Kingdom of Sardinia

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Kingdom of Sardinia
Regno di Sardegna
Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae




The final flag used by the kingdom under the "Perfect Fusion" (1848–1861) Coat of arms
Kingdom of Sardinia in 1815.
Capital Cagliari
(1324–1720, 1798–1814)
(1720–1798, 1814–1861)
Languages Italian, French, Sardinian, Ligurian, Corsican
Government Absolute monarchy
Parliamentary constitutional monarchy
 -  1324–1327 James II (first)
 -  1849–1861 Victor Emmanuel II (last)
Prime Minister
 -  1848 Cesare Balbo (first)
 -  1860-1861 Camillo Benso (last)
Legislature Parliament
 -  Upper house Subalpine Senate
 -  Lower house Chamber of Deputies
 -  Papal investiture 1297
 -  Actual establishment 1324
 -  Kingdom to Habsburg 1714
 -  Kingdom to Savoy 1720
 -  Perfect Fusion 1848
 -  Loss of Savoy and Nice 1860
 -  Becomes the new Kingdom of Italy 1861
 -  1859 73,810 km² (28,498 sq mi)
Currency Piedmontese scudo (to 1816)
French franc (1800–14)
Sardinian lira (1816–61)
Today part of  France
Warning: Value not specified for "continent"
A map of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1856, after the fusion of all its provinces into a single jurisdiction


The kingdom initially consisted of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, sovereignty over both of which was claimed by the Papacy, which granted them as a fief, the regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae ("kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica"), to King James II of Aragon in 1297. Beginning in 1324, James and his successors conquered the island of Sardinia and established de facto their de jure authority. In 1420 the last competing claim to the island was bought out. After the union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, Sardinia became a part of the burgeoning Spanish Empire. In 1720 it was ceded by the Habsburg and Bourbon claimants to the Spanish throne to Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. The kingdom of Sardinia came to be progressively identified with the entire domain ruled by the House of Savoy, which included, besides Savoy and Aosta, dynastic possessions since the 11th century, the Principality of Piedmont (a possession built up in the 13th century), and the County of Nice (a possession since 1388). While the traditional capital of the island of Sardinia and seat of its viceroys was Cagliari, the Piedmontese city of Turin was the de facto capital of the House of Savoy.

When the mainland domains of the House of Savoy were occupied and eventually annexed by Napoleonic France, the king of Sardinia made his permanent residence on the island for the first time in its history. The Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which restructured Europe after Napoleon's defeat, returned to Savoy its mainland possessions and augmented them with Liguria, taken from the Republic of Genoa. In 1847–48, in a "perfect fusion", the various Savoyard states were unified under one legal system, with the capital in Turin, and granted a constitution, the Statuto Albertino. There followed the annexation of Lombardy (1859), the central Italian states and the Two Sicilies (1860), Venetia (1866), and the Papal States (1870). On 17 March 1861, to more accurately reflect its new geographic extent, the Kingdom of Sardinia changed its name to the Kingdom of Italy, and its capital was eventually moved first to Florence then to Rome.

Early history[edit]

In 238 BC Sardinia became, with Corsica, a province of the Roman Empire. The Romans ruled the island until the middle of the 5th century, when it was occupied by the Vandals, who had also settled in north Africa. In 534 AD it was reconquered by the Romans, but now from the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium. It remained a Byzantine province until the Arab conquest of Sicily in the 9th century. After that, communications with Constantinople became very difficult, and powerful families of the island assumed control of the land.

Sardinia faced Arab attempts to sack and conquer the island almost without help, and still organized itself according to the imperial ideology of Byzantium. The state was not the personal property of the ruler and of his family, as in western Europe, but rather a separate institution, as it was during the Roman and Byzantine Empires, a monarchical republic.

Starting from 705–706, Saracens from north Africa (recently conquered by Arab armies) harassed the population of the coastal cities. Information about the Sardinian political situation in the following centuries is scarce. Due to Saracen attacks, in the 9th century Tharros was abandoned in favor of Oristano, after more than 1800 years of occupation; Caralis, Porto Torres and numerous other coastal centres suffered the same fate. There is a record of another massive Saracen sea attack in 1015–16 from the Balearics, led by Mujāhid al-ʿĀmirī (Latinized in Museto). The Saracen attempt to invade the island was stopped by the Byzantine-Sardinian kingdom or Judicatus with the support of the fleets of the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa, free cities of the Holy Roman Empire. Pope Benedict VIII also requested aid from the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa in the struggle against the Arabs.[3]

After the Great Schism, Rome made many efforts to re-Latinize the Sardinian church, politics and society, and to finally reunify the island under one Catholic ruler, as it had been for all of southern Italy, when the Byzantines had been driven away by Catholic Normans. Even the title of Judices was a Byzantine reminder of the Greek church and state, in times of harsh relations between eastern and western churches (Massacre of the Latins, 1182, Siege of Constantinople (1204), Recapture of Constantinople, 1261).

Before the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica, the Archons (ἄρχοντες) or, in Latin, judices,[4][5] who reigned in the island from the 9th or 10th century until the beginning of the 11th century, can be considered as real kings of all Sardinia (Κύριε βοήθε ιοῦ δού λού σου Tουρκοτουρίου ἅρχωντοσ Σαρδινίας καί τής δού ληςσου Γετιτ[6]),[7][8] even though nominal vassals of the Byzantine emperors. Of these sovereigns only two names are known: Turcoturiu and Salusiu (Tουρκοτουριου βασιλικου προτοσπαθαριου [9] και Σαλουσιου των ευγενεστατων άρχωντων),[10][11] who probably ruled in the 10th century. The Archons still wrote in Greek or Latin, but one of the first document of the Judex of Cagliari, their direct successor, was written in romance Sardinian language, but with the Greek alphabet.

The realm was divided into four small kingdoms, the Judicati, perfectly organized as was the previous realm, but was now under the influence of the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire and its Frankish-Roman political ideology. That was the cause of conflicts leading to a long war between the Judices, who regarded themselves as kings fighting against rebellious nobles.[12] Byzantine political doctrine died out permanently with the last Judicatus in 1410, when the new Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica defeated the Arborea Judicatus in a battle in Sanluri and its sovereign rights were sold by the last Judex. This took place only a few decades before the conquest of Constantinople by the Muslim Turks and the discovery of the new world. It is claimed that, excluding the Republic of Venice, Sardinia was the last direct institutional and ideological country of Roman ancestry in western Europe by 1410.[citation needed]

Flag of the Kingdom of Sardinia in the middle of the 16th century

Later, the title of King of Sardinia was granted by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire to Barisone II of Arborea[13] and Enzio of Sardinia. The first could not reunify the island under his rule, despite years of war against the other Sardinian judices, and he finally concluded a peace treaty with them in 1172.[14] The second did not have the opportunity. Invested with the title from his father, Emperor Frederick II in 1239, he was soon recalled by his parent and appointed Imperial Vicar for Italy. He died in 1272 without direct recognized heirs after a detention of 23 years in a prison in Bologna.

The Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica (later, just the "Kingdom of Sardinia" from 1460[15]) was a state whose king was the King of Aragon, who started to conquer it in 1324, gained full control in 1410, and directly ruled it until 1460. In that year it was incorporated into a sort of confederation of states, each with its own institutions, called the Crown of Aragon, and united only in the person of the king. The Crown of Aragon was made by a council of representatives of the various states and grew in importance for the main purpose of separating the legacy of Ferdinand II of Aragon from that of Isabella I of Castile when they married in 1469. The idea of the kingdom was created in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII, as a hypothetical entity created for James II of Aragon under a secret clause in the Treaty of Anagni. This was an inducement to join in the effort to restore Sicily, then under the rule of James's brother Frederick III of Sicily, to the Angevin dynasty over the oppositions of the Sicilians. The two islands proposed for this new kingdom were occupied by other states and fiefs at the time. In Sardinia, three of the four states that had succeeded Byzantine imperial rule in the 9th century had passed through marriage and partition under the direct or indirect control of Pisa and Genoa in the 40 years preceding the Anagni treaty. Genoa had also ruled Corsica since conquering the island nearly two centuries before (c. 1133).

There were other reasons beside this papal decision: it was the final successful result of the long fight against the Ghibelline (pro-imperial) city of Pisa and the Holy Roman Empire itself. Furthermore, Sardinia was then under the control of the very Catholic Kings of Aragon, and the last result of rapprochement of the island to Rome. The Sardinian church had never been under the control of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; it was an autonomous province loyal to Rome but greatly influenced by Byzantine liturgy and culture.

Foundation of the Kingdom of Sardinia[edit]

Sardinia was a component of the Crown of Aragon in the 15th century
Main article: History of Sardinia



Corsica, which had never been conquered, was dropped from the formal title and Sardinia passed with the Crown of Aragon to a united Spain. The defeat of the local kingdoms, communes and signorie, the firm Aragonese (later Spanish) rule, the introduction of a sterile feudalism, as well as the discovery of the Americas, provoked an unstoppable decline of the Kingdom of Sardinia. A short period of uprisings occurred under the local noble Leonardo de Alagon, marquess of Oristano, who defended his territories against the Viceroy Nicolò Carroz and managed to defeat the viceroy's army in the 1470s, but was later crushed at the Battle of Macomer in 1478, ending any further revolts in the island. The unceasing attacks from north African pirates and a series of plagues (in 1582, 1652 and 1655) further worsened the situation.

Aragonese conquest of Sardinia[edit]

Kingdom of Sardinia 16th-century map

Although the "Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica" could be said to have started as a questionable and extraordinary de jure state in 1297, its de facto existence began in 1324 when, called by their allies of the Giudicato di Arborea in the course of war with the Republic of Pisa, James II seized the Pisan territories in the former states of Cagliari and Gallura and asserted his papally approved title. In 1347 CE Aragon made war on landlords of the Doria House and the Malaspina House, who were citizens of the Republic of Genoa, which controlled most of the lands of the former Logudoro state in north-western Sardinia, including the city of Alghero and the semiautonomous Republic of Sassari, and added them to its direct domains.

The Giudicato of Arborea, the only Sardinian state that remained independent of foreign domination, proved far more difficult to subdue. Threatened by the Aragonese claims of suzerainty and consolidation of the rest of the island, Arborea continued the conquest of the remaining Sardinian territories beginning in 1353. In 1368 an Aborea offensive succeeded in nearly driving the Aragonese from the island, reducing the "Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica" to just the port cities of Cagliari and Alghero and incorporating everything else into their own kingdom. A peace treaty returned the Aragonese their previous possessions in 1388, but tensions continued and 1382 CE the Arborean army led by Brancaleone Doria again swept the most of the island into Arborean rule. This situation lasted until 1409 when the army of the giudicato of Arborea suffered a heavy defeat by the Aragonese army in the Battle of Sanluri. After the sale of the remaining territories for 100,000 gold florins to the giudicato of Arborea in 1420, the "Kingdom of Sardinia" extended throughout the island, except for the city of Castelsardo (at that time called Casteldoria or Castelgenovese), which had been stolen from the Doria in 1448. The subduing of Sardinia having taken a century, Corsica, which had never been wrestled from the Genoese, was dropped from the formal title of the Kingdom.

Early history of Piedmont[edit]

Main article: Duchy of Savoy



Exchange of Sardinia for Sicily[edit]

19th century coat of arms of the Kingdom of Sardinia under the Savoy dynasty



In 1767–1769, Charles Emmanuel III annexed the Maddalena archipelago in the Strait of Bonifacio from the Republic of Genoa and claimed it as part of Corsica. Since then the archipelago has been a part of the Sardinian region.

Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna[edit]



The Kingdom of Sardinia industrialized from 1830 onward. A constitution, the Statuto Albertino, was enacted in the year of revolutions, 1848 under liberal pressure. The kingdom that until that moment was strictly confined to the island, annexed all the other states of the Savoy house, but its institutions were deeply transformed: it became a constitutional and very centralized monarchy on the French model; under the same pressure Charles Albert declared war on Austria. After initial success the war took a turn for the worse and Charles Albert was defeated by Marshal Radetzky at the Battle of Custozza (1848).

Italian unification[edit]

King Victor Emmanuel II meets Garibaldi in Teano (26 October 1860)
Main article: Italian unification

Like all the various duchies and city-states on the Apennine peninsula and associated islands, the Kingdom of Sardinia was troubled with political instability under alternating governments. After a short and disastrous renewal of the war with Austria in 1849, Charles Albert abdicated on 23 March 1849 in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel II.

In 1852, a liberal ministry under Count Camillo Benso di Cavour was installed and the Kingdom of Sardinia became the engine driving Italian unification. The Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont) took part in the Crimean War, allied with the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France, and fighting against Russia.

In 1859, France sided with the Kingdom of Sardinia in a war against Austria, the Austro-Sardinian War. Napoleon III did not keep his promises to Cavour to fight until all of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia had been conquered. Following the bloody battles of Magenta and Solferino, both French victories, Napoleon thought the war too costly to continue and made a separate peace behind Cavour's back in which only Lombardy would be ceded. Due to the Austrian government's refusal to cede any lands to the Kingdom of Sardinia, they agreed to cede Lombardy to Napoleon, who in turn then ceded the territory to the Kingdom of Sardinia to avoid 'embarrassing' the defeated Austrians. Cavour angrily resigned from office when it became clear that Victor Emmanuel would accept this arrangement.

Garibaldi and the Thousand[edit]

On 5 March 1860, Parma, Tuscany, Modena, and Romagna voted in referenda to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. This alarmed Napoleon, who feared a strong Savoyard state on his south-eastern border and he insisted that if the Kingdom of Sardinia were to keep the new acquisitions they would have to cede Savoy and Nice to France. This was done after referenda showed over 99.5% majorities in both areas in favour of joining France.

In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi started his campaign to conquer the southern Apennines in the name of the Kingdom of Sardinia. He quickly toppled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which was the largest of the states in the region, stretching from Abruzzo and Naples on the mainland to Messina and Palermo on Sicily. He then marched to Gaeta in the central peninsula. Cavour was satisfied with the unification, while Garibaldi, who was too revolutionary for the king and his prime minister, wanted to conquer Rome as well. Garibaldi was disappointed in this development, as well as in the loss of his home province, Nice, to France. He also failed to fulfill the promises that had gained him popular and military support by the Sicilians: that the new nation would be a republic, not a kingdom, and that the Sicilians would see great economic gains after unification. The former did not come to pass until 1946, and the latter is still more a promise than an actuality.

Towards the Kingdom of Italy[edit]

On 17 March 1861, law no. 4671 of the Sardinian Parliament proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy, so ratifying the annexations of all other Apennine states, plus Sicily, to the Kingdom of Sardinia.[17] The institutions and laws of the Kingdom were quickly extended to all of Italy, abolishing the administrations of the other regions. Piedmont became the most dominant and wealthiest region in Italy and the capital of Piedmont, Turin, remained the Italian capital until 1865, when the capital was moved to Florence. But many revolts exploded throughout the peninsula, especially in southern Italy, and on the island of Sicily, because of the unfair treatment of the south by the Piedmontese ruling class. The House of Savoy ruled Italy until 1946 when Italy was declared a republic by referendum.


The currency in use in the mainland domains of the Savoyards was the Piedmontese scudo. During the Napoleonic era, it was replaced in general circulation by the French franc. In 1816, after regaining their Piedmontese dominions, the scudo was replaced by the Sardinian lira, which in 1821 also replaced the Sardinian scudo, the coins that had been in use on the island throughout the period.

Flags, royal standards and coats of arms[edit]

Main article: Flag of Sardinia

When the Duchy of Savoy acquired the Kingdom of Sicily in 1713 and the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1723, the flag of Savoy became the flag of a naval power. This posed the problem that the same flag was already in use by the Knights of Malta. Because of this, the Savoyards modified their flag for use as a naval ensign in various ways, adding the letters FERT in the four cantons, or adding a blue border, or using a blue flag with the Savoy cross in one canton.

Eventually, king Charles Albert adopted the "revolutionary" Italian tricolor, surmounted by the Savoyard shield, as his flag. This flag became the flag of the Kingdom of Italy, and the tricolor without the Savoyard escutcheon remains the flag of Italy.


Territorial evolution of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1324 to 1720[edit]

Territorial evolution of the Apennine region from 1796 to 1860[edit]

Notes and references[edit]


  1. ^ The name of the state was originally Latin: Regnum Sardiniae, or Regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae when the kingdom was still considered to include Corsica. In Italian it is Regno di Sardegna, in Sardinian Rennu de Sardigna and in Piedmontese Regn ëd Sardëgna.


  1. ^ Aldo Sandulli e Giulio Vesperini (2011). "L'organizzazione dello Stato unitario". Rivista trimestrale di diritto pubblico (in Italian): 47–49. Retrieved 19 March 2013. 
  2. ^ Società Reduci Crimea (1884). "Ricordo pittorico militare della spedizione sarda in Oriente 1885-56" (in Italian). p. 11. Retrieved 19 March 2013. 
  4. ^ C. Zedda-R. Pinna, La nascita dei giudicati, proposta per lo scioglimento di un enigma storiografico, su Archivio Storico Giuridico Sardo di Sassari, vol. n°12, 2007, Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche dell'Università di Sassari
  5. ^ F. Pinna, Le testimonianze archeologiche relative ai rapporti tra gli Arabi e la Sardegna nel medioevo, in Rivista dell'Istituto di storia dell'Europa mediterranea, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, n°4, 2010
  6. ^ Archeological museum of Cagliari, from Santa Sofia church in Villasor
  8. ^ Crónica del califa 'Abd ar-Rahmân III an-Nâsir entre los años 912–942,(al-Muqtabis V), édicion. a cura de P. CHALMETA – F. CORRIENTE, Madrid, 1979, p. 365 "Tuesday, August 24th 942 (A.D.), a messenger of the Lord of the island of Sardinia appeared at the gate of al-Nasir ... asking for a treaty of peace and friendship. With him were the merchants, people Malfat, known in al-Andalus as from Amalfi, with the whole range of their precious goods, ingots of pure silver, brocades etc. ... transactions which drew gain and great benefits"
  9. ^ Constantini Porphyrogeneti De caerimoniis aulae Byzantinae, in Patrologia cursus completus. Series Graeca CXII, Paris 1857
  10. ^ R. CORONEO, Scultura mediobizantina in Sardegna, Nuoro, Poliedro, 2000
  11. ^ Roberto Coroneo, Arte in Sardegna dal IV alla metà dell'XI secolo, edizioni AV, Cagliari 2011
  12. ^ Barisone Doria: "La senyoria no la tenim ne havem haùda ne del rey ne da regina, e no som tenguts a rey ne a regina axi com eren los dits harons de Sicilia, abans de la dita senyoria e domini obtenim per Madonna Elionor, nostra muller, che és jutgessa d'Arborea e filla e succehidora per son pare per lo jutgat d'Arborea, la qual Casa d'Arborea ha D anys que ha hauda senyioria en la present illa" "We had our lordship not from any king or queen and have not to be loyal to any king or queen as sicilian Barons, because we had our lordship from Madonna Elionor, our wife, who is Judicissa of Arborea, daughter and successor of her father of the judicatus of Arborea, and this House of Arborea has reined for five hundreds years in this island." – Archivo de la Corona d'Aragon. Colleccion de documentos inéditos. XLVIII
  13. ^ G. Seche, L'incoronazione di Barisone "Re di Sardegna" in due fonti contemporanee: gli Annales genovesi e gli Annales pisani, in Rivista dell'Istituto di storia dell'Europa mediterranea, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, n°4, 2010
  14. ^ Dino Punchu (a cura di), I Libri Iurium della Repubblica de Genova, Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Roma, 1996, n°390, pag.334
  15. ^ Geronimo Zurita, Los cinco libros postreros de la segunda parte de los Anales de la Corona d'Aragon, Oficino de Domingo de Portonaris y Ursono, Zaragoza, 1629, libro XVII, pag. 75–76
  17. ^ The Changing Faces of Federalism: Institutional Reconfiguration in Europe From East to West. p. 183. Retrieved 2014-03-03. 


  • Murtaugh, Frank M. (1991). Cavour and the Economic Modernization of the Kingdom of Sardinia. New York: Garland Publishing Inc. ISBN 9780815306719. 
  • Hearder, Harry (1986). Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento, 1790–1870. London: Longman. ISBN 0-582-49146-0. 
  • Martin, George Whitney (1969). The Red Shirt and the Cross of Savoy. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co. ISBN 0-396-05908-2. 
  • Storrs, Christopher (1999). War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55146-3. 

See also[edit]