alternatehistory.com

Despite the deteriorating relationship between the Corsicans and the French, the British did not perceive that the Corsican situation in mid-1758 was necessarily developing to their advantage. Major-General Henry Seymour Conway had delayed the second part of the campaign, and the French occupation of the city in July foreclosed this possibility entirely. Colonel John Arabin had made an impression at Corti, but the Corsican government remained ostensibly neutral and no national uprising had materialized. In August, Conway concluded that the British plan to take Corsica had failed, and that the only remaining question was whether Britain should retain Ajaccio or raze its defenses before withdrawing as Admiral Charles Saunders had recommended. Vacillating as usual, Conway decided to ask London for instructions.

Despite the failure of the original plan, the British ministry had several reasons to remain on Corsica. Ajaccio was much closer to France than Gibraltar, and provided a means of support for the British warships off Toulon and privateers in French waters. Although the lack of a local infrastructure to support fleet operations was problematic, the Admiralty considered it a useful position to hold - at least so long as it was not threatened by land. But the other factor that made British statesmen sit up and take notice was the fact that France had responded to the landing by reinforcing their position on Corsica. One of the original criticisms of the Corsica plan was that unlike attacks on coastal France, an assault on Corsica would not force the French to redirect forces away from Hanover, the only theater of Britain’s war where the British Navy offered no advantage. Plainly, however, they were interested enough in the island to make at least some effort to shore up their position there, and every battalion stationed on Corsica was a battalion not on the continent.

Yet despite France and Britain both committing themselves to keeping Corsica, neither Conway nor his counterpart Guy André Pierre de Montmorency, Marquis de Laval made any attempt to engage one another. Conway did not have the forces to attack the French, and could not depend on a decisive intervention by the Mediterranean squadron as long as it was occupied with keeping watch on Toulon. Laval had the superior force, but he was tied down in the north by his fear of another British landing and the growing native insurgency in Bastia province.

King Theodore thus found himself in an enviable position as the man holding the balance of power. With the aid of Corsican auxiliaries and logistical support, Conway could potentially press the French back into their presidi and besiege them. Conversely, if Theodore backed Laval, the British position at Ajaccio would become extremely tenuous. This latter course was not very likely given Theodore’s own preferences and the growing hostility between the Corsicans and the French, but it remained plausible, and officially the Corsican government continued to declare its faithfulness to the Convention of Ajaccio.

Theodore, who was negotiating with the British in secret without the knowledge of Count Gianpietro Gaffori, cast his own ministers as the villains. It was an old trick of the king’s, often played - to present himself as the sympathetic and rational man lamentably restrained from action by a difficult people (or, in this case, their difficult government). The actual negotiations were largely conducted in Turin, between Theodore’s personal agent Sir John Powers and the British ambassador to Sardinia Sir James Gray.[1] Gray was a seasoned diplomat, described as “wise and prudent” by his Sardinian counterpart, but he relied on General Conway for his impressions of the political situation on Corsica. Conway was an honest but also rather credulous man, hopeless at politics, who relayed the king’s official line with little interrogation: that Theodore favored a deal with Britain, but Gaffori and the rest of the ministers feared to break with France and were suspicious of the intentions of the “heretical” English. The inference was that for the right price - and strong guarantees of British military support - Theodore could prevail over his reluctant cabinet.

Obviously the Corsicans would require British subsidies and military support to expel the French and keep them from returning. The details, however, remained unsettled. Gray knew that foreign subsidies were politically sensitive in Britain and desired to keep expenditures to a minimum. He was also exasperated by Theodore’s recurrent demands for more British troops. It seemed to Gray as if Theodore wanted the British to drive the French out on their own with the Corsicans merely cheering them on. Gray, who knew that London would probably not be sending more battalions, was insistent that the Corsicans would have to provide the lion’s share of the manpower. Ships, money, muskets, and even Conway’s redcoats could be provided, but ultimately redeeming Corsican soil would require a willingness to shed Corsican blood.

In late 1758 that willingness was not much in evidence even among the devoti. The original conspirators seem to have imagined their “uprising” as a traditional armed conflict modeled after Theodore’s campaigns; they would rally the militia to defeat the French as they had done at San Pellegrino and Ponte Novo. But the devoti were too few in number and too local in character to raise the sort of armies which would have made this possible. The French could not have been greatly discomfited by a “muster” in November which saw no more than “three score hillmen with old muskets and worn flints” assemble at Vescovato. The devoti had hoped to be commanders of a new rebellion, but at the moment they were captains without soldiers. The French were widely resented, but that did not mean that Corsican peasants were standing in line to fight them on behalf of this little clique of disgruntled notables.

An alternative to this ineffective posturing was provided by Ignacio Domenico Baldassari, one of the original devoti and a former officer in the French Régiment Royal-Corse. His experiences in the French army had instilled in him a deep skepticism of militia forces. Rather than waiting for some future mass uprising, Baldassari assembled a company of motivated young radicals to fight the French in the manner of the petite guerre. His followers would descend from the mountains to attack patrols and guard posts and then fade back into the macchia, for which they were given the popular name macchiari. Aided by the terrain, the local population, and well-heeled sympathizers among the Corsican elite (including Don Giovan, Principe di Morosaglia himself) they quickly made themselves an enormous nuisance to the French. The French, unlike the Genoese, could not simply bolt themselves within their citadels; British naval power obligated them to control the productive lands of the province and to keep the land route between Bastia and San Fiorenzo open.

The escalation of this conflict was welcomed by the British, but the sluggish pace was maddening. It was particularly galling in light of the fact that, by January at the latest, Sir James Gray had a very promising draft Anglo-Corsican treaty in hand. Yet despite the progress of negotiations in Turin, Theodore hesitated at the precipice and refused to take the plunge. The stakes were high, and the overall outcome of the war still seemed in doubt. To exert some pressure, the British threatened to withdraw from Ajaccio, but since the Admiralty still desired the base it was mostly an empty gesture; all that was done was a partial redeployment to Gibraltar.

It was in February, at Borgo, that the stalemate finally began to collapse. This hilltop town just ten miles south at Bastia was little used by Baldassari’s men, but the devoti had nevertheless made it a conspicuous target. It was the conspiracy’s founding site, as well as the location of a considerable magazine. Having caught wind of these armaments, Colonel Jules Marc Antoine de Morell, Comte d’Aubigny decided to do exactly what the French had done at Murato and send a column of men to seize the cache of munitions. This time, however, d’Aubigny miscalculated. Unlike Murato, Borgo was a formidable defensive position, and the locals had advance warning of the raid; the devoti apparently were not the only ones with intelligence leaks. But Borgo also had a special resonance. It was here that, fifteen years before, the enraged Corsicans had risen up on their own and driven Boissieux’s Frenchmen from the town in a bloody battle.




When 200 French soldiers approached Borgo, they found not an armed rabble milling about in the churchyard but a company of militiamen hunkered down on a high ridge behind a hastily erected breastwork of earth and logs. An officer sent forward to demand that the locals disperse was informed by the devote Giuseppe Barbaggi that the Borghigiani did not recognize French authority, and that nothing short of a royal order would compel them to disband. It soon became evident that the Corsicans were not bluffing. The French launched an attack, but taking the fortified crest of Borgo in the face of distressingly heavy and accurate musketry proved beyond their means - or at least beyond the willingness of the French to suffer casualties. After a rather short engagement, the French withdrew to Bastia, intending to return with more men and heavier firepower. The “Second Battle of Borgo,” however, was not to be followed by a third.

The blood shed at Borgo accomplished what neither the devoti nor Baldassari’s more successful macchiari had been able to do on their own. Even in the absence of a national press, word of the engagement quickly spread - word that the Borghigiani had stood fast against foreign invasion (though many of the militiamen were from elsewhere, including Barbaggi, who was from Murato) and smashed a battalion of French soldiers (though the French suffered only 24 casualties). Motivated by fear of another attack, and perhaps a desire by the younger generation to take part in another “revolutionary” victory, armed men from the Castagniccia streamed into the village. Prominent notables encouraged them with increasingly belligerent pronouncements. Anarchy loomed, and it seemed possible that the crisis would bring down the government. Theodore was largely exempt from public scorn, with the most popular theory being that his inaction was a consequence of his family being held “hostage” in Bastia, but Count Gaffori was more vulnerable. It seemed quite likely that when the consulta generale next convened they would be demanding the resignation of the man already mocked by a few brave souls as “Don fà nunda” (“Don Do-Nothing”).

Either reluctantly pressed by events or happily seizing an opportunity, Theodore surprised even his own cabinet by summoning the French envoy to Corti and giving him a stern upbraiding before the court. The French forces, he declared, had gone far outside the bounds of the Convention of Ajaccio and had even launched an unwarranted attack against a Corsican village. As such, he demanded that the French forces return to their treaty-specified posts at Calvi and San Fiorenzo and abandon all other positions in Corsica. He further declared that Laval and d’Aubigny no longer enjoyed the trust of His Serene Majesty and demanded their immediate removal. If these demands were unmet, he suggested that he would be within his rights to consider the Convention abrogated in its entirety.

Of course Theodore could not expel the French. But Theodore always wanted to be the center of attention, and this action restored the king to his “proper” role as the protagonist on center stage, not a helpless bystander. Moreover, while his words had been harsh, they were not altogether intemperate. He had not simply ripped up the Convention as some of the more bellicose princes and notabili demanded, but rather cast himself as its strict adherent. He certainly knew that France could not - would not - return to following the letter of the Convention; aside from the blow to their prestige, it would require them to give up Bastia and would probably render their position at San Fiorenzo indefensible. Yet by framing the conflict in this manner he cast himself as the victim and the French as the faithless party. This would not deter France - indeed, it would infuriate them - but it made his course of action more palatable to the “pro-Convention” faction in his kingdom.

Although perhaps not intentionally, it was also a propaganda coup in Britain. While the Corsican expedition was certainly covered in the British press, the Corsicans themselves were not particularly sympathetic subjects. Theodore, after all, had “betrayed” Britain in the Treaty of Monaco and allied with France, and it was difficult to call Conway’s rather underwhelming Corsican campaign a blow against “French tyranny” once it became clear that the Corsicans were not particularly eager to rise up against them. Anti-ministry papers lambasted the expedition as pointless and ridiculed the idea that the Corsicans would rise up against their fellow Catholics. The skirmish at Borgo and Theodore’s theatrical turn against France, however, came as heaven-sent proof of Gallic tyranny. Here was France running roughshod over a small island of liberty-loving people and their king making a brave stand against Bourbon might, demanding only - and vainly - that France keep her word.

Theodore’s demands were for the most part ignored. The only one which was ultimately met was the removal of Laval, who had already been requesting a transfer for months.[2] This provided Theodore with cover to switch sides and enact his draft agreement with the British, if he so desired. But it would be the British, not the Corsicans, who would provide the final push. Certainly British action was prompted in part by the de facto rebellion in the northeast, but it also had much to do with shifting leadership within the British forces, who would now take their orders from the newly-promoted Brigadier General James Wolfe.



Footnotes
[1] Despite taking no part in the war, the Kingdom of Sardinia was notionally an ally of the Bourbons and Habsburgs at this time. Nevertheless, Carlo Emanuele feared French encroachment in Corsica. He had disapproved of the circumstances of the Treaty of Monaco and was further dismayed by the Convention of Ajaccio, which he interpreted as part of a slow-moving plot to dominate Corsica - perhaps even annex it to France - the result of which could only be to further encircle and constrain the Savoyard state. Although he offered no overt support to the British or Corsicans, it is clear that Carlo Emanuele was aware of the Anglo-Corsican talks going on in his capital and knowingly provided his good offices. His officials at the port of Finale also seem to have been less than diligent in preventing the smuggling of weapons and gunpowder into Corsica for the use of the devoti.
[2] Laval had come to profoundly hate his assignment and the Corsicans in general. Of all the various French senior officers who presided over French occupations of Corsica in the 18th century, none - not even the defeated Boissieux - came do detest them quite as openly as the Marquis de Laval.