Grand Duchy of Tuscany (jun 9, 1815 – dec 7, 1859)

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The Napoleonic system collapsed in 1814, and the following territorial settlement, the Congress of Vienna, ceded the State of Presidi to a restored Tuscany. Ferdinand III resumed his rule, and died in 1824. Italian nationalism exploded in the post-Napoleonic years, leading to the establishment of secret societies bent on a unified Italy. Whence these leagues arrived in Tuscany, a concerned Ferdinand requisitioned an Austrian garrison, from his brother Emperor Francis of Austria, for the defence of the state. Ferdinand aligned Tuscany with Austria.

Following Ferdinand's death, his elder son, Leopold II, succeeded him. Leopold was contemporarily acknowledged as a liberal monarch. Despite his merits, most his subjects still dismissed him as a foreigner. His affinity for Austria was equally unpalatable. In 1847, Leopold, following the death of the then-incumbent Duchess of Parma, Marie Louise of Austria, and the secret Treaty of Florence (1844), annexed the Duchy of Lucca, (A state created solely to accommodate the House of Bourbon-Parma until they could re-assume their Parmese sovereignty). The Duke of Lucca decided to abdicate his throne in favor of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopoldo II, while the Lucca territories of Montignoso, Gallicano, Minucciano and Castiglione di Garfagnana were given to Modena. Tuscany then ceded its Lunigiana territories to Modena with the exception of Pontremoli which passed to the Duchy of Parma. The same year, a Tuscan state council was brought into being.

In December 1859, the Grand Duchy was joined to the Duchies of Modena and Parma to form the United Provinces of Central Italy, which were annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia a few months later. On 22 March 1860, after a referendum that voted overwhelmingly (95%) in favour of a union with Sardinia; Tuscany was formally annexed to Sardinia. Italy was unified in 1870, when the remains of the Papal States were annexed in that September, deposing Pope Pius IX.

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