Victor Emmanuel II of Italy

Born in Turin on 14 March 1820, Victor Emmanuel became King of Sardinia in 1849 after his father abdicated during the First Italian War of Independence. He appointed Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, as Prime Minister and sent forces to the Crimean War in 1855, earning a seat at the peace table where he could press the case for unification. With French backing he liberated Lombardy from Austria, ceding Savoy and Nice as payment, then supported Giuseppe Garibaldi's conquest of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860. He marched through Umbria and the Marche, won the Battle of Castelfidardo against Papal troops, and met Garibaldi at Teano to claim the south. On 17 March 1861 he became King of Italy. The Vatican excommunicated him. He annexed Veneto in 1866, seized Rome in 1870 after France fell to Prussia, and made it his capital. He died there on 9 January 1878, buried in the Pantheon beneath the monument that now bears his name.