The Vatican City State is a neutral nation, which has not engaged in any war since its formation in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty. It has no formal military compact or agreement with neighbouring Italy, although responsibility for defending the Vatican City from an international aggressor is likely to lie primarily with the Italian Armed Forces. Although the Vatican City State has never been at war, its forces were exposed to military aggression when it was bombed during World War II, and whilst defending Vatican property in Rome during the same conflict.
The Papal States, officially the State of the Church, were a series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope, from the 8th century until 1870. They were among the major states of Italy from roughly the 8th century until the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia successfully unified the Italian Peninsula by conquest in a campaign virtually concluded in 1861 and definitively in 1870. At their zenith, the Papal States covered most of the modern Italian regions of Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Romagna, and portions of Emilia. These holdings were considered to be a manifestation of the temporal power of the pope, as opposed to his ecclesiastical primacy.
The Roman Republic was a short-lived state declared on 9 February 1849, when the government of the Papal States was temporarily replaced by a republican government due to Pope Pius IX's flight to Gaeta. The republic was led by Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Aurelio Saffi. Together they formed a triumvirate, a reflection of a form of government in the ancient Roman Republic.
The Sack of Rome, then part of the Papal States, on 6 May 1527 was carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor during the War of the League of Cognac. The largely Protestant German Landsknechts, mutinying over unpaid wages as well as Spanish soldiers & Italian mercenaries, entered the city of Rome, defeated the vastly outnumbered defenders and looted the city. The sack debilitated the League of Cognac, an alliance formed by France, Milan, Venice, Florence and the Papacy against Charles V. Pope Clement VII took refuge in Castel Sant' Angelo after the Swiss Guard were annihilated in a delaying rearguard action, where he remained until a ransom was paid to the pillagers. Benvenuto Cellini, eyewitness to the events, described the sack in his works.
Francesco Crispi was an Italian patriot and statesman. He was among the main protagonists of the Italian Risorgimento and a close friend and supporter of Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi, and one of the architects of the unification of Italy in 1860.
Marco Minghetti was an Italian economist and statesman.
Giacomo Antonelli was an Italian cardinal deacon. He was the Cardinal Secretary of State from 1848 until his death; he played a key role in Italian politics, resisting the unification of Italy and affecting Roman Catholic interests in European affairs. He was often called the "Italian Richelieu" and the "Red Pope."
Agostino Depretis was an Italian statesman and politician. He was the Prime Minister of Italy for several times between 1876 and 1887 and leader of the Historical Left parliamentary group for more than a decade. He is the fourth-longest serving Prime Minister in Italian history, after Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Giolitti and Silvio Berlusconi. Depretis is widely considered one of the most powerful and important politicians in Italian history.
The Wars of Castro were a series of conflicts during the mid-17th century revolving around the ancient city of Castro, which eventually resulted in the city's destruction on 2 September 1649. The conflict was a result of a power struggle between the papacy – represented by members of two deeply entrenched Roman families and their popes, the Barberini and Pope Urban VIII and the Pamphili and Pope Innocent X – and the Farnese dukes of Parma, who controlled Castro and its surrounding territories as the Duchy of Castro.
The September Convention was a treaty, signed on 15 September 1864, between the Kingdom of Italy and the French Empire, under which:
The 1799–1800 papal conclave followed the death of Pope Pius VI on August 29, 1799, and led to the selection as pope of Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, who took the name Pius VII, on March 14, 1800. This conclave was held in Venice and was the last to take place outside Rome. This period was marked by uncertainty for the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church following the invasion of the Papal States and abduction of Pius VI under the French Directory.
The Fasci Siciliani[ˈfaʃʃi sitʃiˈljani], short for Fasci Siciliani dei Lavoratori, were a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration, which arose in Sicily in the years between 1889 and 1894. The Fasci gained the support of the poorest and most exploited classes of the island by channeling their frustration and discontent into a coherent programme based on the establishment of new rights. Consisting of a jumble of traditionalist sentiment, religiosity, and socialist consciousness, the movement reached its apex in the summer of 1893, when new conditions were presented to the landowners and mine owners of Sicily concerning the renewal of sharecropping and rental contracts.
The Battle of Castelfidardo took place on 18 September 1860 at Castelfidardo, a small town in the Marche region of Italy. It was fought between the Sardinian army – acting as the driving force in the war for Italian unification, against the Papal States.
The Kingdom of Italy was a state which existed from 1861 – when King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy – until 1946, when civil discontent led an institutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and form the modern Italian Republic. The state was founded as a result of the unification of Italy under the influence of the Savoy-led Kingdom of Sardinia, which can be considered its legal predecessor state.
Foreign relations between Pope Pius IX and Italy were characterized by an extensive political and diplomatic conflict over Italian unification and the subsequent status of Rome after the victory of the liberal revolutionaries.
The 1644 papal conclave was called upon the death of Pope Urban VIII. It lasted from 9 August to 15 September 1644; the cardinal electors chose Giovanni Battista Pamphili, who took office as Pope Innocent X.
The Banca Romana scandal surfaced in January 1893 in Italy over the bankruptcy of the Banca Romana, one of the six national banks authorised at the time to issue currency. The scandal was the first of many Italian corruption scandals, and discredited both ministers and parliamentarians, in particular those of the Historical Left and was comparable to the Panama Canal Scandal that was shaking France at the time, threatening the constitutional order. The crisis prompted a new banking law, tarnished the prestige of the Prime Ministers Francesco Crispi and Giovanni Giolitti and prompted the collapse of the latter's government in November 1893.
See also: 1893 in Italy, other events of 1894, 1895 in Italy.
See also: 1890 in Italy, other events of 1891, 1892 in Italy.
See also: 1889 in Italy, other events of 1890, 1891 in Italy.