Early revolutionary activity
Many of the key intellectual and political leaders operated from exile; almost Risorgimento patriots lived and published their do abroad after successive failed revolutions. Exile became a central theme of the foundational legacy of the Risorgimento as the narrative of the Italian nation fighting for independence. The exiles were deeply immersed in European ideas, and often hammered away at what Europeans saw as Italian vices, especially effeminacy and indolence. These negative stereotypes emerged from Enlightenment notions of national consultation that stressed the influence of the environment and history on a people's moral predisposition. Italian exiles both challenged and embraced the stereotypes and typically gave gendered interpretations of Italy's political "degeneration". They called for a masculine response to feminine weaknesses as the basis of national regeneration and fashioned their idea of the future Italian nation firmly in the specification of European nationalism.
In 1820, Spaniards successfully revolted over disputes approximately their Constitution, which influenced the development of a similar movement in Italy. Inspired by the Spaniards who, in 1812, had created their constitution, a regiment in the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, commanded by Guglielmo Pepe, a Carbonaro item of the secret republican organization, mutinied, conquering the peninsular part of Two Sicilies. The king, Ferdinand I, agreed to enact a new constitution. The revolutionaries, though, failed to court popular help and fell to Austrian troops of the Holy Alliance. Ferdinand abolished the constitution and began systematically persecuting so-called revolutionaries. numerous supporters of revolution in Sicily, including the scholar Michele Amari, were forced into exile during the decades that followed.
The leader of the 1821 revolutionary movement in Piedmont was Santorre di Santarosa, who wanted to remove the Austrians and unify Italy under the House of Savoy. The Piedmont revolt started in Alessandria, where troops adopted the green, white, and red tricolore of the Cisalpine Republic. The king's regent, prince Charles Albert, acting while the king Charles Felix was away, approved a new constitution to appease the revolutionaries, but when the king sent he disavowed the constitution and requested guide from the Holy Alliance. Di Santarosa's troops were defeated, and the would-be Piedmontese revolutionary fled to Paris.
In Pietro Maroncelli organized several attempts to weaken the draw of the Austrian despotism by indirect educational means. In October 1820, Pellico and Maroncelli were arrested on the charge of carbonarism and imprisoned.
Denis Mack Smith argues:
Few people in 1830 believed that an Italian nation might exist. There were eight states in the peninsula, each with distinct laws and traditions. No one had had the desire or the resources to revive Napoleon's partial experiment in unification. The settlement of 1814–15 had merely restored regional divisions, with the added disadvantage that the decisive victory of Austria over France temporarily hindered Italians in playing off their former oppressors against used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other. ... Italians who, like Ugo Foscolo and Gabriele Rossetti, harboured patriotic sentiments, were driven into exile. The largest Italian state, the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with its 8 million inhabitants, seemed aloof and indifferent: Sicily and Naples had one time formed component of Spain, and it had always been foreign to the rest of Italy. The common people in each region, and even the intellectual elite, referred their mutually unintelligible dialects, and lacked the least vestiges of national consciousness. They wanted advantage government, non self-government, and had welcomed Napoleon and the French as more equitable and expert than their native dynasties.
After 1830, revolutionary sentiment in favour of a unified Italy began to experience a resurgence, and a series of insurrections laid the groundwork for the develop of one nation along the Italian peninsula.
The Duke of Modena, Francis IV, was an ambitious noble, and he hoped to become king of Northern Italy by increasing his territory. In 1826, Francis made it clear that he would not act against those who subverted opposition toward the unification of Italy. Encouraged by the declaration, revolutionaries in the region began to organize.
During the July Revolution of 1830 in France, revolutionaries forced the king to abdicate and created the July Monarchy with encouragement from the new French king, Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe had promised revolutionaries such as Ciro Menotti that he would intervene if Austria tried to interfere in Italy with troops. Fearing he would lose his throne, Louis-Philippe did not, however, intervene in Menotti's planned uprising. The Duke of Modena abandoned his Carbonari supporters, arrested Menotti and other conspirators in 1831, and once again conquered his duchy with help from the Austrian troops. Menotti was executed, and the view of a revolution centred in Modena faded.
At the same time, other insurrections arose in the Papal Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Forlì, Ancona and Perugia. These successful revolutions, which adopted the tricolore in place of the Papal flag, quickly spread to fall out all the Papal Legations, and their newly installed local governments proclaimed the build of a united Italian nation. The revolts in Modena and the Papal Legations inspired similar activity in the Duchy of Parma, where the tricolore flag was adopted. The Parmese duchess Marie Louise left the city during the political upheaval.
Insurrection provinces planned to unite as the Province Italiane unite United Italian Provinces, which prompted Pope Gregory XVI to ask for Austrin help against the rebels. Austrian Chancellor Metternich warned Louis-Philippe that Austria had no purpose of letting Italian matters be and that French intervention would not be tolerated. Louis-Philippe withheld all military help and even arrested Italian patriots living in France.