III.

The Diplomatic and Military Phase

Cavour's policy was to secure for the Kingdom of Sardinia the diplomatic and military support of Napoleon III, the French emperor. Napoleon and Cavour secretly planned a war against Austria. By the spring of 1859, Cavour had created a crisis that led the Austrians to send an ultimatum demanding Piedmontese disarmament. Cavour rejected the ultimatum and, in the subsequent war, the French came to the aid of the Piedmontese. The Austrians were defeated in the two battles of Magenta and Solferino and were forced to surrender Lombardy, with its great city of Milan, to Napoleon III. Then in 1859 Napoleon placed Lombardy under the sovereignty of Victor Emmanuel II.

In a series of elections during 1859 and 1860, all the states in the northern part of the Italian peninsula, with the exception of Venetia, which still belonged to Austria, voted to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. In the space of less than two years, the Kingdom of Sardinia under Victor Emmanuel II had more than doubled its size. Napoleon III was alarmed by the size of France's new neighbor. Napoleon's unease was soothed by Cavour's decision in 1860 to cede to France the Sardinian provinces of Savoy, near the Alps, and Nice, on the Mediterranean coast. This decision was unpopular in Italy, and it enraged Garibaldi, who was born in Nice. After 1860, the only French presence on the Italian peninsula was in the city of Rome, where French troops remained at the request of the pope.

Garibaldi was the hero of the next phase of Italian unification. In May 1860, he sailed for Sicily in two small ships with a force of just over 1000 volunteers. Their campaign was successful in Sicily first, and then in Naples, which Garibaldi triumphantly entered on September 7, 1860. The Kingdom of Sardinia was sympathetic toward Garibaldi but maintained a policy of neutrality until it appeared that Garibaldi was about to send his army into Rome, which was protected by French troops. Cavour did not want to antagonize Napoleon III. To regain the initiative, Cavour went to war against Pope Pius IX, who had abandoned his liberal views. With Napoleon's consent, Cavour moved his forces into the Papal States. Soon afterward, in late 1860, two-thirds of the Papal States voted to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Papal States were reduced to Rome and its immediate environs still under the protection of France. The provinces of Naples and Sicily, which Garibaldi had conquered, also voted to join Sardinia. Victor Emmanuel's government controlled the whole peninsula except for Rome and for Venice, which was still part of the Austrian Empire. On March 17, 1861, an all-Italian parliament proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy, with Victor Emmanuel as the first king and Cavour as the first prime minister.

Venice was added to Italy in 1866 after Prussia defeated Austria in the Seven Weeks' War, in which Italy sided with Prussia; Venice was its reward. Then, in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III withdrew his troops from Rome. With the city of Rome and the remaining Papal States left unprotected, Italian troops moved into Rome without opposition. Rome voted for union with Italy in October 1870 and, in July 1871, Rome became the capital of a united Italy.