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The fall of Bastia on May 19th was a moment of unparalleled triumph for the rebels. It was, in the first place, a great symbolic victory: the capital of Genoese Corsica had fallen and its governor had been captured. In his red robe and plumed hat, flanked by his Corsican guards and foreign servants, Theodore rode through the city streets, intent upon making the same impressive spectacle as he had made upon his arrival. The rebel soldiers and sympathizers were ecstatic. Those Genoese and republican Corsicans who remained were presumably less so, but the massacre they feared did not happen. French and English diplomats reported looting, but it is difficult to distinguish between disorganized looting by soldiers and the purposeful seizure of Genoese assets by Theodore to fund his war effort.

Theodore badly needed money to pay his soldiers and officers, and Bastia was the perfect place to get it. Genoese citizens and Corsican filogenovesi[1] were more prevalent in Bastia and its surrounding territories than anywhere else, which gave Theodore and his officers the excuse to plunder them. Costa records that mandatory "war contributions" were collected from the people of the region to the tune of over 1.5 million livres, which Count Sebastiano Costa claimed could provide for Theodore's army for more than a year. Specific wealthy families in Bastia were targeted for extra taxation; a certain signore in the city was compelled to give up 4,000 livres on his own. Much of this payment was "in kind," and in particular the rebels took cattle, olive oil, flour, and wine from wherever it was found. A good deal was seized from "absentee" owners, Genoese citizens and well-off Corsican filogenovesi who had fled the advance of the rebel forces.

The rebel gains in materiel were substantial. Not only was the garrison disarmed of its weapons, but Bastia was the largest Genoese arms depot on the island. The British consul in Genoa John Bagshaw, citing his secret contact in the city, claimed that the rebels had seized "two thousand muskets & much powder and shot" along with an unknown quantity of pistols, "large muskets" (presumably wall guns), swords, and even grenades. The citadel's battery also came into rebel hands; the defenders had spiked the guns but done little else, and local smiths soon restored most of them to working order. Costa also reported that the rebel militia stripped the Genoese soldiers of their boots, as despite Theodore's gifts of shoes many of the rebel soldiers seem to have remained barefoot or shod in the uncured boar-hide footwear worn by many of the natives.

The Genoese soldiers were interned until ransom or exchange could be arranged. The officers seem to have been treated graciously, but their inferiors were held in warehouses and the dungeons the Genoese had previously used to keep galley-slaves. Foreigners were interned with the Genoese unless they volunteered to join the king's foreign company. As for the Corsicans of the garrison,[2] the deadline for the king's amnesty had long since passed, but nevertheless Theodore offered clemency to those who would join the rebellion and imprisoned those who refused along with the Genoese. The only Corsicans not given this chance were the few Corsican officers. They were lined up and summarily shot in the town square as vittoli, traitors to the nation.[A] According to Costa, some 300 men joined the rebel ranks, including both Corsicans and foreigners.

The acquisition of a port, particularly after losing Porto Vecchio, was crucial to the rebel cause. Within days of Bastia's capture, a ship from Livorno arrived with a small cargo of munitions as well as a number of foreign volunteers and Corsicans returning to the motherland from foreign service. They included Giovan Luca Poggi, a Corsican captain in the Neapolitan army, and Antone Nobile Battisti, Count Giappiconi's brother-in-law and an engineer in the Venetian army. Within the next few weeks, two more ships full of "contraband" would arrive, this time from France, under captains Pierre-Paul Blanchier and Lorenzo Denas. Both delivered their cargoes safely, including 18 cannon, in part because the Genoese navy feared to fire on vessels bearing the French flag. Genoese complaints to the French government resulted in both captains being arrested upon their return to France, but that did not stop the trickle of cargo; a week later a French tartane called the St. Louis delivered muskets and ammunition to the rebels at Bastia. Were the shipments already arranged by Theodore, or by Ripperda (then in Morocco), or some greater power? Nobody seemed to know.

After a few days at Bastia, Theodore's army descended into the Nebbio, the fertile region around the Bay of San Fiorenzo. The population here was largely unsympathetic to the rebel cause, although there were evidently enough locals to assemble a pro-monarchist militia battalion under a native of the village of Oletta, Giovan Natali, who was made a colonel. Natali was a tenacious solider but also had a serious axe to grind against his neighbors, with whom he had quarreled during the earlier years of the revolt. He was quite pleased to lead the "confiscation" of filogenovesi property in the region, and responded to resistance with arson. His score-settling in the Nebbio, however, was a sideshow to Theodore's primary goal, which was to capture the port of San Fiorenzo. Although fairly small in population thanks to the "poor air" from nearby wetlands, its squat, cylindrical citadel overlooked an excellent sheltered cove that rivaled that of Porto Vecchio. Unless it was taken, the threat of a Genoese landing there would continually endanger Bastia and the rest of Theodore's recent conquests in the northeast.

The Genoese were also aware of San Fiorenzo's importance, and had reinforcements on the way. Actually the reinforcements had been intended for Bastia, but did not make it in time; Consul Bagshaw reported that their departure was delayed by panicked citizens fleeing from that city who erroneously claimed that it had already fallen. Instead, 600 Genoese regulars were diverted to San Fiorenzo under the command of Colonel Marchelli. That scuttled any hope of a quick assault on the town, and it lacked Bastia's vulnerable water supply, so there was nothing for it but to begin a siege. Guns were moved into position, although most of the artillery was moved southwards to San Pellegrino to assist in the thus far fruitless siege that was still going on there.

Theodore was a capable military leader, but he suffered at times from inconstancy. On June 4th, he received word from General Simone Fabiani, the governor of the Balagna, that he had defeated a 500-strong Genoese force and laid siege to Algajola. Fabiani added that he had received word that the citizens of the key town of Calenzana, the site of the rebels' finest victory over the imperial troops several years before, wished to join the rebellion but were prevented by a Genoese garrison. Costa feared it might be a trap, and said as much to Theodore, but the king insisted on going. With 300 men (possibly his royal guard), Theodore relocated westwards, and on the 8th Fabiani and the king assaulted the town. After a bloody and close-fought battle, the Genoese retreated from the town and withdrew to Calvi.[B] The victory was tempered only by the action of an enterprising Genoese captain in Algajola, who took advantage of Fabiani's absence to surprise and rout the small observation force he had left behind. His boastful missive to the Senate that he had destroyed one rebel cannon and captured seven (!) muskets from the fleeing Corsicans did not give the Genoese much to celebrate.

From the Balagna, Theodore rode to Vescovato, which he had established as a temporary headquarters in the northeast. There were matters of state he wished to discuss with Costa and Giafferi; men of good standing needed to be selected for the constitutionally-mandated Diet, which had never been formed, and Theodore wished to arrange the minting of currency. He also had numerous letters to write to foreign capitals, continental friends, and Ripperda. Strategically speaking, removing himself from the "front" at such a time to pursue matters of parliaments and coinage was not ideal, and he was criticized for it by some as being more interested in playing king than taking the responsibilities of one. Theodore, however, knew that gaining support from abroad was necessary to his purpose, and believed that the trappings of sovereignty—a currency, a Diet, foreign affairs, and so on—were preconditions to having one's sovereignty actually recognized, both in Corsica and abroad.

Still, it was a bad time to leave. Colonel Marchelli was reinforced in early June by the Compagnia dei Banditi under Captain Domenico de Franceschi, an irregular unit raised from Liguria by promising amnesty to bandits and freedom to criminals and galley slaves in exchange for their armed service. He succeeded in sallying forth and defeating the rebel encirclement, led by colonels Felice Cervoni and Ignazio Arrighi, and captured six guns. The royalists retreated in confusion; Cervoni subsequently accused Arrighi of cowardice, saying he fled the battlefield without engaging, which created such a rift between the two men that Arrighi subsequently abandoned the Nebbio altogether and returned to the mountains with his whole battalion. Marchelli unleashed Franceschi and his irregulars upon the Nebbio to punish traitors, and handed out some 200 muskets to filogenovesi loyalists who had been alienated by Natali's cruelty. Cervoni and Natali, badly outnumbered, withdrew into the hills to the south, although Natali soon returned as a guerrilla, moving about the country with a small band of men to conduct retaliations against "traitors" (and their families) who had joined up with Marchelli.

Having reconquered much of the Nebbio, Marchelli asked for further reinforcements to retake Bastia. The Senate, reeling over the loss of their island capital, had made the very (financially) painful decision to retain six additional companies of Swiss mercenaries. Two were diverted to Calvi to oppose any attempts by Fabiani to take that strong fortress, while the other four were dispatched to San Fiorenzo with four companies of Ligurians. By mid-June, Marchelli had amassed 1,500 regulars at San Fiorenzo (of whom 500 were Swiss), as well as around 600 native auxiliaries and at least 800 banditi.

Against this host Colonel Cervoni was badly outmatched. He sent messengers requesting aid, both from Theodore and from Colonel Castinetta in Bastia. Castinetta, however, did little to assist him. Bastia was a large and restless city, with many disloyal elements, and Castinetta was also convinced that Marchelli's attack on Bastia would come over the Bocca di Teghime, the pass over the mountainous spine of the Capo Corso to the west of Bastia. Rising 536 meters above sea level by way of a steep, rocky, well-wooded slope above Patrimonio, Teghime would not be an easy avenue of attack (particularly with abysmal Genoese logistics and a near total lack of pack animals) but it was the most direct, and Castinetta hoped that with preparation he could make it too costly to take. That, however, precluded being of much help to Cervoni further south. Cervoni, having withdrawn to Oletta less than five miles from San Fiorenzo, now faced the prospect of facing three thousand men with no more than two or three hundred, a figure which included Natali's local militiamen.


Footnotes
[1] Supporters of Genoa.
[2] The Genoese were not generally in the practice of stationing Corsican companies of the regular army on Corsica, so it's unclear who these pro-Genoese Corsican troops were. It's possible that the Genoese were simply so desperate for occupying forces that they bent their own rules, or perhaps these were loyalist irregulars or militia under their own officers.

Timeline Notes
[A] Vittolo was the name of the man who betrayed and assassinated Sampiero, the 16th century Corsican national hero. For centuries afterwards, Corsicans continued to use his name as a synonym for "traitor," in the same sense as "Quisling."
[B] IOTL, Theodore narrowly lost this battle because his men ran out of ammunition. ITTL, having taken Bastia and raided its armory, there's enough powder and shot to go around, and it becomes a hard-fought victory instead.
[C] For purposes of my sanity, only major towns and villages which have been mentioned so far in the TL are indicated. Other sites will be added for your reference as we go on. Some regions have also been added; except for Niolo, which is a single pieve, they all represent physical regions which cover multiple pieves.