The 19th-century revolutions in Italy and the road to the Risorgimento

After Napoleon’s defeat, European powers met at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and restored Austria's control across northern Italy to strengthen conservative rule.

By reversing the government reforms that the French occupation had introduced, Austria restored direct censorship and police surveillance, and returned political power to traditional elites.

Metternich, who was the Austrian foreign minister, supported this harsh rule as part of the Holy Alliance strategy to crush liberalism.

As a result, Italian nationalists, who had worked in secret, attempted to challenge this order.

Societies such as the Carbonari, which formed in Naples, spread to other states as members planned uprisings and demanded constitutions.

The 1820 uprising in Naples, which was supported militarily by General Guglielmo Pepe, briefly forced the king to grant a constitution before Austrian troops suppressed the movement.

Further unrest in 1831 included separate revolts in Modena and the Papal Legations, with the Modena uprising initiated by Ciro Menotti, who had been betrayed by Duke Francis IV.

However, these various revolts again failed due to military intervention. Uprisings attracted wide support from middle-class liberals and discontented soldiers, but Austrian forces and mass arrests quickly ended any hope of success.

Those who had escaped exile or execution, however, carried the nationalist cause with them across Europe and continued to organise from abroad. 

During the following decade, Giuseppe Mazzini, who became the main ideological leader of Italian unification, offered a clear national plan based on republican principles.

He formally established Young Italy in 1831, which he had first planned the previous year, and urged revolutionaries to reject dynastic claims in favour of a single, democratic Italian republic.

Because he believed that a shared language and past united Italians, he also said that duty and education should guide political reform.

His writings were published in journals such as La Giovine Italia and inspired wide support among students, teachers, and professionals who rejected foreign rule.

When many of his early uprisings had failed, he had been forced into exile in cities like Marseille and London, where Mazzini continued to be a leading voice for national unity and influenced future leaders such as Giuseppe Garibaldi. 

When political unrest spread across Europe in 1848, revolutionary uprisings broke out in almost every Italian state.

Armed citizens expelled Austrian garrisons from Milan and Venice during the March revolts, and liberals in the Papal States pushed for a constitution.

After Pope Pius IX fled Rome, radicals declared a republic in February 1849 and invited Mazzini to help govern it.

At the same time, Sicilian separatists overthrew Bourbon control and attempted to restore their 1812 constitution.

Monarchs such as Charles Albert of Piedmont took up arms against Austria to expand their influence and to exploit popular unrest.

Initial victories gave hope to reformers, but poor coordination between movements and the rapid movement of foreign troops soon ended the rebellions.

Austrian Field Marshal Radetzky defeated Piedmontese forces at Custoza and Novara, which prompted Charles Albert to abdicate in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel II.

Then, French soldiers entered Rome and restored papal authority, while Austrian forces recaptured Lombardy and Venetia.

Bourbon troops defeated opposition in the south. By the end of 1849, conservative forces had reversed nearly every revolutionary gain. 

Following the collapse of the revolts, Count Camillo di Cavour shifted Italian nationalism toward diplomacy and reform rather than republican revolution.

As prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia from 1852, he focused on improving the state’s economy and modernised transport networks and reduced church influence on politics.

To raise Piedmont’s international standing, he also sent troops to fight in the Crimean War in 1855, which quickly gained the attention of Britain and France.

However, Piedmontese troops saw limited combat, but the campaign allowed Cavour to take part in diplomacy after the war.

Because he saw the need for foreign allies in any war against Austria, he later negotiated the Plombières Agreement with Napoleon III that promised French support if Austria attacked.

In 1859, Cavour had provoked Austria by gathering troops near the border, and this led to the Second Italian War of Independence.

French and Piedmontese forces won key victories at Magenta and Solferino, forcing Austria to give up Lombardy.

Venetia remained under Austrian control, and Napoleon later abandoned the alliance.

Piedmont had expanded and now led the push for national unity. 

At the same time, Garibaldi launched a southern campaign that shifted the balance of power.

In May 1860, he assembled a force of about one thousand volunteers, known as the Redshirts, and sailed to Sicily in what became known as the Expedition of the Thousand.

He defeated Bourbon troops and seized Palermo. After he had crossed to the mainland, his force continued north and entered Naples, where many urged him to declare a republic, but Garibaldi instead handed control of the south to King Victor Emmanuel II, whom he met at Teano.

That decision allowed north and south to unite under one constitutional monarchy.

His victory at the Battle of Volturno in October 1860 removed the last Bourbon resistance.

Then, on 17 March 1861, the first Italian parliament gathered in Turin and declared the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. 

At that point, two key regions, Venetia and Rome, were still outside the new kingdom's control.

Italy entered the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 on the side of Prussia. As a result of Austria’s defeat, Venetia was handed to Napoleon III as an intermediary, who then transferred it to Italy under the Treaty of Vienna.

Rome remained protected by French troops under the September Convention of 1864, which committed France to defend the Papacy while Italy agreed to move its capital from Turin to Florence.

When war broke out between France and Prussia in 1870, Napoleon withdrew his soldiers to defend his own territory.

Italian troops moved into Rome on 20 September and took control of the city with little resistance.

The breach of the Porta Pia, which happened during this entry, became an important symbol of unification, which was followed by a public vote that confirmed the annexation and, in 1871, Rome became the capital of a unified Italy. 

Over the course of fifty-six years, the Risorgimento changed Italy from a fragmented set of foreign-ruled states into an independent constitutional monarchy.

Mazzini provided the ideas, Cavour led diplomacy and government policy, and Garibaldi won the military victories that made national unity possible.

However, Italy still faced serious challenges such as economic inequality and regional tension between the industrialised north and rural south, but the long-awaited political unification had finally been achieved under Victor Emmanuel II.

Future tensions over the Roman Question continued until the Lateran Pacts of 1929, which recognised the independence of Vatican City and resolved the standoff between the Italian state and the Papacy.

By then, the Kingdom of Italy had already secured its place in Europe.