Crema, Lombardy
By the 1859 Treaty of Zurich which ended the Austro-Sardinian War, Austria ceded Lombardy, including Crema, to France, who then immediately ceded it to Sardinia. This formed part of the "Risorgimento", which saw Sardinia become the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. In 1946, the Kingdom became the modern Italian Republic.
Austro-Italian ironclad arms race
After the failure of the First Italian War of Independence, Sardinia began the search for potential allies. Sardinian Prime Minister Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, found French Emperor Napoleon III supportive of an alliance with Sardinia following the Crimean War, in which France and Sardinia were allies against Russia. After the Plombières Agreement of 1858, Napoleon III and Cavour signed a secret treaty of alliance against Austria whereby France would assist Sardinia in return for Nice and Savoy being ceded to France. The Franco-Sardinian forces quickly defeated the Austrians during the spring of 1859 and after the Battle of Solferino, Austria ceded most of Lombardy and the city of Milan to France under the Treaty of Zürich, who transferred it to Sardinia in exchange for Savoy and Nice. During the war, Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi would emerge as a leader for the unification of Italy. Garibaldi, initially supported a republican revolution to bring the peninsula together. However, he eventually concluded that only the Kingdom of Sardinia could unify the Italian states into one nation.