alternatehistory.com

As the Corsicans were fighting a war against the Genoese with musket and ball, Theodore was waging a one-man war with the Republic with paper and pen. Even before his landing on the island, Theodore had known very well that his success would probably be contingent upon finding foreign support for his venture. His early inquiries had been promising: during his preparations between 1734 and 1736 he had realized that there were few governments, aside from the Genoese Senate itself, which really cared whether Genoa retained Corsica. What worried statesmen in Paris, London, Madrid, Naples, Turin, and even Vienna was whose hands Corsica would fall into once it had been wrested free from the Republic. It was commonly assumed that Theodore was a front for some other power; newspapers speculated on who his backer might be, while diplomats and ministers sent urgent letters back and forth debating the latest "evidence" as to who his benefactors were. Theodore's challenge was not to prove to foreign powers that he could win—for that seemed very possible—but to satisfy them that, having won, he would not reveal himself to have been a pawn of their enemies all along.

The great power which was most directly concerned with the fate of Corsica was France. The island itself was of no great value to the kingdom, but it could be very valuable to her enemies. If one wished to cause the most mayhem to the lucrative trade between the French ports of Marseilles and Toulon and the Ottoman ports of the eastern Mediterranean, one could not design a better base for such interdiction than Corsica. The London Daily Journal observed in June 1736 that “Anybody who holds Corsica can, with two frigates of twenty cannon each, stop France’s trade with the Levant.” That potential would be cause for concern even if the holder of the isle was the king of Spain or Naples, both fellow Bourbons, but if Corsica were held by the British it would be a true disaster. As a result of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the British had gained a foothold in the Mediterranean with the acquisition of Gibraltar and Minorca. Corsica would make a fine addition to this string of bases, extending British naval power projection to the very coast of Italy and raising the prospect of a British stranglehold on the French Mediterranean.[1]

The first Frenchman to truly grasp the importance of the Corsican rebellion was Jacques de Campredon. Campredon was a diplomat with a long and distinguished career who had served as the French minister to Sweden and then to Russia before being dispatched to Genoa in 1728. From this position he had seen the rebellion from its very earliest days. He had established many contacts and sources in his years spent there and possessed a deep knowledge of the workings of the Genoese government; in both matters of Genoese elite society and the Corsican troubles, his knowledge was unrivaled among foreign observers.

By 1735, this knowledge had led Campredon to the conclusion that the war was unwinnable for the Genoese. In his opinion it was only a matter of time before the Republic completely lost control of the island, and thus the only question was which power would come subsequently to control it. Campredon wrote that the kings of Spain, Naples, and Sardinia were all very interested, and even claimed to have uncovered evidence of an imperial scheme to bequeath the island to Portugal. Campredon knew very well of the threat which a hostile fleet, or even a few privateers, could pose to French trade out of Toulon and Marseille, and concluded that the only way for France to safeguard her own interests in the Mediterranean was to take possession of Corsica for herself.


King Louis XV and his ministers thought the idea was at least worthy of study, and gave Campredon a royal blessing to move ahead with his plans. Campredon prudently observed that French control would be impossible without at least some base of support among the Corsicans themselves, and began establishing contacts with various Corsican chiefs in an attempt to build up a pro-French faction. Very quickly his "French party" came to include some very notable men indeed, including Luigi Giafferi and Luca d'Ornano. Convinced at the time that Spanish intervention was likely, Campredon sent letters back to Paris arguing that "we should propose to Genoa to cede Corsica to France." In late 1735, when the rebellion seemed to be in desperate straits, he obtained from some of the beleaguered rebel leaders a signed document inviting the King of France to take sovereignty of their island. It seems he purposefully attached no date to the document so it could be used at his government's leisure. Having thus built a favorable faction within Corsica and obtained an invitation to rule it, Campredon sent the document to Paris. By now, however, his views on how best to obtain the island had evolved based on his own appraisal of Genoese politics. He now believed that Genoese pride was probably too great to permit a negotiated cession, and the best solution was for France to invade Corsica without warning and present its occupation to the Genoese as a fait accompli. It was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and Genoese outrage could be mollified by compensation after the fact.

Campredon may have known the Genoese well, but he had badly misjudged his own king. Louis was scandalized by the very notion of such an unprovoked assault against the Genoese Republic, and Campredon's audacious plan was immediately rejected and suppressed. Rebuffed, Campredon returned to covertly expanding the pro-French faction on the island, but just a few months later his careful work was completely ruined by Theodore's arrival. Many of the Corsican leaders had a favorable opinion of France, but while Campredon offered only promises of future succor Theodore offered food, guns, and ammunition. It was no contest at all: the "French party" ceased to exist practically overnight. Giafferi, who had been Campredon's greatest catch, became Theodore's prime minister. Soon after, Campredon received instructions from his government to cease all contact with the rebels. Sternly commanded to turn his attentions elsewhere, he began working on a report on Genoese politics and the social lives of its elite which was published in 1737 as the Relation de l'État de Gênes.

Although Campredon's scheme had come to nothing, French concern with Corsica only intensified after it became known that Theodore had been first conveyed to Corsica by a British ship piloted by a British captain, Richard "Dick" Ortega. In fact the British government had already banned its citizens from having any business with the "malcontents" of Corsica, and Ortega was acting on his own volition under the mistaken impression that Theodore had some arrangement with the King of Britain. He and his ship, the Richard, were as mentioned the focus of a minor diplomatic crisis which was resolved by the capture of his ship by the Genoese, Ortega's suicide, and the repatriation of his crew to Britain.[A] After this point more supplies were coming to the island under the French flag than the British, but nevertheless the Republic dispatched Marquis Giovanni Francesco Brignole Sale, a future Doge and one of the foremost Genoese statesmen of the age, to London in May to lodge an official protest over the manner of Theodore's arrival. Although wary of British involvement, Campredon does not seem to have believed that Theodore was really a British agent. Most speculation by serious minds (as opposed to febrile gossip in the papers) centered around three possibilities: Spain, Naples, and Sardinia.

Much of the Spanish speculation centered not on King Felipe V but his wife Elisabetta Farnese. The queen had extraordinary influence over the government and a keen interest in foreign policy with a particular focus on Spanish power in Italy. She herself was the daughter of the Duke of Parma, and eventually became the heiress of that state which was passed to her son Carlos in 1731. By 1736 Carlos had exchanged that title for that of Naples,[2] but the queen still hoped to regain her patrimony for her younger son Felipe. Elisabetta had certainly met Theodore when he was in Spanish service, at least in the context of a royal audience, and it seems plausible that she knew who he was; he had, after all, married one of her maids of honor and had been a protege of Cardinal Alberoni, once her closest adviser. Nevertheless, there is little actual evidence to suggest that she had much interest in Corsica, and Theodore's association with the disgraced Johan Willem Ripperda (whose dukedom had since been officially stripped from him in absentia as a result of his service to the Moors) probably counted against him.


Carlos, now King of Naples and Sicily, was himself a possible contender. He had already been offered the crown of Corsica once before; the rebel delegation of 1734 which had included Andrea Ceccaldi, who was either at that time or very soon to be a colonel in Carlos's army, had traveled to Madrid to propose that the infante become their king. As the Spanish Bourbons were quite busy with the conquest of Naples and the broader War of Polish Succession, this proposal came to nothing. By 1736, however, Carlos's position was more secure, and as a twenty year old conqueror full of ambition it was quite plausible that he might set his sights on further acquisitions. Carlos had presumably never met Theodore, but his secretary of state Joseph Joachim, marqués de Montallegre was not only a good friend of Theodore from their days together in Spain but also his marital relation, as Montallegre had married the sister of Theodore's wife Catalina.[3] Notably, Naples seems to have been a port of significance for illicit trade with the rebels second only to Livorno.

Finally there was Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia. The Savoyard state had gone to war with Genoa twice in the 17th century, and tensions had been ratcheted up further by the bequest of the Marquisate of Finale to Genoa in 1713 as this territory was also claimed by the House of Savoy.[4] Around 1727, just before the outbreak of the rebellion, Sardinian and Genoese forces had clashed at the Ligurian border; it was not exactly a war, but shots were fired, and the Genoese added a thousand men to their standing army just to be on the safe side. Finale, not Corsica, remained Charles Emmanuel's principal object, but as the Genoese position deteriorated he had reason to be concerned. Everything that was true about the island posing a threat to French shipping was even more true for Sardinia, a two-part state whose only link between Piedmont and Sardinia proper consisted of the port of Nice and the waters around Corsica. Initially, Charles Emmanuel was quite content to passively observe the continuing woes of the Genoese, but after the fall of Bastia his government became increasingly anxious about the prospect of French intervention.

Theodore's diplomatic strategy, insofar as it could be called a strategy, was little more than to throw everything at the wall and hope that something stuck. Most of his letters were to friends, acquaintances, and family members asking for monetary support, but he also sought constantly to gain the ear of diplomats and royal ministers. He was not picky; the French, Spanish, British, Sardinians, and Austrians were all courted for their support or at least asked to reject Genoa's contrary overtures. Theodore knew his politics well, and needled at the fears and neuroses of each of these powers by implying that if they did not support him the island would surely be delivered into the hands of their enemies. To the British, for instance, he raised the specter of Stuart conspiracies with the backing of France and Spain; he was not ashamed at all to use the Old Pretender as a bogeyman despite having personally served his cause as a secret agent for years.

The Genoese diplomatic strategy was to secure pledges from other powers to bar their nationals from providing arms to or having any commerce with the rebels. France had done this in 1731 and Britain in 1732, while Sardinian authorities in Nice (but not the Court of Turin itself) had banned arms sales to the Corsicans in 1731. In July of 1736, Genoa succeeded in getting a similar pledge from the States General of the Netherlands, and Britain re-iterated her own ban on dealings with the "malcontents" after the Ortega affair. Attempts to gain the same promise from other powers, however—most notably Spain, Naples, and Tuscany—seem to have born little fruit.

Footnotes
[1] There was of course Livorno, just across the water from Corsica, which was to be the major British naval base in Italy during the coming War of Austrian Succession. Livorno, however, was not a British possession but part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and a free port; its use depended on the friendship of the Medici (and after the Grand Duke's death in 1737, the Habsburgs) and this might not always be guaranteed. Livorno was also a poor site—not an obvious place for a port, it had been essentially willed into existence by the Medici, and it suffered from both a comparatively shallow harbor and a lack of fresh water, which had to be carried from some distance inland. Geographically speaking, Porto Vecchio, San Fiorenzo, and Calvi were all clearly superior. Finally, since Livorno was on the continent it was potentially vulnerable to landward attack in a way that Corsica was obviously not, something which the British of all people could certainly appreciate.
[2] Technically the War of Polish Succession, when all of this was occurring, was still ongoing in 1736, although open hostilities had ended in October of 1735. A final treaty would not be signed until 1738.
[3] The fact that Montallegre and Theodore remained on good terms in 1736 is another reason to suspect that the tales of Theodore's supposed mistreatment of his wife were merely Genoese fabrications. If Theodore had really stolen all of Catalina's money, abandoned her in poverty, and bigamously married while she was still alive as Genoese "witnesses" attested, one suspects that the relationship between Theodore and Catalina's brother-in-law would have been less than amicable.
[4] The Savoyard dukes became Kings of Sardinia only in 1720.

Timeline Notes
[A] If you haven't already guessed, I've decided to retcon my little POD involving Ortega surviving; I initially thought I would do something with it, but I've decided it's not necessary and doesn't really change anything that's happened thus far. I have not yet edited my previous posts to reflect this decision, but I will soon.