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Updated: June 18, 2025
The consequence was, that Austrian troops were marched into his territory. This movement roused Charles Albert to espouse more actively the Italian cause. In Tuscany the Liberals, with Ricasoli for a leader, drove the Grand Duke to measures of reform. Austrian aggressions were more severely felt in Parma and Modena. The king was obliged to grant to his people a constitution.
Though the ministers appointed by him included men as distinguished as the Marquis Gino Capponi, Baron Ricasoli and Prince Corsini, they failed in winning a strong popular support. Leghorn, where the population, unlike that of the rest of Tuscany, is by nature turbulent, broke into open revolution.
Baron Ricasoli, who succeeded him as Prime Minister, encouraged by the support of France, which was no longer disguised, actually wrote, in the name of his king, both to the Pope and Cardinal Antonelli, urging them to give up the sovereignty of Rome.
The only result of these transactions was that Cardinal Antonelli remarked to the French Government that the Holy See would never come to terms with robbers, and that, although at war with the Turin Cabinet, 'the Pope's relations with Italy were excellent. More harmful to Ricasoli than the fulminations of the Vatican was the veiled but determined hostility of Napoleon III. Cavour succeeded in more or less keeping the Emperor in ignorance of the degree to which their long partnership resembled a duel.
The eastern side of the Grand Harbour was broken by three prominent peninsulas, later occupied by Fort Ricasoli, Fort St. Angelo, and Fort St. Michael. The only fortification in 1530 was the Fort of St. Angelo, with a few guns and very weak walls.
The public, however, soon learned, to its great astonishment, what, at first, it could not believe, that provisional governments took the place of the Piedmontese Commissioners, and that Baron Ricasoli, at Florence, Signor Farini, at Modena and Parma, and Cipriani, at Bologna, all agents of Count de Cavour and the revolution, dismissed everywhere such officials as were suspected of looking seriously to the return of the legitimate sovereigns, and had recourse to popular suffrage.
But the Tuscans soon divined the real intention of the French, and the Provisional Government in Florence, previously instituted under Bettino Ricasoli, suddenly avowed its intention of uniting Tuscany to Sardinia, whereupon Prince Napoleon, seeing the true attitude of the country, found it advisable to affect to promote the annexation.
In any case, if this general is quick, or if they are not too quick for him, according to possible instructions, a collision is difficult to be avoided. Baron Ricasoli has left Florence for the camp, and all sorts of rumours are afloat as to the present state of negotiations as they appear unmistakably to exist.
Cavour sent L.C. Farini to Modena, and Massimo d'Azeglio to Bologna, to take over what was called the "protectorate," and special commissioners were also appointed at Parma and Florence, but at Florence the real ruler was Ricasoli. On July 5 Cavour told Kossuth that European diplomacy was very anxious to patch up a worthless peace, but still he had no fears.
After Cavour's death, Ricasoli, the head of the ministry, led the constitutional party; and Ratazzi, who succeeded him and had been more in sympathy with the Garibaldians, did not deviate from his predecessor's cautious policy. The relations of the Italian government to France, even obliged the king to interfere to put down a rising, set on foot by Garibaldi, for driving the French out of Rome.
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