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Thus far in their Nebbio campaign, time had been on the side of the Corsicans. Their slow strangulation of San Fiorenzo had sunk Genoese morale to rock-bottom and caused conditions in the besieged town to deteriorate to abominable levels. In addition to the bouts of malaria which struck the garrison (especially, it was said, the Germans and Swiss), the unhygienic conditions had led to epidemics of scabies and typhus. Yet Theodore was now beginning to come to the end of his means. Powder and ammunition were running low—his tricks to smuggle powder out of San Fiorenzo itself only got him so far—and cash with which to keep his army in the field was likewise being quickly drained away.

Other grave issues, too, pressed upon him. Late October brought the news of the assassination of Count Anton-Francesco Giappiconi, Theodore's minister of war and one of his most prominent supporters, who was ambushed and slain in the Castagniccia while attempting to raise troops. The assassins were claimed by some to have been motivated by vendetta against Theodore's regime, perhaps regarding the execution of the traitor Luccioni early in the war, but the Corsicans universally believed that Genoese money had paid for his death. Coming close one the heels of this misfortune was a major incursion led by Genoese troops gathered at Porto Vecchio, who had devastated Fiumorbo and now advanced towards Aleria on the eastern coast.

Both events demonstrated the strategy of the new Genoese commissioner Giovanni-Battista de Mari. Mari, a well-respected diplomat who had been brought out of retirement to take over the administration of Corsica, had no military experience but considerable cunning and political savvy. Given the difficulties of Colonel Marchelli at San Fiorenzo and the poor state of the Genoese military in Corsica generally, Mari concentrated his funds on assassinating or suborning rebel leaders and concentrated his forces on the "soft underbelly" of the eastern Diqua, hoping to cause enough disunion and panic as to compel Theodore to abandon his siege or at least bleed away his troops until the siege was no longer practicable.

It was a good strategy, as Theodore could not easily respond. He needed San Fiorenzo: with it, the productive Nebbio could be secured, a new major port could be added to Bastia and Isola Rossa, and the whole northeast quadrant of the island would be free of easy staging areas for Genoese invasions.[1] Without it, his political position might well crumble, and his reign could be at an end. Theodore dispatched Colonel Antonio Colonna, one of his most trusted commanders, to organize a defense, but he could not afford to send more than a token bodyguard with him; the rebels in the south would have to rely on themselves and their own resources.

By this point the Genoese garrison of San Fiorenzo under Marchelli numbered between one thousand and 1,200 men. This was a considerable drop from a high of more than three thousand shortly after his disembarkation on Corsica, caused by the loss at Rutali (in which some estimated nearly a thousand Genoese and auxiliaries were lost) as well as desertion, death, and medical evacuation due to the abysmal conditions in the Genoese camp. Theodore's force did not vastly outnumber them, if indeed it outnumbered them at all—modern estimates range from a thousand to 1,500 men, which by rebel standards was a very large army, surpassed only by the two thousand or so Theodore had led against the Genoese at Furiani at the outset of his reign. As Marchelli continually complained in his letters to the Senate that even some of the soldiers who remained suffered from ailments which made them unable to fight, however, raw numbers may not give a full account of the Corsican advantage.

Theodore could wait no longer, and on the 2nd of November the Corsicans under Lieutenant-General Count Andrea Ceccaldi surged forward across the Aliso valley. Theodore had hoped for surprise, but he did not get it—Costa blamed traitors within the royalist camp. What followed was a stinging rebel defeat. The marshy terrain around the Aliso slowed and disordered the rebel advance. Theodore had ordered several cannon moved to Buttogio to cover their advance, but their fire was innacurate and made little impression. The Genoese, formed up on the slope of the Silla Morta, laid down fire into the milling crowds of slowly-advancing rebel infantry, and two Genoese guns joined their volleys with grapeshot. The Corsicans stuck with the attack longer than expected considering how many were irregulars; it was the terrain and their tactics which were in doubt, not their bravery. Nevertheless, after three hours of fighting the Corsicans pulled back, having suffered much worse than the Genoese defenders.


On their far left flank the Genoese had posted a Swiss company under Captain Jost, a mercenary officer from Grisons. Theodore and Ceccaldi had not placed much emphasis on this flank, staffing it only with irregulars, but Jost's position had a wooded creek-bed immediately below it. The irregulars, having advanced as far as this wood, took cover among the trees and shot at the Swiss. This shoot-out ended when Jost ordered an advance with the bayonet, at which point the irregulars fled. Jost, preparing for a second assault and wishing to deny the enemy their cover, decided to keep his newly-taken position on the other side of the wood. This made another such rebel advance under cover impossible, but it also put him out of position, much further forward than the main line and with his own flank unprotected.

The Corsican command soon realized the error. Theodore ordered Captain Silvestre Colombani and his foreign company to reinforce the right flank, and sent a horse messenger for Colonel Giovan Natali, whose position was east of San Fiorenzo. During that morning's attack, Natali had made a foray down the defile of the Poggio which had been easily repulsed; it may have been a feint anyway. This time, Natali took most of his men south, leaving only a token force at the Poggio gap. During these maneuvers, Theodore ordered the bombardment of the Genoese lines to resume, while Ceccaldi organized a demonstration in the center to occupy the attention of the Genoese. Obscured by the cliffs of the Silla Morta, Natali's movement was unobserved.

The second major assault began around an hour after noon. Natali's attack was observed by the Genoese Major Morati, who detached forces to reinforce Jost, but it was too late; Jost's exposed flank was hit by Natali's militia and the battle in the woods behind his forward position turned into a melee, and the Swiss and Corsicans were said to have clashed with bayonets and cutlasses. Professionals though they were, the Swiss were both outnumbered and enveloped and did not stand for long.

The main rebel attack had been no more successful than the first; less so, in fact, since the troops were shy after the early morning butchery and Colonel Carlo Felice Giuseppe on the rebel left had outright refused to make another attack through the marshes. The forces of Natali and Colombani were so disorganized from the melee in the woods that they were incapable of following up with an immediate attack against the Genoese center. A counterattack might have restored the Genoese position, or a new line might have been formed on the north ridge of the Silla Morta. Instead, however, and much to the bafflement of the Corsicans, the Genoese withdrew; the Genoese center abandoned its position and retreated past the Poggio into San Fiorenzo proper, and the rest of the force followed. In effect, Jost's withdrawal sent the entire army into retreat.


Marchelli, who came under harsh criticism for his actions, was accused by some of cowardice and incompetence. Marchelli himself would later turn the blame on Morati, who was at the front and (he claimed) ordered the withdrawal. If so, perhaps Morati, seeing Jost collapse on his left, simply lost his nerve and started a retreat to avoid being outflanked; in fairness to him, he was not fully aware of the situation on the left, where the field was partially forested and an unexpected force had just come out of nowhere. It is possible he believed that the attack on his left was a far more serious affair than what it actually was, and after seeing Jost's retreat ordered a tactical withdrawal that could not be undone without tremendous confusion.

The Genoese troops retreated in good order, but as a result they abandoned not only their two field guns but their best defensive position. The Corsicans crossed the killing field of the marshy Aliso valley almost without opposition. Marchelli did his best to organize his forces for a counterattack, but by the time he was ready it was already well into the afternoon and the rebels had crested the Silla Morta. His attack, the final major action of the day, was halfhearted and failed to dislodge the rebels. The only real creditable action by a Genoese commander was in the north, where Captain Franchi repulsed an attack by Captain Poggi and held the bridge over the Natio. Bloodied and tired, the Corsicans could give no more, and the day's battle ended. The Genoese still held the town and the Poggio river, but their position was now hopeless. On the day after the battle, Major Antone Nobile Battisti was called forward to assemble most of the field guns and a few of the Ochinese battery guns into a "grand battery" of seven cannon to the north of Buttogio, where they could bombard the defenders and the town center at no more than a thousand yards. The Corsican gunners, inexperienced though they were, could easily range their guns on these stationary targets.

At last the Genoese had a stroke of luck; the arrival of a flotilla of eight ships bearing food and ammunition which had threaded the needle down the Bay of San Fiorenzo thanks to congenial weather. They did not bring many reinforcements, however, and at this point food and ammunition were of limited tactical value when Marchelli's own headquarters was being struck by cannonballs, although the rebel battery fire had slowed somewhat in an effort to conserve dwindling powder.

Marchelli, believing himself to be heavily outnumbered and probably unaware of the rebels' difficulties with powder, decided the cause was hopeless. Commissioner-General Mari, however, had instructed him to hold the port at all costs and had forbidden him to enter into any negotiations with the rebels. He found a solution: taking three of the recently-arrived ships, he loaded the wounded and sick on board and announced that he would be personally returning to Genoa to demand reinforcements from the Senate. He ordered Morati to supervise the defense until he returned, and conveyed to him Mari's warning not to surrender.

It seems unlikely that he actually imagined that this plan was likely to succeed given the grave situation of the Genoese at San Fiorenzo. He had, in effect, stitched up Morati, who he disliked and blamed for the earlier withdrawal; if the garrison really was doomed to fall, then it would fall on Morati's watch, and Marchelli could disavow any surrender as contrary to his direct orders. When the colonel sailed away, Morati was left with no more than 600 troops, and while his food situation had been improved his tactical situation was grim. The rebels outnumbered him and outgunned him, and he held a largely unfortified position surrounded by enemies.

It was only a matter of days before he decided that he was not going to preside over the wholesale loss of the garrison as Marquis Rivarola had when Bastia fell, and elected to use the remaining ships anchored off Tettola beach to evacuate with all the men they could carry. That this withdrawal was accomplished largely unmolested suggested to some that Morati had come to some agreement with the rebels; he strenuously denied it, and it is also possible that the rebels, having taken serious casualties of their own and critically low on gunpowder, simply lacked the means to oppose his flight. On November 13th, King Theodore and his army entered the battered town of San Fiorenzo, and the Moor's Head was raised above the pockmarked citadel.[2]

For Theodore, the victory was a vital one, the culmination of a campaign in the northeast fought since that spring. Yet unlike his victory at Bastia, which had fueled his later campaigns with arms, money, and munitions, San Fiorenzo did not provide him with much of a boost. Unlike Rivarola, who had been forced to capitulate, Morati had withdrawn with most of the militarily useful stores. As for money, San Fiorenzo was a tiny village compared to Bastia, and the surrounding countryside had long since been looted or ruined by months of conflict between the rebels and the filogenovesi. An addition of a port, particularly one as good as San Fiorenzo, was a potential boon to the rebels, but it did not immediately fill his pockets or his magazines.

He had little choice but to disband his army to conserve his dwindling money and munitions. All that remained was the "royal guard" and the foreign company, together amounting to no more than 400 men, and some of these were needed to assist Colonel Natali, the newly-appointed military governor of the Nebbio, in keeping control of a province that was still in large part pro-Genoese. When he returned to Vescovato in the following week, it was with fewer than 250 men. Colonna had not encountered much success raising volunteers in the south, but the situation in Fiumorbo was stabilized somewhat by the actions of the rebel zealots of Zicavo,[A] who under the Lusinchi brothers, Milanino and Carlo, contested Fiumorbo with the Genoese in the traditional manner of ambuscades and guerrilla actions. This opposition, the fall of San Fiorenzo, and raids by General Michele Durazzo against the environs of Porto Vecchio would eventually convince the Genoese to halt their advance and return to winter quarters.


Footnotes
[1] Although the Genoese did occupy the northern end of the Capo Corso, that position was at the end of a long, narrow, and mountainous peninsula. To sustain a serious offensive down the length of the Cape was a logistical near-impossibility for the Genoese.
[2] As a postscript, Morati was arrested along with Marchelli upon his return to Genoa on suspicion of cowardice. Marchelli's argument that he had merely taken a brief and necessary leave to gather reinforcements was scarcely believable, and yet no prosecution followed. The likely explanation is that Genoa feared the consequences of such an action. The Genoese blockade of Corsica was not only of goods and materiel, but information; diplomats remarked that one could always tell when the Genoese were doing poorly because there would be a prolonged dearth of any news at all about Corsica. To subject either Marchelli or Morati to a public court-martial would involve divulging details about just how poor the Genoese situation was and how badly they had performed. The Senate, or perhaps the War Office, probably decided it would be far better to sweep it all under the rug. Both men were soon freed and retained their ranks, although Morati languished on indefinite half-pay and eventually resigned from the army. Marchelli seems to have remained active, probably thanks to his influential family, but he was never again posted to Corsica.

Timeline Notes
[A] "Zealots" is an appropriate word. Theodore was very popular in Zicavo, which IOTL constituted the last refuge of the rebel movement during the French occupation of 1738-41. This popularity was in part due to the efforts of a charismatic local priest who preached that the rebellion was a holy war and that killing a Genoese soldier would immediately absolve one of all sin. While the mountain shepherds of Niolo enjoyed a reputation as the hardiest and most warlike of the rebels, nobody surpassed the Zicavesi in devotion to the King.