Today is Sardinia’s Day, (sa die de sa Sardigna; Sassarese: la dì di la Sardigna; Gallurese: la dì di la Saldigna; Algherese: lo dia de la Sardenya; Italian: il giorno della Sardegna). a holiday in Sardinia commemorating the Sardinian Vespers, which occurred from 1794 to 1796.
In the last decades of the 18th century following the Savoyard take-over of the island, tensions had begun to mount among the Sardinians towards the Piedmontese administration. Sardinian peasants resented the feudal rule and both the local nobles and the bourgeoisie were being left out of any active civil and military role, with the viceroy and other people from the Italian mainland being appointed in charge of the island.
In 1793, a French fleet tried to conquer the island. However, the locals managed to resist the invasion by the French, and began expecting the Savoyards to acknowledge the feat and improve their condition in return. The Sardinians thus presented with the King a list of grievances requiring his remedy, amongst which the demand that most of the offices be reserved for native Sardinians, along with autonomy from the Savoyard ruling class.
The King’s peremptory refusal to grant the island any of these wishes eventually spurred the rebellion against Piedmont’s primacy. On 28 April 1794, known as sa dii de s’aciappa (“the day of the pursuit and capture”), people in Cagliari started chasing any Piedmontese functionaries they could find; since many of them started to wear the local robes in order to blend into the crowd, any people suspected to be from the Italian mainland would be asked by the populace to “say chickpea” (nara cixiri) in Sardinian: failure in pronouncing the word correctly would give their origin away.
Thus, Sardinia became the first European country to have engaged in a revolution of its own, the episode not being the result of a foreign military importation like in most of Europe.
special…
Schadenfreude is so much funnier in Dutch…
triggering their target audience…
Today is the birthday, in 1952, of American musician Chuck Leavell who was a member of the The Allman Brothers Band during the height of their 1970s popularity. He is the longtime keyboardist and musical director with The Rolling Stones and Leavell has also toured and recorded with Eric Clapton, George Harrison, David Gilmour and John Mayer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCRS4DRmf_w
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