Infantryman Foreign Legion battle of Solferino, 1859

After his failed attempt to assassinate Napoleon III in 1858, Felice Orsini, the Italian liberal, wrote a letter from his prison cell urging the French Emperor to support Italy in her struggle for independence, a subject never far from Napoleon’s thoughts as he had been a member of the Carbonari when young, and had always harboured the idea of, ‘sovereign states based on racial and linguistic unity collaborating in the general purpose of prosperity and peace.’ At a meeting with Piedmont’s Prime Minister, Camillio Carvour at Plombiéres in July 1858, Napoleon agreed to join Italy in a war against Austria.