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Bad Faith
General Ceccaldi directing his troops [A]
As Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur fought his way northwards, a state of truce prevailed in the Balagna. King Theodore and his officers do not seem to have expected the diplomatic overtures which Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat, Marquis de Boissieux made to them following the French victory in the north. Theodore admitted that it was "curious" that Boissieux, who so clearly had the upper hand, had not chosen to immediately attack the royalists in the Nebbio while they were weak. Still, if Boissieux wanted to talk, Theodore would talk, while his lieutenants scrambled to come up with some plan for the defense of the country.
Yet Boissieux seems to have resorted to negotiation precisely because he was the stronger party, and he knew it. The Corsicans had faced the French and lost badly; there was no reason to think they would do better the second time around with fewer men and a demoralized army. Perhaps negotiations gave them time to prepare, but it would not be enough time for the Corsican militia to transmute itself into a fighting force capable of besting the finest army in Europe. Boissieux also understood better than any of his subordinates that fighting the Corsicans in the mountains would be a different game altogether. While his overall strategic plan assumed that the rebellion could be strangled by capturing the coastal regions and cutting off all resupply, the strangulation would not be instantaneous, and some die-hards might well hold out in the mountains.
The best outcome—for himself, for his men, and, he believed, for the Corsicans—was a capitulation by the rebel command, and he was willing to offer generous terms to accomplish it. The leaders of the rebellion would, he wrote, only suffer exile; they would not be permitted to return to Corsica, but they would avoid any further punishment and would not be handed over to the Genoese. Even Theodore himself was included in this offer. Boissieux, however, was also firm. The terms of Fontainebleau were not open for negotiation, and the surrender demanded was unconditional; the Corsicans would have to consign themselves utterly to "the equity and clemency of His Majesty." Perhaps having learned from his earlier failed negotiations, Boissieux also set a time limit. Any of the Corsican rebel leaders who had not tendered their surrender within 20 days of his pronouncement would lose all hope of clemency, and those Corsicans who continued in their resistance would be subject to "the full rigors of war."
Again playing the would-be collaborator, Theodore tried his best to drag out the end date, telling Boissieux that he needed more time to bring the Corsican generals around. A consulta would have to be called, of course, and here Theodore appeared to place his monarchy on a surprisingly liberal footing. As he had been made king by the will of the people, he wrote to Boissieux, he could not very well take such a drastic step as surrendering the country without consulting them, which meant a fully constituted consulta of all the parishes. But Boissieux was not having it. If Theodore was king, went his dismissive reply, then he should order his subjects to surrender; and if he was not a king, then he was merely a rebel, and should surrender himself immediately or be treated as a common bandit.
Boissieux's ultimatum was issued on the 26th of May, three days after the Battle of the Balagna, which made the deadline the 15th of June. On the 10th, however, a messenger riding hard from Orezza brought news to Theodore of the action at Alesani which had transpired over the previous two days. Ceccaldi's "victory" was most welcome, but Theodore seized at once upon the "atrocities" which Ceccaldi claimed Villemur had perpetrated. On the 12th, a letter reached Boissieux in which Theodore castigated him for ordering the plunder and burning of Corsican villages and the murder of innocent people (by which he presumably meant Villemur's summary executions of suspected rebels). He accused Boissieux of treachery, having extended an olive branch with one hand and then plunged a dagger into the back of the Corsicans with the other. How, indeed, could he entrust his people's fate to the "equity and clemency" of a king who represented himself with such faithless and barbarous servants?
Boissieux did not trust Theodore. He was beginning to see Theodore for what he was—that is, a highly accomplished liar—and suspected that his accusations were mere fabrications, a means to catch him off guard or trick him into giving the rebels more time. He did not reply to Theodore's accusations. He did, however, demand an accounting from Villemur, as this letter was the first he had heard about the Battle of Alesani. Villemur had not made contact in several days, and Boissieux dispatched a frigate to find him and bring him this urgent query.
Meanwhile, Villemur's progress was being delayed by the sick and wounded, and their number was rising every day as disease took its toll on his brigade and rations were gradually scaled back to stretch out supplies. Villemur wanted to leave the invalids behind with a battalion to supervise their evacuation while the rest of the brigade went on ahead, but Cervioni did not seem like the right place to do this—it was too exposed, too close to the enemy, and several miles from the coast. A single battalion posted there might be overrun by the rebels he fought just up the valley, and given what had happened to the doomed company of his own Bassigny Regiment at Milaria it seemed within the realm of possibility that the rebels would do the unthinkable and slaughter the invalids.
In Villemur's opinion, the better option was San Pellegrino, a Genoese watchtower less than fourteen miles up the coast. It seemed like the ideal place to relocate the invalids and for the whole army to pause and receive new supplies. Although no great fortress like Calvi, the Torre di San Pellegrino was a stout enough structure to have resisted a rebel siege for months even with artillery (though the rebel artillery was crewed by amateurs). It had fallen to the Corsicans, but so far the Corsicans had never stood and faced Villemur's brigade, and the brigadier suspected they were not about to start now. If they did make a stand and held the tower, Villemur's lack of artillery would be somewhat problematic, but it could be made up for by the naval gunnery of the French and Genoese fleets.
In fact Villemur had tried to arrange this well in advance. On the 4th of June, the day he departed from Aleria, he had given instructions to a Genoese captain to bring troops to occupy the fortress and to prepare warships to assist him against San Pellegrino if it turned out to be rebel-occupied. On the 10th—the day after the Battle of Alesani—he had submitted a report of the previous day's events, as well as his request for both fighting and supply ships to meet him at San Pellegrino as soon as possible, to the commander of a Genoese tartane. Unluckily for Villemur, that tartane was attacked by Corsican corsairs off the coast of Biguglia. The ship escaped, but only by beating far out to sea; it appears to have landed at Portoferraio on Elba and did not attempt a return to Corsica until several days later, when it was too late to make any difference. Villemur's first message on the 4th regarding armed ships did come through, and the Genoese had a flotilla of three galleys in the vicinity, but they were unsure where and when Villemur was going to be, and after seeing no sign of him at San Pellegrino on the 10th they were forced to sail south to take on fresh water.
Ceccaldi had no special knowledge of Villemur's plans, but any fool could have predicted Villemur's next move; there was no other way to go but north. After crossing the Fiumalto near San Pellegrino, the coastal plain widened significantly, and from there it was only 18 miles more to Bastia. If Villemur could not be stopped at San Pellegrino it seemed likely the next battle would be on the outskirts of Bastia itself. That proximity to Bastia, however, also meant proximity to the rebel forces in the Nebbio.
Theodore had been holding his forces back in the Nebbio in anticipation of an attack by Rousset, but Ceccaldi's letter arriving on the 10th changed his calculations entirely. Ceccaldi wrote that he was certain Villemur would be on the move north to San Pellegrino as soon as possible. Theodore, realizing that it was only two days to San Pellegrino and still five days until the end of Boissieux's deadline, did the math and announced a new strategy: he would steal a march on Villemur by leading the regulars and several companies of militia to San Pellegrino, joining with Ceccaldi's forces, and attacking the French with their combined forces. There would then be enough time to return to the Nebbio before Boissieux's grace period ended and before Boissieux received news of what had happened. It would, Theodore claimed, be a "stroke of lightning" as had been accomplished in 1736, when the rebels had force marched to Porto Vecchio, taken the defenders by surprise, and stormed the city.
The plan was not well-received. Chancellor Sebastiano Costa and Prime Minister Liugi Giafferi thought it quite mad, and Fabiani demanded that if it was to be done it should certainly not be led by the king, urging him to appoint Giafferi, Count Castinetta (Colonel Gio-Giacomo Ambrosi di Castinetta, military governor of Bastia) or Viscount Kilmallock (Adjutant-General Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock, Theodore's brother-in-law) instead. All were reluctant to bet on another field engagement with the French forces that had already demonstrated in the Balagna that they could steamroll Corsican militia in open terrain with the greatest of ease.
The king, however, would not change his mind, and could not be overruled. Although Theodore had a sense of self-preservation and had flown from difficult positions in the past, he had also demonstrated personal bravery in battle. He told Fabiani and the rest of the war council that, as king, he would not allow his subjects to face peril for the national cause while refusing to face it himself. His English secretary Denis Richard offered an alternative and somewhat less flattering explanation, saying that the aesthetics of the noble king fighting a decisive battle for the fate of his country appealed to him. But Theodore demonstrated a certain fatalism as well; as he explained to the council with a wry smile, if Villemur defeated Ceccaldi at San Pellegrino, they would all be lost in a week's time anyway; it made no sense to not throw everything they had into stopping Villemur here and now. After quickly penning his outraged (and thoroughly hypocritical) letter to Boissieux, Theodore was on the move.
So it came to pass that on the evening of June 11th, when Ceccaldi arrived at San Pellegrino, Villemur was encamped six miles to his south at San Nicolao and Theodore was nine miles to his north at Borgo. Ceccaldi, having received a letter from Theodore, understood his duty very well: he had to hold back a French army twice the size of his own until his king arrived with reinforcements. "You must do," Theodore wrote him, "all that is in your power to do."
Timeline Notes
[A] Edit: Thanks to @eustacethemonk for the big version of this picture!
Bad Faith
General Ceccaldi directing his troops [A]
As Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur fought his way northwards, a state of truce prevailed in the Balagna. King Theodore and his officers do not seem to have expected the diplomatic overtures which Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat, Marquis de Boissieux made to them following the French victory in the north. Theodore admitted that it was "curious" that Boissieux, who so clearly had the upper hand, had not chosen to immediately attack the royalists in the Nebbio while they were weak. Still, if Boissieux wanted to talk, Theodore would talk, while his lieutenants scrambled to come up with some plan for the defense of the country.
Yet Boissieux seems to have resorted to negotiation precisely because he was the stronger party, and he knew it. The Corsicans had faced the French and lost badly; there was no reason to think they would do better the second time around with fewer men and a demoralized army. Perhaps negotiations gave them time to prepare, but it would not be enough time for the Corsican militia to transmute itself into a fighting force capable of besting the finest army in Europe. Boissieux also understood better than any of his subordinates that fighting the Corsicans in the mountains would be a different game altogether. While his overall strategic plan assumed that the rebellion could be strangled by capturing the coastal regions and cutting off all resupply, the strangulation would not be instantaneous, and some die-hards might well hold out in the mountains.
The best outcome—for himself, for his men, and, he believed, for the Corsicans—was a capitulation by the rebel command, and he was willing to offer generous terms to accomplish it. The leaders of the rebellion would, he wrote, only suffer exile; they would not be permitted to return to Corsica, but they would avoid any further punishment and would not be handed over to the Genoese. Even Theodore himself was included in this offer. Boissieux, however, was also firm. The terms of Fontainebleau were not open for negotiation, and the surrender demanded was unconditional; the Corsicans would have to consign themselves utterly to "the equity and clemency of His Majesty." Perhaps having learned from his earlier failed negotiations, Boissieux also set a time limit. Any of the Corsican rebel leaders who had not tendered their surrender within 20 days of his pronouncement would lose all hope of clemency, and those Corsicans who continued in their resistance would be subject to "the full rigors of war."
Again playing the would-be collaborator, Theodore tried his best to drag out the end date, telling Boissieux that he needed more time to bring the Corsican generals around. A consulta would have to be called, of course, and here Theodore appeared to place his monarchy on a surprisingly liberal footing. As he had been made king by the will of the people, he wrote to Boissieux, he could not very well take such a drastic step as surrendering the country without consulting them, which meant a fully constituted consulta of all the parishes. But Boissieux was not having it. If Theodore was king, went his dismissive reply, then he should order his subjects to surrender; and if he was not a king, then he was merely a rebel, and should surrender himself immediately or be treated as a common bandit.
Boissieux's ultimatum was issued on the 26th of May, three days after the Battle of the Balagna, which made the deadline the 15th of June. On the 10th, however, a messenger riding hard from Orezza brought news to Theodore of the action at Alesani which had transpired over the previous two days. Ceccaldi's "victory" was most welcome, but Theodore seized at once upon the "atrocities" which Ceccaldi claimed Villemur had perpetrated. On the 12th, a letter reached Boissieux in which Theodore castigated him for ordering the plunder and burning of Corsican villages and the murder of innocent people (by which he presumably meant Villemur's summary executions of suspected rebels). He accused Boissieux of treachery, having extended an olive branch with one hand and then plunged a dagger into the back of the Corsicans with the other. How, indeed, could he entrust his people's fate to the "equity and clemency" of a king who represented himself with such faithless and barbarous servants?
Boissieux did not trust Theodore. He was beginning to see Theodore for what he was—that is, a highly accomplished liar—and suspected that his accusations were mere fabrications, a means to catch him off guard or trick him into giving the rebels more time. He did not reply to Theodore's accusations. He did, however, demand an accounting from Villemur, as this letter was the first he had heard about the Battle of Alesani. Villemur had not made contact in several days, and Boissieux dispatched a frigate to find him and bring him this urgent query.
Meanwhile, Villemur's progress was being delayed by the sick and wounded, and their number was rising every day as disease took its toll on his brigade and rations were gradually scaled back to stretch out supplies. Villemur wanted to leave the invalids behind with a battalion to supervise their evacuation while the rest of the brigade went on ahead, but Cervioni did not seem like the right place to do this—it was too exposed, too close to the enemy, and several miles from the coast. A single battalion posted there might be overrun by the rebels he fought just up the valley, and given what had happened to the doomed company of his own Bassigny Regiment at Milaria it seemed within the realm of possibility that the rebels would do the unthinkable and slaughter the invalids.
In Villemur's opinion, the better option was San Pellegrino, a Genoese watchtower less than fourteen miles up the coast. It seemed like the ideal place to relocate the invalids and for the whole army to pause and receive new supplies. Although no great fortress like Calvi, the Torre di San Pellegrino was a stout enough structure to have resisted a rebel siege for months even with artillery (though the rebel artillery was crewed by amateurs). It had fallen to the Corsicans, but so far the Corsicans had never stood and faced Villemur's brigade, and the brigadier suspected they were not about to start now. If they did make a stand and held the tower, Villemur's lack of artillery would be somewhat problematic, but it could be made up for by the naval gunnery of the French and Genoese fleets.
In fact Villemur had tried to arrange this well in advance. On the 4th of June, the day he departed from Aleria, he had given instructions to a Genoese captain to bring troops to occupy the fortress and to prepare warships to assist him against San Pellegrino if it turned out to be rebel-occupied. On the 10th—the day after the Battle of Alesani—he had submitted a report of the previous day's events, as well as his request for both fighting and supply ships to meet him at San Pellegrino as soon as possible, to the commander of a Genoese tartane. Unluckily for Villemur, that tartane was attacked by Corsican corsairs off the coast of Biguglia. The ship escaped, but only by beating far out to sea; it appears to have landed at Portoferraio on Elba and did not attempt a return to Corsica until several days later, when it was too late to make any difference. Villemur's first message on the 4th regarding armed ships did come through, and the Genoese had a flotilla of three galleys in the vicinity, but they were unsure where and when Villemur was going to be, and after seeing no sign of him at San Pellegrino on the 10th they were forced to sail south to take on fresh water.
Ceccaldi had no special knowledge of Villemur's plans, but any fool could have predicted Villemur's next move; there was no other way to go but north. After crossing the Fiumalto near San Pellegrino, the coastal plain widened significantly, and from there it was only 18 miles more to Bastia. If Villemur could not be stopped at San Pellegrino it seemed likely the next battle would be on the outskirts of Bastia itself. That proximity to Bastia, however, also meant proximity to the rebel forces in the Nebbio.
Theodore had been holding his forces back in the Nebbio in anticipation of an attack by Rousset, but Ceccaldi's letter arriving on the 10th changed his calculations entirely. Ceccaldi wrote that he was certain Villemur would be on the move north to San Pellegrino as soon as possible. Theodore, realizing that it was only two days to San Pellegrino and still five days until the end of Boissieux's deadline, did the math and announced a new strategy: he would steal a march on Villemur by leading the regulars and several companies of militia to San Pellegrino, joining with Ceccaldi's forces, and attacking the French with their combined forces. There would then be enough time to return to the Nebbio before Boissieux's grace period ended and before Boissieux received news of what had happened. It would, Theodore claimed, be a "stroke of lightning" as had been accomplished in 1736, when the rebels had force marched to Porto Vecchio, taken the defenders by surprise, and stormed the city.
The plan was not well-received. Chancellor Sebastiano Costa and Prime Minister Liugi Giafferi thought it quite mad, and Fabiani demanded that if it was to be done it should certainly not be led by the king, urging him to appoint Giafferi, Count Castinetta (Colonel Gio-Giacomo Ambrosi di Castinetta, military governor of Bastia) or Viscount Kilmallock (Adjutant-General Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock, Theodore's brother-in-law) instead. All were reluctant to bet on another field engagement with the French forces that had already demonstrated in the Balagna that they could steamroll Corsican militia in open terrain with the greatest of ease.
The king, however, would not change his mind, and could not be overruled. Although Theodore had a sense of self-preservation and had flown from difficult positions in the past, he had also demonstrated personal bravery in battle. He told Fabiani and the rest of the war council that, as king, he would not allow his subjects to face peril for the national cause while refusing to face it himself. His English secretary Denis Richard offered an alternative and somewhat less flattering explanation, saying that the aesthetics of the noble king fighting a decisive battle for the fate of his country appealed to him. But Theodore demonstrated a certain fatalism as well; as he explained to the council with a wry smile, if Villemur defeated Ceccaldi at San Pellegrino, they would all be lost in a week's time anyway; it made no sense to not throw everything they had into stopping Villemur here and now. After quickly penning his outraged (and thoroughly hypocritical) letter to Boissieux, Theodore was on the move.
So it came to pass that on the evening of June 11th, when Ceccaldi arrived at San Pellegrino, Villemur was encamped six miles to his south at San Nicolao and Theodore was nine miles to his north at Borgo. Ceccaldi, having received a letter from Theodore, understood his duty very well: he had to hold back a French army twice the size of his own until his king arrived with reinforcements. "You must do," Theodore wrote him, "all that is in your power to do."
Timeline Notes
[A] Edit: Thanks to @eustacethemonk for the big version of this picture!
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