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Italy Special - Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (Italy's First Prime Minister & Italian Unification)
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Italy Special - Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (Italy's First Prime Minister & Italian Unification)
Episode Transcript
Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Camillo Benso.
Parliament: Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!
Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram and I'm here with my dad. We usually review all the British Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Keir Starmer, but this week we are on vacation. Yay!
Joe: Our family has been driving on a tour through northern and late—
Abram: You forgot we visited France and Monaco.
Joe: And France.
Abram: And we're going to visit a tiny part of Switzerland.
Joe: And Monaco and a tiny part of Switzerland. And I know of no better way to appreciate a place than by learning about a little bit of its history. And fortunately for us, the Piedmont region where we're spending most of our time is the heart of the Italian unification movement.
Abram: We're not even in the Piedmont region right now.
Joe: No, we're not right now, but we were earlier and we will be again. I think, maybe not. Fortunately for us, the Piedmont region, where we spent some time yesterday, is the heart of the Italian unification movement and the home of one of Italy's greatest politicians.
Abram: And the other guy who liked to fight.
Joe: The Count of Cavour. No, Garibaldi is— he's not from Turin, he's from Nice.
Abram: That's nice.
Joe: And Abram, Camillo is who we're going to talk about this week.
Abram: Then why does your book say Cavour?
Joe: Because he's the Count of Cavour.
Abram: So that means he's the only person who knows how to do math in Cavour?
Joe: I'm not going to dignify that with a response. So just for our listeners and for you, Abram, the history of Italian unification is a complex one, but there are a couple key characters: Cavour, the political leader and a bit of a schemer, and Giuseppe Garibaldi. He's a hotheaded—
Abram: Is he bald? Uh, no, he's not actually bald, but he has "bald" in his name and he's hotheaded. Maybe his hair burnt off.
Joe: Yeah. And Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hotheaded revolutionary. Garibaldi couldn't have unified the country politically without Cavour, and Cavour didn't have the stomach for the radical and aggressive nature of Garibaldi's approaches. But we are a Prime Minister podcast, and that means we're going to focus on Cavour. But Garibaldi is going to be out there and doing stuff as well as others, and I don't want anyone to think that we're only providing a part of the story.
Abram: Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at primefactorspodcast.com. We're also on Facebook and BlueSky. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, and review. However, we only accept reviews above four stars, or at least four stars.
Joe: If they want to review us lower, they can, but I would be sad.
Abram: We only like reviews that are that high.
Joe: Well, right now we only have five-star reviews, so let's not inspire anyone to give us less.
Abram: Okay.
Joe: All right, are you ready, Abram?
Abram: Oh yeah.
Picture This
Joe: It's well past midnight on a stifling July night in Monzambano, the far eastern edge of newly won Lombardy. In a dim anteroom of the royal headquarters, Cavour paced like a caged animal. A single oil lamp burned beside a bare wooden bench, casting long, wavering shadows on the plaster walls. This was no palace in Turin. Here the air reeked of ink, wax, and soldiers' boots. Camillo pulled out his handkerchief, wiped sweat from his brow and the fog off of his glasses. Somewhere beyond that door, King Victor Emmanuel II had agreed to terms that Cavour considered nothing short of a national betrayal. Footsteps echoed. A servant in the king's colors appeared, murmuring in Piedmontese, "The king awaits." Cavour stepped into the light of the king's study and paused, blinking. This room was brighter, hot, too many lamps and too many candles. Rich carpets and a few polished chairs had been brought from Turin, but the place had been overrun by war. Maps sprawled across tables and on the floor, documents lying open, even an officer's sword propped carelessly in one corner.
Abram: Hmm, poor sword.
Joe: Behind a heavy desk sat Victor Emmanuel II, broad-shouldered, shirt open at the throat, with a cigar in his teeth.
Abram: How do you get a cigar inside someone's tooth?
Joe: You sort of hold it there and it's not literally— it's not literally in his tooth.
Abram: So you do this, that, this is what you do?
Joe: No.
Abram: And then you want to like that? Okay. Audience, please don't smoke.
Joe: Where the heck was I?
Abram: Oh, right. Cigar in his tooth.
Joe: Behind a heavy desk sat Victor Emmanuel II, broad-shouldered, shirt open at the throat, with a cigar between his teeth. That's better. His uniform coat lay tossed over a chair, and his face glistened with sweat. And leaning against the wall stood Costantino Nigra, a mustached diplomat. He looked just as exhausted. In his hand, he held a folded document. In times of stress, the king's native Piedmontese accent was unmistakable. "Please, Cavour, read it." Cavour took the paper. As his eyes swept the lines, his cheeks reddened. This was even worse than the rumor. Lombardy was gained, but Venetia was left to Austria, and the rest of Italy unchanged, like it was packed in winter ice. The dream of united Italy stopped cold. All of Napoleon III's promises melted away into thin air. "Sire," Cavour began, then caught himself. In his frustration, he too switched to his native Piedmontese. "This, this, this makes no sense. We're winning. What is Lombardy worth if Venetia remains in their hands? At the moment of victory, we surrender? With this, Italy will not be free, not in our lifetimes." Cavour began to pace, struggling to control his agitation in front of his liege. "Sire, sire, refuse it! If the French will not fight, we'll fight alone, and if we fall, we'll fall for Italy." The king's eyes narrowed. "Cavour, we cannot go it alone. We have freed millions, and one day we may free more, but for today, for now, we need peace." Cavour stopped, his chest heaving. "But, but, but— I am the leader of the government. I am the president of the council. I—"
Abram: I—
Joe: He broke off, the unspoken end of that sentence burning in the air. Finally, he straightened. "Sire, I will not sign this. I will not sign away Italy. I resign."
Abram: Dun dun dun!
Joe: Victor Emmanuel pushed back his chair, came around the desk, and placed a heavy hand on Cavour's shoulders. His voice softened.
Abram: I think Cavour's a jerk.
Joe: We just started, Abram. "I'm sorry, Camillo. We all need rest." He gestured to an attendant. Cavour had walked into the room as Prime Minister, but he walked out a broken man.
Abram: Bye, Cavour.
Joe: What do you think of that?
Abram: Jerk.
Joe: He's a jerk. He's— he's—
Abram: Can't accept peace.
Joe: It's not that he didn't want peace. It's that he had been fighting his entire life for this idea of a national Italy, and he's seeing it like being ripped out of his hands. And as we go through our episode, I think you'll understand exactly how hard he had worked to unify Italy. And exactly how much it hurt him that this opportunity was lost.
Abram: Hmm. But if he wasn't able to unite Italy, why are we doing an episode on it? Shouldn't we be doing the person who was able to unite Italy?
Joe: Spoilers. He does win in the end. This is like— this is a moment. This is a dramatic moment in his life.
Abram: Please cut out the spoiler.
Joe: We'll see. All right.
Abram: Wait. So, Dad, you want our audience to know what happens at the end.
Joe: I mean, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?
Abram: Not all stories have a happy ending unless you're Disney.
Joe: That's true. That's true. Anyway, shall we continue?
Abram: Yup.
A Brief History of Italy
Joe: If there's one part of the world that I don't need to explain a lot of the early history about, it's Italy. The name Italy might have come from the Greek word Italia, which referred to a tribe in the tip of the southern peninsula, but it gradually came to mean the entire peninsula.
Abram: And a little bit north of the peninsula. Yeah, we're not on a peninsula, Dad.
Joe: There are several other explanations for the origin of the term, but let's move on. In prehistory, Italy was divided into small states and tribes, but thanks to the rapid expansion of Rome as an economic and military powerhouse, all of Italy was united by the Roman Republic era and for the first time by the Social War around 80 BCE. Everyone in the peninsula could be a citizen, and a common culture began to emerge, and was only strengthened as the Roman Republic gave way to the Roman Empire. And there are millions of good books and podcasts about the Roman Empire, but Abram, how many Roman emperors can you name?
Abram: I'll try though. Augustus Caesar, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Caligula, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Galba, Vespasian, Titus, Vitellius, um, Domitian, Commodus, Septimius Severus, Geta, uh, the evil guy.
Joe: Who's the evil guy?
Abram: The one who killed Geta. Are you doing them in order?
Joe: Mostly. Jesus.
Abram: Uh, the teenager. Okay. Let me think. The guy in his 50s. What? I can't remember their names. I'm just doing, you know.
Joe: Okay, we don't need to keep going, but—
Abram: Oh, I know. Caracalla. He was the evil guy.
Joe: Good. Do you have any more you want to name for the end?
Abram: I'll name the Western ones.
Joe: Okay, go ahead. I want to see how well you do.
Abram: Let me see. Honorius, Majorian, Libius Severus, Romulus, Julius Nepos, Olybrius, Anthemius, Petronius Maximus, Anthemius.
Joe: The impressive thing is you haven't named a single Constantinian, and those are like the most famous for most people.
Abram: What do you mean by them?
Joe: Constantine and Constantine II and Constantine and Constantine II and Constantius and Constantius. You always impress me by sometimes you know the ones that I don't expect and you don't know the ones that I expect. Should we continue, Abram?
Abram: No, no, no, no.
Joe: Abram, good job. Okay, let's continue. The Roman Empire conquered most of Europe, but by the 400s was in a state of deep decline.
Abram: I know.
Joe: As the barbarian and non-Roman tribes increasingly colonized and conquered parts of the Roman-held territory, and the whole Roman system was crumbling.
Abram: When did it fall? 476. The last claim to it was in 480.
Joe: Yep. And that led Italy to be controlled by who?
Abram: Do you know?
Joe: Barbarians. Odoacer specifically proclaimed himself the King of Italy. And you might want to remember that title, King of Italy, because it's going to be important later. He was conquered by the Ostrogoths. But don't worry, the Eastern Roman Empire will save the day by a whole bunch of people you didn't name. A hundred years later, Justinian I had managed to reconquer Italy by 554 CE, but it wasn't done easily. The peninsula had suffered under famine and disease and was very weak, and so it became very easy pickings when the Lombards came in 568. And after that, it was going to be more than a thousand years before Italy was united again.
Abram: Aw, that's sad.
Joe: Ironically, the Lombards would adopt some post-Roman customs, including the use of Late Latin, and despite being a barbarian kingdom, this idea that they were once part of what had been a unified culture persisted. In the next thousand years, control of parts of Italy would change hands many times. Charlemagne would take over the Lombard kingdom, but much of the peninsula would remain outside his grasp. Abram, what years did Charlemagne rule?
Abram: He died in 814, but I don't know when he started to rule, when and where and how.
Joe: As we advance further into history, Italy became a battleground of nations and ideas. Venice and the maritime republics would rise as trading centers.
Abram: So there's Venice and Genoa.
Joe: More or less. During the Renaissance, city-states like Genoa and Florence would be epicenters of European culture.
Abram: Okay, so everything's Genoa.
Joe: The Catholic Church remained seated in Rome.
Abram: And Genoa.
Joe: Not Genoa.
Abram: Yes, Genoa.
Joe: But controlled faith and territory across the continent. And against all of that, powers like Spain, France, and Austria treated Italy like a chessboard as they took direct control or propped up individual leaders. And by the late 1700s, where we're going to start our story, Italy will be completely broken, with at least a dozen semi-independent regions, including Genoa, some of which are under the thumb of one empire or another.
Abram: Including Genoa.
Joe: Yeah, which I think actually at this point Genoa is still Piedmont, so it's part of Sardinia. We are for now going to focus on just one.
Abram: Genoa.
Joe: The Kingdom of Sardinia, which is in the upper northwest corner of Italy.
Abram: And Sardinia.
Joe: It is called Sardinia, but it's not just the island, right? And Abram, for our listeners that don't know geography as well, where is the island of Sardinia?
Abram: So there's a boot and it's kicking a deflated soccer ball. Okay. And then above that soccer ball, near the player's jersey, if you go a bit over here and there's a weird rectangle thing. Okay.
Joe: Yes. And there's two of those islands. So which one is Sardinia?
Abram: Sicily's the deflated soccer ball that the boot's kicking towards the middle. Middle of the boot, there's the rectangle one. That's Sardinia.
Joe: And what's north of Sardinia?
Abram: Europe.
Joe: Right, but there's another—
Abram: Genoa!
Joe: Not Genoa. There's another island.
Abram: Yes, it is. Genoa's north of Sardinia.
Joe: Is it really?
Abram: Yes.
Joe: Great. I was trying to get you to say Corsica.
Abram: Yeah, Corsica is north of it.
Joe: Anyway, so it's called Sardinia, but it's not just the island.
Abram: It's named after sardines.
Joe: I think sardines are named after it, actually. So it's called Sardinia, but it's not just the island, it's also Piedmont and Savoy. So for our purposes, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the capital is actually in—
Abram: Genoa.
Joe: No, it's Turin. And not Sardinia, not Genoa, it is Turin. This quirk of naming is important because the Kingdom of Sardinia was ruled from Turin by the House of Savoy and was one of the few relatively independent Italian states at the time. For centuries, they had skillfully navigated the great power struggles between the royal houses of France and Austria. But now, at the turn of the 19th century, a new force is about to upend the entire world. Napoleon Bonaparte.
Abram: Oh.
Joe: But for our story, we're going to zoom in now to the Benso family, Piedmont nobles of the Marquisate of Cavour.
A Family of Collaborators
Joe: So, Abram, the Marquess of Cavour or the Marquisate of Cavour, was established with the Benso family back in 1649, purchased from the king, right? We've seen something like that in the British system. Which king? I don't know who was king of Sardinia in 1649.
Abram: I probably could have said if it was English king or maybe French king.
Joe: Well, who was the English and French king in 1649?
Abram: In England, it was Charles I for the first month, and then no one for the rest. Okay, and in France it was Louis XIV, I think.
Joe: All right, well, we'll check that. The point is that the Marquisate was named for the town of Cavour, and the seat of that Marquisate was the Rocca di Cavour. That was like a castle and a rock that was above that town of Cavour. Unfortunately, the castle was destroyed in 1690, and by that point the family was already falling on hard times. They moved to the nearby mansion at Santena, which I guess anytime you're moving to a mansion, you're not doing too bad. But they had to leave the castle in ruins. By the time we get to the 1780s, Philippine was forced to sell their silverware, their tapestries, and honestly, Abram, just about anything else to keep the family solvent. The economic instability that was being caused by all the things going on in France, the French Revolution— like, it really didn't help the family.
Abram: French Revolution was 1790.
Joe: All right, so we'll scratch that. The important thing is that by the 1780s, the family wasn't doing so well, and that they were being forced to sell off their silverware, their tapestries, and just about anything else in order to keep the wealth going. So even though they were marquis, they were not marquis making a lot of money. But this is when Camillo's father, Michele Antonio Paolo Benso, is born. Now, at that point, the current king of Sardinia is someone named Charles Emmanuel IV. He came to the throne in 1796 when his father died, and he and his family were closely tied to the kings of France, or the former kings of France. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were his brother- and sister-in-law. Sardinia had fought and lost against the French in the War of the First Coalition, but in 1798, the bill came due. First, they just granted France the right to transport troops across Piedmont land, but the presence of those French troops made it very easy for France to force Charles Emmanuel to abandon the region and flee to Sardinia, once again making the Kingdom of Sardinia just the island. Piedmont, including the territory of the Marquess of Cavour, was shortly after absorbed into the French Republic.
Abram: Who is that under?
Joe: So this is the point of the French Republic where it's the Directory. So Napoleon hasn't come to power yet.
Abram: But the king and queen have already been beheaded.
Joe: Yeah, the king and queen gone. And because the King of Sardinia was closely related to the former king and queen, they kicked him out. They basically took over Piedmont, kicked him out to Sardinia itself. And France is now ruling over that part of northwestern Italy. The first thing you should know about the French Republic is that they didn't like nobles very much, and that the Marquisate was abolished. They're all citizens now, just like everybody else. And around 1798, Camillo's father Michele was 17, and he was drafted into the French army. He was just a common soldier, although he quickly became a junior artillery officer. He was forced to fight in the French wars at this point, lots and lots of wars. He was forced to fight against the Austrians, but he actually switched sides when the Austrians seemed to be winning. He switched sides. He joined a reconstituted Sardinian army. He tried to push out the French, but he failed.
Abram: Oh.
Joe: So he was fighting for the French, then he turned traitor. He was then fighting against the French, and now he's just lost again. So he's fleeing to Switzerland because—
Abram: Switzerland's neutral, like always.
Joe: I think so. He claimed at the time, or he claimed later, that he had been injured and couldn't fight anymore, but there's not a lot of documentation about this injury. I think the bigger point is that he just fought for the French, and then he rebelled against the French and fought against them, and that if he would have stuck around, he would have been executed as a traitor by somebody. Whichever side was winning probably didn't like him, so he just needed to get the heck out of there. In Switzerland, he settled down. And despite all the madness that was going on in the world, he proposed to Victorie, the Count de Sellon's eldest daughter. Guess what she said?
Abram: No.
Joe: She said no. So having failed to court the count's eldest daughter, he then tried to court the count's second eldest daughter. And what do you think she said?
Abram: No. Actually, she said yes. I'm the second daughter. I'm not as good. I don't know. Maybe I don't have self-esteem.
Joe: But the point is, her name is Adele de Sellon. And she said yes. And so she is now Michele's wife and the future Camillo Benso's mother. While Michele is away, the rest of the family, quite frankly, make peace with France. They sign a trade deal that they're going to provide cloth for the French military. And the Benso family starts to see their fortunes rising again. Most of my sources paint Grandma Philippine as the leader of the family during this period. I have no idea what Camillo's grandfather was doing. But in 1807, it ceases to matter because his grandfather dies and Michele becomes the next Marquess. But of course, the French don't care. There's no such thing as the Marquess of Cavour because they're in the French system now, and he's still in exile. In 1804, do you know what happens in 1804?
Abram: Henry Addington leaves being Prime Minister.
Joe: In 1804, Abram, the French Republic elevated Napoleon and he became the leader of a new French Empire. Piedmont became just another department in the French Empire called the Po department, and they didn't even get to keep their name. But by this point, Grandma Philippine had worked her magic. She had fully ingratiated herself and her family in with the French aristocracy. They have become collaborators. So in 1808, a man who's not important for anything except his name— well, not important to us for anything except his name. He is Prince Camillo Borghese, was made the Governor-General of the Transalpine Departments of the French Empire. In other words, he is now the governor of the region that includes Piedmont and where the Bensos are living.
Abram: He's now the governor. So right now he's the governor.
Joe: He is in 1808 made the governor.
Abram: Okay, so that means he's been a governor for an impressive 217 years. I think that's a world record.
Joe: Wasn't the governor the whole time, Abram.
Abram: Actually, it's 200.
Joe: In any event, notice that he is called Prince because Emperor Napoleon doesn't mind noble titles as much, even though all of the old pre-French titles are still defunct. As Prince Camillo Borghese sets up his new palace in Turin overseeing occupied Piedmont, he needs a staff.
Abram: And thanks to Philippine and the Benso family, he gets a giant one that he can point at things and make them turn into flames.
Joe: Possibly, but he also needs workers. And thanks to Philippine, the Benso family have all really become friends with the French. Grandma Philippine is made a Countess of the Empire. She becomes a lady-in-waiting for Prince Camillo's wife. Dad is allowed to return from his exile in Switzerland. He is made a Baron of the Empire and the First Chamberlain. And even Aunt Vittoria, the woman who turned down Camillo's dad's offer, she is made a Baroness of the Empire and a lady-in-waiting. So this whole family is now completely working with the French Empire, helping them control Piedmont. And they're nobles again. They now have French Empire titles, so they're not the Marquess of Cavour. And all it took was abandoning their freedom, abandoning their homeland, and becoming collaborators to the French Empire. They even get to live in the palace in Turin.
Abram: Did we see the palace?
Joe: I don't know that we did. So on August 10th, 1810, Michele Benso and his wife welcomed their second son. They named that son Camillo in honor of their patron, Prince Camillo Borghese. And I think it's ironic that Italy's great unifier and the man who helped push out the French and the Austrians and the Spanish from Italy would come from a family of collaborators and named for their French patron. I think that's really ironic.
Abram: Why?
Joe: It's just weird, right? So just somebody that is so important to the freedom of Italy would be so involved, or his family would be so involved in the domination of Italy by the French. But it doesn't matter. The story of Camillo Benso starts here.
Silver Spoons
Joe: So we start every biography with a look at Silver Spoons— how connected and influential the subject's family is and how many legs up they get in the world. I do this calculation partially using Wikipedia, and this time I'm using Italian Wikipedia because, guess what, not all of these people have articles in English. In all, Camillo Benso is born with 13 silver spoons. That places him somewhere between William Pitt the Elder and John Stuart. His father's side of the family is Sardinian nobility, while his mother's side has several peers of the Holy Roman Empire. Add to that all the French Empire titles that his parents achieved right before his birth, and you have someone who has lots of advantages despite being just a second son. Of course, what nobody knew at the time was that the French Empire was not going to last. Napoleon attempted to invade Russia during the winter. Britain and many allies in the Sixth Coalition took advantage of his mistakes. They captured Paris. Napoleon was sent to exile on Elba. He escaped.
Abram: Then he came back.
Joe: He re-established the French Empire, and then he was defeated at Waterloo.
Abram: But he didn't die at Waterloo.
Joe: No.
Abram: He went to exile again, too far away to come back.
Joe: Yeah.
Abram: How did he come back from the island he was on?
Joe: I don't know.
Abram: Did he just swim?
Joe: I think he probably had help. So that defeat not only inspired an ABBA song, but it also meant that all the groveling that the Benso family had been doing for a generation was now for nothing. King Victor Emmanuel returned as the King of Sardinia, and the Benso families were now marquesses again. But all of those French Empire titles are gone.
Abram: That's sad.
Joe: Well, in a way. There were celebrations in the streets at Turin. Celebrations, but with one caveat. Some of the freedoms granted under the French Empire were rolled back when Victor Emmanuel returned to the throne. This also meant that young Camillo Benso, who has not yet turned five, is now called the Count of Cavour as a courtesy title.
Abram: Why?
Joe: That's a good question. So, in the British system, the second son wouldn't get a title. But in the Sardinian system, which seems to be based on the French system, his elder brother was allowed to be called the Marquess even before their dad was dead. But as the second son, he's allowed to be called the Count. I found contradictory information as to why that is allowed, but let's just go with it. He is called the Count of Cavour because that's what he is going to be called the rest of his life.
Abram: He's never gonna be a marquess.
Joe: Well, he can't be because his brother isn't gonna die. Well, not in enough time.
Abram: His brother's immortal!
Joe: Since we're on the subject of change, let's look quickly at what Italy looked like when the French Empire was gone. Sardinia is now a bit larger than before. It has Sardinia, Piedmont, Savoy, and Liguria. Sardinia also controls what is now part of France as far west as Nice.
Abram: That's nice.
Joe: Did not control Monaco, but they—
Abram: Morocco?
Joe: Monaco. Yes.
Abram: Sorry. They didn't control Morocco. Why do you need to point that out?
Joe: They also protected Monaco, although that was semi-independent. Northeast Italy is called the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, and it's part of the Austrian Empire that includes Milan and Venice and everything further east. Heading south, Parma, Modena, and Tuscany are all technically independent duchies, but they're really puppets of the Austrian Empire. Further south still, and east all the way to Bologna, are the Papal States, centered around Rome and home to the Pope.
Abram: What's south of that?
Joe: The southern end of the peninsula is the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Abram: Why are there two Sicilies?
Joe: Great question, Abram. It is the merger of the Kingdom of Sicily—
Abram: Yeah.
Joe: —with the Kingdom of Naples.
Abram: Then why is Naples now a Sicily?
Joe: But confusingly, the Kingdom of Naples also called itself Sicily. So by merging the Kingdom of Sicily, which is Naples, with the Kingdom of Sicily that is not Naples, they now call it the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
Abram: So that means a place is now also referred to as Sicily.
Joe: Yes. So the Two Sicilies were previously under the Spanish thumb.
Abram: Okay, so is this the Portuguese thumb and this is the Spanish thumb? Yes. So, and these are the Two Sicilies? Is this essentially what happened?
Joe: Yes. San Marino, independent, but very, very tiny.
Abram: Is it tinier than now?
Joe: It's the same size as now, I think. We do get a funny story when Camillo was six. When visiting family in Switzerland, the family traveled with rented post horses, much like the same way as we saw in some of our British episodes. The six-year-old Camillo was very unhappy with the quality of the horses, and he immediately demanded that the postmaster be fired when they arrived at the Swiss village. The host replied that only the mayor, called a syndic, could fire the postmaster, but that Camillo could have an audience with the mayor the next day. So imagine a six-year-old kid, right, demanding when they arrive in Switzerland, "I want to see the mayor." Do you think you'd get away with that?
Abram: I want to see the mayor! I want to see the mayor!
Joe: Anyway, that night, Camillo's host sent a message to the mayor about this hilarious six-year-old, and they arranged for him to meet with all the pomp and circumstance you can imagine for a marquess's family meeting Swiss aristocrats. Camillo demanded that the postmaster be fired. The mayor agreed and then promptly did nothing, and everyone found it to be so funny that they wrote about it later. I don't think this story tells us anything about Camillo except that he had once been a very demanding and spoiled child. At age ten, he was sent away to military academy. His elder brother got to go to a better school where he could have a classical education, but as a second son, Camillo's options were more limited. And at the military academy, he basically got to learn math and geography and geometry, but very little in the way of reading or writing, just stuff that you might need as a military officer. And he'll later complain that the academy did not prepare him for a life as a journalist or a politician. But really, that was the point. It's a military academy. That's what it's for. But although Camillo was not being given a liberal education, many students, revolutionaries around Europe were waking up and demanding rights. In Italy, a secret society known as the Carbonari had taken root and were whispering of freedoms and possible reunification of the peninsula. The revolutionary dreamers in Sardinia just needed a tiny little spark to light the fire of rebellion.
Revolutionary Dreamers
Joe: Abram, the world left behind by the French Empire was a powder keg. Despite France falling into chaos and authoritarianism, Europeans and beyond dreamed of liberty and throwing off all those absolute monarchies that still existed. Some wanted a republic like the United States, some wanted a constitutional monarchy like Britain, and others mixed those ideas with the idea of nation-building. Right? Let's have a nation of all Italians or a nation of all Germans. And this pattern is repeated over and over and over again in the 19th century. One rebellion will inspire another and another and another, and liberal ideas will spread kind of like wildfire. The year 1821 is one such moment. Camillo is only eleven, so he's not involved in this, but he would have learned about these events even in his military academy. In that year, Spaniards fought to regain a constitution that was taken from them. Mexico and Peru fought for independence from Spain. Greece rebelled to escape the Ottoman Empire. But there was stuff happening closer to home. In Piedmont, on March 10th, 1821, a group of soldiers at the Alessandria fortress mutinied. They raised a tri—
Abram: Mutiny mean—
Joe: Mutiny means rebelled. I'm an officer and I am going to take my troops and point them against the people that I'm supposed to be fighting, or on a ship, taking over against the captain's orders.
Abram: Oh.
Joe: But they raised a tricolor flag of rebellion. They demanded "constitution or death," and they began marching fifty miles towards Turin, picking up revolutionaries, picking up students, picking up people that wanted a constitution in Italy. By March 13th, they had made it to Turin. King Victor Emmanuel I said, "I know, I'll quit." And he abdicated. Bye! His younger brother, Prince Charles Felix, is now King Charles Felix. But guess what? King Charles Felix is outside the capital at the time and can't get there.
Abram: That's sad.
Joe: So a 22-year-old cousin of the king, the next in line for the throne, named Prince Charles Albert, was installed as regent. And Charles Albert was a member of the younger generation, a new man who was open to new ideas. He was beloved by the growing liberal movement as someone who understood them. He met with revolutionaries in Piedmont, and he agreed with them. Sardinia could have a constitution. They won. Except King Charles Felix immediately put a stop to it. He was a 56-year-old authoritarian of the very old mold. He ripped up the new constitution and sent his well-meaning cousin into exile. And then he used Austrian troops— Austrian troops— to put down the revolts in Piedmont. The dreams of a liberal monarchy in Italy were dashed, for now. But keep track of this Prince Charles Albert. He's going to be an important character. Although he started off as a liberal, he quickly has a change of heart. He personally joined a force to invade Spain in 1823 to reinstall their king, and he's going to be seen now by all those people who saw him as a potential hero. He's now seen as a traitor, a pariah.
Abram: Why did they do this?
Joe: Well, good question, Abram, and the answer is probably that he was next in line for the throne and that he wanted to get back in the good graces of his cousin so that they didn't write him out of the succession. So basically, he's gonna be like, "I'm gonna do whatever I need to do to make sure that I'm still the next in line for the throne." But now that Prince Charles Albert is allowed back in Turin, he needs to staff his household. And the subject of our episode is now fourteen, and he's selected to be a page for the prince. These duties complemented his military training. It involved delivering messages, introducing guests, and even traveling with the prince on trips. And it was probably arranged by Camillo's father or grandmother, because it meant that the prince would now help pay for his education. I don't know much about Camillo during this time, but we know that he was very much a child of the 1821 revolts. He came to believe wholeheartedly in the unification of Italy. He believed in a British-style constitutional monarchy, and he thought that politics would have to be the solution to the problems. And he also hated his new boss, Prince Charles Albert. He saw him as a traitor. In 1826, he graduated from military academy first in his class, and thanks to his excellent math skills, he was made a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers in the Royal Sardinian Army. So basically, they were the people that would follow the army around building bridges, fortifications, whatever was needed. Despite his intelligence, however, Camillo's relationship with the prince soured. And different biographies put this in a different way. Maybe he made a childish outburst about how much he hated the uniforms. They apparently made him look like a lobster. Or maybe he disagreed with the prince over policy. And at this point, Prince Charles Albert had become such a symbol of the liberal movement's failure and misplaced trust that the young Camillo may have just struggled to contain his disdain for his royal patron. And by 1828, that relationship reached a breaking point. Prince Charles Albert kicked him out of his household and may even have tried to strip him of his military commission, but if he did, the king refused. And by the end of 1830, Camillo's grousing about the government had gotten around, and he was pretty much put in exile. He was assigned as a supervisor to rebuild the fortress of Bard. Do you remember we passed that fort?
Abram: Yes.
Joe: Although the role could have been seen as a promotion, Camillo felt that it was a "virtual exile" and a punishment for his liberal sympathies. The posting is going to keep him far from his friends and far from those liberal intelligentsia in Turin. And sources differ on why he was exiled. It could have simply been his bad relationship with the prince or an old grudge being repaid. One source said that his father had become more prominent in Turin. He's going to become the mayor, amongst other things.
Abram: Did he become the mayor?
Joe: Michele Benso will become first a commissioner of the city, then the head of police, and then he's going to become the mayor. I don't know which he is right now, but the point is his father is now important enough that maybe his son is a little bit of an embarrassment and he just wants him far away to not spout liberal nonsense. Just after being posted at Bard, King Charles Felix died, and now Prince Charles Albert is now king.
Abram: Yeah, but now that there's no one else that could kick him out, why didn't he just get back his liberal ideas from earlier?
Joe: You have a great question, and one that we're going to get to in a couple minutes. Good catching that. Anyway, Camillo was still upset with the prince and quite frankly still saw his new king as a traitor, so he used his time at Bard to deepen his understanding. He researched liberal philosophy. He wrote papers. He talked about the importance of finding an "Italian Washington" that would be able to deliver Italy in case 1821 ever happened again. But he's also being loud enough at this that he's seen as an agitator. He's being watched by the police. He's a radical or something like one. And so in November 1831, at age 21, Camillo's anger at being trapped at Bard— at the fortress— boiled over. He resigned from the army and returned home. He was still full of ideas, but now he was unemployed.
A Man of the Land
Joe: By this point in 1831, Camillo's family had largely found their place again in Sardinian society. The sins of them working with the French had been forgotten, and Michele Benso was now more than acting as the Marquess of Cavour. And as I told you earlier, he has become established in Turin. Despite being out of the military, Camillo was not idle for long, and his father just gave him lots of work in order to keep the young man busy. First, his father rented a property from his sister-in-law, who is now the Duchess Vittoria de Sellon. This property is at a town called Grinzane, and Camillo gets sent there to run this estate, which mostly consisted of unproductive vineyards. And at the same time, Camillo also bought himself an estate at Leri, about a full day's carriage ride from Grinzane. And that estate was focused on rice fields. It was so poor that his biographer reports that he had only a single servant who had to act— get this— one servant, Abram— as cook and butler and housekeeper. Can you imagine being so poor that you could only have one servant to do all of those jobs?
Abram: We don't even have one servant. Man. We have zero servants.
Joe: Yeah, we're clearly not related to marquesses, I guess. Camillo wrote proudly that, quote, "I have purchased a large estate among the rice fields. All I am in want of is the money to pay for it." Fortunately, his father was rich and gave him the money. Camillo seems to have dropped out of politics at this point, with one exception. He became the mayor of Grinzane. About 350 people lived there, most of whom were employed by the family's estate. This was an appointment, not an election. At this time, they did not elect mayors, but it meant that he had responsibility for people and not just land. And that became his life. He managed two estates. He was the mayor of a small town. He did write to his aunt, however, and said, quote, "Do not imagine that all I have suffered has in any way abated my love for the views which I previously entertained." I still want a constitution. I still want freedoms, a constitutional monarchy. But now he was too busy to deal with it. Both estates did very well under his stewardship, and what he had learned of engineering at the military academy went very well for establishing irrigation, importing the latest technologies. The wines that were produced at Grinzane apparently went from barely drinkable to well-respected. I don't know if I believe that, but hey, they say it's true. He had a knack for management and leadership, and he made his lands profitable. And this kind of reminds me of Rockingham, right? Because he had his lands that he made profitable.
Abram: Oh yeah.
Joe: As things settled in, Camillo even finds time to travel and visit Switzerland, France, England, and Belgium, and he always keeps his ears open.
Abram: I wouldn't want to keep my ears open.
Joe: Wouldn't that be gross? You know what it means.
Abram: No, I don't.
Joe: And he spends the next fifteen years of his life growing his businesses, tending his lands. But as the 1840s rolled around, revolutionary fever once again spread across Europe.
Abram: Of course they rolled around because there were trains.
Joe: Another spark was coming, but this time the now 38-year-old Camillo Benso is going to be right in the center of the action.
The Revolutions of 1848
Joe: Camillo may have retired to run his family estates, but he never strayed far from his revolutionary roots. He used his fifteen years of free time to learn, improve his English, and read all that he could from the revolutionary thinkers of his day. And when he traveled, he would often learn about other political systems. He was particularly fond, it seems, of the British constitutional monarchy, but to be honest, that might be source bias. I'm only able to read English sources, and so naturally the English sources would say he really loved the British. But he did like systems that kept a king or queen, and he wanted those systems to have a powerful parliament to give voice to the people. Now, Britain didn't have a written constitution, and something that he certainly would have felt was a gap, but he thought that their system worked okay. And so in 1847, Camillo returned to political life. He co-founded a newspaper called the Il Risorgimento—
Abram: Il Risorgimento.
Joe: —or "Rising Again" in English. Thank you, Abram, which championed liberal ideas, pushed for a constitution, and called for the unification of Italy. He and others wrote articles for it. I'm not positive the paper was even legal when he started it, but he was far from the only such agitator in Europe. And quite frankly, Camillo was very correctly reading the international mood. On January 12th, 1848, armed groups in Palermo— that's Sicily, right, Abram?
Abram: Yeah. Is it one of the Sicilies? It is one of the Sicilies, right?
Joe: Yep. Armed groups in Palermo aimed to undo the Two Sicilies and restore the rights that they had lost in 1812, which inspired others and on and on and on until it seemed like every nation in Europe had seen some revolutionary activities. Paris, Baden, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Milan, Prussia, Venice, and dozens more.
Abram: Dublin?
Joe: I don't think Dublin. They were busy with a potato famine.
Abram: I think slightly later, but yeah.
Joe: Some of these were successful, right? At least at first. Governments were toppled. King Louis-Philippe of France abdicated in favor of President Louis-Napoleon. King Ludwig I abdicated in Munich. Metternich, the chancellor of the Austrian Empire, resigned. Right? So all these people are rising up all over Europe and demanding rights. And it seemed, at least for a moment, that they were being heard. And King Charles Albert, who you remember was once the liberal darling, but now the enemy, he saw the unhappy people in Turin outside his palace windows.
Abram: And did not care at all.
Joe: Well, Camillo and other journalists attempted to get an audience with the king, but the king refused. He didn't want to be seen to bow to public pressure, but he also didn't want to wait until the unrest in Turin got out of control. He saw what had happened to those other kings.
Abram: I have a question. Why didn't he go— now that the people stopping him are dead— why is he no longer liberal again?
Joe: This is one of the big mysteries.
Abram: He probably got so wrapped up in being the enemy that he became the enemy. Possibly so, but— What do you think happened?
Joe: I think that you're going to get a clue in just a second. So when Camillo and other journalists outlined their ideas for a constitution in the press, the king may have thought back to his days as a bright-eyed 23-year-old prince and thought, hey, now would be a good time to become a liberal monarch after all. He changed his mind. He is now a liberal monarch. He says, yes, let's have a constitution. And he looked out the window and saw the people with the pitchforks and the torches and said, well, it's better that than being toppled.
Abram: Why do they have those weird science fork things? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Joe: No, not tuning forks. They're not walking through the streets holding tuning forks.
Abram: Yes, they are.
Joe: They're walking through the street holding pitchforks—
Abram: No, they're holding tuning forks. So if you ever quote a thing where you include an AI image, of the people— when I say that they're holding— change to tuning forks.
Joe: Sure. What even are tuning forks?
Abram: Tuning forks— you hit them and the arms on the tuning fork will vibrate at exactly an exact frequency that could be used for something.
Abram: Anyway. But why are they holding them?
Joe: I mean, tuning forks, salad forks. I mean, they were just marching down the street.
Abram: Animaniacs made a whole song about this kind of stuff. The complicated food etiquette stuff.
Joe: In any event, just as he had once promised in 1821, Charles Albert delivered a constitution. On March 4th, 1848, the Statuto Albertino was signed, and it reformed the Sardinian government in a model very much like Britain. It would have a Senate, which is a little bit like a House of Lords, with peers appointed by the king.
Abram: Oh, D'Azeglio's faction would love this.
Joe: It would have a Chamber of Deputies, which is a little bit like a House of Commons, and elections would be held across the country for representatives. Judges would be appointed for life by the king. Catholicism would be the official state religion, but others would be tolerated. Personal liberty and property would be respected. And perhaps most importantly for revolutionary journalists like Cavour, freedom of the press. But Charles Albert's next step, Abram, was even more surprising. And perhaps one that Camillo believed in theory, but not in practice. There were revolts going on in Milan and Venice, signs that people were crying out for liberal government like his new liberal government. And so he acted. He also knew that Vienna is rioting, and that might be keeping the Austrians occupied with their own internal politics. And so Camillo actually wrote about this directly. He said, quote, "The moment has arrived for the Sardinian monarchy, the moment of grave deliberations, that which decides the fortunes of empires and the fate of nations." On March 23rd, 1848, King Charles Albert declared war on Austria and marched Sardinian troops into Lombardy. This will be known to history as the First Italian War of Independence. At first, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Papal States backed this Sardinian invasion, but as they watched their own people agitate and revolt, they had little energy to spare to help for an Austrian invasion. A war election was called to find the first ministers for the Chamber of Deputies. Camillo ran and won a seat in Turin. And remember that at this point, Count of Cavour is just a courtesy title, so he would have to be in their House of Commons, not in their House of Lords.
Abram: To make money. Why did he stop being like—
Joe: Well, he will never be a lord. He has a courtesy title because his dad is a marquess and later his brother will be a marquess. But unless his brother dies without kids, he will not become a marquess.
Abram: Then why is he a count?
Joe: Because in the Sardinian system, which is very different than the British system or any other system that I've ever heard of, the second son gets a subsidiary title. So when he was born, he was the second son. The first son got a courtesy title of Marquess. The second son got a courtesy title of Count. Why? I don't know. To make a long story short about this First Italian War of Independence, King Charles Albert made mistakes at pretty much every step. He overestimated how busy Vienna would be on its own problems and how quickly they could respond. He also expected more help from allies, but they all found excuses to be elsewhere when the Piedmontese army began to suffer defeats. His hope was that with Milan and Venice revolting, that he would be able to march in and the people would rise up and join his new liberal monarchy, but it just didn't happen. Turn after turn, Charles Albert was defeated until he had no choice but to backtrack to his own borders and sue for peace. There was one particularly good Sardinian revolutionary leader, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and we saw many, many monuments and streets named after him on our trip. And he managed to do better against Austria than expected, but he also lost and had to flee to Switzerland. He wasn't a general, more a uniter of people, and his Redshirts were not an official branch of the military.
Abram: But he just like got a bunch of random guys and just gave them guns.
Joe: A little bit more than random guys, but people with guns that don't always do what they're told. That's pretty much him. Make a note of him because he's going to be back later. Austria stamped out all the revolts, including those in Italy, before the end of the year. And so did the German Confederation and Prussia. And everyone else. The forces of authoritarianism, Abram, won every time, although there were a few gains. France gave all men the right to vote, for example, but the presidency of Louis-Napoleon wouldn't quite be the liberal democracy that some hoped for. Do you know who Louis-Napoleon is, Abram?
Abram: Yeah.
Joe: Who is he?
Abram: Person from France.
Joe: I know, but do you know what he is better known as?
Abram: The person from France.
Joe: No, I'll keep that as a little surprise then. Austria caved, and they eliminated legal serfdom where it existed. And in many other places, the liberal dream just sort of went underground for a while. In Sardinia, King Charles Albert was humiliated. And do you know what he did?
Abram: Changed his mind.
Joe: He actually— that is a really good thought, but no, he abdicated. Bye. Yep. And so he gave the throne to his 29-year-old son, who is now called King Victor Emmanuel II. You saw— how many statues have we seen of King—
Abram: I calculate about 10,654.
Joe: We saw a lot of statues of King Victor Emmanuel II on this trip. So in what was a very important point, though, do you know what King Victor Emmanuel II did?
Abram: No.
Joe: He kept the constitution. And his second— well, we'll get to that part. So Sardinia will stay as a parliamentary democracy, even though the dreams of Italian unity seem over.
Abram: So did we pass the scene from the thing?
Joe: No, we're not there yet.
Abram: Was it just another almost identical scene of them having to accept defeat?
Joe: Yes, there's going to be a couple more defeats before they can get victory. Don't worry. Camillo wrote, quote, "As long as liberty exists in one corner of the peninsula, we must not despair of the future. As long as Piedmont can protect its institutions from despotism and anarchy, there will be a means of working successfully at the regeneration of the country." But now they just had to figure out those means. Camillo saw that romantic popular uprisings were doomed, and it would be up to the new Sardinian government, of which he was a member, to learn from their defeats and rise to the challenges ahead.
Cavour in Politics
Joe: With the war over and the Sardinian constitution entrenched under King Victor Emmanuel II, let's take a little look at what he was stepping into. Given that they had to create a parliament quickly, rooms were taken from existing palaces and repurposed. This is much like the way the British Parliament reused chapel rooms from Westminster Palace and turned them into meeting spaces. Cavour was in the Chamber of Deputies, and they would meet at a place called the Palazzo Carignano in Turin in an oval room called the Sala della Camera. The salad? Something like that. Even though the new constitution had been in effect for only fourteen months, the government was extremely unstable. It was eight prime ministers before one could stay in office longer than a few weeks. But a man named Massimo D'Azeglio has just been voted in, and he's going to manage to hold the government together for a couple years. Right now, the key factions in Parliament are: the largest group is called the Clerical Wing, or the Historical Right. They wanted to strengthen the power of the church. They believed in monarchy, but they liked the constitution. That's D'Azeglio's faction. The second is called the Moderate Left, a group that likes democracy, wants to reduce the power of the church a lot, and they'd be happiest if there wasn't a king at all. The third largest is the Liberal Right, soon to be known as the Cavourian Right, a group that cared a lot about free trade and wanted to reduce the church's role in government. And as the name suggests, this is where Camillo Benso will align himself. It's kind of in the middle. And there were a handful of smaller groups representing other interests. There was an ultra-Catholic party, and there was another party on the other side that said, get rid of the king now, right? So there were smaller groups, but this is what was in Parliament. The clearest thing to say about Camillo at this point is that he's a pragmatic leader. He believes in liberal causes, but he's trying not to be dogmatic about them. He wants a constitutional monarchy and he doesn't trust republics, right? He saw how France's attempts at a republic failed, and that just led to radicals and chopping off heads and eventually the return of authoritarianism. He has a great quote about this. Quote, "What is it that has always wrecked the finest and justest revolutions? The mania for revolutionary means." Right? So revolutionaries become manic about doing everything in exactly the right way, and that eventually leads their governments to collapse into something worse. Another quote: "When reforms are effected in good time, far from weakening authority, they strengthen it. Frankly, follow the examples of the Duke of Wellington, of Earl Grey, and Sir Robert Peel. Follow broadly the road of reforms without fear of being inopportune. Do not think that it will weaken the cause of the constitutional throne, for it will, on the contrary, strengthen it." I think you recognize some of those names, right, Abram?
Abram: Person who tea is named after, the Waterloo guy, and the only Peelite Party guy.
Joe: Okay. What? No, I like it. But what do all three of them have in common, Abram?
Abram: Something special.
Joe: You're just being difficult, I see.
Abram: What?
Joe: That's okay. But behind all these feelings is the belief that in the end the result must be a united Italy. He said, quote, "Reforms will gather about it all the live forces of Italy and conduct the nation to the destiny awaiting her." And he made a prediction around this time that came true. He thought that the 1848 revolt in France, which just toppled their king and put Louis-Napoleon in power, would collapse. He thought that they moved too quickly, and he was right. President Louis-Napoleon is better known to history as—
Abram: King.
Joe: Emperor Napoleon III.
Abram: Oh.
Joe: After he gives up on democracy and decides to stay in power by force. You know, people that are democratically elected and then try to stay in power by force? Thankfully, that can't happen in the U.S.
Abram: Well, why do you say thankfully?
Joe: I'm just saying. Almost all the victories that were won in the rebellions of 1848 and the rebellions that followed were short-lived. Sardinia kept its constitution. Victor Emmanuel II was a constitutional monarch. He did not go back on his promise. In the end, Charles Albert provided that constitution that his younger self would have wanted, and his son followed suit. And I think that is amazing.
Abram: Oh yeah.
Joe: But as a result, many nations in Europe refused to acknowledge them. Russia would not recognize the Sardinian government at all, while Austria would not see them as anything more than a threat to peace in Lombardy. And in fact, they're not going to sign a peace treaty for a number of years later. It's difficult to chart the baby steps that Camillo was making in Parliament, but he was seen as intelligent, although not a good speaker. Multiple biographies say he's a really bad speaker, but he is a workaholic. He has a background as an engineer, as a businessman running his family's estates. He was a mayor. So it was probably inevitable that Prime Minister Massimo D'Azeglio wanted to bring him into government. A previous finance minister had died, and there was an opening for a person who was good at money. The king actually warned Prime Minister D'Azeglio about this. He said, quote, "I will accept him, but wait a little, and he will rob you of your portfolios."
Abram: Of your collection of worksheet images, things that you put in a weird foldy thing?
Joe: Or government jobs, one or the other. In October 1850, Camillo Benso joined the government as Finance Minister. And actually, biographies are all over the place on this. One calls him the Minister of Trade, Agriculture, and the Navy. Like, he had multiple jobs. The names of those jobs are translated differently in English. What's clear is that he had an important job, and he began negotiating trade deals with England, France, Belgium. In December 1851, just as I said, Louis-Napoleon dissolved the National Assembly in France, and he was going to declare himself emperor a few months later. But much of the focus then on the Sardinian government was actually worrying, right? What if France tried to occupy Piedmont again? When Camillo was born, he was born in occupied Italy. France controlled it. And this is the moment, Abram, where Camillo showed what kind of politician he was. There was a debate about the freedom of the press. To use a metaphor the Prime Minister D'Azeglio liked, he saw France as a sleeping lion. And it would be best if Sardinia didn't do anything to wake the lion up. And as such, it was argued by some that they needed to curb the freedom of the press. They didn't want any writers, and don't forget that Camillo was a writer first, annoying the French enough to cause them to invade. For five months, the Sardinian Parliament struggled to pass this law. And this is until Cavour broke ranks and formed an alliance between his own group and the Moderate Left, and he succeeded in passing a bill. He found a legislative compromise that was just acceptable enough to both sides. They were able to pass the law.
Abram: So two of the three parties agreed on it just enough.
Joe: He got two of the three groups to come together in a marriage of sorts, pass this law, but it fractured the government. D'Azeglio managed to stay in power, but most of the ministers resigned, and in fact Camillo was fired from his jobs.
Abram: Why?
Joe: Because the king was upset that he did not follow what he— the way that he wanted it to have been done. Like, he went outside and negotiated these deals backroom.
Abram: Oh, in the smoky backrooms. But while he was temporarily relieved of his duties— I wouldn't call it being relieved because I don't think he's relieved to have gotten fired. Well, I don't like how people say like you're guilty when that's also an emotion. I don't like those terms.
Joe: So with a little free time on his hands, Cavour traveled to France. He met directly with Louis-Napoleon to try to better understand France's position, see if they were going to invade. But in October 1852, Prime Minister D'Azeglio gave up. Cavour's union—
Abram: Now he's relieved.
Joe: —of the Moderate Left and the moderate right was too strong of a combination. And the king did the only thing he could do. He invited Cavour back into government, but this time in a new role.
Abram: What?
Joe: Prime Minister of Sardinia.
Joe: Well, that's the next subject heading, yes.
Abram: And I feel like we could almost just use that take.
Prime Minister of Sardinia
Joe: So Cavour laid out his plan as Prime Minister like this, quote, "Piedmont must begin by raising herself, by re-establishing in Europe as well as in Italy a position and a credit equal to our ambition. Hence, there must be a policy unswerving in its aim but flexible and various as to the means employed, embracing the exchequer, military reorganization, diplomacy, and religious affairs." So he had a huge problem to solve first. Thanks to that war with Austria that King Charles Albert started, Sardinia had been forced to pay reparations. You know what reparations are?
Abram: Nope.
Joe: When you lose a war and whatever, oftentimes you have to pay a fine, shall we say, to the people that you lost a war to, you know, to compensate them for the damage. So think Germany after World War I had a lot of war reparations, and that's why they went from Germany to Chernobyl.
Abram: No.
Joe: Yes. No. That's a little bit why the German people were more able to listen to a somewhat evil guy who didn't want to pay the reparations anymore. Anyway, that's a dramatic oversimplification of the causes of World War II.
Abram: So because they went from Germany to Germany, that happened?
Joe: I have no idea what you're saying.
Abram: But Germany— Germany to Germany.
Joe: See? So usually in this case it meant austerity, right? The country would have to spend very little especially on the military, just to pay back the war debt. And this kept losers weak after a bad war. But this isn't what Cavour wanted to do, so he took a gamble.
Abram: Don't gamble, Cavour.
Joe: Well, he said, quote, "In order to realize our program and profitably cultivate the country's resources, it was necessary to give a powerful impulse to works of public utility, to work our railways with all possible circumspection while we gave encouragement to other enterprises." Instead of going into austerity, Sardinia would invest heavily in new railroads, new businesses, improving trade routes, and modernization. It would require a massive tax increase as well as loans, which would put the country deep into debt. If he succeeded, it would be brilliant. But if he failed, the country was going to dig itself a really, really deep hole. The taxes that he established were unpopular. Newspapers attacked him. His home was assaulted by a mob that screamed for his death. The increased taxes on top of crop failures were devastating to the Sardinian farmers, but he didn't give in. The next day after that mob attack, he made a spectacle of himself walking from his damaged home to the Finance Ministry through the public streets, all but daring the mobs to come after him, but also showing that he wasn't scared. I'm actually sure he had plenty of police protection, even if it wasn't visible. Don't forget his father had been the mayor of Turin and the former chief of police. His father is now dead, but I think—
Abram: His father's dead!
Joe: I think the police would be paying attention.
Abram: I can't believe you killed his father.
Joe: I didn't kill his father. He died of natural causes.
Abram: That's what they think.
Joe: Cavour's efforts massively increased the number of rail lines in Piedmont such that they were building more faster than any other region in Italy. He was particularly proud of a railway from Turin to Genoa that would take trade goods to and from the coast, and when it opened in 1854, he rode in a place of honor on the very first train. The rail lines were not just for trade, but they allowed for rapid movement of troops around the country, and while the nation rebuilt its military, it would be able to more quickly deploy them west to prevent encroachment from France or east from Austria. In diplomacy, he met with Louis-Napoleon and worked to establish a positive relationship with France. Keeping France as a friend of Sardinia and not likely to invade and occupy it would keep the focus where it needed to be, that is, on Austria. And there wasn't a moment when he wasn't thinking that Lombardy and beyond were still controlled by Austria. We have another good quote here saying, quote, "Let me say frankly, in the face of impending possibilities, I think it prudent, conformable with the interests of the country, to be on good terms with France." Cavour's stance on the church is more complicated. He wanted "a free church in a free state." While he supported the church in theory and was a practicing Catholic, the Pope was in charge of the Papal States and supported by Austria. He supported the Catholic religion, but not Catholic politics. Under his government, they abolished the church courts. So if a priest or a nun got into trouble, they could only be charged by church authorities and given church penalties. He said that wasn't fair, and he moved them to normal courts, which prevented the church from being lenient with their own members. He also confiscated a significant amount of church property to pay down the country's debt, not unlike what had been done in England a couple centuries before. At the same time he reduced the power of the church, he was trying to win over Roman Catholics. If there would ever be a united Italy, he needed Roman Catholics on his side, right? There's a lot of Roman Catholics.
Abram: Yes. Why they're called Roman Catholics.
Joe: Because they don't live outside of Rome?
Abram: During a cholera epidemic in 1854, he feared for his life and his afterlife. And other politicians had been denied last rites by the church. So he made an arrangement with a person named Father Giacomo, a local priest in Turin, to provide him that sacrament if he would need it. The idea would be if you were Catholic and you didn't receive last rites and you died, dead, while you still had sins, right, that hadn't been forgiven, you would go to hell, right? So he didn't want to go to hell.
Abram: No.
Joe: But more importantly, publicly, as a politician, it was a sign that Catholicism was still valued in his government. I will say, though, that the Pope— I don't remember which Pope it is— did excommunicate both him and King Victor Emmanuel II. So I guess he was going to hell anyway.
Abram: That's sad.
Joe: By 1855, the situation in Sardinia was looking brighter. His economic reforms were taking hold, and his gamble to go into debt for development was paying off. He wrote, quote, "Circumstances have led Piedmont to take a clear and positive position in Italy. Since Providence has so willed it that Piedmont should be alone, free, and independent in Italy, it is the duty of Piedmont to use that liberty and independence in pleading the cause of our unfortunate peninsula before Europe." And that is why, Abram, in 1855, Sardinia committed 18,000 troops to a war that they had nothing to do with.
Abram: Whoa.
A Seat at the Table
Joe: In 1855, Russia invaded what is now Moldova, at the time controlled by the Ottoman Empire, over a petty excuse about how Russian Orthodox citizens were being treated in Palestine. Really, Russia sees the Ottoman Empire as falling. And their empire is rising, and they're going to take advantage of that decline. Britain and France are eager to maintain the balance of power in Europe, so they go to war on the Ottoman Empire's side. And the first thing that they're doing in this war is they're trying to capture Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, but they don't succeed. It just leads to an extended siege. I'm simplifying this war a lot. This, by the way, is called the Crimean War. Have you heard of that?
Abram: I think so, but I— not much about it.
Joe: I'm simplifying it a lot, but the key is that Cavour decides that Sardinia should fight as well. They send 18,000 troops to Crimea to fight a war that they have nothing to do with. They help, but that's not the real story. The real story is that Cavour is playing politics with Sardinian lives. By going to a war he didn't need to do, he has boosted his relationship with Britain and France. And again, France is a risk. They could at any time decide that Piedmont would look really great on a map of France. Cavour hoped to use this improved relationship to secure their help if Austria ever invaded. And so hold on to that thought for just a minute. It also had a side effect of having real-world combat training for 18,000 troops. So hold on to that thought too. In September 1855, with Sardinia's help, Sevastopol was taken, and Cavour went to Paris to help negotiate the peace treaty. This is a huge deal that they were invited to the peace table. They were acting like a full-fledged nation, like they were important among the powers of Europe. Benso arrived at the peace conference three weeks early and used that time to wine and dine Napoleon III. And who was the British Prime Minister in September 1855?
Abram: George Hamilton-Gordon, or did he already leave?
Joe: I have in my notes here Palmerston.
Abram: I think so, but the Crimean War was George Hamilton-Gordon.
Joe: Yeah. He also circulated a document called the "Memorandum on the Condition of Italy," which reminded everyone that he wanted Italian unification. He wanted it to be an official topic of the peace conference, but that's crazy because the peace conference was about the Crimean War. But that's what he wanted, and he was turned down. But during the signing ceremony, he asked to give a personal statement. In brief remarks, he spoke about the Austrian occupation of northern Italy. Austria angrily demanded to be able to respond, but that's what he wanted. He put the subject of Italy on everyone's mind. I don't have an exact quote, but Napoleon III apparently remarked that Cavour came to Paris with nothing, but he left as the talk of Europe. And so that sounds like a big win to me. The result of this is further rapport with France, including an agreement for a tunnel under Mount Cenis to directly link France to Piedmont. It'll be an engineering marvel of its age when it opens.
Abram: Was that the tunnel that has the lane stuff?
Joe: I'm not sure if that was one of the tunnels. We went through so many. Anyway, it's not going to be done in Cavour's lifetime, but when it is done, it's going to reduce the amount of time to travel from Paris to Turin from like two days to less than a day. And here's a stranger note for you: this is around the time when Cavour decides that he needs to learn to speak Italian.
Abram: Okay, did Italian exist already?
Joe: Yes. Up to this point, Cavour has been most comfortable speaking French. That was probably the language he spoke at home, as well as the language of government in Sardinia. The locals spoke an Italian dialect called Piedmontese, which he also spoke, but this wasn't true Italian. The real Italian is the literary Italian of famous writers like Dante and Petrarch. And Cavour actually will never become an expert speaker in Italian, but he's moving closer to establishing literary Italian as the language of the new state that he wants to build. And all he has to do is keep Napoleon III on his side. It sure would be a shame if some Italians tried to assassinate him.
A Secret Deal
Joe: On January 14th, 1858, two Italian men attempted to assassinate Napoleon III outside of a Paris opera house.
Abram: Why?
Joe: Because he was an emperor. He was destroying the democracy in France. They planned the attack in Britain, and Lord Palmerston was forced to resign, in part because of the implication that Britain was involved. The lion, France, was now awake, and there was a real risk that France was going to invade in order to prevent any future such attacks and to punish the nation that they felt was responsible— Sardinia. Angry letters went back and forth, but this is where Cavour's diplomacy in the Crimean War and all that time wining and dining Napoleon III paid off. He pulled something that I think in politics can only be described as an Uno reverse card.
Abram: Wow.
Joe: Somehow Cavour managed to convince Napoleon that it was Italian revolutionaries that tried to kill him, yes, but it was Austria's fault, because if Austria hadn't destabilized the peninsula, there wouldn't be revolutionaries. And if Austria wasn't occupying northern Italy, then those revolutionaries wouldn't have anything to complain about. And so in July 1858, Cavour and Napoleon III secretly signed the Plombières Agreement. There was going to be a war, and this is what they agreed. First, Sardinia is going to antagonize Austria and get them to fire the first shot. It was critical to make Austria look like the aggressor. France would then send— sources differ— 150,000, 250,000 troops to aid Sardinia. They would be added to the existing 100,000 Sardinian troops that they already had. King Victor Emmanuel II would personally command some of the troops so that it would clearly be Sardinia's war, even though there would be more French troops. When they won— and they planned to win— the Austrian regions of Lombardy, Venetia, Parma, Modena, and Romagna would form a new Kingdom of Upper Italy and in time, maybe not very much time, be permitted to merge with Sardinia. A new Kingdom of Central Italy would also be formed, but it would be ruled by a French vassal. Sardinia agreed to not try to unify all of Italy, but France would reduce the control of the Papal States to just the region immediately around Rome.
Abram: Which region? Lazio region?
Joe: Yes. So the Pope would be the new official leader of a confederation of Italian states. So in theory, there would be a loose grouping of Italian countries with the Pope as the leader. And France wanted two things in return. First, they wanted a political marriage between Prince Napoléon-Jérôme, Napoleon III's cousin, with Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy. This basically gives them in a couple generations potentially a claim on some of this Italian territory anyway. He also wanted two bits of territory. Nice.
Abram: That's nice.
Joe: And Savoy. Okay. So to get the eastern bits of Italy back, France wanted the western extremities of Sardinia to be taken away. They considered it a fair trade, although I don't know that the Sardinian citizens there were pleased about it. And I know for sure one wasn't.
Abram: Who?
Joe: Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Abram: Hi.
Joe: He's from Nice.
Abram: That's nice.
Joe: He's very unhappy about this. In March 1859, Sardinia mobilized its army. Austria demanded that they stop. Sardinia refused, and so Austria declared war. They crossed into Sardinian territory and invaded, and this is called the Second War of Italian Independence. Austria knows that France is coming, so they try to win quickly, capturing Novara and Vercelli before making a beeline to Turin. But fortunately, the Sardinian troops are able to halt them at Alessandria until Napoleon III arrives with reinforcements. The tide is turned, and the combined French-Sardinian force enter Lombardy for the first time on May 20th. Rebellions in various Italian regions rise up and they support the Sardinian regime. Emperor Franz Josef of Austria fires the general that was losing this war and decides to lead it directly. But at this point, Italy becomes almost an afterthought. The war becomes a personal battle between Franz Josef of Austria and Napoleon III of France. And although the French capture Milan and it seems like they could keep going, the two emperors have a sit-down and decide that they've had enough, and they signed an armistice on July 12th, 1859. So they don't get to Venice. They don't make it to Venice. All those promises that France made? Forgotten. Central Italy was going to be given back to Austrian puppets. Sardinia would get Lombardy, so that's nice, but the dream of Italian unification would be over. Under pressure, King Victor Emmanuel II signed the armistice. We saw this in the beginning of our episode in our Picture This.
Abram: Why did France just give up?
Joe: It's— I don't even have a good answer.
Abram: So they were able to get Milan, but that's about it? They stopped after Milan.
Joe: Okay. Cavour wanted him to keep fighting even without French support, but it was a lost cause. And so, in disgust, Camillo Benso resigned as Prime Minister.
Cavour's Italy
Joe: In the next six months, his replacement— and I'm not even going to bother to name him— signed the armistice, but he struggled to hold the country together. In a secret meeting— one of my sources says at the king's hunting lodge, another says actually at his palace in Turin, who knows— the king met with Cavour and asked him to come back. Cavour agreed to return as Prime Minister, but only if the king allowed him to run his own expansionist agenda and that the king would agree not to push back. The king agrees. So on January 21st, 1860, Cavour becomes Prime Minister of Sardinia for the second time.
Abram: Yay!
Joe: Ever since the war, Sardinian troops had continued to occupy Parma, Modena, and Tuscany. They were supposed to, by the treaty that they signed, hand them back, but instead what they did is they held elections where the people voted to join Sardinia. How fair these elections were under these conditions is unclear, but France decides to look the other way. In April, revolutionaries in Palermo staged a revolt. A group of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi— remember him— unofficially travel to Sicily to—
Abram: Is he bald?
Joe: I don't know— unofficially travel to Sicily to assist in the revolt. He was really angry about the loss of Nice.
Abram: That's nice.
Joe: And he initially thought he'd try to take it by force, but events in Palermo provided him with a different outlet. Cavour doesn't actually like this. He doesn't like revolts at all, but in this case he decides to let Garibaldi do his thing. And by the end of May, Garibaldi's troops had taken the city of Palermo and were on their way to conquering all of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. Some political back-dealing and some negotiation between Cavour and Garibaldi causes him to stop before invading Rome. They don't want to get into that quite yet. The newly freed people of Sicily vote to join Sardinia again.
Abram: So now is it Piedmont, Sardinia, Sicily, and Lombardy? Are those the four regions? And Liguria.
Joe: And Liguria, yeah.
Abram: So five.
Joe: Yes. So I don't know how fair that election was. The tides of change were moving quickly, however, because how many of those regions are now under Sardinia?
Abram: Five.
Joe: They decided, you know, calling all of these places Sardinia, that doesn't make sense, does it? We need a new name. What should we call this country?
Abram: Oh, there we are. The language is Italian, so I have an idea. Let's call it Ital-land.
Joe: Good, but let's just shorten it a little bit.
Abram: Ital-nd?
Joe: No, we— I think the D is kind of throwing us off.
Abram: Oh, Italia.
Joe: Just— that's going to be hard for other people to pronounce. So let's just remove the A at the end.
Abram: Italy. So there.
Joe: Yes. Okay. Is that essentially what happened?
Abram: Yeah.
Joe: So on March 17th, Parliament passed a bill to change the name of the country to be the Kingdom of Italy. But they stress continuity. Italy was going to keep the Sardinian constitution so that they would remain a constitutional monarchy. And in fact, Victor Emmanuel II insists that he remain Victor Emmanuel II. He doesn't become Victor Emmanuel I, King of Italy. He still remains the Second. Turin is going to remain the capital, at least for now. Until a future time when Rome could be part of the kingdom. New elections are held in January 1861 to build the first Italian Parliament that would include all of the country's newly added regions. And on March 23rd, 1861, it is official. The Count of Cavour becomes the first Prime Minister of Italy.
Abram: Yay!
Joe: This is still a partial state. Northeastern Italy, including Venice, are still outside the new country, as are the Papal States around Rome. But Cavour's intentions are clear, and it seems like only a matter of time and another war before those would join up. Cavour wrote, quote, "Will the deliverance of Venice come by arms or diplomacy? I do not know. It is the secret of Providence."
Abram: Doesn't he die soon?
Joe: Yes. So while this would be a great time to talk about the rest of the story about how Italy came together, Cavour died. He does not live to see his dream completed.
Abram: When did he die?
Joe: On June 6th, 1861, he fell ill from malaria and he died after less than three months leading the new kingdom. He was only 50 years old and he had been Prime Minister of Italy for something like 81 days. Well, some biographies state that he died of exhaustion and overwork. I think they're a little biased. Others suggest he just had a bad doctor. He was bled to death. Doesn't matter. It is the end, however, of Camillo Benso, the Count of Cavour's story. So, Abram, on our trip around Italy, we have seen many statues, many streets, many plazas named for Cavour.
Abram: Uh-huh.
Joe: The town that he was mayor of changed its name to include Cavour. We almost went to the Cavour Museum, but it was closed. I think in some ways, Cavour died at exactly the right time. He got to bask in the triumph. He got to be the first Prime Minister of Italy. But there were decades of hard work still ahead trying to unite.
Abram: Did Italy not fully unite for like ten years after his death?
Joe: I'm not sure the exact date when everything— when all the rest happened. There's going to be a third war of Italian independence. There's going to be all this stuff going on with the Pope. Not everyone in all of those regions that were just absorbed felt that those elections were fair, and many across Italy felt that it had been Sardinia taking over their territory instead of giving them true freedom. It's a complicated topic, but Cavour was the Prime Minister that brought it together. He was the Prime Minister that led to the unification. He just managed to die before a lot of the problems that— and real challenges that would continue to plague the country in their unification for many years. I think this episode might be a little kind to Camillo Benso. I'm sure that he has more flaws than I said here, but I kind of like him. Okay, what do you think, Abram?
Abram: Good. I think it's Camillo, but any Italian listeners, please— if you leave a review, remember the review requirements— please tell us if it's Camillo, Cameelo, or Cameelio.
Joe: Okay, if I've been saying his name wrong this entire episode, it's going to be very sad. But Abram, what do you think of Cavour? Okay, was he as fun as a British Prime Minister?
Abram: Yes, better.
Joe: Better.
Abram: Dad, is it okay if we continue this trend by like in a few days making like a special— we'll continue it on to have the rest of them join. It would be called the Reunification of Italy, or like the first half would be directly taken from this episode and the second half would be like newly recorded material.
Joe: Abram, would that be okay if you want me to make a special episode finishing up the story of Italian unification? I'll do it for you. And you hear it here, guys, he's asking me for this. So don't be mad when it appears in your feed, okay?
Abram: Okay.
Joe: All right, Abram, I think we are good with this episode.
Abram: We aren't gonna rate him because we can't.
Joe: We're not gonna rate him. I had a lot of fun doing this. We are gonna go out and do a gondola ride in Venice.
Abram: That's cool.
Joe: So all we have to do now is say goodnight, Abram.
Abram: Goodnight.
Bibliography
Joe: This week's episode was recorded on location on a northern Italy road trip, primarily in Aosta and Venice. We started in Nice and visited the monument erected there in honor of the transition of the city to France. And I cannot tell you how many Cavour, Garibaldi, and King Victor Emmanuel II statues, squares, and streets we encountered on our journey. We even made a stop in Santena, the hometown of the Marquisate of Cavour. Italy is an amazing country, and I am so glad that I had the chance to share this story with Abram and with you. My key sources for this episode are: "The Life and Times of Cavour" by William Roscoe Thayer, written in 1911. "The Life of Count Cavour" by Charles de Mazade, written in 1877. I used an English translation of the French, but I'm not sure who did the translation. And "Cavour" by— wait for it— Countess Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington Martinengo-Cesaresco, written in 1904. None of those books represent recent scholarship, so I did my best to validate using online and other materials. Better sources did not arrive by the time we left for Italy, so I made the best of it. Any errors that I introduced are my own. If you enjoyed this second vacation episode, please check out last year's episode on Ito Hirobumi, recorded while we were in Japan. He was a terrorist— he was a terrorist turned politician and was assassinated for his trouble. And it makes an amazing story as well. Next time will likely be another special episode as we close out the story of Italian reunification. Abram has asked that we cover it, and we are currently looking at a special episode with a guest host. So please look forward to that. Our editor this week is Paley Bowe from Radio Guru. If you like the way this episode sounds, and I certainly do, please check him out. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. I know Abram says this at the top, but we really are dependent on our subscribers and to get the message out about our podcast. We're really excited about the work that we do, and we are so grateful for you and every listener that supports us. Thank you, and we'll see you soon.
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