Sforza was born in
Lucca, the second son of
Count Giovanni Sforza (1846-1922), an archivist and noted historian from
Montignoso,
Tuscany, and Elisabetta Pierantoni, born in a family of rich silk merchants. His father was a descendant of the Counts of
Castel San Giovanni, an illegitimate branch of the
House of Sforza who had ruled the
Duchy of Milan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At the death of his older brother in 1936, Carlo inherited the hereditary title of
Count granted to their father in 1910. The Count was a member of the ancient
Sforza dynasty, descendant from a branch of the
Dukes of Milan, and related to the
Pallavicini family as well as other
Italian noble families, such as the
Medici and
Orsini. His wife,
Countess Valentina Errembault de Dudzeele (1875 - 1969) was from an old
Belgian noble family. After graduating in law from the
University of Pisa, Sforza entered the diplomatic service in 1896. He served as consular
attaché in
Cairo (1896) and
Paris (1897), then as consular secretary in
Constantinople (1901) and
Beijing. He was then appointed
chargé d'affaires in
Bucharest in 1905, but a diplomatic incident caused him to resign in December of the same year. Nevertheless, he was sent as private secretary of
Marquis Emilio Visconti-Venosta, the Italian delegate to the
Algeciras Conference. Visconti-Venosta's recommendation earned him the post of first secretary of legation in
Madrid (1906-1907), before being sent as chargé d'affaires in Constantinople (1908-1909) where he witnessed the
Young Turk Revolution. Counsellor of the Embassy at
London in 1909, he then made his first experience of government as cabinet secretary of the Italian foreign minister for some months in the
Fortis cabinet. From 1911 to 1915, he was sent to China. where he witnessed the
1911 Revolution which ended the Qing dynasty and renegotiated the statute of the
Italian concession of Tientsin with the new Chinese authorities. Sforza was in favour of an
Italian intervention in the First World War on the side of the
Allies. From 1915 to 1919, he was sent as ambassador in
Corfu to the exiled
Serbian government. After the
First World War he became Italian foreign minister under
Giovanni Giolitti. In 1921 Sforza upset nationalist right-wing forces by signing the
Rapallo Treaty which recognised the important port of
Fiume as a
free city. As minister of Foreign Affairs, he was instrumental in breaking the proto-fascist feud led by poet
Gabriele D'Annunzio in Fiume. He remained foreign minister until the fall of the Giolitti cabinet on 4 July 1921. Sforza was appointed ambassador to
France in February 1922 but resigned from office nine months later on 31 October after
Benito Mussolini had gained power. In June 1924, when Mussolini was weakened by news of the murder of a Socialist deputy in parliament and opponents debated their course of action, Sforza quietly proposed a swift attack to depose him but was unable to find men capable of such a strong-arm plot. Sforza led the anti-fascist opposition in the Senate until being forced into exile in 1926. While living in exile in Belgium, the native country of his wife, Sforza published the books,
European Dictatorships,
Contemporary Italy,
Synthesis of Europe, as well as many articles where he analysed the fascist ideology and attacked its many well-wishers as well as different "appeasers" in England, France and elsewhere. He published the 1928 book ''L'Enigme Chinoise'' based on his experiences in China. Sforza was a critic of the Holy See's decision to consecrate the first six Chinese bishops in modern times. He who contended that the Holy See had been naively optimistic in consecrating the bishops and that the supremacy of the Aryan race was unchallenged. After the murder in France in 1937 of Carlo Rosselli, leader of the Giustizia e Libertà movement (non-marxist left), Count Sforza became the de facto leader of Italian antifascism in exile. Sforza lived in Belgium and France until the German occupation in June 1940. He then settled in
England where he lived until moving on to the
United States, where he joined the antifascist
Mazzini Society. Attending the Italian-American Congress in
Montevideo, Uruguay, in August 1942, he presented an eight-point agenda for the establishment of an Italian liberal democratic republic within the
Atlantic Charter. The conference approved Sforza's agenda and acclaimed him "spiritual head of the Italian antifascists." After the
surrender in September 1943, he returned to his country. In June 1944 he accepted the offer of
Ivanoe Bonomi to join his provisional antifascist government. In 1946 Sforza became a member of the
Italian Republican Party. As foreign minister (1947–1951) he supported the
European Recovery Program and the settlement of
Trieste. He was a convinced advocate and one of the designers of Italy's pro-European policy and with
De Gasperi he led Italy into the
Council of Europe. On 18 April 1951, he signed the Treaty instituting the
European Coal and Steel Community, making Italy one of the founding members. Count Carlo Sforza died in Rome in 1952. ==Family==