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Soldiers, Smugglers, and Diplomats
By late March, Theodore's deputies Gianpietro Gaffori and Father Erasmo Orticoni were on their way to Calvi. Mindful of how previous rebel envoys had been treated by the Genoese, Gaffori and Orticoni requested a guarantee of safe passage from Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat de Boissieux. He did better than that; a company of grenadiers was dispatched a few miles outside of Calvi to escort them, and to make sure that once in the town they were not arrested by Commissioner-General Giovanni-Battista de Mari.
Boissieux treated the envoys very hospitably, but they were not exactly the men he had been hoping for. Boissieux's instructions from Versailles were somewhat conflicted—he was to exhaust all peaceable methods to subdue the rebellion before resorting to violence, but he was also told to avoid any dealings with Theodore, who was presumed to be a likely foreign agent, possibly British. To make peace, he needed high-level interlocutors among the rebels, but while Gaffori and Orticoni fit the bill he was also aware that they were associated with the adventurer-king. When Father Gregorio Salvini had told him by letter that a consulta would be convened to choose representatives, he had welcomed the news and pledged to wait, but he had not known it was to be an affair presided over by Theodore.
Boissieux asked them if they were representing the "Corsican nation," as he had been expecting, or "the Baron Neuhoff." "Why, seigneur," replied Gaffori with a bit too much cheek for a diplomat, "I might just as well ask whether you are a representative of France, or His Majesty King Louis." Boissieux's reply to this is not known, but the dilemma was clearly laid out—while Theodore's "reign" was a very loose one, he was sufficiently well-regarded by the Corsican leaders that it was difficult for Boissieux to negotiate with the "rebel movement" without going through him or his ministers, and that made it impossible for Boissieux to have it both ways. The general was irked but not dissuaded by this, and continued the talks for several more days, but the proposals of Gaffori and Orticoni were nonstarters. They suggested a number of possible alternatives. Of course, they said, independent Corsica could be a friendly and faithful ally of France, or failing this perhaps the French could permit Corsica to be an autonomous principality under the ultimate suzerainty of the French king. Orticoni even re-iterated Theodore's inventive proposal that through the mediation of the Pope, the French could recognize the "ancient claim" of Rome to Corsica in exchange for the cession of Avignon. Such proposals were somewhat beyond Boissieux's pay grade, but his orders were fairly clear. He could not, he reiterated, endorse or accept any proposal which denied the sovereignty of Genoa over Corsica.
To his credit, Boissieux's counter-proposal was humane and generous, and had it been offered a few years before the rebels would have considered themselves lucky. He proposed a general amnesty for all the rebels, forgiveness for all debt incurred by unpaid taxes since 1729, limits on the hated salt tax to put it in line with what the rebels had written into their own 1736 constitution, a mandate that all dioceses on Corsica be filled by Corsican bishops, the construction and funding of a university in Corsica for the native people, and other such concessions. Boissieux was obviously aware of the various demands the rebels had made since the rebellion's inception.
Had the rebels possessed any confidence in the willingness of the Genoese to honor these concessions, perhaps they would have accepted the general's offer, but one further proviso was a deal-breaker—Boissieux insisted that the Corsicans be disarmed. Gaffori and Orticoni, like all of the rebel leaders with half a brain, understood very well that promises by the French were only good so long as the French were present. Disarmament, however, was rather more permanent, and as soon as the French were gone the people would be helpless to resist any arbitrary decision by the Genoese Senate to rescind Boissieux's concessions. Indeed, that exact story had played out in 1734, when the rebels had surrendered to the might of the imperial forces and received promises that their grievances would be addressed if they only gave up their arms, only for the Genoese to rip up the agreement the very moment Austrian boots left Corsican beaches. They were not going to be fooled again.
Boissieux soon came to sympathize with their cause. He had no strong opinion on the Corsican matter prior to his arrival, aside perhaps from a general aristocratic distaste for rebellion, but his experiences soon turned him against the Genoese. Part of it was personal—he came to detest Mari, who fumed at him for meeting with the Corsican envoys and even tried unsuccessfully to engineer their arrest despite them being under French protection. Mari was furious with Boissieux for the offer he had given the rebels; his proposals were well outside his authority, Mari claimed, for the French had no business dictating Genoese policy, and a Lieutenant-General should dare not presume to tell the Senate what taxes it should demand or what universities it should build. Mari refused to even consider amnesty for the ringleaders of the rebellion, a matter on which he was probably less flexible than his government was, but the pitiless Senate seems to have agreed that the Corsicans had to make up the last nine years of lapsed taxes (for how else were they to pay for this ruinous French occupation force?). Driven by desperation, senatorial debates on the subject of Corsica had grown increasingly deranged and on occasion nearly genocidal. A proposal was made by one senator that, when the French had suppressed the rebellion, the island ought to be "depopulated" and resettled with foreign colonists of a "less contumacious race." As far as the Genoese government was concerned - and Mari quite agreed - Boissieux's job was a mere military matter; he was to crush the rebellion with fire and sword and then hand whatever was left over to the Genoese with no questions asked or demands made. Genoa was, after all, paying his troops; why should she not set the agenda?
Boissieux also came to resent the interference and evasiveness of his own government. Pierre-Jean Pignon, who had held talks with Salvini in Livorno under the authority of the French foreign secretary Jean-Jacques Amelot de Chaillou, arrived in Corsica shortly after Boissieux, but his presence was evidently not diplomatic in nature. The general correctly suspected that Pignon's purpose was to inform Amelot and the chief minister Cardinal André-Hercule Fleury of his activities, and complained to his superiors that Pignon was obviously biased towards the Genoese and probably in their pocket. He may also have resented the notion that Fleury trusted the reports of Pignon, a mere doctor and consul, over a count and veteran French general. Boissieux eventually won that contest, and managed to secure Pignon's recall from Corsica in May, but he was unable to make his government see the situation as he saw it. In a letter to Cardinal Fleury, he argued that no resolution was possible given the circumstances, for even if he reduced the island to submission by force the rebels would resume the fight as soon as he was gone. He requested that the government consider the Corsican request to be made subject to France, either as a French province or as a dependent principality, presumably for some Bourbon cadet.
As Boissieux waited for a response to this missive and for the Corsicans to formally consider his own proposal, hostilities continued between the Corsicans and Genoese. Skirmishing in southeast Corsican continued to escalate, with the Genoese in Porto Vecchio and rebel irregulars from La Rocca, Zicavo, and Fiumorbo launching increasingly violent raids and counter-raids against one another. In the west, the Corsican forces under Marquis Luca d'Ornano had duly complied with the French request to lift the siege of Ajaccio, but in April the Genoese took advantage of his to launch their own offensive from that city under the Genoese commandant Soprani. Soprani's force reaved through the countryside destroying orchards, stealing livestock, and burning houses. A furious d'Ornano managed at last to catch him, and on April 26th the rebels ambushed Soprani's force and reportedly massacred 200 Genoese and filogenovesi militiamen. D'Ornano ordered that no quarter be given, and the few men who somehow ended up as prisoners anyway were brought to the outskirts of Ajaccio and hanged within view of the walls. The French at Ajaccio were shocked, but Boissieux only saw the confirmation of his prior conviction that the rebels would never be reconciled with Genoa.
In May, as diplomacy and conflict were proceeding in parallel in Corsica, a curious and sensational document was published in Le Mercure Historique et Politique, the Amsterdam-based French language gazette edited by Jean Rousset de Missy. It purported to be a cargo manifest of a fleet which had just sailed from Texel bearing cargo for King Theodore and his army of liberty-loving patriots. The sums were sobering:
To say that this elicited some comment would be a bit too modest. If accurate, it was enough to supply an army—certainly the Genoese army, with a likely strength of less than 6,000 at the time, would have been amply armed by such a cargo. Some of the items are questionable—what, exactly, did the syndicate think the Corsicans would do with two thousand lances? Otherwise, however, it demonstrated as holistic a view of armed rebellion as one could expect from merchants, in which shoes, tools, and tents are no less important than arms. There are reasons to doubt the strict accuracy of the manifest, as its was published in a known pro-Theodore gazette and provided to de Missy by "Baron von Droste," a relative of Theodore. The fact that it was published at all suggests that it was intended as propaganda, either to dismay the Genoese (or French, for that matter) or to assure readers on the continent that Theodore was no joke.
Regardless, the cargo was still substantial enough to require three merchant ships to carry it, and internal letters within syndicate reveal their estimation of the value of the cargo at a considerable half million florins.[1] Even those who have confidently described the manifest as exaggerated must concede that the sums, at least when it comes to small arms, are not necessarily implausible. Amsterdam had emerged as a major hub of the arms trade in the 17th century. That a consortium of wealthy merchants with connections to banking houses in Amsterdam and Switzerland and the apparent tacit approval of the States General (for certainly nobody could have amassed and exported such a sum of arms without the government's knowledge) could have, in 1738, sent several thousand muskets to Corsica is entirely plausible. Compared to the roughly 180,000 firearms exported to the West African coast in the year 1730 alone by the Dutch and British, such a shipment was practically a rounding error.
To ensure compensation for such a princely sum of armaments, the syndicate placed one of their own in command of the fleet, Pierre Keelmann. Not merely an employee but a major investor himself, Keelmann allegedly had 100,000 florins sunk into the venture and could therefore be relied upon to take a very personal interest in full and prompt payment. He was given express instructions by the syndicate to not unload the supplies until that payment was forthcoming, preferably in the form of oil, to the tune of a million florins in value.[B] The exact profit margin expected is unclear, as the half-million estimate for the cargo clearly does not cover the overhead of the expedition, and it may not include the ready cash which Theodore was provided with. Clearly, however, the syndicate expected to profit, and it would not take much of a margin to make the venture notable; the margin on the musket trade to West Africa in those days sometimes sunk as low as 7%.
It would be several months before this fleet was to arrive. In the meantime, the Corsicans appeared to be more isolated than ever. The French had added four galleys to the initial blockading force of three frigates,[2] although those resource-intensive ships were of somewhat less value to the blockade than the cruisers. Yet the blockade failed to stop at least one ship bearing arms to the rebels, a "pinnace" out of Livorno which arrived in April. The manifest of that ship is unknown—it was small, and the contribution could not have been great—but it was notable in that on board was Matthias von Drost (or Mathieu), widely reported on the continent to be a nephew of Theodore.
Matthias von Drost has long been the most obscure of Theodore's relations. The Genoese alleged that he was not a relation of Theodore at all, nor even a German, but a Corsican spy by the same of "Salvini." Perhaps they were confusing him with the rebel spy and agent Father Gregorio Salvini, who was also active in Livorno. The name "Von Drost" suggests a connection to Theodore's uncle Franz Bernhard Johann von Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid, who was commonly known as the Freiherr von Drost from his subsidiary title of Drost zu Altena und Iserlohe and was the probable "Baron von Droste" who was the source for the manifest published by Le Mercure. Yet while Franz Bernhard had several known sons, none of them appear to have been named Matthias, Mathieu, or any variant thereof, and Franz Bernhard had only adopted that title as a kindness to Theodore, who would himself have been the inheritor of the Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid baronetcy had he not been disinherited by his grandfather. It is impossible that Matthias could have been the son of Franz Bernhard, as Franz's actual heir was 13 years old at the time, and one source gives the father of Matthias as "Georg von Drost."
Clearly the Genoese were wrong, for Theodore himself had no doubt that von Drost was his kinsman. Yet if Matthias was a close relation it is unclear why, despite apparently being in Tuscan service, he would have not appeared in Theodore's schemes until 1738. One must remember, however, that "nephew" was used loosely in this era to mean all matter of male relatives, and that drost was a fairly common title (approximately meaning "bailiff") in the region of the Low Countries and Westphalia. It seems most likely that Matthias was a somewhat distant cousin of Theodore, a theory which is supported by the fact that despite being the first one of Theodore's "nephews" to meaningfully contribute to the cause he appears to have never been considered as a plausible successor. Perhaps that only burnishes his image: he alone of the "Neuhoff nephews" cannot be accused of participating in Theodore's scheme in the hope of attaining royal power.
Drost, unlike Theodore's actual nephew Count Charles Philippe of Trévou, was here to stay, and he fit in well. Drost clearly spoke the language, having been in Tuscany for some years, and while he was no military genius he soon demonstrated that he was competent enough to command and charismatic enough for the Corsican militia to obey him. Theodore made him a general, which seemed to pass without comment; while the promotion of a fellow Corsican to such a rank always elicited envious complaints from their peers, the idea that the king might grant his "nephews" that exalted position immediately upon arrival appears to have been uncontroversial. He was, after all, the king's relative, and in a world where even the Popes exalted their nephews (and had, three years earlier, made a Spanish infante a cardinal at the age of 8), such nepotism was viewed as par for the course.
Footnotes
[1] Presumably "florins" is a reference to Dutch guilders, which were also commonly called florins. Based on known exchange rates in 1731, half a million guilders was equal to approximately 1.07 million French livres. Now, perhaps, would be a good time to remind the reader that Theodore was unable to raise money to get out of debtor's prison when the sum was "only" 30,000 florins.
[2] French galleys of the time were generally 3-gun ships, although for such a small armament the caliber was impressive: Two 18-pounder guns and a 36-pounder, all mounted as bow-chasers.
Some mounted an additional pair of 4-pounder guns in the bow.
Timeline Notes
[A] I don't know what this is. Any French speakers care to help me out here?
[B] I've tried to run some math on this, and without going into details, it doesn't really make sense. Part of the problem is the very limited information on prices and exchange rates that we have. It seems as if either Costa's estimate for the value of Balagnese olive oil was horribly off-base or the syndicate was valuing the oil at an extremely low rate, which seems unlikely. Then again, the syndicate was not basing its assumptions off a thorough study of the Corsican olive economy, but the claims Theodore had made in conversations from his jail cell. This was, essentially, a multi-million dollar gun-running scheme based on the equivalent of figures drawn hastily on the back of a napkin.
Soldiers, Smugglers, and Diplomats
Father Erasmo Orticoni, first foreign minister of the Kingdom of Corsica
Father Erasmo Orticoni, first foreign minister of the Kingdom of Corsica
By late March, Theodore's deputies Gianpietro Gaffori and Father Erasmo Orticoni were on their way to Calvi. Mindful of how previous rebel envoys had been treated by the Genoese, Gaffori and Orticoni requested a guarantee of safe passage from Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat de Boissieux. He did better than that; a company of grenadiers was dispatched a few miles outside of Calvi to escort them, and to make sure that once in the town they were not arrested by Commissioner-General Giovanni-Battista de Mari.
Boissieux treated the envoys very hospitably, but they were not exactly the men he had been hoping for. Boissieux's instructions from Versailles were somewhat conflicted—he was to exhaust all peaceable methods to subdue the rebellion before resorting to violence, but he was also told to avoid any dealings with Theodore, who was presumed to be a likely foreign agent, possibly British. To make peace, he needed high-level interlocutors among the rebels, but while Gaffori and Orticoni fit the bill he was also aware that they were associated with the adventurer-king. When Father Gregorio Salvini had told him by letter that a consulta would be convened to choose representatives, he had welcomed the news and pledged to wait, but he had not known it was to be an affair presided over by Theodore.
Boissieux asked them if they were representing the "Corsican nation," as he had been expecting, or "the Baron Neuhoff." "Why, seigneur," replied Gaffori with a bit too much cheek for a diplomat, "I might just as well ask whether you are a representative of France, or His Majesty King Louis." Boissieux's reply to this is not known, but the dilemma was clearly laid out—while Theodore's "reign" was a very loose one, he was sufficiently well-regarded by the Corsican leaders that it was difficult for Boissieux to negotiate with the "rebel movement" without going through him or his ministers, and that made it impossible for Boissieux to have it both ways. The general was irked but not dissuaded by this, and continued the talks for several more days, but the proposals of Gaffori and Orticoni were nonstarters. They suggested a number of possible alternatives. Of course, they said, independent Corsica could be a friendly and faithful ally of France, or failing this perhaps the French could permit Corsica to be an autonomous principality under the ultimate suzerainty of the French king. Orticoni even re-iterated Theodore's inventive proposal that through the mediation of the Pope, the French could recognize the "ancient claim" of Rome to Corsica in exchange for the cession of Avignon. Such proposals were somewhat beyond Boissieux's pay grade, but his orders were fairly clear. He could not, he reiterated, endorse or accept any proposal which denied the sovereignty of Genoa over Corsica.
To his credit, Boissieux's counter-proposal was humane and generous, and had it been offered a few years before the rebels would have considered themselves lucky. He proposed a general amnesty for all the rebels, forgiveness for all debt incurred by unpaid taxes since 1729, limits on the hated salt tax to put it in line with what the rebels had written into their own 1736 constitution, a mandate that all dioceses on Corsica be filled by Corsican bishops, the construction and funding of a university in Corsica for the native people, and other such concessions. Boissieux was obviously aware of the various demands the rebels had made since the rebellion's inception.
Had the rebels possessed any confidence in the willingness of the Genoese to honor these concessions, perhaps they would have accepted the general's offer, but one further proviso was a deal-breaker—Boissieux insisted that the Corsicans be disarmed. Gaffori and Orticoni, like all of the rebel leaders with half a brain, understood very well that promises by the French were only good so long as the French were present. Disarmament, however, was rather more permanent, and as soon as the French were gone the people would be helpless to resist any arbitrary decision by the Genoese Senate to rescind Boissieux's concessions. Indeed, that exact story had played out in 1734, when the rebels had surrendered to the might of the imperial forces and received promises that their grievances would be addressed if they only gave up their arms, only for the Genoese to rip up the agreement the very moment Austrian boots left Corsican beaches. They were not going to be fooled again.
Boissieux soon came to sympathize with their cause. He had no strong opinion on the Corsican matter prior to his arrival, aside perhaps from a general aristocratic distaste for rebellion, but his experiences soon turned him against the Genoese. Part of it was personal—he came to detest Mari, who fumed at him for meeting with the Corsican envoys and even tried unsuccessfully to engineer their arrest despite them being under French protection. Mari was furious with Boissieux for the offer he had given the rebels; his proposals were well outside his authority, Mari claimed, for the French had no business dictating Genoese policy, and a Lieutenant-General should dare not presume to tell the Senate what taxes it should demand or what universities it should build. Mari refused to even consider amnesty for the ringleaders of the rebellion, a matter on which he was probably less flexible than his government was, but the pitiless Senate seems to have agreed that the Corsicans had to make up the last nine years of lapsed taxes (for how else were they to pay for this ruinous French occupation force?). Driven by desperation, senatorial debates on the subject of Corsica had grown increasingly deranged and on occasion nearly genocidal. A proposal was made by one senator that, when the French had suppressed the rebellion, the island ought to be "depopulated" and resettled with foreign colonists of a "less contumacious race." As far as the Genoese government was concerned - and Mari quite agreed - Boissieux's job was a mere military matter; he was to crush the rebellion with fire and sword and then hand whatever was left over to the Genoese with no questions asked or demands made. Genoa was, after all, paying his troops; why should she not set the agenda?
Boissieux also came to resent the interference and evasiveness of his own government. Pierre-Jean Pignon, who had held talks with Salvini in Livorno under the authority of the French foreign secretary Jean-Jacques Amelot de Chaillou, arrived in Corsica shortly after Boissieux, but his presence was evidently not diplomatic in nature. The general correctly suspected that Pignon's purpose was to inform Amelot and the chief minister Cardinal André-Hercule Fleury of his activities, and complained to his superiors that Pignon was obviously biased towards the Genoese and probably in their pocket. He may also have resented the notion that Fleury trusted the reports of Pignon, a mere doctor and consul, over a count and veteran French general. Boissieux eventually won that contest, and managed to secure Pignon's recall from Corsica in May, but he was unable to make his government see the situation as he saw it. In a letter to Cardinal Fleury, he argued that no resolution was possible given the circumstances, for even if he reduced the island to submission by force the rebels would resume the fight as soon as he was gone. He requested that the government consider the Corsican request to be made subject to France, either as a French province or as a dependent principality, presumably for some Bourbon cadet.
As Boissieux waited for a response to this missive and for the Corsicans to formally consider his own proposal, hostilities continued between the Corsicans and Genoese. Skirmishing in southeast Corsican continued to escalate, with the Genoese in Porto Vecchio and rebel irregulars from La Rocca, Zicavo, and Fiumorbo launching increasingly violent raids and counter-raids against one another. In the west, the Corsican forces under Marquis Luca d'Ornano had duly complied with the French request to lift the siege of Ajaccio, but in April the Genoese took advantage of his to launch their own offensive from that city under the Genoese commandant Soprani. Soprani's force reaved through the countryside destroying orchards, stealing livestock, and burning houses. A furious d'Ornano managed at last to catch him, and on April 26th the rebels ambushed Soprani's force and reportedly massacred 200 Genoese and filogenovesi militiamen. D'Ornano ordered that no quarter be given, and the few men who somehow ended up as prisoners anyway were brought to the outskirts of Ajaccio and hanged within view of the walls. The French at Ajaccio were shocked, but Boissieux only saw the confirmation of his prior conviction that the rebels would never be reconciled with Genoa.
In May, as diplomacy and conflict were proceeding in parallel in Corsica, a curious and sensational document was published in Le Mercure Historique et Politique, the Amsterdam-based French language gazette edited by Jean Rousset de Missy. It purported to be a cargo manifest of a fleet which had just sailed from Texel bearing cargo for King Theodore and his army of liberty-loving patriots. The sums were sobering:
- 8,000 muskets, half of these with bayonets
- 4,000 pistols
- 1,000 "large muskets" (wall guns?)
- 800 carbines
- 27 artillery pieces: a dozen 24-pounders, a dozen 12-pounders, and three "large culverins" of 18-pound caliber
- 6,000 cannonballs of various calibers
- 100,000 pounds of coarse gunpowder for artillery
- 120,000 pounds of fine gunpowder for small arms
- 400,000 gun flints
- 100,000 pounds of lead shot
- 2,000 grenades
- 1,000 "wooden bombs" (bombes de bois)[A]
- 2,000 lances
- 500 hunting knives
- 3,000 bandoliers, military belts, powder horns, etc.
- 2,000 picks and other tools
- 8,000 pairs of shoes
- Cloth sufficient for 1,000 straw mattresses and canvas for 1,000 tents
- 400 uniforms and an unstated number of "flags and standards"
- 50 drums, 24 trumpets, and one "timbale" (kettle drum)
- 80 chests containing the personal effects of the king, including cash for paying soldiers and "establishing commerce"
To say that this elicited some comment would be a bit too modest. If accurate, it was enough to supply an army—certainly the Genoese army, with a likely strength of less than 6,000 at the time, would have been amply armed by such a cargo. Some of the items are questionable—what, exactly, did the syndicate think the Corsicans would do with two thousand lances? Otherwise, however, it demonstrated as holistic a view of armed rebellion as one could expect from merchants, in which shoes, tools, and tents are no less important than arms. There are reasons to doubt the strict accuracy of the manifest, as its was published in a known pro-Theodore gazette and provided to de Missy by "Baron von Droste," a relative of Theodore. The fact that it was published at all suggests that it was intended as propaganda, either to dismay the Genoese (or French, for that matter) or to assure readers on the continent that Theodore was no joke.
Regardless, the cargo was still substantial enough to require three merchant ships to carry it, and internal letters within syndicate reveal their estimation of the value of the cargo at a considerable half million florins.[1] Even those who have confidently described the manifest as exaggerated must concede that the sums, at least when it comes to small arms, are not necessarily implausible. Amsterdam had emerged as a major hub of the arms trade in the 17th century. That a consortium of wealthy merchants with connections to banking houses in Amsterdam and Switzerland and the apparent tacit approval of the States General (for certainly nobody could have amassed and exported such a sum of arms without the government's knowledge) could have, in 1738, sent several thousand muskets to Corsica is entirely plausible. Compared to the roughly 180,000 firearms exported to the West African coast in the year 1730 alone by the Dutch and British, such a shipment was practically a rounding error.
To ensure compensation for such a princely sum of armaments, the syndicate placed one of their own in command of the fleet, Pierre Keelmann. Not merely an employee but a major investor himself, Keelmann allegedly had 100,000 florins sunk into the venture and could therefore be relied upon to take a very personal interest in full and prompt payment. He was given express instructions by the syndicate to not unload the supplies until that payment was forthcoming, preferably in the form of oil, to the tune of a million florins in value.[B] The exact profit margin expected is unclear, as the half-million estimate for the cargo clearly does not cover the overhead of the expedition, and it may not include the ready cash which Theodore was provided with. Clearly, however, the syndicate expected to profit, and it would not take much of a margin to make the venture notable; the margin on the musket trade to West Africa in those days sometimes sunk as low as 7%.
It would be several months before this fleet was to arrive. In the meantime, the Corsicans appeared to be more isolated than ever. The French had added four galleys to the initial blockading force of three frigates,[2] although those resource-intensive ships were of somewhat less value to the blockade than the cruisers. Yet the blockade failed to stop at least one ship bearing arms to the rebels, a "pinnace" out of Livorno which arrived in April. The manifest of that ship is unknown—it was small, and the contribution could not have been great—but it was notable in that on board was Matthias von Drost (or Mathieu), widely reported on the continent to be a nephew of Theodore.
Matthias von Drost has long been the most obscure of Theodore's relations. The Genoese alleged that he was not a relation of Theodore at all, nor even a German, but a Corsican spy by the same of "Salvini." Perhaps they were confusing him with the rebel spy and agent Father Gregorio Salvini, who was also active in Livorno. The name "Von Drost" suggests a connection to Theodore's uncle Franz Bernhard Johann von Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid, who was commonly known as the Freiherr von Drost from his subsidiary title of Drost zu Altena und Iserlohe and was the probable "Baron von Droste" who was the source for the manifest published by Le Mercure. Yet while Franz Bernhard had several known sons, none of them appear to have been named Matthias, Mathieu, or any variant thereof, and Franz Bernhard had only adopted that title as a kindness to Theodore, who would himself have been the inheritor of the Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid baronetcy had he not been disinherited by his grandfather. It is impossible that Matthias could have been the son of Franz Bernhard, as Franz's actual heir was 13 years old at the time, and one source gives the father of Matthias as "Georg von Drost."
Clearly the Genoese were wrong, for Theodore himself had no doubt that von Drost was his kinsman. Yet if Matthias was a close relation it is unclear why, despite apparently being in Tuscan service, he would have not appeared in Theodore's schemes until 1738. One must remember, however, that "nephew" was used loosely in this era to mean all matter of male relatives, and that drost was a fairly common title (approximately meaning "bailiff") in the region of the Low Countries and Westphalia. It seems most likely that Matthias was a somewhat distant cousin of Theodore, a theory which is supported by the fact that despite being the first one of Theodore's "nephews" to meaningfully contribute to the cause he appears to have never been considered as a plausible successor. Perhaps that only burnishes his image: he alone of the "Neuhoff nephews" cannot be accused of participating in Theodore's scheme in the hope of attaining royal power.
Drost, unlike Theodore's actual nephew Count Charles Philippe of Trévou, was here to stay, and he fit in well. Drost clearly spoke the language, having been in Tuscany for some years, and while he was no military genius he soon demonstrated that he was competent enough to command and charismatic enough for the Corsican militia to obey him. Theodore made him a general, which seemed to pass without comment; while the promotion of a fellow Corsican to such a rank always elicited envious complaints from their peers, the idea that the king might grant his "nephews" that exalted position immediately upon arrival appears to have been uncontroversial. He was, after all, the king's relative, and in a world where even the Popes exalted their nephews (and had, three years earlier, made a Spanish infante a cardinal at the age of 8), such nepotism was viewed as par for the course.
Footnotes
[1] Presumably "florins" is a reference to Dutch guilders, which were also commonly called florins. Based on known exchange rates in 1731, half a million guilders was equal to approximately 1.07 million French livres. Now, perhaps, would be a good time to remind the reader that Theodore was unable to raise money to get out of debtor's prison when the sum was "only" 30,000 florins.
[2] French galleys of the time were generally 3-gun ships, although for such a small armament the caliber was impressive: Two 18-pounder guns and a 36-pounder, all mounted as bow-chasers.
Some mounted an additional pair of 4-pounder guns in the bow.
Timeline Notes
[A] I don't know what this is. Any French speakers care to help me out here?
[B] I've tried to run some math on this, and without going into details, it doesn't really make sense. Part of the problem is the very limited information on prices and exchange rates that we have. It seems as if either Costa's estimate for the value of Balagnese olive oil was horribly off-base or the syndicate was valuing the oil at an extremely low rate, which seems unlikely. Then again, the syndicate was not basing its assumptions off a thorough study of the Corsican olive economy, but the claims Theodore had made in conversations from his jail cell. This was, essentially, a multi-million dollar gun-running scheme based on the equivalent of figures drawn hastily on the back of a napkin.
- Carp
- Word Count: 3.1k