History of Sardinia 23 February 1793, Domenico Millelire, in command of the Sardinian fleet, defeated near the Maddalena archipelago the fleets of the French Republic, which was included with the rank of lieutenant, the young and future Emperor of France Napoleon Bonaparte. Millelire received the first Gold Medal of Military Valor of the Italian Navy. In the same month, Sardinians stopped the attempted French landing on the beach of Quartu Sant'Elena, near the Capital of Cagliari. Because of these successes, the representatives of nobility and clergy ("Stamenti") formulated five requests addressed to the King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia in order to have
Kingdom of Sardinia Piedmont-Sardinia, or even the Kingdom of Piedmont to emphasise that the island of Sardinia was of secondary importance to the monarchy. The formal name of the entire Savoyard state was the "States of His Majesty the King of Sardinia". Its final capital was Turin, the capital of Savoy since the Middle Ages. The kingdom initially consisted of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, sovereignty over both of which was claimed by the Papacy, which granted them as a fief, the "regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae" ("kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica"), to King James II of Aragon in 1297. Beginning in 1324,