During the rise of nationalism in Europe—a process begun around the sixteenth century and culminating in the World Wars of the twentieth century—the most important factor for determining shared national identity was a shared language. This is how German nationality arose from the scatterings of Germanic people around Europe—they often spoke the same root language. The same is true in Italy, France, England, and so on.

Camillo di Cavour was chosen as the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (in Northern Italy) by the King Victor Emmanuel II in 1852. Cavour was a dedicated statesman who used his position to push for economic expansion and, subsequently, the political expansion of his kingdom. By 1871, Italian unification had been achieved.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, each of these nations was either a part of a larger empire or split into many different kingdoms and republics except for Russia, which already had a centralized government that reflected the people of the same nation.

The battles of Tours and Lepanto were not fought by English forces, so we can rule these two answer choices out immediately. The battles of the Somme and Trafalgar were fought during World War One and the Napoleonic Wars, respectively, and so came too late to be part of the rise of English nationalism. The Battle of Agincourt, which took place during the Hundred Years’ War with the French, happened in the fifteenth century and so came at the perfect time to be incorporated into the rise of nationalism in England. It helped solidify what it meant to be English, as opposed to French, and led to the rise of self-identifying nationalist ethnicity among the English people.

Realpolitik was the primary political philosophy of the German unifying leader Otto von Bismarck. Realpolitik is based around a pragmatic application of political power, or political power wielded outside of ideological, religious, or ethnic motivation.

Many European nation-states coalesced around ethnic identity and shared cultural heritage. The Spanish nation-state coalesced around both of these, but also around the religion of Catholicism. Protestantism was almost non-existent in Spain and those who adhered to either Islam or Judaism were either banished or forcefully converted to Catholicism during the formation of the Spanish nation-state.

Giuseppe Garibaldi never proposed the idea of incorporating the Northern Italian States into the Austrian Empire. He led the "Red Shirts" in a military campaign which led to the unification of his conquered area with that ruled by Victor Emanuel.

The taking of Venice by the forces of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866 as part of the Third War of Italian Independence was a key moment in the process of Italian unification. The absorption of the papal states by Italy after the Capture of Rome in 1870 also resulted in the period from 1870 to 1829 during which the pope refused to acknowledge the loss of his temporal power, and was thus described as the “prisoner in the Vatican.” The Expedition of the Thousand red shirts destroyed the power of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and created the Kingdom of Italy. The Conte di Cavour’s alliance with France led to victory at the Battle of Solferino and the consolidation of Piedmont-Sardinia, the state largely responsible for Italy’s formation. Cesare Borgia was a 16th century statesman idolized by Machiavelli.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, was the cry of French Nationalists during the French Revolution. Prior to the French Revolution, French nobility attempted to rule an industrializing country with a feudal mindset. The new concept of nationalism emerged when the French people decided that loyalty to their country was superior to loyalty to their lords, desiring equality for all, even by force.

Otto von Bismarck, a Prussian nobleman, undertook the unification of the German states through a series of consolidating wars. He ruled Germany alongside Wilhelm I as Chancellor from 1871 to 1890. Wilhelm II ruled Germany from 1891-1902. Otto von Hapsburg was the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary. Lech Walesa was the President of Poland and a prominent human rights advocate. Johann Gottfried Herder was an 18th century poet and philosopher.