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Note on History
We have to admit that "North controlled by Austria, the South
feuding papal states" (cfr. Castle Falkenstein Rulebook, page 28)
seemed to us a hasty way to dismiss a promising situation.Such hastiness,
on the other hand, gave us a lot of free-hand in interpreting the facts.
In our personal interpretation of the New European timeline, Italy
mantains through the Age of Empires its original "balkanized" condition.
To this end, we had to somehow derail the unification process started in 1848...
1859 - despite the work of diplomat Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (and the behind-the-scenes persuasive activities of the Countess of Castiglione) and a hastily signed treaty dating from the Crimean adventure, Napoleon III refuses to lend his help to the Sardinia-Piedmont troops facing Austrian contingents across the Ticino River. After a short, inconclusive and expensive campaign, in which the deployment of tactical aerial support completely guts the infantry operations of both armies involved, what is left of the Imperial Army retreats in the Triveneto Sector (North-Eastern Italy), leaving Lombardy behind as a disputed land that the exausted Piedmontese forces can't keep under effective control.
1860 - on the night of May the 9th, an unknown underwater vessel torpedoes the two ships carrying Giuseppe Garibaldi's 1000 volunteers to Sicily, thus making the opening of a second, southern front an impossibility. A handful of Redshirts survives the catastrophe and reaches the coast of Lazio, where they are captured, tried as pirates under Papal Law and hanged. The Piedmontese troops massed in Tuscany waiting for the right opportunity to move south and seize the Papal lands can only retreat. The fate of General Garibaldi is still a mistery.
1861 - a republican's bomb claims the life of Count Cavour and his escort as they pass through Via del Po on February the 3rd. The unification process grinds to a halt while the world is aghast. In the following months, through a series of treaties, Romagna, Parma, Modena, and Tuscany become close allies of the Kingdom of Sardinia, forming the Savoia Coalition under the de-facto rule of King Vittorio Emmanuele II.
In early May, Giuseppe Mazzini is elected President of the reformed Repubblica Lombarda, a small nation uneasily positioned between the two main contenders. The Triveneto is still under Austrian rule and the activities of the Carbonari patriots continue in the shadows. To the south, the Vatican Stato Pontificio and the Borbonic Regno delle Due Sicilie still hold to their old bounduaries.
Coming Soon
Faerie Lore
of Northern
ItalyThe
Savoia
Coalition
The
Repubblica Lombarda
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