page_title: Charles Albert of Sardinia
section_title: Liberal sovereign (1845–1849)
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Albert of Sardinia / Liberal sovereign (1845–1849)
caption_attribution_description: English: Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859)
context_page_description: Charles Albert was the King of Sardinia from 27 April 1831 to 23 March 1849. His name is bound up with the first Italian constitution, the Albertine Statute, and with the First Italian War of Independence.
  During the Napoleonic period, he resided in France, where he received a liberal education. As Prince of Carignano in 1821, he granted and then withdrew his support for a rebellion which sought to force Victor Emmanuel I to institute a constitutional monarchy. He became a conservative and participated in the legitimist expedition against the Spanish liberals in 1823.
  He became king of Sardinia in 1831 on the death of his distant cousin Charles Felix, who had no heir. As king, after an initial conservative period during which he supported various European legitimist movements, he adopted the idea of a federal Italy, led by the Pope and freed from the House of Habsburg in 1848. In the same year he granted the Albertine Statute, the first Italian constitution, which remained in force until 1947.
context_section_description: In 1845, revolutionary movements erupted in Rimini and in the Papal States. To Massimo d'Azeglio, who had gone to report on the events, Charles Albert said, "that on the day of conflict with Austria, he would throw himself in with his sons, with his army, with all his substance, to fight for the independence of Italy."
  Understandably, on 8 June 1846, on the orders of Chancellor Metternich, the Austrian ambassador to Turin, Karl Ferdinand von Buol, asked Charles Albert to clarify his position - was he with Austria or with the revolutionaries? The King of Sardinia hesitated. In the meanwhile, on 16 June, Pope Pius IX had been elected as Pope. His first order of business was to grant an amnesty to those condemned of political crimes. The new pope then protested against Austria for having occupied Ferrara, in the Holy See, without its consent. Charles Albert, who saw in Pius IX a way of reconciling his loyalty with his old liberal ideas, wrote to him offering his support.
  In the same way, in September 1847, Cesare Trabucco, Charles Albert's secretary, was authorised to write a letter on 2 September, in which the king expressed his hope that God would grant him the power to undertake a war of independence in which he would take command of the army and the Guelph cause. These declarations made Charles Albert far more popular. However, he continued to break up anti-Austrian demonstrations because the court and government remained divided. De La Tour, Foreign Minister Solaro della Margarita, and Archbishop Liugi Fransoni considered the anti-Austrian policy exceptionally dangerous, but it was supported by Minister of War di Villamarina, Cesare Alfieri di Sostegno, Cesare Balbo, Massimo and Roberto d'Azeglio, and the young Count Cavour.
  Meanwhile, the demands of the people became pressing and were not always accepted. In this period, for example, Charles Albert did not accept a Genoese delegation which called for the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Kingdom, whom he had already banned from political writings. He did, however, implement the so-called Perfect Fusion of the Savoyard state on 29 November 1847, which extended the reforms carried out on the mainland to the island of Sardinia.
  At the beginning of 1848, news arrived that following the outbreak of the Spring of Nations, Ferdinand II had granted a constitution in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In Turin there were acclamations for the King of Naples and the Pope, while Charles Albert remained bound by the oath he had sworn to Charles Felix to respect religiously all the fundamental laws of the monarchy, and to retain absolutist rule.
caption: The elderly Austrian chancellor, Klemens von Metternich, who requested clarification on the policy of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1846
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