As emperor of France and king of Italy, Napoleon directly controlled all of northern and central Italy. During his rule, far-reaching reforms were instituted. Although the new Italian legal codes were translated almost verbatim from the French with little regard for Italian traditions, they introduced a modern jurisprudence responsive to the rights of the individual citizen. Properties held in mortmain, the old feudal ecclesiastical tenure (specifically those of the regular clergy), were transferred to the state and sold. The remaining feudal rights and jurisdictions were abolished. Roads were improved everywhere, and both primary and higher education were strengthened. In return for higher taxes, Italians thus gained a network of new and improved services that were to hasten Italian social and economic progress and cohesion.
The Continental System, a blockade designed to close the entire European continent to British trade, was proclaimed on November 21, 1806. It was freely violated everywhere, including along the Italian coastline. Although the blockade’s real purpose was to promote the growth of French manufacturing, especially the silk industry, by protecting it against imports, the war economy and blockade also stimulated Italian production, prompted the emergence of machine-building and metallurgy sectors, and spurred the completion of important public works. The Kingdom of Naples
In the south, after the repression and executions of 1799, the Bourbons experimented with some cautious reforms, mainly fiscal and antifeudal. These were implemented to strengthen the loyalty of the rural population, which had already proved so valuable to the monarchy. But the Neapolitan government was desperately weak, both politically and militarily. Indeed, the French reoccupied the country between February and March 1806, and the Bourbon court once more fled to Sicily. On March 30, 1806, Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte, was proclaimed king of Naples. When he became king of Spain in 1808, he was replaced by one of the most famous French generals, Joachim Murat. Despite this change, the nine years of French rule in southern Italy were a period of continuity, and, consequently, French reforms had a lasting impact. Joachim Murat was more independent of Paris than Joseph Bonaparte had been. During his reign there were fewer French ministers and advisers in proportion to Neapolitan officials, and he opposed the enforcement of the Continental System. Feudal privileges and immunities were finally abolished, although the landed aristocracy retained extensive power in the countryside. By purchasing the property confiscated from the church and from exiled landowners, southern notables subverted Murat’s plan to distribute small landholdings to peasant families. Much common land, originally usurped by large landowners, was recovered, but this worked to the benefit of bourgeois notables known in the south as galantuomini (“honourable men”). Fiscal, judicial, and educational reforms, similar to those introduced in the Kingdom of Italy, were implemented in Naples. Sardinia and Sicily
Meanwhile, both Sardinia, where the Savoy court took refuge, and Sicily remained apart from the Napoleonic world. In Sicily the Bourbons were under strict English control, not only militarily but also politically. In 1811–12, when the king clashed with the Sicilian nobles, mostly over taxation, the British naval commander Lord William Bentinck intervened. He introduced a moderate constitution that left much power in the hands of the nobles but markedly limited the absolute powers of the throne. Sicily then experienced a short period of autonomy with intense political ferment, which ended in 1816 when the restored Bourbons abrogated the constitution and reunited the island with the Kingdom of Naples to form the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The end of French rule
The Napoleonic regime collapsed in Italy as it did in the rest of Europe. Beauharnais and Murat, with their respective armies, had taken part in Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. At the moment of defeat, Murat deserted the emperor, returned to Naples, and made peace with the English and the Austrians. Joining them in their campaign against Beauharnais, though without a full commitment, he advanced with his Neapolitan troops as far as the Po River (March 1814). By the terms of the armistice of Schiarino-Rizzino (April 16, 1814), Beauharnais was able to retain control of Lombardy. But an insurrection in Milan on April 20 allowed the Austrians to occupy the entire region. The restoration period The Vienna settlement
The Congress of Vienna (1814–15), held by the victorious allies to restore the prerevolutionary European political status quo, determined that the Bourbons should be returned to Naples. For this reason, taking advantage of Napoleon’s escape from Elba to France on March 1, 1815, and his return to power, Joachim Murat opted to change sides yet one more time and declared war on Austria on March 15, 1815. In the Rimini proclamation of March 30 he incited all Italian nationalists to war, but no general insurrection occurred. Quickly defeated, Murat was forced to abdicate in May. From his exile in Corsica he moved to a base in Calabria to attempt the reconquest of his kingdom. Recaptured by Bourbon troops, he was executed in October 1815.
The Congress of Vienna established the political order in Italy that lasted until unification between 1859 and 1870. According to the Final Act of the congress, Francis I of Austria also became king of Lombardy-Venetia, which was incorporated into the Habsburg state. The former episcopal principality of Trento was formally annexed to Austria. King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy recovered his territories (Nice, Savoy, and Piedmont) and acquired the Ligurian coast, including Genoa. The duchy of Parma was granted to Marie-Louise of Habsburg, the daughter of Francis I and Napoleon’s second wife. At her death the duchy was to revert to the Bourbon-Parma family, which was also temporarily placed in charge of the duchy of Lucca. The Habsburg-Este family returned to Modena and inherited the duchy of Massa in 1825. Also in Tuscany, the Habsburg-Lorraine family added the State of the Garrisons to its former domains and was given claim to Lucca, which the Bourbon-Parma family was to relinquish in 1847. The pope recovered his temporal domain in central Italy. Ferdinand IV of Naples reassumed control of his former realm under the new title of Ferdinand I, King of the Two Sicilies.
Thus, the Vienna settlement dismantled the three aristocratic republics of Venice, Genoa, and Lucca; it strengthened Piedmont and restored undisputed Austrian hegemony in the peninsula. Austrian troops garrisoned Ferrara, ready to intervene in case of trouble in the Papal States. Austria gained the right to intervene in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, if necessary. Members of the house of Habsburg ruled over Parma, Modena, and Tuscany; and Venetia and Lombardy became, in practice, provinces of the Austrian Empire. Only the Savoy kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont remained outside the Austrian system designed and imposed on Italy by the Austrian foreign minister Klemens, Fürst (prince) von Metternich. Under Russia’s secret protection the Savoy government proved dependably reactionary.
On April 7, 1815, Francis I proclaimed the formation of the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. The new state was a fiction, however, because the two regions remained separate, each subject to the central ministries in Vienna. Milan lost its role as a capital, most of the Napoleonic administration was dismantled, and the centralizing authority of Vienna became all-pervasive. Many reforms, especially legal reforms, were abolished. Austria reacted to widespread discontent with increasingly severe police measures and stricter censorship, suppressing, for example, the liberal and Romantic periodical Il conciliatore (“The Conciliator”) after only one year of publication (1818–19).