[1815 – 1870] The Risorgimento: Unification of Italy

In the year 1815, following the thunderous collapse of Napoleon’s empire, the idea of “Italy” was little more than a fantasy, a poet’s dream. What existed on the boot-shaped peninsula was a fractured mosaic of kingdoms, duchies, and states, most groaning under the heel of foreign masters. The Austrian Empire held the wealthy northern regions of Lombardy and Venetia, its white-coated soldiers a constant, galling presence in the bustling streets of Milan and the watery alleys of Venice. Central Italy, including Rome itself, was governed by the Pope, not as a spiritual leader but as an absolute monarch of the Papal States. To the south, the Spanish Bourbon dynasty ruled the impoverished Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a land of stark beauty, sun-baked poverty, and near-feudal social structures where life for the peasant majority had changed little in centuries. Italy, as the Austrian statesman Metternich cynically remarked, was merely a "geographical expression." Yet, something was stirring beneath the surface. In the gas-lit cafes of Turin and the secret cellars of Genoa, a dangerous idea was taking root: *Risorgimento*, or "Resurgence." It was a whisper that grew into a call to arms, a belief that the people of the peninsula, who shared a common heritage stretching back to Rome, should be united in a single, independent nation. This movement had three distinct, and often conflicting, faces. First was its soul: Giuseppe Mazzini. A brilliant, fervent writer and revolutionary from Genoa, Mazzini was the prophet of unification. From his exile in London, he smuggled pamphlets and letters into Italy, his words igniting the imaginations of students, lawyers, and merchants. He founded a secret society, "Young Italy," with a simple, radical creed: unification through popular uprising, and the establishment of a republic. To join was to swear an oath, often in clandestine torch-lit meetings, to dedicate your life to this single, all-consuming cause. Mazzini gave the dream a voice, a moral purpose. But dreams cannot dislodge armies. For that, the movement needed a sword. It found one in Giuseppe Garibaldi. He was a figure ripped from the pages of a romance novel: a sailor from Nice with a flowing beard, a piercing gaze, and an almost mythical talent for guerrilla warfare. Exiled for his revolutionary activities, he had spent years in South America, fighting for republican causes and honing his skills. When he returned, he was a legend. His followers, the *Camicie Rosse* or Redshirts, were a volunteer army bound by sheer devotion to their leader. Clad in the simple, loose-fitting red wool shirts he’d adopted from Montevideo’s slaughterhouse workers, they were a motley but ferocious fighting force, armed with whatever they could find. Garibaldi embodied the raw, romantic passion of the Risorgimento. Passion and prophecy, however, are no match for the cold calculus of European power politics. The Risorgimento needed a brain, a master statesman who could navigate the treacherous currents of international diplomacy. This was Count Camillo di Cavour, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. A pragmatic, cigar-chomping aristocrat with no love for Mazzini's republican zeal or Garibaldi's reckless heroics, Cavour envisioned a different path. He wanted a unified Italy, but a conservative, monarchical one, led by his own king, Victor Emmanuel II. From his seat of power in Turin, a city of elegant baroque architecture, Cavour began laying the groundwork. He was a modernizer. While the south languished, he built railways that snaked through the Piedmontese landscape, telegraph lines that crackled with information, and industries that churned out textiles and steel. He understood that a strong economy and a modern army were the essential tools of nation-building. The first great explosion came in 1848, the "Springtime of Peoples," when revolutions erupted across Europe. In Italy, cities rose up, constitutions were demanded, and for a brief, glorious moment, it seemed Mazzini's dream of a popular uprising was coming true. But the old order was too strong. The Austrians, under the ruthless General Radetzky, crushed the rebellion in the north. A fledgling Roman Republic, defended by Garibaldi himself, was snuffed out by French troops sent to restore the Pope. The uprisings failed, drowned in blood and disillusionment. It was Cavour who learned the lesson: Italy could not free itself alone. He needed an ally. In 1859, he cleverly provoked Austria into declaring war, having already secured a secret alliance with Emperor Napoleon III of France. The battles that followed were horrific clashes of old and new warfare. At Magenta and Solferino, tens of thousands of men fell in a matter of hours, their colourful 19th-century uniforms making them easy targets for new rifled cannons and muskets. The sheer carnage at Solferino, witnessed by Swiss businessman Henri Dunant, inspired the creation of the International Red Cross. The Franco-Piedmontese alliance was victorious. Lombardy was wrested from Austria and joined to Piedmont. Then, in 1860, came the Risorgimento’s most audacious chapter. With Cavour’s tacit, deniable blessing, Garibaldi and his "Expedition of the Thousand" set sail from Genoa. Just over a thousand volunteers, mostly students and artisans in their iconic red shirts, landed in Sicily to challenge the Bourbon kingdom. It was a fool's errand, a suicidal gamble. Yet, the impossible happened. The Sicilian peasants, desperate to overthrow their landlords, rallied to Garibaldi's banner. His small force swelled, and in a series of lightning victories, he swept across the island and onto the mainland, the Bourbon army dissolving before him. As he marched triumphantly into Naples, he was the undisputed master of southern Italy. Now came the moment of supreme tension. The two Italies—Garibaldi’s revolutionary, popular south, and Cavour’s monarchical, establishment north—were on a collision course. Garibaldi wanted to march on Rome, an act that would have provoked war with Catholic France. Cavour, horrified at the prospect of a radical republic, sent the Piedmontese army south to intercept him. At Teano, the final drama played out. The revolutionary met the king. In a moment that secured the nation, Garibaldi, the republican hero, sacrificed his own ideals for the greater cause of unity. He looked at Victor Emmanuel II and simply said, "I greet the first King of Italy." He then handed over half a country and retired to his small farm on the island of Caprera. By 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was officially proclaimed. It was not yet complete. Venetia was added in 1866, a prize for Italy’s alliance with Prussia in a war against Austria. Finally, in 1870, with France distracted by war with Prussia, the Italian army marched into Rome, ending over a thousand years of the Pope's temporal rule. The unification was complete. But creating "Italy" was one thing; creating "Italians" was another. The new nation was saddled with immense debt. A staggering 78% of its population was illiterate. The industrial north and the agrarian south were like two different countries, speaking dialects so different they could barely understand one another. For a peasant in Sicily, the new "Italian" state was just another distant master, one that imposed taxes and conscription. The glorious Risorgimento, a story of heroic passion and cunning statecraft, had forged a nation. The difficult, messy, and often painful task of making that nation one people had only just begun.