Victor Emmanuel I

Victor Emmanuel I, 1759–1824, king of Sardinia (1802–21). His brother and predecessor, Charles Emmanuel IV, lost (1798) all his territories except the island of Sardinia to France in the French Revolutionary Wars. Victor Emmanuel accompanied his brother to Sardinia and succeeded him on his abdication (1802). After Napoleon's fall he returned (1814) to Turin, recovered Piedmont, Savoy, and Nice, and received at the Congress of Vienna Liguria with Genoa. He abolished many Napoleonic reforms and refused to grant a constitution. An uprising (1821) in Piedmont, largely the work of the Carbonari, forced him to abdicate in favor of his brother Charles Felix (see Savoy, house of).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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