I think in some ways the small scope of the timeline is what makes it a breath of fresh air amongst so many continent spanning TL's. Plus you've clearly done your work, in terms of the depth of research and knowledge that had to go into it.
King Theodore's Corsica
- Thread starter Carp
- Start date
Your attention to details, depth in researches, regular updates, the way you relate one character's choices in actions to their psychology are what make this TL so appreciated, in my opinion.
Also your writing skills.
Keep up the good work, you have a lot of fans waiting for their dose
Also your writing skills.
Keep up the good work, you have a lot of fans waiting for their dose
on a continent/centuries-scale TL you can get a minor fact/research item wrong and it be no big deal. the same level error on this TL would blow the whole thing apart - the attention to detail is what's most impressive
The other thing with the wide focus TLs is that eventually the author will wander into an area that you know well (or at least better than the author) and you'll notice some goofs. It's simply inavoidable, nobody can research everything as thoroughly as I have my few narrow pet interests. But then you start thinking "OK if they're making mistakes in subjects that I know well, how many mistakes are they making in subjects that I DON'T know well?" Then suspension of disbelief gets broken.
The other problem is with big TLs you start noticing patterns. Black Swan stuff that is rare IOTL that happens so its plausible, but when you get the same Black Swan happen the third time... Or weird lacuna with common sorts of events just not taking place. Like no civil wars or every civil war being solely a war of succession, etc.
The other problem is with big TLs you start noticing patterns. Black Swan stuff that is rare IOTL that happens so its plausible, but when you get the same Black Swan happen the third time... Or weird lacuna with common sorts of events just not taking place. Like no civil wars or every civil war being solely a war of succession, etc.
Conflagration
Conflagration
Genoese regulars and officers, early 1740s
The late Commissioner-General Spinola had done an impressive job in keeping the lid on the Corsican rebellion, particularly considering the poor support he received from his own government. Although peace had never truly been achieved, the Corsican revolution had been relegated to the status of a slow-burning insurgency carried out by a small minority of the population. It is thus all the more surprising how quickly the situation unraveled in a single month.
Genoese regulars and officers, early 1740s
The Corsican leaders were divided as to the implications of their “victory” over the force of Colonel Rodolfo Antonio de Jost. The men of Orezza had defended their pieve, but the relief of Morosaglia demonstrated that the Genoese were hardly out of the fight, and even among the armed insurgents there was much less enthusiasm for attacking Genoese posts than defending their own homes. Many of the “exile” leaders in the interior, including Gianpietro Gaffori, were determined to eject the Genoese from the highland, but their goals fell short of outright revolution; it might be enough if they merely attained that liberty which was presently enjoyed by the Corsicans of the Dila, where the government collected no taxes and Genoese soldiers hardly dared tread outside their handful of coastal bastions. Such an outcome suggested a policy of active yet limited resistance, which appeared incompatible with any cooperation with King Theodore, the very avatar of Corsican independence. Gaffori and men like him were opposed by the true rebels, known colloquially as the inconciliabili (“irreconcilables”) or verdi (“greens,” after the color of the royalist cockade), who in a military sense were represented most prominently by Theodore’s “nephew” Johann Friedrich von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg. Rauschenburg, understandably, had personal dynastic reasons for wanting an all-out war, but the breadth of his support outside his own band of diehards was uncertain.
Theodore’s prospects seemed no better in the Balagna. The “big three” rebel leaders there, Giovanni Tommaso Giuliani di Muro, Nicolo Poletti di Palasca, and Gio Ambrogio Quilici di Speloncato, had actively supported “bandits” which raided the Genoese supply route through the interior. Like Gaffori, however, they seemed primarily interested in gaining leverage, and they were even less concerned with the Genoese presence in Corti and the Castagniccia than Gaffori. Their efforts to negotiate a separate, uniquely favorable rate of the taglia for the Balagna demonstrated the narrowly provincial nature of their concerns. They had no provocateur like Rauschenburg to stand for the “war party” and the royalist cause. That deficiency, at least, could be remedied by Theodore, who had brought his own. On board the Revenge with him were a number of exiles freshly returned from Tuscany, but the two most relevant ones at the moment were Colonel Carlo Felice Giuseppe and Captain-General Simone Fabiani.
Fabiani was a genuine hero of the Balagna and one of its most prominent citizens. A member of the old Corsican nobility and a former member of the Council of Twelve (indeed, his family had held a hereditary spot on the council for generations), there were few men that had his status and influence in the province. Helpfully for Theodore, he was also completely wedded to the royalist cause. While in theory Fabiani was subject to the same blanket amnesty as the rest of the Corsicans, the Genoese had tried to assassinate him before, and given his prominence in the rebellion as Theodore’s highest-ranking general it seemed unlikely that the Genoese would allow him to simply resume his old life as if nothing had happened. Moreover, Fabiani had married into a prominent clan of Orezza, which gave him a foot in both theaters of the war and ensured that he would support action against the Genoese in the Castagniccia. Theodore unleashed him upon the Balagna, imploring him to press their leaders to action and giving him a large sum of weapons and money to raise a new Balagnese force.
Colonel Giuseppe, hailing from Pietralba in Caccia, was less socially prominent but only modestly less renowned. Originally a leader of a militia band from Canale and Caccia, Giuseppe first enters the scene during Theodore’s siege of San Fiorenzo in 1736, and had won wide acclaim (and a knighthood) by his unyielding defense of San Antonino, the action that had kept the ill-fated Battle of the Balagna from turning into a massacre. He had fought again at Ponte Novu in a bold but in retrospect ill-considered attempt to cut off the French retreat and had been wounded in battle, but recovered in time to be given the colonelcy of one of Theodore’s briefly-existing regular regiments. At the Battle of Ponte Lecchia, Theodore’s last stand in the north, Giuseppe had been captured by the French. Yet despite Genoa’s demands, General Lautrec had thought it undignified and inappropriate to hand over honorable soldiers (rebels though they were) to Genoa to be hanged like thieves, and Lautrec was among those who chose pardon in exchange for perpetual exile. With the French gone, however, “perpetual” proved to be shorter than anticipated. Now back in Corsica, Giuseppe was ready to fight, and his home country - Caccia - was in a key position between the Balagna and the Castagniccia. While his influence and the number of men he could personally call upon were small in comparison to Fabiani, a better-placed man to support the Castagniccian rebels could not be found.
With such allies, Theodore was able to divide the Balagnese “national” leadership and gain at least a modicum of traction for his designs. Giuliani, who was not on good terms with Fabiani at the moment, withheld his support, but Poletti came around and began making plans with Giuseppe. Fabiani, meanwhile, was able to mobilize his own clan and hoped to soon raise forces from his in-laws in Orezza as well. While Giuliani and Quilici did not offer Theodore anything more than words, neither were they filogenovesi, and for now they continued to sit on the sidelines.
The implications of the return of Theodore and his followers were not lost on Gian Benedetto Speroni, assistant commissioner-general and vice-regent of Corsica, who had been thrust into power by Spinola’s illness and death at the very moment that the republic’s position on the island seemed to be nearing the brink of disaster. With the failure of the Orezza expedition, the fall of Porto Vecchio, and the return of Theodore and his lieutenants, Speroni was soon convinced that his predecessor’s military plan was unworkable. Shortly after Jost’s defeat (and while Spinola yet lived, albeit confined to his bed) Speroni wrote a letter to the Senate in his capacity as acting commissioner-general and laid out two alternatives. Either, he wrote, the government could give him an additional “two or three thousand” soldiers to put down the nascent rebellion in the Castagniccia, or it could immediately withdraw from the interior, which otherwise could not be maintained against the insurgents. Undoubtedly he knew as he wrote it that the first alternative was impossible; such an allocation of forces would require the state to either relocate virtually the entire regular army to Corsica, utter insanity at a time of war in Europe, or to raise thousands of additional troops, which it could not find and could hardly afford.
Corsican affairs were not about to wait. Wasting no time in trying to press his advantage, Gaffori sent word to Jost within days of his defeat that the “nationals” would be drafting a new list of demands. Hostilities, he suggested, could be suspended during this period and the negotiations thereafter. No sooner had Jost returned to Bastia bearing this message, however, than the inconciliabili began to undermine Gaffori’s laurel branch. On the 5th of February, Rauschenburg and Guiseppe attacked Morosaglia again, failing to overrun the garrison there but investing the convent and cutting off the Bastia-Corti supply route. Once more they were hoping to spur the Corsicans into action by giving them a war whether they wanted it or not. This necessarily demanded a Genoese response, and Speroni dispatched Major Domenico de Franceschi to relieve the convent with support from Colonel Pietro Paolo Crettler. The rebels, however, had learned from their unsuccessful siege of Morosaglia a few days earlier. Instead of waiting for the Genoese to arrive and being pressed by enemy forces on multiple sides, they decamped from Morosaglia as soon as they learned of Franceschi’s advance. In concert with bands of nationals from nearby Ampugnani, they attacked Franceschi’s column on the 7th. Although he narrowly avoided encirclement, the major was forced to make a fighting retreat all the way back to Vescovato and suffered significant casualties in the process. Crettler, marching with 300 men from Corti, managed to relieve Morosaglia in their absence, but the Bastia-Corti road remained insecure and Crettler did not have the supplies or logistical resources to keep Morosaglia so heavily garrisoned.
In a matter of days, two successive events rocked the Genoese position further. The first was the proclamation of rebellion in the Balagna; Marquis Fabiani had seized control of Isola Rossa, which had no Genoese garrison, re-established himself as the royalist governor of the province, and declared a general insurrection against the Genoese. The initial response to this among the Balagnese themselves was tepid, but it set off Giuseppe Maria Mambilla, the commissioner-general of Calvi, who already had something of a paranoiac tendency. Mambilla’s first response was to threaten to march on Isola Rossa immediately, as in the past mere bluster had obtained some modest success. But he had neither the troops, the supplies, nor the nerve, and when the promised counterattack failed to materialize it merely made the Genoese look weaker.
The second blow to fall was in the south. For months, Colonel Antonio Colonna-Bozzi had set his sights on Sartena, but with little native support and a shortage of supplies he had been unable to move upon it. Although the Genoese garrison in Sartena consisted of only 60 men, resistance there was stiffened considerably by the loyalty of Giacomo Maria Peretti, captain of the filogenovesi militia in the province. Peretti had been a captain during Theodore’s reign in the service of the national cause; his defection had only occurred after Theodore’s flight and the Franco-Austrian occupation. The Genoese had been rather surprised by his willingness to accept the regulations and give his loyalty to the republic, but they were glad of it, for while only about 25 of his militiamen were on the government’s payroll he was a powerful clan leader who could call upon as many as 150 armed followers to defend Sartena in the event of an emergency. Shortly after he had arrived at Porto Vecchio, Theodore had sent a letter to Peretti encouraging the captain to switch sides (again), gently reminding him of his former allegiance and assuring him that he held no grudge against him for his defection. Theodore had, after all, absolved his commanders from guilt regarding any collaboration they might be forced into after his flight from Corti, and had just published a general amnesty. Peretti did not take him up on this offer, but tellingly he does not appear to have shared the letter with the Genoese either.
Sartena
With the support of Peretti and the local militia, the Genoese position at Sartena was not as bad off as it seemed. Colonna had superior numbers, but the Genoese had a fortified position and local sympathy while Colonna was slowed by his own logistical problems. Yet Giovanni Francesco Franzoni, commissioner of Bonifacio, had lost faith in his ability to hold the inland territory. Although Bonifacio itself was considered unassailable, Franzoni had fewer regular forces in his entire quarter of the island than Colonna had men in his battalion. When he had requested reinforcements after the capture of Porto Vecchio, Spinola had sent him only forty men, and after the return of Theodore and the defeat of Jost in the north it was clear that more would not be forthcoming. Franzoni was also aware of Theodore’s landing in Porto Vecchio and his meetings with various inland chiefs and commanders, and while the king’s plans were unknown to him he feared that a general rebellion was in the works.
This was all too much for Franzoni. At the end of January, before Colonna had even left Porto Vecchio, Franzoni ordered Captain Malbergh, commander of the garrison at Sartena, to withdraw from the town. Some of the residents of Sartena wrote a letter to Franzoni pleading with him to maintain the garrison and give the people guns to defend themselves against the rebels. Franzoni, however, was unmoved, and Malbergh left Sartena to fend for itself. This left the loyalists in a difficult position, for they had heard of the harsh measures taken against filogenovesi in the north, and Colonna made no secret of the fact that he intended to hew to the letter of Theodore’s amnesty - he would welcome all those who turned to the national cause, and wreak vengeance on those vittoli who continued to support the Genoese. If there was any chance of continued resistance in Sartena, it collapsed when Peretti, seeing that he had been left twisting in the wind by Franzoni, belatedly decided to take the king’s offer and renounced his allegiance to the republic. On February 10th, with hardly a shot fired, Colonna and Poggi captured the town. The nearby coastal village of Propriano, which was essentially unfortified and had never been the site of a garrison under Spinola’s plan, capitulated thereafter.
Once can only imagine what was going through Speroni’s mind. In the space of two weeks, the Genoese had suffered the failure of their major Orezza expedition, the defeat of Jost and Franceschi, the fall of Sartena, the rise of a new rebellion in the Balagna, and the death of the commissioner-general. Speroni was more convinced than ever that the interior needed to be evacuated, but he still had no orders from Genoa. To prepare for the government’s eventual decision, he determined to send Jost into the interior with a large detachment of troops and as many mules as could be found. Corti still had a considerable amount of military supplies, not to mention artillery, which had to be evacuated along with the troops, and the least he could do was to make sure everything was in place when the order finally came.
Speroni benefited from the continued division within the rebel ranks between the “moderate” nationals and the inconciliabili. Gaffori was of a mind to let the Genoese pass freely; the rebels anticipated that an evacuation was in the works (or at least a radical redeployment), and if the Genoese were to leave of their own accord Corti would be won back much faster and with less bloodshed than if the rebels were forced to fight for it. The cost, however, would be the loss of the materiel at Corti, along with the chance to inflict a crushing defeat on the Genoese. Gaffori doubted it could be done, and noted that a siege would be difficult without artillery. Reliable reports, however, suggested that the garrison had very limited supplies, and might be starved out. As this debate continued within the national ranks Jost was able to make his crucial delivery to Corti.
In the meantime, the malcontents were streaming into the Castagniccia and there was open fighting between nationals and filogenovesi across the district. To the south, the powerful filogenovesi captain Giacomo Filippo Martinetti skirmished with Zicavesi and “bandits” from Ghisoni and Bozio. Gaffori’s position, meanwhile, was weakened by the defection of Carlo Ciavaldini, a powerful chief in Orezza, to the inconciliabili; Theodore had appointed him as colonel and member of the Diet to replace his recently deceased father Decio, a Diet member during Theodore’s previous reign. Recent developments seemed to suggest that the Genoese position was collapsing, and Gaffori had to be watchful, not wishing to be caught on the wrong side of events.
Crettler’s position, too, was shifting in an undesirable direction. He had been forced to allow the Greeks to return to Ajaccio, not only because they were on the verge of mutiny but because the commissioner there, Stefano Veneroso, had demanded their return in light of the fall of Sartena. This left him with around 400 men, which was nevertheless still substantial compared to the rebel bands. Crettler was at least confident that he could hold Corti as long as his supplies lasted, and if all else failed could fall back to the south in the direction of Ajaccio as the Greeks had gone, although going over the mountains would greatly complicate the evacuation of the artillery and other heavy supplies. Yet even this avenue of retreat was put in doubt when a national force under Colonel Felice Cervoni, a royalist and associate of Rauschenburg, took up a position with his band of fighters less than a mile from the town.
With serious threats in the Balagna and the Dila, Speroni had to rely on the forces of the Bastia province alone, which amounted to around 1,500 regulars. With at least 500 men at Bastia and another 400 at Corti, that left fewer than 600 soldiers outside these two presidia, and most of these were occupying other coastal positions or outposts on the Bastia-Corti route. There were several hundred armed filogenovesi as well, but these forces were reluctant to assist in any evacuation, as they reasonably feared that a Genoese withdrawal from the interior would endanger their own safety. They had little motivation to facilitate their own abandonment.
Finally, on the 18th of February, Speroni received permission from his superiors to vacate Corti,[1] and the order was quickly conveyed to Crettler. The delay, however, had given the rebels time to organize. Even Gaffori seemed to be coming around; what argument worked best on him is unclear, but there is some evidence to suggest that the deciding factor was Corti’s cannon. He had worked hard to defend the arsenal during the French invasion and the occupation that followed, but its importance was greater than any sunk cost - if it was leverage in negotiations that Gaffori wanted, nothing provided greater leverage than artillery. Gaffori thus offered to join the captains of the inconciliabili in their investment of Corti, so long as they agreed to abide by a new ultimatum - he would propose to the Genoese that they could evacuate the city in peace so long as they left their artillery, heavy equipment, and livestock behind, including hundreds of mules which they had only just moved to Corti to move the guns. Cervoni agreed, as did Giuseppe and Rauschenburg shortly thereafter; the latter two wanted blood, but by dangling the prospect of national unity in front of them Gaffori was able to get his way.
Speroni had no intention of bowing to these demands, and was only interested in using Gaffori’s ultimatum to play for time. While he exchanged proposals with the marquis and his “moderate” faction, Speroni ordered Jost to Venzolasca with 300 men and ordered various filogenovesi companies to Corti to strengthen Crettler’s force. Notwithstanding the ongoing negotiations, Crettler’s orders were to withdraw with his material as soon as practicable; now with some 600 men under his command, about a third of which were militia, Speroni believed that the fractious rebels would be unable to stop him. Yet the Corsicans were not blind to these troop movements, which strongly suggested that Speroni was not acting in good faith.
On the 25th of February, Crettler began his withdrawal. A rearguard of 50 regulars and about a hundred militiamen were left at Corti; although Speroni believed Corti could not be permanently held, he was reluctant to simply abandon it, and expected that once Crettler had withdrawn with the arsenal the remaining garrison could be extricated peacefully. Although the Genoese hoped to quickly complete the withdrawal before the Corsicans had time to react, moving a large cache of artillery, arms, and supplies with hundreds of mules accompanied by hundreds of soldiers through the Corsican interior was not a speedy task.
Cervoni, who had been watching Corti, almost immediately launched an attack on the convoy’s rearguard. While the Genoese heavily outnumbered his company, which was probably less than a hundred strong, the Genoese column was necessarily stretched out over a long distance on the narrow valley road and interspersed with mules. wagons, and artillery carriages. There was no way that Crettler could bring his whole force to bear against Cervoni, and while Cervoni had no hope of actually defeating the enemy his harassment could slow down the convoy even further. Despite taking some losses, Crettler was as yet only inconvenienced, and managed to push aside the scant forces trying to obstruct his passage. On the 27th, the convoy reached the convent of Morosaglia. By this time, however, Rauschenburg and Giuseppe had also reached Rostino, and when the next day dawned Crettler discovered that he was besieged by a significant and steadily growing force of local militia and irregulars from Niolo, Caccia, Canale, Orezza, Ampugnani, and elsewhere, including some men who seem to have been from Gaffori’s “faction.” Marquis Gaffori was frustrated by the decision of the inconciliabili to attack the Genoese during his negotiations, but Speroni had also made him look like a rube by trying to abscond with the arsenal while those negotiations were as yet ongoing. Worse still, Corti was still occupied (if only by a skeleton garrison), so Gaffori did not even have a liberated town to show for his work. Although he did not personally join the forces at Morosaglia, Gaffori offered no strong objection to the attack; clearly his control over the situation was slipping.
Crettler now found himself in a very dire situation. Although his forces were bolstered by Morosaglia’s garrison and he was well-stocked for weaponry and artillery, Morosaglia was not particularly well-fortified and had already fallen once before to the rebels.[2] But the more serious problem was that of supplies, for Crettler’s men could not eat flint and powder. Morosaglia had only a scarce supply of flour, certainly not enough to feed a whole battalion for long, and even using the existing supply posed a challenge as the rebels had destroyed the outpost’s bread ovens during their previous occupation of the convent. The only mitigating factor to the supply crisis was not particularly comforting: there were fewer mouths to feed each day, as Crettler’s own force was diminishing at a frightening rate due to desertion.
Crettler determined that a breakout was simply not possible considering that he would have to take the entire convoy with him. A battalion could fight its way out of a siege, but not with an artillery train at its back. He decided instead to await the arrival of Jost’s battalion, last at Venzolasca, so he and Jost’s forces could catch the besieging rebels in a pincer as Jost had done to the rebels besieging Morosaglia a month earlier. The rebels were more numerous now, but scarcely better organized; they had too many leaders and not much of a formal command structure. But Jost acted sluggishly, or at least cautiously; between him and Morosaglia was hostile territory, and the natives were restless. Instead of marching immediately on Morosaglia, he sent word back to Bastia demanding more men and supplies.
Goaded into advancing by Speroni, Jost finally began moving to the relief of Morosaglia on the 3rd of March. By this time, however, the rebels too had brought in reinforcements. Crettler was probably wrong in his assessment of the strength of his besiegers; there is every reason to thing that, at first, he handily outnumbered them. The Corsicans were practical people, however, and as rumor spread of a beleaguered Genoese army and the prospect of victory (and looting) small bands of bandits and militiamen began to congregate near Morosaglia. Moreover, the Balagnese - or at least around 200 of them - had finally come through for their Castagniccian brethren. Although the reports of a general uprising in that province were still very much exaggerated, Marquis Fabiani had raised a respectable company from his own clan, various allied families (including the supporters of Poletti), and armed exiles. Together, Fabiani and Poletti arrived at Ponte Leccia on the 1st. Their troops were welcome, but Fabiani even more so; although not everyone followed his orders, he was well-known as Theodore's highest ranking general and the commander of the king's briefly-existing regular army, and could credibly assume a position of command over the gaggle of rebels, bandits, gawkers, and opportunists that constituted the "besieging" force.
The “Battle of Morosaglia” of March 4th was not an exceptional demonstration of military skill by either side. Jost, shy from his earlier defeat and unsure of the forces he was facing, advanced tentatively, and thus gave the rebels plenty of warning to avoid being caught in a pincer between him and the Morosaglia garrison as they had been in January. Nevertheless, the rebels failed in an attempt to ambush him. After hours of hard skirmishing through the morning of the 4th, he had pressed close enough to send a message to Crettler, but the rider was spotted by rebel pickets and captured after his horse was shot and crippled. Although denied direct communication, Crettler was close enough to hear the fighting, and by mid-afternoon decided to make an attack on his own initiative. Crettler succeeded in breaking the rebel encirclement and making contact with Jost’s men.
The rebels soon recovered from this setback and Fabiani ordered a general attack. The Genoese regulars formed up in their lines, but were hampered by the wooded and hilly terrain, the general disorder of the battlefield, and the fact that fire was coming at them from multiple directions. To organize the withdrawal of the convoy under such conditions seemed impossible. After eleven hours of hard fighting and with casualties continuing to mount, Crettler made the decision to retreat with all his remaining forces. Despite Fabiani’s urging, the Corsicans failed to effectively pursue the Genoese; they were exhausted and many had little or no ammunition left. Crettler withdrew with his bloodied column, but without most of the train, which the rebels fell upon and seized.
Crettler had managed his evacuation, but at a high price. He had set out with around 450 men from Corti, but by the time he returned to Bastia he counted only 253 of that force who were still alive and fit for service. Some military supplies had been removed from the interior, but the Corsicans had gained most of it for themselves - hundreds of muskets, barrels of shot and powder, dozens of mules and other pack animals, and all the artillery pieces which had been removed from the Corti arsenal. Thus armed, the rebels turned back on Corti, where the remaining garrison - no more than 130 men - was forced to surrender in late March after a few days of demonstrative bombardment. Not one Genoese post remained in all of interior Corsica.[A]
Footnotes
[1] The Senate further informed him that Spinola’s replacement had been elected, Pier Maria Giustiniani, but Giustiani would not actually arrive at Corsica until the end of spring.
[2] By coincidence, the Genoese commander of the garrison at that time was Captain Lorenzo Crettler, colonel Crettler’s younger brother.
Timeline Notes
[A] This update represents a major departure from OTL, which I hope flows naturally from the changes in the timeline so far. Historically, the British did indeed take Theodore to Isola Rossa to gauge the depth of his support; he gave out arms and money, but the Corsicans responded coolly to his overtures. I’ve discussed possible reasons for this earlier in the thread; although older “pre-revisionist” works on Theodore generally ascribed his failure to the Corsicans finally seeing him for the fraud that he (supposedly) was, the fact that the very Corsicans who rejected him subsequently set up a regency in his name (at least nominally) suggests to me that it wasn’t so much a matter of respect as expediency. Theodore brought too little to the table, and at too great a price, for his presence meant no negotiation or accomodation with the Genoese was possible. Theodore committed them to a war they were reluctant to fight, and he brought no allies nor substantial resources to help them fight it. ITTL, however, a number of important things have changed. The British still aren’t giving him anything more than transportation and some cash, but he’s got a battalion in the south (under Colonna) and more money/weapons than he did historically. Simone Fabiani is still alive and Rauschenburg is still active (historically, the former was assassinated in 1736 and the latter surrendered to the French in 1740). Perhaps most importantly, however, his much longer reign in the late 1730s (lasting for years instead of mere months) has increased the credibility of Theodore as a military leader and Corsica as a viable independent state. The Corsicans still aren’t all welcoming him with open arms, but he at least has a chance - and enough of a chance that, ITTL, he’ll decide to stay instead of sailing off in disappointment.
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Keep in mind, though, that it's much easier to retain troops when they're behind the walls of fortified garrisons than when they're trooping up and down the mountains of Corsica. The Genoese soldiers and officers hated being sent out on patrol but didn't complain much when safely ensconced in Bastia. Desertion, and attrition in general, was always much worse for the Genoese when they were actively trying to control the interior; despite its reputation as a relatively "elite" force, de Franceschi's anti-guerrilla flying column hemorrhaged men at an astounding rate whenever it was deployed, and IOTL the Morosaglia garrison lost nearly a quarter of its men to desertion in a single two-month period.
In purely military terms, Morosaglia is arguably not a very consequential defeat for the Genoese. Many - perhaps most - of their casualties (more by desertion than violence) were from among the militia, who the Genoese regard as expendable. Crettler and Jost escaped with most of their regulars, and Speroni was planning on evacuating Corti anyway. Its most significant effects are a) the re-acquisition of at least part of the "rebel arsenal," principally artillery, and b) the political effect of discrediting the "moderates" while handing an apparent victory to the inconciliabili. As we'll see in the next update, the post-Spinola strategy of the Genoese plays to their traditional strengths - specifically, hunker down in the citadels and wait out the war until the French (or whoever) are available to help out again. They can potentially manage that for quite some time; after all, they survived Theodore's early reign ITTL while losing only one of their four principal citadels (that is, Bastia).
What's the odds of losing any more citadels? Slim to none? Though right now if Theodore can get the rebels together he's got the kit to make something happen.
Of the four, Bastia was the weakest, but the Genoese have been working on strengthening it over the past few years and won't be caught off guard by the same trick Theodore pulled before (namely, taking control of the city's water supply). Calvi is for all intents and purposes invulnerable without foreign support; the British siege in 1794 lasted 51 days but still required 2,300 British regulars (plus Corsican auxiliaries), a blockading naval squadron, and the sacrifice of Horatio Nelson's eye. (That said, in 1794 Calvi was held by the French revolutionary army, whose reputation is a bit better than the Genoese army of the 1740s.) Bonifacio is arguably not as strong as Calvi (at least against landward attack) but its location makes it a logistical nightmare to besiege; the Corsicans will probably leave it alone. Ajaccio is a plausible target, but to besiege Ajaccio Theodore needs the full support of d'Ornano, which so far has not been forthcoming.
One question is how much the Genoese draw down their garrison forces if/when they are sucked into the larger war. Historically, the Genoese regular force on Corsica declined from just over 2,500 men in late 1743 to a mere 715 men - for the whole island - at the end of the war in 1748. Between November of 1743 and May 1746, the Bastia garrison alone declined from 1,446 men to 100. This was necessary - by 1745, the very survival of the state was at stake, and the Treaty of Aranjuez required the Genoese to field a 10,000 man army in Europe (a number which they never actually reached). If they make the same troop reductions ITTL, however, with a (presumably) stronger, more unified, and more hostile rebel movement, they might get wrecked.
Or one in which she survived perhaps? A Morea-war timeline where she successfully retakes Crete and Cyprus, then holds them, surviving via English assistance.
Missed this earlier.
To explain, I'm not totally sure how I want to do a map right now. The only unambiguous "royalist territory" would, presumably, be Porto Vecchio and Sartena, as they are directly held by a royalist army. Isola Rossa, being under Fabiani's renewed governorship, probably counts too. But the status of the rest of the country is ambiguous. Zicavo is undoubtedly sympathetic to Theodore, but they gave no real help to Colonna; d'Ornano is up to something but it doesn't seem to be staunch royalism. The situation in the Castagniccia is even more complicated, with the sentiments of the people divided among filogenovesi, inconciliabili, and "moderate" factions between those two. The "bandit" forces of Rauschenburg and men like him aren't really holding territory.
A map simply showing remaining Genoese areas of control would be easy to do, because there's so little of it left, but defining "zones of control" for the nationals is troublesome at this moment in the story. I was just going to resume mapmaking when the situation was a bit clearer, but if people have other ideas I'm open to it.
Question,
Where exactly does a Genoese regular desert to on a not so friendly island?
Where exactly does a Genoese regular desert to on a not so friendly island?
It's friendlier than you might think. The Corsicans didn't have a congenital hatred for all Genoese persons; a Ligurian peasant on the run from the army is not going to get shot or strung up by the natives just because of his previous allegiance. After all, hundreds of Corsicans served in the Genoese army at any given time, and while Theodore criminalized such service many families had an honorable history of soldiering for the Republic (and many other nations). Being a clan society, family mattered much more than nationality to most Corsicans. If anything, the Corsican nationals hated the vittoli - filogenovesi traitors - much more than they hated the Genoese, in part because loyalist/nationalist sentiment in any given community often followed existing clan rivalries. A loyalist militiaman who fell into the hands of rebels was in far more danger than some private nobody from the Genoese regular army, who might actually be helped by rebels who were well aware that desertion sapped the strength of their enemy.
Furthermore, keep in mind that many Genoese regulars were not actually Genoese. Nearly half of the Genoese soldiers posted on Corsica at this time were in foreign units, specifically the German and Grison battalions. Even the ostensibly "Genoese" soldiers might not actually be Genoese, because the Republic could not afford to be picky and recruited a lot of non-Genoese Italians into "Ligurian" units, as well as deserters from other armies including Spaniards and Frenchmen. Such men could readily find work in any army in Europe are were not particularly attached to Genoa. The Corsicans don't seem to have held their service for Genoa against them, and there is evidence of German deserters from the Genoese army ending up fighting for the rebels.
Although some found refuge with the Corsicans, the ultimate destination of many deserters was probably abroad. We know that the French solicited deserters during their stay on the island, and continued to do so after they left: it was well known that the French vice-consul in Calvi sheltered deserters and moved them on to France right under the nose of the local Genoese authorities. A soldier who ditched Jost's battalion in the Castagniccia only had to make his way to Calvi, and unless someone happened to recognize and report him it was but a quick jaunt to the vice-consul's house to volunteer for the army of His Most Christian Majesty. The French probably didn't pay a lot more than the Genoese, but at least they (usually) paid and fed their soldiers in a timely fashion. As we'll see in the next update, the Spanish also poached from Genoese forces, in their case by parking a ship in Ajaccio's harbor and inviting "recruits" to come aboard.