Why was the March on Rome a transfer of power rather than a military conquest?

The March on Rome in 1922 is characterized as a transfer of power rather than a military conquest because it occurred within the existing framework of the Italian constitution, facilitated by the surrender of public authorities to fascist intimidation.1

While the event involved an armed insurrection by fascist Blackshirts who converged on the capital, the government of Prime Minister Luigi Facta attempted to counter the threat by ordering a state of siege. The decisive moment occurred when King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign the decree, effectively preventing the army from opposing the fascists.12

Faced with this lack of state resistance and fearing civil war or the loss of his throne, the king instead invited Benito Mussolini to form a cabinet. Consequently, Mussolini was appointed prime minister through a formal, albeit coerced, constitutional process rather than by seizing the state through a military victory. Mussolini later reframed the event as a conquest to bolster his image, but it remained a transfer of power enabled by the collapse of the state's political will.12