King Theodore's Corsica
- Thread starter Carp
- Start date
The marriage? Probably not. The last Freiherr von und zu Neuhoff, Johann Leopold, died in 1701 when Theodore was only seven years old. Schloss Neuenhof thus passed to Johann Leopold's daughter, Elisabeth Josina. I don't know her birth date, but it must have been in the 1690s - she was a product of her father's second marriage in 1688 and did not marry until 1714. By then she was an adult, and had her first child only a year after the marriage.
Under other circumstances, Elisabeth Josina might have been a good match for Theodore. They were about the same age, and intermarriage between the main Neuhoff and Neuhoff-Pungelscheid branches was a regular occurrence to conserve the family lands. Theodore's great-grandfather was a baron of von und zu Neuhoff, who was also Elisabeth Josina's grandfather, making them first cousins once removed. That's a pretty close marriage, but hardly unprecedented among the rather incestuous German nobility. Had Theodore inherited the Neuhoff-Pungelscheid lands, this match would have brought together nearly all of the extended Neuhoff patrimony. But because of the legal spat between his father and grandfather, Theodore was disinherited, and thus not much of a prospect. He had no estates and no money, and in 1714 was nothing more than a 20 year old captain in the Bavarian Taufkirchen cuirassiers. I have no evidence that such a match was considered. Presumably Elisabeth Josina, who probably arranged her own marriage, was aiming higher than a landless cousin.
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Oh! Sorry, I assumed that was part of the ongoing conversation, not a comment on the update.
The official answer to that is "we don't know." It's possible that Theodore signed off on the deal beforehand, knowing that it was in the best interest of his chosen successor if Don Giovan went elsewhere. Perhaps he knew about it even before the Royal Testament was signed. The deal itself, however, was between the princes and didn't directly involve the king. Theodore would not want to be perceived as trying to drive out his cousin Don Giovan, who was so helpful to him during the Revolution, but he may have encouraged the prince to accept the deal as the best way to gain his independence, take care of the family patrimony, and ensure his financial security.
Somewhat odd that the ruins of castle Rauschenburg look as if the castle fell into disuse long before the stated date in the 19th century, but the manor house appears carefully preserved.
That trend began in the 1500s with Henry IV of France.
Later, one sees Christina of Sweden, James II of England (& VII of Scotland), and Augustus the Strong of Saxony.
Non-royal conversions include
- Two children of Elizabeth Stuart of Bohemia: her second daughter Louise, who "eloped" and became a nun; and her sixth son, Edward of Simmern, who converted to marry Anne de Gonzague.
- Francis Rákóczi, former Prince of Transylvania
There were also a fair number of brides who converted on marriage, but there were some both ways, so that wasn't so much of a trend.
Enjoyed the update, but man have to pour one out for my favorite Mountain Man and revolutionary Rauschenburg, sad to see him leave but glad there is more to his story.
Seems that way, although I don't know how much of the "manor house" is original. Apparently it's now a farm shop where you can buy local asparagus.
As bad as Rauschenburg looks, Pungelscheid got it worse. The castle was struck by lightning in 1797 and burned to the ground. Only a few bits of stone wall remain today.
Presumably there's more of an extended family out there, with those three cousins just being the ones interested enough in the Corsican throne to fight for it. Pungelscheid has sisters, as Carp has remarked. The others may well also have siblings.
A further thought on the story-post: With Theodore setting the line of succession in stone by decree now a precedent, may future monarchs also try their hand at this power?
A further thought on the story-post: With Theodore setting the line of succession in stone by decree now a precedent, may future monarchs also try their hand at this power?
I'm still doing some family research so I don't want to make any more firm statements just yet, but I will note that there aren't actually all that many Neuhoffs left. Historically, the extended Neuhoff family sort of inexplicably fell off a cliff. Neither the Pungelscheid nor Rauschenburg lines appear to have continued beyond this generation. After being prominent in the Westphalian nobility for centuries, the family virtually disappears in the late 1700s.
As far as I am aware, the only male Neuhoff line which survived the century was the line of Neuhoff gennant Ley, which branched off from the senior (von und zu) Neuhoff line in the 15th century but regularly intermarried with the other Neuhoff branches (Theodore's great-grandmother was a Neuhoff-Ley). They were never as important or prosperous as the Neuhoffs of the past, but they did survive, and still do. Indeed, here is a picture of German businessman Jesco von Neuhoff, of the Neuhoff-Ley branch:
I guess if you're a Corsican Legitimist in 2019, Jesco's your guy.
The constitution states that “in the absence of personal succession, the aforementioned Baron [Theodore] may, in his lifetime, designate a successor of his relation” (emphasis added), which strongly suggests that the right of selection is only granted to Theodore and not his successors. In other words, the Corsicans wanted to set up a hereditary monarchy but knew that Theodore had no children, so they gave him a “one time only” power to choose who would succeed him and start a new line of succession.
That said, however, no constitution is self-enforcing, and it's quite possible that a later Corsican monarch might cite "precedent" in an attempt to change the succession. It has the makings of a constitutional crisis, though...
I have a funny feeling that
and it's going to cause no end of problems
I'm going to get my wish and Theodore and Maria are going to have a beautiful healthy Baby but it's going to come at a point when Don Federico is super invested in becoming the next King and also super entrenched in the politics and power of Corsica
Admit it: he put you up to writing this TL, didn't he!
I guess if you're a Corsican Legitimist in 2019, Jesco's your guy.
Yeah, that's why it's taken me 113 pages and 2.5 years to mention him. We're playing the long game here.
Exodus
Exodus
Tunisian Berber irregular, 18th century
Tunisian Berber irregular, 18th century
Ali Pasha, the Bey of Tunis, had risen to power with treachery, rebellion, and murder, and was fated to fall from power in the same way. Ali Pasha had originally acquired his throne in an uprising against his uncle Hussein, the founder of the dynasty. This civil war lasted from 1735 until 1740, but with the aid of the Algerians Ali was eventually able to defeat his uncle, who was captured and beheaded by Ali Pasha’s son Younis. Hussein’s sons, Muhammad Rashid and Ali, managed to escape their father’s downfall and took refuge in Algiers.
Having seized power and driven out his rivals, Ali Pasha turned against the Europeans who controlled a string of outposts on Tunisia’s northern coast. It was an auspicious moment, as in the 1740s both France and Genoa were occupied with crises in Europe. Leading his father’s army, Younis captured Tabarka and Cap Nègre and took hundreds of Genoese and Frenchmen into slavery. This prompted a war with France, but a French attack on Tabarka turned into a catastrophic failure and the French ultimately offered Ali Pasha generous terms for peace.
His ascendancy, however, would not last forever. The sons of Hussein were able to convince the Algerians to switch sides, and they invaded Tunis with an Algerian army in 1746. This attempt failed because of a mutiny among the Algerians, but Ali Pasha remained insecure. His position was shaken by the rebellion of his own son Younis, who had gained the loyalty of the Turkish garrison and used them to briefly seize control of the city before his father was able to return with an army and overcome him in 1752. Shortly thereafter, the hopes of Muhammad and Ali were renewed by the accession of a new and warlike Dey of Algiers, Baba Ali, in 1754. Fearing another Algerian invasion, Ali Pasha turned to the British for assistance and agreed to lease them Tabarka in exchange for a subsidy. But this only further convinced the French to support Ali Pasha’s rivals in Algiers, and the British were distracted and spread too thin to render any concrete aid to Ali Pasha. In 1756 the brothers made their move, once more with an Algerian army at their backs. Once more Ali Pasha's janissaries turned on him, and the bey was captured by the Algerians, who then subjected Tunis to a bloody and brutal sack. Hundreds - perhaps thousands - were slaughtered.
The brothers now expected to take their rightful place in Tunis, only to find that the commander of the Algerian troops, Ahmed Bey of Constantine, was in no hurry to leave. He quarreled with the brothers over the division of loot and the conduct of his forces, but his true aim was to annex Tunis to his own beylik. Baba Ali, however, feared the ambitions of his subordinate, and ultimately Ahmed Bey withdrew from Tunis with his soldiers, “persuaded” by a recall order from Algiers and a hefty bribe from the brothers. Ali Pasha was dragged back to Algiers with him, and was strangled in prison a month later.
As soon as the Algerians were gone, the janissaries of Tunis decided that they had no need for the sons of Hussein. They rose in rebellion and captured Muhammad, while Ali barely managed to escape. At first they ruled the city themselves, leading a "revolutionary" government which was mainly concerned with robbing the population blind, but news that Ali was recruiting an army to lead against them convinced the Turks to try and shore up their authority. They liberated Younis, who had been languishing in prison since his rebellion in 1752, and declared him to be the new bey. Younis's first act was to have Muhammad beheaded. He then turned on the Foreigners' Quarter, for Younis hated the French almost as much as he loved separating heads from shoulders, and French support for Hussein’s sons provided him with an ideal pretext. Without warning, his janissaries stormed the French consulate, savagely murdered the consul, and killed or imprisoned all the other foreigners they could find.
Fearing for his life, the Corsican consul Cristoforo Buongiorno fled to the house of Charles Gordon, the British consul, whose home was an island of tranquility amidst nightmarish violence. Bloodthirsty as he was, Younis was not foolish enough to risk war with both France and Britain. Gordon happily sheltered every foreigner that was able to make it to his door. In a letter to the Corsican foreign minister Giovanni Vincente Garelli, Consul Buongiorno described how he and the other "refugees" had watched from the window as the Turks paraded outside Gordon's house, waving the French consul’s head on the end of a lance. At any other time this outrageous act would certainly have led to a swift and forceful response from France, but in 1757 the French could not spare anything for Younis’s chastisement. They could do nothing but watch in horror as their plan backfired horrendously.
Fortunately, Younis’s reign of terror would be short-lived. Although Younis ruled the city of Tunis, his cousin Ali had succeeded in rallying the Bedouin tribes to his cause. This army was soon joined by Berbers, urban Arabs, and disaffected kulughlis (the sons of Turks and native women) who had been dismissed from the army by Ali Pasha. In the spring of 1759, Ali’s army assaulted the capital, defeated the janissaries, and captured Younis as he tried to flee the city. In the spirit of reciprocity, Ali had his cousin beheaded. Ali ibn Hussein - thereafter known as Ali II or Ali Bey [1] - still found himself in danger, as Younis's son Isma’il had escaped to Tripoli and fully intended to return, but Isma’il made his move prematurely in 1760 and was rather easily defeated and driven off.
Ali II, Bey of Tunis
Although Ali’s father Hussein had won effective independence from the Ottomans and curbed the political power of the Turkish janissaries in 1705, he and every Tunisian bey after him had still relied on the janissaries as a military strike force. Initially, Ali Bey seemed as though he would follow in their footsteps, if for no other reason than to ward off the threat posed by Isma’il. Yet he had not forgotten that the Turks had turned on Ali Pasha twice, and were directly responsible for freeing Younis, murdering his brother, and ravaging his city. After Isma’il’s defeat, Ali Bey began recruiting more kulughlis and Arabs into the standing army to counterbalance the Turkish forces.
Thinking themselves indispensable, the overconfident janissaries rose in revolt in 1761 under the leadership of the Tunisian Dey Muhammad Kazdaghli, demanding that the army be Turkish-only to the exclusion of all Arabs. At first the bey appeared conciliatory and promised to fulfill their demands, but this was merely a ploy. His loyal soldiers launched a surprise attack on the janissary barracks, overwhelming the Turks and killing many. Facing imminent destruction, the Turks offered to surrender and handed over Kazdaghli, no doubt expecting that Ali would simply punish the instigating officers. Ali accepted their surrender - and then ordered all the rebels to be immediately put to death.
Ali Bey was no Tunisian nationalist. His dynasty was Turkish in origin - his father, Hussein, was the son of a Cretan-born janissary - and the core of his standing army was composed of kulughlis, mamluks, and Zuwawa horsemen from Algeria,[A] none of them native Tunisians. Having rid himself of the Turks in spectacular fashion, however, he had no choice but to rebuild the state on a native foundation. Despite his ruthlessness against the Turks, Ali Bey was magnanimous towards the rest of his subjects, promising to forgive his enemies and actively promoting the welfare of Bedouins, urban Arabs, and Berbers alike. Ali Bey gained a reputation as a wise, just, and pious ruler who abolished harsh taxes on the peasantry, enacted important economic reforms, gave stipends to the clerics, and gained the trust of the Tunisian khassa (“notables” or “elites”). Gradually, he even began to explore including the natives within the regular army apparatus. Nevertheless, his reforms could not rejuvenate his devastated country overnight, and he was severely weakened by the loss of the Turks, who despite their disloyalty had been effective soldiers. He was compelled to pay tribute to the Algerians to forestall a new invasion, and recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III like his predecessors.
The French derived no benefit from Ali’s victory. Although they had backed the brothers’ rebellion early on, the situation in the Western Mediterranean had changed drastically since the expedition of Muhammad and Ali had kicked off in 1756. Now Britain was the dominant naval and commercial power, while France had been forced to renounce its rights to Cap Nègre and the valuable Tunisian coral trade in the Treaty of Paris. Ali Bey could see the writing on the wall, and quickly ratified Ali Pasha’s treaty with Britain and confirmed their rights to Tabarka. The concession would now be managed by the newly chartered Barbary Company,[2] which received preferential tariff rates at all Tunisian ports. This gained Ali Bey a respectable British subsidy, but he hoped for more - specifically, British military support against the Algerians. The British, however, were not in the mood to install a major garrison in Tunisia or involve themselves in a new conflict, and for the time being the bey’s hopes were unfulfilled.
Tunisian kulughli soldier
This turn towards Britain also meant closer relations with the Corsicans, and in 1762 Ali Bey renewed the 1734 treaty of alliance which had been signed by a then-uncrowned Theodore and Ali’s father Hussein Bey. As part of this agreement the bey repatriated 60 enslaved Corsicans, who were given a royal welcome in Bastia. King Theodore happily portrayed their return as a concession from the Tunisians, and did not publicize the fact that it had only been accomplished with some British pressure and a compensatory bribe to the bey. Some have suggested that Ali Bey’s genial attitude towards the Corsicans was personal, as he was himself half-Corsican; his mother, Lalla Jannat, was a Corsican woman who had been captured in a raid, enslaved, and taken as a concubine by Hussein Bey before becoming his third wife (c. 1709). But Corsica was also increasingly important to Tunisia’s economy and the Anglo-Tunisian relationship, for the expulsion of France from the Tunisian coast opened the door for Corsicans to take a dominant position in the Tunisian coral fishery.
Although the British and Corsicans did well enough out of the civil war, it had been disastrous for the Tunisian Jews. Hundreds had perished during the Algerian sack of 1757, and Younis gladly put the Jews at the disposal of his Turkish soldiers to be plundered and harassed as they pleased. By the time Ali Bey finally stabilized the situation and liquidated the janissaries in 1761, most of the grana, Tunis’s Italian-speaking Jews, had fled the country. Some returned under the more enlightened government of Ali Bey, but the community never recovered, which had as much to do with economics as the trauma of war. The Treaty of Paris and the arrival of the Barbary Company began a new period of British dominance in Tunisian commerce, and the old Jewish merchants found they could not compete with the much lower tariff rates which the English had been granted by treaty. Although the Livorno-Tunis trade remained principally in the hands of the remaining grana, the Company steadily devoured everything else.
Tunisian anarchy, English monopoly, and the postwar boom of the Corsican coral industry opened a new chapter in the history of Corsican Jewry. In 1753 there had been fewer than 30 Jews permanently residing on the island; in 1762, less than a decade later, this figure had grown to five hundred.[3] By 1765 there were two Jewish-owned “coral factories” in the city producing coral beads for the Indian trade which together employed about a hundred workers, both Jewish and Christian. There were Jewish tailors, leatherworkers, butchers, and a glassmaking workshop. Ajaccio’s first rabbi, Abraham Isaac Castello, had himself been a coral-worker in Livorno before founding a printing shop; he was not only a talented scholar and philosopher who King Theodore once called “the wisest man in the kingdom,” but also introduced the city’s first printing press. In 1763 a Tunisian Jew opened the island’s first coffeehouse, which was a frequent haunt of the Constitutional Society.
The native Ajaccini had mixed opinions as to the changing face of their city. The wave of Jewish immigration was part of a larger postwar trend, as the once sleepy Genoese entrepôt of Ajaccio developed into a modest but increasingly busy center of commerce, manufacturing, and culture. Before the Revolution, seeing a foreign (that is, non-Genoese) ship in the harbor had been an occurrence worthy of note; now it was an everyday event, at least during the sailing season. The foreign presence brought prosperity, but not for everyone - coral fishermen and carpenters were certainly better served by the new economy than tailors and traders, who faced daunting new competition. In general, however, the Jews and other foreigners created more jobs than they took.
Yet not everyone had economics foremost in their minds, and the benefits of growth had to be weighed against the peril to one’s soul. It was one thing for a few Jews or “Lutherans” to visit the city, or even to live there; nobody had begrudged the king his English followers or raised an outcry against the presence of Dutch oil merchants. Now, however, heretics and unbelievers seemed to be flooding into Ajaccio at a rapid rate, and it seemed conceivable that they might tempt native Corsicans into damnation. In 1762 the Jewish community requested permission from the city’s anziani to buy a house to serve as a dedicated synagogue; the council initially agreed, then reversed its decision because of public outcry, and then reversed itself again in 1763 thanks to royal pressure and written assurances from the Jewish leaders that Christians would not be allowed inside under any circumstances or otherwise “recruited.” That seemed to resolve the matter, but other crises would soon follow.
Still, the relative acceptance which the Jews found in this previously all-Catholic city was surprising for the time. It may be that the Ajaccini really did see the benefits of immigration trumpeted by Theodore, or that the isolated Corsicans were simply too ignorant to have the same antisemitic prejudices of mainland Italians. Perhaps the shared animosity of the Jews and Ajaccini towards the odious French occupation created a lingering sense of solidarity. One could also blame the condition of the Corsican church, which had many priests but a weak and largely powerless hierarchical structure, rendering any organized campaign against “apostates” difficult. Of course, the more perverse explanation is that the Corsicans simply had a more convenient target for their xenophobia: the Greeks.
The surrender of the French after the Battle of Concador not only delivered the French army into British custody, but the auxiliary cavalrymen of the Greek “Busacci squadron” as well. After the signing of the Convention of Bastia in June 1759, the Greeks were handed over to Corsican authorities. Their status and ultimate fate was a matter of some contention. The Greeks were widely despised, particularly in the Nebbio, where Busacci and his horsemen had eagerly served as France’s enforcers to requisition supplies and violently suppress the macchiari. But they were not prisoners of war, because Corsica had not been at war; nor could they be declared traitors, as that would imply that all who helped the French were traitors (including many important native Corsicans). Count Gianpietro Gaffori promised to hold individual trials for those who were accused of murder or theft, but then backtracked. The count realized that if the Greeks actually got their day in court they would simply claim that they were French soldiers acting under orders. Given the political divide between filofrancesi and filoinglesi, Gaffori feared this would simply inflame tensions for no benefit. Ultimately the Greeks were simply disarmed and returned to Ajaccio.
Nobody expected them to receive a warm welcome from the largely filoinglese Ajaccini, but the busaccini (as they were nicknamed) were also shunned by their fellow Greeks. There was a fierce rivalry between the Busacci brothers and Giorgio Stefanopoli, who vied for leadership of the overall Greek community and strongly disagreed on the community’s future. Stefanopoli believed that the Greeks ought to integrate, reconcile with the “natives,” and make Corsica their permanent home. The Busaccis, on the other hand, believed that the Corsicans would never respect them and “integration” could only mean the loss of their culture and identity. The ultimate goal of the busaccini had always been emigration, and since Theodore refused to let them go, they had pledged themselves to the King of France in the hope that he would recognize their service and help them leave Corsica for good. Stefanopoli not only received the wayward busaccini with ill grace, but petitioned the Corsican government to have the Busacci brothers deported. Once the war was over, Theodore reluctantly agreed. The Busacci brothers did finally manage to emigrate, but not quite in the way they had imagined: They were forced to leave all their property behind and dropped off in Marseilles with a handful of followers, family members, and fellow officers. They hoped to gain some pension or assistance from King Louis XV in recognition of their service, but to no avail; the French wanted nothing more to do with them.
Giorgio Stefanopoli thus emerged as the undisputed leader of the Greco-Corsican community, but “integration” did not prove as easy as he had hoped. The Ajaccini did not pay much attention to the Busacci-Stefanopoli rivalry and tended to consider all the Greeks to be traitors and French sympathizers. Stefanopoli sought royal assistance, hoping that his loyalty to Theodore might be rewarded with money or land, but it was politically untenable for the king to show favor to the Greeks. Sympathetic to their plight, Theodore proposed to make use of the Greeks by forming an all-Greek unit of “Royal Lacedaemonians” for the army, but his ministers assured him that this was folly. Although the Greco-Corsicans had proved themselves to be both skilled farmers and capable soldiers, neither vocation seemed to be open to them in Corsica.
Footnotes
[1] Formally, ‘Abu’l Hasan ‘Ali ibn Hussein Pasha, Beylerbeyli of Tunis.
[2] Also known as the “Second Barbary Company” as not to be confused with the short-lived Elizabethan-era trading company of the same name. The original Barbary Company had been established chiefly to conduct trade with Morocco, but was dissolved in 1597 when its charter expired. After this the Barbary Coast was presumably included within the remit of the Levant Company, whose main business was in the Eastern Mediterranean, but the Levant Company’s exclusive rights were revoked in 1754.
[3] Five hundred Jews was still a mere fraction of Livorno’s Jewish community, which numbered around four thousand, but it was far in excess of the Jews living in Genoa. Even after concerted efforts by the Republic to attract Jews to help revive the economy, the city could boast no more than 70 souls in 1763.
Timeline Notes
[A] The Zuwawa are the namesake of the French “Zouaves,” the soldiers who became famous for their Algerian-inspired baggy pants.
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Well, the Greek thing ends on a cliffhanger. I hope they dont go the way of the Prince of Morosaglia.