The defeat of Piedmont, together with the failure of Mazzini’s republic at Rome and Manin’s at Venice, led to a second restoration of the old despotic regimes and to the virtual occupation of central Italy by Austrian troops. The war had shown how little feeling there was among Italians for unification. Thereafter Piedmont alone among Italian states retained any initiative or independence, and this was largely offset by defeatism and by a cleavage between moderates and revolutionaries that failure in battle had exacerbated. There was serious dissatisfaction with the government. A revolt in Genoa necessitated the blockade and bombardment of the city by royal troops. It was resented that the armistice had been arbitrarily signed by the king without the participation of his ministers, and because of a hostile left-wing majority in the chamber, the king had to appeal against parliament to the people in a personal proclamation from Moncalieri. Only after new elections was the treaty of Milan ratified, early in 1850.

Neither the armistice nor the proclamation of Moncalieri had shown much regard for constitutional proprieties. Unlike other Italian states, Piedmont preserved intact its new constitution of 1848, but this statuto was a conservative document, the handiwork of antirevolutionaries such as Cesare Balbo and Ottavio di Revel. There was always a danger that Victor Emmanuel II might follow the example of Ferdinand of Naples and repudiate his constitutional oath. His mother and his wife were both Austrians, and he must have appreciated that representative institutions as yet evoked little esteem in the country. Massimo d’Azeglio, who was prime minister from 1849 to 1852, though a sincere liberal, had been disillusioned by the events of recent years into thinking that perhaps the statuto had gone too far and that a long time would be needed before Italians were ready for freedom and national unity.

Gradually, however, and almost unintentionally there developed the habit of ministerial responsibility to parliament. The presence of exiles from other provinces helped to identify Piedmont as the nucleus of a future Italy and to mollify the provincialism and illiberalism of Turin. Administrative unification helped to fuse the royal dominions of Savoy, Piedmont, Sardinia, and Liguria, and deputies self-consciously learned to speak Italian instead of French so as to make themselves understood. A railroad was built to link Turin with Genoa; the Siccardi law was passed to curtail ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and battle was joined to limit the aristocratic monopoly in the senate, the army, and the bureaucracy.

The rise of Cavour

In 1850 the ministry was strengthened by the inclusion of Camillo Benso di Cavour, a financial expert who had recently entered parliament. Cavour soon set about breaking the hold of the house of Rothschild upon Piedmontese finances and defied the experts by imposing heavy taxes and changing the country’s economy to one of almost complete free trade. This helped to destroy the restrictions of economic paternalism and municipalism and also won the favor of Great Britain as a new market for local goods.

Conquering his own initial unpopularity, Cavour showed himself to be by far the ablest leader in the coalition. He skilfully made a tacit alliance with Urbano Rattazzi of the center left to supplant D’Azeglio and then resigned, early in 1852. D’Azeglio’s cabinet soon foundered on the king’s refusal to permit the passage of further anticlerical legislation. Cavour was the obvious successor, as he was more amenable on this point, and his connubio (union) with the left gave him effective control of the chamber. In November he duly became prime minister. During the next nine years he was to preside over the formation of a new kingdom of Italy.

The connubio of right center and left center prevented the emergence of a two-party system in Italy, but it also prevented the king’s attempting a coup d’etat such as that of Louis Napoleon in France. Cavour yielded to the king by withdrawing the civil marriage bill in 1853, but the radicals were strong enough in his cabinet to force through an attack on mortmain lands and ecclesiastical salaries. In 1855 Luigi Nazaridi Calabiana, bishop of Casale, led a clerical counterattack against Cavour, and the king tried to veto a bill to dissolve some of the monasteries. When Cavour resigned Victor Emmanuel was forced to recognize that he was not strong enough to flout parliamentary wishes too openly and sensibly gave way.

By this time Cavour was becoming chiefly interested in foreign policy. He continued to deplore the activity of those who wanted to unify Italy. His government condemned Mazzini to death and expelled hundreds of the extreme radicals, hounding their journals out of existence, revising the jury system when necessary, and introducing harsher press laws. Nevertheless, nationalism was no longer a mere literary aspiration among the intellectuals, and Cavour was gradually being converted to the view that many of the visionary ideals of Mazzini were neither so dangerous nor so utopian as he had thought. In preparation for the future he made a deliberate attempt to show other European states that Piedmont not only could govern itself wisely and liberally but also was a force to reckon with abroad and could speak for Italians elsewhere in the peninsula. The army was reorganized by Gen. Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora. Austria was publicly reproached for its harsh rule in Lombardy and for its confiscation of the property of those Lombards who had fled into exile at Turin.

Cavour realistically perceived that Charles Albert and Mazzini had both been in error to think that foreign alliances were superfluous. French support was indispensable if Austria was to be opposed. It was thus the more disastrous when in 1854–55 the outbreak of the Crimean War temporarily healed the rivalry of France and Austria, and Piedmont’s old game of playing one off against the other no longer worked. So as not to be completely isolated, Cavour subsequently joined in the war. He was forced into this step by the king, who was eager to retrieve the reputation of his army and had arranged if necessary to supplant a recalcitrant Cavour with a more warlike cabinet. Cavour forestalled this by accepting the war, overruling the almost unanimous opposition of the other ministers, and courageously committing his country without any guarantees or conditions to a war in which no direct national interest was involved. So doing, he kept power at home and hung onto French sympathy until better times should allow him to exploit it. As a reward, Piedmont was later given a seat at the peace conference in Paris (1856), where a few hours were given to general discussions on the unfortunate state of Italy. This was not much, but it was more than Cavour had at one time expected. The Italian question was at last open. Austria was isolated again, and its occupation of central Italy was becoming recognized as a breach of the Vienna settlement.

At once Cavour began to prepare for another war of independence against Austria. Railways were built with military strategy in mind; a naval base was constructed at La Spezia; and fortifications were erected at Alessandria. This was done by royal decree, in order to avoid a parliamentary debate. By these means a moral ascendancy was captured over the rival republican program of Mazzini. The two programs, opposite though they seemed, each stimulated the other, and both proved to be necessary ingredients of the process of unification. Failed uprisings by Francesco Bentivegna in Sicily (1856) and Carlo Pisacane in Naples (1857) showed that the time for isolated republican conspiracies was over. Independence required diplomatic action backed by a regular army and the organization of a state.

Another sign of the times was that, instead of dreading Piedmontese expansion, other Italians were beginning to welcome it. The Venetian Daniele Manin, the Tuscan Bettino Ricasoli, the Sicilian Giuseppe La Farina, and Luigi Carlo Farini from the Papal States were all turning to collaborate with Turin. The exiled Manin, founder of the National Society, promised in a famous challenge to renounce his republicanism if only the House of Savoy would accept the doctrine of unity.

Meanwhile about 50,000 exiles from other provinces had taken refuge in Piedmont—prior to this time, scholars such as Gabriele Rossetti, Anthony Panizzi, and Pellegrino Rossi had instead taken foreign citizenship. As these later exiles were people of education for the most part, they came to have great influence on the press and on politics in Turin and largely contributed to the education of the Piedmontese in Italian. Cavour himself, though he refused the proffered alliance of Mazzini, accepted that of the National Society and began to think that unity might not after all be the “nonsense” that he had lately called it.

The elections of November 1857 came as a reverse to Cavour. Savoy, Sardinia, and Liguria returned an opposition majority, and had he not been so self-confident he would have resigned. He also came near to a breach with the king over the latter’s disreputable private life. It weakened him still further when Rattazzi left the ministry early in 1858. Luckily for him, French support was now so firm that even Felice Orsini’s attempted assassination of Napoleon III in January 1858 could not shake it. Cavour cleverly divined that Napoleon’s empire, though conservative at home, was revolutionary abroad and needed a policy of prestige and military victory. Furthermore, Piedmont was a necessary buffer that France could not allow to be defeated by Austria. It was rather a French interest to chase Austria altogether from Italy, especially as France could name as its price the provinces of Savoy and Nice.

Second Italian War of Independence

In July 1858, unknown even to his colleagues, Cavour had secret talks with Napoleon III at Plombières, where together they hatched a plan to create a kingdom of north Italy including Lombardy, Venice, and the central duchies. It then became Cavour’s task to provoke a war by the following spring in such a way as to make Austria seem the aggressor. This might not have been so easy had not Austria also regarded the war as inevitable. After an alliance had been signed between France and Piedmont in January 1859, Austria declared war in April.

The French won the Battle of Magenta in June, and the allies entered Milan. This was shortly followed by a second indecisive victory at Solferino. Napoleon, however, was disillusioned with the lack of support from other parts of Italy and knew that Cavour was working behind his back to annex Tuscany and Umbria as well as the other territories. This acquisition of part of the Papal States would not only have scandalized Napoleon’s Roman Catholic subjects but also have created a stronger kingdom in Italy than he desired to see. Accordingly in July he unexpectedly arranged an armistice at Villafranca. The peace of Zurich in November eventually gave most of Lombardy to Piedmont, but not Venice, not the formidable Quadrilateral (the fortress cities of Mantua, Peschiera, Verona, and Legnago), and not the duchies. Napoleon’s plan was to leave Italy a relatively weak confederation of small states under the general presidency of the pope, and in this plan, for the moment, he almost seemed to have succeeded.

Cavour protested unavailingly against this desertion and reached the point of using most disrespectful language to the king at the latter’s headquarters in Monzambano. Reluctantly, but realistically, the king accepted the accomplished fact, and Cavour resigned in July 1859. For six months he was out of office, while a stopgap Rattazzi-La Marmora ministry proved itself unequal to the situation.

During this time attention was first fixed on central Italy, where the outbreak of war against Austria had caused spontaneous risings against the old ruling houses and their Austrian garrisons. Napoleon was resolutely opposed to the annexation of the duchies by Piedmont, and though royal commissioners had been sent to Bologna, Florence, Modena, and Parma, these forfeited their authority after the armistice of Villafranca. However, the local revolutionary governments refused to be dismayed. Elections were held to confirm the triumph of the nationalists, and more or less open dictatorial powers were conferred on Farini and Ricasoli, respectively. Gen. Manfredo Fanti was seconded from Piedmont to organize an army of central Italy, with Garibaldi as his second in command.

Cavour, although out of office, had continued to give advice and encouragement to these revolutionaries in their effort to annex themselves to Piedmont. In January 1860 he saw how to recapture the political initiative. After ousting La Marmora he proceeded to upset Napoleon’s original plans by offering to exchange Savoy and Nice for permission to carry out this new annexation. A treaty was signed in March to ratify his plan. Plebiscites were held in each region to confirm the exchange (March–April), so successfully that their sanction in each case was almost unanimous. The parliament that met at Turin on April 2 thus included Lombards, Tuscans, and Romagnols. In less than a year Piedmont had more than doubled its size, against the strong wishes of most of Europe. It now included nearly 10,000,000 people, almost half the population of the peninsula. Only the sacrifice of Savoy and Nice marred the general satisfaction.

Garibaldi’s conquest of southern Italy

The next stage in unification was the annexation of Sicily and Naples, and for this Italy had to thank the much-maligned radicals of the extreme left. In May 1859 Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies was succeeded by his son, Francis II, who continued the traditional policy of refusing a constitution or a friendly alliance with Piedmont. There was little evidence of much nationalist sentiment in the south, but brutal persecution by the Bourbons had generated a widespread desire for change. In Sicily this was supported by a bitter and age-old dislike of rule from Naples, and Francesco Crispi, with other friends of Mazzini, found it easy to prepare and begin an insurrection.

Early in May 1860 Crispi persuaded Garibaldi to lead 1,000 men from Genoa (the so-called Expedition of the Thousand) to support this revolt. They reached the island just before order had been restored. Aided by a peasants’ revolt against the landlords, which spread disorganization and terror, Garibaldi wrested Palermo from a strong garrison of troops. By the beginning of June nearly the entire island had been cleared of Bourbon forces.

Cavour had given no help to the original expedition and indeed had done his best to persuade Garibaldi not to sail. Excited however by the amazing success of the revolution, he quickly made up for this and soon sent royal commissioners to arrange the annexation of Sicily. Garibaldi was nevertheless determined to hold onto his dictatorial powers. His intention was that the states of Europe might be confronted with the acquisition not only of Sicily but also of Naples and Rome. He also knew that, were Cavour in charge of the revolution, the French could use their influence on him to stop his further progress. Crossing to the mainland, he occupied Naples in September 1860. Francis II fled to Gaeta, but the Bourbon army at last held Garibaldi on the Liri River.

The Kingdom of Italy and Cavour’s legacy

Cavour then decided on one of his boldest strokes. In September 1860, on the flimsiest of excuses, Cavour invaded the Papal States. Napoleon III would never have allowed this but for the plea that Garibaldi could otherwise have carried the revolution into the Vatican itself. Carefully leaving intact Rome and its surrounding countryside, the northern army captured Umbria and the Marches, defeating the papal troops at Castelfidardo and entering Neapolitan territory in the middle of September. This simultaneously put pressure on Garibaldi to yield his conquests, and plebiscites were held in October and purported to express the wish of the people of Sicily and Naples for annexation to Piedmont.

Garibaldi reluctantly retired to his island home of Caprera; Farini was sent to organize an emergency government in the south; and Gen. Enrico Cialdini supervised the capture of the last Bourbon strongholds early in 1861. Umbria and the Marches were also annexed, and representatives of these provinces and of the south were present when parliament met at Turin. In March 1861 the parliament declared Victor Emmanuel to be king of Italy—his title remained Victor Emmanuel II, to show that it was no new state but a continuation of the old kingdom of Sardinia.

His lifework thus accomplished, Cavour died in June 1861, worn out with responsibility and with the strain of carrying virtually the whole burden of the country’s administration. His achievements were the result of no preconceived plan but of enlightened opportunism over means and ends. He had been an ambitious man, second to no one in unscrupulousness and Machiavellianism, but he remained faithful to the broad tenets of liberalism. He had courage and firmness of decision, a sense of proportion and skill in maneuver, which in combination amounted to genius. It was a great misfortune for his country that he died so early and before the initial problems of the newly unified kingdom had been properly settled.

In his last days he attracted the applause of parliament by his proclamation that the capital of Italy had to be Rome. But how to proceed, and how to reconcile the pope and Roman Catholic opinion to a unified Italy, he did not yet know. Furthermore, he left behind him neither a properly stable parliamentary majority nor responsible and able leaders who could take over where he had left off.