To guard against a future invasion by the Viking Empire, the remnants of Francia maintained an army of over twenty-six thousand men and conscripted tens of thousands of laborers to build fortifications. Their finances were on the verge of collapse.
"To hell with it. Sardinia hasn't paid taxes in fifty years. I refuse to believe Basil would break with us over a territory that contributes nothing!"
With that, the Count of Orléans decisively led his army across the strait.
They landed on northern Sardinia and marched along the coast toward Torres in the island's northwest.
Since the seventh century, Eastern Roman control over the western Mediterranean had steadily weakened.
As a result, Sardinia had gradually fragmented into four native realms: Torres, Gallura, Arborea, and Cagliari, with a combined population of roughly 180,000.
On August 25, five thousand Frankish soldiers entered the fertile northwestern plains.
The local king dispatched envoys to negotiate, only to be presented with a list of demands so extravagant that it might as well have been a ransom.
The negotiations collapsed.
Torres hurriedly organized its defenses.
However, after years of fighting the Viking Empire, Frankish military tactics had advanced considerably and were far beyond the capabilities of the local kingdoms to counter.
Realizing that Torres intended to resist, the Count of Orléans led three hundred cavalry and five hundred mounted infantry in a rapid strike against the inland stronghold of Adam.
Catching the enemy completely off guard, he easily routed two thousand soldiers who were still on the march.
The next stage was siege warfare.
As usual, the Franks employed mining tactics.
They tunneled beneath the walls of two major towns and brought them crashing down, seizing large stockpiles of grain and wool.
"Sardinia is rich in resources, and its armies are laughably weak. Why didn't we come here sooner?"
The Count of Orléans was immensely pleased with himself.
He immediately wrote to Bald Charles in Pisa, requesting additional reinforcements.
At this point, Charles had little choice.
He dispatched the remaining four thousand troops of his mobile reserve and simultaneously paid a substantial bribe to a certain eunuch in Constantinople, hoping the influential official would speak on his behalf.
With his forces expanded to nine thousand men, the Count of Orléans decided to split the army.
He personally led five thousand soldiers south to attack Gallilus and the southernmost realm of Carilia.
The force containing Alfred was ordered eastward to conquer Gallura, a mountainous, sparsely populated kingdom whose people were renowned for their fierce temperament.
By mid-September, Alfred had pushed deep into the interior.
Along the way, he noticed ancient stone towers scattered across the island.
The towers were cylindrical, usually around ten meters tall, and constructed from massive squared stones.
What astonished him was that no mortar or concrete had been used.
The structures stood solely through the weight and precise fitting of the stones themselves.
"Incredible. How did the ancients build these?"
Documents from a local monastery informed Alfred that these towers—called Nuraghe—had already existed long before the Roman Empire.
By that estimate, many were over fifteen hundred years old.
Occasionally, local defenders used these ancient structures as strongholds.
They sealed the entrances and fought from elevated positions with bows and spears, creating considerable difficulties for the Franks.
Alfred's solution was simple.
He ordered the construction of mantlets and shield carts to protect advancing soldiers.
Once they reached the tower, men armed with iron picks smashed open the entrances.
Then piles of firewood were ignited, filling the tower with smoke and suffocating the defenders hiding above.
Using these methods, the Frankish army advanced steadily until it reached Gallura's capital, Civita.
There they began digging siege tunnels and constructing trebuchets.
During the siege, the king repeatedly sent priests outside the walls to negotiate.
"You refuse to fight the Vikings or the Moors, yet you invade Sardinia. Why?"
The Frankish commanders remained silent.
The answer was painfully obvious.
They could not defeat the Vikings or the Moors.
So they sought resources elsewhere.
In October, the eastern Frankish army captured Civita and continued southward along the coast into the Kingdom of Cagliari.
At the same time, the western Frankish army under the Count of Orléans was also advancing south.
After hearing what had happened to the other three kingdoms, Cagliari immediately appealed to the Eastern Roman forces in Sicily for aid.
It also sent envoys to Rome, requesting mediation from the Papacy.
Faced with mounting international pressure, many senior Frankish officers began considering withdrawal.
Alfred, however, insisted on continuing the campaign.
"My lords, we've already made enemies of all Sardinia.
"If we spare Cagliari now, it will likely absorb the remnants of the other kingdoms and become a permanent Frankish enemy.
"This war must be finished.
"The Eastern Romans are still hesitating. We still have time."
Persuaded by Alfred, the Frankish command accelerated the siege.
They also produced a mountain of dubious evidence accusing the King of Cagliari of maintaining secret dealings with both the Moors and the Vikings—a venomous serpent lurking in the shadows.
On October 25, the Eastern Roman fleet finally departed Sicily.
By the time it reached Cagliari, the harbor city had already fallen.
A huge breach gaped in the eastern wall.
The city lay in ruins, and bloated corpses floated throughout the harbor.
"What a frightening siege speed."
The fleet commander dispatched a small boat to gather information.
The Franks treated the arriving allies with great hospitality.
They even escorted them through the royal palace, proudly displaying locations where the king and nobles had supposedly conducted heretical rituals, along with numerous letters allegedly exchanged with Vikings and Moors.
Half an hour later, negotiations took place on the beach.
The Franks agreed to return Sardinia.
They cited two reasons.
First, Sardinia nominally belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire.
Their invasion, they claimed, had been motivated solely by suspicions that local rulers were collaborating with Moors and Vikings.
Now that the traitors had been eliminated, it was only proper to restore the island to their ally.
Second, Frankish exploitation of Sardinia had become so severe that they had already extracted enough grain and livestock to feed eighty thousand people for an entire year.
They had also seized property worth roughly three thousand pounds.
The island had been stripped nearly bare.
Famine and rebellion were inevitable.
Better to leave early and hand the problem over to someone else.
"Purging traitors?" the fleet commander replied coldly.
"You've done us such a great favor. Should I be thanking you?"
After venting his anger, he ordered his troops to assume responsibility for Cagliari's defenses.
In effect, he accepted the Frankish version of events.
Not long before, he had received an imperial decree from Constantinople with clear instructions:
As long as the Franks returned Sardinia, the matter was to be considered closed.
From Emperor Basil's perspective, Sardinia had not paid taxes for decades.
Even if it had been thoroughly plundered, the Empire suffered no real loss.
On the contrary, acquiring the island without spending a single soldier's life was arguably a gain.
More importantly, the Franks served as a buffer against further expansion by the Viking Empire.
Basil needed to preserve the alliance and ensure the Franks continued holding the Alpine frontier.
If the Vikings ever broke into Italy, they could cross from Naples and launch attacks directly against Greece.
In that scenario, the Eastern Roman Empire would face the nightmare of being squeezed from both east and west.
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