War with Austria

• Piedmont now had support from a large country outside of Italy for a war, but the problem was how to provoke war with Austria without appearing as the aggressor
• several attempts were made to do this
• another reason why Austria had to be seen as the aggressor is because they would gain allies otherwise, Britain, etc. would support them in an unprovoked war
• Victor Emmanuel II gave a provocative speech to try an lure Austria into a war - this did not work
• Cavour then decided to mobilise the Piedmontese army
• after a while, something did errupt: Austria demanded that Cavour demobilise his troops immediately 
• fearing a possible attack, Austria then mobilised their troops - which was a large army. But it was also expensive to do this for a long time
• Austria had sent an ultimatum for Cavour, and he refused
• in response, Austria declared war on Piedmont 29th April 1859

The battles:

• there…