Leslie Massey
The unification of Italy was a complex and protracted process, involving numerous wars with Austrian forces. The First Italian War of Independence, sparked by revolutionary riots in 1848, saw King Charles Albert of Sardinia declare war on Austria, marking the beginning of Italy's struggle for independence. The Third Italian War of Independence, fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire from June to August 1866, was a significant step towards unification. Italian literary figures such as Vittorio Alfieri, Francesco Lomonaco, and Niccolò Tommaseo are considered precursors of Italian nationalism, with their works reflecting and fostering a sense of national identity. The most famous proto-nationalist work is arguably Alessandro Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), which allegorically criticised Austrian rule.
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What You'll Learn
The Napoleonic era
Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1769 on the island of Corsica to an Italian family that gained French noble status in 1778. He served in the French army when the French Revolution started and quickly rose to the rank of general, winning several victories. In 1799, he led a coup d'état, overthrew the Directory, and was appointed First Consul. Within a few years, he named himself Emperor and set out to build a French-dominated empire in Europe.
Napoleon brought political stability to a France torn by revolution and war. He made peace with the Catholic Church and reversed the most radical religious policies of the National Convention. In 1804, he promulgated the Civil Code, a revised body of civil law that helped stabilize French society. The Civil Code affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult men, established a merit-based society, and enhanced equality under the law. It also confirmed the revolutionary changes within France, such as the spread of French revolutionary legislation to much of Western Europe, and the weakening of the powers of the Roman Catholic Church, guilds, and manorial aristocracy.
Napoleon's armies conquered the Iberian and Italian peninsulas and occupied lands, forcing Austria, Prussia, and Russia to ally with him and respect French hegemony in Europe. He directly annexed territories in the Low Countries and western Germany, and set up satellite kingdoms in other parts of Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland. However, his invasion of Russia in 1812 marked a turning point, as his vast army faced bitter cold, repeated Russian attacks, and a lack of supplies. Only a battered remnant of his army returned to France, and he was forced to abdicate in 1814.
Napoleon returned to power the following year, but his reign was resisted by the allies, and his army was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era. During this period, he had shaped European politics and military strategies, and his conquests sparked growing nationalism in the regions he conquered.
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The Rimini Proclamation
> Italians! The hour has come to engage in your highest destinies... Providence has called you to be an independent nation. From the Alps to the straits of Sicily, there is but one cry – Italian independence.
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The Italian tricolour
The Italian flag, often referred to as The Tricolour (il Tricolore), features three equally sized vertical pales of green, white, and red, with the green at the hoist side. The Italian Flag Day, or Tricolour Day, is celebrated on 7 January every year. This commemorates the first official adoption of the tricolour as a national flag by a sovereign Italian state, the Cispadane Republic, a Napoleonic sister republic of Revolutionary France, on 7 January 1797.
The first documented use of the Italian national colours is dated 21 August 1789, when eyewitnesses reported seeing demonstrators in Genoa wearing a red, white, and green cockade. The Italian Jacobins decided to keep green instead of blue because it represented nature and, therefore, social equality and freedom. The tricolour cockades then became one of the official symbols of the Milanese National Guard, founded on 20 November 1796, and spread elsewhere on the Italian peninsula.
The congress decision to adopt a green, white, and red tricolour flag was greeted with enthusiasm and applause. The flag of the Cispadane Republic featured horizontal bands with the top red, white in the centre, and green at the bottom, along with the emblem of the republic and the letters "R" and "C" on the sides. The Cispadane and Transpadane republics merged to form the Cisalpine Republic, whose Grand Council adopted a tricolour flag in vertical bands on 11 May 1798. The tricolour flag was maintained until 1802, when the Cisalpine Republic was renamed the Napoleonic Italian Republic, and a new flag was adopted.
During the Napoleonic era, the tricolour became a symbol of the unification of Italy. After the fall of Napoleon, the Italian tricolour became the symbol of the patriotic ferments that began to spread in Italy and united the efforts of the Italian people towards freedom and independence. In the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, a state dependent on the Austrian Empire, those who exhibited the Italian tricolour were subject to the death penalty. The tricolour was adopted during the revolutions of 1820, 1830, and 1848, and during the First, Second, and Third Italian Wars of Independence. With the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, the tricolour became the national flag of a united Italy.
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The Austrian Habsburgs
The House of Habsburg, also known as the Habsburg monarchy, was a vast collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties, and other realms ruled by the family of the same name. The history of the Habsburg monarchy can be traced back to the election of Rudolf I as King of Germany in 1273. In 1282, Rudolf I acquired the Duchy of Austria for the Habsburgs, thus establishing the "Austrian hereditary lands".
From 1438 to 1806, with few exceptions, the Habsburg Archduke of Austria was elected as Holy Roman Emperor. The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs from 1440 until their extinction in the male line in 1740. The family split several times into parallel branches, most consequentially in the mid-16th century between its Spanish and German-Austrian branches. The Austrian branch ruled the Holy Roman Empire along with Hungary, Bohemia, and vast other realms of Central and Eastern Europe.
The monarchy began to fracture in the final years of World War I and ultimately disbanded with the proclamation of the Republic of German-Austria and the First Hungarian Republic in late 1918.
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The War of Austrian Succession
In 1713, Charles VI of the Habsburg dynasty issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which ensured that the Habsburg hereditary possessions could be inherited by a daughter. When Charles VI died in 1740, his daughter Maria Theresa succeeded him, but her claim to the throne was not recognized by some European powers, including Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. This led to a power struggle and shifting alliances as countries navigated the balance of power and state-building efforts.
The war officially began on December 16, 1740, when Frederick II of Prussia, also known as Frederick the Great, invaded and quickly occupied the prosperous and strategically located Austrian province of Silesia. Prussia was allied with France, Bavaria, Spain, Sweden, and Saxony. While Austria was supported by Britain, the Dutch Republic, Russia, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was characterized by shifting alliances and power dynamics, with countries forming new alliances based on interests rather than traditional loyalties.
The war consisted of several interconnected conflicts, including the First and Second Silesian Wars, which were fought between Prussia and Austria over control of Silesia. The First Silesian War ended in 1742 with a peace treaty that ceded most of Silesia to Prussia. The Second Silesian War began in 1744 when Prussia invaded Bohemia and ended in 1745 with the Treaty of Dresden, which confirmed Prussia's possession of Silesia.
The war also included colonial conflicts between Britain and France in North America and India. Britain pursued a strategy of naval blockade and bombardment of enemy ports, utilizing its naval power to harass enemy shipping and attack outposts. France, on the other hand, succeeded in overrunning much of western Flanders and captured several towns in the Austrian Netherlands, including Brussels.
The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed in October 1748, officially ended the War of Austrian Succession. The treaty preserved the bulk of the Austrian inheritance for Maria Theresa and recognized her as the ruler of the Monarchy. However, it failed to resolve underlying tensions among European powers, and the unresolved territorial claims contributed to future conflicts such as the Seven Years' War.
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Frequently asked questions
The romanticist who fought to set Italy free from Austrian rule was Alessandro Manzoni. His famous proto-nationalist work, "I Promessi Sposi" (The Betrothed), published in 1827, was widely read as an allegorical criticism of Austrian rule.
"I Promessi Sposi" played a significant role in fostering Italian nationalism. The 1840 version of the novel used a standardized version of the Tuscan dialect, which was a conscious effort by Manzoni to create a unified Italian language.
The unification of Italy was a complex process involving multiple wars, revolutions, and political negotiations. The First Italian War of Independence (1848) and the Third Italian War of Independence (1866) were key conflicts against Austrian rule. Additionally, there were various secret societies and conspiracies, such as the Carbonari, that opposed Austrian influence.
The efforts to unify Italy and remove Austrian rule ultimately succeeded. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861, and the Third Italian War of Independence resulted in the acquisition of the region of Venetia from Austria. However, the process was gradual, and some regions, such as Istria and Dalmatia, remained under the Austro-Hungarian Empire even after the formation of the Kingdom of Italy.
