The spokesmen of the Risorgimento, who were often forced to emigrate, represented very different conceptions: G. Mazzini, founder of Giovine Italia and later other national revolutionary organizations, strived for a unitary democratic republic unified by Italian forces; Carlo Cattaneo (* 1801, † 1869) preferred a republican federation; V. Gioberti, leader of the “Neoguelfen”, looked back on the Middle Ages and saw the church and papacy (and Pope Pius IX, who was still liberal after his election in 1846) as the unifying forces of an Italian federation; C. Count Balbo and M. d’Azeglio on the other hand, expected the House of Savoy to lead against Austria after the necessary reforms of the clerical and neo-absolutist political system.
After the first hunger riots in 1847, the European revolutionary year began in 1848 with the Sicilian uprising; Representative constitutions based on the French model were now granted for both Sicily (suspended in 1849), Tuscany (abolished in 1852) and Sardinia-Piedmont (“Statuto Albertino” of March 4, 1848, as a constitution of the united Kingdom of Italy in force until the end of the monarchy in 1946). After anti-Austrian uprisings in Milan (under Cattaneo) and in Venice (republic until August 24, 1849 under D. Manin), King Karl Albert of Sardinia declared war on Austria, which first led to the defeat of Custoza (July 25, 1848), then on the defeat of Novara (March 23, 1849, again against Field Marshal J. W. Graf Radetzky) and led to his resignation in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel II. Despite the strengthening of the counter-revolution, Pius IX was at the end of 1848 . expelled from the Papal States (in exile in Gaeta he finally turned to anti-liberalism) and the republic was proclaimed in Rome (under Mazzini as the leader of a triumvirate legitimized by parliament), which until July 1849 with free corpses from many parts of Italy, including the G. Garibaldis, was able to defend against the vastly superior troops sent by Louis Napoleon, President of the French Republic.
The later Napoleon III. intervened to restore papal rule with consideration for its Catholic voters as Austria had before against the Tuscan Republic (January 1849, in favor of the Habsburg Leopold II). After the fall of Rome, Garibaldi continued the fight with a “long march” to the other side of Italy. At the end of August 1849, he too had to disband his remaining associations.
The subsequent stagnation and reaction (including the state of siege in Upper Austrian Italy until after the Crimean War in 1856, absolutist arbitrary rule in the Bourbon Naples-Sicily) shifted the center of the Risorgimento to the Savoyard Sardinia-Piedmont, which had retained the constitution and parliament and became a place of refuge for many Italian refugees. Here, under d’Azeglio (Prime Minister 1849) and Cavour, who was influenced by English liberalism (Prime Minister 1852), an economic modernization with free trade, railway construction and agricultural and banking subsidies began. Cavour relied on a broad alliance of its moderate-liberal “Destra storica” (“historical rights”) with the moderate “left” (monastery secularization 1855), whereby the country was de facto governed by parliament. In terms of foreign policy, he secured the support of Napoleon III for Sardinia-Piedmont by participating in the Crimean War (January 1855) . against Austria; The French emperor tried to combine hopes of a renewed French supremacy in Europe with sympathy for national movements – despite strong ties to the Pope and the Papal States. Inner Italian support of the course was Cavour in from Manin Founded in 1857, Società Nazionale, stood against him Republicans to Mazzini, of which, however, a. Garibaldi resolved to limited cooperation with the Piedmontese monarchy for the sake of achieving national freedom and unity.
In 1858 Napoleon III. - against the cession of Nice and Savoy – an extension of Sardinia-Piedmont to the still Austrian northern Italy (liberation “to the Adriatic”) in prospect; Italian unity, however, was to exist only in a loose federation under papal primacy. For more articles about Italy and Europe, please follow Mathgeneral.
An Austrian ultimatum provoked the war with Sardinia and France in 1859, which, with the participation of the Società Nazionale, led to national uprisings in Tuscany, the other small states of central Italy and papal Emilia-Romagna with the aim of joining Sardinia-Piedmont. Because of this, and because of the losses on the battlefields after the victory of Solferino (June 24, 1859), Napoleon III broke . the war ended with the preliminary peace of Villafranca (July 11, 1859, confirmed in the Peace of Zurich), which only awarded Lombardy to Sardinia-Piedmont, while Veneto remained with Austria. France received Nice and Savoy (concealed by plebiscites) after it had agreed to the annexation (also after plebiscites) of Modena, Parma, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany to Sardinia-Piedmont in 1860. In May 1860, the about the assignments landed inter alia. Garibaldi outraged his hometown with a volunteer corps (“Zug der Thousand”) in Sicily and conquered it, supported by the discontented rural population and decisively favored by the inner weakness of the Bourbon rule; after his transition to the lower Italian mainland – ultimately aiming at Rome – the Bourbon monarchy also overthrew in Naples. In September 1860 Piedmontese troops occupied Piedmontese troops with the consent of Napoleon III under the pretext of protecting the Pope from an attack by Garibaldi. the Marche and Umbria. Here too, and after Garibaldi’s handover of power to the representatives of Viktor Emanuel - in southern Italy plebiscites confirmed the Anschluss, from which only the remaining church state (Latium) was spared under the pressure of the Vatican-friendly France. After the first parliamentary elections in January 1861, the “Kingdom of Italy” under Victor Emmanuel II was founded on March 17, 1861 . proclaimed. Contrary to the hopes of the left advocating a constituent assembly, this agreement ultimately took place as a “royal conquest,” ie. H. as a step-by-step transfer of the Sardinian constitution (from 1848) and the administrative order, which was centralized according to the French model, divided into provinces and led by prefects to the rest of Italy. A high census suffrage (1861: 1.9% of the population entitled to vote, an average of 540 votes for a member of parliament) restricted political representation to a narrow, liberal-conservative upper class. The reorganization weighed particularly heavily on southern Italy, where loyalty to the expelled Bourbon dynasty supported by the Vatican, Briganten), the bloody suppression of which employed up to 100,000 regular troops. Here, as well as in the lack of land reform, which solidified the backward economic and social structures, lie among others. the causes of the problems of the Mezzogiorno that still exist today, but also problems (including clientelism) of the political system through all its changes up to the end of the 20th century.
