It must suffice to indicate very briefly the various stages in the development of her national idea, and the manner in which she finally realised it.

Liberal principles took root in Italy at the time of the French Revolution, and the first glimmerings of nationalism were due to Napoleon, who bundled the princes out of the peninsula and even for a time exiled the Pope himself.
But it was constitutional rather than national freedom which seemed most urgent to the generation which succeeded Napoleon.

The Carbonari, as the early Italian revolutionaries were called, confined themselves almost entirely to the demand for a constitution in the various existing States, and though they eagerly desired the expulsion of Austria, they did so not because she prevented Italian unity, but because she forbade political reform.

Their risings, therefore, local and disunited in character, were bound to fail; the first fifteen years after the Congress of Vienna were occupied by a series of attempts to substitute a constitutional for an absolute _regime_ in different parts of Italy, attempts which Austria crushed with a heavy hand.
The period which followed, 1830-1848, belongs to Mazzini and his "Young Italy" party.

His task was to fire Italy for the first time with the ideal of national unity and independence.