BALBO, CESARE, COUNT (1789-18S3), Italian writer and statesman, was born at Turin of a noble Piedmontese family. From 1808 to 1814 he served in various capacities under the Napoleonic empire at Florence, Rome, Paris, and in Illyria. On the fall of Napoleon he entered the service of his native country. While his father, Prospero Balbo, was appointed min ister of the interior, he entered the army and undertook political missions to Paris and London. On the outbreak of the revolution of 1821, of which he disapproved, although he was suspected of sympathizing with it, he was forced into exile; and though later he was allowed to return to Piedmont, all public service was denied him, and he turned to the literary expression of his po litical ideas. He sought the independence of Italy from foreign control but was not a partisan of revolution. Of true Italian unity he had no expectation and no desire; but he was devoted to the house of Savoy, which he foresaw was destined to change the fate of Italy. In his book Speranze (or Hopes of Italy), he suggests that Austria should seek compensation in the Balkans for the inevitable loss of her Italian provinces. He became the leader of a moderate party, and the steady opponent, not only of des potism, but of democracy. At last, in 1848, his hopes were to some extent satisfied by the constitution granted by the king. He was appointed a member of the commission on the electoral law, and became first constitutional prime minister of Piedmont, but only held office a few months. With the ministry of d'Azeglio he was on friendly terms. The most important of his writings are historico-political, and derive at once their majesty and their weakness from his theocratic conception of Christian ity. He published Quattro Novelle (1829) ; Storia d'Italia sotto i Barbari ; Vita di Dante (1839) ; Meditazioni Storiche Le Speranze d'Italia (1844), Pensieri sully Storia d'Italia (1858), Della Monarchia rappresentativa in Italia (Florence, 1857).
See E. Ricotti, Della Vita e degli Scritti di Cesare Balbo (1856) ; A. Vismara, Bibliografia di Cesare Balbo (Milan, 1882) .