Our shame – The sad story of Giommaria Angioy is not to be ascribed to one of the many historical sins committed by us Sardinians over time; it is to be ascribed, rather, to an unspeakable collective shame of ours, so great is it.
The only true Sardinian revolutionary, our Robespierre, who could have inflamed the Sardinians to rebel against the oppressive foreign royal government, led them against the local parasitic nobility, and perhaps led them to independence from Savoy Piedmont, we snubbed, abandoned and sent him into exile in Paris, where he died alone and penniless.
Giommaria Angioy – He was born in Bono on 21 October 1751. He began his studies in Sassari and in 1767 he obtained a master's degree in Philosophy and Arts. After moving to Cagliari, he graduated in utroque jure in 1771. His great political season began in the aftermath of the failed French invasion in 1793 and, above all, after the insurrection of July 1794 which led to the expulsion of the Piedmontese viceroy and which gave all power to the Royal Audience of which he became Judge. In that period the patriotic movement had divided, roughly, into three parties: the conservative feudal one, the moderate one and the democratic reformist one. Angioy was the soul and the leader of the latter. In Sardinia the situation had become dramatic: all of Logudoro was in arms against the feudal lords; Sassari, the stronghold of the barons, was stormed and occupied. On February 13, 1796, Angioy was appointed by the viceroy Filippo Vivalda as his Alternos with full civil, judicial and military powers, and sent to Logudoro to calm the disturbances.
Arriving in Sassari on the 28th, acclaimed by the crowd, he immediately gave orders to help the population oppressed by poverty. But his commitment to repress feudal abuses induced the Sardinian feudal lords to discredit him with the viceroy Filippo Vivalda who prepared to oppose him.
End of the Angevin revolt – Now isolated, Giommaria Angioy, with a small but tenacious group of supporters from Logudore, then thought of carrying out a demonstrative march on the Capital to obtain explicit recognition of the rights of the Sardinian vassals. It seems that he had previously maintained close relations with French agents in order to hand the island over to France to establish a sovereign state on the model of the Republic beyond the Alps. Unfortunately, the armistice of Cherasco between Napoleon and Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia (III of Savoy) wrecked this ambitious project. The anti-feudal march began on June 2 with much uproar but little organization. The first opposition from the inhabitants began in Macomer. On June 8, Angioy reached Oristano. At this point the "Stamenti", fearful of a revolutionary action, forwarded a request to the viceroy for the dismissal of Angioy da Alternos declaring him and his followers rebels to the Monarchy.
