Camillo Cavour never fired a gun or led a charge, but he unified Italy more effectively than any general could have. The prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia manipulated France into fighting Austria, engineered plebiscites that absorbed rival Italian states, and played every major European power against the others with a diplomatic cunning that would have impressed Machiavelli himself.

This episode traces Cavour from his Piedmontese aristocratic origins through the alliance with Napoleon III, the wars of Italian unification, and his sudden death just months after seeing a united Italy proclaimed.

• Cavour's aristocratic background and his transformation of Piedmont into Italy's leading liberal state
• The alliance with Napoleon III and the war against Austria that began Italian unification
• The diplomatic maneuvering th ...