Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia
 |
Kingdom of Sardinia, in 1839: Mainland Piedmont, with Savoia upper left (pink) and Nizza (Nice) lower left (brown) both now French, and Sardinia in the inset |
The
Kingdom of Sardinia is a former kingdom in
Italy.
The traditional
giudicati of
Sardinia, which were independent tribal territories each presided over by its "judge", having come under the control either of
Genoa or
Pisa, the Kingdom came into being in
1297, when
Pope Boniface VIII, intervening between the Houses of
Anjou and
Aragon, established on paper a
"regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae" that would be a
fief of the Papacy. Then the Pope offered his newly-invented fief to the Catalan
Jaume II the Just, king of the Crown of Aragon (a confederation made up of the kingdoms of Aragon and
Valencia, and the County of
Catalonia), promising him papal support should he wish to conquer Pisan Sardinia in exchange for Sicily.
In 1323 Jaume II formed an alliance with the
giudice of
Arborea and, following a military campaign which lasted a year or so, occupied the Pisan territories of
Cagliari and
Gallura along with the city of
Sassari, claiming the territory as the "Kingdom of Sardinia and
Corsica". In 1353 Aragon made war on Arborea, then fought with its leader
Eleanor of Arborea, but did not reduce the last of the
autochthonous giudicati until 1410.
The Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica retained its separate character as part of the Crown of Aragon and was not merely incorporated into the Kingdom of Aragon. At the time of his struggles with Arborea,
Pere IV of Aragon granted an autonomous legislature to the Kingdom, which had one of Europe's most advanced legal traditions. The Kingdom was governed in the king's name by a viceroy.
When in 1409 Martà the younger, king of Sicily and heir to Aragon, defeated the last Sardinian
giudicato but then died in Cagliari of malaria, without issue, Sardinia passed with the Crown of Aragon to a united Spain. Corsica, which had never been conquered, was dropped from the formal title.
In
1720 the kingdom of
Sicily was exchanged for that of Sardinia, and the
House of Savoy was enabled to call itself royal, as Kings of Sardinia. Although its name was the Kingdom of Sardinia, the main part of the 18th- and 19th-century territories of the
House of Savoy was in
Savoy and
Piedmont, with a capital at
Turin.
In
1743 the kingdom was combined with
Piedmont as the Kingdom of Sardinia. When in
1796 Napoleon conquered the kingdom along with the rest of Northern Italy, the king,
Charles Emmanuel IV fled to Sardinia.
In
1814 the kingdom was restored and enlarged with the addition of the former
Republic of Genoa, now a duchy, and it served as a
buffer state against
France. In the
19th century the alternative name
Sardinia-Piedmont came in use.
In the reaction after Napoleon, the country was ruled by conservative monarchs:
Victor Emmanuel I and
Charles Felix, who fought at the head of a contingent of his own troops at the
Battle of Trocadero, which set the reactionary
Ferdinand VII on the Spanish throne. In
1831 Carlo Felice was succeeded by the more moderate conservative
Charles Albert. Sardinia industrialized from
1830 onward. A constitution, the
Statuto Albertino was enacted in
the year of revolutions, 1848, under liberal pressure, and under the same pressure war was declared on Austria. After initial success the war took a turn for the worse and Sardinia lost.
Like all of Italy, Sardinia was troubled with political instability, under alternating governments. After a very short and disastrous second war with Austria, Charles Albert abdicated on
March 23,
1849, in favour of his son
Vittorio Emmanuele II. In
1850 a liberal ministry under
Count Camillo Benso di Cavour was installed, and Sardinia became the engine driving the
Italian Unification. Sardinia (Piedmont) took part in the
Crimean War, allied with
Turkey,
Britain and
France, and fighting against
Russia.
In
1859 France sided with Sardinia in a war against
Austria, the
Austro-Sardinian War.
Napoleon III didn't 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 Sardinian/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 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. Because he had reneged on his pre-war promises to Cavour, Napoleon allowed Sardinia to retain possession of
Savoy and
Nice.
On
March 5 1860 Parma,
Tuscany,
Modena and
Romagna voted in
referenda to join Sardinia. This alarmed Napoleon who feared a strong Savoyard state on his southeastern border and he insisted that if Sardinia were to keep the new acquisitions they would have to cede Savoy and Nice to France. This was done after dubious referenda showed around 90% majorities in both areas in favour of joining France. In 1860
Giuseppe Garibaldi started his campaign to conquer southern Italy in the name of Sardinia. He quickly toppled the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and marched to
Gaeta. Cavour was actually the most satisfied with the unification while Garibaldi wanted to conquer Rome. Garibaldi was too revolutionary for the king and his prime minister. On
March 17,
1861 the
Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed thus ending Sardinia as a separate kingdom. Piedmont would become the most dominant and wealthiest region in Italy and the capital of Piedmont, Turin, would remain the Italian capital until
1865 when the capital became
Florence. The
House of Savoy would rule Italy until
1946 when a republic was proclaimed.
*
Map of the Kingdom of Sardinia
