The Unification of Italy The
Risorgimento was the period of Italian history during which the Italian nation earned its national unity.
Vittorio Emanuele II
Count Camillo Benso di Cavour
Liberal ideas, the hopes raised by the Enlightenment and the values \u200b\u200bof the French Revolution were brought to Italy by Napoleon. Inverted existing states, the French, disappointing the hopes of the patriots "Jacobins" Italians, had settled in the Po Valley, creating republics on the French model, revolutionizing the life of the time, bringing new ideas yes, but also making the cost fall on the local economy. He was born as a movement of expectations and ideals, some incompatible with each other: there were those in the field of romantic nationalists, republicans, socialists, liberals, monarchists Savoy, there was the expansionist ambition of becoming House of Savoy to achieve unity the Po Valley, there was the need to free themselves from Austrian rule in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, a common desire was to improve the situation of sociological and economic advantage of the opportunities offered by technical and industrial revolution, at the same time overcoming the fragmentation of the peninsula where there were some liberals, who led the various revolutionaries of the peninsula to develop an idea and develop a larger home. The most important people in this process were many including: Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour, Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy. There were the Unitarians and Federalists Republicans as radicals opposed to the monarchy and Nicholas Tommaseo Carlo Cattaneo; there were Catholics as Vincenzo Gioberti and Antonio Rosmini that pointed to a confederation of Italian states under the presidency of the Pope, there were professors and economists as Giacinto and Albini Pietro Lacava, advisers ideals of Mazzini especially in the south.
Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Garibaldi
After the Congress of Vienna, the French influence in Italian political life left its mark through the exchange of ideas and dissemination of newspapers literary bourgeois salons that flourished in fact, under the pretext literary, created real Anglo-Saxon club, which lends itself to cover the secret societies, some Italian exiles, as Anthony Panizzi, undertook to establish contacts with foreign powers interested in Italian fix the problem. One of the first secret societies was that of the Carbonari. In 1814 this organized secret society of revolutionary movements in Naples, which ended with the conquest of the city in 1820, then lost by Austria. It should, however, say that the first real motorcycle Carbonaro would have made a Macerata in the Papal States, on the night between 24 and 25 June 1817. But the police, informed of the preparations, suppressed the action in the bud. The movements of 1820-1821, although all as its objective the progressive liberalization of absolutist regimes that stifled the freedom of Italy and Italians in those years, however, took on different connotations from state to state and from city to city. While in Naples, the rebels had sole purpose of the promulgation of the constitution, in Turin The uprising received anti-Austrian tension and unrest, already occurred in that city in January 1821, suffocated by the student movements in the blood by the same police Savoy. For this reason, these motions saw as a hero of the Risorgimento as a symbol of our men Santorre of Santa Rosa. Milan also took part in the riots a patriotic and anti-Austrian component led by Count Federico Confalonieri, routed, soon after the failure of the insurrection, in the prison of Spielberg, where there was already a few months ago my friend Silvio Pellico. Since the early nineteenth century established itself as a leading figure Giuseppe Mazzini. Born in Genoa in 1805, he became a member of the Carbonari in 1830. The business forced him to leave Italy in 1831 to flee to Marseilles, where he founded the Young Italy, a movement that picked up the patriotic forces for the establishment of a unitary state, to be included in a broader perspective, federal Europe. The sharing of the program led Mazzini Giuseppe Garibaldi, born in Nice in 1807, to participate in the revolutionary movements of 1834 in Piedmont, the failure of which he was sentenced to death by the government of Savoy and was forced to flee to South America, where he participated in the revolutionary Brazil and Uruguay. The revolts failed due to the lack of coordination between the plotters and the absence and indifference of the masses to the motions.
Massimo d'Azeglio
Vincenzo Gioberti
In the so-called reform period (1846-1848), following the failure of revolutionary movements to Mazzini, take effect political projects of moderate liberals, most notably Max d'Azeglio, Vincenzo Gioberti and Balbo with "the hopes of Italy" which put forward reformist programs for future Italian unit in centralized or federated form. Thus was born the movement of Neo-Guelphism rather successful in the public to coincide with the election of Pope Pius IX, considered a "liberal."
The Expedition of the Thousand and the Wars of Independence The
years 1847-1848 saw the development of various revolutionary movements were marked by a decision by the Kingdom of Sardinia to become a promoter of Italian unity. First step in this direction was the First War of Independence against Austria, which erupted during the revolt of the Five Days of Milan (1848). The war, conducted by Carlo Alberto and lost, ended with a substantial return to the previous situation. In the ten years following the defeat of the republican movement taken force Mazzini, helped by the failure of Neo-Guelphism federal program, the Mazzinians promoted a series of uprisings, all failed. In 1859-1860, there was a new stage, crucial to the process of Italian unification. It was characterized alliance between France's Napoleon III and the Kingdom of Sardinia, decisive victory in the War of Independence against Austria. Immediately followed the victory of the union of Tuscany and the kingdom of 'Emilia Romagna, which were released in the meantime. He had thus created a first draft of the Italian state. A further step towards unity was the Expedition of the Thousand. The latter consisted of little more than a thousand volunteers who come mainly from northern and central Italy, both belonging to the middle class than to those artisans and workers, was the only company to enjoy renaissance, at least in its initial phase , a strong support of the Sicilian peasantry. While Garibaldi was advancing from the south, the Sardinian troops went to the State of the Church and clashed with the papal army in the Marches, where they had the victory that led then to the annexation of Umbria and Marche. Only after the battle of Castelfidardo you could think of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, as it was now possible to combine geographically Garibaldi freed from the southern regions with the regions of Northern and Central merged into the Kingdom of Sardinia after the second war ' Independence and the subsequent annexation. The proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy took place March 17, 1861. The new kingdom will maintain the Albertine Statute, the Constitution granted by Charles Albert in 1848 and remain continuously in force until 1946. Many serious problems were that the new state faced, first, there were still drive the Veneto, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Trentino and Lazio, and then there was the issue of capital, which was Turin, as the seat of the monarchy, but from the first meeting of parliament advocated Rome was still in the hands of the pope. In addition, the young kingdom had to face the problem of so-called "southern banditry." The unification took a further step forward with the Third War of Independence against Austria, which erupted following the participation of Italy to the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The Third War of Independence led to the annexation of the Veneto and Friuli. After this date still remained outside the United, Lazio, Trentino (without the Alto Adige) and Venezia Giulia, whose annexation was necessary to complete the process of unification.
Pope Pius IX
Although the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy had been referred to Rome as the moral capital of the new state, the city remained the seat of the Papal States. Some papal lands had already been annexed, others (the Marche and Umbria) had been lost by the pope after the Battle of Castelfidardo, but the Papal States, reduced to only Lazio, remained under the protection of French troops who continue to defend it from two failed attempts to Garibaldi. Only after the defeat and capture of Napoleon III Sedan, Italian troops entered September 20, 1870 from breach of Porta Pia in the capital. After October 2, 1870 that sanctioned the annexation of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy, in June of 1871 the capital of Italy, already moved from Turin to Florence, Rome finally became. The Roman Church by Pope Pius IX, who considered himself a prisoner of the new Italian state reacted by excommunicating Vittorio Emanuele II, also not considered appropriate, and then explicitly forbade Catholics to participate actively in Italian political life, where you autoesclusero for half a century with serious consequences for the future history of Italy.
Trentino-Alto Adige, Venezia Giulia, Istria, the city of Zadar, were united Italy Nel 1924.
