Charles Albert

Biography

Charles Albert was born in Turin in 1798 into the Carignano branch of the House of Savoy. His father died in 1800, and he grew up largely in Napoleonic France and Geneva, where he received a liberal schooling, including two years on the rolls of the Collège Stanislas in Paris and a spell at the military school in Bourges. He returned to Turin after Napoleon's fall in 1814 as heir presumptive to the Sardinian throne.

In March 1821, as Prince of Carignano, he first encouraged liberal conspirators seeking a constitution and, after Victor Emmanuel I abdicated, briefly served as regent and swore to the Spanish Constitution of 1812, before abandoning the movement on the orders of the new king, Charles Felix. To redeem himself with the conservative courts he fought with the French expedition that restored absolute rule in Spain in 1823, distinguishing himself at the Trocadero.

He succeeded Charles Felix in April 1831. His early reign was conservative and harsh towards Mazzini's Young Italy conspiracies, but he modernised the state: new civil and criminal codes were issued in 1837 and 1839, feudalism was abolished in Sardinia and the army and administration were reformed. In early 1848, under public pressure, he granted the Statuto Albertino, a constitution that later became the basic law of united Italy.

The same year he led Piedmont into war against Austria in support of the Lombard uprising, but was driven back by the Austrians that summer and agreed to an armistice; when he resumed hostilities in March 1849 his army was routed at Novara within days. He abdicated that night in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel II, went into exile in Portugal and died in Porto in July 1849.