The night of St. Bartholomew

It is in 1899 that Patella, the captain of the Carabinieres of Nuoro, in a restaurant in Oliena, discussed the phenomenon of Barbagian banditry, with the Lieutenant Giulio Bechi, which will become the author of the book "Big Hunting", one of the most characteristic about this argument.


A day of meetings that will mark the memory of the soldier, especially thanks to the fateful encounter with Maria Antonia Serra Sanna, who Bechi remembered as the Queen of the town (sa Reina), feared, obeyed and protected by a "blue wall of silence".


One cannot know what this meeting did arise in the mind of the "mainlander" lieutenant, but made manifest to his captain in a rush the need for a punitive action, convinced of the need that they should intervene immediately and arrest them all: bandits, and not.


In "Big Hunting" the lieutenant reported the occurrence of the capture of the opponents to the "Meritorious" (the Carabinierees Corp), from the other perspective, that of the carabinieres. The one who was considered "colonial" or "invader" in a land already under the rule of a well established social order, although not formal, and, without doubt, alternative to the state law, which was the Barbaricine ordering.

However, the night at issue, was aimed not only to the bandits of Nuoro, but also to those of the surroundings, including under the heap of arrests the fugitives, them abettors, or suspected. The night between 14 and 15 May 1899 marks the turning point on the decay of Sardinian banditry as a social phenomenon.


Nuoro and the whole Barbagia were besieged by soldiers, carabinieres and police officers under the direct control of the captain Patella that divided his underlings into seven groups, displacing them at crucial points for the operation of attack.


State agents, before sunrise, flooded the streets and surrounded each village with the specific intent to arrest all those who were suspected of supporting or have relations of cooperation with the fugitives.

Thus, they were, captured more than six hundred abettors (thanks to the arrest warrants "in white", delivered to the judiciary the sergeant Lussorio Cau) many of which acquitted under appraisal. The purpose of the raid was to deprive the so-called bandits of their points of support in order to weaken them and force themselves to give up.


So it was with some, as many minor fugitives voluntarily yielded. On the night of St. Bartholomew the justice of the state has decided and has brought everyone with it: women, children and elderly people without distinction of gender, in order to overpower those who had gone into hiding for years.