In Parliament
Entering parliament in 1861 as deputy of the Extreme Left for the Castelvetrano district, he would retain his seat in all successive legislatures until the end of his life. Crispi acquired the reputation of being the most aggressive and most impetuous member of the Republican Party. He denounced the Right for "diplomatising the revolution". Personal ambition and restlessness made him difficult to cooperate with and he earned himself the nickname of Il Solitario (The Loner). In 1864, he finally deserted Mazzini and announced he was a monarchist, because as he put it in a letter to Mazzini: The monarchy unites us; the republic would divide us.
In 1866 he refused to enter Baron Bettino Ricasoli’s cabinet; in 1867 he worked to impede the Garibaldian invasion of the papal states, foreseeing the French occupation of Rome and the disaster of Mentana. By methods of the same character as those subsequently employed against himself by Felice Cavallotti, he carried on the violent agitation known as the Lobbia affair, in which sundry conservative deputies were, on insufficient grounds, accused of corruption. On the outbreak of the Franco-German War he worked energetically to impede the projected alliance with France, and to drive the Giovanni Lanza cabinet to Rome. The death of Urbano Rattazzi in 1873 induced Crispi’s friends to put forward his candidature to the leadership of the Left; but Crispi, anxious to reassure the crown, secured the election of Depretis.
In 1876 he was elected President of the Chamber. During the autumn of 1877 he went to London, Paris and Berlin on a confidential mission, establishing cordial personal relationships with British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone and Foreign Minister Lord Granville and other English statesmen, and with Otto von Bismarck, by then Chancellor of the German Empire.
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