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  • The most successful leader of the Risorgimento movement was Camillo di Cavour.
  • He was from a prominent Piedmontese family and a successful entrepreneur
  • In 1847, Cavour founded a liberal newspaper, Il Risorgimento.
  • While Cavour favored constitutionalism and opposition to Austria but unlike Mazzini and Garibaldi he was not a republican.
  • The failure of the revolutions of 1848 and 1849 tended to discredit the schemes of Mazzini and Garibaldi and gave Cavour the opportunity to take the lead in seeking Italian unification.
  • He favored the achievement of Italian unity under the royal house of Savoy. In 1852, he became prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont.
  • Cavour began by strengthening the Sardinian economy. He patronized the construction of highways, canals, docks, and railroads.
  • He concluded trade treaties to increase commerce, reformed the credit system, and sought to limit the influence of the church.
  • These efforts were calculated to make Sardinia a model state that its Italian neighbors would want to join.
  • Cavour realized that he would need the help of a major power to fight Austria, whose Italian possessions constituted the biggest obstacle to Italian unification.
  • Cavour was clear that Italy required international support.
  • He strongly believed that only through diplomacy and policy of war (simi­lar to Bismarck’s policy of ‘blood and iron’) could Italian unification be achieved.
  • He united Italy under the leadership of Sardinia. Lombardy, Tuscany, Parma and Papal States also united with Sardinia.
  • In these circumstances, the Crimean war of 1854 broke out. In this war, Cavour sent Italian forces to assist Britain and France against Russia.
  • The war did not involve any issues of national interest for Sardinia, but attendance at the peace conference following the war gave Cavour an opportunity to call big power attention to the issue of Italian unity.
  • Due to the contribution of troops sent by Cavour, Britain and France won. So Cavour got the reward for it. This was a diplomatic victory of Cavour.
  • Cavour was not to serve the new country long. He died on June 6, 1861.
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