Telepylos
“The Genoese say that the barbarity of the Maniots will never be so great as to not be counterbalanced by that of the Corsicans. What is certain is that, if that treaty ever succeeds, no national matchmaking shall ever prove a better choice. Their common marriages shall produce offspring which will be masterpieces of monstrosity.”
- Georges Guillet de Saint-George, 1675, regarding the arrival of the Greeks in Corsica
In March of 1782, as the Coral War was still ongoing, the British garrison of Fort St. Philip surrendered to Bourbon forces. Having finally regained control of Minorca, Spain’s first order of business was to expel all the “foreign” peoples whom the British had settled on the island. The British authorities had purposefully introduced non-Catholic populations to the island, chiefly Greeks and Jews, to counterbalance the hostile native population. From the 1760s, however, the Jews had gravitated towards Corsica rather than Minorca, leaving the British with mainly Greeks.
The Spanish considered the Greeks to be not merely foreigners, but enemies. A British governor noted their “incredible spirit” for privateering; in just a few years between the outbreak of war and the final fall of Port Mahon, the British recorded more than 50 privateer ships based out of Minorca which captured 220 prizes worth nearly 400,000 pounds sterling in total. The number of Greeks among these privateers is not recorded, but they clearly had more relish for the enterprise than the native Minorcans, who tended to be more sympathetic to their Spanish brethren.
The Spanish authorities gave the entire population just three days to leave, and they were forced to leave all their property behind. The brothers Nicola and Cana Alexiano, probably the richest Greeks on the island, attested that they had been deprived of “estates and property in land, houses, warehouses, ships, and merchandize” worth more than 10,000 pounds sterling. The Alexianos, however, were the lucky ones - they managed to get a ticket back to England with the garrison, which had surrendered on terms, and they could still rely on some funds invested in places the Spaniards could not reach. Most of the Minorcan Greeks had neither their resources nor their influence, and were instead dropped off in Marseilles with little more than what they could carry on their backs.
[A]
Don Giorgio Maria Stefanopoli, the
de facto leader of the Corsican Greek community, was predictably interested in attracting some of these exiles to Ajaccio. His dwindling community had been looking down the barrel of eventual extinction prior to the Archipelago Expedition. When the Russians made peace with the Ottomans, they left the Greek rebels to their fate, and while many went into exile in Russian territory Stefanopoli had managed to induce a few hundred Greeks (mostly Moreans and Cretans) to follow him into exile. Although this had given the Greco-Corsicans a demographic reprieve, more immigrants would ensure the survival of Don Giorgio’s community - and, of course, expand his own influence and importance as the community’s foremost representative.
The Corsican government, however, was not interested - firstly, because they were in the middle of a war, and secondly, because the last thing they needed was more people in Ajaccio. The city’s population had exploded in the last twenty years thanks to Jewish immigration and the arrival of poor Corsicans from the interior
Dila looking for better wages than they received as tenant farmers, but this had strained both the city’s meager water supply and its civil harmony. The native Ajaccini had been tolerant enough when the Jews were a small minority bringing the wealth of the coral industry to their city, but the rapid expansion of Jewish settlement caused unease among Ajaccio’s native upper class and resentment among those who found themselves in competition with Jewish artisans (or, at the lower end of the economic ladder, poor laborers from the countryside). Adding another thousand Greeks to this situation seemed unwise.
The cause of the Minorcan Greeks would be taken up again in the following year by Andrea Mavrachi (born
Andreas Mavrakis), a former officer in the Corsican Navy. Mavrachi was a sailor from Crete who had fought for the Russians as a privateer during the Archipelago Expedition and had left the island with the
Korsikanskiy legion. He had settled in Ajaccio, joined the navy as an
alfiere (a junior officer rank, equivalent to a midshipman), and was fortunate enough to have been assigned to the Lacedemone, where he shared in Admiral Lorenzo’s lucrative captures of Genoese shipping. When the war ended he resigned from the navy and used his prize money to buy his own ship. He visited Bonifacio on business in the spring of 1783, and the white-cliffed city appears to have made quite an impression on him.
Mavrachi may have learned of the plight of the Minorcan Greeks from Stefanopoli, but the two were not close. “
Kapetán Yiorgákis,” as the Greeks called Don Giorgio, ruled the Greek community as if it was his own personal fiefdom and favored his own Maniot clan over the new arrivals like Mavrachi. Stefanopoli wanted to bring more Greeks to Ajaccio because Ajaccio was his community; finding a home for them in Bonifacio did not serve his interests, as he would not be able to exert the same influence there. Mavrachi, however, saw Bonifacio as a chance to build a new community beyond the grasp of the Kapetán and the Stefanopoli clan. Now that he had a ship of his own, Mavrachi began visiting Marseilles and other ports to make contact with the Minorcan exiles and spread the word about this potential opportunity.
Chancellor Paoli did not immediately embrace this plan, as despite his commitment to “Theodoran liberty” he was concerned about backlash against non-Catholics, particularly from a population as volatile as that of Bonifacio. Yet he could not deny that the Greeks would be useful to the state, as Corsica’s lack of experienced seamen was a liability in both peace and war. A population grateful to their “hosts” for rescuing them from exile and poverty might be just the counterbalance to Bonifacio’s disloyal natives that Paoli was looking for. Despite the fierce opposition of Stefanopoli, who considered this whole project to be a challenge to his authority, Mavrachi was able to raise the funds to charter two ships to bring 380 Minorcan Greeks to Bonifacio in September of 1783.
Bonifacio was not exactly an idyll. The Greeks had lost everything in Minorca, and while the government offered them free homes they were given little else. They were treated with hostility by the native Bonifacini, who saw them as interlopers squatting in the houses of their departed neighbors and friends. But they did enjoy the support of the
luogotenente, Marquis Francesco Antonio Gaffori, the benefits of which went beyond mere protection. When the Greeks began building their own chapel, local Catholic priests attempted to impede them by forbidding their parishioners to aid them in any way, including providing them with any labor or selling them any goods. Gaffori dispatched a company of troops to assist in building the chapel, sent a letter to the Bishop of Ajaccio demanding that he censure the local priests, and threatened to fine shop owners for “disturbing civil peace” if they refused to sell to Greeks. Gaffori had no strong attachment to the Greeks, but he had nothing but contempt for the “Ligurians” (who despised him with equal vigor) and backed any initiative which he believed would weaken and humiliate them.
More Greeks would soon follow. Some of the initial colonists may have believed that their stay on Corsica would be temporary; the French had expelled the Greek community once before, in the 1750s, only for them to return home when the island was returned to Britain at the end of the Prussian War. This time, however, Britain’s loss would be permanent, for in the Treaty of Paris of 1784 which ended the American War of Independence, Minorca was formally returned to Spanish sovereignty. Many Minorcan Greeks who had been holding out for a chance to return home now accepted the inevitable and followed their countrymen to Bonifacio. In 1785 the community reached a thousand souls, surpassing Don Giorgio’s community in Ajaccio.
The dispute over the chapel was not the last time the Greeks of Bonifacio would find themselves at the center of religious controversy. Most of the initial Greek colonists of Bonifacio were, at least formally, Catholic. While some of these people were firmly attached to the Roman faith - many Minorcan Greeks were originally from the Venetian-controlled Ionian Islands, which had a sizable Greek Catholic population - most had converted during their time in Minorca in a vain attempt to mitigate local prejudice. For the most part, these “converts” had maintained their traditional rites and practices, merely adding a nominal profession of obedience to Rome. In Bonifacio, however, such obedience no longer seemed to serve any purpose, and within a few years of the initial settlement several Orthodox priests from Ottoman Greece arrived at this new Greek colony and set about trying to “re-evangelize” the locals, urging them to return to the pristine traditions of their ancestors. As there was no legal obstacle to doing so, many “reverted” to Orthodoxy.
This created a furor among the Catholic clergy of Corsica greater than any objection to Jewish settlement. The Jews may not have been Christian, but they at least did not proselytize; no Corsican Jew was actively encouraging apostasy from the Roman religion. Theo and his government came under pressure from both the native clergy and the Spanish Jesuits to expel the “schismatic” foreign priests who were at the forefront of this movement. As these priests were non-resident foreigners, they were not protected by the Corsican constitution, and most of them were eventually deported on the rather flimsy basis that their preaching activities disturbed the peace. The government, however, had neither the legal authority nor the desire to actually mandate the observance of the Catholic faith. While some Greek Bonifacini persisted in their obedience to Rome, either out of genuine conviction or a belief that formal Catholicism would help them climb the ladder in the Corsican government or military, they were relegated to a minority within the Greek community in the city.
The final rearguard action fought by the Ligurian Bonifacini would be over the fate of their ancient government. Despite increasing numbers of Greek settlers, the native Bonifacini retained control over their local councils for some years because of the law that counselors had to be literate - specifically, literate in
Italian. That requirement did not extend to voters, however, and eventually the Greeks were able to assemble a slate of better-educated Greek candidates to stand for election, including Mavrachi. In 1786 the natives responded to this threat by passing a new law which declared that candidates also had to either be born in Bonifacio or born to a Bonifacini parent, which disqualified all the Greeks.
Fortunately for the Greeks, the king himself was sympathetic to their plight. When Bonifacio had fallen to the Corsican Army during the Coral War, King Theodore II had reluctantly agreed to not make a triumphal entry into the city for the sake of his personal safety and the public peace. In 1784, however, he finally made the journey. The king toured the clifftop city and stayed at the Cattaciolo House, a residence popularly known as the
Casa di Carlo V because Emperor Charles V had stayed there for three nights in 1541 after his failed expedition to Algiers. Theo’s reception by the Ligurian-Bonifacini was rather sullen and indifferent, but he was surprised by the warm reception given to him by the Greek settlers. The Greek community leaders organized performances for his entertainment, and Mavrachi played up his record as the king’s loyal soldier - in stark contrast to the Ligurians, who had recently been Theo’s enemies.
Front door and engraved lintel of the Casa di Cattaciolo, which housed both Emperor Charles V and King Theodore II
Such pandering was not the only reason for Theo to support the Greeks, but it surely didn’t hurt. When he received a petition from Mavrachi and other Greek leaders complaining of their disenfranchisement, the king was keen to demonstrate that loyalty was rewarded. He received some pushback from Paoli and the Justice Ministry, as the government had always tried to avoid interposing itself in matters of “local presidial administration.” Instead, Theo was convinced to intervene in a more oblique manner. Rather than annulling the act of the Bonifacini council specifically, the king signed a
grida which declared that “
no subject of the Kingdom shall be denied the exercise of their rights… on the basis of the place of their birth, the nationality of their forebears, or the length of their residence in the Kingdom.” This edict, commonly known as the “Residence Decree,” not only broke the power of the minority government in Bonifacio but created a durable precedent that natural-born and naturalized citizens could not be treated differently in Corsican law. From 1787 the Greeks entered local government and - aided by continued emigration of the Ligurian “natives” - soon came to dominate the civic council.
The establishment of the Greek “colony” at Bonifacio created a bifurcation in the Corsican Greek community as a whole. The community of the Stefanopoli in Ajaccio, which remained predominantly Maniot, consisted of more “Corsicanized” Greeks - the Greek Ajaccini were overwhelmingly Catholic (although many still practiced the Greek rite), wore Italian fashions, and spoke Italian in public. The ennobled “Stefanopoli de Comnene” family continued to wield influence after the death of Don Giorgio in 1786 and its members remained proud of their supposed imperial Byzantine heritage, but they increasingly saw themselves as Corsican aristocrats first and foremost, and regularly intermarried with other Corsican elite families in the 19th century.
In contrast, the Greek settlers of Bonifacio tended to come from the isles (Crete, the Aegean Islands, and the Ionian Islands), were mostly Orthodox, seldom married outside their community, and were more “traditional” in their dress and habits. By the early 19th century the traditional fustanella seems to have entirely disappeared from Ajaccio but was still commonly worn by Greek men in Bonifacio. The Greco-Bonifacini also maintained ties with Greece itself, which would become relevant in the 19th century when Greek nationalist movements began to challenge Ottoman rule. Bonifacio would become a significant center of nationalist expatriate activity in the 1800s, with several prominent Greco-Bonifacini becoming involved in financing, organizing, and recruiting for the nascent Greek national struggle.
[B]
Timeline Notes
[A] This expulsion occurred in IOTL, albeit in 1781. Exact numbers of the expelled population and their ethnic makeup are hard to come by. Most sources I’ve seen focus on the Jewish population, which is said to have been about 500 people at the time of the expulsion. The total number of foreign settlers (“Jews, Greeks, and Moors”) may have been around 3,000, and I have seen estimates for the Greek population ranging from 500 to 2,000. ITTL the number of Minorcan Jews is much smaller than 500 as Ajaccio is a more attractive destination for Jewish settlement than Port Mahon, and the British have made up for it by recruiting more Greeks.
[B] This update’s title is a reference to the Odyssey. Bonifacio has been identified as a possible candidate for
Telepylos (“far-off port”), the home of the giant man-eating Laestrygonians in Homer’s epic. In the story, the Laestrygonians hurl rocks down upon Odysseus’s ships and destroy nearly all of them, with Odysseus escaping only because his own ship was moored outside the harbor. Homer’s description of the harbor (“about which on both sides a sheer cliff runs continuously, and projecting headlands opposite to one another stretch out at the mouth, and the entrance is narrow”) is consistent with the harbor of Bonifacio, although this is hardly determinative on its own. Perhaps more intriguing is that one of the tribes of the Corsi - the ancient inhabitants of Corsica - was known to the Romans as the
Lestriconi, which sounds awfully similar to
Laestrygones. In Roman times the Lestriconi dwelled in the northeastern corner of Sardinia, just across the strait from Bonifacio. Perhaps in Homer’s time they had not yet migrated across the strait.
