Victor Emmanuel II

Victor Emmanuel II is the monarch invoked as a possible ally against Bourbon rule and, after Garibaldi’s campaigns, the sovereign in whose name Sicily’s dictatorship is proclaimed. His role marks both the promise and the limits of unification: the island is joined to a new kingdom, yet the systems imposed afterward leave it, in the narrative’s final judgment, once again a conquered land.

Political hopes and the planned insurrection

As Sicilian revolutionary unrest smolders, some nobles and members of the intellectual middle class look to the king of Sardinia as a means of freeing the island from Bourbon subjection. Francesco Crispi works to bring these political currents together, proposing to Giuseppe Garibaldi an insurrection originating outside Sicily but intended to aid Sicilian rebels and ultimately unite Italy. Crispi tells Garibaldi that an uprising has already begun in Palermo, presenting the Gancia revolt as the opening for that broader intervention.

Garibaldi and the volunteer fighters of the Expedition of the Thousand set sail from Quarto without Victor Emmanuel II’s explicit support. Their campaign is nevertheless conducted in his name, placing the king at the center of the revolution’s political claim even before he has endorsed the expedition.

Garibaldi’s campaign in the king’s name

After landing at Marsala, the expedition reaches Salemi, where Garibaldi proclaims himself dictator of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel II. The volunteers then march on Palermo, where they are welcomed as liberators, and continue to Naples. The progression gives the king’s name a double function: it associates the campaign with the prospect of release from Bourbon government, while also directing that liberation toward a wider Italian political order.

The meeting of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II at Teano on October 26 marks the beginning of the Kingdom of Italy. The narrative thus presents the king not as the leader of the Sicilian uprising itself, but as the sovereign whose encounter with Garibaldi signals the transfer from revolutionary campaign to national state formation.

Unification and Sicily’s renewed subordination

The political settlement that follows disappoints the expectation of a distinct Sicilian future. Officials of the Kingdom of Sardinia extend their legislative, economic, fiscal, and trading systems to southern Italy and Sicily without adapting them to local circumstances or allowing compromise. The resulting discontent reaches the nobility, which loses privileges and cultural identity, while ordinary people continue to face an economy with few apparent prospects for improvement.

In this account, the association of Victor Emmanuel II’s name with liberation does not prevent Sicily from being absorbed into a new centralized order. The concluding image of the island as once again a conquered land makes the distinction stark: the end of Bourbon subjection brings Italian unification, but not the political or economic autonomy that many Sicilians had hoped it would secure.