Kingdom of Sardinia

The Kingdom of Sardinia was the principal state behind the final phase of Italian unification: under Victor Emmanuel II and Cavour, it became the political centre from which the new kingdom was organized. In the novel, its victory ends Bourbon rule in Sicily, but the transfer of power also reveals how readily old elites and new wealth can be incorporated into a changed political framework.

Leadership and Political Setting

The movement known as the Risorgimento had gathered strength after the Napoleonic Wars, when Austria occupied northern Italy, and had already reached a crisis in 1848. By 1860, leadership had fallen mainly to the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled from Turin by Victor Emmanuel II, with Cavour as prime minister. The novel’s historical framing places this rise against the impending end of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies: Ferdinand II had just died, and the peninsula was soon to be united under a single state.

The Kingdom of Sardinia was presented as Italy’s only liberal state, a distinction that gave its government a political claim as well as a military one. Its authority nevertheless advanced through a mixture of revolutionary action, royal command, and negotiations with established Sicilian figures. The transition did not simply replace personal and local influence with impersonal institutions; both kinds of power remained active as the new state took shape.

Military Expansion and Unification

In May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from near Genoa with a thousand volunteers, acting against Cavour’s wishes, to take Sicily from the Bourbons. The Garibaldini landed at Marsala, defeated Bourbon forces at Calatafimi, and occupied Palermo within three weeks. Garibaldi, acclaimed as dictator of Sicily, recruited additional volunteers, crossed to the mainland, and entered Naples. Later that year, Bourbon forces were defeated on the Volturno, and the Kingdom of Sardinia’s troops besieged Francis II in Gaeta.

Garibaldi ultimately handed southern Italy to Victor Emmanuel II and withdrew from public life. Plebiscites then endorsed union across the peninsula, with the Papal States the exception; French troops remained there for reasons of French internal politics. When Garibaldi tried in 1862 to force the question of Rome by marching on it, his men were defeated by Piedmontese troops at Aspromonte, where he was wounded. The action ended the revolutionary phase of the Risorgimento; the process culminated officially in Rome’s declaration as Italy’s capital in 1870.

From Royal Authority to State Institutions

The contrast between dynastic rule and the new government appears in Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina’s memories of audiences with Ferdinand II. The King’s court joined ceremony to personal familiarity: after an elaborate passage through palace rooms and waiting chambers, the Prince met the monarch in a modest study where papers awaited the King’s signature. Ferdinand shifted from discussing family and science to questioning the Prince about the Lieutenant-General of Sicily, seeking information that Don Fabrizio declined to provide. The encounter made royal authority seem both personal and administrative, dependent on access, loyalty, and the monarch’s immediate judgment.

After the change of regime, the government in Turin sought to bring distinguished Sicilians into the new order through appointments to the Senate. Chevalley told Don Fabrizio that provincial authorities had proposed him for royal nomination, citing his family’s antiquity, scientific distinction, prestige, and conduct during recent events. He described the Senate as a high chamber whose members would examine and debate government bills, and whose role would be to encourage good measures and restrain bad ones. Don Fabrizio recognized that the office was more than an honorary title, but refused it: he considered himself compromised by association with the Bourbon regime and ill-suited to guide others without the capacity for political self-deception.

His refusal was also a pointed recommendation. Don Fabrizio proposed Don Calogero Sedàra instead, arguing that practical ability and political power mattered more to the new state than inherited prestige or scientific achievement. Chevalley did not immediately endorse the suggestion, but the later outcome confirmed its political force: ten years afterward, Don Calogero did enter the Senate. The new institution thus offered a route into national power for a local figure whose wealth and influence had grown during the transition.

Social Accommodation and Political Legacy

The Prince’s reading of the change is that a new governing class may take the old class’s place while preserving much of the existing order. He sees local Liberals seeking wealth and advancement more than social transformation, and imagines the Salina name surviving even as titles and emblems lose their former public standing. His unease at the prospect of rule from Turin reflects his expectation that a change of capital and political language might leave familiar relationships intact. The narrative sets that skepticism beside the actual institutional shift: the Kingdom of Sardinia’s expansion ended Bourbon sovereignty and created a unified state, even as local networks shaped who would benefit from it.

The accommodation is visible in the marriage of Tancredi Falconeri and Angelica Sedàra. Don Calogero’s wealth helped finance the restoration of Villa Falconeri, while Tancredi’s energy and new resources made him influential in political circles. Their union linked an aristocratic family to rising bourgeois wealth; the restored house retained its old proportions even as new furnishings changed its appearance. The Kingdom of Sardinia’s unification project therefore forms the political setting for a broader transfer and recombination of status: offices, money, marriage, and inherited names carry elements of the old order into the new one.