Plombières Agreement
The Plombières Agreement (, ) of 21 July 1858 was a secret verbal agreement concluded at Plombières-les-Bains between the chief minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, Count Cavour, and the French Emperor, Napoleon III. Some older English language sources refer to it as the Treaty of Plombières, but most avoid identifying it as a "treaty". For evidential reasons there have been disputes on the details of what was agreed, but as events unfolded over the next couple of years it was apparent that the agreement had opened the way for the , concluded on 28 January 1859, and for the subsequent  Second Italian War of Independence that became an important step along the path to Italian unification within fewer than ten years. The Plombières Agreement was an agreement concerning a future war in which France and Piedmont would ally themselves against Austria in order to remove and exclude Austrian authority and influence from the Italian peninsula. In its place Italy, which Metternich, a previous Austrian chancellor, had reportedly dismissed on various occasions as a "[mere] geographical expression", would be divided into two spheres of influence to be dominated respectively by Piedmont and France. As events turned out the war was triggered  as agreed at Plombières, but its geo-political aftermath was not precisely the one that had been envisaged. The French position. Emperor Napoleon III was keen to settle the "Italian question" and to revise the humiliations of the 1815 Vienna Congress. He had long ago formed the view that this required a war against Austria. War with Austria could bring France military success, delivering glory to France and humiliation to Austria. Actively supporting Italian nationalist aspirations would place France firmly on the side of what was then seen as progressive liberalism, and confirm the nation's special revolutionary credentials. For  France, however, Italian independence (from Austria) and Italian political unification were two very different things. Political unification would have been contrary to French interests because it would have risked reducing French influence on the Italian peninsula. An opportunity for the chief minister of Piedmont-Sardinia. The prime-minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, was aware of the French objectives and was looking for an opportunity to serve these, while at the same time fulfilling his own by removing the burdensome yoke of Austrian repression from as many Italians as possible. The arrival in Turin of Jacques Alexandre  Bixio in April 1858 provided Cavour with his opportunity. Bixio was a retired physician, originally from Liguria, with a taste for politics and for ballooning: he had made his life in France. Bixio was a friend both of Cavour and of Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, cousin to the French Emperor. His presence in Turin was ostensibly part of a discrete European tour, visiting various European royal families in order to find a socially suitable wife for the Emperor's cousin. Bixio was also able to pass to his friend, the Piedmontese chief minister, French proposals for an alliance of the two  states against Austria. The agreement would be reinforced through the marriage of Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, daughter of the Piedmontese King, Victor Emmanuel II, to Prince Napoléon Bonaparte. Reflecting the international sensitivities involved, negotiations progressed outside the "usual" diplomatic channels. To confirm his approval for the proposal, Cavour sent his diplomat, Costantino Nigra, to Paris, where Nigra made contact with another friend and confidant of the emperor (and another physician) called Henri Conneau. On 9 May 1858 Conneau was able to confirm to Nigra that the alliance proposal had the full support of the emperor himself. Further talks now  took place in Turin involving Conneau, Cavour and King Victor Emmanuel. At this point a suggestion came from the emperor for a meeting between himself and Cavour at Plombières-les-Bains, a once fashionable health resort in the small ravine of in the Vosges, reassuringly far from Paris or Turin, and off the beaten track of those following international diplomacy and politics. The meeting. On 11 July 1858 Count Cavour left Turin, letting it be known that he was heading for Switzerland. Only the King and the Piedmontese military commander, General La Marmora, were aware that his final destination was  Plombières, where nine days later the Piedmontese Prime Minister arrived during the evening of 20 July 1858. There is no surviving source for the meeting from Napoleon III. The only direct report of the discussions comes from Cavour. Cavour's report takes the form of a letter which he wrote to the King on 24 July 1858 from an overnight halt at Baden-Baden, while on his way home. This letter was made public in 1883 in "La Perseveranza", a Milanese newspaper. The meeting itself took place on 21 July 1858, with a first four-hour session starting at 11.00  and a second session running from 16.00 till 20.00. It was a Tuesday. The venue was a moving one: the two men sat together, without support staff, in a small horse-drawn carriage as it undertook a slow passage round and round the little town. Searching for a "casus belli". Neither man wanted the blame for causing the impending war. Cavour noted that Napoleon began by stating that he was determined to support Piedmont-Sardinia with all his strength in a war against Austria, on the condition that the war was not in support of a revolutionary cause and could  be justified in diplomatic terms and, more importantly, before public opinion in France and in Europe. Violations of trade treaty obligations by Austria were considered by Napoleon to be insufficient grounds for a war. There was discussion of whether the presence of an Austrian military garrison in Bologna might justify war against Austria, but the French Emperor was in the end reluctant to use this as a pretext. There were Austrian troops not only in Bologna, but also in Rome and the Papal States, preserving the status quo; in Rome there were also French troops for broadly similar reasons, and  parallels between the garrisoning of Bologna and of Rome were uncomfortably close. It then transpired that Napoleon had a proposal of his own. The little Duchy of Modena and Reggio presented a more promising "casus belli". Its ruler was Francis V, an Austrian ally and one of the many great-grandsons of the eighteenth-century Austrian empress Maria Theresa. Francis had conspicuously failed to acknowledge Napoleon III as emperor of France following the latter's coup d'état at the start of the decade. Francis of Modena had inadvertently set himself up as eminently dispensable in the eyes of Napoleon. As  they traveled round the streets of Plombières, Cavour and Napoleon devised a plan to provoke an appeal for protection from the Modenese citizens to the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, and a demand for annexation of their duchy to Piedmont-Sardinia. The co-operation of the Modenese citizenry in such a scheme seems never to have been in doubt. The King of Piedmont-Sardinia would respond by graciously declining the appeal in the terms in which it was put, but he would nevertheless send a menacing communication to Francis V of Modena. The communication would be seen as interference in the  Austrian sphere of influence and would provoke outrage in Vienna: Austria's response would be correspondingly provocative. Piedmont-Sardinia would then find itself obliged to occupy militarily Massa, a coastal city and an important port belonging to the Duchy of Modena, by which time a wider war with Austria would have been triggered. A political structure for Italy. Napoleon III stated that the Austrians must be completely ejected from the Italian peninsula, and Cavour agreed. Discussion then moved on to agreement on a political structure for the Italian peninsula following the removal of Austria. These four Italian states would have  formed a confederation, modeled on the German Confederation, of which the honorary presidency would be given to the Pope. The French price. As Cavour later reported to his king, On the matter of force levels for the war, the Piedmontese military commander Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora had produced a plan involving an army of 160,000 men, provided 50:50 by France and Piedmont-Sardinia, and a military campaign focused on the Po Valley. The emperor had his own plan, however, involving 300,000 men of whom 200,000 would be French, and he spoke in terms of a military campaign pushing right through  to Vienna. The dynastic marriage. After a mid-afternoon break the protagonists climbed back into their little carriage around five o'clock. The Emperor turned to the proposed marriage between his cousin, Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, with Victor Emmanuel's eldest daughter. Cavour had already been fully briefed by his king on this matter. He highlighted the unfortunate rumours in circulation about the character of Prince Napoléon Bonaparte and also drew attention to the age of the Princess, who was only fifteen. In the report he wrote to the King three days after the meeting, Cavour was nevertheless keen to stress the  merits of the proposed marriage. The nature of future political and military alliance would be transformed, if created without the underpinning of the marriage on which Napoleon was so keen. Progressing the alliance without the marriage would be an enormous political error. The meeting ended with a handshake, accompanied by the Emperor's injunction: "Have faith in me, as I have faith in you." Objectives. It appears from Cavour's report of the meeting that Napoleon III had prepared very carefully for it, and dictated the terms of the secret "Plombières Agreement" that resulted. Piedmont-Sardinia might be a regional  power in terms of the Po Valley, but the France was a European great power. Nevertheless, Cavour was entirely upbeat over the agreement. The tensions between the disparate objectives and expectations of the parties are nevertheless clear. Cavour believed that by controlling ""Italia Alta"", the Northern Italian Kingdom, Piedmont-Sardinia would have practical political and economic control over the entire Italian peninsula. In contrast, Napoleon was convinced that France would have control over the southern two thirds of Italy and would thereby be able to exercise de facto control over Piedmont-Sardinia. They could not both be right. Consequences. The  Franco-Sardinian Treaty. The treaty creating a was signed on 28/29 January 1859 at Turin by Victor Emmanuel II and at Paris on 26 January 1859 by Napoleon III. Not everything agreed verbally at Plombières six months before surfaced in the Treaty: it was silent on the geo-political understandings covering central and southern Italy. On the military side, The Treaty merely committed France to intervene alongside Piedmont-Sardinia in the event of aggression from Austria. In the event of any military events ending with the creation of a Kingdom of ""Alta Italia"", the northern Italian kingdom envisaged at Plombières , France would be rewarded, receiving Savoy and Nice. On 30 January 1859 the marriage was celebrated at Turin between Prince Napoléon Bonaparte and Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy. The war. Following a series of provocative military movements near the Austro-Piedmontese frontier by Piedmont-Sardinia, and having become aware of the Franco-Sardinian alliance, the Austrians took the initiative by issuing the Ultimatum of Vienna on 23 April 1859. The Austrian ultimatum required the total demobilisation of the Piedmontese army. By failing to comply with this demand, the Piedmontese triggered a declaration of war by Austria, thereby fulfilling the French  condition that their support for Piedmont-Sardinia would be contingent on Austria being the aggressor in any war. A succession of serious regional anti-Austrian pro-nationalist insurrections now broke out in Florence, Modena, Parma and the Papal States. Napoleon III evidently concluded that his earlier plan to secure French domination of central and southern Italy through his alliance with Piedmont-Sardinia could only be achieved at an unacceptable military and economic cost. On a personal level he seems to have been genuinely (and very publicly) horrified by the slaughter involved in fighting wars in an industrial age, notably at  the battles of Magenta and Solferino. He was also aware of the risk to French security from an ambitious and opportunistic Prussia in the event of France becoming over-committed militarily in Italy. He therefore hastened to sign an armistice with Austria. The French and the Austrians signed the Armistice of Villafranca without consulting the Piedmontese, provoking outrage and rioting in the streets of Turin. Under the terms agreed at Villafranca between France and Austria, most of Lombardy was transferred from Austria to France. France immediately transferred these territories to Piedmont-Sardinia, receiving Savoy and Nice in return. This left  the central Italian states, notably Tuscany and the Papal States, to be returned to the control of their former Austrian client-rulers. However, these central Italian territories were now occupied by Piedmontese troops who showed no enthusiasm for the idea of restoring Austrian sponsored rulers. The French themselves had no wish or incentive to provide practical military or other support to the Austrians for such a restoration in defiance of their alliance with Piedmont. In practical terms, therefore, following so-called Second Italian War of Independence the Piedmontese retained control both of Italia Alta, the northern Italian kingdom agreed at  Plombières, and of central Italy.