t Ferdinando Avogadro di Collobiano, see URST, b . 655,
f. 38, 1904. O n the land holdings of his son, see Archivio Avogadro di Collobiano e
dellaMotta, b . 157.
50
Bourdieu, Distinction, p . 157.
in their pocketbooks; it also engendered a new society that seemed to

bear little relationship to what they had known before 1914. The
resulting disorientation, disillusionment, and cynicism severed many of
the emotional bonds that linked a younger generation of aristocrats to
the past, weakening in the process their attachment to norms and social
practices that had previously defined the nobility as a separate and dis-
tinct elite within Piedmontese high society. Financial exigencies com-
bined with a new indifference to tradition to induce a significant
erosion of aristocratic taboos and prejudices in the 1920s and 1930s as a
profile of the nobles who became members of the Societa del Whist
after 1918 clearly indicates.
Both in their educational background and in their career choices, this
post-war generation of men from titled families differed in important
respects from their predecessors who had entered the club in the two
decades before 1915. To begin with, aristocratic men were much more
likely to have received university degrees (Table 6.10). Prior to the war,
only a small minority of the nobles in the Whist received their laurea. In
the vast majority of cases (78 percent), those who did graduate from the
university, took degrees in law usually as part of their preparation for
careers in the diplomatic corps. Nearly twice as many members went to
military school and then entered the officers corps. This traditional
pattern changed noticeably in the decades after the war when the ranks
of dottori virtually doubled, with university graduates outnumbering for
the first time army officers among the new members of the Whist.
Almost half of the titled men who entered the club between 1919 and
1940 had received a higher education. Moreover, a substantially larger
number of these university trained aristocrats now took their degrees in
fields such as engineering and economics that prepared them more for
entry into the worlds of industry and commerce than state service.
Changing educational preferences coincided with the accelerated
decline of old caste prejudices against involvement in business enter-
prise. The inter-war period saw a gradual expansion of "acceptable"
occupations for young men from old-line families. After 1918, a
growing number of nobles either chose or were forced to abandon the
life of leisure and public service followed by their ancestors and to seek
employment in Turin's business community. Of the 292 men from
titled families who were admitted as members to the Societa del Whist
between 1919 and 1940, 38 held managerial positions in industry and
banking, a work status that would have been unimaginable in the pre-
war era.51
51
See source cited in Table 6.10.
Table 6.10 Aristocratic higher education (titled Whist members)

Degree Field 1893-1914 1919-40
Law 56 78
Engineering 12
Economics 1 8
Agronomy 1 3
Chemistry 0 3
Mathematics 1 o
Medicine 1 o
University totals 72 133

% of cohort 28 46
Military 139 104
% of cohort 55 37
These statistics are drawn from Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, pp. 186—257.
Aristocratic attitudes toward social contacts with business families

changed accordingly, as both the admissions policies of the Whist and
new marriage alliances attest. In contrast to the patterns that had pre-
vailed in the two decades before 1914 when they accounted for less than
6 percent of the entrants into the Whist, non-nobles made up 13
percent of the new members admitted into the club in the inter-war
years.52 During the same period, it also became more socially accept-
able, if not commonplace, for even the scions of Piedmont's wealthier
old titled families to take the daughters of prominent industrial magnates
as their brides. This merger of old stock and new wealth found its purest
expression in the inter-war years in the marriage of Count Cesare Val-
perga di Masino to Vittoria Leumann in September 1929. The groom
was the only son and principal heir to the substantial patrimony and
titles of one of Piedmont's most ancient and prestigious aristocratic
lineages. After serving with distinction in World War I, Count Cesare
led the life of a gentleman of leisure, dividing his time between his
palace in Turin and his ancestral castle in Masino. His new bride, on the
other hand, came from a strikingly different social milieu. The Leu-
manns had only arrived in Italy in the 1830s and in three generations
they went from being textile workers to heading one of the region's
most important cotton manufacturing complexes. Nor was the
Leumann-Valperga di Masino wedding a unique event; the same years
also saw other prominent industrial families like the Mazzonis and Rossi
di Montelera begin to intermarry with the old nobility.53
52
Ibid.
53
T h e marriage is n o t e d i n U libro d'oro della nobilta italiana ( R o m e , 1932), p. 1140. A c -
cording t o M a n n o , the Valperga di Masino w e r e a m o n g the t o p four noble families
The triumph of Fascism did not fundamentally alter these patterns of

economic and social reconversion. Much like their counterparts in
Tuscany and Rome, aristocratic families in Piedmont emerged as bene-
ficiaries of the collapse of parliamentary democracy and the consolida-
tion of Mussolini's dictatorship in the 1920s, although they were neither
early nor enthusiastic converts to the Blackshirts' movement.54 After
their virtual disappearance from political life in the immediate post-war
period, titled aristocrats served in a whole host of governmental and
party posts at the local level in the years from 1925 to 1943.55
The honors and offices that the Fascist regime bestowed upon titled
nobles hardly represented, however, a restoration of aristocratic tradi-
tionalism in Piedmont. On the contrary, the old-line families sacrificed
even more of their old social exclusivity by according the plebeian
leaders of Fascism a degree of acclaim and acceptance that they had long
denied the Duce's liberal predecessors.56 More importantly, despite
in Piedmont who historically enjoyed precedence over all others on all solemn occa-
sions and royal ceremonies. See Manno, H patriziato subalpino, vol. xx, "Piossasco
Asinari Derossi". For a biographical sketch of Count Cesare Valperga di Masino, see
Societa Cavour, Secolo di vita, p. 250. On the Leumann family, see Testa, "La
strategic di una famiglia imprenditoriale," pp. 603-636. During the inter-war years,
Count Alberto d'Harcourt married Ada Rossi di Montelera, while three of Cesare
Mazzonis' children married into noble families: Schiari Riccardi, di Gresy, and
Mocchia di Coggiola. See Manno, H patriziato subalpino, vol. xv, and Levi, L'idea del
buon padre, p. 8.
54
T h e available evidence indicates that aristocratic "fascists o f the first h o u r " were a
decided rarity in T u r i n and the surrounding region. Certainly n o figure comparable
to Marchese D i n o Perrone Campagni, scion of an old Florentine noble family and
generalissimo of the Tuscan squadrists, emerged from the ranks of the Piedmontese
nobility. A t least until 1925, most politically active nobles w e r e at best jiancheggiatori,
whose primary allegiances remained with t h e Liberal-Monarchist a n d Catholic
camps. O n the early days of the Fascio of Turin, see Bianchi di Vigny, Storia delfas-
dstno torinese, p p . 143, 336, 339, 397. For additional information, see Missori, Ger-
archie e statuti del PNF; Tuninetti, Squadrismo; Guasco, Fascisti e cattolid; Maggia, Lotte
sociale e lotte politiche; Chiaramonte, Economia e societa in provincia di Novara.
55
Some eighty-six aristocratic members o f the Societa del Whist served the Fascist
regime in t h e following capacities: twenty-four podesta, four vice-podesta, t e n
federal secretaries of the P N F , four political secretaries of local fasci, eight members
of disciplinary councils, fifteen i n the economic corporations, and t w e n t y - o n e in
various other capacities. See Societa Cavour, Un secolo di vita, p p . 1 8 6 - 2 5 7 and
Missori, Gerarchie e statuti, p p . 1 5 8 - 2 9 2 .
56
I n 1928, the Societa del Whist conferred the status of H o n o r a r y M e m b e r o n Musso-
lini, w h o became t h e first and only n o n - n o b l e and head of government t o ever
receive such a title. Breaking with another longstanding tradition of the club, that of
political neutrality, the Whist held a special dinner four years later in O c t o b e r 1932
to h o n o r the D u c e , w h o became the first head of an Italian government t o enter its
rooms and address t h e membership since the days o f Cavour. See Societa Cavour,
Un secolo di vita, p p . 8 8 - 8 9 , for an account o f the reception for Mussolini at the
their renewed political prominence, the aristocrats who entered public

life during the inter-war period differed in important respects from their
nineteenth-century predecessors. Measured by the traditional standards
of their class, they were considerably less wealthy, leisured, service-
oriented, and socially exclusive than their parents and grandparents.
Unprecedented numbers of nobles no longer possessed the financial
means to support their old genteel way of life. And even those titled
families who remained financially well-off were much less likely to still
constitute a landed aristocracy with their wealth and status in the
countryside. By the late 1930s, the figure of the aristocratic landed gen-
tleman of leisure had become much more the exception rather than the
rule.
At the same time, the Great War and its aftermath left noble families
demoralized and undermined their old sense of collective elan. Thus,
with the retreat from the land came a decline in other traditions that had
previously defined and distinguished the Piedmontese nobility. The
generation of nobles who entered the Whist after 1918, for instance, no
longer embraced the old military vocation with the same enthusiasm and
unanimity as before the war. Instead, growing numbers of them took a
decidedly bourgeois course, pursuing technical educations and careers in
business that only a generation earlier had been viewed with utter con-
tempt in respectable aristocratic circles. And as more young nobles
began to enter the worlds of industry and finance, old caste barriers
began to come down with the opening of the doors of the Whist to new
men and the increasing frequency of intermarriage between noble and
bourgeois families. By the end of the inter-war period, Piedmont's titled
elite had gone a long way toward losing their distinctive identity and
merging into a broader and more heterogeneous upper class.
World War II and its aftermath only carried to completion this
process of social reconversion and fusion. In addition to its substantial
material costs, the war drastically hastened the demise of the last two
institutional bulwarks of aristocratic group identity and cohesion in
Piedmont: the House of Savoy and the old, socially exclusive, Societa
del Whist. The abolition of the monarchy after a national referendum in
1946 and the resultant loss of legal status for hereditary titles deprived
Piedmontese noble families of an institution that had provided the focus
Whist. The foremost regional luminary of Fascism, the newly ennobled (1925)
Count Cesare De Vecchi di Cismon, was also accorded an unusually warm reception
from the institutional bastion of the Piedmontese aristocracy. In 1929, the members
of the Whist made him a socio aggregate d'honore, the first since 1865. Two years later
the club admitted his son, Count Giorgio De Vecchi di Cismon, as a regular
member. See ibid., pp. 245, 260.
for their traditional ethos of duty and service as well as the figurehead
that structured their social hierarchies.57 Nowhere were the conse-
quences of the fall of the monarchy more evident than in the armed
forces, which more than any other body had defined the special identity
of the Piedmontese nobility. In the absence of the House of Savoy, the
Italian army officers corps ceased to be the fashionable, not to say oblig-
atory, vocation it had once been in aristocratic circles.
World War II also dramatically hastened the collapse of the remaining
barriers to elite social fusion. Such fusion found its most fitting symbolic
expression in the post-war transformation of the Societa del Whist. In
December 1946, a special commission was formed by the membership
to explore various solutions to the club's enormous financial problems
and the physical damage of its old locale. Without the means to con-
tinue "the life of the club along the same lines as in the years preceding
the war" and unwilling to accept "a reduced style of life," the members
decided to open negotiations with "a similar club." These negotiations
concluded in 1948 when the Whist merged with the leading bourgeois
men's club, the Accademia Filarmonica, to form "a great club, a
meeting place for all the best elements in the city." 58 Appropriately, the
new hybrid club took up residence in the locale of the Filarmonica, a
former aristocratic palace in Piazza San Carlo.
In the decades since World War II, Piedmont's titled noble families
have not vanished altogether from the upper classes and high society in
Turin as even the most casual glance at the leadership and membership
of the Whist-Filarmonica clearly reveals.59 Eight of the eleven presi-
dents of the club between 1948 and 1977 were old-line nobles from
such pedigreed families as the San Martino d'Aglie di San Germano,
Provana di Collegno, and Giriodi Panissera di Monastero. As recently as
1977, 395 men or more than half the membership of what has remained
one of Italy's most exclusive and socially prestigious gentlemen's clubs
still claimed titles which they attached prominently to their names in
the Whist—Filarmonica address book. While some nobles only acquired
their titles after World War I, many others came from old-stock
families. Indeed, a number of them continued to possess not only titles,
but also the material trappings of aristocratic lineage. Prince Don Fran-
cesco Guasco di Bisio, for instance, resided in his ancestral palace on Via
57
See R u m i , "La politica nobiliare," pp. 5 9 2 - 5 9 3 .
58
S e e a c o p y o f the commission's report w h i c h is located i n A S T , Sez. R i u n i t e , A r -
chivio C o m p a n s di Brichanteau, u.a. 4 3 , f, 1. 2. O n the actual fusion, see Marazzi,
170 anniversario dell'Accademia Filarmonica, p . 7.
59
T h e data presented i n this paragraph are drawn from the Societa del W h i s t - A c c a -
demia Filarmonica, Elenco dei sod per Vanno 1977 (Turin, 1977).
dei Guasco in Alessandria. Others like Count Luigi Valperga di Masino,

Marchese Carlo Del Carretto di Moncrivello, Count Percivalle Roero
di Monticello, and Marchese Alessandro Gay di Quarti e di Lesegno still
remained the owners and occupants of castles that bear their names and
had been in their families for centuries.
But these men represented a shrinking minority within a group of
old families that now resided for the most part on the wide avenues of
the newer "bourgeois" neighborhoods of Turin such the Crocetta and
earned their livelihoods in the worlds of finance and industry. Signifi-
cantly, some of the more successful nobles in the post-war era — Luca
Cordero di Montezemolo, Gustavo Figarolo di Gropello, Filippo
Beraudo di Pralormo, and Vittorio Caissotti di Chiusano - have served
as high level executives and representatives of this Fiat industrial empire
and the Agnelli family. As their achievements attest, the survival of the
nobility has depended on the abandonment of an aristocratic culture of
landed leisure and the acceptance of a new culture of work and
industry.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PROBATE RECORDS
Much of the quantitative data in this book rests on a survey of all surviving
probate records from unification to the years shortly before World War I -
approximately 30,000 files — which were stored in the Ufficio di Registro in
the building of Intendenza di Finanza in Turin at the time that I consulted
them. I located and examined about 90 percent of all the records for the years
1862 to 1885, and 1901 to 1912. In addition, I carried out a smaller post-war
survey of some 4,250 files in probate in 1922 and the first half of 1923. Unfor-
tunately, all records for the years 1886 to 1900 are missing, having either been
lost or destroyed. Individual files or fascicoli were grouped in binders or buste.
Each busta contained from 42 to 146 fascicoli. From these files I collected
detailed patrimonial, genealogical, demographic, and professional information
on all individuals from titled aristocratic families, some 837 individuals, as well
as on a group of the 125 wealthiest non-nobles (with estates valued at over
L. 750,000). That information was then entered into an SAS data set, using an
IBM mainframe computer. With thirty-two variables, this data set permitted
the systematic analysis of such factors as the form and scale of wealth, lineage,
gender, primogeniture, and endogamy within the nobility over a span of a half
century. At the same time, it also provided a more precise measure of the infil-
tration, interaction, intermarriage, and other forms of contact between nobles
and new families from the worlds of industry, banking, and commerce.
The inaccessibility, disarray, and physical deterioration of the nineteenth-
century probate records in Turin largely dictated a comprehensive survey. The
documents for the period up to 1912 were crammed into a dark, damp, and
filthy room in the basement below the Ufficio di Registro where they had
been left largely untouched for decades. The condition of records for the
period from 1913 to 1919, which were stored in a nearby room, were slightly
better, but almost as inaccessible. The probate records for the period since the
end of World War I were organized chronologically in larger and cleaner
rooms in an adjoining warehouse. Although annual indexes do exist from 1862
onward, they were of little use for the period before 1919, since the actual
226
BIBLIOGRAPHY 227
volumes of documents themselves were no longer maintained in any systematic
manner. A number of them could not be consulted or even identified due to
water damage.
These conditions offered advantages as well as disadvantages. The lack of
order and limited accessibility made it nearly impossible to do the in-depth
samples of specific years that have permitted scholars to reconstruct the
distribution of wealth among all classes in other cities on the peninsula. These
conditions also dictated the decision to set the lower limit of the wealthy elites
at the comparatively high level of L. 750,000. That cut-off point provided a
sufficiently large pool of wealthy non-nobles, on whom I could gather detailed
information and still be assured of completing the survey within the time
allotted to me by the Ufficio di Registro and the Archivio di Stato di Torino.
Although I lack detailed data on the structure and distribution of wealth within
the group of non-nobles with estates valued at between L. 250,000 and
L. 750,000, I did record the number of such estates annually in the periods
covered in the survey. More seriously, the apparent destruction of all records
for the years 1886 through 1900 precluded any analysis of the immediate,
short-term consequences of the banking crisis and agricultural depression of
the late 1880s and early 1890s.
For the study of aristocratic wealth, however, a survey of all surviving docu-
ments greatly reduces the problems of representativeness and the distortions
created by exceptional cases, since it provides a much larger pool of estates than
one finds by sampling only a limited number of years. Moreover, the neglected
state of the records has meant that most of the files still contain not only the
official tax forms, but also a host of supportive documents that include marriage
contracts, wills, testaments, contracts, and leases. These documents offered
more detailed information on the creation, preservation, and transfer of large
fortunes over the course of their owners' lives.
LAND REGISTRIES AND OTHER PUBLIC RECORDS
Archivio Centrale dello Stato (Rome)

Ministero dell'Interno: Rapporti dei Prefetti, Alessandria, Cuneo, and Novara
(1882-1888)
Archivio di Stato di Torino, Sezione Riunite

Catasto Francese (1812):
Province of Vercelli: Departments of Santhia, Vercelli, Stroppiana, Desana,
Livorno, Crescentino, Cigliano, San Germano, Gattinara, Trino, Arborio.
Province of Turin: Communes of Carignano, Poirino, Fiano, Collegno.
Province of Cuneo: Communes of Carde, Costigliole, La Manta, La Trinita,
Carru, Margarita, Morozzo, Moretta, Polonghera, Faule, Bene, Rocca
de' Baldi, Vottignasco, Torre di S. Giorgio, Centallo, S. Albano,
Magliano, Caraglio, Venzuolo, Villanovetta.
228 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catasto Rabbini (1850s): Provinces of Novara and Turin.
Senato - Testamenti Pubblicati d'Uffico: 1817-1864
Atti Notarili: Insinuazioni (various years)
Archivio di Stato di Torino: Prima Sezione

Titoli di Nobilta: 1825-1846
Archivio della Commissione Araldica Piemontese: 1889- 1942
Antonio Manno, "II patriziato subalpino. Notizie di fatto storiche, genealo-
giche, feudali, ed araldiche," 26 vols. The first two volumes of this alpha-
betically organized work were published in Florence in 1895; the
remaining twenty-four volumes are in typescript with the original in the
Biblioteca Reale di Torino and carbon copies at the Biblioteca Nazionale
di Torino and both sections of the Archivio di Stato di Torino.
Archivio Comunale di Torino

Ruolo della tassa sui domestici: 1900, 1907, 1912
Ruolo della tassa sulle vetture private: 1899, 1912, 1913
Ruolo della tassa sulla ricchezza mobile: 1903
Ruolo della tassa sulle aree fabbricabili: 1914
Lista elettorale amministrativa, 1875
FAMILY PAPERS
Archivio di Stato di Torino: Prima Sezione

Alfieri di Sostegno
Asinari di San Marzano
De Genova di Pettinengo
Ferrero d'Ormea
Ferrero Fiesco, Principi di Masserano
Ferrero Ponziglione di Borgo d'Ale
Provana di Sabbione
Archivio di Stato di Torino: Sezione Riunite

Avogadro della Motta e di Collobiano
Broglia di Casalborgone
Compans di Brichanteau
Archivio di famiglia
Archivio politico
Costa della Trinita e di Polonghera
D'Harcourt
Doria di Cirie
Isnardi di Caraglio
BIBLIOGRAPHY 229
Luserna di Rora
Mazzonis
Pallavicino-Mossi
Sannazzaro
Thaon di Revel
Valperga di Masino
Villa di Villastellone
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INDEX
Accademia Filarmonica 187, 224 Arnaldi di Balme, Count Francesco 80

fusion, elite 189, 190, 192 Arnaldi di Balme, Count Guido 173
high society 190 Arrivabene, Count Charles 38, 156, 177
membership 189 Asinari di San Marzano, Carlo 47
wealth 189 Asinari di San Marzano, Count Ermolao 54
administration, municipal and nobility 35, 37, Asinari di San Marzano, family 29, 64, 107,
56, 70, 71 in, 112, 145
Agnelli, family 225 Asinari di San Marzano, Father Luigi 146
Agnelli, Giovanni 164, 165, 167, 184 Asinari di San Marzano, Marchese Federico 101
agriculture, Piedmontese Asinari di San Marzano, Marchese Filippo
depression 109, 114 34-36
golden years 108, 109 associations, Catholic political 81, 82
Aldrichjr., Nelson 160 associations, voluntary and nobility 73—75, 87,
Alessandria 79, 87, 117, 194, 202, 207, 225 88, 162
Alfieri di Sostegno, family 137,138,141,172,209 Associazione Agraria Subalpina 50-53, 108
Alfieri di Sostegno, Marchese Carlo 209, 210 Asti 129, 198
Alfieri di Sostegno, Marchese Carlo Emanuele Avogadro della Motta, Agnese 120, 121
137, 138 Avogadro della Motta, Count Emiliano 43, 60,
Alfieri di Sostegno, Marchese Cesare 46, 48, 62, 109, 120-122, 138
50-52, 53, 57, 58, 95 Avogadro della Motta, Count Giuseppe
Alfieri, Count Corrado 175 Ignazio 139
Allemano, Giuseppe 8 Avogadro della Motta, Count Ignazio 120
Anderson, Benedict 2 Avogadro della Motta, family 120
Anderson, Perry 190-193 Avogadro di Casanova, family 31, 115
Aosta, Duke of 77, 202 Avogadro di Casanova, Giuseppe Maria 120
Arborio di Gattinara, Carlo 3 5 Avogadro di Casanova, Teresa 120
Arborio Gattinara di Breme, Venceslao 86 Avogadro di Cerrione, family 179
Arborio Gattinara di Satirana, Duke Alfonso 77 Avogadro di Collobiano, Count Augusto 102,
Arborio Mella, Alessandro 185 219
Arduino, Giuseppe 16—24, 32, 35 Avogadro di Collobiano, Count Ferdinando
aristocracy, feudal 76, 80, 98, 102, 124, 154, 155, 186
army Avogadro di Collobiano, Count Filiberto 35,
aristocratic identity 15, 18, 19, 144, 150-155 101, 102
aristocratic politics 65, 72, 73, 154, 155 Avogadro di Collobiano, Countess Irene 130,
ennoblement 151, 152 191
French Revolution 27, 28 Avogadro di Collobiano, family 107, 124
high society 154—156 Avogadro di Quaregna, Count Luigi 74
role of nobility in 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, Avogadro di Quinto, Count Felice 121
23-25, 34-37, 48, 49, 57, 58, 62, 63, 72, Avogadro di Quinto, family 115
73, 82-84, 87, 88, 102, 103, 145, 148-155,
223, 224 Balbiano di Aramengo, Count Giulio Cesare
social reproduction 153, 154, 167 80
241
242 INDEX
Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, Count Carlo 117 discontents 44, 45
Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, Count Ernesto marriage 132, 133
67-70, 73, 74, 76, 79, 98, 117, 118, 130, wealth 92, 101, 102, 114, 117-119, 211, 212
138, 154, 182, 191, 206 CafRFiorio 156, 164
Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, Count Vittorio 117, Caissotti di Chiusano, Count Luigi 81
138 Caissotti di Chiusano, Vittorio 225
Balbo Bertone di Sambuy, family 116—117 Canera di Salasco, Alessandro 173
Balbo di Vinadio, Count Cesare 46, 47, 78, 147 Capris di Ciglie, Count Saverio 205
bank deposits 112, 113 careers, aristocratic 148—151
banking, and nobility 172, 206—208, 220 Caresana di Carisio, family 115
Barbaroux, family 37 Carlo Alberto
Barbaroux, Giuseppe 3 5 King of Sardinia 49—54, 61, 102, 155
Barel di Sant'Albano, Count Edoardo 173 Prince of Carignano 48
Barel di Sant'Albano, family 152 Carlo Emanuele I, Duke of Savoy 17
Baretti, Giuseppe 13, 14 Carlo Emanuele III, King of Sardinia 19
Barnabites 140, 146 Carlo Emanuele IV, King of Sardinia 28
Barracco, Baron Alfonso 107 Carlo Felice, King of Sardinia 34, 35, 38, 48,
Barracco, family 103 155
Bastogi, family 170 Carnevale 38, 190, 192
Bastogi, Pietro 170 Carpi, Leandro 14, 78, 79, 162, 177
Baudi di Selve, Adolfo 174 Carutti di Cantogno, Baron Domenico 75
Baudi di Vesme, Count Alessandro 74, 75 Casana, Baron Ernesto 172, 207, 217
Beccaria Incisa di Santo Stefano, family 87 Casana, Baron Roberto 217
Beckett, John 108 Casana, family 152
Beraudo di Pralormo, Count Carlo 49, 53, 175 Cassa di Risparmio 172, 202
Beraudo di Pralormo, Count Roberto 61 Catasto Rabbini 106
Beraudo di Pralormo, family 18, 106, 108, 115 Catholic Church
Beraudo di Pralormo, Filippo 225 aristocratic education 138—140
Biandra di Reaglie, Count Massimo 160 aristocratic politics 59, 60, 77—82
Biglia, Giovanni Battista 184 role of nobility in 18, 31, 43, 44, 58, 87, 88,
Biscaretti di RufFia, Count Roberto 75, 171 128, 202, 209
Blancardi Roero de la Turbie, Baron Luigi 116 Cavalchini Garofoli, Baron Alessandro 67
Boarelli, family 173 Cavalchini Garofoli, family 64
Bolmida, Baron Vincenzo 122 Cavour, Benso di, family 31, 78, n o , i n , 117,
Bolmida, Giuseppe 185 209
Bonaparte, Napoleon and Italy 4, 28-30 Cavour, Count Camillo Benso di 6, 39, 45,
Boncompagni di Mombello, Count Carlo 76 48-54, 58, 59, 61-64, 95> io8 > 114-116,
bonds 112—114, 170, 173, 174, 176, 203, 206, 129, 156
207, 211, 212, 217, 218 Cavour, Giuseppina Benso di 210
Bonvicino, family 194 Cavour, Marchese Aynardo Benso di 115, 209,
Borbonese, family 37 210
Borelli, Count Giacinto 53 Cavour, Marchese Gustavo Benso di 58, 78
Borghese, family 107 celibacy, aristocratic 133
Borghese, Prince Camillo 30 Censi perpetui 123
Borghese, Prince Paolo 170 Ceriana, Arturo 166
Bourdieu, Pierre 11, 122, 219 Ceriana, family 192, 193
Brignone Sale, Marchese Antonio 58 Ceriana-Mayneri, family 152, 173
Brofferio, Angelo 41, 42, 49, 56 Chamber of Deputies, role of nobility in 56,
Broglia di Casalborgone, Count Carlo 80, 133, 58-60, 65-67, 69, 70, 72, 83, 192
199 charity, aristocratic 46—48, 49, 74, 124, 131,
Broglia di Casalborgone, Count Mario 54, 199 203, 204
Chigi, family 107
Cacherano di Bricherasio, Count Emanuele 75, Circolo degli Artisti 74, 190
154, 165, 166, 170, 171 Circolo del Tupinet 80, 81
Cacherano di Bricherasio, family 18, 146 Cisa di Gresy, Marchese Luigi 172
cadets, aristocratic closure, aristocratic 162—164, I($9, T94> T95
army 154 Catholic schools 167
careers 138 clubs 187, 189, 190
INDEX 243
costs 195 d'Azeglio, Marchese Emanuele Taparelli 137,
endogamy 177-179, 181 209, 210
erosion 220, 221 d'Azeglio, Marchese Roberto Taparelli 49, 53,
high society 190, 192, 193 69, 78, 138
hunting parties 193 d'Azeglio, Massimo Taparelli 13, 33, 34, 45, 58,
life-styles 181-184 63, 129, 136-138
residential patterns 194 d'Azeglio, Taparelli, family 137, 141, 209
voluntary associations 167 d'Harcourt, Count Giulio 81, 85, 86, 198
clubs, gentlemen's 127 d'Harcourt, Count Giuseppe 100, 106, 112,
Coardi di Bagnasco, Marchese Emanuele 98, 113, 174, 175, 185
182 d'Harcourt, family 198,
Coardi di Carpeneto, family 18, 22, 115 d'Harcourt, Olimpia 100
codes of behavior, aristocratic 9, 18, 23, 123, D'Oncieu de la Batie, Count Paolo 75
124, 160, 167, 168, 219 D'Oncieux de la Batie, family 166
emulation, bourgeois 167—169 Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Beatrice 99, 100
Collegio dei nobili di Torino 140 Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, family 107, 209
Collegio San Giuseppe 146, 147, 167 Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Prince Emanuele
Coller, Count Gaspare 58 97-99
Colli di Felizzano, family 57 Dalla Valle di Pomaro, Marchese Alessandro
Colonna, Prince Don Prospero 170 101, 106, 211
companies, joint-stock and nobility 172—174 Dalla Valle di Pomaro, Marchese Giuseppe
Compans di Brichanteau, family 194 138, 211
Compans di Brichanteau, Marchesa Albertina Dalla Valle di Pomaro, Marchese Luigi 87
211, 218 Davis, John 5
Compans di Brichanteau, Marchese Alessandro De Fernex, family 166
63 De Ferrari, Raffaele, Duke of Galliera 96
Compans di Brichanteau, Marchese Carlo De Ganay, Bona 117, 118
66-69, 75, 76, 83-87, 127, 154, 211, 218 De Genova di Pettinengo, Count Eugenio 153,
Conelli de'Prosperi, Count Carlo 182 184
Confederazione Italiana delTIndustria 185, 188, De Genova di Pettinengo, General Ignazio 153
189 De La Tour, Baron Charles 78
Connubio 61 De Maistre, Count Rodolfo 78
conservatives, aristocratic 42—46, 50-53, 56-63 DePlanta,Rodolfoi85
cooperatives, Catholic and nobility 80, 81 De Rossi di Santa Rosa, Count Pietro 53
Cora, Enrico 185, 189 De Sellon d'Allemand, Victoria 116
Cordero di Montezemolo, Luca 225 DeSellon,Adeleii7
Cordero di Vonzo, Count Carlo 85 De Viry, Count Giorgio 78
Corsini, family 169, 171 Del Carretto di Balestrino, Marchese
Corsini, Prince Tommaso 96 Domenico 106
Costa della Trinita, Count Carlo 112, 125 Del Carretto di Moncrivello, family 193
Costa della Trinita, Count Paolo 173, 205, Del Carretto di Moncrivello, Marchese Carlo
217 225
Costa della Trinita, family 18, 49, 115, 217 Del Carretto di Moncrivello, Marchese Ernesto
Costa della Trinita, Marchesa Luisa 137, 138 77
Costa della Trinita, Marchese Maurizio 217 Del Carretto, Marchese Vittorio 172
Costa di Beauregard, Carlo Alberto 129 Delia Chiesa della Torre, family 74
Costa di Polonghera, Count Emanuele 213 Della Chiesa di Cinzano, family 102
Court, role of nobility in 24, 25, 35—38, 55—58, Della Chiesa di Cinzano, Marchese Lodovico
71—72, 78, 82, 83, 102, 103, 148, 149, 156 158, 179, 180
Craponne-Bonnefon, Luigi 185, 189 Delia Villa di Villastellone, family 115
credits 94, 113 Denina, family 166, 192, 194
Crotti di Costigliole, Count Edoardo 62, 78 Denina, Severino 188
culture, role of nobility 73—75 depression, agricultural and nobility 11,
Cuneo 71, 76, 77, 87, 106, 198, 217 197-201, 206, 212, 213
prices 90, 91, 197, 198
d'Azeglio, Marchesa Costanza Taparelli 49, 56 social unrest 201—203, 212, 213
d'Azeglio, Marchese Cesare Taparelli 52, 77, wealth 198, 199
137 Derossi di Santarosa, Santorre 47
244 INDEX
Des Ambrois, Luigi 38 Ferrero di Ventimiglia, Alfonso 213
Destra 65-70, 72, 73 Ferrero Fieschi della Marmora, family 106
Di Saluzzo di Paesana, Marchesa Amelia 87 Fiat 165, 171, 184, 225
di Saluzzo, Angelo 47 fidecommessi 23, 28, 34, 132
Di Viry, Countess Maria 85 Figarolo di Gropello, Count Giovanni
diplomatic corps, role of nobility in 15, 17, 133-135, 137, 183
20-25, 35, 36, 57, 72-74, 84, 87, 148, 154, Figarolo di Gropello, family 135, 136, 183, 194,
220 202
Dona di Cine, Ernestina 210 Figarolo di Gropello, Gustavo 225
dueling 168 Figarolo di Gropello, Vittorio 202, 203
Durazzo Pallavicini, Marchese Giacomo 170 Figarolo Tarino di Gropello, Count Giulio
Durazzo, family 179 164
Durio, Giuseppe 192 Florence, nobility of 15, 97, 106, 204
France, nobility of 42, 91, 92
education, aristocratic 24 fusion, elite 204
curriculum 141, 142 army 166, 167
discipline 142—144, 146 army officers corps 164, 165
family 136, 137 Catholic schools 166, 167
fusion, elite 167 clubs 224
private schools 138—144, 146—149 high society 192
social reproduction 127, 142, 143 historiography 162, 163
university 220 intermarriage 221—223
values 138-143, 148 limits 9, 168, 169, 176, 177, 180, 185-190,
Engelfred, family 193 192-195
Engelfred, Giuseppe 166, 182 state and politics 163, 164
England, nobility of 1, 2, 42, 107, 108, 119, voluntary associations 166
169, 170
ennoblement 18-20, 24, 25, 35-40, 44, 71, 165, Gabaleone di Salmour, Count Ruggero 38, 45,
173,211 5i
problems of 19-21, 23, 41, 42, 179 Gabaleone di Salmour, family 18
Galleani di S. Ambrosie, Baron Orazio 74
Faa di Bruno, Casimiro 75 Gallenga, Antonio Carlo Napoleone 132
Faa di Bruno, family 145 Galli della Loggia, family 145
Falletti di Barolo, family 21, 22, 107, 116, 201, Galli della Mantica, Count Ferdinando 76
209 Gallina, Stefano 35
Falletti di Barolo, Marchesa Giulia 78, 97, 99, Gamba, Baron Carlo 81
106, 107, 112, 209 Gay di Quarti e di Lesegno, Marchese
Falletti di Barolo, Marchese Tancredi 99 Alessandro 225
Falletti di Villafalletto, family 87 Gay di Quarti, Count Calisto 217
family, aristocratic Gazelli di Rossana, Count Paolo 138
demographic decline 208—210 Gazelli di Rossana, family 13, 98
dimensions 131—135 Gazelli di Rossana, Stanislao 139
importance 128-131, 135, 136 Gazzetta Piemontese 68
networks 83, 84, 86, 87 Geisser, family 166
parent-child relations 134—136 Genoa, Duke of 190, 191
Fascism, and nobility 222 Genoa, nobility of 15, 96, 97, 169, 170, 179,
Fassini-Camossi, family 152 204
Fenzi, Emanuelle 97 Ghilini, Marchesa Daria 117
Fenzi, family 170 Gianotti, Baron Romano 81
Ferraris, Dante 184, 185, 189 Gilardini, Giovanni 174
Ferrero d'Ormea, Count Gustavo 204—207 Gioberti, Vincenzo 13
Ferrero della Marmora, Alberto 78 Giovine-Club 188
Ferrero della Marmora, family 18, 57, 102, 108 Giriodi Panissera di Monastero, family 224
Ferrero della Marmora, General Alfonso 113 Gloria, Giovanni 188
Ferrero della Marmora, Marchese Tommaso Gonella, family 152
76, 158, 200 government, and nobility 65, 66, 69, 72, 73, 82,
Ferrero di Cambiano, family 74 83
Ferrero di Cambiano, Marchese Cesare 67, 68 Gramsci, Antonio 3
INDEX 245
Grimaldi, family 179 Lega Industriale Biellese 189
Gromis di Trana, Count Emilio 68 Lega Industriale di Torino 185, 187, 189
Guasco di Bisio, Marchese Alessandro 87 Leonardi, Count Max 77
Guasco di Bisio, Marchese Giovanni 166 Leonardi, family 108
Guasco di Bisio, Prince Don Francesco 225 Leumann, family 189
Guidobono Cavalchini, Baron Pietro Antonio Leumann, Napoleone 185
119 Leumann, Victoria 221
Levi de Veali, Baroness Faustina 192
identity, aristocratic 126—131, 139, 140, 161, Lieven, Dominic 7
186, 187, 207, 208, 219, 220, 222, 223 lineage, aristocratic
debts 125 endogamy 102, 103, 178-180
landownership 122—125 family size 131, 132
urban properties 124, 125 identity 129-131
wealth 122, 123 wealth 101-104, 115, 116, 127, 128, 207,
IlMomento 81 208, 216, 217
II Venerdi della Contessa 190—194 Lombardy, nobility of 10, 15, 97, 132
Incisa della Rocchetta, family 135, 136 Lovera di Maria, Giuseppe 75
Incisa della Rocchetta, Marchese Enrico 87, Lucca 92, 94, 97
135 Lunel di Cortemiglia, Count Lanfranco 76
Incisa della Rocchetta, Marchese Mario 123, Luserna di Rora, family 49, 64, 74, 166, 193
129, 133-137, 152, 153, 155, 164, 165, 168 Luserna di Rora, Marchese Emanuele 70
Incisa di Camerana, Baldassero 76 Luserna di Rora, Marchese Maurizio 177, 154,
indebtedness, aristocratic 93—96, 116, 117, 125, 173,217
199, 200, 203, 204
industry, aristocratic aversion to 24, 25, 40, 41, Macry, Paolo 5
104, 114, 115, 144, 149, 169, 171-174, Maffei di Boglia, family 194
188, 208, 221, 223 Manno, Baron Antonio 80
industry, automobile and nobility 170—173 Manno, Baron Giuseppe 58
inflation, post-war 214—216 Marazio, Baron Annibale 66
inheritance, aristocratic marriage, aristocratic
laws 98, 99, 118, 131, 132 patterns 41, 42, 207, 208, 221
strategies 21, 101, 102, 115—121 social reproduction 129, 130
interpenetration, economic strategies 21, 132
aristocratic resistance in Turin 176 wealth 116—118, 120
England 169 Marsaglia, Luigi 184
Genoa 170 Martini and Rossi, distillers 174, 201
Rome 170 Martini, Alessandro 201
Tuscany 170 Matthews, Bertie 113
investment, aristocratic 175, 176, 205—207 Mayer, Arno 2, 9
Istituto Sociale 146, 167 Mazzetti di Frinco, family 29
Italy, Kingdom of and nobility 55, 56 Mazzetti di Saluggia, family 115
Italy, nobilities of Mazzonis, Baron Paolo 207
characteristics 6, 9, 10 Mazzonis, family 174, 189, 221
historiographical debates 2—4, 8 Milan, nobility of 97, 171, 179, 187
Military Academy of Turin 153
Jesuits 140, 142, 146 Military School of Modena 84, 153
Junkers, Prussian 10, 25, 64, 69, 107, 119 moderates, aristocratic 43—53, 57, 58, 62
modernization, agricultural and nobility 22, 50,
La Stampa 74, 130, 191 107-109, 114, 115, 120
landownership, aristocratic 31, 46, 47, 96, 97, Moffa di Lisio, Count Guglielmo 45, 47
104-110, 114, 121, 122, 201, 204, 206, Morozzo della Rocca di Bianze, Cristina 14,
207, 211—219, 222, 223 137
decline 200 Morozzo della Rocca di Bianze, Marchese
depression, agricultural 200 Filippo 74
eighteenth century 21 Morozzo della Rocca, family 145
Napoleonic Era 32 Morozzo della Rocca, General Enrico 160
landownership, bourgeois 175, 176 Mossi di Morano, Archibishop Vincenzo 116
Lega di Difesa Agraria 80 mutual aid, Catholic societies of 80
246 INDEX
Naples, nobility of 4, 5, 11, 15, 16, 25, 91, 92, Pollone, Eugenio 185
107 Polsi, Alessandro 171
Nasi, family 152, 193 Poma, family 189
networks, aristocratic 55, 56, 81-87, 127-129, Ponza di San Martino, Count Cesare 76
139, 140, 157 poverty, aristocratic 92-94
Nicolis di Robilant, Count Carlo Felice 68, 84 Predari, Francesco 51
Nicolis di Robilant, Countess Edmena 87 primogeniture 21, 23, 28, 34, 92, 98, 100—102,
Nicolis di Robilant, family 18, 144 118, 130, 132, 207-209, 211
Nicolis di Robilant, General Carlo 83 privilege, aristocratic 20-23, 28—30, 32—34,
Nicolis di Robilant, Stanislao 84 37-39, 45-47, 54, 55, 123
Nigra, family 37, 194 Provana di Collegno, Count Alessandro 79
nobility, Piedmontese Provana di Collegno, family 57, 115, 121, 224
general characteristics 6—17, 24, 25, 37, 38, Provana di Collegno, Giacinto 47
87,88 Provana di Collegno, Luigi 35
ideological divisions 32, 33, 42, 43, 47-53, 61 Provana di Collegno, Teresa 121
relations with bourgeoisie 9—12, 22, 23, 25, Provana di Druent, family 116
35-41, 44, 46, 47, 49-53, 55, 61, 67, 68
Novara 76, 102, 106, 108, 197, 212, 219 Radicati di Brozolo, Marchesa Maria 86
Rati Opizzoni, Count Paolo 85
Olivetti, Gino 185 real estate, urban and nobility 93—96, 109—113,
Opera Pia Barolo 209 204-206, 218
Opera Pia San Paolo 70 Rebaudengo, family 173
Opera Pia Taparelli 209 Red Cross, Italian 166
Oreglia d'Isola, family 194 Regio Convitto delle Vedove e Nubili di
Oreglia di Novello, Adelaide 117 Civile Condizione 199
relations, aristocratic—bourgeois
Pallavicino delle Frabose, Luisa 117 Europe 1, 2
Pallavicino delle Frabose, Marchese Marco France 26
Adalberto 117 Germany 9
Pallavicino, Ferdinando 84 Italy 3-6, 8-10
Pallavicino, Rolando 84 Piedmont 11, 12
Pallavicino-Mossi, family i n , 124, 146, 198, reproduction, social 127—128, 130-132, 135,
203, 213-215 136, 139, 140
Pallavicino-Mossi, Marchese Giuseppe 130, residence, patterns of
182, 183, 191, 200, 202, 204, 211, 214, 219 bourgeoisie 184—187
Pallavicino-Mossi, Marchese Lodovico 78, 98, nobility 184-187
109, 112, 116, 125, 133, 147, 211 Restoration, role of nobility in 32-37
Panissera di Veglio, Count Remigio 84 Revolution of 1848 and Piedmontese nobility
Pansoya, family 37 55
Paravia, Pier Alessandro 53 Revolution, French
Patriotica Nobile Societa del Casino 20 impact on Piedmontese nobility 26-33,
patronage, aristocratic 55, 56, 82, 84—87, 43-45
122—124, 211, 212 interpretations 25—27
Pavoncelli, family 103 Revolution, Piedmontese of 1821 and nobility
Perequazione 18—21 48
Pernati di Momo, Count Alessandro 172 Ricardi Lomellini, Countess Costanza 86
Perrone di San Martino, Arturo 67 Ricasoli, Baron Bettino 170
Perrone di San Martino, family 18, 193 Riccardi di Lantosca, family 193
Petitti di Roreto, Count Carlo Illarione 51, 58 Pdcci des Ferres, Baron Carlo 80, 81, 83
Piacenza 92, 94, 97 Ricci, Marchese Vincenzo 77, 202
Piacenza, Felice 189, Ricciolio, family 37
Pinelli, Ferdinando 36 rice 22, 31, 120, 197, 212, 219
politics, aristocratic Richelmy, Cardinal Agostino 81
behind-the-scenes influence 75—77 Rignon, Count Felice 174, 207
post-1848 55, 56 Rignon, family 37, 103, 152
post-1861 65-69 Roberti di Castelvero, Count Vittorio 80
post-1882 retreat 69, 70 Roero di Monticello, Count Percivalle 225
problems of 1850s 59-62 Rolle, family 189
INDEX 247
Romanelli, Raffaele 3 Scati Grimaldi di Casaleggio, Marchese
Rome, nobility of 25, 107, 204, 222 Vittorio 68
Rossi di Montelera, family 221 schools, private and nobility 84
Rossi, Cesare 194 Sclopis di Salerano, Count Federico 53
Rossi, Teofilo 189, 194 Sella, family 192
Rovasenda di Rovasenda, Count Alessandro Sella, Vittorio 188
213 Senate, role of nobility in 57-60, 65, 66, 72, 73,
Royal Academy of Agriculture 22, 108 78
Royal Albertine Academy of Fine Arts 74 Sereni, Emilio 3
Royal Carlo Alberto College 84, 140-144, 146, Serpieri, Arrigo 214
161, 167 Seyssel d'Aix di Sommariva, Count Luigi 131
careers 148, 149 Seyssel d'Aix, family 194
social composition 144—146 Sicily, nobility of 15, 16
Royal Company for Insurance against Fire 172 Simmel, Georg 169
Royal Military Academy 36, 140—142, 149, 152 Sinistra 70
careers 148 sociability, patterns of
social composition 144, 145 bourgeoisie 181, 182, 192-195
Russia, nobility of 2 Jewish elite 192
nobility 181, 182, 186, 187, 190, 192-194
Salino, Count Augusto 130 Socialists 66, 81, 212
Sallier de la Tour, Marchese Vittorio Amedeo Societa del Whist 84, 85, 128, 151, 182, 224
53 army 159, 165, 168, 169, 213, 220, 223
Sallier de la Tour, Marshal Vittorio 48, 78 exclusivity 187-189, 220-223
Saluzzo di Monesiglio, Cesare 143 fusion with Accademia Filarmonica 224
Saluzzo di Monesiglio, family 144 Italian national unification 62
Saluzzo di Monterosso, Count Cesare 66 lineage I57~i59
Saluzzo di Paesana, family 111 marriage 158, 159
Salvaia, Father Illuminato 133 membership 156-159, 168, 219-221
San Martino d'Aglie di San Germano, family origins 49, 156
224 rituals 159—161
San Martino d'Aglie, Count Vittorio 86 social reproduction 155-159, 161, 167, 168
San Martino di San Germano, Cristina 130 wealth 158, 168
San Martino di San Germano, family 146 Societa dell'Unione 187
San Martino di San Germano, Marchese society, high
Emanuele 154 fusion, elite 192, 196, 197, 224
San Martino di Strambino, Countess Irene 86 House of Savoy 190
San Martino Valperga, Count Guido 85 seasons 190, 191
Sant'Amour de Chanaz, Marchesa Cristina 99 Solaro del Borgo, family 22, 28
Sardinia, Kingdom of and nobility 10, 17, 20, Solaro della Margarita, Count Clemente 43—46,
21,25,29,35, 52 50, 51, 53, 61, 63, 78, 95, 128, 129, 133
Sauli d'Igliano, Count Lodovico 34 Solaroli di Briona, Marchese Paolo 103, 172,
Savio di Bernstiel, Baroness Olimpia 39, 63 207
Savoy, House of 10, 16 Spain 119
aristocratic caste-consciousness 38 standard of living, aristocratic 94, 95, 98, 133,
aristocratic devotion to 141, 142 134, 182, 183, 201
aristocratic identity 190, 223, 224 Statuto 54, 55, 57, 156, 163
challenge to nobility 17—22 stocks 112-114, 170, 173, 174, 176, 197, 203,
influence of nobility on 56, 57, 64, 72, 79 206, 207, 211, 217, 218
land holdings 107
relations with Catholic Church 59-61 Tabasso, family 189
role in Italian state 57, 71 taxes, income 174
strategies of ennoblement 18, 19 taxes, luxury 98, 182—185, 189, 201
Scarampi del Cairo, Marchese Alberto 86 Teatro Regio 38, 39, 70, 128
Scarampi del Cairo, Marchese Carlo Alberto testaments, aristocratic 129, 130
212 Thaon di Revel, Count Ignazio 48, 160
Scarampi di Villanova, Count Edoardo 75 Thaon di Revel, Count Ottavio 35, 54, 58-62,
Scarampi di Villanova, family 194 78, 95, 121
Scarampi di Villanova, Marchese Fernando 166 Thaon di Revel, family 172, 193
248 INDEX
Thaon di Revel, Genova 68 Vittorio Amedeo II, King of Sardinia 19, 23, 25
Thaon di S. Andre, Marchese Emanuele 116, Vittorio Amedeo III, King of Sardinia 19
182 Vittorio Emanuele I, King of Sardinia 33, 38,
Thaon di St. Andre, family 106 48, 140, 141, 155
Thompson, F. M. L. 169 Vittorio Emanuele II
Tommaseo, Niccolo 37 King of Italy 57, 62, 65, 71, 102
Torelli, Count Luigi 59 King of Sardinia 55, 60, 61, 156
Torlonia, family 103, 106 Vittorio Emanuele III, King of Italy 153
Tornielli Brusati di Vergano, Count Giuseppe Voli, family 152, 192, 194
76, 77
Tornielli di Borgolavezzaro, Marchese Rinaldo War, First World and nobility 11, 12, 196, 197
76 decline 212, 213
Tornielli, family 108 economic effects 213—216
Toso, Don Giacomo 139 military service 213
Trabucco di Castagnetto, Count Cesare 79 mobilization 213
Trotti Bentivoglio, family 179 wealth 214, 215
Turin, capital city 6, 64 wealth, aristocratic
Turin, Count of 190, 193 distribution 90—96, 98, 99-101, 103, 104,
Turin, province of 198, 217 109, n o , 174, 196, 198, 199, 208, 209,
landownership 105—107, 116, 117 215
Turinese Agricultural Federation 81 eighteenth century 22, 23, 25
Turinetti di Priero, family 18, 22 endogamy 179—181
Tuscany, nobility of 169, 222 importance after 1861 89
life-styles 183-185, 211, 212
Umberto I, King of Italy 71 Napoleonic Era 30
unification, Italian and nobility 62—64 preservation 114—122, 209, 211
Unione Conservatrice 80 scale 89—92, 94-107, 109, n o , 114—117,
Unione Liberale-Monarchica 77 200-202, 211, 214-216
structure 92—96, 101, 104—106, 109-111,
Valerio, Lorenzo 51, 52 121, 122, 203-206, 211, 212, 215-218
Valperga di Borgomasino, family 116 symbolic power 121, 122, 125, 201, 202, 219
Valperga di Masino, Count Carlo Francesco wealth, bourgeois
116 distribution 90, 174
Valperga di Masino, Count Cesare 66, 70, 79, life-styles 182-185
98, 130, 172, 182, 221 marriage patterns 179, 180
Valperga di Masino, Count Luigi 116, 130, 184, scale 89-91, 100, 201, 202, 215
225 structure 104—106, i n , 112, 114, 176, 177
Valperga di Masino, Countess Eufrasia 116 Weil-Weiss, Baron Ignazio 172, 174, 180, 182
Valperga di Masino, Countess Sofia 63 Wild and Abbegg, cotton manufacturers 174
Valperga di Masino, family 18, 22, 74, i n , 172, Wild, Emilio 185
186, 194 women, aristocratic
Valperga di San Martino, Count Guido 76, education 147, 148
Venice, nobility of 15 marriage customs 132
Vercelli 76, 77, 106, 109, 115, 117, 120, 121, marriage patterns 133
197, 202, 205, 212, 214, 219 social roles 128
Villari, Luigi 163 wealth 98-100, 113, 114, 211, 212
Visconti d'Aragona, family 179 women, bourgeois 176
Family power and public life in Brescia, 1580-1650

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JOANNE M. FERRARO
Church and politics in Renaissance Italy

The life and career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini, 1453-1524
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Crime, disorder, and the Risorgimento
The politics of policing in Bologna
STEVEN C. HUGHES
Liturgy, sanctity and history in Tridentine Italy

Pietro Maria Campi and the preservation of the particular
SIMON DITCHFIELD
Lay confraternities and civic religion in Renaissance Bologna

NICHOLAS TERPSTRA
Society and the professions in Italy, 1860-1914

Edited by MARIA MALATESTA
Herculean Ferrara
Ercole d'Este (1471-1505) and the invention of a ducal capital
THOMAS TUOHY
Numbers and nationhood

Writing statistics nineteenth-century Italy
SILVANA PATRIARCA
The Italian garden

Art, design and culture
Edited by JOHN DIXON HUNT
Reviving the Renaissance
The use and abuse of the past in nineteenth-century Italian art and decoration
Edited by ROSANNA PAVONI
Railways and the formation of the Italian state in the nineteenth century
ALBERT SCHRAM
English merchants in seventeenth-century Italy

GIGLIOLA PAGANO DE DIVITIIS
Aristocrats in bourgeois Italy

The Piedmontese nobility, 1861-1930
ANTHONY L. CARDOZA

(Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture) Anthony L. Cardoza-Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy - The Piedmontese Nobility, 1861-1930-Cambridge University Press (1998)

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(Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture) Anthony L. Cardoza-Aristocrats in Bourgeois Italy - The Piedmontese Nobility, 1861-1930-Cambridge University Press (1998)

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This book provides the first full account of the Italian nobility in the post-unifi-

ARISTOCRATS IN BOURGEOIS ITALY

Edited by GIGLIOLA Universita degli Studi, Parma

This series comprises monographs and a variety of collaborative volumes,

For a list of titles in the series, see end of book

© Anthony L. Cardoza 1997

First published 1997

Typeface Bembo 10/1 lipt.

A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

ISBN 0 521 59303 4 hardback

List of tables page xi

The making of the Piedmontese nobility: 1600-1848 13

The long goodbye: aristocrats in politics and 55

Old money: the scale and structure of aristocratic 89

Perpetuating an aristocratic social elite 126

5 The limits of fusion: aristocratic-bourgeois 162

6 Retreat and adaptation in the twentieth century 196

3.1 Hierarchy of wealth: aristocracy and bourgeoisie page 91

6.7 Large estates in probate 215

A great many individuals and institutions helped me in the preparation

Torino, the Biblioteca Comunale, the Biblioteca Provinciale, and the

This study examines the evolution of aristocratic identities and roles in

what Perry Anderson has called a "deliberate, systematized symbiosis"

serve to perpetuate consensual hierarchies and inequalities. In the

of social assimilation and exclusion within a prominent regional aristoc-

In my examination of the Piedmontese nobility, I have attempted to

fusing with other elements of the propertied classes, Piedmontese nobles

and influence both reflected and helped to perpetuate a more diffuse

tuate traditional social hierarchies in which old-line aristocrats still

THE MAKING OF THE PIEDMONTESE

A remarkably consistent image of Piedmont's titled nobility emerges

power, and influence, as well as sizeable differences in lineage, custom,

Unlike their southern counterparts, they enjoyed neither vast landhold-

FROM FEUDAL ARISTOCRACY TO SERVICE NOBILITY: 1 6 O O - I 7 9 O

families like the Cacherano di Bricherasio, Costa della Trinita, Ferrero

tary-aristocratic way of life all contributed to this process.20 The ten-

the Savoyard rulers to abolish privilege altogether, allowed Piedmont's

Aristocratic landowners not only consolidated and expanded their

tinued to enjoy a range of exclusive rights and privileges. The reforms

The same feudal-military ideology also tended to accentuate tradi-

SURVIVAL AND ADAPTATION IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY

The situation of Piedmontese aristocrats, however, differed from that of

the Piedmontese nobility's collective confidence and sense of security.

Marchesa Asinari di San Marzano, and Marchese Mazzetti di Frinco on

economic weight in the society.70 There were significant variations in

with non-nobles. At the same time, the French occupation introduced

THE INDIAN SUMMER OF ARISTOCRATIC PRIMACY: 1 8 1 5 - 1 8 4 8

Compromise with egalitarian ideas did not figure prominently on the

classes of citizens. While the offices were supposed to be divided equally

The aristocracy also continued to account for most of the provincial

local administration, especially in the major urban centers of the

underscored aristocratic resistance to the notion of allowing "people not

Vincenzo Gioberti to Vieusseux in F. Orlando, Carteggi italiani (Florence, 1896), vol.

Cavour were not exempt from caste prejudices in their social

(1814-1847)," in Atti della Sodeta Italiana di Studi Araldici (Turin, 1990),

nobles remained fairly limited.110 Likewise, the few women from

INTERNECINE CONFLICT AND THE END OF ARISTOCRATIC

The virtual monopoly of political and social leadership enjoyed by

this goal. On the contrary, the very dominance of the nobility in

To prevent any repetition of the "great catastrophes" of the revolu-

wisdom and practicality of Solaro's intransigent hostility to new ideas

safeguard the position of the nobility, moderates advocated instead a