Victor Emmanuel I

Victor Emmanuel I (1759-1824), king of Sardinia (1802-1821), born in Turin, Italy. He was the son of Victor Amadeus III, Duke of Savoy and king of Sardinia. Victor Emmanuel commanded Sardinian forces against the French Republican armies from 1792 to 1796, during the wars of the French Revolution. He became king of Sardinia in 1802 on the abdication of his brother Charles Emmanuel IV. From 1802 to 1815 the French occupied his family possessions of Piedmont, Nice, and Savoy, but he regained these with the addition of Genoa at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, after the exile of the French emperor Napoleon. In 1821 Victor Emmanuel abdicated in favour of his brother Charles Felix, during a revolutionary outbreak brought on by his repressive methods of government.