Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour
Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour /kaˈvuːr/ (Turin, August 10, 1810 - Turin, June 6, 1861) was an Italian statesman and a leading figure in the movement towards the unification of Italy. He was one of the leaders of the Historical Right and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont. -Sardinia, a position he held (except for a six-month resignation) throughout the Second War of Italian Independence and Giuseppe Garibaldi's campaigns to unify Italy. Following the declaration of a united Kingdom of Italy, Cavour took over as Prime Minister of Italy; he died after only three months in office, so he did not live to see the incorporation of Venice or Rome into the new Italian nation.
In his early years, Cavour promoted various economic reforms in his home region of Piedmont, and founded the political newspaper Il Risorgimento. After being elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he rose rapidly through the Piedmontese government, coming to dominate the Chamber of Deputies thanks to a union of center-left and center-right politicians. Following an extensive program to expand the railway system, Cavour became Prime Minister in 1852. As Prime Minister, Cavour successfully steered the rule of Piedmont through the Crimean War, the Second Italian War of Independence, and the expeditions of Garibaldi, diplomatically managing to maneuver Piedmont into a new great power in Europe, controlling a near-united Italy that was five times the size of Piedmont before he came to power. Cavour was a Freemason of the Italian Symbolic Rite.
The English historian Denis Mack Smith claims that Cavour was the most successful parliamentarian in Italian history, but he was not particularly democratic. In his opinion, Cavour was often dictatorial, ignored his ministerial colleagues and parliament, and interfered in parliamentary elections. He also practiced drag and other politics that carried over to post-Resurgence Italy.
Biography
Son of the Marquis Mixol Benso de Cavour and Adèle de Sellon, a lady of Swiss origin. An aristocratic Piedmontese with liberal ideas, during his youth he studied at the Military Academy, becoming an Engineer officer. Little attached to military life, he left the army and dedicated himself to traveling abroad studying the economic development of the most industrialized countries such as France and Great Britain, documenting all the innovations related to any field. At the age of 22, he was appointed mayor of Grinzane, a town where his family owned land. The town changed its name to Grinzane Cavour in thanks to Camillo Benso, who was its mayor for 17 years.
His beginnings in politics
In 1847 he made his appearance on the political scene as founder, together with Cesare Balbo, of a moderate liberal newspaper, the Risorgimento. He was elected deputy to Parliament in June 1848. He lost his seat in the January 1849 elections, but regained it in March of the same year, and would not leave it until his death.
In 1850, after an impassioned speech in favor of the Siccardi laws, he became part of the government of Massimo D'Azeglio, as Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and the Navy; in 1851 he completes his control of the economic life of the Country with the assumption of the powers of the Finance portfolio. In 1852 he prepared with Urbano Rattazzi, the main exponent of the liberal left, a coalition that led him to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in November of the same year.
Reforms
Once he reached this position, the Count of Cavour dedicated himself to the economic and industrial strengthening of the Kingdom of Sardinia, favoring the construction of railways, roads and starting the construction of the Fréjus tunnel. He revitalized agriculture by introducing new crops, carrying out improvement works, and building irrigation canals. He favored the creation of a steel industry and the strengthening of the textile industry. He reformed the army through his collaborator, General La Marmora, and ordered the construction of a maritime arsenal at La Spezia.
Internal Policy
In internal politics, Cavour was the architect of the constitutional monarchical order, accepting liberalism in the political and economic aspects, but in reality all his reforms were dictated by his desire to prevent any type of democratic or republican insurrection. In fact, Cavour believed that Piedmont-Sardinia should enter into a frank industrialization as a means of ensuring a prosperous and stable economy that Cavour considered essential for a strong State, for which liberal doctrines would be a useful tool, although without neglecting to resort to the protectionism where necessary. In this sense, he promoted the construction of large-scale railways and the modernization of shipyards and ports.
Cavour accepted some principles of democracy such as free elections, the king's subjection to parliament and constitutionalism, but he insisted that the political regime be dominated by an elite; Precisely these ideas were the reason for his most bitter disagreements with the patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, who advocated a democracy that included the proletariat and the peasants, while Cavour only considered acceptable the political participation of the middle class and the bourgeoisie. In fact, both characters never had really friendly relations: Cavour used to call Garibaldi "savage" while Garibaldi described Cavour as "vile intriguing".
A staunch supporter of the statement of Charles de Montalembert, «Free Church in a free State», Cavour was concerned with resizing the power of the Catholic Church in Italy, and promoted the construction of homes for children, at the same time he maintained a he fought tenaciously against the Jesuits, who held a monopoly on educational tasks while Cavour supported the idea of primary education under purely state supervision.
Cavour maintained conservative ideas on the social level, but rejected that the Catholic clergy maintained privileges over the liberal State itself; In this sense, he managed to get a law approved in Piedmont-Sardinia that abolished contemplative monastic orders and abolished the privileges of the manomorta and the judicial forum for ecclesiastics. This law caused a great scandal among the conservatives and ran into the opposition of King Víctor Manuel, who forced the resignation of Cavour, in the so-called "Calabian Crisis" (April 26, 1855). After a few days, however, the king had to recall Cavour for the same position, but the bill had to be partly abandoned.
Foreign policy and unification of Italy
In foreign policy, Cavour was an able politician to forge alliances in favor of Piedmont-Sardinia according to the convenience of the moment, although at times he was accompanied by fortune. His objective was to create a strong state in northern Italy under the crown of the House of Savoy, but he discovered that in order to achieve this objective, Piedmont had to obtain support from the European powers, since it was evident that Austria would use all its might to prevent the Piedmont growth.
Precisely, Cavour refused to repeat the experience of 1849, judging that the Piedmontese kingdom was still too weak to face Austria alone, while the support of the rest of the Italian states for the Piedmont cause was very doubtful. In 1854 Cavour saw an opportunity when the Crimean War broke out: France and Great Britain, allied with Turkey, were fighting against Russia, which was making efforts to extend its hegemony in the Balkan Peninsula and in the Bosphorus region. Cavour offered Piedmontese military aid to the great powers, taking advantage of the ports under Piedmontese control in the Mediterranean, also offering to send an army corps to the Crimea.
It was not easy for Cavour to obtain authorization for such an expedition from the Parliament of Turin: the reason why Piedmontese soldiers had to fight in a remote region where Piedmont-Sardinia had no interests to defend was not understood. But Cavour achieved his goal and the Piedmontese troops actively participated in the fight on the side of the victors, thanks to which Piedmont was admitted to the peace negotiating table as an ally of two great powers: France and Great Britain.
In 1856 the Franco-Russian-British peace was signed at the Congress of Paris, with the presence of the representative of Austria. Cavour certainly did not obtain any territorial compensation for Piedmont's participation in the war, but he managed to have one of the sessions devoted expressly to discussing the "Italian problem": he was thus able to publicly defend the idea that the repression of reactionary governments and the The politics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were the real people responsible for the revolutionary concerns that were taking shape throughout the peninsula and, above all, that these revolts in Italy could degenerate into a revolutionary threat to all the governments of Europe, thereby managing to increase the Franco-British concern in the "Italian problem".
Thus, Cavour achieved his first goal: he drew the attention of all the European powers to the "Italian question"; After that, to be successful, he would have to have managed to interest one of them in a special way. In July 1858, Cavour met with the French Emperor Napoleon III (in favor of intervening in favor of the Italians despite having miraculously escaped alive from the attack on the Emilian patriot Felice Orsini in January of that year) in the town of Plombières to ratify a defensive-offensive treaty between France and Piedmont-Sardinia against the Habsburgs, with which France would gain an important ally in southern Europe and Cavour hoped to drag the French into militarily intervening against Austria.
In Italy, King Victor Emmanuel II and the President of the Council of Piedmont, Camilo Benso di Cavour, tried to introduce some liberal measures and thereby achieve the peaceful unification of the Italian states. As this was not possible, in 1860 they supported Giuseppe Garibaldi's fight for Il Risorgimiento or the resurrection of a united Italy. Said character undertook the liberation of Italy from the French troops that had invaded it. The unification of Italy was achieved in 1870.
Alliance with France
Through intrigues, Cavour secured the military support of France and in early 1859 conducted a series of military maneuvers on the Austro-Piedmontese border to provoke the Austrian government, which he achieved after a bitter exchange of diplomatic protests. Thus, in April 1859 a war broke out that pitted France and Piedmont-Sardinia on the one hand and Austria on the other. The war resulted in defeats for the Austrians and this allowed the annexation of Lombardy to Piedmont, but the government of Napoleon III interrupted the war campaign ahead of schedule with the Piedmontese, France signing an armistice with Austria in the Treaty of Villafranca on 1 July 1859, while the French were not interested in carrying out massive military operations in northern Italy just to benefit the expansion of Piedmont-Sardinia, and they also feared a warlike intervention by Prussia to the aid of Austria. Peace meant that Austria ceded most of Lombardy to the French - except for the eastern fortresses of Mantua and Legnago - and France in turn ceded this territory to Piedmont-Sardinia.
Faced with the French refusal to undertake further military commitments, Cavour resigned in protest, finding the addition of Austrian Lombardy a smaller reward for Piedmont-Sardinia than he had hoped, but was careful not to make public reproaches against France so as not to damage relations with a great power. Despite the opposition of Víctor Manuel II, in 1860 Cavour returned to occupy the position of President of the Council.
The plebiscites of 1860
At the beginning of the war of April 1859, Cavour stimulated revolts in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and in the duchies of Modena and Parma, where their pro-Austrian governments were overthrown, being easily occupied by troops from Piedmont-Sardinia; such troops also entered the territories of Emilia-Romagna (with the important cities of Ferrara and Bologna), which had risen up against the Papal States, which could not offer appreciable resistance.
Taking advantage of the political and military weakness of Austria after the Treaty of Villafranca, and with the diplomatic support of Great Britain, Cavour managed to impose at the beginning of 1860 the holding of plebiscites that in March of said year they were celebrated in Tuscany, in the duchies of Modena and Parma and in the northern occupied regions of the Papal States (Emilia-Romagna) for these territories to be annexed to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, achieving Cavour through promises and threats that such States, whose autonomy was compromised as they lacked Austrian military backing, agreed to join Piedmont-Sardinia.
With this, the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia grew considerably in territory, covering almost all of northern Italy, with the exception of the eastern end of Lombardy and all of Veneto. In order to continue obtaining French support for his project, which was already to unify the entire Italian peninsula, Cavour convinced the Piedmontese government to cede the city of Nice and the Savoy region to France, considering that these territories had little relation to Italy proper. bliss, although the territorial transfer was not without regret by the Piedmontese government.
Annexation of the Two Sicilies
In a non-explicit way, Cavour did not obstruct Garibaldi's effort to organize the Expedition of the Thousand against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in April 1860, but after the landing on May 11 and the capture of Palermo by the Garibaldins On May 28, Cavour tried - at the beginning of July - to pressure Garibaldi to immediately annex the island of Sicily to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, to which Garibaldi refused this alternative, considering that the unification was very negative. Italian was seen as a simple "Piedmontese expansionism". In July 1860, Cavour also tried to stimulate a revolt of his own in the mountains in Naples due to the proximity of Garibaldi's "red shirts", but he failed, leaving Garibaldi as master of the situation, so that the Garibaldian troops managed to take Naples and seize the territory. control of Two Sicilies.
After Garibaldi troops controlled the entire island of Sicily after taking Messina on July 26, Cavour required Garibaldi to stop his troops at the Strait of Messina, but Garibaldi ignored him and ordered the "red shirts" to stop. they will cross the strait on August 19, beginning to invade the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; this disobedience of Garibaldi to the head of the government of Piedmont-Sardinia was not sanctioned by King Victor Manuel, who tacitly approved the crossing of the strait. Finally, the Garibaldian troops -reinforced with thousands of Neapolitan soldiers who changed sides- continued their march meeting little resistance until on September 7 they took Naples, the most populous city in Italy and capital of the Two Sicilies.
Meanwhile, with the excuse of arresting the "dangerous revolutionary", Cavour sent Piedmontese troops on September 11 to the territory of the Papal States in September and seized the Marches and Umbria regions, although without attacking the Lazio, -province that surrounds the city of Rome- while the regime of Napoleon III still maintained a French garrison in Rome to protect Pope Pius IX. After the capture of Ancona by the Piedmontese on September 29, the areas of Italy under the control of Piedmont-Sardinia achieved full territorial continuity.
Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy
When in October 1860 the Piedmontese armies and the "red shirts" met - from northern and southern Italy, respectively -, Garibaldi handed over political authority over southern Italy to Victor Emmanuel II, thus reaching to a partial reunification of the peninsula, but Garibaldi also requested that Cavour be removed from his position, which displeased the monarch; After that, Cavour managed to issue an order on November 11 granting the Garibaldinos soldiers the option of discharging with a small sum of money or enlisting for two years, motivating that the majority of Garibaldinos i> choose to graduate. After the defeat of the last Bourbon strongholds in southern Italy in February 1861, on March 17 of the same year Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed King of Italy in Turin, Cavour achieving his most precious political project by being able to proclaim the creation of a unified Italian State, governed by Italians, and covering almost the entire Italian Peninsula.
Cavour dedicated himself to a large-scale diplomatic operation to reach an agreement with the Papacy, offering the latter to maintain its internal autonomy within the Kingdom of Italy but the Pope renouncing his temporal power, Pius IX's rejection of this proposal gave origin to the Roman Question that would last almost sixty years. Likewise, Cavour temporarily abandoned the question of annexing Venice to the Kingdom of Italy "by arms or diplomacy" until consolidating the new Italian State, and considering it premature to confront Austria on this issue. Also trying to avoid conflicts with France, a European power that still protected the Papacy militarily, Cavour also disapproved of Garibaldi's plan for the regular army of the Kingdom to invade the territory that was still left to the Papal States and seize Rome for fear of a Negative reaction from Napoleon III, although on March 25 Cavour himself admitted to Parliament that the capital of the Kingdom should be -one day- the city of Rome.
The political confrontations with Garibaldi did not stop because on January 16, 1861 Cavour issued orders to dissolve the Garibaldian troops from the south that had not yet been discharged, fearing that if they were transferred to the north they would cause extremist agitation, and Garibaldi attacked him in a stern speech before parliament on April 18. Before concluding these plans, Cavour fell ill in late May and died, probably of malaria, at his family's palace in Turin on June 6, 1861 at the age of 50. Shortly before expiring he uttered the phrase: « Italy is already made, everything is safe ».
Over time, two ships of the Italian Navy have been named after Cavour, in 1915 a battleship was named after him, and in 2004 an aircraft carrier. His name has also been given to numerous squares, streets, and train stations in Turin, Trieste, Rome, Naples, and Florence, among several other cities.
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