ZURICH, TREATIES OF. — On 11 July 1859, when Napoleon III and Francis Joseph met at Villafranca, they agreed to end the war that had opposed the Franco-Sardinian forces to the Austrians on the plains of Lombardy.
That same evening Prince Jerome Napoleon took to Verona the text of the preliminary peace terms as agreed in the morning’s conversation, and Francis Joseph, after making some alterations—later approved by the French Sovereign—signed II. The document provided for the cession of Lombardy to Napoleon III to be handed over to Victor Emmanuel II; the restoration of the Duke of Modena and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, thereby tacitly authorizing Francis Joseph to approve the annexation of Parma to Sardinia; the creation of an Italian Confederation to be placed under the honorary presidency of the Pope; and the granting of a full and complete amnesty to all who had compromised themselves politically in Venetia and central Italy. To translate the Villafranca preliminaries into a definitive instrument, Zurich was chosen as the venue for a peace conference, and there the negotiations dragged on from August to November 1859. Representing Austria were Count Colloredo and Baron von Mayenburg; France, Baron de Bourqueney and the Marquis de Banneville; Sardinia, Chevalier Luigi Desmabrosi and Baron Alessandro Jocetau. While the talks were in progress, serious events were unfolding in the duchies, where Farini in Emilia and Ricasoli in Tuscany assumed dictatorial powers, as it was clear from unmistakable signs that the liberal agitators would not tolerate the return of the former sovereigns.
Victor Emmanuel, for his part, opposed the inclusion of Austrian Venetia in the projected Italian Confederation and threatened to abdicate (21 Oct.) unless Tuscany and the Legations were simply and directly annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia. With equal concern, the conference was followed in Rome, where Pius IX, on 26 September, in the allocution Maxima animi nostri, reiterated the warnings of his allocution Ad gravissimum of 20 June, threatening the gravest ecclesiastical censures against anyone who dared to attack the temporal power of the Popes. Meanwhile, England favoured the independence of the Sardinian state so as to have in the Mediterranean a sufficiently strong friendly power to counter French predominance there.
In this situation, the Congress of Zurich closed on 21 November with the simultaneous signing of three separate treaties: between Sardinia and Austria, between Austria and France, and among the three states together. These left the definitive arrangement of central Italy entirely unresolved, to be decided by an international Congress.
Pius IX then wrote to Victor Emmanuel II (3 Dec.) urging him to uphold the rights of the Holy See within the Congress, while at the same time solemnly protesting against the publication of a pamphlet entitled Le Pape et le Congrès, directly inspired by Napoleon III, which suggested that the Pope should voluntarily renounce his temporal dominions, with the exception of Rome and Latium. A few weeks later, after Walewski had been replaced by Thouvenel at the head of French foreign policy and Cavour, who had resigned after Villafranca, had returned to power, the French Emperor consented to the annexations in exchange for the cession of Nice and Savoy, so that the plebiscites in Emilia and Tuscany could be held (11–12 March 1860), and the idea of a Congress, no less than the agreements concluded at Zurich, fell completely by the wayside.