The New International Encyclopædia/Charles Albert

​CHARLES AL′BERT (1798–1849). King of Sardinia from 1831 to 1849. He was the son of Prince Charles Emmanuel of Savoy-Carignan, and in 1800 succeeded to his father’s title and estates in France and Piedmont. In 1817 he married Maria Theresa, daughter of the Archduke Ferdinand of Tuscany. On the outbreak of the revolutionary movement in Piedmont in 1821, he was made regent upon the abdication of Victor Emmanuel I., until Charles Felix, the brother of the late King, should arrive to assume the sovereignty. He displeased, during his short reign of a week, both the Liberal Party and its opponents, and Charles Felix disavowed all his acts, and for some time forbade his appearance at Court. In 1829, however, he was appointed Viceroy of Sardinia. On the death of Charles Felix, April 27, 1831, he ascended the throne. Under the impulse of the movements of 1848, Charles Albert granted to Sardinia a constitution, the Statuto, which became the constitutional basis of the new Italy (see Cavour). The King entered warmly into the project of Italian unity, and evidently expected to place himself at the head of the whole movement and of the new kingdom of Italy. He was not, however, in real sympathy with the democracy of the new liberalism, and he was too visionary and unpractical to lead Sardinia along the difficult road that lay before her. When the Lombards and Venetians rose against the Austrian Government, he declared war against Austria, March 23, 1848, and at first was successful; but his army was deficient in organization and leadership, and at Custozza, July 25, 1848, and at Novara, March 23, 1849, his hopes were wrecked by crushing defeats at the hands of the Austrians. On the battlefield of Novara he resigned the crown in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel. He retired to Portugal, and died in Oporto on the 28th of July of the same year. See Italy; Sardinia; Savoy, House of;