Kingdom of Sardinia

The Kingdom of Sardinia (also called Piedmont-Sardinia or the Kingdom of Piedmont) was the most dynamic Italian state of the 19th century and the engine of Italian unification. Ruled by the House of Savoy from its capital Turin on the Italian mainland, it modernised rapidly under Cavour's liberal economic reforms in the 1850s, built railways and free-trade agreements, and manoeuvred diplomatically to isolate Austria. Its alliance with Napoleon III of France secured military victory over Austria in 1859, liberating Lombardy. By 1861, through conquest, diplomacy, and the annexation of Garibaldi's southern conquests, it had absorbed most of the peninsula into the new Kingdom of Italy.

• Existed: 1720 CE – 1861 CE
• Type: Entity
• Government: Constitutional Monarchy
• Capital: Turin