The unification of Italy, the Risorgimento, joined the separate states of the Italian peninsula into one Kingdom of Italy between 1859 and 1871. It was driven from Turin by the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont), its king Victor Emmanuel II and his prime minister Count Camillo Cavour, with the volunteer general Giuseppe Garibaldi conquering the south. Lombardy was won from Austria in 1859, Tuscany and the central duchies voted to join in March 1860, Garibaldi took Sicily and Naples in 1860, and the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in Turin on 17 March 1861. Venice followed in 1866, Rome was captured on 20 September 1870, and it became the capital in 1871. Trento and Trieste, still Austrian, passed to Italy only after the First World War.
Before 1859 the peninsula was a patchwork restored by the Congress of Vienna in 1815: the Kingdom of Sardinia in the north-west, Austrian-ruled Lombardy–Venetia in the north-east, the duchies of Parma and Modena, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States across the centre, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south, and tiny San Marino. This guide follows the map place by place, from Turin to Rome.
Turin and Palazzo Carignano: Where Cavour Planned It
The revolutions of 1848 had shown what would not work. Milan threw out its Austrian garrison in the Five Days of 18–22 March 1848, and Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, declared war on Austria, only to be beaten by Marshal Radetzky at Custoza in July and again at Novara on 23 March 1849. He abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II. The Roman Republic of Giuseppe Mazzini fell to a French army on 29 June 1849, and Venice surrendered to Austria in August. Mazzini’s dream of a republic rising from below had failed; unification would come through the House of Savoy, from Turin.
Cavour, prime minister from 1852, modernised Piedmont’s railways, banks and army and sent troops to the Crimean War in 1855 alongside Britain and France, earning a seat among the great powers. The decisive bargain came at Plombières-les-Bains on 21 July 1858, where he met Napoleon III in secret. France would help drive Austria out of northern Italy; in return France expected Savoy, with Nice left to be settled later, and the pope would keep Rome. The formal alliance of 28 January 1859 then promised France both Savoy and Nice. The Piedmontese parliament that would carry out this policy met in the baroque ballroom of Palazzo Carignano, home of the Chamber of Deputies from 1848 to 1861.
Magenta and Solferino: Lombardy Taken in June 1859
Cavour provoked Austria with military manoeuvres, and the Second War of Independence began in April 1859. Austria fielded about 140,000 men against about 70,000 Sardinians, but its army took almost ten days to cover the 80 km towards Turin, by which time French troops had arrived. The allies beat the Austrians at Magenta, near Milan, on 4 June, and then at Solferino, south of Lake Garda, on 24 June. Solferino involved about 300,000 soldiers on both sides, the largest battle since Leipzig in 1813, and it was the last major battle in which all the armies were personally commanded by their monarchs. Garibaldi’s volunteer Hunters of the Alps meanwhile beat the Austrians at Varese and Como.
Napoleon III then stopped short. Under the Armistice of Villafranca of 12 July 1859, Lombardy passed to Piedmont, but Austria kept Venetia and the fortress city of Mantua. The line of the Mincio river became the new frontier.
Florence, Parma, Modena and Bologna: Central Italy Votes in March 1860
While the armies fought in Lombardy, the rulers of Tuscany, Parma and Modena fled, and the papal Legations around Bologna rose against Rome. Their provisional governments formed the United Provinces of Central Italy, corresponding to today’s Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. Plebiscites in March 1860 voted to join Piedmont, and the annexation followed on 22 March 1860.
The price was paid at the western end of the kingdom. By the Treaty of Turin of 24 March 1860, Savoy and Nice were handed to France, as the 1859 alliance had promised. Garibaldi, born in Nice, deeply resented Cavour for giving away his home city. By early 1860 only five states were left on the peninsula: the enlarged Kingdom of Sardinia, Austrian Venetia, the reduced Papal States, the Two Sicilies and San Marino.
Quarto to Marsala and Palermo: The Thousand in Sicily, May 1860
The south was taken by an expedition the government in Turin officially disowned and quietly helped. On the night of 5–6 May 1860, Garibaldi and 1,089 volunteers in red shirts, armed with obsolete muskets, embarked from a rock at Quarto, about 5.6 km south-east of Genoa’s old port, on two steamships, the Piemonte and the Lombardo. After a stop at Talamone on the Tuscan coast, they landed at Marsala on the western tip of Sicily on 11 May. Two Royal Navy ships in the harbour deterred the Neapolitan fleet from interfering.
At Salemi on 14 May Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel. The next day his men beat a larger Neapolitan force at Calatafimi, and local rebels swelled his numbers to about 4,000. On 27 May the siege of Palermo began, with street fighting inside the city. General Ferdinando Lanza, with some 25,000 troops, bombarded Palermo heavily, but a British admiral brokered an armistice and the Neapolitan army withdrew. More than 20 further sailings brought about 21,000 extra volunteers from the north. The island’s geography is covered in our guide to Sicily.
Naples, the Volturno and Teano: The Two Sicilies Fall
Garibaldi crossed the Strait of Messina in August, and the garrison at Reggio Calabria surrendered. Basilicata and Apulia declared for the Kingdom of Italy on their own on 18 and 21 August. He was at Cosenza by the end of the month and at Eboli, near Salerno, on 5 September. King Francis II pulled his loyal troops back behind the Volturno river, and on 7 September Garibaldi entered Naples by train with a handful of followers. On 1 October about 30,000 Garibaldini narrowly beat about 25,000 Bourbon troops on the Volturno, between Capua and Caserta.
Cavour feared Garibaldi would march on Rome and provoke France. A Piedmontese army under Manfredo Fanti and Enrico Cialdini therefore invaded the Papal States from the north, beat the papal army at Castelfidardo and took Ancona on 29 September, seizing the Marche and Umbria while leaving Rome itself alone. A plebiscite on 21 October confirmed the annexation of the Two Sicilies, and on 26 October Garibaldi met Victor Emmanuel at Teano in northern Campania and handed over his conquests. He retired to the island of Caprera. Francis II held out in the coastal fortress of Gaeta from 5 November 1860 until 13 February 1861.
On 18 February 1861 the first Italian Parliament assembled in Turin, and on 17 March it proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, the date Italy still marks as its anniversary. On 27 March Rome was declared the capital, though it lay outside the kingdom. Cavour died three months later. Southern resistance did not end with the plebiscites: bands loyal to Francis fought the new state for years.
Venice and Mantua: Custoza, Lissa and the 1866 Referendum
Garibaldi tried to take Rome in 1862 but was wounded by Italian regular troops at Aspromonte in Calabria on 28 August. By the September Convention of 1864, France agreed to pull its garrison out of Rome within two years, and in 1865 the capital moved from Turin to Florence, a step that set off riots in Turin.
Venetia came through an alliance with Prussia, signed on 8 April 1866. Italy declared war on Austria on 20 June and lost twice: on land at Custoza on 24 June and at sea off the Adriatic island of Lissa, now Vis in Croatia, on 20 July. Only Garibaldi won, at Bezzecca on 21 July, before he was ordered back and replied with one word, “Obbedisco” (“I obey”). Prussia’s victory decided the matter. Under the Treaty of Vienna of 12 October, Austria ceded Venetia and Mantua to Napoleon III, who passed them to Italy on 19 October, and a referendum on 21–22 October approved annexation with only 69 votes against out of more than 642,000. Bismarck’s parallel wars, which made Germany in 1871, are traced in our post on the unification of Germany.
Porta Pia, Rome: The Breach of 20 September 1870
Rome was protected by French troops; a second attempt by Garibaldi was beaten by papal and French forces at Mentana on 3 November 1867, and a French garrison stayed at Civitavecchia until August 1870. When the Franco-Prussian War began, Napoleon III recalled it, and after his defeat at Sedan the Italian government moved. Pope Pius IX refused a face-saving offer on 10 September. General Raffaele Cadorna’s army crossed the papal frontier on 11 September and reached the Aurelian Walls on 19 September.
On 20 September 1870, after three hours of cannon fire, the wall was breached beside Porta Pia, and the Bersaglieri marched into the city along Via Pia, renamed Via XX Settembre. Forty-nine Italian soldiers, four officers and nineteen papal troops were killed. A plebiscite on 2 October annexed Rome and Lazio, ending the Papal States, which had existed since 756. Rome was officially made the capital on 3 February 1871, and the government moved there that July.
Pius IX rejected the Law of Guarantees, which would have left him the Leonine City, and declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican. The dispute lasted until the Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929 created Vatican City as an independent state, explained in our post on what Vatican City is. The last stops on the map came later still: Trento and Trieste, the “unredeemed lands” left under Austria in 1866, passed to Italy after the First World War, and the Treaty of Rapallo of 1920 settled the new border with Yugoslavia, a point some historians treat as the true end of the Risorgimento.