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As the Corsicans waited for spring, the tension in Europe was steadily building. The continent seemed to be moving inexorably towards a general conflict sparked by Britain's declaration of war on Spain in October of 1739. When King Theodore assured his ministers that war between Britain and France was imminent, he was expressing an opinion that was shared by many people across the continent including Emperor Karl VI himself. The emperor was increasingly alarmed by the power of France and the abominable state into which Austrian military and diplomatic power appeared to have slid. His hopes for the preservation of the Habsburg patrimony and the enforcement of the Pragmatic Sanction after his own death rested upon a grand anti-Bourbon alliance in which British participation was absolutely essential. Indeed, it was quite apparent that Britain's failure to join Austria's side in the last Bourbon-Habsburg war, the War of Polish Succession, had been a major factor in Austria's defeat.

The emperor's eagerness to draw the British into a firm alliance led him to consider the warnings of their ministers regarding Corsica all the more seriously. The British certainly did not seek war with France - quite the opposite, they hoped that King Louis XV would remain uninvolved to allow them to concentrate solely on Spain - but they had long suspected that the French (or some other Bourbon power) had designs upon Corsica. This concerned the British mainly because of Corsica's proximity to Livorno, the key port of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. English merchants did quite a bit of business in Livorno, where there was a substantial expatriate community. If a general war were to begin with the Bourbon powers, the city was also likely to be Britain's only friendly naval base in the Western Mediterranean east of Minorca. French control of Corsica would allow them to strangle British trade through Livorno completely, and would make the operation of a battle fleet out of Livorno more hazardous. Only a few months past, when Britain was at peace and Austria was still reeling from her defeat by the Turks, Corsica had seemed like an insignificant mote with no relevance to British or imperial policy. Now, however, the British were growing anxious, and the emperor began to perceive that little mote as a place worth taking notice of, if only to continue wooing the British and limiting the power of France in Europe.

The emperor somewhat misjudged the intentions of French chief minister Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury. The venerable cardinal, in fact, had long been an advocate of peace between France and Britain, a goal which he shared with his counterpart Sir Robert Walpole, whose period of dominance in Britain roughly paralleled that of Fleury in France. Both men, however, were nearing the end of their reigns. Walpole's influence was clearly declining; he had opposed the Spanish war but had been outmatched by popular will and his opponents in the parliament. Fleury, whose power was more secure as it depended on his close personal relationship with King Louis XV rather than the whims of the electorate (Fleury had been the king's tutor since the age of five), remained supreme, but the cardinal was now nearing 87 years of age and spent much of 1739 and 1740 suffering through long spells of illness. Despite his infirmity, he still held the reigns of power through trusted subordinates, but the vultures were circling in the form of court factions eager to supplant him. Fleury was never eager for war; he found France better served by neutrality in the Anglo-Spanish conflict, supported France's acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction, and generally opposed another war with the Habsburgs. How long his influence (and indeed his life) would last, however, was another question.

The defeat of Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat, Marquis de Boissieux at Ponte Novu came as a great shock to the French, who could scarcely imagine such a catastrophe befalling a numerically superior French army at the hands of half-wild bandits led by a renegade charlatan. Boissieux's career seemed unlikely to survive it. Recovering from a flesh wound and taken ill again, Boissieux had sent a letter to the king in December requesting to be relieved of his command for reasons of health. His wound, in fact, was quite minor, but his health had indeed been poor of late - he had spent a good part of the previous summer struggling with dysentery. Whether he would have been sacked otherwise will never truly be known, as his resignation was accepted. The debacle also reflected badly on Nicolas Prosper Bauyn d'Angervilliers, the secretary of state for war who pushed Boissieux into seeking a decisive confrontation, but it scarcely mattered as the secretary died in February. His replacement, François Victor Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, was wholly subservient to Fleury's will.

Fleury was souring on the Corsican adventure. He had worked hard to keep France at peace with its neighbors (whenever possible) and to put the state's finances on a stable footing. During his tenure thus far, France's debt had been substantially paid down, the currency had stabilized, and trade had grown considerably. Throwing money and lives away in Corsica for no tangible gain—for contrary to the fears of France's rivals, Fleury had no intention of annexation—seemed ill-advised, particularly when there was talk of impending war across the continent. Fleury remained concerned about the prospect of a closer Habsburg-Hanoverian relationship, and his representatives in Vienna complained constantly of the frequent conversations which Grand Duke Franz Stefan, the emperor's son-in-law, was said to have with British diplomats. Nevertheless, Boissieux's failure meant that France had little chance of preempting Austrian involvement if the emperor was inclined to it. Fleury, who was still hopeful that peace could be preserved, thus decided it was better to cooperate in this intervention than be left in the cold, and sent instructions to French diplomats in Vienna to discuss possible terms for the joint occupation.


In the meantime a replacement was needed for Boissieux. In January, Lieutenant-General Daniel François de Gélas, Vicomte de Lautrec was summoned to Paris to receive his orders: Corsica was now his problem. The arc of Lautrec's career thus far was not very different from the man he was replacing. Both had served in Italy during the War of Polish Succession with the rank of maréchal de camp, and both had commanded divisions at the Battle of Guastalla in 1734. Lautrec had been appointed inspector-general of the infantry in 1736 and promoted to lieutenant-general in 1738, the same year as Boissieux. While Boissieux was sent to Corsica, however, Lautrec went to Switzerland. In that year, civil strife had broken out between the city's magistracy and the burghers, and Lautrec had been selected as a French plenipotentiary to mediate the conflict. During his time there (1737-8), he managed to forge a compromise between the two sides which proved so effective that the city demonstrated its gratitude by striking a medal in his honor. Lautrec was no mere diplomat—he had been a French officer since 1705 and had extensive experience in the field. Still, it is at least plausible that his success as a mediator in Geneva elevated him above France's many other available lieutenant-generals for consideration for this particular service. Aside from any possible negotiations with the rebels, he would have to deal with the disgruntled Genoese authorities and quite possibly manage a joint occupation with France's great continental rival, a task which might benefit from some tact and delicacy.[A]

February was a quiet month on Corsica. Although low-level skirmishing in the occupied provinces never truly stopped, neither the rebels nor the French or Genoese attempted serious moves against one another. The most notable event was not a battle, but a wedding. In late February, King Theodore's "nephew" Matthias von Drost married Maria Rosa Colonna-Bozzi, the sister of Count Antonio Colonna-Bozzi and the niece of Chancellor Sebastiano Costa. It was an auspicious match for all parties involved. The prestige of being linked to the king's relations, even a rather distant relation like Drost, was clearly appealing to Drost's new brother-in-law. For Drost, it was even smarter; as a landless minor nobleman his prospects in Westphalia could not have been terribly bright, and he had made up his mind to link his fate to Corsica and his "uncle's" kingdom, for better or for worse. A marriage into the Colonna-Bozzi family ensured his acceptance into Corsican elite society and gave him access to the influence and power of a well-established clan. And there was more to the marriage than simply calculations of status and power; Drost and Count Colonna had become good friends, and while Drost did not marry for love we are told that his relationship with his wife was affectionate.[B]

At the beginning of March, Theodore summoned his ministers and generals to a war council at Corti. Marquis Simone Fabiani, as the vice-president of the council, was present, along with minister of war Count Marc-Antonio Giappiconi, Adjutant-General Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock, Lieutenant-General Andrea Ceccaldi, Lieutenant-General von Drost, Lieutenant-General Johann Friedrich von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg, and Count Gianpietro Gaffori, whose key position as the army's quartermaster had been recently recognized by Theodore with his promotion from colonel to major-general. The royalists had learned that Boissieux had departed from Corsica near the end of February, but as far as they knew his replacement had not yet arrived. Maréchal de Camp Jean-Charles, Seigneur de Rousset held interim command, but he was clearly disinclined to do anything with it lest he suffer a career-ending disaster like Boissieux had. The Corsicans were equally unsure of what France had in store for them, or indeed what their strategy should be when the campaign season resumed. The occupation of the coasts had cut the king's correspondence to a trickle, which made Theodore anxious, as he had little information on developments in France or Fleury's further intentions.

What the royalists did have was an army, or at least something like it. Fabiani had reorganized the militia which had wintered at Ponte Leccia into "proper" battalions and along with Kilmallock had done as much as he could to give them some modicum of training in that time. The government had paid the men to remain over the winter, but now winter was nearing its end. Fabiani forcefully argued that the men should be kept on the payroll, lest the training and organization they had acquired be lost, and the interior be left vulnerable to a new French offensive.

The problem, as Gaffori pointed out, was money. The rebels still had a substantial reserve of weapons and ammunition, recently replenished by the Battle of Ponte Novu in which hundreds of French muskets, swords, and bayonets had been captured.[1] The state had no virtually no income, however, and while the syndicate-provided coffers had not yet run out, they would be depleted all the more quickly by expanding the regular forces. Gaffori explained that there was no way that Fabiani's new regiments could be paid for their entire year of enlistment with the money the government currently had. At some point—probably that summer, he surmised—they would have to hope that the soldiers would start accepting IOUs. Nevertheless, Fabiani carried the day. The marquis was among the royalist leaders with the closest personal relationship to Theodore, and the king rarely opposed him on military matters.

The question then became what the rebels should do with their army. Several of the generals wanted to strike at Pietralba; it was uncomfortably close to the interior, and according to Rauschenburg's scouts the French had drawn down their forces there to a single reinforced battalion. The Corsicans would have the advantage of numbers and surprise. Others, particularly Ceccaldi, argued that the French should first be driven from the Castagniccia, for surely there they would be joined by large numbers of sympathetic militia. Theodore, however, was reluctant to attack the French either in the north or the east. They had not yet stirred from their winter slumber; was it such a good idea to rouse them prematurely? Although the king projected confidence in his soldiers, his private belief seems to have been that the best way to approach the French was through diplomatic means. That had served him well early on in Boissieux's term when the general had been as ready to talk as Theodore, but the 1739 campaign had demonstrated the limits of a strategy of continual obfuscation and delay.

Theodore had another use for the army in mind. To the surprise of many, he suggested that an attack should be made neither against Pietralba nor the Castagniccia, but Aleria. Villemur had captured the fortress in his march northwards, but it had since been turned over to the Genoese army, which - according to Theodore's own spies - had only a few companies in the area. Capturing Aleria would mean the liberation of the Tavignano estuary and the nearby lagoons, which had been significant smuggling areas before the coast had been lost to the French and Genoese. Some concern was raised at the prospect of taking the fort unless artillery was also brought to bear, which would considerably delay the campaign, but Theodore reminded them that the rebels had, before his arrival, stormed and slaughtered the garrison there without any artillery, and recalled to them the success of the attack on Porto Vecchio, the first successful battle of his reign, in which the Corsicans had likewise surprised and taken a fortified position by storm. Questions remained—would the Alerian coastline be of any actual use with the French and Genoese still in command of the sea? Having taken Aleria, how would it be held? In retrospect, one wonders whether part of Theodore's motivation was to restore some contact with the outside world, as being a hermit-king in the mountains did not suit his temperament. Despite some misgivings, however, the council approved of the plan. Theodore had the strong support of Gaffori, and many others felt obligated to defer to his "genius," as Theodore's military reputation was still riding high after Ponte Novu.

Three battalions were furnished for the purpose—the Giuseppe regiment and the Guards under Brigadier Gio-Giacomo Ambrosi di Castinetta—at the insistence of the war council that at least some of the regular forces needed to remain behind to defend the capital.[2] In total, this amounted to about 800 regulars placed under Castineta's command, a force that was expected to comfortably outnumber the Genoese garrison even before the addition of the local militia.

Footnotes
[1] These muskets were mainly Model 1728 French infantry muskets [see image], several hundred of which were already in rebel hands by the time of Ponte Novu thanks to French troops killed or captured at San Pellegrino and elsewhere. The barrel of the Model 1728 was attached to the stock by iron bands, unlike the typical Liege muskets provided by the syndicate whose barrels were pinned into position. A banded barrel made for a sturdier and more durable musket that held up better to the rigors of back-country travel and hand-to-hand combat. In addition, there is some speculation that the Corsicans, who prized accuracy and often preferred taking aimed shots from cover, found a banded barrel better for sighting the musket (as military muskets of the period lacked actual sights). The rebels took an instant liking to the weapon and preferred the "French musket" to all other muskets during the Revolutionary era. Although few examples survive today, Corsican gunsmiths also converted a substantial amount of pinned-barrel Dutch/Liege muskets into banded-barrel muskets during the Revolutionary period and through the rest of the 18th century.
[2] Typical European practice at this time was to name brigades after their colonel. Some armies numbered their regiments, but for most this was merely an administrative identifier and a means to establish ceremonial precedence rather than the common name of the unit. The Corsicans did not actually refer to Fabiani's new regiments as "first" and "second" at the time, although they did refer to the battalions within those regiments as first and second battalions, with the former under the colonel's command (or the major, in the colonel's absence) and the latter under the lieutenant-colonel.

Timeline Notes
[A] I don't really know why Boissieux and Maillebois were, in OTL, chosen for Corsican command, but it was notable to me that they were both veterans of the Italian theater of the War of Polish Succession. Thus, to find Boissieux's replacement ITTL, I started with other divisional commanders in Italy at that time. Frustratingly, most don't really have a lot of biographical info available on them, but Lautrec - who went on to become a Marshal of France IOTL - stood out to me for his diplomatic success and seemed like a decent choice.
[B] Drost's marriage to Maria Rosa is OTL, although perhaps not at this exact time (some sources say 1736 or 1738; another 1748, which does not seem credible to me). The information on his family is conflicting and often rather suspect. It is alleged by some that his son, named Frederick or Francesco, married Maddalena Buonaparte, Napoleon's great-aunt.