ABSTRACT
As early as March 3, 1922, a fascist putsch took place in the Free State of Fiume created by the Treaty of Rapallo. The elections for the Constituent Assembly mandated by the Treaty, held in April 1921, saw a decisive victory for the advocates of autonomy. At this point the Fascists, copying the tactic that D’Annunzio had employed during the referendum on the future of the town, had the documents of the electoral operations destroyed. After a few days of chaos, the Fascists temporarily seized power with the help of Francesco Giunta, their leading man in Trieste.1 Nonetheless, the election results were confirmed, and the leader of the autonomist party, Riccardo Zanella, was elected President of the Constituent Assembly. In response, on March 3, 1922, the Fascists gathered en masse in the town, while torpedo boats of the Italian Navy, still in the port, bombarded the government palace. The Carabinieri helped the putsch by shooting from the site of the Italian delegation. Instead of defending the government palace, the Twenty-sixth Infantry Battalion of the Italian Army made room for the Fascists. The supporters of autonomy assessed the number of Fascists participating in the attempt at one thousand five hundred, only two hundred of them from Fiume.2 Zanella was forced to yield power to a Committee of National Defense, soon to be replaced by a National Council.
