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Theodore von Neuhoff was a man of many talents, but keeping a great house was not one of them. He had been a wanderer for most of his life, whether as an itinerant alchemist, an officer for hire, a Jacobite spy, or a Corsican revolutionary. Stripped of his family patrimony while still an infant, he had never even owned a house, let alone managed the properties, offices, and ceremonies of a royal household. While Theodore preferred a roof over his head and good wine on his table, Sebastiano Costa’s memoirs record times of difficulty when the king slept in the bare grass and subsisted on water and raw chestnuts without the slightest complaint. His tolerance of a modest lifestyle was admirable for a revolutionary leader, but it was not what was expected of a king who aspired to be taken seriously by the crowned heads of Europe - or, for that matter, his own people.

Theodore’s disinterest in such matters allowed them to devolve to Queen Eleonora. She had managed the little state of Guastalla on her own owing to the mental incapacity of her first husband, and was quite willing to use her personal revenues from her considerable estates to set up a royal household that would not be an international embarrassment.[1] Yet though Eleonora had higher expectations of comfort than Theodore, she was not a spendthrift hedonist. Having grown up in proximity to the imperial court, she understood very well that the royal house was a political organ which constructed the image of the king and controlled access to his royal person. Her aim was not simply to maximize her luxury or service her own pride, but to make the Corsican monarchy - an institution in which she was now a full partner - into something worthy of respect.

Corsica’s lack of a single established capital complicated the situation. Corti was notionally the seat of government, where Prime Minister Gianpietro Gaffori resided and where the consulta generale met, as well as the location of the island’s main mint and sole university. As far as he was able, Gaffori attempted to concentrate the ministry and the dieta there. The queen, however, hated Corti and vastly preferred Bastia, and centered the administration of the household in the old governor’s palace. Bastia was also the logical center of administration for the royal treasury, as the productive terre della corona were concentrated in the northeast. Ajaccio’s time would come later; in the 1750s it was but an occasional winter getaway for the royal family, but it would gain considerably in importance in the following decade. All this required a household that was small enough to travel with the royal family throughout the country.

The highest household office was that of Maresciallo di Corte, Hofmarschall, or “Court Marshal,” which had existed since the beginning of Theodore’s reign in 1736. This was mostly an honorary office reserved for a senior Corsican nobleman which bore a salary but little real responsibility. Beneath the marshal were the various heads of the household departments. There was the Gran Cameriere (Chamberlain), who supervised the personal assistants of the royal family; the Gran Maggiordomo (Grand Steward), who supervised the kitchen and cellar staff, the musicians, the tailors, and all other “non-personal” staff of the palace; and the Maestro di Stalla (Master of the Stables), who supervised the stable, transport, and hunting staff. Although these jobs were not “full time,” so to speak, they were not actual sinecures and entailed some supervisory responsibility.

In 1754, the queen’s private secretary recorded the “paper strength” of the household as follows:[A]



While supporting 130 people was probably challenging for Eleonora, it is worth remembering that her 1754 figures were aspirational, and particularly early on many of these “paper” offices were not filled. The stables, however, were usually fully staffed; the king’s movement throughout the country meant that there was plenty of work for saddlers, farriers, grooms, and mule drivers. One can see from the roster that the royal household was in a sense its own village; most of its employees were not courtiers and lackeys, but artisans and tradesmen, many of them native Corsicans.[2] An underappreciated benefit of this was to give jobs to the king’s subjects, particularly important in Bastia where the flight of the Genoese colonial government and its administrative apparatus had put many people out of work.

The court of the 1750s had very few sinecures. This was not only because of a lack of money, but because of the deathly cultural allergy which the Corsicans had to any connotation of servility. Pierre Emmanuel, Marquis de Crussol-Florensac, the envoy extraordinary of France, complained that it was extremely difficult to find personal attendants in Corsica; despite the evident poverty of the people and the considerable salary which Crussol was willing to pay, even poor laborers bristled at the notion of being a servant. On the continent, servitude to a monarch was a high honor; a king’s valet held a much-coveted post. In Corsica, however, a valet was just a valet, and servitude was dishonorable regardless of how lofty the master was. As a consequence, those offices with a servile connotation - particularly valets and footmen - were difficult to fill with Corsicans.[3] Many of Theodore’s personal staff were men of Scottish and Irish descent (although not always born there) who were recommended to the king through his old Jacobite connections.[4]

Nevertheless, some paid posts to reward important noblemen were necessary, and since they could not be given such “honorary menial” titles as “valet” or “gentleman of the bedchamber” (or, God forbid, “groom of the stool”) it was necessary to find another place for them. Such a place emerged from the king’s practice of taking regular “excursions” from the palace on horseback; sometimes these were hunting expeditions, but the king was not a particularly avid hunter, and for the most part he simply enjoyed touring his little kingdom. Apart from a handful of guards and equerries, he usually rode with a few ministers and advisors to provide conversation. At the queen’s encouragement, the king made the position of regular riding and hunting companion into a formal office, known as the signore della caccia (“gentleman of the hunt”). The purpose of these signori (their number hovered between four and eight at any one time) was to accompany the king whilst riding and to participate in the occasional hunt. Aside from being a nobleman, the only requirements were that one had to be able to ride, shoot, and not bore the king. The gentlemen of the hunt were granted a “royal gift” for their services, essentially a salary, but it was not exceedingly high; the main attraction of the office was that it offered regular proximity to the king and an “occupation” at court which was manful rather than servile. Theodore filled their ranks with his personal favorites, as well as important nobles who were not ministers but needed to be assured that they were close to power.

Aside from reasons already mentioned, it was necessary to expand the royal household because the House of Neuhoff was rapidly growing. In the spring 1750 the king was delighted to receive his niece Elisabeth Cherrier Jeanne de Saint-Alban at Bastia. Elisabeth was the illegitimate daughter of Theodore’s late sister, Marie Anne Leopoldine, who after the death of her husband the Comte du Trevou had become the live-in mistress of Anne Marie Joseph de Lorraine, Prince de Guise et Comte d'Harcourt, a prince-étranger of France of the House of Lorraine-Guise, a cadet branch of that family which presently held the imperial throne in the person of Emperor Franz Stefan. Although they were not exceptionally close cousins genealogically speaking - the line of Lorraine-Guise had diverged from the senior line in the early 16th century - the prince was nevertheless considered the emperor’s kinsman and was a very wealthy and influential aristocrat. Marie Anne Leopoldine had died giving birth to Elisabeth in 1725, but the Comte d’Harcourt had cared enough for his illegitimate daughter to provide her with an education at a convent as well as a small fortune to provide for her future marriage. As of her arrival on Corsica, Elisabeth was still unmarried at 25 but remained an attractive prospect. Aside from being the niece of a king and the possessor of a considerable dowry, she was described as a striking beauty.

Theodore had never met his niece in person before 1750 and knew her only through letters, but they immediately got along very well. Passionate, energetic, beautiful, and strong-willed, it was often said that Elisabeth more closely resembled Theodore in both looks and personality than any of his cousins, and the king doted upon his niece as though she were his own daughter. Even the queen - who could be somewhat prickly - took a liking to Elisabeth, if only because she was the first woman to set foot on Corsica with whom Elenora could have a decent discussion about opera. But the family member who was most taken with her was Don Federico, Principe di Capraia, who fell madly in love with her the first time they met. Although she was his first cousin once removed, they were the same age. Elisabeth presumably was not quite so enthralled with the prince at their first meeting, but she eventually came around; Prince Frederick assiduously wooed her during her stay, and in the spring of 1751 she agreed to marry him.



It was a smart marriage for several reasons other than the mutual affections of the bride and groom. Despite her pedigree, as a bastard Elisabeth probably could not have made so lofty a match back in France.[B] Don Federico gained her dowry and some very consequential in-laws, as Elisabeth was not only a member (albeit an illegitimate one) of the extended House of Lorraine but had two half-sisters (then deceased) who had married well: the eldest to the Duke of Bouillon, whose daughter had in turn married the son of Marc de Beauvau, prince de Craon, Regent of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; and the youngest to Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, a maréchal de France and close friend of King Louis XV. Elisabeth even had noble Corsican blood: her great-grandmother (the paternal grandmother of the comte d’Harcourt) was Anne d'Ornano, Marquise de Maubec, a direct descendant of Sampiero Corso.

Frederick and Elisabeth wasted little time in their union, for in April of 1752 - scarcely ten months after their wedding - the countess gave birth to a baby girl christened Maria Anna Caterina Lucia. This increased the number of children in the extended royal family to three; Don Matteo, Principe di Porto Vecchio, already had a son and a daughter, Francesco Antonio (b. 1745) and Maria Vittoria Theodora (b. 1749).[5] Maria Anna’s birth was followed only weeks later with the news that Queen Eleonora was pregnant. Marquis Giapietro Gaffori and many of the ministers were jubilant; a direct heir of the king would spare them from a possible succession crisis. Congregations across Corsica prayed for the health of Eleonora, whose pregnancy afforded her a new popularity among a population which had regarded her rather tepidly. In November the queen gave birth to a boy at the Bastia palace, but it was clear from the start that the baby was frail and troubled. The infant, briefly crown prince of Corsica, died two days later.

We need not doubt that the Prince of Capraia, like the rest of the king’s relatives, sincerely regretted the misfortune of Theodore and Eleonora. Nevertheless, his own marriage and the king’s continued childlessness considerably strengthened his political and dynastic position. A latecomer to Corsica, Don Federico was initially seen as rather inconsequential compared to his better known and more accomplished cousins. His part in the capture of Capraia had won praise, but he was still not considered to be a plausible contender for the throne; he couldn’t even speak Italian. By 1752, however, his candidacy was being taken much more seriously. He was the dynastically senior Neuhoff cousin, and his marriage to the Theodore’s beloved niece only further strengthened his family ties to the king. He had also become by far the richest of the “royal nephews” by virtue of of Elisabeth’s large dowry and his inheritance of the Neuhoff-Pungelscheid lands from his father Franz Bernhard, who had died in 1747 and left everything to his only son. Even his Italian was improving, although he still had a heavy German accent.

The person most threatened by this rise was Don Giovan, Principe di Morosaglia. Don Giovan - Rauschenburg - was an acclaimed war hero and had been longer in Theodore’s service, but he was both poor and still unmarried at the age of 38. Perhaps Don Federico had married principally for love, but any marriage was an important consideration for a successor, as if the throne were inherited by a childless bachelor it would only replace one succession crisis with another. To gain both a fortune and a wife at one fell swoop, Don Giovan picked up where Theodore had left off at Massa-Carrara. In the spring of 1752 he succeeded in securing the hand of the 24 year old Princess Maria Camilla Cybo-Malaspina, the youngest of the three Cybo-Malaspina daughters and the sister-in-law of Ercole d’Este, the son and heir of the Duke of Modena.

Being a member of a sovereign house, Maria Camilla was in some sense a superior match compared to the bastard daughter of the Comte d’Harcourt. In other ways, however, the marriage was something less than a success. Maria Camilla was a young socialite who was absolutely devastated by having to leave her life of operas, concerts, balls, and salons for this drab, uncultured island. True, Eleonora had not been overjoyed upon seeing Corsica for the first time, but she was older, wiser, and a capable administrator, so she had thrown her energy (and her considerable fortune) into making the royal household into a form that suited her tastes. Maria Camilla was not the queen, had few resources of her own, and was totally unused to managing anything except her social calendar. She loathed Corsica and was scarcely more fond of her husband, the rough and irascible Prince of Morosaglia. He was - in her estimation - cold, unsympathetic, too old, and far below her station, a poor baron pretending to princedom.[6] She broke down in tears at her own wedding. Although Maria Camilla soon resigned herself to her fate, she was often depressed, and lamented in private that she had not been married to the heir of a sovereign duke or a rich Roman prince like her sisters.[7] The queen had also suffered a lonely youth as an unwilling bride and made an effort to keep Maria Camilla’s spirits up, but even with the queen’s encouragement the princess found it difficult fitting into the small circle of noblewomen who constituted the “ladies of court.” She particularly disliked Elisabeth, ostensibly for her illegitimacy, but it is hard not to see envy at work: the bastard French woman was prettier, more popular, beloved by the king, and had a much wealthier husband who actually loved her.


Footnotes
[1] The largest Theodore’s staff had ever been during the Revolution was in the winter of 1739-40, the last period of respite before he was driven from the country by the French. His household amounted to a private secretary, a valet, a chaplain, two footmen, a cook, an equerry, two aides-de-camp, and perhaps half a dozen lesser servants. By comparison, the Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, whose state was only marginally more populous than Corsica (reaching 200,000 people by the end of the century), employed 400 full-time household personnel. Karl of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was more profligate than most, but nevertheless any prince of his rank and importance - to say nothing of a king - would be expected to have a staff of hundreds, not dozens.
[2] Although Theodore did not take an active role in staffing, he insisted that Eleonora hire Corsicans whenever possible to avoid the appearance of a fully foreign court and to give work to the locals. With some specialized professions this was not possible; it seems unlikely, for instance, that there were many Corsican wigmakers to choose from.
[3] Although the cultural aversion to servitude was mainly a male obsession, the queen nevertheless found it difficult to find Corsican ladies in waiting, as the patriarchal Corsicans were extremely reluctant to send off young unwed women to a place beyond their control where they might be in the presence of a variety of male (and often foreign) servants and workers.
[4] In the wake of the failed 1745 uprising and the general collapse of a Jacobite restoration as a realistic prospect, Corsica became the destination of a number of Catholic Jacobites and men of “Jacobite descent” on the basis of Theodore’s reputation and links to the exile community (including through Freemasonry). Other states offered more glorious prospects for those high Jacobite nobles who were angling for a real military command, but Theodore’s court and royal guard nevertheless offered honorable positions for those not quite so exalted. The presence of these men did not prove much of a hindrance to Anglo-Corsican relations; whatever their family origins or old allegiances, they were not necessarily pro-Bourbon, and the English envoy found them to be quite cordial and most useful for reaching the king’s ear. Indeed, the French suspected Theodore’s “British” courtiers of acting in the interests of the Hanoverian government.
[5] Possibly named as a reference to “Theodore’s victory,” as Princess Maria Vittoria Theodora was born just over a month after the Treaty of Monaco was signed.
[6] Don Giovan’s poor relationship with his wife and his general lack of interest in women have led to a few modern conjectures about his sexuality. He was nearly 40 by the time he married and seems to have been spurred to this only by Frederick's marriage, and unlike Theodore in his younger days Rauschenburg is not known to have indulged in any affairs whatsoever. That said, there is also no evidence of him having any suggestive relationships with men, which would certainly have been scandalous if it had even been suspected; Corti was not Paris. It may be that Don Giovan was simply not romantically inclined in any direction.[C]
[7] Not that her eldest sister had it much better, although for different reasons: quite the opposite of the supposedly “cold” Prince of Morosaglia, Ercole d’Este was a dissipated hedonist who took great interest in mistresses and none at all in his wife. Only the middle sister, Maria Anna Matilde, seems to have had a decent time of it. While her husband, the Roman prince Orazio Albani, had married her for her name and dowry, their union seems to have been fairly unremarkable by 18th century standards and was very fruitful in children.


Timeline Notes
[A] I hope this is of some mild interest; I tried to make it plausible. It’s surprisingly difficult to find thorough and concrete information on the numbers and types of servants and tradesmen in European princely courts. I also hope I didn't butcher my Italian profession names too badly...
[B] And indeed, IOTL she did not marry quite so high - her husband was a squire who worked as a government official. They had four children together.
[C] I have no idea what Rauschenburg’s taste in romantic partners was; actually there’s very little information on any of Theodore’s “nephews.” In fact as far as I can tell neither Rauschenburg nor Pungelscheid (Don Federico) ever married, which is presumably why the whole Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid family (including the Rauschenburg cadet line) appears to vanish with their generation in the middle 18th century. The Neuhoff family did survive into the present day, but the only current Neuhoff I’m aware of descends from the line of Neuhoff gennant Ley, a cadet branch which occasionally intermarried with the Pungelscheids but is not descended - as far as I can tell - from any of Theodore’s close relatives. To be honest, the Neuhoff genealogy is muddled by conflicting sources and it’s hard to say whether I’ve got it right or not. Somebody with access to real old historical records could probably mop the floor with me and my internet-assembled Neuhoff family tree (actually that’s probably true of a lot of things in this TL), but until that happens I’m just going to go with the best I have given my limited resources.