The Mistakes of Our History: A French King of Arborea
The re-reading of Francesco Cesare Casula, professor of Medieval History, of the facts and characters from the Kingdom of Sardinia to the modern age
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A negative judgment – The grandfather of William I, king of Arborea and third Viscount of Narbonne, took part in the battle of Campaldino in Tuscany in 1289 and made a very poor impression.
Even more, his nephew did it at the battle of Sanluri on June 30, 1409, recklessly leading the Arborean troops against the Catalan-Aragonese of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and lost. And that is how, through his fault, we lost our freedom from the foreign occupier and the possibility of making Sardinia Sardinian.
The story – After the death of Eleonora d'Arborea and her son Mariano V, in the absence of direct heirs, the great-nephew of Beatrice, Eleonora's sister, married to Amerigo VI, Viscount of Narbonne, grandmother of the designated Arborean monarch William III, was called to Oristano from France.
As soon as he arrived, he was crowned king of Arborea, with the ordinal I, on 13 January 1409. Immediately, with an inappropriately chivalrous spirit, the new Sardinian sovereign met with the infant Martin the Younger, head of the army of the entire Crown of Aragon, near the Cagliari pond, and proposed an open battle to resolve the dispute, confident in the fact that his forces were greater than those of the enemy.
The mistake – It was a great foolishness, because, to win the war against the Catalan-Aragonese Kingdom of Sardinia, it was enough to do nothing, and let time, hunger and hunger wear out the Iberian army crammed intolerantly in Cagliari, forcing it to re-embark for the ports of origin and leave the entire island in the hands of the Arboreans. Instead, he did not do so.
The Battle of Sanluri – The battle in line, between the two armies, took place on the morning of June 30, a Sunday, on the plain immediately south of the castle and fortified village of Sanluri, where William I was with his heterogeneous army of seventeen thousand Sardinian infantry, two thousand French knights and a thousand Genoese crossbowmen.
In a location still marked on the IGM maps as “Su bruncu de sa battalla” (“The hill of the battle”), the Arborensi were attacked in the center by the eight thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry from Sicily, Aragon, Valencia and the Balearic Islands, who were better equipped and trained, and split into two groups: the left part retreated, pressed, up to the Mannu stream, and was overwhelmed in the place that bears the lugubrious name of “Su occidroxiu” (“The slaughterhouse”); the right part in turn split into two remnants: the first fled to Sanluri but was caught and torn to pieces; the second, with the king of the Giudicato in person, took refuge in the nearby castle of Monreale which fortunately resisted.
Four days later, on July 4, the poorly defended and under-garrisoned Villa di Chiesa (Iglesias) surrendered to Giovanni de Sena.
It was a real defeat for the Sardinian Giudicati: the beginning of the end, although shortly afterwards, on 25 July, Martin the Younger died of malaria in Castel di Cagliari, creating understandable confusion among the Iberian army in Sardinia and throughout the Crown of Aragon which remained without direct heirs for the succession to the throne.
The end of the Kingdom of Arborea – In the same month of July 1409 William I went to France to seek help in vain. Leonardo Cubello remained in Oristano as his lieutenant or “judge of fact” and came to terms with the enemy, signing on 29 March 1410, in the monastery of San Martino fuori le mura, a document of capitulation of the city and of almost all of historical Arborea which was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia
Ten years of inconclusive clashes and conflicts passed. But, seeing all efforts to defend a State now in deep decline and headed towards an inevitable end, useless, the Judicial king entered into negotiations with the new sovereign of the Crown of Aragon Alfonso II (or V) the Magnanimous for the sale of his sovereign prerogatives over Arborea.
The agreement was reached in Alghero with Alfonso the Magnanimous himself on 17 August 1420. At the price of 100,000 gold florins, after more than half a millennium of life, the glorious indigenous Giudicale Kingdom and the ancient dream of an entirely Sardinian nation ended.
Francis Caesar Casula
