Page 580 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

1220 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Concluding remarks
All of the key elements of the ‘grammar of the bayonet’ emerge in this heavily elabo-
rated ‘chronicles’. The charge is a decisive action, with its compact rush of troops and
the material and moral cleanness of the flashing bayonets. The fear of the cold steel
overcomes a ‘savage’ enemy lacking the moral strength, the discipline and the esprit de
corps needed to withstand the impact. The charge is an avalanche with a life of its own,
routing the enemies by its sheer, irresistible impact... This bloodless and aseptic descrip-
tion marks a strikingly contrast with the onslaught of the same Arab auxiliaries, when
26
charging – in their turn – the Italian troops . This is one of the reasons accounting for
the success of the ‘military myth’, and for its long lasting impact even after the end of
the war. The soldier is, first and foremost, a man who does his duty into a group where
his position is well known and respected, thanks to a set of rule that mediates between
the barracks (or the battlefield) and the everyday life. The ‘army model’ (as well as the
whole set of values shaping the soldier as a human and a social prototype) became the
answer to the need for order, hierarchy and discipline that the country and its ruling class
so urgently felt. Thus, while technology provided the icons to depict the Libyan experi-
ence, tradition did the same with the language.
In this sense, the ‘modern’ Libyan war contributed in strengthening a body of largely
conservative values. The Army was – together with the Latinitas and the ‘myth of the
return’ – one of the key pillars that framed this experience at symbolic and discursive
level, and that channelled the Italian ambitions into the wake of a new, conservative
modernity. This process was a by-product of the end of the ‘historical’ Risorgimento and
of its transformation into a ritual representation. Its ‘celebrative’ dimensions were func-
tional to the new context and to the efforts of the national elite to overcome the limits of
the nation building carried out in the previous fifty years. The war supported the shaping
of a common identity, overcoming the differences and solving the political, social, and
economic conflicts of the country into a paternalistic vision, made on the one hand of
comprehension and benevolence, on the other of respect and obedience. However, on
the background of Giolitti’s declining primacy, this did not support any kind of union
sacrée. Rather, it shed light on a new domestic front, which pushed to the extreme – in
a conservative and authoritarian sense – the political orientation of the ruling class, and
paved the way to the convergence of nationalist, Catholic and right wing interests that
emerged in the legislative elections of 1913.
For the sketch of an Arab “fierce rush” against Italian positions, see irace, With the Ital-
ians..., cit., pp. 145-46. Quite obviously, Arab attitude is explained as a product of their inher-
ent “substratum of cowardice […] The mind of these people is a strange mixture of treachery
and ferocity. They only attack when they are ten to one, as on the fatal October 23 [1911] [the
day of ‘treason’ of Sciara Sciat], or else under the wild impulse of that religious frenzy which
fills them with the blood-lust even to their own destruction; an impulse, not of courage, but
of epileptic fury, as shown in the battle [of Sidi Mesri] of October 26 [1911]” (irace, With
the Italians..., cit., pp. 155-56).

26 irace, With the Italians..., cit. p. 279-80.