Estrangement
Henri Léonard Jean Baptiste Bertin
French policy from the outbreak of the Corsican Revolution to “King Theodore’s War” was quite consistently opposed to Corsica’s separation from the Genoese state. It was not, as the British often suspected, that the French wanted the island for themselves; although individual ministers and ambassadors had sometimes flirted with the notion of French annexation, most notably in 1735, it had never been particularly attractive to King
Louis XV. Certainly Louis and his advisors wished to deny Corsica to their rivals, particularly the British, who might use the island to disrupt French trade and imperil the kingdom’s security, and French annexation was an obvious means to avert such an outcome. But while Corsica was of strategic importance for France, so too was Genoa.
Although France held no territory in Italy,
access to Italy was considered to be a strategic necessity. As long as the “Family Compact” endured, France needed to be able to defend the Italian domains of its Spanish ally, and in the event of another war between Vienna and Versailles it would be beneficial if the French were able to strike at Habsburg possessions in Lombardy. As the last war had demonstrated, however, British naval power meant that access to Italy by sea could not be guaranteed. France could only count on a land route into Italy, and for this there were only two options. One was through the territory of the evasive and duplicitous King of Sardinia, whose cooperation was hardly assured and could only be obtained at great cost. The other was through the Republic of Genoa, a much weaker and traditionally friendlier state. Consequently, French support for the Genoese in Corsica was intended not merely to deny Corsica to France’s enemies, but to maintain Genoa as a French client. A French annexation of Corsica might accomplish the former, but only by sacrificing the latter.
France’s about-face on this issue in 1749 was a consequence of Genoa’s complete rout from Corsica. With rebel forces now in control of virtually the entire island (save Bonifacio), the Genoese were no longer in any position to deny France’s rivals access to Corsican ports. France could either devote itself wholly to the reduction of the island - which was at that moment militarily and economically untenable - or come to an accomodation with the government which
actually controlled those ports. Even so, King Louis had been loathe to deviate from his pro-Genoese policy for fear of turning the republic permanently against him, particularly given that the relationship between France and the Republic had already been badly strained by France’s “betrayal” of the Genoese at Aix-la-Chapelle. His eventual decision to recognize Corsican independence was due entirely to
François Claude Bernard Louis de Chauvelin, who had assured Louis and his ministers that the Genoese government was quite eager to rid itself of the island. With deft diplomacy, Chauvelin argued, France could achieve a “perfect peace” - a resolution of the festering Corsican problem in a way that would keep both Corsica and Genoa within France’s sphere of influence.
In late 1749 Chauvelin had looked like a genius, but by 1752 Louis and his ministers were beginning to regret their trust in him. The years since Monaco had not been kind to Chauvelin’s “perfect peace.” Chauvelin himself had been caught entirely by surprise by the Genoese Revolution and had been forced to flee the city in a rather undignified manner. His superiors were hardly eager to hear of a popular revolt, but they were even more chagrined by the fact that the uprising had been quashed with Austrian troops. Empress
Maria Theresa was not really interested in curbing French influence; her intervention in Genoa was chiefly a means to prop up the state so as to contain King
Carlo Emanuele III of Sardinia and prevent him from profiting from Ligurian chaos. Nevertheless, the French worried that Genoese dependence on Austrian arms would wall France out of Italy entirely. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Ligurian Sea King
Theodore had surprised everyone by wedding an Austrian duchess who was suspected in Versailles of being a pawn of Habsburg interests, and at the end of 1751 had entered into closer relations with Britain to the detriment of French interests in Tunisia. Chauvelin had promised that he could keep both Genoa and Corsica in the French orbit, but now it seemed as if France might be left with neither.
In Corsica, the French response to this dilemma was more stick than carrot. Chauvelin had contrived Corsica’s 15 million livre debt primarily as a means to control the island rather than to profit from it, but France’s own difficult financial situation coupled with Theodore’s unacceptably free-wheeling approach to “clientage” suggested to the French ministry that it was high time for the Corsicans to begin paying what they owed. Demanding interest from Corsica, however, was like squeezing blood from a stone. The state was perpetually broke, and the only person with a substantial sum of money - Queen
Eleonora - had taken great pains to wall her fortune off from her husband and his government (and thus the French). But the French did not have much sympathy, for the reports of
Pierre Emmanuel, Marquis de Crussol-Florensac detailed how the Corsican government hardly demanded any taxes and sold salt to the people at a rate that would be unthinkably low in France.
The French sought to correct this native “mismanagement” by dispatching
Henri Leonard Bertin in 1753 to straighten out Corsican affairs. A 33 year old bureaucrat from a recently-ennobled family of Périgord, Bertin had served most recently as intendant of Roussillon. What the French probably had in mind was for Bertin to be another
Guillaume du Tillot, the minister of finance for the newly installed Duke
Felipe of Parma, who not only acted as France’s agent in the Parmesan court but pursued bold reforms of the duchy’s economy. Yet whereas Parma was an autocratic state where Felipe could staff his administration how he saw fit, Corsica operated under a constitution which demanded that “all the dignities, offices, and honors to be attributed in the kingdom be reserved for Corsicans alone, to the perpetual exclusion of any foreigner.” In an attempt to accommodate the French and satisfy his own government, Theodore gave Bertin an office in the household rather than the ministry, naming him as “Private Treasurer.” This did little to reassure Prime Minister
Gianpietro Gaffori, who immediately perceived Bertin as a rival for power, his position in the household also earned him the ire of Queen Eleonora. The French, who already believed her to be an Austrian plant, assumed her animus was based on an inveterate hatred for France; in truth she was jealously guarding her control over the court finances, which she considered to be her private fiefdom.
To his credit, Bertin did have some worthwhile ideas. He initially welcomed the unusual posting as an opportunity, as Corsica seemed like it might be a
tabula rasa where the latest modern and “enlightened” reforms could be introduced without the opposition of entrenched elites which seemed to always scuttle reform in France. Bertin outlined a plan for Corsica which involved a restructuring of the
Catasto Reale, the modernization of agriculture, the surveying and exploitation of mineral resources, and an equitable system of taxation which would tap the resources of the wealthy. But Bertin’s program was hobbled by the perception that he was a foreign minder working for the benefit of France, and while Bertin was a capable administrator he was a poor politician who had no talent for convincing hostile factions to support his plans.
The centerpiece of Bertin’s program was the
sovvenzione (“subvention”), a 5% tax on the gross product of land. The tax managed to win the grudging acceptance of the
dieta, if only because Theodore made it abundantly clear that if Corsica could not service the French debt their very sovereignty would be in danger. Yet while the tax increased the government’s revenue, it fell far short of expectations. The Corsicans nicknamed it the
Decima Borbonica (“Bourbon Tithe”), and believing that the funds mainly went to line the pockets of the French they frequently under-reported their yields or evaded the tax altogether. They found this easy as Corsica’s nascent bureaucracy was insufficient to the task and collection duties were often delegated to rural elites who felt the same way about the
sovvenzione as the peasants. Getting accurate information about who owed what also proved extremely difficult because the government’s land survey was still years away from completion. The implementation of the
sovvenzione caused Corsican cooperation with the surveyors (who were mostly French) to fall off dramatically, as the farmers correctly anticipated that the completion of the survey would make tax evasion harder. In his frustration, Bertin only managed to further alienate Gaffori by accusing him of deliberate mismanagement.
Bertin’s other schemes met similarly disappointing fates. He drafted a plan to reopen the old iron mine at Farinole and restore the nearby foundry at Murato, both long abandoned, but even with Theodore's support could find neither the funding nor the skilled labor to realize this plan. He thought to energize Corsican forestry by the construction of roads, but to procure the labor for this attempted to push through a plan of French-style corvée labor; Bertin imagined that a means to pay tax through labor would be welcome in cash-poor Corsica, but did not reckon with the absolute revulsion the Corsicans had for servitude (particularly of the unpaid variety). Bertin demanded fee hikes at ports and raising the coral levy, but here he was accused of partiality: French shipping was conveniently exempted from his added fees, while the greatest competitors of the coral fishermen (and thus the indirect beneficiaries of Bertin’s higher coral tax) were their French counterparts. Without a formal position in the government and facing the opposition of Count Gaffori, the queen, and virtually everyone else aside from Theodore himself, Bertin could not do much to enact his proposals or enforce those which were enacted. In 1755 he resigned this fruitless and thankless post after less than two years in office and pronounced Corsica to be “thoroughly ungovernable.”
Bertin’s early tenure overlapped with a visit from Theodore’s nephew,
Charles Philippe de Bellefeulac, Comte du Trévou, the only son of his late sister Marie Anne Leopoldine. The Comte du Trévou had not been on Corsica since 1736, when he had briefly attended his uncle in a search for foreign adventure. It had been disappointing; Theodore welcomed him but urged the count to return to France where he could be of more use, and when Charles Philippe grudgingly departed he was captured by the Genoese and forced to apologize to his own government.
Much had changed since then. In 1736, the count had been an impetuous 17 year old cadet; in 1753, he was a 34 year old veteran officer, a captain in the elite
Gardes Françaises. Publicly he declared that he was merely paying a visit to his esteemed uncle, who was now theoretically a friend of France, but everyone - especially Theodore’s other “nephews” - was convinced that he could have no other motive than to gain the Corsican throne for himself. He was, after all, the king’s closest male relative, having the advantages of both gender and legitimacy over his half-sister
Elisabeth Cherrier Jeanne de Saint-Alban, the new Princess of Capraia. Theodore’s own writings from the 1730s suggest that, at least at that time, he viewed Charles Philippe as his likely successor.
Theodore received his nephew warmly, but Charles Philippe had no local support. Count Gaffori and the other ministers were respectful, but agreed privately that the Comte du Trévou had no evident interest in Corsica and would probably serve merely as a vessel for French policy, a concern which was particularly acute at this time. The law was on their side, for the Corsican constitution demanded that Theodore’s heir had to reside in the kingdom, something Charles Philippe clearly had no intention of doing. No doubt a royal crown appealed to him, but the count’s attachments in France were significant. He had a family of his own now, and he was a man of means and status who hunted with King Louis himself. To leave the social circle of Versailles for Corsica was hardly attractive, and Charles Philippe was more interested in glory than the practical politics which would be required to establish himself on an island already abundant with would-be successors.
Federico, Principe di Capraia was not on hand to meet this potential challenger, as he had departed for the continent earlier that year. Don Federico had not been to his estates in Westphalia since his father’s death in 1747, and his presence was badly needed to straighten out his affairs there. He did, however, spare some time on his journey for a visit to Lunéville, the seat of the court of Lorraine where his wife had influential kinsmen. Elisabeth’s niece was married to
Charles-Juste, the son of the elderly
Marc de Beauveau, Prince de Craon, who had resigned as Regent of Tuscany in 1749 and returned to Lorraine, while Charles-Juste’s sister
Marie Françoise Catherine, Marquise de Boufflers, nicknamed “
La Dame de Volupté” (“the Lady of Delight”), was the mistress of the reigning duke
Stanisław Leszczyński, father-in-law of the King of France. Although not much of a cultural or philosophical heavyweight himself, Prince Frederick was welcome at Stanisław’s court, where the duke and his hangers-on were interested to hear stories of the famous
le Roi-Laurier.
18th century drawing of the Château de Lunéville in Lorraine
The prince’s stay in Lunéville was not long, but this visit to his in-laws had a useful consequence. Frederick had sought their assistance, particularly that of the Prince of Craon, in making an appeal to Emperor
Franz Stefan on Elisabeth’s behalf. This would eventually bear fruit in the following year when the obliging emperor, in his capacity as the head of the House of Lorraine, signed an act officially legitimating the Princess of Capraia. Although the act of legitimation explicitly denied her any inheritance rights, it declared her to be a recognized member of the extended House of Lorraine and permitted her to bear the surname of
d’Harcourt. As the legitimate house of Lorraine-Guise-Harcourt was entirely extinct - Elisabeth’s father had died without male issue and his legitimate daughters were all deceased - this declaration offended precisely nobody and cost the emperor nothing. Signed in November of 1754, the edict arrived in time for the birth of Frederick and Elisabeth’s first son, baptised
Théodore François Joseph (
Teodoro Francesco Giuseppe), in May of 1755.
[1] In further recognition of their mutual (if distant) relation, Emperor Franz became the child’s godfather by proxy.
[2]
While this act of imperial benevolence demonstrated a warming in Austro-Corsican relations,
Franco-Corsican relations were plunging into an unrecoverable tailspin. Bertin’s resignation was damaging, but the real problem was that Theodore’s relationship with Versailles, already badly damaged, could not withstand the strain of war.
Although there was little eagerness for another war in either London or Paris, Britain and France were pulled inexorably back into conflict by festering disputes on the peripheries of their empires. In India, the British and French (more specifically, the British East India Company and the French
Compagnie de Indes) were already on opposite sides of a proxy war in the Carnatic. In North America, disagreements over the precise boundary between British and French territories led to increasingly bold acts by colonial forces, who attempted to bolster their nations’ rival claims by building forts and expelling rival traders from disputed territory. Ever greater provocations would eventually lead to actual shooting between Canadiens and British colonial troops in 1754. Thanks to the support of their native allies the French possessed an early advantage in these engagements, which in turn spurred the British to send regular forces to bolster the colonials. The French could not help but see this as an escalation and replied by sending forces of their own, which the British attempted to arrest by the exercise of their naval power. All the courts of Europe could plainly see that war was imminent. The great question was whether a conflict begun in the colonies would stay there, as the Anglo-Spanish war of 1739 had done before it was subsumed in the broader War of the Austrian Succession, or whether this new Anglo-French war would spill over into Europe.
This question divided even the ministers of the French government. Some cautioned that hostilities should remain bottled up in the Americas (and India), believing that opening a war in Europe would be both risky and ruinously expensive for the French state, which was still laden with debt from the last war. The proponents of a European war, however, wielded powerful arguments of their own. The strength of the British navy and Britain’s great advantage in colonial manpower (compared to the thinly populated territories of New France) gave her the upper hand in any colonial war in the Americas. In Europe, however, Britain was exposed and vulnerable. Hanover could be overwhelmed by the French army and taken as a valuable bargaining chip, and England itself lay tantalizingly close to French shores; despite the failure of previous enterprises, a
coup de main against England would gain a French victory no matter what transpired in the dark forests of America.
Such a strategy was too bold for King Louis, and even those who believed a European war inevitable were not keen to stir up a hornet's nest by launching a French army into Germany or toppling the Hanoverians. An offensive in the Mediterranean, however, seemed like a proportional and politically acceptable compromise between colonial sequestration and continental conflagration. An invasion of British-held Menorca would deny the British a valuable base and was unlikely to draw British allies into the war. Better still, the prospect of the island’s return to Spain might tempt the reluctant
Fernando VI to join the fight alongside his Bourbon cousin. Without their vital naval base at Port Mahon the British would be ill equipped to defend their recent acquisition of Tabarka, allowing the French to eject them from the Barbary Coast and indeed all the Mediterranean east of Gibraltar.
Corsica was an unwelcome complication to this plan. If Corsica’s neutrality were assured France would have no cause for alarm, but Theodore’s old alliance with the British and his behavior since 1749 suggested that he could not be trusted. In the view from Versailles, France’s gracious toleration of Theodore and his truculent people thus far was an indulgence which they could not afford in a time of war. To truly ensure that the British would gain no purchase on the Granite Isle, it would be necessary for the French to secure it themselves, whether Theodore and the Corsicans wanted them there or not.
Footnotes
[1] “François” was evidently chosen to honor both the emperor and Prince Frederick’s father Franz Bernhard, while “Joseph” was the name of Elisabeth’s own father, the last Comte d'Harcourt.
[2] The proxy was Charles de Nay, son of Emmanuel de Nay, Comte de Richecourt, Craon’s successor as president of the Tuscan regency and a key figure in Austro-Corsican relations during his tenure (1749-1757). The count and King Theodore shared an interest in agricultural and economic reform in their respective territories, as well as a mutual involvement in Freemasonry. They were occasional correspondents and cooperated to smoothly implement commercial agreements between Corsica and Livorno following Corsica’s independence in 1749. Richecourt would return to Lorraine after suffering a stroke, but his son Charles would settle permanently in Tuscany, having been enfeoffed with the imperial marquisate of Treschietto in the Tuscan Lunigiana.
