Charles Albert of Sardinia /

Charles Albert (Carlo Alberto Amedeo; 2 October 1798 – 28 July 1849) was the King of Piedmont-Sardinia from 1831 to 1849. He succeeded his distant cousin Charles Felix, and his name is bound with the first Italian statute and the First War of Independence (1848–49). He abdicated after his forces were defeated by the Austrian army at the Battle of Novara (1849), and died in exile soon thereafter. He was born in Turin in 1798, to Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Carignano and Maria Cristina of Saxony. His father was a fifth-generation descendant of Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano, founder of the Savoy-Carignano line of the House of Savoy. Because none of the sons of Victor Amadeus III themselves had sons, Charles Albert was throughout his life known to be their likely successor on the throne of Sardinia. He was educated in the intellectually liberal and Francophile atmosphere of Geneva, then in Paris during the First French Empire. Napoleon I of France named him lieutenant of the dragoons in 1814. After the fall of Napoleon, Charles Albert returned to Turin. Two mentors were entrusted with countering the dangerous ideas about national liberation Charles had learned in France. However,