Unification of Italy

Unification of Italy or Risorgimento, the emergence of a unified kingdom of Italy in 1861. By the Vienna Settlement, drawn up in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, Italy was left wholly fragmented, with no unifying institution. There were three obstacles to unity. The first was the Austrian occupation of Lombardy and Venetia in the north and north-east of the peninsula. The second was the Papal States, the principality under the sovereignty of the pope, which straddled the centre of the peninsula, cutting off the north from the south. The third obstacle was formed by the existence of several independent states. In the north-west was the Kingdom of Sardinia/Piedmont, which had slowly expanded since the Middle Ages, and was the most advanced state in Italy. A second kingdom, that of Naples, occupied the southern half of the peninsula. Three smaller duchies, Tuscany, Parma, and Modena were ruled by relatives of the Austrian Habsburgs. All these states were absolutist.

Before 1848 national sentiment—a desire for the unity, or even the independence, of Italy—was limited to a small section of the aristocracy and the middle class. Numerous among the latter were retired army officers, who had fought with Napoleon. By 1820 these groups had formed secret societies, the largest of which was the Carbonari. They were perhaps more concerned with securing constitutions from their absolutist sovereigns than with any great national aim, but some of them certainly wrote of “Italy”. In 1820 there were revolutions in Naples and Piedmont, spearheaded by the Carbonari, and in 1831 rather more serious ones in Bologna against Pope Gregory XVI, and in the small duchies of Parma and Modena. All of these risings were put down by Austrian armed intervention.

The revolutionary movement acquired a distinctly nationalist character through the work of Giuseppe Mazzini. He believed that Italy should acquire not only independence, but unity as an integrated republic. His secret society, Young Italy, formed revolutionary cells all over the peninsula. The liberal pope, Pius IX, elected in 1846, added to the nationalist fervour, which culminated in the revolutions of 1848. The first of these revolutions was in Sicily, against the King of Naples, who was forced to grant a constitution for the whole of his kingdom. Meanwhile Pius IX was granting surprisingly radical reforms in Rome. The King of Piedmont, Charles Albert, somewhat belatedly lifted press censorship, and granted a constitution. Following revolution in Vienna, Italian risings against the Austrians succeeded in Milan and Venice, and persuaded Charles Albert to go to war with Austria.

In the spring of 1848 it therefore looked as if the independence, if not the unity, of Italy was an immediate possibility. But the Piedmontese were defeated by the Austrians, and the old monarchical authorities successfully reasserted their absolutism. A republic in Rome, under Mazzini, was destroyed by French intervention, in spite of a heroic defence by Garibaldi. Only in Piedmont did a constitution survive, but there the existence of a parliament provided the arena for the emergence of Count Camillo di Cavour, whose subtle, opportunistic, and flexible policy led to the unification of Italy in little more than a decade.

Cavour's policy consisted of securing the diplomatic and military support of the Second French Empire, under Napoleon III. By the Pact of Plombières the two men planned a war against Austria, and by the spring of 1859 Cavour had created a somewhat artificial crisis that led to the Austrians foolishly sending an ultimatum to the Piedmontese capital of Turin, demanding Piedmontese disarmament. Cavour rejected the ultimatum, and in the subsequent war the French came to the help of the Piedmontese. The Austrians were defeated in the two grim battles of Magenta and Solferino, and were now forced to surrender Lombardy, with its great city of Milan, to Napoleon III, who placed it under the sovereignty of Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont.

Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and the northern half of the Papal States opted for union with Piedmont—now recognized as the Kingdom of Upper Italy—in the course of the first half of 1860. Napoleon III's unease at these developments was soothed by Cavour's decision to cede the provinces of Savoy and Nice to France, a decision that was unpopular in Italy, and which outraged Garibaldi, who had been born in Nice.

Garibaldi was the hero of the next phase of Italian unification. In May he embarked from a point near Genoa in two small ships with a volunteer force of just over 1,000 young irregulars. Their extraordinary campaign culminated in Garibaldi's entry into Naples in September. To regain the initiative Cavour went to war with the pope, and moved a Piedmontese army into the now defunct Kingdom of Naples. With the Piedmontese government in control of the whole peninsula, an all-Italian parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy on March 17, 1861. After a third war against Austria in 1866, Venice was added to Italy, with Rome following in 1870.