Second Ricasoli government

As Prime Minister of Italy, Ricasoli refused Napoleon III's offer to cede Veneto (at that time part of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia) to Italy on condition that Italy should abandon the Prussian alliance, and also refused the Prussian decoration of the Black Eagle because Alfonso Ferraro La Marmora, author of the alliance, was not to receive it.^[2] Upon the departure of the French troops from Rome at the end of 1866, he again attempted to conciliate the Holy See with a convention in virtue of which Italy would have restored to the Catholic Church the property of the suppressed religious orders in return for the gradual payment of 24,000,000. To mollify the Vatican, he conceded the exequatur to forty-five bishops inimical to the Italian government. The Vatican accepted his proposal; however, the Chamber of Deputies proved refractory, and although dissolved by Ricasoli, it returned more hostile than before. Without waiting for a vote, Ricasoli resigned from office and practically disappeared from political life.^[2]