- Date:
- 1848 - 1861
- Location:
- Italy
unification of Italy
What was the Risorgimento?
What role did Napoleon’s downfall play in Italy’s unification?
How did Camillo Benso di Cavour contribute to the unification of Italy?
What was the significance of the Second Italian War of Independence?
unification of Italy, sequence of political and military events that freed the Italian states from foreign domination and culminated in the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. Central to this period was the Risorgimento (Italian: “Rising Again”), an ideological and literary movement that helped to arouse the national consciousness of the Italian people and unite them politically.
The collapse of the Napoleonic regime
In the wake of Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia, the French Empire began to unravel in Italy as it did in the rest of Europe. After the Battle of Leipzig (October 1813), the Austrian invasion of Italy began. Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s marshal who had been king of Naples since 1808, deserted the French when Eugène de Beauharnais, the viceroy of Italy, refused Murat’s suggestion that they should seek a separate peace with England and Austria.
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Murat advanced on Eugène with his Neapolitan troops as far as the Po River (March 1814). At the same time, revolutionary groups hampered Eugène’s defense, hoping that Italian independence would follow a French exit. With Austrians closing from the north and Murat advancing from the south, Eugène concluded the armistice of Schiarino-Rizzino (April 16, 1814). Eugène was able to retain control of Lombardy, but revolutionaries associated with Federico Confalonieri took control of Milan. Recognizing that his position was untenable, Eugène retired to Bavaria, and the Austrians at once occupied Lombardy. There was no chance that they would surrender power to the once more disillusioned patriots. Murat’s belated attempt during the Hundred Days to reestablish a Napoleonic state in the peninsula and his subsequent execution removed the last obstacles to the process of restoration.
The restoration period
The restoration in Italy could not be a complete return to the order of 1795. Austria retained possession of Venetia, and prudence dictated to the delegates at the Congress of Vienna that continued Austrian predominance in Italy should guarantee the peninsula against French influence. The combined territories of Venetia and Lombardy were to be ruled as a single province, by a not unduly harsh or unjust administration. The remoteness of the imperial government at Vienna and an increasingly illiberal regime soon aroused discontent in Austria’s Italian province. The Austrian archduchess Marie Louise, former empress of the French, who was granted Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla for her lifetime, preserved some of the Napoleonic administrative and legal structure in the duchy. In Modena a complete reaction began under the rule of Francis IV, son of the previous duke, Maria Theresa’s son Ferdinand. Tuscany under Ferdinand III, the emperor Leopold II’s son, was an oasis for Italian liberals during the years of persecution. As Austrian princes, the rulers of Tuscany were always susceptible to pressure from Klemens von Metternich on any major issue. But liberal hatred of Austria all over the peninsula sprang from the knowledge that Austrian intervention was the ultimate guarantee against constitutional reform anywhere in Italy.
Among the non-Austrian rulers restored in 1815, the king of Sardinia received some increase of territory by the addition of Liguria to Piedmont. Within Piedmont, the reaction against French innovations was violent but tempered by a jealousy of Austrian domination of northern Italy, which made some identification of the cause of Sardinia with that of Italy appear inevitable. In the Papal States the reaction was catastrophic, the attempted reforms of Ercole Cardinal Consalvi collapsing under the incompetence of the central administration and the revived influence of the Jesuits.
Almost from the first days of the restoration the provinces that had formerly belonged to the kingdom of Italy were in a state of revolutionary unrest. Ferdinand IV of Naples, who now took the title Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, was hampered in his efforts to restore the ancien régime by the intransigence of the island of Sicily (which had enjoyed some degree of liberty under a constitution imposed upon Ferdinand by the British forces of occupation) and by his dependence on many of the administrators and officers of the Murat epoch. Of the smaller states, Lucca passed to the Spanish infanta Maria Luisa (widow of Louis, king of Etruria, whose son Charles represented the Bourbons of Parma, temporarily excluded by the grant of Parma to the Austrian Marie Louise) and suffered some degree of clerical reaction. San Marino survived the process of restoration almost unchanged.
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Early revolutionary movements
Some middle-class and patriotic groups soon began to regret the passing of the Napoleonic administration and its opportunities. Discontent first became vocal in the Italian secret societies. The period of the ascendancy of the Freemasons ended with their quasi-official patronage by the French, but a group of societies known as the Carbonari had replaced them. These societies had originally come into existence in Naples as an anti-Bourbon force under the French administration. After turning to opposition under the restoration they had acquired an almost regularized existence as the focus of discontent in the south. Always largely middle class, they soon lost all contact with the masses, who remained loyalist and clerical in their sympathies.
In 1814 and 1815 the Carbonari spread to Romagna. A similar organization in Piedmont, the Federati, derived its inspiration directly from France and was patriotic and anti-Austrian in purpose. The revolutionary plots of 1820 and 1821 were the work of these and similar societies and seldom looked beyond the confines of single states.
A revolution at Naples in 1820 forced Ferdinand to grant a constitution (July 7), which was based on the democratic Spanish charter of 1812. A ministry of former Napoleonic officers and administrators was set up but had to face almost immediately a second insurrection at Palermo. This was wholly separatist in aim, a movement of all classes that cut across the constitutional revolution of the mainland. A local quarrel between Palermo and Messina further complicated the situation. No Sicilian deputies were present at the parliament, which opened at Naples on October 1. Then the congress of Troppau, followed by that of Laibach (modern Ljubljana, Slovenia), made clear the determination of the Holy Alliance to preserve the Vienna settlement in Italy. Ferdinand, in spite of his constitutional oaths, applied to the Holy Alliance for help. An Austrian army overthrew the revolutionary government in March 1821 and reconquered Sicily for the crown soon after. It remained in occupation until 1827 and enforced a violent reaction under the king and his police chief, Antonio Capece Minutolo, principe di Canosa.
A similar movement, but localized to a greater degree in the officer corps and more specifically anti-Austrian, broke out in Piedmont. Charles Albert, the heir presumptive to King Charles Felix of Sardinia, was cognizant of the plot and assumed the role of regent for a few days when the pronunciamiento took place in March 1821. His grant of a constitution was at once revoked by Charles Felix; he was arrested, and after a few weeks an Austrian army recaptured Turin for the king. The chief result of the plot was the disgrace of Charles Albert and a temporary weakening of the normally anti-Austrian trend in Piedmontese policy. Both the Neapolitan and the Piedmontese movements suffered from being the plots of small groups rather than true revolutionary movements. The same was true of the Lombard liberals, who suffered imprisonment after a series of trials (1821–23) and were almost all drawn from the ranks of the educated and noble classes. The investigation of the Piedmontese plot led to their discovery, and their contribution to the Risorgimento could consist only in the example of their courage and the legend of their martyrdom. The work of one, Silvio Pellico, was a notable contribution to the literature of the national movement.
Central Italy, especially the legations, also suffered from disturbances. After the July Revolution in Paris (1830) and the spread of the illusion that France would not permit Austrian intervention, the movement took a serious aspect in the papal Marches. The revolutionaries believed they had the support of Francis IV of Modena, who had toyed with the idea of a central Italian kingdom. Risings took place at Parma and Bologna, while that at Modena itself was forestalled by the arrest of the chief conspirators. But with Tuscany and Lombardy quiet and their hopes of help from France disappointed, the revolutionary governments that were set up proved helpless.
The revolutionaries’ own internal divisions left them to face the Austrian invasion singly. Louis Philippe, the new king of the French, ordered the occupation of Ancona by a French force as a counter to the extension of Austrian power that the new restorations brought with them, and this completed the disillusion of those who had looked to him for help (February 1832). A five-power memorandum had been addressed to the papal government recommending internal reforms before the final occupations of Bologna and Ancona but was virtually ignored by the papal administration.
The failure of Carbonarism was one of the stimuli prompting Giuseppe Mazzini to seek a new outlet for Italian discontent. On the succession of Charles Albert to the throne of Sardinia (1831), Mazzini addressed to him an appeal to lead a nationalist movement. Alarmed by a recent incursion of Italian patriots into Savoy from France, the king did nothing, apparently as Mazzini had hoped. Mazzini therefore proposed to rely solely upon a national insurrectionary movement, aiming at unity in a free republic. He envisaged the creation of the new Italy in terms as much moral as political and looked to patriotism and example rather than to diplomacy and tactics as his methods. In 1831 he founded the revolutionary organization Giovine Italia, whose influence spread rapidly among Italian exiles and inside the peninsula. Although it was more broadly based and national in outlook than the Carbonari, its recruitment still drew on a relatively small class of young bourgeois and middle-class radicals and made no effective appeal to the masses. In addition, Mazzini’s distrust of Piedmont and his rejection of foreign intervention stood in the way of any final success. But from 1833 to 1845 repeated raids and insurrections organized by Giovine Italia kept alive the unionist cause and the tradition of revolt. Only with the failure of the expedition of the Bandiera brothers to Calabria in 1844 was the bankruptcy of this method in the face of popular apathy at last fully realized.
Federalism and reform in the 1840s
In reaction against the waste of life and ill-success of Mazzini’s program, moderate opinion tended to crystallize around federal conceptions of the solution of the Italian problem. In 1843 Vincenzo Gioberti published his Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (“On the Moral and Civil Primacy of Italians”), advocating a federal union of the existing states that would look to the papacy for leadership. A Piedmontese group, including Cesare Balbo and Massimo d’Azeglio, advocated a similar federation but with Piedmont as its leader. Charles Albert’s attitude toward Austria had stiffened in the years before 1846, and an unavowed toleration was given to the Turin moderates who emphasized the anti-Austrian rather than the constitutional aspects of the Italian problem.
The election of Pope Pius IX (June 16, 1846) in succession to the staunchly conservative Gregory XVI was the beginning of the crisis of the early Risorgimento. Pius was a man of liberal and patriotic views, influenced by Gioberti’s conception of the role of the papacy. It was not clear, at the beginning of his reign, if these views were compatible with the European status of the papacy and the existence of the Vatican as a temporal power. His influence over the other Italian sovereigns and over the country clergy and nobility, none of whom would have been likely to adhere to the national movement without his example, was immense in 1846 and 1847.
Pius at once instituted a number of overdue reforms. An amnesty was granted, plans for railway development were drawn up, Rome received a municipal government, and the laity were admitted to the civil administration. A council of state was set up, a new press law granted some degree of freedom of publication, and a civil guard was formed. The democratic party, encouraged by these concessions, pushed for still more reforms, and Pius grew concerned as this process gathered momentum.
Alarmed by the changes, Klemens von Metternich permitted Josef Radetzky, the Austrian commander, to occupy the papal town of Ferrara on July 17, 1847, as a precautionary move and Parma and Modena later in the year. At the same time he approached France with a view to joint Austro-French intervention to stifle the reform movement. These measures identified Pius more firmly than ever with the growing national and liberal cause. Negotiations began for a customs union of Tuscany, Piedmont, and the Papal States, but the talks were fatally hampered by the disparity between the essentially negative papal conception of such a union and the Piedmontese conception of it as a positive anti-Austrian force.
More important was the response in the other states to Pius’s example of internal reform. Leopold II of Tuscany granted a press law (May 6, 1847), which was immediately followed by a burst of reformist propaganda. Lucca was granted a civil guard on September 1, Tuscany two days later. The growing violence of the democrats, above all at Leghorn, was already making settled government difficult in Tuscany. Charles Albert had hoped to avoid constitutional reform but was constrained by moderate opinion to accept a more liberal ministry and to concede a press law. The wave of reformist agitation that followed prompted further reform in police and administration. By the end of 1847, Piedmont was also affected by the spread of democratic faction, notably at Genoa, and Charles Albert, like Pius, was already feeling compromised by his association with reform.
First Italian War of Independence
The situation was suddenly and radically transformed by the Sicilian revolution of January 12, 1848, the first revolution of the year of revolutions. As in 1821, the local separatist movement of the island was complicated by a constitutional revolution on the mainland that soon followed the Palermo revolt. The islanders demanded independence or the Spanish constitution of 1812, and to preserve his grip on the mainland Ferdinand II (V of Naples) granted a constitution that went far beyond any previous reforms in any of the Italian states. But Sicily proclaimed its independence of the Bourbon monarchy on April 13.
Encouraged and frightened by the events at Naples, other sovereigns granted constitutions. Tuscany received one on February 11, and Pius granted one on March 14. The only constitution that was to survive the revolutionary war was Piedmont’s Statuto Albertino (March 4), which became the constitution of united Italy.
The European situation was a favorable one for the reform parties. The February revolution in Paris and the March revolution in Vienna made any active intervention unlikely. Lombardy had been disturbed by riots and outbreaks in the early months of 1848. Finally, when news of the Vienna revolution reached Milan, that city rebelled in its turn and after the famous “five days” of battle forced Radetzky to withdraw (March 18–23). Simultaneously, a revolt at Venice restored the ancient republic under the leadership of Daniele Manin (March 22). Charles Albert saw that the moment for effective action against the Austrian army had come. He declared war (March 24) and led his army across the Ticino to Milan.
The Piedmontese army was weakened by detachments to the French frontier and did not succeed in catching Radetzky before he took refuge in the fortress area of the Quadrilateral (Verona, Peschiera, Legnago, and Mantua). Charles Albert pursued him, broke into the Quadrilateral, and soon forced the Austrian army to depend upon Venetia for its communications; he was not able, however, to shake its hold on the fortresses. Tuscany and Naples had by now declared war, and a papal force under Giovanni Durando crossed the Po with the aim of operating on the Austrian communications in Venetia.
The decay of this still favorable situation began with a papal allocution of April 29 in which Pius, conscious of the danger of an Austrian and German schism, disavowed any intention of declaring war on any Christian nation. The internal divisions of the Italian movement at once assumed a much enhanced importance. The Lombard rebels were already bitterly divided into pro-Piedmontese and anti-Piedmontese factions. Charles Albert’s motives were also deeply distrusted by the Tuscan democrats. He himself would not entertain the notion of seeking French support, fearing the accession of strength that the Piedmontese republicans would draw from it. In addition, the northern Italian working class was almost everywhere indifferent or hostile to the Piedmontese army.
Charles Albert’s failure to take Verona was the military turning point of the campaign. An army under Laval Nugent evaded interception and reinforced Radetzky on May 25. Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies had by this time recalled the Neapolitan troops (which had been moving northward) in order to deal with the revolution at Naples, now wholly out of hand. The annexation of Parma, Piacenza, and Modena to Piedmont by plebiscite in June gave Charles Albert no military help, and the annexations of Lombardy and Venice (July) increased suspicion of his real motives.
At the end of July Radetzky turned on Charles Albert and defeated him in a succession of battles around Custoza. To save the Piedmontese army Charles Albert abandoned Milan, amid the hostility of the city that was enraged by his “treachery.” On August 9 he withdrew from further fighting by concluding an armistice at Vigevano.
In all the states the extremist democrats now tended to assume power, though they were in fact incapable of controlling their followers. A revolt in Bologna failed to force Pius into a declaration of war but drove out the Austrian garrison. In Rome the moderates were wholly discredited, and Pellegrino Rossi, an able liberal, tried in vain to preserve order. His ministry was ended by his assassination (November 15). Pius fled in disguise to Gaeta on November 24 and refused to return. A constituent assembly voted the end of the temporal power of the papacy and proclaimed a republic (February 9, 1849). Pius appealed for armed intervention to secure his restoration.
Similar deteriorations took place in Tuscany and in Naples. Leopold and Ferdinand abandoned the attempt to control the extremists and went to Gaeta. The Tuscan republic was proclaimed on February 8, 1849. A few days earlier a Roman invitation to Piedmont to nominate delegates to a constituent assembly for all Italy was rejected summarily by Gioberti’s government. This government was soon replaced by another, under Urbano Rattazzi, which hoped to reopen the war. To redeem past promises to the Lombard patriots and to avoid the necessity of accepting an Austrian peace, the armistice was denounced at its expiration (March 12), and war began on March 20. On March 28 Charles Albert abdicated after the decisive defeat at Novara. His successor, Victor Emmanuel II, hastened to make peace.
Italy was now at the disposal of the Austrian army. Lucca and Florence were occupied, and Leopold II returned to his capital under Austrian protection (July 28); Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies had crushed the Sicilian rising on his return. Already in April, unwilling to allow Austria to act alone in the restoration of the papacy, the government of Louis Napoleon had sent a French force under Nicolas Oudinot to Civitavecchia. The French suffered an initial defeat at the hands of Giuseppe Garibaldi, and the Roman republic, under Mazzini, defended itself heroically for a month. But Oudinot broke into Rome on June 29. The assembly was dissolved a few days later, and the keys of the city sent to Gaeta. Garibaldi, with some of the garrison, set out for Venice and reached San Marino before his small force fell completely to pieces. Venice itself, deprived of Piedmontese naval support, capitulated in August. A peace treaty between Austria and Piedmont, imposing a heavy indemnity on Piedmont and restoring the territorial settlement of 1815, completed the pacification of 1849.
This pacification marked, in general terms, the end of the revolutionary phase of the Risorgimento and the beginning of the diplomatic phase. The revolutionaries failed because of their internal dissensions, because of the distrust of Piedmont by the smaller states, because of the Piedmontese distrust of France, and because of the confusion over the role that the papacy should play in the making of Italy. Moreover the mass of the population was unmoved by the revolutionary appeal. Only at Venice, Milan, and Rome did genuine popular movements of all classes have any effect. The military superiority of Radetzky both in the quality of his troops and in generalship was the final factor assuring the Austrian restoration of 1849.