Chapter Content
For centuries, Italy had been a prize more often than a power.
Its peninsula was carved, invaded by Islamic powers, contested, and ruled by foreign crowns—Spanish, French, Austrian—its cities brilliant and divided, its people forced to live beneath other banners. Even in the nineteenth century, Austria still held the north like a mailed fist, and French bayonets guarded the Pope in Rome.
Italy's unification did not arrive as a gift.
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