Charles Albert of Sardinia
Charles Albert of Sardinia was the king who gave Piedmont the Statuto, the constitution that would be Italy's until 1948, and led the war of 1848 against Austria in the name of Italy, lost it at Custoza, tried again the next spring and lost it in five days at Novara, and abdicated on the battlefield to a son who would finish what he had begun. He came from the junior branch of the house, raised in Paris and Geneva under Napoleon, and as a young prince in 1821 he was drawn into the officers' conspiracy for a constitution, accepted the regency when his uncle fled, and abandoned the rebels within days when the king who was about to succeed disowned him. Liberals called him the hesitating king for the rest of his life. His penance was to serve the reaction: he fought with the French army in Spain in 1823 and was received back. He became king in 1831 and for the first years ruled as an absolutist with a Jesuit confessor, while reforming the codes, the army and the tariff and letting Turin become the one Italian capital with a native industry. The election of Pius IX in 1846 and the Milan tobacco riots moved him. On 4 March 1848 he granted the Statuto, a constitution modelled on the French charter of 1830 with a king who kept the executive and a parliament of two houses. When Milan rose against the Austrians three weeks later he declared war, saying Italy would do it alone, and crossed the Ticino. He won at Goito and Peschiera and wasted the summer, and Radetzky beat him at Custoza in July and took Milan back. He signed an armistice and the Milanese jeered him out of the city. Pressed by the democrats in his own parliament, he denounced the armistice in March 1849 and Radetzky crushed his army at Novara on the 23rd. That night he abdicated for his son Victor Emmanuel II, left as a private man for Portugal, and died in Oporto four months later, aged fifty.
- Lived: 1798 CE – 1849 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: king, monarch
