But the seeds of liberty and change had been sown in Italy above
all with the First Napoleonic Campaign and a sense of national
unity had been aroused by the establishment of first republican
structures and then the Kingdom of Italy. These, united to the
administrative and judicial reforms extended from France into
Italy (especially the introduction of the Code Napol?n), began
to take root despite the restoration. Support came from the
intellectual and middle-classes in all the Italian States and
from numerous patriotic associations, often working in secret
(as the `Young Italy', of Giuseppe Mazzini) but profoundly influencing
society. The demand for freer and more democratic institutions,
the frequency of episodes of insurrection stretching from Piedmont
to Sicily but above all the concession of the Spanish constitution
forced the Italian rulers (from Carlo Alberto to Leopoldo II
and from Ferdinando II to Pius IX) to follow suit also during
1848. A year that was rich in events and innovations not only
for Italy but also for the rest of Europe with the revolutions
in Paris and Vienna.
Encouraged by the uprisings of Milan and Venice, the king of
Sardinia Carlo Alberto intervened in 1848 against Austria
with the help of volunteers from various parts of Italy and
the regular armies of the pope and Naples. But the sudden defection
of the latter two destroyed at birth what had seemed an aspiration
already realized. A second attempt by the same Carlo Alberto
failed the following year at Novara and he was forced to abdicate
in favour of Vittorio Emanuele II. Meanwhile Rome was living
with Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi a short republican season,
like Tuscany, Sicily and Venice, before the French and Austrian
troops intervened to restore the deposed rulers who reacted
by revoking the constitutions conceded the previous year.
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