Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810-1861), the brain

Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia and the political mastermind of unification. Cavour modernized Sardinia (railways, free trade, secular education), maneuvered diplomatically to gain French support against Austria, and used both diplomacy and selective military action to expand Sardinia's territory. He oversaw the integration of liberated and conquered Italian states into a unified Kingdom of Italy under the Sardinian king Victor Emmanuel II.