In the 1830s, the unification of the Apennine Peninsula was still a distant prospect.
Italy, like Germany, was understood more as a geographical concept rather than a country's name.
Just as many small principalities stood in the Germanic region, Italy, after the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Napoleonic Wars, still consisted of six countries: the Papal States, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Modena, the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, and the Two Sicilies Kingdom.
Among these six countries, except for the theocratic Papal States and the Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the House of Savoy, the other four were mostly under the direct or indirect control of the Austrian Empire.
For instance, the Two Sicilies Kingdom mentioned by Heine, although their kings were from the Bourbon Family, had queens from the Austrian Habsburg Royal Family for two consecutive generations after the kingdom's restoration post-Napoleonic Wars.
