The Armistice of Villafranca, concluded by Napoleon III of France and Franz Joseph I of Austria on July 11, 1859, set the stage for the end of the Second Italian War of Independence.

It was the consequence of a unilateral decision by France, which, at war alongside the Kingdom of Sardinia against Austria, needed to conclude peace because of the danger of the conflict spreading to Central Europe.

Beginning with the signing of the Treaty of Defensive Alliance between France and the Kingdom of Sardinia on January 26, 1859, Piedmontese Prime Minister Cavour began preparations for the liberation of northern Italy and the inevitable war with Austria.

In the face of military preparations, Austrian grievances were not long in coming, and on April 24, 1859, Cavour, after rejecting Vienna's ultimatum instructing the Kingdom of Sardinia to demobilize its army, received a declaration of war from Austria.

The defeated Austrian army retreated east of the Mincio River while in Paris, contrary to Cavour's hopes, Napoleon III began to consider the possibility of an armistice with Vienna.

[2] In Britain the Prussian proposal for mediation was not received with particular interest: the new Liberal prime minister Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, although closer to French positions than his predecessor Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby was hampered by the Conservative followers in the government and by Queen Victoria, so the new executive differed little from the old one.

[3] The proposal found a different reception in Saint Petersburg, where Ambassador Otto von Bismarck, the future chancellor, reported to Berlin of the favorable Russian disposition to joint mediation.

[6] Resolved, therefore, to pursue the road to peace, Napoleon III, without waiting for the outcome of a listless British attempt to communicate France's intentions to Austria, sent General Émile Félix Fleury (1815-1884) on July 6, 1859, to the headquarters of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph with a proposal for an armistice.

The latter, informed of the situation in Europe, was not surprised by the proposed French truce; pointing out, however, that if the armistice anticipated peace, it had to be in accordance with mutual commitments, namely, the Sardinian-French treaty of alliance.

[6] On the 7th, Franz Joseph granted the truce, and on the morning of July 8, 1859, the commissioners in charge met in Villafranca, between the Allied (at Valeggio sul Mincio) and Austrian (at Verona) headquarters.

[8] On that same July 8, 1859, Victor Emmanuel II, fearing French initiatives to the detriment of the Kingdom of Sardinia, went to Napoleon III to reveal the proposals he planned to make to Austria.

Victor Emmanuel agreed, departing decisively from the expectations of his prime minister Cavour,[10] who, having received a rather calming telegram from the king, left for the theater of operations, arriving in Desenzano on the morning of July 10.

[11] That same day Cavour met both Prince Napoléon and Napoleon III to whose explanations of the armistice terms he protested strongly,[12] but with Victor Emmanuel the conversation was probably even worse.

[17] Half an hour later Napoleon III returned to Valeggio and immediately sent for Prince Napoléon to inform him of the outcome of the talks and send him to Verona to put pen to paper on the preliminaries of the Villafranca meeting.

[18] The two Bonapartes (Napoleon III and Prince Napoléon were cousins) insisted that the king of Sardinia reach a decision, and the French emperor after half an hour of discussion put on paper the following points to be proposed to Austria: Italian confederation under the honorary presidency of the pope, cession of Lombardy to France, which would in turn cede it to the Kingdom of Sardinia, Venetia to Austria but included in the Italian confederation, return of the pro-Austrian rulers to Modena and Tuscany in peaceful ways and with a commitment to grant a constitution, political reforms in the Papal States, and separate administration of the Papal Legations.

The Prime Minister, in addition to seeing his hopes of liberating all of northern Italy from the Habsburgs thwarted, judged the entry of the Kingdom of Sardinia into the future confederation alongside Austria as catastrophic for national prestige.

"[20] Around midnight on July 11, 1859, Cavour was formally still in office, and Victor Emmanuel II and advisor Costantino Nigra made him aware of the Austrian counterproposal, which loomed an even worse picture for the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Cavour lost his self-restraint by speaking of Napoleon III's betrayal and invoking the moral obligations undertaken by the French emperor to the Italians and to the honor of the House of Savoy.

[21][25] The final terms of the armistice were as follows: For not respecting in spirit the alliance Napoleon III momentarily renounced territorial claims on Savoy and Nice, and demanded from the Kingdom of Sardinia only a small part of the war expenses incurred in the military campaign.

However, this event had enormous political weight: the cession of Lombardy marked the most serious defeat Austria had ever suffered on the Italian question, ending Austrian control of a region it had ruled since 1706.

At this point Victor Emmanuel II and Cavour realized the great political advantage gained from the defeat of Austria and resumed in 1860 with Giuseppe Garibaldi the leadership in the process for the unification of Italy.