page_title: History of Sardinia
section_title: Kingdom of Sardinia under the House of Savoy
hierarchical_section_title: History of Sardinia / Kingdom of Sardinia / Kingdom of Sardinia under the House of Savoy
caption_attribution_description: Montevecchio, la miniera di levante
context_page_description: Archaeological evidence of prehistoric human settlement on the island of Sardinia is present in the form of nuraghes and other prehistoric monuments, which dot the land. The recorded history of Sardinia begins with its contacts with the various people who sought to dominate western Mediterranean trade in Classical Antiquity: Phoenicians, Punics and Romans. Initially under the political and economic alliance with the Phoenician cities, it was partly conquered by Carthage in the late 6th century BC and then entirely by Rome after the First Punic War. The island was included for centuries in the Roman province of Sardinia and Corsica, which would be incorporated into the diocese of Italia suburbicaria in 3rd and 4th centuries.
  In the Early Middle Ages, through the European barbarian movements, the waning of the Byzantine Empire influence in the western Mediterranean and the Saracen raids, the island fell out of the sphere of influence of any higher government; this led to the birth of four independent kingdoms called Judicates in the 8th through 10th centuries.
context_section_description: Sardinia was disputed between 1700 and 1720. After the War of the Spanish Succession it was assigned to Emperor Charles VI in 1714, Philip V of Spain briefly recovered the island in 1717, but in 1720 the European powers assigned Sicily to Charles VI and Sardinia to the House of Savoy, so Vittorio Amedeo II became the King of Sardinia.
  In 1793 Sardinians defeated twice the French invaders. On 23 February 1793, Domenico Millelire, in command of the Sardinian fleet, defeated near the Maddalena archipelago the fleets of the French Republic, which was included with the rank of lieutenant, the young and future Emperor of France Napoleon Bonaparte. Millelire received the first Gold Medal of Military Valor of the Italian Navy. In the same month, Sardinians stopped the attempted French landing on the beach of Quartu Sant'Elena, near the Capital of Cagliari. Because of these successes, the representatives of nobility and clergy (Stamenti) formulated five requests addressed to the King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia in order to have the same rights as the Italian mainlanders, but they met with a refusal. Because of this discontent, on 28 April 1794, during an uprising in Cagliari, two Piedmontese officials were killed. That was the start of a revolt (called the "Moti rivoluzionari sardi" or "Vespri sardi") all over the island, which culminated on 28 April 1794 (commemorated today as sa die de sa Sardigna) with the expulsion of the officers for a few days from the capital Cagliari.  On 28 December 1795, insurgents in Sassari demonstrating against feudalism, mainly from the region of Logudoro, occupied the city. On 13 February 1796, in order to prevent the spread of the revolt, the viceroy Filippo Vivalda gave to the Sardinian magistrate Giovanni Maria Angioy the role of Alternos, which meant a substitute of the viceroy himself. Angioy moved from Cagliari to Sassari, and during his journey almost all the villages joined the uprising, demanding an end to feudalism and aiming to declare the island to be an independent republic, but once he was outnumbered by loyalist forces he fled to Paris and sought support from the French to invade Sardinia and make it an independent Republic.
  In 1799 King Charles Emmanuel IV was ousted from Piedmont by the French army, and moved his court to Cagliari (his brother and successor Victor Emmanuel I returned to Turin only in 1814). At the end of the 18th century, the Universities of Sassari and Cagliari were restored. In 1820, the Savoyards imposed the "Enclosures Act" (editto delle chiudende) on the island, a legislative act which turned the land's traditional collective ownership, a cultural and economic cornerstone of Sardinia since the Nuragic times, into private property. This gave rise to many abuses, as the reform favoured the landholders while excluding the poor Sardinian farmers and shepherds, who witnessed the abolition of the communal rights and the sale of the land. Many local rebellions like the Nuorese Su Connottu ("The Already Known" in Sardinian) riot in 1868, all repressed by the King's army, resulted in an attempt to return to the past and reaffirm the right to use the once common land.
  In 1847, under King Charles Albert, all the administrative differences between Sardinia and the Italian mainland were abolished through the so-called Perfect fusion: this manoveur had been presented as the only possible way to grant equal rights to all inhabitants of the Kingdom, which would become a unitary state and the basic legislation of the future united Italy as well.
  New urban plans and new villages (for example Carloforte, Calasetta and Santa Teresa di Gallura) were realised between the 18th and the 19th centuries. They often followed the urban model of Turin, which now was the capital of the Reign of Italy. New infrastructures were built under King Carlo Felice. The main road from the south (Cagliari) to the north (Sassari) was enhanced (the road still exists today and it still bears the name of Carlo Felice). Also, the first ferry route between the island and Genoa was established, using stea
caption: The mine of Montevecchio, Guspini.
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