Carlo Alberto

King of Sardinia from 1831 to 1849, born in Turin: he granted the Statute of 1848, opened the First War of Independence and abdicated after Novara.

Image from the publication of TorinoOggi — From the publication of TorinoOggi, 2026-09-21

Carlo Alberto of Savoy-Carignano (Turin, 2 October 1798 – Porto, 28 July 1849) was King of Sardinia from 1831 to 1849. Son of Carlo Emanuele, Prince of Carignano, and of Maria Cristina Albertina of Saxe-Courland^[1], he was born at Palazzo Carignano, where his son Vittorio Emanuele II would also be born^[2]. For Turin his name is tied above all to the Statute of 1848, the constitutional charter he issued for the Kingdom of Sardinia, and to the First War of Independence, ended by the defeat at Novara and his abdication^[3].

A prince raised far from court

Belonging to the cadet Carignano branch of the House of Savoy, he left Turin a few months after his birth: when in December 1798 Carlo Emanuele IV was forced to abdicate, the family moved to Paris. His father died on 24 July 1800, and the prince spent his childhood beside a mother sympathetic to revolutionary France, in straitened circumstances after the confiscation of their property, until in 1810 Napoleon granted them an income and him the title of count^[1]. In Paris he was tutored by Abbé Liautard and attended the Collège Saint-Stanislas intermittently; between 1812 and 1813 he lived in Geneva in the boarding house of the Protestant pastor Jean Pierre Vaucher, who left a deep mark on his upbringing, and in 1814 he moved to the military academy in Bourges^[1].

He arrived in Turin on 26 May 1814, after Napoleon's fall. Vittorio Emanuele I wanted to keep him close in order to correct his French and Genevan education, entrusting him first to Count Filippo Grimaldi and, from 1816, to the cavaliere Policarpo Cacherano d'Osasco. On 30 September 1817 he married, in Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore, Archduchess Maria Teresa, daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; in March 1820 their first-born, Vittorio Emanuele, was born^[1].

The 1821 regency and exile

At the start of March 1821 his name was circulating among the constitutionalist conspirators: on 6 March he met Santorre di Santarosa and other plotters. On 12 March the citadel of Turin rose up, Vittorio Emanuele I abdicated in favour of his brother Carlo Felice, then away, and named the young prince regent^[1]. On 13 March, under pressure from the constitutionalists and with popular demonstrations in front of Palazzo Reale, the city's decurions, ministers and generals convened and agreed it was better to give way to avoid civil war: that evening the regent granted the Spanish constitution, subject to the new king's approval^[1].

On 18 March came the proclamation in which Carlo Felice declared null any act not issued by himself. On 21 March Carlo Alberto left Turin by night; at San Germano he received orders to move to Tuscany, and from 2 April he was in Florence, isolated and depressed. To rehabilitate himself he asked to fight in Spain against the liberals: in August 1823 he took part in the assault on the Trocadero and won the Cross of Saint Louis; at the end of December, at the Sardinian embassy in Paris, he swore to uphold the fundamental laws of the Savoy monarchy^[1]. Back in Turin on 7 February 1824, after ten at night to avoid celebrations, he lived until 1831 in a kind of exile at home^[1].

The reforming king (1831–1847)

He came to the throne on 27 April 1831, on the death of Carlo Felice. The first years were marked by a close alliance with Austria and by repression: against the conspiracies of Giovine Italia, which had also spread within the army, the trials of 1833 ended with 26 death sentences, 12 of them carried out, and more than 200 sentences of exile; civilians too were tried by military courts^[1].

Alongside the repression, he launched a long effort to modernise the state. On 19 August 1831 he set up the Council of State; the civil code followed (20 June 1837), the penal code (26 October 1839) and, in 1842, the commercial and procedural codes. On 21 May 1836 an edict abolished feudal jurisdiction in Sardinia; from 1834 customs policy cut tariffs, and from 1835 the budget stayed in surplus, freeing resources for agriculture, roads and ports^[1]. He also promoted the railways meant to link central Europe with Genoa and expanded charitable institutions and scientific academies^[3]. In 1832 he wanted a public picture gallery with the paintings of the royal collections: the future Galleria Sabauda, housed at first on the main floor of Palazzo Madama^[4].

The Statute of 1848

In the autumn of 1847 the king abolished judicial privileges (29 October) and ecclesiastical censorship (30 October) and opened administrative offices to election (27 November). After Ferdinand II of Bourbon had granted a constitution in Naples, the Council of Conference ruled on 3 February 1848 in favour of a charter; on 8 February a proclamation in fourteen articles announced its basis^[1]. The Statute, in 84 articles, was signed on 4 March and promulgated on the 5th^[1]. The preamble opens with the formula of a sovereign granting a concession:

"With the loyalty of a King and the affection of a Father, We come today to fulfil what We had announced to Our most beloved subjects in Our proclamation of the 8th of last February"
Carlo Alberto, preamble to the Statute, Turin, 4 March 1848

Article 1 made the Catholic religion the sole religion of the state, tolerating other faiths^[5]. The king retained executive power and shared legislative power with a Senate appointed by the crown and an elected Chamber; the text described itself as the "fundamental, perpetual and irrevocable law of the Monarchy" and was the only one of Italy's 1848 constitutions to survive the restoration, remaining formally in force for the whole life of the Kingdom of Italy^[6]. In the same days came the emancipation of the Waldensians (17 February) and of the Jews (25 March)^[1]. Palazzo Carignano was chosen for the Chamber of Deputies: in little more than a month Carlo Sada turned the elliptical hall into the chamber of the Subalpine Parliament, where Cavour, Gioberti and Massimo d'Azeglio would speak; it is the only parliamentary chamber of 1848 to survive intact in Europe^[7].

The war, Novara and the abdication

On news of the uprising in Milan, on 23 March 1848 the government decided on war against Austria^[1]. Carlo Alberto adopted the tricolour as his flag and, to those abroad who tried to hold him back, replied with the formula "Italy will manage on her own" ("l'Italia farà da sé")^[3]. Taking personal command, he won at Pastrengo on 30 April and at Goito and Peschiera on 30 May, but was defeated at Custoza on 25 July; on 5 August he left Milan amid the population's protests, and on the 9th the Salasco armistice was signed. The historian Pieri credited him with "purely passive courage" but no capacity for command^[1].

Hostilities resumed in March 1849 under the command of General Chrzanowski and ended on 23 March with the defeat at Novara. When the Austrian general Hess made the occupation of the Lomellina and of Alessandria a condition of the armistice, the king abdicated in favour of his son and, in the night between 23 and 24 March, left incognito as the "Count of Barge" for Vercelli^[1]. Travelling through France and Spain he reached Portugal, arriving in Porto on 19 April at the villa "Entre Quintas." There he lived in seclusion, reading Plutarch's Lives, and died on 28 July 1849^[1].

Superga and Turin's memory

His body was laid to rest in 1849 in the royal tombs of the Basilica of Superga, the burial place created by Vittorio Amedeo II^[8]: with him the line of sovereigns buried in the basilica's crypt, opened by Vittorio Amedeo II, comes to a close^[9]. His distant death soon fed a myth, the poetic transfiguration of a personal tragedy^[1].

In the city he is remembered by Carlo Marochetti's equestrian monument in piazza Carlo Alberto, commissioned by the Piedmontese government and completed in 1861: the king on horseback on a triple base, surrounded by an artilleryman, a lancer, a bersagliere and a grenadier, with the allegorical figures of Martyrdom, Independence, Justice and Liberty^[10]. Today the Subalpine Parliament is part of the route through the Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano^[7].

Pages linking here

Sources

Report a mistake.