Italian troops during the Third War of Unification (Giuseppe Rava)

The story of Italian unification is fascinating. Basically the Austrian empire controlled part of the Italian peninsula, and several jealously independent kingdoms were spread over the rest of it, and then there was the Pope who controlled Rome and environs. At a crucial moment the French Empire under Napoleon III wanted to have a hand in anything that happened there bc of “the Napoleonic legend.” Germany was unifying around the same time which had a powerful indirect effect. An important part of Italian unification was Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, an exceptionally effective diplomat. So anyway, it took several wars and a lot of politicking and it happened over several decades. The most entertaining writeup I’ve read was in a history textbook that was written right after WW1 (my copy’s in storage unfortunately and I don’t remember the title). Wikipedia has an OK summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Italy