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After the initial defeats in the 2nd Italo-Austrian War, the initial agreement between Paris and Vienna took a rather... unique route in terms of the eventual transfer of territory to Sardinia. According to the terms of the Villafrancia Armistice, the Austrians were to cede most of Lombardia to France in exchange for French agreement to allow the disposed monarchs of the central Italian states to be restored to their thrones, before France would transfer the province to Sardinia in exchange for Savoy and Nice. These terms, however, were widely despised by the revolutionary-minded Italians for obvious reasons, who felt betrayed by having central Italy handed back to the Habsburgs and being prevented from marching on to take Veneto. It was only after some time and arm-twisting by the more moderate conservative factions in Turin, as well as concession to the Italian states ascending to Sardinia, that the final transfer of territory took place.

Suppose, than, that King Emmanuel; either listening to Garibaldi and his revolutionary forces and faced with a stiffer spine by Austrian and French diplomats, renegades on its secret promise to France on the grounds that they weren't brought into the peace negotiations as an equal partner and that Napoleon III broke his promises by pursuing a unilateral peace. That leaves the Emperor with one of the key provinces of central Italy, while simultaneously the position of the Papacy isent overly undermined. How would such a situation affect the trajectory of Italian unification and the relations between the three powers?


Does Napoleon III establish a friendly regime in Milan, recreating the kingdom of his illustrious uncle? The Emperor hadent exactly abandoned political interests in the peninsula and could very well find sympathizers among the more conservative forces, raising the possibility of an alternative , Catholic pole to the romantic secular nationalism expressed by the revolutionaries for a unified Italian state. How would the restored Habsburg monarchs react?
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