Correnti patriottiche nella Varese del Risorgimento (1814-1859)

The essay analyzes the anti-Austrian opposition in Varese, a town in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, starting from its citizen Count Tullio Dandolo and from his contacts with the Lombard confederates who, on the occasion of the Piedmontese “Carbonari” rising in March 1821, tried to persuade the king-to-be Charles Albert to wage war against Austria, in order to free Milan.In the Thirties, Domenico Adamoli's exclusive circle was a true salon of political initiation and spread of Mazzini's idea of nation, for a united, republican and democratic Italy. Young educated people, both aristocrats and middle-class, professionals and scholars adhered to it, driven by shared dissatisfaction with the Habsburgs. In the Forties, there emerged in Varese, too, a moderate current inclined to an agreement with the monarchies, both in the neo-Guelph version in favour of the Pope and in the pro-Charles Albert (‘albertista’)one in favour of the House of Savoy.The local patriotism then merged more definitely with the pro-Savoy trend in the fifties, within the context of the hegemony assumed by the moderates all over the country in the Italian national programme and, more particularly, of the conversion of the Lombard moderates to Cavour..