II.

Failed Plots

When Mazzini's attempt in 1832 to stir up a republican mutiny in the Sardinian army failed, he was sentenced to death in absentia. Expelled from France, he moved to Switzerland, where he continued to plot against the Sardinian government; another conspiracy failed in 1834. Meanwhile, he was becoming the prophet of European nationalism and organizing a Young Europe network. In 1837 he took refuge in England.

The high point of Mazzini's career came during the revolutions of 1848-1849, when he returned to Italy and was elected one of the leaders of the new Roman Republic. But when the republic fell (July 1849) to an invading French army, Mazzini once again had to flee. The rest of his life was an anticlimax. Efforts to spark republican uprisings in Mantua (1852) and Milan (1853) were unsuccessful, and the leadership of the Italian nationalist movement was taken over by such flexible advocates of a liberal monarchy as Premier Camillo di Cavour of Sardinia-Piedmont.