Luigi Luzzatti

Prime Minister

**Luigi Luzzatti** (March 11, 1860 – March 29, 1940) was an Isgardian financier, political economist, social philosopher, and jurist who served as the third president of Isgardia between July 27, 1921 and July 27, 1933. Luzzatti also founded the National Socialist party, which dominated the Republic of Isgardia between 1921 and 1940, and was a key figure during his party's period of governance.

Born in 1860 in Venice, Luigi Luzzatti attended law school in Padua before becoming a law professor at the University of Rome in 1899. In 1901, Luzzatti founded the *Banca Popolare di Milano* in Milan with the aim to provide credits to peasants, small shopkeepers and artisans whose only option for capital had been pawnbrokers or usurious moneylenders. During the republican revolution, Luigi Luzzatti toured northern Isgardia and gave rousing speeches in town centres and city halls about the growing republican sentiment, and was appointed to the Republican Governing Body in January 1903 after securing the loyalty of the economically important regions around Venice. Following the August 1903 abdication of King Umberto, the newly elected president Sidney Sonnino appointed Luzzatti as the administrator of northern Isgardia as a reward for his efforts during the revolution; from the base of Venice, Luzzatti spent millions of lira in spreading his populist message around the country, and actively campaigned against President Sonnino during the 1915 presidential election. As the Isgardian economy collapsed in the 1910s after poor management, Luzzatti's brand of socialist nationalism grew increasingly popular and ultimately spawned the National Socialist party in 1916. With the moderate vote split between Giovanni Giolitti and Sidney Sonnino, Luigi Luzzatti won the presidency in the 1921 presidential election and was inaugurated on July 27, 1921.

During his presidency, Luigi Luzzatti sought to implement a series of economic restructurings for the benefit of the masses and waged a political conflict with members of the Isgardian elite who sought to stop him. In 1922, President Luzzatti launched a series of crackdowns against rich landowners and forcefully confiscated thousands of properties across the country, before auctioning them off the ordinary citizens; with the money raised from the scheme, Luzzatti invested in establishing one of the world's first modern welfare states buy creating a sovereign wealth fund using the revenue, and the profits from the wealth fund being used to finance benefit programmes. President Luzzatti also implemented a radically aggressive foreign policy against Isgardia's European neighbours as part of a wider nationalistic attempt to expand the Republic of Loxenia into the Balkans, whilst African colonies in Ethiopia and Somalia were established to seize the raw materials required for an expansion of the armed forces. Luzzatti won re-election to the presidency in 1927, and from March 1928 onwards began a campaign of democratic backsliding to consolidate full executive power in the presidency. Despite his power grab in the late 1920s, Luigi Luzzatti declined to run for a third term in 1933, and instead selected his prime minister Antonio Salandra to run as his successor. Following the election of Antonio Salandra as president in 1933, Luigi Luzzatti remained as the leader of the National Socialist party and became an influential kingmaker within the party, keeping parts of his former power through de-facto relationships with Salandra and his successor Vittorio Orlando. In March 1940, Luigi Luzzatti died of old age; within days of Luzzatti's death, the National Socialist regime he had build collapsed after Benito Mussolini seized power in a coup d'état.