Marco Aurelio Saffi (Forlì, 1819 – San Varano, Forlì, 1980). Born to a family that was firmly committed to the Napoleonic cause, Saffi graduated from the University of Ferrara in 1841 and became a lawyer. Initially in favor of the institutional reforms promised by Pius IX, he soon grew disappointed with the Pope and turned to the republican movement led by Mazzini. In 1848 Saffi authored a manifesto—widely supported by local patriotic and popular circles—demanding a constitution for Romagna. In 1849 Saffi took part in the revolutionary activities of the Roman Republic, first serving as deputy in the Constituent Assembly, then as Minister of the Interior, and finally serving in the triumvirate with Mazzini and Armellini. After the fall of the Roman Republic, Saffi took refuge in Switzerland, moving then to France and finally London. In 1853, in Italy again, he organized the insurrection in Romagna. After again living in London between 1853 and 1860, he returned to Italy and became the director of the Popolo d’Italia, a newspaper founded by Mazzini. In 1861 he became a member of Parliament, but resigned the following year in response to the repression in Aspromonte. After 1867, he mainly devoted himself to the study of history, also teaching diplomacy at the University of Bologna.
Roberto Balzani. “Saffi, Marco Aurelio.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 89 (2017), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/marco-aurelio-saffi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
“Marco Aurelio Saffi.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/aurelio-saffi/.
Giuseppe Avezzana (Chieri, 1797 – Rome, 1879). Sentenced in absentia for taking part in the Piedmontese insurrection in 1821, he went into exile in Spain, where he served in the ranks of the Constitutional army. From there he moved to New Orleans in 1823 and then to Mexico. Thanks to his actions against the Spaniards in 1829 and against the usurper Brusamante in 1832, Avezzana was nominated general commander of the Four Oriental States of the Republic of Mexico. In 1834 he moved to New York. After returning to Italy in 1848, he rejoined the military ranks as a colonel and was assigned to Genoa as commander of the National Guard. Under his command, Genoa attempted to continue the fight against the Austrians after the defeat of Novara. Defeated by General La Marmora, Avezzana fled to Rome, where he served as minister of war under the Mazzinian triumvirate in 1849. After going to New York in exile in 1849, he returned again to Italy and participated in Garibaldi's campaigns of 1860, ‘66 and ‘67. As a member of Parliament, he supported moving the capital from Florence to Rome. In 1877, he became president of a newly founded organization, Pro Italia irredenta, promoting the liberation of Trieste and Trento.
Luigi Lerro. “Avezzana, Giuseppe.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 4 (1962), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuseppe-avezzana_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
“Avezzana, Giuseppe.” Treccani, L’unificazione (2011),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuseppe-avezzana_%28L%27Unificazione%29/.
Paolo Bajnotti (Turin, 1824 – San Remo, 1819). Descended from a noble Turinese family, Count Paolo Bajnotti pursued a diplomatic career for the Kingdom of Piedmonte. In 1876 he married Caroline Matilda Brown, daughter of the General Consul for the United States in Rome, Nicholas Brown III. Bajnotti served as a diplomat in New York, Paris, Saint Petersburg, and Chicago, and was appointed plenipotentiary minister for the Kingdom of Italy in the United States. After his wife’s death in 1892, Bajnotti commissioned two memorials in her honor in the city of Providence, where she was born: the clocktower (Carrie Tower) on Brown University’s campus and the Bajnotti fountain (Carrie Brown Memorial) in Burnside Park. He also commissioned a fountain in honor of his parents in Turin, the Fontana Angelica. He died in San Remo in 1819.
Ugo Bassi (Cento, Italy, 1801 – Bologna 1849). After taking his vows as a Barnabite cleric, he taught rhetoric in Naples and later became a preacher. In 1848, he joined the papal troops of General Durando. After being wounded three times in Treviso, he moved to the republican front, taking part in the defense of Venice and Rome. While following Garibaldi during his retreat through central Italy, Bassi was captured by the Austrians in Comacchio on August 4th, 1849, and later executed in Bologna.
Maria L. Trebiliani. “Bassi, Ugo.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 7 (1970),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ugo-bassi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Cristina di Belgiojoso (Milan, 1808 – Milan, 1871). Born Cristina Trivulzio, a descendant of the aristocratic Trivulzio family, she married Prince Emilio Barbaiano di Belgioioso d’Este at the age of 16. They separated after a few years, and Cristina started traveling through Italy and abroad, coming into contact with liberal and patriotic circles. In 1830 she settled in Paris, where she cultivated a salon which included several prominent figures of the time, including Heinrich Heine, Honorè de Balzac, Gioacchino Rossini, Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Vincenzo Bellini, Alfred De Musset, Augustine Thierry, Francois Guizot, and Camillo Benso di Cavour. In 1834, she generously supported Mazzini’s expedition to Savoy by selling her jewelry. In 1840 she returned to Italy, settling on her estate in Locate, near Milan. There, inspired by Fourier’s and Saint-Simon’s theories, she dedicated herself to improving the living conditions of peasants. In 1847 she resumed traveling, meeting many of the key figures of the unification movement, such as Cesare Balbo, Niccolò Tommaseo, Giuseppe Montanelli, and King Charles Albert. During the final days of the Roman Republic in 1849, she directed the military hospitals. After the fall of the Roman Republic, she traveled through Asia Minor, and later described her journey in the book Asie Mineure (1858). After returning to France in 1853, she obtained permission in 1856 to settle again in Locate. There, she wrote a history of the house of Savoy (Histoire de la maison de Savoie). In Milan in 1860, she founded the French-language journal L’Italie. In her late writings she addressed social and political issues, with special attention to the condition of women.
Angelica Zazzeri. “Trivulzio, Cristina.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 97 (2020), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/cristina-trivulzio_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29.
Charles Lucien Bonaparte, prince of Canino (Paris, 1803 – Paris, 1857). The son of Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother, Lucien, he grew up on his father’s feudal holding near Rome, developing an interest in natural sciences, which he later was accompanied by an interest in politics. After urging reforms on the newly elected Pope Pius IX, he then championed the Roman Republic, serving as vice president of its Constituent Assembly. He would be accused of masterminding the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi, prompting the pope’s flight from Rome.
Fiorella Bartoccini. “Bonaparte, Carlo Luciano.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 11 (1989), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/bonaparte-carlo-luciano-principe-di-canino_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
John Carter Brown (1797 – 1874). The youngest of three surviving children born to Nicholas Brown, Jr., he graduated from Brown in 1816, giving a graduation oration titled “The Revolution of Empires.” In 1822, he was sent to Europe for a business trip on behalf of the family firm, Brown & Ives. After being shipwrecked in France, he turned the business trip into a two-year Grand Tour under the supervision of his erudite uncle, Dr. Benjamin Carter. Carter, a physician who had learned Chinese while working in Canton for Brown & Ives and had spent 15 years in Europe, introduced Brown to “The Great Subject,” meaning the reciprocal influences between the Old and the New World. After his father’s death, Brown withdrew from Brown & Ives affairs and devoted himself to book collecting. An opponent of slavery, he took part in the Free Soil Movement in the 1840s and 50s, becoming president of the Emigrant Aid Society. His library was later donated to Brown University.
Nicholas Brown III (Providence, 1792 – Providence, 1859) was the United States consul to the Vatican from 1845 to 1853. He was the eldest of the three surviving children born to Nicholas Brown Jr. and Ann Carter. Nicholas III graduated from Brown University in 1811 before attending the prestigious Tapping Reeve Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut. Unlike his cousin Moses Brown Ives, he refused to sit the bar, and so his father sent him to his brother-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Carter, in London. He returned to the United States in 1819, first settling in New York and then in Providence, where he spent the next four years. In 1820 he married his second cousin, Abby Mason, but she soon fell ill and died in October 1822 in the Bahamas. Nicholas III would eventually remarry, to twenty-four-year-old Caroline Matilda Clements in November 1831. His first child, Alfred Nicholas Brown, was born one year later, in 1832, and a daughter, AnnMary, in 1835. Sadly, AnnMary died prematurely of scarlet fever in 1937, two weeks after the birth of Nicholas and Caroline’s second daughter, who then received the name of her deceased older sister. John Carter Brown II, their fourth child, was born in March 1840. One year later, Nicholas’ father, Nicholas Brown Jr. died, ending a very fractious father-son relationship. Two more children followed: Caroline Matilda (Carrie), in 1841, and Robert Grenville, in 1846. In the following years, Nicholas III embarked on a diplomatic career, securing an appointment as the American consul to Rome. He and his family arrived in Rome in November 1845, when Italy was in turmoil. The country was a patchwork of smaller states and kingdoms, and revolutionary forces were beginning to shake foreign countries’ power. In 1848, when the Vatican’s minister of the interior was assassinated and the Pope fled to Gaeta, Nicholas III openly supported the revolutionary cause and the newly formed Roman Republic. However, the U.S. State Department appointed a new consul, Lewis Cass, with instructions not to recognize the Roman Republic. The revolutionaries could not hold the city against the Austrian and French troops that eventually breached the walls of Rome. Nicholas III subsequently continued to offer his support to the republican cause and provided American passports to many revolutionaries. He then submitted his resignation to the State Department and, when Pope Pius IX was escorted back to Rome, he left for Genoa, bringing along several revolutionaries disguised as his servants. He remained in Europe for three more years before returning to Rhode Island in 1853. He would die a few years later, on March 2nd, 1859.
Sylvia Brown. Grappling with Legacy: Rhode Island’s Brown Family and the American Philanthropic Impulse (Bloomington, Indiana: Archway, 2017).
Angelo Brunetti, also known as Ciceruacchio (Rome, 1800 – Ca’ Tiepolo, Italy, 1849). The illiterate son of a blacksmith, Ciceruacchio worked as a cart driver carrying hay, grains, wine, and other goods into Rome. As his transport business grew, so did his local influence. He was allegedly initiated into politics by the writer Pietro Sterbini and the notary Felice Sifoni, who led him to join the Carbonari, a revolutionary group, in 1827. Later on, he also became a member of Mazzini’s unification movement, Young Italy. Because of these associations, he came under police surveillance in 1837. The promises of liberal reforms brought on by the accession of Pope Pius IX in 1846 increased Ciceruacchio’s leadership and involvement in mass rallies and the city’s political landscape. However, despite the revolutionary climate of 1848, the new Pope did not support liberal reform and resisted popular demands for change. This quickly turned Ciceruacchio from blind support to radical opposition. His son Luigi was suspected to have been the assassin of Pellegrino Rossi, the head of the Papal States’ government, in November 1848. With the Pope having fled to Gaeta and the establishment of the Roman Republic, Ciceruacchio occupied a less prominent position. Yet later on he was again one of the main players, when he defended the city against the French assault guided by General Charles Oudinot and, once the city capitulated, accompanied Garibaldi and his republican forces in their retreat.
Maria L. Trebiliani. “Brunetti, Angelo, detto Ciceruacchio.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 14 (1972), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/brunetti-angelo-detto-ciceruacchio_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon III (Paris, 1808 – Chislehurst, England, 1873). A nephew of Napoleon I, he would serve as the last monarch of France, following his assumption of the title of emperor, reigning from 1852 to 1870. He was raised by his mother in Switzerland, but spent winter and spring each year in Rome. He joined in the rebellion against the pope in 1831 before going into exile in Switzerland. Imprisoned from 1840 to 1846 in a French fortress following an abortive attempt at organizing a revolt, he escaped to London. Two years later, in 1848, following the French revolution of that year, he was elected to the French Constituent Assembly and then elected the new French republic’s first president later that year. In April 1849, Louis Napoléon secretly ordered French troops to enter Rome and restore the authority of Pope Pius IX.
Fiorella Bartoccini. “Bonaparte, Napoleone Luigi.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 11 (1969),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/luigi-napoleone-cittadella_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
James Buchanan (Stony Batter, PA, 1791 – Wheatland, PA, 1868). Buchanan began his political career as a member of the Federalist Party, but later aligned with the Democratic Party. He was elected to the House of Representatives from 1821 to 1831 and was elected senator in 1833. Buchanan was appointed President James K. Polk's secretary of state in 1845, and in this role he negotiated with Britain over Oregon’s borders. In 1856, Buchanan won the presidential election, becoming the fifteenth president of the United States. During his term in office, he attempted to reconcile the Democrats of the North with those of the South over the slavery question. However, he could not prevent the outbreak of the Civil War. After Lincoln’s election in 1860, he retired to private life.
Harry Searles. “Buchanan, James.” American History Central, published May 18, 2019, https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/james-buchanan/.
Carlo Armellini (Rome, 1777 – Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Belgium, 1863). Following his studies at Rome’s Sapienza University, Armellini undertook a successful legal career. His political career started with the 1846 election of Pope Pius IX, whom he initially supported. However, his position radically changed over the course of 1848. After the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi and the exile of Pius IX in Gaeta, Armellini became minister of the interior of the provisional government, and he prepared the election of the constituent assembly. In the resulting government of the Roman Republic, he was named a member of the leading triumvirate with Giuseppe Mazzini and Aurelio Saffi. He contributed to the writing of the constitution proclaimed on July 3rd, 1849, while the French army was entering Rome. After the fall of the second Republic, Armellini went into exile in Belgium, where he died in 1863.
Renzo De Felice. “Armellini, Carlo.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 4 (1962), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/carlo-armellini_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Lewis Cass Jr. Cass was appointed by James Buchanan to succeed Jacob Martin as chargé d’affaires to the Papal States, arriving in Rome in May 1849 during the last weeks of the Roman Republic. Cass, whose father, a U.S. senator, had been the unsuccessful Democratic Party candidate for president in 1848, had been commissioned as a major during the Mexican-American War. He served as chargé d’affaires in Rome from 1849 to 1854, later serving as minister resident between 1854 and 1858. He died in Paris in 1878.
Leo Francis Stock. United States Ministers to the Papal States (Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1933).
Walter Burges Smith. America’s diplomats and consuls of 1776-1865 (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Dept. of State, 1986).
John Middleton Clayton (Dagsboro, Delaware, 1796 – Dover, Delaware, 1856). He served as the U.S. senator from Delaware (1829–1836) and was a vehement opponent of President Andrew Jackson. Clayton was then appointed Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Delaware (1837–1839). In 1845, he was once again elected to the United States Senate, where he opposed the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, but advocated the active prosecution of the latter once it was begun. On March 8th, 1849, Clayton became U.S. secretary of state in Zachary Taylor’s administration. His most notable accomplishment was the negotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 with the British minister, Sir Henry Bulwer-Lytton.
“Clayton, John Middleton.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/john-middleton-clayton/.
Francisque de Corcelle (Marcilly d’Azergue, 1802 – Paris, 1892). He served in the National Assembly from 1837 to 1852, representing the liberal Catholicism party. In 1849 Corcelle was sent by French president Louis Bonaparte to Rome, where he denounced the treaty made by Ferdinand de Lesseps and helped bring about the restoration of the Papal government. In 1871, he served again as a member of the National Assembly and, the same year, returned to Rome as the French ambassador.
David I. Kertzer. The Pope Who Would be King (New York: Random House, 2018).
Massimo D’Azeglio (Turin, 1798 – Turin, 1866). Massimo Taparelli, Marquis d’Azeglio, was the descendant of a noble Piedmontese family. Having abandoned his military career, young D’Azeglio decided to become a painter and settled in Rome (1820–30). In 1831, he moved to Milan. In the 1840s, through his cousin Cesare Balbo, D’Azeglio began to take his first steps into politics, and in 1845 he visited Romagna, Marche, and Tuscany as a political envoy for the liberal movement. The following year, he published his famous work Degli ultimi casi di Romagna, a pamphlet which exposed papal maladministration. The advent of the new pope, Pius IX, ignited D’Azeglio’s hopes for the realization of his moderate liberal program, which he developed in Proposta di un programma per l’opinione nazionale italiana (1847), putting forward the idea of an Italian confederation under the auspices of the pope. He later placed his hopes for renewal in Charles Albert. In May 1849, Victor Emmanuel II entrusted him with forming a cabinet. His contribution gave the Kingdom a modernizing push through a redefinition of the political economy and the relationship with the Church (the Siccardi laws of 1850).
Walter Maturi. “d’Azeglio, Massimo Taparelli.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 4 (1962), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/massimo-taparelli-d-azeglio_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Ugo Foscolo (Zakynthos, Venetian Republic, 1778 – Turnham Green, 1827). One of the greatest authors of neoclassical and pre-romantic Italian literature, Niccolò Foscolo was born in the Ionian Islands to a Venetian father and a Greek mother. Upon the death of his father in 1788, the family moved to Venice, where Foscolo pursued his literary ambitions. Among his earliest works are two tragedies: Tieste and Edippo. Soon he began to take part in politics, and wrote the odes A Venezia and A Bonaparte liberatore, addressed to Napoleon. Following the definitive end of the ancient Republic of Venice, Foscolo wrote his famous novel, The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, and later moved to Milan, where he met Giuseppe Parini. In 1813, with the Austrian entry into Milan, he went into exile in Switzerland and then London, where he spent the rest of his life.
Mario Scotti. “Foscolo, Ugo.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 49 (1997),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ugo-foscolo_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Sarah Margaret Fuller (Cambridgeport, MA, 1810 – Fire Island, NY, 1850). Fuller was an early proponent of feminism, advocating for women's rights, education, and the right to seek any employment they wish. Fuller’s father, Timothy Fuller, ensured Sarah received a rigorous education from a young age. She became the first editor of the Transcendentalist journal The Dial in 1840, and soon she joined the New York Tribune as a literary critic. In 1846, she was sent to England and Italy as a foreign correspondent for the Tribune. In England, she met the exiled Giuseppe Mazzini and embraced his cause and political ideas. During the time she spent in Italy, she met the Roman patriot Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, belonging to a noble, but impoverished, family. The two married in 1847 and together supported the Italian independence cause. The couple and their young son Angelino died in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York, as they were traveling to the United States in 1850. Fuller's body was never recovered, and her manuscript on the rise and fall of the 1849 Roman Republic was also lost.
Daniel Howe. "Margaret Fuller." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta (Stanford University, 2021), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fuller-margaret/.
Antonio Gallenga (Parma, Italy, 1810 – Chepstow, England, 1895). When the French Revolution of 1830 caused turmoil in Italy, he participated in the Parma insurrections in 1831. Having fled to Tuscany and then Marseille and Corsica, he adhered to the Giovine Italia movement and planned the assassination of King Charles Albert, which was ultimately unsuccessful. In October 1836, he set sail to New York and settled in Boston, where he soon mastered the English language and entered the highest intellectual circles. Three years later he relocated to England, where he supported himself as a translator and wrote several articles for local magazines. In 1854, he was elected a minister of the Italian parliament, but had to resign after revealing, in his History of Piedmont (1855), his youthful attempt at regicide. Hired as a news correspondent for The Times, Gallenga covered the Expedition of the Thousand, the American Civil War, and the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars.
Giuseppe Monsagrati. “Gallenga, Antonio Carlo Napoleone.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 51 (1998), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/antonio-carlo-napoleone-gallenga_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Anita Garibaldi (Morinhos, Brazil, 1821 – Guiccioli Farm, Ravenna, 1849). Originally married to Manuel Duarte Aguiar, in 1839 Anita, born Ana María de Jesus Ribeiro, abandoned her first husband to follow Giuseppe Garibaldi, whom she met in Laguna, in the southern Brazilian province of Santa Catarina. The two married in Montevideo, Uruguay on June 16th, 1842, and she took part in all of Garibaldi’s military exploits. Anita arrived in Italy in 1847 with her daughter and two sons, and in 1849 joined her husband in the defense of the newly proclaimed Roman Republic, which ultimately fell to the French. She then fled with Garibaldi’s troops but, exhausted from the effort, tragically died during the retreat.
“Garibaldi, Anita,” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line,
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/anita-garibaldi/.
Giuseppe Garibaldi (Nice, France, 1807 – Caprera, Italy, 1882). Born in 1807 in Nice, then part of the Savoyard kingdom, Garibaldi began adult life as a mariner. A follower of Mazzini’s Young Italy movement, he took part in the Italian revolts in 1831, leading to a long period (1835–48) of exile in South America, where he joined a series of rebellions. Returning to Italy following the upheavals of 1848, initially taking part in the battle against the Austrians in Lombardy, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly of the Roman Republic and became the most important military leader in its defense. As the French troops entered Rome in July 1849 Garibaldi led his forces north, hunted by Austrian, French, Spanish, and Neapolitan troops. There followed a long period in exile before his return to Italy In 1859 and his exploits leading Italian forces in the battles to unify Italy. He died in 1882 in his island home in Caprera off the coast of Sardinia.
Giuseppe Monsagrati. “Garibaldi, Giuseppe.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 52 (1999),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuseppe-garibaldi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Gay, H(arry) Nelson (1870 – 1932). Gay was an American author and scholar who lived in Italy from 1898 until his death in 1932. He wrote several works on the Risorgimento and biographies for Americani Illustri.” His personal library was renowned for its collection of resources on the history of Italy from 1815 to 1870.
“H. Nelson Gay letters to William Roscoe Thayer.” The New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts (n.d.), https://archives.nypl.org/mss/1124.
Vincenzo Gioberti (Turin, 1801 – Paris, 1852). Born to a modest family, Gioberti obtained a degree in theology and was ordained in 1825. In 1826, he became one of the king’s chaplains; however, his republican views soon cost him this position. In 1833, he resigned his office but was arrested on a charge of conspiracy. He was imprisoned for several months and banished without a trial. He first went to Paris and later to Brussels, where he remained until 1845. There, he wrote most of his major works: Teoria del sovrannaturale (1838), Introduzione allo studio della filosofia (1839–40), Degli errori filosofici di Antonio Rosmini (1841), and Il gesuita moderno (1846–47). His fame grew after 1843, when he published his Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani, which proposed a confederation of all the states of Italy with the pope at the head. This work had great resonance and gained consensus in many quarters, especially with the advent of a new pope, Pius IX, in 1836. The Mazzinians, however, dissented from his views.In 1848, he returned to Turin and refused the honor of a senatorship, preferring instead to represent his native town in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he was soon elected president. For a short time, he held a seat in the cabinet, though without being given the necessary resources, and served as minister of education in the Casati government. In December 1848 he was nominated prime minister; however, lacking a full majority, he resigned in February. After the Battle of Novara in 1849, he was appointed ambassador to Franceby Victor Emmanuel, but soon retired to private life. In 1851, he published Del rinnovamento civile d’Italia, his second great political work, pleading the cause of Italian unification under the Sabaudian program.
“Gioberti, Vincenzo.” Treccani, L’Unificazione (2011),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/vincenzo-gioberti_%28L%27Unificazione%29/.
Gregory XVI (Belluno, Italy, 1765 – Rome, 1846). Born Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari, at the age of eighteen he joined the order of the Camaldolese in the Monastery of San Michele in Burano, and later was ordained as a priest. Under Leo XII, he was made cardinal in pectore in 1826 and appointed Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. In February 1831, after a fifty-day conclave, Cappellari was elected Pope while the insurrections against the Papal States, which had started in Bologna, were rapidly approaching the borders of Rome. The Austrian troops quickly repressed the protests of the red-shirted republicans, while the French government seized the city of Ancona to counter the Austrian intervention and imposed tutelage from Vienna and Paris on the Papal State until 1838. During his pontificate, Gregory XVI faced numerous international conflicts with Spain, Portugal, and Russia, and condemned the doctrines of La Mennais (with his encyclical, Mirari Vos) and George Hermes.
Giacomo Martina. “Gregorio XIV.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 59 (2002),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/papa-gregorio-xvi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Rush Christopher Hawkins (Pomfret, Vermont, 1831 – New York, 1920). Although born into a venerable Vermont family, Hawkins received little formal education. At the age of fifteen, he left home to enlist in the military and fight in the Mexican-American war. Initially refused due to his young age, Hawkins eventually enlisted and served in the army for nine months before falling ill. In the subsequent years, he joined a company of traveling actors and musicians, later working for a dry goods merchant; a maritime lawyer connected with the slave trade; and a debt collection firm based in Chicago. In 1856, Hawkins settled in New York City, where he practiced law with a cousin. He also met Nicholas Brown III, a former US consul to the papal court and lieutenant governor of Rhode Island, and his daughter, Annmary Brown, whom Hawkins married within a year. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Hawkins was appointed colonel of a regiment of New York volunteers, later receiving a brevet promotion to brigadier general. In 1865 he returned to New York, where he enjoyed his growing wealth and the fortune Annmary had inherited from her father, which included a number of European paintings purchased by Nicholas Brown III during his time in Rome. Now possessing the time and resources to explore Europe, Hawkins avidly collected a wide number of artworks, rare books, and incunabula during his European travels. By the turn of the century, his collection included over five hundred incunabula, of which he became a respected scholar. After Annmary’s death from pneumonia in 1903, Hawkins devoted the last eighteen years of his life to the creation of the Annmary Brown Memorial. Hawkins died in New York in 1920 after being fatally injured by an automobile.
Rebecca Soules. “‘Nothing must be changed’: Rush Hawkins’ lost memorial museum.” Museum History Journal 10, no. 1 (2017): 15–28.
Lajos Kossuth (Monok, Hungary 1802 – Turin, 1894). After being elected to the Hungarian National Assembly in 1847, Kossuth became the leading figure during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, which began after news of the revolution in Paris arrived. Kossuth was sent to Vienna to demand a parliamentary government for Hungary. The Emperor assented to a Hungarian constitution, and Lajos Batthyány created the first Hungarian government with Kossuth as minister of finance. Kossuth later declared the independence of Hungary, defending the country with the help of Polish and Italian troops. After the revolution was crushed by Russia, Kossuth sought refuge in Turkey, where he was incarcerated. After being liberated in 1851, he went to London, then the United States, and later, France and Italy. From abroad, he attempted to link the Magyar cause with the Italian fight for unity and independence, seeking the support of Napoleon III against Austria. He promoted the creation of the Hungarian Legion, which was meant to travel from Italy to Hungary, and planned landings on the Dalmatian coast with Garibaldi.
“Kossuth, Lajos” Treccani, Dizionario di Storia (2010),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/lajos-kossuth_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/.
Adriano Lemmi (Livorno, 1822 – Florence, 1906). The son of a wealthy merchant, Lemmi dedicated himself to business in Livorno and later in Naples since his youth. Motivated by democratic ideals, in his early twenties he went into voluntary exile in France and later moved to Egypt and Constantinople. In London in 1847 he met Mazzini, to whom he always remained connected. Two years later, Lemmi joined him in Rome to defend the Republic, and in 1851 Mazzini entrusted him with the mission of helping Lajos Kossuth to evade the fortress of Kutahja. In 1857, he financed the expedition of Carlo Pisacane and contributed to the development of the democratic patriotic movement, earning the title “banker of the Italian revolution.” In 1860, he was involved in the organization of the Expedition of the Thousand, and in the following months he was charged with building railroad lines in Tuscany and the South. The later part of his life was marked by his adherence to the Freemasons, of which he was appointed Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy. However, his friendship with Francesco Crispi led him to be accused of having transformed Freemasonry into an organization dependent on the government. His involvement in the Banca Romana scandal marked his exit from the public sphere.
“Lemmi, Adriano.” Treccani, L’Unificazione (2011),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/adriano-lemmi_%28L%27Unificazione%29/.
Ferdinand de Lesseps (Versailles, 1805 – Guilly, France, 1894). Lesseps fulfilled several diplomatic assignments, the most important and controversial of which took place during the Roman Republic. He was entrusted with the task of opening negotiations with the Constituent Assembly of the Roman Republic. In reality, the French government exclusively aimed to buy time while it was sending its troops. Misunderstanding the mission he was appointed with, Lesseps opened fair negotiations and tried to negotiate an agreement whereby Pope Pius IX could return peacefully to the Vatican while also ensuring the continued independence of Rome. Having been called back to France, he was harshly criticized for his conciliatory attitude towards the Roman Republic. Having abandoned diplomacy, he was the developer of the Suez Canal; he later failed to repeat this success when he attempted to build the Panama Canal.
“Lesseps, Ferdinand-Marie visconte de.” Treccani, Dizionario di Storia (2010),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ferdinand-marie-visconte-de-lesseps_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/.
Daniele Manin (Venice, 1804 – Paris, 1857). The son of a Jewish lawyer, Manin studied law at Padua and then practiced in Venice. He engaged in legal opposition to the Austrian administration and presented a petition to the Emperor which demanded respect for Italian citizenship in the Veneto region and the concession of autonomy. In 1848, he was arrested along with Niccolò Tommaseo and then freed by the crowd that rose up in Venice after news arrived of the insurrection in Vienna. When the Austrians withdrew from Venice, Manin became president of the re-created Republic of San Marco. However, after Venice was retaken by the Austrians in 1849, he was exiled to France, where he continued to fight for the Italian cause. In his final years, he converted from republicanism to monarchism and, together with Giorgio Pallavicini and Giuseppe La Farina, he founded the Società Nazionale Italiana, which promoted the idea of Italian unity under the Piedmontese monarchy.
“Manin, Daniele.” Treccani, L’Unificazione (2011),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/daniele-manin_%28L%27Unificazione%29/.
Jacob Martin. Martin was a native of North Carolina. He was appointed chief clerk of the U.S. State Department in 1840. He served as the secretary of the American Legation in France from 1844 to 1847, acting as chargé for several months. In August 1848, Martin was appointed chargé d’affaires to the Papal States, initially holding a successful meeting with the pope. However, he died of illness less than a month later and was succeeded by Lewis Cass Jr.
Leo Francis Stock. United States Ministers to the Papal States (Washington D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1933).
Walter Burges Smith, America’s diplomats and consuls of 1776–1865 (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Dept. of State, 1986).
Giuseppe Mazzini (Genoa, 1805 – Pisa, 1872). Mazzini’s father was a physician and university professor, and his mother was renowned for her Jansenist religious fervor and moral rigor. Alongside politics, he cultivated an interest in literature, adhering passionately to Romantic ideals. After graduating in law from the University of Genoa in 1827, he collaborated with the Genoese newspaper L'Indicatore Genovese and, when it was shut down by the Piedmontese authorities, with L'Indicatore Livornese, published by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi. In 1827, he became a member of the Carbonari, a political secret society. In 1830, he was arrested at Genoa and interned in Savona, where he remained until 1831. After the sentence, he was asked to choose between being confined in a small hamlet of the kingdom or being exiled. Mazzini chose exile, traveling to Geneva, Lyon, and Marseille. In 1831, he organized a new political society called Giovine Italia (Young Italy), whose aim was to promote the unification of the several kingdoms of the peninsula into a single republic. The new nation had to be “una, indipendente, libera e repubblicana” (one, independent, free and republican). Very soon, the members of Giovine Italia organized many insurrectionist activities, all destined to fail. In 1833, the Savoy government discovered one of the insurrection plots; many revolutionaries were arrested and 12 were executed. In 1837, having been expelled from Switzerland, Mazzini moved to live in London in a poor economic state, relying exclusively on his writing to support himself. He created several organizations aimed at the unification or liberation of other nations modeled on Giovine Italia. During those years, Mazzini garnered international popularity and support. In April 1848, Mazzini reached Milan, whose population had rebelled against the Austrian garrison, and contributed to create a provisional government. When, in 1849, the Roman Republic was declared, Mazzini came to Rome and was appointed, together with Carlo Armellini and Aurelio Saffi, as a member of the triumvirate, becoming the leader of the government and showing good administrative ability. However, when the Republic fell, Mazzini set out for Switzerland and then to London. In the 1850s, Mazzini attempted to revitalize the insurrection by organizing a series of uprisings, which failed and prompted harsh repression. In 1858, he founded a journal called Pensiero e azione (Thought and Action) in London. In 1870, he attempted to start a rebellion in Sicily, but was arrested and imprisoned in Gaeta. He was freed in the amnesty declared after the Kingdom of Italy took Rome, and he returned to exile. He spent the following years between London and Lugano, before returning to Italy to spend his final days. From February 1872 until his death, Mazzini lived in Pisa under the name “Doctor Brown,” hosted by Giannetta Nathan Rosselli.
Renato Coriasso. “Mazzini, Giuseppe.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 72 (2008), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuseppe-mazzini_res-94b23cfc-29b2-11de-bb24-0016357eee51_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
“Mazzini, Giuseppe.” Treccani, L’Unificazione (2011),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuseppe-mazzini_%28L%27Unificazione%29/.
Nicolas-Charles Victor Oudinot (Bar-le-Duc, France, 1767 – Paris, 1847). Having remained loyal to Louis XVIII during the Hundred Days war, Oudinot was nominated field marshal in 1822 and later held command of the cavalry school at Saumur. In 1849, he commanded the French expedition that besieged and ultimately took Rome, crushing the revolutionary Roman Republic and re-establishing the secular power of Pope Pius IX. After Louis Napoléon's coup d'état on December 2nd, 1851, he retired from military and political life.
“Oudinot, Nicolas-Charles-Victor, duca di Reggio.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line,
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/oudinot-nicolas-charles-victor-duca-di-reggio.
Carlo Pepoli (Bologna, 1796 – Bologna, 1881). Born in Bologna to a wealthy aristocratic family, he received a well-rounded education in history, literature, music, and the arts. A prolific poet, Pepoli wrote numerous epigraphs to celebrate artists, composers, and public figures of his time. He became the vice-president of the Accademia Felsinea where, in 1826, Giacomo Leopardi gave a reading of a Canto dedicated to him. Pepoli was a central figure in the 1831 revolution and, together with the brothers Carlo and Luigi Bonaparte, marched on Rome under the leadership of General Giuseppe Sercognani. He ended up imprisoned by the Austrians and was later exiled to France, where he settled in Paris. There, he was part of the important salon run by the exiled Princess Belgiojoso and frequented by artists such as Frederic Chopin, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Italian exiles such as Vincenzo Gioberti, Giuseppe Ferrari, Guglielmo Pepe, and Alessandro Poerio. In Paris, Pepoli met the composer Vincenzo Bellini, for whom he prepared the libretto for the opera I puritani. In 1835 he moved to London, where he became professor of Italian Literature at University College and married the writer Elizabeth Fergus. He returned to Italy briefly in 1848, and from 1859 resumed his political and academic activities in Bologna until his death in 1881.
Axel Körner. “Pepoli, Carlo.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 82 (2015), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/carlo-pepoli_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
“Pepoli, Carlo.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line, https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pepoli-carlo-conte/.
Pope Pius IX (Senigallia, Papal States 1792 – Rome, 1878). Born Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, Pius was ordained as a priest in 1819. In 1823, he was named Auditor to assist the Apostolic Nuncio in Chile, where he remained for three years. Upon his return to Rome, he was appointed head of the hospital of San Michele in Rome (1825–1827). In 1827, he became bishop of Spoleto; in 1832, archbishop of Imola; and in 1840 was appointed cardinal. At the time, Cardinal Mastai Ferretti was considered a liberal: he supported administrative changes in the Papal States and sympathized with the nationalist movement in Italy. He became the pope in 1846, amid widespread expectations that he would be a champion of reform and modernization in the Papal States and in the entire Catholic Church. Patriots accordingly wanted him to lead the battle for Italian independence. Pius IX's early years as pope saw many reforms; he granted general amnesty for political prisoners, and conceded a limited freedom of the press, a council of ministers, and a state consulta. In 1848, he issued a new constitution and nominated a government led by Gaetano Recchi and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli. However, at the outbreak of the first Italian War of Independence, he soon abandoned his liberal leanings, claiming to be above national interests and refusing to go to war with Austria, and reversing his initial popularity in Italy. Prime Minister Rossi was assassinated in November 1848 and, in the days following, Pius IX remained prisoner in his own palace. However, he escaped Rome several days later, taking refuge in Gaeta under the protection of Emperor Ferdinand II. From Gaeta, Pius IX urged the intervention of all Catholic powers (France, Austria, Spain, and the Kingdom of the two Sicilies) to depose the newly-formed Roman Republic. After the removal of the Republic, he appointed a conservative government of three cardinals, the Red Triumvirate, to administer the Papal States until his return to Rome. However, the process of unification had already started, and in 1859–60 Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia took all the Papal territories except Latium and Rome. Rome was invaded on September 20th, 1870, putting an end to the secular power of the papacy. The Italian parliament approved the Law of Guarantees, which gave the pope the use of the Vatican but denied him sovereignty over the Papal States. Pius IX officially rejected this offer and refused to recognize the new kingdom. He excommunicated the nation's leaders, including King Victor Emmanuel II, and attached to his 1864 encyclical, Quanta cura, a strong condemnation against liberalism, modernism, freedom of conscience, secularization, and separation of church and state, entitled a Syllabus of Errors. At the first Vatican council, Pius IX promulgated the definition of papal infallibility. In 2000, Pius IX was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
Giacomo Martina. “Pio IX, papa, beato.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 84 (2015), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pio-ix-papa-beato_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
“Pio IX.” Treccani, L’Unificazione (2011),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pio-ix_%28L%27Unificazione%29/.
James Knox Polk (Mecklenburg, NC, 1795 – Nashville, TN, 1849). Polk began his career as a lawyer in Tennessee. In 1823, he entered politics and quickly became one of the leaders of the Democratic Party. In 1845, he was elected 11th president of the United States. During his term, the U.S. saw significant territorial expansion.
“Polk, James.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line,
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/james-knox-polk/.
“Polk, James.” Treccani, Dizionario di Storia (2011),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/james-polk_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/.
William Hickling Prescott (Salem, MA, 1796 – Boston, MA, 1859). After graduating from Harvard, Prescott embarked on an extended tour of Europe. He dedicated himself to the study of Spanish history. His works on the subject include The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (1838), The History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), and The History of the reign of Philip II (1855–58, not completed).
“Prescott, William Hickling.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line,
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/william-hickling-prescott/.
Pietro Rosselli (Rome, 1808 – Ancona, 1885). The son of an officer of the Roman army, Rosselli entered the army as a cadet when he was seven years old. In 1831, he became a second lieutenant and took part in the campaign against the insurgent provinces. In 1832, he was promoted to lieutenant, and the following year he entered the military’s engineering division. In 1836, he left military service for health reasons and enrolled at the University of Rome, dedicating himself to military studies. In those years, he published several pamphlets about military strategy. Despite his brother’s membership in Giovine Italia, Pietro did not show much interest in politics or patriotism until the late 1840s. In 1848, he answered the government’s call to retired officers, volunteering to take command of one of the battalions sent to defend Venice. In 1849, he obtained command of the troops devoted to the defense of the southern border of the newly-constituted Roman Republic. Rosselli disapproved of Garibaldi’s strategic choices during the battle of Velletri in 1849, and would blame him for the defeat in a pamphlet published years later. In 1860, after a period of inactivity, he served as general in the Italian army.
Enrico Francia. “Rosselli, Pietro.” Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 88 (2017),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pietro-roselli_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
Pellegrino Rossi (Carrara, Italy, 1787 – Rome, 1848). In 1831, while a professor at Geneva’s Calvinist Academy, Rossi was appointed by the Federal Diet of Switzerland to compile a revised constitution (known as the Pacte Rossi), which was ultimately rejected. In 1833, Rossi settled in France, where he was appointed professor of political economy at the Collège de France and later, in 1834, professor of constitutional law at the Sorbonne. In the same year, he was naturalized as a French citizen, and in 1845 was tasked by François Guizot with negotiating the expulsion of the Jesuits from France. As a result of his success, he was appointed France’s ambassador to the Papal States. However, the French Revolution of 1848 severed his connection with France, and he remained in Rome, where he became minister of the Interior under Pius IX. However, Rossi’s program of moderate-liberal government aroused the hostility of both reactionary and democratic fringes. He was assassinated at the opening of the Parliament on November 15th, 1848.
“Rossi, Pellegrino.” Treccani, Dizionario di Storia (2010),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pellegrino-rossi_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/.
Carlo Giuseppe Maria Rusconi (Bologna, 1812 – Rome, 1889). After being involved in the February 1831 revolution, Rusconi left his hometown for Marseille, where he met Giuseppe Mazzini and very likely became a member of Giovine Italia. On assignment from Mazzini, he then proceeded to Paris to meet with Filippo Buonarroti. Returning to Bologna, he began his writing career, both writing a series of historical novels and engaging with translations from English. He translated and published works by Walter Schott for La Minerva in Padua, and reached the height of his career as a translator with the Italian version of the Complete Works of Shakespeare in 1838. This translation had great resonance in the following decades, and later became the reference text for Giuseppe Verdi’s Shakespearean librettos. His activities as a translator continued in the following years; he published a translation of the complete works of Byron and, for the first time in Italy, Schiller’s complete theatrical works. From 1847, Rusconi intensified his political activities. In 1849, he was elected member of the Constituent Assembly as the representative for Bologna and Forlì, and voted in favor of the establishment of the Roman Republic, of which he was appointed minister of foreign affairs. When French troops landed in Civitavecchia, he went to London in an attempt to obtain political and diplomatic support from the English government. He then went briefly to Paris to promote the Roman cause. However, when news of the capitulation of Rome reached him, Rusconi settled in Genoa. In the following years, he continued to dedicate himself to writing and to politics, holding several government appointments.
Valerio Camarotto. “Rusconi, Carlo Giuseppe Maria.” Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 89 (2017),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/carlo-giuseppe-maria-rusconi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
George Sand (Paris, 1804 – Nohant, France 1876). Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin was best known by her pen name, George Sand. In 1822, she married Casimir Dudevant and they had two children together. In 1831, she left her family and had romantic affairs with novelist Jules Sandeau, dramatist Alfred de Musset, and composer Frederic Chopin, among others. Sand's first published novel, Rose et Blanche (1831), was written in collaboration with Sandeau. She subsequently adopted the pen name that made her famous, George Sand.
“Sand, George.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line,
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/george-sand/.
William Carroll Sanders. Sanders was originally from Mobile, Alabama. He was commissioned to serve as U.S. consul to Rome on May 29, 1949, while Nicholas Brown was still serving in that position. Following Brown’s departure from Rome in the summer of 1949, Sanders served as the lone American consul there until his resignation three years later.
Walter Burges Smith. America’s diplomats and consuls of 1776–1865 (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Dept. of State, 1986).
Leo Francis Stock. United States Ministers to the Papal States (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1933).
Leo Francis Stock. Consular Relations between the United States and the Papal States (Washington, D.C.: American Catholic Historical Association, 1945).
Pietro Sterbini (Sgurgola, Italy, 1793 – Naples, 1863). Sterbini was a physician and the author of the tragedy La vestale (1827), which was banned by the pontifical police. He was a Freemason and took part in the revolutionary movements of 1831. Afterwards, he sought refuge in Corsica, where he remained for two years, and later in Marseille (1835–1846). He joined Giovine Italia and, after Pius IX’s amnesty, returned to Rome, where was elected to the National Assembly in May 1848. Politically aligned with the democrats, he served as minister of commerce and public works and deputy of the Constituent assembly. Exiled to Paris (1849–1860) during the Restaurazione, he aligned himself with Cavourian politics and the Savoy monarchy. He spent the rest of his life in Naples where, together with Diodato Lioy, founded the journal Roma.
Ignazio Vaca. “Sterbini, Pietro.” Treccani, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 94 (2019),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pietro-sterbini_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
“Sterbini, Pietro.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line,
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pietro-sterbini/.
Zachary Taylor (Virginia, 1784 – Washington, D.C., 1850). After joining the U.S. Army in 1808, Taylor made a name for himself fighting the Native Americans at Fort Harrison (1812) and in Florida (1836–1837). He was then placed in command of the American troops in Florida, followed by Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. In 1845, he led the army in occupying Texas. He later distinguished himself with his victories in the Mexican-American war. In 1849, he was elected the 12th president of the United States, and served in office until his death in 1850.
“Taylor, Zachary.” Treccani, Dizionario di Storia (2010),
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/zachary-taylor_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/.
Charles-Alexis-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (Verneuil, France, 1805 – Cannes, 1859). The descendant of an old Norman aristocratic family–which was persecuted during the French revolution–Tocqueville was one of the major representatives of nineteenth-century liberalism. In 1831, Tocqueville, together with his friend Gustave de Beaumont, received a mission from the French minister of the interior to examine prisons and penitentiaries in the United States. They were particularly interested in learning how democracy worked in the young nation. The result of this tour was De la démocratie en Amérique, which first appeared in 1835 in two volumes. Elected member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1839, he presented a law on the abolition of slavery and a proposal on prison reform. After the fall of the July Monarchy during the February 1848 Revolution, Tocqueville was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly in 1848. He was then nominated minister of foreign affairs, pursuing anti-Austrian and pro-English policies while in the role. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's December 2nd, 1851 coup, and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution, published in 1856.
“Toqueville, Charles-Alexis-Henri Clérel de.” Treccani, Dizionario di Storia (2011),
Jessie White Mario (Portsmouth, England, 1832 – Florence, 1906). Born and raised in England, Mario received an excellent education, which culminated in studying philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris under the guidance of Félicité-Robert de Lamennais. In the French capital, she met Emma Roberts, who introduced her to Giuseppe Garibaldi during a visit to Sardinia. This encounter had a great impact on the young woman, who, upon returning to London in 1855, dedicated herself to the unification of Italy. Hoping to become a doctor, she applied to medical schools. However, all her applications were rejected due to her gender. In London, she moved in circles attended by Italian exiles and Italophile Londoners, and met Giuseppe Mazzini, of whom she became a friend and collaborator. She became a propagandist for the Italian cause, writing newspaper articles explaining the issues in Italy, giving lectures, and raising funds in England and Scotland. In 1857, she accompanied Mazzini to Genoa, where she met her future husband, Alberto Mario. The failure of Mazzini’s conspiracy led to her capture and imprisonment of four months. The Marios then returned to England and, later, toured the US with a series of lectures promoting the Italian cause. In 1860, they joined Garibaldi in Sicily, where Mario worked as a nurse, gaining the title of “nurse of the Thousand.” At the same time, she was deeply interested in understanding the social problems in the region; from the early 1870s, Jessie devoted herself to philanthropic work among the urban poor of southern Italy. She wrote a large number of articles about the sociopolitical issues that followed the unification, in order to raise awareness and encourage action. She denounced the living and working conditions of the poor in the south, as well as the extremely poor provision of healthcare and widespread illiteracy.
Angelica Zazzeri. “Mario, Jessie Meriton-White.” Treccani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani 100 (2020), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/jessie-white-mario_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.
“Mario, Jessie Meriton-White.” Treccani, Enciclopedia on line,
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/jessie-meriton-white-mario/.