Charles Albert of Sardinia

Who was Charles Albert of Sardinia?

Charles Albert was the King of Piedmont-Sardinia from 1831 to 1849. He succeeded his distant cousin Charles Felix, of the House of Savoy, where he came from its Carignano branch and his name is bound up with the first "Italian statute" and the First Italian War of Independence. He abdicated after his forces were defeated by the Imperial Austrian army at the Battle of Novara, and died in exile soon thereafter.

He was born in Turin in October 1798, to Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Carignano and Maria Cristina of Saxony. His father was a fifth-generation descendant of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano, founder of the Savoy-Carignano line of the House of Savoy. Because none of the sons of Victor Amadeus III themselves had sons, Charles Albert was throughout his life known to be their likely successor on the throne of Sardinia-Piedmont.

He was educated in the intellectually liberal and "Francophile" atmosphere of the Swiss city of Geneva, then in Paris during the First French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte,. Napoleon I of France named him lieutenant of the dragoons in 1814. After the final fall of Napoleon the following year, Charles Albert returned to Turin. Two mentors were entrusted with countering the dangerous ideas about "national liberation" Charles had learned in France. However, he continued to display some sympathies with the liberals.