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Italian unification
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"Risorgimento" redirects here. For the 2011 opera by Lorenzo Ferrero, see Risorgimento! (opera). For the newspaper established by Camillo Cavour, see Il Risorgimento (newspaper).
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Italian unification
Risorgimento
Episodio delle cinque giornate (Baldassare Verazzi).jpg
Five Days of Milan, 18–22 March 1848
Date	1815–1871
Location	Italy
Participants	Italian society, Kingdom of Sardinia, Provisional Government of Milan, Republic of San Marco, Kingdom of Sicily, Roman Republic, Carboneria, French Empire, Red Shirts, Hungarian legion, Southern Army, United Provinces of Central Italy, Kingdom of Italy
Outcome	
Italian revolutions of 1820
Italian revolutions of 1830
Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states
First Italian War of Independence
Second Italian War of Independence
Expedition of the Thousand
Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
Third Italian War of Independence
Capture of Rome
Rome becomes the capital of the Kingdom of Italy
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Italian unification (Italian: Unità d'Italia [uniˈta ddiˈtaːlja]), or the Risorgimento ([risordʒiˈmento], meaning "the Resurgence" or "revival"), was the political and social movement that consolidated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century. The process began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna and was completed in 1871 when Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.[1][2]

The term, which also designates the cultural, political and social movement that promoted unification, recalls the romantic, nationalist and patriotic ideals of an Italian renaissance through the conquest of a unified political identity that, by sinking its ancient roots during the Roman period, "suffered an abrupt halt [or loss] of its political unity in 476 AD after the collapse of the West Roman Empire."[3]

However, some of the terre irredente did not join the Kingdom of Italy until 1918 after Italy defeated Austria-Hungary in World War I. Some nationalists see the 4 November 1918 Armistice of Villa Giusti as the completion of unification.[4]

Contents  [hide] 
1	Background
1.1	French Revolution
1.2	Reaction and dreams 1815–1848
1.3	The Carboneria
1.4	Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi
2	Early revolutionary activity
2.1	Exiles and European and masculine ideals
2.2	Two Sicilies insurrection
2.3	Piedmont insurrection
2.4	1830 insurrections
3	Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian Independence War
3.1	Cavour and the prospects for unification
4	Towards the Kingdom of Italy
4.1	The "Pisacane" fiasco
4.2	The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath
4.3	The Mille expedition
4.4	Defeat of the Kingdom of Naples
4.5	Roman Question
5	Third War of Independence (1866)
6	Rome
6.1	Mentana and Villa Glori
6.2	Memorial
6.3	Capture of Rome
7	Problems
7.1	Ruling and representing southern Italy
8	Historiography
9	Risorgimento and irredentism
9.1	Irredentism and the two World Wars
9.2	After World War II
10	Anniversary of Risorgimento
11	Culture and Risorgimento
11.1	Art
11.2	Literature
11.3	Music
11.4	Films
12	Maps of Italy before and during Italian unification
13	References
14	Bibliography
14.1	Historiography
14.2	Italian
15	External links
Background[edit]
Italy was unified by Rome in the third century BC. For 700 years, it was a kind of territorial extension of the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, enjoying, for a long time, a privileged status and so it was not converted into a province.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy remained united under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and later disputed between the Kingdom of the Lombards and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. Following conquest by the Frankish Empire, the title of King of Italy merged with the office of Holy Roman Emperor. However, the emperor was an absentee German speaking foreigner who had little concern for the governance of Italy as a state; as a result, Italy gradually developed into a system of city-states.

This situation persisted through the Renaissance but began to deteriorate with the rise of modern nation-states in the early modern period. Italy, including the Papal States, then became the site of proxy wars between the major powers, notably the Holy Roman Empire (later Austria), Spain and France.

Harbingers of national unity appeared in the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, and the 15th century foreign policy of Cosimo De Medici and Lorenzo De Medici. Leading Renaissance Italian writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Guicciardini expressed opposition to foreign domination. Petrarch stated that the "ancient valour in Italian hearts is not yet dead" in Italia Mia. Machiavelli later quoted four verses from Italia Mia in The Prince, which looked forward to a political leader who would unite Italy "to free her from the barbarians".[5]

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 formally ended with the rule of the Holy Roman Emperors in Italy. However, the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty, another branch of which provided the Emperors, continued to rule most of Italy down to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).

A sense of Italian national identity was reflected in Gian Rinaldo Carli's Della Patria degli Italiani,[6] written in 1764. It told how a stranger entered a café in Milan and puzzled its occupants by saying that he was neither a foreigner nor a Milanese. "'Then what are you?' they asked. 'I am an Italian,' he explained."[7]

French Revolution[edit]
The Habsburg rule in Italy came to an end with the campaigns of the French Revolutionaries in 1792–97, when a series of client republics were set up. In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by the last emperor, Francis II, after its defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars destroyed the old structures of feudalism in Italy and introduced modern ideas and efficient legal authority; it provided much of the intellectual force and social capital that fueled unification movements for decades after it collapsed in 1814.[8] The French Republic spread republican principles, and the institutions of republican governments promoted citizenship over the rule of the Bourbons and Habsburgs and other dynasties.[9] The reaction against any outside control challenged Napoleon's choice of rulers. As Napoleon's reign began to fail, the rulers he had installed tried to keep their thrones (among them: Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy and Joachim Murat, king of Naples) further feeding nationalistic sentiments. Beauharnais tried to get Austrian approval for his succession to the new Kingdom of Italy, and on 30 March 1815, Murat issued the Rimini Proclamation, which called on Italians to revolt against their Austrian occupiers.

Reaction and dreams 1815–1848[edit]
After Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments. Italy was again controlled largely by the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs,[10] as they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of Italy and were, together, the most powerful force against unification.

An important figure of this period was Francesco Melzi d'Eril, serving as vice-president of the Napoleonic Italian Republic (1802–1805) and consistent supporter of the Italian unification ideals that would lead to the Italian Risorgimento shortly after his death.[11] Meanwhile, artistic and literary sentiment also turned towards nationalism; Vittorio Alfieri, Francesco Lomonaco and Niccolò Tommaseo are generally considered three great literary precursors of Italian nationalism, but the most famous of proto-nationalist works was Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) widely read as a thinly-veiled allegorical critique of Austrian rule. Published in 1827 and extensively revised in the following years the 1840 version of I Promessi Sposi used a standardized version of the Tuscan dialect, a conscious effort by the author to provide a language and force people to learn it.[12]

Exiles dreamed of unification. Three ideals of unification appeared. Vincenzo Gioberti, a Piedmontese priest, had suggested a confederation of Italian states under leadership of the Pope in his 1842 book, Of the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians.[13] Pope Pius IX at first appeared interested but he turned reactionary and led the battle against liberalism and nationalism.[14]

Giuseppe Mazzini and Carlo Cattaneo wanted the unification of Italy under a federal republic. That proved too extreme for most nationalists. The middle position was proposed by Cesare Balbo (1789–1853) as a confederation of separate Italian states led by Piedmont.[15]

The Carboneria[edit]

Italian unification
One of the most influential revolutionary groups was the Carboneria, a secret political discussion group formed in Southern Italy early in the 19th century; the members were called Carbonari. After 1815, Freemasonry in Italy was repressed and discredited due to its French connections. A void was left that the Carboneria filled with a movement that closely resembled Freemasonry but with a commitment to Italian nationalism and no association with Napoleon and his government. The response came from middle class professionals and business men and some intellectuals. The Carboneria disowned Napoleon but nevertheless were inspired by the principles of the French Revolution regarding liberty, equality and fraternity. They developed their own rituals, and were strongly anticlerical. The Carboneria movement spread across Italy.[16]

Conservative governments feared the Carboneria, imposing stiff penalties on men discovered to be members. Nevertheless, the movement survived and continued to be a source of political turmoil in Italy from 1820 until after unification. The Carbonari condemned Napoleon III (who, as a young man, had fought on the side of the Carbonari) to death for failing to unite Italy, and the group almost succeeded in assassinating him in 1858, when Felice Orsini, Giovanni Andrea Pieri, Carlo Di Rudio and Andrea Gomez launched three bombs at him. Many leaders of the unification movement were at one time or other members of this organization. The chief purpose was to defeat tyranny and to establish constitutional government. Though contributing some service to the cause of Italian unity, historians such as Cornelia Shiver doubt that their achievements were proportional to their pretensions.[17]

Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi[edit]

Garibaldi and Cavour making Italy in a satirical cartoon of 1861
Many leading Carbonari revolutionaries wanted a republic,[18] two of the most prominent being Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini's activity in revolutionary movements caused him to be imprisoned soon after he joined. While in prison, he concluded that Italy could − and therefore should − be unified and formulated his program for establishing a free, independent, and republican nation with Rome as its capital. Following his release in 1831, he went to Marseille in France, where he organized a new political society called La Giovine Italia (Young Italy), whose motto was "Dio e Popolo" (God and People), which sought the unification of Italy.[19]

Garibaldi, a native of Nice (then part of France) participated in an uprising in Piedmont in 1834 and was sentenced to death but he escaped to South America, spending fourteen years in exile, taking part in several wars and learning the art of guerrilla warfare before his return to Italy in 1848.[20]

Early revolutionary activity[edit]

Guglielmo Pepe

The Arrest of Silvio Pellico and Piero Maroncelli, Saluzzo, civic museum
Exiles and European and masculine ideals[edit]
Many of the key intellectual and political leaders operated from exile; most Risorgimento patriots lived and published their work abroad after successive failed revolutions. Exile became a central theme of the foundational legacy of the Risorgimento as the narrative of the Italian nation fighting for independence.[21] The exiles were deeply immersed in European ideas, and often hammered away at what Europeans saw as Italian vices, especially effeminacy and indolence. These negative stereotypes emerged from Enlightenment notions of national character that stressed the influence of the environment and history on a people's moral predisposition. Italian exiles both challenged and embraced the stereotypes and typically presented gendered interpretations of Italy's political "degeneration". They called for a masculine response to feminine weaknesses as the basis of a national regeneration, and fashioned their image of the future Italian nation firmly in the standards of European nationalism.[22]

Two Sicilies insurrection[edit]
In 1820, Spaniards successfully revolted over disputes about their Constitution, which influenced the development of a similar movement in Italy. Inspired by the Spaniards (who, in 1812, had created their constitution), a regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, commanded by Guglielmo Pepe, a Carbonaro (member of the secret republican organisation),[23] mutinied, conquering the peninsular part of Two Sicilies. The king, Ferdinand I, agreed to enact a new constitution. The revolutionaries, though, failed to court popular support and fell to Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance. Ferdinand abolished the constitution and began systematically persecuting known revolutionaries. Many supporters of revolution in Sicily, including the scholar Michele Amari, were forced into exile during the decades that followed.[24]

Piedmont insurrection[edit]
The leader of the 1821 revolutionary movement in Piedmont was Santorre di Santarosa, who wanted to remove the Austrians and unify Italy under the House of Savoy. The Piedmont revolt started in Alessandria, where troops adopted the green, white, and red tricolore of the Cisalpine Republic. The king's regent, prince Charles Albert, acting while the king Charles Felix was away, approved a new constitution to appease the revolutionaries, but when the king returned he disavowed the constitution and requested assistance from the Holy Alliance. Di Santarosa's troops were defeated, and the would-be Piedmontese revolutionary fled to Paris.[25]

In Milan, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli organised several attempts to weaken the hold of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means. In October 1820, Pellico and Maroncelli were arrested on the charge of carbonarism and imprisoned.[26]

1830 insurrections[edit]
Historian Denis Mack Smith argues that:

Few people in 1830, believed that an Italian nation might exist. There were eight states in the peninsula, each with distinct laws and traditions. No one had had the desire or the resources to revive Napoleon's partial experiment in unification. The settlement of 1814–15, had merely restored regional divisions, with the added disadvantage that the decisive victory of Austria over France temporarily hindered Italians in playing off their former oppressors against each other. ... Italians who, like Ugo Foscolo and Gabriele Rossetti, harboured patriotic sentiments, were driven into exile. The largest Italian state, the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with its 8 million inhabitants, seemed aloof and indifferent: Sicily and Naples had once formed part of Spain, and it had always been foreign to the rest of Italy. The common people in each region, and even the intellectual elite, spoke their mutually unintelligible dialects, and lacked the least vestiges of national consciousness. They wanted good government, not self-government, and had welcomed Napoleon and the French as more equitable and efficient than their native dynasties.[27]


Ciro Menotti
After 1830, revolutionary sentiment in favour of a unified Italy began to experience a resurgence, and a series of insurrections laid the groundwork for the creation of one nation along the Italian peninsula.

The Duke of Modena, Francis IV, was an ambitious noble, and he hoped to become king of Northern Italy by increasing his territory. In 1826, Francis made it clear that he would not act against those who subverted opposition toward the unification of Italy. Encouraged by the declaration, revolutionaries in the region began to organize.

During the July Revolution of 1830 in France, revolutionaries forced the king to abdicate and created the July Monarchy with encouragement from the new French king, Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe had promised revolutionaries such as Ciro Menotti that he would intervene if Austria tried to interfere in Italy with troops. Fearing he would lose his throne, Louis-Philippe did not, however, intervene in Menotti's planned uprising. The Duke of Modena abandoned his Carbonari supporters, arrested Menotti and other conspirators in 1831, and once again conquered his duchy with help from the Austrian troops. Menotti was executed, and the idea of a revolution centered in Modena faded.

At the same time, other insurrections arose in the Papal Legations of Bologna, Forlì, Ravenna, Imola, Ferrara, Pesaro and Urbino. These successful revolutions, which adopted the tricolore in favour of the Papal flag, quickly spread to cover all the Papal Legations, and their newly installed local governments proclaimed the creation of a united Italian nation. The revolts in Modena and the Papal Legations inspired similar activity in the Duchy of Parma, where the tricolore flag was adopted. The Parmese duchess Marie Louise left the city during the political upheaval.

Insurrected provinces planned to unite as the Province Italiane unite (United Italian Provinces), which prompted Pope Gregory XVI to ask for Austrian help against the rebels. Austrian Chancellor Metternich warned Louis-Philippe that Austria had no intention of letting Italian matters be, and that French intervention would not be tolerated. Louis-Philippe withheld any military help and even arrested Italian patriots living in France.

In early 1831, the Austrian army began its march across the Italian peninsula, slowly crushing resistance in each province that had revolted. This military action suppressed much of the fledgling revolutionary movement, and resulted in the arrest of many radical leaders.[28]

Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian Independence War[edit]
Main articles: Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states and First Italian War of Independence

Execution of the Bandiera Brothers
In 1844, two brothers from Venice, Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, members of the Giovine Italia, planned to make a raid on the Calabrian coast against the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in support of Italian Unification. They assembled a band of about twenty men ready to sacrifice their lives, and set sail on their venture on 12 June 1844. Four days later they landed near Crotone, intending to go to Cosenza, liberate the political prisoners and issue their proclamations. Tragically for the Bandiera brothers, they did not find the insurgent band they were told awaited them, so they moved towards La Sila. They were ultimately betrayed by one of their party, the Corsican Pietro Boccheciampe, and by some peasants who believed them to be Turkish pirates. A detachment of gendarmes and volunteers were sent against them, and after a short fight the whole band was taken prisoner and escorted to Cosenza, where a number of Calabrians who had taken part in a previous rising were also under arrest. The Bandiera brothers and their nine companions were executed by firing squad; some accounts state they cried "Viva l’Italia!" ("Long live Italy!") as they fell. The moral effect was enormous throughout Italy, the action of the authorities was universally condemned, and the martyrdom of the Bandiera brothers bore fruit in the subsequent revolutions.[29]


Ruggero Settimo
On 5 January 1848, the revolutionary disturbances began with a civil disobedience strike in Lombardy, as citizens stopped smoking cigars and playing the lottery, which denied Austria the associated tax revenue. Shortly after this, revolts began on the island of Sicily and in Naples. In Sicily the revolt resulted in the proclamation of the Kingdom of Sicily with Ruggero Settimo as Chairman of the independent state until 1849 when the Bourbon army took back full control of the island on 15 May 1849 by force.[30]

In February 1848, there were revolts in Tuscany that were relatively nonviolent, after which Grand Duke Leopold II granted the Tuscans a constitution. A breakaway republican provisional government formed in Tuscany during February shortly after this concession. On 21 February, Pope Pius IX granted a constitution to the Papal States, which was both unexpected and surprising considering the historical recalcitrance of the Papacy. On 23 February 1848, King Louis Philippe of France was forced to flee Paris, and a republic was proclaimed. By the time the revolution in Paris occurred, three states of Italy had constitutions—four if one considers Sicily to be a separate state.


Battle of Goito
Meanwhile, in Lombardy, tensions increased until the Milanese and Venetians rose in revolt on 18 March 1848. The insurrection in Milan succeeded in expelling the Austrian garrison after five days of street fights – 18–22 March (Cinque giornate di Milano). An Austrian army under Marshal Josef Radetzky besieged Milan, but due to defection of many of his troops and the support of the Milanese for the revolt, they were forced to retreat.

Soon, Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia (who ruled Piedmont and Savoy), urged by the Venetians and Milanese to aid their cause, decided this was the moment to unify Italy and declared war on Austria (First Italian Independence War). After initial successes at Goito and Peschiera, he was decisively defeated by Radetzky at the Battle of Custoza on 24 July. An armistice was agreed to, and Radetzky regained control of all of Lombardy-Venetia save Venice itself, where the Republic of San Marco was proclaimed under Daniele Manin.

While Radetzky consolidated control of Lombardy-Venetia and Charles Albert licked his wounds, matters took a more serious turn in other parts of Italy. The monarchs who had reluctantly agreed to constitutions in March came into conflict with their constitutional ministers. At first, the republics had the upper hand, forcing the monarchs to flee their capitals, including Pope Pius IX.


Giuseppe Mazzini
Initially, Pius IX had been something of a reformer, but conflicts with the revolutionaries soured him on the idea of constitutional government. In November 1848, following the assassination of his Minister Pellegrino Rossi, Pius IX fled just before Giuseppe Garibaldi and other patriots arrived in Rome. In early 1849, elections were held for a Constituent Assembly, which proclaimed a Roman Republic on 9 February. On 2 February 1849, at a political rally held in the Apollo Theater, a young Roman priest, the Abbé Carlo Arduini, had made a speech in which he had declared that the temporal power of the popes was a "historical lie, a political imposture, and a religious immorality."[31] In early March 1849, Giuseppe Mazzini arrived in Rome and was appointed Chief Minister. In the Constitution of the Roman Republic,[32] religious freedom was guaranteed by article 7, the independence of the pope as head of the Catholic Church was guaranteed by article 8 of the Principi fondamentali, while the death penalty was abolished by article 5, and free public education was provided by article 8 of the Titolo I.


Daniele Manin and Niccolò Tommaseo after the proclamation of the Republic of San Marco
Before the powers could respond to the founding of the Roman Republic, Charles Albert, whose army had been trained by the exiled Polish general Albert Chrzanowski, renewed the war with Austria. He was quickly defeated by Radetzky at Novara on 23 March 1849. Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II, and Piedmontese ambitions to unite Italy or conquer Lombardy were, for the moment, brought to an end. The war ended with a treaty signed on 9 August. A popular revolt broke out in Brescia on the same day as the defeat at Novara, but was suppressed by the Austrians ten days later.

There remained the Roman and Venetian Republics. In April, a French force under Charles Oudinot was sent to Rome. Apparently, the French first wished to mediate between the Pope and his subjects, but soon the French were determined to restore the Pope. After a two-month siege, Rome capitulated on 29 June 1849 and the Pope was restored. Garibaldi and Mazzini once again fled into exile—in 1850 Garibaldi went to New York City. Meanwhile, the Austrians besieged Venice defended by a volunteer army led by Daniele Manin and Guglielmo Pepe, which were forced to surrender on 24 August. Pro-independence fighters were hanged en masse in Belfiore, while the Austrians moved to restore order in central Italy, restoring the princes who had been expelled and establishing their control over the Papal Legations. The revolutions were thus completely crushed.[33]

Cavour and the prospects for unification[edit]
Morale was of course badly weakened, but the dream of Risorgimento did not die. Instead, the Italian patriots learned some lessons that made them much more effective at the next opportunity in 1860. Military weakness was glaring, as the small Italian states were completely outmatched by France and Austria. France was a potential ally, and the patriots realized they had to focus all their attention on expelling Austria first, with a willingness to give the French whatever they wanted in return for essential military intervention. The French in fact received Savoy and Nice in 1860. Secondly, the patriots realized that the Pope was an enemy, and could never be the leader of a united Italy. Third they realized that republicanism was too weak a force. Unification had to be based on a strong monarchy, and in practice that meant reliance on Piedmont (the Kingdom of Sardinia) under King Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878) of the House of Savoy. Count Cavour (1810 – 1861) provided critical leadership. He was a modernizer interested in agrarian improvements, banks, railways and free trade. He opened a newspaper as soon as censorship allowed it: Il Risorgimento called for the independence of Italy, a league of Italian princes, and moderate reforms. He had the ear of the king and in 1852 became prime minister. He ran an efficient active government, promoting rapid economic modernization while upgrading the administration of the army and the financial and legal systems. He sought out support from patriots across Italy. In 1855, the kingdom became an ally of Britain and France in the Crimean war, which gave Cavour's diplomacy legitimacy in the eyes of the great powers.[34][35]

Towards the Kingdom of Italy[edit]
The "Pisacane" fiasco[edit]
In 1857, Carlo Pisacane, an aristocrat from Naples who had embraced Mazzini's ideas, decided to provoke a rising in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His small force landed on the island of Ponza. It overpowered guards and liberated hundreds of prisoners. In sharp contrast to his hypothetical expectations, there was no local uprising and the invaders were quickly overpowered. Pisacane was killed by angry locals who suspected he was leading a gypsy band trying to steal their food.[36]

The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath[edit]
Main article: Second Italian War of Independence

King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, 1st Prime Minister of Italy
The 2nd War of Italian Independence began in April 1859 when the Sardinian Prime Minister Count Cavour found an ally in Napoleon III. Napoleon III signed a secret alliance and Cavour provoked Austria with military maneuvers and eventually created the war in April 1859. Cavour called for volunteers to enlist in the Italian liberation. The Austrians planned to use their army to beat the Sardinians before the French could come to their aid. Austria had an army of 140,000 men, while the Sardinians had a mere 70,000. This proved less important than it first appeared, however, as Emperor Franz Josef had chosen his officers based on their aristocratic titles and lineage instead of their personal merit. This strategy was no doubt socially acceptable, but the emperor soon discovered blue blood was a remarkably poor guarantor of military victory. Instead of swiftly entering the capital of Sardinia, the Austrian army crawled, taking almost ten days to travel the 80 kilometres (50 mi). By this time, the French had reinforced the Sardinians, so the Austrians retreated. Napoleon III's plans worked and at the battle of Solferino, France defeated Austria and forced negotiations. The settlement, by which Lombardy was annexed to Sardinia, left Austria in control of Venice. Sardinia eventually won the Second War of Italian Unification due to statesmanship instead of armies or popular election. The final arrangement was ironed out by "back-room" deals instead of in the battlefield. This was because neither France, Austria, nor Sardinia wanted to risk another battle and could not handle further fighting. All of the sides were eventually unhappy with the final outcome of the 2nd War of Italian Unification and expected another conflict in the future.[37]

The Mille expedition[edit]
Main article: Expedition of the Thousand

Giuseppe Garibaldi
Thus, by early 1860, only five states remained in Italy—the Austrians in Venetia, the Papal States (now minus the Legations), the new expanded Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and San Marino.[38][39][40]

Francis II of the Two Sicilies, the son and successor of Ferdinand II (the infamous "King Bomba"), had a well-organized army of 150,000 men. But his father's tyranny had inspired many secret societies, and the kingdom's Swiss Mercenaries were unexpectedly recalled home under the terms of a new Swiss law that forbade Swiss citizens to serve as mercenaries. This left Francis with only his mostly-unreliable native troops. It was a critical opportunity for the unification movement. In April 1860, separate insurrections began in Messina and Palermo in Sicily, both of which had demonstrated a history of opposing Neapolitan rule. These rebellions were easily suppressed by loyal troops.

In the meantime, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a native of Nice, was deeply resentful of the French annexation of his home city. He hoped to use his supporters to regain the territory. Cavour, terrified of Garibaldi provoking a war with France, persuaded Garibaldi to instead use his forces in the Sicilian rebellions. On 6 May 1860, Garibaldi and his cadre of about a thousand Italian volunteers (called I Mille), steamed from Quarto near Genoa, and, after a stop in Talamone on 11 May, landed near Marsala on the west coast of Sicily.

Near Salemi, Garibaldi's army attracted scattered bands of rebels, and the combined forces defeated the opposing army at Calatafimi on 13 May. Within three days, the invading force had swelled to 4,000 men. On 14 May Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel. After waging various successful but hard-fought battles, Garibaldi advanced upon the Sicilian capital of Palermo, announcing his arrival by beacon-fires kindled at night. On 27 May the force laid siege to the Porta Termini of Palermo, while a mass uprising of street and barricade fighting broke out within the city.


Battle of Calatafimi
With Palermo deemed insurgent, Neapolitan general Ferdinando Lanza, arriving in Sicily with some 25,000 troops, furiously bombarded Palermo nearly to ruins. With the intervention of a British admiral, an armistice was declared, leading to the Neapolitan troops' departure and surrender of the town to Garibaldi and his much smaller army. In Palermo was created the Dictatorship of Garibaldi.

This resounding success demonstrated the weakness of the Neapolitan government. Garibaldi's fame spread and many Italians began to consider him a national hero. Doubt, confusion, and dismay overtook the Neapolitan court—the king hastily summoned his ministry and offered to restore an earlier constitution, but these efforts failed to rebuild the peoples' trust in Bourbon governance.

Six weeks after the surrender of Palermo, Garibaldi attacked Messina. Within a week, its citadel surrendered. Having conquered Sicily, Garibaldi proceeded to the mainland, crossing the Strait of Messina with the Neapolitan fleet at hand. The garrison at Reggio Calabria promptly surrendered. As he marched northward, the populace everywhere hailed him, and military resistance faded: on 18 and 21 August, the people of Basilicata and Apulia, two regions of the Kingdom of Naples, independently declared their annexation to the Kingdom of Italy. At the end of August, Garibaldi was at Cosenza, and, on 5 September, at Eboli, near Salerno. Meanwhile, Naples had declared a state of siege, and on 6 September the king gathered the 4,000 troops still faithful to him and retreated over the Volturno river. The next day, Garibaldi, with a few followers, entered by train into Naples, where the people openly welcomed him.[41]

Defeat of the Kingdom of Naples[edit]

People cheering as Garibaldi enters Naples
Though Garibaldi had easily taken the capital, the Neapolitan army had not joined the rebellion en masse, holding firm along the Volturno River. Garibaldi's irregular bands of about 25,000 men could not drive away the king or take the fortresses of Capua and Gaeta without the help of the Sardinian army. The Sardinian army, however, could only arrive by traversing the Papal States, which extended across the entire center of the peninsula. Ignoring the political will of the Holy See, Garibaldi announced his intent to proclaim a "Kingdom of Italy" from Rome, the capital city of Pope Pius IX. Seeing this as a threat to the domain of the Catholic Church, Pius threatened excommunication for those who supported such an effort. Afraid that Garibaldi would attack Rome, Catholics worldwide sent money and volunteers for the Papal Army, which was commanded by General Louis Lamoricière, a French exile.


Battle of Volturno
The settling of the peninsular standoff now rested with Napoleon III. If he let Garibaldi have his way, Garibaldi would likely end the temporal sovereignty of the Pope and make Rome the capital of Italy. Napoleon, however, may have arranged with Cavour to let the king of Sardinia free to take possession of Naples, Umbria and the other provinces, provided that Rome and the "Patrimony of St. Peter" were left intact.[42]

It was in this situation that a Sardinian force of two army corps, under Fanti and Cialdini, marched to the frontier of the Papal States, its objective being not Rome but Naples. The Papal troops under Lamoricière advanced against Cialdini, but were quickly defeated and besieged in the fortress of Ancona, finally surrendering on 29 September. On 9 October, Victor Emmanuel arrived and took command. There was no longer a papal army to oppose him, and the march southward proceeded unopposed.


Victor Emmanuel meets Garibaldi near Teano
Garibaldi distrusted the pragmatic Cavour, particularly due to Cavour's role in the French annexation of Nice, Garibaldi's birthplace. Nevertheless, he accepted the command of Victor Emmanuel. When the king entered Sessa Aurunca at the head of his army, Garibaldi willingly handed over his dictatorial power. After greeting Victor Emmanuel in Teano with the title of King of Italy, Garibaldi entered Naples riding beside the king. Garibaldi then retired to the island of Caprera, while the remaining work of unifying the peninsula was left to Victor Emmanuel.

The progress of the Sardinian army compelled Francis II to give up his line along the river, and he eventually took refuge with his best troops in the fortress of Gaeta. His courage boosted by his resolute young wife, Duchess Marie Sophie of Bavaria, Francis mounted a stubborn defence that lasted three months. But European allies refused him aid, food and munitions became scarce, and disease set in, so the garrison was forced to surrender. Nonetheless, ragtag groups of Neapolitans loyal to Francis fought on against the Italian government for years to come.

The fall of Gaeta brought the unification movement to the brink of fruition—only Rome and Venetia remained to be added. On 18 February 1861, Victor Emmanuel assembled the deputies of the first Italian Parliament in Turin. On 17 March 1861, the Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, and on 27 March 1861 Rome was declared Capital of Italy, even though it was not actually in the new Kingdom.[43]

Three months later Cavour, having seen his life's work nearly complete, died. When he was given the last rites, Cavour purportedly said: "Italy is made. All is safe."[44]


Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
Roman Question[edit]
Main article: Roman Question
Mazzini was discontent with the perpetuation of monarchical government and continued to agitate for a republic. With the motto "Free from the Alps to the Adriatic", the unification movement set its gaze on Rome and Venice. There were obstacles, however. A challenge against the Pope's temporal dominion was viewed with great distrust by Catholics around the world, and there were French troops stationed in Rome. Victor Emmanuel was wary of the international repercussions of attacking the Papal States, and discouraged his subjects from participating in revolutionary ventures with such intentions.[45]


The Injured Garibaldi in the Aspromonte Mountains (oil on canvas), credited to Gerolamo Induno
Nonetheless, Garibaldi believed that the government would support him if he attacked Rome. Frustrated at inaction by the king, and bristling over perceived snubs, he came out of retirement to organize a new venture. In June 1862, he sailed from Genoa and landed again at Palermo, where he gathered volunteers for the campaign, under the slogan o Roma o Morte ("either Rome or Death"). The garrison of Messina, loyal to the king's instructions, barred their passage to the mainland. Garibaldi's force, now numbering two thousand, turned south and set sail from Catania. Garibaldi declared that he would enter Rome as a victor or perish beneath its walls. He landed at Melito on 14 August and marched at once into the Calabrian mountains.

Far from supporting this endeavour, the Italian government was quite disapproving. General Cialdini dispatched a division of the regular army, under Colonel Pallavicino, against the volunteer bands. On 28 August the two forces met in the Aspromonte. One of the regulars fired a chance shot, and several volleys followed, but Garibaldi forbade his men to return fire on fellow subjects of the Kingdom of Italy. The volunteers suffered several casualties, and Garibaldi himself was wounded; many were taken prisoner. Garibaldi was taken by steamer to Varignano, where he was honorably imprisoned for a time, but finally released.[46]

Meanwhile, Victor Emmanuel sought a safer means to the acquisition of the remaining Papal territory. He negotiated with the Emperor Napoleon for the removal of the French troops from Rome through a treaty. They agreed to the September Convention in September 1864, by which Napoleon agreed to withdraw the troops within two years. The Pope was to expand his own army during that time so as to be self-sufficient. In December 1866, the last of the French troops departed from Rome, in spite of the efforts of the pope to retain them. By their withdrawal, Italy (excluding Venetia and Savoy) was freed from the presence of foreign soldiers.[47]

The seat of government was moved in 1865 from Turin, the old Sardinian capital, to Florence, where the first Italian parliament was summoned. This arrangement created such disturbances in Turin that the king was forced to leave that city hastily for his new capital.[48]

Third War of Independence (1866)[edit]
Main article: Third Italian War of Independence

Battle of Custoza
In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Austria contested with Prussia the position of leadership among the German states. The Kingdom of Italy seized the opportunity to capture Venetia from Austrian rule and allied itself with Prussia.[49] Austria tried to persuade the Italian government to accept Venetia in exchange for non-intervention. However, on 8 April, Italy and Prussia signed an agreement that supported Italy's acquisition of Venetia, and on 20 June Italy declared war on Austria. Within the context of Italian unification, the Austro-Prussian war is called Third Independence War, after the First (1848) and the Second (1859).[50]

Victor Emmanuel hastened to lead an army across the Mincio to the invasion of Venetia, while Garibaldi was to invade the Tyrol with his Hunters of the Alps. The enterprise ended in disaster. The Italian army encountered the Austrians at Custoza on 24 June and suffered a defeat. On 20 July the Regia Marina was defeated in the battle of Lissa. Italy's fortunes were not all so dismal, though. The following day, Garibaldi's volunteers defeated an Austrian force in the battle of Bezzecca, and moved toward Trento.[51]

Meanwhile, Prussian Minister President Otto von Bismarck saw that his own ends in the war had been achieved, and signed an armistice with Austria on 27 July. Italy officially laid down its arms on 12 August. Garibaldi was recalled from his successful march and resigned with a brief telegram reading only "Obbedisco" ("I obey").


Victor Emmanuel II in Venice
In spite of Italy's poor showing, Prussia's success on the northern front obliged Austria to cede Venetia. Under the terms of a peace treaty signed in Vienna on 12 October, Emperor Franz Joseph had already agreed to cede Venetia to Napoleon III in exchange for non-intervention in the Austro-Prussian War, and thus Napoleon ceded Venetia to Italy on 19 October, in exchange for the earlier Italian acquiescence to the French annexation of Savoy and Nice.

In the peace treaty of Vienna, it was written that the annexation of Venetia would have become effective only after a referendum—taken on 21 and 22 October—to let the Venetian people express their will about being annexed or not to the Kingdom of Italy. Historians suggest that the referendum in Venetia was held under military pressure,[52] as a mere 0.01% of voters (69 out of more than 642,000 ballots) voted against the annexation.[53] However it should be admitted that the re-establishment of a Republic of Venice orphan of Istria and Dalmatia had little chances to develop.

Austrian forces put up some opposition to the invading Italians, to little effect. Victor Emmanuel entered Venice and Venetian land, and performed an act of homage in the Piazza San Marco.[54]

Rome[edit]
Mentana and Villa Glori[edit]

Garibaldi at Mentana, 3 November 1867
The national party, with Garibaldi at its head, still aimed at the possession of Rome, as the historic capital of the peninsula. In 1867 Garibaldi made a second attempt to capture Rome, but the papal army, strengthened with a new French auxiliary force, defeated his poorly armed volunteers at Mentana. Subsequently, a French garrison remained in Civitavecchia until August 1870, when it was recalled following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.

Before the defeat at Mentana, Enrico Cairoli, his brother Giovanni and 70 companions had made a daring attempt to take Rome. The group had embarked in Terni and floated down the Tiber. Their arrival in Rome was to coincide with an uprising inside the city. On 22 October 1867, the revolutionaries inside Rome seized control of the Capitoline Hill and of Piazza Colonna. Unfortunately for the Cairolis and their companions, by the time they arrived at Villa Glori, on the northern outskirts of Rome, the uprising had already been suppressed. During the night of 22 October 1867, the group was surrounded by Papal Zouaves, and Giovanni was severely wounded. Enrico was mortally wounded and bled to death in Giovanni's arms.

With the Cairoli dead, command was assumed by Giovanni Tabacchi who had retreated with the remaining volunteers into the villa, where they continued to fire at the papal soldiers. These also retreated in the evening to Rome. The survivors retreated to the positions of Garibaldi on the Italian border.

Memorial[edit]
At the summit of Villa Glori, near the spot where Enrico died, there is a plain white column dedicated to the Cairoli brothers and their 70 companions. About 100 meters to the left from the top of the Spanish Steps, there is a bronze monument of Giovanni holding the dying Enrico in his arm. A plaque lists the names of their companions. Giovanni never recovered from his wounds and from the tragic events of 1867. According to an eyewitness,[55] when Giovanni died on 11 September 1869:

In the last moments, he had a vision of Garibaldi and seemed to greet him with enthusiasm. I heard (so says a friend who was present) him say three times: "The union of the French to the papal political supporters was the terrible fact!" he was thinking about Mentana. Many times he called Enrico, that he might help him! then he said: "but we will certainly win; we will go to Rome!"

Capture of Rome[edit]
Main article: Capture of Rome

Capture of Rome
In July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War began. In early August, the French Emperor Napoleon III recalled his garrison from Rome, thus no longer providing protection to the Papal State. Widespread public demonstrations illustrated the demand that the Italian government take Rome. The Italian government took no direct action until the collapse of the Second French Empire at the Battle of Sedan. King Victor Emmanuel II sent Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino to Pius IX with a personal letter offering a face-saving proposal that would have allowed the peaceful entry of the Italian Army into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the pope. The Papacy, however, exhibited something less than enthusiasm for the plan:

The Pope's reception of San Martino (10 September 1870) was unfriendly. Pius IX allowed violent outbursts to escape him. Throwing the King's letter upon the table he exclaimed, "Fine loyalty! You are all a set of vipers, of whited sepulchres, and wanting in faith." He was perhaps alluding to other letters received from the King. After, growing calmer, he exclaimed: "I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!" San Martino was so mortified that he left the next day.[56]

The Italian Army, commanded by General Raffaele Cadorna, crossed the papal frontier on 11 September and advanced slowly toward Rome, hoping that a peaceful entry could be negotiated. The Italian Army reached the Aurelian Walls on 19 September and placed Rome under a state of siege. Although now convinced of his unavoidable defeat, Pius IX remained intransigent to the bitter end and forced his troops to put up a token resistance. On 20 September, after a cannonade of three hours had breached the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pia, the Bersaglieri entered Rome and marched down Via Pia, which was subsequently renamed Via XX Settembre. 49 Italian soldiers and four officers, and 19 papal troops died. Rome and Latium were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy after a plebiscite held on 2 October. The results of this plebiscite were accepted by decree of 9 October.


The Quirinal Palace in Rome became the head of state of Italy's official residence (royal residence of the Kings of Italy and after the Italian constitutional referendum, 1946 residence and workplace for the Presidents of the Italian Republic)
Initially the Italian government had offered to let the pope keep the Leonine City, but the Pope rejected the offer because acceptance would have been an implied endorsement of the legitimacy of the Italian kingdom's rule over his former domain. Pius IX declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican, although he was not actually restrained from coming and going. Rather, being deposed and stripped of much of his former power also removed a measure of personal protection — if he had walked the streets of Rome he might have been in danger from political opponents who had formerly kept their views private. Officially, the capital was not moved from Florence to Rome until July 1871.[57]

Historian Raffaele de Cesare made the following observations about Italian unification:

The Roman question was the stone tied to Napoleon's feet — that dragged him into the abyss. He never forgot, even in August 1870, a month before Sedan, that he was a sovereign of a Catholic country, that he had been made Emperor, and was supported by the votes of the Conservatives and the influence of the clergy; and that it was his supreme duty not to abandon the Pontiff.[58]

For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations…. Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured.[59]

Problems[edit]
Unification was achieved entirely in terms of Piedmont's interests. Martin Clark says, "It was Piedmontization all around."[60] Cavour died unexpectedly in June 1861, at 50, and most of the many promises that he made to regional authorities to induce them to join the new kingdom of Italy were ignored. The new Kingdom of Italy was structured by renaming the old Kingdom of Sardinia and annexing all the new provinces into its structures. The first king was Victor Emmanuel II and kept his old title.

National and regional officials were all appointed by Piedmont. A few regional leaders succeeded to high positions in the new national government, but the top bureaucratic and military officials were mostly Piedmontese. The national capital was briefly moved to Florence and finally to Rome, one of the cases of Piedmont losing out.

However, Piedmontese tax rates and regulations, diplomats and officials were imposed on all of Italy. The new constitution was Piedmont's old constitution, which was generally liberal and was welcomed by liberal elements. However its anticlerical provisions were resented in the pro-clerical regions around Venice and Rome and in Sicily and south of Naples. Cavour had promised there would be regional and municipal, local governments, but all the promises were broken in 1861.

The first decade of the kingdom saw savage civil wars in Sicily and in the Naples region. Hearder claimed that failed efforts to protest unification involved "a mixture of spontaneous peasant movement and a Bourbon-clerical reaction directed by the old authorities."[61]

The pope lost Rome in 1870 and ordered the Catholic Church not to co-operate with the new government, a decision fully reversed only in 1929.[62] Most of those for Risorgimento had wanted strong provinces, but they got a strong central state instead. The inevitable long-run results were a severe weakness of national unity, and a politicized system based on mutually-hostile regions hostiless. Such factors remain in the 21st century.[63]

Ruling and representing southern Italy[edit]
From the spring of 1860 to the summer of 1861, a major challenge that the Piedmontese parliament faced on national unification was how they should govern and control the southern regions of the country that were frequently represented and described by northern Italian correspondents as "corrupt," "barbaric" and "uncivilized".[64] In response to the depictions of southern Italy, the Piedmontese parliament had to decide whether it should investigate the southern regions to understand the social and political situations there better or it should establish jurisdiction and order by using mostly force.[65]

The dominance of letters sent from the Northern Italian correspondents that deemed Southern Italy to be "so far from the ideas of progress and civilization" ultimately induced the Piedmontese parliament to choose the latter course of action, which effectively illustrated the intimate connection between representation and rule.[66] In essence, the Northern Italians' "representation of the south as a land of barbarism (variously qualified as indecent, lacking in "public conscience," ignorant, superstitious, etc.)" provided the Piedmontese with the justification to rule the southern regions on the pretext of implementing a superior, more civilized, "Piedmontese morality".[66]

Historiography[edit]
See also: Brigantaggio

Caricature of the Post-Risorgimento: Italia Turrita at the centre points out to Enrico Cialdini (on the right) all her enemies around Napoleon III (turned into a tree): from the left, Pope Pius IX, Bourbons, clergy, and brigands. In the background, Garibaldi plows his farm.
Italian unification is still a topic of debate. According to Massimo d'Azeglio, centuries of foreign domination created remarkable differences in Italian society, and the role of the newly formed government was to face these differences and to create a unified Italian society. Still today the most famous quote of Massimo d'Azeglio is, "L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani" (Italy has been made. Now it remains to make Italians).[67]


Massimo d'Azeglio
The economist and politician Francesco Saverio Nitti criticized the newly created state for not taking in to consideration the substantial economic differences between Northern Italy, a free market economy, and Southern Italy, a state protectionism economy, when integrating the two. When the Kingdom of Italy extended the free market economy to the rest of the country, the South's economy collapsed under the weight of the North's. Nitti contended that this change should have been much more gradual in order to allow the birth of an adequate entrepreneurial class able to make strong investments and initiatives in the south. These mistakes, he felt, were the cause of the economic and social problems which came to be known as the Southern Question (Questione Meridionale).[68][69]

The politician, historian, and writer Gaetano Salvemini commented that even though Italian Unification had been a strong opportunity for both a moral and economic rebirth of Italy's Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy), due to lack of understanding and action on the part of politicians, corruption and organized crime flourished in the South.[70] The Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci criticized Italian Unification for the limited presence of the masses in politics, as well as the lack of modern land reform in Italy.[71]

Revisionism of Risorgimento produced a clear radicalization of Italy in the mid-twentieth century, following the fall of the Savoy monarchy and fascism during World War II. Reviews of the historical facts concerning Italian unification's successes and failures continue to be undertaken by domestic and foreign academic authors, including Denis Mack Smith, Christopher Duggan, and Lucy Riall. Recent work emphasizes the central importance of nationalism.[72][73]

Risorgimento and irredentism[edit]
The process of unification of the Italian people in a national state was not completed in the nineteenth century. Many Italians remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy and this situation created the Italian irredentism.

Italia irredenta (Unredeemed Italy) was an Italian nationalist opinion movement that emerged after Italian unification. It advocated irredentism among the Italian people as well as other nationalities who were willing to become Italian and as a movement; it is also known as "Italian irredentism". Not a formal organization, it was just an opinion movement that claimed that Italy had to reach its "natural borders". Similar patriotic and nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the 19th century.[74]

Irredentism and the two World Wars[edit]

The Vittoriano in Rome, honoring King Victor Emmanuel and celebrating the unity of Italy. The decision to build it was reached in 1878, shortly after the king's death that year; the site on the Capitoline Hill was chosen in 1882; and the design of 28-year-old Giuseppe Sacconi was selected in 1884. Construction began in 1885 and the monument was inaugurated in 1911, although features were subsequently added or altered during the fascist period.
During the post-unification era, some Italians were dissatisfied with the current state of the Italian Kingdom since they wanted the kingdom to include Trieste, Istria, and other adjacent territories, as well. This Italian irredentism succeeded in World War I with the annexation of Trieste and Trento, with the respective territories of Venezia Giulia and Trentino.

The Kingdom of Italy had declared neutrality at the beginning of the war, officially because the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary was a defensive one, requiring its members to come under attack first. Many Italians were still hostile to Austria's continuing occupation of ethnically Italian areas, and Italy chose not to enter. Austria-Hungary requested Italian neutrality, while the Triple Entente (which included Great Britain, France and Russia) requested its intervention. With the London Pact, signed in April 1915, Italy agreed to declare war against the Central Powers, in exchange for the irredent territories of Friuli, Trentino, and Dalmatia (see Italia irredenta).

Italian irredentism obtained an important result after the First World War, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and the city of Zara. During the Second World War, after the Axis attack on Yugoslavia, Italy created the "Governatorato di Dalmazia" (from 1941 to September 1943), so the Kingdom of Italy annexed temporarily even Split (Italian Spalato), Kotor (Cattaro), and most of coastal Dalmatia. From 1942 to 1943, even Corsica and Nice (Italian Nizza) were temporarily annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, nearly fulfilling in those years the ambitions of Italian irredentism.

For its avowed purpose the movement had the "emancipation" of all Italian lands still subject to foreign rule after Italian unification. The Irredentists took language as the test of the alleged Italian nationality of the countries they proposed to emancipate, which were Trentino, Trieste, Dalmatia, Istria, Gorizia, Ticino, Nice (Nizza), Corsica, and Malta. Austria-Hungary promoted Croat interests in Dalmatia and Istria to weaken Italian claims in the western Balkans before the First World War.[75]

After World War II[edit]
After WWII the irredentism movement faded away in Italian politics. Only a few thousand Italians remain in Istria and Dalmatia as a consequence of the Italian defeat in WWII and the slaughter of thousands of Italians as reprisals for fascist atrocities, and the subsequent departure of approximately 400,000 people in what became known as the Istrian exodus. 350,000 refugees were ethnic Italians (76% of which born in the territories surrendered), the others being ethnic Slovenians, ethnic Croatians, and ethnic Istro-Romanians, choosing to maintain Italian citizenship.[76]

Anniversary of Risorgimento[edit]
Anniversary of Risorgimento
Reggio calabria monumento all'italia.jpg
Monument to Italia Turrita in Reggio Calabria
Observed by	Italy
Type	National
Significance	Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861
Celebrations	Parades, Fireworks, Concerts, Picnics, Balls, Trade shows
Date	17 March
Frequency	every fifty years
Italy celebrates the Anniversary of Risorgimento every fifty years, on 17 March (date of proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy). The anniversary occurred in 1911 (50th), 1961 (100th) and 2011 (150th) with several celebrations throughout the country.[77]

150th Anniversary of ''Risorgimento''

Celebration in Florence

 

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

 

A castle near Modena

 

Mole Antonelliana during the anniversary, Turin

 

Rieti

 

Banner in Milan

 

Fiat Mirafiori Motor Village, Turin

 

Ferrari Formula One car with the logo of the 150th anniversary of Risorgimento

Culture and Risorgimento[edit]
Art[edit]

Mourning Italia turrita on the tomb to Vittorio Alfieri by Antonio Canova

The Kiss (1859) by Francesco Hayez
In art, this period was characterised by the Neoclassicism that draws inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The main Italian sculptor was Antonio Canova who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh. The mourning Italia turrita on the tomb to Vittorio Alfieri is one of the main works of Risorgimento by Canova.

Francesco Hayez was another remarkable artist of this period whose works often contain allegories about Italian unification. His most known painting The Kiss aims to portray the spirit of the Risorgimento: the man wears red, white and green, representing the Italian patriots fighting for independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire while the girl's pale blue dress signifies France, which in 1859 (the year of the painting's creation) made an alliance with the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia enabling the latter to unify the many states of the Italian peninsula into the new kingdom of Italy. Hayez's three paintings on the Sicilian Vespers are an implicit protest against the foreign domination of Italy.

Andrea Appiani, Domenico Induno and Gerolamo Induno are also known for their patriotic canvases. Risorgimento was also represented by works not necessarily linked to Neoclassicism as in the case of Giovanni Fattori who was one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli that soon became a leading Italian plein-airists, painting landscapes, rural scenes, and scenes of military life during the Italian unification.[78]

Literature[edit]

Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni (1841) by Francesco Hayez

Portrait of Francesco De Sanctis (1890) by Francesco Saverio Altamura
In literature, lots of works were dedicated to Risorgimento since the beginning. The most known writer of Risorgimento is Alessandro Manzoni whose works are a symbol of the Italian unification, both for its patriotic message and because of his efforts in the development of the modern, unified Italian language; he is famous for the novel The Betrothed (orig. Italian: I Promessi Sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature.

Vittorio Alfieri, was the founder of a new school in the Italian drama, expressed in several occasions his suffering about the foreign domination's tyranny.

Ugo Foscolo describes in his works the passion and love for the fatherland and the glorious history of the Italian people; these two concepts are respectively well expressed in two masterpieces, The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis and Dei Sepolcri.

Vincenzo Monti, known for the Italian translation of the Iliad, described in his works both enthusiasms and disappointments of Risorgimento until his death.

Giovanni Berchet wrote a poetry characterised by a high moral, popular and social content; he also contributed to Il Conciliatore, a progressive bi-weekly scientific and literary journal, influential in the early Risorgimento that was published in Milan from September 1818 until October 1819 when it was closed by the Austrian censors; its writers included also Ludovico di Breme, Giuseppe Nicolini and Silvio Pellico.

Giacomo Leopardi was one of the most important poets of Risorgimento thanks to works such as Canzone all'Italia and Risorgimento.

Niccolò Tommaseo, the editor of the Italian Language Dictionary in eight volumes, was a precursor of the Italian irredentism and his works are a rare examples of a metropolitan culture above nationalism; he supported the liberal revolution headed by Daniele Manin against the Austrian Empire and he will always support the unification of Italy.

Francesco de Sanctis was one of the most important scholars of Italian language and literature in the 19th century; he supported the Revolution of 1848 in Naples and for this reason he was imprisoned for three years; his reputation as a lecturer on Dante in Turin brought him the appointment of professor at ETH Zürich in 1856; he returned to Naples as Minister of Public Education after the unification of Italy.

The writer and patriot Luigi Settembrini published anonymously the Protest of the People of the Two Sicilies, a scathing indictment of the Bourbon government and was imprisoned and exiled several times by the Bourbons because of his support to Risorgimento; after the formation of the Kingdom of Italy, he was appointed professor of Italian literature at the University of Naples.

Ippolito Nievo is another main representant of Risorgimento with his novel Confessioni d'un italiano; he fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand.

Risorgimento was also depicted in several famous novels: The Leopard written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Heart by Edmondo De Amicis and Piccolo mondo antico by Antonio Fogazzaro.[79]

Music[edit]

Verdi's bust outside the Teatro Massimo in Palermo
Risorgimento won the support of many leading Italian opera composers.[80] Their librettos often saw a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments. Ideas expressed in operas stimulated the political mobilisation in Italy and among the cultured classes of Europe who appreciated Italian opera. Furthermore, Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in musical discourses.[81]

In his L'italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers), Gioachino Rossini expressed his support to the unification of Italy; the patriotic line Pensa alla patria, e intrepido il tuo dover adempi: vedi per tutta Italia rinascere gli esempi d’ardir e di valor / "Think about the fatherland and intrepid do your duty: see for all Italy the birth of the examples of courage and value" was censored in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

Vincenzo Bellini was a secret member of the Carbonari and in his masterpiece I puritani (The Puritans), the last part of Act 2 is an allegory to Italian unification. Another Bellini opera, Norma, was at the center of an unexpected standing ovation during its performance in Milan in 1859: while the chorus was performing Guerra, guerra! Le galliche selve (War, war! The Gallic forests) in Act 2, the Italians began to greet the chorus with loud applause and to yell the word "War!" several times towards the Austrian officers at the opera house.[82]

The relationship between Gaetano Donizetti and the Risorgimento is still controversial. Even though Giuseppe Mazzini tried to use some of Donizetti's works for promoting the Italian cause, Donizetti had always preferred not to get involved in politics.[83]


Patriots scrawling "Viva VERDI" on walls
Historians vigorously debate how political were the operas of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). In particular, the chorus of the Hebrew slaves (known as "Va, pensiero") from the third act of the opera Nabucco was intended to be an anthem for Italian patriots, who were seeking to unify their country and free it from foreign control in the years up to 1861 (the chorus's theme of exiles singing about their homeland, and its lines like O mia patria, si bella e perduta / "O my country, so lovely and so lost" was thought to have resonated with many Italians).[84] Beginning in Naples in 1859 and spreading throughout Italy, the slogan "Viva VERDI" was used as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Viva Victor Emmanuel King of Italy), referring to Victor Emmanuel II.[85][86]

Franco Della Peruta argues in favour of close links between the operas and the Risorgimento, emphasizing Verdi's patriotic intent and links to the values of the Risorgimento. Verdi started as a republican, became a strong supporter of Cavour and entered the Italian parliament on Cavour's suggestion. His politics caused him to be frequently in trouble with the Austrian censors. Verdi's main works of 1842-49 were especially relevant to the struggle for independence, including Nabucco (1842), I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843), Ernani (1844), Attila (1846), Macbeth (1847), and La battaglia di Legnano (1848). However, starting in the 1850s, his operas showed few patriotic themes because of the heavy censorship of the absolutist regimes in power.


The final scene of the opera Risorgimento! (2011) by Lorenzo Ferrero
Verdi later became disillusioned by politics, but he was personally active part in the political world of events of the Risorgimento and was elected to the first Italian parliament in 1861.[87] Likewise Marco Pizzo argues that after 1815 music became a political tool, and many songwriters expressed ideals of freedom and equality. Pizzo says Verdi was part of this movement, for his operas were inspired by the love of country, the struggle for Italian independence, and speak to the sacrifice of patriots and exiles.[88] On the other side of the debate, Mary Ann Smart argues that music critics at the time seldom mentioned any political themes.[89] Likewise Roger Parker argues that the political dimension of Verdi's operas was exaggerated by nationalistic historians looking for a hero in the late 19th century.[90]

Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco and the Risorgimento are the subject of a 2011 opera, Risorgimento! by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Italian unification.

Films[edit]
The Leopard is a film from 1963, based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and directed by Luchino Visconti. It features Burt Lancaster as the eponymous character, the Prince of Salina. The film depicts his reaction to the Risorgimento, and his vain attempts to retain his social standing.

There are other movies set in this period:

1860 (1934), by Alessandro Blasetti
Piccolo mondo antico (1941), by Mario Soldati
Un garibaldino al convento (1942), by Vittorio De Sica
Heart and Soul (1948), by Vittorio De Sica
Senso (1954), by Luchino Visconti
Garibaldi (1961), by Roberto Rossellini
1870 (1971), by Alfredo Giannetti
Passione D'Amore (1981), by Ettore Scola (later adapted by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine into the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Passion)
Noi credevamo (2010), by Mario Martone
Maps of Italy before and during Italian unification[edit]

Italy in 1494

 

Italy in 1796

 

Italy in 1810

 

Italy in 1859: orange Kingdom of Sardinia, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), light green Duchy of Parma, green Duchy of Modena, dark green Grand Duchy of Tuscany, red Papal States, yellow Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

 

Italy in 1860: orange Kingdom of Sardinia, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), pink United Provinces of Central Italy, red Papal States, yellow Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

 

Italy in 1861: orange Kingdom of Italy, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), red Papal States.

 

Kingdom of Italy in 1870

 

Kingdom of Italy in 1919

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Jump up ^ Axel Körner, "Opera and nation in nineteenth‐century Italy: conceptual and methodological approaches." Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17#4 (2012): 393-399.
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Jump up ^ Mary Ann Smart, "How political were Verdi's operas? Metaphors of progress in the reception of I Lombardi alla prima crociata," Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2013) 18#2 PP 190-204.
Jump up ^ Roger Parker, "Verdi politico: a wounded cliché regroups." Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17#4 (2012): 427-436.
Bibliography[edit]
Ascoli, Albert Russell and Krystyna Von Henneberg, eds. Making and Remaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento (2001) online
Beales, Derek; Biagini, Eugenio (2003). The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy (2nd ed.). Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-36958-0.
Carter, Nick, ed., Britain, Ireland and the Italian Risorgimento (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 233 pp
Clark, Martin. The Italian Risorgimento (2nd ed. 2009); 146pp
Collier, Martin, Italian Unification, 1820-71 (Heinemann, 2003); textbook, 156 pages excerpt
Davis, John A., ed. (2000). Italy in the nineteenth century: 1796–1900. London: Oxford University Press.
De Mattei, Roberto. Pius IX (2004).
Gilmour, David.The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples (2011). excerpt
Hearder, Harry. Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento 1790 - 1870 (1983) excerpt
Holt, Edgar. The Making of Italy 1815–1870, (1971).
Mowat, R.B. A history of European diplomacy, 1815-1914 (1922) pp 115-63 online free
Patriarca, Silvana, and Lucy Riall, eds. The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 13 essays on specialized topics by scholars excerpt; review
Pearce, Robert, and Andrina Stiles. Access to History: The Unification of Italy 1789-1896 (4th rf., Hodder Education, 2015), textbook. excerpt
Pozzo, Barbara (2013). "Masculinity Italian style". Nevada Law Journal, special issue: Men, Masculinities, and Law: A Symposium on Multidimensional Masculinities Theory. William S. Boyd School of Law. 13 (2): 15.
Rapone, Danilo. Religion and politics in the Risorgimento. Britain and the new Italy, 1861–1875 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 3012pp.
Riall, Lucy. The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society, and National Unification (Routledge, 1994) online
Riall, Lucy. Garibaldi: Invention of a hero (Yale UP, 2008).
Riall, Lucy (1998). "Hero, saint or revolutionary? Nineteenth‐century politics and the cult of Garibaldi". Modern Italy. Taylor and Francis. 3 (2): 191–204. doi:10.1080/13532949808454803.
Ridley, Jasper. Garibaldi (1974), a standard biography.
Sarlin, Simon (2009). "Fighting the Risorgimento: foreign volunteers in southern Italy (1860–63)". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. Taylor and Francis. 14 (4): 476–490. doi:10.1080/13545710903281987.
Smith, Denis Mack. Cavour (1985)
Smith, Denis Mack. Mazzini (1995) excerpt
Smith, Denis Mack. Victor Emanuel, Cavour, and the Risorgimento (Oxford University Press, 1971)
Thayer, William Roscoe (1911). The Life and Times of Cavour vol 1. old interpretations but useful on details; vol 1 goes to 1859]; volume 2 online covers 1859-62
Trevelyan, George Macaulay (1911). Garibaldi and the making of Italy.
Wawro, Geoffrey. "Austria versus the Risorgimento: A New Look at Austria's Italian strategy in the 1860s." European History Quarterly 26#1 (1996): 7-29.
Woolf, Stuart Joseph. The Italian Risorgimento (1969).
Woolf, Stuart. A History of Italy 1700-1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change (1960), 519 pp
Wright, Owain (2012). "British foreign policy and the Italian occupation of Rome, 1870". The International History Review. Taylor and Francis. 34 (1): 161–176. doi:10.1080/07075332.2012.668343.
Historiography[edit]
Ramm, Agatha (1972). "The Risorgimento in Sicily: Recent Literature". English Historical Review. 87 (345): 795–811. JSTOR 562204.
Rao, Anna Maria. "Napoleonic Italy: Old and New Trends in Historiography." in Ute Planert, ed., Napoleon's Empire (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016). pp 84–97.
Italian[edit]
Bacchin, Elena. Italofilia. Opinione pubblica brittanica e il Risorgimento italiano 1847–1864 (Turin, Carocci editore, 2014), 266 pp
Banti, Alberto Mario. La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell'Italia unita. Torino, Einaudi, 2000
Banti, Alberto Mario. Il Risorgimento italiano. Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2004 (Quadrante Laterza; 125)
Ghisalberti, Carlo. Istituzioni e società civile nell'età del Risorgimento. Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2005 (Biblioteca universale Laterza; 575)
Della Peruta, Franco. L'Italia del Risorgimento: problemi, momenti e figure. Milano, Angeli, 1997 (Saggi di storia; 14)
Della Peruta, Franco. Conservatori, liberali e democratici nel Risorgimento. Milano, Angeli, 1989 (Storia; 131)
De Rosa, Luigi. La provincia subordinata. Saggio sulla questione meridionale, Bari, Laterza, 2004
Guerra, Nicola. Le due anime del processo di unificazione nazionale: Risorgimento e Controrisorgimento. La necessità di un nuovo approccio di ricerca ancora disatteso. Pesaro, Chronica Mundi, October 2011, ISSN 2239-7515
Scirocco, Alfonso. L'Italia del risorgimento: 1800–1860. (vol. 1 di Storia d'Italia dall'unità alla Repubblica), Bologna, Il mulino, 1990
Scirocco, Alfonso. In difesa del Risorgimento. Bologna, Il mulino, 1998 (Collana di storia contemporanea)
Tomaz, Luigi. Il confine d'Italia in Istria e Dalmazia, Presentazione di Arnaldo Mauri, Conselve, Think ADV, 2008.
Carlo Cardia, Risorgimento e religione, Giappichelli, Torino, 2011, ISBN 978-88-348-2552-5.
External links[edit]
	Wikimedia Commons has media related to Italian Risorgimento.
The Risorgimento: A Time for Reunification
Women of the Risorgimento
Garibaldi & The Risorgimento
Cavour and the Unification of Italy
Arcaini, G.B. (6 March 2005). "The Italian Unification". History of Italy. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
Arcaini, G.B. (30 November 2003). "Italy's Unity". History of Italy. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
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Italian unification
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Risorgimento" redirects here. For the 2011 opera by Lorenzo Ferrero, see Risorgimento! (opera). For the newspaper established by Camillo Cavour, see Il Risorgimento (newspaper).
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This article's lead section does not adequately summarize key points of its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page. (January 2017)
Italian unification
Risorgimento
Episodio delle cinque giornate (Baldassare Verazzi).jpg
Five Days of Milan, 18–22 March 1848
Date	1815–1871
Location	Italy
Participants	Italian society, Kingdom of Sardinia, Provisional Government of Milan, Republic of San Marco, Kingdom of Sicily, Roman Republic, Carboneria, French Empire, Red Shirts, Hungarian legion, Southern Army, United Provinces of Central Italy, Kingdom of Italy
Outcome	
Italian revolutions of 1820
Italian revolutions of 1830
Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states
First Italian War of Independence
Second Italian War of Independence
Expedition of the Thousand
Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
Third Italian War of Independence
Capture of Rome
Rome becomes the capital of the Kingdom of Italy
Part of a series on the
History of Italy
Old map of Italian peninsula
Ancient[show]
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Timeline

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Italian unification (Italian: Unità d'Italia [uniˈta ddiˈtaːlja]), or the Risorgimento ([risordʒiˈmento], meaning "the Resurgence" or "revival"), was the political and social movement that consolidated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century. The process began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna and was completed in 1871 when Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.[1][2]

The term, which also designates the cultural, political and social movement that promoted unification, recalls the romantic, nationalist and patriotic ideals of an Italian renaissance through the conquest of a unified political identity that, by sinking its ancient roots during the Roman period, "suffered an abrupt halt [or loss] of its political unity in 476 AD after the collapse of the West Roman Empire."[3]

However, some of the terre irredente did not join the Kingdom of Italy until 1918 after Italy defeated Austria-Hungary in World War I. Some nationalists see the 4 November 1918 Armistice of Villa Giusti as the completion of unification.[4]

Contents  [hide] 
1	Background
1.1	French Revolution
1.2	Reaction and dreams 1815–1848
1.3	The Carboneria
1.4	Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi
2	Early revolutionary activity
2.1	Exiles and European and masculine ideals
2.2	Two Sicilies insurrection
2.3	Piedmont insurrection
2.4	1830 insurrections
3	Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian Independence War
3.1	Cavour and the prospects for unification
4	Towards the Kingdom of Italy
4.1	The "Pisacane" fiasco
4.2	The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath
4.3	The Mille expedition
4.4	Defeat of the Kingdom of Naples
4.5	Roman Question
5	Third War of Independence (1866)
6	Rome
6.1	Mentana and Villa Glori
6.2	Memorial
6.3	Capture of Rome
7	Problems
7.1	Ruling and representing southern Italy
8	Historiography
9	Risorgimento and irredentism
9.1	Irredentism and the two World Wars
9.2	After World War II
10	Anniversary of Risorgimento
11	Culture and Risorgimento
11.1	Art
11.2	Literature
11.3	Music
11.4	Films
12	Maps of Italy before and during Italian unification
13	References
14	Bibliography
14.1	Historiography
14.2	Italian
15	External links
Background[edit]
Italy was unified by Rome in the third century BC. For 700 years, it was a kind of territorial extension of the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, enjoying, for a long time, a privileged status and so it was not converted into a province.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy remained united under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and later disputed between the Kingdom of the Lombards and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. Following conquest by the Frankish Empire, the title of King of Italy merged with the office of Holy Roman Emperor. However, the emperor was an absentee German speaking foreigner who had little concern for the governance of Italy as a state; as a result, Italy gradually developed into a system of city-states.

This situation persisted through the Renaissance but began to deteriorate with the rise of modern nation-states in the early modern period. Italy, including the Papal States, then became the site of proxy wars between the major powers, notably the Holy Roman Empire (later Austria), Spain and France.

Harbingers of national unity appeared in the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, and the 15th century foreign policy of Cosimo De Medici and Lorenzo De Medici. Leading Renaissance Italian writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Guicciardini expressed opposition to foreign domination. Petrarch stated that the "ancient valour in Italian hearts is not yet dead" in Italia Mia. Machiavelli later quoted four verses from Italia Mia in The Prince, which looked forward to a political leader who would unite Italy "to free her from the barbarians".[5]

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 formally ended with the rule of the Holy Roman Emperors in Italy. However, the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty, another branch of which provided the Emperors, continued to rule most of Italy down to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).

A sense of Italian national identity was reflected in Gian Rinaldo Carli's Della Patria degli Italiani,[6] written in 1764. It told how a stranger entered a café in Milan and puzzled its occupants by saying that he was neither a foreigner nor a Milanese. "'Then what are you?' they asked. 'I am an Italian,' he explained."[7]

French Revolution[edit]
The Habsburg rule in Italy came to an end with the campaigns of the French Revolutionaries in 1792–97, when a series of client republics were set up. In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by the last emperor, Francis II, after its defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars destroyed the old structures of feudalism in Italy and introduced modern ideas and efficient legal authority; it provided much of the intellectual force and social capital that fueled unification movements for decades after it collapsed in 1814.[8] The French Republic spread republican principles, and the institutions of republican governments promoted citizenship over the rule of the Bourbons and Habsburgs and other dynasties.[9] The reaction against any outside control challenged Napoleon's choice of rulers. As Napoleon's reign began to fail, the rulers he had installed tried to keep their thrones (among them: Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy and Joachim Murat, king of Naples) further feeding nationalistic sentiments. Beauharnais tried to get Austrian approval for his succession to the new Kingdom of Italy, and on 30 March 1815, Murat issued the Rimini Proclamation, which called on Italians to revolt against their Austrian occupiers.

Reaction and dreams 1815–1848[edit]
After Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments. Italy was again controlled largely by the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs,[10] as they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of Italy and were, together, the most powerful force against unification.

An important figure of this period was Francesco Melzi d'Eril, serving as vice-president of the Napoleonic Italian Republic (1802–1805) and consistent supporter of the Italian unification ideals that would lead to the Italian Risorgimento shortly after his death.[11] Meanwhile, artistic and literary sentiment also turned towards nationalism; Vittorio Alfieri, Francesco Lomonaco and Niccolò Tommaseo are generally considered three great literary precursors of Italian nationalism, but the most famous of proto-nationalist works was Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) widely read as a thinly-veiled allegorical critique of Austrian rule. Published in 1827 and extensively revised in the following years the 1840 version of I Promessi Sposi used a standardized version of the Tuscan dialect, a conscious effort by the author to provide a language and force people to learn it.[12]

Exiles dreamed of unification. Three ideals of unification appeared. Vincenzo Gioberti, a Piedmontese priest, had suggested a confederation of Italian states under leadership of the Pope in his 1842 book, Of the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians.[13] Pope Pius IX at first appeared interested but he turned reactionary and led the battle against liberalism and nationalism.[14]

Giuseppe Mazzini and Carlo Cattaneo wanted the unification of Italy under a federal republic. That proved too extreme for most nationalists. The middle position was proposed by Cesare Balbo (1789–1853) as a confederation of separate Italian states led by Piedmont.[15]

The Carboneria[edit]

Italian unification
One of the most influential revolutionary groups was the Carboneria, a secret political discussion group formed in Southern Italy early in the 19th century; the members were called Carbonari. After 1815, Freemasonry in Italy was repressed and discredited due to its French connections. A void was left that the Carboneria filled with a movement that closely resembled Freemasonry but with a commitment to Italian nationalism and no association with Napoleon and his government. The response came from middle class professionals and business men and some intellectuals. The Carboneria disowned Napoleon but nevertheless were inspired by the principles of the French Revolution regarding liberty, equality and fraternity. They developed their own rituals, and were strongly anticlerical. The Carboneria movement spread across Italy.[16]

Conservative governments feared the Carboneria, imposing stiff penalties on men discovered to be members. Nevertheless, the movement survived and continued to be a source of political turmoil in Italy from 1820 until after unification. The Carbonari condemned Napoleon III (who, as a young man, had fought on the side of the Carbonari) to death for failing to unite Italy, and the group almost succeeded in assassinating him in 1858, when Felice Orsini, Giovanni Andrea Pieri, Carlo Di Rudio and Andrea Gomez launched three bombs at him. Many leaders of the unification movement were at one time or other members of this organization. The chief purpose was to defeat tyranny and to establish constitutional government. Though contributing some service to the cause of Italian unity, historians such as Cornelia Shiver doubt that their achievements were proportional to their pretensions.[17]

Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi[edit]

Garibaldi and Cavour making Italy in a satirical cartoon of 1861
Many leading Carbonari revolutionaries wanted a republic,[18] two of the most prominent being Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini's activity in revolutionary movements caused him to be imprisoned soon after he joined. While in prison, he concluded that Italy could − and therefore should − be unified and formulated his program for establishing a free, independent, and republican nation with Rome as its capital. Following his release in 1831, he went to Marseille in France, where he organized a new political society called La Giovine Italia (Young Italy), whose motto was "Dio e Popolo" (God and People), which sought the unification of Italy.[19]

Garibaldi, a native of Nice (then part of France) participated in an uprising in Piedmont in 1834 and was sentenced to death but he escaped to South America, spending fourteen years in exile, taking part in several wars and learning the art of guerrilla warfare before his return to Italy in 1848.[20]

Early revolutionary activity[edit]

Guglielmo Pepe

The Arrest of Silvio Pellico and Piero Maroncelli, Saluzzo, civic museum
Exiles and European and masculine ideals[edit]
Many of the key intellectual and political leaders operated from exile; most Risorgimento patriots lived and published their work abroad after successive failed revolutions. Exile became a central theme of the foundational legacy of the Risorgimento as the narrative of the Italian nation fighting for independence.[21] The exiles were deeply immersed in European ideas, and often hammered away at what Europeans saw as Italian vices, especially effeminacy and indolence. These negative stereotypes emerged from Enlightenment notions of national character that stressed the influence of the environment and history on a people's moral predisposition. Italian exiles both challenged and embraced the stereotypes and typically presented gendered interpretations of Italy's political "degeneration". They called for a masculine response to feminine weaknesses as the basis of a national regeneration, and fashioned their image of the future Italian nation firmly in the standards of European nationalism.[22]

Two Sicilies insurrection[edit]
In 1820, Spaniards successfully revolted over disputes about their Constitution, which influenced the development of a similar movement in Italy. Inspired by the Spaniards (who, in 1812, had created their constitution), a regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, commanded by Guglielmo Pepe, a Carbonaro (member of the secret republican organisation),[23] mutinied, conquering the peninsular part of Two Sicilies. The king, Ferdinand I, agreed to enact a new constitution. The revolutionaries, though, failed to court popular support and fell to Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance. Ferdinand abolished the constitution and began systematically persecuting known revolutionaries. Many supporters of revolution in Sicily, including the scholar Michele Amari, were forced into exile during the decades that followed.[24]

Piedmont insurrection[edit]
The leader of the 1821 revolutionary movement in Piedmont was Santorre di Santarosa, who wanted to remove the Austrians and unify Italy under the House of Savoy. The Piedmont revolt started in Alessandria, where troops adopted the green, white, and red tricolore of the Cisalpine Republic. The king's regent, prince Charles Albert, acting while the king Charles Felix was away, approved a new constitution to appease the revolutionaries, but when the king returned he disavowed the constitution and requested assistance from the Holy Alliance. Di Santarosa's troops were defeated, and the would-be Piedmontese revolutionary fled to Paris.[25]

In Milan, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli organised several attempts to weaken the hold of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means. In October 1820, Pellico and Maroncelli were arrested on the charge of carbonarism and imprisoned.[26]

1830 insurrections[edit]
Historian Denis Mack Smith argues that:

Few people in 1830, believed that an Italian nation might exist. There were eight states in the peninsula, each with distinct laws and traditions. No one had had the desire or the resources to revive Napoleon's partial experiment in unification. The settlement of 1814–15, had merely restored regional divisions, with the added disadvantage that the decisive victory of Austria over France temporarily hindered Italians in playing off their former oppressors against each other. ... Italians who, like Ugo Foscolo and Gabriele Rossetti, harboured patriotic sentiments, were driven into exile. The largest Italian state, the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with its 8 million inhabitants, seemed aloof and indifferent: Sicily and Naples had once formed part of Spain, and it had always been foreign to the rest of Italy. The common people in each region, and even the intellectual elite, spoke their mutually unintelligible dialects, and lacked the least vestiges of national consciousness. They wanted good government, not self-government, and had welcomed Napoleon and the French as more equitable and efficient than their native dynasties.[27]


Ciro Menotti
After 1830, revolutionary sentiment in favour of a unified Italy began to experience a resurgence, and a series of insurrections laid the groundwork for the creation of one nation along the Italian peninsula.

The Duke of Modena, Francis IV, was an ambitious noble, and he hoped to become king of Northern Italy by increasing his territory. In 1826, Francis made it clear that he would not act against those who subverted opposition toward the unification of Italy. Encouraged by the declaration, revolutionaries in the region began to organize.

During the July Revolution of 1830 in France, revolutionaries forced the king to abdicate and created the July Monarchy with encouragement from the new French king, Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe had promised revolutionaries such as Ciro Menotti that he would intervene if Austria tried to interfere in Italy with troops. Fearing he would lose his throne, Louis-Philippe did not, however, intervene in Menotti's planned uprising. The Duke of Modena abandoned his Carbonari supporters, arrested Menotti and other conspirators in 1831, and once again conquered his duchy with help from the Austrian troops. Menotti was executed, and the idea of a revolution centered in Modena faded.

At the same time, other insurrections arose in the Papal Legations of Bologna, Forlì, Ravenna, Imola, Ferrara, Pesaro and Urbino. These successful revolutions, which adopted the tricolore in favour of the Papal flag, quickly spread to cover all the Papal Legations, and their newly installed local governments proclaimed the creation of a united Italian nation. The revolts in Modena and the Papal Legations inspired similar activity in the Duchy of Parma, where the tricolore flag was adopted. The Parmese duchess Marie Louise left the city during the political upheaval.

Insurrected provinces planned to unite as the Province Italiane unite (United Italian Provinces), which prompted Pope Gregory XVI to ask for Austrian help against the rebels. Austrian Chancellor Metternich warned Louis-Philippe that Austria had no intention of letting Italian matters be, and that French intervention would not be tolerated. Louis-Philippe withheld any military help and even arrested Italian patriots living in France.

In early 1831, the Austrian army began its march across the Italian peninsula, slowly crushing resistance in each province that had revolted. This military action suppressed much of the fledgling revolutionary movement, and resulted in the arrest of many radical leaders.[28]

Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian Independence War[edit]
Main articles: Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states and First Italian War of Independence

Execution of the Bandiera Brothers
In 1844, two brothers from Venice, Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, members of the Giovine Italia, planned to make a raid on the Calabrian coast against the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in support of Italian Unification. They assembled a band of about twenty men ready to sacrifice their lives, and set sail on their venture on 12 June 1844. Four days later they landed near Crotone, intending to go to Cosenza, liberate the political prisoners and issue their proclamations. Tragically for the Bandiera brothers, they did not find the insurgent band they were told awaited them, so they moved towards La Sila. They were ultimately betrayed by one of their party, the Corsican Pietro Boccheciampe, and by some peasants who believed them to be Turkish pirates. A detachment of gendarmes and volunteers were sent against them, and after a short fight the whole band was taken prisoner and escorted to Cosenza, where a number of Calabrians who had taken part in a previous rising were also under arrest. The Bandiera brothers and their nine companions were executed by firing squad; some accounts state they cried "Viva l’Italia!" ("Long live Italy!") as they fell. The moral effect was enormous throughout Italy, the action of the authorities was universally condemned, and the martyrdom of the Bandiera brothers bore fruit in the subsequent revolutions.[29]


Ruggero Settimo
On 5 January 1848, the revolutionary disturbances began with a civil disobedience strike in Lombardy, as citizens stopped smoking cigars and playing the lottery, which denied Austria the associated tax revenue. Shortly after this, revolts began on the island of Sicily and in Naples. In Sicily the revolt resulted in the proclamation of the Kingdom of Sicily with Ruggero Settimo as Chairman of the independent state until 1849 when the Bourbon army took back full control of the island on 15 May 1849 by force.[30]

In February 1848, there were revolts in Tuscany that were relatively nonviolent, after which Grand Duke Leopold II granted the Tuscans a constitution. A breakaway republican provisional government formed in Tuscany during February shortly after this concession. On 21 February, Pope Pius IX granted a constitution to the Papal States, which was both unexpected and surprising considering the historical recalcitrance of the Papacy. On 23 February 1848, King Louis Philippe of France was forced to flee Paris, and a republic was proclaimed. By the time the revolution in Paris occurred, three states of Italy had constitutions—four if one considers Sicily to be a separate state.


Battle of Goito
Meanwhile, in Lombardy, tensions increased until the Milanese and Venetians rose in revolt on 18 March 1848. The insurrection in Milan succeeded in expelling the Austrian garrison after five days of street fights – 18–22 March (Cinque giornate di Milano). An Austrian army under Marshal Josef Radetzky besieged Milan, but due to defection of many of his troops and the support of the Milanese for the revolt, they were forced to retreat.

Soon, Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia (who ruled Piedmont and Savoy), urged by the Venetians and Milanese to aid their cause, decided this was the moment to unify Italy and declared war on Austria (First Italian Independence War). After initial successes at Goito and Peschiera, he was decisively defeated by Radetzky at the Battle of Custoza on 24 July. An armistice was agreed to, and Radetzky regained control of all of Lombardy-Venetia save Venice itself, where the Republic of San Marco was proclaimed under Daniele Manin.

While Radetzky consolidated control of Lombardy-Venetia and Charles Albert licked his wounds, matters took a more serious turn in other parts of Italy. The monarchs who had reluctantly agreed to constitutions in March came into conflict with their constitutional ministers. At first, the republics had the upper hand, forcing the monarchs to flee their capitals, including Pope Pius IX.


Giuseppe Mazzini
Initially, Pius IX had been something of a reformer, but conflicts with the revolutionaries soured him on the idea of constitutional government. In November 1848, following the assassination of his Minister Pellegrino Rossi, Pius IX fled just before Giuseppe Garibaldi and other patriots arrived in Rome. In early 1849, elections were held for a Constituent Assembly, which proclaimed a Roman Republic on 9 February. On 2 February 1849, at a political rally held in the Apollo Theater, a young Roman priest, the Abbé Carlo Arduini, had made a speech in which he had declared that the temporal power of the popes was a "historical lie, a political imposture, and a religious immorality."[31] In early March 1849, Giuseppe Mazzini arrived in Rome and was appointed Chief Minister. In the Constitution of the Roman Republic,[32] religious freedom was guaranteed by article 7, the independence of the pope as head of the Catholic Church was guaranteed by article 8 of the Principi fondamentali, while the death penalty was abolished by article 5, and free public education was provided by article 8 of the Titolo I.


Daniele Manin and Niccolò Tommaseo after the proclamation of the Republic of San Marco
Before the powers could respond to the founding of the Roman Republic, Charles Albert, whose army had been trained by the exiled Polish general Albert Chrzanowski, renewed the war with Austria. He was quickly defeated by Radetzky at Novara on 23 March 1849. Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II, and Piedmontese ambitions to unite Italy or conquer Lombardy were, for the moment, brought to an end. The war ended with a treaty signed on 9 August. A popular revolt broke out in Brescia on the same day as the defeat at Novara, but was suppressed by the Austrians ten days later.

There remained the Roman and Venetian Republics. In April, a French force under Charles Oudinot was sent to Rome. Apparently, the French first wished to mediate between the Pope and his subjects, but soon the French were determined to restore the Pope. After a two-month siege, Rome capitulated on 29 June 1849 and the Pope was restored. Garibaldi and Mazzini once again fled into exile—in 1850 Garibaldi went to New York City. Meanwhile, the Austrians besieged Venice defended by a volunteer army led by Daniele Manin and Guglielmo Pepe, which were forced to surrender on 24 August. Pro-independence fighters were hanged en masse in Belfiore, while the Austrians moved to restore order in central Italy, restoring the princes who had been expelled and establishing their control over the Papal Legations. The revolutions were thus completely crushed.[33]

Cavour and the prospects for unification[edit]
Morale was of course badly weakened, but the dream of Risorgimento did not die. Instead, the Italian patriots learned some lessons that made them much more effective at the next opportunity in 1860. Military weakness was glaring, as the small Italian states were completely outmatched by France and Austria. France was a potential ally, and the patriots realized they had to focus all their attention on expelling Austria first, with a willingness to give the French whatever they wanted in return for essential military intervention. The French in fact received Savoy and Nice in 1860. Secondly, the patriots realized that the Pope was an enemy, and could never be the leader of a united Italy. Third they realized that republicanism was too weak a force. Unification had to be based on a strong monarchy, and in practice that meant reliance on Piedmont (the Kingdom of Sardinia) under King Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878) of the House of Savoy. Count Cavour (1810 – 1861) provided critical leadership. He was a modernizer interested in agrarian improvements, banks, railways and free trade. He opened a newspaper as soon as censorship allowed it: Il Risorgimento called for the independence of Italy, a league of Italian princes, and moderate reforms. He had the ear of the king and in 1852 became prime minister. He ran an efficient active government, promoting rapid economic modernization while upgrading the administration of the army and the financial and legal systems. He sought out support from patriots across Italy. In 1855, the kingdom became an ally of Britain and France in the Crimean war, which gave Cavour's diplomacy legitimacy in the eyes of the great powers.[34][35]

Towards the Kingdom of Italy[edit]
The "Pisacane" fiasco[edit]
In 1857, Carlo Pisacane, an aristocrat from Naples who had embraced Mazzini's ideas, decided to provoke a rising in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His small force landed on the island of Ponza. It overpowered guards and liberated hundreds of prisoners. In sharp contrast to his hypothetical expectations, there was no local uprising and the invaders were quickly overpowered. Pisacane was killed by angry locals who suspected he was leading a gypsy band trying to steal their food.[36]

The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath[edit]
Main article: Second Italian War of Independence

King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, 1st Prime Minister of Italy
The 2nd War of Italian Independence began in April 1859 when the Sardinian Prime Minister Count Cavour found an ally in Napoleon III. Napoleon III signed a secret alliance and Cavour provoked Austria with military maneuvers and eventually created the war in April 1859. Cavour called for volunteers to enlist in the Italian liberation. The Austrians planned to use their army to beat the Sardinians before the French could come to their aid. Austria had an army of 140,000 men, while the Sardinians had a mere 70,000. This proved less important than it first appeared, however, as Emperor Franz Josef had chosen his officers based on their aristocratic titles and lineage instead of their personal merit. This strategy was no doubt socially acceptable, but the emperor soon discovered blue blood was a remarkably poor guarantor of military victory. Instead of swiftly entering the capital of Sardinia, the Austrian army crawled, taking almost ten days to travel the 80 kilometres (50 mi). By this time, the French had reinforced the Sardinians, so the Austrians retreated. Napoleon III's plans worked and at the battle of Solferino, France defeated Austria and forced negotiations. The settlement, by which Lombardy was annexed to Sardinia, left Austria in control of Venice. Sardinia eventually won the Second War of Italian Unification due to statesmanship instead of armies or popular election. The final arrangement was ironed out by "back-room" deals instead of in the battlefield. This was because neither France, Austria, nor Sardinia wanted to risk another battle and could not handle further fighting. All of the sides were eventually unhappy with the final outcome of the 2nd War of Italian Unification and expected another conflict in the future.[37]

The Mille expedition[edit]
Main article: Expedition of the Thousand

Giuseppe Garibaldi
Thus, by early 1860, only five states remained in Italy—the Austrians in Venetia, the Papal States (now minus the Legations), the new expanded Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and San Marino.[38][39][40]

Francis II of the Two Sicilies, the son and successor of Ferdinand II (the infamous "King Bomba"), had a well-organized army of 150,000 men. But his father's tyranny had inspired many secret societies, and the kingdom's Swiss Mercenaries were unexpectedly recalled home under the terms of a new Swiss law that forbade Swiss citizens to serve as mercenaries. This left Francis with only his mostly-unreliable native troops. It was a critical opportunity for the unification movement. In April 1860, separate insurrections began in Messina and Palermo in Sicily, both of which had demonstrated a history of opposing Neapolitan rule. These rebellions were easily suppressed by loyal troops.

In the meantime, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a native of Nice, was deeply resentful of the French annexation of his home city. He hoped to use his supporters to regain the territory. Cavour, terrified of Garibaldi provoking a war with France, persuaded Garibaldi to instead use his forces in the Sicilian rebellions. On 6 May 1860, Garibaldi and his cadre of about a thousand Italian volunteers (called I Mille), steamed from Quarto near Genoa, and, after a stop in Talamone on 11 May, landed near Marsala on the west coast of Sicily.

Near Salemi, Garibaldi's army attracted scattered bands of rebels, and the combined forces defeated the opposing army at Calatafimi on 13 May. Within three days, the invading force had swelled to 4,000 men. On 14 May Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel. After waging various successful but hard-fought battles, Garibaldi advanced upon the Sicilian capital of Palermo, announcing his arrival by beacon-fires kindled at night. On 27 May the force laid siege to the Porta Termini of Palermo, while a mass uprising of street and barricade fighting broke out within the city.


Battle of Calatafimi
With Palermo deemed insurgent, Neapolitan general Ferdinando Lanza, arriving in Sicily with some 25,000 troops, furiously bombarded Palermo nearly to ruins. With the intervention of a British admiral, an armistice was declared, leading to the Neapolitan troops' departure and surrender of the town to Garibaldi and his much smaller army. In Palermo was created the Dictatorship of Garibaldi.

This resounding success demonstrated the weakness of the Neapolitan government. Garibaldi's fame spread and many Italians began to consider him a national hero. Doubt, confusion, and dismay overtook the Neapolitan court—the king hastily summoned his ministry and offered to restore an earlier constitution, but these efforts failed to rebuild the peoples' trust in Bourbon governance.

Six weeks after the surrender of Palermo, Garibaldi attacked Messina. Within a week, its citadel surrendered. Having conquered Sicily, Garibaldi proceeded to the mainland, crossing the Strait of Messina with the Neapolitan fleet at hand. The garrison at Reggio Calabria promptly surrendered. As he marched northward, the populace everywhere hailed him, and military resistance faded: on 18 and 21 August, the people of Basilicata and Apulia, two regions of the Kingdom of Naples, independently declared their annexation to the Kingdom of Italy. At the end of August, Garibaldi was at Cosenza, and, on 5 September, at Eboli, near Salerno. Meanwhile, Naples had declared a state of siege, and on 6 September the king gathered the 4,000 troops still faithful to him and retreated over the Volturno river. The next day, Garibaldi, with a few followers, entered by train into Naples, where the people openly welcomed him.[41]

Defeat of the Kingdom of Naples[edit]

People cheering as Garibaldi enters Naples
Though Garibaldi had easily taken the capital, the Neapolitan army had not joined the rebellion en masse, holding firm along the Volturno River. Garibaldi's irregular bands of about 25,000 men could not drive away the king or take the fortresses of Capua and Gaeta without the help of the Sardinian army. The Sardinian army, however, could only arrive by traversing the Papal States, which extended across the entire center of the peninsula. Ignoring the political will of the Holy See, Garibaldi announced his intent to proclaim a "Kingdom of Italy" from Rome, the capital city of Pope Pius IX. Seeing this as a threat to the domain of the Catholic Church, Pius threatened excommunication for those who supported such an effort. Afraid that Garibaldi would attack Rome, Catholics worldwide sent money and volunteers for the Papal Army, which was commanded by General Louis Lamoricière, a French exile.


Battle of Volturno
The settling of the peninsular standoff now rested with Napoleon III. If he let Garibaldi have his way, Garibaldi would likely end the temporal sovereignty of the Pope and make Rome the capital of Italy. Napoleon, however, may have arranged with Cavour to let the king of Sardinia free to take possession of Naples, Umbria and the other provinces, provided that Rome and the "Patrimony of St. Peter" were left intact.[42]

It was in this situation that a Sardinian force of two army corps, under Fanti and Cialdini, marched to the frontier of the Papal States, its objective being not Rome but Naples. The Papal troops under Lamoricière advanced against Cialdini, but were quickly defeated and besieged in the fortress of Ancona, finally surrendering on 29 September. On 9 October, Victor Emmanuel arrived and took command. There was no longer a papal army to oppose him, and the march southward proceeded unopposed.


Victor Emmanuel meets Garibaldi near Teano
Garibaldi distrusted the pragmatic Cavour, particularly due to Cavour's role in the French annexation of Nice, Garibaldi's birthplace. Nevertheless, he accepted the command of Victor Emmanuel. When the king entered Sessa Aurunca at the head of his army, Garibaldi willingly handed over his dictatorial power. After greeting Victor Emmanuel in Teano with the title of King of Italy, Garibaldi entered Naples riding beside the king. Garibaldi then retired to the island of Caprera, while the remaining work of unifying the peninsula was left to Victor Emmanuel.

The progress of the Sardinian army compelled Francis II to give up his line along the river, and he eventually took refuge with his best troops in the fortress of Gaeta. His courage boosted by his resolute young wife, Duchess Marie Sophie of Bavaria, Francis mounted a stubborn defence that lasted three months. But European allies refused him aid, food and munitions became scarce, and disease set in, so the garrison was forced to surrender. Nonetheless, ragtag groups of Neapolitans loyal to Francis fought on against the Italian government for years to come.

The fall of Gaeta brought the unification movement to the brink of fruition—only Rome and Venetia remained to be added. On 18 February 1861, Victor Emmanuel assembled the deputies of the first Italian Parliament in Turin. On 17 March 1861, the Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, and on 27 March 1861 Rome was declared Capital of Italy, even though it was not actually in the new Kingdom.[43]

Three months later Cavour, having seen his life's work nearly complete, died. When he was given the last rites, Cavour purportedly said: "Italy is made. All is safe."[44]


Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
Roman Question[edit]
Main article: Roman Question
Mazzini was discontent with the perpetuation of monarchical government and continued to agitate for a republic. With the motto "Free from the Alps to the Adriatic", the unification movement set its gaze on Rome and Venice. There were obstacles, however. A challenge against the Pope's temporal dominion was viewed with great distrust by Catholics around the world, and there were French troops stationed in Rome. Victor Emmanuel was wary of the international repercussions of attacking the Papal States, and discouraged his subjects from participating in revolutionary ventures with such intentions.[45]


The Injured Garibaldi in the Aspromonte Mountains (oil on canvas), credited to Gerolamo Induno
Nonetheless, Garibaldi believed that the government would support him if he attacked Rome. Frustrated at inaction by the king, and bristling over perceived snubs, he came out of retirement to organize a new venture. In June 1862, he sailed from Genoa and landed again at Palermo, where he gathered volunteers for the campaign, under the slogan o Roma o Morte ("either Rome or Death"). The garrison of Messina, loyal to the king's instructions, barred their passage to the mainland. Garibaldi's force, now numbering two thousand, turned south and set sail from Catania. Garibaldi declared that he would enter Rome as a victor or perish beneath its walls. He landed at Melito on 14 August and marched at once into the Calabrian mountains.

Far from supporting this endeavour, the Italian government was quite disapproving. General Cialdini dispatched a division of the regular army, under Colonel Pallavicino, against the volunteer bands. On 28 August the two forces met in the Aspromonte. One of the regulars fired a chance shot, and several volleys followed, but Garibaldi forbade his men to return fire on fellow subjects of the Kingdom of Italy. The volunteers suffered several casualties, and Garibaldi himself was wounded; many were taken prisoner. Garibaldi was taken by steamer to Varignano, where he was honorably imprisoned for a time, but finally released.[46]

Meanwhile, Victor Emmanuel sought a safer means to the acquisition of the remaining Papal territory. He negotiated with the Emperor Napoleon for the removal of the French troops from Rome through a treaty. They agreed to the September Convention in September 1864, by which Napoleon agreed to withdraw the troops within two years. The Pope was to expand his own army during that time so as to be self-sufficient. In December 1866, the last of the French troops departed from Rome, in spite of the efforts of the pope to retain them. By their withdrawal, Italy (excluding Venetia and Savoy) was freed from the presence of foreign soldiers.[47]

The seat of government was moved in 1865 from Turin, the old Sardinian capital, to Florence, where the first Italian parliament was summoned. This arrangement created such disturbances in Turin that the king was forced to leave that city hastily for his new capital.[48]

Third War of Independence (1866)[edit]
Main article: Third Italian War of Independence

Battle of Custoza
In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Austria contested with Prussia the position of leadership among the German states. The Kingdom of Italy seized the opportunity to capture Venetia from Austrian rule and allied itself with Prussia.[49] Austria tried to persuade the Italian government to accept Venetia in exchange for non-intervention. However, on 8 April, Italy and Prussia signed an agreement that supported Italy's acquisition of Venetia, and on 20 June Italy declared war on Austria. Within the context of Italian unification, the Austro-Prussian war is called Third Independence War, after the First (1848) and the Second (1859).[50]

Victor Emmanuel hastened to lead an army across the Mincio to the invasion of Venetia, while Garibaldi was to invade the Tyrol with his Hunters of the Alps. The enterprise ended in disaster. The Italian army encountered the Austrians at Custoza on 24 June and suffered a defeat. On 20 July the Regia Marina was defeated in the battle of Lissa. Italy's fortunes were not all so dismal, though. The following day, Garibaldi's volunteers defeated an Austrian force in the battle of Bezzecca, and moved toward Trento.[51]

Meanwhile, Prussian Minister President Otto von Bismarck saw that his own ends in the war had been achieved, and signed an armistice with Austria on 27 July. Italy officially laid down its arms on 12 August. Garibaldi was recalled from his successful march and resigned with a brief telegram reading only "Obbedisco" ("I obey").


Victor Emmanuel II in Venice
In spite of Italy's poor showing, Prussia's success on the northern front obliged Austria to cede Venetia. Under the terms of a peace treaty signed in Vienna on 12 October, Emperor Franz Joseph had already agreed to cede Venetia to Napoleon III in exchange for non-intervention in the Austro-Prussian War, and thus Napoleon ceded Venetia to Italy on 19 October, in exchange for the earlier Italian acquiescence to the French annexation of Savoy and Nice.

In the peace treaty of Vienna, it was written that the annexation of Venetia would have become effective only after a referendum—taken on 21 and 22 October—to let the Venetian people express their will about being annexed or not to the Kingdom of Italy. Historians suggest that the referendum in Venetia was held under military pressure,[52] as a mere 0.01% of voters (69 out of more than 642,000 ballots) voted against the annexation.[53] However it should be admitted that the re-establishment of a Republic of Venice orphan of Istria and Dalmatia had little chances to develop.

Austrian forces put up some opposition to the invading Italians, to little effect. Victor Emmanuel entered Venice and Venetian land, and performed an act of homage in the Piazza San Marco.[54]

Rome[edit]
Mentana and Villa Glori[edit]

Garibaldi at Mentana, 3 November 1867
The national party, with Garibaldi at its head, still aimed at the possession of Rome, as the historic capital of the peninsula. In 1867 Garibaldi made a second attempt to capture Rome, but the papal army, strengthened with a new French auxiliary force, defeated his poorly armed volunteers at Mentana. Subsequently, a French garrison remained in Civitavecchia until August 1870, when it was recalled following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.

Before the defeat at Mentana, Enrico Cairoli, his brother Giovanni and 70 companions had made a daring attempt to take Rome. The group had embarked in Terni and floated down the Tiber. Their arrival in Rome was to coincide with an uprising inside the city. On 22 October 1867, the revolutionaries inside Rome seized control of the Capitoline Hill and of Piazza Colonna. Unfortunately for the Cairolis and their companions, by the time they arrived at Villa Glori, on the northern outskirts of Rome, the uprising had already been suppressed. During the night of 22 October 1867, the group was surrounded by Papal Zouaves, and Giovanni was severely wounded. Enrico was mortally wounded and bled to death in Giovanni's arms.

With the Cairoli dead, command was assumed by Giovanni Tabacchi who had retreated with the remaining volunteers into the villa, where they continued to fire at the papal soldiers. These also retreated in the evening to Rome. The survivors retreated to the positions of Garibaldi on the Italian border.

Memorial[edit]
At the summit of Villa Glori, near the spot where Enrico died, there is a plain white column dedicated to the Cairoli brothers and their 70 companions. About 100 meters to the left from the top of the Spanish Steps, there is a bronze monument of Giovanni holding the dying Enrico in his arm. A plaque lists the names of their companions. Giovanni never recovered from his wounds and from the tragic events of 1867. According to an eyewitness,[55] when Giovanni died on 11 September 1869:

In the last moments, he had a vision of Garibaldi and seemed to greet him with enthusiasm. I heard (so says a friend who was present) him say three times: "The union of the French to the papal political supporters was the terrible fact!" he was thinking about Mentana. Many times he called Enrico, that he might help him! then he said: "but we will certainly win; we will go to Rome!"

Capture of Rome[edit]
Main article: Capture of Rome

Capture of Rome
In July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War began. In early August, the French Emperor Napoleon III recalled his garrison from Rome, thus no longer providing protection to the Papal State. Widespread public demonstrations illustrated the demand that the Italian government take Rome. The Italian government took no direct action until the collapse of the Second French Empire at the Battle of Sedan. King Victor Emmanuel II sent Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino to Pius IX with a personal letter offering a face-saving proposal that would have allowed the peaceful entry of the Italian Army into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the pope. The Papacy, however, exhibited something less than enthusiasm for the plan:

The Pope's reception of San Martino (10 September 1870) was unfriendly. Pius IX allowed violent outbursts to escape him. Throwing the King's letter upon the table he exclaimed, "Fine loyalty! You are all a set of vipers, of whited sepulchres, and wanting in faith." He was perhaps alluding to other letters received from the King. After, growing calmer, he exclaimed: "I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!" San Martino was so mortified that he left the next day.[56]

The Italian Army, commanded by General Raffaele Cadorna, crossed the papal frontier on 11 September and advanced slowly toward Rome, hoping that a peaceful entry could be negotiated. The Italian Army reached the Aurelian Walls on 19 September and placed Rome under a state of siege. Although now convinced of his unavoidable defeat, Pius IX remained intransigent to the bitter end and forced his troops to put up a token resistance. On 20 September, after a cannonade of three hours had breached the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pia, the Bersaglieri entered Rome and marched down Via Pia, which was subsequently renamed Via XX Settembre. 49 Italian soldiers and four officers, and 19 papal troops died. Rome and Latium were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy after a plebiscite held on 2 October. The results of this plebiscite were accepted by decree of 9 October.


The Quirinal Palace in Rome became the head of state of Italy's official residence (royal residence of the Kings of Italy and after the Italian constitutional referendum, 1946 residence and workplace for the Presidents of the Italian Republic)
Initially the Italian government had offered to let the pope keep the Leonine City, but the Pope rejected the offer because acceptance would have been an implied endorsement of the legitimacy of the Italian kingdom's rule over his former domain. Pius IX declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican, although he was not actually restrained from coming and going. Rather, being deposed and stripped of much of his former power also removed a measure of personal protection — if he had walked the streets of Rome he might have been in danger from political opponents who had formerly kept their views private. Officially, the capital was not moved from Florence to Rome until July 1871.[57]

Historian Raffaele de Cesare made the following observations about Italian unification:

The Roman question was the stone tied to Napoleon's feet — that dragged him into the abyss. He never forgot, even in August 1870, a month before Sedan, that he was a sovereign of a Catholic country, that he had been made Emperor, and was supported by the votes of the Conservatives and the influence of the clergy; and that it was his supreme duty not to abandon the Pontiff.[58]

For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations…. Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured.[59]

Problems[edit]
Unification was achieved entirely in terms of Piedmont's interests. Martin Clark says, "It was Piedmontization all around."[60] Cavour died unexpectedly in June 1861, at 50, and most of the many promises that he made to regional authorities to induce them to join the new kingdom of Italy were ignored. The new Kingdom of Italy was structured by renaming the old Kingdom of Sardinia and annexing all the new provinces into its structures. The first king was Victor Emmanuel II and kept his old title.

National and regional officials were all appointed by Piedmont. A few regional leaders succeeded to high positions in the new national government, but the top bureaucratic and military officials were mostly Piedmontese. The national capital was briefly moved to Florence and finally to Rome, one of the cases of Piedmont losing out.

However, Piedmontese tax rates and regulations, diplomats and officials were imposed on all of Italy. The new constitution was Piedmont's old constitution, which was generally liberal and was welcomed by liberal elements. However its anticlerical provisions were resented in the pro-clerical regions around Venice and Rome and in Sicily and south of Naples. Cavour had promised there would be regional and municipal, local governments, but all the promises were broken in 1861.

The first decade of the kingdom saw savage civil wars in Sicily and in the Naples region. Hearder claimed that failed efforts to protest unification involved "a mixture of spontaneous peasant movement and a Bourbon-clerical reaction directed by the old authorities."[61]

The pope lost Rome in 1870 and ordered the Catholic Church not to co-operate with the new government, a decision fully reversed only in 1929.[62] Most of those for Risorgimento had wanted strong provinces, but they got a strong central state instead. The inevitable long-run results were a severe weakness of national unity, and a politicized system based on mutually-hostile regions hostiless. Such factors remain in the 21st century.[63]

Ruling and representing southern Italy[edit]
From the spring of 1860 to the summer of 1861, a major challenge that the Piedmontese parliament faced on national unification was how they should govern and control the southern regions of the country that were frequently represented and described by northern Italian correspondents as "corrupt," "barbaric" and "uncivilized".[64] In response to the depictions of southern Italy, the Piedmontese parliament had to decide whether it should investigate the southern regions to understand the social and political situations there better or it should establish jurisdiction and order by using mostly force.[65]

The dominance of letters sent from the Northern Italian correspondents that deemed Southern Italy to be "so far from the ideas of progress and civilization" ultimately induced the Piedmontese parliament to choose the latter course of action, which effectively illustrated the intimate connection between representation and rule.[66] In essence, the Northern Italians' "representation of the south as a land of barbarism (variously qualified as indecent, lacking in "public conscience," ignorant, superstitious, etc.)" provided the Piedmontese with the justification to rule the southern regions on the pretext of implementing a superior, more civilized, "Piedmontese morality".[66]

Historiography[edit]
See also: Brigantaggio

Caricature of the Post-Risorgimento: Italia Turrita at the centre points out to Enrico Cialdini (on the right) all her enemies around Napoleon III (turned into a tree): from the left, Pope Pius IX, Bourbons, clergy, and brigands. In the background, Garibaldi plows his farm.
Italian unification is still a topic of debate. According to Massimo d'Azeglio, centuries of foreign domination created remarkable differences in Italian society, and the role of the newly formed government was to face these differences and to create a unified Italian society. Still today the most famous quote of Massimo d'Azeglio is, "L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani" (Italy has been made. Now it remains to make Italians).[67]


Massimo d'Azeglio
The economist and politician Francesco Saverio Nitti criticized the newly created state for not taking in to consideration the substantial economic differences between Northern Italy, a free market economy, and Southern Italy, a state protectionism economy, when integrating the two. When the Kingdom of Italy extended the free market economy to the rest of the country, the South's economy collapsed under the weight of the North's. Nitti contended that this change should have been much more gradual in order to allow the birth of an adequate entrepreneurial class able to make strong investments and initiatives in the south. These mistakes, he felt, were the cause of the economic and social problems which came to be known as the Southern Question (Questione Meridionale).[68][69]

The politician, historian, and writer Gaetano Salvemini commented that even though Italian Unification had been a strong opportunity for both a moral and economic rebirth of Italy's Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy), due to lack of understanding and action on the part of politicians, corruption and organized crime flourished in the South.[70] The Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci criticized Italian Unification for the limited presence of the masses in politics, as well as the lack of modern land reform in Italy.[71]

Revisionism of Risorgimento produced a clear radicalization of Italy in the mid-twentieth century, following the fall of the Savoy monarchy and fascism during World War II. Reviews of the historical facts concerning Italian unification's successes and failures continue to be undertaken by domestic and foreign academic authors, including Denis Mack Smith, Christopher Duggan, and Lucy Riall. Recent work emphasizes the central importance of nationalism.[72][73]

Risorgimento and irredentism[edit]
The process of unification of the Italian people in a national state was not completed in the nineteenth century. Many Italians remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy and this situation created the Italian irredentism.

Italia irredenta (Unredeemed Italy) was an Italian nationalist opinion movement that emerged after Italian unification. It advocated irredentism among the Italian people as well as other nationalities who were willing to become Italian and as a movement; it is also known as "Italian irredentism". Not a formal organization, it was just an opinion movement that claimed that Italy had to reach its "natural borders". Similar patriotic and nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the 19th century.[74]

Irredentism and the two World Wars[edit]

The Vittoriano in Rome, honoring King Victor Emmanuel and celebrating the unity of Italy. The decision to build it was reached in 1878, shortly after the king's death that year; the site on the Capitoline Hill was chosen in 1882; and the design of 28-year-old Giuseppe Sacconi was selected in 1884. Construction began in 1885 and the monument was inaugurated in 1911, although features were subsequently added or altered during the fascist period.
During the post-unification era, some Italians were dissatisfied with the current state of the Italian Kingdom since they wanted the kingdom to include Trieste, Istria, and other adjacent territories, as well. This Italian irredentism succeeded in World War I with the annexation of Trieste and Trento, with the respective territories of Venezia Giulia and Trentino.

The Kingdom of Italy had declared neutrality at the beginning of the war, officially because the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary was a defensive one, requiring its members to come under attack first. Many Italians were still hostile to Austria's continuing occupation of ethnically Italian areas, and Italy chose not to enter. Austria-Hungary requested Italian neutrality, while the Triple Entente (which included Great Britain, France and Russia) requested its intervention. With the London Pact, signed in April 1915, Italy agreed to declare war against the Central Powers, in exchange for the irredent territories of Friuli, Trentino, and Dalmatia (see Italia irredenta).

Italian irredentism obtained an important result after the First World War, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and the city of Zara. During the Second World War, after the Axis attack on Yugoslavia, Italy created the "Governatorato di Dalmazia" (from 1941 to September 1943), so the Kingdom of Italy annexed temporarily even Split (Italian Spalato), Kotor (Cattaro), and most of coastal Dalmatia. From 1942 to 1943, even Corsica and Nice (Italian Nizza) were temporarily annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, nearly fulfilling in those years the ambitions of Italian irredentism.

For its avowed purpose the movement had the "emancipation" of all Italian lands still subject to foreign rule after Italian unification. The Irredentists took language as the test of the alleged Italian nationality of the countries they proposed to emancipate, which were Trentino, Trieste, Dalmatia, Istria, Gorizia, Ticino, Nice (Nizza), Corsica, and Malta. Austria-Hungary promoted Croat interests in Dalmatia and Istria to weaken Italian claims in the western Balkans before the First World War.[75]

After World War II[edit]
After WWII the irredentism movement faded away in Italian politics. Only a few thousand Italians remain in Istria and Dalmatia as a consequence of the Italian defeat in WWII and the slaughter of thousands of Italians as reprisals for fascist atrocities, and the subsequent departure of approximately 400,000 people in what became known as the Istrian exodus. 350,000 refugees were ethnic Italians (76% of which born in the territories surrendered), the others being ethnic Slovenians, ethnic Croatians, and ethnic Istro-Romanians, choosing to maintain Italian citizenship.[76]

Anniversary of Risorgimento[edit]
Anniversary of Risorgimento
Reggio calabria monumento all'italia.jpg
Monument to Italia Turrita in Reggio Calabria
Observed by	Italy
Type	National
Significance	Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861
Celebrations	Parades, Fireworks, Concerts, Picnics, Balls, Trade shows
Date	17 March
Frequency	every fifty years
Italy celebrates the Anniversary of Risorgimento every fifty years, on 17 March (date of proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy). The anniversary occurred in 1911 (50th), 1961 (100th) and 2011 (150th) with several celebrations throughout the country.[77]

150th Anniversary of ''Risorgimento''

Celebration in Florence

 

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

 

A castle near Modena

 

Mole Antonelliana during the anniversary, Turin

 

Rieti

 

Banner in Milan

 

Fiat Mirafiori Motor Village, Turin

 

Ferrari Formula One car with the logo of the 150th anniversary of Risorgimento

Culture and Risorgimento[edit]
Art[edit]

Mourning Italia turrita on the tomb to Vittorio Alfieri by Antonio Canova

The Kiss (1859) by Francesco Hayez
In art, this period was characterised by the Neoclassicism that draws inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The main Italian sculptor was Antonio Canova who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh. The mourning Italia turrita on the tomb to Vittorio Alfieri is one of the main works of Risorgimento by Canova.

Francesco Hayez was another remarkable artist of this period whose works often contain allegories about Italian unification. His most known painting The Kiss aims to portray the spirit of the Risorgimento: the man wears red, white and green, representing the Italian patriots fighting for independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire while the girl's pale blue dress signifies France, which in 1859 (the year of the painting's creation) made an alliance with the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia enabling the latter to unify the many states of the Italian peninsula into the new kingdom of Italy. Hayez's three paintings on the Sicilian Vespers are an implicit protest against the foreign domination of Italy.

Andrea Appiani, Domenico Induno and Gerolamo Induno are also known for their patriotic canvases. Risorgimento was also represented by works not necessarily linked to Neoclassicism as in the case of Giovanni Fattori who was one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli that soon became a leading Italian plein-airists, painting landscapes, rural scenes, and scenes of military life during the Italian unification.[78]

Literature[edit]

Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni (1841) by Francesco Hayez

Portrait of Francesco De Sanctis (1890) by Francesco Saverio Altamura
In literature, lots of works were dedicated to Risorgimento since the beginning. The most known writer of Risorgimento is Alessandro Manzoni whose works are a symbol of the Italian unification, both for its patriotic message and because of his efforts in the development of the modern, unified Italian language; he is famous for the novel The Betrothed (orig. Italian: I Promessi Sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature.

Vittorio Alfieri, was the founder of a new school in the Italian drama, expressed in several occasions his suffering about the foreign domination's tyranny.

Ugo Foscolo describes in his works the passion and love for the fatherland and the glorious history of the Italian people; these two concepts are respectively well expressed in two masterpieces, The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis and Dei Sepolcri.

Vincenzo Monti, known for the Italian translation of the Iliad, described in his works both enthusiasms and disappointments of Risorgimento until his death.

Giovanni Berchet wrote a poetry characterised by a high moral, popular and social content; he also contributed to Il Conciliatore, a progressive bi-weekly scientific and literary journal, influential in the early Risorgimento that was published in Milan from September 1818 until October 1819 when it was closed by the Austrian censors; its writers included also Ludovico di Breme, Giuseppe Nicolini and Silvio Pellico.

Giacomo Leopardi was one of the most important poets of Risorgimento thanks to works such as Canzone all'Italia and Risorgimento.

Niccolò Tommaseo, the editor of the Italian Language Dictionary in eight volumes, was a precursor of the Italian irredentism and his works are a rare examples of a metropolitan culture above nationalism; he supported the liberal revolution headed by Daniele Manin against the Austrian Empire and he will always support the unification of Italy.

Francesco de Sanctis was one of the most important scholars of Italian language and literature in the 19th century; he supported the Revolution of 1848 in Naples and for this reason he was imprisoned for three years; his reputation as a lecturer on Dante in Turin brought him the appointment of professor at ETH Zürich in 1856; he returned to Naples as Minister of Public Education after the unification of Italy.

The writer and patriot Luigi Settembrini published anonymously the Protest of the People of the Two Sicilies, a scathing indictment of the Bourbon government and was imprisoned and exiled several times by the Bourbons because of his support to Risorgimento; after the formation of the Kingdom of Italy, he was appointed professor of Italian literature at the University of Naples.

Ippolito Nievo is another main representant of Risorgimento with his novel Confessioni d'un italiano; he fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand.

Risorgimento was also depicted in several famous novels: The Leopard written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Heart by Edmondo De Amicis and Piccolo mondo antico by Antonio Fogazzaro.[79]

Music[edit]

Verdi's bust outside the Teatro Massimo in Palermo
Risorgimento won the support of many leading Italian opera composers.[80] Their librettos often saw a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments. Ideas expressed in operas stimulated the political mobilisation in Italy and among the cultured classes of Europe who appreciated Italian opera. Furthermore, Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in musical discourses.[81]

In his L'italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers), Gioachino Rossini expressed his support to the unification of Italy; the patriotic line Pensa alla patria, e intrepido il tuo dover adempi: vedi per tutta Italia rinascere gli esempi d’ardir e di valor / "Think about the fatherland and intrepid do your duty: see for all Italy the birth of the examples of courage and value" was censored in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

Vincenzo Bellini was a secret member of the Carbonari and in his masterpiece I puritani (The Puritans), the last part of Act 2 is an allegory to Italian unification. Another Bellini opera, Norma, was at the center of an unexpected standing ovation during its performance in Milan in 1859: while the chorus was performing Guerra, guerra! Le galliche selve (War, war! The Gallic forests) in Act 2, the Italians began to greet the chorus with loud applause and to yell the word "War!" several times towards the Austrian officers at the opera house.[82]

The relationship between Gaetano Donizetti and the Risorgimento is still controversial. Even though Giuseppe Mazzini tried to use some of Donizetti's works for promoting the Italian cause, Donizetti had always preferred not to get involved in politics.[83]


Patriots scrawling "Viva VERDI" on walls
Historians vigorously debate how political were the operas of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). In particular, the chorus of the Hebrew slaves (known as "Va, pensiero") from the third act of the opera Nabucco was intended to be an anthem for Italian patriots, who were seeking to unify their country and free it from foreign control in the years up to 1861 (the chorus's theme of exiles singing about their homeland, and its lines like O mia patria, si bella e perduta / "O my country, so lovely and so lost" was thought to have resonated with many Italians).[84] Beginning in Naples in 1859 and spreading throughout Italy, the slogan "Viva VERDI" was used as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Viva Victor Emmanuel King of Italy), referring to Victor Emmanuel II.[85][86]

Franco Della Peruta argues in favour of close links between the operas and the Risorgimento, emphasizing Verdi's patriotic intent and links to the values of the Risorgimento. Verdi started as a republican, became a strong supporter of Cavour and entered the Italian parliament on Cavour's suggestion. His politics caused him to be frequently in trouble with the Austrian censors. Verdi's main works of 1842-49 were especially relevant to the struggle for independence, including Nabucco (1842), I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843), Ernani (1844), Attila (1846), Macbeth (1847), and La battaglia di Legnano (1848). However, starting in the 1850s, his operas showed few patriotic themes because of the heavy censorship of the absolutist regimes in power.


The final scene of the opera Risorgimento! (2011) by Lorenzo Ferrero
Verdi later became disillusioned by politics, but he was personally active part in the political world of events of the Risorgimento and was elected to the first Italian parliament in 1861.[87] Likewise Marco Pizzo argues that after 1815 music became a political tool, and many songwriters expressed ideals of freedom and equality. Pizzo says Verdi was part of this movement, for his operas were inspired by the love of country, the struggle for Italian independence, and speak to the sacrifice of patriots and exiles.[88] On the other side of the debate, Mary Ann Smart argues that music critics at the time seldom mentioned any political themes.[89] Likewise Roger Parker argues that the political dimension of Verdi's operas was exaggerated by nationalistic historians looking for a hero in the late 19th century.[90]

Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco and the Risorgimento are the subject of a 2011 opera, Risorgimento! by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Italian unification.

Films[edit]
The Leopard is a film from 1963, based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and directed by Luchino Visconti. It features Burt Lancaster as the eponymous character, the Prince of Salina. The film depicts his reaction to the Risorgimento, and his vain attempts to retain his social standing.

There are other movies set in this period:

1860 (1934), by Alessandro Blasetti
Piccolo mondo antico (1941), by Mario Soldati
Un garibaldino al convento (1942), by Vittorio De Sica
Heart and Soul (1948), by Vittorio De Sica
Senso (1954), by Luchino Visconti
Garibaldi (1961), by Roberto Rossellini
1870 (1971), by Alfredo Giannetti
Passione D'Amore (1981), by Ettore Scola (later adapted by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine into the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Passion)
Noi credevamo (2010), by Mario Martone
Maps of Italy before and during Italian unification[edit]

Italy in 1494

 

Italy in 1796

 

Italy in 1810

 

Italy in 1859: orange Kingdom of Sardinia, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), light green Duchy of Parma, green Duchy of Modena, dark green Grand Duchy of Tuscany, red Papal States, yellow Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

 

Italy in 1860: orange Kingdom of Sardinia, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), pink United Provinces of Central Italy, red Papal States, yellow Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

 

Italy in 1861: orange Kingdom of Italy, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), red Papal States.

 

Kingdom of Italy in 1870

 

Kingdom of Italy in 1919

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Bibliography[edit]
Ascoli, Albert Russell and Krystyna Von Henneberg, eds. Making and Remaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento (2001) online
Beales, Derek; Biagini, Eugenio (2003). The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy (2nd ed.). Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-36958-0.
Carter, Nick, ed., Britain, Ireland and the Italian Risorgimento (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 233 pp
Clark, Martin. The Italian Risorgimento (2nd ed. 2009); 146pp
Collier, Martin, Italian Unification, 1820-71 (Heinemann, 2003); textbook, 156 pages excerpt
Davis, John A., ed. (2000). Italy in the nineteenth century: 1796–1900. London: Oxford University Press.
De Mattei, Roberto. Pius IX (2004).
Gilmour, David.The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples (2011). excerpt
Hearder, Harry. Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento 1790 - 1870 (1983) excerpt
Holt, Edgar. The Making of Italy 1815–1870, (1971).
Mowat, R.B. A history of European diplomacy, 1815-1914 (1922) pp 115-63 online free
Patriarca, Silvana, and Lucy Riall, eds. The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 13 essays on specialized topics by scholars excerpt; review
Pearce, Robert, and Andrina Stiles. Access to History: The Unification of Italy 1789-1896 (4th rf., Hodder Education, 2015), textbook. excerpt
Pozzo, Barbara (2013). "Masculinity Italian style". Nevada Law Journal, special issue: Men, Masculinities, and Law: A Symposium on Multidimensional Masculinities Theory. William S. Boyd School of Law. 13 (2): 15.
Rapone, Danilo. Religion and politics in the Risorgimento. Britain and the new Italy, 1861–1875 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 3012pp.
Riall, Lucy. The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society, and National Unification (Routledge, 1994) online
Riall, Lucy. Garibaldi: Invention of a hero (Yale UP, 2008).
Riall, Lucy (1998). "Hero, saint or revolutionary? Nineteenth‐century politics and the cult of Garibaldi". Modern Italy. Taylor and Francis. 3 (2): 191–204. doi:10.1080/13532949808454803.
Ridley, Jasper. Garibaldi (1974), a standard biography.
Sarlin, Simon (2009). "Fighting the Risorgimento: foreign volunteers in southern Italy (1860–63)". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. Taylor and Francis. 14 (4): 476–490. doi:10.1080/13545710903281987.
Smith, Denis Mack. Cavour (1985)
Smith, Denis Mack. Mazzini (1995) excerpt
Smith, Denis Mack. Victor Emanuel, Cavour, and the Risorgimento (Oxford University Press, 1971)
Thayer, William Roscoe (1911). The Life and Times of Cavour vol 1. old interpretations but useful on details; vol 1 goes to 1859]; volume 2 online covers 1859-62
Trevelyan, George Macaulay (1911). Garibaldi and the making of Italy.
Wawro, Geoffrey. "Austria versus the Risorgimento: A New Look at Austria's Italian strategy in the 1860s." European History Quarterly 26#1 (1996): 7-29.
Woolf, Stuart Joseph. The Italian Risorgimento (1969).
Woolf, Stuart. A History of Italy 1700-1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change (1960), 519 pp
Wright, Owain (2012). "British foreign policy and the Italian occupation of Rome, 1870". The International History Review. Taylor and Francis. 34 (1): 161–176. doi:10.1080/07075332.2012.668343.
Historiography[edit]
Ramm, Agatha (1972). "The Risorgimento in Sicily: Recent Literature". English Historical Review. 87 (345): 795–811. JSTOR 562204.
Rao, Anna Maria. "Napoleonic Italy: Old and New Trends in Historiography." in Ute Planert, ed., Napoleon's Empire (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016). pp 84–97.
Italian[edit]
Bacchin, Elena. Italofilia. Opinione pubblica brittanica e il Risorgimento italiano 1847–1864 (Turin, Carocci editore, 2014), 266 pp
Banti, Alberto Mario. La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell'Italia unita. Torino, Einaudi, 2000
Banti, Alberto Mario. Il Risorgimento italiano. Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2004 (Quadrante Laterza; 125)
Ghisalberti, Carlo. Istituzioni e società civile nell'età del Risorgimento. Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2005 (Biblioteca universale Laterza; 575)
Della Peruta, Franco. L'Italia del Risorgimento: problemi, momenti e figure. Milano, Angeli, 1997 (Saggi di storia; 14)
Della Peruta, Franco. Conservatori, liberali e democratici nel Risorgimento. Milano, Angeli, 1989 (Storia; 131)
De Rosa, Luigi. La provincia subordinata. Saggio sulla questione meridionale, Bari, Laterza, 2004
Guerra, Nicola. Le due anime del processo di unificazione nazionale: Risorgimento e Controrisorgimento. La necessità di un nuovo approccio di ricerca ancora disatteso. Pesaro, Chronica Mundi, October 2011, ISSN 2239-7515
Scirocco, Alfonso. L'Italia del risorgimento: 1800–1860. (vol. 1 di Storia d'Italia dall'unità alla Repubblica), Bologna, Il mulino, 1990
Scirocco, Alfonso. In difesa del Risorgimento. Bologna, Il mulino, 1998 (Collana di storia contemporanea)
Tomaz, Luigi. Il confine d'Italia in Istria e Dalmazia, Presentazione di Arnaldo Mauri, Conselve, Think ADV, 2008.
Carlo Cardia, Risorgimento e religione, Giappichelli, Torino, 2011, ISBN 978-88-348-2552-5.
External links[edit]
	Wikimedia Commons has media related to Italian Risorgimento.
The Risorgimento: A Time for Reunification
Women of the Risorgimento
Garibaldi & The Risorgimento
Cavour and the Unification of Italy
Arcaini, G.B. (6 March 2005). "The Italian Unification". History of Italy. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
Arcaini, G.B. (30 November 2003). "Italy's Unity". History of Italy. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
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Italian unification
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Risorgimento" redirects here. For the 2011 opera by Lorenzo Ferrero, see Risorgimento! (opera). For the newspaper established by Camillo Cavour, see Il Risorgimento (newspaper).
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Italian unification
Risorgimento
Episodio delle cinque giornate (Baldassare Verazzi).jpg
Five Days of Milan, 18–22 March 1848
Date	1815–1871
Location	Italy
Participants	Italian society, Kingdom of Sardinia, Provisional Government of Milan, Republic of San Marco, Kingdom of Sicily, Roman Republic, Carboneria, French Empire, Red Shirts, Hungarian legion, Southern Army, United Provinces of Central Italy, Kingdom of Italy
Outcome	
Italian revolutions of 1820
Italian revolutions of 1830
Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states
First Italian War of Independence
Second Italian War of Independence
Expedition of the Thousand
Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
Third Italian War of Independence
Capture of Rome
Rome becomes the capital of the Kingdom of Italy
Part of a series on the
History of Italy
Old map of Italian peninsula
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Italian unification (Italian: Unità d'Italia [uniˈta ddiˈtaːlja]), or the Risorgimento ([risordʒiˈmento], meaning "the Resurgence" or "revival"), was the political and social movement that consolidated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of the Kingdom of Italy in the 19th century. The process began in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna and was completed in 1871 when Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.[1][2]

The term, which also designates the cultural, political and social movement that promoted unification, recalls the romantic, nationalist and patriotic ideals of an Italian renaissance through the conquest of a unified political identity that, by sinking its ancient roots during the Roman period, "suffered an abrupt halt [or loss] of its political unity in 476 AD after the collapse of the West Roman Empire."[3]

However, some of the terre irredente did not join the Kingdom of Italy until 1918 after Italy defeated Austria-Hungary in World War I. Some nationalists see the 4 November 1918 Armistice of Villa Giusti as the completion of unification.[4]

Contents  [hide] 
1	Background
1.1	French Revolution
1.2	Reaction and dreams 1815–1848
1.3	The Carboneria
1.4	Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi
2	Early revolutionary activity
2.1	Exiles and European and masculine ideals
2.2	Two Sicilies insurrection
2.3	Piedmont insurrection
2.4	1830 insurrections
3	Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian Independence War
3.1	Cavour and the prospects for unification
4	Towards the Kingdom of Italy
4.1	The "Pisacane" fiasco
4.2	The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath
4.3	The Mille expedition
4.4	Defeat of the Kingdom of Naples
4.5	Roman Question
5	Third War of Independence (1866)
6	Rome
6.1	Mentana and Villa Glori
6.2	Memorial
6.3	Capture of Rome
7	Problems
7.1	Ruling and representing southern Italy
8	Historiography
9	Risorgimento and irredentism
9.1	Irredentism and the two World Wars
9.2	After World War II
10	Anniversary of Risorgimento
11	Culture and Risorgimento
11.1	Art
11.2	Literature
11.3	Music
11.4	Films
12	Maps of Italy before and during Italian unification
13	References
14	Bibliography
14.1	Historiography
14.2	Italian
15	External links
Background[edit]
Italy was unified by Rome in the third century BC. For 700 years, it was a kind of territorial extension of the capital of the Roman Republic and Empire, enjoying, for a long time, a privileged status and so it was not converted into a province.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Italy remained united under the Ostrogothic Kingdom and later disputed between the Kingdom of the Lombards and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. Following conquest by the Frankish Empire, the title of King of Italy merged with the office of Holy Roman Emperor. However, the emperor was an absentee German speaking foreigner who had little concern for the governance of Italy as a state; as a result, Italy gradually developed into a system of city-states.

This situation persisted through the Renaissance but began to deteriorate with the rise of modern nation-states in the early modern period. Italy, including the Papal States, then became the site of proxy wars between the major powers, notably the Holy Roman Empire (later Austria), Spain and France.

Harbingers of national unity appeared in the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, and the 15th century foreign policy of Cosimo De Medici and Lorenzo De Medici. Leading Renaissance Italian writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Guicciardini expressed opposition to foreign domination. Petrarch stated that the "ancient valour in Italian hearts is not yet dead" in Italia Mia. Machiavelli later quoted four verses from Italia Mia in The Prince, which looked forward to a political leader who would unite Italy "to free her from the barbarians".[5]

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 formally ended with the rule of the Holy Roman Emperors in Italy. However, the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty, another branch of which provided the Emperors, continued to rule most of Italy down to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).

A sense of Italian national identity was reflected in Gian Rinaldo Carli's Della Patria degli Italiani,[6] written in 1764. It told how a stranger entered a café in Milan and puzzled its occupants by saying that he was neither a foreigner nor a Milanese. "'Then what are you?' they asked. 'I am an Italian,' he explained."[7]

French Revolution[edit]
The Habsburg rule in Italy came to an end with the campaigns of the French Revolutionaries in 1792–97, when a series of client republics were set up. In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by the last emperor, Francis II, after its defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars destroyed the old structures of feudalism in Italy and introduced modern ideas and efficient legal authority; it provided much of the intellectual force and social capital that fueled unification movements for decades after it collapsed in 1814.[8] The French Republic spread republican principles, and the institutions of republican governments promoted citizenship over the rule of the Bourbons and Habsburgs and other dynasties.[9] The reaction against any outside control challenged Napoleon's choice of rulers. As Napoleon's reign began to fail, the rulers he had installed tried to keep their thrones (among them: Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy and Joachim Murat, king of Naples) further feeding nationalistic sentiments. Beauharnais tried to get Austrian approval for his succession to the new Kingdom of Italy, and on 30 March 1815, Murat issued the Rimini Proclamation, which called on Italians to revolt against their Austrian occupiers.

Reaction and dreams 1815–1848[edit]
After Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments. Italy was again controlled largely by the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs,[10] as they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of Italy and were, together, the most powerful force against unification.

An important figure of this period was Francesco Melzi d'Eril, serving as vice-president of the Napoleonic Italian Republic (1802–1805) and consistent supporter of the Italian unification ideals that would lead to the Italian Risorgimento shortly after his death.[11] Meanwhile, artistic and literary sentiment also turned towards nationalism; Vittorio Alfieri, Francesco Lomonaco and Niccolò Tommaseo are generally considered three great literary precursors of Italian nationalism, but the most famous of proto-nationalist works was Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) widely read as a thinly-veiled allegorical critique of Austrian rule. Published in 1827 and extensively revised in the following years the 1840 version of I Promessi Sposi used a standardized version of the Tuscan dialect, a conscious effort by the author to provide a language and force people to learn it.[12]

Exiles dreamed of unification. Three ideals of unification appeared. Vincenzo Gioberti, a Piedmontese priest, had suggested a confederation of Italian states under leadership of the Pope in his 1842 book, Of the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians.[13] Pope Pius IX at first appeared interested but he turned reactionary and led the battle against liberalism and nationalism.[14]

Giuseppe Mazzini and Carlo Cattaneo wanted the unification of Italy under a federal republic. That proved too extreme for most nationalists. The middle position was proposed by Cesare Balbo (1789–1853) as a confederation of separate Italian states led by Piedmont.[15]

The Carboneria[edit]

Italian unification
One of the most influential revolutionary groups was the Carboneria, a secret political discussion group formed in Southern Italy early in the 19th century; the members were called Carbonari. After 1815, Freemasonry in Italy was repressed and discredited due to its French connections. A void was left that the Carboneria filled with a movement that closely resembled Freemasonry but with a commitment to Italian nationalism and no association with Napoleon and his government. The response came from middle class professionals and business men and some intellectuals. The Carboneria disowned Napoleon but nevertheless were inspired by the principles of the French Revolution regarding liberty, equality and fraternity. They developed their own rituals, and were strongly anticlerical. The Carboneria movement spread across Italy.[16]

Conservative governments feared the Carboneria, imposing stiff penalties on men discovered to be members. Nevertheless, the movement survived and continued to be a source of political turmoil in Italy from 1820 until after unification. The Carbonari condemned Napoleon III (who, as a young man, had fought on the side of the Carbonari) to death for failing to unite Italy, and the group almost succeeded in assassinating him in 1858, when Felice Orsini, Giovanni Andrea Pieri, Carlo Di Rudio and Andrea Gomez launched three bombs at him. Many leaders of the unification movement were at one time or other members of this organization. The chief purpose was to defeat tyranny and to establish constitutional government. Though contributing some service to the cause of Italian unity, historians such as Cornelia Shiver doubt that their achievements were proportional to their pretensions.[17]

Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi[edit]

Garibaldi and Cavour making Italy in a satirical cartoon of 1861
Many leading Carbonari revolutionaries wanted a republic,[18] two of the most prominent being Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini's activity in revolutionary movements caused him to be imprisoned soon after he joined. While in prison, he concluded that Italy could − and therefore should − be unified and formulated his program for establishing a free, independent, and republican nation with Rome as its capital. Following his release in 1831, he went to Marseille in France, where he organized a new political society called La Giovine Italia (Young Italy), whose motto was "Dio e Popolo" (God and People), which sought the unification of Italy.[19]

Garibaldi, a native of Nice (then part of France) participated in an uprising in Piedmont in 1834 and was sentenced to death but he escaped to South America, spending fourteen years in exile, taking part in several wars and learning the art of guerrilla warfare before his return to Italy in 1848.[20]

Early revolutionary activity[edit]

Guglielmo Pepe

The Arrest of Silvio Pellico and Piero Maroncelli, Saluzzo, civic museum
Exiles and European and masculine ideals[edit]
Many of the key intellectual and political leaders operated from exile; most Risorgimento patriots lived and published their work abroad after successive failed revolutions. Exile became a central theme of the foundational legacy of the Risorgimento as the narrative of the Italian nation fighting for independence.[21] The exiles were deeply immersed in European ideas, and often hammered away at what Europeans saw as Italian vices, especially effeminacy and indolence. These negative stereotypes emerged from Enlightenment notions of national character that stressed the influence of the environment and history on a people's moral predisposition. Italian exiles both challenged and embraced the stereotypes and typically presented gendered interpretations of Italy's political "degeneration". They called for a masculine response to feminine weaknesses as the basis of a national regeneration, and fashioned their image of the future Italian nation firmly in the standards of European nationalism.[22]

Two Sicilies insurrection[edit]
In 1820, Spaniards successfully revolted over disputes about their Constitution, which influenced the development of a similar movement in Italy. Inspired by the Spaniards (who, in 1812, had created their constitution), a regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, commanded by Guglielmo Pepe, a Carbonaro (member of the secret republican organisation),[23] mutinied, conquering the peninsular part of Two Sicilies. The king, Ferdinand I, agreed to enact a new constitution. The revolutionaries, though, failed to court popular support and fell to Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance. Ferdinand abolished the constitution and began systematically persecuting known revolutionaries. Many supporters of revolution in Sicily, including the scholar Michele Amari, were forced into exile during the decades that followed.[24]

Piedmont insurrection[edit]
The leader of the 1821 revolutionary movement in Piedmont was Santorre di Santarosa, who wanted to remove the Austrians and unify Italy under the House of Savoy. The Piedmont revolt started in Alessandria, where troops adopted the green, white, and red tricolore of the Cisalpine Republic. The king's regent, prince Charles Albert, acting while the king Charles Felix was away, approved a new constitution to appease the revolutionaries, but when the king returned he disavowed the constitution and requested assistance from the Holy Alliance. Di Santarosa's troops were defeated, and the would-be Piedmontese revolutionary fled to Paris.[25]

In Milan, Silvio Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli organised several attempts to weaken the hold of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means. In October 1820, Pellico and Maroncelli were arrested on the charge of carbonarism and imprisoned.[26]

1830 insurrections[edit]
Historian Denis Mack Smith argues that:

Few people in 1830, believed that an Italian nation might exist. There were eight states in the peninsula, each with distinct laws and traditions. No one had had the desire or the resources to revive Napoleon's partial experiment in unification. The settlement of 1814–15, had merely restored regional divisions, with the added disadvantage that the decisive victory of Austria over France temporarily hindered Italians in playing off their former oppressors against each other. ... Italians who, like Ugo Foscolo and Gabriele Rossetti, harboured patriotic sentiments, were driven into exile. The largest Italian state, the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with its 8 million inhabitants, seemed aloof and indifferent: Sicily and Naples had once formed part of Spain, and it had always been foreign to the rest of Italy. The common people in each region, and even the intellectual elite, spoke their mutually unintelligible dialects, and lacked the least vestiges of national consciousness. They wanted good government, not self-government, and had welcomed Napoleon and the French as more equitable and efficient than their native dynasties.[27]


Ciro Menotti
After 1830, revolutionary sentiment in favour of a unified Italy began to experience a resurgence, and a series of insurrections laid the groundwork for the creation of one nation along the Italian peninsula.

The Duke of Modena, Francis IV, was an ambitious noble, and he hoped to become king of Northern Italy by increasing his territory. In 1826, Francis made it clear that he would not act against those who subverted opposition toward the unification of Italy. Encouraged by the declaration, revolutionaries in the region began to organize.

During the July Revolution of 1830 in France, revolutionaries forced the king to abdicate and created the July Monarchy with encouragement from the new French king, Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe had promised revolutionaries such as Ciro Menotti that he would intervene if Austria tried to interfere in Italy with troops. Fearing he would lose his throne, Louis-Philippe did not, however, intervene in Menotti's planned uprising. The Duke of Modena abandoned his Carbonari supporters, arrested Menotti and other conspirators in 1831, and once again conquered his duchy with help from the Austrian troops. Menotti was executed, and the idea of a revolution centered in Modena faded.

At the same time, other insurrections arose in the Papal Legations of Bologna, Forlì, Ravenna, Imola, Ferrara, Pesaro and Urbino. These successful revolutions, which adopted the tricolore in favour of the Papal flag, quickly spread to cover all the Papal Legations, and their newly installed local governments proclaimed the creation of a united Italian nation. The revolts in Modena and the Papal Legations inspired similar activity in the Duchy of Parma, where the tricolore flag was adopted. The Parmese duchess Marie Louise left the city during the political upheaval.

Insurrected provinces planned to unite as the Province Italiane unite (United Italian Provinces), which prompted Pope Gregory XVI to ask for Austrian help against the rebels. Austrian Chancellor Metternich warned Louis-Philippe that Austria had no intention of letting Italian matters be, and that French intervention would not be tolerated. Louis-Philippe withheld any military help and even arrested Italian patriots living in France.

In early 1831, the Austrian army began its march across the Italian peninsula, slowly crushing resistance in each province that had revolted. This military action suppressed much of the fledgling revolutionary movement, and resulted in the arrest of many radical leaders.[28]

Revolutions of 1848–1849 and First Italian Independence War[edit]
Main articles: Revolutions of 1848 in the Italian states and First Italian War of Independence

Execution of the Bandiera Brothers
In 1844, two brothers from Venice, Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, members of the Giovine Italia, planned to make a raid on the Calabrian coast against the Kingdom of Two Sicilies in support of Italian Unification. They assembled a band of about twenty men ready to sacrifice their lives, and set sail on their venture on 12 June 1844. Four days later they landed near Crotone, intending to go to Cosenza, liberate the political prisoners and issue their proclamations. Tragically for the Bandiera brothers, they did not find the insurgent band they were told awaited them, so they moved towards La Sila. They were ultimately betrayed by one of their party, the Corsican Pietro Boccheciampe, and by some peasants who believed them to be Turkish pirates. A detachment of gendarmes and volunteers were sent against them, and after a short fight the whole band was taken prisoner and escorted to Cosenza, where a number of Calabrians who had taken part in a previous rising were also under arrest. The Bandiera brothers and their nine companions were executed by firing squad; some accounts state they cried "Viva l’Italia!" ("Long live Italy!") as they fell. The moral effect was enormous throughout Italy, the action of the authorities was universally condemned, and the martyrdom of the Bandiera brothers bore fruit in the subsequent revolutions.[29]


Ruggero Settimo
On 5 January 1848, the revolutionary disturbances began with a civil disobedience strike in Lombardy, as citizens stopped smoking cigars and playing the lottery, which denied Austria the associated tax revenue. Shortly after this, revolts began on the island of Sicily and in Naples. In Sicily the revolt resulted in the proclamation of the Kingdom of Sicily with Ruggero Settimo as Chairman of the independent state until 1849 when the Bourbon army took back full control of the island on 15 May 1849 by force.[30]

In February 1848, there were revolts in Tuscany that were relatively nonviolent, after which Grand Duke Leopold II granted the Tuscans a constitution. A breakaway republican provisional government formed in Tuscany during February shortly after this concession. On 21 February, Pope Pius IX granted a constitution to the Papal States, which was both unexpected and surprising considering the historical recalcitrance of the Papacy. On 23 February 1848, King Louis Philippe of France was forced to flee Paris, and a republic was proclaimed. By the time the revolution in Paris occurred, three states of Italy had constitutions—four if one considers Sicily to be a separate state.


Battle of Goito
Meanwhile, in Lombardy, tensions increased until the Milanese and Venetians rose in revolt on 18 March 1848. The insurrection in Milan succeeded in expelling the Austrian garrison after five days of street fights – 18–22 March (Cinque giornate di Milano). An Austrian army under Marshal Josef Radetzky besieged Milan, but due to defection of many of his troops and the support of the Milanese for the revolt, they were forced to retreat.

Soon, Charles Albert, the King of Sardinia (who ruled Piedmont and Savoy), urged by the Venetians and Milanese to aid their cause, decided this was the moment to unify Italy and declared war on Austria (First Italian Independence War). After initial successes at Goito and Peschiera, he was decisively defeated by Radetzky at the Battle of Custoza on 24 July. An armistice was agreed to, and Radetzky regained control of all of Lombardy-Venetia save Venice itself, where the Republic of San Marco was proclaimed under Daniele Manin.

While Radetzky consolidated control of Lombardy-Venetia and Charles Albert licked his wounds, matters took a more serious turn in other parts of Italy. The monarchs who had reluctantly agreed to constitutions in March came into conflict with their constitutional ministers. At first, the republics had the upper hand, forcing the monarchs to flee their capitals, including Pope Pius IX.


Giuseppe Mazzini
Initially, Pius IX had been something of a reformer, but conflicts with the revolutionaries soured him on the idea of constitutional government. In November 1848, following the assassination of his Minister Pellegrino Rossi, Pius IX fled just before Giuseppe Garibaldi and other patriots arrived in Rome. In early 1849, elections were held for a Constituent Assembly, which proclaimed a Roman Republic on 9 February. On 2 February 1849, at a political rally held in the Apollo Theater, a young Roman priest, the Abbé Carlo Arduini, had made a speech in which he had declared that the temporal power of the popes was a "historical lie, a political imposture, and a religious immorality."[31] In early March 1849, Giuseppe Mazzini arrived in Rome and was appointed Chief Minister. In the Constitution of the Roman Republic,[32] religious freedom was guaranteed by article 7, the independence of the pope as head of the Catholic Church was guaranteed by article 8 of the Principi fondamentali, while the death penalty was abolished by article 5, and free public education was provided by article 8 of the Titolo I.


Daniele Manin and Niccolò Tommaseo after the proclamation of the Republic of San Marco
Before the powers could respond to the founding of the Roman Republic, Charles Albert, whose army had been trained by the exiled Polish general Albert Chrzanowski, renewed the war with Austria. He was quickly defeated by Radetzky at Novara on 23 March 1849. Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II, and Piedmontese ambitions to unite Italy or conquer Lombardy were, for the moment, brought to an end. The war ended with a treaty signed on 9 August. A popular revolt broke out in Brescia on the same day as the defeat at Novara, but was suppressed by the Austrians ten days later.

There remained the Roman and Venetian Republics. In April, a French force under Charles Oudinot was sent to Rome. Apparently, the French first wished to mediate between the Pope and his subjects, but soon the French were determined to restore the Pope. After a two-month siege, Rome capitulated on 29 June 1849 and the Pope was restored. Garibaldi and Mazzini once again fled into exile—in 1850 Garibaldi went to New York City. Meanwhile, the Austrians besieged Venice defended by a volunteer army led by Daniele Manin and Guglielmo Pepe, which were forced to surrender on 24 August. Pro-independence fighters were hanged en masse in Belfiore, while the Austrians moved to restore order in central Italy, restoring the princes who had been expelled and establishing their control over the Papal Legations. The revolutions were thus completely crushed.[33]

Cavour and the prospects for unification[edit]
Morale was of course badly weakened, but the dream of Risorgimento did not die. Instead, the Italian patriots learned some lessons that made them much more effective at the next opportunity in 1860. Military weakness was glaring, as the small Italian states were completely outmatched by France and Austria. France was a potential ally, and the patriots realized they had to focus all their attention on expelling Austria first, with a willingness to give the French whatever they wanted in return for essential military intervention. The French in fact received Savoy and Nice in 1860. Secondly, the patriots realized that the Pope was an enemy, and could never be the leader of a united Italy. Third they realized that republicanism was too weak a force. Unification had to be based on a strong monarchy, and in practice that meant reliance on Piedmont (the Kingdom of Sardinia) under King Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878) of the House of Savoy. Count Cavour (1810 – 1861) provided critical leadership. He was a modernizer interested in agrarian improvements, banks, railways and free trade. He opened a newspaper as soon as censorship allowed it: Il Risorgimento called for the independence of Italy, a league of Italian princes, and moderate reforms. He had the ear of the king and in 1852 became prime minister. He ran an efficient active government, promoting rapid economic modernization while upgrading the administration of the army and the financial and legal systems. He sought out support from patriots across Italy. In 1855, the kingdom became an ally of Britain and France in the Crimean war, which gave Cavour's diplomacy legitimacy in the eyes of the great powers.[34][35]

Towards the Kingdom of Italy[edit]
The "Pisacane" fiasco[edit]
In 1857, Carlo Pisacane, an aristocrat from Naples who had embraced Mazzini's ideas, decided to provoke a rising in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His small force landed on the island of Ponza. It overpowered guards and liberated hundreds of prisoners. In sharp contrast to his hypothetical expectations, there was no local uprising and the invaders were quickly overpowered. Pisacane was killed by angry locals who suspected he was leading a gypsy band trying to steal their food.[36]

The Second Italian Independence War of 1859 and its aftermath[edit]
Main article: Second Italian War of Independence

King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, 1st Prime Minister of Italy
The 2nd War of Italian Independence began in April 1859 when the Sardinian Prime Minister Count Cavour found an ally in Napoleon III. Napoleon III signed a secret alliance and Cavour provoked Austria with military maneuvers and eventually created the war in April 1859. Cavour called for volunteers to enlist in the Italian liberation. The Austrians planned to use their army to beat the Sardinians before the French could come to their aid. Austria had an army of 140,000 men, while the Sardinians had a mere 70,000. This proved less important than it first appeared, however, as Emperor Franz Josef had chosen his officers based on their aristocratic titles and lineage instead of their personal merit. This strategy was no doubt socially acceptable, but the emperor soon discovered blue blood was a remarkably poor guarantor of military victory. Instead of swiftly entering the capital of Sardinia, the Austrian army crawled, taking almost ten days to travel the 80 kilometres (50 mi). By this time, the French had reinforced the Sardinians, so the Austrians retreated. Napoleon III's plans worked and at the battle of Solferino, France defeated Austria and forced negotiations. The settlement, by which Lombardy was annexed to Sardinia, left Austria in control of Venice. Sardinia eventually won the Second War of Italian Unification due to statesmanship instead of armies or popular election. The final arrangement was ironed out by "back-room" deals instead of in the battlefield. This was because neither France, Austria, nor Sardinia wanted to risk another battle and could not handle further fighting. All of the sides were eventually unhappy with the final outcome of the 2nd War of Italian Unification and expected another conflict in the future.[37]

The Mille expedition[edit]
Main article: Expedition of the Thousand

Giuseppe Garibaldi
Thus, by early 1860, only five states remained in Italy—the Austrians in Venetia, the Papal States (now minus the Legations), the new expanded Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and San Marino.[38][39][40]

Francis II of the Two Sicilies, the son and successor of Ferdinand II (the infamous "King Bomba"), had a well-organized army of 150,000 men. But his father's tyranny had inspired many secret societies, and the kingdom's Swiss Mercenaries were unexpectedly recalled home under the terms of a new Swiss law that forbade Swiss citizens to serve as mercenaries. This left Francis with only his mostly-unreliable native troops. It was a critical opportunity for the unification movement. In April 1860, separate insurrections began in Messina and Palermo in Sicily, both of which had demonstrated a history of opposing Neapolitan rule. These rebellions were easily suppressed by loyal troops.

In the meantime, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a native of Nice, was deeply resentful of the French annexation of his home city. He hoped to use his supporters to regain the territory. Cavour, terrified of Garibaldi provoking a war with France, persuaded Garibaldi to instead use his forces in the Sicilian rebellions. On 6 May 1860, Garibaldi and his cadre of about a thousand Italian volunteers (called I Mille), steamed from Quarto near Genoa, and, after a stop in Talamone on 11 May, landed near Marsala on the west coast of Sicily.

Near Salemi, Garibaldi's army attracted scattered bands of rebels, and the combined forces defeated the opposing army at Calatafimi on 13 May. Within three days, the invading force had swelled to 4,000 men. On 14 May Garibaldi proclaimed himself dictator of Sicily, in the name of Victor Emmanuel. After waging various successful but hard-fought battles, Garibaldi advanced upon the Sicilian capital of Palermo, announcing his arrival by beacon-fires kindled at night. On 27 May the force laid siege to the Porta Termini of Palermo, while a mass uprising of street and barricade fighting broke out within the city.


Battle of Calatafimi
With Palermo deemed insurgent, Neapolitan general Ferdinando Lanza, arriving in Sicily with some 25,000 troops, furiously bombarded Palermo nearly to ruins. With the intervention of a British admiral, an armistice was declared, leading to the Neapolitan troops' departure and surrender of the town to Garibaldi and his much smaller army. In Palermo was created the Dictatorship of Garibaldi.

This resounding success demonstrated the weakness of the Neapolitan government. Garibaldi's fame spread and many Italians began to consider him a national hero. Doubt, confusion, and dismay overtook the Neapolitan court—the king hastily summoned his ministry and offered to restore an earlier constitution, but these efforts failed to rebuild the peoples' trust in Bourbon governance.

Six weeks after the surrender of Palermo, Garibaldi attacked Messina. Within a week, its citadel surrendered. Having conquered Sicily, Garibaldi proceeded to the mainland, crossing the Strait of Messina with the Neapolitan fleet at hand. The garrison at Reggio Calabria promptly surrendered. As he marched northward, the populace everywhere hailed him, and military resistance faded: on 18 and 21 August, the people of Basilicata and Apulia, two regions of the Kingdom of Naples, independently declared their annexation to the Kingdom of Italy. At the end of August, Garibaldi was at Cosenza, and, on 5 September, at Eboli, near Salerno. Meanwhile, Naples had declared a state of siege, and on 6 September the king gathered the 4,000 troops still faithful to him and retreated over the Volturno river. The next day, Garibaldi, with a few followers, entered by train into Naples, where the people openly welcomed him.[41]

Defeat of the Kingdom of Naples[edit]

People cheering as Garibaldi enters Naples
Though Garibaldi had easily taken the capital, the Neapolitan army had not joined the rebellion en masse, holding firm along the Volturno River. Garibaldi's irregular bands of about 25,000 men could not drive away the king or take the fortresses of Capua and Gaeta without the help of the Sardinian army. The Sardinian army, however, could only arrive by traversing the Papal States, which extended across the entire center of the peninsula. Ignoring the political will of the Holy See, Garibaldi announced his intent to proclaim a "Kingdom of Italy" from Rome, the capital city of Pope Pius IX. Seeing this as a threat to the domain of the Catholic Church, Pius threatened excommunication for those who supported such an effort. Afraid that Garibaldi would attack Rome, Catholics worldwide sent money and volunteers for the Papal Army, which was commanded by General Louis Lamoricière, a French exile.


Battle of Volturno
The settling of the peninsular standoff now rested with Napoleon III. If he let Garibaldi have his way, Garibaldi would likely end the temporal sovereignty of the Pope and make Rome the capital of Italy. Napoleon, however, may have arranged with Cavour to let the king of Sardinia free to take possession of Naples, Umbria and the other provinces, provided that Rome and the "Patrimony of St. Peter" were left intact.[42]

It was in this situation that a Sardinian force of two army corps, under Fanti and Cialdini, marched to the frontier of the Papal States, its objective being not Rome but Naples. The Papal troops under Lamoricière advanced against Cialdini, but were quickly defeated and besieged in the fortress of Ancona, finally surrendering on 29 September. On 9 October, Victor Emmanuel arrived and took command. There was no longer a papal army to oppose him, and the march southward proceeded unopposed.


Victor Emmanuel meets Garibaldi near Teano
Garibaldi distrusted the pragmatic Cavour, particularly due to Cavour's role in the French annexation of Nice, Garibaldi's birthplace. Nevertheless, he accepted the command of Victor Emmanuel. When the king entered Sessa Aurunca at the head of his army, Garibaldi willingly handed over his dictatorial power. After greeting Victor Emmanuel in Teano with the title of King of Italy, Garibaldi entered Naples riding beside the king. Garibaldi then retired to the island of Caprera, while the remaining work of unifying the peninsula was left to Victor Emmanuel.

The progress of the Sardinian army compelled Francis II to give up his line along the river, and he eventually took refuge with his best troops in the fortress of Gaeta. His courage boosted by his resolute young wife, Duchess Marie Sophie of Bavaria, Francis mounted a stubborn defence that lasted three months. But European allies refused him aid, food and munitions became scarce, and disease set in, so the garrison was forced to surrender. Nonetheless, ragtag groups of Neapolitans loyal to Francis fought on against the Italian government for years to come.

The fall of Gaeta brought the unification movement to the brink of fruition—only Rome and Venetia remained to be added. On 18 February 1861, Victor Emmanuel assembled the deputies of the first Italian Parliament in Turin. On 17 March 1861, the Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, and on 27 March 1861 Rome was declared Capital of Italy, even though it was not actually in the new Kingdom.[43]

Three months later Cavour, having seen his life's work nearly complete, died. When he was given the last rites, Cavour purportedly said: "Italy is made. All is safe."[44]


Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
Roman Question[edit]
Main article: Roman Question
Mazzini was discontent with the perpetuation of monarchical government and continued to agitate for a republic. With the motto "Free from the Alps to the Adriatic", the unification movement set its gaze on Rome and Venice. There were obstacles, however. A challenge against the Pope's temporal dominion was viewed with great distrust by Catholics around the world, and there were French troops stationed in Rome. Victor Emmanuel was wary of the international repercussions of attacking the Papal States, and discouraged his subjects from participating in revolutionary ventures with such intentions.[45]


The Injured Garibaldi in the Aspromonte Mountains (oil on canvas), credited to Gerolamo Induno
Nonetheless, Garibaldi believed that the government would support him if he attacked Rome. Frustrated at inaction by the king, and bristling over perceived snubs, he came out of retirement to organize a new venture. In June 1862, he sailed from Genoa and landed again at Palermo, where he gathered volunteers for the campaign, under the slogan o Roma o Morte ("either Rome or Death"). The garrison of Messina, loyal to the king's instructions, barred their passage to the mainland. Garibaldi's force, now numbering two thousand, turned south and set sail from Catania. Garibaldi declared that he would enter Rome as a victor or perish beneath its walls. He landed at Melito on 14 August and marched at once into the Calabrian mountains.

Far from supporting this endeavour, the Italian government was quite disapproving. General Cialdini dispatched a division of the regular army, under Colonel Pallavicino, against the volunteer bands. On 28 August the two forces met in the Aspromonte. One of the regulars fired a chance shot, and several volleys followed, but Garibaldi forbade his men to return fire on fellow subjects of the Kingdom of Italy. The volunteers suffered several casualties, and Garibaldi himself was wounded; many were taken prisoner. Garibaldi was taken by steamer to Varignano, where he was honorably imprisoned for a time, but finally released.[46]

Meanwhile, Victor Emmanuel sought a safer means to the acquisition of the remaining Papal territory. He negotiated with the Emperor Napoleon for the removal of the French troops from Rome through a treaty. They agreed to the September Convention in September 1864, by which Napoleon agreed to withdraw the troops within two years. The Pope was to expand his own army during that time so as to be self-sufficient. In December 1866, the last of the French troops departed from Rome, in spite of the efforts of the pope to retain them. By their withdrawal, Italy (excluding Venetia and Savoy) was freed from the presence of foreign soldiers.[47]

The seat of government was moved in 1865 from Turin, the old Sardinian capital, to Florence, where the first Italian parliament was summoned. This arrangement created such disturbances in Turin that the king was forced to leave that city hastily for his new capital.[48]

Third War of Independence (1866)[edit]
Main article: Third Italian War of Independence

Battle of Custoza
In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Austria contested with Prussia the position of leadership among the German states. The Kingdom of Italy seized the opportunity to capture Venetia from Austrian rule and allied itself with Prussia.[49] Austria tried to persuade the Italian government to accept Venetia in exchange for non-intervention. However, on 8 April, Italy and Prussia signed an agreement that supported Italy's acquisition of Venetia, and on 20 June Italy declared war on Austria. Within the context of Italian unification, the Austro-Prussian war is called Third Independence War, after the First (1848) and the Second (1859).[50]

Victor Emmanuel hastened to lead an army across the Mincio to the invasion of Venetia, while Garibaldi was to invade the Tyrol with his Hunters of the Alps. The enterprise ended in disaster. The Italian army encountered the Austrians at Custoza on 24 June and suffered a defeat. On 20 July the Regia Marina was defeated in the battle of Lissa. Italy's fortunes were not all so dismal, though. The following day, Garibaldi's volunteers defeated an Austrian force in the battle of Bezzecca, and moved toward Trento.[51]

Meanwhile, Prussian Minister President Otto von Bismarck saw that his own ends in the war had been achieved, and signed an armistice with Austria on 27 July. Italy officially laid down its arms on 12 August. Garibaldi was recalled from his successful march and resigned with a brief telegram reading only "Obbedisco" ("I obey").


Victor Emmanuel II in Venice
In spite of Italy's poor showing, Prussia's success on the northern front obliged Austria to cede Venetia. Under the terms of a peace treaty signed in Vienna on 12 October, Emperor Franz Joseph had already agreed to cede Venetia to Napoleon III in exchange for non-intervention in the Austro-Prussian War, and thus Napoleon ceded Venetia to Italy on 19 October, in exchange for the earlier Italian acquiescence to the French annexation of Savoy and Nice.

In the peace treaty of Vienna, it was written that the annexation of Venetia would have become effective only after a referendum—taken on 21 and 22 October—to let the Venetian people express their will about being annexed or not to the Kingdom of Italy. Historians suggest that the referendum in Venetia was held under military pressure,[52] as a mere 0.01% of voters (69 out of more than 642,000 ballots) voted against the annexation.[53] However it should be admitted that the re-establishment of a Republic of Venice orphan of Istria and Dalmatia had little chances to develop.

Austrian forces put up some opposition to the invading Italians, to little effect. Victor Emmanuel entered Venice and Venetian land, and performed an act of homage in the Piazza San Marco.[54]

Rome[edit]
Mentana and Villa Glori[edit]

Garibaldi at Mentana, 3 November 1867
The national party, with Garibaldi at its head, still aimed at the possession of Rome, as the historic capital of the peninsula. In 1867 Garibaldi made a second attempt to capture Rome, but the papal army, strengthened with a new French auxiliary force, defeated his poorly armed volunteers at Mentana. Subsequently, a French garrison remained in Civitavecchia until August 1870, when it was recalled following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.

Before the defeat at Mentana, Enrico Cairoli, his brother Giovanni and 70 companions had made a daring attempt to take Rome. The group had embarked in Terni and floated down the Tiber. Their arrival in Rome was to coincide with an uprising inside the city. On 22 October 1867, the revolutionaries inside Rome seized control of the Capitoline Hill and of Piazza Colonna. Unfortunately for the Cairolis and their companions, by the time they arrived at Villa Glori, on the northern outskirts of Rome, the uprising had already been suppressed. During the night of 22 October 1867, the group was surrounded by Papal Zouaves, and Giovanni was severely wounded. Enrico was mortally wounded and bled to death in Giovanni's arms.

With the Cairoli dead, command was assumed by Giovanni Tabacchi who had retreated with the remaining volunteers into the villa, where they continued to fire at the papal soldiers. These also retreated in the evening to Rome. The survivors retreated to the positions of Garibaldi on the Italian border.

Memorial[edit]
At the summit of Villa Glori, near the spot where Enrico died, there is a plain white column dedicated to the Cairoli brothers and their 70 companions. About 100 meters to the left from the top of the Spanish Steps, there is a bronze monument of Giovanni holding the dying Enrico in his arm. A plaque lists the names of their companions. Giovanni never recovered from his wounds and from the tragic events of 1867. According to an eyewitness,[55] when Giovanni died on 11 September 1869:

In the last moments, he had a vision of Garibaldi and seemed to greet him with enthusiasm. I heard (so says a friend who was present) him say three times: "The union of the French to the papal political supporters was the terrible fact!" he was thinking about Mentana. Many times he called Enrico, that he might help him! then he said: "but we will certainly win; we will go to Rome!"

Capture of Rome[edit]
Main article: Capture of Rome

Capture of Rome
In July 1870, the Franco-Prussian War began. In early August, the French Emperor Napoleon III recalled his garrison from Rome, thus no longer providing protection to the Papal State. Widespread public demonstrations illustrated the demand that the Italian government take Rome. The Italian government took no direct action until the collapse of the Second French Empire at the Battle of Sedan. King Victor Emmanuel II sent Count Gustavo Ponza di San Martino to Pius IX with a personal letter offering a face-saving proposal that would have allowed the peaceful entry of the Italian Army into Rome, under the guise of offering protection to the pope. The Papacy, however, exhibited something less than enthusiasm for the plan:

The Pope's reception of San Martino (10 September 1870) was unfriendly. Pius IX allowed violent outbursts to escape him. Throwing the King's letter upon the table he exclaimed, "Fine loyalty! You are all a set of vipers, of whited sepulchres, and wanting in faith." He was perhaps alluding to other letters received from the King. After, growing calmer, he exclaimed: "I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I tell you, you will never enter Rome!" San Martino was so mortified that he left the next day.[56]

The Italian Army, commanded by General Raffaele Cadorna, crossed the papal frontier on 11 September and advanced slowly toward Rome, hoping that a peaceful entry could be negotiated. The Italian Army reached the Aurelian Walls on 19 September and placed Rome under a state of siege. Although now convinced of his unavoidable defeat, Pius IX remained intransigent to the bitter end and forced his troops to put up a token resistance. On 20 September, after a cannonade of three hours had breached the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pia, the Bersaglieri entered Rome and marched down Via Pia, which was subsequently renamed Via XX Settembre. 49 Italian soldiers and four officers, and 19 papal troops died. Rome and Latium were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy after a plebiscite held on 2 October. The results of this plebiscite were accepted by decree of 9 October.


The Quirinal Palace in Rome became the head of state of Italy's official residence (royal residence of the Kings of Italy and after the Italian constitutional referendum, 1946 residence and workplace for the Presidents of the Italian Republic)
Initially the Italian government had offered to let the pope keep the Leonine City, but the Pope rejected the offer because acceptance would have been an implied endorsement of the legitimacy of the Italian kingdom's rule over his former domain. Pius IX declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican, although he was not actually restrained from coming and going. Rather, being deposed and stripped of much of his former power also removed a measure of personal protection — if he had walked the streets of Rome he might have been in danger from political opponents who had formerly kept their views private. Officially, the capital was not moved from Florence to Rome until July 1871.[57]

Historian Raffaele de Cesare made the following observations about Italian unification:

The Roman question was the stone tied to Napoleon's feet — that dragged him into the abyss. He never forgot, even in August 1870, a month before Sedan, that he was a sovereign of a Catholic country, that he had been made Emperor, and was supported by the votes of the Conservatives and the influence of the clergy; and that it was his supreme duty not to abandon the Pontiff.[58]

For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations…. Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured.[59]

Problems[edit]
Unification was achieved entirely in terms of Piedmont's interests. Martin Clark says, "It was Piedmontization all around."[60] Cavour died unexpectedly in June 1861, at 50, and most of the many promises that he made to regional authorities to induce them to join the new kingdom of Italy were ignored. The new Kingdom of Italy was structured by renaming the old Kingdom of Sardinia and annexing all the new provinces into its structures. The first king was Victor Emmanuel II and kept his old title.

National and regional officials were all appointed by Piedmont. A few regional leaders succeeded to high positions in the new national government, but the top bureaucratic and military officials were mostly Piedmontese. The national capital was briefly moved to Florence and finally to Rome, one of the cases of Piedmont losing out.

However, Piedmontese tax rates and regulations, diplomats and officials were imposed on all of Italy. The new constitution was Piedmont's old constitution, which was generally liberal and was welcomed by liberal elements. However its anticlerical provisions were resented in the pro-clerical regions around Venice and Rome and in Sicily and south of Naples. Cavour had promised there would be regional and municipal, local governments, but all the promises were broken in 1861.

The first decade of the kingdom saw savage civil wars in Sicily and in the Naples region. Hearder claimed that failed efforts to protest unification involved "a mixture of spontaneous peasant movement and a Bourbon-clerical reaction directed by the old authorities."[61]

The pope lost Rome in 1870 and ordered the Catholic Church not to co-operate with the new government, a decision fully reversed only in 1929.[62] Most of those for Risorgimento had wanted strong provinces, but they got a strong central state instead. The inevitable long-run results were a severe weakness of national unity, and a politicized system based on mutually-hostile regions hostiless. Such factors remain in the 21st century.[63]

Ruling and representing southern Italy[edit]
From the spring of 1860 to the summer of 1861, a major challenge that the Piedmontese parliament faced on national unification was how they should govern and control the southern regions of the country that were frequently represented and described by northern Italian correspondents as "corrupt," "barbaric" and "uncivilized".[64] In response to the depictions of southern Italy, the Piedmontese parliament had to decide whether it should investigate the southern regions to understand the social and political situations there better or it should establish jurisdiction and order by using mostly force.[65]

The dominance of letters sent from the Northern Italian correspondents that deemed Southern Italy to be "so far from the ideas of progress and civilization" ultimately induced the Piedmontese parliament to choose the latter course of action, which effectively illustrated the intimate connection between representation and rule.[66] In essence, the Northern Italians' "representation of the south as a land of barbarism (variously qualified as indecent, lacking in "public conscience," ignorant, superstitious, etc.)" provided the Piedmontese with the justification to rule the southern regions on the pretext of implementing a superior, more civilized, "Piedmontese morality".[66]

Historiography[edit]
See also: Brigantaggio

Caricature of the Post-Risorgimento: Italia Turrita at the centre points out to Enrico Cialdini (on the right) all her enemies around Napoleon III (turned into a tree): from the left, Pope Pius IX, Bourbons, clergy, and brigands. In the background, Garibaldi plows his farm.
Italian unification is still a topic of debate. According to Massimo d'Azeglio, centuries of foreign domination created remarkable differences in Italian society, and the role of the newly formed government was to face these differences and to create a unified Italian society. Still today the most famous quote of Massimo d'Azeglio is, "L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani" (Italy has been made. Now it remains to make Italians).[67]


Massimo d'Azeglio
The economist and politician Francesco Saverio Nitti criticized the newly created state for not taking in to consideration the substantial economic differences between Northern Italy, a free market economy, and Southern Italy, a state protectionism economy, when integrating the two. When the Kingdom of Italy extended the free market economy to the rest of the country, the South's economy collapsed under the weight of the North's. Nitti contended that this change should have been much more gradual in order to allow the birth of an adequate entrepreneurial class able to make strong investments and initiatives in the south. These mistakes, he felt, were the cause of the economic and social problems which came to be known as the Southern Question (Questione Meridionale).[68][69]

The politician, historian, and writer Gaetano Salvemini commented that even though Italian Unification had been a strong opportunity for both a moral and economic rebirth of Italy's Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy), due to lack of understanding and action on the part of politicians, corruption and organized crime flourished in the South.[70] The Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci criticized Italian Unification for the limited presence of the masses in politics, as well as the lack of modern land reform in Italy.[71]

Revisionism of Risorgimento produced a clear radicalization of Italy in the mid-twentieth century, following the fall of the Savoy monarchy and fascism during World War II. Reviews of the historical facts concerning Italian unification's successes and failures continue to be undertaken by domestic and foreign academic authors, including Denis Mack Smith, Christopher Duggan, and Lucy Riall. Recent work emphasizes the central importance of nationalism.[72][73]

Risorgimento and irredentism[edit]
The process of unification of the Italian people in a national state was not completed in the nineteenth century. Many Italians remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy and this situation created the Italian irredentism.

Italia irredenta (Unredeemed Italy) was an Italian nationalist opinion movement that emerged after Italian unification. It advocated irredentism among the Italian people as well as other nationalities who were willing to become Italian and as a movement; it is also known as "Italian irredentism". Not a formal organization, it was just an opinion movement that claimed that Italy had to reach its "natural borders". Similar patriotic and nationalistic ideas were common in Europe in the 19th century.[74]

Irredentism and the two World Wars[edit]

The Vittoriano in Rome, honoring King Victor Emmanuel and celebrating the unity of Italy. The decision to build it was reached in 1878, shortly after the king's death that year; the site on the Capitoline Hill was chosen in 1882; and the design of 28-year-old Giuseppe Sacconi was selected in 1884. Construction began in 1885 and the monument was inaugurated in 1911, although features were subsequently added or altered during the fascist period.
During the post-unification era, some Italians were dissatisfied with the current state of the Italian Kingdom since they wanted the kingdom to include Trieste, Istria, and other adjacent territories, as well. This Italian irredentism succeeded in World War I with the annexation of Trieste and Trento, with the respective territories of Venezia Giulia and Trentino.

The Kingdom of Italy had declared neutrality at the beginning of the war, officially because the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary was a defensive one, requiring its members to come under attack first. Many Italians were still hostile to Austria's continuing occupation of ethnically Italian areas, and Italy chose not to enter. Austria-Hungary requested Italian neutrality, while the Triple Entente (which included Great Britain, France and Russia) requested its intervention. With the London Pact, signed in April 1915, Italy agreed to declare war against the Central Powers, in exchange for the irredent territories of Friuli, Trentino, and Dalmatia (see Italia irredenta).

Italian irredentism obtained an important result after the First World War, when Italy gained Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and the city of Zara. During the Second World War, after the Axis attack on Yugoslavia, Italy created the "Governatorato di Dalmazia" (from 1941 to September 1943), so the Kingdom of Italy annexed temporarily even Split (Italian Spalato), Kotor (Cattaro), and most of coastal Dalmatia. From 1942 to 1943, even Corsica and Nice (Italian Nizza) were temporarily annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, nearly fulfilling in those years the ambitions of Italian irredentism.

For its avowed purpose the movement had the "emancipation" of all Italian lands still subject to foreign rule after Italian unification. The Irredentists took language as the test of the alleged Italian nationality of the countries they proposed to emancipate, which were Trentino, Trieste, Dalmatia, Istria, Gorizia, Ticino, Nice (Nizza), Corsica, and Malta. Austria-Hungary promoted Croat interests in Dalmatia and Istria to weaken Italian claims in the western Balkans before the First World War.[75]

After World War II[edit]
After WWII the irredentism movement faded away in Italian politics. Only a few thousand Italians remain in Istria and Dalmatia as a consequence of the Italian defeat in WWII and the slaughter of thousands of Italians as reprisals for fascist atrocities, and the subsequent departure of approximately 400,000 people in what became known as the Istrian exodus. 350,000 refugees were ethnic Italians (76% of which born in the territories surrendered), the others being ethnic Slovenians, ethnic Croatians, and ethnic Istro-Romanians, choosing to maintain Italian citizenship.[76]

Anniversary of Risorgimento[edit]
Anniversary of Risorgimento
Reggio calabria monumento all'italia.jpg
Monument to Italia Turrita in Reggio Calabria
Observed by	Italy
Type	National
Significance	Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861
Celebrations	Parades, Fireworks, Concerts, Picnics, Balls, Trade shows
Date	17 March
Frequency	every fifty years
Italy celebrates the Anniversary of Risorgimento every fifty years, on 17 March (date of proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy). The anniversary occurred in 1911 (50th), 1961 (100th) and 2011 (150th) with several celebrations throughout the country.[77]

150th Anniversary of ''Risorgimento''

Celebration in Florence

 

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

 

A castle near Modena

 

Mole Antonelliana during the anniversary, Turin

 

Rieti

 

Banner in Milan

 

Fiat Mirafiori Motor Village, Turin

 

Ferrari Formula One car with the logo of the 150th anniversary of Risorgimento

Culture and Risorgimento[edit]
Art[edit]

Mourning Italia turrita on the tomb to Vittorio Alfieri by Antonio Canova

The Kiss (1859) by Francesco Hayez
In art, this period was characterised by the Neoclassicism that draws inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The main Italian sculptor was Antonio Canova who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh. The mourning Italia turrita on the tomb to Vittorio Alfieri is one of the main works of Risorgimento by Canova.

Francesco Hayez was another remarkable artist of this period whose works often contain allegories about Italian unification. His most known painting The Kiss aims to portray the spirit of the Risorgimento: the man wears red, white and green, representing the Italian patriots fighting for independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire while the girl's pale blue dress signifies France, which in 1859 (the year of the painting's creation) made an alliance with the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia enabling the latter to unify the many states of the Italian peninsula into the new kingdom of Italy. Hayez's three paintings on the Sicilian Vespers are an implicit protest against the foreign domination of Italy.

Andrea Appiani, Domenico Induno and Gerolamo Induno are also known for their patriotic canvases. Risorgimento was also represented by works not necessarily linked to Neoclassicism as in the case of Giovanni Fattori who was one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli that soon became a leading Italian plein-airists, painting landscapes, rural scenes, and scenes of military life during the Italian unification.[78]

Literature[edit]

Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni (1841) by Francesco Hayez

Portrait of Francesco De Sanctis (1890) by Francesco Saverio Altamura
In literature, lots of works were dedicated to Risorgimento since the beginning. The most known writer of Risorgimento is Alessandro Manzoni whose works are a symbol of the Italian unification, both for its patriotic message and because of his efforts in the development of the modern, unified Italian language; he is famous for the novel The Betrothed (orig. Italian: I Promessi Sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature.

Vittorio Alfieri, was the founder of a new school in the Italian drama, expressed in several occasions his suffering about the foreign domination's tyranny.

Ugo Foscolo describes in his works the passion and love for the fatherland and the glorious history of the Italian people; these two concepts are respectively well expressed in two masterpieces, The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis and Dei Sepolcri.

Vincenzo Monti, known for the Italian translation of the Iliad, described in his works both enthusiasms and disappointments of Risorgimento until his death.

Giovanni Berchet wrote a poetry characterised by a high moral, popular and social content; he also contributed to Il Conciliatore, a progressive bi-weekly scientific and literary journal, influential in the early Risorgimento that was published in Milan from September 1818 until October 1819 when it was closed by the Austrian censors; its writers included also Ludovico di Breme, Giuseppe Nicolini and Silvio Pellico.

Giacomo Leopardi was one of the most important poets of Risorgimento thanks to works such as Canzone all'Italia and Risorgimento.

Niccolò Tommaseo, the editor of the Italian Language Dictionary in eight volumes, was a precursor of the Italian irredentism and his works are a rare examples of a metropolitan culture above nationalism; he supported the liberal revolution headed by Daniele Manin against the Austrian Empire and he will always support the unification of Italy.

Francesco de Sanctis was one of the most important scholars of Italian language and literature in the 19th century; he supported the Revolution of 1848 in Naples and for this reason he was imprisoned for three years; his reputation as a lecturer on Dante in Turin brought him the appointment of professor at ETH Zürich in 1856; he returned to Naples as Minister of Public Education after the unification of Italy.

The writer and patriot Luigi Settembrini published anonymously the Protest of the People of the Two Sicilies, a scathing indictment of the Bourbon government and was imprisoned and exiled several times by the Bourbons because of his support to Risorgimento; after the formation of the Kingdom of Italy, he was appointed professor of Italian literature at the University of Naples.

Ippolito Nievo is another main representant of Risorgimento with his novel Confessioni d'un italiano; he fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand.

Risorgimento was also depicted in several famous novels: The Leopard written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Heart by Edmondo De Amicis and Piccolo mondo antico by Antonio Fogazzaro.[79]

Music[edit]

Verdi's bust outside the Teatro Massimo in Palermo
Risorgimento won the support of many leading Italian opera composers.[80] Their librettos often saw a delicate balance between European romantic narratives and dramatic themes evoking nationalistic sentiments. Ideas expressed in operas stimulated the political mobilisation in Italy and among the cultured classes of Europe who appreciated Italian opera. Furthermore, Mazzini and many other nationalists found inspiration in musical discourses.[81]

In his L'italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers), Gioachino Rossini expressed his support to the unification of Italy; the patriotic line Pensa alla patria, e intrepido il tuo dover adempi: vedi per tutta Italia rinascere gli esempi d’ardir e di valor / "Think about the fatherland and intrepid do your duty: see for all Italy the birth of the examples of courage and value" was censored in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

Vincenzo Bellini was a secret member of the Carbonari and in his masterpiece I puritani (The Puritans), the last part of Act 2 is an allegory to Italian unification. Another Bellini opera, Norma, was at the center of an unexpected standing ovation during its performance in Milan in 1859: while the chorus was performing Guerra, guerra! Le galliche selve (War, war! The Gallic forests) in Act 2, the Italians began to greet the chorus with loud applause and to yell the word "War!" several times towards the Austrian officers at the opera house.[82]

The relationship between Gaetano Donizetti and the Risorgimento is still controversial. Even though Giuseppe Mazzini tried to use some of Donizetti's works for promoting the Italian cause, Donizetti had always preferred not to get involved in politics.[83]


Patriots scrawling "Viva VERDI" on walls
Historians vigorously debate how political were the operas of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). In particular, the chorus of the Hebrew slaves (known as "Va, pensiero") from the third act of the opera Nabucco was intended to be an anthem for Italian patriots, who were seeking to unify their country and free it from foreign control in the years up to 1861 (the chorus's theme of exiles singing about their homeland, and its lines like O mia patria, si bella e perduta / "O my country, so lovely and so lost" was thought to have resonated with many Italians).[84] Beginning in Naples in 1859 and spreading throughout Italy, the slogan "Viva VERDI" was used as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Viva Victor Emmanuel King of Italy), referring to Victor Emmanuel II.[85][86]

Franco Della Peruta argues in favour of close links between the operas and the Risorgimento, emphasizing Verdi's patriotic intent and links to the values of the Risorgimento. Verdi started as a republican, became a strong supporter of Cavour and entered the Italian parliament on Cavour's suggestion. His politics caused him to be frequently in trouble with the Austrian censors. Verdi's main works of 1842-49 were especially relevant to the struggle for independence, including Nabucco (1842), I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843), Ernani (1844), Attila (1846), Macbeth (1847), and La battaglia di Legnano (1848). However, starting in the 1850s, his operas showed few patriotic themes because of the heavy censorship of the absolutist regimes in power.


The final scene of the opera Risorgimento! (2011) by Lorenzo Ferrero
Verdi later became disillusioned by politics, but he was personally active part in the political world of events of the Risorgimento and was elected to the first Italian parliament in 1861.[87] Likewise Marco Pizzo argues that after 1815 music became a political tool, and many songwriters expressed ideals of freedom and equality. Pizzo says Verdi was part of this movement, for his operas were inspired by the love of country, the struggle for Italian independence, and speak to the sacrifice of patriots and exiles.[88] On the other side of the debate, Mary Ann Smart argues that music critics at the time seldom mentioned any political themes.[89] Likewise Roger Parker argues that the political dimension of Verdi's operas was exaggerated by nationalistic historians looking for a hero in the late 19th century.[90]

Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco and the Risorgimento are the subject of a 2011 opera, Risorgimento! by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Italian unification.

Films[edit]
The Leopard is a film from 1963, based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and directed by Luchino Visconti. It features Burt Lancaster as the eponymous character, the Prince of Salina. The film depicts his reaction to the Risorgimento, and his vain attempts to retain his social standing.

There are other movies set in this period:

1860 (1934), by Alessandro Blasetti
Piccolo mondo antico (1941), by Mario Soldati
Un garibaldino al convento (1942), by Vittorio De Sica
Heart and Soul (1948), by Vittorio De Sica
Senso (1954), by Luchino Visconti
Garibaldi (1961), by Roberto Rossellini
1870 (1971), by Alfredo Giannetti
Passione D'Amore (1981), by Ettore Scola (later adapted by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine into the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Passion)
Noi credevamo (2010), by Mario Martone
Maps of Italy before and during Italian unification[edit]

Italy in 1494

 

Italy in 1796

 

Italy in 1810

 

Italy in 1859: orange Kingdom of Sardinia, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), light green Duchy of Parma, green Duchy of Modena, dark green Grand Duchy of Tuscany, red Papal States, yellow Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

 

Italy in 1860: orange Kingdom of Sardinia, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), pink United Provinces of Central Italy, red Papal States, yellow Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

 

Italy in 1861: orange Kingdom of Italy, blue Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia (Austrian Empire), red Papal States.

 

Kingdom of Italy in 1870

 

Kingdom of Italy in 1919

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^ Jump up to: a b Nelson Moe, “’This is not Italy!’: Ruling and Representing the South, 1860-1861,” in The View from the Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question, 156-183 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 166.
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Jump up ^ Mary Ann Smart, "How political were Verdi's operas? Metaphors of progress in the reception of I Lombardi alla prima crociata," Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2013) 18#2 PP 190-204.
Jump up ^ Roger Parker, "Verdi politico: a wounded cliché regroups." Journal of Modern Italian Studies 17#4 (2012): 427-436.
Bibliography[edit]
Ascoli, Albert Russell and Krystyna Von Henneberg, eds. Making and Remaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento (2001) online
Beales, Derek; Biagini, Eugenio (2003). The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy (2nd ed.). Longman. ISBN 978-0-582-36958-0.
Carter, Nick, ed., Britain, Ireland and the Italian Risorgimento (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 233 pp
Clark, Martin. The Italian Risorgimento (2nd ed. 2009); 146pp
Collier, Martin, Italian Unification, 1820-71 (Heinemann, 2003); textbook, 156 pages excerpt
Davis, John A., ed. (2000). Italy in the nineteenth century: 1796–1900. London: Oxford University Press.
De Mattei, Roberto. Pius IX (2004).
Gilmour, David.The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples (2011). excerpt
Hearder, Harry. Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento 1790 - 1870 (1983) excerpt
Holt, Edgar. The Making of Italy 1815–1870, (1971).
Mowat, R.B. A history of European diplomacy, 1815-1914 (1922) pp 115-63 online free
Patriarca, Silvana, and Lucy Riall, eds. The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 13 essays on specialized topics by scholars excerpt; review
Pearce, Robert, and Andrina Stiles. Access to History: The Unification of Italy 1789-1896 (4th rf., Hodder Education, 2015), textbook. excerpt
Pozzo, Barbara (2013). "Masculinity Italian style". Nevada Law Journal, special issue: Men, Masculinities, and Law: A Symposium on Multidimensional Masculinities Theory. William S. Boyd School of Law. 13 (2): 15.
Rapone, Danilo. Religion and politics in the Risorgimento. Britain and the new Italy, 1861–1875 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 3012pp.
Riall, Lucy. The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society, and National Unification (Routledge, 1994) online
Riall, Lucy. Garibaldi: Invention of a hero (Yale UP, 2008).
Riall, Lucy (1998). "Hero, saint or revolutionary? Nineteenth‐century politics and the cult of Garibaldi". Modern Italy. Taylor and Francis. 3 (2): 191–204. doi:10.1080/13532949808454803.
Ridley, Jasper. Garibaldi (1974), a standard biography.
Sarlin, Simon (2009). "Fighting the Risorgimento: foreign volunteers in southern Italy (1860–63)". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. Taylor and Francis. 14 (4): 476–490. doi:10.1080/13545710903281987.
Smith, Denis Mack. Cavour (1985)
Smith, Denis Mack. Mazzini (1995) excerpt
Smith, Denis Mack. Victor Emanuel, Cavour, and the Risorgimento (Oxford University Press, 1971)
Thayer, William Roscoe (1911). The Life and Times of Cavour vol 1. old interpretations but useful on details; vol 1 goes to 1859]; volume 2 online covers 1859-62
Trevelyan, George Macaulay (1911). Garibaldi and the making of Italy.
Wawro, Geoffrey. "Austria versus the Risorgimento: A New Look at Austria's Italian strategy in the 1860s." European History Quarterly 26#1 (1996): 7-29.
Woolf, Stuart Joseph. The Italian Risorgimento (1969).
Woolf, Stuart. A History of Italy 1700-1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change (1960), 519 pp
Wright, Owain (2012). "British foreign policy and the Italian occupation of Rome, 1870". The International History Review. Taylor and Francis. 34 (1): 161–176. doi:10.1080/07075332.2012.668343.
Historiography[edit]
Ramm, Agatha (1972). "The Risorgimento in Sicily: Recent Literature". English Historical Review. 87 (345): 795–811. JSTOR 562204.
Rao, Anna Maria. "Napoleonic Italy: Old and New Trends in Historiography." in Ute Planert, ed., Napoleon's Empire (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016). pp 84–97.
Italian[edit]
Bacchin, Elena. Italofilia. Opinione pubblica brittanica e il Risorgimento italiano 1847–1864 (Turin, Carocci editore, 2014), 266 pp
Banti, Alberto Mario. La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell'Italia unita. Torino, Einaudi, 2000
Banti, Alberto Mario. Il Risorgimento italiano. Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2004 (Quadrante Laterza; 125)
Ghisalberti, Carlo. Istituzioni e società civile nell'età del Risorgimento. Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2005 (Biblioteca universale Laterza; 575)
Della Peruta, Franco. L'Italia del Risorgimento: problemi, momenti e figure. Milano, Angeli, 1997 (Saggi di storia; 14)
Della Peruta, Franco. Conservatori, liberali e democratici nel Risorgimento. Milano, Angeli, 1989 (Storia; 131)
De Rosa, Luigi. La provincia subordinata. Saggio sulla questione meridionale, Bari, Laterza, 2004
Guerra, Nicola. Le due anime del processo di unificazione nazionale: Risorgimento e Controrisorgimento. La necessità di un nuovo approccio di ricerca ancora disatteso. Pesaro, Chronica Mundi, October 2011, ISSN 2239-7515
Scirocco, Alfonso. L'Italia del risorgimento: 1800–1860. (vol. 1 di Storia d'Italia dall'unità alla Repubblica), Bologna, Il mulino, 1990
Scirocco, Alfonso. In difesa del Risorgimento. Bologna, Il mulino, 1998 (Collana di storia contemporanea)
Tomaz, Luigi. Il confine d'Italia in Istria e Dalmazia, Presentazione di Arnaldo Mauri, Conselve, Think ADV, 2008.
Carlo Cardia, Risorgimento e religione, Giappichelli, Torino, 2011, ISBN 978-88-348-2552-5.
External links[edit]
	Wikimedia Commons has media related to Italian Risorgimento.
The Risorgimento: A Time for Reunification
Women of the Risorgimento
Garibaldi & The Risorgimento
Cavour and the Unification of Italy
Arcaini, G.B. (6 March 2005). "The Italian Unification". History of Italy. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
Arcaini, G.B. (30 November 2003). "Italy's Unity". History of Italy. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
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The First Carlist War was a civil war in Spain from 1833 to 1840, fought between factions over the succession to the throne and the nature of the Spanish monarchy. It was fought between supporters of the regent, Maria Christina, acting for Isabella II of Spain, and those of the late king's brother, Carlos de Borbón (or Carlos V). The Carlists goal was the return to an absolute monarchy. Portugal, France and the United Kingdom supported the regency, and sent volunteer and even regular forces to confront the Carlist army.

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The unification of Ger
The unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France. Princes of the German states, excluding Austria, gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm I of Prussia as German Emperor after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War. Unofficially, the de facto transition of most of the German-speaking populations into a federated organization of states had been developing for some time through alliances formal and informal between princely rulers—but in fits and starts; self-interests of the various parties hampered the process over nearly a century of autocratic experimentation, beginning in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1806), and the subsequent rise of German nationalism.

Unification exposed tensions due to religious, linguistic, social, and cultural differences among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 only represented one moment in a continuum of the larger unification processes. The Holy Roman Emperor had been often called "Emperor of all the Germanies"; contemporary news accounts frequently referred to "The Germanies", and in the empire, its members of higher nobility were referred to as "Princes of Germany" or "Princes of the Germanies"—for the lands once called East Francia had been organized and governed as pocket kingdoms since before the rise of Charlemagne (800 AD). In the mountainous terrain of much of the territory, isolated peoples developed cultural, educational, linguistic, and religious differences over such a lengthy time period. By the nineteenth century, transportation and communications improvements brought these regions closer together.

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which had included more than 500 independent states, was effectively dissolved when Emperor Francis II abdicated (6 August 1806) during the War of the Third Coalition. Despite the legal, administrative, and political disruption associated with the end of the Empire, the people of the German-speaking areas of the old Empire had a common linguistic, cultural, and legal tradition further enhanced by their shared experience in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. European liberalism offered an intellectual basis for unification by challenging dynastic and absolutist models of social and political organization; its German manifestation emphasized the importance of tradition, education, and linguistic unity of peoples in a geographic region. Economically, the creation of the Prussian Zollverein (customs union) in 1818, and its subsequent expansion to include other states of the German Confederation, reduced competition between and within states. Emerging modes of transportation facilitated business and recreational travel, leading to contact and sometimes conflict among German speakers from throughout Central Europe.

The model of diplomatic spheres of influence resulting from the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 after the Napoleonic Wars endorsed Austrian dominance in Central Europe. The negotiators at Vienna took no account of Prussia's growing strength within and among the German states and so failed to foresee that Prussia would rise to challenge Austria for leadership of the German peoples. This German dualism presented two solutions to the problem of unification: Kleindeutsche Lösung, the small Germany solution (Germany without Austria), or Großdeutsche Lösung, the greater Germany solution (Germany with Austria).

Historians debate whether Otto von Bismarck—Minister President of Prussia—had a master plan to expand the North German Confederation of 1866 to include the remaining independent German states into a single entity or simply to expand the power of the Kingdom of Prussia. They conclude that factors in addition to the strength of Bismarck's Realpolitik led a collection of early modern polities to reorganize political, economic, military, and diplomatic relationships in the 19th century. Reaction to Danish and French nationalism provided foci for expressions of German unity. Military successes—especially those of Prussia—in three regional wars generated enthusiasm and pride that politicians could harness to promote unification. This experience echoed the memory of mutual accomplishment in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly in the War of Liberation of 1813–14. By establishing a Germany without Austria, the political and administrative unification in 1871 at least temporarily solved the problem of dualism.

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Contents  [hide]

1Brief timeline

2German-speaking Central Europe in the early 19th century

2.1Rise of German nationalism under the Napoleonic System

2.2Reorganization of Central Europe and the rise of German dualism

2.3Problems of reorganization

3Economic collaboration: the customs union

3.1Roads and railways

3.2Geography, patriotism and language

4Vormärz and nineteenth century liberalism

4.1Hambach Festival: liberal nationalism and conservative response

4.2Liberalism and the response to economic problems

5First efforts at unification

5.1German revolutions of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament

5.21848 and the Frankfurt Parliament in retrospective analysis

5.3Problem of spheres of influence: The Erfurt Union and the Punctation of Olmütz

5.4External expectations of a unified Germany

5.5Prussia's growing strength: Realpolitik

6Founding a unified state

6.1The Schleswig-Holstein Question

6.2War between Austria and Prussia, 1866

6.2.1Choosing sides

6.2.2Austria isolated

6.3Realpolitik and the North German Confederation

7War with France

7.1Spheres of influence fall apart in Spain

7.2Military operations

7.3Proclamation of the German Empire

7.4Importance in the unification process

8Political and administrative unification

8.1Constituent states of the Empire

8.2Political structure of the Empire

8.3Historical arguments and the Empire's social anatomy

9Beyond the political mechanism: forming a nation

9.1Kulturkampf

9.2Integrating the Jewish community

9.3Writing the story of the nation

10See also

11References

12Sources

13Further reading

14External links

Brief timeline[edit]

1797: The French First Republic annexed the Left Bank of the Rhine as a result of the War of the First Coalition.

1802: Previous annexations by France confirmed following its victory in the War of the Second Coalition.

1804: Francis I of Austria declared the new Austrian Empire as a reaction to Napoleon Bonaparte's proclamation of the First French Empire in 1804.

1806: As a result of the War of the Third Coalition, Napoleon I annexed some territories East of the Rhine, replaced the Holy Roman Empire by the Confederation of the Rhine as a French client-state.

1807: Prussia lost one half of its territory following the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1815: After the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna reinstated the Germanic states into the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire.

1819: The Carlsbad Decrees suppressed any form of pan-Germanic activities to avoid the creation of a 'German state'; the Kingdom of Prussia, however, initiated a customs union with other Confederation states.

1834: The Prussian-led custom union evolved into the Zollverein that included almost all Confederation states except the Austrian Empire.

1848: Revolts across the German Confederation, such as in Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt, forced King Frederick William IV of Prussia to grant a constitution to the Confederation. In the meantime, the Frankfurt Parliament was set up in 1848 and attempted to proclaim a united Germany, but this was refused by William IV. The question of a united Germany under the Kleindeutsch solution (to exclude Austria) or the so-called Großdeutsch (to include Austria) began to surface.

1850: The Erfurt Union was a short-lived attempt at a union of German states under a federation, proposed by the Kingdom of Prussia. The Erfurt Union Parliament (Erfurter Unionsparlament), lasting from March 20 to April 29, 1850, was opened at the former Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. The union never came into effect, and was completely undermined by the Punctation of Olmütz, a treaty between Prussia and Austria, signed 29 November 1850, by which Prussia abandoned the Erfurt Union and accepted the revival of the German Confederation under Austrian leadership. [1][2]

1861–62: King Wilhelm I became King of Prussia and he appointed Otto von Bismarck on 23 September 1862, Minister President and Foreign Minister, who favoured a 'blood-and-iron' policy to create a united Germany under the leadership of Prussia.

1864: The Danish-Prussian War started as Prussia protested against Danish incorporation of Schleswig into the Kingdom of Denmark. The Austrian Empire was deliberately drawn into this war by Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia. The Austro-Prussian victory led to Schleswig, the northern part, being governed by Prussia and Holstein, the southern part, being governed by Austria, as per the Treaty of Vienna (1864).

1866: Bismarck accused the Austrian Empire of stirring up troubles in Prussian-held Schleswig. Prussian troops drove into Austrian-held Holstein and took control of the entire state of Schleswig-Holstein. Austria declared war on Prussia and, after fighting the Austro-Prussian War (Seven Weeks' War), was swiftly defeated. The Treaty of Prague (1866) formally dissolved the German Confederation and Prussia created the North German Confederation to include all Germanic states except the pro-French, southern kingdoms of Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg.

1870: When the French emperor, Napoleon III, demanded territories of the Rhineland in return for his neutrality amid the Austro-Prussian War, Bismarck used the Spanish Succession Question (1868) and Ems Telegram (1870) as an opportunity to incorporate the southern kingdoms. Napoleon III declared war against Prussia.

1871: The Franco-Prussian War ended with Prussian troops capturing Paris, the capital of the Second French Empire. Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg were incorporated into the North German Confederation in the Treaty of Frankfurt (1871). Bismarck then proclaimed King Wilhelm I, now Kaiser Wilhelm I, as leader of the new, united Germany (German Reich), excluding Austria. With the German troops remaining in Paris, Napoleon III dissolved the French Empire and a new republic, the Third French Republic, was created under Adolphe Thiers.

German-speaking Central Europe in the early 19th century[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Holy Roman Empire.

Germania, a personification of the German nation, appears in Philipp Veit's fresco (1834–36). She is holding a shield with the coat of arms of the German Confederation (see enlargement below). The shields on which she stands are the arms of the seven traditional Electors of the Holy Roman Empire.

Coat of arms of the German Confederation, also called Deutscher Bund

Prior to 1806, German-speaking Central Europe included more than 300 political entities, most of which were part of the Holy Roman Empire or the extensive Habsburg hereditary dominions. They ranged in size from the small and complex territories of the princely Hohenlohe family branches to sizable, well-defined territories such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Prussia. Their governance varied: they included free imperial cities, also of different sizes, such as the powerful Augsburg and the minuscule Weil der Stadt; ecclesiastical territories, also of varying sizes and influence, such as the wealthy Abbey of Reichenau and the powerful Archbishopric of Cologne; and dynastic states such as Württemberg. These lands (or parts of them—both the Habsburg domains and Hohenzollern Prussia also included territories outside the Empire structures) made up the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, which at times included more than 1,000 entities. Since the 15th century, with few exceptions, the Empire's Prince-electors had chosen successive heads of the House of Habsburg to hold the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Among the German-speaking states, the Holy Roman Empire administrative and legal mechanisms provided a venue to resolve disputes between peasants and landlords, between jurisdictions, and within jurisdictions. Through the organization of imperial circles (Reichskreise), groups of states consolidated resources and promoted regional and organizational interests, including economic cooperation and military protection.[3]

The War of the Second Coalition (1799–1802) resulted in the defeat of the imperial and allied forces by Napoleon Bonaparte. The treaties of Lunéville (1801) and Amiens (1802) and the Mediatization of 1803 transferred large portions of the Holy Roman Empire to the dynastic states and secularized ecclesiastical territories. Most of the imperial cities disappeared from the political and legal landscape, and the populations living in these territories acquired new allegiances to dukes and kings. This transfer particularly enhanced the territories of Württemberg and Baden. In 1806, after a successful invasion of Prussia and the defeat of Prussia and Russia at the joint battles of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon dictated the Treaty of Pressburg, in which the Emperor dissolved the Holy Roman Empire.[4]

Rise of German nationalism under the Napoleonic System[edit]

For more details on this topic, see French period.

Under the hegemony of the French Empire (1804–1814), popular German nationalism thrived in the reorganized German states. Due in part to the shared experience, albeit under French dominance, various justifications emerged to identify "Germany" as a single state. For the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte,

The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole.[5]

A common language may have been seen to serve as the basis of a nation, but as contemporary historians of 19th-century Germany noted, it took more than linguistic similarity to unify these several hundred polities.[6] The experience of German-speaking Central Europe during the years of French hegemony contributed to a sense of common cause to remove the French invaders and reassert control over their own lands. The exigencies of Napoleon's campaigns in Poland (1806–07), the Iberian Peninsula, western Germany, and his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 disillusioned many Germans, princes and peasants alike. Napoleon's Continental Systemnearly ruined the Central European economy. The invasion of Russia included nearly 125,000 troops from German lands, and the loss of that army encouraged many Germans, both high- and low-born, to envision a Central Europe free of Napoleon's influence.[7] The creation of student militias such as the Lützow Free Corps exemplified this tendency.[8]

The Battle of the Nations monument, erected for the centennial in 1913, honors the efforts of the German people in the victory over Napoleon

The debacle in Russia loosened the French grip on the German princes. In 1813, Napoleon mounted a campaign in the German states to bring them back into the French orbit; the subsequent War of Liberation culminated in the great Battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of Nations. In October 1813, more than 500,000 combatants engaged in ferocious fighting over three days, making it the largest European land battle of the 19th century. The engagement resulted in a decisive victory for the Coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden, and it ended French power east of the Rhine. Success encouraged the Coalition forces to pursue Napoleon across the Rhine; his army and his government collapsed, and the victorious Coalition incarcerated Napoleon on Elba. During the brief Napoleonic restoration known as the 100 Days of 1815, forces of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussianarmy under the command of Gebhard von Blücher, were victorious at Waterloo (18 June 1815).[9] The critical role played by Blücher's troops, especially after having to retreat from the field at Ligny the day before, helped to turn the tide of combat against the French. The Prussian cavalry pursued the defeated French in the evening of 18 June, sealing the allied victory. From the German perspective, the actions of Blücher's troops at Waterloo, and the combined efforts at Leipzig, offered a rallying point of pride and enthusiasm.[10] This interpretation became a key building block of the Borussian myth expounded by the pro-Prussian nationalist historians later in the 19th century.[11]

Reorganization of Central Europe and the rise of German dualism[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Congress of Vienna.

Map of the Holy Roman Empire in 1789. The map is dominated by the Habsburg Monarchy (orange) and the Kingdom of Prussia (blue), besides a large number of small states (many of them too small to be shown on the map)

After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna established a new European political-diplomatic system based on the balance of power. This system reorganized Europe into spheres of influence, which, in some cases, suppressed the aspirations of the various nationalities, including the Germans and Italians.[12] Generally, an enlarged Prussia and the 38 other states consolidated from the mediatized territories of 1803 were confederated within the Austrian Empire's sphere of influence. The Congress established a loose German Confederation (1815–1866), headed by Austria, with a "Federal Diet" (called the Bundestag or Bundesversammlung, an assembly of appointed leaders) that met in the city of Frankfurt am Main. In recognition of the imperial position traditionally held by the Habsburgs, the emperors of Austria became the titular presidents of this parliament. Problematically, the built-in Austrian dominance failed to take into account Prussia's 18th century emergence in Imperial politics. Ever since the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg had made himself King in Prussia at the beginning of that century, their domains had steadily increased through war and inheritance. Prussia's consolidated strength had become especially apparent during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War under Frederick the Great.[13] As Maria Theresa and Joseph tried to restore Habsburg hegemony in the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick countered with the creation of the Fürstenbund (Union of Princes) in 1785. Austrian-Prussian dualismlay firmly rooted in old Imperial politics. Those balance of power manoeuvers were epitomized by the War of the Bavarian Succession, or "Potato War" among common folk. Even after the end of the Holy Roman Empire, this competition influenced the growth and development of nationalist movements in the 19th century.[14]

Problems of reorganization[edit]

German language area (here including Dutch, Frisian, and Luxembourgish) based on 19th century language maps with close German language islandsshown with today's European state borders.

Despite the nomenclature of Diet (Assembly or Parliament), this institution should in no way be construed as a broadly, or popularly, elected group of representatives. Many of the states did not have constitutions, and those that did, such as the Duchy of Baden, based suffrage on strict property requirements which effectively limited suffrage to a small portion of the male population.[15] Furthermore, this impractical solution did not reflect the new status of Prussia in the overall scheme. Although the Prussian army had been dramatically defeated in the 1806 Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, it had made a spectacular comeback at Waterloo. Consequently, Prussian leaders expected to play a pivotal role in German politics.[16]

Boundaries of the German Confederation. Prussia is blue, Austria-Hungary yellow, and the rest grey.

The surge of German nationalism, stimulated by the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period and initially allied with liberalism, shifted political, social, and cultural relationships within the German states.[17] In this context, one can detect its roots in the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period.[18] The Burschenschaft student organizations and popular demonstrations, such as those held at Wartburg Castle in October 1817, contributed to a growing sense of unity among German speakers of Central Europe. Furthermore, implicit and sometimes explicit promises made during the War of Liberation engendered an expectation of popular sovereignty and widespread participation in the political process, promises that largely went unfulfilled once peace had been achieved. Agitation by student organizations led such conservative leaders as Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich, to fear the rise of national sentiment; the assassination of German dramatist August von Kotzebue in March 1819 by a radical student seeking unification was followed on 20 September 1819 by the proclamation of the Carlsbad Decrees, which hampered intellectual leadership of the nationalist movement.[19]

Metternich was able to harness conservative outrage at the assassination to consolidate legislation that would further limit the press and constrain the rising liberal and nationalist movements. Consequently, these decrees drove the Burschenschaften underground, restricted the publication of nationalist materials, expanded censorship of the press and private correspondence, and limited academic speech by prohibiting university professors from encouraging nationalist discussion. The decrees were the subject of Johann Joseph von Görres's pamphlet Teutschland [archaic: Deutschland] und die Revolution (Germany and the Revolution) (1820), in which he concluded that it was both impossible and undesirable to repress the free utterance of public opinion by reactionary measures.[20]

Economic collaboration: the customs union[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Zollverein.

Another institution key to unifying the German states, the Zollverein, helped to create a larger sense of economic unification. Initially conceived by the Prussian Finance Minister Hans, Count von Bülow, as a Prussian customs union in 1818, the Zollverein linked the many Prussian and Hohenzollern territories. Over the ensuing thirty years (and more) other German states joined. The Union helped to reduce protectionist barriers between the German states, especially improving the transport of raw materials and finished goods, making it both easier to move goods across territorial borders and less costly to buy, transport, and sell raw materials. This was particularly important for the emerging industrial centers, most of which were located in the Prussian regions of the Rhineland, the Saar, and the Ruhr valleys.[21] States more distant from the coast joined the Customs Union earlier. Not being a member mattered more for the states of south Germany, since the external tariff of the Customs Union prevented customs-free access to the coast (which gave access to international markets). Thus, by 1836, all states to the south of Prussia had joined the Customs Union, except Austria. [22]

In contrast, the coastal states already had barrier free access to international trade and did not want consumers and producers burdened with the import duties they would pay if they were within the Zollverein customs border. Hanover on the north coast formed its own customs union - the “Tax Union” or Steuerverein - in 1834 with Brunswick and with Oldenburg in 1836. The external tariffs on finished goods and overseas raw materials and were below the rates of the Zollverein. Brunswick joined the Zollverein Customs Union in 1842, while Hanover and Oldenburg finally joined in 1854[23] After the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia and thus annexed also to the Customs Union, while the two Mecklenburg states and the city states of Hamburg and Bremen joined late because they were reliant on international trade. The Mecklenburgs joined in 1867, while Bremen and Hamburg joined in 1888. [22]

Roads and railways[edit]

In October, 1817, approximately 500 students rallied at Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther had sought refuge over three centuries earlier, to demonstrate in favor of national unification. Wartburg was chosen for its symbolic connection to German national character. Contemporary, colored wood engraving.[24]

By the early 19th century, German roads had deteriorated to an appalling extent. Travelers, both foreign and local, complained bitterly about the state of the Heerstraßen, the military roads previously maintained for the ease of moving troops. As German states ceased to be a military crossroads, however, the roads improved; the length of hard–surfaced roads in Prussia increased from 3,800 kilometres (2,400 mi) in 1816 to 16,600 kilometres (10,300 mi) in 1852, helped in part by the invention of macadam. By 1835, Heinrich von Gagern wrote that roads were the "veins and arteries of the body politic..." and predicted that they would promote freedom, independence and prosperity.[25] As people moved around, they came into contact with others, on trains, at hotels, in restaurants, and for some, at fashionable resorts such as the spa in Baden-Baden. Water transportation also improved. The blockades on the Rhine had been removed by Napoleon's orders, but by the 1820s, steam engines freed riverboats from the cumbersome system of men and animals that towed them upstream. By 1846, 180 steamers plied German rivers and Lake Constance, and a network of canals extended from the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe rivers.[26]

As important as these improvements were, they could not compete with the impact of the railway. German economist Friedrich List called the railways and the Customs Union "Siamese Twins", emphasizing their important relationship to one another.[27]He was not alone: the poet August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote a poem in which he extolled the virtues of the Zollverein, which he began with a list of commodities that had contributed more to German unity than politics or diplomacy.[28]Historians of the Second Empire later regarded the railways as the first indicator of a unified state; the patriotic novelist, Wilhelm Raabe, wrote: "The German empire was founded with the construction of the first railway..."[29] Not everyone greeted the iron monster with enthusiasm. The Prussian king Frederick William III saw no advantage in traveling from Berlin to Potsdama few hours faster, and Metternich refused to ride in one at all. Others wondered if the railways were an "evil" that threatened the landscape: Nikolaus Lenau's 1838 poem An den Frühling (To Spring) bemoaned the way trains destroyed the pristine quietude of German forests.[30]

The Bavarian Ludwig Railway, which was the first passenger or freight rail line in the German lands, connected Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835. Although it was 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) long and only operated in daylight, it proved both profitable and popular. Within three years, 141 kilometres (88 mi) of track had been laid, by 1840, 462 kilometres (287 mi), and by 1860, 11,157 kilometres (6,933 mi). Lacking a geographically central organizing feature (such as a national capital), the rails were laid in webs, linking towns and markets within regions, regions within larger regions, and so on. As the rail network expanded, it became cheaper to transport goods: in 1840, 18 Pfennigs per ton per kilometer and in 1870, five Pfennigs. The effects of the railway were immediate. For example, raw materials could travel up and down the Ruhr Valley without having to unload and reload. Railway lines encouraged economic activity by creating demand for commodities and by facilitating commerce. In 1850, inland shipping carried three times more freight than railroads; by 1870, the situation was reversed, and railroads carried four times more. Rail travel changed how cities looked and how people traveled. Its impact reached throughout the social order, affecting the highest born to the lowest. Although some of the outlying German provinces were not serviced by rail until the 1890s, the majority of the population, manufacturing centers, and production centers were linked to the rail network by 1865.[31]

This drawing offered a satirical commentary on the prevalence of toll barriers in the many German states, circa 1834. Some states were so small that transporters loaded and reloaded their cargoes two and three times a day.

Geography, patriotism and language[edit]

As travel became easier, faster, and less expensive, Germans started to see unity in factors other than their language. The Brothers Grimm, who compiled a massive dictionary known as The Grimm, also assembled a compendium of folk tales and fables, which highlighted the story-telling parallels between different regions.[32] Karl Baedeker wrote guidebooks to different cities and regions of Central Europe, indicating places to stay, sites to visit, and giving a short history of castles, battlefields, famous buildings, and famous people. His guides also included distances, roads to avoid, and hiking paths to follow.[33]

The words of August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben expressed not only the linguistic unity of the German people but also their geographic unity. In Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, officially called Das Lied der Deutschen ("The Song of the Germans"), Fallersleben called upon sovereigns throughout the German states to recognize the unifying characteristics of the German people.[34] Such other patriotic songs as "Die Wacht am Rhein" ("The Watch on the Rhine") by Max Schneckenburger began to focus attention on geographic space, not limiting "German-ness" to a common language. Schneckenburger wrote "The Watch on the Rhine" in a specific patriotic response to French assertions that the Rhine was France's "natural" eastern boundary. In the refrain, "Dear fatherland, dear fatherland, put your mind to rest / The watch stands true on the Rhine", and in such other patriotic poetry as Nicholaus Becker's "Das Rheinlied" ("The Rhine"), Germans were called upon to defend their territorial homeland. In 1807, Alexander von Humboldt argued that national character reflected geographic influence, linking landscape to people. Concurrent with this idea, movements to preserve old fortresses and historic sites emerged, and these particularly focused on the Rhineland, the site of so many confrontations with France and Spain.[35]

Vormärz and nineteenth century liberalism[edit]

Main article: Vormärz

The period of Austrian and Prussian police-states and vast censorship before the Revolutions of 1848 in Germany later became widely known as the Vormärz, the "before March", referring to March 1848. During this period, European liberalism gained momentum; the agenda included economic, social, and political issues. Most European liberals in the Vormärz sought unification under nationalist principles, promoted the transition to capitalism, sought the expansion of male suffrage, among other issues. Their "radicalness" depended upon where they stood on the spectrum of male suffrage: the wider the definition of suffrage, the more radical.[36]

Hambach Festival: liberal nationalism and conservative response[edit]

Pro-nationalist participants march to the ruins of Hambach Castle in 1832. Students and some professionals, and their spouses, predominated. They carried the flag of the underground Burschenschaft, which later became the basis of the flag of modern Germany

Despite considerable conservative reaction, ideas of unity joined with notions of popular sovereignty in German-speaking lands. The Hambach Festival (Hambacher Fest) in May 1832 was attended by a crowd of more than 30,000.[37] Promoted as a county fair,[38] its participants celebrated fraternity, liberty, and national unity. Celebrants gathered in the town below and marched to the ruins of Hambach Castle on the heights above the small town of Hambach, in the Palatinate province of Bavaria. Carrying flags, beating drums, and singing, the participants took the better part of the morning and mid-day to arrive at the castle grounds, where they listened to speeches by nationalist orators from across the conservative to radical political spectrum. The overall content of the speeches suggested a fundamental difference between the German nationalism of the 1830s and the French nationalism of the July Revolution: the focus of German nationalism lay in the education of the people; once the populace was educated as to what was needed, they would accomplish it. The Hambach rhetoric emphasized the overall peaceable nature of German nationalism: the point was not to build barricades, a very "French" form of nationalism, but to build emotional bridges between groups.[39]

A German caricature that mocks the Carlsbad Decrees, which suppressed freedom of expression.

As he had done in 1819, after the Kotzebue assassination, Metternich used the popular demonstration at Hambach to push conservative social policy. The "Six Articles" of 28 June 1832 primarily reaffirmed the principle of monarchical authority. On 5 July, the Frankfurt Diet voted for an additional 10 articles, which reiterated existing rules on censorship, restricted political organizations, and limited other public activity. Furthermore, the member states agreed to send military assistance to any government threatened by unrest.[40] Prince Wrede led half of the Bavarian army to the Palatinate to "subdue" the province. Several hapless Hambach speakers were arrested, tried and imprisoned; one, Karl Heinrich Brüggemann (1810–1887), a law student and representative of the secretive Burschenschaft, was sent to Prussia, where he was first condemned to death, but later pardoned.[37]

Liberalism and the response to economic problems[edit]

Several other factors complicated the rise of nationalism in the German states. The man-made factors included political rivalries between members of the German confederation, particularly between the Austrians and the Prussians, and socio-economic competition among the commercial and merchant interests and the old land-owning and aristocratic interests. Natural factors included widespread drought in the early 1830s, and again in the 1840s, and a food crisis in the 1840s. Further complications emerged as a result of a shift in industrialization and manufacturing; as people sought jobs, they left their villages and small towns to work during the week in the cities, returning for a day and a half on weekends.[41]

The economic, social and cultural dislocation of ordinary people, the economic hardship of an economy in transition, and the pressures of meteorological disasters all contributed to growing problems in Central Europe.[42] The failure of most of the governments to deal with the food crisis of the mid-1840s, caused by the potato blight(related to the Great Irish Famine) and several seasons of bad weather, encouraged many to think that the rich and powerful had no interest in their problems. Those in authority were concerned about the growing unrest, political and social agitation among the working classes, and the disaffection of the intelligentsia. No amount of censorship, fines, imprisonment, or banishment, it seemed, could stem the criticism. Furthermore, it was becoming increasingly clear that both Austria and Prussia wanted to be the leaders in any resulting unification; each would inhibit the drive of the other to achieve unification.[43]

First efforts at unification[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Revolutions of 1848.

Crucially, both the Wartburg rally in 1817 and the Hambach Festival in 1832 had lacked any clear-cut program of unification. At Hambach, the positions of the many speakers illustrated their disparate agendas. Held together only by the idea of unification, their notions of how to achieve this did not include specific plans but instead rested on the nebulous idea that the Volk (the people), if properly educated, would bring about unification on their own. Grand speeches, flags, exuberant students, and picnic lunches did not translate into a new political, bureaucratic, or administrative apparatus. While many spoke about the need for a constitution, no such document appeared from the discussions. In 1848, nationalists sought to remedy that problem.[44]

German revolutions of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Frankfurt Parliament.

The widespread—mainly German—revolutions of 1848–49 sought unification of Germany under a single constitution. The revolutionaries pressured various state governments, particularly those in the Rhineland, for a parliamentary assembly that would have the responsibility to draft a constitution. Ultimately, many of the left-wing revolutionaries hoped this constitution would establish universal male suffrage, a permanent national parliament, and a unified Germany, possibly under the leadership of the Prussian king. This seemed to be the most logical course since Prussia was the strongest of the German states, as well as the largest in geographic size. Generally, center-right revolutionaries sought some kind of expanded suffrage within their states and potentially, a form of loose unification. Their pressure resulted in a variety of elections, based on different voting qualifications, such as the Prussian three-class franchise, which granted to some electoral groups—chiefly the wealthier, landed ones—greater representative power.[45]

Pre-parliament delegates process into Paul's Church in Frankfurt, where they laid the groundwork for electing a National Parliament.[46]

On 27 March 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament passed the Paulskirchenverfassung (Constitution of St. Paul's Church) and offered the title of Kaiser (Emperor) to the Prussian king Frederick William IV the next month. He refused for a variety of reasons. Publicly, he replied that he could not accept a crown without the consent of the actual states, by which he meant the princes. Privately, he feared opposition from the other German princes and military intervention from Austria or Russia. He also held a fundamental distaste for the idea of accepting a crown from a popularly elected parliament: he would not accept a crown of "clay".[47] Despite franchise requirements that often perpetuated many of the problems of sovereignty and political participation liberals sought to overcome, the Frankfurt Parliament did manage to draft a constitution and reach an agreement on the kleindeutsch solution. While the liberals failed to achieve the unification they sought, they did manage to gain a partial victory by working with the German princes on many constitutional issues and collaborating with them on reforms.[48]

1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament in retrospective analysis[edit]

Scholars of German history have engaged in decades of debate over how the successes and failures of the Frankfurt Parliament contribute to the historiographical explanations of German nation building. One school of thought, which emerged after The Great War and gained momentum in the aftermath of World War II, maintains that the failure of German liberals in the Frankfurt Parliament led to bourgeoisie compromise with conservatives (especially the conservative Junker landholders), which subsequently led to the so-called Sonderweg (distinctive path) of 20th-century German history.[49] Failure to achieve unification in 1848, this argument holds, resulted in the late formation of the nation-state in 1871, which in turn delayed the development of positive national values. Hitler often called on the German public to sacrifice all for the cause of their great nation, but his regime did not create German nationalism: it merely capitalized on an intrinsic cultural value of German society that still remains prevalent even to this day.[50] Furthermore, this argument maintains, the "failure" of 1848 reaffirmed latent aristocratic longings among the German middle class; consequently, this group never developed a self-conscious program of modernization.[51]

More recent scholarship has rejected this idea, claiming that Germany did not have an actual "distinctive path" any more than any other nation, a historiographic idea known as exceptionalism.[52] Instead, modern historians claim 1848 saw specific achievements by the liberal politicians. Many of their ideas and programs were later incorporated into Bismarck's social programs (e.g., social insurance, education programs, and wider definitions of suffrage). In addition, the notion of a distinctive path relies upon the underlying assumption that some other nation's path (in this case, the United Kingdom's) is the accepted norm.[53] This new argument further challenges the norms of the British-centric model of development: studies of national development in Britain and other "normal" states (e.g., France or the United States) have suggested that even in these cases, the modern nation-state did not develop evenly. Nor did it develop particularly early, being rather a largely mid-to-late-19th-century phenomenon.[54] Since the end of the 1990s, this view has become widely accepted, although some historians still find the Sonderweg analysis helpful in understanding the period of National Socialism.[55][56]

This depiction of Germania, also by Philipp Veit, was created to hide the organ of the Paul's Church in Frankfurt, during the meeting of the Parliament there, March 1848–49. The sword was intended to symbolize the Word of Godand to mark the renewal of the people and their triumphant spirit.

Problem of spheres of influence: The Erfurt Union and the Punctation of Olmütz[edit]

After the Frankfurt Parliament disbanded, Frederick William IV, under the influence of General Joseph Maria von Radowitz, supported the establishment of the Erfurt Union—a federation of German states, excluding Austria—by the free agreement of the German princes. This limited union under Prussia would have almost entirely eliminated Austrian influence on the other German states. Combined diplomatic pressure from Austria and Russia (a guarantor of the 1815 agreements that established European spheres of influence) forced Prussia to relinquish the idea of the Erfurt Union at a meeting in the small town of Olmütz in Moravia. In November 1850, the Prussians—specifically Radowitz and Frederick William—agreed to the restoration of the German Confederation under Austrian leadership. This became known as the Punctation of Olmütz, but among Prussians it was known as the "Humiliation of Olmütz."[57]

Although seemingly minor events, the Erfurt Union proposal and the Punctation of Olmütz brought the problems of influence in the German states into sharp focus. The question became not a matter of if but rather when unification would occur, and whenwas contingent upon strength. One of the former Frankfurt Parliament members, Johann Gustav Droysen, summed up the problem:

We cannot conceal the fact that the whole German question is a simple alternative between Prussia and Austria. In these states, German life has its positive and negative poles—in the former, all the interests [that] are national and reformative, in the latter, all that are dynastic and destructive. The German question is not a constitutional question but a question of power; and the Prussian monarchy is now wholly German, while that of Austria cannot be.[58]

Unification under these conditions raised a basic diplomatic problem. The possibility of German (or Italian) unification would overturn the overlapping spheres of influence system created in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. The principal architects of this convention, Metternich, Castlereagh, and Tsar Alexander (with his foreign secretary Count Karl Nesselrode), had conceived of and organized a Europe balanced and guaranteed by four "great powers": Great Britain, France, Russia, and Austria, with each power having a geographic sphere of influence. France's sphere included the Iberian Peninsula and a share of influence in the Italian states. Russia's included the eastern regions of Central Europe and a balancing influence in the Balkans. Austria's sphere expanded throughout much of the Central European territories formerly held by the Holy Roman Empire. Britain's sphere was the rest of the world, especially the seas.[59]

This sphere of influence system depended upon the fragmentation of the German and Italian states, not their consolidation. Consequently, a German nation united under one banner presented significant questions. There was no readily applicable definition for who the German people would be or how far the borders of a German nation would stretch. There was also uncertainty as to who would best lead and defend "Germany", however it was defined. Different groups offered different solutions to this problem. In the Kleindeutschland ("Lesser Germany") solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the Prussian Hohenzollerns; in the Grossdeutschland ("Greater Germany") solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the Austrian Habsburgs. This controversy, the latest phase of the German dualism debate that had dominated the politics of the German states and Austro-Prussian diplomacy since the 1701 creation of the Kingdom of Prussia, would come to a head during the following twenty years.[60]

External expectations of a unified Germany[edit]

Other nationalists had high hopes for the German unification movement, and the frustration with lasting German unification after 1850 seemed to set the national movement back. Revolutionaries associated national unification with progress. As Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to German revolutionary Karl Blind on 10 April 1865, "The progress of humanity seems to have come to a halt, and you with your superior intelligence will know why. The reason is that the world lacks a nation [that] possesses true leadership. Such leadership, of course, is required not to dominate other peoples but to lead them along the path of duty, to lead them toward the brotherhood of nations where all the barriers erected by egoism will be destroyed." Garibaldi looked to Germany for the "kind of leadership [that], in the true tradition of medieval chivalry, would devote itself to redressing wrongs, supporting the weak, sacrificing momentary gains and material advantage for the much finer and more satisfying achievement of relieving the suffering of our fellow men. We need a nation courageous enough to give us a lead in this direction. It would rally to its cause all those who are suffering wrong or who aspire to a better life and all those who are now enduring foreign oppression."[61]

German unification had also been viewed as a prerequisite for the creation of a European federation, which Giuseppe Mazzini and other European patriots had been promoting for more than three decades:

In the spring of 1834, while at Berne, Mazzini and a dozen refugees from Italy, Poland and Germany founded a new association with the grandiose name of Young Europe. Its basic, and equally grandiose idea, was that, as the French Revolution of 1789 had enlarged the concept of individual liberty, another revolution would now be needed for national liberty; and his vision went further because he hoped that in the no doubt distant future free nations might combine to form a loosely federal Europe with some kind of federal assembly to regulate their common interests. [...] His intention was nothing less than to overturn the European settlement agreed [to] in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, which had reestablished an oppressive hegemony of a few great powers and blocked the emergence of smaller nations. [...] Mazzini hoped, but without much confidence, that his vision of a league or society of independent nations would be realized in his own lifetime. In practice Young Europe lacked the money and popular support for more than a short-term existence. Nevertheless he always remained faithful to the ideal of a united continent for which the creation of individual nations would be an indispensable preliminary.[62]

Prussia's growing strength: Realpolitik[edit]

Further information: Helmuth von Moltke the Elder § Moltke's Theory of War

The convergence of leadership in politics and diplomacy by Bismarck, left, reorganization of the army and its training techniques by Albrecht von Roon (center), and the redesign of operational and strategic principles by Helmuth von Moltke (right) placed Prussia among the most powerful states in European affairs after the 1860s.

King Frederick William IV suffered a stroke in 1857 and could no longer rule. This led to his brother William becoming Prince Regent of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1858. Meanwhile, Helmuth von Moltke had become chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, and Albrecht von Roon would become Prussian Minister of War in 1859.[63] This shuffling of authority within the Prussian military establishment would have important consequences. Von Roon and William (who took an active interest in military structures) began reorganizing the Prussian army, while Moltke redesigned the strategic defense of Prussia by streamlining operational command. Prussian army reforms (especially how to pay for them) caused a constitutional crisis beginning in 1860 because both parliament and William—via his minister of war—wanted control over the military budget. William, crowned King Wilhelm I in 1861, appointed Otto von Bismarck to the position of Minister-President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck resolved the crisis in favor of the war minister.[64]

The Crimean War of 1854–55 and the Italian War of 1859 disrupted relations among Great Britain, France, Austria, and Russia. In the aftermath of this disarray, the convergence of von Moltke's operational redesign, von Roon and Wilhelm's army restructure, and Bismarck's diplomacy influenced the realignment of the European balance of power. Their combined agendas established Prussia as the leading German power through a combination of foreign diplomatic triumphs—backed up by the possible use of Prussian military might—and an internal conservativism tempered by pragmatism, which came to be known as Realpolitik.[65]

Bismarck expressed the essence of Realpolitik in his subsequently famous "Blood and Iron" speech to the Budget Committee of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies on 30 September 1862, shortly after he became Minister President: "The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood."[66] Bismarck's words, "iron and blood" (or "blood and iron", as often attributed), have often been misappropriated as evidence of a German lust for blood and power.[67] First, the phrase from his speech "the great questions of time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions" is often interpreted as a repudiation of the political process—a repudiation Bismarck did not himself advocate.[68] Second, his emphasis on blood and iron did not imply simply the unrivaled military might of the Prussian army but rather two important aspects: the ability of the assorted German states to produce iron and other related war materials and the willingness to use those war materials if necessary.[69]

Founding a unified state[edit]

There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, and each [is] separately ruled by an independent sovereign with all the machinery of State. Yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit.

—article from The New York Times published in July 1, 1866[70]

The need for both iron and blood soon became apparent. By 1862, when Bismarck made his speech, the idea of a German nation-state in the peaceful spirit of Pan-Germanism had shifted from the liberal and democratic character of 1848 to accommodate Bismarck's more conservative Realpolitik. Ever the pragmatist, Bismarck understood the possibilities, obstacles, and advantages of a unified state. He also understood the importance of linking that state to the Hohenzollern dynasty, which for some historians remains one of Bismarck's primary contributions to the creation of the German Empire in 1871.[71] While the conditions of the treaties binding the various German states to one another prohibited Bismarck from taking unilateral action, the politician and diplomat in him realized the impracticality of such an action.[72] In order to get the German states to unify, Bismarck needed a single, outside enemy that would declare war on one of the German states first, thus providing a casus belli to rally all Germans behind. This opportunity arose with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Historians have long debated Bismarck's role in the events leading up to the war. The traditional view, promulgated in large part by late 19th and early 20th century pro-Prussian historians, maintains that Bismarck's intent was always German unification. Post-1945 historians, however, see more short-term opportunism and cynicism in Bismarck's manipulation of the circumstances to create a war, rather than a grand scheme to unify a nation-state.[73] Regardless, Bismarck was neither villain nor saint: by manipulating events of 1866 and 1870, he demonstrated the political and diplomatic skill that had caused Wilhelm to turn to him in 1862.[74]

From north to south: The Danish part of Jutland in purple and terracotta, Schleswig in red and brown, and Holstein in lime yellow. The Schleswig-Holstein Question was about the status of those territories.

Three episodes proved fundamental to the administrative and political unification of Germany. First, the death without male heirs of Frederick VII of Denmark led to the Second War of Schleswig in 1864. Second, the unification of Italy provided Prussia an ally against Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Finally, France—fearing Hohenzollern encirclement—declared war on Prussia in 1870, resulting in the Franco-Prussian War. Through a combination of Bismarck's diplomacy and political leadership, von Roon's military reorganization, and von Moltke's military strategy, Prussia demonstrated that none of the European signatories of the 1815 peace treaty could guarantee Austria's sphere of influence in Central Europe, thus achieving Prussian hegemony in Germany and ending the dualism debate.[75]

The Schleswig-Holstein Question[edit]

Main article: Second Schleswig War

The first episode in the saga of German unification under Bismarck came with the Schleswig-Holstein Question. On 15 November 1863, King Christian IX of Denmark became king of Denmark and duke of Schleswig and Holstein. On 18 November 1863, he signed the Danish November Constitution and declared the Duchy of Schleswig a part of Denmark. The German Confederation saw this act as a violation of the London Protocol of 1852, which emphasized the status of the kingdom of Denmark as distinct from the independent duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The populations of Schleswig and Holstein, furthermore, greatly valued this separate status. The German Confederation could use the ethnicities of these duchies as a rallying cry: large portions of both Schleswig and Holstein were of German origin and spoke German in everyday life (though Schleswig had a sizable Danish minority). Diplomatic attempts to have the November Constitution repealed collapsed, and fighting began when Prussian and Austrian troops crossed the border into Schleswig on 1 February 1864. Initially, the Danes attempted to defend their country using an ancient earthen wall known as the Danevirke, but this proved futile. The Danes were no match for the combined Prussian and Austrian forces, and they could not rely on help from their allies in the other Scandinavian states because Denmark had nullified its alliance rights by violating the London Protocol. The Needle Gun, one of the first bolt action rifles to be used in conflict, aided the Prussians in both this war and the Austro-Prussian War two years later. The rifle enabled a Prussian soldier to fire five shots while lying prone, while its muzzle-loading counterpart could only fire one shot and had to be reloaded while standing. The Second Schleswig War resulted in victory for the combined armies of Prussia and Austria, and the two countries won control of Schleswig and Holstein in the concluding peace of Vienna, signed on 30 October 1864.[76]

War between Austria and Prussia, 1866[edit]

Main article: Austro-Prussian War

Situation at the time of the outbreak of the war:  Prussia  Austria  Austria's allies  Prussia's allies  Neutral  Under joint administration (Schleswig-Holstein)

The second episode in Bismarck's unification efforts occurred in 1866. In concert with the newly formed Italy, Bismarck created a diplomatic environment in which Austria declared war on Prussia. The dramatic prelude to the war occurred largely in Frankfurt, where the two powers claimed to speak for all the German states in the parliament. In April 1866, the Prussian representative in Florence signed a secret agreement with the Italian government, committing each state to assist the other in a war against Austria. The next day, the Prussian delegate to the Frankfurt assembly presented a plan calling for a national constitution, a directly elected national Diet, and universal suffrage. German liberals were justifiably skeptical of this plan, having witnessed Bismarck's difficult and ambiguous relationship with the Prussian Landtag (State Parliament), a relationship characterized by Bismarck's cajoling and riding roughshod over the representatives. These skeptics saw the proposal as a ploy to enhance Prussian power rather than a progressive agenda of reform.[77]

Choosing sides[edit]

The debate over the proposed national constitution became moot when news of Italian troop movements in Tyroland near the Venetian border reached Vienna in April 1866. The Austrian government ordered partial mobilization in the southern regions; the Italians responded by ordering full mobilization. Despite calls for rational thought and action, Italy, Prussia, and Austria continued to rush toward armed conflict. On 1 May, Wilhelm gave von Moltkecommand over the Prussian armed forces, and the next day he began full-scale mobilization.[78]

In the Diet, the group of middle-sized states, known as Mittelstaaten (Bavaria, Württemberg, the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse, and the duchies of Saxony–Weimar, Saxony–Meiningen, Saxony–Coburg, and Nassau), supported complete demobilization within the Confederation. These individual governments rejected the potent combination of enticing promises and subtle (or outright) threats Bismarck used to try to gain their support against the Habsburgs. The Prussian war cabinet understood that its only supporters among the German states against the Habsburgs were two small principalities bordering on Brandenburg that had little military strength or political clout: the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They also understood that Prussia's only ally abroad was Italy.[79]

Opposition to Prussia's strong-armed tactics surfaced in other social and political groups. Throughout the German states, city councils, liberal parliamentary members who favored a unified state, and chambers of commerce—which would see great benefits from unification—opposed any war between Prussia and Austria. They believed any such conflict would only serve the interests of royal dynasties. Their own interests, which they understood as "civil" or "bourgeois", seemed irrelevant. Public opinion also opposed Prussian domination. Catholic populations along the Rhine—especially in such cosmopolitan regions as Cologne and in the heavily populated Ruhr Valley—continued to support Austria. By late spring, most important states opposed Berlin's effort to reorganize the German states by force. The Prussian cabinet saw German unity as an issue of power and a question of who had the strength and will to wield that power. Meanwhile, the liberals in the Frankfurt assembly saw German unity as a process of negotiation that would lead to the distribution of power among the many parties.[80]

Prussian Prince Friedrich Carl orders his enthusiastic troops to attack at the Battle of Königgrätz. The Crown Prince and his troops had arrived late, and in the wrong place, but when he arrived, he ordered his troops immediately into the fray. This decisive battle, which the Prussians won, forced the Habsburgs to end the war and laid the groundwork for the Kleindeutschland (little Germany) solution, or "Germany without Austria."

Austria isolated[edit]

Although several German states initially sided with Austria, they stayed on the defensive and failed to take effective initiatives against Prussian troops. The Austrian army therefore faced the technologically superior Prussian army with support only from Saxony. France promised aid, but it came late and was insufficient.[81] Complicating the situation for Austria, the Italian mobilization on Austria's southern border required a diversion of forces away from battle with Prussia to fight the Third Italian War of Independence on a second front in Venetia and on the Adriatic sea.[82] The day-long Battle of Königgrätz, near the village of Sadová, gave Prussia an uncontested and decisive victory.[83]

Realpolitik and the North German Confederation[edit]

For more details on this topic, see North German Confederation.

A quick peace was essential to keep Russia from entering the conflict on Austria's side.[84] Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau, and the city of Frankfurt. Hesse Darmstadt lost some territory but not its sovereignty. The states south of the Main River (Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria) signed separate treaties requiring them to pay indemnities and to form alliances bringing them into Prussia's sphere of influence. Austria, and most of its allies, were excluded from the North German Confederation.[85]

The end of Austrian dominance of the German states shifted Austria's attention to the Balkans. In 1867, the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph accepted a settlement (the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867) in which he gave his Hungarian holdings equal status with his Austrian domains, creating the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.[86] The Peace of Prague (1866) offered lenient terms to Austria, in which Austria's relationship with the new nation-state of Italy underwent major restructuring; although the Austrians were far more successful in the military field against Italian troops, the monarchy lost the important province of Venetia. The Habsburgs ceded Venetia to France, which then formally transferred control to Italy.[87] The French public resented the Prussian victory and demanded Revanche pour Sadová ("Revenge for Sadova"), illustrating anti-Prussian sentiment in France—a problem that would accelerate in the months leading up to the Franco-Prussian War.[88] The Austro-Prussian War also damaged relations with the French government. At a meeting in Biarritz in September 1865 with Napoleon III, Bismarck had let it be understood (or Napoleon had thought he understood) that France might annex parts of Belgium and Luxembourg in exchange for its neutrality in the war. These annexations did not happen, resulting in animosity from Napoleon towards Bismarck.

The reality of defeat for Austria caused a reevaluation of internal divisions, local autonomy, and liberalism.[89] The new North German Confederation had its own constitution, flag, and governmental and administrative structures. Through military victory, Prussia under Bismarck's influence had overcome Austria's active resistance to the idea of a unified Germany. Austria's influence over the German states may have been broken, but the war also splintered the spirit of pan-German unity: most of the German states resented Prussian power politics.[90]

War with France[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Causes of the Franco-Prussian War.

By 1870 three of the important lessons of the Austro-Prussian war had become apparent. The first lesson was that, through force of arms, a powerful state could challenge the old alliances and spheres of influence established in 1815. Second, through diplomatic maneuvering, a skillful leader could create an environment in which a rival state would declare war first, thus forcing states allied with the "victim" of external aggression to come to the leader's aid. Finally, as Prussian military capacity far exceeded that of Austria, Prussia was clearly the only state within the Confederation (or among the German states generally) capable of protecting all of them from potential interference or aggression. In 1866, most mid-sized German states had opposed Prussia, but by 1870 these states had been coerced and coaxed into mutually protective alliances with Prussia. In the event that a European state declared war on one of their members, they all would come to the defense of the attacked state. With skillful manipulation of European politics, Bismarck created a situation in which France would play the role of aggressor in German affairs, while Prussia would play that of the protector of German rights and liberties.[91]

Spheres of influence fall apart in Spain[edit]

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Metternich and his conservative allies had reestablished the Spanish monarchy under King Ferdinand VII. Over the following forty years, the great powers supported the Spanish monarchy, but events in 1868 would further test the old system. A revolution in Spain overthrew Queen Isabella II, and the throne remained empty while Isabella lived in sumptuous exile in Paris. The Spanish, looking for a suitable Catholic successor, had offered the post to three European princes, each of whom was rejected by Napoleon III, who served as regional power-broker. Finally, in 1870 the Regency offered the crown to Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a prince of the Catholic cadet Hohenzollern line. The ensuing furor has been dubbed by historians as the Hohenzollern candidature.[92]

Over the next few weeks, the Spanish offer turned into the talk of Europe. Bismarck encouraged Leopold to accept the offer.[93] A successful installment of a Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen king in Spain would mean that two countries on either side of France would both have German kings of Hohenzollern descent. This may have been a pleasing prospect for Bismarck, but it was unacceptable to either Napoleon III or to Agenor, duc de Gramont, his minister of foreign affairs. Gramont wrote a sharply formulated ultimatum to Wilhelm, as head of the Hohenzollern family, stating that if any Hohenzollern prince should accept the crown of Spain, the French government would respond—although he left ambiguous the nature of such response. The prince withdrew as a candidate, thus defusing the crisis, but the French ambassador to Berlin would not let the issue lie.[94] He approached the Prussian king directly while Wilhelm was vacationing in Ems Spa, demanding that the King release a statement saying he would never support the installation of a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain. Wilhelm refused to give such an encompassing statement, and he sent Bismarck a dispatch by telegram describing the French demands. Bismarck used the king's telegram, called the Ems Dispatch, as a template for a short statement to the press. With its wording shortened and sharpened by Bismarck—and further alterations made in the course of its translation by the French agency Havas—the Ems Dispatch raised an angry furor in France. The French public, still aggravated over the defeat at Sadová, demanded war.[95]

Emperor Napoleon III (left) at Sedan, on 2 September 1870, seated next to Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, holding Napoleon's surrendered sword. The defeat of the French army destabilized Napoleon's regime; a revolution in Paris established the Third French Republic, and the war continued.

Military operations[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Franco-Prussian War.

Napoleon III had tried to secure territorial concessions from both sides before and after the Austro-Prussian War, but despite his role as mediator during the peace negotiations, he ended up with nothing. He then hoped that Austria would join in a war of revenge and that its former allies—particularly the southern German states of Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria—would join in the cause. This hope would prove futile since the 1866 treaty came into effect and united all German states militarily—if not happily—to fight against France. Instead of a war of revenge against Prussia, supported by various German allies, France engaged in a war against all of the German states without any allies of its own.[96] The reorganization of the military by von Roon and the operational strategy of Moltkecombined against France to great effect. The speed of Prussian mobilization astonished the French, and the Prussian ability to concentrate power at specific points—reminiscent of Napoleon I's strategies seventy years earlier—overwhelmed French mobilization. Utilizing their efficiently laid rail grid, Prussian troops were delivered to battle areas rested and prepared to fight, whereas French troops had to march for considerable distances to reach combat zones. After a number of battles, notably Spicheren, Wörth, Mars la Tour, and Gravelotte, the Prussians defeated the main French armies and advanced on the primary city of Metz and the French capital of Paris. They captured Napoleon III and took an entire army as prisoners at Sedan on 1 September 1870.[97]

Proclamation of the German Empire[edit]

The humiliating capture of the French emperor and the loss of the French army itself, which marched into captivity at a makeshift camp in the Saarland ("Camp Misery"), threw the French government into turmoil; Napoleon's energetic opponents overthrew his government and proclaimed the Third Republic.[98] The German High Command expected an overture of peace from the French, but the new republic refused to surrender. The Prussian army invested Paris and held it under siege until mid-January, with the city being "ineffectually bombarded".[99] On 18 January 1871, the German princes and senior military commanders proclaimed Wilhelm "German Emperor" in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.[100] Under the subsequent Treaty of Frankfurt, France relinquished most of its traditionally German regions (Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine); paid an indemnity, calculated (on the basis of population) as the precise equivalent of the indemnity that Napoleon Bonaparte imposed on Prussia in 1807;[101] and accepted German administration of Paris and most of northern France, with "German troops to be withdrawn stage by stage with each installment of the indemnity payment".[102]

18 January 1871: The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Bismarck appears in white. The Grand Duke of Baden stands beside Wilhelm, leading the cheers. Crown Prince Friedrich, later Friedrich III, stands on his father's right. Painting by Anton von Werner.

Importance in the unification process[edit]

Victory in the Franco-Prussian War proved the capstone of the nationalist issue. In the first half of the 1860s, Austria and Prussia both contended to speak for the German states; both maintained they could support German interests abroad and protect German interests at home. In responding to the Schleswig-Holstein Question, they both proved equally diligent in doing so. After the victory over Austria in 1866, Prussia began internally asserting its authority to speak for the German states and defend German interests, while Austria began directing more and more of its attention to possessions in the Balkans. The victory over France in 1871 expanded Prussian hegemony in the German states to the international level. With the proclamation of Wilhelm as Kaiser, Prussia assumed the leadership of the new empire. The southern states became officially incorporated into a unified Germany at the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (signed 26 February 1871; later ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871), which formally ended the war.[103] Although Bismarck had led the transformation of Germany from a loose confederation into a federal nation state, he had not done it alone. Unification was achieved by building on a tradition of legal collaboration under the Holy Roman Empire and economic collaboration through the Zollverein. The difficulties of the Vormärz, the impact of the 1848 liberals, the importance of von Roon's military reorganization, and von Moltke's strategic brilliance all played a part in political unification.[104]

Political and administrative unification[edit]

For more details on this topic, see German Empire.

The new German Empire included 25 states, three of them Hanseatic cities. It realized the Kleindeutsche Lösung ("Lesser German Solution", with the exclusion of Austria) as opposed to a Großdeutsche Lösung or "Greater German Solution", which would have included Austria. Unifying various states into one nation required more than some military victories, however much these might have boosted morale. It also required a rethinking of political, social, and cultural behaviors and the construction of new metaphors about "us" and "them". Who were the new members of this new nation? What did they stand for? How were they to be organized?[105]

Constituent states of the Empire[edit]

Though often characterized as a federation of monarchs, the German Empire, strictly speaking, federated a group of 26 states.[106]

| StateCapital

Kingdoms (Königreiche)

|

Prussia (Preußen) | Berlin

|

Bavaria (Bayern) | Munich

|

Saxony (Sachsen) | Dresden

|

Württemberg | Stuttgart
Grand Duchies (Großherzogtümer)

|

Baden | Karlsruhe

|

Hesse (Hessen) | Darmstadt

|

Mecklenburg-Schwerin | Schwerin

|

Mecklenburg-Strelitz | Neustrelitz

|

Oldenburg | Oldenburg

|

Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach(Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach) | Weimar
Duchies (Herzogtümer)

|

Anhalt | Dessau

|

Brunswick (Braunschweig) | Braunschweig

|

Saxe-Altenburg (Sachsen-Altenburg) | Altenburg

|

Saxe-Coburg and Gotha(Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha) | Coburg

|

Saxe-Meiningen (Sachsen-Meiningen) | Meiningen
Principalities (Fürstentümer)

|

Lippe | Detmold

|

Reuss-Gera (Junior Line) | Gera

|

Reuss-Greiz (Elder Line) | Greiz

|

Schaumburg-Lippe | Bückeburg

|

Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt | Rudolstadt

|

Schwarzburg-Sondershausen | Sondershausen

|

Waldeck and Pyrmont (Waldeck und Pyrmont) | Arolsen
Free and Hanseatic Cities (Freie und Hansestädte)

|

Bremen

|

Hamburg

|

Lübeck
Imperial Territories (Reichsländer)

|

Alsace-Lorraine (Elsass-Lothringen) | Straßburg

Political structure of the Empire[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Constitution of the German Empire.

The 1866 North German Constitution became (with some semantic adjustments) the 1871 Constitution of the German Empire. With this constitution, the new Germany acquired some democratic features: notably the Imperial Diet, which—in contrast to the parliament of Prussia—gave citizens representation on the basis of elections by direct and equal suffrage of all males who had reached the age of 25. Furthermore, elections were generally free of chicanery, engendering pride in the national parliament.[107] However, legislation required the consent of the Bundesrat, the federal council of deputies from the states, in and over which Prussia had a powerful influence; Prussia could appoint 17 of 58 delegates with only 14 votes needed for a veto. Prussia thus exercised influence in both bodies, with executive power vested in the Prussian King as Kaiser, who appointed the federal chancellor. The chancellor was accountable solely to, and served entirely at the discretion of, the Emperor. Officially, the chancellor functioned as a one-man cabinet and was responsible for the conduct of all state affairs; in practice, the State Secretaries (bureaucratic top officials in charge of such fields as finance, war, foreign affairs, etc.) acted as unofficial portfolio ministers. With the exception of the years 1872–1873 and 1892–1894, the imperial chancellor was always simultaneously the prime minister of the imperial dynasty's hegemonic home-kingdom, Prussia. The Imperial Diet had the power to pass, amend, or reject bills, but it could not initiate legislation. (The power of initiating legislation rested with the chancellor.) The other states retained their own governments, but the military forces of the smaller states came under Prussian control. The militaries of the larger states (such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Saxony) retained some autonomy, but they underwent major reforms to coordinate with Prussian military principles and came under federal government control in wartime.[108]

Historical arguments and the Empire's social anatomy[edit]

Germania, also called the Niederwald Monument, was erected in 1877–83 at Rüdesheim.

The Sonderweg hypothesis attributed Germany's difficult 20th century to the weak political, legal, and economic basis of the new empire. The Prussian landed elites, the Junkers, retained a substantial share of political power in the unified state. The Sonderweg hypothesis attributed their power to the absence of a revolutionary breakthrough by the middle classes, or by peasants in combination with the urban workers, in 1848 and again in 1871. Recent research into the role of the Grand Bourgeoisie—which included bankers, merchants, industrialists, and entrepreneurs—in the construction of the new state has largely refuted the claim of political and economic dominance of the Junkers as a social group. This newer scholarship has demonstrated the importance of the merchant classes of the Hanseatic cities and the industrial leadership (the latter particularly important in the Rhineland) in the ongoing development of the Second Empire.[109]

Additional studies of different groups in Wilhelmine Germany have all contributed to a new view of the period. Although the Junkers did, indeed, continue to control the officer corps, they did not dominate social, political, and economic matters as much as the Sonderweg theorists had hypothesized. Eastern Junker power had a counterweight in the western provinces in the form of the Grand Bourgeoisie and in the growing professional class of bureaucrats, teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc.[110]

Beyond the political mechanism: forming a nation[edit]

This monument to Kaiser Wilhelm, at Koblenz, where the Moselle River(upper river) meets the Rhine River (lower river), called the Deutsches Eck, or the German corner.

If the Wartburg and Hambach rallies had lacked a constitution and administrative apparatus, that problem was addressed between 1867 and 1871. Yet, as Germans discovered, grand speeches, flags, and enthusiastic crowds, a constitution, a political reorganization, and the provision of an imperial superstructure; and the revised Customs Union of 1867–68, still did not make a nation.[111]

A key element of the nation-state is the creation of a national culture, frequently—although not necessarily—through deliberate national policy.[112] In the new German nation, a Kulturkampf (1872–78) that followed political, economic, and administrative unification attempted to address, with a remarkable lack of success, some of the contradictions in German society. In particular, it involved a struggle over language, education, and religion. A policy of Germanization of non-German people of the empire's population, including the Polish and Danish minorities, started with language, in particular, the German language, compulsory schooling (Germanization), and the attempted creation of standardized curricula for those schools to promote and celebrate the idea of a shared past. Finally, it extended to the religion of the new Empire's population.[113]

Kulturkampf[edit]

Main article: Kulturkampf

For some Germans, the definition of nation did not include pluralism, and Catholics in particular came under scrutiny; some Germans, and especially Bismarck, feared that the Catholics' connection to the papacy might make them less loyal to the nation. As chancellor, Bismarck tried without much success to limit the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and of its party-political arm, the Catholic Center Party, in schools and education and language-related policies. The Catholic Center Party remained particularly well entrenched in the Catholic strongholds of Bavaria and southern Baden, and in urban areas that held high populations of displaced rural workers seeking jobs in the heavy industry, and sought to protect the rights not only of Catholics, but other minorities, including the Poles, and the French minorities in the Alsatian lands.[114] The May Laws of 1873 brought the appointment of priests, and their education, under the control of the state, resulting in the closure of many seminaries, and a shortage of priests. The Congregations Law of 1875 abolished religious orders, ended state subsidies to the Catholic Church, and removed religious protections from the Prussian constitution.[115]

Integrating the Jewish community[edit]

In this close-up of the Niederwald Monument (see long shot above), Germania towers 40 metres (131 ft) above the town of Rüdesheim. She holds a crown in her right hand and carries a sword at her side. The Niederwald Germania was erected 1877–1883.

For more details on this topic, see History of the Jews in Germany.

The Germanized Jews remained another vulnerable population in the new German nation-state. Since 1780, after emancipation by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Jews in the former Habsburg territories had enjoyed considerable economic and legal privileges that their counterparts in other German-speaking territories did not: they could own land, for example, and they did not have to live in a Jewish quarter (also called the Judengasse, or "Jews' alley"). They could also attend universities and enter the professions. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, many of the previously strong barriers between Jews and Christians broke down. Napoleon had ordered the emancipation of Jews throughout territories under French hegemony. Like their French counterparts, wealthy German Jews sponsored salons; in particular, several Jewish salonnières held important gatherings in Frankfurt and Berlin during which German intellectuals developed their own form of republican intellectualism. Throughout the subsequent decades, beginning almost immediately after the defeat of the French, reaction against the mixing of Jews and Christians limited the intellectual impact of these salons. Beyond the salons, Jews continued a process of Germanization in which they intentionally adopted German modes of dress and speech, working to insert themselves into the emerging 19th-century German public sphere. The religious reform movement among German Jews reflected this effort.[116]

By the years of unification, German Jews played an important role in the intellectual underpinnings of the German professional, intellectual, and social life. The expulsion of Jews from Russia in the 1880s and 1890s complicated integration into the German public sphere. Russian Jews arrived in north German cities in the thousands; considerably less educated and less affluent, their often dismal poverty dismayed many of the Germanized Jews. Many of the problems related to poverty (such as illness, overcrowded housing, unemployment, school absenteeism, refusal to learn German, etc.) emphasized their distinctiveness for not only the Christian Germans, but for the local Jewish populations as well.[117]

Writing the story of the nation[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Historiography and nationalism.

Another important element in nation-building, the story of the heroic past, fell to such nationalist German historians as the liberal constitutionalist Friedrich Dahlmann(1785–1860), his conservative student Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), and others less conservative, such as Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) and Heinrich von Sybel (1817–1895), to name two. Dahlmann himself died before unification, but he laid the groundwork for the nationalist histories to come through his histories of the English and French revolutions, by casting these revolutions as fundamental to the construction of a nation, and Dahlmann himself viewed Prussia as the logical agent of unification.[118]

Heinrich von Treitschke's History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1879, has perhaps a misleading title: it privileges the history of Prussia over the history of other German states, and it tells the story of the German-speaking peoples through the guise of Prussia's destiny to unite all German states under its leadership. The creation of this Borussian myth (Borussia is the Latin name for Prussia) established Prussia as Germany's savior; it was the destiny of all Germans to be united, this myth maintains, and it was Prussia's destiny to accomplish this.[119] According to this story, Prussia played the dominant role in bringing the German states together as a nation-state; only Prussia could protect German liberties from being crushed by French or Russian influence. The story continues by drawing on Prussia's role in saving Germans from the resurgence of Napoleon's power in 1815, at Waterloo, creating some semblance of economic unity, and uniting Germans under one proud flag after 1871.[120]

Mommsen's contributions to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica laid the groundwork for additional scholarship on the study of the German nation, expanding the notion of "Germany" to mean other areas beyond Prussia. A liberal professor, historian, and theologian, and generally a titan among late 19th-century scholars, Mommsen served as a delegate to the Prussian House of Representatives from 1863–1866 and 1873–1879; he also served as a delegate to the Reichstag from 1881–1884, for the liberal German Progress Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei) and later for the National Liberal Party. He opposed the antisemitic programs of Bismarck's Kulturkampf and the vitriolic text that Treitschke often employed in the publication of his Studien über die Judenfrage (Studies of the Jewish Question), which encouraged assimilation and Germanization of Jews.[121]

See also[edit]

Germany portal

Unification of Italy

References[edit]

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2. Jump up^ Gunter Mai, [2000] Die Erfurter Union und das Erfurter Unionsparlament 1850. Köln: Böhlau

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4. Jump up^ Robert A. Kann. History of the Habsburg Empire: 1526–1918, Los Angeles, 1974, p. 221. In his abdication, Francis released all former estates from their duties and obligations to him, and took upon himself solely the title of King of Austria, which had been established since 1804. Golo Mann, Deutsche Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main, 2002, p. 70.

5. Jump up^ Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1808). "Address to the German Nation". www.historyman.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-06-06.

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7. Jump up^ Jakob Walter, and Marc Raeff. The diary of a Napoleonic foot soldier. Princeton, N.J., 1996.

8. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 384–387.

9. Jump up^ Although the Prussian army had gained its reputation in the Seven Years' War, its humiliating defeat at Jena and Auerstadt crushed the pride many Prussians felt in their soldiers. During their Russian exile, several officers, including Carl von Clausewitz, contemplated reorganization and new training methods. Sheehan, p. 323.

10. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 322–323.

11. Jump up^ David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford & New York, 1984, part 1; Thomas Nipperdey, German History From Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1871, New York, Oxford, 1983. Chapter 1.

12. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 398–410; Hamish Scott, The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740–1815, US, 2006, pp. 329–361.

13. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 398–410.

14. Jump up^ Jean Berenger. A History of the Habsburg Empire 1700–1918. C. Simpson, Trans. New York: Longman, 1997, ISBN 0-582-09007-5. pp. 96–97.

15. Jump up^ Lloyd Lee, Politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism, and Social Reform in Baden, 1800–1850, Cranbury, New Jersey, 1980.

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17. Jump up^ L.B. Namier, (1952) Avenues of History. London, ONT, 1952, p. 34.

18. Jump up^ Nipperdey, pp. 1–3.

19. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 407–408, 444.

20. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 442–445.

21. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 465–467; Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 106–107.

22. ^ Jump up to:a b Keller,Wolfgang and Shiue,Carol (University of Colorado, NBER, and CEPR) The Trade Impact of the Customs Union, Pub. University of Colorado, 5 March 2013; pp.10 and 18

23. Jump up^ Ploeckl, Florian. The Zollverein and the Formation of a Customs Union, Discussion Paper no. 84 in Economic and Social History series, publ by Nuffield College, Oxford;Page 23; Retrieved from www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History March 2017; p.23

24. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 460–470. German Historical Institute

25. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 465.

26. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 466.

27. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 467–468.

28. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 502.

29. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 469.

30. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 458.

31. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 466–467.

32. Jump up^ They traced the roots of the German language, and drew its different lines of development together. The Brothers Grimm online. Joint Publications.

33. Jump up^ (in German) Hans Lulfing, Baedecker, Karl[permanent dead link], Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, p. 516 f.

34. Jump up^ (in German) Peter Rühmkorf, Heinz Ludwig Arnold, Das Lied der DeutschenGöttingen: Wallstein, 2001, ISBN 3-89244-463-3, pp. 11–14.

35. Jump up^ Raymond Dominick III, The Environmental Movement in Germany, Bloomington, Indiana University, 1992, pp. 3–41.

36. Jump up^ Jonathan Sperber, Rhineland radicals: the democratic movement and the revolution of 1848–1849. Princeton, N.J., 1993.

37. ^ Jump up to:a b Sheehan, pp. 610–613.

38. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 610.

39. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 612.

40. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 613.

41. Jump up^ David Blackbourn, Marpingen: apparitions of the Virgin Mary in nineteenth-century Germany. New York, 1994.

42. Jump up^ Sperber, Rhineland radicals. p. 3.

43. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, p. 127.

44. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 610–615.

45. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 138–164.

46. Jump up^ (in German) Badische Heimat/Landeskunde online 2006 Veit's Pauls ChurchGermania. Retrieved 5 June 2009.

47. Jump up^ Jonathan Sperber, Revolutionary Europe, 1780–1850, New York, 2000.

48. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 176–179.

49. Jump up^ Examples of this argument appear in: Ralf Dahrendorf, German History, (1968), pp. 25–32; (in German) Hans Ulrich Wehler, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, 1871–1918, Göttingen, 1973, pp. 10–14; Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom, Chicago, 1957; Raymond Grew, Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States, Princeton, 1978, pp. 312–345; Jürgen Kocka and Allan Mitchell. Bourgeois society in nineteenth-century Europe. Oxford, 1993; Jürgen Kocka, "German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg." Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 23, No. 1 (January, 1988), pp. 3–16; Volker Berghahn, Modern Germany. Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century.Cambridge, 1982.

50. Jump up^ World Encyclopedia V.3 p. 542.

51. Jump up^ For a summary of this argument, see David Blackbourn, and Geoff Eley. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford & New York, 1984, part 1.

52. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley. Peculiarities, Part I.

53. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, Chapter 2.

54. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, pp. 286–293.

55. Jump up^ Jürgen Kocka, "Comparison and Beyond.'" History and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 1 (February, 2003), pp. 39–44, and Jürgen Kocka, "Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg", History and Theory, Vol. 38, No. 1 (February, 1999), pp. 40–50.

56. Jump up^ For a representative analysis of this perspective, see Richard J. Evans, Rethinking German history: nineteenth-century Germany and the origins of the Third Reich.London, 1987.

57. Jump up^ A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1914–1918, Oxford, 1954, p. 37.

58. Jump up^ J.G.Droysen, Modern History Sourcebook: Documents of German Unification, 1848–1871. Retrieved 9 April 2009.

59. Jump up^ Zamoyski, pp. 100–115.

60. Jump up^ Blackbourn, The long nineteenth century, pp. 160–175.

61. Jump up^ The remainder of the letter exhorts the Germans to unification: "This role of world leadership, left vacant as things are today, might well be occupied by the German nation. You Germans, with your grave and philosophic character, might well be the ones who could win the confidence of others and guarantee the future stability of the international community. Let us hope, then, that you can use your energy to overcome your moth-eaten thirty tyrants of the various German states. Let us hope that in the center of Europe you can then make a unified nation out of your fifty millions. All the rest of us would eagerly and joyfully follow you." Denis Mack Smith (editor). Garibaldi (Great Lives Observed), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969, p. 76.

62. Jump up^ Mack Smith, Denis (1994). Mazzini. Yale University Press. pp. 11–12.

63. Jump up^ Holt, p. 27.

64. Jump up^ Holt, pp. 13–14.

65. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 175–179.

66. Jump up^ Hollyday, 1970, pp. 16–18.

67. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Peculiarities, Part I.

68. Jump up^ Bismarck had "cut his teeth" on German politics, and German politicians, in Frankfurt: a quintessential politician, Bismarck had built his power-base by absorbing and co-opting measures from throughout the political spectrum. He was first and foremost a politician, and in this lied his strength. Furthermore, since he trusted neither Moltke nor Roon, he was reluctant to enter a military enterprise over which he would have no control. Mann, Chapter 6, pp. 316–395.

69. Jump up^ Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, Ithaca, New York, 2005, pp. 90–108; 324–333.

70. Jump up^ The Situation of Germany. (PDF) – The New York Times, July 1, 1866.

71. Jump up^ Michael Eliot Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: the German invasion of France, 1870–1871. New York, MacMillan, 1961, p. 40.

72. Jump up^ Mann, pp. 390–395.

73. Jump up^ A. J. P. Taylor, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman. Oxford, Clarendon, 1988. Chapter 1, and Conclusion.

74. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 40–57.

75. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 900–904; Wawro, pp. 4–32; Holt, p. 75.

76. Jump up^ Holt, p. 75.

77. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 900–906.

78. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 906; Geoffrey Wawro, The Austro Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866. Cambridge, Cambridge University, 1996, pp. 82–84.

79. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 905–906.

80. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 909.

81. Jump up^ Wawro, pp. 50–60; 75–79.

82. Jump up^ Wawro, pp. 57–75.

83. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 908–909

84. Jump up^ Taylor, Bismarck, pp. 87–88.

85. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 910.

86. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 905–910.

87. Jump up^ Rosita Rindler Schjerve Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the Nineteenth Century Habsburg Empire, 2003, ISBN 3-11-017653-X, pp. 199–200.

88. Jump up^ Bridge and Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System 1814–1914.

89. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 909–910; Wawro, Chapter 11.

90. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, Chapter V: From Reaction to Unification, pp. 225–269.

91. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 4–60.

92. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 50–57.

93. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 55–56.

94. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 56–57.

95. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 55–59.

96. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 64–68.

97. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 218–222.

98. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 222–230.

99. Jump up^ Taylor, Bismarck, p. 126

100. Jump up^ Die Reichsgründung 1871 (The Foundation of the Empire, 1871), Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online, accessed 2008-12-22. German text translated: [...] on the wishes of Wilhelm I, on the 170th anniversary of the elevation of the House of Brandenburg to princely status on 18 January 1701, the assembled German princes and high military officials proclaimed Wilhelm I as German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles Palace.

101. Jump up^ Taylor, Bismarck, p. 133.

102. Jump up^ Crankshaw, Edward. Bismarck. New York, The Viking Press, 1981, p. 299.

103. Jump up^ Howard, Chapter XI: the Peace, pp. 432–456.

104. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 255–257.

105. Jump up^ Alon Confino. The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

106. Jump up^ Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910. New York, 2005, p. 1.

107. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, p. 267.

108. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 225–301.

109. Jump up^ David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford [Oxfordshire] and New York, Oxford University Press, 1984. Peter Blickle, Heimat: a critical theory of the German idea of homeland, Studies in German literature, linguistics and culture. Columbia, South Carolina, Camden House; Boydell & Brewer, 2004. Robert W. Scribner, Sheilagh C. Ogilvie, Germany: a new social and economic history. London and New York, Arnold and St. Martin's Press, 1996.

110. Jump up^ To name only a few of these studies: Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German right: radical nationalism and political change after Bismarck. New Haven, 1980. Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910.New York, 2005. Richard J. Evans,Society and politics in Wilhelmine Germany.London and New York, 1978. Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866. Princeton, New Jersey, 1996. Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany. Princeton, N.J., 1984. (1997).

111. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 240–290.

112. Jump up^ For more on this idea, see, for example, Joseph R. Llobera, and Goldsmiths' College. The role of historical memory in (ethno)nation-building, Goldsmiths sociology papers. London, 1996; (in German) Alexandre Escudier, Brigitte Sauzay, and Rudolf von Thadden. Gedenken im Zwiespalt: Konfliktlinien europäischen Erinnerns, Genshagener Gespräche; vol. 4. Göttingen: 2001; Alon Confino. The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill, 1999.

113. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 243–282.

114. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 283; 285–300.

115. Jump up^ Jonathan Sperber. Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany, Princeton, N.J., 1984.

116. Jump up^ Marion Kaplan, The making of the Jewish middle class: women, family, and identity in Imperial Germany, New York, 1991.

117. Jump up^ Kaplan, in particular, pp. 4–7 and Conclusion.

118. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, p. 241.

119. Jump up^ Karin Friedrich, The other Prussia: royal Prussia, Poland and liberty, 1569–1772, New York, 2000, p. 5.

120. Jump up^ Many modern historians describe this myth, without subscribing to it: for example, Rudy Koshar, Germany's Transient Pasts: Preservation and the National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, 1998; Hans Kohn. German history; some new German views. Boston, 1954; Thomas Nipperdey, Germany history from Napoleon to Bismarck.

121. Jump up^ Josep R. Llobera and Goldsmiths' College. The role of historical memory in (ethno)nation-building. Goldsmiths sociology papers. London, Goldsmiths College, 1996.

Sources[edit]

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Blackbourn, David, Marpingen: apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany. New York: Knopf, 1994. ISBN 0-679-41843-1

Blackbourn, David. The long nineteenth century: a history of Germany, 1780–1918. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-507672-9

Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-19-873057-6

Blickle, Peter. Heimat: a critical theory of the German idea of homeland. Studies in German literature, linguistics and culture. Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-582-78458-1

Bridge, Roy and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System 1814–1914, 2nd ed. Longman, 2004. ISBN 978-0-582-78458-1

Confino, Alon. The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-8078-4665-0

Crankshaw, Edward. Bismarck. New York, The Viking Press, 1981. ISBN 0-333-34038-8

Dahrendorf, Ralf. Society and Democracy in Germany (1979)

Dominick, Raymond, III. The Environmental Movement in Germany, Bloomington, Indiana University, 1992. ISBN 0-253-31819-X

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Flores, Richard R. Remembering the Alamo: memory, modernity, and the master symbol. Austin: University of Texas, 2002. ISBN 978-0-292-72540-9

Friedrich, Karin, The other Prussia: royal Prussia, Poland and liberty, 1569–1772, New York, 2000. ISBN 978-0-521-02775-5

Grew, Raymond. Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-691-07598-0

Hollyday, F. B. M. Bismarck. New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1970. ISBN 978-0-13-077362-3

Howard, Michael Eliot. The Franco-Prussian War: the German invasion of France, 1870–1871. New York, MacMillan, 1961. ISBN 978-0-415-02787-8

Hull, Isabel. Absolute Destruction: Military culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca, New York, Syracuse University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8014-7293-0

Kann, Robert A. History of the Habsburg Empire: 1526–1918. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1974 ISBN 978-0-520-04206-3

Kaplan, Marion. The making of the Jewish middle class: women, family, and identity in Imperial Germany. New York, Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-19-509396-4

Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan. Bourgeois society in nineteenth century Europe. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-85496-414-7

Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan. "German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg." Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 23, No. 1 (January 1988), p. 3–16.

Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan. "Comparison and Beyond.'" History and Theory Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2003), p. 39–44.

Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan. "Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg". History and Theory Vol. 38, No. 1 (February 1999), p. 40–50.

Kohn, Hans. German history; some new German views. Boston: Beacon, 1954. OCLC 987529

Koshar, Rudy. Germany's Transient Pasts: Preservation and the National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8078-4701-5

Krieger, Leonard. The German Idea of Freedom, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1957. ISBN 978-1-59740-519-5

Lee, Lloyd. The politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism, and Social Reform in Baden, 1800–1850. Cranbury, New Jersey, Associated University Presses, 1980. ISBN 978-0-87413-143-7

Llobera, Josep R. and Goldsmiths' College. "The role of historical memory in (ethno)nation-building." Goldsmiths Sociology Papers. London, Goldsmiths College, 1996. ISBN 978-0-902986-06-0

Mann, Golo. The History of Germany Since 1789 (1968)

Namier, L.B.. Avenues of History. New York, Macmillan, 1952. OCLC 422057575

Nipperdey, Thomas. Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-691-02636-7

Schjerve, Rosita Rindler, Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the nineteenth century Habsburg Empire. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2003. ISBN 978-3-11-017654-4

Schulze, Hagen. The course of German nationalism: from Frederick the Great to Bismarck, 1763–1867. Cambridge & New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-521-37759-1

Scott, H. M. The Birth of a Great Power System. London & New York, Longman, 2006. ISBN 978-0-582-21717-1

Scribner, Robert W. and Sheilagh C. Ogilvie. Germany: a new social and economic history. London: Arnold Publication, 1996. ISBN 978-0-340-51332-3

Sheehan, James J. German history 1770–1866. Oxford History of Modern Europe. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-820432-9

Sked, Alan. Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815–1918. London, Longman, 2001. ISBN 978-0-582-35666-5

Sorkin, David, The transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840, Studies in Jewish history. New York, Wayne State University Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-8143-2828-6

Sperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions, 1848–1851. New Approaches to European History. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-521-54779-6

Sperber, Jonathan. Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-691-05432-2

Sperber, Jonathan. Rhineland radicals: the democratic movement and the revolution of 1848–1849. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-691-00866-0

Stargardt, Nicholas. The German idea of militarism: radical and socialist critics, 1866–1914. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-521-46692-9

Steinberg, Jonathan. Bismarck: A Life (2011)

Taylor, A. J. P., The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1914–1918, Oxford, Clarendon, 1954. ISBN 978-0-19-881270-8

Taylor, A. J. P.. Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. ISBN 978-0-394-70387-9

Victoria and Albert Museum, Dept. of Prints and Drawings, and Susan Lambert. The Franco-Prussian War and the Commune in caricature, 1870–71. London, 1971. ISBN 0-901486-30-2

Walker, Mack. German home towns: community, state, and general estate, 1648–1871. Ithaca, Syracuse University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8014-8508-4

Wawro, Geoffrey. The Austro-Prussian War. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-62951-9

Wawro, Geoffrey]. Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792–1914. 2000. ISBN 978-0-415-21445-2

Wehler, Hans Ulrich. The German Empire, 1871–1918 (1997)

Zamoyski, Adam. Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. New York, HarperCollins, 2007. ISBN 978-0-06-077519-3

Further reading[edit]

Bazillion, Richard J. Modernizing Germany: Karl Biedermann's career in the kingdom of Saxony, 1835–1901. American university studies. Series IX, History, vol. 84. New York, Peter Lang, 1990. ISBN 0-8204-1185-X

Brose, Eric Dorn. German History, 1789–1871: From the Holy Roman Empire to the Bismarckian Reich. (1997) online edition

Bucholz, Arden. Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian war planning. New York, Berg Pub Ltd, 1991. ISBN 0-85496-653-6

Bucholz, Arden. Moltke and the German Wars 1864–1871. New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2001. ISBN 0-333-68758-2

Clark, Christopher. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947. Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006, 2009. ISBN 978-0-674-03196-8

Clemente, Steven E. For King and Kaiser!: the making of the Prussian Army officer, 1860–1914. Contributions in military studies, no. 123. New York: Greenwood, 1992. ISBN 0-313-28004-5

Cocks, Geoffrey and Konrad Hugo Jarausch. German professions, 1800–1950. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-19-505596-9

Droysen, J.G. Modern History Sourcebook: Documents of German Unification, 1848–1871. Accessed April 9, 2009.

Dwyer, Philip G. Modern Prussian history, 1830–1947. Harlow, England, New York: Longman, 2001. ISBN 0-582-29270-0

Friedrich, Otto. Blood and iron: from Bismarck to Hitler the von Moltke family's impact on German history. New York, Harper, 1995. ISBN 0-06-016866-8

Groh, John E. Nineteenth-century German Protestantism: the church as social model. Washington, D.C., University Press of America, 1982. ISBN 0-8191-2078-2

Henne, Helmut, and Georg Objartel. German student jargon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Berlin & NY, de Gruyter, 1983. OCLC 9193308

Hughes, Michael. Nationalism and society: Germany, 1800–1945. London & New York, Edward Arnold, 1988. ISBN 0-7131-6522-7

Kollander, Patricia. Frederick III: Germany's liberal emperor, Contributions to the study of world history, no. 50. Westport, Conn., Greenwood, 1995. ISBN 0-313-29483-6

Koshar, Rudy. Germany's Transient Pasts: Preservation and the National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8078-4701-1

Lowenstein, Steven M. The Berlin Jewish community: enlightenment, family, and crisis, 1770–1830. Studies in Jewish history. New York, Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-508326-1

Lüdtke, Alf. Police and State in Prussia, 1815–1850. Cambridge, New York & Paris, Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-521-11187-0

Ogilvie, Sheilagh, and Richard Overy. Germany: A New Social and Economic History Volume 3: Since 1800 (2004)

Ohles, Frederik. Germany's rude awakening: censorship in the land of the Brothers Grimm. Kent, Ohio, Ohio State University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87338-460-1

Pflanze Otto, ed. The Unification of Germany, 1848–1871 (1979), essays by historians

Schleunes, Karl A. Schooling and society: the politics of education in Prussia and Bavaria, 1750–1900. Oxford & New York, Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-85496-267-0

Showalter, Dennis E. The Wars of German Unification (2nd ed. 2015), 412pp by a leading military historian

Showalter, Dennis E. Railroads and rifles: soldiers, technology, and the unification of Germany. Hamden, Connecticut, Hailer Publishing, 1975. ISBN 0-9798500-9-6

Smith, Woodruff D. Politics and the sciences of culture in Germany, 1840–1920. New York, Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-19-506536-0

Wawro, Geoffrey. The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-61743-X

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many into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France. Princes of the German states, excluding Austria, gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm I of Prussia as German Emperor after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War. Unofficially, the de facto transition of most of the German-speaking populations into a federated organization of states had been developing for some time through alliances formal and informal between princely rulers—but in fits and starts; self-interests of the various parties hampered the process over nearly a century of autocratic experimentation, beginning in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, which saw the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1806), and the subsequent rise of German nationalism.

Unification exposed tensions due to religious, linguistic, social, and cultural differences among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 only represented one moment in a continuum of the larger unification processes. The Holy Roman Emperor had been often called "Emperor of all the Germanies"; contemporary news accounts frequently referred to "The Germanies", and in the empire, its members of higher nobility were referred to as "Princes of Germany" or "Princes of the Germanies"—for the lands once called East Francia had been organized and governed as pocket kingdoms since before the rise of Charlemagne (800 AD). In the mountainous terrain of much of the territory, isolated peoples developed cultural, educational, linguistic, and religious differences over such a lengthy time period. By the nineteenth century, transportation and communications improvements brought these regions closer together.

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which had included more than 500 independent states, was effectively dissolved when Emperor Francis II abdicated (6 August 1806) during the War of the Third Coalition. Despite the legal, administrative, and political disruption associated with the end of the Empire, the people of the German-speaking areas of the old Empire had a common linguistic, cultural, and legal tradition further enhanced by their shared experience in the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. European liberalism offered an intellectual basis for unification by challenging dynastic and absolutist models of social and political organization; its German manifestation emphasized the importance of tradition, education, and linguistic unity of peoples in a geographic region. Economically, the creation of the Prussian Zollverein (customs union) in 1818, and its subsequent expansion to include other states of the German Confederation, reduced competition between and within states. Emerging modes of transportation facilitated business and recreational travel, leading to contact and sometimes conflict among German speakers from throughout Central Europe.

The model of diplomatic spheres of influence resulting from the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 after the Napoleonic Wars endorsed Austrian dominance in Central Europe. The negotiators at Vienna took no account of Prussia's growing strength within and among the German states and so failed to foresee that Prussia would rise to challenge Austria for leadership of the German peoples. This German dualism presented two solutions to the problem of unification: Kleindeutsche Lösung, the small Germany solution (Germany without Austria), or Großdeutsche Lösung, the greater Germany solution (Germany with Austria).

Historians debate whether Otto von Bismarck—Minister President of Prussia—had a master plan to expand the North German Confederation of 1866 to include the remaining independent German states into a single entity or simply to expand the power of the Kingdom of Prussia. They conclude that factors in addition to the strength of Bismarck's Realpolitik led a collection of early modern polities to reorganize political, economic, military, and diplomatic relationships in the 19th century. Reaction to Danish and French nationalism provided foci for expressions of German unity. Military successes—especially those of Prussia—in three regional wars generated enthusiasm and pride that politicians could harness to promote unification. This experience echoed the memory of mutual accomplishment in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly in the War of Liberation of 1813–14. By establishing a Germany without Austria, the political and administrative unification in 1871 at least temporarily solved the problem of dualism.

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Contents  [hide]

1Brief timeline

2German-speaking Central Europe in the early 19th century

2.1Rise of German nationalism under the Napoleonic System

2.2Reorganization of Central Europe and the rise of German dualism

2.3Problems of reorganization

3Economic collaboration: the customs union

3.1Roads and railways

3.2Geography, patriotism and language

4Vormärz and nineteenth century liberalism

4.1Hambach Festival: liberal nationalism and conservative response

4.2Liberalism and the response to economic problems

5First efforts at unification

5.1German revolutions of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament

5.21848 and the Frankfurt Parliament in retrospective analysis

5.3Problem of spheres of influence: The Erfurt Union and the Punctation of Olmütz

5.4External expectations of a unified Germany

5.5Prussia's growing strength: Realpolitik

6Founding a unified state

6.1The Schleswig-Holstein Question

6.2War between Austria and Prussia, 1866

6.2.1Choosing sides

6.2.2Austria isolated

6.3Realpolitik and the North German Confederation

7War with France

7.1Spheres of influence fall apart in Spain

7.2Military operations

7.3Proclamation of the German Empire

7.4Importance in the unification process

8Political and administrative unification

8.1Constituent states of the Empire

8.2Political structure of the Empire

8.3Historical arguments and the Empire's social anatomy

9Beyond the political mechanism: forming a nation

9.1Kulturkampf

9.2Integrating the Jewish community

9.3Writing the story of the nation

10See also

11References

12Sources

13Further reading

14External links

Brief timeline[edit]

1797: The French First Republic annexed the Left Bank of the Rhine as a result of the War of the First Coalition.

1802: Previous annexations by France confirmed following its victory in the War of the Second Coalition.

1804: Francis I of Austria declared the new Austrian Empire as a reaction to Napoleon Bonaparte's proclamation of the First French Empire in 1804.

1806: As a result of the War of the Third Coalition, Napoleon I annexed some territories East of the Rhine, replaced the Holy Roman Empire by the Confederation of the Rhine as a French client-state.

1807: Prussia lost one half of its territory following the War of the Fourth Coalition.

1815: After the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna reinstated the Germanic states into the German Confederation under the leadership of the Austrian Empire.

1819: The Carlsbad Decrees suppressed any form of pan-Germanic activities to avoid the creation of a 'German state'; the Kingdom of Prussia, however, initiated a customs union with other Confederation states.

1834: The Prussian-led custom union evolved into the Zollverein that included almost all Confederation states except the Austrian Empire.

1848: Revolts across the German Confederation, such as in Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt, forced King Frederick William IV of Prussia to grant a constitution to the Confederation. In the meantime, the Frankfurt Parliament was set up in 1848 and attempted to proclaim a united Germany, but this was refused by William IV. The question of a united Germany under the Kleindeutsch solution (to exclude Austria) or the so-called Großdeutsch (to include Austria) began to surface.

1850: The Erfurt Union was a short-lived attempt at a union of German states under a federation, proposed by the Kingdom of Prussia. The Erfurt Union Parliament (Erfurter Unionsparlament), lasting from March 20 to April 29, 1850, was opened at the former Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. The union never came into effect, and was completely undermined by the Punctation of Olmütz, a treaty between Prussia and Austria, signed 29 November 1850, by which Prussia abandoned the Erfurt Union and accepted the revival of the German Confederation under Austrian leadership. [1][2]

1861–62: King Wilhelm I became King of Prussia and he appointed Otto von Bismarck on 23 September 1862, Minister President and Foreign Minister, who favoured a 'blood-and-iron' policy to create a united Germany under the leadership of Prussia.

1864: The Danish-Prussian War started as Prussia protested against Danish incorporation of Schleswig into the Kingdom of Denmark. The Austrian Empire was deliberately drawn into this war by Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia. The Austro-Prussian victory led to Schleswig, the northern part, being governed by Prussia and Holstein, the southern part, being governed by Austria, as per the Treaty of Vienna (1864).

1866: Bismarck accused the Austrian Empire of stirring up troubles in Prussian-held Schleswig. Prussian troops drove into Austrian-held Holstein and took control of the entire state of Schleswig-Holstein. Austria declared war on Prussia and, after fighting the Austro-Prussian War (Seven Weeks' War), was swiftly defeated. The Treaty of Prague (1866) formally dissolved the German Confederation and Prussia created the North German Confederation to include all Germanic states except the pro-French, southern kingdoms of Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg.

1870: When the French emperor, Napoleon III, demanded territories of the Rhineland in return for his neutrality amid the Austro-Prussian War, Bismarck used the Spanish Succession Question (1868) and Ems Telegram (1870) as an opportunity to incorporate the southern kingdoms. Napoleon III declared war against Prussia.

1871: The Franco-Prussian War ended with Prussian troops capturing Paris, the capital of the Second French Empire. Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg were incorporated into the North German Confederation in the Treaty of Frankfurt (1871). Bismarck then proclaimed King Wilhelm I, now Kaiser Wilhelm I, as leader of the new, united Germany (German Reich), excluding Austria. With the German troops remaining in Paris, Napoleon III dissolved the French Empire and a new republic, the Third French Republic, was created under Adolphe Thiers.

German-speaking Central Europe in the early 19th century[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Holy Roman Empire.

Germania, a personification of the German nation, appears in Philipp Veit's fresco (1834–36). She is holding a shield with the coat of arms of the German Confederation (see enlargement below). The shields on which she stands are the arms of the seven traditional Electors of the Holy Roman Empire.

Coat of arms of the German Confederation, also called Deutscher Bund

Prior to 1806, German-speaking Central Europe included more than 300 political entities, most of which were part of the Holy Roman Empire or the extensive Habsburg hereditary dominions. They ranged in size from the small and complex territories of the princely Hohenlohe family branches to sizable, well-defined territories such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Prussia. Their governance varied: they included free imperial cities, also of different sizes, such as the powerful Augsburg and the minuscule Weil der Stadt; ecclesiastical territories, also of varying sizes and influence, such as the wealthy Abbey of Reichenau and the powerful Archbishopric of Cologne; and dynastic states such as Württemberg. These lands (or parts of them—both the Habsburg domains and Hohenzollern Prussia also included territories outside the Empire structures) made up the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, which at times included more than 1,000 entities. Since the 15th century, with few exceptions, the Empire's Prince-electors had chosen successive heads of the House of Habsburg to hold the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Among the German-speaking states, the Holy Roman Empire administrative and legal mechanisms provided a venue to resolve disputes between peasants and landlords, between jurisdictions, and within jurisdictions. Through the organization of imperial circles (Reichskreise), groups of states consolidated resources and promoted regional and organizational interests, including economic cooperation and military protection.[3]

The War of the Second Coalition (1799–1802) resulted in the defeat of the imperial and allied forces by Napoleon Bonaparte. The treaties of Lunéville (1801) and Amiens (1802) and the Mediatization of 1803 transferred large portions of the Holy Roman Empire to the dynastic states and secularized ecclesiastical territories. Most of the imperial cities disappeared from the political and legal landscape, and the populations living in these territories acquired new allegiances to dukes and kings. This transfer particularly enhanced the territories of Württemberg and Baden. In 1806, after a successful invasion of Prussia and the defeat of Prussia and Russia at the joint battles of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon dictated the Treaty of Pressburg, in which the Emperor dissolved the Holy Roman Empire.[4]

Rise of German nationalism under the Napoleonic System[edit]

For more details on this topic, see French period.

Under the hegemony of the French Empire (1804–1814), popular German nationalism thrived in the reorganized German states. Due in part to the shared experience, albeit under French dominance, various justifications emerged to identify "Germany" as a single state. For the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte,

The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole.[5]

A common language may have been seen to serve as the basis of a nation, but as contemporary historians of 19th-century Germany noted, it took more than linguistic similarity to unify these several hundred polities.[6] The experience of German-speaking Central Europe during the years of French hegemony contributed to a sense of common cause to remove the French invaders and reassert control over their own lands. The exigencies of Napoleon's campaigns in Poland (1806–07), the Iberian Peninsula, western Germany, and his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 disillusioned many Germans, princes and peasants alike. Napoleon's Continental Systemnearly ruined the Central European economy. The invasion of Russia included nearly 125,000 troops from German lands, and the loss of that army encouraged many Germans, both high- and low-born, to envision a Central Europe free of Napoleon's influence.[7] The creation of student militias such as the Lützow Free Corps exemplified this tendency.[8]

The Battle of the Nations monument, erected for the centennial in 1913, honors the efforts of the German people in the victory over Napoleon

The debacle in Russia loosened the French grip on the German princes. In 1813, Napoleon mounted a campaign in the German states to bring them back into the French orbit; the subsequent War of Liberation culminated in the great Battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of Nations. In October 1813, more than 500,000 combatants engaged in ferocious fighting over three days, making it the largest European land battle of the 19th century. The engagement resulted in a decisive victory for the Coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden, and it ended French power east of the Rhine. Success encouraged the Coalition forces to pursue Napoleon across the Rhine; his army and his government collapsed, and the victorious Coalition incarcerated Napoleon on Elba. During the brief Napoleonic restoration known as the 100 Days of 1815, forces of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussianarmy under the command of Gebhard von Blücher, were victorious at Waterloo (18 June 1815).[9] The critical role played by Blücher's troops, especially after having to retreat from the field at Ligny the day before, helped to turn the tide of combat against the French. The Prussian cavalry pursued the defeated French in the evening of 18 June, sealing the allied victory. From the German perspective, the actions of Blücher's troops at Waterloo, and the combined efforts at Leipzig, offered a rallying point of pride and enthusiasm.[10] This interpretation became a key building block of the Borussian myth expounded by the pro-Prussian nationalist historians later in the 19th century.[11]

Reorganization of Central Europe and the rise of German dualism[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Congress of Vienna.

Map of the Holy Roman Empire in 1789. The map is dominated by the Habsburg Monarchy (orange) and the Kingdom of Prussia (blue), besides a large number of small states (many of them too small to be shown on the map)

After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna established a new European political-diplomatic system based on the balance of power. This system reorganized Europe into spheres of influence, which, in some cases, suppressed the aspirations of the various nationalities, including the Germans and Italians.[12] Generally, an enlarged Prussia and the 38 other states consolidated from the mediatized territories of 1803 were confederated within the Austrian Empire's sphere of influence. The Congress established a loose German Confederation (1815–1866), headed by Austria, with a "Federal Diet" (called the Bundestag or Bundesversammlung, an assembly of appointed leaders) that met in the city of Frankfurt am Main. In recognition of the imperial position traditionally held by the Habsburgs, the emperors of Austria became the titular presidents of this parliament. Problematically, the built-in Austrian dominance failed to take into account Prussia's 18th century emergence in Imperial politics. Ever since the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg had made himself King in Prussia at the beginning of that century, their domains had steadily increased through war and inheritance. Prussia's consolidated strength had become especially apparent during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War under Frederick the Great.[13] As Maria Theresa and Joseph tried to restore Habsburg hegemony in the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick countered with the creation of the Fürstenbund (Union of Princes) in 1785. Austrian-Prussian dualismlay firmly rooted in old Imperial politics. Those balance of power manoeuvers were epitomized by the War of the Bavarian Succession, or "Potato War" among common folk. Even after the end of the Holy Roman Empire, this competition influenced the growth and development of nationalist movements in the 19th century.[14]

Problems of reorganization[edit]

German language area (here including Dutch, Frisian, and Luxembourgish) based on 19th century language maps with close German language islandsshown with today's European state borders.

Despite the nomenclature of Diet (Assembly or Parliament), this institution should in no way be construed as a broadly, or popularly, elected group of representatives. Many of the states did not have constitutions, and those that did, such as the Duchy of Baden, based suffrage on strict property requirements which effectively limited suffrage to a small portion of the male population.[15] Furthermore, this impractical solution did not reflect the new status of Prussia in the overall scheme. Although the Prussian army had been dramatically defeated in the 1806 Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, it had made a spectacular comeback at Waterloo. Consequently, Prussian leaders expected to play a pivotal role in German politics.[16]

Boundaries of the German Confederation. Prussia is blue, Austria-Hungary yellow, and the rest grey.

The surge of German nationalism, stimulated by the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period and initially allied with liberalism, shifted political, social, and cultural relationships within the German states.[17] In this context, one can detect its roots in the experience of Germans in the Napoleonic period.[18] The Burschenschaft student organizations and popular demonstrations, such as those held at Wartburg Castle in October 1817, contributed to a growing sense of unity among German speakers of Central Europe. Furthermore, implicit and sometimes explicit promises made during the War of Liberation engendered an expectation of popular sovereignty and widespread participation in the political process, promises that largely went unfulfilled once peace had been achieved. Agitation by student organizations led such conservative leaders as Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich, to fear the rise of national sentiment; the assassination of German dramatist August von Kotzebue in March 1819 by a radical student seeking unification was followed on 20 September 1819 by the proclamation of the Carlsbad Decrees, which hampered intellectual leadership of the nationalist movement.[19]

Metternich was able to harness conservative outrage at the assassination to consolidate legislation that would further limit the press and constrain the rising liberal and nationalist movements. Consequently, these decrees drove the Burschenschaften underground, restricted the publication of nationalist materials, expanded censorship of the press and private correspondence, and limited academic speech by prohibiting university professors from encouraging nationalist discussion. The decrees were the subject of Johann Joseph von Görres's pamphlet Teutschland [archaic: Deutschland] und die Revolution (Germany and the Revolution) (1820), in which he concluded that it was both impossible and undesirable to repress the free utterance of public opinion by reactionary measures.[20]

Economic collaboration: the customs union[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Zollverein.

Another institution key to unifying the German states, the Zollverein, helped to create a larger sense of economic unification. Initially conceived by the Prussian Finance Minister Hans, Count von Bülow, as a Prussian customs union in 1818, the Zollverein linked the many Prussian and Hohenzollern territories. Over the ensuing thirty years (and more) other German states joined. The Union helped to reduce protectionist barriers between the German states, especially improving the transport of raw materials and finished goods, making it both easier to move goods across territorial borders and less costly to buy, transport, and sell raw materials. This was particularly important for the emerging industrial centers, most of which were located in the Prussian regions of the Rhineland, the Saar, and the Ruhr valleys.[21] States more distant from the coast joined the Customs Union earlier. Not being a member mattered more for the states of south Germany, since the external tariff of the Customs Union prevented customs-free access to the coast (which gave access to international markets). Thus, by 1836, all states to the south of Prussia had joined the Customs Union, except Austria. [22]

In contrast, the coastal states already had barrier free access to international trade and did not want consumers and producers burdened with the import duties they would pay if they were within the Zollverein customs border. Hanover on the north coast formed its own customs union - the “Tax Union” or Steuerverein - in 1834 with Brunswick and with Oldenburg in 1836. The external tariffs on finished goods and overseas raw materials and were below the rates of the Zollverein. Brunswick joined the Zollverein Customs Union in 1842, while Hanover and Oldenburg finally joined in 1854[23] After the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg were annexed by Prussia and thus annexed also to the Customs Union, while the two Mecklenburg states and the city states of Hamburg and Bremen joined late because they were reliant on international trade. The Mecklenburgs joined in 1867, while Bremen and Hamburg joined in 1888. [22]

Roads and railways[edit]

In October, 1817, approximately 500 students rallied at Wartburg Castle, where Martin Luther had sought refuge over three centuries earlier, to demonstrate in favor of national unification. Wartburg was chosen for its symbolic connection to German national character. Contemporary, colored wood engraving.[24]

By the early 19th century, German roads had deteriorated to an appalling extent. Travelers, both foreign and local, complained bitterly about the state of the Heerstraßen, the military roads previously maintained for the ease of moving troops. As German states ceased to be a military crossroads, however, the roads improved; the length of hard–surfaced roads in Prussia increased from 3,800 kilometres (2,400 mi) in 1816 to 16,600 kilometres (10,300 mi) in 1852, helped in part by the invention of macadam. By 1835, Heinrich von Gagern wrote that roads were the "veins and arteries of the body politic..." and predicted that they would promote freedom, independence and prosperity.[25] As people moved around, they came into contact with others, on trains, at hotels, in restaurants, and for some, at fashionable resorts such as the spa in Baden-Baden. Water transportation also improved. The blockades on the Rhine had been removed by Napoleon's orders, but by the 1820s, steam engines freed riverboats from the cumbersome system of men and animals that towed them upstream. By 1846, 180 steamers plied German rivers and Lake Constance, and a network of canals extended from the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe rivers.[26]

As important as these improvements were, they could not compete with the impact of the railway. German economist Friedrich List called the railways and the Customs Union "Siamese Twins", emphasizing their important relationship to one another.[27]He was not alone: the poet August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote a poem in which he extolled the virtues of the Zollverein, which he began with a list of commodities that had contributed more to German unity than politics or diplomacy.[28]Historians of the Second Empire later regarded the railways as the first indicator of a unified state; the patriotic novelist, Wilhelm Raabe, wrote: "The German empire was founded with the construction of the first railway..."[29] Not everyone greeted the iron monster with enthusiasm. The Prussian king Frederick William III saw no advantage in traveling from Berlin to Potsdama few hours faster, and Metternich refused to ride in one at all. Others wondered if the railways were an "evil" that threatened the landscape: Nikolaus Lenau's 1838 poem An den Frühling (To Spring) bemoaned the way trains destroyed the pristine quietude of German forests.[30]

The Bavarian Ludwig Railway, which was the first passenger or freight rail line in the German lands, connected Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835. Although it was 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) long and only operated in daylight, it proved both profitable and popular. Within three years, 141 kilometres (88 mi) of track had been laid, by 1840, 462 kilometres (287 mi), and by 1860, 11,157 kilometres (6,933 mi). Lacking a geographically central organizing feature (such as a national capital), the rails were laid in webs, linking towns and markets within regions, regions within larger regions, and so on. As the rail network expanded, it became cheaper to transport goods: in 1840, 18 Pfennigs per ton per kilometer and in 1870, five Pfennigs. The effects of the railway were immediate. For example, raw materials could travel up and down the Ruhr Valley without having to unload and reload. Railway lines encouraged economic activity by creating demand for commodities and by facilitating commerce. In 1850, inland shipping carried three times more freight than railroads; by 1870, the situation was reversed, and railroads carried four times more. Rail travel changed how cities looked and how people traveled. Its impact reached throughout the social order, affecting the highest born to the lowest. Although some of the outlying German provinces were not serviced by rail until the 1890s, the majority of the population, manufacturing centers, and production centers were linked to the rail network by 1865.[31]

This drawing offered a satirical commentary on the prevalence of toll barriers in the many German states, circa 1834. Some states were so small that transporters loaded and reloaded their cargoes two and three times a day.

Geography, patriotism and language[edit]

As travel became easier, faster, and less expensive, Germans started to see unity in factors other than their language. The Brothers Grimm, who compiled a massive dictionary known as The Grimm, also assembled a compendium of folk tales and fables, which highlighted the story-telling parallels between different regions.[32] Karl Baedeker wrote guidebooks to different cities and regions of Central Europe, indicating places to stay, sites to visit, and giving a short history of castles, battlefields, famous buildings, and famous people. His guides also included distances, roads to avoid, and hiking paths to follow.[33]

The words of August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben expressed not only the linguistic unity of the German people but also their geographic unity. In Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, officially called Das Lied der Deutschen ("The Song of the Germans"), Fallersleben called upon sovereigns throughout the German states to recognize the unifying characteristics of the German people.[34] Such other patriotic songs as "Die Wacht am Rhein" ("The Watch on the Rhine") by Max Schneckenburger began to focus attention on geographic space, not limiting "German-ness" to a common language. Schneckenburger wrote "The Watch on the Rhine" in a specific patriotic response to French assertions that the Rhine was France's "natural" eastern boundary. In the refrain, "Dear fatherland, dear fatherland, put your mind to rest / The watch stands true on the Rhine", and in such other patriotic poetry as Nicholaus Becker's "Das Rheinlied" ("The Rhine"), Germans were called upon to defend their territorial homeland. In 1807, Alexander von Humboldt argued that national character reflected geographic influence, linking landscape to people. Concurrent with this idea, movements to preserve old fortresses and historic sites emerged, and these particularly focused on the Rhineland, the site of so many confrontations with France and Spain.[35]

Vormärz and nineteenth century liberalism[edit]

Main article: Vormärz

The period of Austrian and Prussian police-states and vast censorship before the Revolutions of 1848 in Germany later became widely known as the Vormärz, the "before March", referring to March 1848. During this period, European liberalism gained momentum; the agenda included economic, social, and political issues. Most European liberals in the Vormärz sought unification under nationalist principles, promoted the transition to capitalism, sought the expansion of male suffrage, among other issues. Their "radicalness" depended upon where they stood on the spectrum of male suffrage: the wider the definition of suffrage, the more radical.[36]

Hambach Festival: liberal nationalism and conservative response[edit]

Pro-nationalist participants march to the ruins of Hambach Castle in 1832. Students and some professionals, and their spouses, predominated. They carried the flag of the underground Burschenschaft, which later became the basis of the flag of modern Germany

Despite considerable conservative reaction, ideas of unity joined with notions of popular sovereignty in German-speaking lands. The Hambach Festival (Hambacher Fest) in May 1832 was attended by a crowd of more than 30,000.[37] Promoted as a county fair,[38] its participants celebrated fraternity, liberty, and national unity. Celebrants gathered in the town below and marched to the ruins of Hambach Castle on the heights above the small town of Hambach, in the Palatinate province of Bavaria. Carrying flags, beating drums, and singing, the participants took the better part of the morning and mid-day to arrive at the castle grounds, where they listened to speeches by nationalist orators from across the conservative to radical political spectrum. The overall content of the speeches suggested a fundamental difference between the German nationalism of the 1830s and the French nationalism of the July Revolution: the focus of German nationalism lay in the education of the people; once the populace was educated as to what was needed, they would accomplish it. The Hambach rhetoric emphasized the overall peaceable nature of German nationalism: the point was not to build barricades, a very "French" form of nationalism, but to build emotional bridges between groups.[39]

A German caricature that mocks the Carlsbad Decrees, which suppressed freedom of expression.

As he had done in 1819, after the Kotzebue assassination, Metternich used the popular demonstration at Hambach to push conservative social policy. The "Six Articles" of 28 June 1832 primarily reaffirmed the principle of monarchical authority. On 5 July, the Frankfurt Diet voted for an additional 10 articles, which reiterated existing rules on censorship, restricted political organizations, and limited other public activity. Furthermore, the member states agreed to send military assistance to any government threatened by unrest.[40] Prince Wrede led half of the Bavarian army to the Palatinate to "subdue" the province. Several hapless Hambach speakers were arrested, tried and imprisoned; one, Karl Heinrich Brüggemann (1810–1887), a law student and representative of the secretive Burschenschaft, was sent to Prussia, where he was first condemned to death, but later pardoned.[37]

Liberalism and the response to economic problems[edit]

Several other factors complicated the rise of nationalism in the German states. The man-made factors included political rivalries between members of the German confederation, particularly between the Austrians and the Prussians, and socio-economic competition among the commercial and merchant interests and the old land-owning and aristocratic interests. Natural factors included widespread drought in the early 1830s, and again in the 1840s, and a food crisis in the 1840s. Further complications emerged as a result of a shift in industrialization and manufacturing; as people sought jobs, they left their villages and small towns to work during the week in the cities, returning for a day and a half on weekends.[41]

The economic, social and cultural dislocation of ordinary people, the economic hardship of an economy in transition, and the pressures of meteorological disasters all contributed to growing problems in Central Europe.[42] The failure of most of the governments to deal with the food crisis of the mid-1840s, caused by the potato blight(related to the Great Irish Famine) and several seasons of bad weather, encouraged many to think that the rich and powerful had no interest in their problems. Those in authority were concerned about the growing unrest, political and social agitation among the working classes, and the disaffection of the intelligentsia. No amount of censorship, fines, imprisonment, or banishment, it seemed, could stem the criticism. Furthermore, it was becoming increasingly clear that both Austria and Prussia wanted to be the leaders in any resulting unification; each would inhibit the drive of the other to achieve unification.[43]

First efforts at unification[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Revolutions of 1848.

Crucially, both the Wartburg rally in 1817 and the Hambach Festival in 1832 had lacked any clear-cut program of unification. At Hambach, the positions of the many speakers illustrated their disparate agendas. Held together only by the idea of unification, their notions of how to achieve this did not include specific plans but instead rested on the nebulous idea that the Volk (the people), if properly educated, would bring about unification on their own. Grand speeches, flags, exuberant students, and picnic lunches did not translate into a new political, bureaucratic, or administrative apparatus. While many spoke about the need for a constitution, no such document appeared from the discussions. In 1848, nationalists sought to remedy that problem.[44]

German revolutions of 1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Frankfurt Parliament.

The widespread—mainly German—revolutions of 1848–49 sought unification of Germany under a single constitution. The revolutionaries pressured various state governments, particularly those in the Rhineland, for a parliamentary assembly that would have the responsibility to draft a constitution. Ultimately, many of the left-wing revolutionaries hoped this constitution would establish universal male suffrage, a permanent national parliament, and a unified Germany, possibly under the leadership of the Prussian king. This seemed to be the most logical course since Prussia was the strongest of the German states, as well as the largest in geographic size. Generally, center-right revolutionaries sought some kind of expanded suffrage within their states and potentially, a form of loose unification. Their pressure resulted in a variety of elections, based on different voting qualifications, such as the Prussian three-class franchise, which granted to some electoral groups—chiefly the wealthier, landed ones—greater representative power.[45]

Pre-parliament delegates process into Paul's Church in Frankfurt, where they laid the groundwork for electing a National Parliament.[46]

On 27 March 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament passed the Paulskirchenverfassung (Constitution of St. Paul's Church) and offered the title of Kaiser (Emperor) to the Prussian king Frederick William IV the next month. He refused for a variety of reasons. Publicly, he replied that he could not accept a crown without the consent of the actual states, by which he meant the princes. Privately, he feared opposition from the other German princes and military intervention from Austria or Russia. He also held a fundamental distaste for the idea of accepting a crown from a popularly elected parliament: he would not accept a crown of "clay".[47] Despite franchise requirements that often perpetuated many of the problems of sovereignty and political participation liberals sought to overcome, the Frankfurt Parliament did manage to draft a constitution and reach an agreement on the kleindeutsch solution. While the liberals failed to achieve the unification they sought, they did manage to gain a partial victory by working with the German princes on many constitutional issues and collaborating with them on reforms.[48]

1848 and the Frankfurt Parliament in retrospective analysis[edit]

Scholars of German history have engaged in decades of debate over how the successes and failures of the Frankfurt Parliament contribute to the historiographical explanations of German nation building. One school of thought, which emerged after The Great War and gained momentum in the aftermath of World War II, maintains that the failure of German liberals in the Frankfurt Parliament led to bourgeoisie compromise with conservatives (especially the conservative Junker landholders), which subsequently led to the so-called Sonderweg (distinctive path) of 20th-century German history.[49] Failure to achieve unification in 1848, this argument holds, resulted in the late formation of the nation-state in 1871, which in turn delayed the development of positive national values. Hitler often called on the German public to sacrifice all for the cause of their great nation, but his regime did not create German nationalism: it merely capitalized on an intrinsic cultural value of German society that still remains prevalent even to this day.[50] Furthermore, this argument maintains, the "failure" of 1848 reaffirmed latent aristocratic longings among the German middle class; consequently, this group never developed a self-conscious program of modernization.[51]

More recent scholarship has rejected this idea, claiming that Germany did not have an actual "distinctive path" any more than any other nation, a historiographic idea known as exceptionalism.[52] Instead, modern historians claim 1848 saw specific achievements by the liberal politicians. Many of their ideas and programs were later incorporated into Bismarck's social programs (e.g., social insurance, education programs, and wider definitions of suffrage). In addition, the notion of a distinctive path relies upon the underlying assumption that some other nation's path (in this case, the United Kingdom's) is the accepted norm.[53] This new argument further challenges the norms of the British-centric model of development: studies of national development in Britain and other "normal" states (e.g., France or the United States) have suggested that even in these cases, the modern nation-state did not develop evenly. Nor did it develop particularly early, being rather a largely mid-to-late-19th-century phenomenon.[54] Since the end of the 1990s, this view has become widely accepted, although some historians still find the Sonderweg analysis helpful in understanding the period of National Socialism.[55][56]

This depiction of Germania, also by Philipp Veit, was created to hide the organ of the Paul's Church in Frankfurt, during the meeting of the Parliament there, March 1848–49. The sword was intended to symbolize the Word of Godand to mark the renewal of the people and their triumphant spirit.

Problem of spheres of influence: The Erfurt Union and the Punctation of Olmütz[edit]

After the Frankfurt Parliament disbanded, Frederick William IV, under the influence of General Joseph Maria von Radowitz, supported the establishment of the Erfurt Union—a federation of German states, excluding Austria—by the free agreement of the German princes. This limited union under Prussia would have almost entirely eliminated Austrian influence on the other German states. Combined diplomatic pressure from Austria and Russia (a guarantor of the 1815 agreements that established European spheres of influence) forced Prussia to relinquish the idea of the Erfurt Union at a meeting in the small town of Olmütz in Moravia. In November 1850, the Prussians—specifically Radowitz and Frederick William—agreed to the restoration of the German Confederation under Austrian leadership. This became known as the Punctation of Olmütz, but among Prussians it was known as the "Humiliation of Olmütz."[57]

Although seemingly minor events, the Erfurt Union proposal and the Punctation of Olmütz brought the problems of influence in the German states into sharp focus. The question became not a matter of if but rather when unification would occur, and whenwas contingent upon strength. One of the former Frankfurt Parliament members, Johann Gustav Droysen, summed up the problem:

We cannot conceal the fact that the whole German question is a simple alternative between Prussia and Austria. In these states, German life has its positive and negative poles—in the former, all the interests [that] are national and reformative, in the latter, all that are dynastic and destructive. The German question is not a constitutional question but a question of power; and the Prussian monarchy is now wholly German, while that of Austria cannot be.[58]

Unification under these conditions raised a basic diplomatic problem. The possibility of German (or Italian) unification would overturn the overlapping spheres of influence system created in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. The principal architects of this convention, Metternich, Castlereagh, and Tsar Alexander (with his foreign secretary Count Karl Nesselrode), had conceived of and organized a Europe balanced and guaranteed by four "great powers": Great Britain, France, Russia, and Austria, with each power having a geographic sphere of influence. France's sphere included the Iberian Peninsula and a share of influence in the Italian states. Russia's included the eastern regions of Central Europe and a balancing influence in the Balkans. Austria's sphere expanded throughout much of the Central European territories formerly held by the Holy Roman Empire. Britain's sphere was the rest of the world, especially the seas.[59]

This sphere of influence system depended upon the fragmentation of the German and Italian states, not their consolidation. Consequently, a German nation united under one banner presented significant questions. There was no readily applicable definition for who the German people would be or how far the borders of a German nation would stretch. There was also uncertainty as to who would best lead and defend "Germany", however it was defined. Different groups offered different solutions to this problem. In the Kleindeutschland ("Lesser Germany") solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the Prussian Hohenzollerns; in the Grossdeutschland ("Greater Germany") solution, the German states would be united under the leadership of the Austrian Habsburgs. This controversy, the latest phase of the German dualism debate that had dominated the politics of the German states and Austro-Prussian diplomacy since the 1701 creation of the Kingdom of Prussia, would come to a head during the following twenty years.[60]

External expectations of a unified Germany[edit]

Other nationalists had high hopes for the German unification movement, and the frustration with lasting German unification after 1850 seemed to set the national movement back. Revolutionaries associated national unification with progress. As Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to German revolutionary Karl Blind on 10 April 1865, "The progress of humanity seems to have come to a halt, and you with your superior intelligence will know why. The reason is that the world lacks a nation [that] possesses true leadership. Such leadership, of course, is required not to dominate other peoples but to lead them along the path of duty, to lead them toward the brotherhood of nations where all the barriers erected by egoism will be destroyed." Garibaldi looked to Germany for the "kind of leadership [that], in the true tradition of medieval chivalry, would devote itself to redressing wrongs, supporting the weak, sacrificing momentary gains and material advantage for the much finer and more satisfying achievement of relieving the suffering of our fellow men. We need a nation courageous enough to give us a lead in this direction. It would rally to its cause all those who are suffering wrong or who aspire to a better life and all those who are now enduring foreign oppression."[61]

German unification had also been viewed as a prerequisite for the creation of a European federation, which Giuseppe Mazzini and other European patriots had been promoting for more than three decades:

In the spring of 1834, while at Berne, Mazzini and a dozen refugees from Italy, Poland and Germany founded a new association with the grandiose name of Young Europe. Its basic, and equally grandiose idea, was that, as the French Revolution of 1789 had enlarged the concept of individual liberty, another revolution would now be needed for national liberty; and his vision went further because he hoped that in the no doubt distant future free nations might combine to form a loosely federal Europe with some kind of federal assembly to regulate their common interests. [...] His intention was nothing less than to overturn the European settlement agreed [to] in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, which had reestablished an oppressive hegemony of a few great powers and blocked the emergence of smaller nations. [...] Mazzini hoped, but without much confidence, that his vision of a league or society of independent nations would be realized in his own lifetime. In practice Young Europe lacked the money and popular support for more than a short-term existence. Nevertheless he always remained faithful to the ideal of a united continent for which the creation of individual nations would be an indispensable preliminary.[62]

Prussia's growing strength: Realpolitik[edit]

Further information: Helmuth von Moltke the Elder § Moltke's Theory of War

The convergence of leadership in politics and diplomacy by Bismarck, left, reorganization of the army and its training techniques by Albrecht von Roon (center), and the redesign of operational and strategic principles by Helmuth von Moltke (right) placed Prussia among the most powerful states in European affairs after the 1860s.

King Frederick William IV suffered a stroke in 1857 and could no longer rule. This led to his brother William becoming Prince Regent of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1858. Meanwhile, Helmuth von Moltke had become chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, and Albrecht von Roon would become Prussian Minister of War in 1859.[63] This shuffling of authority within the Prussian military establishment would have important consequences. Von Roon and William (who took an active interest in military structures) began reorganizing the Prussian army, while Moltke redesigned the strategic defense of Prussia by streamlining operational command. Prussian army reforms (especially how to pay for them) caused a constitutional crisis beginning in 1860 because both parliament and William—via his minister of war—wanted control over the military budget. William, crowned King Wilhelm I in 1861, appointed Otto von Bismarck to the position of Minister-President of Prussia in 1862. Bismarck resolved the crisis in favor of the war minister.[64]

The Crimean War of 1854–55 and the Italian War of 1859 disrupted relations among Great Britain, France, Austria, and Russia. In the aftermath of this disarray, the convergence of von Moltke's operational redesign, von Roon and Wilhelm's army restructure, and Bismarck's diplomacy influenced the realignment of the European balance of power. Their combined agendas established Prussia as the leading German power through a combination of foreign diplomatic triumphs—backed up by the possible use of Prussian military might—and an internal conservativism tempered by pragmatism, which came to be known as Realpolitik.[65]

Bismarck expressed the essence of Realpolitik in his subsequently famous "Blood and Iron" speech to the Budget Committee of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies on 30 September 1862, shortly after he became Minister President: "The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood."[66] Bismarck's words, "iron and blood" (or "blood and iron", as often attributed), have often been misappropriated as evidence of a German lust for blood and power.[67] First, the phrase from his speech "the great questions of time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions" is often interpreted as a repudiation of the political process—a repudiation Bismarck did not himself advocate.[68] Second, his emphasis on blood and iron did not imply simply the unrivaled military might of the Prussian army but rather two important aspects: the ability of the assorted German states to produce iron and other related war materials and the willingness to use those war materials if necessary.[69]

Founding a unified state[edit]

There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, and each [is] separately ruled by an independent sovereign with all the machinery of State. Yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit.

—article from The New York Times published in July 1, 1866[70]

The need for both iron and blood soon became apparent. By 1862, when Bismarck made his speech, the idea of a German nation-state in the peaceful spirit of Pan-Germanism had shifted from the liberal and democratic character of 1848 to accommodate Bismarck's more conservative Realpolitik. Ever the pragmatist, Bismarck understood the possibilities, obstacles, and advantages of a unified state. He also understood the importance of linking that state to the Hohenzollern dynasty, which for some historians remains one of Bismarck's primary contributions to the creation of the German Empire in 1871.[71] While the conditions of the treaties binding the various German states to one another prohibited Bismarck from taking unilateral action, the politician and diplomat in him realized the impracticality of such an action.[72] In order to get the German states to unify, Bismarck needed a single, outside enemy that would declare war on one of the German states first, thus providing a casus belli to rally all Germans behind. This opportunity arose with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Historians have long debated Bismarck's role in the events leading up to the war. The traditional view, promulgated in large part by late 19th and early 20th century pro-Prussian historians, maintains that Bismarck's intent was always German unification. Post-1945 historians, however, see more short-term opportunism and cynicism in Bismarck's manipulation of the circumstances to create a war, rather than a grand scheme to unify a nation-state.[73] Regardless, Bismarck was neither villain nor saint: by manipulating events of 1866 and 1870, he demonstrated the political and diplomatic skill that had caused Wilhelm to turn to him in 1862.[74]

From north to south: The Danish part of Jutland in purple and terracotta, Schleswig in red and brown, and Holstein in lime yellow. The Schleswig-Holstein Question was about the status of those territories.

Three episodes proved fundamental to the administrative and political unification of Germany. First, the death without male heirs of Frederick VII of Denmark led to the Second War of Schleswig in 1864. Second, the unification of Italy provided Prussia an ally against Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Finally, France—fearing Hohenzollern encirclement—declared war on Prussia in 1870, resulting in the Franco-Prussian War. Through a combination of Bismarck's diplomacy and political leadership, von Roon's military reorganization, and von Moltke's military strategy, Prussia demonstrated that none of the European signatories of the 1815 peace treaty could guarantee Austria's sphere of influence in Central Europe, thus achieving Prussian hegemony in Germany and ending the dualism debate.[75]

The Schleswig-Holstein Question[edit]

Main article: Second Schleswig War

The first episode in the saga of German unification under Bismarck came with the Schleswig-Holstein Question. On 15 November 1863, King Christian IX of Denmark became king of Denmark and duke of Schleswig and Holstein. On 18 November 1863, he signed the Danish November Constitution and declared the Duchy of Schleswig a part of Denmark. The German Confederation saw this act as a violation of the London Protocol of 1852, which emphasized the status of the kingdom of Denmark as distinct from the independent duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The populations of Schleswig and Holstein, furthermore, greatly valued this separate status. The German Confederation could use the ethnicities of these duchies as a rallying cry: large portions of both Schleswig and Holstein were of German origin and spoke German in everyday life (though Schleswig had a sizable Danish minority). Diplomatic attempts to have the November Constitution repealed collapsed, and fighting began when Prussian and Austrian troops crossed the border into Schleswig on 1 February 1864. Initially, the Danes attempted to defend their country using an ancient earthen wall known as the Danevirke, but this proved futile. The Danes were no match for the combined Prussian and Austrian forces, and they could not rely on help from their allies in the other Scandinavian states because Denmark had nullified its alliance rights by violating the London Protocol. The Needle Gun, one of the first bolt action rifles to be used in conflict, aided the Prussians in both this war and the Austro-Prussian War two years later. The rifle enabled a Prussian soldier to fire five shots while lying prone, while its muzzle-loading counterpart could only fire one shot and had to be reloaded while standing. The Second Schleswig War resulted in victory for the combined armies of Prussia and Austria, and the two countries won control of Schleswig and Holstein in the concluding peace of Vienna, signed on 30 October 1864.[76]

War between Austria and Prussia, 1866[edit]

Main article: Austro-Prussian War

Situation at the time of the outbreak of the war:  Prussia  Austria  Austria's allies  Prussia's allies  Neutral  Under joint administration (Schleswig-Holstein)

The second episode in Bismarck's unification efforts occurred in 1866. In concert with the newly formed Italy, Bismarck created a diplomatic environment in which Austria declared war on Prussia. The dramatic prelude to the war occurred largely in Frankfurt, where the two powers claimed to speak for all the German states in the parliament. In April 1866, the Prussian representative in Florence signed a secret agreement with the Italian government, committing each state to assist the other in a war against Austria. The next day, the Prussian delegate to the Frankfurt assembly presented a plan calling for a national constitution, a directly elected national Diet, and universal suffrage. German liberals were justifiably skeptical of this plan, having witnessed Bismarck's difficult and ambiguous relationship with the Prussian Landtag (State Parliament), a relationship characterized by Bismarck's cajoling and riding roughshod over the representatives. These skeptics saw the proposal as a ploy to enhance Prussian power rather than a progressive agenda of reform.[77]

Choosing sides[edit]

The debate over the proposed national constitution became moot when news of Italian troop movements in Tyroland near the Venetian border reached Vienna in April 1866. The Austrian government ordered partial mobilization in the southern regions; the Italians responded by ordering full mobilization. Despite calls for rational thought and action, Italy, Prussia, and Austria continued to rush toward armed conflict. On 1 May, Wilhelm gave von Moltkecommand over the Prussian armed forces, and the next day he began full-scale mobilization.[78]

In the Diet, the group of middle-sized states, known as Mittelstaaten (Bavaria, Württemberg, the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse, and the duchies of Saxony–Weimar, Saxony–Meiningen, Saxony–Coburg, and Nassau), supported complete demobilization within the Confederation. These individual governments rejected the potent combination of enticing promises and subtle (or outright) threats Bismarck used to try to gain their support against the Habsburgs. The Prussian war cabinet understood that its only supporters among the German states against the Habsburgs were two small principalities bordering on Brandenburg that had little military strength or political clout: the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They also understood that Prussia's only ally abroad was Italy.[79]

Opposition to Prussia's strong-armed tactics surfaced in other social and political groups. Throughout the German states, city councils, liberal parliamentary members who favored a unified state, and chambers of commerce—which would see great benefits from unification—opposed any war between Prussia and Austria. They believed any such conflict would only serve the interests of royal dynasties. Their own interests, which they understood as "civil" or "bourgeois", seemed irrelevant. Public opinion also opposed Prussian domination. Catholic populations along the Rhine—especially in such cosmopolitan regions as Cologne and in the heavily populated Ruhr Valley—continued to support Austria. By late spring, most important states opposed Berlin's effort to reorganize the German states by force. The Prussian cabinet saw German unity as an issue of power and a question of who had the strength and will to wield that power. Meanwhile, the liberals in the Frankfurt assembly saw German unity as a process of negotiation that would lead to the distribution of power among the many parties.[80]

Prussian Prince Friedrich Carl orders his enthusiastic troops to attack at the Battle of Königgrätz. The Crown Prince and his troops had arrived late, and in the wrong place, but when he arrived, he ordered his troops immediately into the fray. This decisive battle, which the Prussians won, forced the Habsburgs to end the war and laid the groundwork for the Kleindeutschland (little Germany) solution, or "Germany without Austria."

Austria isolated[edit]

Although several German states initially sided with Austria, they stayed on the defensive and failed to take effective initiatives against Prussian troops. The Austrian army therefore faced the technologically superior Prussian army with support only from Saxony. France promised aid, but it came late and was insufficient.[81] Complicating the situation for Austria, the Italian mobilization on Austria's southern border required a diversion of forces away from battle with Prussia to fight the Third Italian War of Independence on a second front in Venetia and on the Adriatic sea.[82] The day-long Battle of Königgrätz, near the village of Sadová, gave Prussia an uncontested and decisive victory.[83]

Realpolitik and the North German Confederation[edit]

For more details on this topic, see North German Confederation.

A quick peace was essential to keep Russia from entering the conflict on Austria's side.[84] Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau, and the city of Frankfurt. Hesse Darmstadt lost some territory but not its sovereignty. The states south of the Main River (Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria) signed separate treaties requiring them to pay indemnities and to form alliances bringing them into Prussia's sphere of influence. Austria, and most of its allies, were excluded from the North German Confederation.[85]

The end of Austrian dominance of the German states shifted Austria's attention to the Balkans. In 1867, the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph accepted a settlement (the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867) in which he gave his Hungarian holdings equal status with his Austrian domains, creating the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.[86] The Peace of Prague (1866) offered lenient terms to Austria, in which Austria's relationship with the new nation-state of Italy underwent major restructuring; although the Austrians were far more successful in the military field against Italian troops, the monarchy lost the important province of Venetia. The Habsburgs ceded Venetia to France, which then formally transferred control to Italy.[87] The French public resented the Prussian victory and demanded Revanche pour Sadová ("Revenge for Sadova"), illustrating anti-Prussian sentiment in France—a problem that would accelerate in the months leading up to the Franco-Prussian War.[88] The Austro-Prussian War also damaged relations with the French government. At a meeting in Biarritz in September 1865 with Napoleon III, Bismarck had let it be understood (or Napoleon had thought he understood) that France might annex parts of Belgium and Luxembourg in exchange for its neutrality in the war. These annexations did not happen, resulting in animosity from Napoleon towards Bismarck.

The reality of defeat for Austria caused a reevaluation of internal divisions, local autonomy, and liberalism.[89] The new North German Confederation had its own constitution, flag, and governmental and administrative structures. Through military victory, Prussia under Bismarck's influence had overcome Austria's active resistance to the idea of a unified Germany. Austria's influence over the German states may have been broken, but the war also splintered the spirit of pan-German unity: most of the German states resented Prussian power politics.[90]

War with France[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Causes of the Franco-Prussian War.

By 1870 three of the important lessons of the Austro-Prussian war had become apparent. The first lesson was that, through force of arms, a powerful state could challenge the old alliances and spheres of influence established in 1815. Second, through diplomatic maneuvering, a skillful leader could create an environment in which a rival state would declare war first, thus forcing states allied with the "victim" of external aggression to come to the leader's aid. Finally, as Prussian military capacity far exceeded that of Austria, Prussia was clearly the only state within the Confederation (or among the German states generally) capable of protecting all of them from potential interference or aggression. In 1866, most mid-sized German states had opposed Prussia, but by 1870 these states had been coerced and coaxed into mutually protective alliances with Prussia. In the event that a European state declared war on one of their members, they all would come to the defense of the attacked state. With skillful manipulation of European politics, Bismarck created a situation in which France would play the role of aggressor in German affairs, while Prussia would play that of the protector of German rights and liberties.[91]

Spheres of influence fall apart in Spain[edit]

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Metternich and his conservative allies had reestablished the Spanish monarchy under King Ferdinand VII. Over the following forty years, the great powers supported the Spanish monarchy, but events in 1868 would further test the old system. A revolution in Spain overthrew Queen Isabella II, and the throne remained empty while Isabella lived in sumptuous exile in Paris. The Spanish, looking for a suitable Catholic successor, had offered the post to three European princes, each of whom was rejected by Napoleon III, who served as regional power-broker. Finally, in 1870 the Regency offered the crown to Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a prince of the Catholic cadet Hohenzollern line. The ensuing furor has been dubbed by historians as the Hohenzollern candidature.[92]

Over the next few weeks, the Spanish offer turned into the talk of Europe. Bismarck encouraged Leopold to accept the offer.[93] A successful installment of a Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen king in Spain would mean that two countries on either side of France would both have German kings of Hohenzollern descent. This may have been a pleasing prospect for Bismarck, but it was unacceptable to either Napoleon III or to Agenor, duc de Gramont, his minister of foreign affairs. Gramont wrote a sharply formulated ultimatum to Wilhelm, as head of the Hohenzollern family, stating that if any Hohenzollern prince should accept the crown of Spain, the French government would respond—although he left ambiguous the nature of such response. The prince withdrew as a candidate, thus defusing the crisis, but the French ambassador to Berlin would not let the issue lie.[94] He approached the Prussian king directly while Wilhelm was vacationing in Ems Spa, demanding that the King release a statement saying he would never support the installation of a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain. Wilhelm refused to give such an encompassing statement, and he sent Bismarck a dispatch by telegram describing the French demands. Bismarck used the king's telegram, called the Ems Dispatch, as a template for a short statement to the press. With its wording shortened and sharpened by Bismarck—and further alterations made in the course of its translation by the French agency Havas—the Ems Dispatch raised an angry furor in France. The French public, still aggravated over the defeat at Sadová, demanded war.[95]

Emperor Napoleon III (left) at Sedan, on 2 September 1870, seated next to Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, holding Napoleon's surrendered sword. The defeat of the French army destabilized Napoleon's regime; a revolution in Paris established the Third French Republic, and the war continued.

Military operations[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Franco-Prussian War.

Napoleon III had tried to secure territorial concessions from both sides before and after the Austro-Prussian War, but despite his role as mediator during the peace negotiations, he ended up with nothing. He then hoped that Austria would join in a war of revenge and that its former allies—particularly the southern German states of Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria—would join in the cause. This hope would prove futile since the 1866 treaty came into effect and united all German states militarily—if not happily—to fight against France. Instead of a war of revenge against Prussia, supported by various German allies, France engaged in a war against all of the German states without any allies of its own.[96] The reorganization of the military by von Roon and the operational strategy of Moltkecombined against France to great effect. The speed of Prussian mobilization astonished the French, and the Prussian ability to concentrate power at specific points—reminiscent of Napoleon I's strategies seventy years earlier—overwhelmed French mobilization. Utilizing their efficiently laid rail grid, Prussian troops were delivered to battle areas rested and prepared to fight, whereas French troops had to march for considerable distances to reach combat zones. After a number of battles, notably Spicheren, Wörth, Mars la Tour, and Gravelotte, the Prussians defeated the main French armies and advanced on the primary city of Metz and the French capital of Paris. They captured Napoleon III and took an entire army as prisoners at Sedan on 1 September 1870.[97]

Proclamation of the German Empire[edit]

The humiliating capture of the French emperor and the loss of the French army itself, which marched into captivity at a makeshift camp in the Saarland ("Camp Misery"), threw the French government into turmoil; Napoleon's energetic opponents overthrew his government and proclaimed the Third Republic.[98] The German High Command expected an overture of peace from the French, but the new republic refused to surrender. The Prussian army invested Paris and held it under siege until mid-January, with the city being "ineffectually bombarded".[99] On 18 January 1871, the German princes and senior military commanders proclaimed Wilhelm "German Emperor" in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.[100] Under the subsequent Treaty of Frankfurt, France relinquished most of its traditionally German regions (Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine); paid an indemnity, calculated (on the basis of population) as the precise equivalent of the indemnity that Napoleon Bonaparte imposed on Prussia in 1807;[101] and accepted German administration of Paris and most of northern France, with "German troops to be withdrawn stage by stage with each installment of the indemnity payment".[102]

18 January 1871: The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Bismarck appears in white. The Grand Duke of Baden stands beside Wilhelm, leading the cheers. Crown Prince Friedrich, later Friedrich III, stands on his father's right. Painting by Anton von Werner.

Importance in the unification process[edit]

Victory in the Franco-Prussian War proved the capstone of the nationalist issue. In the first half of the 1860s, Austria and Prussia both contended to speak for the German states; both maintained they could support German interests abroad and protect German interests at home. In responding to the Schleswig-Holstein Question, they both proved equally diligent in doing so. After the victory over Austria in 1866, Prussia began internally asserting its authority to speak for the German states and defend German interests, while Austria began directing more and more of its attention to possessions in the Balkans. The victory over France in 1871 expanded Prussian hegemony in the German states to the international level. With the proclamation of Wilhelm as Kaiser, Prussia assumed the leadership of the new empire. The southern states became officially incorporated into a unified Germany at the Treaty of Versailles of 1871 (signed 26 February 1871; later ratified in the Treaty of Frankfurt of 10 May 1871), which formally ended the war.[103] Although Bismarck had led the transformation of Germany from a loose confederation into a federal nation state, he had not done it alone. Unification was achieved by building on a tradition of legal collaboration under the Holy Roman Empire and economic collaboration through the Zollverein. The difficulties of the Vormärz, the impact of the 1848 liberals, the importance of von Roon's military reorganization, and von Moltke's strategic brilliance all played a part in political unification.[104]

Political and administrative unification[edit]

For more details on this topic, see German Empire.

The new German Empire included 25 states, three of them Hanseatic cities. It realized the Kleindeutsche Lösung ("Lesser German Solution", with the exclusion of Austria) as opposed to a Großdeutsche Lösung or "Greater German Solution", which would have included Austria. Unifying various states into one nation required more than some military victories, however much these might have boosted morale. It also required a rethinking of political, social, and cultural behaviors and the construction of new metaphors about "us" and "them". Who were the new members of this new nation? What did they stand for? How were they to be organized?[105]

Constituent states of the Empire[edit]

Though often characterized as a federation of monarchs, the German Empire, strictly speaking, federated a group of 26 states.[106]

| StateCapital

Kingdoms (Königreiche)

|

Prussia (Preußen) | Berlin

|

Bavaria (Bayern) | Munich

|

Saxony (Sachsen) | Dresden

|

Württemberg | Stuttgart
Grand Duchies (Großherzogtümer)

|

Baden | Karlsruhe

|

Hesse (Hessen) | Darmstadt

|

Mecklenburg-Schwerin | Schwerin

|

Mecklenburg-Strelitz | Neustrelitz

|

Oldenburg | Oldenburg

|

Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach(Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach) | Weimar
Duchies (Herzogtümer)

|

Anhalt | Dessau

|

Brunswick (Braunschweig) | Braunschweig

|

Saxe-Altenburg (Sachsen-Altenburg) | Altenburg

|

Saxe-Coburg and Gotha(Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha) | Coburg

|

Saxe-Meiningen (Sachsen-Meiningen) | Meiningen
Principalities (Fürstentümer)

|

Lippe | Detmold

|

Reuss-Gera (Junior Line) | Gera

|

Reuss-Greiz (Elder Line) | Greiz

|

Schaumburg-Lippe | Bückeburg

|

Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt | Rudolstadt

|

Schwarzburg-Sondershausen | Sondershausen

|

Waldeck and Pyrmont (Waldeck und Pyrmont) | Arolsen
Free and Hanseatic Cities (Freie und Hansestädte)

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Bremen

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Hamburg

|

Lübeck
Imperial Territories (Reichsländer)

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Alsace-Lorraine (Elsass-Lothringen) | Straßburg

Political structure of the Empire[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Constitution of the German Empire.

The 1866 North German Constitution became (with some semantic adjustments) the 1871 Constitution of the German Empire. With this constitution, the new Germany acquired some democratic features: notably the Imperial Diet, which—in contrast to the parliament of Prussia—gave citizens representation on the basis of elections by direct and equal suffrage of all males who had reached the age of 25. Furthermore, elections were generally free of chicanery, engendering pride in the national parliament.[107] However, legislation required the consent of the Bundesrat, the federal council of deputies from the states, in and over which Prussia had a powerful influence; Prussia could appoint 17 of 58 delegates with only 14 votes needed for a veto. Prussia thus exercised influence in both bodies, with executive power vested in the Prussian King as Kaiser, who appointed the federal chancellor. The chancellor was accountable solely to, and served entirely at the discretion of, the Emperor. Officially, the chancellor functioned as a one-man cabinet and was responsible for the conduct of all state affairs; in practice, the State Secretaries (bureaucratic top officials in charge of such fields as finance, war, foreign affairs, etc.) acted as unofficial portfolio ministers. With the exception of the years 1872–1873 and 1892–1894, the imperial chancellor was always simultaneously the prime minister of the imperial dynasty's hegemonic home-kingdom, Prussia. The Imperial Diet had the power to pass, amend, or reject bills, but it could not initiate legislation. (The power of initiating legislation rested with the chancellor.) The other states retained their own governments, but the military forces of the smaller states came under Prussian control. The militaries of the larger states (such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Saxony) retained some autonomy, but they underwent major reforms to coordinate with Prussian military principles and came under federal government control in wartime.[108]

Historical arguments and the Empire's social anatomy[edit]

Germania, also called the Niederwald Monument, was erected in 1877–83 at Rüdesheim.

The Sonderweg hypothesis attributed Germany's difficult 20th century to the weak political, legal, and economic basis of the new empire. The Prussian landed elites, the Junkers, retained a substantial share of political power in the unified state. The Sonderweg hypothesis attributed their power to the absence of a revolutionary breakthrough by the middle classes, or by peasants in combination with the urban workers, in 1848 and again in 1871. Recent research into the role of the Grand Bourgeoisie—which included bankers, merchants, industrialists, and entrepreneurs—in the construction of the new state has largely refuted the claim of political and economic dominance of the Junkers as a social group. This newer scholarship has demonstrated the importance of the merchant classes of the Hanseatic cities and the industrial leadership (the latter particularly important in the Rhineland) in the ongoing development of the Second Empire.[109]

Additional studies of different groups in Wilhelmine Germany have all contributed to a new view of the period. Although the Junkers did, indeed, continue to control the officer corps, they did not dominate social, political, and economic matters as much as the Sonderweg theorists had hypothesized. Eastern Junker power had a counterweight in the western provinces in the form of the Grand Bourgeoisie and in the growing professional class of bureaucrats, teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc.[110]

Beyond the political mechanism: forming a nation[edit]

This monument to Kaiser Wilhelm, at Koblenz, where the Moselle River(upper river) meets the Rhine River (lower river), called the Deutsches Eck, or the German corner.

If the Wartburg and Hambach rallies had lacked a constitution and administrative apparatus, that problem was addressed between 1867 and 1871. Yet, as Germans discovered, grand speeches, flags, and enthusiastic crowds, a constitution, a political reorganization, and the provision of an imperial superstructure; and the revised Customs Union of 1867–68, still did not make a nation.[111]

A key element of the nation-state is the creation of a national culture, frequently—although not necessarily—through deliberate national policy.[112] In the new German nation, a Kulturkampf (1872–78) that followed political, economic, and administrative unification attempted to address, with a remarkable lack of success, some of the contradictions in German society. In particular, it involved a struggle over language, education, and religion. A policy of Germanization of non-German people of the empire's population, including the Polish and Danish minorities, started with language, in particular, the German language, compulsory schooling (Germanization), and the attempted creation of standardized curricula for those schools to promote and celebrate the idea of a shared past. Finally, it extended to the religion of the new Empire's population.[113]

Kulturkampf[edit]

Main article: Kulturkampf

For some Germans, the definition of nation did not include pluralism, and Catholics in particular came under scrutiny; some Germans, and especially Bismarck, feared that the Catholics' connection to the papacy might make them less loyal to the nation. As chancellor, Bismarck tried without much success to limit the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and of its party-political arm, the Catholic Center Party, in schools and education and language-related policies. The Catholic Center Party remained particularly well entrenched in the Catholic strongholds of Bavaria and southern Baden, and in urban areas that held high populations of displaced rural workers seeking jobs in the heavy industry, and sought to protect the rights not only of Catholics, but other minorities, including the Poles, and the French minorities in the Alsatian lands.[114] The May Laws of 1873 brought the appointment of priests, and their education, under the control of the state, resulting in the closure of many seminaries, and a shortage of priests. The Congregations Law of 1875 abolished religious orders, ended state subsidies to the Catholic Church, and removed religious protections from the Prussian constitution.[115]

Integrating the Jewish community[edit]

In this close-up of the Niederwald Monument (see long shot above), Germania towers 40 metres (131 ft) above the town of Rüdesheim. She holds a crown in her right hand and carries a sword at her side. The Niederwald Germania was erected 1877–1883.

For more details on this topic, see History of the Jews in Germany.

The Germanized Jews remained another vulnerable population in the new German nation-state. Since 1780, after emancipation by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Jews in the former Habsburg territories had enjoyed considerable economic and legal privileges that their counterparts in other German-speaking territories did not: they could own land, for example, and they did not have to live in a Jewish quarter (also called the Judengasse, or "Jews' alley"). They could also attend universities and enter the professions. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, many of the previously strong barriers between Jews and Christians broke down. Napoleon had ordered the emancipation of Jews throughout territories under French hegemony. Like their French counterparts, wealthy German Jews sponsored salons; in particular, several Jewish salonnières held important gatherings in Frankfurt and Berlin during which German intellectuals developed their own form of republican intellectualism. Throughout the subsequent decades, beginning almost immediately after the defeat of the French, reaction against the mixing of Jews and Christians limited the intellectual impact of these salons. Beyond the salons, Jews continued a process of Germanization in which they intentionally adopted German modes of dress and speech, working to insert themselves into the emerging 19th-century German public sphere. The religious reform movement among German Jews reflected this effort.[116]

By the years of unification, German Jews played an important role in the intellectual underpinnings of the German professional, intellectual, and social life. The expulsion of Jews from Russia in the 1880s and 1890s complicated integration into the German public sphere. Russian Jews arrived in north German cities in the thousands; considerably less educated and less affluent, their often dismal poverty dismayed many of the Germanized Jews. Many of the problems related to poverty (such as illness, overcrowded housing, unemployment, school absenteeism, refusal to learn German, etc.) emphasized their distinctiveness for not only the Christian Germans, but for the local Jewish populations as well.[117]

Writing the story of the nation[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Historiography and nationalism.

Another important element in nation-building, the story of the heroic past, fell to such nationalist German historians as the liberal constitutionalist Friedrich Dahlmann(1785–1860), his conservative student Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), and others less conservative, such as Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) and Heinrich von Sybel (1817–1895), to name two. Dahlmann himself died before unification, but he laid the groundwork for the nationalist histories to come through his histories of the English and French revolutions, by casting these revolutions as fundamental to the construction of a nation, and Dahlmann himself viewed Prussia as the logical agent of unification.[118]

Heinrich von Treitschke's History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1879, has perhaps a misleading title: it privileges the history of Prussia over the history of other German states, and it tells the story of the German-speaking peoples through the guise of Prussia's destiny to unite all German states under its leadership. The creation of this Borussian myth (Borussia is the Latin name for Prussia) established Prussia as Germany's savior; it was the destiny of all Germans to be united, this myth maintains, and it was Prussia's destiny to accomplish this.[119] According to this story, Prussia played the dominant role in bringing the German states together as a nation-state; only Prussia could protect German liberties from being crushed by French or Russian influence. The story continues by drawing on Prussia's role in saving Germans from the resurgence of Napoleon's power in 1815, at Waterloo, creating some semblance of economic unity, and uniting Germans under one proud flag after 1871.[120]

Mommsen's contributions to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica laid the groundwork for additional scholarship on the study of the German nation, expanding the notion of "Germany" to mean other areas beyond Prussia. A liberal professor, historian, and theologian, and generally a titan among late 19th-century scholars, Mommsen served as a delegate to the Prussian House of Representatives from 1863–1866 and 1873–1879; he also served as a delegate to the Reichstag from 1881–1884, for the liberal German Progress Party (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei) and later for the National Liberal Party. He opposed the antisemitic programs of Bismarck's Kulturkampf and the vitriolic text that Treitschke often employed in the publication of his Studien über die Judenfrage (Studies of the Jewish Question), which encouraged assimilation and Germanization of Jews.[121]

See also[edit]

Germany portal

Unification of Italy

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ Blackbourn, David (1997) The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918, Oxford: Oxford University Press

2. Jump up^ Gunter Mai, [2000] Die Erfurter Union und das Erfurter Unionsparlament 1850. Köln: Böhlau

3. Jump up^ See, for example, James Allen Vann, The Swabian Kreis: Institutional Growth in the Holy Roman Empire 1648–1715. Vol. LII, Studies Presented to International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions. Bruxelles, 1975. Mack Walker. German home towns: community, state, and general estate, 1648–1871. Ithaca, 1998.

4. Jump up^ Robert A. Kann. History of the Habsburg Empire: 1526–1918, Los Angeles, 1974, p. 221. In his abdication, Francis released all former estates from their duties and obligations to him, and took upon himself solely the title of King of Austria, which had been established since 1804. Golo Mann, Deutsche Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main, 2002, p. 70.

5. Jump up^ Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1808). "Address to the German Nation". www.historyman.co.uk. Retrieved 2009-06-06.

6. Jump up^ James J. Sheehan, German History, 1780–1866, Oxford, 1989, p. 434.

7. Jump up^ Jakob Walter, and Marc Raeff. The diary of a Napoleonic foot soldier. Princeton, N.J., 1996.

8. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 384–387.

9. Jump up^ Although the Prussian army had gained its reputation in the Seven Years' War, its humiliating defeat at Jena and Auerstadt crushed the pride many Prussians felt in their soldiers. During their Russian exile, several officers, including Carl von Clausewitz, contemplated reorganization and new training methods. Sheehan, p. 323.

10. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 322–323.

11. Jump up^ David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford & New York, 1984, part 1; Thomas Nipperdey, German History From Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1871, New York, Oxford, 1983. Chapter 1.

12. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 398–410; Hamish Scott, The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740–1815, US, 2006, pp. 329–361.

13. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 398–410.

14. Jump up^ Jean Berenger. A History of the Habsburg Empire 1700–1918. C. Simpson, Trans. New York: Longman, 1997, ISBN 0-582-09007-5. pp. 96–97.

15. Jump up^ Lloyd Lee, Politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism, and Social Reform in Baden, 1800–1850, Cranbury, New Jersey, 1980.

16. Jump up^ Adam Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, New York, 2007, pp. 98–115, 239–40.

17. Jump up^ L.B. Namier, (1952) Avenues of History. London, ONT, 1952, p. 34.

18. Jump up^ Nipperdey, pp. 1–3.

19. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 407–408, 444.

20. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 442–445.

21. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 465–467; Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 106–107.

22. ^ Jump up to:a b Keller,Wolfgang and Shiue,Carol (University of Colorado, NBER, and CEPR) The Trade Impact of the Customs Union, Pub. University of Colorado, 5 March 2013; pp.10 and 18

23. Jump up^ Ploeckl, Florian. The Zollverein and the Formation of a Customs Union, Discussion Paper no. 84 in Economic and Social History series, publ by Nuffield College, Oxford;Page 23; Retrieved from www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/History March 2017; p.23

24. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 460–470. German Historical Institute

25. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 465.

26. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 466.

27. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 467–468.

28. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 502.

29. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 469.

30. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 458.

31. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 466–467.

32. Jump up^ They traced the roots of the German language, and drew its different lines of development together. The Brothers Grimm online. Joint Publications.

33. Jump up^ (in German) Hans Lulfing, Baedecker, Karl[permanent dead link], Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, p. 516 f.

34. Jump up^ (in German) Peter Rühmkorf, Heinz Ludwig Arnold, Das Lied der DeutschenGöttingen: Wallstein, 2001, ISBN 3-89244-463-3, pp. 11–14.

35. Jump up^ Raymond Dominick III, The Environmental Movement in Germany, Bloomington, Indiana University, 1992, pp. 3–41.

36. Jump up^ Jonathan Sperber, Rhineland radicals: the democratic movement and the revolution of 1848–1849. Princeton, N.J., 1993.

37. ^ Jump up to:a b Sheehan, pp. 610–613.

38. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 610.

39. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 612.

40. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 613.

41. Jump up^ David Blackbourn, Marpingen: apparitions of the Virgin Mary in nineteenth-century Germany. New York, 1994.

42. Jump up^ Sperber, Rhineland radicals. p. 3.

43. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, p. 127.

44. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 610–615.

45. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 138–164.

46. Jump up^ (in German) Badische Heimat/Landeskunde online 2006 Veit's Pauls ChurchGermania. Retrieved 5 June 2009.

47. Jump up^ Jonathan Sperber, Revolutionary Europe, 1780–1850, New York, 2000.

48. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 176–179.

49. Jump up^ Examples of this argument appear in: Ralf Dahrendorf, German History, (1968), pp. 25–32; (in German) Hans Ulrich Wehler, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, 1871–1918, Göttingen, 1973, pp. 10–14; Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom, Chicago, 1957; Raymond Grew, Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States, Princeton, 1978, pp. 312–345; Jürgen Kocka and Allan Mitchell. Bourgeois society in nineteenth-century Europe. Oxford, 1993; Jürgen Kocka, "German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg." Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 23, No. 1 (January, 1988), pp. 3–16; Volker Berghahn, Modern Germany. Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century.Cambridge, 1982.

50. Jump up^ World Encyclopedia V.3 p. 542.

51. Jump up^ For a summary of this argument, see David Blackbourn, and Geoff Eley. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford & New York, 1984, part 1.

52. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley. Peculiarities, Part I.

53. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, Chapter 2.

54. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, pp. 286–293.

55. Jump up^ Jürgen Kocka, "Comparison and Beyond.'" History and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 1 (February, 2003), pp. 39–44, and Jürgen Kocka, "Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg", History and Theory, Vol. 38, No. 1 (February, 1999), pp. 40–50.

56. Jump up^ For a representative analysis of this perspective, see Richard J. Evans, Rethinking German history: nineteenth-century Germany and the origins of the Third Reich.London, 1987.

57. Jump up^ A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1914–1918, Oxford, 1954, p. 37.

58. Jump up^ J.G.Droysen, Modern History Sourcebook: Documents of German Unification, 1848–1871. Retrieved 9 April 2009.

59. Jump up^ Zamoyski, pp. 100–115.

60. Jump up^ Blackbourn, The long nineteenth century, pp. 160–175.

61. Jump up^ The remainder of the letter exhorts the Germans to unification: "This role of world leadership, left vacant as things are today, might well be occupied by the German nation. You Germans, with your grave and philosophic character, might well be the ones who could win the confidence of others and guarantee the future stability of the international community. Let us hope, then, that you can use your energy to overcome your moth-eaten thirty tyrants of the various German states. Let us hope that in the center of Europe you can then make a unified nation out of your fifty millions. All the rest of us would eagerly and joyfully follow you." Denis Mack Smith (editor). Garibaldi (Great Lives Observed), Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969, p. 76.

62. Jump up^ Mack Smith, Denis (1994). Mazzini. Yale University Press. pp. 11–12.

63. Jump up^ Holt, p. 27.

64. Jump up^ Holt, pp. 13–14.

65. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 175–179.

66. Jump up^ Hollyday, 1970, pp. 16–18.

67. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Peculiarities, Part I.

68. Jump up^ Bismarck had "cut his teeth" on German politics, and German politicians, in Frankfurt: a quintessential politician, Bismarck had built his power-base by absorbing and co-opting measures from throughout the political spectrum. He was first and foremost a politician, and in this lied his strength. Furthermore, since he trusted neither Moltke nor Roon, he was reluctant to enter a military enterprise over which he would have no control. Mann, Chapter 6, pp. 316–395.

69. Jump up^ Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, Ithaca, New York, 2005, pp. 90–108; 324–333.

70. Jump up^ The Situation of Germany. (PDF) – The New York Times, July 1, 1866.

71. Jump up^ Michael Eliot Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: the German invasion of France, 1870–1871. New York, MacMillan, 1961, p. 40.

72. Jump up^ Mann, pp. 390–395.

73. Jump up^ A. J. P. Taylor, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman. Oxford, Clarendon, 1988. Chapter 1, and Conclusion.

74. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 40–57.

75. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 900–904; Wawro, pp. 4–32; Holt, p. 75.

76. Jump up^ Holt, p. 75.

77. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 900–906.

78. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 906; Geoffrey Wawro, The Austro Prussian War: Austria's War with Prussia and Italy in 1866. Cambridge, Cambridge University, 1996, pp. 82–84.

79. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 905–906.

80. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 909.

81. Jump up^ Wawro, pp. 50–60; 75–79.

82. Jump up^ Wawro, pp. 57–75.

83. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 908–909

84. Jump up^ Taylor, Bismarck, pp. 87–88.

85. Jump up^ Sheehan, p. 910.

86. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 905–910.

87. Jump up^ Rosita Rindler Schjerve Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the Nineteenth Century Habsburg Empire, 2003, ISBN 3-11-017653-X, pp. 199–200.

88. Jump up^ Bridge and Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System 1814–1914.

89. Jump up^ Sheehan, pp. 909–910; Wawro, Chapter 11.

90. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, Chapter V: From Reaction to Unification, pp. 225–269.

91. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 4–60.

92. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 50–57.

93. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 55–56.

94. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 56–57.

95. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 55–59.

96. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 64–68.

97. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 218–222.

98. Jump up^ Howard, pp. 222–230.

99. Jump up^ Taylor, Bismarck, p. 126

100. Jump up^ Die Reichsgründung 1871 (The Foundation of the Empire, 1871), Lebendiges virtuelles Museum Online, accessed 2008-12-22. German text translated: [...] on the wishes of Wilhelm I, on the 170th anniversary of the elevation of the House of Brandenburg to princely status on 18 January 1701, the assembled German princes and high military officials proclaimed Wilhelm I as German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles Palace.

101. Jump up^ Taylor, Bismarck, p. 133.

102. Jump up^ Crankshaw, Edward. Bismarck. New York, The Viking Press, 1981, p. 299.

103. Jump up^ Howard, Chapter XI: the Peace, pp. 432–456.

104. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 255–257.

105. Jump up^ Alon Confino. The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

106. Jump up^ Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910. New York, 2005, p. 1.

107. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, p. 267.

108. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 225–301.

109. Jump up^ David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley. The peculiarities of German history: bourgeois society and politics in nineteenth-century Germany. Oxford [Oxfordshire] and New York, Oxford University Press, 1984. Peter Blickle, Heimat: a critical theory of the German idea of homeland, Studies in German literature, linguistics and culture. Columbia, South Carolina, Camden House; Boydell & Brewer, 2004. Robert W. Scribner, Sheilagh C. Ogilvie, Germany: a new social and economic history. London and New York, Arnold and St. Martin's Press, 1996.

110. Jump up^ To name only a few of these studies: Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German right: radical nationalism and political change after Bismarck. New Haven, 1980. Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910.New York, 2005. Richard J. Evans,Society and politics in Wilhelmine Germany.London and New York, 1978. Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866. Princeton, New Jersey, 1996. Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany. Princeton, N.J., 1984. (1997).

111. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 240–290.

112. Jump up^ For more on this idea, see, for example, Joseph R. Llobera, and Goldsmiths' College. The role of historical memory in (ethno)nation-building, Goldsmiths sociology papers. London, 1996; (in German) Alexandre Escudier, Brigitte Sauzay, and Rudolf von Thadden. Gedenken im Zwiespalt: Konfliktlinien europäischen Erinnerns, Genshagener Gespräche; vol. 4. Göttingen: 2001; Alon Confino. The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill, 1999.

113. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 243–282.

114. Jump up^ Blackbourn, Long Century, pp. 283; 285–300.

115. Jump up^ Jonathan Sperber. Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany, Princeton, N.J., 1984.

116. Jump up^ Marion Kaplan, The making of the Jewish middle class: women, family, and identity in Imperial Germany, New York, 1991.

117. Jump up^ Kaplan, in particular, pp. 4–7 and Conclusion.

118. Jump up^ Blackbourn and Eley, Peculiarities, p. 241.

119. Jump up^ Karin Friedrich, The other Prussia: royal Prussia, Poland and liberty, 1569–1772, New York, 2000, p. 5.

120. Jump up^ Many modern historians describe this myth, without subscribing to it: for example, Rudy Koshar, Germany's Transient Pasts: Preservation and the National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, 1998; Hans Kohn. German history; some new German views. Boston, 1954; Thomas Nipperdey, Germany history from Napoleon to Bismarck.

121. Jump up^ Josep R. Llobera and Goldsmiths' College. The role of historical memory in (ethno)nation-building. Goldsmiths sociology papers. London, Goldsmiths College, 1996.

Sources[edit]

Berghahn, Volker. Modern Germany: Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ISBN 978-0-521-34748-8

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Blackbourn, David, Marpingen: apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Bismarckian Germany. New York: Knopf, 1994. ISBN 0-679-41843-1

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Blickle, Peter. Heimat: a critical theory of the German idea of homeland. Studies in German literature, linguistics and culture. Columbia, South Carolina: Camden House Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-582-78458-1

Bridge, Roy and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System 1814–1914, 2nd ed. Longman, 2004. ISBN 978-0-582-78458-1

Confino, Alon. The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-8078-4665-0

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Howard, Michael Eliot. The Franco-Prussian War: the German invasion of France, 1870–1871. New York, MacMillan, 1961. ISBN 978-0-415-02787-8

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Kann, Robert A. History of the Habsburg Empire: 1526–1918. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1974 ISBN 978-0-520-04206-3

Kaplan, Marion. The making of the Jewish middle class: women, family, and identity in Imperial Germany. New York, Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-19-509396-4

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Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan. "Comparison and Beyond.'" History and Theory Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2003), p. 39–44.

Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Allan. "Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg". History and Theory Vol. 38, No. 1 (February 1999), p. 40–50.

Kohn, Hans. German history; some new German views. Boston: Beacon, 1954. OCLC 987529

Koshar, Rudy. Germany's Transient Pasts: Preservation and the National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8078-4701-5

Krieger, Leonard. The German Idea of Freedom, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1957. ISBN 978-1-59740-519-5

Lee, Lloyd. The politics of Harmony: Civil Service, Liberalism, and Social Reform in Baden, 1800–1850. Cranbury, New Jersey, Associated University Presses, 1980. ISBN 978-0-87413-143-7

Llobera, Josep R. and Goldsmiths' College. "The role of historical memory in (ethno)nation-building." Goldsmiths Sociology Papers. London, Goldsmiths College, 1996. ISBN 978-0-902986-06-0

Mann, Golo. The History of Germany Since 1789 (1968)

Namier, L.B.. Avenues of History. New York, Macmillan, 1952. OCLC 422057575

Nipperdey, Thomas. Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-691-02636-7

Schjerve, Rosita Rindler, Diglossia and Power: Language Policies and Practice in the nineteenth century Habsburg Empire. Berlin, De Gruyter, 2003. ISBN 978-3-11-017654-4

Schulze, Hagen. The course of German nationalism: from Frederick the Great to Bismarck, 1763–1867. Cambridge & New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-521-37759-1

Scott, H. M. The Birth of a Great Power System. London & New York, Longman, 2006. ISBN 978-0-582-21717-1

Scribner, Robert W. and Sheilagh C. Ogilvie. Germany: a new social and economic history. London: Arnold Publication, 1996. ISBN 978-0-340-51332-3

Sheehan, James J. German history 1770–1866. Oxford History of Modern Europe. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-820432-9

Sked, Alan. Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815–1918. London, Longman, 2001. ISBN 978-0-582-35666-5

Sorkin, David, The transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840, Studies in Jewish history. New York, Wayne State University Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-8143-2828-6

Sperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions, 1848–1851. New Approaches to European History. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-521-54779-6

Sperber, Jonathan. Popular Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-691-05432-2

Sperber, Jonathan. Rhineland radicals: the democratic movement and the revolution of 1848–1849. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-691-00866-0

Stargardt, Nicholas. The German idea of militarism: radical and socialist critics, 1866–1914. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-521-46692-9

Steinberg, Jonathan. Bismarck: A Life (2011)

Taylor, A. J. P., The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1914–1918, Oxford, Clarendon, 1954. ISBN 978-0-19-881270-8

Taylor, A. J. P.. Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. ISBN 978-0-394-70387-9

Victoria and Albert Museum, Dept. of Prints and Drawings, and Susan Lambert. The Franco-Prussian War and the Commune in caricature, 1870–71. London, 1971. ISBN 0-901486-30-2

Walker, Mack. German home towns: community, state, and general estate, 1648–1871. Ithaca, Syracuse University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-8014-8508-4

Wawro, Geoffrey. The Austro-Prussian War. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-62951-9

Wawro, Geoffrey]. Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792–1914. 2000. ISBN 978-0-415-21445-2

Wehler, Hans Ulrich. The German Empire, 1871–1918 (1997)

Zamoyski, Adam. Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. New York, HarperCollins, 2007. ISBN 978-0-06-077519-3

Further reading[edit]

Bazillion, Richard J. Modernizing Germany: Karl Biedermann's career in the kingdom of Saxony, 1835–1901. American university studies. Series IX, History, vol. 84. New York, Peter Lang, 1990. ISBN 0-8204-1185-X

Brose, Eric Dorn. German History, 1789–1871: From the Holy Roman Empire to the Bismarckian Reich. (1997) online edition

Bucholz, Arden. Moltke, Schlieffen, and Prussian war planning. New York, Berg Pub Ltd, 1991. ISBN 0-85496-653-6

Bucholz, Arden. Moltke and the German Wars 1864–1871. New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2001. ISBN 0-333-68758-2

Clark, Christopher. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947. Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006, 2009. ISBN 978-0-674-03196-8

Clemente, Steven E. For King and Kaiser!: the making of the Prussian Army officer, 1860–1914. Contributions in military studies, no. 123. New York: Greenwood, 1992. ISBN 0-313-28004-5

Cocks, Geoffrey and Konrad Hugo Jarausch. German professions, 1800–1950. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-19-505596-9

Droysen, J.G. Modern History Sourcebook: Documents of German Unification, 1848–1871. Accessed April 9, 2009.

Dwyer, Philip G. Modern Prussian history, 1830–1947. Harlow, England, New York: Longman, 2001. ISBN 0-582-29270-0

Friedrich, Otto. Blood and iron: from Bismarck to Hitler the von Moltke family's impact on German history. New York, Harper, 1995. ISBN 0-06-016866-8

Groh, John E. Nineteenth-century German Protestantism: the church as social model. Washington, D.C., University Press of America, 1982. ISBN 0-8191-2078-2

Henne, Helmut, and Georg Objartel. German student jargon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Berlin & NY, de Gruyter, 1983. OCLC 9193308

Hughes, Michael. Nationalism and society: Germany, 1800–1945. London & New York, Edward Arnold, 1988. ISBN 0-7131-6522-7

Kollander, Patricia. Frederick III: Germany's liberal emperor, Contributions to the study of world history, no. 50. Westport, Conn., Greenwood, 1995. ISBN 0-313-29483-6

Koshar, Rudy. Germany's Transient Pasts: Preservation and the National Memory in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8078-4701-1

Lowenstein, Steven M. The Berlin Jewish community: enlightenment, family, and crisis, 1770–1830. Studies in Jewish history. New York, Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-508326-1

Lüdtke, Alf. Police and State in Prussia, 1815–1850. Cambridge, New York & Paris, Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-521-11187-0

Ogilvie, Sheilagh, and Richard Overy. Germany: A New Social and Economic History Volume 3: Since 1800 (2004)

Ohles, Frederik. Germany's rude awakening: censorship in the land of the Brothers Grimm. Kent, Ohio, Ohio State University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87338-460-1

Pflanze Otto, ed. The Unification of Germany, 1848–1871 (1979), essays by historians

Schleunes, Karl A. Schooling and society: the politics of education in Prussia and Bavaria, 1750–1900. Oxford & New York, Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-85496-267-0

Showalter, Dennis E. The Wars of German Unification (2nd ed. 2015), 412pp by a leading military historian

Showalter, Dennis E. Railroads and rifles: soldiers, technology, and the unification of Germany. Hamden, Connecticut, Hailer Publishing, 1975. ISBN 0-9798500-9-6

Smith, Woodruff D. Politics and the sciences of culture in Germany, 1840–1920. New York, Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-19-506536-0

Wawro, Geoffrey. The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-61743-X

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