Europe restored: Italy and Germany after the Congress of Vienna (1815)

In 1815, the Congress of Vienna restored a political map of the Italian peninsula built on dynastic legitimacy rather than national sentiment, dissolving the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy and Murat's Kingdom of Naples. In their place, the peninsula was carved into eight states: the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, the Austrian-ruled Lombard-Venetian Kingdom, the duchies of Parma and Modena, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the tiny Republic of San Marino. Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich dismissed Italy as "a mere geographical expression," a phrase that captured the settlement's contempt for any notion of Italian political unity. Austria controlled Lombardy and Venetia directly and, through dynastic ties and secret military treaties, exercised decisive influence over Parma, Modena, and Tuscany as well.