alternatehistory.com

Despite his youth and relatively junior grade in the Royal Navy, Lieutenant David Aytone found himself treated like a visiting ambassador as soon as he set foot upon Corsican soil. King Theodore himself came to the shore at the beach of Toga, just north of Bastia, along with a company of grenadiers and the best military band the Corsicans could scrape together. What Aytone found most surprising, however, was that the king spoke perfect English. He was just about the only man in the Corsican camp who did, which put the lieutenant in the odd position of having a king as his translator. This worked to Theodore’s advantage, for he had every reason to portray the young lieutenant as a figure of more consequence than he actually was; to his officers, Theodore referred to the Englishman as Signore Aitone, and he certainly did not stop the Corsican soldiers referring to Aytone simply as U capitanu inglese. The British were lodged in cottages in Cardo close to Theodore’s own temporary domicile, and Aytone became the king’s frequent guest at dinners and war councils, although he presumably could not understand much of the latter.

Even before the British fleet sailed into view, the royalist council of war had developed a new plan. Theodore and his officers surmised that the Genoese were too weak to defend everywhere at once, and that a feint against the Terranova might draw enough defenders from the Terravecchia to allow the Corsicans to take the ramparts. To accomplish this, however, the Corsicans needed to get close enough to the citadel to actually threaten an attack. Major Anton Nobile Battisti, having surveyed the battlefield, pointed out that the ideal avenue for this attack was via a ridge arising directly west of the citadel. An advance down this ridge would be partially shielded from cannon-fire from the citadel below and would flank the southern end of the ramparts at the Church of San Giuseppe. But first the Corsicans would have to storm the strong point at the western end of the ridge, called the Posto della Croce by the Genoese. Vice-Regent Speroni had identified the “Post of the Cross” as a crucial location for the defense of Bastia and had recommended building a fortified tower there, but there had been neither time nor resources for that, and an earthen redoubt defended the hill instead.

Commissioner-General Pier Maria Giustiniani - himself a bishop - considered the successful Genoese defense of the Terravecchia to have been nothing short of a miracle, and instructed the citizens to give thanks to God for their deliverance. Nevertheless, he realized that his men had only hung on by the skin of their teeth. The Terravecchia perimeter had been defended by more than 600 men, the lion’s share of his force, leaving only a few hundred to hold the Terranova and its outposts. He was certain that the Corsicans would attack the Terravecchia again, but did not know if he could replicate his earlier success. The Genoese position was improved by the arrival of the feluccas, which not only carried food, ammunition, and artillery, but 50 Grison infantry and a cache of muskets which could be used to arm more citizens. The arrival of the British mitigated the effect of this windfall, however, as it forced Giustiniani to strengthen the citadel’s garrison and man the artillery there in case Captain Charles Watson attempted an attack on the harbor or the citadel itself.

The Corsicans preceded their attack with a ruse. The militia gathered above the Terravecchia on the morning of September 28th, appearing as if they were prepared for another assault, and soon the Corsican artillery opened up on Terravecchia once more. The real attack, however, was made by four companies of regulars against the Posto della Croce further south, led personally by Lieutenant-Colonel Milanino Lusinchi. Although they suffered under a hot fire from the hilltop redoubt, the defenders were outnumbered and had only 31 regular soldiers, the rest (under a hundred in total) being militia and armed citizenry. The first attack stalled as the Corsicans hunkered down and returned fire ineffectively, but Lieutenant-Colonel Lusinchi led the men back up the hill, sword in hand, until the Corsicans poured over the earthworks. The militia fled, and 23 Grison regulars were killed or captured.

After regrouping at the redoubt, Lusinchi’s force pivoted northwest, where another Genoese outpost at the Convent of the Capuchins lay down the hill less than 300 yards away. A separate detachment of regulars and militia had engaged this position early in the day, mostly as a means to fix the defenders in position so they could not reinforce the Posto della Croce. Now that this position was taken, the Corsicans were able to attack the convent from the rear and soon flushed out the defenders. As predicted, the defenders at the Church of San Giuseppe to the south rapidly withdrew to the citadel rather than allow themselves to be flanked in a similar manner. By noon or shortly thereafter the outer defenses of the Terranova had totally collapsed, placing the Corsicans within 700 yards of the citadel.

Over the next two days, the Corsicans and their British auxiliaries re-positioned their artillery. Aytone had pointed out that the guns were presently too distant to do much good, and the newly captured position on the ridge near the Posto della Croce would permit guns emplaced there to enfilade parts of the Terravecchia defenses. Under Battisti’s direction, a hastily fortified battery was constructed, and on the 30th the Corsican and British gun crews began pounding the Genoese positions. The Church of the Jesuits, another church-turned-bastion in the defensive line, was in the crossfire of two different Corsican batteries only 500 yards away. Within hours, the church was damaged so badly that the roof caved in and the defenders had to abandon it. With all their artillery concentrated at the citadel, the Genoese could offer almost no reply to this attack, and this unopposed bombardment had a corrosive effect on the morale of the defenders. The bombardment resumed on the 1st of October, and the Corsican guns were joined by the artillery of the Newcastle, which had anchored north of the port so as to bombard the northern Terravecchia out of the citadel’s effective range.[1]

Just after noon, the Corsicans launched a ground attack with around 1,400 men over the length of the Terravecchia perimeter. The militia was assigned to the center, under the overall command of Lieutenant-General Luigi Maria Ciavaldini of Orezza. The regulars would be positioned mainly on the flanks, with Major Pietro Giovan Battaglini commanding in the north and Lieutenant-Colonel Lusinchi in the south.[2] This time they were better prepared to attack the ramparts, having equipped themselves with ladders and axes. Once more, however, the Corsican organization proved rather shoddy; Count Marcantonio Giappiconi imagined a grand assault in unison over the whole line, but in practice different parts of the rampart were engaged at different times. This poor coordination was most evident in the center, where despite being heavily outnumbered the defenders managed to withstand the assault of the militia, which degenerated into sporadic, piecemeal advances and long-range skirmishing down the line.

The flanks, however, were another story. The heaviest fighting of the day was in the south, where Lusinchi’s battalion assaulted the Genoese lines around the shattered Church of the Jesuits. This part of the line had been most seriously damaged by the Corsican guns, and now Lusinchi’s men had the advantage of charging down a hill instead of up it. The Genoese regulars under Captain Giovanni Battista Albora gave them a good volley, but it did not stop the attack, and the Corsicans were soon on top of them. Apparently eschewing the usual patriotic slogans of “Evvivu Corsica” and “Evvivu u Rè,” the regulars launched themselves over the ramparts with a chilling cry of “Tumbà, Tumbà, Tumbà!” (“Kill, kill, kill!”). A desperate melee ensued, but it did not last long; battered and outnumbered, the Genoese collapsed and Albora’s company was routed along with their supporting militia. Battaglini’s attack in the north was less sanguinary, but no less successful. His primary target, the Convent of San Francesco, was held by the Barabino Grenadiers, but despite having performed so gallantly earlier in the siege the unit withdrew from its position without orders after the eponymous Captain Barabino was shot dead early in the battle. With their flanks staved in, the Genoese center abandoned the ramparts and retreated.

When Bastia fell to the rebels in 1736, it was by means of a peaceful capitulation, and the city had been scarcely harmed. Now, having been compelled to take it by force, the rebels put the city to the sack. Although General Ciavaldini commanded the whole center division in theory, the militia soon split up into its various regional companies and ignored the Orezzan general's orders. They entered the city as soon as the Genoese abandoned the ramparts and began looting almost immediately. Some of the citizens attempted to fight back, but this only enraged the Corsicans, who started attacking the populace indiscriminately. Lieutenant-Colonel Lusinchi was stabbed in the shoulder and lost control of his troops, who allegedly massacred the enemy wounded and then joined the general mayhem. Only Battaglini’s force kept some semblance of order. A fire broke out, possibly caused by the Newcastle’s bombardment, and was left to rage unchecked for hours. Retreating Genoese soldiers and militiamen mingled with terrified citizens in a stampede towards the safety of the Terranova in which dozens were fatally trampled. The streets were said to have been full of smoke, blood, and broken glass; the only part of the Terravecchia which was largely untouched was the port district in the south, where the guns of the citadel were sufficient to warn off looters.

Hundreds of civilians were killed, perhaps the better part of a thousand. In the months and years that followed, not even the best of Corsica’s apologists could dispute this figure much; they settled for excuses, claiming the paroxysm of violence to be the unfortunate but unavoidable result of pent-up anger over a long history of oppression and abuse, unleashed upon the capital and symbol of Genoa’s power. More critical commentators presented the sack as further evidence of the inherently violent and bloodthirsty nature of the Corsican people. “They are wild dogs, not men,” exclaimed Giustiniani, who was genuinely mortified. But arguably the real fault lay with the royalist commanders, who had unleashed an army of irregulars and “bandits” upon the city and utterly failed to control them. According to Father Carlo Rostini, Theodore had attempted to ride into Bastia personally to stop the bloodshed and plundering, but was prevented by Count Giappiconi and his other officers who absolutely refused to allow the king to ride off into a burning and lawless city. Giappiconi made the attempt himself, but was clearly not entirely successful as violence and looting continued through the night. Only with the coming of dawn was order finally restored.

Theodore was by all accounts shocked and dismayed by the behavior of his troops, but nevertheless wasted little time in minimizing his own responsibility and turning the blame on the Genoese. He accused Giustiniani of provoking the violence by arming civilians and encouraging their resistance, as well as not surrendering when his position was clearly hopeless. More generally, he claimed that by their very decision to “occupy” Corsica against the will of its people, a land which they had “usurped” and possessed no right to (notwithstanding their four centuries of rule), the Genoese were the true aggressors in the conflict and ipso facto responsible for any and all atrocities which arose from it, including any misdeeds of the Corsicans. While Theodore clearly did not intend for the city to be sacked, his sweeping renunciation of all responsibility for the conduct of his troops and his failure to hold any of his own officers or soldiers responsible for the sack surely do not count among his most admirable moments.

Without the Terravecchia, Giustiniani was in considerable trouble. The bishop had done all he could to bring food stores into the Terranova and set up impromptu bread ovens in the citadel, but the greater problem was water, as most of the city’s cisterns were in the Terravecchia. All of his resources were further strained by hundreds of refugees who had fled, intermingled with his retreating soldiers, through the citadel gates. Some of his officers recommended capitulation, but Giustiniani did not want to suffer the same fate as Speroni, who had been scapegoated and imprisoned for what the patricians felt had been an overly hasty surrender of Ajaccio. He also had direct orders from the Greater Council to hold on as long as possible, as the government expected the arrival of the expeditionary force which the Bourbons had promised them in the Treaty of Aranjuez. By October, however, this force still had yet to be organized.

Giustiniani did enjoy one small victory. Having rejected Theodore’s demands to surrender, he countered with a demand of his own, that the civilians presently within the city be allowed to depart in peace. Theodore knew that this could only hurt him, as it would give Giustiniani fewer mouths to feed and thus allow him to withstand a longer siege, but he felt he had no choice. Despite publicly deflecting all blame for the sack upon the Genoese, the king seems to have still suffered from a feeling of guilt in the immediate aftermath. Having presided over such atrocities, whoever may have been at fault, Theodore felt he could not subsequently refuse Giustiniani’s request and subject the civilians within the citadel to a bombardment.

On the 7th, after several days of trench-digging and moving artillery, the investment of the citadel was completed and the last phase of the siege began. Following standard practice at the time, the Corsican artillery was first ordered to concentrate its fire on the enemy bastions of San Carlo, San Giovanni, and Santa Maria, hoping to suppress counter-battery fire before moving closer to create breaches. Corsican gunnery was predictably lackluster, but the British sailors who had been given responsibility for three 24-pounder guns were more adept, and the Corsicans benefited from having vastly superior artillery compared to their enemy. The shots of their heavy guns proved able to damage masonry, smash parapets, and dismount artillery at ranges where the Genoese sakers and falcons - the heaviest of which had scarcely half the shot weight of a Corsican 12-pounder, and most were considerably lighter than that - were unable to make much of an impact on Corsican earthen bunkers and gabions. Even a pair of demi-culverins which Giustiniani had moved to the landward batteries had only limited effect, and they too were overpowered and out-ranged by the Corsican batteries.

Major Battisti realized soon after the bombardment had begun that, owing to the poor design and location of the citadel, making a breach and taking the citadel by storm might not be necessary. The Corsicans suffered from a lack of indirect artillery; they possessed no howitzers or mortars which could shoot over the walls and threaten the Terranova itself. The ridge of the Posto della Croce, however, extended eastwards to a 350 foot knoll which was under 400 yards from the citadel, practically point-blank range for artillery. Even direct-fire guns could, from this height, shoot right over the walls and bombard the interior directly, including Giustiniani's own governor's palace. All that was required was to suppress the Genoese artillery, and the counter-fire from the citadel was slackening each day.

The construction of this battery began on the 13th, and the Genoese immediately realized the danger. As the hill was somewhat of an exposed position and quite close to the fortress, Major Giovanni Kinich suggested that a surprise sally from the fortress might ruin the attempt and perhaps even succeed in taking some of the rebel guns out of commission. This attack, however, was delayed by the pessimism and defeatism of other officers, including Colonel Carlo Francesco Bembo, the most senior Genoese army officer present, who felt that a sally would be pointless and the siege had effectively been lost with the fall of the Terravecchia. By the time Kinich managed to persuade a temporizing Giustiniani into supporting him and authorizing an attack, the Corsican position on the hill had been significantly strengthened. On the 15th, Kinich and his Grison company led a sally against the battery but found the enemy well-prepared behind their redoubt. The Genoese forces struggled up the hill under heavy musket-fire. Astoundingly, they managed to reach and even take the Corsican position, but at severe cost, and their plans to turn the two Corsican guns which had already been moved into position against the Corsicans were foiled by the fact that the rebels had not actually brought up any ammunition yet. The rebels soon launched a massive counterattack that drove the Genoese from the redoubt and sent them running back down the hill. Major Kinich was shot twice, once during the advance and once upon the hilltop; the second wound proved mortal, and he died that night in the custody of the rebels.

On the following afternoon, a Corsican 12-pounder gun sent a ball crashing through one of the houses in the Terranova which the Genoese were using as a barracks. Theodore sent a message declaring that the next shot would be red-hot, and that he would continue to pour hot shot into the citadel’s interior until the Terranova was a burned out husk. After conferring briefly with his officers, the commissioner-general asked for terms. The king, who was irate at Giustiniani for resisting so long, was in no mood to be generous. Citing the assassination of Franzini, the attempted assassination of several other naziunali, and the kidnapping plot against Marquis Simone Fabiani’s family, all of which he laid at the feet of the Commissioner-General, the king declared that no honors of war could be offered to a man with no honor. The garrison would march out with their flags furled and surrender all their arms; the Genoese would be interned as prisoners with no parole, the foreign mercenaries would be disbanded, and any Corsican nationals among their ranks would be summarily shot as traitors.[A]

That last point in particular was intolerable to Giustiniani, who sent a boat to the Dragon (which had returned from cruising some days earlier) and offered instead to surrender Bastia to Captain Charles Watson. Watson demurred but agreed that the execution order was a dishonorable demand, and sent his own boat to the Corsicans with a message hinting that his own honor and that of the British nation would be offended if Theodore did not moderate his terms. Theodore reluctantly agreed to drop the execution order, and at Giappiconi’s urging also offered to parole the Genoese troops and allow passage back to Genoa on the condition that they would never return to Corsica nor bear arms against the Worms Allies for a period of one year. The count’s advice was practical; he saw no need to take prisoners merely out of spite and waste valuable food on them. Giustiniani once more appealed to the British for an even better deal, but although Watson recorded in his correspondence that he found the denial of the honors of war distasteful (for the Genoese, in his estimation, had resisted as manfully as might be expected), the worst excesses of the terms had been curbed and he was unwilling to push the Corsicans any further. Just after five in the afternoon on October the 16th, the gates of the citadel were opened and the garrison marched out. Giustiniani, either claiming illness or the fact that he was not a military officer (sources differ), was not present at the surrender. In his stead, Colonel Bembo offered his own sword on behalf of the Genoese forces. Theodore, although present, refused to accept a sword from Giustiniani's "lieutenant," and thus Giappiconi accepted his surrender. The king and the bishop, as far as is known, never met face to face.
The battle had been a bloody one for both sides. Around one out of every five royalist soldiers or militiamen present at the battle were killed, wounded, or dead of disease; for the Genoese it was about one in four, not including the larger number of civilians killed in the sack, whether by Corsican looters, fire, bombardment, or stampede. The battle had demonstrated the bravery of the new Corsican army, but also problems with discipline and organization that were not easily remedied. For Theodore and his officers, the siege also served as a warning against relying too much on the Corsican militia, particularly for tasks like assaulting fortified positions. Although the extra manpower which the militia provided had been vital to the capture of Bastia, the actual performance of the militia companies in battle had been almost uniformly disappointing, to say nothing of their execrable behavior in the Terravecchia. In retrospect, it was probably predictable that poor shepherds and farmers who were only infrequently paid for their services would, given arms and free reign over an enemy city, take everything which wasn't nailed down.

The losses of the royalists were mitigated at least in party by considerable material gains. They captured a substantial amount of provisions and military stores, hundreds of muskets, a large quantity of gunpowder (the citadel would have run out of water long before its garrison ran out of ammunition), at least two dozen cannon of various calibers and in various states of repair, and 11 small ships (mainly feluccas) which had been blockaded in Bastia’s harbor. The British were compensated for their help with a large share of the recovered provisions. Theodore requested that Aytone, or some other officer and his men, be permitted to remain and instruct the Corsican artillerymen, but Watson’s aim had been accomplished and he was unwilling to bend the rules any more. On the 17th of October, the British departed from Corsica, having suffered two wounded (both from counter-battery fire against Aytone's gunners). It would not, however, be the last time the British set foot on the island.


Footnotes
[1] The Dragon and the Seaford had temporarily departed. Although he had assured Theodore that he would maintain a blockade of the port, the presence of all three of his ships was not necessary to do this, and he continued to cruise with one or two ships while the siege was ongoing.
[2] Battaglini, from Talasani, was one of Giappiconi’s senior officers in his old Venetian regiment.

Timeline Notes
[A] Lest we forget, a protagonist is not always the same thing as a hero. “Enlightened” though he may be in some respects, Theodore is not immune from being petty and vindictive, particularly when angered. He hated slavery and intolerance but had no problem at all with summary execution, at least not when he was doing the executing.