Italian unification in the context of "Austro-Prussian War"

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Italian: Regno delle Due Sicilie) was a kingdom in Southern Italy from 1816 to 1861 under the control of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, a cadet branch of the Spanish Bourbons. The kingdom was the largest sovereign state by population and land area in Italy before the Italian unification, comprising Sicily and most of the area of today's Mezzogiorno (southern Italy) and covering all of the Italian peninsula south of the Papal States.

The kingdom was formed when the Kingdom of Sicily merged with the Kingdom of Naples, which was officially also known as the Kingdom of Sicily. Since both kingdoms were named Sicily, they were collectively known as the "Two Sicilies" (Utraque Sicilia, literally "both Sicilies"), and the unified kingdom adopted this name. The king of the Two Sicilies was overthrown by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860, after which the people voted in a plebiscite to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. The annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies completed the first phase of Italian unification, and the new Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861.

A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such things for the sake of glory and honor. Post-classical and modern heroes, on the other hand, perform great deeds or selfless acts for the common good instead of the classical goal of wealth, pride, and fame. The antonym of hero is villain. Other terms associated with the concept of hero may include good guy or white hat.

In classical literature, the hero is the main or revered character in heroic epic poetry celebrated through ancient legends of a people, often striving for military conquest and living by a continually flawed personal honor code. The definition of a hero has changed throughout time. Merriam Webster dictionary defines a hero as "a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities". Examples of heroes range from mythological figures, such as Gilgamesh and Iphigenia, to historical and modern figures, such as Joan of Arc, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Sophie Scholl, Alvin York, Audie Murphy, and Chuck Yeager, and fictional "superheroes", including Superman and Batman.

Veneto, officially the Region of Veneto, is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the north-east of the country. It is the 4th most populous region in Italy, with a population of 4,851,851 as of 2025. Venice is the region's capital while Verona is the largest city.

Veneto was part of the Roman Empire until the 5th century AD. Later, after a feudal period, it was part of the Republic of Venice until 1797. Venice ruled for centuries over one of the largest and richest maritime republics and trade empires in the world. After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the former Republic was combined with Lombardy and re-annexed to the Austrian Empire as the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, until that was merged with the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence and of a plebiscite.

The House of Savoy (Italian: Casa Savoia, French: Maison de Savoie) is a royal house (formally a dynasty) of Franco-Italian origin that was established in 1003 in the historical region of Savoy, which was originally part of the Kingdom of Burgundy and now lies mostly within southeastern France. Through gradual expansions, the family grew in power, first ruling the County of Savoy, a small Alpine county northwest of Italy, and later gaining absolute rule of the Kingdom of Sicily. During the years 1713 to 1720, they were handed the Kingdom of Sardinia and would exercise direct rule from then onward as Piedmont–Sardinia, which was the legal predecessor state of the Kingdom of Italy and the Italian Empire, which in turn are the predecessors of the present-day Italian Republic.

From rule of a region on the French–Italian border, by the time of the abolition of monarchy in Italy, the dynasty's realm grew to include nearly all of the Italian peninsula. Through its junior branch of Savoy-Carignano, the House of Savoy led the Italian unification in 1861, and ruled the Kingdom of Italy until 1946. They also briefly ruled the Kingdom of Spain during the 19th century. The Savoyard kings of Italy were Victor Emmanuel II, Umberto I, Victor Emmanuel III, and Umberto II. Umberto II reigned for only a few weeks, as the last king of Italy, before being deposed following the 1946 Italian institutional referendum, after which the Italian Republic was proclaimed.

In ancient Roman religion, Roma was a female deity who personified the city of Rome and, more broadly, the Roman state. She was created and promoted to represent and propagate certain of Rome's ideas about itself, and to justify its rule. She was portrayed on coins, sculptures, architectural designs, and at official games and festivals. Images of Roma had elements in common with other goddesses, such as Rome's Minerva, her Greek equivalent Athena and various manifestations of Greek Tyche, who protected Greek city-states; among these, Roma stands dominant, over piled weapons that represent her conquests, and promising protection to the obedient. Her "Amazonian" iconography shows her "manly virtue" (virtus) as fierce mother of a warrior race, augmenting rather than replacing local goddesses. On some coinage of the Roman Imperial era, she is shown as a serene advisor, partner and protector of ruling emperors. In Rome, the Emperor Hadrian built and dedicated a gigantic temple to her as Roma Aeterna ("Eternal Rome"), and to Venus Felix ("Venus the Bringer of Good Fortune"), emphasising the sacred, universal and eternal nature of the empire.

Roma's official cult served to advance the propagandist message of Imperial Rome. In Roman art and coinage, she is usually depicted in military form, with helmet and weapons. In Rome's eastern provinces, she was often shown with mural crown or cornucopia, or both. Her image is rarely found in a commonplace or domestic context. Roma was probably favoured by Rome's high-status Imperial representatives abroad, rather than the Roman populace at large. She was depicted on silver cups, arches, and sculptures, including the base of the column of Antoninus Pius. She survived into the Christian period as a personification of the Roman state. Her depiction seated with a shield and spear later influenced that of Britannia, personification of Britain.

Casale Monferrato (Italian pronunciation: [kaˈzaːle moɱferˈraːto]) is a town in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, in the province of Alessandria. It is situated about 60 km (37 mi) east of Turin on the right bank of the Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Montferrat hills. Beyond the river lies the vast plain of the Po valley.

An ancient Roman municipium, the town has been the most important trade and manufacturing centre of the area for centuries. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Casale became a free municipality and, in the 15th and early 16th centuries, served as the capital of the House of Palaiologos. Then in 1536, the town passed to the Gonzagas who fortified it with a large citadel. In the 17th century, Casale was heavily involved in the War of the Mantuan Succession and besieged by French and Spanish troops. During the wars of Italian unification the town was a defensive bulwark against the Austrian Empire.

Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri (Italian: [kaˈmillo ˈbɛnso]; 10 August 1810 – 6 June 1861), generally known as the Count of Cavour (/kəˈvʊər/ kə-VOOR; Italian: Conte di Cavour [ˈkonte di kaˈvur]) or simply Cavour, was an Italian politician, statesman, businessman, economist, and noble, and a leading figure in the movement towards Italian unification. He was one of the leaders of the Historical Right and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1852, a position he maintained (except for a six-month resignation) until his death, throughout the Second Italian War of Independence and Giuseppe Garibaldi's campaigns to unite Italy. After the declaration of a united Kingdom of Italy, Cavour took office as the first Prime Minister of Italy; he died after only three months in office and did not live to see the Roman Question solved through the complete unification of the country after the Capture of Rome in 1870.

Cavour put forth several economic reforms in his native region of Piedmont, at that time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, in his earlier years and founded the political newspaper Il Risorgimento. After being elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he quickly rose in rank through the Piedmontese government, coming to dominate the Chamber of Deputies through a union of centre-left and centre-right politicians. After a large rail system expansion program, Cavour became prime minister in 1852. As prime minister, Cavour successfully negotiated Piedmont's way through the Crimean War, the Second Italian War of Independence, and Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, managing to manoeuvre Piedmont diplomatically to become a new great power in Europe, controlling a nearly united Italy that was five times as large as Piedmont had been before he came to power.

The Austro-Hungarian Navy or Imperial and Royal War Navy (German: kaiserliche und königliche Kriegsmarine, in short k.u.k. Kriegsmarine, Hungarian: Császári és Királyi Haditengerészet) was the naval force of Austria-Hungary. Ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy were designated SMS, for Seiner Majestät Schiff (His Majesty's Ship). The k.u.k. Kriegsmarine came into being after the formation of Austria-Hungary in 1867, and ceased to exist in 1918 upon the Empire's defeat and subsequent collapse at the end of World War I.

Before 1867, the Imperial Austrian Navy or simply the Austrian Navy, saw action in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Austrian expedition against Morocco (1829), the Second Egyptian–Ottoman War, the First and Second Wars of Italian Independence, the Second Schleswig War, and the Third War of Italian Independence. Following Austria's defeat by Prussia and Italy during the Seven Weeks' War, the Austrian Empire reformed itself into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, and the navy also became the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Largely neglected by the Empire in its early years, the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine expanded along with Austro-Hungarian industrialization into one of the largest navies in the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas. By 1914, the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine had a peacetime strength of 20,000 personnel, seeing action in the Boxer Rebellion and other conflicts before World War I.

Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (UK: /mænˈzoʊni/, US: /mɑːn(d)ˈzoʊni/, Italian: [alesˈsandro manˈdzoːni]; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian philosopher, poet, playwright, and novelist.

He is famous for the novel The Betrothed (orig. Italian: I promessi sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature. The novel is also a symbol of the Italian Risorgimento, both for its patriotic message and because it was a fundamental milestone in the development of the modern, unified Italian language. Manzoni also contributed to the stabilization of the modern Italian language and helped to ensure linguistic unity throughout Italy.