Agostino Depretis (31 January 1813-29 July 1887) was Prime Minister of Italy from 25 March 1876 to 24 March 1878 (succeeding Marco Minghetti and preceding Benedetto Cairoli), from 19 December 1878 to 14 July 1879 (interrupting Cairoli's terms), and from 29 May 1881 to 29 July 1887 (succeeding Cairoli and preceding Francesco Crispi).
Biography[]
Agostino Depretis was born in Stradella, Lombardy in 1813, and he became a lawyer and a disciple of Giuseppe Mazzini. He smuggled arms to revolutionaries in Milan and was nearly captured by the Austrians, and he was elected a deputy in 1848 and affiliated himself with the Historical Left. He opposed Piedmontese participation in the Crimean War, and he served as Governor of Brescia before unsuccessfully attempting to persuade Giuseppe Garibaldi to support the Kingdom of Italy's immediate annexation of Sicily in 1860. Depretis continued to serve as an intermediary with Garibaldi, and his political career nearly ended due to the political fallout from the Battle of Aspromonte in 1862. However, he served as Public Works Minister in 1862, as Naval Minister from 1866 to 1867, and as Finance Minister in 1867 and from 1876 to 1877, and as Prime Minister from 1876 to 1878, from 1878 to 1879, and from 1881 to 1887. Depretis' tenure as Naval Minister was controversial due to Italy's military defeats at the hands of Austria during the Third Italian War of Independence. Depretis emerged as leader of the Left during the 1870s and 1880s, pioneering the political art of Trasformismo, the creation of a broad centrist coalition to isolate the extremes of the left and right. He established compulsory, secular, and free public education for children aged six to nine, established the Ministry of the Treasury to establish greater control over state budget, established the Triple Alliance with Germany and Italy in 1882 to oppose the alliance of France and Russia, supported the enfranchisement of educated men over the age of 21, completed the railway system, colonized Massawa in Italian Eritrea, and supported extravagant public works projects. He died of gout in 1887 at the age of 74.