The various Italian states are ruled by either the papacy, the Bourbons or the Habsburgs.

The first of the European revolutions of 1848 begins in Palermo as a popular insurrection.

Soon taking on overtones of Sicilian separatism, it spreads throughout the island and, eventually, the entire peninsula.

When the dust settles some twenty-two years later, Italy will have become a single nation united under a hereditary monarch who is neither Bourbon or Habsburg, and the pope will have imprisoned himself in his sole remaining enclave, the Vatican City.

The year 1848 is historically famous for the wave of revolutions, a series of widespread struggles for more liberal governments, that break out from Brazil to Hungary; although most fail in their immediate aims, they significantly alter the political and philosophical landscape and will have major ramifications throughout the rest of the century.