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 occupied the territory. The Giudicato of Arborea, having Oristano as its capital, had the longest life compared to the other kingdoms. Its later history is entwined with the attempt to unify the island into a single Sardinian state ("Republica sardisca" "Sardinian Republic" in Sardinian, "Nació sarda" or "sardesca" "Sardinian Nation" in Catalan) against their relatives and former Aragonese allies. In 1297, Pope Boniface VIII established on his own initiative ("motu proprio") a hypothetical "regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae" ("Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica") in order to settle the War of the Sicilian Vespers diplomatically. This had broken out in 1282 between