Europe in an Age of Nationalism, 1848–70 497The Unification of Italy:
The Risorgimento
No event of the Crimean War was more surprising than
the declaration of war on Russia by Piedmont-Sardinia,
a distant state with no direct interests at stake. That de-
cision was the carefully calculated work of the Pied-
montese premier, Count Camillo di Cavour, the
foremost architect of Italian unification. Cavour was a
wealthy landowner with an advanced education in en-
gineering and an admiration for England, which he
knew much better than Sicily or Calabria. He was a
short, plump, florid-faced man, a constantly cheerful
hard worker who began the day at 5 A.M. His skills
combined the pragmatism of the engineer and business
executive with the cynical dexterity of the diplomat.
Cavour had long advocated the liberalization of Italy.
He meant the term broadly: Scientific agriculture, mod-
ern banking, railroad building, and free trade capitalism
were as important as secularized institutions, a free
press, and representative government. He became
prominent in 1847 when he founded a newspaper, Il
Risorgimento(the Revival), to champion Italian indepen-
dence and progressive reforms. The newspaper became
the leading voice of liberal-nationalism, making its title
a synonym for the process of unification.
The revolutions of 1848 convinced most observers
that rebellion in the streets would not drive the Austri-
ans out of Italy. The leadership of a strong state, plus
foreign assistance, would be needed. Both seemed dis-
tant during the reaction of 1849. In the south, Ferdi-
nand of Naples was arresting, imprisoning, and
torturing more than twenty thousand of his citizens. In
Lombardy and Venetia, Marshal Radetzky dispensed
the justice of the military tribunal—a few executions,
many floggings, more imprisonments, thousands of ex-
iles. Pope Pius IX, proscribed seven thousand people
and executed priests with republican sympathies. Only
in Piedmont, where King Charles Albert had abdicated
in favor of his son, King Victor Emmanuel II, did the
liberalism of 1848 survive. Victor Emmanuel kept the
constitution (the Statuto) that his father had granted, de-
spite an Austrian offer to cancel Piedmont’s war indem-
nity if he abrogated the document. In 1850, Victor
Emmanuel promulgated the Siccardi Laws, written by
Cavour, limiting the powers of the Catholic Church by
abolishing church courts, permitting civil marriage,
and restricting the number of church holidays. This
version of separation of church and state, which
Cavour called “a free church in a free state,” persuaded
nationalists such as Garibaldi and Manin to recognizeDOCUMENT 25.4
A Radical Prince Describes the
World of Serf-owning Aristocrats
Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) was born to the Rus-
sian nobility and spent his childhood in luxury. He became a
geographer of distinction, known for his exploration of
Siberia. Kropotkin slowly turned to social criticism, however,
attacking the world into which he had been born. He entered
radical politics in western Europe and spent several years in
French prisons for his anarchism.Wealth was measured in those times by the num-
ber of “souls” that a landed proprietor owned. So
many “souls” meant so many male serfs: women
did not count. My father, who owned nearly
twelve hundred souls, in three different provinces,
and who had, in addition to his peasants’ holding,
large tracts of land which were cultivated by these
peasants, was accounted a rich man. He lived up to
his reputation, which meant that his house was
open to any number of visitors, and that he kept a
very large household. We were a family of eight,
occasionally ten or twelve; but fifty servants at
Moscow, and half as many more in the country,
were considered not one too many. Four coach-
men to attend a dozen horses, three cooks for the
masters and two more for the servants, a dozen
men to wait upon us at dinner-time (one man,
plate in hand, standing behind each person seated
at the table), and girls innumerable in the maid-
servants’ room—how could any one do with less
than this?
Kropotkin, Peter. Memoirs of a Revolutionist.Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1899.of his father’s Polish political prisoners, yet confronted
a major Polish revolution in 1863. He reopened univer-
sities and granted them greater freedom, yet they be-
came centers of intellectual discontent pressing for
more reforms. Alexander liberalized the press laws and
harvested radical criticism. He emancipated the serfs
but still faced peasant rebellions (one occurred in
Kazan as early as April 1861). Revolutionaries repeat-
edly tried to kill him. They ultimately succeeded, and
the reign that had begun with such promise ended with
his blood on the pavement.