Pietro Cabboi with his wife Elena Orrù and their children. Among them, on the right, is Maria dressed in white.
Maria Cabboi in Armungia: family origins and roots in the territory
Maria Cabboi was born in Armungia on October 16, 1901, into a family of cattle breeders. There were differing opinions in the village as to why her great-grandfather Pietro Cabboi had moved to Gerrei from the fertile Parteolla hills many years earlier. Some believed he was attracted by the green pastures along the banks of the Flumendosa River; others believed he had fled from the municipality of Dolianova after seducing and abandoning a local girl. In any case, his marriage to Francesca Piga had produced many children, allowing his surname to spread rapidly in Armungia. Her grandson, Pietro, was also a shepherd and served as mayor of the village for several years. He married Elena Orrù, daughter of Giovanni, who had come to Armungia from Sinnai to transport goods with a horse-drawn cart and later became a barber and shoemaker.
Maria Cabboi and her marriage to Giuseppe Lussu
The marriage between Pietro Cabboi and Elena Orrù produced seven children, including Maria Cabboi, who grew up with her siblings in the large manor house built by her parents on Via Municipio, not far from the nuraghe and the town hall. On May 27, 1922, not yet twenty-one, young Maria married Giuseppe Lussu , the older brother of Emilio Lussu , born in 1887. Giuseppe had returned from the front a few years earlier in poor health, having been taken prisoner with his regiment in Carnia in October 1917 and locked up in the terrible prison camp at Mauthausen . From there, by hitting a sentry with a metal bar wrapped in wool so as not to kill him, he managed to escape, reaching Slovakia and finding refuge in a priest's home. The marriage between Maria Cabboi and Giuseppe Lussu, however, lasted less than two years. Giuseppe died at sunset on April 16, 1924, at just 37 years old, consumed by tuberculosis. Maria continued to live in the Lussu household with Lucia Mereu, mother of Emilio and Giuseppe, until 1926, when she met Giovanni Chabert , a young Piedmontese brigadier who had come to Armungia to open the first Carabinieri barracks .
Giovanni Chabert, Armungia and the encounter with Mary
It was certainly not coincidence that brought Giovanni Chabert to Sardinia a few years earlier. He himself recounted that he had been transferred to the island as punishment, after arriving a day late at the Carabinieri Legion in Turin for enlistment aboard a train from Marseille . One day, a young shepherd arrived at the barracks to report the theft of a copper pot, which he claimed had later been seen in the courtyard of the Lussu family . Going to the Lussu home for a necessary inspection, Giovanni Chabert saw the young Maria Cabboi for the first time and was particularly struck by her. There was no real engagement, and the opportunities for them to meet were very few. After a few months, however, an anonymous letter was sent to the Legion in Cagliari to report the relationship, something not permitted to the Carabinieri at the time. As a result, Giovanni Chabert was immediately transferred from Armungia to Merano , in the heart of the South Tyrolean Dolomites .
The Chabert family between Trentino, Sardinia, and Emilio Lussu
Giovanni then quickly asked Maria Cabboi to marry him, and after the wedding, they lived together for several years in Alto Adige and Trentino , where their first two children were born: Edoardo, who died at just six months old, and Ettore. In 1933, six months before returning to Sardinia and Armungia, their third child, Giancarlo, was born in Torbole sul Garda. In July 1944, upon his return to Sardinia after seventeen years spent away between confinement on Lipari , exile in France , and the resistance in Nazi-occupied Rome , Emilio Lussu was also able to return to Armungia. Greeted by the population, after a brief speech in the church square, his first visit was to Maria and Giovanni in their home on Via Municipio. With all his family members having passed away, Maria was his closest remaining relative in the village. Accompanying him through the cemetery paths, carrying a bouquet of chrysanthemums, collected by Maria, to be placed on his mother's grave, was one of their sons, young Giancarlo. The bond between the Chabert family and Emilio Lussu endured. For a time, Giovanni Chabert managed his estate in Armungia, often entrusting Ettore and Giancarlo with herding his horses. Maria Cabboi would never forget him either.
