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
Sardinia Kingdom ended and Sardinia was returned to Roman rule. In 533, Sardinia returned to the rule of the Byzantine Empire when the Vandals were defeated by the armies of Justinian I under the General Belisarius in the Battle of Tricamarum, in their African kingdom; Belisarius sent his general Cyril to Sardinia to retake the island. Sardinia remained in Byzantine hands for the next 300 years aside from a short period in which it was invaded by the Ostrogoths in 551. Under Byzantine rule, the island was divided into districts called "mereíai" (μερείαι) in Byzantine Greek, which were governed by a