Person1810 – 1861

Camillo Cavour

Also called: Count of Cavour

Prime minister of Sardinia who led Italian unification through modernization and diplomacy, becoming the first prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861

A Piedmontese noble who studied British parliamentary government and economics, he founded the liberal newspaper Il Risorgimento. Becoming prime minister of Sardinia in 1852, he modernized the kingdom with railways, banks and free trade. By joining the Crimean War he raised the Italian question at the Paris peace conference, and in the secret Plombières agreement of 1858 he won the backing of Napoleon III. He became the first prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 but died within three months.

Show on the map

Where they went

Open the full map

OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors

1 related event

1
1859 – 1870Unification of Italyleader
Cavour of the Kingdom of Sardinia joined the north and centre through diplomacy and war, and Garibaldi brought in the south; the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861. Venice was added in 1866 and Rome in 1870, completing unification.

People who appear alongside

Giuseppe Garibaldi1807 – 1882
Italian soldier and revolutionary who in 1860 led the Thousand, the “Redshirts”, to conquer Sicily and Naples and handed them to the King of Sardinia
Victor Emmanuel II1820 – 1878
King of Sardinia (1849–1861) and first king of united Italy (1861–1878)
Giuseppe Mazzini1805 – 1872
Italian revolutionary who founded Young Italy and called for Italy to be united as a single republic
Napoleon III1808 – 1873
Louis-Napoléon, nephew of Napoleon I, elected president in 1848, who made himself emperor (1852–1870) by a coup but was captured in the Franco-Prussian War and deposed

Themes this person appears in

Revolutions and Nation-States1776 – 1871
From the Declaration of Independence to the German Empire — a century in which liberalism and nationalism toppled the old order in Europe and the Americas and built nation-states