Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica - Aragonese Conquest of Sardinia

Aragonese Conquest of Sardinia

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 some landlords, Doria House and Malaspina House, who were citizen of the Republic of Genoa, which so 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 (Giudicato is the italian word equivalent in contemporary usage to "kingdom" or "duchy."). 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 the 1409 when the army of the giudicato of Arborea suffered a heavy defeat the Catalan-Aragonese army in the Battle of Sanluri. After the sale of the remaining territories for 100,000 gold florins of the Giudicato of Arborea in the 1420, the "Kingdom of Sardinia" extended throughout the island, excepet for the city of Castelsardo (at that time called Casteldoria or Castelgenovese) that was stolen from the Doria in 1448. The subduing of Sardinia having taken a century, Corsica, which had not been wrested from the Genoese, was dropped from the formal title of the Kingdom.