Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

On page 3, Cyrnos is a possible typo for Cyrnus.

CONSTABLE'S MISCELLANY
OF
FOREIGN LITERATURE.

VOL. V.

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.
JAMES M'GLASHAN, DUBLIN.
MDCCCLV.

EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.

ISLAND of CORSICA

Engraved & Printed in Colours
by W. & A. K. Johnston, Edinburgh.
Edinburgh, T. Constable & C^o.

[View larger image]

WANDERINGS IN CORSICA:
ITS HISTORY AND ITS HEROES.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF
FERDINAND GREGOROVIUS
BY ALEXANDER MUIR.

VOL. I.

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.
JAMES M'GLASHAN, DUBLIN.
MDCCCLV.

PREFACE.

It was in the summer of the past year that I went over to the island of Corsica. Its unknown solitudes, and the strange stories I had heard of the country and its inhabitants, tempted me to make the excursion. But I had no intention of entangling myself so deeply in its impracticable labyrinths as I actually did. I fared like the heroes of the fairy-tales, who are allured by a wondrous bird into some mysterious forest, and follow it ever farther and farther into the beautiful wilderness. At last I had wandered over most of the island. The fruit of that summer is the present book, which I now send home to my friends. May it not meet with an unsympathetic reception! It is hoped that at least the history of the Corsicans, and their popular poetry, entitles it to something better.

The history of the Corsicans, all granite like their mountains, and singularly in harmony with their nature, is in itself an independent whole; and is therefore capable of being presented, even briefly, with completeness. It awakens the same interest of which we are sensible in reading the biography of an unusually organized man, and would possess valid claims to our attention even though Corsica could not boast Napoleon as her offspring. But certainly the history of Napoleon's native country ought to contribute its share of data to an accurate estimate of his character; and as the great man is to be viewed as a result of that history, its claims on our careful consideration are the more authentic.

It is not the object of my book to communicate information in the sphere of natural science; this is as much beyond its scope as beyond the abilities of the author. The work has, however, been written with an earnest purpose.

I am under many obligations for literary assistance to the learned Corsican Benedetto Viale, Professor of Chemistry in the University of Rome; and it would be difficult for me to say how helpful various friends were to me in Corsica itself. My especial thanks are, however, due to the exiled Florentine geographer, Francesco Marmocchi, and to Camillo Friess, Archivarius in Ajaccio.

Rome, April 2, 1853.

The Translator begs to acknowledge his obligations to L. C. C. (the translator of Grillparzer's Sappho), for the translation of the Lullaby, [pp. 240], [241], in the first volume; the Voceros which begin on pp. 51, 52, and 54, in the second volume, and the poem which concludes the work.

Edinburgh, February 1855.

CONTENTS.

WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

BOOK I.—HISTORY.

CHAP. I.—EARLIEST ACCOUNTS.

The oldest notices of Corsica we have, are to be found in the Greek and Roman historians and geographers. They do not furnish us with any precise information as to what races originally colonized the island, whether Phœnicians, Etruscans, or Ligurians. All these ancient races had been occupants of Corsica before the Carthaginians, the Phocæan Greeks, and the Romans planted their colonies upon it.

The position of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, in the great western basin of the Mediterranean, made them points of convergence for the commerce and colonization of the surrounding nations of the two continents. To the north, at the distance of a day's journey, lies Gaul; three days' journey westwards, Spain; Etruria is close at hand upon the east; and Africa is but a few days' voyage to the south. The continental nations necessarily, therefore, came into contact in these islands, and one after the other left their stamp upon them. This was particularly the case in Sardinia, a country entitled to be considered one of the most remarkable in Europe, from the variety and complexity of the national characteristics, and from the multifarious traces left upon it by so many different races, in buildings, sculptures, coins, language, and customs, which, deposited, so to speak, in successive strata, have gradually determined the present ethnographic conformation of the island. Both Corsica and Sardinia lie upon the boundary-line which separates the western basin of the Mediterranean into a Spanish and an Italian half; and as soon as the influences of Oriental and Greek colonization had been eradicated politically, if not physically, these two nations began to exercise their determining power upon the islands. In Sardinia, the Spanish element predominated; in Corsica, the Italian. This is very evident at the present day from the languages. In later times, a third determining element, but a purely political one—the French, was added in the case of Corsica. At a period of the remotest antiquity, both Spanish and Gallo-Celtic or Ligurian tribes had passed over to Corsica; but the Spanish characteristics which struck the philosopher Seneca so forcibly in the Corsicans of his time, disappeared, except in so far as they are still visible in the somewhat gloomy and taciturn, and withal choleric disposition of the present islanders.

The most ancient name of the island is Corsica—a later, Cyrnus. The former is said to be derived from Corsus, a son of Hercules, and brother of Sardus, who founded colonies on the islands, to which they gave their names. Others say that Corsus was a Trojan, who carried off Sica, a niece of Dido, and that in honour of her the island received its appellation. Such is the fable of the oldest Corsican chronicler, Johann della Grossa.

Cyrnus was a name in use among the Greeks. Pausanias says, in his geography of Phocis: "The island near Sardinia (Ichnusa) is called by the native Libyans, Corsica; by the Greeks, Cyrnus." The designation Libyans, is very generally applied to the Phœnicians, and it is highly improbable that Pausanias was thinking of an aboriginal race. He viewed them as immigrated colonists, like those in Sardinia. He says, in the same book, that the Libyans were the first who came to Sardinia, which they found already inhabited, and that after them came the Greeks and Hispanians. The word Cyrnos itself has been derived from the Phœnician, Kir—horn, promontory. In short, these matters are vague, traditionary, hypothetical.

So much seems to be certain, from the ancient sources which supplied Pausanias with his information, that in very early times the Phœnicians founded colonies on both islands, that they found them already inhabited, and that afterwards an immigration from Spain took place. Seneca, who spent eight years of exile in Corsica, in his book De Consolatione, addressed to his mother Helvia, and written from that island, has the following passage (cap. viii.):—"This island has frequently changed its inhabitants. Omitting all that is involved in the darkness of antiquity, I shall only say that the Greeks, who at present inhabit Massilia (Marseilles), after they had left Phocæa, settled at first at Corsica. It is uncertain what drove them away—perhaps the unhealthy climate, the growing power of Italy, or the scarcity of havens; for, that the savage character of the natives was not the reason, we learn from their betaking themselves to the then wild and uncivilized tribes of Gaul. Afterwards, Ligurians crossed over to the island; and also Hispanians, as may be seen from the similarity of the modes of life; for the same kinds of covering for the head and the feet are found here, as among the Cantabrians—and there are many resemblances in words; but the entire language has lost its original character, through intercourse with the Greeks and Ligurians." It is to be lamented that Seneca did not consider it worth the pains to make more detailed inquiry into the condition of the island. Even for him its earliest history was involved in obscurity; how much more so must it be for us?

Seneca is probably mistaken, however, in not making the Ligurians and Hispanians arrive on the island till after the Phocæans. I have no doubt that the Celtic races were the first and oldest inhabitants of Corsica. The Corsican physiognomy, even of the present time, appears as a Celtic-Ligurian.

CHAPTER II.
THE GREEKS, ETRUSCANS, CARTHAGINIANS, AND ROMANS IN CORSICA.

The first historically accredited event in relation to Corsica, is that immigration of the fugitive Phocæans definitely mentioned by Herodotus. We know that these Asiatic Greeks had resolved rather to quit their native country, than submit to inevitable slavery under Cyrus, and that, after a solemn oath to the gods, they carried everything they possessed on board ship, and put out to sea. They first negotiated with the Chians for the cession of the Œnusian Islands, but without success; they then set sail for Corsica, not without a definite enough aim, as they had already twenty years previously founded on that island the city of Alalia. They were, accordingly, received by their own colonists here, and remained with them five years, "building temples," as Herodotus says; "but because they made plundering incursions on their neighbours, the Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians brought sixty ships into the seas. The Phocæans, on their side, had equipped a fleet of equal size, and came to an engagement with them off the coast of Sardinia. They gained a victory, but it cost them dear; for they lost forty vessels, and the rest had been rendered useless—their beaks having been bent. They returned to Alalia, and taking their wives and children, and as much of their property as they could, with them, they left the island of Cyrnus, and sailed to Rhegium." It is well known that they afterwards founded Massilia, the present Marseilles.

We have therefore in Alalia, the present Aleria—a colony of an origin indubitably Greek, though it afterwards fell into the hands of the Etruscans. The history of this flourishing commercial people compels us to assume, that, even before the arrival of the Phocæans, they had founded colonies in Corsica. It is impossible that the powerful Populonia, lying so near Corsica on the coast opposite, with Elba already in its possession, should never have made any attempt to establish its influence along the eastern shores of the island. Diodorus says in his fifth book:—"There are two notable cities in Corsica—Calaris and Nicæa; Calaris (a corruption of Alalia or Aleria) was founded by the Phocæans. These were expelled by the Tyrrhenians, after they had been some time in the island. The Tyrrhenians founded Nicæa, when they became masters of the sea." Nicæa is probably the modern Mariana, which lies on the same level region of the coast. We may assume that this colony existed contemporaneously with Alalia, and that the immigration of the entire community of Phocæans excited jealousy and alarm in the Tyrrhenians, whence the collision between them and the Greeks. It is uncertain whether the Carthaginians had at this period possessions in Corsica; but they had colonies in the neighbouring Sardinia. Pausanias tells us that they subjugated the Libyans and Hispanians on this island, and built the two cities of Caralis (Cagliari) and Sulchos (Palma di Solo). The threatened danger from the Greeks now induced them to make common cause with the Tyrrhenians, who also had settlements in Sardinia, against the Phocæan intruders. Ancient writers further mention an immigration of Corsicans into Sardinia, where they are said to have founded twelve cities.

For a considerable period we now hear nothing more about the fortunes of Corsica, from which the Etruscans continued to draw supplies of honey, wax, timber for ship-building, and slaves. Their power gradually sank, and they gave way to the Carthaginians, who seem to have put themselves in complete possession of both islands—that is, of their emporiums and havens—for the tribes of the interior had yielded to no foe. During the Punic Wars, the conquering Romans deprived the Carthaginians in their turn of both islands. Corsica is at first not named, either in the Punic treaty of the time of Tarquinius, or in the conditions of peace at the close of the first Punic War. Sardinia had been ceded to the Romans; the vicinity of Corsica could not but induce them to make themselves masters of that island also; both, lying in the centre of a sea which washed the shores of Spain, Gaul, Italy, and Africa, afforded the greatest facilities for establishing stations directed towards the coasts of all the countries which Rome at that time was preparing to subdue.

We are informed, that in the year 260 before the birth of Christ, the Consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio crossed over to Corsica, and destroyed the city of Aleria, and that he conquered at once the Corsicans, Sardinians, and the Carthaginian Hanno. The mutilated inscription on the tomb of Scipio has the words—Hec cepit Corsica Aleriaque vrbe. But the subjugation of the wild Corsicans was no easy matter. They made a resistance as heroic as that of the Samnites. We even find that the Romans suffered a number of defeats, and that the Corsicans several times rebelled. In the year 240, M. Claudius led an army against the Corsicans. Defeated, and in a situation of imminent danger, he offered them favourable conditions. They accepted them, but the Senate refused to confirm the treaty. It ordered the Consul, C. Licinius Varus, to chastise the Corsicans, delivering Claudius at the same time into their hands, that they might do with him as they chose. This was frequently the policy of the Romans, when they wished to quiet their religious scruples about an oath. The Corsicans did as the Spaniards and Samnites had done in similar instances. They would not receive the innocent general, and sent him back unharmed. On his return to Rome, he was strangled, and thrown upon the Gemonian stairs.

Though subdued by the Romans, the Corsicans were continually rising anew, already exhibiting that patriotism and love of freedom which in much later times drew the eyes of the world on this little isolated people. They rebelled at the same time with the Sardinians; but when these had been conquered, the Corsicans also were obliged to submit to the Consul Caius Papirus, who defeated them in the bloody battle of the "Myrtle-field." But they regained a footing in the mountain strongholds, and it appears that they forced the Roman commander to an advantageous peace.

They rose again in the year 181. Marcus Pinarius, Prætor of Sardinia, immediately landed in Corsica with an army, and defeated the islanders with dreadful carnage in a battle of which Livy gives an account—they lost two thousand men killed. The Corsicans submitted, gave hostages and a tribute of one hundred thousand pounds of wax. Seven years later, a new insurrection and other bloody battles—seven thousand Corsicans were slain, and two thousand taken prisoners. The tribute was raised to two hundred thousand pounds of wax. Ten years afterwards, this heroic people is again in arms, compelling the Romans to send out a consular army: Juventius Thalea, and after him Scipio Nasica, completed the subjugation of the island in the year 162.

The Romans had thus to fight with these islanders for more than a hundred years, before they reduced them to subjection. Corsica was governed in common with Sardinia by a Prætor, who resided in Cagliari, and sent a legatus or lieutenant to Corsica. But it was not till the time of the first civil war, that the Romans began to entertain serious thoughts of colonizing the island. The celebrated Marius founded, on the beautiful level of the east coast, the city of Mariana; and Sulla afterwards built on the same plain the city of Aleria, restoring the old Alalia of the Phocæans. Corsica now began to be Romanized, to modify its Celtic-Spanish language, and to adopt Roman customs. We do not hear that the Corsicans again ventured to rebel against their masters; and the island is only once more mentioned in Roman history, when Sextus Pompey, defying the triumvirs, establishes a maritime power in the Mediterranean, and takes possession of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily. His empire was of short duration.

CHAPTER III.
STATE OF THE ISLAND DURING THE ROMAN PERIOD.

The nature of its interior prevents us from believing that the condition of the island was by any means so flourishing during the long periods of its subjection to the Romans, as some writers are disposed to assume. They contented themselves, as it appears, with the two colonies mentioned, and the establishment of some ports. The beautiful coast opposite Italy was the region mainly cultivated. They had only made a single road in Corsica. According to the Itinerary of Antonine, this Roman road led from Mariana along the coast southwards to Aleria, to Præsidium, Portus Favoni, and Palæ, on the straits, near the modern Bonifazio. This was the usual place for crossing to Sardinia, in which the road was continued from Portus Tibulæ (cartio Aragonese)—a place of some importance, to Caralis, the present Cagliari.

Pliny speaks of thirty-three towns in Corsica, but mentions only the two colonies by name. Strabo, again, who wrote not long before him, says of Corsica: "It contains some cities of no great size, as Blesino, Charax, Eniconæ, and Vapanes." These names are to be found in no other writer. Pliny has probably made every fort a town. Ptolemy, however, gives the localities of Corsica in detail, with the appellations of the tribes inhabiting them; many of his names still survive in Corsica unaltered, or easily recognised.

The ancient authors have left us some notices of the character of the country and people during this Roman period. I shall give them here, as it is interesting to compare what they say with the accounts we have of Corsica in the Middle Ages and at the present time.

Strabo says of Corsica: "It is thinly inhabited, for it is a rugged country, and in most places has no practicable roads. Hence those who inhabit the mountains live by plunder, and are more untameable than wild beasts. When the Roman generals have made an expedition against the island, and taken their strongholds, they bring away with them a great number of slaves, and then people in Rome may see with astonishment, what fierce and utterly savage creatures these are. For they either take away their own lives, or they tire their master by their obstinate disobedience and stupidity, so that he rues his bargain, though he have bought them for the veriest trifle."

Diodorus: "When the Tyrrhenians had the Corsican cities in their possession, they demanded from the natives tribute of resin, wax, and honey, which are here produced in abundance. The Corsican slaves are of great excellence, and seem to be preferable to other slaves for the common purposes of life. The whole broad island is for the most part mountainous, rich in shady woods, watered by little rivers. The inhabitants live on milk, honey, and flesh, all which they have in plenty. The Corsicans are just towards each other, and live in a more civilized manner than all other barbarians. For when honey-combs are found in the woods, they belong without dispute to the first finder. The sheep, being distinguished by certain marks, remain safe, even although their master does not guard them. Also in the regulation of the rest of their life, each one in his place observes the laws of rectitude with wonderful faithfulness. They have a custom at the birth of a child which is most strange and new; for no care is taken of a woman in child-birth; but instead of her, the husband lays himself for some days as if sick and worn out in bed. Much boxwood grows there, and that of no mean sort. From this arises the great bitterness of the honey. The island is inhabited by barbarians, whose speech is strange and hard to be understood. The number of the inhabitants is more than thirty thousand."

Seneca: "For, leaving out of account such places as by the pleasantness of the region, and their advantageous situation, allure great numbers, go to remote spots on rude islands—go to Sciathus, and Seriphus, and Gyarus, and Corsica, and you will find no place of banishment where some one or other does not reside for his own pleasure. Where shall we find anything so naked, so steep and rugged on every side, as this rocky island? Where is there a land in respect of its products scantier, in respect of its people more inhospitable, in respect of its situation more desolate, or in respect of its climate more unhealthy? And yet there live here more foreigners than natives."

According to the accounts of the oldest writers, we must doubtless believe that Corsica was in those times to a very great extent uncultivated, and, except in the matter of wood, poor in natural productions. That Seneca exaggerates is manifest, and is to be explained from the situation in which he wrote. Strabo and Diodorus are of opposite opinions as to the character of the Corsican slaves. The former has in his favour the history and unvarying character of the Corsicans, who have ever shown themselves in the highest degree incapable of slavery, and Strabo could have pronounced on them no fairer eulogy than in speaking of them as he has done. What Diodorus, who writes as if more largely informed, says of the Corsican sense of justice, is entirely true, and is confirmed by the experience of every age.

Among the epigrams on Corsica ascribed to Seneca, there is one which says of the Corsicans: Their first law is to revenge themselves, their second to live by plunder, their third to lie, and their fourth to deny the gods.

This is all the information of importance we have from the Greeks and Romans on the subject of Corsica.

CHAPTER IV.
COMMENCEMENT OF THE MEDIÆVAL PERIOD.

Corsica remained in the possession of the Romans, from whom in later times it received the Christian religion, till the fall of Rome made it once more a prey to the rovers by land and sea. Here, again, we have new inundations of various tribes, and a motley mixture of nations, languages, and customs, as in the earliest period.

Germans, Byzantine Greeks, Moors, Romanized races appear successively in Corsica. But the Romanic stamp, impressed by the Romans and strengthened by bands of fugitive Italians, has already taken its place as an indelible and leading trait in Corsican character. The Vandals came to Corsica under Genseric, and maintained themselves in the island a long time, till they were expelled by Belisarius. After the Goths and Longobards had in their turn invaded the island and been its masters, it fell, along with Sardinia, into the hands of the Byzantines, and remained in their possession nearly two hundred years. It was during this period that numerous Greek names and roots, still to be met with throughout the country and in the language, originated.

The Greek rule was of the Turkish kind. They appeared to look upon the Corsicans as a horde of savages; they loaded them with impossible exactions, and compelled them to sell their very children in order to raise the enormous tribute. A period of incessant fighting now begins for Corsica, and the history of the nation consists for centuries in one uninterrupted struggle for existence and freedom.

The first irruption of the Saracens occurred in 713. Ever since Spain had become Moorish, the Mahommedans had been scouring the Mediterranean, robbing and plundering in all the islands, and founding in many places a dominion of protracted duration. The Greek Emperors, whose hands were full in the East, totally abandoned the West, which found new protectors in the Franks. That Charlemagne had to do with Corsica or with the Moors there, appears from his historian Eginhard, who states that the Emperor sent out a fleet under Count Burkhard, to defend Corsica against the Saracens. His son Charles gave them a defeat at Mariana. These struggles with the Moors are still largely preserved in the traditions of the Corsican people. The Roman noble, Hugo Colonna, a rebel against Pope Stephen IV., who sent him to Corsica with a view to rid himself of him and his two associates, Guido Savelli and Amondo Nasica, figures prominently in the Moorish wars. Colonna's first achievement was the taking of Aleria, after a triple combat of a romantic character, between three chivalrous paladins and as many Moorish knights. He then defeated the Moorish prince Nugalon, near Mariana, and forced all the heathenish people in the island to submit to the rite of baptism. The comrade of this Hugo Colonna was, according to the Corsican chronicler, a nephew of Ganelon of Mayence, also named Ganelon, who had come to Corsica to wipe off the disgrace of his house in Moorish blood.

The Tuscan margrave, Bonifacius, after a great naval victory over the Saracens on the coast of Africa, near Utica, is now said to have landed at the southern extremity of Corsica on his return home, and to have built a fortress on the chalk cliffs there, which received from its founder the name of Bonifazio. This took place in the year 833. Louis the Pious granted him the feudal lordship of Corsica. Etruria thus acquires supremacy over the neighbouring island a second time, and it is certain that the Tuscan margraves continued to govern Corsica till the death of Lambert, the last of their line, in 951.

Berengarius, and after him Adalbert of Friuli, were the next masters of the island; then the Emperor Otto II. gave it to his adherent, the Margrave Hugo of Toscana. No further historical details can be arrived at with any degree of precision till the period when the city of Pisa obtained supremacy in Corsica.

In these times, and up till the beginning of the eleventh century, a fierce and turbulent nobility had been forming in Corsica, as in Italy—the various families of which held sway throughout the island. This aristocracy was only in a very limited degree of native origin. Italian magnates who had fled from the barbarians, Longobard, Gothic, Greek or Frankish vassals, soldiers who had earned for themselves land and feudal title by their exertions in the wars against the Moors, gradually founded houses and hereditary seigniories. The Corsican chronicler makes all the seigniors spring from the Roman knight Hugo Colonna and his companions. He makes him Count of Corsica, and traces to his son Cinarco the origin of the most celebrated family of the old Corsican nobility, the Cinarchesi; to another son, Bianco, that of the Biancolacci; to Pino, a son of Savelli's, the Pinaschi; and in the same way we have Amondaschi, Rollandini, descendants of Ganelon and others. In later times various families emerged into distinction from this confusion of petty tyrants, the Gentili, and Signori da Mare on Cape Corso; beyond the mountains, the seigniors of Leca, of Istria, and Rocca, and those of Ornans and of Bozio.

CHAPTER V.
FEUDALISM IN CORSICA—THE LEGISLATOR SAMBUCUCCIO.

For a long period the history of the Corsicans presents nothing but a bloody picture of the tyranny of the barons over the lower orders, and the quarrels of these nobles with each other. The coasts became desolate, the old cities of Aleria and Mariana were gradually forsaken; the inhabitants of the maritime districts fled from the Saracens higher up into the hills, where they built villages, strengthened by nature and art so as to resist the corsairs and the barons. In few countries can the feudal nobility have been so fierce and cruel as in Corsica. In the midst of a half barbarous and quite poor population, Nature around them savage as themselves, unchecked by any counterpoise of social morality or activity, unbridled by the Church, cut off from the world and civilizing intercourse—let the reader imagine these nobles lording it in their rocky fastnesses, and, giving the rein to their restless and unsettled natures in sensuality and violence. In other countries all that was humanizing, submissive to law, positive and not destructive in tendency, collected itself in the cities, organized itself into guilds and corporate bodies, and uniting in a civic league, made head against the aristocracy. But it was extremely difficult to accomplish anything like this in Corsica, where trade and manufactures were unknown, where there were neither cities nor a commercial middle-class. All the more note-worthy is the phenomenon, that a nation of rude peasants should, in a manner reminding us of patriarchal times, have succeeded in forming itself into a democracy of a marked and distinctive character.

The barons of the country, engaged in continual wars with the oppressed population of the villages, and fighting with each other for sole supremacy, had submitted at the beginning of the eleventh century to one of their own number, the lord of Cinarca, who aimed at making himself tyrant of the whole island. Scanty as our materials for drawing a conclusion are, we must infer from what we know, that the Corsicans of the interior had hitherto maintained a desperate resistance to the barons. In danger of being crushed by Cinarca, the people assembled to a general council. It is the first Parliament of the Corsican Commons of which we hear in their history, and it was held in Morosaglia. On this occasion they chose a brave and able man to be their leader, Sambucuccio of Alando, with whom begins the long series of Corsican patriots, who have earned renown by their love of country and heroic courage.

Sambucuccio gained a victory over Cinarca, and compelled him to retire within his own domains. As a means of securing and extending the advantage thus gained, he organized a confederacy, as was done in Switzerland under similar circumstances, though somewhat later. All the country between Aleria, Calvi, and Brando, formed itself into a free commonwealth, taking the title of Terra del Commune, which it has retained till very recently. The constitution of this commonwealth, simple and entirely democratic in its character, was based upon the natural divisions of the country. These arise from its mountain-system, which separates the island into a series of valleys. As a general rule, the collective hamlets in a valley form a parish, called at the present day, as in the earliest times, by the Italian name, pieve (plebs). Each pieve, therefore, included a certain number of little communities (paese); and each of these, in its popular assembly, elected a presiding magistrate, or podestà, with two or more Fathers of the Community (padri del commune), probably, as was customary in later times, holding office for a single year. The Fathers of the Community were to be worthy of the name; they were to exercise a fatherly care over the welfare of their respective districts; they were to maintain peace, and shield the defenceless. In a special assembly of their own they chose an official, with the title caporale, who seems to have been invested with the functions of a tribune of the Commons, and was expressly intended to defend the rights of the people in every possible way. The podestàs, again, in their assembly, had the right of choosing the Dodici or Council of Twelve—the highest legislative body in the confederacy.

However imperfect and confused in point of date our information on the subject of Sambucuccio and his enactments may be, still we gather from it the certainty that the Corsicans, even at that early period, were able by their own unaided energies to construct for themselves a democratic commonwealth. The seeds thus planted could never afterwards be eradicated, but continued to develop themselves under all the storms that assailed them, ennobling the rude vigour of a spirited and warlike people, encouraging through every period an unexampled patriotism, and a heroic love of freedom, and making it possible that, at a time when the great nations in the van of European culture lay prostrate under despotic forms of government, Corsica should have produced the democratic constitution of Pasquale Paoli, which originated before North America freed herself, and when the French Revolution had not begun. Corsica had no slaves, no serfs; every Corsican was free. He shared in the political life of his country through the self-government of his commune, and the popular assemblies—and this, in conjunction with the sense of justice, and the love of country, is the necessary condition of political liberty in general. The Corsicans, as Diodorus mentions to their honour, were not deficient in the sense of justice; but conflicting interests within their island, and the foreign tyrannies to which, from their position and small numbers, they were constantly exposed, prevented them from ever arriving at prosperity as a State.

CHAPTER VI.
THE PISANS IN CORSICA.

The legislator Sambucuccio fared as many other legislators have done. His death was a sudden and severe blow to his enactments. The seigniors immediately issued from their castles, and spread war and discord over the land. The people, looking round for help, besought the Tuscan margrave Malaspina to rescue them, and placed themselves under his protection. Malaspina landed on the island with a body of troops, defeated the barons, and restored peace. This happened about the year 1020, and the Malaspinas appear to have remained rulers of the Terra del Commune till 1070, while the seigniors bore sway in the rest of the country. At this time, too, the Pope, who pretended to derive his rights from the Frankish kings, interfered in the affairs of the island. It would even seem that he assumed the position of its feudal superior, and that Malaspina was Count of Corsica by the papal permission. The Corsican bishoprics furnished him with another means of establishing his influence in the island. The number of these had in the course of time increased to six, Aleria, Ajaccio, Accia, Mariana, Nebbio, and Sagona.

Gregory VII. sent Landulph, Bishop of Pisa, to Corsica, to persuade the people to put themselves under the power of the Church. This having been effected, Gregory, and then Urban II., in the year 1098, granted the perpetual feudal superiority of the island to the bishopric of Pisa, now raised to an archbishopric. The Pisans, therefore, became masters of the island, and they maintained a precarious possession of it, in the face of continual resistance, for nearly a hundred years.

Their government was wise, just, and benevolent, and is eulogized by all the Corsican historians. They exerted themselves to bring the country under cultivation, and to improve the natural products of the soil. They rebuilt towns, erected bridges, made roads, built towers along the coast, and introduced even art into the island, at least in so far as regarded church architecture. The best old churches in Corsica are of Pisan origin, and may be instantly recognised as such from the elegance of their style. Every two years the republic of Pisa sent as their representative to the island, a Giudice, or judge, who governed and administered justice in the name of the city. The communal arrangements of Sambucuccio were not altered.

Meanwhile, Genoa had been watching with jealous eyes the progress of Pisan ascendency in the adjacent island, and could not persuade herself to allow her rival undisputed possession of so advantageous a station in the Mediterranean, immediately before the gates of Genoa. Even when Urban II. had made Pisa the metropolitan see of the Corsican bishops, the Genoese had protested, and they several times compelled the popes to withdraw the Pisan investiture. At length, in the year 1133, Pope Innocent II. yielded to the urgent solicitations of the Genoese, and divided the investiture, subordinating to Genoa, now also made an archbishopric, the Corsican bishops of Mariana, Accia, and Nebbio, while Pisa retained the bishoprics of Aleria, Ajaccio, and Sagona. But the Genoese were not satisfied with this; they aimed at secular supremacy over the whole island. Constantly at war with Pisa, they seized a favourable opportunity of surprising Bonifazio, when the inhabitants of the town were celebrating a marriage festival. Honorius III. was obliged to confirm them in the possession of this important place in the year 1217. They fortified the impregnable cliff, and made it the fulcrum of their influence in the island; they granted the city commercial and other privileges, and induced a great number of Genoese families to settle there. Bonifazio thus became the first Genoese colony in Corsica.

CHAPTER VII.
PISA OR GENOA?—GIUDICE DELLA ROCCA.

Corsica was now rent into factions. One section of the inhabitants inclined to Pisa, another to Genoa, many of the seigniors maintained an independent position, and the Terra del Commune kept itself apart. The Pisans, though hard pressed by their powerful foes in Italy, were still unwilling to give up Corsica. They made an islander of the old family of Cinarca, their Lieutenant and Giudice, and committed to him the defence of his country against Genoa.

This man's name was Sinucello, and he became famous under the appellation of Giudice della Rocca. His patriotism and heroic courage, his wisdom and love of justice, have given him a place among those who in barbarous times have distinguished themselves by their individual excellencies. The Cinarchesi, it is said, had been driven by one of the papal margraves to Sardinia. Sinucello was a descendant of the exiled family. He had gone to Pisa and attained to eminence in the service of the republic. The hopes of the Pisans were now centred in him. They made him Count and Judge of the island, gave him some ships, and sent him to Corsica in the year 1280. He succeeded, with the aid of his adherents there, in overpowering the Genoese party among the seigniors, and restoring the Pisan ascendency. The Genoese sent Thomas Spinola with troops. Spinola suffered a severe defeat at the hands of Giudice. The war continued many years, Giudice carrying it on with indefatigable vigour in the name of the Pisan republic; but after the Genoese had won against the Pisans the great naval engagement at Meloria, in which the ill-fated Ugolino commanded, the power of the Pisans declined, and Corsica was no longer to be maintained.

After the victory the Genoese made themselves masters of the east coast of Corsica. They intrusted the subjugation of the island, and the expulsion of the brave Giudice, to their General Luchetto Doria. But Doria too found himself severely handled by his opponent; and for years this able man continued to make an effectual resistance, keeping at bay both the Genoese and the seigniors of the island, which seemed now to have fallen into a state of complete anarchy. Giudice is one of the favourite national heroes of the chroniclers: they throw an air of the marvellous round his noble and truly Corsican figure, and tell romantic stories of his long-continued struggles. However unimportant these may be in a historical point of view, still they are characteristic of the period, the country, and the men. Giudice had six daughters, who were married to persons of high rank in the island. His bitter enemy, Giovanninello, had also six daughters, equally well married. The six sons-in-law of the latter form a conspiracy against Giudice, and in one night kill seventy fighting men of his retainers. This gives rise to a separation of the entire island into two parties, and a feud like that between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, which lasts for two hundred years. Giovanninello was driven to Genoa: returning, however, soon after, he built the fortress of Calvi, which immediately threw itself into the hands of the Genoese, and became the second of their colonies in the island. The chroniclers have much to say of Giudice's impartial justice, as well as of his clemency,—as, for example, the following. He had once taken a great many Genoese prisoners, and he promised their freedom to all those who had wives, only these wives were to come over themselves and fetch their husbands. They came; but a nephew of Giudice's forced a Genoese woman to spend a night with him. His uncle had him beheaded on the spot, and sent the captives home according to his promise. We see how such a man should have been by preference called Giudice—judge; since among a barbarous people, and in barbarous times, the character of judge must unite in itself all virtue and all other authority.

In his extreme old age Giudice grew blind. A disagreement arose between the blind old man and his natural son Salnese, who, having treacherously got him into his power, delivered him into the hands of the Genoese. When Giudice was being conducted on board the ship that was to convey him to Genoa, he threw himself upon his knees on the shore, and solemnly imprecated a curse on his son Salnese, and all his posterity. Giudice della Rocca was thrown into a miserable Genoese dungeon, and died in Genoa in the tower of Malapaga, in the year 1312. The Corsican historian Filippini, describes him as one of the most remarkable men the island has produced; he was brave, skilful in the use of arms, singularly rapid in the execution of his designs, wise in council, impartial in administering justice, liberal to his friends, and firm in adversity—qualities which almost all distinguished Corsicans have possessed. With Giudice fell the last remains of Pisan ascendency in Corsica.

CHAPTER VIII.
COMMENCEMENT OF GENOESE SUPREMACY—CORSICAN COMMUNISTS.

Pisa made a formal surrender of the island to Genoa, and thirty years after the death of Giudice, the Terra del Commune, and the greater number of the seigniors submitted to the Genoese supremacy. The Terra sent four messengers to the Genoese Senate, and tendered its submission under the condition, that the Corsicans should pay no further tax than twenty soldi for each hearth. The Senate accepted the condition, and in 1348 the first Genoese governor landed in the island. It was Boccaneria, a man who is praised for his vigour and prudence, and who, during his single year of power, gave the country peace. But he had scarcely returned from his post, when the factions raised their heads anew, and plunged the country into the wildest anarchy. From the first the rights of Genoa had not been undisputed, Boniface VIII. having in 1296, in virtue of the old feudal claims of the papal chair, granted the superiority of Corsica and Sardinia to King James of Arragon. A new foreign power, therefore—Spain, connected with Corsica at a period of hoary antiquity—seemed now likely to seek a footing on the island; and in the meantime, though no overt attempt at conquest had been made, those Corsicans who refused allegiance to Genoa, found a point of support in the House of Arragon.

The next epoch of Corsican history exhibits a series of the most sanguinary conflicts between the seigniors and Genoa. Such confusion had arisen immediately on the death of Giudice, and the people were reduced to such straits, that the chronicler wonders why, in the wretched state of the country, the population did not emigrate in a body. The barons, as soon as they no longer felt the heavy hand of Giudice, used their power most tyrannously, some as independent lords, others as tributary to Genoa—all sought to domineer, to extort. The entire dissolution of social order produced a sect of Communists, extravagant enthusiasts, who appeared contemporaneously in Italy. This sect, an extraordinary phenomenon in the wild Corsica, became notorious and dreaded under the name of the Giovannali. It took its rise in the little district of Carbini, on the other side the hills. Its originators were bastard sons of Guglielmuccio, two brothers, Polo and Arrigo, seigniors of Attalà. "Among these people," relates the chronicler, "the women were as the men; and it was one of their laws that all things should be in common, the wives and children as well as other possessions. Perhaps they wished to renew that golden age of which the poets feign that it ended with the reign of Saturn. These Giovannali performed certain penances after their fashion, and assembled at night in the churches, where, in going through their superstitious rites and false ceremonies, they concealed the lights, and, in the foulest and the most disgraceful manner, took pleasure the one with the other, according as they were inclined. It was Polo who led this devilish crew of sectaries, which began to increase marvellously, not only on this side the mountains, but also everywhere beyond them."

The Pope, at that time residing in France, excommunicated the sect; he sent a commissary with soldiers to Corsica, who gave the Giovannali, now joined by many seigniors, a defeat in the Pieve Alesani, where they had raised a fortress. Wherever a Giovannalist was found, he was killed on the spot. The phenomenon is certainly remarkable; possibly the idea originally came from Italy, and it is hardly to be wondered at, if among the poor distracted Corsicans, who considered human equality as something natural and inalienable, it found, as the chronicler tells us, an extended reception. Religious enthusiasm, or fanatic extravagance, never at any other time took root among the Corsicans; and the island was never priest-ridden: it was spared at least this plague.

CHAPTER IX.
STRUGGLES WITH GENOA—ARRIGO DELLA ROCCA.

The people themselves, driven to desperation after the departure of Boccaneria, begged the assistance of Genoa. The republic accordingly sent Tridano della Torre to the island. He mastered the barons, and ruled seven full years vigorously and in peace.

The second man of mark from the family of Cinarca or Rocca, now appears upon the stage, Arrigo della Rocca—young, energetic, impetuous, born to rule, as stubborn as Giudice, equally inexhaustible in resource and powerful in fight. His father, Guglielmo, had fought against the Genoese, and had been slain. The son took up the contest. Unfortunate at first, he left his native country and went to Spain, offering his services to the House of Arragon, and inciting its then representatives to lay claim to those rights which had already been acknowledged by the Pope. Tridano had been murdered during Arrigo's absence, the seigniors had rebelled, the island had split into two parties—the Caggionacci and the Ristiagnacci, and a tumult of the bloodiest kind had broken out.

In the year 1392, Arrigo della Rocca appeared in Corsica almost without followers, and as if on a private adventure, but no sooner had he shown himself, than the people flocked to his standard. Lionello Lomellino and Aluigi Tortorino were then governors, two at once in those unsettled times. They called a diet at Corte, counselled and exhorted. Meanwhile, Arrigo had marched rapidly on Cinarca, routing the Genoese troops wherever they came in their way; immediately he was at the gates of Biguglia, the residence of the governors; he stormed the place, assembled the people, and had himself proclaimed Count of Corsica. The governors retired in dismay to Genoa, leaving the whole country in the hands of the Corsicans, except Calvi, Bonifazio, and San Columbano.

Arrigo governed the island for four years without molestation—energetically, impartially, but with cruelty. He caused great numbers to be beheaded, not sparing even his own relations. Perhaps some were imbittered by this severity—perhaps it was the inveterate tendency to faction in the Corsican character, that now began to manifest itself in a certain degree of disaffection.

The seigniors of Cape Corso rose first, with the countenance of Genoa; but they were unsuccessful—with an iron arm Arrigo crushed every revolt. He carried in his banner a griffin over the arms of Arragon, to indicate that he had placed the island under the protection of Spain.

Genoa was embarrassed. She had fought many a year now for Corsica, and had gained nothing. The critical position of her affairs tied the hands of the Republic, and she seemed about to abandon Corsica. Five Nobili, however, at this juncture, formed themselves into a sort of joint-stock company, and prevailed upon the Senate to hand the island over to them, the supremacy being still reserved for the Republic. These were the Signori Magnera, Tortorino, Fiscone, Taruffo, and Lomellino; they named their company "The Mahona," and each of them bore the title of Governor of Corsica.

They appeared in the island at the head of a thousand men, and found the party discontented with Arrigo, awaiting them. They effected little; were, in fact, reduced to such extremity by their energetic opponent, that they thought it necessary to come to terms with him. Arrigo agreed to their proposals, but in a short time again took up arms, finding himself trifled with; he defeated the Genoese Nobili in a bloody battle, and cleared the island of the Mahona. A second expedition which the Republic now sent was more successful. Arrigo was compelled once more to quit Corsica.

He went a second time to Spain, and asked support from King John of Arragon. John readily gave him two galleys and some soldiers, and after an absence of two months the stubborn Corsican appeared once more on his native soil. Zoaglia, the Genoese governor, was not a match for him; Arrigo took him prisoner, and made himself master of the whole island, with the exception of the fortresses of Calvi and Bonifazio. This occurred in 1394. The Republic sent new commanders and new troops. What the sword could not do, poison at last accomplished. Arrigo della Rocca died suddenly in the year 1401. Just at this time Genoa yielded to Charles VI. of France. The fortunes of Corsica seemed about to take a new turn; this aspect of affairs, however, proved, in the meantime, transitory. The French king named Lionello Lomellino feudal count of the island. He is the same who was mentioned as a member of the Mahona, and it is to him Corsica owes the founding of her largest city, Bastia, to which the residence of the Governors was now removed from the neighbouring Castle of Biguglia.

CHAPTER X.
VINCENTELLO D'ISTRIA.

A man of a similar order began now to take the place of Arrigo della Rocca. Making their appearance constantly at similar political junctures, these bold Corsicans bear an astonishing resemblance to each other; they form an unbroken series of undaunted, indefatigable, even tragic heroes, from Giudice della Rocca, to Pasquale Paoli and Napoleon, and their history—if we except the last notable name—is identical in its general character and final issue, as the struggle of the island against the Genoese rule remains throughout centuries one and the same. The commencement of the career of these men, who all emerge from banishment, has each time a tinge of the romantic and adventurous.

Vincentello d'Istria was a nephew of Arrigo's, son of one of his sisters and Ghilfuccio a noble Corsican. Like his uncle, he had in his youth attached himself to the court of Arragon, had entered into the Arragonese service, and distinguished himself by splendid deeds of arms. Later, having procured the command of some Arragonese ships, he had conducted a successful corsair warfare against the Genoese, and made his name the terror of the Mediterranean. He resolved to take advantage of the favourable position of affairs, and attempt a landing in his native island, where Count Lomellino had drawn odium on himself by his harsh government, and Francesco della Rocca, natural son of Arrigo, who ruled the Terra del Commune in the name of Genoa, as vice-count, was vainly struggling with a formidable opposition.

Vincentello landed unexpectedly in Sagona, marched rapidly to Cinarca, exactly as his uncle had done, took Biguglia, assembled the people, and made himself Count of Corsica. Francesco della Rocca immediately fell by the hand of an assassin; but his sister, Violanta—a woman of masculine energy, took up arms, and made a brave resistance, though at length obliged to yield. Bastia surrendered. Genoa now sent troops with all speed; after a struggle of two years, Vincentello was compelled to leave the island—a number of the selfish seigniors having made common cause with Genoa.

In a short time, Vincentello returned with Arragonese soldiers, and again he wrested the entire island from the Genoese, with the exception of Calvi and Bonifazio. When he had succeeded thus far, Alfonso, the young king of Arragon, more enterprising than his predecessors, and having equipped a powerful fleet, prepared in his own person to make good the presumed Arragonese rights on the island by force of arms. He sailed from Sardinia in 1420, anchored before Calvi, and forced this Genoese city to surrender. He then sailed to Bonifazio; and while the Corsicans of his party laid siege to the impregnable fortress on the land side, he himself attacked it from the sea. The siege of Bonifazio is an episode of great interest in these tedious struggles, and was rendered equally remarkable by the courage of the besiegers, and the heroism of the besieged. The latter, true to Genoa to the last drop of blood—themselves to a great extent of Genoese extraction—remained immoveable as their own rocks; and neither hunger, pestilence, nor the fire and sword of the Spaniards, broke their spirit during that long and distressing blockade. Every attempt to storm the town was unsuccessful; women, children, monks and priests, stood in arms upon the walls, and fought beside the citizens. For months they continued the struggle, expecting relief from Genoa, till the Spanish pride of Alfonso was at length humbled, and he drew off, weary and ashamed, leaving to Vincentello the prosecution of the siege. Relief came, however, and delivered the exhausted town on the very eve of its fall.

Vincentello retreated; and as Calvi had again fallen into the hands of the Genoese, the Republic had the support of both these strong towns. King Alfonso made no further attempt to obtain possession of Corsica. Vincentello, now reduced to his own resources, gradually lost ground; the intrigues of Genoa effecting more than her arms, and the dissensions among the seigniors rendering a general insurrection impossible.

The Genoese party was specially strong on Cape Corso, where the Signori da Mare were the most powerful family. With their help, and that of the Caporali, who had degenerated from popular tribunes to petty tyrants, and formed now a new order of nobility, Genoa forced Vincentello to retire to his own seigniory of Cinarca. The brave Corsican partly wrought his own fall: libertine as he was, he had carried off a young girl from Biguglia; her friends took up arms, and delivered the place into the hands of Simon da Mare. The unfortunate Vincentello now resolved to have recourse once more to the House of Arragon; but Zacharias Spinola captured the galley which was conveying him to Sicily, and brought the dreaded enemy of Genoa a prisoner to the Senate. Vincentello d'Istria was beheaded on the great stairs of the Palace of Genoa. This was in the year 1434. "He was a glorious man," remarks the old Corsican chronicler.

CHAPTER XI.
THE BANK OF ST. GEORGE OF GENOA.

After the death of Vincentello, the seigniors contended with each other for the title of Count of Corsica; Simon da Mare, Giudice d'Istria, Renuccio da Leca, Paolo della Rocca, were the chief competitors; now one, now another, assuming the designation. In Genoa, the Fregosi and Adorni had split the Republic into two factions; and both families were endeavouring to secure the possession of Corsica. This occasioned new wars and new miseries. No respite, no year of jubilee, ever came for this unhappy country. The entire population was constantly in arms, attacking or defending. The island was revolt, war, conflagration, blood, from one end to the other.

In the year 1443, some of the Corsicans offered the supremacy to Pope Eugene IV., in the hope that the Church might perhaps be able to restrain faction, and restore peace. The Pope sent his plenipotentiary with troops; but this only increased the embroilment. The people assembled themselves to a diet in Morosaglia, and chose a brave and able man, Mariano da Gaggio, as their Lieutenant-general. Mariano first directed his efforts successfully against the degenerate Caporali, expelled them from their castles, destroyed many of these, and declared their office abolished. The Caporali, on their side, called the Genoese Adorno into the island. The people now placed themselves anew under the protection of the Pope; and as the Fregosi had meanwhile gained the upper hand in Genoa, and Nicholas V., a Genoese Pope, favoured them, he put the government of Corsica into the hands of Ludovico Campo Fregoso in the year 1449. In vain the people rose in insurrection under Mariano. To increase the already boundless confusion, Jacob Imbisora, an Arragonese viceroy, appeared, demanding subjection in the name of Arragon.

The despairing people assembled again to a diet at Lago Benedetto, and adopted the fatal resolution of placing themselves under the Bank of St. George of Genoa. This society had been founded in the year 1346 by a company of capitalists, who lent the Republic money, and farmed certain portions of the public revenue as guarantee for its repayment. At the request of the Corsicans, the Genoese Republic ceded the island to this Bank, and the Fregosi renounced their claims, receiving a sum of money in compensation.

The Company of St. George, under the supremacy of the Senate, entered upon the territory thus acquired in the year 1453, as upon an estate from which they were to draw the highest returns possible.

But years elapsed before the Bank succeeded in establishing its authority in the island. The seigniors beyond the mountains, in league with Arragon, made a desperate resistance. The governors of the Bank acted with reckless severity; many heads fell; various nobles went into exile, and collected around Tomasin Fregoso, a man of a restless disposition, whose remembrance of his family's claims upon Corsica had been greatly quickened, since his uncle Lodovico had become Doge. He came, accompanied by the exiles, routed the forces of the Bank, and put himself in possession of a large portion of the island, after the people had proclaimed him Count.

In 1464, Genoa fell into the hands of Francesco Sforza of Milan, and a power with which Corsica had never had anything to do, began to look upon the island as its own. The Corsicans, who preferred all other masters to the Genoese, gladly took the oath of allegiance to the Milanese general, Antonio Cotta, at the diet of Biguglia. But on the same day a slight quarrel again kindled the flames of war over all Corsica. Some peasants of Nebbio had fallen out with certain retainers of the seigniors from beyond the mountains, and blood had been shed. The Milanese commandant forthwith inflicted punishment on the guilty parties. The haughty nobles, considering their seigniorial rights infringed on, immediately mounted their horses and rode off to their homes without saying a word. Preparations for war commenced. To avert a new outbreak, the inhabitants of the Terra del Commune held a diet, named Sambucuccio d'Alando—a descendant of the first Corsican legislator—their vicegerent, and empowered him to use every possible means to establish peace. Sambucuccio's dictatorship dismayed the insurgents; they submitted to him and remained quiet. A second diet despatched him and others as ambassadors to Milan, to lay the state of matters before the Duke, and request the withdrawal of Cotta.

Cotta was replaced by the certainly less judicious Amelia, who occasioned a war that lasted for years. In all these troubles the democratic Terra del Commune appears as an island in the island, surrounded by the seigniories; it remains always united, and true to itself, and represents, it may be said, the Corsican people. For almost two hundred years we have seen nothing decisive happen without a popular Diet (veduta), and we have several times remarked that the people themselves have elected their counts or vicegerents.

The war between the Corsicans and the Milanese was still raging with great fury when Thomas Campo Fregoso again appeared upon the island, trying his fortunes there once more. The Milanese sent him to Milan a prisoner. Singular to relate, he returned from that city in the year 1480, furnished with documents entitling him to have his claims acknowledged. His government, and that of his son Janus, were so cruel, that it was impossible the rule of the Fregoso family could last long, though they had connected themselves by marriage with one of the most influential men in the island, Giampolo da Leca.

The people, meanwhile, chose Renuccio da Leca as their leader, who immediately addressed himself to the Prince of Piombino, Appian IV., and offered to place Corsica under his protection, provided he sent sufficient troops to clear the island of all tyrants. How unhappy the condition of this poor people must have been, seeking help thus on every side, beseeching the aid now of one powerful despot, now of another, adding by foreign tyrants to the number of its own! The Prince of Piombino thought proper to see what could be done in Corsica, more especially as part of Elba already belonged to him. He sent his brother Gherardo di Montagnara with a small army. Gherardo was young, handsome, of attractive manners, and he lived in a style of theatrical splendour. He came sumptuously dressed, followed by a magnificent retinue, with beautiful horses and dogs, with musicians and jugglers. It seemed as if he were going to conquer the island to music. The Corsicans, who had scarcely bread to eat, gazed on him in astonishment, as if he were some supernatural visitant, conducted him to their popular assembly at the Lago Benedetto, and amid great rejoicings, proclaimed him Count of Corsica, in the year 1483. The Fregosi lost courage, and, despairing of their sinking cause, sold their claim to the Genoese Bank for 2000 gold scudi. The Bank now made vigorous preparations for war with Gherardo and Renuccio. Renuccio lost a battle. This frightened the young Prince of Piombino to such a degree, that he quitted the island with all the haste possible, somewhat less theatrically than he had come to it. Piombino desisted from all further attempts.

CHAPTER XII.
PATRIOTIC STRUGGLES—GIAMPOLO DA LECA—RENUCCIO DELLA ROCCA.

Two bold men now again rise in succession to oppose Genoa. Giampolo da Leca had, as we have seen, become connected with the Fregosi. Although these nobles had resigned their title in favour of the Bank, they were exceedingly uneasy under the loss of influence they had sustained. Janus, accordingly, without leaving Genoa, incited his relative to revolt against the governor, Matias Fiesco. Giampolo rose. But beaten and hard pressed by the troops of the Bank, he saw himself compelled, after a vain attempt to obtain aid from Florence, to lay down his arms, and to emigrate to Sardinia with wife, child, and friends, in the year 1487.

A year had scarcely passed, when he again appeared at the call of his adherents. A second time unfortunate, he made his escape again to Sardinia. The Genoese now punished the rebels with the greatest severity—with death, banishment, and the confiscation of their property. More and more fierce grew the Corsican hatred towards Genoa. For ten years they nursed its smouldering glow. All this while Giampolo remained in exile, meditating revenge—his watchful eye never lifted from his oppressed and prostrate country. At last he came back. He had neither money nor arms; four Corsicans and six Spaniards were all his troops, and with these he landed. He was beloved by the people, for he was noble, brave, and of great personal beauty. The Corsicans crowded to him from Cinarca, from Vico, from Niolo, and from Morosaglia. He was soon at the head of a body of seven thousand foot and two hundred horse—a force which made the Bank of Genoa tremble for its power. It accordingly despatched to the island Ambrosio Negri, an experienced general. Negri, by intrigue and fair promises, contrived to detach a part of Giampolo's followers, and particularly to draw over to himself Renuccio della Rocca, a nobleman of activity and spirit. Giampolo, with forces sensibly diminished, came to an engagement with the Genoese commander at the Foce al Sorbo, and suffered a defeat, in which his son Orlando was taken prisoner. He concluded a treaty with Negri, the terms of which allowed him to leave the island unmolested. He returned to Sardinia in 1501, with fifty Corsicans, there to waste his life in inconsolable grief.

Giampolo's fall was mainly owing to Renuccio della Rocca. This man, the head of the haughty family of Cinarca, saw that the Genoese Bank had adopted a particular line of policy, and was pursuing it with perseverance; he saw that it was resolved to crush completely and for ever the power of the seigniors, more especially of those whose lands lay beyond the mountains, and that his own turn would come. Convinced of this, he suddenly rose in arms in the year 1502. The contest was short, and the issue favourable for Genoa, whose governor in the island was at that time one of the Doria family. All the Dorias, as governors, distinguished themselves by their energy and by their reckless cruelty, and it was to them alone that Genoa owed her gratitude for the important service of at length crushing the Corsican nobility. Nicolas Doria forced Renuccio to come to terms; and one of the conditions imposed on the Corsican noble was that he and his family were henceforth to reside in Genoa.

Giampolo was, still living in Sardinia, more than all other Corsican patriots a source of continual anxiety to the Genoese, who made several attempts to come to an amicable agreement with him. His son Orlando, who had newly escaped to Rome from his prison in Genoa, sent pressing solicitations from that city to his father to rouse himself from his dumb and prostrate inactivity. But Giampolo continued to maintain his heartbroken silence, and listened as little to the suggestions of his son as to those of the Genoese.

Suddenly Renuccio disappeared from Genoa in the year 1504; he left wife and child in the hands of his enemies, and went secretly to Sardinia to seek an interview with the man whom he had plunged into misfortune. Giampolo refused to see him. He was equally deaf to the entreaties of the Corsicans, who all eagerly awaited his arrival. His own relations had in the meantime murdered his son. The viceroy caught the murderers, and was about to execute them, in order to show a favour to Giampolo. But the generous man forgave them, and begged their liberation.

Renuccio had meanwhile gathered eighteen resolute men about him, and, undeterred by the fate of his children, who had been thrown into a dungeon immediately after his flight, he landed again in Corsica. Nicolas Doria, however, lost no time in attacking him before the insurrection became formidable, and he gained a victory. To daunt Renuccio, he had his eldest son beheaded, and he threatened the youngest with a like fate, but allowed himself to be moved by the boy's entreaties and tears. The unhappy father, defeated at every point, fled to Sardinia, and then to Arragon. Doria took ample revenge on all who had shown him countenance, laid whole districts of the island waste, burned the villages, and dispersed the inhabitants.

Renuccio della Rocca returned in the year 1507. This unyielding man was entirely the reverse of the moody and sorrow-laden Giampolo. He set foot on his native soil with only twenty companions. Another of the Dorias met him this time, Andreas, afterwards the famous Doge, who had served under his cousin Nicolò. The Corsican historian Filippini, a Genoese partisan, admits the cruelties committed by Andreas during this short campaign. He succeeded in speedily crushing the revolt; and compelled Renuccio a second time to accept a safe conduct to Genoa. When the Corsican arrived, the people would have torn him to pieces, had not the French governor carried him off with all speed to his castle.

Three years elapsed. Suddenly Renuccio again showed himself in Corsica. He had escaped from Genoa, and after in vain imploring the aid of the European princes, once more bidding defiance to fortune, he had landed in his native country with eight friends. Some of his former vassals received him in Freto, weeping, deeply moved by the accumulated misfortunes of the man, and his unexampled intrepidity of soul. He spoke to them, and conjured them once more to draw the sword. They were silent, and went away. He remained some days in Freto, in concealment. Nicolo Pinello, a captain of Genoese troops in Ajaccio, accidentally passed by upon his horse. The sight of him proved so intolerable to Renuccio, that he attacked him at night and killed him, took his horse, and now showed himself in public. As soon us his presence in the island became known, the soldiers of Ajaccio were sent out to capture him. Renuccio fled into the hills, hunted like a bandit or wild beast. The peasantry, who were put to the torture by his pursuers, as a means of inducing them to discover his lurking-places, at last resolved to end their own miseries and his life. In the month of May 1511, Renuccio della Rocca was found miserably slain in the hills. He was one of the stoutest hearts of the noble house of Cinarca. "They tell," says the Corsican chronicler, "that Renuccio was true to himself till the last, and that he showed no less heroism in his death than in his life; and this is, of a truth, much to his honour, for a brave man should never lose his nobleness of soul, even when fate brings him to an ignominious end."

Giampolo had meanwhile gone to Rome, to ask the aid of the Pope, but, unsuccessful in his exertions, he died there in the year 1515.

CHAPTER XIII.
STATE OF CORSICA UNDER THE BANK OF ST. GEORGE.

With Giampolo and Renuccio ended the resistance of the Corsican seigniors. The noble families of the island decayed, their strong keeps fell into ruin, and at present we hardly distinguish here and there upon the rocks of Corsica the blackened walls of the castles of Cinarca, Istria, Leca, and Ornano. But Genoa, in crushing one dreaded foe, had raised against herself another far more formidable—the Corsican people.

During this era of the iron rule of the Genoese Bank, many able men emigrated, and sought for themselves name and fame in foreign countries. They entered into military service, and became famous as generals and Condottieri. Some were in the service of the Medici, others in that of the Spozzi; or they were among the Venetians, in Rome, with the Gonzagas, or with the French. Filippini names a long array of them; among the rest, Guglielmo of Casabianca, Baptista of Leca, Bartelemy of Vivario, with the surname of Telamon, Gasparini, Ceccaldi, and Sampiero of Bastelica. Fortune was especially kind to a Corsican of Bastia, named Arsano; turning renegade, he raised himself to be King of Algiers, under the appellation of Lazzaro. This is the more singular, that precisely at this time Corsica was suffering dreadfully from the Moors, and the Bank had surrounded the whole island with a girdle of beacons and watch-towers, and fortified Porto Vecchio on the southern coast.

After the wars with Giampolo and Renuccio, the government of the Bank was at first mild and paternal, and Corsica enjoyed the blessings of order and peace. So says the Corsican chronicler.

The administration of public affairs, on which very slight alteration was made after the Republic took it out of the hands of the Bank, was as follows:—

The Bank sent a governor to Corsica yearly, who resided in Bastia. He brought with him a vicario, or vicegerent, and a doctor of laws. The entire executive was in his hands; he was the highest judicial and military authority. He had his lieutenants (luogotenenti) in Calvi, Algajola, San Fiorenzo, Ajaccio, Bonifazio, Sartena, Vico, Cervione, and Corte. An appeal lay from them to the governor. All these officials were changed once a year, or once in two years. To protect the people from an oppressive exercise of power on their part, a Syndicate had been established, before which a complaint against any particular magistrate could be lodged. If the complaint was found to be well grounded, the procedure of the magistrate concerned could be reversed, and he himself punished with removal from his office. The governor himself was responsible to the Syndics. They were six in number—three from the people, and three from the aristocracy; and might be either Corsicans or Genoese. In particular cases, commissaries came over, charged with the duty of instituting inquiries.

Besides all this, the people exercised the important right of naming the Dodici, or Council of Twelve; and they did this each time a change took place in the highest magistracy. Strictly speaking, twelve were chosen for the districts this side the mountains, six for those beyond. The Dodici represented the people's voice in the deliberations of the governor; and without their consent no law could be enacted, abolished, or modified. One of their number went to Genoa, with the title of Oratore, to act as representative of the Corsican people in the Senate there.

The democratic basis of the constitution of the communes and pievi, with their Fathers of the Community and their podestàs, was not altered, and the popular assembly (veduta or consulta) was still permitted. The governor usually summoned it in Biguglia, when anything of general importance was to be done with the consent of the people.

It is clear that these arrangements were of a democratic nature—that they allowed the people free political movement, and a share in the government; gave them a hold on the protection of the law, and checked the arbitrary tendencies of officials. The Corsican people was, therefore, well entitled to congratulate itself, and consider itself favoured far beyond the other nations of Europe, if such laws were really allowed their due force, and did not become an empty show. How they did become an empty show, and how the Genoese rule passed into an abominable despotism—Genoa, like Venice, committing the fatal error of alienating her foreign provinces by a tyrannous, instead of attaching them to herself by a benevolent treatment—we shall see in the following chapters. For now Corsica brings forward her bravest man, and one of the most remarkable characters of the century, against Genoa.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE PATRIOT SAMPIERO.

Sampiero was born in Bastelica, a spot lying above Ajaccio, in one of the wildest regions of the Corsican mountains, not of an ancient family, but of unknown parents. Guglielmo, grandson of Vinciguerra, has been named as his father; others say he was of the family of the Porri.

Like other Corsican youths, Sampiero had betaken himself to the Continent, and foreign service, at an early age. We find him in the service of the Cardinal Hippolyto de Medici, among the Black Bands at Florence; and he was still young when the world was already talking of his bold deeds, noble disposition, and great force of character. He was the sword and shield of the Medici in their struggle with the Pazzi. Thirsting for action and a wider field, he left his position of Condottiere with these princes, and entered the army of Francis I. of France. The king made him colonel of a Corsican regiment which he had formed. Bayard became his friend, and Charles of Bourbon honoured his impetuous bravery and military skill. "On a day of battle," said Bourbon, "the Corsican colonel is worth ten thousand men." Sampiero distinguished himself on many fields and before many fortresses, and his reputation was equally great with friend and foe.

Entirely devoted to the interests of his master, who was now prosecuting the war with Spain, he had still ear and eye for his native island, from which voices reached him now and then that moved him deeply. He came to Corsica in the year 1547, to take a wife from among his own countrywomen. He chose a daughter of one of the oldest houses beyond the mountains—the house of Ornano. Though he was himself without ancestry, Sampiero's fame and well-known manly worth were a patent of nobility which Francesco Ornano could not despise; and he gave him the hand of his only daughter, the beautiful Vannina, the heiress of Ornano.

No sooner did the governor of the Genoese Bank learn the presence of Sampiero—in whom he foreboded an implacable foe—within the bounds of his authority, than, in defiance of all justice, he had him seized and thrown into prison. Francesco Ornano, fearing for his son-in-law's life, hastened to Genoa to the French ambassador. The latter instantly demanded Sampiero's liberation. The demand was complied with; but the insult done him was now for Sampiero another and a personal spur to give relief in action to his long-cherished hatred of Genoa, and ardent wish to free his native country.

The posture of continental affairs, the war between France and Charles V., soon gave him opportunity.

Henry II., husband of Catherine de Medici, deeply involved in Italian politics, in active war with the Emperor, and in alliance with the Turks, who were on the point of sending a fleet into the Western Mediterranean, agreed to the proposal of an enterprise against Corsica. A double end seemed attainable by this: for first, in threatening Corsica, Genoa was menaced; and secondly, as the Republic, since Andreas Doria had freed her from the French yoke, had become the close ally of Charles V., carrying the war into Corsica was carrying it on against the Emperor himself. And besides, the island offered an excellent position in the Mediterranean, and a basis for the operations of the combined French and Turkish fleets. Marshal Thermes, therefore, at that time in Italy, and besieging Siena, received orders to prepare for the conquest of Corsica.

He held a council of war in Castiglione. Sampiero was overjoyed at the turn affairs had taken; all his wishes were centred in the liberation of his country. He represented to Thermes the necessary and important consequences of the undertaking, and it was forthwith set on foot. Its success could not be doubted. The French only needed to land, and the Corsican people would that moment rise in arms. The hatred of the rule of the Genoese merchants had reached, since the fall of Renuccio, the utmost pitch of intensity; and it had its ground not merely in the ineradicable passion of the people for liberty, but in the actual state of affairs in the island. For, as soon as the Bank saw its power secured, it began to rule despotically. The Corsicans had been stripped of all their political rights: they had lost their Syndicate, the Dodici, their old communal magistracies; justice was venal, murder permitted—at least the murderer was protected in Genoa, and furnished with letters-patent for his personal safety. The horrors of the Vendetta, therefore, of the implacable revenge that insists on blood for blood, took root firm and fast. All writers on Corsican history are unanimous, that the demoralization of the courts of justice was the deepest wound which the Bank of Genoa inflicted on Corsica.

Sampiero had sent a Corsican, named Altobello de Gentili, into the island, to ascertain the state of the popular feeling; his letters, and the hope of his coming kindled the wildest joy; the people trembled with eagerness for the arrival of the fleet. Thermes, and Admiral Paulin, whose squadron had effected a junction with the Turkish fleet at Elba, now sailed for Corsica in August 1553. The brave Pietro Strozzi and his company was with them, though not long; Sampiero, the hope of the Corsicans, was with them; Johann Ornano, Rafael Gentili, Altobello, and other exiles, all burning for revenge, and impatient to drench their swords in Genoese blood.

They landed on the Renella near Bastia. Scarcely had Sampiero shown himself on the city walls, which the invaders ascended by means of scaling ladders, when the people threw open the gates. Bastia surrendered. Without delay they proceeded to reduce the other strong towns, and the interior. Paulin anchored before Calvi, the Turk Dragut before Bonifazio, Thermes marched on San Fiorenzo, Sampiero on Corte, the most important of the inland fortresses. Here too he had no sooner shown himself than the gates were opened. The Genoese fled in every direction, the cause of liberty was triumphant throughout the island; only Ajaccio, Bonifazio, and Calvi, trusting to the natural strength of their situation, still held out. Neither Paulin from the sea, nor Sampiero from the land, could make any impression on Calvi. The siege was raised, and Sampiero hastened to Ajaccio. The Genoese under Lamba Doria prepared for an obstinate defence, but the people opened the gates to their deliverer. The houses of the Genoese were plundered; yet, even here, in the case of their country's enemies, the Corsicans showed how sacred in their eyes were the natural laws of generosity and hospitality; many Genoese, fleeing to the villages for an asylum, found shelter with their foes. Francesco Ornano took Lamba Doria into his own house.

CHAPTER XV.
SAMPIERO—FRANCE AND CORSICA.

Meanwhile the Turk was besieging Bonifazio with furious vigour, ravaging at the same time the entire surrounding country. Dragut was provoked by the heroic resistance of the inhabitants, who showed themselves worthy descendants of those earlier Bonifazians that so bravely held the town against Alfonso of Arragon. Night and day, despite of hunger and weariness, they manned the walls, successfully repelling all attacks, the women showing equal courage with the men. Sampiero came to the assistance of the Turks; the assaults of the besiegers continued without intermission, but the town remained steadfast. The Bonifazians were in hopes of relief, hourly expecting Cattaciolo, one of their fellow-citizens, from Genoa. The messenger came, bearing news of approaching succours; but he fell into the hands of the French. They made a traitor of him, inducing him to carry forged letters into the city, which advised the commandant to give up all hope of being relieved. He accordingly concluded a treaty, and surrendered the unconquered town under the condition that the garrison should be allowed to embark for Genoa with military honours. The brave defenders had scarcely left the protection of their walls, when the barbarous Turk, trampling under foot at once his oath and common humanity, fell upon them, and began to cut them in pieces. Sampiero with difficulty rescued all that it was still possible to rescue. Not content with this revenge, Dragut demanded to be allowed to plunder the city, and, when this was refused, a large sum in compensation, which Thermes could not pay, but promised to pay. Dragut, exasperated, instantly embarked, and set sail for Asia—he had been corrupted by Genoese gold.

After the fall of Bonifazio, Genoa had not a foot of land left in Corsica, except the "ever-faithful" Calvi. No time was to be lost, therefore, if the island was not to be entirely relinquished. The Emperor had promised help, and placed some thousands of Germans and Spaniards at the disposal of the Genoese, and Cosmo de Medici sent an auxiliary corps. A very considerable force had thus been collected, and, to put success beyond question, the leadership of the expedition was intrusted to their most celebrated general, Andreas Doria, while Agostino Spinola was made second in command.

Andreas Doria was at that time in his eighty-sixth year; but the aspect of affairs seemed so critical, that the old man could not but comply with the call of his fellow-citizens. He received the banner of the enterprise in the Cathedral of Genoa, from the senators, protectors of the Bank, the clergy, and the people.

On the 20th November 1553, Doria landed in the Gulf of San Fiorenzo, and, in a short time, the star of Genoa was once more in the ascendant. San Fiorenzo, which had been strongly fortified by Thermes, fell; Bastia surrendered; the French gave way on every side. Sampiero had about this time, in consequence of a quarrel with Thermes, been obliged to proceed to the French court; but after putting his calumniators there to silence, he returned in higher credit than before, and as the alone heart and soul of the war, which the incapable Thermes had proved himself unfit to conduct. He was indefatigable in attack, in resistance, in guerilla warfare. Spinola met with a sharp repulse on the field of Golo, but a wound which Sampiero received in the fight rendering him for some time inactive, the Corsicans suffered a bloody defeat at Morosaglia. Sampiero now gave his wound no more time to heal; he again appeared on the field, and defeated the Spaniards and Germans in the battle of Col di Tenda, in the year 1554.

The war was carried on with unabated fury for five years. Corsica seemed to be certain of the perpetual protection of France, and in general to regard herself as an independently organized section of that kingdom. Francis II. had named Jourdan Orsini his viceroy, and the latter, at a general diet, had, in the name of his king, pronounced Corsica incorporated with France, declaring that it was now for all time impossible to separate the island from the French crown—that the one could be abandoned only with the other. The fate of Corsica seemed, therefore, already linked to the French monarchy, and the island to be detached from the general body of the Italian states, to which it naturally belongs. But scarcely had the king made the solemn announcement above referred to, when the treaty of Cateau Cambresis, in the year 1559, shattered at a single blow all the hopes of the Corsicans.

France concluded a peace with Philip of Spain and his allies, and engaged to surrender Corsica to the Genoese. The French, accordingly, immediately put all the places they had garrisoned into the hands of Genoa, and embarked their troops. A desperate struggle had been maintained for six years to no purpose, diplomacy now lightly gamed away the earnings of that long war's bloody toil, and the Corsican saw himself hurled back into his old misery, and abandoned, defenceless, to Genoese vengeance, by a rag of paper, a pen-and-ink peace. This breach of faith was a crushing blow, and extorted from the country a universal cry of despair, but it was not listened to.

CHAPTER XVI.
SAMPIERO IN EXILE—HIS WIFE VANNINA.

It was now that Sampiero began to show himself in all his greatness; for the man must be admitted to be really great whom adversity does not bend, but who gathers double strength from misfortune. He had quitted Corsica as an outlaw. The peace had taken the sword out of his hand; the island, ravaged and desolate from end to end, could not venture a new struggle on its own resources—a new war needed fresh support from a foreign power. For four years Sampiero wandered over Europe seeking help at its most distant courts; he travelled to France to Catherine, hoping to find her mindful of old services that he had done the house of Medici; he went to Navarre; to the Duke of Florence; to the Fregosi; to one Italian court after another; he sailed to Algiers to Barbarossa; he hastened to Constantinople to the Sultan Soliman. His stern, imposing demeanour, the emphatic sincerity of his speech, his powerful intellect, his glowing patriotism, everywhere commanded admiration and respect, among the barbarians not less than among the Christians; but they comforted him with vain hopes and empty promises.

While Sampiero was thus wandering with unwearied perseverance from court to court, inciting the princes to an enterprise in behalf of Corsica, Genoa had not lost sight of him; Genoa was alarmed to think what might one day be the result of his exertions. It was clearly necessary, by some means or other, to cripple once for all the dreaded arm of Sampiero. Poison and assassination, it is said, had been tried, but had failed. It was resolved to crush his spirit, by bringing his natural affection as a father and a husband into conflict with his passionate love of country. It was resolved to break his heart.

Sampiero's wife Vannina lived in her own house at Marseilles, under the protection of France. She had her youngest son, Francesco, beside her; the elder, Alfonso, was at the court of Catherine. The Genoese surrounded her with their agents and spies. It was their aim, and it was important to them, to allure Sampiero's wife and child to Genoa. To effect this, they employed a certain Michael Angelo Ombrone, who had been tutor to the young sons of Sampiero, and enjoyed his entire confidence; a cunning villain of the name of Agosto Bazzicaluga was another of their tools. Vannina was of a susceptible and credulous nature, proud of the ancient name of Ornano. These Genoese traitors represented to her the fate that necessarily awaited the children of her proscribed husband. Heirs of their father's outlawry, robbed of the seigniory of their renowned ancestors, poor—their very lives not safe, what might they not come to? They pictured to her alarmed imagination these, her beloved children, in the wretchedness of exile, eating the bread of dependence, or what was worse, if they trod in the footsteps of their father, hunted in the mountains, at last captured, and loaded with the chains of galley-slaves.

Vannina was deeply moved—her fidelity began to waver; the thought of going to Genoa grew gradually less foreign to her—less and less repulsive. There, said Ombrone and Bazzicaluga, they will restore to your children the seigniory of Ornano, and your own gentle persuasions will at length succeed in reconciling even Sampiero with the Republic. The poor mother's heart was not proof against this. Vannina was thoroughly a woman; her natural feeling at last spoke with imperious decision, refusing to comprehend or sympathize with the grand, rugged, terrible character of her husband, who only lived because he loved his country, and hated its oppressors; and who nourished with his own being the all-consuming fire of his sole passion—remorselessly flinging in all his other possessions like faggots to feed the flames. Her blinded heart extorted from Vannina the resolution to go to Genoa. One day, she said to herself, we shall all be happy, peaceful, and reconciled.

Sampiero was in Algiers, where the bold renegade Barbarossa, as Sultan of the country, had received him with signal marks of respect, when a ship arrived from Marseilles, and brought the tidings that his wife was on the point of escaping to Genoa with his boy. When Sampiero began to comprehend the possibility of this flight, his first thought was to throw himself instantly into the vessel, and hasten to Marseilles; he became calmer, and bade his noble friend, Antonio of San Fiorenzo, go instead, and prevent the escape—if prevention were still possible. He himself, restraining his sorrow within his innermost heart, remained, negotiated with Barbarossa about an expedition against Genoa, and subsequently sailed for Constantinople, to try what could be effected with the Sultan, not till then proposing to return to Marseilles to ascertain the position of his private affairs.

Antonio of San Fiorenzo had made all possible haste upon his mission. Rushing into Vannina's house, he found it empty and silent. She was away with her child, and Ombrone, and Bazzicaluga, in a Genoese ship, secretly, the day before. Hurriedly Antonio collected friends, Corsicans, armed men, threw himself into a brigantine, and made all sail in the direction which the fugitives ought to have taken. He sighted the Genoese vessel off Antibes, and signalled for her to shorten sail. When Vannina saw that she was pursued, knowing too well who her pursuers were likely to be, in an agony of terror she begged to be put ashore, scarcely knowing what she did. But Antonio reached her as she landed, and took possession of her person in the name of Sampiero and the King of France.

He brought her to the house of the Bishop of Antibes, that the lady, quite prostrate with grief, might enjoy the consolations of religion, and might have a secure asylum in the dwelling of a priest. Horrible thoughts, to which he gave no expression, made this advisable. But the Bishop of Antibes was afraid of the responsibility he might incur, and refusing to run any risk, he gave Vannina into the hands of the Parliament of Aix. The Parliament declared its readiness to take her under its protection, and to permit none, whoever he might be, to do her violence. But Vannina wished nothing of all this, and declined the offer. She was, she said, Sampiero's wife, and whatever sentence her husband might pronounce on her, to that sentence she would submit. The guilty consciousness of her fatal step lay heavy on her heart, and while she wept bitterest tears of repentance, she imposed on herself a noble and silent resignation to the consequences.

And now Sampiero, leaving the Turkish court, where Soliman had for a while wonderingly entertained the famous Corsican, returned to Marseilles, giving himself up to his own personal anxieties. At Marseilles, he found Antonio, who related to him what had occurred, and endeavoured to restrain his friend's gathering wrath. One of Sampiero's relations, Pier Giovanni of Calvi, let fall the imprudent remark that he had long foreseen Vannina's flight. "And you concealed what you foresaw?" cried Sampiero, and stabbed him dead with a single thrust of his dagger. He threw himself on horseback, and rode in furious haste to Aix, where his trembling wife waited for him in the castle of Zaisi. Antonio hurried after him, agonized with the fear that all efforts of his to avert some dreadful catastrophe might be unavailing.

Sampiero waited beneath the windows of the castle till morning. He then went to his wife, and took her away with him to Marseilles. No one could read his silent purposings in his stern face. As he entered his house with her, and saw it standing desolate and empty, the whole significance of the affront—the full consciousness of her treason and its possible results, sank upon his heart; once more the intolerable thought shot through him that it was his own wife who had basely sold herself and his child into the detested hands of his country's enemies; the demon of phrenzy took possession of his soul, and he slew her with his own hand.

Sampiero, says the Corsican historian, loved his wife passionately, but as a Corsican—that is, to the last Vendetta.

He buried his dead in the Church of St. Francis, and did not spare funereal pomp. He then went to show himself at the court of Paris. This occurred in the year 1562.

CHAPTER XVII.
RETURN OF SAMPIERO—STEPHEN DORIA.

Sampiero was coldly received at the French court; the courtiers whispered, avoided him, sneered at him from behind their virtuous mask. Sampiero was not the man to be dismayed by courtiers, nor was the court of Catherine de Medici a tribunal before which the fearful deed of one of the most remarkable men of his time could be tried. Catherine and Henry II. forgot that Sampiero had murdered his wife, but they would do no more for Corsica than willingly look on while it was freed by the exertions of others.

Now that he had done all that was possible as a diplomatist, and saw no prospect of foreign aid, Sampiero fell back upon himself, and resolved to trust to his own and his people's energies. He accordingly wrote to his friends in Corsica that he would come to free his country or die. "It lies with us now," he said, "to make a last effort to attain the happiness and glory of complete freedom. We have applied to the cabinets of France, of Navarre, and of Constantinople; but if we do not take up arms till the day when the aid of France or Tuscany shall be with us in the fight, there is a long period of oppression yet in store for our country. And at any rate, would a national independence obtained with the assistance of foreigners be a prize worth contending for? Did the Greeks seek help of their neighbours to rescue their independence from the yoke of the Persians? The Italian Republics are recent examples of what the strong will of a people can do, combined with the love of country. Doria could free his native city from the oppression of a tyrannous aristocracy; shall we forbear to rise till the soldiers of the King of Navarre come to fight in our ranks?"

On the 12th of June 1564, Sampiero landed in the Gulf of Valinco, with a band of twenty Corsicans, and five-and-twenty Frenchmen. He sank the galley which had brought him. When he was asked why he had done so, and where he would find refuge if the Genoese were now suddenly to attack him, he answered, "In my sword!" He assaulted the castle of Istria with this handful of men, took it, and marched rapidly upon Corte. The Genoese drew out to meet him before the walls of the town, with a much superior force, as Sampiero had still not above a hundred men. But such was the terror inspired by his mere name, that he no sooner appeared in sight than they fled without drawing sword. Corte opened its gates, and Sampiero had thus gained one important position. The Terra del Commune immediately made common cause with him.

Sampiero now advanced on Vescovato, the richest district of the island, on the slopes of the mountains where they sink towards the beautiful plain of Mariana. The people of Vescovato assembled at his approach, alarmed for the safety of their harvest, which was threatened by this new storm of war. They were urgently counselled by the Archdeacon Filippini, the Corsican historian, to remain neutral, and take no notice of Sampiero, whatever he might do. When Sampiero entered Vescovato, he found it ominously quiet, and the people all within their houses; at last, yielding to curiosity or sympathy, they came out. Sampiero spoke to them, accusing them, as he justly might, of a want of patriotism. His words made a deep impression. Offers of entertainment in some of their houses were made; but Sampiero punished the inhabitants of Vescovato with his contempt, and passed the night in the open air.

The place became nevertheless the scene of a bloody battle. Nicolas Negri led his Genoese against it, as a position held by Sampiero. It was a murderous struggle; the more so that as the number engaged on both sides was comparatively small, it was mainly a series of single combats. Corsicans, too, were here fighting against Corsicans—for a company of the islanders had remained in the service of Genoa. These fell back, however, when Sampiero upbraided them for fighting against their country. Victory was inclining to the side of Genoa—for Bruschino, one of the bravest of the Corsican captains, had fallen, when Sampiero, rallying his men for one last effort, succeeded in finally repulsing the Genoese, who fled in disorder towards Bastia.

The victory of Vescovato brought new additions to the forces of Sampiero, and another at Caccia, in which Nicolas Negri was among the killed, spread the insurrection through the whole interior. Sampiero now hoped to be assisted in earnest by Tuscany, and even by the Turks; for in winning battle after battle over the Spaniards and Genoese, with such inconsiderable means at his command, he had shown what Corsican patriotism might do if it were supported.

On the death of Negri, the Genoese without delay despatched their best general to the island, in the person of Stephen Doria, whose bravery, skill, and unscrupulous severity rendered him worthy of the name. He was at the head of a force of four thousand German and Italian mercenaries. The war broke out, therefore, with fresh fury. The Corsicans suffered some reverses; but the Genoese, weakened by important defeats, were once more thrown back upon Bastia. Doria had made an attack on Bastelica, Sampiero's birthplace, had laid it in ashes, and made the patriot's house level with the ground. Houses and property were little to the man whose own hand had sacrificed his wife to his country; noticeable, however, is this Genoese policy of constantly bringing the patriotism of the Corsicans into tragic conflict with their personal affections. What they tried in vain with Sampiero, succeeded with Campocasso—a man of unusual heroism, of an influential family of old Caporali. His mother had been seized and placed in confinement. Her son did not hesitate a moment—he threw away his sword, and hastened into the Genoese camp to save his mother from the torture. He left it again when they proposed to him to become the murderer of Sampiero, and remained quiet at home. Powerful friends were becoming fewer and fewer round Sampiero; now that Bruschino had fallen, Campocasso gone over to the enemy, and the brave Napoleon of Santa Lucia, the first of his name who distinguished himself as a military leader, had suffered a severe defeat.

If the whole hatred of the Corsicans and Genoese could be put into two words, these two are Sampiero and Doria. Both names, suggestive of the deadliest personal feud, at the same time completely represent their respective nationalities. Stephen Doria exceeded all his predecessors in cruelty. He had sworn to annihilate the Corsican people. His openly expressed opinions are these:—"When the Athenians became masters of the principal town in Melos, after it had held out for seven months, they put all the inhabitants above fourteen years of age to death, and sent a colony to people the place anew, and keep it in obedience. Why do we not imitate this example? Is it because the Corsicans deserve punishment less than those ancient rebels? The Athenians saw in these terrible chastisements the means of conquering the Peloponnese, the whole of Greece, Africa, and Sicily. By putting all their enemies to the sword, they restored the reputation and terror of their arms. It will be said that this procedure is contrary to the law of nations, to humanity, to the progress of civilisation. What does it matter, provided we only make ourselves feared?—that is all I ask. I care more for what Genoa says than for the judgment of posterity, which has no terrors for me. This empty word posterity checks none but the weak and irresolute. Our interest is to extend on every side the circle of conquered country, and to take from the insurgents everything that can support a war. Now, I see but two ways of doing this—first, by destroying the crops, and secondly, by burning the villages, and pulling down the towers in which they fortify themselves when they dare not venture into the field."

The advice of Doria sufficiently shows how fierce the Genoese hatred of this indomitable people had become, and indicates but too plainly the unspeakable miseries the Corsicans had to endure. Stephen Doria laid half the island desolate with fire and sword; and Sampiero was still unconquered. The Corsican patriot had held an assembly of the people in Bozio to strengthen the general cause by the adoption of suitable measures, to regulate anew the council of the Dodici and the other popular magistracies, and to organize, if possible, an insurrection of the entire people. Sampiero was not a mere soldier, he was a far-seeing statesman. He wished to give his country, with its independence, a free republican constitution, founded on the ancient enactments of Sambucuccio of Alando. He wished to draw, from the situation of the island, from its forests and its products in general, such advantages as might enable it to become a naval power; he wished to make Corsica, in alliance with France, powerful and formidable, as Rhodes and Tyre had once been. Sampiero did not aim at the title of Count of Corsica; he was the first who was called Father of his country. The times of the seigniors were past.

He sent messengers to the continental courts, particularly to France, asking assistance; but the Corsicans were left to their fate. Antonio Padovano returned from France empty-handed; he only brought Sampiero's young son Alfonso, ten thousand dollars in money, and thirteen standards with the inscription—Pugna pro patria. This was, nevertheless, enough to raise the spirits of the Corsicans; and the standards, which Sampiero divided among the captains, became the occasion of envy and dangerous heartburnings.

Here are two letters of Sampiero's.

To Catherine of France.—"Our affairs have hitherto been prosperous. I can assure your Majesty, that unless the enemy had received both secret and open help from the Catholic King of Spain, at first twenty-two galleys and four ships, with a great number of Spaniards, we should have reduced them to such extremity, that by this time they would have been no longer able to maintain a footing in the island. Nevertheless, and come what will, we will never abandon the resolution we have taken, to die sooner than acknowledge in any way whatever the supremacy of the Republic. I pray of your Majesty, therefore, in these circumstances, not to forget my devotion to your person, and that of my country to France. If his Catholic Majesty shows himself so friendly to the Genoese, who are, even without him, so formidable to us—a people forsaken by all the world—will your Majesty suffer us to be destroyed by our cruel foes?"

To the Duke of Parma.—"Although we should become tributary to the Ottoman Porte, and thus run the risk of offending all the Princes of Christendom, nevertheless this is our unalterable resolution—A hundred times rather the Turks than the supremacy of the Republic. France herself has not respected the treaty, which, as they said, was to be the guarantee of our rights and the end of our miseries. If I take the liberty of troubling you with the affairs of the island, it is that your Highness may, if need be, take our part at the court of Rome against the attacks of our enemies. I desire that my words may at least remain a solemn protest against the indifference of the Catholic Princes, and an appeal to the Divine justice."

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DEATH OF SAMPIERO.

Once more ambassadors set out for France, five in number; but the Genoese intercepted them off the coast. Three leapt into the sea to save themselves by swimming, one of whom was drowned; the two who were captured were first put to the torture, and then executed. The war assumed the frightful character of a merciless Vendetta on both sides. Doria, however, effected nothing. Sampiero defeated him again and again; and at last, in the passes of Luminanda, almost annihilated the Genoese forces. It required the utmost exertion of Doria's great skill and personal bravery to extricate himself on the latter occasion. He arrived in San Fiorenzo, bleeding, exhausted, and in despair, and soon after left the island. The Republic replaced him by Vivaldi, and afterwards by the artful and intriguing Fornari; but the Genoese had lost all hope of crushing Sampiero by war and open force. Against this man, who had come to the island as an outlaw with a few outlawed followers, they had gradually sent their whole force into the field—their own and a Spanish fleet, their mercenaries, Germans, fifteen thousand Spaniards, their greatest generals, Doria, Centurione, and Spinola; yet, the same Genoa that had conquered Pisa and Venice had proved unable to subdue a poor people, forsaken by the whole world, who came into the ranks of battle starving, in rags, unshod, badly armed, and who, when they returned home, found nothing but the ashes of their villages.

It was therefore decided that Sampiero must be murdered.

Dissensions, fomented by the Genoese, had long existed between him and the descendants of the old seigniors. Some, like Hercules of Istria, had deserted him from lust of Genoese gold, or because their pride revolted at the thought of obeying a man who had risen from the dust. Others had a Vendetta with Sampiero; they had a debt of blood to exact from him. These were the nobles of the Ornano family, three brothers—Antonio, Francesco, and Michael Angelo, cousins of Vannina. Genoa had won them with gold, and the promise of the seigniory of Ornano, of which Vannina's children were the rightful heirs. The Ornanos, again, gained the monk Ambrosius of Bastelica, and Sampiero's own servant Vittolo, a trusted follower, with whose help it was agreed to take Sampiero in an ambuscade. The governor, Fornari, approved of the plan, and committed its execution to Rafael Giustiniani.

Sampiero was in Vico when the monk brought him forged letters, urgently requesting him to come to Rocca, where a rebellion, it was said, had broken out against the popular cause. Sampiero instantly despatched Vittolo with twenty horse to Cavro, and himself followed soon after. He was accompanied by his son Alfonso, Andrea de' Gentili, Antonio Pietro of Corte, and Battista da Pietra. Vittolo, in the meantime, instructed the brothers Ornano, and Giustiniani, that Sampiero would pass through the defile of Cavro; on receiving which intelligence, they immediately set out for the spot indicated with a considerable force of foot and horse, and formed the ambuscade. Sampiero and his little band were riding unsuspectingly through the pass, when they suddenly found themselves assailed on every side, and the defile swarming with armed men. He saw that his hour was come. Yielding now to those impulses of natural affection which he had once so signally disowned, he ordered his son Alfonso to leave him, to flee, and save himself for his country. The son obeyed, and escaped. Most of his friends had fallen bravely fighting by his side, when Sampiero rushed into the mêlée, to hew his way through if it were possible. The day was just dawning. The three Ornanos had kept their eyes constantly upon him, at first afraid to assail the terrible man; but at length, spurred on by revenge, they pressed in upon him, some Genoese soldiery at their back. Sampiero fought desperately. He had thrown himself upon Antonio Ornano, and wounded him with a pistol-shot in the throat. But his carbine missed fire; Vittolo, in loading it, had put in the bullet first. Sampiero's face was streaming with blood; freeing his eyes from it with his left, his right hand still grasped his sword, and kept all at bay, when Vittolo, from behind, shot him through the back, and he fell. The Ornanos now rushed in upon the dying man, and finished their work. They cut off Sampiero's head, and carried it to the Governor.

It was on the 17th of January in the year 1567 that Sampiero fell. He had reached his sixty-ninth year, his vigour unimpaired by age or military toil. The stern grandeur of his soul, and his pure and heroic patriotism, have made his name immortal. He was great in the field, inexhaustible in council; owing all to his own extraordinary nature, without ancestry, he inherited nothing from fortune, which usually favours the parvenu, but from misfortune everything, and he yielded, like Viriathus, only to the assassin. He has shown, by his elevating example, what a noble man can do, when he remains unyieldingly true to a great passion.

Sampiero was above the middle height, of proud and martial bearing, dark and stern, with black curly hair and beard. His eye was piercing, his words few, firm, and impressive. Though a son of nature, and without education, he possessed acute perceptions and unerring judgment. His friends accused him of seeking the sovereignty of his native island; he sought only its freedom. He lived as simply as a shepherd, wore the woollen blouse of his country, and slept on the naked earth. He had lived at the most luxurious courts of his time, at those of Florence and Versailles, but he had contracted none of their hollowness of principle, or corrupt morality. The rugged patriot could murder his wife because she had betrayed herself and her child to her country's enemies, but he knew nothing of those crimes that pervert nature, and those principles that would refine the vile abuse into a philosophy of life. He was simple, rugged, and grand, headlong and terrible in anger, a whole man, and fashioned in the mightiest mould of primitive nature.

CHAPTER XIX.
SAMPIERO'S SON, ALFONSO—TREATY WITH GENOA.

At the news of Sampiero's fall, the bells were rung in Genoa, and the city was illuminated. The murderers quarrelled disgracefully over their Judas-hire; that of Vittolo amounted to one hundred and fifty gold scudi.

Sorrow and dismay fell upon the Corsican nation; its father was slain. The people assembled in Orezza; three thousand armed men, many weeping, all profoundly sad, filled the square before the church. Leonardo of Casanova, Sampiero's friend and fellow-soldier, broke the silence. He was about to pronounce the patriot's funeral oration.

This man was at the time labouring under the severest personal affliction. Unheard-of misfortunes had overtaken him. He had shortly before escaped from prison, by the aid of a heroic youth, his own son. Leonardo had been made prisoner by the Genoese, who had thrown him into a dungeon in Bastia. His son, Antonio, meditated plans of rescue night and day. Disguised in the dress of the woman who brought the prisoners their food, he made his way into his father's cell. He conjured his father to make his escape and leave him behind; though they should put him to death, he said, he was but a stripling, and his death would do him honour, while it preserved his father's arm and wisdom for his country; their duty as patriots pointed out this course. Long and terrible was the struggle in the father's mind. At last he saw that he ought to do as his son had said; he tore himself from his arms, and, wrapped in the female dress, passed safely out. When the youth was discovered, he gave himself up without resistance, proud and happy. They led him to the governor, and, at his command, he was hung from the window of his father's castle of Fiziani.

Leonardo, the generous victim's fate written in stern characters on his face, rose now like a prophet before the assembled people—

"Slaves weep," he said, "free men avenge themselves! No weak-spirited lamenting! Our mountains should re-echo nothing but shouts of war. Let us show, by the vigour of our measures, that he is not all dead. Has he not left us the example of his life? The Fornari and the Vittoli cannot rob us of that. It has escaped their ambuscades and their treacherous balls. Why did he cry to his son, Save thyself? Doubtless that there might still remain a hero for our country, a head for our soldiers, a dreaded foe for the Genoese. Yes, countrymen, Sampiero has left to his murderers the stain of his death, and to the young Alfonso the duty of vengeance. Let us aid in accomplishing the noble work. Close the ranks! The spirit of the father returns to us in the son. I know the youth. He is worthy of the name he bears, and of the country's confidence. He has nothing of youth but its glow—the ripeness of the judgment is sometimes in advance of the time of life, and a ripe judgment is a gift that Heaven has not denied him. He has long shared the dangers and toils of his father. All the world knows he is master of the rough craft of arms. Our soldiers are eager to march under his command, and you may be sure their instinct is true—it never deceives them. The masses guess their men. They are seldom mistaken in their choice of those whom they think fit to lead them. And, moreover, what higher tribute could you pay to the memory of Sampiero, than to choose his son? Those who hear me have set their hearts too high to be within the reach of fear.

"Are there men among us base enough to prefer the shameful security of slavery to the storms and dangers of freedom? Let them go, and separate themselves from the rest of the people. But let them leave us their names. When we have engraved these names on a pillar of eternal shame, which we shall erect on the spot where Sampiero was assassinated, we will send their owners off, covered with disgrace, to keep company with Vittolo and Angelo at the court of Fornari. But they are fools not to know that arms and battle, which are the honourable resource of free and brave men, are also the safest recourse of the weak. If they still hesitate, let me say to them—On the one side stand renown for our standard, liberty for ourselves, independence for our country; on the other, the galleys, infamy, contempt, and all the other miseries of slavery. Choose!"

After this speech of Leonardo's, the people elected by acclamation Alfonso d'Ornano to be Chief and General of the Corsicans. Alfonso was seventeen years old, but he was Sampiero's son. The Corsicans thus, far from being broken and cast down by the death of Sampiero, as their enemies had hoped, set up a stripling against the proud Republic of Genoa, mocking the veteran Genoese generals, and the name of Doria; and for two years the youth, victorious in numerous conflicts, held the Genoese at bay.

Meanwhile the long war had exhausted both sides. Genoa was desirous of peace; the island, at that time divided by the factions of the Rossi and Negri, was critically situated, and, like its enemy, disposed for a cessation of hostilities. The Republic, which had already, in 1561, resumed Corsica from the Bank of St. George, now recalled the detested Fornari, and sent George Doria to the island—the only man of the name of whom the Corsicans have preserved a grateful memory. The first measure of this wise and temperate nobleman was to proclaim a general amnesty. Many districts tendered allegiance; many captains laid down their arms. The Bishop of Sagona succeeded in persuading even the young Alfonso to a treaty, which was concluded between him and Genoa on the following terms:—1. Complete amnesty for Alfonso and his adherents. 2. Liberty for them and their families to embark for the Continent. 3. Liberty to dispose of their property by sale, or by leaving it in trust. 4. Restoration of the seigniory of Ornano to Alfonso. 5. Assignment of the Pieve Vico to the partisans of Alfonso till their embarkation. 6. A space of sixty days for the settlement of their affairs. 7. Liberty for each man to take a horse and some dogs with him. 8. Cancelling of the liabilities of those who were debtors to the public treasury; for all others, five years' grace, in consideration of the great distress prevailing in the country. 9. Liberation of certain persons then in confinement.

Alfonso left his native island with three hundred companions in the year 1569; he went to France, where he was honourably received by King Charles IX., who made him colonel of the Corsican regiment he was at that time forming. Many Corsicans went to Venice, great numbers took service with the Pope, who organized from them the famous Corsican Guard of the Eight Hundred.

BOOK II.—HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.
STATE OF CORSICA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—A GREEK COLONY ESTABLISHED ON THE ISLAND.

It was not till the close of the war of Sampiero that the wretched condition of the island became fully apparent. It had become a mere desert, and the people, decimated by the war, and by voluntary or compulsory emigration, were plunged in utter destitution and savagery. To make the cup of their sorrows full, the plague several times visited the country, and famine compelled the inhabitants to live on acorns and roots. Besides all this, the corsairs roved along the coasts, plundered the villages, and carried off men and women into slavery. It was in this state George Doria found the island, when he came over as governor; and so long as he was at the head of its affairs, Corsica had reason to rejoice in his paternal care, his mildness and clemency, and his conscientious observance of the stipulations of the treaty, by which the statutes and privileges of the Terra del Commune had been specially guaranteed.

Scarcely had George Doria made way for another governor, when Genoa returned to her old mischievous policy. People in power are usually so obstinate and blind, that they see neither the past nor the future. Gradually the Corsicans were again extruded from all offices, civil, military, and ecclesiastical—the meanest posts filled with Genoese, the old institutions suppressed, and a one-sided administration of justice introduced. The island was considered in the light of a Government domain. Impoverished Genoese nobili had places given them there to restore their finances. The Corsicans were involved in debt, and they now fell into the hands of the usurers—mostly priests—to whom they had recourse, in order to muster money for the heavy imposts. The governor himself was to be looked on as a satrap. On his arrival in Bastia, he received a sceptre as a symbol of his power; his salary, paid by the country, was no trifle; and in addition, his table had to be furnished by payments in kind—every week a calf, and a certain quantity of fruits and vegetables. He received twenty-five per cent. of all fines, confiscations, and prizes of smuggled goods. His lieutenants and officials were cared for in proportion. For he brought to the island with him an attorney-general, a master of the ceremonies, a secretary-general, and a private secretary, a commandant of the ports, a captain of cavalry, a captain of police, a governor-general of the prisons. All these officials were vampires; Genoese writers themselves confess it. The imposts became more and more oppressive; industry was at a stand-still; commerce in the same condition—for the law provided that all products of the country, when exported, should be carried to the port of Genoa.

All writers who have treated of this period in Corsican history, agree in saying that of all the countries in the world, she was at that time the most unhappy. Prostrate under famine, pestilence, and the ravages of war; unceasingly harassed by the Moors; robbed of her rights and her liberty by the Genoese; oppressed, plundered; the courts of justice venal; torn by the factions of the Blacks and Reds; bleeding at a thousand places from family feuds and the Vendetta; the entire land one wound—such is the picture of Corsica in those days—an island blessed by nature with all the requisites for prosperity. Filippini counted sixty-one fertile districts which now lay desolate and forsaken—house and church still standing—a sight, as he says, to make one weep. Destitute of any other pervading principle of social cohesion, the Corsican people must have utterly broken up, and scattered into mere hordes, unless it had been penetrated by the sentiment of patriotism, to an extent so universal and with a force so intense. The virtue of patriotism shows itself here in a grandeur almost inconceivable, if we consider what a howling wilderness it was to which the Corsicans clung with hearts so tender and true; a wilderness, but drenched with their blood, with the blood of their fathers, of their brothers, and of their children, and therefore dear. The Corsican historian says, in the eleventh book of his history, "If patriotism has ever been known at any time, and in any country of the world, to exercise power over men, truly we may say that in the island of Corsica it has been mightier than anywhere else; for I am altogether amazed and astounded that the love of the inhabitants of this island for their country has been so great, as at all times to prevent them from coming to a firm and voluntary determination to emigrate. For if we pursue the course of their history, from the earliest inhabitants down to the present time, we see that throughout so many centuries this people has never had peace and quiet for so much as a hundred years together; and that, nevertheless, they have never resolved to quit their native island, and so avoid the unspeakable ruin that has followed so many and so cruel wars, that were accompanied with dearth, with conflagration, with feuds, with murders, with inward dissensions, with tyrannous exercise of power by so many different nations, with plundering of their goods, with frequent attacks of those cruel barbarians—the corsairs, and with endless miseries besides, that it would be tedious to reckon up." Within a period of thirty years, twenty-eight thousand assassinations were committed in Corsica.

"A great misfortune for Corsica," says the same historian, "is the vast number of those accursed machines of arquebuses." The Genoese Government drew a considerable revenue from the sale of licenses to carry these. "There are," remarks Filippini, "more than seven thousand licenses at present issued; and, besides, many carry fire-arms without any license, and especially in the mountains, where you see nothing but bands of twenty and thirty men, or more, all armed with arquebuses. These licenses bring seven thousand lire out of poor, miserable Corsica every year; for every new governor that comes annuls the licenses of his predecessor, in order forthwith to confirm them afresh. But the buying of the fire-arms is the worst. For you will find no Corsican so poor that he has not his gun—in value at least from five to six scudi, besides the outlay for powder and ball; and those that have no money sell their vineyard, their chestnuts, or other possessions, that they may be able to buy one, as if it were impossible to exist unless they did so. In truth, it is astonishing, for the greater part of these people have not a coat upon their back that is worth a half scudo, and in their houses nothing to eat; and yet they hold themselves for disgraced, if they appear beside their neighbours without a gun. And hence it comes that the vineyards and the fields are no longer under cultivation, and lie useless, and overgrown with brushwood, and the owners are compelled to betake themselves to highway robbery and crime; and if they find no convenient opportunity for this, then they violently make opportunity for themselves, in order to deprive those who go quietly about their business, and support their poor families, of their oxen, their kine, and other cattle. From all this arises such calamity, that the pursuit of agriculture is quite vanished out of Corsica, though it was the sole means of support the people had—the only kind of industry still left to these islanders. They who live in such a mischievous manner, hinder the others from doing so well as they might be disposed to do: and the evil does not end here; for we hear every day of murders done now in one village, now in another, because of the easiness with which life can be taken by means of the arquebuses. For formerly, when such weapons were not in use, when foes met upon the streets, if the one was two or three times stronger than the other, an attack was not ventured. But now-a-days, if a man has some trifling quarrel with another, although perhaps with a different sort of weapon he would not dare to look him in the face, he lies down behind a bush, and without the least scruple murders him, just as you shoot down a wild beast, and nobody cares anything about it afterwards; for justice dares not intermeddle. Moreover, the Corsicans have come to handle their pieces so skilfully, that I pray God may shield us from war; for their enemies will have to be upon their guard, because from the children of eight and ten years, who can hardly carry a gun, and never let the trigger lie still, they are day and night at the target, and if the mark be but the size of a scudo, they hit it."

Filippini, the contemporary of Sampiero, saw fire-arms introduced into Corsica, which were quite unknown on the island, as he informs us, till the year 1553. Marshal Thermes—the French, therefore—first brought fire-arms into Corsica. "And," says Filippini, "it was laughable to see the clumsiness of the Corsicans at first, for they could neither load nor fire; and when they discharged, they were as frightened as the savages." What the Corsican historian says as to the fearful consequences of the introduction of the musket into Corsica is as true now, after the lapse of three hundred years, as it was then, and a chronicler of to-day could not alter an iota of what Filippini has said.

In the midst of all this Corsican distress, we are surprised by the sudden appearance of a Greek colony on their desolate shores. The Genoese had striven long and hard to denationalize the Corsican people by the introduction of foreign and hostile elements. Policy of this nature had probably no inconsiderable share in the plan of settling a Greek colony in the island, which was carried into execution in the year 1676. Some Mainotes of the Gulf of Kolokythia, weary of the intolerable yoke of the Turks, like those ancient Phocæans who refused to submit to the yoke of the Persians, had resolved to migrate with wife, child, and goods, and found for themselves a new home. After long search and much futile negotiation for a locality, their ambassador, Johannes Stefanopulos, came at length to Genoa, and expressed to the Senate the wishes of his countrymen. The Republic listened to them most gladly, and proposed for the acceptance of the Greeks the district of Paomia, which occupies the western coast of Corsica from the Gulf of Porto to the Gulf of Sagona. Stefanopulos convinced himself of the suitable nature of the locality, and the Mainotes immediately contracted an agreement with the Genoese Senate, in terms of which the districts of Paomia, Ruvida, and Salogna, were granted to them in perpetual fief, with a supply of necessaries for commencing the settlement, and toleration for their national religion and social institutions; while they on their part swore allegiance to Genoa, and subordinated themselves to a Genoese official sent to reside in the colony. In March 1676, these Greeks, seven hundred and thirty in number, landed in Genoa, where they remained two months, previously to taking possession of their new abode. Genoa planted this colony very hopefully; she believed herself to have gained, in the brave men composing it, a little band of incorruptible fidelity, who would act as a permanent forepost in the enemy's country. It was, in fact, impossible that the Greeks could ever make common cause with the Corsicans. These latter gazed on the strangers when they arrived—on the new Phocæans—with astonishment. Possibly they despised men who seemed not to love their country, since they had forsaken it; without doubt they found it a highly unpleasant reflection that these intruders had been thrust in upon their property in such an altogether unceremonious manner. The poor Greeks were destined to thrive but indifferently in their new rude home.

CHAPTER II.
INSURRECTION AGAINST GENOA.

For half a century the island lay in a state of exhaustion—the hatred of Genoa continuing to be fostered by general and individual distress, and at length absorbing into itself every other sentiment. The people lived upon their hatred; their hatred alone prevented their utter ruin.

Many circumstances had been meanwhile combining to bring the profound discontent to open revolt. It appeared to the sagacious Dodici—for this body still existed, at least in form—that a main source of the miseries of their country was the abuse in the matter of licensing fire-arms. Within thirty years, as was noticed above, twenty-eight thousand assassinations had been committed in Corsica. The Twelve urgently entreated the Senate of the Republic to forbid the granting of these licenses. The Senate yielded. It interdicted the selling of muskets, and appointed a number of commissaries to disarm the island. But as this interdict withdrew a certain amount of yearly revenue from the exchequer, an impost of twelve scudi was laid upon each hearth, under the name of the due seini, or two sixes. The people paid, but murmured; and all the while the sale of licenses continued, both openly and secretly.

In the year 1724, another measure was adopted which greatly annoyed the Corsicans. The Government of the country was divided—the lieutenant of Ajaccio now receiving the title of Governor—and thus a double burden and twofold despotism henceforth pressed upon the unfortunate people. In the hands of both governors was lodged irresponsible power to condemn to the galleys or death, without form or procedure of any kind; as the phrase went—ex informata conscientia (from informed conscience). An administration of justice entirely arbitrary, lawlessness and murder were the results.

Special provocations—any of which might become the immediate occasion of an outbreak—were not wanting. A punishment of a disgraceful kind had been inflicted on a Corsican soldier in a small town of Liguria. Condemned to ride a wooden horse, he was surrounded by a jeering crowd who made mirth of his shame. His comrades, feeling their national honour insulted, attacked the mocking rabble, and killed some. The authorities beheaded them for this. When news of the occurrence reached Corsica, the pride of the nation was roused, and, on the day for lifting the tax of the due seini, a spark fired the powder in the island itself.

The Lieutenant of Corte had gone with his collector to the Pieve of Bozio; the people were in the fields. Only an old man of Bustancio, Cardone by name, was waiting for the officer, and paid him his tax. Among the coin he tendered was a gold piece deficient in value by the amount of half a soldo. The Lieutenant refused to take it. The old man in vain implored him to have pity on his abject poverty; he was threatened with an execution on his goods, if he did not produce the additional farthing on the following day; and he went away musing on this severity, and talking about it to himself, as old men will do. Others met him, heard him, stopped, and gradually a crowd collected on the road. The old man continued his complaints; then passing from himself to the wrongs of the country, he worked his audience into fury, forcibly picturing to them the distress of the people, and the tyranny of the Genoese, and ending by crying out—"It is time now to make an end of our oppressors!" The crowd dispersed, the words of the old man ran like wild-fire through the country, and awakened everywhere the old gathering-cry Evviva la libertà!—Evviva il popolo! The conch[A] blew and the bells tolled the alarm from village to village. A feeble old man had thus preached the insurrection, and half a sou was the immediate occasion of a war destined to last for forty years. An irrevocable resolution was adopted—to pay no further taxes of any kind whatever. This occurred in October of the year 1729.

On hearing of the commotion among the people of Bozio, the governor, Felix Pinelli, despatched a hundred men to the Pieve. They passed the night in Poggio de Tavagna, having been quietly received into the houses of the place. One of the inhabitants, however, named Pompiliani, conceived the plan of disarming them during the night. This was accomplished, and the defenceless soldiers permitted to return to Bastia. Pompiliani was henceforth the declared head of the insurgents. The people armed themselves with axes, bills, pruning-knives, threw themselves on the fort of Aleria, stormed it, cut the garrison in pieces, took possession of the arms and ammunition, and marched without delay upon Bastia. More than five thousand men encamped before the city, in the citadel of which Pinelli had shut himself up. To gain time he sent the Bishop of Mariana into the camp of the insurgents to open negotiations with them. They demanded the removal of all the burdens of the Corsican people. The bishop, however, persuaded them to conclude a truce of four-and-twenty days, to return into the mountains, and to wait for the Senate's answer to their demands. Pinelli employed the time he thus gained in procuring reinforcements, strengthening forts in his neighbourhood, and fomenting dissensions. When the people saw themselves merely trifled with and deceived, they came down from the mountains, this time ten thousand strong, and once more encamped before Bastia. A general insurrection was now no longer to be prevented; and Genoa in vain sent her commissaries to negotiate and cajole.

An assembly of the people was held in Furiani. Pompiliani, chosen commander under the urgent circumstances of the commencing outbreak, had shown himself incapable, and was now set aside, making room for two men of known ability—Andrea Colonna Ceccaldi of Vescovato, and Don Luis Giafferi of Talasani—who were jointly declared generals of the people. Bastia was now attacked anew and more fiercely, and the bishop was again sent among the insurgents to sooth them if possible. A truce was concluded for four months. Both sides employed it in making preparations; intrigues of the old sort were set on foot by the Genoese Commissary Camillo Doria; but an attempt to assassinate Ceccaldi failed. The latter had meanwhile travelled through the interior along with Giafferi, adjusting family feuds, and correcting abuses; subsequently they had opened a legislative assembly in Corte. Edicts were here issued, measures for a general insurrection taken, judicial authorities and a militia organized. A solemn oath was sworn, never more to wear the yoke of Genoa. The insurrection, thus regulated, became legal and universal. The entire population, this side as well as on the other side the mountains, now rose under the influence of one common sentiment. Nor was the voice of religion unheard. The clergy of the island held a convention in Orezza, and passed a unanimous resolution—that if the Republic refused the people their rights, the war was a measure of necessary self-defence, and the people relieved from their oath of allegiance.

CHAPTER III.
SUCCESSES AGAINST GENOA, AND GERMAN MERCENARIES—PEACE CONCLUDED.

The canon Orticoni had been sent to the Continent to seek the protection of the foreign powers, and Giafferi to Tuscany to procure arms and ammunition, which were much needed; and meanwhile the truce had expired. Genoa, refusing all concessions, demanded unconditional submission, and the persons of the two leaders of the revolt; but when the war was found to break out simultaneously all over the island, and the Corsicans had taken numbers of strong places, and formed the sieges of Bastia, of Ajaccio, and of Calvi, the Republic began to see her danger, and had recourse to the Emperor Charles VI. for aid.

The Emperor granted them assistance. He agreed to furnish the Republic with a corps of eight thousand Germans, making a formal bargain and contract with the Genoese, as one merchant does with another. It was the time when the German princes commenced the practice of selling the blood of their children to foreign powers for gold, that it might be shed in the service of despotism. It was also the time when the nations began to rouse themselves; the presence of a new spirit—the spirit of the freedom and power and progress of the masses—began to be felt throughout the world. The poor people of Corsica have the abiding honour of opening this new era.

The Emperor disposed of the eight thousand Germans under highly favourable conditions. The Republic pledged herself to support them, to pay thirty thousand gulden monthly for them, and to render a compensation of one hundred gulden for every deserter and slain man. It became customary, therefore, with the Corsicans, whenever they killed a German, to call out, "A hundred gulden, Genoa!"

The mercenaries arrived in Corsica on the 10th of August 1731; not all however, but in the first instance, only four thousand men—a number which the Senate hoped would prove sufficient for its purposes. This body of Germans was under the command of General Wachtendonk. They had scarcely landed when they attacked the Corsicans, and compelled them to raise the siege of Bastia.

The Corsicans saw the Emperor himself interfering as their oppressor, with grief and consternation. They were in want of the merest necessaries. In their utter poverty they had neither weapons, nor clothing, nor shoes. They ran to battle bareheaded and barefoot. To what side were they to turn for aid? Beyond the bounds of their own island they could reckon on none but their banished countrymen. It was resolved, therefore, at one of the diets, to summon these home, and the following invitation was directed to them:—

"Countrymen! our exertions to obtain the removal of our grievances have proved fruitless, and we have determined to free ourselves by force of arms—all hesitation is at an end. Either we shall rise from the shameful and humiliating prostration into which we have sunk, or we know how to die and drown our sufferings and our chains in blood. If no prince is found, who, moved by the narrative of our misfortunes, will listen to our complaints and protect us from our oppressors, there is still an Almighty God, and we stand armed in the name and for the defence of our country. Hasten to us, children of Corsica! whom exile keeps at a distance from our shores, to fight by the side of your brethren, to conquer or die! Let nothing hold you back—take your arms and come. Your country calls you, and offers you a grave and immortality!"

They came from Tuscany, from Rome, from Naples, from Marseilles. Not a day passed but parties of them landed at some port or another, and those who were not able to bear arms sent what they could in money and weapons. One of these returning patriots, Filician Leoni of Balagna, hitherto a captain in the Neapolitan service, landed near San Fiorenzo, just as his father was passing with a troop to assault the tower of Nonza. Father and son embraced each other weeping. The old man then said: "My son, it is well that you have come; go in my stead, and take the tower from the Genoese." The son instantly put himself at the head of the troop; the father awaited the issue. Leoni took the tower of Nonza, but a ball stretched the young soldier on the earth. A messenger brought the mournful intelligence to his father. The old man saw him approaching, and asked him how matters stood. "Not well," cried the messenger; "your son has fallen!" "Nonza is taken?" "It is taken." "Well, then," cried the old man, "evviva Corsica!"

Camillo Doria was in the meantime ravaging the country and destroying the villages; General Wachtendonk had led his men into the interior to reduce the province of Balagna. The Corsicans, however, after inflicting severe losses on him, surrounded him in the mountains near San Pellegrino. The imperial general could neither retreat nor advance, and was, in fact, lost. Some voices loudly advised that these foreigners should be cut down to a man. But the wise Giafferi was unwilling to rouse the wrath of the Emperor against his poor country, and permitted Wachtendonk and his army to return unharmed to Bastia, only exacting the condition, that the General should endeavour to gain Charles VI.'s ear for the Corsican grievances. Wachtendonk gave his word of honour for this—astonished at the magnanimity of men whom he had come to crush as a wild horde of rebels. A cessation of hostilities for two months was agreed on. The grievances of the Corsicans were formally drawn up and sent to Vienna; but before an answer returned, the truce had expired, and the war commenced anew.

The second half of the imperial auxiliaries was now sent to the island; but the bold Corsicans were again victorious in several engagements; and on the 2d of February 1732, they defeated and almost annihilated the Germans under Doria and De Vins, in the bloody battle of Calenzana. The terrified Republic hereupon begged the Emperor to send four thousand men more. But the world was beginning to manifest a lively sympathy for the brave people who, utterly deserted and destitute of aid, found in their patriotism alone, resources which enabled them so gloriously to withstand such formidable opposition.

The new imperial troops were commanded by Ludwig, Prince of Würtemberg, a celebrated general. He forthwith proclaimed an amnesty under the condition that the people should lay down their arms, and submit to Genoa. But the Corsicans would have nothing to do with conditions of this kind. Würtemberg, therefore, the Prince of Culmbach, Generals Wachtendonk, Schmettau, and Waldstein, advanced into the country according to a plan of combined operation, while the Corsicans withdrew into the mountains, to harass the enemy by a guerilla warfare. Suddenly the reply of the imperial court to the Corsican representation of grievances arrived, conveying orders to the Prince of Würtemberg to proceed as leniently as possible with the people, as the Emperor now saw that they had been wronged.

On the 11th of May 1732, a peace was concluded at Corte on the following terms—1. General amnesty. 2. That Genoa should relinquish all claims of compensation for the expenses of the war. 3. The remission of all unpaid taxes. 4. That the Corsicans should have free access to all offices, civil, military, and ecclesiastical. 5. Permission to found colleges, and unrestricted liberty to teach therein. 6. Reinstatement of the Council of Twelve, and of the Council of Six, with the privilege of an Oratore. 7. The right of defence for accused persons. 8. The appointment of a Board to take cognizance of the offences of public officials.

The fulfilment of this—for the Corsicans—advantageous treaty, was to be personally guaranteed by the Emperor; and accordingly, most of the German troops left the island, after more than three thousand of their number had found a grave in Corsica. Only Wachtendonk remained some time longer to see the terms of the agreement carried into effect.

CHAPTER IV.
RECOMMENCEMENT OF HOSTILITIES—DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE—DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION OF COSTA.

The imperial ratification was daily expected; but before it arrived, the Genoese Senate allowed the exasperation of defeat and the desire of revenge to hurry it into an action which could not fail to provoke the Corsican people to new revolt. Ceccaldi, Giafferi, the Abbé Aitelli, and Rafaelli, the leaders of the Corsicans who had signed the treaty in the name of their nation, were suddenly seized, and dragged off to Genoa, under the pretext of their entertaining treasonable designs against the state. A vehement cry of protest arose from the whole island: the people hastened to Wachtendonk, and urged upon him that his own honour was compromised in this violent act of the Genoese; they wrote to the Prince of Würtemberg, to the Emperor himself, demanding protection in terms of the treaty. The result was that the Emperor without delay ratified the conditions of peace, and demanded the liberation of the prisoners. All four were set at liberty, but the Senate endeavoured to extract a promise from them never again to return to their country. Ceccaldi went to Spain, where he entered into military service; Rafaelli to Rome; Aitelli and Giafferi to Leghorn, in the vicinity of their native island; where they could observe the course of affairs, which to all appearance could not remain long in their present posture.

On the 15th of June 1733, Wachtendonk and the last of the German troops left the island, which, with the duly ratified instrument of treaty in its possession, now found itself face to face with Genoa. The two deadly foes had hardly exchanged glances, when both were again in arms. Nothing but war to the knife was any longer possible between the Corsicans and the Genoese. In the course of centuries, mutual hate had become a second nature with both. The Genoese citizen came to the island rancorous, intriguing, cunning; the Corsican was suspicious, irritable, defiant, exultingly conscious of his individual manliness, and his nation's tried powers of self-defence. Two or three arrests and attempts at assassination, and the people instantly rose, and gathered in Rostino, round Hyacinth Paoli, an active, resolute, and intrepid burgher of Morosaglia. This was a man of unusual talent, an orator, a poet, and a statesman; for among the rugged Corsicans, men had ripened in the school of misfortune and continual struggle, who were destined to astonish Europe. The people of Rostino named Hyacinth Paoli and Castineta their generals. They had now leaders, therefore, though they were to be considered as provisional.

No sooner had the movement broken out in Rostino, and the struggle with Genoa been once more commenced, than the brave Giafferi threw himself into a vessel, and landed in Corsica. The first general diet was held in Corte, which had been taken by storm. War was unanimously declared against Genoa, and it was resolved to place the island under the protection of the King of Spain, whose standard was now unfurled in Corte. The canon, Orticoni, was sent to the court of Madrid to give expression to this wish on the part of the Corsican people.

Don Luis Giafferi was again appointed general, and this talented commander succeeded, in the course of the year 1734, in depriving the Genoese of all their possessions in the island, except the fortified ports. In the year 1735, he called a general assembly of the people in Corte. On this occasion he demanded Hyacinth Paoli as his colleague, and this having been agreed to, the advocate, Sebastiano Costa, was appointed to draw up the scheme of a constitution. This remarkable assembly affirmed the independence of the Corsican people, and the perpetual separation of Corsica from Genoa; and announced as leading features in the new arrangements—the self-government of the people in its parliament; a junta of six, named by parliament, and renewed every three months, to accompany the generals as the parliament's representatives; a civil board of four, intrusted with the oversight of the courts of justice, of the finances, and of commercial interests. The people in its assemblies was declared the alone source of law. A statute-book was to be composed by the highest junta.

Such were the prominent features of a constitution sketched by the Corsican Costa, and approved of in the year 1735, when universal political barbarism still prevailed upon the Continent, by a people in regard to which the obscure rumour went that it was horribly wild and uncivilized. It appears, therefore, that nations are not always educated for freedom and independence by science, wealth, or brilliant circumstances of political prominence; oftener perhaps by poverty, misfortune, and love for their country. A little people, without literature, without trade, had thus in obscurity, and without assistance, outstripped the most cultivated nations of Europe in political wisdom and in humanity; its constitution had not sprung from the hot-bed of philosophical systems—it had ripened upon the soil of its material necessities.

Giafferi, Ceccaldi, and Hyacinth Paoli had all three been placed at the head of affairs. Orticoni had returned from his mission to Spain, with the answer that his catholic Majesty declined taking Corsica under his special protection, but declared that he would not support Genoa with troops. The Corsicans, therefore, as they could reckon on no protection from any earthly potentate, now did as some of the Italian republics had done during the Middle Ages, placed themselves by general consent under the guardian care of the Virgin Mary, whose picture henceforth figured on the standards of the country; and they chose Jesus Christ for their gonfaloniere, or standard-bearer.

Genoa—which the German Emperor, involved in the affairs of Poland, could not now assist—was meanwhile exerting itself to the utmost to reduce the Corsicans to subjection. The republic first sent Felix Pinelli, the former cruel governor, and then her bravest general, Paul Battista Rivarola, with all the troops that could be raised. The situation of the Corsicans was certainly desperate. They were destitute of all the necessaries for carrying on the war; the country was completely exhausted, and the Genoese cruisers prevented importation from abroad. Their distress was such that they even made proposals for peace, to which, however, Genoa refused to listen. The whole island was under blockade; all commercial intercourse was at an end; vessels from Leghorn had been captured; there was a deficiency of arms, particularly of fire-arms, and they had no powder. Their embarrassments had become almost insupportable, when, one day, two strange vessels came to anchor in the gulf of Isola Rossa, and began to discharge a heavy cargo of victuals and warlike stores—gifts for the Corsicans from unknown and mysterious donors. The captains of the vessels scorned all remuneration, and only asked the favour of some Corsican wine in which to drink the brave nation's welfare. They then put out to sea again amidst the blessings of the multitude who had assembled on the shore to see their foreign benefactors. This little token of foreign sympathy fairly intoxicated the poor Corsicans. Their joy was indescribable; they rang the bells in all the villages; they said to one another that Divine Providence, and the Blessed Virgin, had sent their rescuing angels to the unhappy island, and their hopes grew lively that some foreign power would at length bestow its protection on the Corsicans. The moral impression produced by this event was so powerful, that the Genoese feared what the Corsicans hoped, and immediately commenced treating for peace. But it was now the turn of the Corsicans to be obstinate.

Generous Englishmen had equipped these two ships, friends of liberty, and admirers of Corsican heroism. Their magnanimity was soon to come into conflict with their patriotism, through the revolt of North America. The English supply of arms and ammunition enabled the Corsicans to storm Aleria, where they made a prize of four pieces of cannon. They now laid siege to Calvi and Bastia. But their situation was becoming every moment more helpless and desperate. All their resources were again spent, and still no foreign power interfered. In those days the Corsicans waited in an almost religious suspense; they were like the Jews under the Maccabees, when they hoped for a Messiah.

CHAPTER V.
BARON THEODORE VON NEUHOFF.

Early in the morning of the 12th of March 1736, a vessel under British colours was seen steering towards Aleria. The people who crowded to the shore greeted it with shouts of joy; they supposed it was laden with arms and ammunition. The vessel cast anchor; and soon afterwards, some of the principal men of the island went on board, to wait on a certain mysterious stranger whom she had brought. This stranger was of kingly appearance, of stately and commanding demeanour, and theatrically dressed. He wore a long caftan of scarlet silk, Moorish trowsers, yellow shoes, and a Spanish hat and feather; in his girdle of yellow silk were a pair of richly inlaid pistols, a sabre hung by his side, and in his right hand he held a long truncheon as sceptre. Sixteen gentlemen of his retinue followed him with respectful deference as he landed—eleven Italians, two French officers, and three Moors. The enigmatical stranger stepped upon the Corsican shore with all the air of a king,—and with the purpose to be one.

The Corsicans surrounded the mysterious personage with no small astonishment. The persuasion was general that he was—if not a foreign prince—at least the ambassador of some monarch now about to take Corsica under his protection. The ship soon began to discharge her cargo before the eyes of the crowd; it consisted of ten pieces of cannon, four thousand muskets, three thousand pairs of shoes, seven hundred sacks of grain, a large quantity of ammunition, some casks of zechins, and a considerable sum in gold coins of Barbary. It appeared that the leading men of the island had expected the arrival of this stranger. Xaverius Matra was seen to greet him with all the reverence due to a king; and all were impressed by the dignity of his princely bearing, and the lofty composure of his manner. He was conducted in triumph to Cervione.

This singular person was a German, the Westphalian Baron Theodore von Neuhoff—the cleverest and most fortunate of all the adventurers of his time. In his youth he had been a page at the court of the Duchess of Orleans, had afterwards gone into the Spanish service, and then returned to France. His brilliant talents had brought him into contact with all the remarkable personages of the age; among others, with Alberoni, with Ripperda, and Law, in whose financial speculations he had been involved. Neuhoff had experienced everything, seen everything, thought, attempted, enjoyed, and suffered everything. True to the dictates of a romantic and adventurous nature, he had run through all possible shapes in which fortune can appear, and had at length taken it into his head, that for a man of a powerful mind like him, it must be a desirable thing to be a king. And he had not conceived this idea in the vein of the crackbrained Knight of La Mancha, who, riding errant into the world, persuaded himself that he would at least be made emperor of Trebisonde in reward for his achievements; on the contrary, accident threw the thought into his quite unclouded intellect, and he resolved to be a king, to become so in a real and natural way,—and he became a king.

In the course of his rovings through Europe, Neuhoff had come to Genoa just at the time when Giafferi, Ceccaldi, Aitelli, and Rafaelli were brought to the city as prisoners. It seems that his attention was now for the first time drawn to the Corsicans, whose obstinate bravery made a deep impression on him. He formed a connexion with such Corsicans as he could find in Genoa, particularly with men belonging to the province of Balagna; and after gaining an insight into the state of affairs in the island, the idea of playing a part in the history of this romantic country gradually ripened in his mind. He immediately went to Leghorn, where Orticoni, into whose hands the foreign relations of the island had been committed, was at the time residing. He introduced himself to Orticoni, and succeeded in inspiring him with admiration, and with confidence in his magnificent promises. For, intimately connected, as he said he was, with all the courts, he affirmed that, within the space of a year, he would procure the Corsicans all the necessary means for driving the Genoese for ever from the island. In return, he demanded nothing more than that the Corsicans should crown him as their king. Orticoni, carried away by the extraordinary genius of the man, by his boundless promises, by the cleverness of his diplomatic, economic, and political ideas, and perceiving that Neuhoff really might be able to do his country good service, asked the opinion of the generals of the island. In their desperate situation, they gave him full power to treat with Neuhoff. Orticoni, accordingly, came to an agreement with the baron, that he should be proclaimed king of Corsica as soon as he put the islanders in a position to free themselves completely from the yoke of Genoa.

As soon as Theodore von Neuhoff saw this prospect before him, he began to exert himself for its realisation with an energy which is sufficient of itself to convince us of his powerful genius. He put himself in communication with the English consul at Leghorn, and with such merchants as traded to Barbary; he procured letters of recommendation for that country; went to Africa; and after he had moved heaven and earth there in person, as in Europe by his agents, finding himself in possession of all necessary equipments, he suddenly landed in Corsica in the manner we have described.

He made his appearance when the misery of the island had reached the last extreme. In handing over his stores to the Corsican leaders, he informed them that they were only a small portion of what was to follow. He represented to them that his connexions with the courts of Europe, already powerful, would be placed on a new footing the moment that the Genoese had been overcome; and that, wearing the crown, he should treat as a prince with princes. He therefore desired the crown. Hyacinth Paoli, Giafferi, and the learned Costa, men of the soundest common sense, engaged upon an enterprise the most pressingly real in its necessities that could possibly be committed to human hands—that of liberating their country, and giving its liberty a form, and secure basis, nevertheless acceded to this desire. Their engagements to the man, and his services; the novelty of the event, which had so remarkably inspirited the people; the prospects of further help; in a word, their necessitous circumstances, demanded it. Theodore von Neuhoff, king-designate of the Corsicans, had the house of the Bishop of Cervione appointed him for his residence; and on the 15th of April, the people assembled to a general diet in the convent of Alesani, in order to pass the enactment converting Corsica into a kingdom. The assembly was composed of two representatives from every commune in the country, and of deputies from the convents and clergy, and more than two thousand people surrounded the building. The following constitution was laid before the Parliament: The crown of the kingdom of Corsica is given to Baron Theodore von Neuhoff and his heirs; the king is assisted by a council of twenty-four, nominated by the people, without whose and the Parliament's consent no measures can be adopted or taxes imposed. All public offices are open to the Corsicans only; legislative acts can proceed only from the people and its Parliament.

These articles were read by Gaffori, a doctor of laws, to the assembled people, who gave their consent by acclamation; Baron Theodore then signed them in presence of the representatives of the nation, and swore, on the holy gospels, before all the people, to remain true to the constitution. This done, he was conducted into the church, where, after high mass had been said, the generals placed the crown upon his head. The Corsicans were too poor to have a crown of gold; they plaited one of laurel and oak-leaves, and crowned therewith their first and last king. And thus Baron Theodore von Neuhoff, who already styled himself Grandee of Spain, Lord of Great Britain, Peer of France, Count of the Papal Dominions, and Prince of the Empire, became King of the Corsicans, with the title of Theodore the First.

Though this singular affair may be explained from the then circumstances of the island, and from earlier phenomena in Corsican history, it still remains astonishing. So intense was the patriotism of this people, that to obtain their liberty and rescue their country, they made a foreign adventurer their king, because he held out to them hopes of deliverance; and that their brave and tried leaders, without hesitation and without jealousy, quietly divested themselves of their authority.

CHAPTER VI.
THEODORE I., KING OF CORSICA.

Now in possession of the kingly title, Theodore wished to see himself surrounded by a kingly court, and was, therefore, not sparing in his distribution of dignities. He named Don Luis Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli his prime ministers, and invested them with the title of Count. Xaverius Matra became a marquis, and grand-marshal of the palace; Giacomo Castagnetta, count and commandant of Rostino; Arrighi, count and inspector-general of the troops. He gave others the titles of barons, margraves, lieutenants-general, captains of the Royal Guard, and made them commandants of various districts of the country. The advocate Costa, now Count Costa, was created grand-chancellor of the kingdom, and Dr. Gaffori, now Marquis Gaffori, cabinet-secretary to his Majesty the constitutional king.

Ridiculous as all these pompous arrangements may appear, King Theodore set himself in earnest to accomplish his task. In a short time he had established order in the country, settled family feuds, and organized a regular army, with which, in April 1736, he took Porto Vecchio and Sartene from the Genoese. The Senate of Genoa had at first viewed the enigmatic proceedings that were going on before its eyes with astonishment and fear, imagining that the intentions of some foreign power might be concealed behind them. But when obscurities cleared away, and Baron Theodore stood disclosed, they began to lampoon him in pamphlets, and brand him as an unprincipled adventurer deep in debt. King Theodore replied to the Genoese manifestoes with kingly dignity, German bluntness, and German humour. He then marched in person against Bastia, fought like a lion before its walls, and when he found he could not take the city, blockaded it, making, meanwhile, expeditions into the interior of the island, in the course of which he punished rebellious districts with unscrupulous severity, and several times routed the Genoese troops.

The Genoese were soon confined to their fortified towns on the sea. In their embarrassment at this period they had recourse to a disgraceful method of increasing their strength. They formed a regiment, fifteen hundred strong, of their galley-slaves, bandits, and murderers, and let loose this refuse upon Corsica. The villanous band made frequent forays into the country, and perpetrated numberless enormities. They got the name of Vittoli, from Sampiero's murderer, or of Oriundi.

King Theodore made great exertions for the general elevation of the country. He established manufactories of arms, of salt, of cloth; he endeavoured to introduce animation into trade, to induce foreigners to settle in the island, by offering them commercial privileges, and, by encouraging privateering, to keep the Genoese cruisers in check. The Corsican national flag was green and yellow, and bore the motto: In te Domine speravi. Theodore had also struck his own coins—gold, silver, and copper. These coins showed on the obverse a shield wreathed with laurel, and above it a crown with the initials, T. R.; on the reverse were the words: Pro bono et libertate. On the Continent, King Theodore's money was bought up by the curious for thirty times its value. But all this was of little avail; the promised help did not come, the people began to murmur. The king was continually announcing the immediate appearance of a friendly fleet; the friendly fleet never appeared, because its promise was a fabrication. The murmurs growing louder, Theodore assembled a Parliament on the 2d of September, in Casacconi; here he declared that he would lay down his crown, if the expected help did not appear by the end of October, or that he would then go himself to the Continent to hasten its appearance. He was in the same desperate position in which, as the story goes, Columbus was, when the land he had announced would not appear.

On the dissolution of the Parliament, which, at the proposal of the king, had agreed to a new measure of finance—a tax upon property, Theodore mounted his horse, and went to view his kingdom on the other side the mountains. This region had been the principal seat of the Corsican seigniors, and the old aristocratic feeling was still strong there. Luca Ornano received the monarch with a deputation of the principal gentlemen, and conducted him in festal procession to Sartene. Here Theodore fell upon the princely idea of founding a new order of knighthood; it was a politic idea, and, in fact, we observe, in general, that the German baron and Corsican king knows how to conduct himself in a politic manner, as well as other upstarts of greater dimensions who have preceded and followed him. The name of the new order was The Order of the Liberation (della Liberazione). The king was grand-master, and named the cavaliers. It is said that in less than two months the Order numbered more than four hundred members, and that upwards of a fourth of these were foreigners, who sought the honour of membership, either for the mere singularity of the thing, or to indicate their good wishes for the brave Corsicans. The membership was dear, for it had been enacted that every cavalier should pay a thousand scudi as entry-money, from which he was to draw an annuity of ten per cent. for life. The Order, then, in its best sense, was an honour awarded in payment for a loan—a financial speculation. During his residence in Sartene, the king, at the request of the nobles of the region, conferred with lavish hand the titles of Count, Baron, and Baronet, and with these the representatives of the houses of Ornano, Istria, Rocca, and Leca, went home comforted.

While the king thus acted in kingly fashion, and filled the island with counts and cavaliers, as if poor Corsica had overnight become a wealthy empire, the bitterest cares of state were preying upon him in secret. For he could not but confess to himself that his kingdom was after all but a painted one, and that he had surrounded himself with phantoms. The long-announced fleet obstinately refused to appear, because it too was a painted fleet. This chimera occasioned the king greater embarrassment than if it had been a veritable fleet of a hundred well-equipped hostile ships. Theodore began to feel uncomfortable. Already there was an organized party of malcontents in the land, calling themselves the Indifferents. Aitelli and Rafaelli had formed this party, and Hyacinth Paoli himself had joined it. The royal troops had even come into collision with the Indifferents, and had been repulsed. It seemed, therefore, as if Theodore's kingdom were about to burst like a soap-bubble; Giafferi alone still kept down the storm for a while.

In these circumstances, the king thought it might be advisable to go out of the way for a little; to leave the island, not secretly, but as a prince, hastening to the Continent to fetch in person the tardy succours. He called a parliament at Sartene, announced that he was about to take his departure, and the reason why; settled the interim government, at the head of which he put Giafferi, Hyacinth Paoli, and Luca Ornano; made twenty-seven Counts and Baronets governors of provinces; issued a manifesto; and on the 11th of November 1736, proceeded, accompanied by an immense retinue, to Aleria, where he embarked in a vessel showing French colours, taking with him Count Costa, his chancellor, and some officers of his household. He would have been captured by a Genoese cruiser before he was out of sight of his kingdom, and sent to Genoa, if he had not been protected by the French flag. King Theodore landed at Leghorn in the dress of an abbé, wishing to remain incognito; he then travelled to Florence, to Rome, and to Naples, where he left his chancellor and his officers, and went on board a vessel bound for Amsterdam, from which city, he said, his subjects should speedily hear good news.

CHAPTER VII.
GENOA IN DIFFICULTIES—AIDED BY FRANCE—THEODORE EXPELLED HIS KINGDOM.

The Corsicans did not believe in the return of their king, nor in the help he promised to send them. Under the pressure of severe necessity, the poor people, intoxicated with their passion for liberty, had gone so far as even to expose themselves to the ridicule which could not fail to attach to the kingship of an adventurer. In their despair they had caught at a phantom, at a straw, for rescue; what would they not have done out of hatred to Genoa, and love of freedom? Now, however, they saw themselves no nearer the goal they wished to reach. Many showed symptoms of discontent. In this state of affairs, the Regents attempted to open negotiations with Rivarola, but without result, as the Genoese demanded unconditional submission, and surrender of arms. An assembly of the people was called, and its voice taken. The people resolved unhesitatingly that they must remain true to the king to whom they had sworn allegiance, and acknowledge no other sovereign.

Theodore had meanwhile travelled through part of Europe, formed new connexions, opened speculations, raised money, named cavaliers, enlisted Poles and Germans; and although his creditors at Amsterdam threw him into a debtors' prison, the fertile genius of the wonderful man succeeded in raising supplies to send to Corsica. From time to time a ship reached the island with warlike stores, and a proclamation encouraging the Corsicans to remain steadfast.

This, and the fear that the unwearying and energetic Theodore might at length actually win some continental power to his side, made the Republic of Genoa anxious. The Senate had set a price of two thousand genuini on the head of the Corsican king, and the agents of Genoa dogged his footsteps at every court. Herself in pecuniary difficulties, Genoa had drawn upon the Bank for three millions, and taken three regiments of Swiss into her pay. The guerilla warfare continued. It was carried on with the utmost ferocity; no quarter was given now on either side. The Republic, seeing no end of the exhausting struggle, resolved to call in the assistance of France. She had hitherto hesitated to have recourse to a foreign power, as her treasury was exhausted, and former experiences had not been of the most encouraging kind.

The French cabinet willingly seized an opportunity, which, if properly used, would at least prevent any other power from obtaining a footing on an island whose position near the French boundaries gave it so high an importance. Cardinal Fleury concluded a treaty with the Genoese on the 12th of July 1737, in virtue of which France pledged herself to send an army into Corsica to reduce the "rebels" to subjection. Manifestoes proclaimed this to the Corsican people. They produced the greatest sorrow and consternation, all the more so, that a power now declared her intention of acting against the Corsicans, which, in earlier times, had stood in a very different relation to them. The Corsican people replied to these manifestoes, by the declaration that they would never again return under the yoke of Genoa, and by a despairing appeal to the compassion of the French king.

In February of the year 1738, five French regiments landed under the command of Count Boissieux. The General had strict orders to effect, if possible, a peaceable settlement; and the Genoese hoped that the mere sight of the French would be sufficient to disarm the Corsicans. But the Corsicans remained firm. The whole country had risen as one man at the approach of the French; beacons on the hills, the conchs in the villages, the bells in the convents, called the population to arms. All of an age to carry arms took the field furnished with bread for eight days. Every village formed its little troop, every pieve its battalion, every province its camp. The Corsicans stood ready and waiting. Boissieux now opened negotiations, and these lasted for six months, till the announcement came from Versailles that the Corsicans must submit unconditionally to the supremacy of Genoa. The people replied in a manifesto addressed to Louis XV., that they once more implored him to cast a look of pity upon them, and to bear in mind the friendly interest which his illustrious ancestors had taken in Corsica; and they declared that they would shed their last drop of blood before they would return under the murderous supremacy of Genoa. In their bitter need, they meanwhile gave certain hostages required, and expressed themselves willing to trust the French king, and to await his final decision.

In this juncture, Baron Droste, nephew of Theodore, landed one day at Aleria, bringing a supply of ammunition, and the intelligence that the king would speedily return to the island. And on the 15th of September this remarkable man actually did land at Aleria, more splendidly and regally equipped than when he came the first time. He brought three ships with him; one of sixty-four guns, another of sixty, and the third of fifty-five, besides gunboats, and a small flotilla of transports. They were laden with munitions of war to a very considerable amount—27 pieces of cannon, 7000 muskets with bayonets, 1000 muskets of a larger size, 2000 pistols, 24,000 pounds of coarse and 100,000 pounds of fine powder, 200,000 pounds of lead, 400,000 flints, 50,000 pounds of iron, 2000 lances, 2000 grenades and bombs. All this had been raised by the same man whom his creditors in Amsterdam threw into a debtors' prison. He had succeeded by his powers of persuasion in interesting the Dutch for Corsica, and convincing them that a connexion with this island in the Mediterranean was desirable. A company of capitalists—the wealthy houses of Boom, Tronchain, and Neuville—had agreed to lend the Corsican king vessels, money, and the materials of war. Theodore thus landed in his kingdom under the Dutch flag. But he found to his dismay that affairs had taken a turn which prostrated all his hopes; and that he had to experience a fate tinged with something like irony, since, when he came as an adventurer he obtained a crown, but now could not be received as king though he came as a king, with substantial means for maintaining his dignity. He found the island split into conflicting parties, and in active negotiation with France. The people, it is true, led him once more in triumph to Cervione, where he had been crowned; but the generals, his own counts, gave him to understand that circumstances compelled them to have nothing more to do with him, but to treat with France. Immediately on Theodore's arrival, Boissieux had issued a proclamation, which declared every man a rebel, and guilty of high treason, who should give countenance to the outlaw, Baron Theodore von Neuhoff; and the king thus saw himself forsaken by the very men whom he had, not long before, created counts, margraves, barons, and cavaliers. The Dutchmen, too, disappointed in their expectations, and threatened by French and Genoese ships, very soon made up their minds, and in high dudgeon steered away for Naples. Theodore von Neuhoff, therefore, also saw himself compelled to leave the island; and vexed to the heart, he set sail for the Continent.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRENCH REDUCE CORSICA—NEW INSURRECTION—THE PATRIOT GAFFORI.

In the end of October, the expected decisive document arrived from Versailles in the form of an edict issued by the Doge and Senate of Genoa, and signed by the Emperor and the French king. The edict contained a few concessions, and the express command to lay down arms and submit to Genoa. Boissieux gave the Corsicans fifteen days to comply with this. They immediately assembled in the convent of Orezza to deliberate, and to rouse the nation; and they declared in a manifesto—"We shall not lose courage; arming ourselves with the manly resolve to die, we shall prefer ending our lives nobly with our weapons in our hands, to remaining idle spectators of the sufferings of our country, living in chains, and bequeathing slavery to our posterity. We think and say with the Maccabees: Melius est mori in bello, quam videre mala gentis nostræ—Better to die in war, than see the miseries of our nation."

Hostilities instantly commenced. The haughty and impetuous Boissieux had even sent four hundred men to Borgo to disarm the population in that quarter, before the expiry of the time he had himself allowed. The people were still holding their diet at Orezza. When the news came that the French had entered Borgo, the old cry arose, Evviva la libertà! Evviva il popolo! They rushed upon Borgo, attacked the French, and shut them up in the town. The officer in command of the corps sent messengers to Boissieux, who immediately marched to the rescue with two thousand men. The Corsicans, however, repulsed Boissieux, and drove his battalions in confusion to the walls of Bastia. The French general now sent despatches to France, asking reinforcements, and begging to be relieved from his command on account of sickness. Boissieux, a nephew of the celebrated Villars, died in Bastia on the 2d of February 1739. His successor was the Marquis of Maillebois, who landed in Corsica in spring with a large force.

Maillebois, severe and just, swift and sure in action, was precisely the man fitted to accomplish the task assigned to him. He allowed the Corsicans a certain time to lay down their arms, and on its expiry, advanced his troops at once in several different directions. Hyacinth Paoli, attacked in the Balagna, was obliged to retire, and, more a politician than a soldier, despairing of any successful resistance, he surrendered. The result was that Giafferi did the same. Maillebois now invited the leaders of the Corsicans to an interview with him in Morosaglia, and represented to them that the peace of the country required their leaving it. They yielded; and in the summer of the year 1739, twenty-two of the leading patriots left Corsica. Among these were Hyacinth Paoli, with his son Pasquale, then fourteen years old, Giafferi, with his son, Castineta and Pasqualini.

The country this side the mountains was therefore to be considered as reduced; but on the other side, two brave kinsmen of King Theodore still maintained themselves—his nephews, the Baron von Droste, and Baron Frederick von Neuhoff. After a courageous resistance—Frederick having wandered about for some time in the woods and mountains as guerilla—they laid down their arms on honourable terms, and received passes to quit the island.

It was Maillebois who now, properly speaking, ruled the island. He kept the Genoese governor in check, and, by his vigorous, just, and wise management, restored and preserved order. He formed all those Corsicans who were deeply compromised—and, fearing the vengeance of Genoa, wished to serve under the French standard—into a regiment, which received the name of the Royal-Corse. Events on the Continent rendering his recall necessary, he left Corsica in 1741, and was followed soon after by the whole of the French troops.

The island was scarcely clear of the French, when the hatred of Genoa again blazed forth. It had become a national characteristic, and was destined to pervade the entire history of Corsica's connexion with Genoa. The Governor, Domenico Spinola, made an attempt to collect the impost of the due seini. That instant, insurrection, fighting, and overthrow of the Genoese. Guerilla warfare covered the whole island.

Suddenly, in January 1743, the forgotten King Theodore once more appeared. He landed one day in Isola Rossa with three English men-of-war, and well furnished, as before, with warlike stores. Though ignominiously driven from his kingdom, Theodore had not given up the wish and plan of again being king; he had gone to England, and his zeal and energy there again effected what they had accomplished in Amsterdam. He now anchored off the Corsican coast, distributed his arms and ammunition, and issued proclamations, in which he assumed the tone of an injured and angry monarch, threatened traitors, and summoned his faithful subjects to rally round his person. The people received these in silence; and all that he learned convinced the unhappy ex-king that his realm was lost for ever. With a heavy heart, he weighed anchor and sailed away, never more to return to his island kingdom. He went back to England.

Both Corsicans and Genoese had meanwhile become inclined for a new treaty. An agreement was come to on favourable conditions, which allowed the country those rights already so often demanded and so often infringed on. During two years things remained quiet, and there seemed some faint prospect of a permanent peace, though the island was torn by family feuds and the Vendetta. In order to remove these evils, the people named three men—Gaffori, Venturini, and Alexius Matra—protectors of the country, and these triumvirs now appear as the national leaders. Others, however—exiled, enterprising men—saw the smouldering glow beneath its thin covering, and resolved to make a new assault upon the Genoese supremacy.

Count Domenico Rivarola was at this time in the service of the King of Sardinia; he was a Genoese of Bastia by birth, but at deadly enmity with the Republic. He collected a number of Corsicans about himself, represented to King Charles Emanuel the probable success of an enterprise in behalf of Corsica, obtained some ships, and with English aid made himself master of Bastia. The Corsicans declared for him, and the war became general. Giampetro Gaffori, a man of unusual heroism, marched upon Corte and attacked the citadel, which occupies a strong position on a steep crag. The Genoese commandant saw that it must necessarily fall, if the heavy fire of the Corsicans continued long enough to make another breach. He therefore had Gaffori's young son, who had been made prisoner, bound to the wall of the citadel, in order to stop the firing. The Corsicans were horror-struck to see Gaffori's son hanging on the wall, and their cannon instantly became silent: not another shot was fired. Giampetro Gaffori shuddered; then breaking the deep silence, he shouted, "Fire!" and with redoubled fury the artillery again began to ply upon the wall. A breach was made and stormed, but the boy remained uninjured, and the heroic father enjoyed the reward of clasping his son living to his breast.

On the fall of Corte, the whole interior of the island rose; and on the 10th of August 1746, a general assembly once more affirmed the independence of Corsica. Gaffori, Venturini, and Matra were declared Generals and Protectors of the nation; and an invitation was issued, calling on all Corsicans beyond the seas to return home. The hopes of material aid from Sardinia were, however, soon disappointed; its assistance was found insufficient, Bastia fell again into the hands of the Genoese, and Rivarola had been obliged to flee to Turin. The Genoese Senate again betook itself to France, and begged the minister to send a corps of auxiliaries against the Corsicans.

In 1748, two thousand French troops came to Corsica under the command of General Cursay. Their appearance again threw the unhappy people into the utmost consternation. As the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had extinguished every hope of help from Sardinia, the Corsicans agreed to accept the mediation of the King of France. Cursay himself was a man of the noblest character—humane, benevolent, and just; he gained the attachment of the Corsicans as soon as they came to know him, and they willingly committed their affairs into his hands. Accordingly, through French mediation, a treaty was effected in July 1751, highly favourable to the Corsicans, allowing them more privileges than they had hitherto enjoyed, and above all, protecting their nationality. But this treaty made Cursay incur the hatred of the Genoese; the Republic and the French general became open enemies. Tumult and bloodshed resulted; and the favourite of the Corsican people would have lost his life in a disturbance at Ajaccio, if the brave Gaffori had not hastened to his rescue. The Genoese calumniated him at his court, asserted that he was the cause of continual disturbances, that he neglected his proper duties, and intrigued for his own ends—in short, that he had views upon the crown of Corsica. This had the desired effect; the noble Cursay was deprived of his command and thrown into the Tower of Antibes as prisoner of state, there to remain till his case had been tried, and sentence pronounced.

The fate of Cursay infuriated the Corsicans; the entire population on both sides of the mountains rose in arms. A diet was held in Orezza, and Giampetro Gaffori created sole General and Governor of the nation.

Gaffori now became the terror of Genoa. Sampiero himself seemed to have risen again to life in this indomitable and heroic spirit. He was no sooner at the head of the people, than he collected and skilfully organized their forces, threw himself like lightning on the enemy, routed them in every direction, and speedily was in possession of the entire island except the strong seaports. Grimaldi was at this time governor; wily and unscrupulous as Fornari had once shown himself, he could see no safety for Genoa except in the murder of her powerful foe. He formed a plot against his life. Gaffori was, in Corsican fashion, involved in a Vendetta; he had some deadly enemies, men of Corte, by name Romei. The governor gained these men; and, to make his deed the more abominable, he won Gaffori's own brother, Anton-Francesco, for the plot. The conspirators inveigled Gaffori into an ambuscade, and murdered him on the third of October 1753. Vengeance overtook only the unnatural brother: captured a few days after the nefarious act, he was broken on the wheel; but the Romei found refuge with the governor. It is said that Giampetro's wife—a woman whose heroism had already made her famous—after the death of her husband, led her son, a boy of twelve, to the altar, and made him swear to avenge the murder of his father. The Corsican people had lost in him their noblest patriot. Giampetro Gaffori, doctor of laws, and a man of learning, possessed of the already advanced cultivation of his century, generous, of high nobility of soul, ready to sacrifice everything for his country—was one of the bravest of the Corsican heroes, and worthy to be named in the history of his country along with Sampiero. But a nation that could, time after time, produce such men, was invincible. Gaffori had fallen; Pasquale Paoli stood ready to take his place.

After Giampetro's death, the people assembled as after the death of Sampiero, to do honour to the hero by public funeral obsequies. They then, with one voice, declared war to the knife against Genoa, and pronounced all those guilty of capital crime who should ever venture to propose a treaty with the hereditary foe. Five individuals were placed at the head of the government—Clemens Paoli, Hyacinth's eldest son, Thomas Santucci, Simon Pietro Frediani, and Doctor Grimaldi.

These five conducted the affairs of the island and the war against the Republic for two years, but it was felt necessary that the forces of the nation should be united in one strong hand; and a man destined to be not only an honour to his country, but an ornament to humanity, was called home for that purpose.

CHAPTER IX.
PASQUALE PAOLI.

Pasquale Paoli was the youngest son of Hyacinth. His father had taken him at the age of fourteen to Naples, when he went there to live in exile. The unusual abilities of the boy already promised a man likely to be of service to his country. His highly cultivated father had him educated with great care, and procured him the instructions of the most celebrated men of the city. Naples was at that time, and throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, in a remarkable degree, the focus of that great Italian school of humanistic philosophers, historians, and political economists, which could boast such names as those of Vico, Giannone, Filangieri, Galiani, and Genovesi. The last mentioned, the great Italian political economist, was Pasquale's master, and bore testimony to the genius of his pupil. From this school issued Pasquale Paoli, one of the greatest and most practical of those humanistic philosophers of the eighteenth century, who sought to realize their opinions in legislation and the ordering of society.

It was Clemens Paoli who, when the government of the Five was found not to answer the requirements of the country, directed the attention of the Corsicans to his brother Paoli. Pasquale was then an officer in the Neapolitan service; he had distinguished himself during the war in Calabria, and his noble character and cultivated intellect had secured him the esteem of all who knew him. His brother Clemens wrote to him, one day, that he must return to his native island, for it was the will of his countrymen that he should be their head. Pasquale, deeply moved, hesitated. "Go, my son," said old Hyacinth to him, "do your duty, and be the deliverer of your country."

On the 29th of April 1755, the young Pasquale landed at Aleria, on the same spot where, nineteen years before, Baron Theodore had first set foot on Corsican soil. Not many years had elapsed since then, but the aspect of things had greatly changed. It was now a native Corsican who came to rule his country—a young man who had no brilliant antecedents, nor splendid connexions, on the strength of which he could promise foreign aid; who was not a maker of projects, seeking to produce an impression by theatrical show, but who came with empty hands, without pretensions, modest almost to timidity, bringing nothing with him but his love for his country, his own force of character, and his humanistic philosophy, as the means by which he was to transform a primitive people, reduced to a state of savagery by family feuds, banditti-life, and the Vendetta, to an orderly and peaceable community. The problem was extraordinary, nay, in history unexampled; and the success with which, before the eyes of all Europe, Paoli wrought at its solution, at a time when similar attempts on the cultured nations of the Continent signally failed, affords a proof that the rude simplicity of nature is more susceptible of democratic freedom than the refined corruption of polished society.

Pasquale Paoli was now nine-and-twenty, of graceful and vigorous make, with an air of natural dignity; his calm, composed, unobtrusive manners, the mild and firm expression of his features, the musical tones of his voice, his simple but persuasive words, inspired instant confidence, and bespoke the man of the people, and the great citizen. When the nation, assembled in San Antonio della Casabianca, had declared Pasquale Paoli its sole General, he at first declined the honour, pleading his youth and inexperience; but the people would not even give him a colleague. On the 15th of July 1755, Pasquale Paoli placed himself at the helm of his country.

He found his country in this condition: the Genoese, confined to their fortified towns, making preparations for war; the greater part of the island free; the people grown savage, torn by faction and family feud; the laws obsolete; agriculture, trade, science, neglected or non-existent; the material everywhere raw and in confusion, but full of the germs of a healthy life, implanted by former centuries, and in the subsequent course of events not stifled, but strengthened and encouraged; finally, he had to deal with a people whose noblest qualities—love of country and love of freedom—had been stimulated to very madness.