The Pivot
The Pivot
Just before the fall of Vico, Lieutenant-General Matthias von Drost had arrived in the Dila. Drost's history and relationship to Theodore are rather murky. Although referred to by contemporaries as the king's "nephew" in the same manner as Johann Friedrich Caspar von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg, Theodore's first cousin, there is no indication that Drost was as close to Theodore genealogically, and he was never referred to with the surname of Neuhoff.[1] It is generally presumed that he was a more distant cousin. Of his history we know little; certainly he was a Westphalian, but at some point prior to 1738 he was apparently in the service of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in a military capacity. That may be why we find him arriving in Corsica bearing smuggled arms from Livorno in early 1739, for perhaps his contacts in the Grand Duchy proved useful in arranging covert transport. Curiously, the Genoese published a tract claiming that he was not Theodore's relation at all, nor even German, but an Italian from Livorno named "Salvini." This seems likely to be some sort of confusion with Father Gregorio Salvini, an actual rebel agent in Livorno.
Drost had briefly been in the north with Rauschenburg, but had gone south either on Theodore's orders or his own initiative. Although Drost did not arrive with a large number of soldiers or munitions, he was nevertheless well-received by Lieutenant-General Marquis Luca d'Ornano, who seemed gratified to have one of the king's "nephews" pay him court, and made friends with Colonel Antonio Colonna-Bozzi immediately. His presence useful to Colonna, for although Colonna and d'Ornano were cousins by marriage, Colonna's influence over him on military matters was limited. Drost, named lieutenant-general by the king, was d'Ornano's equal in rank, but more importantly he was a blood representative of the king, and thus someone whom the marquis was required to take seriously as long as he was an avowed royalist. Drost and Colonna were frustrated by d'Ornano's failure to act during the summer, but by early September men were beginning to return from the fields. Thanks to the logistical efforts of Colonna and Secretary Gianpietro Gaffori, these men could also be armed and supplied with ammunition.
The French and Genoese evidently did not expect much from d'Ornano. Although the general's contact with Maréchal de Camp Louis-François Crozat, Marquis du Châtel had slackened of late, Châtel believed that d'Ornano was still seeking a way out and would be unwilling to fight. Already spread somewhat thin and mindful of the attrition he had suffered to Colonna's troops, Châtel does not seem to have laid plans for further offensives, but when he received word of a gathering rebel force at the nearby village of Peri he ordered Colonel Alexandre-Auguste de Grivel, Marquis d'Ourouer, to take several French companies and a number of Genoese auxiliaries to drive them off and seize any arms there. It is important to note that although the Genoese had more than a thousand men in the Ajaccio district, most of these were filogenovesi militiamen. Grimaldi seems to have had only about 150 Genoese regulars under his command, as well as 200 Greek militia. The Greeks had proved stalwart defenders of Ajaccio but were not trusted in the field by their Genoese commanders, who thought them unruly and difficult. As the defense of the city could not be trusted to the Greeks alone, most of the Genoese regulars were stationed there too, which meant that any "Genoese" troops in the field were almost entirely Corsicans with a few Genoese officers.
In fact Marquis d'Ornano himself had ordered the muster of militia throughout Celavo, of which Peri was only the most westward meeting point. It is possible that Drost convinced him to renew the fight now that the harvest season was ending, but d'Ornano was surely aware of how badly the situation seemed to be going in the north. It may be more likely that marshaling the militia was an attempt to bolster his negotiating position with the French by demonstrating that, despite Colonna's defeat and the fall of Vico, he remained a force to be taken seriously. If the latter interpretation is true, d'Ourouer's attack was certainly a blunder, for it compelled d'Ornano to fight or lose face. The militia at Peri, numbering less than a hundred men, fled the village on the approach of d'Ourouer's force, but they soon sought aid from the marquis. He could not refuse them.
On the afternoon of September 2nd, d'Ourouer's force fell under attack by around 700 royalist militiamen led by d'Ornano personally. To d'Ourouer's dismay, most of the filogenovesi militia fired but once and fled as soon as they had discharged their muskets; some did not even stand that long. Abandoned by their allies, the French were overwhelmed and forced to withdraw back into the pieve of Ajaccio. D'Ornano did not immediately follow up this victory, explaining to Drost that he had to gather more men. In fact action was not taken until around the 10th, when d'Ornano invaded Cinarca with more than a thousand men. His defeat of a Genoese force at Casaglione threatened to drive a wedge through the French-held sector, cutting off Vico from Ajaccio.
Châtel, determining that Vico was too difficult and remote to hold in the wake of d'Ornano's renewed hostility, ordered the Marquis de Valence to withdraw his battalion from there and return to Cinarca. Inexplicably, however, Valence decided that instead of taking the marginally safer southwestern route to the coast via the Sagone valley, he would march down the rocky gorge of the Liamone due south. An encounter with some Corsican rebels there should have illustrated the danger, but after fighting a brief skirmish Valence pressed on, while the Corsicans reported the French advance to their captains. On September 17th, while attempting to cross a stone bridge over the Liamone, his battalion was ambushed by Drost and Colonna and soundly thrashed. Valence escaped unharmed, but reportedly more than 150 Frenchmen were killed. Allegedly this high death toll was due to the fact that having heard that Theodore did not have the means to supply prisoners, Drost ordered that none should be taken. Châtel himself noted that he had received reports of Corsicans executing prisoners and bayoneting wounded men.
This defeat represented a serious setback for Châtel, who only had three battalions of his own. Furthermore, the performance of the Genoese at Peri demonstrated that their militia forces could not be relied upon in field operations. Meanwhile, d'Ornano's host steadily grew. With his men in danger of being isolated and overwhelmed in their inland posts, Châtel reluctantly ordered a withdrawal from much of the occupied territory. Vico and Cinarca were abandoned to the royalists save for the coastal villages of Sagone and Tiuccia, and these posts were held only by the actions of the Genoese fleet, as it became difficult for the French to reach them by land.
Meanwhile rebel territory continued to recede in the north, where Brigadier Anne de Montmorency-Luxembourg, Comte de Montmorency invaded the strategic Ostriconi valley from the eastern Balagna. Novella and Pietralba were captured without much resistance, although Rauschenburg's men subsequently raided French supply trains in the valley. The pieve of Caotera had been recently wrested from the rebels by Louis Georges Erasme, Marquis de Contades, in a successful bid to keep the rebels out of the Nebbio, but it was proving difficult to hold. The proximity to the rebellious pieves of Rostino and Casaconi meant that there was a constant danger of rebel attacks. That necessitated a substantial French presence, but the narrow paths between mountain villages made for a considerable logistical strain. The troops themselves also resented being posted in such difficult and often squalid conditions, while also being subject to Corsican attacks at any time.
The success of Boissieux's summer campaign had, for a time, silenced critical voices in Paris. The Battle of the Balagna had been the grand and sweeping victory which the French had long awaited, and this was followed by the swift fall of the Nebbio and the liberation of Bastia. Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur's disaster in the east had caused considerable consternation, even shock, but as Boissieux had not been in personal command he was able to foist it off on a combination of Villemur's own mistakes, the poor support offered by the French naval squadron under the Marquis de Sabran, and the ill air of Corsica. Boissieux, however, had over-promised—he had assured his superiors that the rebels, once cut off from the world, would lose their courage and agree to terms, thus sparing French lives from needless waste. Yet by September's end, the rebels were still fighting and French casualties were still growing.
Boissieux's strategy of containment was beginning to show its shortcomings. The rebels could, in theory, be waited out given sufficient time, but as long as they were unmolested in the "national redoubt" of the interior they could recover from defeats and use this highland base to launch raids wherever the French were weakest. Lack of arms might eventually exhaust their ability to resist, but not lack of food, for while there was not a vast surplus by which Theodore could feed hundreds of prisoners the highlanders had chestnuts and goat's milk enough to sustain themselves in the mountains. Incessant skirmishing bled away French forces and disease exacted an even heavier toll. Hopes that Theodore's support would crumble appeared to be overly optimistic; some had indeed deserted the rebel cause, but most of Theodore's core generals remained loyal. The most promising potential defection, that of d'Ornano, had been irrevocably bungled—or perhaps, as Châtel later proposed, he had never been serious at all.
The Genoese, who had always been critical of Boissieux, finally began to gain some purchase with their complaints to the French court. Annoyed at the length and human cost of what was supposed to be little more than the suppression of bandits, the chief minister Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury made his unhappiness known to the Secretary of State for War, Nicolas Prosper Bauyn d'Angervilliers, who in turn demanded action from Boissieux. Boissieux responded that he would need more men to make a decisive blow against the rebels given his losses thus far. Angervilliers was skeptical, but could see some sense in it; although Fleury was hesitant towards the idea of pouring more men into the Corsican quagmire, if a "surge" of soldiers could overcome the rebels in one fell swoop it would be a better use of resources than continuing the slow grind of the blockade.
The problem, as usual, was the Genoese Senate. They had learned through Commandant Grimaldi of the negotiations between Châtel and d'Ornano, which they interpreted in the least favorable light possible; it seemed to them as if the French might be attempting to subvert d'Ornano for their own devices. There was also the extremely dysfunctional relationship between Boissieux and the Genoese commissioner-general Giovanni-Battista de Mari, owing to Mari's insistence on a draconian policy and Boissieux's view that his actions only inflamed the Corsicans to rebel. Boissieux was infuriated by a proposed plan promulgated by the Genoese Senate after the recapture of Bastia, which he summed up as follows:
- Recovery of war expenditures and taxes not collected for 10 years
- Establishment of a body of troops and officials of justice at the expense of the Corsicans
- Compensation for Corsicans loyal to the Republic who suffered from the war
- Expulsion of families of those responsible for the revolt and confiscation of their property
- Expulsions of priests and monks who gave aid to the revolt
- Importation of foreign colonists
- Destruction of various villages, the chestnut trees of Alesani and other centers of rebellion, and most of the convents
Count Neipperg, widely blamed for the botched Treaty of Belgrade
For the Habsburgs, the summer of 1739 had been an unmitigated disaster. The empire had been a belated participant in the Russo-Turkish War (1735-1739), for neither Emperor Karl VI nor his ministers had much interest in territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottomans at that time. Their only concern was preserving their alliance with Russia, which had been Austria’s only major ally during the recent War of Polish Succession. Although the emperor was uneasy about Russia’s ambitions in the Balkans, he ultimately considered his participation necessary to preserve the Russian alliance and avoid diplomatic isolation. After long delays by Vienna's diplomats, Austria could play for time no longer, and finally joined the fight in 1737.
Despite being reluctant belligerents, the Austrians had every expectation that the war would go their way. The Habsburgs and Ottomans had long been foes, but Austria had clearly had the upper hand since the Ottoman army was broken at the gates of Vienna by the Holy League in 1683. The 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz, which ended the Great Turkish War that had started at Vienna's gates, marked the first major Ottoman territorial loss in Europe. The Ottomans were forced to yield Hungary, Slavonia, and Croatia to the Habsburgs. The Porte’s attempt at a revanche in 1716-18 was scarcely more successful, and they were forced to cede Northern Serbia, Bosnian Posavina, the Banat, and Oltenia to the Habsburgs in the Treaty of Passarowitz. The Ottoman Empire was perceived as weak and crumbling, and despite the ominously poor showing of Austrian armies in the recent War of Polish Succession there was little doubt in Vienna that the Ottomans would stand no chance the Austrian armies that had been humiliating them for the last half century.
Austria, however, was recently bereft of the services of the great Prince Eugene of Savoy (who had inconveniently died in 1736 on the eve of this new conflict), and proved incapable of finding anyone capable of filling his shoes. Although the Austrians won a few battles in the field, their inept commanders were unable to make use of them. By the spring of 1739 no serious progress had been made and all belligerent parties were looking for a way out. A treaty based upon the status quo ante bellum was a distinct possibility until the summer campaign, in which the Austrian army was defeated at Grocka and withdrew. Although Belgrade still stood, the peace talks were bungled badly by poor communication and rivalry between Field Marshal George Olivier Wallis and Count Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg, who was Wallis’ subordinate and yet had been given plenipotentiary authority to conduct negotiations because of Vienna’s distrust of Wallis after his failure at Grocka. The result was that the imperial court, believing that the war was about to turn in their favor because of a few minor victories near Belgrade and long-overdue progress on the Russian front, was shocked to learn that their representative had agreed to a treaty on August 1st which not only ceded Belgrade without a fight but all the lands gained at Passarowitz in 1718 except the Banat north of the Danube. Renouncing the treaty was impossible; the French had already countersigned it in their role as mediators, Neipperg had already allowed the Turks to take possession of Belgrade’s gates as a preliminary to ratification, and Vienna was not eager for the unfortunate war to drag on any longer. Austria reluctantly ratified the humiliating Treaty of Belgrade and then took its revenge on Wallis and Neipperg, who were both disgraced, imprisoned, and brought up on charges of cowardice and incompetence.[A]
Austria had been a signatory, along with France and Genoa, of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, in which it had agreed in principle to commit troops to end the Corsican rebellion. Austrian entry into the Russo-Turkish War had prevented that from transpiring, but as soon as the ratification of the Treaty of Belgrade became known it was again a subject of debate in Genoa, Vienna, and Paris. The Genoese desire for Austrian occupation was tempered by the prospective cost, for Vienna would be no more willing to pay its own way than France. What attracted them was that an imperial presence could act as a shield against possible French ambitions on the island. While the French might conceivably seize the island from the Genoese they would not dare attack an imperial garrison.
Intervention was, in retrospect, not in the obvious interest of Vienna. Corsica was of little consequence to Habsburg power, and the friendship of Genoa was not worth much. Genoa was still closely aligned with and reliant upon Spain, perhaps an even greater Habsburg rival than France because of competing Austrian-Spanish claims in Italy. Coming just after an ignominious defeat in the Balkans, the timing was also poor. The Turkish war had been hugely expensive, and the prospect of having to raise special taxes to continue funding it was a strong reason that the emperor had not contested the unfortunate Treaty of Belgrade. The war had also exposed serious deficiencies in the leadership and organization of the Austrian army which ought to have demanded the attention of the emperor and his general staff and taken precedence over Mediterranean adventurism.
Nevertheless, the emperor was not entirely averse to the idea. The Habsburgs had suffered the loss of Naples to the Spanish Bourbons in the recent War of Polish Succession, and imperial intervention in Corsica could serve as a demonstration of continued Austrian influence and interest in the region. A demonstration of imperial power would also be welcome after the humiliation of Belgrade. As for cost, it was presumed that the Republic would pay the bills for the intervention force just as they had with the French. There was, of course, no prospect of an agreement being reached in October, and perhaps not for months to come, for messages had to be conveyed between Genoa, Vienna, and Florence, and proposals and counter-proposals would need to be debated and revised by the Genoese Senate and the emperor's ministers.
The man who pressed hardest for the intervention was certainly Franz Stefan, Grand Duke of Tuscany and son-in-law of the emperor. The grand duke had held a position of high command in the Balkans, but this post was completely honorary and the imperial defeat did not reflect on him. He was, in any case, more interested in his own possessions. Although the expected succession of his wife Maria Theresa to the Habsburg crown lands would make him a queen's consort, he still desired a royal crown of his own in order to be a king in his own right. In early 1737 his eye had been upon Corsica, nearly within sight of his new possession of Tuscany, but his assignment to the Balkans had interrupted his plans. The continued difficulties of the French in Corsica suggested that his window of opportunity was not yet shut.
Franz Stefan actively promoted the Corsican mission to his father-in-law and downplayed French difficulties in Corsica as the product of Boissieux's somnolence and the cack-handed execution of the French. It was a shame, he argued, that the French were now intervening where once the Genoese had turned to imperial might; to leave the matter entirely to France would only cause Habsburg influence in Italy to wane further. At the same time, the grand duke's agents quietly assured the Genoese that imperial intervention was imminent, and that the grand duke would ensure that the Genoese received favorable terms. Genoa had little reason to trust the duke, whose scheming was known to them, but they feared Franz less than the French, and if the grand duke could deliver imperial troops at affordable rates then his friendship was worth pursuing. Assured by Franz Stefan that the Austrians would soon be showing up with a better deal, it is no wonder that the Genoese Senate felt confident enough to stall French proposal to send additional forces.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany was not alone in pressing Vienna to intervene. Although the British government had no interest in the fate of Theodore and his rebels, they were concerned about the continued French presence in Corsica. Curiously, they seem to have believed that Naples, not France, was the most likely recipient of the island if the Bourbons were to annex it, but this outcome was no more satisfying than a French takeover. Accordingly, the British representatives in Vienna attempted to impress upon the emperor and his ministers how undesirable it would be if France (or Naples) were to gain permanent control over the island. Emperor Karl did not entirely trust the British, who despite their mutual alliance had chosen to remain neutral during the War of Polish Succession, but he shared their concern for Bourbon expansionism in the Italian sphere.[B]
Situation in Corsica in late September 1739
Green: Royalist controlled
Red: Genoese controlled
Blue: French or joint Franco-Genoese occupation
White: Unknown, neutral, or uninhabited
Footnotes
[1] Matthias' title of "von Drost" has often been seized upon to connect him to Theodore's uncle, Franz Bernhard Johann, who was often known as the "Baron von Drost." Drost, however, was not a place but a title, used in Westphalia and the Low Countries to mean a kind of bailiff or steward. Franz Bernhard was Drost zu Nienrade, Altena, und Iserlohn, and seems to have used this seemingly lesser title as a gesture to his Theodore; as his nephew and ward had been disinherited of his patrimony (to the benefit of Franz Bernhard himself), apparently his uncle thought he should at least keep his name. Franz Bernhard had no son named Matthias, nor does the name appear anywhere else among Theodore's close relations.
Timeline Notes
[A] This is all OTL: Nothing about the outcome of the Austro-Turkish war of 1737-39 has changed ITTL. Although not really relevant to the story of Corsica, it's interesting to note the long life of the Belgrade treaty. The Habsburgs had no reason to see the Treaty of Belgrade as a permanent settlement; it was the result of a poorly-run campaign and an embarrassing diplomatic blunder, and generally assumed to be a momentary setback in what would undoubtedly be a continued Austrian march southwards into the Balkans. The Prussian conquest of Silesia in the WoAS, however, caused Habsburg attention to be increasingly diverted to Europe and in due course to the emerging "German Question." As a result, apart from a brief re-establishment of Austrian control over part of Serbia between 1788 and 1792, the Austro-Turkish border established in 1739 remained essentially static until the Habsburg annexation of Bosnia in 1908.
[B] Although a joint occupation by the Bourbons and Habsburgs, the two great continental rivals, seems fantastical, the Austrian intervention in Corsica nearly happened IOTL. The emperor was willing to join the French occupation and went so far as to instruct his deputies in Livorno and Milan to be ready to send troops. The Genoese delayed for a time because they were concerned about cost, but the proposal for a joint Franco-Austrian occupation still seems to have been on track until the emperor died on October 20th of 1740, starting the War of Austrian Succession.
