Unification of Italy: The Risorgimento from 1815 to 1871

The unification of Italy, known as the Risorgimento (“resurgence”), was the process by which the many states of the Italian peninsula were joined into a single Kingdom of Italy between 1815 and 1871. Driven by nationalist thinkers, the diplomacy of Piedmont-Sardinia, the campaigns of Giuseppe Garibaldi and the help of France and Prussia, it created one of the major nation-states of modern Europe. The new kingdom was proclaimed in 1861 and completed when Rome became its capital in 1871.

Background: a divided peninsula

Italy had not been a single state since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Napoleon redrew its map, creating a Kingdom of Italy in the north and a French-run Kingdom of Naples in the south, and these years spread new laws, administration and ideas of nationhood. After his defeat, the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 restored the old dynasties.

The settlement left the peninsula divided into several states. In the north-west stood the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled by the House of Savoy from Turin and usually called Piedmont. Austria directly ruled Lombardy-Venetia, while Habsburg relatives held Tuscany and Modena and Napoleon’s estranged wife Marie Louise held Parma. The Pope governed the Papal States across the centre, and a Bourbon king ruled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from Naples.

Austria, under its chancellor Metternich, was the real power in Italy. It kept garrisons in the north and was ready to send troops to crush unrest anywhere. Few Italians in 1815 imagined a single state; most identified with their city or region, and most spoke local dialects rather than standard Italian.

The road to unity, 1815–1871

Unification came in stages over more than half a century, through failed revolts, wars and diplomacy.

Early revolts and Mazzini’s Young Italy

Secret societies, above all the Carbonari (“charcoal burners”), organised revolts in Naples and Piedmont in 1820–1821 and in Modena, Parma and the Papal States in 1831. Each time Austrian troops restored order. The failures convinced the Genoese exile Giuseppe Mazzini that conspiracies by small groups were not enough.

In 1831, in Marseille, Mazzini founded Young Italy (Giovine Italia), a movement that called for a united, independent and republican Italy made by the people themselves. His uprisings in the 1830s and 1840s mostly failed, but his writings spread the idea of Italy as a nation with a mission. Other writers proposed different paths: the priest Vincenzo Gioberti suggested a federation of Italian states under the Pope, while moderates looked to Piedmont’s monarchy.

The revolutions of 1848–1849

The revolutions of 1848 swept through Italy. Rulers in Naples, Tuscany, Piedmont and Rome granted constitutions; Piedmont’s Statuto Albertino of March 1848 would later become the constitution of united Italy. In the Five Days of Milan (18–22 March 1848) citizens drove out the Austrian garrison, and Venice proclaimed the Republic of San Marco under Daniele Manin.

King Charles Albert of Piedmont declared war on Austria, beginning what Italians call the First War of Independence. His army was beaten at Custoza in July 1848 and again at Novara on 23 March 1849, after which he abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II. In Rome, the Pope fled and a Roman Republic was proclaimed in February 1849, led by Mazzini and defended by Garibaldi. French troops sent by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took the city in early July 1849, and Venice surrendered to Austria in August.

The lesson drawn by many moderates was that Italy could not “make itself”, as an old slogan claimed. It would need a strong state with an army and foreign allies.

Cavour and the war of 1859

That state was Piedmont-Sardinia, the only Italian kingdom to keep its constitution after 1849. From 1852 its prime minister was Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, a liberal landowner who admired British parliamentary government. He built railways, reformed finances and strengthened the army.

Cavour’s goal at first was a larger northern Italian kingdom, not necessarily the whole peninsula. He sent troops to the Crimean War in 1855 to win a seat at the peace congress in Paris in 1856. In July 1858 he met Napoleon III, now Emperor of the French, secretly at Plombières and agreed that France would help Piedmont against Austria in return for Savoy and Nice.

When Austria sent an ultimatum and invaded Piedmont in April 1859, France came to its aid. The Second War of Independence brought Franco-Piedmontese victories at Magenta on 4 June and at the bloody Battle of Solferino on 24 June. Napoleon III then made a separate armistice at Villafranca on 11 July 1859: Austria gave up Lombardy but kept Venetia. Cavour resigned in protest, but returned to office in January 1860.

Garibaldi and the Expedition of the Thousand

Meanwhile the people of Tuscany, Parma, Modena and the papal Romagna had expelled their rulers. In plebiscites in March 1860 they voted to join Piedmont, and in return Savoy and Nice were handed to France under the Treaty of Turin.

The decisive turn came in the south. In May 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi, a veteran of wars in South America and of the Roman Republic, sailed from near Genoa with about a thousand volunteers in red shirts. The Expedition of the Thousand landed at Marsala in Sicily on 11 May, won at Calatafimi, took Palermo and crossed to the mainland in August. Garibaldi entered Naples on 7 September 1860, and his volunteers defeated the Bourbon army on the Volturno on 1–2 October.

Cavour feared that Garibaldi would march on Rome, provoke France and hand the initiative to Mazzini’s republicans. Piedmontese troops therefore invaded the Papal States’ eastern provinces, defeated the papal army at Castelfidardo on 18 September and moved south. On 26 October 1860, near Teano, Garibaldi met Victor Emmanuel II and in effect handed over his conquests. Plebiscites in the south and in the Marche and Umbria approved annexation.

The Kingdom of Italy, Venetia and Rome

The first Italian parliament met in Turin, and on 17 March 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed King of Italy. Cavour died suddenly on 6 June 1861, leaving others to govern a country whose regions had very different laws, economies and traditions. In the south, an armed revolt usually called “brigandage” was fought by the army for several years, at great human cost.

Two pieces were still missing. Venetia was gained in 1866, when Italy allied with Prussia in its war against Austria. Italian forces were defeated on land at Custoza and at sea off Lissa, but Prussia’s victory forced Austria to give up Venetia, which passed to Italy after a plebiscite in October 1866.

Rome remained under Pope Pius IX, protected by French troops. Garibaldi’s attempts to take it ended in defeat at Aspromonte in 1862 and Mentana in 1867, and in 1865 the capital moved from Turin to Florence. When France withdrew its garrison during the Franco-Prussian War, Italian troops broke through the walls at Porta Pia on 20 September 1870. After a plebiscite, Rome became the capital in 1871. The Pope refused to accept the loss and declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican; the dispute was settled only by the Lateran Treaty of 1929.

Key people

• Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872): republican thinker and organiser whose idea of a united Italian nation inspired a generation, though he never accepted the monarchy that achieved it.
• Count Cavour (1810–1861): Piedmontese prime minister whose diplomacy won the French alliance and steered unification towards a constitutional monarchy.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882): soldier and popular hero whose conquest of Sicily and Naples doubled the size of the new state.
• Victor Emmanuel II (1820–1878): King of Sardinia from 1849 and first King of Italy from 1861.
• Napoleon III (1808–1873): French emperor whose army made the 1859 victories possible, but whose garrison also kept Rome out of Italy until 1870.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

A popular image is of a nation rising as one. In reality, unification was driven by a small educated minority, by Piedmont’s army and diplomacy, and by foreign wars. Many peasants, especially in the south, were indifferent or hostile, and Catholics loyal to the Pope opposed the new state.

The famous line “We have made Italy; now we must make Italians” is usually credited to the Piedmontese statesman Massimo d’Azeglio. It captures a real problem, but the familiar wording is a later paraphrase rather than an exact quotation from his writings.

The four “fathers of the fatherland” were not partners. Mazzini and Garibaldi were republicans who often clashed with Cavour, and Cavour distrusted both. Unification was the result of rivalry as much as cooperation.

Legacy

United Italy became a constitutional monarchy under the House of Savoy, with a parliament elected on a very narrow franchise. The gap between the richer north and the poorer south, the so-called Southern Question, became a lasting issue, and millions of Italians emigrated to the Americas in the following decades.

Italian nationalists continued to claim “unredeemed” lands such as Trento and Trieste, a demand that helped draw Italy into the First World War. The Risorgimento itself became a founding story, celebrated in monuments, street names and in Verdi’s operas, and later borrowed by very different political movements, including Fascism and the Resistance.

Timeline

• 1815, June: The Congress of Vienna restores the old rulers of the Italian states.
• 1831: Mazzini founds Young Italy in Marseille.
• 1848, 18–22 March: The Five Days of Milan; Piedmont goes to war with Austria.
• 1849, 23 March: Piedmont is defeated at Novara; Victor Emmanuel II becomes king.
• 1859, 24 June: French and Piedmontese armies defeat Austria at Solferino.
• 1860, 11 May: Garibaldi’s Thousand land at Marsala in Sicily.
• 1861, 17 March: The Kingdom of Italy is proclaimed.
• 1866, October: Venetia joins Italy after the war with Austria.
• 1870, 20 September: Italian troops enter Rome through the breach at Porta Pia.
• 1871: Rome becomes the capital of Italy.

Why it matters

The Risorgimento created modern Italy and reshaped the balance of power in Europe, weakening Austria and showing how nationalism, diplomacy and war could build a new state. Its unfinished business, from the role of the Church to the divide between north and south, shaped Italian politics for the next century and beyond.