Il Risorgimento d'Italia

The founding of a state by secret associations and romantics, not by fighting about ideas and political concepts, but by heavy fighting nonetheless.

It's always pleasant when all authors and experts on a subject seem to agree: reading through the available literature on the 19th century for information about the founding of the Italian state, the Risorgimento, produces short, seemingly conclusive answers, as this one by Reinhard Schumann: "The Italy of the Restoration and the Ugo Foscolo was an unfulfilled land. … The voices grew louder and gathered themselves in Italy's great undertaking, the Risorgimento d'Italia, which reached its last goal in 1871, Rome as capital of the Kingdom of Italy." Nice and clear, as a scholar would want it to be. The Risorgimento as an era follows the time of Napoleon as "a very dynamic period, both internationally and socially, between 1815 and 1870, that attempted to join the small kingdoms and regions of Italy in one national state, following the congress of Vienna in 1814/15." So, it seems a clear and well described period of history, making it easy to study; no complicated events leading up to or following these years. But would Giuseppe Mazzini and Camillo Cavour agree?

First of all, clarity is never a mistake. Old monarchist dictatorships, the true winners of the Napoleonic wars, split their loot at the congress of Vienna - a return to the old situation of before 1793 was out of the question. But the vultures didn't peck each other's eyes out of course. The Spanish Bourbons kept the south of Italy in the form of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, the pope retained his control of the Papal states, the "house" Savoyen stayed in Turin, keeping Sardinia, and the Habsburgs could reoccupy their Italian territory, especially Venice and Veneto, thereby finally attaining control of land in northern Italy. Many expected a long period of peace.
That was 1815; it took some years to establish control and a military presence in these lands. To cover the violent return of the slow, outdated and unnecessary power of the Viennese "Camarillas", the emperor's brother Rainer established an independent rule in Lombardo-Venice, which was nothing less than the control over a police state.
So the Italian lands were not going to be split up in the same way as before Napoleon, based on the old system of monarchist regime - noble houses ruling their kingdoms "by the grace of God". The Spanish Bourbons held Naples-Sicily, the Austrian Habsburgs the kingdoms of northern Italy. In between them, the pope retained control of the Papal states, the house Savoyen of Sardinia. That was to be the new design.
After the congress of Vienna the Restoration, dominated by the Austrian state chancellor Von Metternich, was put into action in northern Italy more than anywhere else, making important changes produced by the Napoleonic era undone. This led to protests, first from the rising middle class, then from the enlightened nobility as well.
But this design didn't last long and in fact never truly existed in the Italian territories at all. The large number of different groups of Italian activists had never really become active during the 18th century. What had happened was a reorientation towards the new enemies in Naples, Milan, Venice, Rome and Turin.
It took a full five years before it was clear that the rulers of the Restoration were not going to lead to any modernizations. No wonder, as the nobility saw no reason to hurry.
Historians agree that the trigger for the violent, revolutionary changes in Italy can be found in the Spanish example of 1820. The mutiny of Cadiz for instance, in which on 1 January the Bourbon ruler was forced to reinstate the laws of 1812, didn't leave the Italian conspirators unaffected. In Naples, Carbonari and troops under command of Joachim Murat's old general, Guglielmo Pepe, who had entered Bourbon service and was in favour of an uprising in southern Italy, forced through similar laws as in Spain, creating the first conditions for sovereignty of the people.
But the consequent efforts on Sicily and in Basilicata and Capitanata pushed the "Holy Alliance" into action. The monarchist dictatorships had never agreed more than after the congress of Vienna, that everyone wanted to keep each other in power. Metternich once again became the strategist of an empire: after the congress of Troppau, the Holy Alliance decided to intervene in Italy and Spain too and sent Ferdinand to Ljubljana - from where he returned to south Italy with a Habsburg army. Pepe's troops were beaten badly on 7 and 8 March 1821 at Rieti and Antrodoco.
The uprising in upper Italy ended in roughly the same way. Another secret group had been started in Adelphia. The Associatione die federati Italiani, a mixture of liberals, anti-Austrian officials, businessmen, students and officers, wanted to join all of Italy in a state union, including Piedmont-Sardinia, and instate Spanish law. This was even supported by the court at Turin. Although King Victor Emanuel I did abdicate in favour of his brother Karl Felix, the latter then squashed what was being called an uprising in Turin. Only the region of Alessandria was somewhat affected by these events, although here too Austrian troops put an end to the uprising after they came back from Naples. The promising air to the throne from Turin, Carlo Alberto, left to fight the revolutionaries in Spain in name of the Holy Alliance to protect 'church and state'.


While studying all these political concepts and ideas of the revolutionaries and their enemies, we shouldn't forget that Italy had already been undergoing major changes before and during the Napoleonic period - economically, intellectually and thereby also socially. The first effect of the industrialization was joining the economies of all the states, which came together as the 'Italian congress' in the 19th century. The end of the war meant a drop in agricultural prices, leading to a subsequent drop in prices of raw materials for products destined for export. Businessmen had joined in chambers of commerce, which had already been made official in the law of the 'Kingdom of Italy' on 27 July 1811. Many of these had been instated by Napoleon; after 1814 new initiatives were made. The improvements in education and the early printed media shouldn't be underestimated either - and with all this came the self-awareness of the educated, the entrepreneurship of businessmen; when an entrepreneur takes full responsibility for his decisions, he wants to have a say in political decisions as well, and feels competent and justified to do so.
Scientific discoveries were making their entrance into farming - Cavour is a good example of this -, raising production and income. In 1791 already, scientifically orientated land owners in Florence joined in the "Georgofili" and published a journal - another feature of the era, the rise of paper media; after the war, more and more publications appeared that were meant for a larger area than the local area. Creative minds became famous after successful experiments with types of earth, fertilizers and seeds.
The first scientific congress for the whole of Italy was held in 1839 in Pisa and was attended by 400 people. The discussions were ordered by theme, including farming and technology. Further congresses were held in different cities and showed the whole of Italy how valuable cooperation is, but also how necessary for progress - and how the people with influence lacked the necessary understanding of science and industry. And last but not least the church, who regarded all modernization with great skepticism.
But the formation by the publications and congresses of first a scientific community, and later wider based communities as well, could not be stopped. It didn't take long for jurists and economists to unite in the same way.
This formed a very practical basis that rekindled the old theoretical or romantic ideas of a united Italian peninsula. And then suddenly it started: the rights of every noble house were questioned, the different churches were shown to the door; all inhibitions disappeared.
The roots of the Risorgimento in the pre-Napoleonic era must be seen as the deepest of all. And: the enemy of an enemy is a friend. There were many in Italy who saw the French revolution as an example and wanted to join forces with the Convent. The Convent and the Directory in Paris understood how to make use of this situation. In the kingdom of Naples a priest with a revolutionary background, Antonio Jerocades, - perhaps an example of early "liberation theology"; but probably a priest who simply put his religious assignment on hold - started the "Marseillaise Club". Further underground contacts were made through intensive contact with Paris. Then observers at the foreign courts started talking about a "Corsican terrorist" at the head of the French army in Italy, "Buonarroti or Buonaparte or something like that". Besides the French liberation propaganda, Napoleon's most important message were his military victories. His enemies didn't unite in Italy to deliver one decisive blow - this wouldn't come till Waterloo, though the Italian efforts played no significant role there.
To hold on to what had been won, the "Italians" needed to be motivated again through liberty propaganda. And still it seems probable that for the Italian born Bonaparte it wasn't just about propaganda, many of his speeches to Italians sound believable and honest; he seemed truly committed - more in any case than his enemies. After the victory at Lodi, Napoleon captured Milan and started a new "Association of Friends of Freedom and Equality" there, a politically innovative city government. A series of congresses and negotiations between October 1796 and June 1797 led first to the Cisalpine Republic including Reggio, Modena, Bologna and Ferrara, then to the Cisalpine Republic which stretched from Massa and Carrara on the Ligurian coast to Adige, with Milan as capital. And on 6 June 1797 a jacobite uprising in Genoa prepared plans for a Ligurian Republic. The lesson learned in any case was to chase away the old rulers wherever possible.
It was too late for the French general who took charge of Italian affairs, after Napoleon had left for Egypt and went on to greater things, to properly stabilize that which had been achieved. The secular, dictatorial pope in Rome decided to make use of this situation to start the Roman Republic, after a French general on Berthier's staff was murdered. This state too wasn't permanent, but a great example nonetheless. None of the old rulers could simply take their claim to power for granted; none of the revolutionary thinkers should take the rulers claim to power for granted. Everyone had seen them been dethroned, good arguments had been given for the dethronement, and judgement day therefore hadn't arrived yet, because an autocratic old man had taken residence in Siena, in Gaeta or even in France.


These were the elements leading to the Risorgimento; a quick summary of the main story: From 1820 on, resistance against the autocrats and foreign rulers continued to grow. 1820/21 saw uprisings in Sicily, 1821 in Piedmont and 1831 in central Italy - Modena, Romagna -, calling for Italian unity, a new constitution and parliament. All these revolts, organized by the secret Masonic association the "Carbonari", were oppressed by Austrian troops.
Further uprisings followed: the republican-democratic revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini started a secret association while in exile in Marseille, the Young Italians (Italian: Giovine Italia) and illegally spread word about this association in Italy. In this publication Mazzini aimed for a unification of Italy as a democratic republic, which the people would have to fight for, creating a free Italy in a Europe of the people. Mazzini and his group, which Giuseppe Garibaldi had joined in 1833, organized a number of different uprisings, first in Piedmont (1833/1834), then in 1843 in Bologna, 1844 in Calabria and 1845 in Rimini. All these uprisings failed. They did however start a relatively open discussion between the fighters for unity about the structure of a future Italy. An alternative to Mazzini's radical republican solution was, amongst others, a proposal by the philosopher Vincenzo Gioberti, who wanted the pope to become the head of a constitutional Italian state confederacy; others wanted to organize the unification as a monarchist state with the Kingdom of Sardinia at its head.
Pope Pius IX started a similar political reform in Rome in 1846. He built a state council, set up a militia, passed an amnesty, and proposed a customs union for Italy. These papal reforms in the Papal states put the ball in the court of the other kingdoms. The liberal pressure increased in all the Italian states. The Turin magazine Il Risorgimento contributed to this too, giving the era its name. They were in favour of a unified Italy led by the house Savoyen - which would mean the king of Piedmont-Sardinia, Carlo Alberto - and were against the republican ideas of the Moderati, who suggested the future Italy to be a liberal kingdom. Another founder of Il Risorgimento was Camillo Benso Count of Cavour. As prime minister of Sardinia-Piedmont from 1852 to 1859 and again in 1860/61, he worked hard for this goal and became the Kingdom of Italy's first prime minister after Italy's unification in 1861.
After the pope's reforms and under pressure of the liberals and other strengthening democratic movements in Europe (see also: the July revolution of 1830, the February revolution of 1848 and the March revolution of 1848/1849), some of the kingdoms started doing careful concessions. Besides the Papal states, the kingdoms of Sicily, Toscana and on 3 March 1848 Sardinia instated constitutions. Especially king Carlo Alberto of Sardinia-Piedmont realized the situation at the time, after the February revolution in France and the beginning of the March revolution in many other European countries (including the central Habsburg country Austria). His constitution formed the basis of a constitutional monarchy for the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont with relatively far going political and social reforms for the time. Much of the later constitution for the Italian kingdom after 1861 was based on Sardinia-Piedmont's constitution and remained generally unchanged until 1946. In this way Sardinia-Piedmont became the prime example for the propaganda of the Italian unity movement.
During the course of the revolutions of 1848/49 the Italian kingdoms witnessed the biggest uprising of the Risorgimento yet. Revolutionary events had already broken out before the French February revolution with the Sicilian January uprising of 1848 and spread out over the entire Italian peninsula from there. Uprisings against the Viennese rulers had started across upper Italy in Milan, Brescia and Padua in January 1848 as well. In the middle of March 1848, Milan declared itself indepent from Habsburg and that Lombardy was to join the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. Shortly thereafter Daniele Manin led the declaration of the republic on 23 March 1848.
To support Lombardy-Venice, king Carlo Alberto of Sardinia declared war against Austria. This put him at the very front of the Italian unity movement. After a few initial successes, the Sardinian and revolutionary troops were beaten by the Austrians led by field marshal Johann Wenzel Radetzky on 25 July 1848 at the battle of Custozza. In the following truce, the Lombardians rejoined the Austrians. After a revolt in Tuscany in February 1849, which led to the abdication of grand duke Leopold II of Austria, fighting between Sardinia-Piedmont and Austria broke out once again. Despite a larger number of troops, the Sardinian army lost to Austria again during the battle of Novara on 23 March 1849. King Carlo Alberto abdicated the same evening in favour of his son Viktor Emanuel II. Viktor Emanuel agreed on a peace treaty with Austria in Milan on 6 August 1849. The combination of this defeat with the defeat of the city republic of Venice, which had held out for more than a year, meant that for the time being the Italian unity movement had been beaten.
The south of Italy had also seen republican uprisings, for instance in Naples and Rome. After the pope had fled to Gaeta in November 1848 after increasing riots, Giuseppe Mazzini declared the Papal states a republic on 9 February 1849. French troops destroyed the Roman Republic again on 3 July 1849. The pope returned to Rome in 1850 and reestablished an authoritarian police state.
After the oppression of the revolutions of 1848/49, the capital of Sardinia-Piedmont, Turin, became more and more the center of the Risorgimento. Prime minister Cavour changed the strategy being used to achieve Italian unification. The experience of the revolutions of '48/49 had shown that Italy wasn't going to be able to achieve its goal by itself, but would require alliances with other states. So diplomatic channels were used to achieve the Italian national state - stronger than ever under conservative rule. The failure of the revolution had seriously weakened the democratic movement, which had been the driving force behind the Risorgimento, not only in Italy but in the whole of Europe.
Cavour secured the help of France by making a secret pact at Plombières in 1858 with emperor Napoleon III, who had been desperately looking for prestige since the Crimean War (1853-56). Following the Crimean War, the peace of Paris of 1856, in which Russia and France had allied, had left Austria much weaker, both politically and diplomatically, than before. Napoleon III, who supported a united Italy and wanted to strengthen his position in Europe, promised Sardinia-Piedmont to support an attack on Lombardy-Venice, in the event of war with Austria. The price would be that Turin would have to give up Nizza and Savoyen to France.
Even though it's usually broad lines that change the course of history, the details of the main characters of the story must be described as well - despite most of the subtleties being impossible to reconstruct so many years later. When one studies Napoleon III's life, it could be said that he was a true Carbonaro. Once again, a Buonaparte, deeply caught up in his youth in Italy, a heavily influential period of his life. After military education in Switzerland, the young man had jumped into the whirlpool of the mid-19th century revolutions, following a visit by his mother Hortense to the now bedridden mother of the first Napoleon in Rome. He had not been permitted to join the Russian-Turkish war - it's questionable if anyone was really waiting for him - but now the papal police was throwing her sons out of the Papal states. The young Bonapartes were "suspected" to have participated in political activities. The younger Louis Napoleon refused to leave Rome, so the police surrounded the palace and forced him to leave.
Incidentally, the "suspicion" was more than justified. Louis Napoleon, the later "third" Napoleon had seriously provoked the Roman regime by riding a horse through the streets of Rome, waving the Italian tricolori. Though he didn't seem to see any political offence in this himself.
The Bonaparte brothers left Rome heading for Florence, where the revolutionary movement was flaring up, led by the secret association of the Carbonari. Their goal was a free, independent Italy, to be achieved through violent insurrection. Moving in from the south, the guerilla movement of the Carbonari was now, 1831, spreading its way across the Papal states. The July revolution gave it a powerful boost. In the middle of the Roman carnival, shooting broke out, prompting Hortense to leave the city and travel after her sons to Florence. When she arrives she learns that her sons - Napoleon and the younger Louis Napoleon, both undoubtedly members of the Carbonari - have secretly left the city to join the insurrection. Both have taken the Carbonari-oath, an oath of secrecy and tireless pursuit of one goal: the establishment of the Italian republic.
In his farewell letter to his mother Louis Napoleon wrote: "The name we carry obliges us to help those unlucky people that call us." Perhaps childish and theatrical, but effective, when one is put at the head of a military heavy weight state.
Hortense then decides to try and save her children and travels after them, supplied with false papers, as far as Foligno. In the mean time, her sons have been accepted by the revolutionaries, thanks to their name, which lends itself perfectly to propaganda, and have immediately been made commanders. At the head of 200 men, the older Napoleon gains a small (pointless) victory over the papal troops, while the younger one attacks fort Civita Castellana. They then start on an enthousiastic march from Bologna towards Rome, during which the Bonapartes come to be seen as the effective drive behind the revolution instead of the indecisive - or is it sensible? - Carbonari general Sercognani.
They make it to Rieti. There the revolutionary army receives word of attacks by "Austrian" troops. At the same time, the older brother falls ill from a measles epidemic. The revolutionaries must leave Bologna, because the Austrians directly threaten Ravenna. Hortense - a worthy daughter of her mother, a worthy sister of her brothers - tries to save both of them by bringing them to Ancona, from where she hopes to find safety on Corfu or even in Turkey.
In Forli Louis Napoleon delivers the news himself that Napoleon is dead. But the circumstances of his death remain somewhat mysterious - despite the fact that he as a Bonaparte has some feeling for what makes good propaganda. Napoleon said to have been ambushed and hit by fire twice while on the road to Forli, either by traitorous Italians or "Austrian" hussars. Or the more prosaic version, which is the version Louis Napoleon told his mother: the measles had triumphed. The diary of one of Hortense's servants sheds some light: both brothers had already made it to Forli, Napoleon was already in agony when Hortense arrives. Because the Austrians could reach Forli at any moment, Hortense and Louis Napoleon, who would be executed as rebel leader if he were caught, flee to France, leaving the dying older brother alone on his death bed.
During this trip it was time to tell Hortense the details of the wild adventures that led to one brother's death: lack of organization and discipline amongst the rebels and shortage of ammunition and equipment were the main causes of the defeat. The troops of the pope remained victorious. The younger brother wrote the archbishop of Spoleto, Mastai-Ferretti. The archbishop took them in, gave them money and granted them his coach to continue the flee to Forli; with which the meeting between Napoleon III and the pope "Pio Nono" completed a circle of the most important people of the time, early in the soon to be "Italian" history, but beyond doubt formative for the later turning points.
On 23 March mother and son arrive in Ancona. The city expects occupation by Viennese troops any day though. Here Hortense receives an imploring letter: "Save the son we have left; he must use a ship!" But once again Hortense has different plans. She has the rumor spread that Louis has left for Corfu while she must stay behind in Ancona due to illness. Then she hides Louis in a house, together with other rebel leaders. Things get dangerous when the troops march in. A general of the Habsburg intervention troops takes up residence in the room directly next to theirs; his orders can be clearly heard through the wall. Hortense treats the unsuspecting officers very kindly and gets them to give her papers to the pilgrims place of Loreto.
Using two wagons, she starts the escape on Easter morning. It's still early dawn when the gate guards check the papers and they don't notice Louis, sitting next to the coachman as a servant. The journey at the head of the French state, and with that the center of the future unification of Italy, has started, in Anconna.


The next mile stone of the Risorgimento: in May 1859 the Sardinian war breaks out. Through clever tactical moves, Austria was provoked to invade Sardinia-Piedmont, thereby being recorded as the instigator of the war. Meanwhile, Cavour was massing troops and raising volunteers in Lombardy. After two months of war, the Austrians were soundly beaten at the battle of Solferino. However, under pressure of the other great powers, who had no interest in a united Italy, Napoleon III pulled out of the war after his victory over Austria through the secret treaty of Villafranca. So following the peace of Zurich of 11 July 1859, Sardinia-Piedmont kept only Lombardy, while Venice was still in Habsburg hands.
The plan of the great powers, to prevent the unification of Italy, didn't go through however. Even during the war already, rebels had overthrown the Habsburg lords from the duchies of Parma and Modena and the grand duchy of Toscany, as well as thrown the papal legates out of Romagna, which was part of the Papal states. In March 1860, after Sardinia-Piedmont had been forced to give Nice and Savoyen to France, the Austrian territories of upper northern Italy had referendums, as approved by Napoleon III, in which the great majority of the people spoke out for joining with the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont.
The giving up of Nice and Savoyens brought the popular freedom fighter and national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi, who until then had supported Cavours' politics as a rational way of achieving a united Italy, directly opposite Cavour and his liberal conservative supporters.
Garibaldi and 1067 volunteer troops landed on Sicily on 11 May 1860 - at that moment still supported by Cavours -where he named himself dictator. With his Thousand ("Mille") he captured the southern Italian island and on 20 August 1860 went on to liberate the rest of both Sicilian kingdoms from their Spanish Bourbon rulers. On 7 September 1860, after the last Bourbon king Franz II had fled, Garibaldi and his troops took the capital of Naples.
Garibaldi's success jeopardized Sardinia-Piedmont's leading role in the unification of Italy. Cavour agreed with Napoleon III to occupy Marken and Umbria, which belonged to the Papal states, to cut Garibaldi off. In September 1860 Piedmontese troops invaded the church provinces. The papal army was beaten at Castelfidardo in Ancona. After the Piedmontese victory, which left the parts of the Papal states under French protection untouched, the troops continued south. Garibaldi was beaten in November 1860 by the troops of Sardinia-Piedmont, which were under direct command of king Victor Emanuel II. Garibaldi backed down from his claim to power after a referendum on 21 October 1860 showed that the vast majority of the people of both Sicilies were in favour of joining the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, just like the north Italians in March of the same year. Eventually, on 17 March 1861, the new kingdom of Italy under king Victor Emanuel II was proclaimed in Turin. Camillo Benso count of Cavour became Italy's first prime minister but only remained in function until his death on 6 June 1861. For the present, the government would be based in the Sardinian-Piedmontese capital of Turin. In 1864 it became Florence, capital of Tuscany.
But the republican hope of a constitutionally based nation was not to be. Gradually the Sardinian-Piedmontese constitution of 1848 was expanded to the whole of Italy, thereby instating a constitutional monarchy. The political representation was limited to a small conservative or liberal upper class, due to voting rights being given to only 1.9% of the population; about 24 million people lived in the Italian region at the time of the Risorgimento. Voting rights were expanded later, but were still only given to a minority of the people. The progressive liberal members of parliament Marco Minghetti and Luigi Carlo Farini wanted to make autonomous regions the basis of the new Italy, but this plan failed. Under Cavour's successor, prime minister Bettino Ricasoli, Italy kept a central government and was split into provinces, following the French model.
The great European powers - France, Prussia and Great Britain - recognized the new Italian state. Protest against the diplomatic recognition came from Austria and the Papal state, which rightly fought Italy's claims to its territory, mainly Venice in the north-east, which was now under Austrian Habsburg control, as well as the rest of the Papal state and Rome, in which French troops were garrisoned for protection.
To further weaken Austria, with the idea of joining Venice to Italy too, Italy became allies with Prussia on 8 April 1866, following the Prussian-Austrian conflict. A few days after the start of the German Wars between Prussia and Austria on 14 June 1866, Italy also declared war on Austria.
Despite winning great victories in Italy (battle of Custozza on 24 June 1866, sea battle of Lissa on 20 July 1866), Austria lost the war against Prussia in the determining battle of Königgrätz on 3 July 1866. This defeat led to Venice being surrendered to France the next day and Italian troops marching in without firing a shot. In Vienna peace was made between Italy and Austria on 3 October 1866, confirming Venice as Italian property. Though even after 1866, some areas, which were later claimed by Italy, remained in Austrian hands: the Terre Irredente ("the unsaved lands"), which became Italian after the First World War.
The Papal state under the pontificate of pope Pius IX remained an area of conflict too. Since the 1830s the Risorgimento produced a number of different claims to the secular rule of Rome. Rome was seen by the Italian nationalists as the obvious capital of Italy. In October 1867 Garibaldi, who had returned on the active political "stage" after his imprisonment, tried to occupy Rome with the help of a troop of volunteers. He and his men were beaten by French and Papal troops on 3 November 1867.
The war that broke out between France and Prussia on 19 July 1870 was good for Italy regarding the Papal state. After France retreated its guard troops from Rome to fight in the war, Italian troops captured the Papal state on 11 September 1870 without any significant difficulty. On 20 September 1870 Rome was taken.
A referendum showed that once again there was large support for joining with Italy and this was duly proclaimed by royal decree on 6 October 1870. This completed the Italian unification and with it the goal of the Risorgimento. The capital of Italy was moved from Florence to Rome in 1871. Most of the foreign states moved their embassies to Rome too, thereby silently acknowledging the end of the secular rule of the papacy.
From now on the pope would have his seat in the Vatican. The so called Guarantee Act of May 1871 defined his position in the Italian capital. So the Vatican, the Lateran and the papal summer residence in castle Gandolfo remained part of the pope's riches, who in the area of wealth stayed a true stately souvereign.
But Pius IX and his direct successors Leo XIII and Pius X did not recognize the new Italy and declined any diplomatic cooperation with the new rulers. Pius IX even described himself as a "prisoner in the Vatican". Those who participated in the invasion of the church state were anathematized. His attempts to restore the secular power of the papacy were unsuccessful though - despite the increased political influence of the church after the first Vatican council of 18 July 1870. Still, the battle over the status of the catholic church in united Italy remained a source of long conflict. No significant catholic concessions were made because of the violent invasion of Rome.


The end of the Risorgimento is usually defined somewhere here; either the establishment of the kingdom of Italy and its international recognition in 1870, or the annexation of Rome and the founding of the capital in 1871are used as final marks. The span of the foundation of Italy, il Risorgimento d'Italia, in any case reaches from the rough sketches after the Italian congresses of 1814/15 to the establishment of the state in 1870/71. The big question is whether we should describe this as a "reunification" or not. Within its borders there have never before been "Italians" with any kind of homogenous culture. Ancient Rome was a very diverse state, whose conquered people were never really integrated, politically nor culturally, even after centuries of Roman rule; comparable to the situation during the Great Migration - borders existed, but people were mainly split into cultural groups.
So was this call for reunification nothing but an extremely effective propaganda trick? Garibaldi - the Albanian - at least may have thought so. Mazzini probably too. The clever tactician and educated intellectual Cavour is more suspect to have crafted a better story from feelings by leaving out some things here and changing other things there. Is it not so that in the historical case study of Italy the "nation building" followed the establishment of the state instead of preceding it? It's both strange and questionable that so shortly after chasing away foreign rule, after achieving the "natural borders" of the peninsula, the important arguments and points of view about freedom and honor were shaken off and that at the end of the 19th century the last remainders of economic sense were lost, when Italy tried to join the craze of colonialism that was spreading across Europe like wild fire, thereby getting involved in an absurd expansion after the more reasonable expansion Italy had already gone through. But these questions don't concern the Risorgimento anymore, but the time of "Mare nostro".

Essay written by Martin Walter and translated by our editor Eric Edelman. Edited by Jansen.

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