The big hunt in Morgogliai

The enduring fight between bandits and security force reached the maximum on ninth and tenth July 1899. Today that dispute is remembered as the “Battle of Morgogliai” and it is considered one of the biggest and the most tragic armed conflicts that happened in Sardinia in the 1800s.


On the one hand, there were the most famous fugitives of that epoch: Elias brothers and Giacomo Serra Sanna from Nuoro, Giuseppe Lovicu from Orgosolo, Tommaso Virdis from Oniferi and Giuseppe Pau from Oliena; cruel bandits that constituted a criminal gang that was respected and dreadful in the whole area of Nuoro; on the other hand, around two hundred Carabinieres and soldiers.


“Proite no los chircas in Murgugliai”? (Why do not you search them in Morgogliai?) It was this sentence, said in a whatever day and declared by one of the many invisible mouths, that proclaimed the end of the dreadful gang of bandits. Because since that moment the everybody’s eyes in an only instant were pointed exactly towards Morgogliai, penetrating into that inaccessible woods, between the territory of Orgosolo and that of Oliena, a place as a shelter, an unassailable outpost, a crucial center of rebellion, a bastion of terror.


Since that moment, they studied a plan for going to drive the criminals out and to restore serenity in the whole area. Serra Sanna brothers and the other bandits were accused of a series of murders such that they made pale; in addition to robberies, thefts, incendiary actions and other brutalities, their incredible cruelty and yearning of revenge aroused clamor. For them there was a big bounty and an infinitive series of condemnations.

The event is well-known. Giovanni Ricci, in the book “Criminal Sardinia”, describes, in detail, all the steps that led to the conflict. The siege on the evening of ninth July, the pistol shots, the hurt people and the died people, the reactions of the institutional authorities and of the citizens of the village. During the conflict, almost all the people died.


Elias and Giacomo, the Serra Sanna brothers, Virdis and Pau. Lovicu was the only one who saved himself in an incredible way. It is told that he climbed in the highest branches of a tree and for twelve hours he waited for the appearance of the dark and the retreat of the Carabinieres, before dispersing in the wood. After the event of Morgogliai, his fame increased enormously. We cannot say likewise about his state of being in hiding that lasted only other two years. It was the twenty-third July 1901 when during the umpteenth battle against the Carabinieres, this time it was him that fell on the ground.


In this terrible conflict also two soldiers died. The islander press dedicated a lot of space to this event. The killing of criminals without scruples, on the one hand, highlighted how of the Italian Government what is felt mainly was the security force, deployed in his power, determined to destroy definitely the plague of banditry only through strength; on the other hand, there were exactly the bandits, passionate, despite their tragic outlines, exactly for an expected sacrifice; it was this element that, despite everything, gave a place in the history to irreprehensible outlaws who sacrificed themselves during the battle and who preferred death rather compromises and losing freedom.


 

For remembering this event, there are some black and white photos of the bandits on the ground, today become well-known. Men shown as hunting trophies, firstly combed like boars, then killed like scruffy dogs and exhibited to spectators, static and by now inoffensive. In Orgosolo there is a stupendous murales that portrays exactly this senseless and Goliardic externalization of the triumph and in the title it presents a sublime irony: “The big hunt in Orgosolo, Morgogliai 1899”. Indeed, it was a hunt.


A true hunt through ambushes, sieges, advancements and a rain of bullets. When they notice the prey, they aim at the target; the abrupt bumpt of the rifle that perforates a rib or a cranium or that chips the bark of a tree before losing in a luxuriant bush of lentisk.


Among many other shots there is escape, madness, running towards the empty space without no way out, the terror stuck in the cornea. Then other endless shots that come on and off, an indented song that is not inclined to calm down. Finally, the right bullet that breaks the thin thread and puts in again the breath, bitterness and blood that flows.


Quiet comes. It is possible to pull the breath and to become aware of the feat. Now, it is possible to dedicate to the photos. Finally, it came the moment of showing everybody the prey and so downtown, very fast, it came the moment of showing the trophies with pride, before the sunset that switch off the day, by now far to the primordial silence that took again the impenetrable woods of Morgogliai, an instant before that emphasis finishes and everything is exactly like before.