CHARLES ALBERT, King of Sardinia. - B. Oct. 2, 1798 in Turin, d. July 28, 1849 in Oporto. Son of Charles Emmanuel, prince of Carignano, of the cadet branch of Savoy, he lost his father at the age of two. He was educated at a boarding school in Paris and in Geneva, and returned after the Restoration to Piedmont as presumptive heir to the throne, since neither King Victor Emmanuel I nor his brother Charles Felix had male children. Born and raised in the revolutionary and Napoleonic climate, Charles Albert was by natural inclination disposed toward the new ideas and the new principles, but alongside this sympathy for the achievements of the revolution he had a most vivid sense of duty and of the interest of the State: sacred to him was the majesty of the king, genuine religious feeling beat in his heart, and reforms appeared to him necessary, including constitutions, only in the event that they really served to strengthen the fabric of the State.
When in 1821 the revolution broke out in Piedmont, Charles Albert, assuming the regency after the abdication of Victor Emmanuel I and in the absence of the new sovereign Charles
Felix, did not succeed in containing the movement as he would have wished. Inclined to grant a Charter on the French model, he had to bestow a constitution on the lines of the Spanish one, and, inwardly reluctant toward the movement itself, he did not find the moral courage and physical energy indispensable for taking a decisive stand. Disavowed by Charles Felix and despised by the revolutionaries, he had to leave Turin, by order of the king, after the repression of the movement. Wishing therefore to demonstrate to the sovereign his aversion to revolutionism, he did not hesitate to go to Spain, and in the train of the army of the duke of Angoulême he took part in the capture of the Trocadero. This gesture served to dispel the doubts that Charles Felix harbored about the ideological and political orthodoxy of his nephew, who was readmitted to the Sardinian states with his former rank of presumptive heir to the throne. Charles Albert became king in 1831, in a period in which a grave crisis troubled all of Europe.
The king, from the outset, demonstrated his aversion for these upheavals, and warmly supported the cause of the legitimists, both French (duchess of Berry) and Spanish and Portuguese (don Carlos and don Miguel). In domestic policy a cautious reform program was undertaken. The Council of State was instituted; new codes were promulgated, based on the Napoleonic ones but stripped of every anti-Catholic intent; the economic and financial policy of the kingdom was inspired by new criteria. In these years Charles Albert particularly aimed at the defense of the Catholic religion, which he declared in article 1 of the Civil Code to be «the sole religion of the State». In 1830 he began negotiations with the Holy See for the reestablishment of the nunciature in Turin, suppressed in 1753 by Charles Emmanuel III, negotiations that were happily concluded the following year. Likewise he obtained from the Holy See a concordat on the question of parish registers and on the personal immunity of the clergy (A. Mercati, Concordati tra la S. Sede e le autorità civili, Rome 1919, pp. 825-38).
The awakening of Italian public opinion, in a national and anti-Austrian sense after 1840, also impressed Charles Albert. With sincerity he then embraced the S'ai le cœur mort de l'ardeur avec des Sannas, des fâcheurs nouvelles qui
sont me donnera de ce pauvre liste, si se porte que vous prévoyez de réaliser, elle me
gennesse me des plus vives afflictions que je ne vous revois, il fut mon fidèle compagnon
dans le malheur, il me donna tant de peaux d'attachement, que je ne puis à m'ours
que de l'innocissement, ne le plus vous tous les jours comme j'en avais l'habitude
depuis tant d'innocissement, ne prouvons me vide dans le vie qu'me due constamment bien
saisible, que je suis pensé de ne pouvoir plus le voir!
Mia le 20 ottime 1836(from M. Costa de Brauzpard, La jeunesse du roi Charles-Albert, Paris 1895)
Vita und
B. Schlegel
(from M. Costa de Beauregard, La jeunesse du roi Charles-Albert, Paris 102)
CARLO ALBERTO, KING OF SARDINIA - Autograph letter of 20 Apr. 1836 from Nice to Count Gerbaix de Sonnaz.
Italian cause, though considering it under certain aspects
from a particularistic point of view. In the
second half of 1847 he granted further reforms and on
4 March 1848 he issued the Statute, which would subsequently
be the fundamental law of the kingdom of Italy until the
proclamation of the republic almost a hundred years later.
Having declared war on Austria in March 1848, C. A.,
after the defeat of Novara in Feb. of the following
year, abdicated in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel II,
and retired to Portugal, where he died a few months later.