Editing Giuseppe Mazzini (section)

==Biography==

===Early years===
[[File:19092015-DSC 2848-2.JPG|thumb|300px|left|Mazzini's house in Genoa, now seat of the Museum of the Risorgimento and of the Mazzinian Institute]]

Mazzini was born in [[Genoa]], which had recently been annexed by the [[First French Empire]]. His father Giacomo Mazzini, originally from [[Chiavari]], was a university professor who had adhered to [[Jacobin (politics)|Jacobin]] ideology, while his mother Maria Drago was renowned for her beauty and religious [[Jansenist]] fervour. From a very early age, Mazzini showed good learning qualities as well as a precocious interest in politics and literature. He was admitted to university at the age of 14, graduating in law in 1826 and initially practised as a "poor man's lawyer". Mazzini also hoped to become a historical novelist or a dramatist and in the same year wrote his first essay, ''Dell'amor patrio di Dante'' ("On Dante's Patriotic Love"), published in 1827. In 1828–1829, he collaborated with the Genoese newspaper ''L'Indicatore Genovese'' which was soon closed by the Piedmontese authorities. He then became one of the leading authors of ''L'Indicatore Livornese'', published at Livorno by [[Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi]], until this paper was closed down by the authorities.

In 1827, Mazzini travelled to [[Tuscany]], where he became a member of the [[Carbonari]], a secret association with political purposes. On 31 October of that year, he was arrested at Genoa and interned at Savona. In early 1831, he was released from prison, but confined to a small hamlet. He chose exile instead, moving to Geneva, Switzerland.<ref name=dbi/>

===Failed insurrections===
[[File:Mazzini-1.jpg|thumb|left|Mazzini in Marseilles]]

In 1831, Mazzini went to [[Marseille]], where he became a popular figure among the Italian exiles. He was a frequent visitor to the apartment of [[Giuditta Bellerio Sidoli]], a Modenese widow who became his lover.<ref name=Hunt2008/> In August 1832 Giuditta Sidoli gave birth to a boy, almost certainly Mazzini's son, whom she named Joseph Démosthène Adolpe Aristide after members of the family of [[Démosthène Ollivier]], with whom Mazzini was staying. The Olliviers took care of the child in June 1833 when Giuditta and Mazzini left for Switzerland. The child died in February 1835.<ref>{{cite book|page=61 |last=Sarti|first=Roland|title=Mazzini: A Life for the Religion of Politics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FMy1sTVu5XMC&pg=PA61|access-date=1 April 2015 |date=1 January 1997|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-275-95080-4}}</ref>

Mazzini organized a new political society called [[Young Italy]]. It was a secret society formed to promote Italian unification: "One, free, independent, republican nation."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist151/mazzini.htm|title=The Oath of ''Young Italy''|website=www.mtholyoke.edu|access-date=30 November 2017|archive-date=16 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190416195924/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist151/mazzini.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> Mazzini believed that a popular uprising would create a unified Italy, and would touch off a European-wide revolutionary movement.<ref name=Hunt2008>Hunt, Lynn; Martin, Thomas R.; and Rosenwein, Barbara H. ''Peoples and Cultures'', Volume C ("Since 1740"): ''The Making of the West''. Boston: Bedford/Saint Martin's, 2008.</ref> The group's motto was ''God and the People'',<ref>Though an adherent of the group, Mazzini was not Christian.</ref> and its basic principle was the unification of the several states and kingdoms of the peninsula into a single republic as the only true foundation of Italian liberty. The new nation had to be "One, Independent, Free Republic".

Mazzini's political activism met some success in Tuscany, [[Abruzzi]], Sicily, [[Piedmont]], and his native [[Liguria]], especially among several military officers. Young Italy counted about 60,000 adherents in 1833, with branches in [[Genoa]] and other cities. In that year Mazzini first attempted insurrection, which would spread from [[Chambéry]] (then part of the [[Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861)|Kingdom of Sardinia]]), [[Alessandria]], [[Turin]], and Genoa. However, the [[House of Savoy|Savoy]] government discovered the plot before it could begin and many revolutionaries (including [[Vincenzo Gioberti]]) were arrested. The repression was ruthless: 12 participants were executed, while Mazzini's best friend and director of the Genoese section of the ''Giovine Italia'', Jacopo Ruffini, killed himself. Mazzini was tried in absentia and sentenced to death.

Despite this setback, whose victims later created numerous doubts and psychological strife in Mazzini, he organized another uprising for the following year. A group of Italian exiles were to enter Piedmont from Switzerland and spread the revolution there, while [[Giuseppe Garibaldi]], who had recently joined Young Italy, was to do the same from Genoa. However, the Piedmontese troops easily crushed the new attempt. [[Denis Mack Smith]] writes:
<blockquote>In the spring of 1834, while at Bern, Mazzini and a dozen refugees from Italy, Poland, and Germany founded a new association with the grandiose name of Young Europe. Its basic, and equally grandiose idea, was that, as the French Revolution of 1789 had enlarged the concept of individual liberty, another revolution would now be needed for national liberty, and his vision went further because he hoped that in the no doubt distant future free nations might combine to form a loosely federal Europe with some kind of federal assembly to regulate their common interests. ... His intention was nothing less than to overturn the European settlement agreed in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, which had reestablished an oppressive hegemony of a few great powers and blocked the emergence of smaller nations. ... Mazzini hoped, but without much confidence, that his vision of a league or society of independent nations would be realized in his own lifetime. In practice, Young Europe lacked the money and popular support for more than a short-term existence. Nevertheless, he always remained faithful to the ideal of a united continent for which the creation of individual nations would be an indispensable preliminary.<ref>{{cite book|author=Mack Smith, Denis|title=Mazzini|url=https://archive.org/details/mazzini00mack_0|url-access=registration|publisher=Yale University Press|year=1994|pages=[https://archive.org/details/mazzini00mack_0/page/11 11–12]|isbn=9780300058840}}</ref></blockquote>

On 28 May 1834, Mazzini was arrested at [[Solothurn]], and exiled from Switzerland. He moved to Paris, where he was again imprisoned on 5 July. He was released only after promising he would move to England. Mazzini, together with a few Italian friends, moved in January 1837 to live in London in very poor economic conditions.

===Exile in London===
[[File:Giuseppe Mazzini 183 Gower Street blue plaque.jpg|thumb|left|Blue plaque, 183 North Gower Street, London]]

On 30 April 1840, Mazzini reformed the ''Giovine Italia'' in London, and on 10 November of the same year, he began issuing the ''Apostolato popolare'' ("Apostleship of the People").

A succession of failed attempts at promoting further uprisings in Sicily, Abruzzi, Tuscany, and [[Lombardy-Venetia]] discouraged Mazzini for a long period, which dragged on until 1840. He was also abandoned by Sidoli, who had returned to Italy to rejoin her children. The help of his mother pushed Mazzini to create several organizations aimed at the unification or liberation of other nations, in the wake of ''Giovine Italia'':<ref>Which was also reformed in 1840 in Paris, thanks to the help of Giuseppe Lamberti.</ref> "[[Young Germany]]", "Young Poland", and "Young Switzerland", which were under the aegis of "Young Europe" (''[[Giovine Europa]]''). He also created an Italian school for poor people active from 10 November 1841 at 5 Greville Street, London.<ref name="ReferenceA">Verdecchia, Enrico. ''Londra dei cospiratori. L'esilio londinese dei padri del Risorgimento'', Marco Tropea Editore, 2010</ref> From London he also wrote an endless series of letters to his agents in Europe and South America and made friends with [[Thomas Carlyle]] and his wife [[Jane Welsh Carlyle|Jane]]. The "Young Europe" movement also inspired a group of young Turkish army cadets and students who, later in history, named themselves the "[[Young Turks]]".

In 1843, he organized another riot in Bologna, which attracted the attention of two young officers of the Austrian Navy, [[Attilio and Emilio Bandiera]]. With Mazzini's support, they landed near [[Cosenza]] ([[Kingdom of Naples]]) but were arrested and executed. Mazzini accused the British government of having passed information about the expeditions to the Neapolitans, and the question was raised in the British Parliament. When it was admitted<ref>By the Home Secretary, [[Sir James Graham, 2nd Baronet]].</ref> that his private letters had indeed been opened, and its contents revealed by the Foreign Office<ref>Directly in the person of the Foreign Secretary, [[George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen]].</ref> to the Austrian<ref>In the person of Baron [[Philipp von Neumann]].</ref> and Neapolitan governments, Mazzini gained popularity and support among the British liberals, who were outraged by such a blatant intrusion of the government into his private correspondence.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

In 1847, he moved again to London, where he wrote a long "open letter" to [[Pope Pius IX]], whose apparently liberal reforms had gained him a momentary status as a possible paladin of the unification of Italy, but The Pope did not reply. He also founded the People's International League. By 8 March 1848, Mazzini was in Paris, where he launched a new political association, the ''Associazione Nazionale Italiana''. In apologising for not being able to attend the first annual celebration of the Leeds Redemption Society (a communitarian experiment) on 7 January 1847 he offered to become a subscriber.<ref>J F C Harrison Social Reform in Victorian Leeds, Thoresby Society 1954 3</ref>

===1848–1849 revolts===
[[File:Citizens shot for reading Mazzini's Journal.jpg|thumb|Citizens shot for reading Mazzini Journals (Compare with [[Édouard Manet]], ''[[The Execution of Emperor Maximilian]]'')]]

On 7 April 1848, Mazzini reached Milan, whose population had rebelled against the Austrian garrison and established a provisional government. The [[First Italian War of Independence]], started by the Piedmontese king [[Charles Albert of Sardinia|Charles Albert]] to exploit the favourable circumstances in Milan, turned into a total failure. Mazzini, who had never been popular in the city because he wanted Lombardy to become a republic instead of joining Piedmont, abandoned Milan. He joined Garibaldi's irregular force at Bergamo, moving to Switzerland with him. Mazzini was one of the founders and leaders of the [[Action Party (Italy, 1848)|Action Party]], the first organized party in the history of Italy.

On 9 February 1849, [[Roman Republic (1849–1850)|a republic]] was declared in Rome, with Pius IX already having been forced to flee to [[Gaeta]] the preceding November. On the same day the Republic was declared, Mazzini reached the city. He was appointed, together with [[Carlo Armellini]] and [[Aurelio Saffi]], as a member of the triumvirate of the new republic on 29 March, becoming soon the true leader of the government and showing good administrative capabilities in social reforms. However, the French troops called by the Pope made clear that the resistance of the Republican troops, led by Garibaldi, was in vain. On 12 July 1849, Mazzini set out for Marseille, from where he moved again to Switzerland.

===Late activities===
[[File:Mazzini Letter to Schurz.png|thumb|Last page of a letter from Mazzini to [[Carl Schurz]] when both were in London, 1851]]

Mazzini spent all of 1850 hiding from the Swiss police. In July he founded the association ''Amici di Italia'' ("Friends of Italy") in London, to attract consensus towards the Italian liberation cause. Failed riots in Mantua (1852) and the abortive [[Milan Uprising]] (1853) were a crippling blow for the Mazzinian organization, whose prestige never recovered. He later opposed the alliance signed by Savoy with Austria for the [[Crimean War]]. Also in vain was the expedition of [[Felice Orsini]] in Carrara of 1853–1854.

In 1856, he returned to Genoa to organize a series of uprisings: the only serious attempt was that of [[Carlo Pisacane]] in Calabria, which again met a disappointing end. Mazzini managed to escape the police but was condemned to death by default. From this moment on, Mazzini was more of a spectator than a protagonist of the [[Unification of Italy|Italian Risorgimento]], whose reins were now strongly in the hands of the Savoyard monarch [[Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia|Victor Emmanuel II]] and his skilled prime minister, [[Camillo Benso, Conte di Cavour]]. The latter defined him as "Chief of the Assassins".

[[File:Genova-Staglieno-Tomba di Mazzini-DSCF8994.JPG|thumb|left|Mausoleum of Mazzini in the [[Staglieno cemetery]] of Genoa]]
In 1858, he founded another journal in London called ''Pensiero e azione'' ("Thought and Action"). On 21 February 1859, together with 151 republicans, he signed a manifesto against the alliance between Piedmont and the Emperor of France which resulted in the [[Second War of Italian Independence]] and the conquest of Lombardy. On 2 May 1860, he tried to reach Garibaldi, who was going to launch his famous [[Expedition of the Thousand]]<ref>Which, apparently, was to follow a plan previously devised by Mazzini himself.</ref> in southern Italy. In the same year, he released ''Doveri dell'uomo'' ("Duties of Man"), a synthesis of his moral, political and social thoughts. In mid-September, he was in Naples, then under Garibaldi's dictatorship, but was invited by the local vice-dictator Giorgio Pallavicino to move away.

The new [[Kingdom of Italy]] was created in 1861 under the Savoy monarchy. In 1862, Mazzini joined Garibaldi in his failed attempt to free Rome. In 1866, Italy joined the [[Austro-Prussian War]] and gained [[Venetia (region)|Venetia]]. At this time, Mazzini frequently spoke out against how the unification of his country was being achieved. In 1867, he refused a seat in the [[Chamber of Deputies (Italy)|Italian Chamber of Deputies]]. In 1870, he tried to start a rebellion in Sicily and was arrested and imprisoned in Gaeta. In October, he was freed in the amnesty declared after the Kingdom [[Capture of Rome|finally took Rome]] and returned to London in mid-December.

Mazzini died of [[pleurisy]] at the house known now as Domus Mazziniana in Pisa in 1872, aged 66. His body was embalmed by [[Paolo Gorini]]. His funeral was held in Genoa, with 100,000 people taking part in it.