Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

First Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy from March to June in 1861

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Lived 1810–1861, aged 51Italy

Italy PoliticiansPolitician

Wikipedia
80 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1810–1861
Aged 51
Awards
8
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

The architect of Italian unification who never saw it finished. Cavour maneuvered Piedmont through wars and Garibaldi's chaos, turning a regional kingdom into the spine of a new nation — then died three months after becoming Italy's first prime minister, a decade before Rome fell.

Biography

About

Born into Piedmontese nobility in 1810, Cavour spent his early career on economic reform and founded the newspaper Il Risorgimento before entering the Chamber of Deputies. He rose fast, built a coalition of centre-left and centre-right politicians, and became Prime Minister of Sardinia in 1852 after pushing through a rail expansion. Over the next nine years he steered Piedmont through the Crimean War, the Second Italian War of Independence, and Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, using diplomacy and timing to absorb territory until Piedmont controlled a nearly united Italy five times its f…

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