The Mistakes of Our History: The Truth About the “Sa Die” Party
The “re-reading” of Professor Francesco Cesare Casula, lecturer of Medieval History, on the facts and characters, from the Kingdom of Sardinia to the modern age
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The background – In the winter of 1792-93, in the midst of the French Revolution, when King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were locked in a dark cell waiting to be guillotined, a military expeditionary force of revolutionaries from beyond the Alps came to Sardinia to bring “liberty, fraternity, equality”. If we had welcomed them, they would certainly have freed us from the hated Savoy sovereigns, they would have freed us from the old local noble parasites, they would have united us into a single, all-Sardinian nation. It was the first attempt by the new “French Republic” to spread the revolutionary principles theorized by the great Enlightenment philosophers outside its borders (the proof is in the “Island of Liberty” already established by Buonarotti in Carloforte a few months earlier). And what did we do? We fought them and kicked them out. Then, we sent a delegation to Turin to the Savoy King to ask for a dutiful reward; which he, with all Savoyard haughtiness, did not give us. Pissed off, we returned to Cagliari to make “The Sardinian Revolution” with broken chairs, expulsions of foreign employees and the lynching of Pizzolo and Paliaccio considered “traitors of Sardinian interests”. Now, after more than two centuries, we celebrate it every 28th April with the name of “Sa Die de sa Sardigna”, singing at the top of our lungs our Marseillaise: “Procurade moderare barones sa tirannia” , which in Italian means: “Oh barons (of yesterday and today) rape us but with delicacy: do not hurt us too much”. No comment.
The “Sardinian Revolution” – Leaving aside the bitter sarcasm, the story of this historical episode is briefly the following:
On 21 December 1792 a large French naval fleet under the command of Rear Admiral La Touche-Tréville appeared off Cagliari without causing any damage.
On January 8 of the new year the French took Carloforte on the islet of San Pietro, renamed the Island of Liberty, where the Jacobin propagandist Filippo Buonarroti established the first revolutionary state in Europe with the constitutional form of a Republic, governed by the Code de la Nature, which unfortunately lasted only four and a half months.
On the 27th, the entire fleet, commanded by Admiral Laurent-Jean-François Truguet, began to bombard Cagliari, which was deaf to his revolutionary proclamations.
On February 14, 4,000 well-armed and equipped men landed at Margine Rosso, on the Quartu coast; but after a week of uncertain advance between salt marshes and ponds towards the Cagliari fortress, disorganization and the fear of a counterattack by the Sardinian militiamen convinced the expeditionary force to re-embark and leave the island on February 24.
The request for a reward – Immediately hoping for a reward from the sovereign for their demonstrated loyalty to the throne, a delegation formed by six representatives of the Sardinian Estates asked in vain to Victor Amadeus II (or III) to reconvene the Parliaments every ten years; to reconfirm all the ancient privileges; to reserve exclusively to indigenous people all civil and military positions, except the highest ones; to create in Turin a special Ministry for the island's affairs; to establish in Cagliari a Council of State to control the legitimacy also with respect to the actions of the viceroys.
The King's refusal – The royal refusal caused a rebellion among the notables and the common people of Cagliari who, on April 28, 1794, captured all five hundred and fourteen officials of Piedmontese origin who worked in the capital, including the viceroy Vincenzo Balbiano, and, two days later, expelled them from the island. But they returned after six months because they were normal subjects of the Kingdom of Sardinia, even if Piedmontese by birth (just as we indigenous Sardinians are institutional Italians in all respects after the State changed its name to the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, today the Italian Republic).
The so-called “anti-Piedmontese revolt” was adopted by the current Autonomous Region of Sardinia as a regional holiday, called “Sa Die de sa Sardinia” , according to law no. 44 of 14 September 1993.
