In 1799, as a consequence of the Napoleonic Wars in Italy, the Savoy royal family left Turin and took refuge in Cagliari for some fifteen years. In 1847, the Sardinian parliaments ("Stamenti"), in order to get the Piedmontese liberal reforms they could not afford due to their separated legal system, renounced their state autonomy and agreed to form a union with the Italian Mainland States ("Stati di Terraferma"), ending up with a single parliament, a single magistracy and a single government in Turin; this move aggravated the island's peripheral condition and most of the pro-union supporters, including its leader Giovanni Siotto Pintor, would later regret it.