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Although the Kingdom of Corsica had not been invited to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the Corsicans did not intend to be absent. King Theodore was determined that he should be present, if only through a representative (as his ministers voiced their united objection to the king himself traveling to Aix-la-Chapelle). Several names were floated to lead this mission, but in the end Theodore settled upon Marquis Luigi Giafferi, his prime minister and the most distinguished Corsican revolutionary leader.

Certainly there were men with more vigor. Giafferi was 79 years old, and for some years had occupied a position in the government which was mainly advisory despite the lofty title of “prime minister.” Some doubted whether he could make the journey at all. Yet the old man’s mind was still clear, and he was eager to perform one last duty for his country. There was a certain attractive symmetry to one of the men who had begun the Revolution in earnest being present at its (presumed) ending, but Theodore’s reasons for the selection were not aesthetic. In the first place, Giafferi was almost universally respected and thus an uncontroversial choice; nobody could reasonably be offended that he was chosen over them. More importantly, Theodore felt that Giafferi was the emissary most likely to be seen as credible by the Bourbons. The marquis had been a member of Campredon’s pro-French party prior to Theodore’s arrival on Corsica, and he had served for several years as a colonel in Naples following the Franco-Austrian invasion. Nobody could accuse him of being a British stooge. Despite the crucial help he had received from London in the past few years and the fact that British soldiers still held Calvi and San Fiorenzo, Theodore’s policy was now to distance himself from Britain as rapidly as possible to assuage French fears about the “malcontents” being British proxies.

It was for this reason that Theodore did not reach out to the British to gain a ticket to Aix-la-Chapelle; to appear as part of the British delegation would send a very undesirable message to Versailles as to where Corsica’s allegiance really lay. Instead Theodore turned to the Austrians, who at the moment appeared to be the most pro-Corsican of the major powers. Theodore, however, was not content to merely write a letter; this was a matter of the utmost importance and delicacy, and he had no trustworthy and capable agent to deal with the Austrians at the moment. At the moment he no longer even had a man in Turin, as Domenico Rivarola, his emissary there, had died in early 1747. Theodore thus announced to the council that he would be traveling incognito to Italy to hold discussions with imperial agents. This was not well-received, but Theodore argued that the risk was no greater than the reward; if Corsica was to be free, the nationals could not miss this opportunity. Some suspected, however, that Theodore had a separate reason to visit Italy, which involved the mission of his foreign minister Erasmo Orticoni to find Corsica a queen.

Since Orticoni had left for Rome that spring, he had been making inquiries into possible brides for the King of Corsica. By going to Rome he was starting with what he knew: he had served as Theodore’s emissary to Rome in past years (and had dodged at least one assassination attempt in the process) and had more contacts there than anywhere else. It was not the worst place to be bride-shopping, for while the Roman princes were not sovereign they had considerable wealth and influence, and given Theodore’s rather strained relationship with Pope Benedict XIV some influence in Rome would be helpful. Orticoni, however, found that most of these princes would not even give him the time of day. The Romans still considered Theodore to be more of an adventurer than a true monarch, and despised the poverty of the man and his kingdom. The Roman aristocracy even had a derisive name for him - il re dell'alloro, “the Laurel King,” in reference to the story that he had been crowned with a laurel wreath because he could not afford a crown.[1] It did not help that Genoa maintained a strong diplomatic and intelligence presence in Rome, and their agents continually sought to thwart Orticoni and turn the opinion of the Curia and the aristocracy against him.

Yet the most basic problem was the fault of nobody but the Corsicans themselves: Orticoni simply wasn’t an appropriate man for the job. Most sovereigns approached marriage proposals by sending high-ranking emissaries - often members of their own royal family - who could negotiate on behalf of their monarch. The Diet had not apprehended this and had chosen Orticoni because he was perceived as capable, articulate, and experienced in diplomacy. He was, after all, the foreign minister, and what was this mission if not foreign affairs? Yet Orticoni was a mere priest; he was not even a noble, let alone a member of the royal house, and in this instance it was debatable whether he even had the king’s support.

Theodore had regretted allowing Orticoni to go almost immediately after his departure, and only allowed him to remain because to recall him would have been impolitic. Certainly he would not fund Orticoni’s venture, and by mid-summer - Orticoni had by then returned to Rome - the priest was running out of money. Discouraged, Orticoni penned a letter to the king which was mainly a long list of complaints about his difficult situation, his lack of means, and the poor treatment he had received at the hands of the aristocracy. So as to not make himself look entirely incapable, however, he added that he had some hopes of gaining an audience with Orazio Albani, the Prince of Soriano, who was engaged to Maria Anna Matilde Cybo-Malaspina, a princess of Massa-Carrara. This had piqued Orticoni’s interest because Maria Anna had a younger sister who was as yet unmarried. Actually Orticoni had already tried to gain such an audience and had been rebuffed, but his letter suggested that he was on the verge of a breakthrough.

The family of Cybo-Malaspina was a sovereign house which ruled the Duchy of Massa and the Principality of Carrara, a tiny state on the Italian coast wedged between the territories of Genoa, Lucca, and Modena. Although sovereign, the princes of Cybo-Malaspina were the lowliest of sovereigns, frequently intermarrying with noble Italian houses. The house had recently expired in the male line (1731), but as the principality’s laws of succession permitted female rule the state had passed to the eldest of three daughters, Maria Theresa. She was married to Ercole Rinaldo d’Este in 1741, the heir to the Duchy of Modena, in an effort by the Modenese to connect their landlocked duchy to the sea. The second daughter was engaged to the Prince of Soriano, as mentioned. The third, the nineteen year old Maria Camilla, was as yet unclaimed.




Orticoni had posed no threat to Theodore as long as he continued to fail. Yet if he was actually making progress then something had to be done, for the king suspected that Orticoni did not really have his own interests at heart. It was not that Orticoni was disloyal, exactly, but the canon had always possessed an independent streak and Theodore suspected he was in contact with the Diet and the faction within his ministry which favored a royal marriage. The king now determined to take control of the situation. Whether he actually had any interest in Maria Camilla is unclear, but at the very least the matter would not be left in the hands of his foreign minister.[2] Thus in September the king sent his “nephew” Matthias von Drost to join (and supercede) Orticoni. Drost was not an experienced diplomat, but as the king’s relative he was a more socially appropriate envoy for a royal marriage proposal. He was also the only relation available, with Johann Friedrich von Neuhoff zu Rauschenberg campaigning in the south and Friedrich Wilhelm von Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid in Provence with the expeditionary force.

To make him more credible in this role, Theodore decided to confer new titles upon Drost and his fellow Neuhoff cousins. Despite awarding the titles of nobility to his most prominent Corsican supporters, Theodore had never granted such titles to Drost, Pungelscheid, or Rauschenburg. It had not been necessary on Corsica, where the fact of being the king’s relative was much more consequential than whether a man’s title happened to be “baron,” “count,” or “marquis,” but if Drost was to be Theodore’s dynastic emissary in Italy he needed a rank worthy of it, and if Drost was to be elevated Theodore knew he would have to do the same for the other cousins. Accordingly, in what is usually known as the “Family Edict” of 1747, Drost was named Prince of Porto Vecchio, Rauschenburg the Prince of Morosaglia, and Pungelscheid the Prince of Capraia. They were essentially “victory titles,” recalling the places where the various princes had been instrumental in the rebellion’s success, but they conveyed no particular authority in those locales.[3][4]

Thusly endowed, the Prince of Porto Vecchio arrived in Rome in early September, and between his greater stature and Theodore’s connections the mission actually began to move ahead. A meeting was arranged between Orticoni, Porto Vecchio, and Orazio Albani’s uncle Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who had played a role in negotiating his nephew’s marriage. Cardinal Albani was something of an outlier within the Curia; while most of the Roman princes and clergy were pro-Bourbon and pro-Stuart in their sympathies, Albani was favored the Habsburgs and Hanoverians. With Vienna’s favor he had been named Cardinal-Protector of the Empire and Papal nuncio to Vienna, and he was a frequent correspondent with both Horace Mann, the British minister in Florence, and Baron Philipp von Stosch, a German antiquarian who was secretly a Hanoverian spy informing on the Pretender’s court in Rome. Stosch was an old friend of Theodore who had known him when he was in Rome.[5] Cardinal Albani did not know Theodore personally, but he was generally aware of the king’s “alliance” with London and Vienna, and with Theodore pulling some strings with mutual friends it proved no problem to obtain some necessary letters of introduction from the cardinal.

With these letters in hand, Porto Vecchio and Orticoni moved on to Massa. Although Princess Maria Theresa Cybo-Malaspina ruled the territory, the key figure as far as the Corsican mission was concerned was her formidable mother Ricciardia Gonzaga, daughter of the last Gonzaga Count of Novellara. Ricciardia had served as the regent of Massa-Carrara between her husband’s death and the majority of Maria Theresa (from 1731 to 1744) and played the role of matchmaker for her daughters. Despite having lived through the death of both her husband’s house and her own (in the male line, at least), she still took a very active interest in the future of her family and had steered her eldest two daughters into marriages which would secure their influence and importance in Italy. The union of Massa-Carrara and Modena would be of great economic value to the former, as there were plans to build a road link over the mountains and make Massa into a seaport for the whole united duchy, and the upcoming marriage to the Prince of Soriano would expand the house’s diplomatic links as well as marrying into the considerable financial resources of the Albani.

If Orticoni’s report is to be believed, Ricciardia was not wholly dismissive of the idea of a Corsican marriage. The idea of royal status appealed to her; certainly there was no other plausible way her immediate family would ascend to royalty. But she was wary of jumping the gun and making any engagement before Corsica’s independence was actually recognized, and there were two further obstacles. The first was that because Massa-Carrara was a small and economically dependent neighbor of Genoa, Ricciardia could not completely ignore the attitude of the Republic towards her dynastic policy. Marrying her daughter to Genoa’s archenemy might have undesirable consequences. The second problem was the age and character of Theodore himself, for Ricciardia had learned to be wary of dissipated men. The first man engaged to her eldest daughter, the Prince of Savoy-Soissons, had died of syphilis at the age of 20 just two weeks after their marriage by proxy; the couple never met. Her present husband, Ercole d’Este, had already proven somewhat of a disappointment by leading a dissolute life and neglecting his young bride. As status-hungry as Ricciardia was, she genuinely wanted her daughter’s marriage to succeed, and marrying her to a man nearly 35 years her senior who was rumored (in Genoese propaganda, anyway) to have been a rogue and a bigamist did not seem like the most obvious start to a successful and fruitful union. She assured the Prince of Porto Vecchio that she had no immediate plans for Maria Camilla and that they would speak again once Theodore’s royal status stood on firmer footing, but Porto Vecchio admitted to Theodore that he could not be sure if the countess remained truly interested or whether she was just politely rebuffing him

This was how things still stood in November of 1747 when Theodore sailed for Livorno - the first time he had made this journey on a ship of the Corsican state (specifically, a pinque seized from its Genoese owners). Although supposedly incognito, Theodore was not exactly unseen; he traveled with six bodyguards as well as his longtime valet Antonio Pino, his Moorish servants Mahomet and Montecristo, his Neapolitan aide Saviero Carlieri, and his Irish compatriot Sir John Powers (who joined him at Livorno).[6] The number of men who traveled with an entourage of nearly a dozen, including two Moors, was not large. The Republic still had a bounty on his head and made every effort to keep a tail on him. Once more Theodore kept a step ahead of them with the connivance of his many friends and acquaintances. According to Horace Mann, the Comte de Richecourt and the Prince de Craon - members of the regency council ruling Tuscany in the name of Emperor Franz Stefan - furnished him and his entourage with a “safehouse” outside Florence. Richecourt assured Theodore that he would send word to Vienna regarding the matter of a Corsican representative at Aix-la-Chapelle.

Theodore was grateful but not satisfied, and eventually moved on towards Milan, hoping to gain a more authoritative answer. Yet while the Austrian governor Ferdinand Bonaventura, Graf von Harrach granted Theodore an audience, matters of the peace conference were above his pay grade, and here too Theodore was left without satisfaction. He mused about going all the way to Vienna, but this is simply impractical, and the situation in Corsica remained too delicate to leave for long. The king lingered in Milan while considering his options, but the Genoese had caught up with him; there was an incident at the house where he was staying when a suspicious man claiming to be a messenger fled when Theodore’s guards attempted to search him, and on the following day someone fired a pistol at his carriage in the middle of a crowded street. Neither man was apprehended. It was time to go, and at least in this regard Count Harrach could assist him. He recommended that Theodore ride south by way of Guastalla, a little duchy north of Modena which was controlled by a Viennese-born regent, where he could lay low for a while before continuing to Tuscany.

We will come back shortly to the remainder of Theodore’s return journey, as it was more eventful than one might expect. As it happened, however, the Austrian angle never did pan out, and in that sense Theodore's "covert" trip to Italy failed to accomplish its main objective. It is possible that the Austrians, already angling for a separate peace with France, did not want to complicate matters by bringing the Corsicans into the picture. Don Luigi Giafferi did indeed travel to Aix-la-Chapelle along with his deputy Sebastiano Ceccaldi (chosen because he was Giafferi’s brother-in-law) and their young secretary Pasquale Paoli (chosen because he could speak French and English and was recommended by the Prince of Porto Vecchio), and eventually they were admitted - just not by the Austrians.


Footnotes
[1] Where this nickname originated is unclear, but it became a rather widespread appellation, eventually becoming popular in Theodore’s native Germany (as der Lorbeerkönig). Although it started as a derogatory reference to Theodore’s poverty and the rustic backwardness of the Corsicans, it would eventually be redeemed as Theodore took his historical place as an Enlightenment figure and the baroque fashions of the earlier 18th century gave way to a new neoclassicism which saw in the simple laurel crown the emanation of classical virtue, honor, and simplicity.
[2] It is also not out of the question that Theodore’s motivation to take a greater interest in the bride-finding process at this time had something to do with him learning of the 30,000 scudi d’oro which had been pledged to the Prince of Soriano as a dowry.
[3] Drost’s title of “Prince of Porto Vecchio” was something of a stretch; the title referred to the conquest of the port by the Free Battalion, but that was mainly led by Drost’s brother-in-law Antonio Colonna. Drost did arrange for reinforcements to be sent to Colonna from the interior and arrived at Porto Vecchio towards the end of the siege, but he was hardly in the same position of command as Pungelscheid was at Capraia. Why Theodore did not choose to call him “Prince of Ajaccio” given his larger role at that siege can only be guessed, but it was presumably either to avoid making his cousins envious (as Ajaccio was a much more consequential city than either Morosaglia or Capraia) or to avoid upsetting Luca d’Ornano, who was technically the leader of the siege in his capacity as “Lieutenant-General of the Dila.” Referring to the failed Anglo-Corsican siege of Bonifacio which Drost had led, the Prince of Morosaglia (Rauschenburg) later remarked that “had it been otherwise, [Drost/Porto Vecchio] would surely have been Prince of Bonifacio.”
[4] In keeping with the usage of the time and scholarly consensus, from now on the princely titles will be preferred in this text over the old baronial titles. Rauschenburg, for instance, will more commonly be referred to as “the Prince of Morosaglia” - or simply “Morosaglia,” in the same way that the Duke of Newcastle is informally referred to as “Newcastle.” Alternatively, they may also be referred to with the Spanish-influenced honorific don, which is how the Corsicans themselves usually referred to the king’s “nephews:” Don Giovan (Rauschenburg/Morosaglia), Don Matteo (Drost/Porto Vecchio), and Don Federico (Pungelscheid/Capraia).
[5] Stosch was apparently still unaware that Theodore had been a Jacobite spy during that time who had reported on Stosch to his handlers in Madrid.
[6] Powers, a nobleman in the Jacobite peerage, had been a friend of Theodore since they had served together in Spain and may have been a relation or family friend of Theodore’s late wife, Lady Sarsfield. He had served Theodore as an officer in Corsica and had fought at San Pellegrino, but had fled the island in 1739 as the French overwhelmed the coasts. Despite his abandonment of the cause, however, Powers and Theodore had made contact again during the king’s exile on the continent and by 1747 they were clearly back on friendly terms.