Enquiry Frame

The official row asks you to explain how four developments fitted together:

• the causes and outbreak of the Second Italian War of Independence
• the impact of the war with Austria in 1859-60
• Garibaldi's takeover of the south in 1860
• the union of north and south in 1860-61

The chronology matters because each stage changed what the next stage made possible.

For AO1 essays, avoid treating these as four separate stories. A strong answer explains
sequence and interaction: French support made northern war possible; the limited peace left
central Italy to be settled by plebiscites; Garibaldi's success forced Cavour to act in the
south; Teano and the later proclamation converted conquest into a constitutional monarchy.

Making War Possible

The Second Italian War of Independence began in 1859, but its causes were prepared from
1856 onwards. Cavour's problem was simple to state and hard to solve: Piedmont-Sardinia
could not defeat Austria alone. Austrian power still blocked Piedmontese expansion in
northern Italy, and Austrian influence protected much of the restored order across the
peninsula. Cavour therefore needed two things at once: Italian nationalist pressure that
made Piedmont look like the natural leader of change, and a great-power ally strong enough
to defeat Austria.

Piedmont's support for nationalists was carefully selective. Cavour did not become a
Mazzinian republican, and he did not want uncontrolled revolution. Instead, Piedmont worked
with moderate nationalism through organisations such as the Italian National Society,
founded in 1857 to promote unity around the House of Savoy. This mattered because it pulled
some nationalists away from failed conspiratorial republicanism and towards a monarchist,
Piedmont-led programme. Daniele Manin, Giuseppe La Farina and Garibaldi gave the movement
national prestige, while Cavour's unofficial encouragement allowed Piedmont to use
nationalist networks without openly declaring revolutionary war on every Italian ruler.

Relations with Napoleon III were equally important and more complicated. Napoleon III
had youthful links with Italian liberal-nationalist circles and wanted to weaken Austrian
influence, but he also had French interests to protect. He wanted diplomatic prestige,
territorial compensation and influence in Italy; he did not want a powerful united Italy
that escaped French control. He also had to consider Catholic opinion in France, because
any attack on the papal position in Rome could damage his regime at home. This is why
French support was essential but unreliable: it was powerful enough to defeat Austria, but
conditional enough to limit Piedmont's freedom.

The Orsini Affair in January 1858 changed the emotional and political context. Felice
Orsini, an Italian nationalist revolutionary, tried to kill Napoleon III in Paris. The
attempt failed, but it linked Italian nationalism to violence on French soil. For Cavour,
the affair created danger and opportunity. It could have turned Napoleon against Italian
nationalists altogether. Instead, it helped persuade him that the Italian problem had to be
managed through diplomacy and war, not left to revolutionary conspirators. Orsini was not
the sole cause of French intervention, but the affair accelerated the move towards a
Franco-Piedmontese agreement.

That agreement took shape in the Pact of Plombieres in July 1858. Cavour and Napoleon
III reached a secret understanding: if Austria attacked Piedmont, France would support
Piedmont militarily. The expected outcome was not a fully united Italy. The plan was
closer to a reorganisation of the peninsula, including a Savoy-led kingdom in northern
Italy, a central Italian arrangement, a continued papal position around Rome and French
compensation through Nice and Savoy. This is crucial for judgement: the diplomacy that
helped create Italy in 1861 originally imagined something more limited and more favourable
to France.

Cavour then prepared for war by making Piedmont look threatened but not aggressive. Victor
Emmanuel II's speech of January 1859 referred to the "cry of pain" from Italy, while
Piedmont mobilised troops and encouraged volunteers. Austria, fearing encirclement and
provocation, issued an ultimatum on 23 April 1859 demanding Piedmontese demobilisation.
Piedmont refused. Austria opened hostilities on 29 April, allowing Cavour to present the
war as defensive and bringing France into the conflict. The outbreak of war was therefore
both a product of Austrian miscalculation and a product of Cavour's deliberate crisis
management.

War, Settlement and Central Italy

The war of 1859 was short, bloody and decisive enough to transform northern Italy, but not
decisive enough to complete Cavour's aims. The Franco-Piedmontese alliance defeated Austria
in Lombardy, yet the settlement showed that Piedmont depended on French calculations as
well as its own ambitions.

The Battle of Magenta on 4 June 1859 opened the road to Milan and forced Austria to
abandon much of Lombardy. Its significance was political as much as military. It proved
that Austrian dominance could be broken by a Franco-Piedmontese alliance, and it gave
Italian nationalists visible evidence that Piedmont could win where earlier revolutions had
failed. The entry of Napoleon III and Victor Emmanuel II into Milan symbolised the shift
from failed protest to successful state-led war.

The Battle of Solferino on 24 June 1859 reinforced that shift but also exposed its
limits. It was a Franco-Piedmontese victory, fought alongside the Sardinian action at San
Martino, but the scale of casualties horrified observers and deepened French anxiety.
Napoleon III now had several reasons to stop: the human cost, possible Prussian or German
pressure on the Rhine, Catholic unease about the implications for the pope, and concern
that unrest in central Italy might produce a larger unification than France wanted. The
battle therefore mattered in two opposite ways: it helped defeat Austria, but it also
pushed Napoleon towards a compromise peace.

The peace settlement began with the armistice of Villafranca on 11 July 1859 and was
confirmed by the Treaty of Zurich in November. Piedmont gained Lombardy, transferred
through France, but Austria kept Venetia. The settlement also envisaged restoration or
protection for the old rulers and a loose Italian confederation under papal presidency.
For Cavour, this was a bitter result because it fell short of the wider anti-Austrian
programme. He resigned in July 1859, a sign that even the architect of the alliance could
be outmanoeuvred by the ally he had chosen.

Cavour's resignation was significant but temporary. It exposed the limits of Piedmont's
independence: France could stop the war, Austria could keep Venetia, and Italian
nationalism could not yet dictate the terms. Yet his return to office in January 1860 also
showed that events were moving in Piedmont's favour. In central Italy, rulers in Tuscany,
Parma, Modena and the Romagna had been displaced, and provisional governments preferred
annexation to Piedmont rather than restoration.

The annexation of central Italian states in 1860 was one of the most important
consequences of the war. Plebiscites in March approved union with Piedmont in Tuscany,
Emilia and the Romagna. These votes were not modern democratic referendums in a neutral
political environment, but they gave Piedmont a language of popular consent and helped
make annexation acceptable to European opinion. The result was a much larger Savoyard state
stretching beyond Piedmont and Lombardy into central Italy.

The price was the loss of Nice and Savoy. Under the Treaty of Turin in March 1860,
Piedmont ceded these territories to France as compensation for French acceptance of the new
arrangement. This was a major diplomatic bargain. It secured Napoleon III's tolerance of
central Italian annexations, but it also damaged the moral purity of the nationalist cause.
Nice was Garibaldi's birthplace, so its cession intensified his distrust of Cavour. The
episode is useful in essays because it shows Cavour's method clearly: he was willing to
trade territory and offend radicals if that made a larger Italian kingdom politically
possible.

Garibaldi and the South

Garibaldi's takeover of the south in 1860 changed the scale and pace of unification. Until
then, Cavour's policy had mainly expanded Piedmont in the north and centre. Garibaldi made
the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies collapse, bringing Sicily and Naples into the question of
Italian unity. His success was not simply the triumph of a thousand heroic volunteers; it
depended on local Sicilian discontent, Bourbon weakness, nationalist networks, Garibaldi's
military reputation and Piedmont's ambiguous tolerance.

Garibaldi's aims were mixed. He had republican roots and a romantic belief in popular
liberation, but by 1860 he accepted that unity under Victor Emmanuel II was more realistic
than a Mazzinian republic. His immediate objective was to liberate Sicily and the mainland
south from Bourbon rule. His wider objective was Italian unity, which for him also meant
Rome and eventually Venetia. This made him both useful and dangerous to Cavour. Garibaldi
could do what official Piedmontese diplomacy could not openly do, but he might also provoke
France, alarm conservatives or create a radical alternative to monarchical leadership.

Garibaldi's relationship with Cavour was therefore tense. Cavour distrusted Garibaldi's
revolutionary unpredictability and feared international complications. Garibaldi distrusted
Cavour because of Nice and because Cavour seemed too willing to compromise with monarchy,
France and diplomacy. Their relationship with Victor Emmanuel II was different.
Garibaldi could present his campaign as being conducted in the king's name, while Victor
Emmanuel could become the symbol through which radical volunteers and moderate monarchists
were temporarily held together.

The expedition began after unrest in Sicily, including the Palermo rising of April 1860,
suggested that a landing might find local support. Garibaldi's volunteers, usually known
as the Thousand, sailed from Quarto near Genoa in May 1860 and landed at Marsala on
11 May. At Salemi, Garibaldi declared himself dictator of Sicily in the name of Victor
Emmanuel II. This formula was politically clever: it gave the expedition revolutionary
authority on the ground while tying it to the Piedmontese monarchy.

The success in Sicily came through momentum. Garibaldi won at Calatafimi on 15 May,
then fought for Palermo and forced Bourbon forces to withdraw from the city. By July, after
victory at Milazzo, Sicily was effectively lost to the Bourbons. Garibaldi then crossed
to the mainland in August. Bourbon authority collapsed with surprising speed, and Garibaldi
entered Naples on 7 September 1860 before the final Bourbon military position had been
fully destroyed. The Battle of the Volturno in early October helped secure his hold, while
Francis II retreated to Gaeta.

The reasons for success were not just military. The Bourbon monarchy suffered from weak
legitimacy, especially in Sicily, and its army and administration did not respond
effectively to the crisis. Local elites often preferred annexation to disorder or continued
Bourbon rule. British naval attitudes also helped create a favourable environment, while
Cavour avoided a full public break with Garibaldi once success became possible. In exam
terms, Garibaldi was the dramatic actor, but his victory depended on wider political
conditions that made the south vulnerable.

From Teano to Kingdom

Garibaldi's conquest created a new danger: the unification movement might escape Cavour's
control. After entering Naples, Garibaldi wanted to move on Rome. For nationalists,
Rome had immense symbolic power as the historic capital of Italy. For Cavour, an attack on
Rome was a diplomatic nightmare. The pope still held Rome, and a French garrison protected
the papal position. If Garibaldi attacked, Napoleon III might intervene against the
national movement, Catholic opinion might turn sharply against Piedmont, and Garibaldi
might become the leader of a radical national revolution rather than the servant of Victor
Emmanuel II.

Piedmont's response was to act before Garibaldi could. Cavour sent Piedmontese forces into
the Papal States, avoiding Rome itself but taking the Marche and Umbria. The victory at
Castelfidardo on 18 September 1860 broke papal military resistance in those territories
and opened a land route between the north and Garibaldi's south. This was a decisive act of
controlled escalation. Cavour used regular Piedmontese troops to stop the revolution from
becoming too radical, but he also used that intervention to expand the future kingdom.

The meeting at Teano on 26 October 1860 is significant because it symbolised the
transfer of revolutionary conquest to monarchy. Garibaldi met Victor Emmanuel II and
recognised him as king. The exact staging and later mythology of the meeting can be debated,
but its political meaning is clear: Garibaldi did not set up a southern republic, keep a
personal dictatorship or march independently on Rome. He accepted that the south would be
handed to the Savoyard monarchy. Teano therefore matters less as a sentimental scene and
more as a settlement of power within the nationalist movement.

Plebiscites then gave annexation a language of consent. In the south, votes on 21 October
1860 approved union with a united Italy under Victor Emmanuel II. In the former papal
territories of the Marche and Umbria, plebiscites followed in early November. These votes
were heavily managed and offered limited choices, but they mattered politically because
they allowed Piedmont to present expansion as the will of the inhabitants rather than
simple conquest. In source work, this point is important: a contemporary pro-Piedmontese
source may present plebiscites as national self-determination, while a hostile source may
stress pressure, restricted alternatives or military occupation.

The Kingdom of Italy was established on 17 March 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II assumed
the title King of Italy. The new state brought together Piedmont-Sardinia, Lombardy, the
central duchies and legations, most of the Papal States outside Rome, and the former
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The capital remained Turin, and the constitution was the
Piedmontese Statuto. This tells you something important about the nature of unification:
Italy was not created by a new constituent assembly designing a fresh state from scratch.
It was largely an expansion of the Piedmontese monarchy over newly annexed territories.

The limitations were obvious. Venetia remained under Austrian control, and Rome
remained under papal rule backed by France. The south had been annexed quickly, but rapid
political union did not remove deep regional differences, economic inequalities or doubts
about legitimacy. So the creation of the Kingdom of Italy was a huge achievement, but not a
finished national settlement. It solved the problem of creating a state more successfully
than it solved the problem of creating a fully integrated nation.

Argument and Exam Judgement

For an A-Level essay, the strongest argument is usually not "Cavour or Garibaldi?" but
how Cavour's diplomacy and Garibaldi's action interacted. Cavour made northern and
central expansion possible by securing French support, provoking Austria and turning
plebiscites into diplomatic evidence. Garibaldi made southern expansion possible by
destroying Bourbon authority faster than Piedmont could have done openly. Victor Emmanuel
II then acted as the shared symbol that allowed these different forces to be fused into
one monarchy.

You can build three high-level interpretations from this row:

The best judgement depends on the question. If asked about causes of the Kingdom of
Italy, Cavour's diplomacy has strong explanatory range because it shaped the war,
settlement and response to Garibaldi. If asked about turning points, Garibaldi's
conquest of the south may be stronger because it transformed a northern-central kingdom
into a near-peninsular one. If asked about limitations, Villafranca, Nice and Savoy,
Rome and Venetia show that Italian unity was created inside tight international
constraints.

For AO2 source evaluation, keep provenance tied to context. A French source from 1859 may
stress liberation while hiding French self-interest. A Piedmontese source on plebiscites
may highlight consent while underplaying military pressure and restricted choices. A
Garibaldian source may celebrate popular nationalism while ignoring Cavour's diplomatic
need to control it. Source value comes from asking what the author could see clearly, what
they had reason to exaggerate, and how their view fits the fast-moving chronology of
1859-61.