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Napoleon’s
Legacy
PART ONE
NATIONALISM AND
LIBERALISM
1815-48
MAZZINI AND ‘YOUNG
ITALY’
THE REVOLUTION OF
1848
THE RISORGIMENTO
The Legacy of Napoleon
Between 1792 and 1815, revolutionary wars swept Europe. France under Napoleon Bonaparte
conquered Italy in 1802 and swept away many of the last vestiges of feudalism across the many
states of the Italian peninsula.
Napoleon made dramatic changes to Italy’s government and crowned himself king of a united
Italy in 1805. Prior to his invasion Italy had been comprised of a series of small, weak and
backward autocratic states. Napoleon promoted the republican ideas of the French Revolution in
Italy. He imposed on Italians a new notion of citizenship based on national, not local identity and
loyalty. Citizens of Italy (not Lombardy, Sicily or Venetia), were expected to enjoy the rights that
an Italian nation and state could offer, and to take on the responsibilities of working and fighting
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to defend her. The overthrow of Napoleon in 1814, followed a
year later by his defeat and exile at Waterloo, saw the changes
he imposed on Italy reversed. In the period of Napoleonic rule,
however, there had been a development of nationalist thinking
in Italy and it would not die easily. Austria, who had been the
dominant power in Italy before she was defeated by France,
returned and re-imposed her will on the states of the
peninsula.
Nationalism and Liberalism
Not only had some Italians come to see themselves as
members of an Italian nation during Napoleon’s rule, but there
were many competing ideas about what shape a future Italy
would take. Some embers of the clergy hoped for a Catholic
Italy, ruled by the Pope, and one priest in particular, Vincento
Gioberti, set out arguments for a theocratic Italy in his book Of
the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians, in 1843.
Other nationalists hoped for a federal Italy, where the
individual states retained much of their powers but a central
government in the wealthiest northern state, Piedmont, would
rule the country.
The Carbonari, a revolutionary secret society that was inspired
by the liberal values of the French Revolution. They wanted to
see a democratic republican Italy emerge and they were
opposed to the autocratic regimes that had been installed
across Italy by the Austrians. The Carbonari were made up of
intellectuals, students, idealists, journalists and were
predominantly middle class.
Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini was one of the key figures of liberal
nationalism in the early to mid 19th Century. He joined the
Carbonari aged 22, in 1827 and in 1831 he founded a society
called Young Italy, believing that a new liberal state could be
created through a popular uprising and it grew to 60,000
members in two years with branches all over the country. The
first attempt at revolt was uncovered in 1833 and the
conspirators were crushed with twelve Mazzinians being
executed and Mazzini himself sentenced to death in absentia.
A further revolt also failed and Mazzini was exiled from his
temporary home in Switzerland and sought refuge in Britain.
Mazzini also tried to develop nationalist movements in other
Metternich described
the term ‘Italy’ merely
as: “A geographic
expression”
Prince Metternich was the
foreign minister of the
Austrian Empire and
attended the Congress of
Vienna, where the new map
of Europe was drawn up. He
was chiefly interested in
creating a post war Europe
that was free from the threat
of revolution. Austria and
Russia cooperated closely
between 1815-48 to
revolutionary and
nationalist uprisings.
Questions:
1) What was the political
legacy of Napoleon in
Italy?
2) Why did Austria need to
control Italy?
3) What do the different
ideas about the kind of
future Italy that
revolutionaries wanted
to create tell us about:
A) The revolutionaries?
B) The future of Italy
itself?
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European countries and created a Young Poland and Young Germany movement.
The revolutions of 1848
Between 1846 and 1848 a series of catastrophic harvest failures and crop blights
brought many European countries to the brink of starvation. Revolts against the
occupying Austrians in Italy followed and the Piedmontese king Charles Albert saw it as
an opportunity to force the weakened Austrians (who had to deal with uprisings in
Poland, Germany and Hungary) out of Italy and to unify the nation behind Piedmont.
Unfortunately the Piedmontese were easily defeated by Austria and the First War of
Independence ended in defeat for Italian revolutionaries and Piedmont.
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