For the 2011 opera prego italian Lorenzo Ferrero, see Risorgimento! 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state, the Kingdom of Italy.
Kingdom of Italy until 1918, after Italy defeated Austria-Hungary in World War I. Italy was unified by Rome in the third century BC. This situation persisted through the Renaissance but began to deteriorate with the rise of modern nation-states in the early modern period. Harbingers of national unity appeared in the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, and the 15th-century foreign policy of Cosimo De Medici and Lorenzo De Medici. The Italian Wars saw 65 years of French attacks on the Italian states, starting with Charles VIII’s invasion of Naples in 1494. Italy fall under the direct or indirect control of the Habsburgs.