Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia-Piedmont from 1849, appoints the conte de Cavour, Camillo Benso, premier on November 4, 1852.

Cavour is generally liberal and believes in free trade, public right of opinion, and secular rule, but remains an enemy of the republicans and revolutionaries inside Piedmont, attempting to balance their needs.

Cavour formulates international commercial treaties and draws on foreign capital to reduce the public debt, stimulate economic growth, and develop a railroad system.

Cavour's dynamism is viewed with suspicion by conservatives and even by d'Azeglio.

Through an alliance with center-left deputies that becomes known as the connubio, Cavour displaces d'Azeglio as head of the cabinet.

Despite disagreements between Cavour and the king (who is influenced by the clerical party and occasionally displays absolutist tendencies), various ecclesiastical, judicial, and fiscal reforms are introduced.

The discovery and execution at Belfiore of the leaders of a conspiracy in Mantua, as well as abortive insurrections in ...

...Cadore, and ...

...Lunigiana, discredits the Italian democratic movement and discourages its most dedicated adherents.

The Italian democratic and republican movement led by Giuseppe Mazzini is meanwhile crumbling.

An insurrection against Austrian rule fails in Milan in February 1853.

Piedmont is able to assume a place among the victors at the Congress of Paris in February 1856 as a result of the Italian contribution in the Crimean War.

Cavour, achieving a diplomatic coup for Piedmont and Italy, declares from this international platform that the only threat to peace in Italy, and the root cause of subversive plots, is the burdensome Austrian overlordship.

Mazzini's isolation is complete when it becomes known that in June and July 1857 he had supported an expedition to the southern mainland to incite insurrection, known as the Sapri expedition, in which the Neapolitan republican and socialist Carlo Pisacane and some three hundred companions lost their lives.

Mazzini manages to escape the police, but is condemned to death by default.

The democrats are divided and unable to carry on the revolutionary struggle; nothing is to be expected from the restored governments.

From this moment on, Mazzini is more of a spectator than a protagonist of the Italian Risorgimento, whose reins are now strongly in the hands of the Savoyard monarch Victor Emmanuel II and his skilled prime minister Cavour.

The latter defines Mazzini as "Chief of the assassins".

Pius IX, now under the influence of the reactionary Giacomo Cardinal Antonelli, refuses to grant any reforms in Rome.

Liberal Catholicism cannot remain viable without reforms in the Papal States.

Austria carries out stern repressive measures in Lombardy-Venetia.