Cavour, C

NICKNAME/ALIAS:  Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour

ACHIEVEMENT(S):  Unification of Italy

NAME:  Cavour, Camille de

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:  August 10, 1810, Turin, Piedmont, French Empire

DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: June 6, 1861,Turin, Italy; Aged 49

DISCIPLINE:  Statesman

FIELD:  Politics

LANGUAGE:  Italian

PARENTS:  Marquis Michel Benso de Cavour; Adele de Sellon

SIBLINGS:  Gustave

SPOUSE:  None

CHILDREN:  None

EDUCATION:  Military Academy of Turin

MAJOR WORK:  Unification of Italy

LIFE AND TIMES:

In 1830, at age 20, Army lieutenant Cavour was sent to Genoa, where he met Anna Giustiniani Schiaffino, an ardent advocate of democratic and republican ideas, whose salon was frequented by many members of the Carbonari, the secret revolutionary society whose guiding force then was Italian revolutionary author Mazzini*.

The French revolution of July, 1830, in which the last Bourbon king, Charles X, was overthrown and replaced with Louis-Philippe, inspired Cavour and strengthened his revolutionary ideas.  

He spent a lot of his time assessing social problems and reading such   social authors as British philosopher Jeremy Bentham*.  He also read the radical "Westminster Review", studied English politics, and in 1835 visited London and Paris, where he frequented the Parliaments, attended university lectures and visited factories, farms, railways, ports, hospitals, schools, and prisons.

In 1847,  when King Charles Albert of Piedmont, bowing to pressure from the strengthening liberals, conceded a certain amount of freedom to the press, Cavour took immediate advantage, founding, with Count Balbo: "Il Risorgimento,"  a newspaper which soon began advocating radical reforms. 

Once elected a member of Parliament in 1848, however, Cavour assumed an intermediate position between the conservatives and the revolutionaries, proving himself to be an effective and authoritative politician.   

Meanwhile,  Austria was gaining the upper hand in the war going on with Italy. Alarmed, Cavour, as a deputy in the Legislature, advocated a peace treaty.  But the war continued and was decisively lost in early 1849, with Charles Albert abdicating and  leaving for exile in Portugal.  He was succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel, with Parliament led by Marquis Massimo d'Azeglio as Prime Minister.

In 1850, Cavour was appointed Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, and the following year Minister of Finance,  when he became the most active and influential member of the Cabinet.  During the early 1850s, Cavour sought to create an alliance between the center -right and the center-left that would form a new majority with greater ability to move toward a policy of secularization and modernization in Piedmont (while defusing the demands of the revolutionaries).

The alliance, called the connubio ("marriage"), brought about the resignation of d'Azeglio in 1852 and the succession of Cavour as Prime Minister.  From that time until his death in 1861, he was his country's acknowledged political leader.       

In 1854, Piedmont became involved in the Crimean War* (1853-56) on the side of the French and English against Russia.  The war ended in 1856 with the Allied victory.  Some months earlier, Austria had renounced its neutrality in the conflict and had pressed Russia to make peace.

By supporting Napoleon III*'s clear intention to intervene militarily in Italy in the near future, and taking advantage of the general animosity toward Austria, Cavour proposed that the matter of Italy be considered by the international community.  He argued that the current state of affairs on the Italian peninsula threatened European peace because of Austrian encroachment in the north,  Papal misgovernment in central Italy, and the autocratic rule of the Spanish Bourbons in the south. 

Cavour was anxious to persuade the two great powers, France and England, to continue their anti-Austrian policy, and adopt a pro-Piedmont policy.  He finally succeeded in winning over Napoleon III, by proposing that he re-establish France as the leading power on the Continent with an expedition into Italy.  The aim would be to replace Austrian domination of the peninsula with French rule.

In 1858, the Franco-Piedmontese alliance came into force, and this time Austria's superior military power was counterbalanced by the French presence.  Franco-Piedmontese victories followed one after another until Napoleon signed an armistice with Austrian Emperor Franz Josef* at Villafranca in July, 1859.

Greatly angered by the armistice, (Cavour considered Victor Emmanuel's acquisition of Lombardy as part of the armistice deal a pittance,  compared with Cavour's dream of liberating Italy  from the Alps to the Adriatic), Cavour resigned as Prime Minister,  but  was returned to power by the King in January, 1860.

Meanwhile, the Austro-Franco-Piedmontese war had fueled revolutionary zeal in Tuscany, the duchies of Modena and Parma, and the Papal states between the Po and the Apennines, where the ducal rulers and papal legates had been expelled.

Realizing that the revolutionary movement in Italy could no longer be checked and that the French emperor could not withdraw from his position as protector of Italian self-determination, Cavour worked for the annexation to Piedmont of the central Italian duchies that had formerly belonged to the ancient rulers of Piedmont.  However, he was forced to give Savoy and Nice to France.

Through these negotiations with France, sealed by the Treaty of Turin of March, 1860, Cavour acquired for Piedmont most of north-central Italy except Venetia, creating a much larger kingdom than he had hoped for.  However, Cavour still was unpopular at home because of the surrender of Nice.  That concession particularly angered the revolutionary Italian patriot and soldier Giuseppe Garibaldi*,  who had been born there.

Garibaldi made up his mind to bring Sicily into a united Italy as a first step towards compensating for the surrender of Nice and Savoy.  To the astonishment of Cavour and many others, Garibaldi recruited 1,000 volunteers, sailed to Sicily, and destroyed Bourbon rule there and in the Italian south.

The greatest danger now was the potential for conflict between the moderate monarchists and the revolutionary republicans.  The danger was averted by the good sense and magnanimity of Garibaldi,  and by a diplomatic stratagem of Cavour.   Cavour sent an army under Victor Emmanuel across Marche and Umbria in central Italy to meet Garibaldi's army at Teano in October, 1860.  The famous handshake of the two leaders melded the two Italies into one united kingdom.

Cavour spent the last six months of his life trying to solve the questions of Venice and Rome.  He hoped Venice might be brought into the Italian fold as the result of a Hungarian uprising, led by revolutionary Kossuth*.  As for Rome, popular support was for a further annexation of the city and environs, considered the natural choice of capital of a united Italy. 

But this meant complex negotiations with the Papal State.  A key decision had to be made concerned the position of Pope Pius IX, the head of   Catholicism, after Rome had become the capital of Italy.  Cavour favored "a free church in a free state", but failed to win the support of the pope or his cardinals.  During vigorous negotiations, he fell  ill and died in Turin in June, 1861.

ASSESSMENT:  Brought about the unification of Italy and developed the country's parliamentary system.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS:  During a trip to England in 1835, met Chadwick*, Babbage* and    Oliphant*.

Knew Panizzi*.

ONELINER: Camillo Cavour, who unified Italy

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

EB

Clark, Martin, The Italian Risorgimento, London & New York:  Longman, 1998

Smith, Denis Mack, Cavour, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985