I was expecting Theodore to negotiate, quibble and drag his feet on the amount of the payment. Let's say, try and catch Bonifacio but trade it back to Genoa for a discount; or threaten to go to the British and give them a port.
If I am honest, it did seem a little bit out of character to give up so much so easily. Surely he would have easily taken Bonifacio and then bad a better standing in the treaty, or played some diplomatic games with Chauvelin.
Had Theodore been there, perhaps he would have. But Theodore wasn’t at Monaco, and negotiating by mail through proxies is not an easy thing to do. Corsica does not have a very deep bench of experienced diplomats, which is why the job was given to a chancellery secretary and a nobleman who can speak French.
Chauvelin’s approach to the negotiation was to give the Corsicans a shitty independence deal (the preliminary terms) and then tell them that if they just agreed to pay off the Genoese (and take a loan from France), he would make sure they got a much better deal. And the original deal was indeed shitty: it not only ceded Bonifacio and Capraia, but required the Corsicans to compensate the Genoese for properties seized during the Revolution - an unstated and potentially enormous figure, since it basically comprises all state land on the island as well as the personal property of every Genoese lord and landowner. I suspect it would amount to more than 15 million livres, but even if it’s less than that, it would be money that Theodore would owe to
Genoa, not France. He would either have to become a debtor to Genoa - the government that’s been trying to kill him for the last 13 years and has absolutely no interest in Corsica’s success - or try to find private loans, which given his reputation and the limited nature of Corsica’s tax base is either going to be impossible or will entail usurious rates of interest.
The risk to the Corsicans would be that by refusing Chauvelin or stalling him out, Chauvelin would simply withdraw his “better” offer and France would throw its support behind the original shitty preliminary deal (or worse, the Genoese proposal of "reconciliation" without independence). They're not privy to Chauvelin's memorandums on how independence is the only viable solution to maintaining French influence. And while turning to Britain might seem like an attractive alternative, their withdrawal from the island after Aix-la-Chapelle suggested to the Corsicans that the British were not going to defend them, while at this exact time Rochford is saying “well hey, maybe we can solve this without independence at all!”
So put yourself in the shoes of Corsica’s negotiators. The French propose a bad deal and the Genoese are determined to make it worse (“actually we’d like Calvi and Capo Corso too…”). Then the French mediator turns to you privately and says “hey, I can make this deal a lot better, all you have to do is settle Genoa’s claims for a lump sum and we’ll loan the money to you at a much better rate than you could ever get from private lenders.” Meanwhile, Britain is spouting off some nonsense about returning to Genoese sovereignty. Then you get a message from Theodore telling you that it’s alright for you to cede Bonifacio so long as you keep Capraia, and that since he’s pretty much completely out of money it would really be best if you could not dawdle too much. You further suspect that at any moment the French could say “screw it” and just decide to invade again, and the last time that happened it did not go too well for the Corsicans. How long are you going to drag your feet before taking Chauvelin’s deal and signing on the dotted line?
Edit: also some of the stuff I read in this timeline is absolutely hilarious with some of my favorites being when the Dutch heard the French were coming and so sent a whole fleet of weapons to the corsicans,
That time the Greeks called the corsicans "poncho-wearing goats" and the corsicans in turn burned down their whole village,
And lastly that time an Austrian soldier chugged a bottle of ink cause he was too excited to start the plundering and drinking early
And to think, I didn’t even invent any of those! Thanks for sharing, I’m glad you are enjoying the TL so far.
Of course, the DCC is not the VOC. Which is also why they probably don't have15 million livres to loan offhand. I suspect their whole capital is less than that.
In the end, after all, France is going to be a relatively benign creditor: the debt serves her political interests, to which it may even consider losing money. OTOH, the Company has no real interest in political control whatsoever: it seeks profit and would happily destroy Corsica's economy and sovereignty is it's what's needed to repay the shareholders (if they can). Clearly, the debt is a still a shackle; it conditions Theodore's policy heavily both economically and (critically for France) in foreign policy.
Indeed, France lost money hand over fist in Corsica IOTL; the tax receipts didn’t even come close to covering the cost of administration, to say nothing of the 40 million livres paid to buy the island or the massive cost of the invasion. Nevertheless, the French considered it worthwhile for strategic reasons. ITTL, as long as Theodore is (or appears to be) their loyal client and fulfills their objectives - to wit, keeping Britain out and promoting French strategic/economic interests - they don’t actually care that much about the balance sheet. They just spent a billion livres on the WAS, 15 million livres is chump change. The loan is primarily useful as a means to control Theodore, and to provide a
casus belli if he goes rogue.
Theodore is a party to the NCC agreement and is personally indebted to them; another ruler would be less likely to honor that agreement, and might just turn to France and say “could you help us get rid of these pesky Dutchmen?” Certainly French
annexation would screw them over. So while the main objective of the NCC is certainly to make a profit, their greed is tempered by a need to maintain a political climate favorable to them. In the present circumstance that makes them pro-royalist (and specifically pro-Theodore) and anti-French, although they can't push the anti-French agenda too hard.
And you are correct that the NCC’s total operating capital is far less than 15 million livres. They’ve lost some investors since the early days (who decided to drop out during the syndicate’s inactivity in the WAS), so they’re a little bit short on cash right now. Their situation will improve once they actually get established and start exporting, but they definitely can’t help Theodore here.
Oh wow ok I thought you made it cause it's pretty good even though I think I prefer the one from the first post
The image in the first post of this thread is my own creation. It’s based on an actual coat of arms depicted on a map of Corsica published in 1737.
I’ve seen the one
@Balerion posted and it’s pretty well done, although it lacks the “wild men” supporters and the Order of Redemption medal that mine has. My main complaint, though, is that I don’t think the Neuhoff arms are depicted accurately. The Neuhoff arms are usually described as a broken silver (or white) chain on a black field, and that example's chain is
unbroken and
gold (or yellow). Coats of arms are sometimes subject to interpretation and I
have seen other sources where the chain is unbroken, but I've never seen a gold chain in the Neuhoff arms.
How much of a derail is this for the Genoese? Might it allow them to make out wildly better or wildly worse in the coming events?
It’s a mixed bag. IOTL, the Genoese managed to keep Finale, but their country was devastated by the warfare which followed the Revolution. Liguria was absolutely brutalized in 1747-48; thousands of Genoese citizens were slaughtered or starved to death. One observer reported that the towns of Liguria had been so thoroughly plundered by marauding armies that there were not even any shutters left on the windows or doors in the door frames. (The idea of Austrian soldiers literally carrying off the
doors is rather hilarious to me; perhaps the implication is that they were scrapped for firewood). While the Austro-Sardinian occupation ITTL was not kind to them and squeezed a lot of wealth out of the country, Liguria avoided OTL’s devastation.
The loss of Finale and Corsica, however, is politically disastrous. Even if one might argue that losing Corsica is good for them in the long term, it’s hard to spin “losing literally half our state’s territory” as a win in the short term. The government has been severely discredited by these failures, as the people hold the government (and more generally, the nobility) to be solely responsible for taking them into the WAS in the first place. The republic has also lost a tremendous amount of international prestige, not just by losing territory but because they folded to the Austrians without a fight in the WAS (the Genoese revolution and the war that followed IOTL may have devastated the countryside, but at least it showed the Genoese were not pushovers and would fight for their country).
Overall, I would say the financial situation of the state is marginally better (but still quite bad), while the political and diplomatic situation of the state is much worse. In the long term, their economic situation is likely to be poorer than OTL because of the loss of Finale and Sardinian competition, although the effects of that may not be immediately apparent.
