alternatehistory.com
Rouge et Noir
This impatience was due to Captain George Townshend’s constant dread of a naval counterattack. Significant Spanish and French naval forces remained in the Mediterranean, either at their principal ports (Toulon and Cartagena) or in cruising squadrons. None of these detachments alone could challenge Townshend’s force, but if they were to combine he could find himself suddenly facing a superior fleet with few options for a swift retreat. The choice of Vice-Admiral William Rowley to deploy nearly half the fleet off Cadiz, outside the Straits of Gibraltar, meant that aside from a few ships watching Cartagena (who could observe but not meaningfully interfere with the exit of the Spanish fleet) there was no British force between Corsica and Gibraltar. Accordingly, if the Bourbon navies chose to combine forces, this hostile fleet would effectively divide the British Mediterranean squadron and have Townshend at their mercy. As it happened, Paris and Madrid had no intention of pursuing such a strategy; their mutual relationship was too strained, and France had already determined to abandon la grand guerre in favor of commerce raiding with small squadrons. Townshend, however, had no way of knowing his enemy’s plans, and bitterly regretted that his orders compelled him to hold such an exposed position when the enemy remained unchecked and un-blockaded. Since he could not abandon the Calvi expedition, it was in his interest to force its conclusion as quickly as possible, which no doubt played into his rather rash decision to attempt to take Calvi by a naval coup de force on November 8th.
As far as Townshend was concerned, the fleet’s safety now hinged upon the successful prosecution of terrestrial siegecraft. While the nature of the terrain and the circumstances of the siege did not require the full use of Vaubanian parallels, the essential strategy was consistent with a continental siege - the citadel would have to be approached with trenches and batteries would have to be erected one after the other, each closer to the walls than the last, until the besiegers’ fire was sufficiently able to suppress the defenders’ guns and cause such damage to the citadel as to force the garrison’s surrender. Of such warfare the Corsicans had no knowledge at all.
As such, although outnumbered by their Corsican allies, the British were to be the main protagonists of the Siege of Calvi. The Corsicans could offer manpower, muskets, and some artillery of their own, but the expertise was British, and thus British officers dictated the manner and timing of the approach. That the Corsicans provided manpower, however, does not mean that the British restricted themselves to a mere commanding and technical role. Townshend disembarked no fewer than 400 British marines at Calvi.[1] British sailors were also disembarked to assist with moving equipment and operating artillery, although the artillery teams were led by officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, who were on hand because it was standard practice to use Royal Artillery crews to operate the mortars aboard bomb vessels rather than Navy personnel. Experienced and highly trained, the expertise of the Royal Artillerymen was key to the Anglo-Corsican effort. All the British forces on land were placed under the command of Thomas Sturton, captain of the Berwick.
Initially, the Corsican forces at Calvi were fairly slight; Townshend put first priority on disembarking his own marines. The first Corsican troops to land at Porto Agro were uniformed regulars under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Milanino Lusinchi, followed by a detachment of the royal artillery under Major-Commandant Anton-Nobile Battisti. When the allied forces captured Madonna della Serra, the total number of disembarked troops amounted to some 300 British soldiers and no more than 150 Corsicans. Once this position had been taken and fortified, however, priority was given to establishing a land supply route for the besiegers. This was made easier by the abandonment of the Genoese outpost near Capo Murione, constructed to guard the approaches from the east. Although the redoubt was not under any immediate threat, the Genoese sentries were so unnerved by the surprise appearance of the enemy to their rear that they precipitously spiked their guns and fled. Although the coastal route was still inaccessible due to fire from the citadel and the Genoese gunships, the retreat of the Genoese from their outlying perimeter allowed access to Madonna della Serra over the shoulders of Capo Murione via a mule track which could accommodate men and mules albeit not artillery or wagons.
Commissioner-General Stefano de Mari had declined to launch an attack against the enemy troops on Madonna della Serra, but Capo Murione was another matter. The commissioner-general still believed that to land heavy siege artillery at Capo Agro and drag it up over the mountains was impossible, and the force at Madonna della Serra was intended merely to invest the city and open the coastal route to the enemy. He therefore considered the abandonment of the Capo Murione post to be much more critical, and on the 25th a force of French and Genoese soldiers emerged to reclaim it. The ridge had since been occupied by a group of Corsican militia, who skirmished with the enemy but ultimately gave way. On the following morning a Corsican force of 120 regulars and 200 militia approached from the east under Lieutenant-General Count Gio Ambrogio Quilici di Speloncato, whom Theodore had ordered to open the land route to the British camp and assume general command of the Corsican forces outside Calvi. The French and Genoese held the high ground and offered a prolonged resistance, but they were hampered by the fact that their artillery was still spiked. In the afternoon, the Corsicans were joined by another hundred men and flanked the position by advancing up a shrub-covered ravine, forcing the defenders to withdraw. The best the French and Genoese could manage was to knock off the trunnions of their spiked guns before retreating, rendering them permanently useless.
Fighting between the two sides now centered around the little village of La Vaccaja about a mile south-southwest of Calvi, where the Genoese had erected a new fortified post to block the coastal route and launch raids against the overland supply line. The Corsicans engaged in a series of skirmishes with the defenders in and around La Vaccaja, but were unable to eject the defenders. The garrison’s presence there, however, was imperiled by the opening of the first proper British battery. It had not been an easy task; rain and heavy seas forced a complete halt to the landings at Port Agro from the 29th of November to the 2nd of December and created a great deal of mud, which made hauling the artillery up the steep hills even more difficult. Nevertheless, steady progress was made, and on the 6th of December the “Hill Battery,” constructed just downslope from Madonna della Serra, opened fire on La Vaccaja with two 12-pounder guns and a 5½-inch “Royal” howitzer. This post, too, was subsequently evacuated. Mari was absolutely stunned that the British possessed such artillery, for there now seemed to be no other explanation but that they had landed and brought it over the hills from Port Agro.
British 5½-inch Royal howitzer
From then on the siege went inexorably forward. The Corsicans, under British instruction, fortified La Vaccaja and placed three 6-pounder field guns there to guard against any attempt at a sally. At 1,600 yards from the citadel, however, it was merely a defensive post to protect the landward route and the right flank of the British advance. The British determined that this advance would be made on the ridge which curved around and approached Calvi from the west. The key position was a low rise less than 700 yards from the citadel walls. The British and Corsicans steadily advanced their works in that direction and raised a temporary battery to ward off counterattacks, until finally moving to seize the key hill on December 13th. This met with a furious response from the defenders, who replied with heavy bombardment from the citadel and repeated ground attacks by infantry advancing through the town of Calvi. This engagement saw the heaviest fighting of the siege as British marines and Corsican infantry struggled to dig into the rocky soil while under almost continual fire.
Captain Sturton had thus far not found much to like in his Corsican allies. He lamented the “sloth” of the Corsicans, particularly the militia, reporting that they had a tendency to do nothing unless specifically ordered, took breaks or wandered off without approval, and had to be repeatedly instructed on digging even the simplest trench, as their natural inclination was to dig a furrow “not even suitable as a breastwork” and then lay their shovels down, assuming they were done. No doubt their discipline was lamentable compared to the British, but these problems were probably exacerbated by communication difficulties, as none of the Corsicans spoke English and very few of the British spoke Italian. General Quilici himself had to resort to French to communicate with his counterparts (or at least those who spoke French).
During the battle for the battery, however, the Corsicans - or at least the regulars - proved capable allies. Lusinchi's men repelled a Genoese ground attack with what Sturton referred to as “smart musketry” and helped to raise the necessary defensive works. The besiegers were aided by Townshend, who dispatched the bomb vessels Carcass and Lightning west of Point Francesco where they could lob shells at the advancing enemy troops while remaining mostly out of range of the citadel’s guns. This bombardment, combined with covering fire from howitzers and field guns, succeeded in setting most of the town on fire and driving the garrison forces back to the citadel. The besiegers began moving up their heavy artillery, and the battery opened fire on the citadel for the first time on the morning of the 16th.
Since the beginning of the operations, Theodore had made his headquarters at the village of Lumio across the bay. He made frequent trips to the coastal Tower of Caldanu, directly opposite Calvi, and would stand atop the tower with his eye glued to his telescope, although as the citadel was over two miles away he could not have glimpsed much.[A] Clearly the king's absence frustrated him, but the British had no intention of taking him to Port Agro on a longboat. Not until the capture of La Vaccaja could he securely make the journey overland, and even then his officers advised against it, but Theodore was determined. He arrived at Madonna della Serra on the 9th, where he could finally behold the battlefield and the siege works in full. Captain Sturton found Theodore’s presence somewhat annoying, as the king was always proffering advice or questioning this or that decision, but the captain admitted that the king could usually be satisfied with a thorough explanation and was impressed by Theodore’s unexpectedly good English. Theodore was content to watch the battle for the battery at a distance, but on the 18th alarmed Sturton and his own officers by insisting that he tour the forward battery. Theodore listened patiently to Sturton's emphatic refusals, but replied that on this land, at least, he was sovereign, and the captain could not tell him where he could or could not go.
Ultimately Theodore agreed to delay his visit for a few days until the gunners had been able to knock out more of the citadel's guns, and made his "tour" on December 21st during a lull in the artillery duel. That morning, the king arrived at the forward battery with Sturton, Quilici, and Battisti. He was, Sturton observed, the most finely dressed man he had ever witnessed in a trench. The king had evidently acquired a "uniform" of his own design which superficially resembled the uniform of his regulars, at least in the sense of a black coat over a red waistcoat; but the coat was a frock of black velvet decorated with gold trim, and over it he wore a voluminous lace cravat and a green silk sash (possibly the riband of the Order of Redemption). Apparently not all of Turin’s money had been spent on soldiers.
Theodore was received warmly by the Corsicans at the battery, who promptly gave what Sturton termed a “Corsican salute” - that is, they shouted and fired their guns into the air. This apparently alarmed the Genoese to such a degree that they abruptly resumed their fire upon the battery. A cannonball struck and dismounted a cannon not 50 feet from Theodore with a horrific crash and a shower of earth and splinters. Quilici begged for the king to retire; the king responded by shaking the dirt off his hat, laughing, and loudly replying “Nonsense; the Genoese know they cannot kill me.” The Corsicans cheered. Courage under fire was perhaps Theodore’s greatest military virtue, and he knew the value of showing it. The purposefulness of the display was implied somewhat later to Captain Sturton, who echoed Quilici’s concern for his safety. “My good Captain,” responded Theodore, this time in English, “I have not come this far by shrinking at the sound of the guns.”
The commissioner-general was finally forced to begin considering the unthinkable. Food and water were not primary concerns; winter rains had helped keep the cisterns up, and two small ships had slipped past the blockade on the 19th with salt and provisions from Capraia. His ammunition, however, was running low, and he was losing the artillery duel with the besiegers. Calvi’s arsenal had no howitzers or mortars aside from the massive petrieri, which were intended for (and supplied with) solid stone shot rather than explosive shells. It became apparent that once the Anglo-Corsican forces had made their works sufficiently strong, the Genoese gunners simply could not do any damage aside from the occasional very lucky shot, like the one that (unbeknownst to Mari) had come a short distance from killing Theodore. The British, however, had several 8” and 5½" mortars and howitzers, taken from the arsenal at Port Mahon, which shelled the interior of the fort incessantly and caused numerous casualties. In the meantime, the 24 and 18 pounder guns of the battery were taking a disastrous toll on the eastern walls, particularly the protruding bastion of Spinchone which guarded the citadel gate and the harbor. By Christmas Eve, all but a few of Spinchone’s guns were out of action.
Mari suggested a Christmas truce to discuss possible terms, which was accepted. He proposed the immediate beginning of a 20 day truce, after which - if no relief force had arrived - he would surrender the fortress and accept Townshend's offer of repatriation. Townshend, however, considered 20 days to be hugely excessive given the position of the defenders, and although Theodore received the proposal favorably Townshend insisted on its rejection. The truce continued throughout Christmas day and Theodore visited the battery once more (Sturton wrote that he engaged in a "Romish Mass" with his troops), but it was not a day of rest, and the besiegers were hard at work moving up more guns and munitions. On the morning of the 26th, the British and Corsican artillerymen launched a massive bombardment against the citadel, throwing everything they had at the walls in a roaring cannonade. Long lines of sailors and militiamen moved powder and shot up to the battery, as well as scaling ladders fashioned by the navy’s carpenters. The east wall of the Spinchone bastion was so badly crumbled that an escalade actually seemed possible. The Genoese had responded initially with some rather feeble counter-fire, but Sturton observed that the battery's fire against the fortress was so hot that the defenders had been driven from their last remaining guns by midday.
This barrage had the desired effect. On the 27th, Mari asked to resume negotiations. Townshend would offer him only seven days of truce before his capitulation, and demanded that he and his men pledge on their honor to not set foot on Corsica nor bear arms against Britain or her allies for one year. In return, in recognition of their defense to the last reasonable extremity, he would grant them the full honors of war and see to their immediate repatriation. Mari agreed, and the guns fell silent.
On January 3rd, 1746, at approximately ten o'clock in the morning, the garrison marched forth from the citadel with their arms and flags. The red and black columns of British and Corsican troops stood next to each other to receive them, with Theodore and Sturton at the heads of their respective columns upon horses brought up for the occasion. Unlike Commissioner-General Giustiniani, who had absented himself from the surrender of Bastia, Stefano de Mari was present, but as a civilian official rather than a military officer he deferred the formalities to Colonel Geraldini, while Lt. Col. de Varignon - with his arm in a sling from a shrapnel wound - represented the French and Spanish. Either to mirror de Mari or to reward his commander, Theodore likewise delegated his part to General Quilici. By prior agreement, Quilici accepted Geraldini’s sword, and Sturton de Varignon’s.
The fall of Calvi was one of the most decisive moments of the Revolution. Militarily, it marked the final expulsion of Genoese forces from the Diqua; while not every part of the north was held by the naziunali (Fiumorbo, for instance, was a nest of loyalist militias), these anti-royalist forces were now completely without the support and succor of the Genoese garrisons of the presidii. But it was also a formidable political victory for Theodore, not only because he had overcome the mighty fortress of Calvi but because his decade of promises that great power support was just around the corner had finally been fulfilled. How pivotal Theodore’s role really was has sometimes been questioned; even without him, some have argued, Britain still would have had some interest in ejecting the Genoese from northern Corsica. Yet nobody had done more to bring Corsica to the attention of the British people and their politicians than Theodore, and the Corsicans of his time certainly saw the “English alliance” as the result of the king's policies and diplomatic networks. The visible manifestation and success of this alliance, coupled with the declining fortunes of the Republic, helped reinvigorate his support among a war-weary population which had grown skeptical of Theodore’s promises.
Lacking the wherewithal to adequately garrison Calvi and restore it to a fighting state, Theodore offered the citadel to Vice-Admiral Henry Medley, who had officially gained control of the Mediterranean squadron at the beginning of the year and arrived off Cape Revellata on the 13th of January. Medley agreed, and landed a force of 150 British infantrymen (approximately two companies) to garrison the fortress in conjunction with Corsican royalist forces. Nevertheless, Medley opted to keep the fleet’s main base at San Fiorenzo, judging it to be more secure.
The question now was to what end the British fleet would be employed. Theodore urged action against Bonifacio to build on the present momentum; this would drive the Genoese from Corsica entirely and, according to the king, free up more Corsican troops for the continental war. Medley was not so enthusiastic. Like most Royal Navy officers he disapproved of the Corsican adventure, and had previously described it as “an ill-concerted scheme.” Medley conceded that the capture of Calvi might turn out to be of some modest benefit, but believed that the best use of the fleet now would be to return in force to the Riviera and make the blockade as strong as possible. Bonifacio, while admittedly of strategic value in a general sense, was not relevant to the present contest for Italy.
The decision, however, was ultimately neither Theodore’s nor Medley’s. The fresh orders which Medley received from the Duke of Newcastle upon gaining his command stated unequivocally that he was to devote a squadron to the prosecution of the war on Corsica, and while those orders had been issued before the fall of Calvi was known in London they were nevertheless binding. Medley was correct to question the wisdom of this strategy, for any gains on Corsica could probably not outweigh the importance of the blockade. That the Southern Secretary persisted in this venture was due mainly to the misapprehensions of King Carlo Emanuele, who while in most respects a sagacious ruler was presently operating under two mistaken assumptions. Firstly, he wrongly assumed that the British had the ships to intervene in Corsica without prejudice to the Riviera blockade. That was false, but as Carlo Emanuele was hardly a naval strategist his misjudgment is easily forgivable; the British Admiralty itself failed to grasp that the means it had devoted to the Mediterranean were insufficient for its ends. The second false assumption, which was more perplexing, was that he presumed that his support for Theodore’s rebellion was likely to deliver Corsica into his own hands.
Certainly Carlo Emanuele was aware of Theodore’s royal pretensions; all of Europe knew of “King Theodore.” That Theodore was often humored with a royal title in the gazettes and parlors, however, did not necessarily mean that this claim was taken seriously. After ten years of rule the only fellow ruler who had recognized his sovereignty was the Bey of Tunis, hardly a diplomatic heavyweight. The great powers had frequently treated Theodore as a placeholder king, a presumed foreign agent who wore the crown only as a ploy to distract from the aims and identities of his secret financiers. The French government had long believed that Theodore was merely a proxy for the British acquisition of Corsica, a belief which was not diminished by the events at Calvi. The British, for their part, had assumed for some years that he was a Spanish or Neapolitan agent owing to his earlier service as a colonel in Spain. On occasion, Theodore had acted as if he were merely an estate agent for Corsica, proffering the kingdom to various crowned heads and implying that he would be quite satisfied with a remunerative position as a general, governor, or viceroy in exchange for his services.
On Corsica itself, however, Theodore left no doubts as to the seriousness with which he regarded his crown. Indeed, the king took himself so seriously that he sometimes veered into self-parody; he often spoke with the “royal we,” issued fatuous decrees written in turgid prose, and thundered with red-faced fury against those who dared to impugn the royal majesty. Yet his reign was no joke. He had ordered and led his subjects into perilous combat and had no qualms about exercising his royal prerogative to sentence men to death. From his origin as an unlikely leader of a beleaguered rebellion, he had defeated the world’s greatest army in battle - twice - and had conquered the Genoese presidii one by one, leaving Bonifacio as the last desperate holdfast of the hated Republic which had once held all Corsica in fetters. Some Corsicans loved Theodore and others hated him, but nobody was laughing at him.
Carlo Emanuele’s policy made it clear that he beheld Theodore in the former light rather than the latter; he differed from his fellow monarchs only in believing that Theodore might be his agent rather than that of a rival. Turin had sent money, supplies, and munitions to Corsica to inflame the rebellion while publicly claiming that the Savoyard monarchy had no territorial interest in the island and was acting in a pure spirit of altruism to secure the “liberty” of the people. The end goal of this policy, while never explicitly stated, was presumably to generate a feeling of grateful loyalty among the Corsicans, nursed by Turin's benevolence and their paid agent Theodore von Neuhoff, which would impel them to demand Savoyard protection and ultimately Savoyard rule. The Corsicans, however, remained largely ignorant of Turin’s role, for Theodore did not brag about the sources of his funding and had no intention of cultivating a pro-Savoyard party. Carlo Emanuele and his foreign minister Leopoldo del Carretto di Gorzegno believed that they had bought Theodore's loyalty (and it had not been cheap), but Theodore's lifelong practice of leaving debts unpaid should probably have been instructive. As far as Theodore was concerned, the King of Sardinia had purchased only his services, not his allegiance, and certainly not his crown.
Footnotes
[1] The term “marine” is used here broadly. The British raised ten regiments of marines over the course of the War of Austrian Succession, and some of them were present at Calvi. Yet these regiments proved unequal to the demand for naval infantry, and thus many “marines” aboard British ships during the war were actually soldiers of ordinary foot regiments on marine duty. During the siege of Villefranche, in which around a thousand British soldiers fought alongside the Sardinian garrison, the British force consisted not only of detachments of the 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 9th Marine Regiments, but elements of the 2nd, 7th, 10th, 29th, and 45th Regiments of Foot. The British force at Calvi was similarly eclectic.
Timeline Notes
[A] Yes, apparently Theodore had a telescope.
Rouge et Noir
British Marines in the 1740s
Calvi was, in a sense, the first true siege which the Corsicans had yet attempted. Ajaccio had been starved out; Corsican artillery had cut off the city’s route of resupply but had not duelled the citadel’s guns nor attempted to breach its walls. The rebel siege of Bastia had been somewhat more sophisticated, but the woefully poor positioning of the citadel had simplified the approach of the Corsican guns and obviated the need to form a breach, as once the artillery was sufficiently close cannonballs could be easily lobbed over the walls. Calvi did not share Bastia’s defects, and while Calvi’s supplies were not unlimited, the garrison was better off than the defenders of Ajaccio and their enemy (that is, the British) was impatient of victory.
British Marines in the 1740s
This impatience was due to Captain George Townshend’s constant dread of a naval counterattack. Significant Spanish and French naval forces remained in the Mediterranean, either at their principal ports (Toulon and Cartagena) or in cruising squadrons. None of these detachments alone could challenge Townshend’s force, but if they were to combine he could find himself suddenly facing a superior fleet with few options for a swift retreat. The choice of Vice-Admiral William Rowley to deploy nearly half the fleet off Cadiz, outside the Straits of Gibraltar, meant that aside from a few ships watching Cartagena (who could observe but not meaningfully interfere with the exit of the Spanish fleet) there was no British force between Corsica and Gibraltar. Accordingly, if the Bourbon navies chose to combine forces, this hostile fleet would effectively divide the British Mediterranean squadron and have Townshend at their mercy. As it happened, Paris and Madrid had no intention of pursuing such a strategy; their mutual relationship was too strained, and France had already determined to abandon la grand guerre in favor of commerce raiding with small squadrons. Townshend, however, had no way of knowing his enemy’s plans, and bitterly regretted that his orders compelled him to hold such an exposed position when the enemy remained unchecked and un-blockaded. Since he could not abandon the Calvi expedition, it was in his interest to force its conclusion as quickly as possible, which no doubt played into his rather rash decision to attempt to take Calvi by a naval coup de force on November 8th.
As far as Townshend was concerned, the fleet’s safety now hinged upon the successful prosecution of terrestrial siegecraft. While the nature of the terrain and the circumstances of the siege did not require the full use of Vaubanian parallels, the essential strategy was consistent with a continental siege - the citadel would have to be approached with trenches and batteries would have to be erected one after the other, each closer to the walls than the last, until the besiegers’ fire was sufficiently able to suppress the defenders’ guns and cause such damage to the citadel as to force the garrison’s surrender. Of such warfare the Corsicans had no knowledge at all.
As such, although outnumbered by their Corsican allies, the British were to be the main protagonists of the Siege of Calvi. The Corsicans could offer manpower, muskets, and some artillery of their own, but the expertise was British, and thus British officers dictated the manner and timing of the approach. That the Corsicans provided manpower, however, does not mean that the British restricted themselves to a mere commanding and technical role. Townshend disembarked no fewer than 400 British marines at Calvi.[1] British sailors were also disembarked to assist with moving equipment and operating artillery, although the artillery teams were led by officers of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, who were on hand because it was standard practice to use Royal Artillery crews to operate the mortars aboard bomb vessels rather than Navy personnel. Experienced and highly trained, the expertise of the Royal Artillerymen was key to the Anglo-Corsican effort. All the British forces on land were placed under the command of Thomas Sturton, captain of the Berwick.
Initially, the Corsican forces at Calvi were fairly slight; Townshend put first priority on disembarking his own marines. The first Corsican troops to land at Porto Agro were uniformed regulars under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Milanino Lusinchi, followed by a detachment of the royal artillery under Major-Commandant Anton-Nobile Battisti. When the allied forces captured Madonna della Serra, the total number of disembarked troops amounted to some 300 British soldiers and no more than 150 Corsicans. Once this position had been taken and fortified, however, priority was given to establishing a land supply route for the besiegers. This was made easier by the abandonment of the Genoese outpost near Capo Murione, constructed to guard the approaches from the east. Although the redoubt was not under any immediate threat, the Genoese sentries were so unnerved by the surprise appearance of the enemy to their rear that they precipitously spiked their guns and fled. Although the coastal route was still inaccessible due to fire from the citadel and the Genoese gunships, the retreat of the Genoese from their outlying perimeter allowed access to Madonna della Serra over the shoulders of Capo Murione via a mule track which could accommodate men and mules albeit not artillery or wagons.
Commissioner-General Stefano de Mari had declined to launch an attack against the enemy troops on Madonna della Serra, but Capo Murione was another matter. The commissioner-general still believed that to land heavy siege artillery at Capo Agro and drag it up over the mountains was impossible, and the force at Madonna della Serra was intended merely to invest the city and open the coastal route to the enemy. He therefore considered the abandonment of the Capo Murione post to be much more critical, and on the 25th a force of French and Genoese soldiers emerged to reclaim it. The ridge had since been occupied by a group of Corsican militia, who skirmished with the enemy but ultimately gave way. On the following morning a Corsican force of 120 regulars and 200 militia approached from the east under Lieutenant-General Count Gio Ambrogio Quilici di Speloncato, whom Theodore had ordered to open the land route to the British camp and assume general command of the Corsican forces outside Calvi. The French and Genoese held the high ground and offered a prolonged resistance, but they were hampered by the fact that their artillery was still spiked. In the afternoon, the Corsicans were joined by another hundred men and flanked the position by advancing up a shrub-covered ravine, forcing the defenders to withdraw. The best the French and Genoese could manage was to knock off the trunnions of their spiked guns before retreating, rendering them permanently useless.
Fighting between the two sides now centered around the little village of La Vaccaja about a mile south-southwest of Calvi, where the Genoese had erected a new fortified post to block the coastal route and launch raids against the overland supply line. The Corsicans engaged in a series of skirmishes with the defenders in and around La Vaccaja, but were unable to eject the defenders. The garrison’s presence there, however, was imperiled by the opening of the first proper British battery. It had not been an easy task; rain and heavy seas forced a complete halt to the landings at Port Agro from the 29th of November to the 2nd of December and created a great deal of mud, which made hauling the artillery up the steep hills even more difficult. Nevertheless, steady progress was made, and on the 6th of December the “Hill Battery,” constructed just downslope from Madonna della Serra, opened fire on La Vaccaja with two 12-pounder guns and a 5½-inch “Royal” howitzer. This post, too, was subsequently evacuated. Mari was absolutely stunned that the British possessed such artillery, for there now seemed to be no other explanation but that they had landed and brought it over the hills from Port Agro.
British 5½-inch Royal howitzer
From then on the siege went inexorably forward. The Corsicans, under British instruction, fortified La Vaccaja and placed three 6-pounder field guns there to guard against any attempt at a sally. At 1,600 yards from the citadel, however, it was merely a defensive post to protect the landward route and the right flank of the British advance. The British determined that this advance would be made on the ridge which curved around and approached Calvi from the west. The key position was a low rise less than 700 yards from the citadel walls. The British and Corsicans steadily advanced their works in that direction and raised a temporary battery to ward off counterattacks, until finally moving to seize the key hill on December 13th. This met with a furious response from the defenders, who replied with heavy bombardment from the citadel and repeated ground attacks by infantry advancing through the town of Calvi. This engagement saw the heaviest fighting of the siege as British marines and Corsican infantry struggled to dig into the rocky soil while under almost continual fire.
Captain Sturton had thus far not found much to like in his Corsican allies. He lamented the “sloth” of the Corsicans, particularly the militia, reporting that they had a tendency to do nothing unless specifically ordered, took breaks or wandered off without approval, and had to be repeatedly instructed on digging even the simplest trench, as their natural inclination was to dig a furrow “not even suitable as a breastwork” and then lay their shovels down, assuming they were done. No doubt their discipline was lamentable compared to the British, but these problems were probably exacerbated by communication difficulties, as none of the Corsicans spoke English and very few of the British spoke Italian. General Quilici himself had to resort to French to communicate with his counterparts (or at least those who spoke French).
During the battle for the battery, however, the Corsicans - or at least the regulars - proved capable allies. Lusinchi's men repelled a Genoese ground attack with what Sturton referred to as “smart musketry” and helped to raise the necessary defensive works. The besiegers were aided by Townshend, who dispatched the bomb vessels Carcass and Lightning west of Point Francesco where they could lob shells at the advancing enemy troops while remaining mostly out of range of the citadel’s guns. This bombardment, combined with covering fire from howitzers and field guns, succeeded in setting most of the town on fire and driving the garrison forces back to the citadel. The besiegers began moving up their heavy artillery, and the battery opened fire on the citadel for the first time on the morning of the 16th.
Since the beginning of the operations, Theodore had made his headquarters at the village of Lumio across the bay. He made frequent trips to the coastal Tower of Caldanu, directly opposite Calvi, and would stand atop the tower with his eye glued to his telescope, although as the citadel was over two miles away he could not have glimpsed much.[A] Clearly the king's absence frustrated him, but the British had no intention of taking him to Port Agro on a longboat. Not until the capture of La Vaccaja could he securely make the journey overland, and even then his officers advised against it, but Theodore was determined. He arrived at Madonna della Serra on the 9th, where he could finally behold the battlefield and the siege works in full. Captain Sturton found Theodore’s presence somewhat annoying, as the king was always proffering advice or questioning this or that decision, but the captain admitted that the king could usually be satisfied with a thorough explanation and was impressed by Theodore’s unexpectedly good English. Theodore was content to watch the battle for the battery at a distance, but on the 18th alarmed Sturton and his own officers by insisting that he tour the forward battery. Theodore listened patiently to Sturton's emphatic refusals, but replied that on this land, at least, he was sovereign, and the captain could not tell him where he could or could not go.
Ultimately Theodore agreed to delay his visit for a few days until the gunners had been able to knock out more of the citadel's guns, and made his "tour" on December 21st during a lull in the artillery duel. That morning, the king arrived at the forward battery with Sturton, Quilici, and Battisti. He was, Sturton observed, the most finely dressed man he had ever witnessed in a trench. The king had evidently acquired a "uniform" of his own design which superficially resembled the uniform of his regulars, at least in the sense of a black coat over a red waistcoat; but the coat was a frock of black velvet decorated with gold trim, and over it he wore a voluminous lace cravat and a green silk sash (possibly the riband of the Order of Redemption). Apparently not all of Turin’s money had been spent on soldiers.
Theodore was received warmly by the Corsicans at the battery, who promptly gave what Sturton termed a “Corsican salute” - that is, they shouted and fired their guns into the air. This apparently alarmed the Genoese to such a degree that they abruptly resumed their fire upon the battery. A cannonball struck and dismounted a cannon not 50 feet from Theodore with a horrific crash and a shower of earth and splinters. Quilici begged for the king to retire; the king responded by shaking the dirt off his hat, laughing, and loudly replying “Nonsense; the Genoese know they cannot kill me.” The Corsicans cheered. Courage under fire was perhaps Theodore’s greatest military virtue, and he knew the value of showing it. The purposefulness of the display was implied somewhat later to Captain Sturton, who echoed Quilici’s concern for his safety. “My good Captain,” responded Theodore, this time in English, “I have not come this far by shrinking at the sound of the guns.”
The commissioner-general was finally forced to begin considering the unthinkable. Food and water were not primary concerns; winter rains had helped keep the cisterns up, and two small ships had slipped past the blockade on the 19th with salt and provisions from Capraia. His ammunition, however, was running low, and he was losing the artillery duel with the besiegers. Calvi’s arsenal had no howitzers or mortars aside from the massive petrieri, which were intended for (and supplied with) solid stone shot rather than explosive shells. It became apparent that once the Anglo-Corsican forces had made their works sufficiently strong, the Genoese gunners simply could not do any damage aside from the occasional very lucky shot, like the one that (unbeknownst to Mari) had come a short distance from killing Theodore. The British, however, had several 8” and 5½" mortars and howitzers, taken from the arsenal at Port Mahon, which shelled the interior of the fort incessantly and caused numerous casualties. In the meantime, the 24 and 18 pounder guns of the battery were taking a disastrous toll on the eastern walls, particularly the protruding bastion of Spinchone which guarded the citadel gate and the harbor. By Christmas Eve, all but a few of Spinchone’s guns were out of action.
Mari suggested a Christmas truce to discuss possible terms, which was accepted. He proposed the immediate beginning of a 20 day truce, after which - if no relief force had arrived - he would surrender the fortress and accept Townshend's offer of repatriation. Townshend, however, considered 20 days to be hugely excessive given the position of the defenders, and although Theodore received the proposal favorably Townshend insisted on its rejection. The truce continued throughout Christmas day and Theodore visited the battery once more (Sturton wrote that he engaged in a "Romish Mass" with his troops), but it was not a day of rest, and the besiegers were hard at work moving up more guns and munitions. On the morning of the 26th, the British and Corsican artillerymen launched a massive bombardment against the citadel, throwing everything they had at the walls in a roaring cannonade. Long lines of sailors and militiamen moved powder and shot up to the battery, as well as scaling ladders fashioned by the navy’s carpenters. The east wall of the Spinchone bastion was so badly crumbled that an escalade actually seemed possible. The Genoese had responded initially with some rather feeble counter-fire, but Sturton observed that the battery's fire against the fortress was so hot that the defenders had been driven from their last remaining guns by midday.
This barrage had the desired effect. On the 27th, Mari asked to resume negotiations. Townshend would offer him only seven days of truce before his capitulation, and demanded that he and his men pledge on their honor to not set foot on Corsica nor bear arms against Britain or her allies for one year. In return, in recognition of their defense to the last reasonable extremity, he would grant them the full honors of war and see to their immediate repatriation. Mari agreed, and the guns fell silent.
On January 3rd, 1746, at approximately ten o'clock in the morning, the garrison marched forth from the citadel with their arms and flags. The red and black columns of British and Corsican troops stood next to each other to receive them, with Theodore and Sturton at the heads of their respective columns upon horses brought up for the occasion. Unlike Commissioner-General Giustiniani, who had absented himself from the surrender of Bastia, Stefano de Mari was present, but as a civilian official rather than a military officer he deferred the formalities to Colonel Geraldini, while Lt. Col. de Varignon - with his arm in a sling from a shrapnel wound - represented the French and Spanish. Either to mirror de Mari or to reward his commander, Theodore likewise delegated his part to General Quilici. By prior agreement, Quilici accepted Geraldini’s sword, and Sturton de Varignon’s.
The fall of Calvi was one of the most decisive moments of the Revolution. Militarily, it marked the final expulsion of Genoese forces from the Diqua; while not every part of the north was held by the naziunali (Fiumorbo, for instance, was a nest of loyalist militias), these anti-royalist forces were now completely without the support and succor of the Genoese garrisons of the presidii. But it was also a formidable political victory for Theodore, not only because he had overcome the mighty fortress of Calvi but because his decade of promises that great power support was just around the corner had finally been fulfilled. How pivotal Theodore’s role really was has sometimes been questioned; even without him, some have argued, Britain still would have had some interest in ejecting the Genoese from northern Corsica. Yet nobody had done more to bring Corsica to the attention of the British people and their politicians than Theodore, and the Corsicans of his time certainly saw the “English alliance” as the result of the king's policies and diplomatic networks. The visible manifestation and success of this alliance, coupled with the declining fortunes of the Republic, helped reinvigorate his support among a war-weary population which had grown skeptical of Theodore’s promises.
Lacking the wherewithal to adequately garrison Calvi and restore it to a fighting state, Theodore offered the citadel to Vice-Admiral Henry Medley, who had officially gained control of the Mediterranean squadron at the beginning of the year and arrived off Cape Revellata on the 13th of January. Medley agreed, and landed a force of 150 British infantrymen (approximately two companies) to garrison the fortress in conjunction with Corsican royalist forces. Nevertheless, Medley opted to keep the fleet’s main base at San Fiorenzo, judging it to be more secure.
The question now was to what end the British fleet would be employed. Theodore urged action against Bonifacio to build on the present momentum; this would drive the Genoese from Corsica entirely and, according to the king, free up more Corsican troops for the continental war. Medley was not so enthusiastic. Like most Royal Navy officers he disapproved of the Corsican adventure, and had previously described it as “an ill-concerted scheme.” Medley conceded that the capture of Calvi might turn out to be of some modest benefit, but believed that the best use of the fleet now would be to return in force to the Riviera and make the blockade as strong as possible. Bonifacio, while admittedly of strategic value in a general sense, was not relevant to the present contest for Italy.
The decision, however, was ultimately neither Theodore’s nor Medley’s. The fresh orders which Medley received from the Duke of Newcastle upon gaining his command stated unequivocally that he was to devote a squadron to the prosecution of the war on Corsica, and while those orders had been issued before the fall of Calvi was known in London they were nevertheless binding. Medley was correct to question the wisdom of this strategy, for any gains on Corsica could probably not outweigh the importance of the blockade. That the Southern Secretary persisted in this venture was due mainly to the misapprehensions of King Carlo Emanuele, who while in most respects a sagacious ruler was presently operating under two mistaken assumptions. Firstly, he wrongly assumed that the British had the ships to intervene in Corsica without prejudice to the Riviera blockade. That was false, but as Carlo Emanuele was hardly a naval strategist his misjudgment is easily forgivable; the British Admiralty itself failed to grasp that the means it had devoted to the Mediterranean were insufficient for its ends. The second false assumption, which was more perplexing, was that he presumed that his support for Theodore’s rebellion was likely to deliver Corsica into his own hands.
Certainly Carlo Emanuele was aware of Theodore’s royal pretensions; all of Europe knew of “King Theodore.” That Theodore was often humored with a royal title in the gazettes and parlors, however, did not necessarily mean that this claim was taken seriously. After ten years of rule the only fellow ruler who had recognized his sovereignty was the Bey of Tunis, hardly a diplomatic heavyweight. The great powers had frequently treated Theodore as a placeholder king, a presumed foreign agent who wore the crown only as a ploy to distract from the aims and identities of his secret financiers. The French government had long believed that Theodore was merely a proxy for the British acquisition of Corsica, a belief which was not diminished by the events at Calvi. The British, for their part, had assumed for some years that he was a Spanish or Neapolitan agent owing to his earlier service as a colonel in Spain. On occasion, Theodore had acted as if he were merely an estate agent for Corsica, proffering the kingdom to various crowned heads and implying that he would be quite satisfied with a remunerative position as a general, governor, or viceroy in exchange for his services.
On Corsica itself, however, Theodore left no doubts as to the seriousness with which he regarded his crown. Indeed, the king took himself so seriously that he sometimes veered into self-parody; he often spoke with the “royal we,” issued fatuous decrees written in turgid prose, and thundered with red-faced fury against those who dared to impugn the royal majesty. Yet his reign was no joke. He had ordered and led his subjects into perilous combat and had no qualms about exercising his royal prerogative to sentence men to death. From his origin as an unlikely leader of a beleaguered rebellion, he had defeated the world’s greatest army in battle - twice - and had conquered the Genoese presidii one by one, leaving Bonifacio as the last desperate holdfast of the hated Republic which had once held all Corsica in fetters. Some Corsicans loved Theodore and others hated him, but nobody was laughing at him.
Carlo Emanuele’s policy made it clear that he beheld Theodore in the former light rather than the latter; he differed from his fellow monarchs only in believing that Theodore might be his agent rather than that of a rival. Turin had sent money, supplies, and munitions to Corsica to inflame the rebellion while publicly claiming that the Savoyard monarchy had no territorial interest in the island and was acting in a pure spirit of altruism to secure the “liberty” of the people. The end goal of this policy, while never explicitly stated, was presumably to generate a feeling of grateful loyalty among the Corsicans, nursed by Turin's benevolence and their paid agent Theodore von Neuhoff, which would impel them to demand Savoyard protection and ultimately Savoyard rule. The Corsicans, however, remained largely ignorant of Turin’s role, for Theodore did not brag about the sources of his funding and had no intention of cultivating a pro-Savoyard party. Carlo Emanuele and his foreign minister Leopoldo del Carretto di Gorzegno believed that they had bought Theodore's loyalty (and it had not been cheap), but Theodore's lifelong practice of leaving debts unpaid should probably have been instructive. As far as Theodore was concerned, the King of Sardinia had purchased only his services, not his allegiance, and certainly not his crown.
Footnotes
[1] The term “marine” is used here broadly. The British raised ten regiments of marines over the course of the War of Austrian Succession, and some of them were present at Calvi. Yet these regiments proved unequal to the demand for naval infantry, and thus many “marines” aboard British ships during the war were actually soldiers of ordinary foot regiments on marine duty. During the siege of Villefranche, in which around a thousand British soldiers fought alongside the Sardinian garrison, the British force consisted not only of detachments of the 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 9th Marine Regiments, but elements of the 2nd, 7th, 10th, 29th, and 45th Regiments of Foot. The British force at Calvi was similarly eclectic.
Timeline Notes
[A] Yes, apparently Theodore had a telescope.
- Carp
- Word Count: 4.4k