Builders of United Italy

Finally he decided to quit Turin and break his fetters. When he was only a short distance on the road to Rome his resolution failed and he returned. Again he resolved to leave t...

Rome fell, and Mazzini's captivity came to an end. He passed through the city where twenty-one years before he had been Triumvir, and, seeking to avoid all popular demonstration...

Yet, with all these obstacles the campaign started at Como with much of the old spirit. Again the veterans of 1859 and 1860, many of the famous Thousand, many who had fought at...

We must now glance for a moment at the remarkable events which General Garibaldi was bringing to pass in Sicily and Calabria. The expedition of the Thousand had started from Gen...

The new Venetian ministry lasted until August 7, when the Royal Commissioners assumed office. Unfortunately Charles Albert was already being beaten back in Lombardy, and on Augu...

The lack of money oppressed him sorely; he would give to every Italian who begged of him on the score of universal brotherhood, gradually his few possessions went their way to t...

The Jesuits at Turin, secret agents of the Austrian government, did their utmost to frighten the King with gross misrepresentations as to the liberals. When new conspiracies bro...

Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi each played an important part in the next act of the great drama of Italy, but Garibaldi unquestionably held the center of the stage. The act was...

When he had fled from France he had been compelled to leave some of his printed works behind him, and he was now in fear lest their appearance and eager appeal for liberty shoul...

Working as an advocate Manin gave up his spare hours to studying Venetian _patois_ and to planning how in time his city might loosen the bonds of Austrian tyranny. As early as 1...

It would be interesting to consider the force of popular legend in a national movement, to weigh sentiment against statesmanship and military prowess. The land of Dante and of S...

Nevertheless, Louis Napoleon, president of the French Republic, sent an army under General Oudinot to Civita Vecchia, declaring that his purpose was simply to maintain order. Th...

It was the "Primato" which gave the exiled Gioberti his place as a great factor in the struggle for Italian independence. His ideas seem strangely archaic now, but they were com...

Cavour had other projects, he was anxious to reunite Parma and Modena with Piedmont, he was eager to have their Lombard estates returned to those Italians concerned in the last...

The next step in the dramatic history followed almost immediately, and although it took place without the open approval of Cavour there is no question but that he was secretly h...

Manzoni's greatest work, however, was yet to appear, for admirable as were his poems and inspiring as were his heroic dramas it was as a novelist that he was to reach his pinnac...

The new King, having sworn allegiance to the constitution, cast about him for a prime minister who could bring order out of seeming chaos, and chose Massimo d'Azeglio, then and...

There is no history more alternately desperate and hopeful than that of the scattered Italian states in their efforts to form a united nation. Many forces fuse in the progress o...

In order that France and England might learn to know the true Victor Emmanuel from the false one created by the slanders of the clerical party, the King, accompanied by Cavour a...

For seven years Victor Emmanuel reigned in Rome, and they were years of great strides in progress and in national unity. He visited foreign sovereigns, and they in turn visited...