An excerpt from SARDINIA 1848: THE BIRTH OF ITALY, by Giovanni Naxos
The Treaty of Turin, signed on 14 April 1848, established the following terms:
• Austria would cede Lombardy-Venetia to Sardinia, although Lombardy-Venetia would remain under personal union with Austria and an appointed Viceroy would have some measure of weight in how the region was governed
• Referenda would be conducted in the smaller Italian states of Lucca, Parma, Modena and Tuscany as to whether they wished to join Sardinia; if the result was a “yes” vote, the existing monarchs of these small states would maintain their rights and privileges as members of the nobility until their death, after which their heir could choose to remain in the Sardinian court or return to Austria
• Ports in Lombardy-Venetia would be usable by the Austrian Navy, and seagoing vessels could be manufactured by companies based in the region as well
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• Austria would give Sardinia 25% of its shares in the Suez Canal Company
• A Treaty of Friendship would be signed between Sardinia and Austria, entailing alignment of diplomatic, economic and military policy
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The results of the referenda were a foregone conclusion by the time they were released on 28 April. The Kingdom of Sardinia, its size already doubled by the inclusion of Lombardy-Venetia, thus annexed the remaining weak states on the Italian peninsula and manoeuvred to face the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. […] the Sardinian Navy set foot on Sicily proper on 16 May; […] despite the regime’s refusal to recognize the agreement, enough confirmed rumours spread to trigger a massive uprising on the mainland […] Bourbons overthrown […]
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[…] The Pope was forced to flee on 7 June, when the attendance of protests in Rome surged to a rough numerical estimate of 100,000 people, and the city itself ground to a halt […] the short-lived Roman Republic happily surrendered to Sardinian forces and Austrian auxiliaries […] Pius IX surrendered the entirety of Romagna, resigned […] details of the Austrian involvement in the liberation of the Papacy would only be revealed after the declassification of military archives in 1990 […]
[…] The temporal power of the Pope was finally broken […] although Church buildings in Rome would continue to be used by the Papacy […] completely removed from political affairs, especially in Italy, and his successors would henceforth involve themselves only in spiritual matters […]
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[…] The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed on 12 September 1848 in […] Charles Albert I of Italy […]
The Austrian role in the Italian peninsula was loudly and widely trumpeted, as well as the Treaty of Turin, widely lauded as one of the major contributors to Italian unification before the second half of the 19th century. […] The French government, after it had recovered from the revolutionary spasms of 1848, was […] deeply unhappy that it […] “had not participated in such a historic and momentous liberation.” However, due to the ongoing construction of the Suez Canal and the concerted efforts of Italy’s and Austria’s capable diplomats, the three powers remained cordial, […] the beginning of the European Collective […] short term, Suez Canal was completed in 1852 […]
Everything after this post is going to be leaping a few decades into the future. I banged out a few "updates" in a burst of inspiration. Is this plausible?