wealthy landowning or bourgeoise families enriched through trade). Although there were numerous noble houses across Venice's home and overseas land possessions, the Republic was in fact ruled as an oligarchy by about 20 to 30 families of Venice's urban nobility, who elected the Doge, held political and military offices and directly participated in the daily governing of the state. They were predominantly merchants, with their main source of income being trade with the East and other entrepreneurial activities, on which they became incredibly wealthy. Some of the most important families, who dominated the politics and the history of the state, include those such as the Contarini, Cornaro, Dandolo, Giustiniani, Loredan, Mocenigo, Morosini and the Venier families. Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946) In the years preceding the political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single state, the Kingdom of Italy, the existence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (before 1816: the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Sicily), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Modena, the Duchy of Savoy, the Papal States and the Austrian Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia led to parallel nobilities with different traditions and rules. Unification Modern Italy became a nation-state during the Risorgimento on 17 March 1861, when most of the states of the peninsula and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were united under King Victor Emmanuel II of the Savoy dynasty, hitherto monarch of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which included Piedmont. The architect of Italian unification was Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel. Rome itself remained for a further decade under the Papacy, and became part of the Kingdom of Italy only in 1870. In September of that year, invading Italian troops entered the Papal state, and the ensuing occupation forced Pope Pius IX to his palace where he declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican, as did his successors, until the Lateran Pacts of 1929. Nobility in the Kingdom Under the united Kingdom of Italy a new national nobility, an attempt (not wholly successful) to impose a uniform nobiliary law, was created, including male succession (although it was possible for ancient titles to be transferred to an heir in the female line by royal authority), and some acknowledgement was made by the King of Italy of titles conferred by