Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

The Kingdom of Sardinia

In 1855, the Kingdom of Sardinia was fighting alongside British, French and Ottoman-Turkish forces against Russia in the Crimean war, a war fought mostly on the Crimean Peninsula. The Crimean peninsula is almost not a peninsula.  Were it not for a tiny isthmus of land not much wider than Manhattan, connecting Crimea to the Ukraine, the peninsula of Crimea would be the island of Crimea. Sardinian forces were less than two percent of the allied forces but this was enough to win friends and influence emperors. The British and French would support or ignore King Vittorio Emanuele II in his wars of independence on the Italian penisula which were really much more wars of conquest. Well almost. Napollean III of France had agreed to support the Sardian king in his wars of independence, which were not so much that as wars of conquest. By the time Pia was old enough to begin school, Sardinian forces had defeated papal forces at the Battle of Castelfidardo forcing the Pope to retreat to the relative safety of the Vatican City. This brazen move managed to get him excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Italy, with the exception of Rome, Veneto and Trentino were now part of the Kingdom of Italy.  declared King of Italy. Rome would soon fall. Turin was now the capital of all of Italy. But by the time young Secondo was ten years old, Florence became the capital. Six years later it would become Rome.