History of Italy (1559–1814)

The history of Italy in the Early Modern period was characterized by foreign domination: Following the Italian Wars (1494 to 1559), Italy saw a long period of relative peace, first under Habsburg Spain (1559 to 1713) and then under Habsburg Austria (1713 to 1796). During the Napoleonic era, Italy was a client state of the French Republic (1796 to 1814). The Congress of Vienna (1814) restored the situation of the late 18th century, which was however quickly overturned by the incipient movement of Italian unification.

Aftermath of the Italian Wars

The Italian Wars saw 65 years of French attacks on the Italian states, starting with Charles VIII's invasion of Naples in 1494. However the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) saw almost all of Italy fall under the direct or indirect control of the Spanish.

Early Modern Italy

The War of the Spanish Succession saw control of much of Italy pass from Spain to Austria, culminating in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. The Spaniards regained Naples and Sicily following the Battle of Bitonto in 1738.

Spanish and Austrian hegemony was not always based on direct rule; while states such as Venice did not come under the direct control of the empires, all of Italy relied on them for protection against external aggression. Furthermore those areas under direct Spanish and (later) Austrian control were theoretically independent principalities bound to the Spanish and Austrian empires through personal unions alone.

Italy experienced a period of relative peace in the seventeenth and eighteeth centuries. However, the Italian economy stagnated due to the decline of the Mediterranean trade routes; in the early seventeenth century the economy experienced a depression.

cience and Art

The peninsula was not influenced by the Reformation, but Italy did contribute to the Enlightenment; it produced examples of enlightened absolutism and intellectuals such as Galileo Galilei and Antonio Genovesi. Enlightened despots ruled in the conservative Papal states, and reformist movements existed in conservative Venice.

Following the Renaissance, painting saw Mannerism evolve into Expressionism, with major Italian artists such as Caravaggio.

Italy in the Napoleonic era

At the end of the 18th century, Italy was almost in the same political conditions as in the 16th century; the main differences were that Austria had replaced Spain as the dominant foreign power after the War of Spanish Succession (and that too was not true with regards to Naples and Sicily), and that the dukes of Savoy (a mountainous region between Italy and France) had become kings of Sardinia by increasing their Italian possessions, which now included Sardinia and the north-western region of Piedmont.

This situation was shaken in 1796, when the French Army of Italy under Napoleon invaded Italy, with the aims of forcing the First Coalition to abandon Sardinia (where they had created an anti-revolutionary puppet-ruler)) and forcing Austria to withdraw from Italy. The first battles came on 9 April, between the French and the Piedmontese, and within only two weeks Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia was forced to sign an armistice. On May 15 the French general then entered Milan, where he was welcomed as a liberator. Subsequently beating off Austrian counterattacks and continuing to advance, he arrived in the Veneto in 1797. Here occurred the Veronese Easters, an act of rebellion against French oppression, that tied down Napoleon for about a week.

On October 1797 Napoleon signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, by which the Republic of Venice was annexed to the Austrian state, dashing Italian nationalists' hopes that it might become an independent state. This treaty gave Austrian recognition to the existence of the Cisalpine Republic (made up of Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and small parts of Tuscany and Veneto), and annexed Piedmont to France. Even if, like the other states created by the invasion, the Cisalpine Republic was just a satellite of France, these satellites sparked a nationalist movement. The Cisalpine Republic was converted into the Italian Republic in 1802, under the presidency of Napoleon.

In 1805, after the French victory over the Third Coalition and the Peace of Pressburg, Napoleon recovered Veneto and Dalmatia, annexing them to the Italian Republic and renaming it the Kingdom of Italy. Also that year a second satellite state, the Ligurian Republic (successor to the old Republic of Genoa), was pressured into merging with France. In 1806, he conquered the Kingdom of Naples and granted it to his brother and then (from 1808) to Joachim Murat, along with marrying his sisters Elisa and Paolina off to the princes of Massa-Carrara and Guastalla. In 1808, he also annexed Marche and Tuscany to the Kingdom of Italy.

In 1809, Bonaparte occupied Rome, for contrasts with the pope, who had excommunicated him, and to maintain his own state efficiently [Dalle grandi rivoluzioni alla Restaurazione. La biblioteca di Repubblica, 2004. pp.342 ] , exiling the Pope first to Savona and then to France, and taking the Papal States' art collections back to the Louvre. With the conquest of the Russia that Napoleon undertook in 1811 marked the end of the apogee of Italians' support for Napoleon, since many Italians died in this failed campaign.

After Russia, the other states of Europe re-allied themselves and defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig, after which his Italian allied states, with Murat first among them, abandoned him to ally with Austria. [Dalle grandi rivoluzioni alla Restaurazione. La biblioteca di Repubblica, 2004. pp.349] Defeated at Paris on 6 April 1814, Napoleon was compelled to renounce his throne and sent into exile on Elba. The resulting Congress of Vienna (1814) restored a situation close to that of 1795, dividing Italy between Austria (in the north-east and Lombardy), the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (in the south and in Sicily), and Tuscany, the Papal States and other minor states in the centre. However, old republics such as Venice and Genoa were not recreated, Venice went to Austria, and Genoa went to the Kingdom of Sardinia.

On Napoleon's escape and return to France (the Hundred Days), he regained Murat's support, but Murat proved unable to convince the Italians to fight for Napoleon with his Proclamation of Rimini and was beaten and killed. The Italian kingdoms thus fell, and Italy's Restoration period began, with many pre-Napoleonic sovereigns returned to their thrones. Piedmont, Genoa and Nice came to be united, as did Sardinia (which went on to create the State of Savoy), while Lombardy, Veneto, Istria and Dalmatia were re-annexed to Austria. The dukedoms of Parma and Modena re-formed, and the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples returned to the Bourbons. All this led to a new Kingdom of Italy and Italian unification.

Notes and references

* Text of the "Albertine Statute" (Constitution of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1848 to 1861, and of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1946): [http://www.quirinale.it/costituzione/Preunitarie-testi.htm] it icon
*"Italy." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 30 Apr. 2006 .

See also

* List of Holy Roman Emperors
* List of Popes
* Historical states of Italy
* House of Savoy (including the list of the modern kings of Italy)