By 11 October Italian forces were firmly in control of the town of Tripoli, and by the end of the month all the major coastal centres, Tobruk (on 4 October), Derna (18 October), Benghazi (20 October) and Homs (21 October) had fallen to Italian arms. So much was military triumph. But, among the troops, the first cholera victim had died on 11 October, and contrary to the optimistic predictions of Galli, De Martino, and the press, the local Arabs did not flock to enrol beneath the banners of the new Rome. Instead, with sporadic help from the Turkish authorities, they resisted Europeans who had come to take away their land and their religion.

Victory by the seizure of a few towns, by ‘sending a gunboat’, if that was what Italian public opinion and politicians had expected, thus proved illusory. As Giolitti had himself earlier warned, a short war against ‘poor black simpletons’ was not enough. There were international ramifications.

Indeed, potentially, Europe was now confronted by a major contest between two acknowledged members of the Concert of Great Powers, even if their power was more titular than real. It was the first war between historically Great Powers since before the Congress of Berlin. The coup in Bosnia–Herzegovina, the struggle for influence in Morocco, the Boer War, the Cretan revolution, the various Balkan skirmishes, even the Russo-Japanese War, involved different diplomatic assumptions, and were different in kind from a real war between Italy and Turkey. Rapid action in Libya was perhaps tolerable. But a full-scale Italo-Turkish conflict would strike at the very basis of the Concert. The Balkans might erupt, and the massive Ottoman Empire might disintegrate.