short note on mazzini and count …

(a) Guiseppe Mazzini: He was an Italian revolutionary who played a significant role in promoting the idea of a unified Italian state. He believed that nations were the natural units of mankind, and so Italy (which was then divided into a number of small states and kingdoms) had to be forged into a single unified republic. During the 1830s, he strived to put together a coherent programme for such a unitary Italian Republic. He also set up two secret societies, namely Young Italy and Young Europe. These societies helped in the dissemination of his ideas.
(b) Count Camillo de Cavour: Of the seven states of Italy, only Sardinia-Piedmont was ruled by an Italian princely house. When the revolutionary uprisings of 1831 and 1848 failed to unite Italy, the responsibility to establish a unified Italy fell upon this Italian state. King Victor Emmanuel II was its ruler and Cavour was the Chief Minister. Cavour led the movement to unite the separate states of nineteenth-century Italy. He engineered a careful diplomatic alliance with France, which helped Sardinia-Piedmont defeat the Austrian forces in 1859, and thereby free the northern part of Italy from the Austrian Habsburgs.