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Treacherous Worms
Despite repeated warnings that the city’s situation was precarious, Ajaccio’s fall had been a complete shock to the Genoese government. As usual, their first instinct was to conceal the true extent of their injury. State censorship became even more draconian and severe: The government threatened five years of galley slavery to anyone who spoke of the disaster and banned any display of mourning for the soldiers or civilians who had died in the siege. The church bells could not ring for them, and their widows were enjoined from wearing black. Still, such a monumental failure could not be entirely hidden, and a scapegoat was needed to deflect uncomfortable questions as to why the Senate had not done more to save the city. Vice-Regent Gian Benedetto Speroni, the commissioner who had presided over Ajaccio’s capitulation, was the obvious choice.
Genoa’s least fortunate man had been thrust into power in a moment of crisis twice in one year - first to replace Commissioner-General Spinola just as his grand strategy was unraveling, and then to replace Commissioner Veneroso after his cowardice and incompetence had already doomed Ajaccio. Speroni was not, in the final analysis, a great leader of his time, but he had stoically met the challenges posed by the failures of his predecessors and the miserliness of his government. His only crime was that he lacked the incandescent genius which would have been required to avert tragedies which had already been long in the making by the time he held the reins of power. For this, he was denounced as a traitor and thrown in prison. He would not remain in prison long; a Genoese nobleman could not simply be “disappeared” without trial, and a trial would bring unwelcome attention to the government’s own role in a catastrophe which they much preferred to sweep under the rug. But his career and reputation were ruined, and he died in obscurity.
The capture of Ajaccio threw the government’s overall Corsican strategy into doubt. The conclusion which the Genoese had drawn months before, that they could not militarily contest the interior with the rebels, seemed to be as true as it had ever been. Yet the validity of the “toehold strategy” which they had developed as a consequence had been shaken by the fall of one of their most important citadels. The Genoese had trusted in their fortresses on the basis that the rebels, being essentially an irregular light infantry force, could make no headway against fortified garrisons. True, Theodore had captured Bastia in 1736, but the city’s defenses had been strengthened since then and the garrison was far larger. The other citadels did not necessarily share the same particular vulnerabilities of Ajaccio, but it was clear that their safety was no longer a foregone conclusion now that the rebels had artillery (and had demonstrated the ability to use it). Theodore’s armistice promised to give the government some time to formulate a new strategy, but the question remained: If neither an offensive nor a purely defensive military strategy was feasible, what was the alternative?
Certainly not reconciliation. The Senate had selected Bishop Pier Maria Giustiniani precisely because of his reputation as a negotiator, and for a few weeks in June and July the senators may have actually believed he might be able to find a mutually acceptable agreement with the rebels. After the consulta of Ortiporio, however, the Genoese government abandoned any lingering hope that a satisfactory peace could be achieved. Flush with success, the rebels would clearly not accept the sort of “reasonable” terms the Genoese were prepared to concede. Although Giustiniani kept up the pretense of negotiations, his government ceased to make any good faith effort to meet Corsican demands and considered the “peace process” to be merely a delaying action.
This pessimism is best illustrated by the fact that even before Giustiniani's arrival at Bastia, the Genoese government was debating once more whether the best option was to offload the island entirely. Notwithstanding the government’s earlier assurances to Rear Admiral Thomas Mathews that they had no intention of selling Corsica, in early May the Greater Council of the Republic formally authorized Doge Domenico Canevaro and the Senate to “dispose of the Kingdom [of Corsica] as they find appropriate.” New rumors began to circulate of a Genoese-Spanish deal, which had the republic’s diplomatic corps scrambling all over Europe to assure concerned ministers that the rumors were untrue. In June, the British Secretary of State for the Southern Department Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, summoned the Genoese ambassador Giambattista Gastaldi in order to repeat the words of his plenipotentiary admiral and explain that Britain would never allow Corsica to be sold under any condition, least of all to a Bourbon.
The duplicity of the British had Gastaldi at his wit’s end. It was all well and good for London to insist that the island not be sold to their enemies in the middle of a war; even the Genoese could appreciate the reasonableness of that request, even if it was tremendously inconvenient for the Republic. For years, however, Gastaldi had been attempting to secure a guarantee of Genoese sovereignty over the island from the British government, only to be repeatedly stalled and evaded. London would apparently neither allow Genoa to dispose of its possession nor fully commit to guaranteeing Genoa’s rights to it. Gastaldi knew all about Britain’s “covert” support for Theodore and correctly ascertained that Lord John Carteret himself was behind it, but when Gastaldi managed to gain an audience with the minister and confront him directly with Britain’s misdeeds, Carteret did not even attempt to justify himself. Instead he lied to Gastaldi’s face, telling him his government had no involvement with Theodore, that he himself had never met the “so-called Baron Newhoff,” and that any suggestion to the contrary was risible, even ludicrous.
Despite Carteret’s outrageous deceit, the Genoese had no choice but to take the British threat with deadly seriousness as long as Mathews was on their doorstep. The Admiral had absolutely no compunctions about threatening force against the Genoese, as demonstrated in an incident in June when no fewer than fourteen xebecs bound from Catalonia carrying Spanish artillery and munitions managed to slip through the British blockade and reach Genoa. Alerted by John Birtles, the British consul, Mathews arrived promptly at Genoa on June 20th with six ships of the line and three bomb ketches and demanded the surrender of the stores. The Genoese government attempted to negotiate, explaining pitifully that they were helpless to act against Spain, but Mathews was unsympathetic and gave them a day to make up their minds before he would open fire on the city. The Genoese then proposed to send the ships back to Spain, but Mathews insisted that the stores be quarantined at Bonifacio and remain there for the rest of the war. The Genoese folded to his demands and the cargo was taken under British escort to Corsica. Fourteen shiploads of artillery and gunpowder would have been of unimaginable value to the rebels, but locked away in the formidable citadel of Bonifacio this treasure was out of their reach.
As it seemed to be the prospect of a Bourbon Corsica which bothered Britain most, the Genoese government next considered whether British opposition might be avoided by selling the island to one of London’s allies. It is difficult to imagine this succeeding given the republic’s economic and political dependence on the Bourbon powers, but the Genoese assemblies further hobbled their chances of a sale by wildly overestimating the actual value of the turbulent island. The Greater Council drafted a proposal to Vienna which suggested the exchange of Corsica for not only the Tuscan Lunigiana (which had been the basis of some abortive proposals for a Corsican cession in earlier years) but the port of Livorno itself (Genoa’s main competitor) as well as an undefined “portion” of the Milanese. The notion that Queen Maria Theresa would make such extensive concessions to Genoa and surrender the only significant Habsburg-controlled port in Italy for the dubious acquisition of Corsica was sheer fantasy. In its desperation the government even discussed selling the island to King Carlo Emanuele III of Sardinia, but again their suggested exchange was preposterous on its face: They would yield Corsica, proposed the Greater Council, in exchange for Montferrat, Tortona, and the Langhe. Confounded by the intractable difficulties of the real world, the Genoese government had retreated into delusion.
What the Genoese did not yet know was that Britain, Austria, and Sardinia were already privately discussing the cession of the Republic’s territory. Gastaldi had only scratched the surface of Albion’s perfidy.
Although Austria and Sardinia had been cooperating against Spain for more than a year, they were not formally allied, and their relationship was rocky and troubled by mutual suspicion. Since the summer of 1742 Lord Carteret, who dreamed of erecting a grand anti-Bourbon coalition, had made bringing these two states into a firmer alignment a top priority of his ministry. The greatest stumbling block thus far had been the price of Sardinia’s allegiance. Carlo Emanuele had demanded certain small yet economically and strategically valuable pieces of the Milanese as a precondition for an alliance. This itself did not sit with Maria Theresa, who had hoped that Carlo Emanuele would settle for the future reconquest of Sicily, but what made it intolerable was that the king demanded his payment up front. Carlo Emanuele expected these cessions to be made immediately, and he expected to keep them regardless of who ended up winning the war. This set off alarm bells in Vienna, where the Sardinian king was already considered untrustworthy. What was to stop him from pocketing his “fee” and then fighting only half-heartedly, or indeed switching sides altogether?
The reason this seemed like a possibility was that ever since the outbreak of the war in Italy, the French had been trying to lure Sardinia into an alliance. They had been allies very recently in the War of Polish Succession and the French understood Sardinia’s importance to Bourbon objectives in Italy. Carlo Emanuele’s state, though not a great power, had a large army for its size and a string of well-fortified bastions in the western Alps that could seriously hamper any attempt to move armies into Italy. Spain had recently discovered this to their great displeasure, and the result was a Spanish army tied up in a fruitless occupation of Savoy with no means to join their fellows fighting in central Italy. If Sardinia were to join France and Spain, Spanish (and French) armies could flood into Lombardy and the effects of British dominance in the Mediterranean would be considerably mitigated.
The problem, again, involved Sardinia’s compensation. France was all too happy to offer Sardinia whatever it wanted, but then again they were not the ones who would have to make sacrifices - any cession would necessarily have to come from Austrian lands in Italy which Spain considered rightfully its own. In the early days of the war King Felipe V had haughtily dismissed such a prospect, confident in the capacity of his armies and skeptical of Sardinia’s power. France’s attempts to woo Sardinia in 1742 had thus foundered on Spanish arrogance, and Sardinia had joined Austria in its defense of the peninsula to great effect. By mid-1743, Spanish reverses in central Italy and their continued inability to force the Alpine frontier had caused Madrid to rethink its attitude towards Sardinia. In consultation with France, a new offer was made to Carlo Emanuele: The king would cede Sardinia to Spain, which would become a kingdom for the Spanish king’s youngest son Don Felipe, and in exchange Carlo Emanuele would receive the entire Milanese and the resurrected title of “King of Lombardy.”
On paper this was an extremely attractive offer. Sardinia itself was of no great value; the Savoyard monarchy had received it only as a consolation prize after the loss of Sicily in 1720 so that they would retain the royal dignity (as while Sardinia and Sicily were kingdoms, Savoy and Piedmont were not). The creation of a royal title for Lombardy thus obviated the need to retain Sardinia, and to exchange that island backwater for long-coveted Milan and its rich Lombard province would be a substantial gain for Turin. But there were other considerations. In the first place, while the potential cession from Austria was much smaller than Spain’s offer of the whole Milanese, Austria actually had that territory; Spain was offering only what it hoped to conquer in the future. Moreover, Carlo Emanuele did not fully trust the sincerity of the Bourbon offer, and that trust was further undermined when his diplomats intercepted a letter from the French foreign minister to the Spanish ambassador assuring him that, as far as the Sardinian business went, “a treaty is only a piece of paper easily torn to shreds.” Such language hardly inspired confidence in Turin.
Nevertheless, Carlo Emanuele and his chief minister Carlo Vincenzo Ferrero, Marquis d’Ormea, actively pursued the Bourbon alliance - or at least appeared to. Carlo Emanuele clearly preferred the modest concessions which he he had demanded of Austria to the grand yet highly dubious offer which Spain had proposed. As Austria was still holding out, however, the king and d’Ormea kept their dialogue with Paris and Madrid open. To give Austria more time to think it over, the Sardinians demanded further concessions from the Bourbons, expecting that they would be rejected and the negotiations would thus be further prolonged. Astoundingly, France blithely agreed to all their demands and promised that they would soon secure Spain’s agreement as well. Shocked by this miscalculation and eager to avoid being dragged into a Bourbon alliance he did not want, Carlo Emanuele turned to Vienna and gave the Queen of Hungary a final ultimatum: Agree to his terms, or he would have no choice but to accept the Bourbon offer that was on the table. That Spain had not actually approved this offer yet was not mentioned. Under pressure from Carteret, who held Austria’s purse strings and dearly wanted to see his designs for an Austro-Sardinian alliance realized, Maria Theresa relented.
The product of this tense brinkmanship was the Treaty of Worms, signed in September 1743 between Britain, Austria, and Sardinia. Austria ceded the territories which Sardinia had demanded, while Sardinia renounced all claims to the remainder of the Milanese. The treaty entailed the commitment of 45,000 Sardinian soldiers and a further 30,000 Austrian soldiers (to be placed under Sardinian command) to the Italian theater. Britain would contribute no ground troops, but pledged to maintain a “strong squadron” in the Mediterranean and agreed to pay annual subsidies to both parties - £200,000 to Sardinia and £300,000 to Austria - for the duration of hostilities. It was the pinnacle of Lord Carteret’s career.
While Carteret was exultant, King Louis XV of France was appalled. The king had been completely hoodwinked by Carlo Emanuele and d’Ormea, led to believe that the King of Sardinia was on the verge of becoming his ally only for him to abruptly join the Habsburg cause. This was a grave embarrassment for the king, who felt not only personally betrayed but mortified that he had been used to deceive his uncle King Felipe. It also exposed French policy in Italy since 1741, which had been predicated upon limiting France’s support for Spain to avoid bringing Sardinia into the war, as a complete sham. The Bourbon response to Worms was the Treaty of Fontainebleau of late October, also known as the “Second Family Compact,” by which France committed herself to supporting the Spanish war in Italy and gaining a principality for Don Felipe. Shortly thereafter, France declared war on Sardinia.
The battle-lines were now drawn, but there was one further complication. In addition to various pieces of the Milanese, Sardinia had demanded the cession of the Marquisate of Finale, and the Treaty of Worms had granted it to them. The problem was that Finale did not actually belong to the Austrians - it belonged to the Genoese. The Spanish had controlled Finale throughout the 17th century, but as a consequence of the War of Spanish Succession it was surrendered to Austria and subsequently sold to the Republic of Genoa by Emperor Karl VI in 1713. The Queen of Hungary speciously claimed that her father had merely mortgaged Finale and that the territory could thus be redeemed at any time, and indeed the allies did not propose to take it without compensation; the Treaty of Worms stipulated that Britain would pay Sardinia an additional £300,000 to redeem the marquisate from Genoa, which was approximately equal to its 1713 purchase price. The idea that Genoa might refuse this forced sale of her territory does not seem to have occurred to the treaty’s authors. Admiral Mathews, who on several occasions had witnessed the Genoese wilt before the threat of British sea power, predicted confidently that if the Genoese did make any attempt to prevent the cession his fleet would quickly remind them of their place.[1]
But Genoa could only be pushed so far. The Republic had thus far maintained its neutrality in the war that consumed Europe, mindful of the fate of minor belligerent states like Bavaria and Modena which had been trampled down and devastated by warring armies, but they had no intention of passively accepting the groundless seizure - indeed, outright theft - of their territory. Finale was a relatively small piece of land, and its people were not terribly enamored of Genoese rule; until very recently its inhabitants had been Spanish subjects who saw Genoa as their traditional enemy, and the Finalesi had revolted against Genoese authorities as recently as 1734. Its cession, however, would cut the Genoese state in two and deliver a key strategic point into the hands of the predatory Sardinian king, potentially crippling the Republic’s ability to defend itself.
Once the secret clauses of the Worms treaty became known - and after the initial icy grip of horror had passed - the Genoese councilors resolved that their state would not be carved up without a fight. The Senate ordered the Finale garrison to be strengthened, while the Greater Council drafted a plan to expand the army to as many as ten thousand men, nearly double its current size. But the most important consequence of the Worms treaty for Genoa was to convince them that neutrality, even backed by an expanded army, was no longer tenable. The Genoese had no desire to fight the British and still saw Austria as a potential protector and ally despite Maria Theresa’s betrayal, but it was inarguable that a Bourbon victory in Italy was the only outcome of the war which guaranteed that Genoa would not lose territory. The Republic would not rush into war, but from this point forward it was practically inevitable that Genoa - and with it, Corsica - would be drawn into the maelstrom.
Genoese determination had to be tempered by practical considerations. An army of 10,000 men was not cheap, and to finance a military expansion the Republic was compelled to take out a new loan for one million scudi from the Bank of Saint George. Manpower was also a problem, for two of the Republic’s traditional sources of troops, Corsican levies and German mercenaries, were largely unavailable. Although in 1744 the Republic would raise a few companies of Corsican troops (mostly filogenovesi exiles) and a whole battalion of “Germans” (mostly deserters from other armies), they would have to rely mainly on the Ligurian peasantry, who were generally loyal to the state but not exactly a martial population. Recruiting, outfitting, and training this newly expanded army would take months, but it was unclear whether the Republic had that sort of time. A Sardinian ultimatum, for all they knew, might arrive any day.
To defend the Republic in the interim, the Senate decided to redeploy units presently stationed in Corsica to vulnerable Ligurian garrisons. Of the six battalions then on Corsica - four Italian, one German, and one Grisons - three of them, two Italian and the single German, were to be recalled as soon as possible. The withdrawal represented a decline in the nominal strength of the regular troops on Corsica from 3,400 to 1,800, a loss of nearly half. This was hardly desirable given the recent fall of Ajaccio, but the Genoese government saw no better alternative. It was presumed that any losses to the rebels in Corsica could be reversed after the war, when French or other foreign armies would be available to render assistance. Conversely, if the “Pragmatic Allies” won the war and Carlo Emanuele succeeded in taking Finale, the Republic would have no recourse.
While Mathews had presumed a Sardinian demand on Finale was imminent, no ultimatum materialized in the remainder of 1743. The Genoese were inclined to attribute this to their own swift action to bolster their defenses, and perhaps they were correct. Although Mathews was confident that Genoa would never dare to resist British and Sardinian might, Carlo Emanuele may have taken their efforts at reinforcing the Finale garrisons as an indication that an attempt to force the Finale issue was more likely to result in war then a peaceful cession. By any objective standard the Sardinian army was far more formidable than Genoa’s army; Sardinia, after all, had agreed to field 45,000 men in the Worms treaty, while for Genoa 10,000 was very much an aspirational figure. Yet defending their strong Ligurian fortresses was exactly what the Genoese army was best at, and they were certain to be supported by thousands of Ligurian irregulars who could make themselves as much of a nuisance in the passes of the Apennines as the Corsicans perched in their own mountains had been to the Genoese. Even when greatly outnumbered the Genoese could turn an invasion into a brutal and costly slog.
More importantly, however, Sardinia could simply not afford to make another enemy. Any attack against Sardinia from the west would have to come either by the coastal route or over the Alpine passes. The former, though considered impractical by the French because of the presence of the British fleet, was favored by the Spanish, and the Sardinians considered it a likely avenue of attack. Much depended on the fortress of Villefranche, which served not only as the linchpin of Sardinian defense on the coast but was also the forward headquarters of the British Mediterranean squadron. If Genoa were to attack Villefranche from the east while the “Gallispan”[3] forces attacked from the west, the port would be placed in considerable danger. Even if the Gallispan army eschewed the coastal route entirely and tried to forge its way through the mountains, hostilities with Genoa would require Sardinian troops to be diverted to Liguria, causing the already outnumbered Austro-Sardinian forces in Piedmont to be even further disadvantaged against what was expected to be an enormous Bourbon army come Spring. Here the crucial blunder of the Worms treaty, and the Finale clause in particular, is evident: It added to the Pragmatic Allies’ list of enemies in Italy at precisely the time when they were facing the greatest threat in the Italian theater thus far.
For Theodore, however, it was a blunder most fortuitous. Theodore had sought Sardinian assistance for years to no avail. While the Sardinian king had always looked upon the Corsican rebellion with some satisfaction - he could hardly object to anything which confounded the Republic - Carlo Emanuele had never thought it necessary or wise to intervene. Now, however, it was absolutely in Sardinia’s interest that the rebels should not only thrive but rise in active rebellion against their Genoese masters. A new Corsican uprising would discourage the Genoese from redeploying even more battalions from Corsica to Liguria, and hopefully distract them from any move towards allying with the Bourbons and becoming an active belligerent. Happily, this change in interest came at the same time that Theodore, ever the optimist, was making new overtures to Turin. Remarkably, he was being aided in this regard by both the officers of the Hanoverian regime and their Stuart rivals: Theodore was put in contact with d’Ormea through the assistance of Arthur Villettes, Britain’s minister in Turin, not long after he had convinced the Old Pretender himself, James Francis Edward Stuart, to write a discreet letter to Carlo Emanuele endorsing the capabilities of his old spy Baron von Neuhoff.[4]
What Theodore needed was well within Carlo Emmanuel’s means, particularly now that the British were filling his pockets to the tune of two hundred thousand pounds per annum. So what was the harm in sliding the Baron von Neuhoff, Vanquisher of the French, a few thousand sequins? [A]
Footnotes
[1] The Finale cession did not sit well with everyone on the side of the Pragmatic Allies. The British MP William Pitt bemoaned that “we have engaged in such an act of injustice toward Genoa as must alarm all Europe, and give to the French a most signal advantage.” “The Genoese, upon learning of it,” observed one Sardinian nobleman with a knack for understatement, “will find this article strange, and I admit that it looks so to me, good Piedmontese though I am.”
[2] Owing to illness, desertion, captivity, recruitment delays, and the occasional combat death, the actual number of regular forces on Corsica at this time was probably 1,500-1,600 out of a nominal 1,800.
[3] “Gallispan” (“Gallic” + “Spanish”) was used to refer to the combined Franco-Spanish forces which were active in Italy after the Treaty of Fontainebleau of 1743.
[4] Carlo Emmanuele was a great-grandson of Charles I of England and thus a first cousin once removed of the Old Pretender. Theodore the ex-Jacobite agent knew this very well and was no doubt hoping to use this familial relationship to his advantage. That James Stuart actually acted on Theodore’s request has been taken by some as supporting evidence to the rumors that Theodore had been granted a title in the Jacobite peerage. Then again, Theodore had many high-ranking Jacobite friends who were influential in the Pretender’s court in Rome; a title may not have been strictly necessary.
Timeline Notes
[A] The Treaty of Worms and its lead-up in this update is essentially as OTL, as nothing’s really changed to alter the fundamental strategies and assumptions of the actors. Carlo Emanuele’s interest in Theodore, while obviously different from OTL, has historical precedent - in early 1744, the king gave Theodore a thousand sequins and seems to have been keeping him in reserve to lead a pro-Sardinian rebellion in Corsica until the British later convinced him to replace Theodore with Domenico Rivarola. Since Genoa didn’t actually join the war IOTL until 1745, clearly Carlo Emanuele was willing to meddle in Corsican affairs long before Genoa actually became a belligerent.
Treacherous Worms
The Republic of Genoa prior to the War of the Austrian Succession. The Marquisate of Finale is the light red segment of coastal territory in Western Liguria.
The Republic of Genoa prior to the War of the Austrian Succession. The Marquisate of Finale is the light red segment of coastal territory in Western Liguria.
Despite repeated warnings that the city’s situation was precarious, Ajaccio’s fall had been a complete shock to the Genoese government. As usual, their first instinct was to conceal the true extent of their injury. State censorship became even more draconian and severe: The government threatened five years of galley slavery to anyone who spoke of the disaster and banned any display of mourning for the soldiers or civilians who had died in the siege. The church bells could not ring for them, and their widows were enjoined from wearing black. Still, such a monumental failure could not be entirely hidden, and a scapegoat was needed to deflect uncomfortable questions as to why the Senate had not done more to save the city. Vice-Regent Gian Benedetto Speroni, the commissioner who had presided over Ajaccio’s capitulation, was the obvious choice.
Genoa’s least fortunate man had been thrust into power in a moment of crisis twice in one year - first to replace Commissioner-General Spinola just as his grand strategy was unraveling, and then to replace Commissioner Veneroso after his cowardice and incompetence had already doomed Ajaccio. Speroni was not, in the final analysis, a great leader of his time, but he had stoically met the challenges posed by the failures of his predecessors and the miserliness of his government. His only crime was that he lacked the incandescent genius which would have been required to avert tragedies which had already been long in the making by the time he held the reins of power. For this, he was denounced as a traitor and thrown in prison. He would not remain in prison long; a Genoese nobleman could not simply be “disappeared” without trial, and a trial would bring unwelcome attention to the government’s own role in a catastrophe which they much preferred to sweep under the rug. But his career and reputation were ruined, and he died in obscurity.
The capture of Ajaccio threw the government’s overall Corsican strategy into doubt. The conclusion which the Genoese had drawn months before, that they could not militarily contest the interior with the rebels, seemed to be as true as it had ever been. Yet the validity of the “toehold strategy” which they had developed as a consequence had been shaken by the fall of one of their most important citadels. The Genoese had trusted in their fortresses on the basis that the rebels, being essentially an irregular light infantry force, could make no headway against fortified garrisons. True, Theodore had captured Bastia in 1736, but the city’s defenses had been strengthened since then and the garrison was far larger. The other citadels did not necessarily share the same particular vulnerabilities of Ajaccio, but it was clear that their safety was no longer a foregone conclusion now that the rebels had artillery (and had demonstrated the ability to use it). Theodore’s armistice promised to give the government some time to formulate a new strategy, but the question remained: If neither an offensive nor a purely defensive military strategy was feasible, what was the alternative?
Certainly not reconciliation. The Senate had selected Bishop Pier Maria Giustiniani precisely because of his reputation as a negotiator, and for a few weeks in June and July the senators may have actually believed he might be able to find a mutually acceptable agreement with the rebels. After the consulta of Ortiporio, however, the Genoese government abandoned any lingering hope that a satisfactory peace could be achieved. Flush with success, the rebels would clearly not accept the sort of “reasonable” terms the Genoese were prepared to concede. Although Giustiniani kept up the pretense of negotiations, his government ceased to make any good faith effort to meet Corsican demands and considered the “peace process” to be merely a delaying action.
This pessimism is best illustrated by the fact that even before Giustiniani's arrival at Bastia, the Genoese government was debating once more whether the best option was to offload the island entirely. Notwithstanding the government’s earlier assurances to Rear Admiral Thomas Mathews that they had no intention of selling Corsica, in early May the Greater Council of the Republic formally authorized Doge Domenico Canevaro and the Senate to “dispose of the Kingdom [of Corsica] as they find appropriate.” New rumors began to circulate of a Genoese-Spanish deal, which had the republic’s diplomatic corps scrambling all over Europe to assure concerned ministers that the rumors were untrue. In June, the British Secretary of State for the Southern Department Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, summoned the Genoese ambassador Giambattista Gastaldi in order to repeat the words of his plenipotentiary admiral and explain that Britain would never allow Corsica to be sold under any condition, least of all to a Bourbon.
The duplicity of the British had Gastaldi at his wit’s end. It was all well and good for London to insist that the island not be sold to their enemies in the middle of a war; even the Genoese could appreciate the reasonableness of that request, even if it was tremendously inconvenient for the Republic. For years, however, Gastaldi had been attempting to secure a guarantee of Genoese sovereignty over the island from the British government, only to be repeatedly stalled and evaded. London would apparently neither allow Genoa to dispose of its possession nor fully commit to guaranteeing Genoa’s rights to it. Gastaldi knew all about Britain’s “covert” support for Theodore and correctly ascertained that Lord John Carteret himself was behind it, but when Gastaldi managed to gain an audience with the minister and confront him directly with Britain’s misdeeds, Carteret did not even attempt to justify himself. Instead he lied to Gastaldi’s face, telling him his government had no involvement with Theodore, that he himself had never met the “so-called Baron Newhoff,” and that any suggestion to the contrary was risible, even ludicrous.
Despite Carteret’s outrageous deceit, the Genoese had no choice but to take the British threat with deadly seriousness as long as Mathews was on their doorstep. The Admiral had absolutely no compunctions about threatening force against the Genoese, as demonstrated in an incident in June when no fewer than fourteen xebecs bound from Catalonia carrying Spanish artillery and munitions managed to slip through the British blockade and reach Genoa. Alerted by John Birtles, the British consul, Mathews arrived promptly at Genoa on June 20th with six ships of the line and three bomb ketches and demanded the surrender of the stores. The Genoese government attempted to negotiate, explaining pitifully that they were helpless to act against Spain, but Mathews was unsympathetic and gave them a day to make up their minds before he would open fire on the city. The Genoese then proposed to send the ships back to Spain, but Mathews insisted that the stores be quarantined at Bonifacio and remain there for the rest of the war. The Genoese folded to his demands and the cargo was taken under British escort to Corsica. Fourteen shiploads of artillery and gunpowder would have been of unimaginable value to the rebels, but locked away in the formidable citadel of Bonifacio this treasure was out of their reach.
As it seemed to be the prospect of a Bourbon Corsica which bothered Britain most, the Genoese government next considered whether British opposition might be avoided by selling the island to one of London’s allies. It is difficult to imagine this succeeding given the republic’s economic and political dependence on the Bourbon powers, but the Genoese assemblies further hobbled their chances of a sale by wildly overestimating the actual value of the turbulent island. The Greater Council drafted a proposal to Vienna which suggested the exchange of Corsica for not only the Tuscan Lunigiana (which had been the basis of some abortive proposals for a Corsican cession in earlier years) but the port of Livorno itself (Genoa’s main competitor) as well as an undefined “portion” of the Milanese. The notion that Queen Maria Theresa would make such extensive concessions to Genoa and surrender the only significant Habsburg-controlled port in Italy for the dubious acquisition of Corsica was sheer fantasy. In its desperation the government even discussed selling the island to King Carlo Emanuele III of Sardinia, but again their suggested exchange was preposterous on its face: They would yield Corsica, proposed the Greater Council, in exchange for Montferrat, Tortona, and the Langhe. Confounded by the intractable difficulties of the real world, the Genoese government had retreated into delusion.
What the Genoese did not yet know was that Britain, Austria, and Sardinia were already privately discussing the cession of the Republic’s territory. Gastaldi had only scratched the surface of Albion’s perfidy.
Although Austria and Sardinia had been cooperating against Spain for more than a year, they were not formally allied, and their relationship was rocky and troubled by mutual suspicion. Since the summer of 1742 Lord Carteret, who dreamed of erecting a grand anti-Bourbon coalition, had made bringing these two states into a firmer alignment a top priority of his ministry. The greatest stumbling block thus far had been the price of Sardinia’s allegiance. Carlo Emanuele had demanded certain small yet economically and strategically valuable pieces of the Milanese as a precondition for an alliance. This itself did not sit with Maria Theresa, who had hoped that Carlo Emanuele would settle for the future reconquest of Sicily, but what made it intolerable was that the king demanded his payment up front. Carlo Emanuele expected these cessions to be made immediately, and he expected to keep them regardless of who ended up winning the war. This set off alarm bells in Vienna, where the Sardinian king was already considered untrustworthy. What was to stop him from pocketing his “fee” and then fighting only half-heartedly, or indeed switching sides altogether?
The reason this seemed like a possibility was that ever since the outbreak of the war in Italy, the French had been trying to lure Sardinia into an alliance. They had been allies very recently in the War of Polish Succession and the French understood Sardinia’s importance to Bourbon objectives in Italy. Carlo Emanuele’s state, though not a great power, had a large army for its size and a string of well-fortified bastions in the western Alps that could seriously hamper any attempt to move armies into Italy. Spain had recently discovered this to their great displeasure, and the result was a Spanish army tied up in a fruitless occupation of Savoy with no means to join their fellows fighting in central Italy. If Sardinia were to join France and Spain, Spanish (and French) armies could flood into Lombardy and the effects of British dominance in the Mediterranean would be considerably mitigated.
The problem, again, involved Sardinia’s compensation. France was all too happy to offer Sardinia whatever it wanted, but then again they were not the ones who would have to make sacrifices - any cession would necessarily have to come from Austrian lands in Italy which Spain considered rightfully its own. In the early days of the war King Felipe V had haughtily dismissed such a prospect, confident in the capacity of his armies and skeptical of Sardinia’s power. France’s attempts to woo Sardinia in 1742 had thus foundered on Spanish arrogance, and Sardinia had joined Austria in its defense of the peninsula to great effect. By mid-1743, Spanish reverses in central Italy and their continued inability to force the Alpine frontier had caused Madrid to rethink its attitude towards Sardinia. In consultation with France, a new offer was made to Carlo Emanuele: The king would cede Sardinia to Spain, which would become a kingdom for the Spanish king’s youngest son Don Felipe, and in exchange Carlo Emanuele would receive the entire Milanese and the resurrected title of “King of Lombardy.”
On paper this was an extremely attractive offer. Sardinia itself was of no great value; the Savoyard monarchy had received it only as a consolation prize after the loss of Sicily in 1720 so that they would retain the royal dignity (as while Sardinia and Sicily were kingdoms, Savoy and Piedmont were not). The creation of a royal title for Lombardy thus obviated the need to retain Sardinia, and to exchange that island backwater for long-coveted Milan and its rich Lombard province would be a substantial gain for Turin. But there were other considerations. In the first place, while the potential cession from Austria was much smaller than Spain’s offer of the whole Milanese, Austria actually had that territory; Spain was offering only what it hoped to conquer in the future. Moreover, Carlo Emanuele did not fully trust the sincerity of the Bourbon offer, and that trust was further undermined when his diplomats intercepted a letter from the French foreign minister to the Spanish ambassador assuring him that, as far as the Sardinian business went, “a treaty is only a piece of paper easily torn to shreds.” Such language hardly inspired confidence in Turin.
Nevertheless, Carlo Emanuele and his chief minister Carlo Vincenzo Ferrero, Marquis d’Ormea, actively pursued the Bourbon alliance - or at least appeared to. Carlo Emanuele clearly preferred the modest concessions which he he had demanded of Austria to the grand yet highly dubious offer which Spain had proposed. As Austria was still holding out, however, the king and d’Ormea kept their dialogue with Paris and Madrid open. To give Austria more time to think it over, the Sardinians demanded further concessions from the Bourbons, expecting that they would be rejected and the negotiations would thus be further prolonged. Astoundingly, France blithely agreed to all their demands and promised that they would soon secure Spain’s agreement as well. Shocked by this miscalculation and eager to avoid being dragged into a Bourbon alliance he did not want, Carlo Emanuele turned to Vienna and gave the Queen of Hungary a final ultimatum: Agree to his terms, or he would have no choice but to accept the Bourbon offer that was on the table. That Spain had not actually approved this offer yet was not mentioned. Under pressure from Carteret, who held Austria’s purse strings and dearly wanted to see his designs for an Austro-Sardinian alliance realized, Maria Theresa relented.
The product of this tense brinkmanship was the Treaty of Worms, signed in September 1743 between Britain, Austria, and Sardinia. Austria ceded the territories which Sardinia had demanded, while Sardinia renounced all claims to the remainder of the Milanese. The treaty entailed the commitment of 45,000 Sardinian soldiers and a further 30,000 Austrian soldiers (to be placed under Sardinian command) to the Italian theater. Britain would contribute no ground troops, but pledged to maintain a “strong squadron” in the Mediterranean and agreed to pay annual subsidies to both parties - £200,000 to Sardinia and £300,000 to Austria - for the duration of hostilities. It was the pinnacle of Lord Carteret’s career.
While Carteret was exultant, King Louis XV of France was appalled. The king had been completely hoodwinked by Carlo Emanuele and d’Ormea, led to believe that the King of Sardinia was on the verge of becoming his ally only for him to abruptly join the Habsburg cause. This was a grave embarrassment for the king, who felt not only personally betrayed but mortified that he had been used to deceive his uncle King Felipe. It also exposed French policy in Italy since 1741, which had been predicated upon limiting France’s support for Spain to avoid bringing Sardinia into the war, as a complete sham. The Bourbon response to Worms was the Treaty of Fontainebleau of late October, also known as the “Second Family Compact,” by which France committed herself to supporting the Spanish war in Italy and gaining a principality for Don Felipe. Shortly thereafter, France declared war on Sardinia.
The battle-lines were now drawn, but there was one further complication. In addition to various pieces of the Milanese, Sardinia had demanded the cession of the Marquisate of Finale, and the Treaty of Worms had granted it to them. The problem was that Finale did not actually belong to the Austrians - it belonged to the Genoese. The Spanish had controlled Finale throughout the 17th century, but as a consequence of the War of Spanish Succession it was surrendered to Austria and subsequently sold to the Republic of Genoa by Emperor Karl VI in 1713. The Queen of Hungary speciously claimed that her father had merely mortgaged Finale and that the territory could thus be redeemed at any time, and indeed the allies did not propose to take it without compensation; the Treaty of Worms stipulated that Britain would pay Sardinia an additional £300,000 to redeem the marquisate from Genoa, which was approximately equal to its 1713 purchase price. The idea that Genoa might refuse this forced sale of her territory does not seem to have occurred to the treaty’s authors. Admiral Mathews, who on several occasions had witnessed the Genoese wilt before the threat of British sea power, predicted confidently that if the Genoese did make any attempt to prevent the cession his fleet would quickly remind them of their place.[1]
But Genoa could only be pushed so far. The Republic had thus far maintained its neutrality in the war that consumed Europe, mindful of the fate of minor belligerent states like Bavaria and Modena which had been trampled down and devastated by warring armies, but they had no intention of passively accepting the groundless seizure - indeed, outright theft - of their territory. Finale was a relatively small piece of land, and its people were not terribly enamored of Genoese rule; until very recently its inhabitants had been Spanish subjects who saw Genoa as their traditional enemy, and the Finalesi had revolted against Genoese authorities as recently as 1734. Its cession, however, would cut the Genoese state in two and deliver a key strategic point into the hands of the predatory Sardinian king, potentially crippling the Republic’s ability to defend itself.
Once the secret clauses of the Worms treaty became known - and after the initial icy grip of horror had passed - the Genoese councilors resolved that their state would not be carved up without a fight. The Senate ordered the Finale garrison to be strengthened, while the Greater Council drafted a plan to expand the army to as many as ten thousand men, nearly double its current size. But the most important consequence of the Worms treaty for Genoa was to convince them that neutrality, even backed by an expanded army, was no longer tenable. The Genoese had no desire to fight the British and still saw Austria as a potential protector and ally despite Maria Theresa’s betrayal, but it was inarguable that a Bourbon victory in Italy was the only outcome of the war which guaranteed that Genoa would not lose territory. The Republic would not rush into war, but from this point forward it was practically inevitable that Genoa - and with it, Corsica - would be drawn into the maelstrom.
Genoese determination had to be tempered by practical considerations. An army of 10,000 men was not cheap, and to finance a military expansion the Republic was compelled to take out a new loan for one million scudi from the Bank of Saint George. Manpower was also a problem, for two of the Republic’s traditional sources of troops, Corsican levies and German mercenaries, were largely unavailable. Although in 1744 the Republic would raise a few companies of Corsican troops (mostly filogenovesi exiles) and a whole battalion of “Germans” (mostly deserters from other armies), they would have to rely mainly on the Ligurian peasantry, who were generally loyal to the state but not exactly a martial population. Recruiting, outfitting, and training this newly expanded army would take months, but it was unclear whether the Republic had that sort of time. A Sardinian ultimatum, for all they knew, might arrive any day.
To defend the Republic in the interim, the Senate decided to redeploy units presently stationed in Corsica to vulnerable Ligurian garrisons. Of the six battalions then on Corsica - four Italian, one German, and one Grisons - three of them, two Italian and the single German, were to be recalled as soon as possible. The withdrawal represented a decline in the nominal strength of the regular troops on Corsica from 3,400 to 1,800, a loss of nearly half. This was hardly desirable given the recent fall of Ajaccio, but the Genoese government saw no better alternative. It was presumed that any losses to the rebels in Corsica could be reversed after the war, when French or other foreign armies would be available to render assistance. Conversely, if the “Pragmatic Allies” won the war and Carlo Emanuele succeeded in taking Finale, the Republic would have no recourse.
While Mathews had presumed a Sardinian demand on Finale was imminent, no ultimatum materialized in the remainder of 1743. The Genoese were inclined to attribute this to their own swift action to bolster their defenses, and perhaps they were correct. Although Mathews was confident that Genoa would never dare to resist British and Sardinian might, Carlo Emanuele may have taken their efforts at reinforcing the Finale garrisons as an indication that an attempt to force the Finale issue was more likely to result in war then a peaceful cession. By any objective standard the Sardinian army was far more formidable than Genoa’s army; Sardinia, after all, had agreed to field 45,000 men in the Worms treaty, while for Genoa 10,000 was very much an aspirational figure. Yet defending their strong Ligurian fortresses was exactly what the Genoese army was best at, and they were certain to be supported by thousands of Ligurian irregulars who could make themselves as much of a nuisance in the passes of the Apennines as the Corsicans perched in their own mountains had been to the Genoese. Even when greatly outnumbered the Genoese could turn an invasion into a brutal and costly slog.
More importantly, however, Sardinia could simply not afford to make another enemy. Any attack against Sardinia from the west would have to come either by the coastal route or over the Alpine passes. The former, though considered impractical by the French because of the presence of the British fleet, was favored by the Spanish, and the Sardinians considered it a likely avenue of attack. Much depended on the fortress of Villefranche, which served not only as the linchpin of Sardinian defense on the coast but was also the forward headquarters of the British Mediterranean squadron. If Genoa were to attack Villefranche from the east while the “Gallispan”[3] forces attacked from the west, the port would be placed in considerable danger. Even if the Gallispan army eschewed the coastal route entirely and tried to forge its way through the mountains, hostilities with Genoa would require Sardinian troops to be diverted to Liguria, causing the already outnumbered Austro-Sardinian forces in Piedmont to be even further disadvantaged against what was expected to be an enormous Bourbon army come Spring. Here the crucial blunder of the Worms treaty, and the Finale clause in particular, is evident: It added to the Pragmatic Allies’ list of enemies in Italy at precisely the time when they were facing the greatest threat in the Italian theater thus far.
For Theodore, however, it was a blunder most fortuitous. Theodore had sought Sardinian assistance for years to no avail. While the Sardinian king had always looked upon the Corsican rebellion with some satisfaction - he could hardly object to anything which confounded the Republic - Carlo Emanuele had never thought it necessary or wise to intervene. Now, however, it was absolutely in Sardinia’s interest that the rebels should not only thrive but rise in active rebellion against their Genoese masters. A new Corsican uprising would discourage the Genoese from redeploying even more battalions from Corsica to Liguria, and hopefully distract them from any move towards allying with the Bourbons and becoming an active belligerent. Happily, this change in interest came at the same time that Theodore, ever the optimist, was making new overtures to Turin. Remarkably, he was being aided in this regard by both the officers of the Hanoverian regime and their Stuart rivals: Theodore was put in contact with d’Ormea through the assistance of Arthur Villettes, Britain’s minister in Turin, not long after he had convinced the Old Pretender himself, James Francis Edward Stuart, to write a discreet letter to Carlo Emanuele endorsing the capabilities of his old spy Baron von Neuhoff.[4]
What Theodore needed was well within Carlo Emmanuel’s means, particularly now that the British were filling his pockets to the tune of two hundred thousand pounds per annum. So what was the harm in sliding the Baron von Neuhoff, Vanquisher of the French, a few thousand sequins? [A]
Footnotes
[1] The Finale cession did not sit well with everyone on the side of the Pragmatic Allies. The British MP William Pitt bemoaned that “we have engaged in such an act of injustice toward Genoa as must alarm all Europe, and give to the French a most signal advantage.” “The Genoese, upon learning of it,” observed one Sardinian nobleman with a knack for understatement, “will find this article strange, and I admit that it looks so to me, good Piedmontese though I am.”
[2] Owing to illness, desertion, captivity, recruitment delays, and the occasional combat death, the actual number of regular forces on Corsica at this time was probably 1,500-1,600 out of a nominal 1,800.
[3] “Gallispan” (“Gallic” + “Spanish”) was used to refer to the combined Franco-Spanish forces which were active in Italy after the Treaty of Fontainebleau of 1743.
[4] Carlo Emmanuele was a great-grandson of Charles I of England and thus a first cousin once removed of the Old Pretender. Theodore the ex-Jacobite agent knew this very well and was no doubt hoping to use this familial relationship to his advantage. That James Stuart actually acted on Theodore’s request has been taken by some as supporting evidence to the rumors that Theodore had been granted a title in the Jacobite peerage. Then again, Theodore had many high-ranking Jacobite friends who were influential in the Pretender’s court in Rome; a title may not have been strictly necessary.
Timeline Notes
[A] The Treaty of Worms and its lead-up in this update is essentially as OTL, as nothing’s really changed to alter the fundamental strategies and assumptions of the actors. Carlo Emanuele’s interest in Theodore, while obviously different from OTL, has historical precedent - in early 1744, the king gave Theodore a thousand sequins and seems to have been keeping him in reserve to lead a pro-Sardinian rebellion in Corsica until the British later convinced him to replace Theodore with Domenico Rivarola. Since Genoa didn’t actually join the war IOTL until 1745, clearly Carlo Emanuele was willing to meddle in Corsican affairs long before Genoa actually became a belligerent.
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