Under the Sign of Duality: Joseph de Maistre and the House of Savoy in the "Age of Democratic Revolution"

Abstract

This article aims to explore the impact exerted by both the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasions on the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, and especially the reactions of his famous counter-revolutionary Savoyard subject, the count Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) to them - first as a publicist, latter as a statesman (Sardinian ambassador in Russia between 1803-1817). In the manner of the sesquicentennial of the Italian unification celebrated in 2011, we seek to reconstruct, through the intellectual testimony of Maistre, some pieces of the intricate mosaic that made up the unification process of that peninsula, highlighting the identitarian dilemmas posed by the revolutionary developments in the territories of the House of Savoy, as well as the importance (certainly indirect and unintended, but not negligible), for the future outcome of this paradoxical process of unification, of the counter-revolutionary Savoyard.

Keywords: French Revolution; Historiography; conservatism; Italian Unification; Maistre