Giovanni Maria Angioy - The Post of "Alternos"

The Post of "Alternos"

The House of Savoy tried to regain control of Sardinia on the same year. A new viceroy, Filippo Vivalda of Castellino, was installed and landed in Cagliari on 6 September, but the revolts and riots continued. Trying to use the unrest to their profit, the nobility from the north-east of Sardinia (Logudoro and Sassari), asked the king greater autonomy from the viceroy and to depend directly by the Crown.

These requests, which somehow broke the unity of the revolt, angered the revolutionaries in Cagliari and in the rest of Sardinia. The revolutionaries thus organised further uprisings against the nobility in Sassari, uprisings that were particularly popular with farmers and shepherds of the northern part of Sardinia, the Logudoro, where feudal rights and laws were not clearly defined and the landowners used this uncertainty to apply extortionate payments from the vassals. The uprising in the Logudoro climaxed on 28 December 1795, when a great mass of rebels from all over Logudoro marched toward Sassari singing the famous song of Francis Ignatius Mannu: "procurad'è moderade, Barones sa tirrannia" (in Sardinian: mitigate your tiranny, you landowners and nobles). The city was occupied by the revolutionaries, led by Gioachino Mundula and Francesco Cillocco. Having taken as prisoners the governor of Sassari and the archbishop, the rebels marched towards Cagliari.

In order to stop the riots, the viceroy Philip Vivalda – 13 February 1796 – along with representatives of Stamenti, decided to send Giovanni Maria Angioy to Sassari. Angioy was then magistrate of the Royal Audience, but in order to try calm the revolt he was given the role of "Alternos", which allowed him to act as viceroy (and he was supposed to work in conjunction with the viceroy).

Having taken the role of Alternos, Angioy departed from Cagliari to the inner part of Sardinia. During the trip, he won over many Sardinians from different classes. He also had a chance to realise the actual conditions of the Sardinian economy and society: agriculture was still archaic and underdeveloped with little innovation. The feudal oppression contributed highly to the hardship of farmers and the deep poverty of the villages. Angioy was thus developing revolutionary and democratic ideas that he had nurtured by reading many French political and philosophical texts (he was fluent in French as well as Italian and Sardinian).

When Angioy arrived in Sassari, he was greeted as a liberator. Many saw in him the person that could help deliver the economic and political change that Sardinia highly needed.

Indeed, after placating the revolt in Sassari and Logudoro, Angioy demanded the viceroy to free the villages and lands from the feudal system. He also refused to collect feudal taxes, as he was required to do by the viceroy. Furthermore, he angered the viceroy even more by expressing his critical views of the feudal system and the Savoy rule. With his powers, he tried to establish some reform by promulgating laws to start some form of collaboration between landowners and farmers, but his efforts were systemically boycotted by the nobility in Cagliari and the Viceroy.

It might seem strange the Sardinian nobility that somehow contributed in starting the revolution, was so adverse to the reforms that Angioy was trying to implement: however, it must be taken into account that the goal of the Sardinian nobility was only to increase their standing in the administration of Sardinia and not certainly to start a radical revolution and change the status quo. As a matter of fact, the Sardinian nobility was deeply worried that the revolt was getting out of their hand.

Because of the difficulties in legally implementing any kind of reform, the support Angioy enjoyed was fading little by little: some of his collaborators deserted him, while the popular revolt that Angioy hoped could topple the status-quo in Sardinia, never took place because significant portions of the population were suspicious of revolutionary ideas akin to those of the French Revolution. The majority of the population was certainly not eager to maintain the feudal system and the rule of the nobility, but many thought the revolutionary ideas that Angioy expressed were too radical and were deeply suspicious of reforms that would have changed radically the social structure of the villages.

In order to succeed in his plans of reform, Angioy secretly made some agreements with France: France were ready to support him in trying to stage a revolt to topple the House of Savoy and the viceroy. Angioy's goal was to proclaim a Sardinian Republic, although it is not clear from his memories whether he was planning to create an independent state with French protection or whether France was supposed to take a more active role in administering the new republic.

However, when in 1795 France signed in Cherasco a peace deal with the Savoy king, Vittorio Amedeo III, any plan of supporting a Sardinian revolt led by Angioy was abandoned. Angioy then faced persecution by the House of Savoy: he was stripped of his Alternos role and an arrest order was issued on him as well as a reward for whoever helped capture or kill him.

Angioy managed to escape arrest and organised an army to carry out his plans of revolt even without any external support. However on 8 June 1796 he was defeated near Oristano, and his army disintegrated. Angioy fled Sardinia and took a boat with the goal of going to Genoa. Apparently his plan was to go to the capital Turin and still try negotiating some measure to abolish the feudal rule in Sardinia. However, as he realised that his efforts were doomed and his own liberty and life were in danger, he fled to France. He lived in France until his death in Paris in 1818.