Eighteen months later, when the wine and money had run out and the Italian fleet finally showed up and lobbed a few shells at the Municipal Palace, no one had the energy to resist.THE ITALIAN (Milky)WAY TO SCIENCE FICTION Abstract of the paper read at the 2013 Global Science Fiction' symposium at Wellesley College', Boston, USA.

This made up the entire activity of the government. Every morning D'Annunzio read poetry and manifestos from his balcony every evening a concert, then fireworks. The modern Uscochi succeeded in some wild coups: several rich Italian merchant vessels suddenly gave the Republic a future: money in the coffers! Artists, bohemians, adventurers, anarchists (D'Annunzio corresponded with Malatesta), fugitives and Stateless refugees, homosexuals, military dandies (the uniform was black with pirate skull-&-crossbones-later stolen by the SS), and crank reformers of every stripe (including Buddhists, Theosophists and Vedantists) began to show up at Fiume in droves. The Navy (made up of deserters and Milanese anarchist maritime unionists) named themselves the Uscochi, after the long- vanished pirates who once lived on local offshore islands and preyed on Venetian and Ottoman shipping. He and one of his anarchist friends wrote the Constitution, which declared music to be the central principle of the State. In a huff, D'Annunzio decided to declare independence and see how long he could get away with it. But Italy turned down his generous offer the Prime Minister called him a fool.

After a necromantic ceremony with his mistress in a cemetery in Venice he set out to conquer Fiume, and succeeded without any trouble to speak of. Gabriele D'Annunzio, Decadent poet, artist, musician, aesthete, womanizer, pioneer daredevil aeronautist, black magician, genius and cad, emerged from World War I as a hero with a small army at his beck and command: the 'Arditi.' At a loss for adventure, he decided to capture the city of Fiume from Yugoslavia and give it to Italy. Therefore, from among the experiments of the inter-War period I'll concentrate instead on the madcap Republic of Fiume, which is much less well known, and was not meant to endure. Makhno's Ukraine and anarchist Spain were meant to have duration, and despite the exigencies of continual war both succeeded to a certain extent: not that they lasted a 'long time,' but they were successfully organized and could have persisted if not for outside aggression. The following section is from a lengthy socialological work

I biplani di d'Annunzio by Luca Masali