Plombières Agreement
1858 secret agreement between Piedmont-Sardinia and France / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Plombières Agreement?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The Plombières Agreement (Italian: Accordi di Plombières, French: Entrevue de Plombières) of 21 July 1858 was a secret verbal agreement which took place at Plombières-les-Bains between the chief minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, Count Cavour,[1] and the French Emperor, Napoleon III. Some older English sources refer to it as the Treaty of Plombières. In modern times, it is merely referred to as an "agreement", since nothing was signed.
Based on limited available evidence, there have been disputes on the details of what was agreed upon at the meeting, but as years passed it became apparent that the agreement had opened the way for the Franco-Piedmontese military alliance [fr], on 28 January 1859, and for the Second Italian War of Independence (that became a vital step towards Italian unification, which was achieved within ten years of the agreement).
The Plombières Agreement was an agreement concerning a future war in which France and Piedmont would ally themselves against Austria to remove and exclude Austrian influence from the Italian peninsula. In its place, Italy, which Metternich, a previous Austrian chancellor, had reportedly dismissed on various occasions as a "[mere] geographical expression",[2] would be divided into two spheres of influence to be dominated respectively by Piedmont and France. As events turned out, the war was triggered as agreed at Plombières, but its geopolitical aftermath was not precisely the one that had been envisaged.