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The Story of the Corsican Greeks
The similarities between the Corsicans and the Maniots, Peloponnesian Greeks native to the Mani peninsula, are striking. Both were isolated from the mainland by rugged mountains and the sea, both were materially poor but fiercely independent, and both were known their clan society, their culture of honor, their predilection for banditry, and their propensity for vicious blood-feuds. When these two peoples met each other in Corsica, however, it was unfortunately their differences rather than what they had in common which was to define their relationship.
Owing to their rebellious spirit and the mountainous terrain of their homeland, the Maniots proved troublesome to subdue, and for many years they thwarted attempts at conquest by the Turks. Mani gave token submission to the Porte, but the peninsula resembled a loose tributary more than a constituent part of the empire. In the late 17th century, however, the peninsula suffered through an exceptionally tumultuous period. Many of the Maniots made the error of siding with the Venetians during the Cretan War (1645-1669), and in anticipation of Venice's defeat and the likelihood of Ottoman retribution a number of Maniot clans began considering the possibility of emigration. In the province of Vitylo (Oitylo), two rival clans, the Iatrani and the Stephanopoli, both sent emissaries to the west to seek out potential new homelands.
The Iatrani quite naturally looked towards Tuscany, as they had (or claimed to have) family ties there. The Iatrani were also locally known as the "Medici," as they were purported to be related to that famous family through kinship with the Acciaioli, a Florentine family which had ruled the Duchy of Athens during the late 14th and 15th centuries and had intermarried with the Medici. The Stephanopoli, meanwhile, also claimed an illustrious lineage; they later styled themselves "Comneno" or "Comnene" on account of a claimed descent from David Megas Komenos, the last emperor of Trebizond. There were not, however, any Komnenos principalities in 17th century Italy, so their investigation was more broad than that of the Iatrani. Eventually they approached the Genoese, who were interested in attracting industrious settlers to their island of Corsica. In 1663, at the same time the Iatrani were making their approach to Tuscany, four Stephanopoli representatives met with Genoese senators and made arrangements to travel to the proposed site of the new settlement in Corsica. Neither clan, however, was successful in arranging an exodus in the 1660s, in part because of diplomatic meddling on the part of the Venetians, who did not want their allies fleeing the country during the then-ongoing war.
After the end of the Cretan War in 1669, the Ottomans—as expected—turned their attention to Mani. Early efforts to bring the natives to heel failed, so the Porte turned to Limberakis Gerakaris, a notorious Maniot pirate, who was rotting away in an Ottoman prison. The Turks offered him freedom and pardon if he was able to conquer his homeland and serve as the empire's viceroy. He made a triumphant entry in 1670 with the help of Turkish forces and was styled as the Bey of Mani, but he became predictably enmeshed in the clan rivalries of his homeland. At the time, the Iatrani and Stephanopoli were at each others' throats because of the abduction and forced marriage of a Iatrani woman by one of the Stephanopoli. Unluckily for the Stephanopoli, the woman was also apparently Gerakaris' fiancee. He sided with the Iatrani and hounded the Stephanopoli with their help and that of his Turkish allies, condemning a number of their leaders to death. Nevertheless, the despotism and volatility of Gerakaris made him unsafe even as an ally, and evidently the Iatrani were the first to have another go at Italian emigration. With Venice's opposition having evaporated after the end of the war, they were able to gain permission from the Grand Duke of Tuscany and several hundred of them arrived at Livorno in 1671. Their colony, however, was not long-lived; it faded away in the 1690s, although it is unclear whether it was wiped out by malaria or simply assimilated into Tuscan society (or a combination of the two).
It was not until October of 1675 that members of the Stephanopoli clan finally began their journey to Corsica. Around 730 men, women, and children squeezed onto the appropriately-named French ship Sauveur and sailed for their new home in Corsica. Although the Stephanopoli dominated the expedition, not every emigrant was of the clan, nor even Maniot; settlers from Corfu, Chios, and Crete were recorded among the passengers. They arrived safely, but a second ship which followed not long thereafter, carrying an additional 440 settlers, was captured off the Corsican coast by Barbary pirates. Its passengers were all sold into slavery in Africa.
The Maniot leaders had already agreed to a compact with the Genoese Senate which set out the terms of their settlement. They were required to swear loyalty to the Republic, to pay its taxes and serve in its armed forces as required, and in exchange were given the village of Paomia and its environs on the western coast of Corsica. Paomia had once been a Corsican village, but at that time was uninhabited. The colonists were also required to become Catholics, but this involved only a recognition of the authority of the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy; the Maniots were permitted to retain the language and ritual of the Greek rite and establish their own church at Paomia. There seems to have been no serious resistance to this requirement among the settlers. In facilitating their settlement, the Republic hoped to introduce a loyal population on Corsica (for even before the 1729 rebellion the Corsicans were turbulent and difficult subjects) and to promote the economic development of the island. The republic gave the Greeks an interest-free loan of 40,000 lire to fund their settlement, as well as animals, seeds, and tools. The Maniots soon proved to be very able agriculturalists, considerably more so than the natives, who were fairly indifferent farmers and reliant primarily on chestnuts and sheep-herding. In short order their new colony grew prosperous. Paomia was large enough to be self-sufficient, and even had its own monastery.
Ruins of the old Greek church of St. Elias (Elijah) at Paomia
For the first few years, relations between the Greeks and the native Corsicans were warm. Greek records claim that they were "welcomed as friends" by the natives, and that the Corsicans assisted in the construction of their new village. A Greek chronicle even describes the Greeks and Corsicans as being godparents to each others' children. The insularity of the newcomers, however, soon bred suspicion. They practiced their own strange religious rite in a foreign language, and they soon made it clear that they had no interest in intermarriage with their Corsican neighbors. For the Corsicans, whose society was based upon a staunch (if somewhat nebulous) Catholic identity and marital alliances between clans, this was bewildering and alienating behavior.
The success of the Greeks also inspired envy. Paomia had been abandoned for years; the Corsicans considered it worthless land and made no great fuss when it was first given to the Greeks. As the "desert" bloomed under the care of the new settlers, however, the Corsicans recalled that they had never been consulted about the land being given to the Greeks and that the neighboring pieves had never renounced their claims upon it. They grumbled at the unfairness of such rich land (as it had now become), which they had formerly written off as arid and useless, being taken from them without compensation and given to foreigners.
In April of 1679, tensions came to a head, and a Greek was murdered by a Corsican on Palm Sunday. The exact nature of the dispute that led to this killing is unrecorded, but from that day the relationship between the Greeks and the Corsicans was characterized mainly by conflict. Yet although the Maniots were known as a tough and warlike people, they knew that they were badly outmatched by the far more numerous Corsicans and thus appealed to their Genoese hosts. The Genoese ensured that the colony was protected, although even they could not stop frequent quarrels and the occasional murder every few years. The Corsicans, determining the Greeks to be heathens and perhaps knowing how deeply it would offend them, took to calling them "Turks." The Greeks, in turn, called the Corsicans "vagabonds" and "poncho-wearing goats."[1]
When the Corsican Rebellion broke out in 1729, the Greeks soon became targets of insurgent forces from Vico and the Niolo. Their fields were devastated by the Corsicans in 1730, but an attempt by a band of Vicolesi to assault the town itself was repulsed by the Greeks. Then, in April of 1731, the newly established leadership of the Corsican national movement extended an olive branch to the Greek colonists. The "generals of the nation" Luigi Giafferi and Andrea Ceccaldi sent a delegation to Paomia offering to set aside their differences if the Greeks would join them in their fight against the Genoese oppressors.
The Greeks flatly refused them. "We do not care at all about the wars of the Corsicans," replied a Greek chieftain, "which they wage unjustly against our prince; for we are strangers in this land, and tend to our own business; and if you have issues with him, you sort them out. We recognize no master other than the prince of Genoa, to whom we acknowledge everything we own; and we are ready to die a thousand times, one after the other, for his sake." Their allegiance was very sensible; the Genoese had not only given them a new home but had protected them for decades against the very same Corsicans who were now trying to lead them into rebellion. The compact they had made with the Genoese required them to give their loyalty and their service in arms to the Republic. Why would they break that promise and betray their lord and protector to join forces with their enemies?
The Tower of Omignia
As justifiable as their reply may have been, it was ill-considered, for the Corsicans did not take rejection well. Within a few weeks, a large force of Corsicans under the leadership of Francesco Battini (claimed rather improbably in a Greek account to be 2,500 strong) besieged the Greek settlement. This time the Genoese could not save them; they best they could offer was a few ships to evacuate the colony to Ajaccio. Even so, the Greeks did not give up without a fight. Having sent off the rest of the colony to Ajaccio, 127 Greeks barricaded themselves in the Tower of Omignia and defied every attempt by the Corsicans to conquer them. Yet it was a futile gesture, as no relief was forthcoming, and the Greeks had no choice but to surrender after several days of siege. The Corsicans took their weapons but allowed them to leave in peace in a somewhat surprising demonstration of mercy. But no mercy was shown to Paomia itself, which was utterly annihilated. The Corsicans destroyed the fields and the orchards, looted the homes, and then burned the whole village to the ground.
By this time the Greek community consisted of just over 800 people, and around 200 of them—surely representing most of the colonists' able-bodied men—were formed into three militia companies serving under the command of the commissioner of Ajaccio. The Greek militia companies proved vital in the defense of the city against several attacks by the rebels, including a siege by Luca d'Ornano and his men during Theodore's early reign. Though the Greek militia was effective and enthusiastic, however, the Genoese found them to be ill-disciplined, and the commissioner of Ajaccio complained in a letter in 1734 that they were impossible to control unless led by Genoese officers and even then sometimes made themselves a liability.
Although their service was useful to the Genoese, this new reality proved controversial among the Greeks themselves. The Paomia colony had originally been divided into nine hereditary chieftainships, each of which presided over between one and two dozen households, but the move to Ajaccio disrupted this traditional power structure. Because they had been deprived of their farmlands, and since most of the adult male population was conscripted into the militia companies, the income of the whole Greek community now depended substantially on Genoese wages. In these circumstances the company captains tended to displace the chieftains as the most powerful men in the Greek community, which caused some internal resentment because the captains were not themselves chieftains or sons of chieftains. Moreover, the three captains—Micaglia Stefanopoli, Teodori Cozzifacci, and Giovanno Busacci—were not on good terms with one another. Stefanopoli, who sought to assert himself as the effective ruler of the whole colony, successfully petitioned the Genoese to give him the rank of major, thus implying his overall seniority. That seniority, however, was largely nominal, and the other captains bitterly resented his attempts to make himself out to be their superior.
The environment of Ajaccio, the island's second-largest city, was more cosmopolitan than that of isolated Paomia, and the Greeks were not unaffected by it. They were in a precarious position and needed to adapt to new surroundings. The Genoese gave them a church in Ajaccio and they continued practicing their own rite, but within a few years the younger generation of Greeks began to show some signs of assimilation, including wearing Corsican dress, learning the Corsican language (which they had spurned before), and even occasionally intermarrying with Corsican families. They remembered their loyalties, however, and continued to render loyal service to the republic even during the nadir of Genoese fortunes during Theodore's early reign. But the rebel Corsicans too remembered the loyalties of the Greeks, and considered the them to be little more than stooges of the Genoese. Accordingly, when the 1736 constitution was drawn up for King Theodore's coronation it specifically named the Greeks as among those "rebels to the Kingdom" whose property was to be confiscated. The Greeks must have found it darkly humorous that the Corsicans were calling them rebels, and may have wondered what property the Corsicans expected to confiscate since they had already destroyed their village.
By 1742, more than ten years after the fall of Paomia, this relationship had not changed much. While they lasted, the French and Austrian interventions took the pressure off Ajaccio, but nevertheless the situation had never been secure enough for the Greeks to return to Paomia and try to rebuild their ruined settlement. The Greek chieftains looked on with apprehension as the French sailed away, and each new setback for Spinola increased their anxiety. Their inquiries about being allowed to emigrate were rebuffed; like the Venetians before them, who had prevented their flight from Mani because they needed them to fight the Turks, the Genoese would not part with them in a time of war and refused to let a single Greek leave the island. Although they dreaded the prospect of being sent off into the mountains of the interior, where the "poncho-wearing goats" were no laughing matter, their captains reluctantly complied with Spinola's orders to reinforce Corti. They simply did not see any other option. Having nailed their flag to the mast of Genoese fortunes, they knew they would sink or swim with the republic.
OTL Postscript
The French conquest of Corsica came initially as a godsend to the Greeks of Corsica, as the new governor, the Comte de Marbeuf, greatly favored them. He organized the construction of a new village for them, named Cargèse, not far from old Paomia, and Marbeuf even built himself a house there. The Corsicans did not forget their rivalry with the Greeks, however, and every time there was a breakdown in governance - at the outbreak of the French Revolution, in the wake of the British withdrawal, after the collapse of the First French Empire, and during the July Revolution in 1830 - the Corsicans inevitably took advantage of the chaos and attacked Cargèse. Some of the Greeks resettled in Ajaccio, others went abroad, but nevertheless several hundred Greeks remained at Cargèse despite these trials.
1830 was to mark the last Corsican raid on Cargèse, for over the course of the 19th century Cargèse became a mixed Corsican-Greek village, with a Latin church and a Greek church standing on opposite sides of the valley. Nevertheless, there was a large wave of emigration by the Corsican Greeks to French Algeria in the 1870s. The remaining Greek population, no longer forced into a staunch Greek identity by the hostility of the natives, quickly began assimilating. The last native Greek speaker in Corsica died in 1976, exactly 300 years after the arrival of the first settlers.
Footnotes
[1] Undoubtedly they were referring to the pilone, the traditional hooded cloak of the Corsicans.
The Story of the Corsican Greeks
A painted icon of the "Three Holy Hierarchs" (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom) brought to Corsica by the Maniot settlers
A painted icon of the "Three Holy Hierarchs" (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom) brought to Corsica by the Maniot settlers
The similarities between the Corsicans and the Maniots, Peloponnesian Greeks native to the Mani peninsula, are striking. Both were isolated from the mainland by rugged mountains and the sea, both were materially poor but fiercely independent, and both were known their clan society, their culture of honor, their predilection for banditry, and their propensity for vicious blood-feuds. When these two peoples met each other in Corsica, however, it was unfortunately their differences rather than what they had in common which was to define their relationship.
Owing to their rebellious spirit and the mountainous terrain of their homeland, the Maniots proved troublesome to subdue, and for many years they thwarted attempts at conquest by the Turks. Mani gave token submission to the Porte, but the peninsula resembled a loose tributary more than a constituent part of the empire. In the late 17th century, however, the peninsula suffered through an exceptionally tumultuous period. Many of the Maniots made the error of siding with the Venetians during the Cretan War (1645-1669), and in anticipation of Venice's defeat and the likelihood of Ottoman retribution a number of Maniot clans began considering the possibility of emigration. In the province of Vitylo (Oitylo), two rival clans, the Iatrani and the Stephanopoli, both sent emissaries to the west to seek out potential new homelands.
The Iatrani quite naturally looked towards Tuscany, as they had (or claimed to have) family ties there. The Iatrani were also locally known as the "Medici," as they were purported to be related to that famous family through kinship with the Acciaioli, a Florentine family which had ruled the Duchy of Athens during the late 14th and 15th centuries and had intermarried with the Medici. The Stephanopoli, meanwhile, also claimed an illustrious lineage; they later styled themselves "Comneno" or "Comnene" on account of a claimed descent from David Megas Komenos, the last emperor of Trebizond. There were not, however, any Komnenos principalities in 17th century Italy, so their investigation was more broad than that of the Iatrani. Eventually they approached the Genoese, who were interested in attracting industrious settlers to their island of Corsica. In 1663, at the same time the Iatrani were making their approach to Tuscany, four Stephanopoli representatives met with Genoese senators and made arrangements to travel to the proposed site of the new settlement in Corsica. Neither clan, however, was successful in arranging an exodus in the 1660s, in part because of diplomatic meddling on the part of the Venetians, who did not want their allies fleeing the country during the then-ongoing war.
After the end of the Cretan War in 1669, the Ottomans—as expected—turned their attention to Mani. Early efforts to bring the natives to heel failed, so the Porte turned to Limberakis Gerakaris, a notorious Maniot pirate, who was rotting away in an Ottoman prison. The Turks offered him freedom and pardon if he was able to conquer his homeland and serve as the empire's viceroy. He made a triumphant entry in 1670 with the help of Turkish forces and was styled as the Bey of Mani, but he became predictably enmeshed in the clan rivalries of his homeland. At the time, the Iatrani and Stephanopoli were at each others' throats because of the abduction and forced marriage of a Iatrani woman by one of the Stephanopoli. Unluckily for the Stephanopoli, the woman was also apparently Gerakaris' fiancee. He sided with the Iatrani and hounded the Stephanopoli with their help and that of his Turkish allies, condemning a number of their leaders to death. Nevertheless, the despotism and volatility of Gerakaris made him unsafe even as an ally, and evidently the Iatrani were the first to have another go at Italian emigration. With Venice's opposition having evaporated after the end of the war, they were able to gain permission from the Grand Duke of Tuscany and several hundred of them arrived at Livorno in 1671. Their colony, however, was not long-lived; it faded away in the 1690s, although it is unclear whether it was wiped out by malaria or simply assimilated into Tuscan society (or a combination of the two).
It was not until October of 1675 that members of the Stephanopoli clan finally began their journey to Corsica. Around 730 men, women, and children squeezed onto the appropriately-named French ship Sauveur and sailed for their new home in Corsica. Although the Stephanopoli dominated the expedition, not every emigrant was of the clan, nor even Maniot; settlers from Corfu, Chios, and Crete were recorded among the passengers. They arrived safely, but a second ship which followed not long thereafter, carrying an additional 440 settlers, was captured off the Corsican coast by Barbary pirates. Its passengers were all sold into slavery in Africa.
The Maniot leaders had already agreed to a compact with the Genoese Senate which set out the terms of their settlement. They were required to swear loyalty to the Republic, to pay its taxes and serve in its armed forces as required, and in exchange were given the village of Paomia and its environs on the western coast of Corsica. Paomia had once been a Corsican village, but at that time was uninhabited. The colonists were also required to become Catholics, but this involved only a recognition of the authority of the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy; the Maniots were permitted to retain the language and ritual of the Greek rite and establish their own church at Paomia. There seems to have been no serious resistance to this requirement among the settlers. In facilitating their settlement, the Republic hoped to introduce a loyal population on Corsica (for even before the 1729 rebellion the Corsicans were turbulent and difficult subjects) and to promote the economic development of the island. The republic gave the Greeks an interest-free loan of 40,000 lire to fund their settlement, as well as animals, seeds, and tools. The Maniots soon proved to be very able agriculturalists, considerably more so than the natives, who were fairly indifferent farmers and reliant primarily on chestnuts and sheep-herding. In short order their new colony grew prosperous. Paomia was large enough to be self-sufficient, and even had its own monastery.
Ruins of the old Greek church of St. Elias (Elijah) at Paomia
For the first few years, relations between the Greeks and the native Corsicans were warm. Greek records claim that they were "welcomed as friends" by the natives, and that the Corsicans assisted in the construction of their new village. A Greek chronicle even describes the Greeks and Corsicans as being godparents to each others' children. The insularity of the newcomers, however, soon bred suspicion. They practiced their own strange religious rite in a foreign language, and they soon made it clear that they had no interest in intermarriage with their Corsican neighbors. For the Corsicans, whose society was based upon a staunch (if somewhat nebulous) Catholic identity and marital alliances between clans, this was bewildering and alienating behavior.
The success of the Greeks also inspired envy. Paomia had been abandoned for years; the Corsicans considered it worthless land and made no great fuss when it was first given to the Greeks. As the "desert" bloomed under the care of the new settlers, however, the Corsicans recalled that they had never been consulted about the land being given to the Greeks and that the neighboring pieves had never renounced their claims upon it. They grumbled at the unfairness of such rich land (as it had now become), which they had formerly written off as arid and useless, being taken from them without compensation and given to foreigners.
In April of 1679, tensions came to a head, and a Greek was murdered by a Corsican on Palm Sunday. The exact nature of the dispute that led to this killing is unrecorded, but from that day the relationship between the Greeks and the Corsicans was characterized mainly by conflict. Yet although the Maniots were known as a tough and warlike people, they knew that they were badly outmatched by the far more numerous Corsicans and thus appealed to their Genoese hosts. The Genoese ensured that the colony was protected, although even they could not stop frequent quarrels and the occasional murder every few years. The Corsicans, determining the Greeks to be heathens and perhaps knowing how deeply it would offend them, took to calling them "Turks." The Greeks, in turn, called the Corsicans "vagabonds" and "poncho-wearing goats."[1]
When the Corsican Rebellion broke out in 1729, the Greeks soon became targets of insurgent forces from Vico and the Niolo. Their fields were devastated by the Corsicans in 1730, but an attempt by a band of Vicolesi to assault the town itself was repulsed by the Greeks. Then, in April of 1731, the newly established leadership of the Corsican national movement extended an olive branch to the Greek colonists. The "generals of the nation" Luigi Giafferi and Andrea Ceccaldi sent a delegation to Paomia offering to set aside their differences if the Greeks would join them in their fight against the Genoese oppressors.
The Greeks flatly refused them. "We do not care at all about the wars of the Corsicans," replied a Greek chieftain, "which they wage unjustly against our prince; for we are strangers in this land, and tend to our own business; and if you have issues with him, you sort them out. We recognize no master other than the prince of Genoa, to whom we acknowledge everything we own; and we are ready to die a thousand times, one after the other, for his sake." Their allegiance was very sensible; the Genoese had not only given them a new home but had protected them for decades against the very same Corsicans who were now trying to lead them into rebellion. The compact they had made with the Genoese required them to give their loyalty and their service in arms to the Republic. Why would they break that promise and betray their lord and protector to join forces with their enemies?
The Tower of Omignia
As justifiable as their reply may have been, it was ill-considered, for the Corsicans did not take rejection well. Within a few weeks, a large force of Corsicans under the leadership of Francesco Battini (claimed rather improbably in a Greek account to be 2,500 strong) besieged the Greek settlement. This time the Genoese could not save them; they best they could offer was a few ships to evacuate the colony to Ajaccio. Even so, the Greeks did not give up without a fight. Having sent off the rest of the colony to Ajaccio, 127 Greeks barricaded themselves in the Tower of Omignia and defied every attempt by the Corsicans to conquer them. Yet it was a futile gesture, as no relief was forthcoming, and the Greeks had no choice but to surrender after several days of siege. The Corsicans took their weapons but allowed them to leave in peace in a somewhat surprising demonstration of mercy. But no mercy was shown to Paomia itself, which was utterly annihilated. The Corsicans destroyed the fields and the orchards, looted the homes, and then burned the whole village to the ground.
By this time the Greek community consisted of just over 800 people, and around 200 of them—surely representing most of the colonists' able-bodied men—were formed into three militia companies serving under the command of the commissioner of Ajaccio. The Greek militia companies proved vital in the defense of the city against several attacks by the rebels, including a siege by Luca d'Ornano and his men during Theodore's early reign. Though the Greek militia was effective and enthusiastic, however, the Genoese found them to be ill-disciplined, and the commissioner of Ajaccio complained in a letter in 1734 that they were impossible to control unless led by Genoese officers and even then sometimes made themselves a liability.
Although their service was useful to the Genoese, this new reality proved controversial among the Greeks themselves. The Paomia colony had originally been divided into nine hereditary chieftainships, each of which presided over between one and two dozen households, but the move to Ajaccio disrupted this traditional power structure. Because they had been deprived of their farmlands, and since most of the adult male population was conscripted into the militia companies, the income of the whole Greek community now depended substantially on Genoese wages. In these circumstances the company captains tended to displace the chieftains as the most powerful men in the Greek community, which caused some internal resentment because the captains were not themselves chieftains or sons of chieftains. Moreover, the three captains—Micaglia Stefanopoli, Teodori Cozzifacci, and Giovanno Busacci—were not on good terms with one another. Stefanopoli, who sought to assert himself as the effective ruler of the whole colony, successfully petitioned the Genoese to give him the rank of major, thus implying his overall seniority. That seniority, however, was largely nominal, and the other captains bitterly resented his attempts to make himself out to be their superior.
The environment of Ajaccio, the island's second-largest city, was more cosmopolitan than that of isolated Paomia, and the Greeks were not unaffected by it. They were in a precarious position and needed to adapt to new surroundings. The Genoese gave them a church in Ajaccio and they continued practicing their own rite, but within a few years the younger generation of Greeks began to show some signs of assimilation, including wearing Corsican dress, learning the Corsican language (which they had spurned before), and even occasionally intermarrying with Corsican families. They remembered their loyalties, however, and continued to render loyal service to the republic even during the nadir of Genoese fortunes during Theodore's early reign. But the rebel Corsicans too remembered the loyalties of the Greeks, and considered the them to be little more than stooges of the Genoese. Accordingly, when the 1736 constitution was drawn up for King Theodore's coronation it specifically named the Greeks as among those "rebels to the Kingdom" whose property was to be confiscated. The Greeks must have found it darkly humorous that the Corsicans were calling them rebels, and may have wondered what property the Corsicans expected to confiscate since they had already destroyed their village.
By 1742, more than ten years after the fall of Paomia, this relationship had not changed much. While they lasted, the French and Austrian interventions took the pressure off Ajaccio, but nevertheless the situation had never been secure enough for the Greeks to return to Paomia and try to rebuild their ruined settlement. The Greek chieftains looked on with apprehension as the French sailed away, and each new setback for Spinola increased their anxiety. Their inquiries about being allowed to emigrate were rebuffed; like the Venetians before them, who had prevented their flight from Mani because they needed them to fight the Turks, the Genoese would not part with them in a time of war and refused to let a single Greek leave the island. Although they dreaded the prospect of being sent off into the mountains of the interior, where the "poncho-wearing goats" were no laughing matter, their captains reluctantly complied with Spinola's orders to reinforce Corti. They simply did not see any other option. Having nailed their flag to the mast of Genoese fortunes, they knew they would sink or swim with the republic.
OTL Postscript
The French conquest of Corsica came initially as a godsend to the Greeks of Corsica, as the new governor, the Comte de Marbeuf, greatly favored them. He organized the construction of a new village for them, named Cargèse, not far from old Paomia, and Marbeuf even built himself a house there. The Corsicans did not forget their rivalry with the Greeks, however, and every time there was a breakdown in governance - at the outbreak of the French Revolution, in the wake of the British withdrawal, after the collapse of the First French Empire, and during the July Revolution in 1830 - the Corsicans inevitably took advantage of the chaos and attacked Cargèse. Some of the Greeks resettled in Ajaccio, others went abroad, but nevertheless several hundred Greeks remained at Cargèse despite these trials.
1830 was to mark the last Corsican raid on Cargèse, for over the course of the 19th century Cargèse became a mixed Corsican-Greek village, with a Latin church and a Greek church standing on opposite sides of the valley. Nevertheless, there was a large wave of emigration by the Corsican Greeks to French Algeria in the 1870s. The remaining Greek population, no longer forced into a staunch Greek identity by the hostility of the natives, quickly began assimilating. The last native Greek speaker in Corsica died in 1976, exactly 300 years after the arrival of the first settlers.
Footnotes
[1] Undoubtedly they were referring to the pilone, the traditional hooded cloak of the Corsicans.
- Carp
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