656 Ch. 17 • The Era of National UnificationCavour and Victor Emmanuel now believed that France had betrayed
them. Austria lost Lombardy to Piedmont-Sardinia but would retain Vene
tia. By the Treaty of Turin on March 24, 1860, Napoleon III agreed to
Piedmont-Sardinia s annexation of Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Bologna,
in addition to Lombardy. In exchange, Piedmont-Sardinia ceded Savoy and
Nice, which passed to France after a plebiscite. With the exception of Vene
tia, almost all of northern and central Italy had now been united under the
constitutional monarchy of Piedmont-Sardinia.
Garibaldi and the Liberation of Southern Italy
The colorful republican revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882)
now leapt onto the stage. Born in Nice (and, like Cavour, a French speaker),
the charismatic and courageous Garibaldi had joined Mazzini’s Young Italy
movement in 1833. After twelve years in exile in South America, he fought
against the Austrians in Lombardy in 1848 and against the French in Rome
in 1849. The war of 1859 provided him with another opportunity to fight
Austria. Angered that the Villafranca armistice had cut short what he con
sidered a war for Italian unification, Garibaldi formed an army of volun
teers, hoping to drive the Austrians from Venetia and the French from
Rome. But an ill-prepared attack on Rome failed completely.
In April 1860, a revolt began against Francis II, the Bourbon monarch of
the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily), as a protest against the
milling tax and the high price of bread. Secretly encouraged by Cavour (who
planned to send Piedmont-Sardinia’s
army to Rome later to rescue the
pope) and openly urged on by Mazz
ini, Garibaldi landed in Sicily with
an army of 1,000 “Red Shirts.” Sicil
ians welcomed him as a liberator.
Garibaldi’s followers outfought the
larger Neapolitan army, taking
Palermo on May 27, 1860. This suc
cess swelled Garibaldi’s ragtag army
of nationalists and adventurers.
Garibaldi then announced that
he was assuming dictatorial power
in Sicily on behalf of King Victor
Emmanuel II of Piedmont-Sardinia.
In August, Garibaldi’s army returned
to the Italian peninsula. Aided by a
popular insurrection, the Red Shirts
took Naples, Italy’s largest city, in
September. Garibaldi’s victories now