Victor Emmanuel II

Victor Emmanuel II (1820-78), king of Sardinia (1849-1861) and king of Italy (1861-1878), born on March 14, 1820, in Turin. He was the son of Charles Albert, king of Sardinia (1831-49), who abdicated in his favor after being defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Novara in 1849. Assisted by Italian statesman Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour, his premier, Victor Emmanuel developed parliamentary government, reorganized the army, regulated finances, stimulated commerce and industry, and secularized ecclesiastical property. He assisted (1855-1856) Britain and France in the Crimean War.

Victor Emmanuel strongly supported the movement toward national unity that was growing in Italy at this time. With French aid he repulsed the Austrians when they invaded Piedmont (Piemonte) in 1859 and added Lombardy (Lombardia) to his realm. The central Italian states accepted him as their king, and after the Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi captured the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from the French in 1860-1861, Victor Emmanuel was master of the entire peninsula, with the exception of Venetia, still held by the Austrians, and the Papal States. He was proclaimed king of Italy in 1861. In the same year he ceded Nice and Savoy to France in payment for past and promised French aid. Venetia was won as a result of Italian intervention on the Prussian side in the Seven Weeks’ War between Austria and Prussia in 1866. In 1870 Rome was annexed and made the capital of Italy. Victor Emmanuel then devoted himself to the peaceful development of Italy. He died in Rome on January 9, 1878.