Wars of Italian Independence

…over northern Italy during the Italian Wars of Independence, both occurring at Custoza, 11 miles southwest of Verona, in Lombardy.

…Franco-Piedmontese War during the second war of Italian independence (1859–61). French ruler Emperor Napoleon III had allied himself with the kingdom of Piedmont, intending to drive the Austrians out of northern Italy. Moving 130,000 men to Italy by train—the first mass movement of troops by railroad—Napoleon III then ran into…

…1849), battle of the first Italian War of Independence in which 70,000 Austrian troops under Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky thoroughly defeated 100,000 poorly trained Italian troops (not all of whom were actually employed in the battle) under Charles Albert, king of Sardinia-Piedmont. It was fought at Novara, 28 miles (45…

…of the second War of Italian Independence. It was fought in Lombardy between an Austrian army and a Franco-Piedmontese army and resulted in the annexation of most of Lombardy by Sardinia-Piedmont, thus contributing to the unification of Italy.

In Habsburg Italy, however, war came swiftly. In late March, answering a plea from the Milanese, the kingdom of Sardinia, the only Italian state with a native monarch, declared war on the emperor and marched into his lands.

…but prospects for a national war seemed promising, and he wanted to seize the initiative to preclude republican and democratic domination of the insurgency. After annexing Parma and Modena, whose rulers had been driven out by insurgents, the Piedmontese won a few more victories before suffering reverses. Pius IX, Leopold…

In 1857 Italian nationalists founded the monarchist-unionist Italian National Society, which supported the policies of Cavour. Under the presidency of Manin and the vice presidency of Garibaldi, the society achieved wider appeal than it would have achieved under the exclusive leadership of moderates. Although he did not…