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Europe · The modern states

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

1816–1860

Created in 1816 when Ferdinand (Ferdinand IV of Naples/III of Sicily, now Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies) formally merged his two kingdoms. It was the largest state in the Italian peninsula.

Existed
1816–1860
Shown on the map
1815–1860
Peak area
91k km²
Region
Europe

Overview

Created in 1816 when Ferdinand (Ferdinand IV of Naples/III of Sicily, now Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies) formally merged his two kingdoms. It was the largest state in the Italian peninsula. It faced liberal-constitutional revolutions in 1820–21 (Carbonari, suppressed with Austrian help) and 1848. Its Bourbon government became a byword among liberals for reaction. In 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand (i Mille) — a force of some 1,089 volunteers (drawn largely from Lombardy, Venetia, Genoa and Tuscany, with a handful of Neapolitans, Sicilians, Romans and Hungarians) — sailed from Quarto aboard the Piemonte and Lombardo and landed at Marsala on 11 May 1860, confronting a Neapolitan army of over 20,000. Garibaldi won at Calatafimi, took Palermo and Naples, and toppled the last Bourbon king Francis II (who held out at Gaeta until February 1861). Plebiscites confirmed annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia/Italy, completed in 1860–1861.

Common questions

What was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies?
Created in 1816 when Ferdinand (Ferdinand IV of Naples/III of Sicily, now Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies) formally merged his two kingdoms. It was the largest state in the Italian peninsula.
When did the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies exist?
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies existed 1816–1860. On this map it is drawn 1815–1860.
How large was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies?
At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies covered about 91,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.

Sources

This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia and the scholarship of Donald Queller, Thomas Madden and Jonathan Harris on the Fourth Crusade, whose post-conspiracy reading of 1204 this document follows. The article this entry is anchored on:

This entry was last updated .

This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made

Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.

Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).

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