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Another device which appealed to the religious zeal of the people was that of blessing the standards of the imperial party. This official blessing of the French flags was calculated to work an immense effect upon the ignorant and somewhat superstitious population. The authorization ran in this way:
"MM. les Commissaires will distribute the flags which MM. les Curés are authorized, and indeed invited, to bless. These standards will be in this case presented by the Commune, at the head of the inhabitants, to MM. les Curés, who will receive them at the entry of the church. Finally, you will understand the importance which I attach to this last recommendation. You will take care that official proclamations, manifestoes, and notices are preserved intact. All appeals to the passions—any notice whatever affixed without the required authorization—will be immediately torn down."
Side by side with this was posted the following official manifesto:
"The Mayor of Bonneville notifies that the Communal Council will assist at the benediction of the flags which the Imperial Government has presented to the Commune; that this religious ceremony will take place on Sunday, the 22nd, at seven o'clock, A. M.; that the "cortège" will leave the Hotel de Ville to go to the church. All electors are invited to this ceremony, which will immediately precede the opening of the voting-urns. In the morning the Hotel de Ville will be decorated with the French flags and the national colors. All the inhabitants are invited to decorate their houses with flags of the same colors.
"The Imperial Government has made its "début" by a signal benefit in giving us the customs "zone", which has hitherto been refused. It assures to us the prosperity of the country. Its generosity will not end here. French engineers have explored the province, have begun to study the banks of the rivers, the state of the roads, and the public works most useful to the country. The numerous mines of Faucigny will be worked, the condition of our "collége" will be improved. Let us show our gratitude to the Emperor. Let us give a free course to our sympathies, so long restrained, and prove by a compact and unanimous vote that we are as much French as our fathers were.
As the day of voting approached, the Central Committee issued the following circular:
"SIR, The Central Annexationist Committee, upon whose proceedings no restrictions were placed, has named you member of the Special Committee for the parish of ———. You will have the goodness, sir, to concert with your colleagues, Messrs. ———, measures which may unite and bring to the poll on Sunday next the greatest possible number of electors, and take any steps which appear expedient, "in order that the vote of the population may be at the same time a striking manifestation of its sentiments towards France and towards the Emperor"."
In addition to all the other pressure, the local police authorities openly declared that lists of the "proscrits" would be made out, and that those who abstained from voting would be punished as soon as they became French subjects. The same authorities received orders from headquarters at Nice to collect the peasants on the day of voting and march them into town, with drums beating, and French flags floating at their head. An Englishman, who was at Nice at the time of the election, thus describes what he saw:
The same witness wrote subsequently from Bonneville, where he happened to be on the day of the voting in Savoy:
Historian John A. Davis, said in 2005, "Everyone, it seems, is busy rethinking, revisioning, revisiting, remaking, remapping or demythologizing the Risorgimento. However, it is not the Risorgimento that is being revisited but the changing images that have made it the potent founding myth of the Italian nation for successive generations of Italians." In the 20th century, and especially since the end of World War II, the received interpretation of Italian unification, the "Risorgimento", has become the object of historical revisionism. The justifications offered for unification, the methods employed to realise it and the benefits supposedly accruing to unified Italy are frequent targets of the revisionists. Some schools have called the "Risorgimento" an imperialist or colonialist venture imposed by Savoy.
Some revisionists tend to negatively re-evaluate key characters of Italian national unity, such as Camillo Benso di Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy. They grafted in this way in the debate on the causes of the so-called Southern Question ("Questione Meridionale"), and say that the Risorgimento was a true work of colonization, followed by a centralizing policy of conquest, because of which the Italian Mezzogiorno would have fallen into a state of backwardness still manifest. Others consider that the policies of tax, toll and industry implemented in the southern regions by the Savoy government since 1861, together with endogenous factors, have further depleted the area or they have affected its development.
Background and historical basis of revisionism on the Risorgimento.
The ideas behind the revisionist movement already began to awaken and strengthen in the years immediately following the events that led to the Kingdom of Sardinia to become the Kingdom of Italy, even before the birth of a historical debate on the subject. The first doubts about the reasons behind the foreign policy of the House of Savoy were raised by Giuseppe Mazzini, one of the theorists and supporters of Italian unification. In this regard Mazzini suggested in his paper ""Italy of the people" that the government of Cavour was not interested in the principle of a united Italy, but simply to push the boundaries of the Savoy state. Even once Italy was unified, Mazzini returned to attack the Government in respect of the new nation:
Statements of Mazzini are precursors of the dispute on the ideal unification process, which began already during the 20th century, as a continuation of the contentious debate between the moderate and democratic parties of Risorgimento. The first criticism of the hagiographic reconstructions came by the same liberal leaders, who had enthusiastically promoted any political activity that would have contributed to the national cause. Among the main targets, there were contentious politics of the new centralized unitary state, defined negatively by the neologism of "piemontesizzazione"" (homologation to Piedmont).
Parallel to the abovementioned political and ideal dispute, across the late 19th century began to appear the first historiographical contributions alternative to the mainstream historiography on the Italian Risorgimento. These works furnished the substrate on which the later revisionist theories were built.
A prime example was the writer Alfredo Oriani, which put into question the outcome of the events of the Risorgimento in his work "The political struggle in Italy" (1892), which examined the conflict between federalism and unitarianism. Oriani criticized the "royal conquest" as a unilateral action to create a new state, assuming that without the support of a strong democratic movement, it would prove to be weak in its foundations. This work is considered the prototype of the first modern revisionist historiography on Italy, alternately to apologetic historiography of Savoy.
Criticisms against the interpretation of the Risorgimento events were also moved by Francesco Saverio Nitti, who in his works "North and South" (Nord e Sud)(1900) and "Italy at the dawn of the twentieth century" (L'Italia all'alba del secolo XX) (1901), analyzed the consequences of the national Unity from a framework illustrating the political and economic situation in the pre-unification states. According to Nitti, the benefits of the national unification process were not equitably distributed throughout the country, facilitating further development of northern Italy at the expense of the South.
Oriani's ideas influenced the thinking of the liberal Piero Gobetti who in 1926 criticized the liberal ruling class in his collection of essays "Risorgimento without heroes" ("Risorgimento senza eroi"). According to Gobetti, the Risorgimento was the work of a minority who resigned to pursue a deeper social and cultural revolution. From this "failed revolution" a state unable to meet the needs of the masses was born.
In the same vein of political and cultural connotations, but with more openly Marxist-style, is part of the revisionist and anti-apologetic analysis of Antonio Gramsci. In his book "Prison Notebooks" (Quaderni del carcere), published posthumously only after 1947, he describes the Risorgimento as a "passive revolution" suffered by the peasants, the poorest social class of the population. The Southern question, Jacobinism, the construction of the revolutionary process in Italy are the central themes of his analysis on the basis of which he reinterprets the Italian Risorgimento as a process of socio-political transformation began in 1789 with the French Revolution, passively transposed in Italy, and hesitated in the collapse of the Ancien Régime.
The reinterpretation of the Italian Risorgimento's events have not a single origin. The questioning of the assumptions of official history is coming from a part of the academic world and from several independent scholars, including several essayists. The growth of this cultural movement, in particular measure across the last fifty years, has generated the emergence of a growing critical literature of the broader historiography, which has gradually been the subject of increasingly acute dispute and controversy. Across the following paragraphs are presented the contributions to historical revisionism, divided according to the framework of origin.
In the years following the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the newborn Italian State, contemporary witnesses gave the prints the first works that brought a critical analysis of the political unification of the peninsula.
In his works, he described the unification process as an assault against two sovereign states (the Two Sicilies and the Church), in violation of international law and in particular of the spiritual and civil values of the Neapolitan nation. The thought of de' Sivo was long the subject of ostracism, in spite of Benedetto Croce had highlighted his thickness as a scholar by writing a biography that was included in the work "A family of patriots" (Una famiglia di patrioti).
The years following the unification of Italy also saw the flowering of a vast literature of memoirs in which mainly ex-members of the dissolved Army of Two Sicilies brought their own interpretation of the facts. Among the numerous examples can be mentioned the brothers Pietro and Ludovico Quandel and Giuseppe Buttà. Chaplain of the 9th Battalion Hunters of the Bourbon Army, he was the author of "A Journey from Boccadifalco to Gaeta" (Un viaggio da Boccadifalco a Gaeta) (1875), autobiographical work that tells the story of the landing of the Expedition of the Thousand in Marsala until the Siege of Gaeta as viewed from the vanquisheds' side.
For a description of the events from his point of view Buttà resorted to a cutting language and a tone more sarcastic than de' Sivo's, also sparing no criticism against the Bourbon officers whom he accused of cowardice or treason against the crown. Despite the limitations resulting from transpositions of individual points of view, the memoirs are cited by many revisionist authors, which give them the value of historical documents.
The revisionism of Risorgimento knew a clear radicalization and resumed in the mid-20th century, after the fall of the Savoy monarchy and that of fascism, for which the Risorgimento was considered an intangible myth. The changed political conditions allowed the emergence of a group of scholars which began re-examining the value of the House of Savoy work, and made largely negative reviews in that respect. About a hundred years after De' Sivo, the members of this group also took up the arguments of criticism, charging in particular to the process of national unification the cause of most problems of the Southern Italy.
In the line of cultural descent, Michele Topa follows Carlo Alianello. By his works "Thus ended the Bourbons of Naples" (Così finirono i Borbone di Napoli) (1959) and "The Brigands of His Majesty" (I briganti di Sua Maestà) (1967), helped to outline a new historiographical conception of the Risorgimento, seen from the losers' standpoint.
Another leading and more intransigent figure of revisionism was Nicola Zitara. Along the same cultural lines of Alianello and Topa, the Calabrian writer considered Italy as the result of an operation of military conquest and economic damage to the South against which it would have been put in place an intricate plot. In her works, Zitara expresses his beliefs derived from an economic analysis conducted according to the canons of Marxist ideology.
Over the years, the revisionism of Risorgimento has found other supporters, both southern- and northern-born, which further in-depth research on the controversial events of the unification process. Among them we can mention Lorenzo Del Boca, Gigi Di Fiore, Francesco Mario Agnoli, Pino Aprile, Fulvio Izzo, Massimo Viglione, Antonio Ciano, Aldo Servidio, Roberto Martucci, Luciano Salera and Pier Giusto Jaeger.
Revisionism of Risorgimento is written about, albeit in different ways, by some academic authors, in most cases of non-Italian origin.
The best-known example is perhaps as the British historian Denis Mack Smith, whose work focuses on the history of Italy from the Risorgimento to the present day. He graduated at Cambridge, a member of the British Academy of Wolfson College (University of Cambridge), of All Souls College (Oxford University) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was a collaborator of Benedetto Croce and Grand Officer of the Order Merit of the Italian Republic.
A distinctly different opinion was expressed by the scholar against Mazzini in the biography he dedicated to him, where the Italian thinker was positively judged because of the impulse given to the democratic life of the 19th century, with particular reference to the campaigns in favor of social security, universal suffrage and women's rights.
In his essay "Documentary falsification and Italian biography", Mack Smith finally highlighted as the systematic destruction, rewriting in apologetic terms and concealment of official documents is a practice which all states are in danger of falling, but in some moments of Italian history this has been systematic. Citing specific examples referred to historical personages of great importance (Vittorio Emanuele II, Garibaldi, Lamarmora, Crispi) the historian provided many examples of manipulation of historical events for political use.
Another influential member of the academic revisionism is Christopher Duggan, a student of Mack Smith and Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of Italian Society of the University of Reading.
In his work "The force of destiny – history of Italy from 1796 to today", Duggan expressed strong criticisms of the most popular historiography, with particular reference to the interpretation of the anti-unification movements in the South and of their repression. In particular, he reports that already in occasion of the massacre of Pontelandolfo and Casalduni voices like the one of the Deputy Giuseppe Ferrari, who called what happened a real "civil war" were abruptly silenced, since according to the official interpretation "the "banditry" was responsible for violence in southern Italy and no one else".
According to the English scholar, the governments of the period after 1861 were obliged to represent the furious fighting that occurred in the former territories of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies as solely related to the common crime, as any other interpretation would have clashed sharply with the results of the "plebiscites" which spoke instead of a population unanimously in favor of unity. Duggan also said that efforts to credit the official version were blatantly contradicted by the facts since in 1864, no fewer than 100,000 soldiers (half of the entire Italian Army) were deployed in the South in an attempt to respond to rising.
According to Duggan, the substrate on which these statements were based was a mixture of "self-interest and fear". It was useful, in fact, to paint the southern territories as corrupt and backward, as this allowed the new government to justify the imposition of its own constitution and laws, administrative practices and men according to the approach of "piemontesizzazione". On the other hand, there was deep concern about the possibility of the spread of riots, which would have fragmented the country again, with unforeseeable consequences.
The historian writes that the alleged backwardness of the southern territories was instrumentally used to justify acts of flagrant lawlessness and violence. Over all, it is remembered the event involving the eminent Piedmontan General Giuseppe Govone, which was sent to Sicily with the task of rounding up conscripts and used of methods such as "putting cities under siege, cutting water supply and the kidnapping of women and children." In an attempt to justify his actions in Parliament, Govone made reference to the alleged "barbarism" of the territory, causing an outbreak of turmoil in the courtroom. Francesco Crispi, a Sicilian, challenged to a duel a prominent deputy of Northern origin and 21 Democrats, including Garibaldi himself, resigned.
Duggan also examines the problem of the number of those killed in the years after unification, citing Quintino Sella in what he calls a "real civil war". He makes a comparison between the official figures (5,200 killed in fighting between and executed in the period 1861-1865) and those calculated by using the local testimoniances and foreign press reports, which speak of tens of thousands (and up to 150,000) deaths. He believes these latest figures "unlikely but not impossible" because the very nature of the killings like that of Pontelandolfo makes no trace left of it in official documents.
The English historian criticizes the "transplant (to) the whole of Italy (with) the laws and institutions of the Piedmont" on the grounds that it was done "with so little consultation, and a callousness so fast and big, from seriously offending the sensibilities and local interests". If in fact, the Piedmont could claim a certain moral leadership as the only Italian state to have a constitution (but not the first, as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies' Ferdinand II had in the first enactment of a Constitution in Italy), in other respects such as education, local government and justice, Lombardy, Tuscany and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had better credentials. Only recently, in fact, Piedmont had shed the reputation of being the "rear-most point of the peninsula".
In addition to the former Kingdom of Two Sicilies, a country of long legal tradition, the replacement of the existing codes with the Piedmont's laws caused extensive discontent in Tuscany, in particular the introduction of the death penalty, which did not exist in enlightened local legal traditions. Others widespread discontent was due to the introduction of the "prefects" as reference points of the system of local government. These were for many decades after the unification invariably of Northern or Piedmont origin, and invariably linked by relations of friendship with the Minister of Interior in key locations such as Milan, Florence, Naples and Palermo.
Duggan turns his critical attention also to the construction of the mythology of the Risorgimento, as defined through the words of Francesco Crispi "religion of the country (which we need to give) the greatest solemnity, the maximum popularity".
British historian believes that the idealization of the unified movement was consciously pursued through the exaltation of the figures of Vittorio Emanuele II and Garibaldi, as a catalyst and homogenization of the various and often conflicting, monarchical and republican, federal and unitary, conservative and radicals trends. This myth was sustained by a steady stream of hagiographic literature, especially after the death of two characters (1878 and 1882, respectively) and an equally conspicuous and in many cases forced the construction of monuments.
This operation of iconification on a national scale had accents of the lowest level (such as the placing of plaques on sites in which Garibaldi had spent a few hours to take a bath) and even moments of blatant counterinformation. Duggan reports the case of serious Garibaldi's biography, written by Giuseppe Guerzoni in 1882, where next to the virtues he described Garibaldi's very human flaws. It was immediately branded as "too sophisticated" by Achille Bizzoni, who hastened to write to a watered down version "of the people use".
Duggan also shows that the work of construction of a mythology of the Risorgimento was also extended to the "nationalization" of school curricula in history, the teaching of which was to be made "so that prospective students absorbed by the history of Italy the love of country". Thus was a careful handling of textbooks, in which there had to be made any mention of the possibility of such figures as Cavour, or worse yet, Vittorio Emanuele, had not been in all respects of disinterested patriots.
In particular, for the protection of the latter, whenever a high political figure died, they proceeded to a careful examination of his papers and private correspondence with the king to expunge and secrete in the Royal Library any incriminating documents. Similarly, the correspondence of Cavour was heavily expurgated of the fierce hostility of Garibaldi and the democrats and phrases that were deeply offensive to Italians.
Another member of the academic revisionism is Martin Clark, professor of political history to the University of Edinburgh.
In his book "The Italian Risorgimento – still a controversial story" Clark says the non-sustainability of the "patriotic and progressive" vision of the unification process. British historian rejects the teleological view of the Risorgimento as an inevitable and finalistic process, considering it rather the correlation of different events, some of which random.
The researcher concludes that "patriotic interpretation of the Risorgimento is wrong, if only for the fact that the Italians were divided and not at all anxious to achieve national unity".
The British also recognized that academic scholars of the Southern School ("Meridionalisti", see specific paragraph) have shown that the society of the ancient Kingdom of Two Sicilies was not stagnant, and some institutions strongly disputed by mainstream historians, such as estate, were not an index of socio-cultural backwardness but rather the "most appropriate response to the technological conditions and market circumstances". It was actually the customs and fiscal policies adopted by the new rulers that destroyed the southern economy.
Rigorous analyses of the Risorgimento were also conducted by Lucy Riall, a professor of history at Birkbeck College of University of London.
Italian unification ( ), also known as the Risorgimento (, ; meaning "Resurgence"), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state, the Kingdom of Italy. Inspired by the rebellions in the 1820s and 1830s against the outcome of the Congress of Vienna, the unification process was precipitated by the revolutions of 1848, and reached completion in 1871, when Rome was officially designated the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.
Some of the states that had been targeted for unification ("terre irredente") did not join the Kingdom of Italy until 1918, after Italy defeated Austria-Hungary in World War I. For this reason, historians sometimes describe the unification period as continuing past 1871, to include activities during the late 19th century and the First World War (1915–1918), and reaching completion only with the Armistice of Villa Giusti on November 4, 1918. This more expansive definition of the unification period is the one presented, for example, at the Central Museum of the Risorgimento at the Vittoriano.
Italy was unified by Rome in the third century BC. For 700 years, it was a "de facto" territorial extension of the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, and for a long time experienced a privileged status but was not converted into a province.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy remained united under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and later disputed between the Kingdom of the Lombards and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. Following conquest by the Frankish Empire, the title of King of Italy merged with the office of Holy Roman Emperor. However, the emperor was an absentee German-speaking foreigner who had little concern for the governance of Italy as a state; as a result, Italy gradually developed into a system of city-states. Southern Italy, however, was governed by the long-lasting Kingdom of Sicily or Kingdom of Naples, which had been established by the Normans. Central Italy was governed by the Pope as a temporal kingdom known as the Papal States.
This situation persisted through the Renaissance but began to deteriorate with the rise of modern nation-states in the early modern period. Italy, including the Papal States, then became the site of proxy wars between the major powers, notably the Holy Roman Empire (including Austria), Spain, and France.
Harbingers of national unity appeared in the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, and the 15th-century foreign policy of Cosimo De Medici and Lorenzo De Medici. Leading Renaissance Italian writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Guicciardini expressed opposition to foreign domination. Petrarch stated that the "ancient valour in Italian hearts is not yet dead" in "Italia Mia". Machiavelli later quoted four verses from "Italia Mia" in "The Prince", which looked forward to a political leader who would unite Italy "to free her from the barbarians".
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 formally ended the rule of the Holy Roman Emperors in Italy. However, the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty, another branch of which provided the Emperors, continued to rule most of Italy down to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).
A sense of Italian national identity was reflected in Gian Rinaldo Carli's "Della Patria degli Italiani", written in 1764. It told how a stranger entered a café in Milan and puzzled its occupants by saying that he was neither a foreigner nor a Milanese. Then what are you?' they asked. 'I am an Italian,' he explained."
After Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments. Italy was again controlled largely by the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs, as they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of Italy and were, together, the most powerful force against unification.
An important figure of this period was Francesco Melzi d'Eril, serving as vice-president of the Napoleonic Italian Republic (1802–1805) and consistent supporter of the Italian unification ideals that would lead to the Italian "Risorgimento" shortly after his death.
Meanwhile, artistic and literary sentiment also turned towards nationalism; Vittorio Alfieri, Francesco Lomonaco and Niccolò Tommaseo are generally considered three great literary precursors of Italian nationalism, but the most famous of proto-nationalist works was Alessandro Manzoni's "I promessi sposi" "(The Betrothed)", widely read as a thinly veiled allegorical critique of Austrian rule. Published in 1827 and extensively revised in the following years, the 1840 version of "I Promessi Sposi" used a standardized version of the Tuscan dialect, a conscious effort by the author to provide a language and force people to learn it.
Exiles dreamed of unification. Three ideals of unification appeared. Vincenzo Gioberti, a Piedmontese priest, had suggested a confederation of Italian states under leadership of the Pope in his 1842 book "Of the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians". Pope Pius IX at first appeared interested but he turned reactionary and led the battle against liberalism and nationalism.
Giuseppe Mazzini and Carlo Cattaneo wanted the unification of Italy under a federal republic, which proved too extreme for most nationalists. The middle position was proposed by Cesare Balbo (1789–1853) as a confederation of separate Italian states led by Piedmont.
One of the most influential revolutionary groups was the Carboneria, a secret political discussion group formed in Southern Italy early in the 19th century; the members were called "Carbonari". After 1815, Freemasonry in Italy was repressed and discredited due to its French connections. A void was left that the Carboneria filled with a movement that closely resembled Freemasonry but with a commitment to Italian nationalism and no association with Napoleon and his government. The response came from middle-class professionals and businessmen and some intellectuals. The Carboneria disowned Napoleon but nevertheless were inspired by the principles of the French Revolution regarding liberty, equality and fraternity. They developed their own rituals, and were strongly anticlerical. The Carboneria movement spread across Italy.
Many leading Carbonari revolutionaries wanted a republic, two of the most prominent being Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini's activity in revolutionary movements caused him to be imprisoned soon after he joined. While in prison, he concluded that Italy could − and therefore should − be unified, and he formulated a program for establishing a free, independent, and republican nation with Rome as its capital. Following his release in 1831, he went to Marseille in France, where he organized a new political society called "La Giovine Italia" (Young Italy), whose motto was "Dio e Popolo" (God and People), which sought the unification of Italy.
Garibaldi, a native of Nice (then part of Piedmont), participated in an uprising in Piedmont in 1834 and was sentenced to death. He escaped to South America, though, spending fourteen years in exile, taking part in several wars, and learning the art of guerrilla warfare before his return to Italy in 1848.
In 1820, Spaniards successfully revolted over disputes about their Constitution, which influenced the development of a similar movement in Italy. Inspired by the Spaniards (who, in 1812, had created their constitution), a regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, commanded by Guglielmo Pepe, a Carbonaro (member of the secret republican organization), mutinied, conquering the peninsular part of Two Sicilies. The king, Ferdinand I, agreed to enact a new constitution. The revolutionaries, though, failed to court popular support and fell to Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance. Ferdinand abolished the constitution and began systematically persecuting known revolutionaries. Many supporters of revolution in Sicily, including the scholar Michele Amari, were forced into exile during the decades that followed.
The leader of the 1821 revolutionary movement in Piedmont was Santorre di Santarosa, who wanted to remove the Austrians and unify Italy under the House of Savoy. The Piedmont revolt started in Alessandria, where troops adopted the green, white, and red "tricolore" of the Cisalpine Republic. The king's regent, prince Charles Albert, acting while the king Charles Felix was away, approved a new constitution to appease the revolutionaries, but when the king returned he disavowed the constitution and requested assistance from the Holy Alliance. Di Santarosa's troops were defeated, and the would-be Piedmontese revolutionary fled to Paris.
In Milan, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli organized several attempts to weaken the hold of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means. In October 1820, Pellico and Maroncelli were arrested on the charge of carbonarism and imprisoned.
After 1830, revolutionary sentiment in favor of a unified Italy began to experience a resurgence, and a series of insurrections laid the groundwork for the creation of one nation along the Italian peninsula.
The Duke of Modena, Francis IV, was an ambitious noble, and he hoped to become king of Northern Italy by increasing his territory. In 1826, Francis made it clear that he would not act against those who subverted opposition toward the unification of Italy. Encouraged by the declaration, revolutionaries in the region began to organize.
During the July Revolution of 1830 in France, revolutionaries forced the king to abdicate and created the July Monarchy with encouragement from the new French king, Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe had promised revolutionaries such as Ciro Menotti that he would intervene if Austria tried to interfere in Italy with troops. Fearing he would lose his throne, Louis-Philippe did not, however, intervene in Menotti's planned uprising. The Duke of Modena abandoned his Carbonari supporters, arrested Menotti and other conspirators in 1831, and once again conquered his duchy with help from the Austrian troops. Menotti was executed, and the idea of a revolution centered in Modena faded.
At the same time, other insurrections arose in the Papal Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Forlì, Ancona and Perugia. These successful revolutions, which adopted the "tricolore" in place of the Papal flag, quickly spread to cover all the Papal Legations, and their newly installed local governments proclaimed the creation of a united Italian nation. The revolts in Modena and the Papal Legations inspired similar activity in the Duchy of Parma, where the "tricolore" flag was adopted. The Parmese duchess Marie Louise left the city during the political upheaval.
Insurrected provinces planned to unite as the "Province Italiane unite" (United Italian Provinces), which prompted Pope Gregory XVI to ask for Austrian help against the rebels. Austrian Chancellor Metternich warned Louis-Philippe that Austria had no intention of letting Italian matters be, and that French intervention would not be tolerated. Louis-Philippe withheld any military help and even arrested Italian patriots living in France.
In early 1831, the Austrian army began its march across the Italian peninsula, slowly crushing resistance in each province that had revolted. This military action suppressed much of the fledgling revolutionary movement, and resulted in the arrest of many radical leaders.
Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian War of Independence.
On 5 January 1848, the revolutionary disturbances began with a civil disobedience strike in Lombardy, as citizens stopped smoking cigars and playing the lottery, which denied Austria the associated tax revenue. Shortly after this, revolts began on the island of Sicily and in Naples. In Sicily the revolt resulted in the proclamation of the Kingdom of Sicily with Ruggero Settimo as Chairman of the independent state until 1849, when the Bourbon army took back full control of the island on 15 May 1849 by force.
In February 1848, there were revolts in Tuscany that were relatively nonviolent, after which Grand Duke Leopold II granted the Tuscans a constitution. A breakaway republican provisional government formed in Tuscany during February shortly after this concession. On 21 February, Pope Pius IX granted a constitution to the Papal States, which was both unexpected and surprising considering the historical recalcitrance of the Papacy. On 23 February 1848, King Louis Philippe of France was forced to flee Paris, and a republic was proclaimed. By the time the revolution in Paris occurred, three states of Italy had constitutions—four if one considers Sicily to be a separate state.
Meanwhile, in Lombardy, tensions increased until the Milanese and Venetians rose in revolt on 18 March 1848. The insurrection in Milan succeeded in expelling the Austrian garrison after five days of street fights – 18–22 March (Cinque giornate di Milano). An Austrian army under Marshal Josef Radetzky besieged Milan, but due to defection of many of his troops and the support of the Milanese for the revolt, they were forced to retreat.
Soon, Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia (who ruled Piedmont and Savoy), urged by the Venetians and Milanese to aid their cause, decided this was the moment to unify Italy and declared war on Austria (First Italian Independence War). After initial successes at Goito and Peschiera, he was decisively defeated by Radetzky at the Battle of Custoza on 24 July. An armistice was agreed to, and Radetzky regained control of all of Lombardy-Venetia save Venice itself, where the Republic of San Marco was proclaimed under Daniele Manin.
While Radetzky consolidated control of Lombardy-Venetia and Charles Albert licked his wounds, matters took a more serious turn in other parts of Italy. The monarchs who had reluctantly agreed to constitutions in March came into conflict with their constitutional ministers. At first, the republics had the upper hand, forcing the monarchs to flee their capitals, including Pope Pius IX.
Before the powers could respond to the founding of the Roman Republic, Charles Albert, whose army had been trained by the exiled Polish general Albert Chrzanowski, renewed the war with Austria. He was quickly defeated by Radetzky at Novara on 23 March 1849. Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II, and Piedmontese ambitions to unite Italy or conquer Lombardy were, for the moment, brought to an end. The war ended with a treaty signed on 9 August. A popular revolt broke out in Brescia on the same day as the defeat at Novara, but was suppressed by the Austrians ten days later.
In 1857, Carlo Pisacane, an aristocrat from Naples who had embraced Mazzini's ideas, decided to provoke a rising in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His small force landed on the island of Ponza. It overpowered guards and liberated hundreds of prisoners. In sharp contrast to his hypothetical expectations, there was no local uprising and the invaders were quickly overpowered. Pisacane was killed by angry locals who suspected he was leading a gypsy band trying to steal their food.
The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath.
The Austrians were defeated at the Battle of Magenta on 4 June and pushed back to Lombardy. Napoleon III's plans worked and at the Battle of Solferino, France and Sardinia defeated Austria and forced negotiations; at the same time, in the northern part of Lombardy, the Italian volunteers known as the Hunters of the Alps, led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, defeated the Austrians at Varese and Como. On 12 July, the Armistice of Villafranca was signed. The settlement, by which Lombardy was annexed to Sardinia, left Austria in control of Venice.
Sardinia eventually won the Second War of Italian Unification through statesmanship rather than armies or popular election. The final arrangement was ironed out by "back-room" deals instead of in the battlefield. This was because neither France, Austria, nor Sardinia wanted to risk another battle and could not handle further fighting. All of the sides were eventually unhappy with the final outcome of the 2nd War of Italian Unification and expected another conflict in the future.
Sardinia annexed Lombardy from Austria; it later occupied and annexed the United Provinces of Central Italy, consisting of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Modena and Reggio and the Papal Legations on 22 March 1860. Sardinia handed Savoy and Nice over to France at the Treaty of Turin, decision that was the consequence of the Plombières Agreement, on 24 March 1860, an event that caused the Niçard exodus, that was the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy.
Thus, by early 1860, only five states remained in Italy—the Austrians in Venetia, the Papal States (now minus the Legations), the new expanded Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and San Marino.
Francis II of the Two Sicilies, the son and successor of Ferdinand II (the infamous "King Bomba"), had a well-organized army of 150,000 men. But his father's tyranny had inspired many secret societies, and the kingdom's Swiss mercenaries were unexpectedly recalled home under the terms of a new Swiss law that forbade Swiss citizens to serve as mercenaries. This left Francis with only his mostly unreliable native troops. It was a critical opportunity for the unification movement. In April 1860, separate insurrections began in Messina and Palermo in Sicily, both of which had demonstrated a history of opposing Neapolitan rule. These rebellions were easily suppressed by loyal troops.
In the meantime, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a native of Nice, was deeply resentful of the French annexation of his home city. He hoped to use his supporters to regain the territory. Cavour, terrified of Garibaldi provoking a war with France, persuaded Garibaldi to instead use his forces in the Sicilian rebellions. On 6 May 1860, Garibaldi and his cadre of about a thousand Italian volunteers (called "I Mille"), steamed from Quarto near Genoa, and, after a stop in Talamone on 11 May, landed near Marsala on the west coast of Sicily.
Near Salemi, Garibaldi's army attracted scattered bands of rebels, and the combined forces defeated the opposing army at Calatafimi on 13 May. Within three days, the invading force had swelled to 4,000 men. On 14 May Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel. After waging various successful but hard-fought battles, Garibaldi advanced upon the Sicilian capital of Palermo, announcing his arrival by beacon-fires kindled at night. On 27 May the force laid siege to the Porta Termini of Palermo, while a mass uprising of street and barricade fighting broke out within the city.
With Palermo deemed insurgent, Neapolitan general Ferdinando Lanza, arriving in Sicily with some 25,000 troops, furiously bombarded Palermo nearly to ruins. With the intervention of a British admiral, an armistice was declared, leading to the Neapolitan troops' departure and surrender of the town to Garibaldi and his much smaller army. In Palermo was created the Dictatorship of Garibaldi.
This resounding success demonstrated the weakness of the Neapolitan government. Garibaldi's fame spread and many Italians began to consider him a national hero. Doubt, confusion, and dismay overtook the Neapolitan court—the king hastily summoned his ministry and offered to restore an earlier constitution, but these efforts failed to rebuild the peoples' trust in Bourbon governance.
The settling of the peninsular standoff now rested with Napoleon III. If he let Garibaldi have his way, Garibaldi would likely end the temporal sovereignty of the Pope and make Rome the capital of Italy. Napoleon, however, may have arranged with Cavour to let the king of Sardinia free to take possession of Naples, Umbria and the other provinces, provided that Rome and the "Patrimony of St. Peter" were left intact.
It was in this situation that a Sardinian force of two army corps, under Fanti and Cialdini, marched to the frontier of the Papal States, its objective being not Rome but Naples. The Papal troops under Lamoricière advanced against Cialdini, but were quickly defeated and besieged in the fortress of Ancona, finally surrendering on 29 September. On 9 October, Victor Emmanuel arrived and took command. There was no longer a papal army to oppose him, and the march southward proceeded unopposed.
Garibaldi distrusted the pragmatic Cavour since Cavour was the man ultimately responsible for orchestrating the French annexation of the city of Nice, which was his birthplace. Nevertheless, he accepted the command of Victor Emmanuel. When the king entered Sessa Aurunca at the head of his army, Garibaldi willingly handed over his dictatorial power. After greeting Victor Emmanuel in Teano with the title of King of Italy, Garibaldi entered Naples riding beside the king. Garibaldi then retired to the island of Caprera, while the remaining work of unifying the peninsula was left to Victor Emmanuel.
The progress of the Sardinian army compelled Francis II to give up his line along the river, and he eventually took refuge with his best troops in the fortress of Gaeta. His courage boosted by his resolute young wife, Queen Marie Sophie, Francis mounted a stubborn defence that lasted three months. But European allies refused to provide him with aid, and food and munitions became scarce, and disease set in, so the garrison was forced to surrender. Nonetheless, ragtag groups of Neapolitans loyal to Francis fought on against the Italian government for years to come.
The fall of Gaeta brought the unification movement to the brink of fruition—only Rome and Venetia remained to be added. On 18 February 1861, Victor Emmanuel assembled the deputies of the first Italian Parliament in Turin. On 17 March 1861, the Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, and on 27 March 1861 Rome was declared Capital of Italy, even though it was not yet in the new Kingdom.
Three months later Cavour died, having seen his life's work nearly completed. When he was given the last rites, Cavour purportedly said: "Italy is made. All is safe."
Mazzini was discontented with the perpetuation of monarchical government and continued to agitate for a republic. With the motto "Free from the Alps to the Adriatic", the unification movement set its gaze on Rome and Venice. There were obstacles, however. A challenge against the Pope's temporal dominion was viewed with profound distrust by Catholics around the world, and there were French troops stationed in Rome. Victor Emmanuel was wary of the international repercussions of attacking the Papal States, and discouraged his subjects from participating in revolutionary ventures with such intentions.

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