King Theodore's Corsica

Carp · Aug 2, 2017

Woes of the Republic

The port of Isola Rossa

"We make known to all whom it may concern, that we shall always observe an inviolable fidelity towards the royal person of Theodore I.; and that we are resolved to live and die for him as his subjects, and never to acknowledge another sovereign than him."
- Proclamation of the Consulta of Corti, May 1737

The Genoese had greeted Theodore's departure from Corsica as good news, believing that it was a sign that the internal dissension among the Corsican leadership which had been exposed by the revolt of the indifferenti had become terminal. To maximize the demoralization of the rebels, they widely published news of Theodore's "flight" from the island, and when his arrest in Amsterdam became known they made sure to spread the word far and wide. The "so-called Baron," crowed the Genoese, had abandoned them and would never be coming back; no help was coming for them. As the Genoese military position was still tenuous, however, the Senate realized it could not act too imperiously, and authorized the Commissioner-General Giovanni Battista de Mari to offer amnesty to rebels who were willing to lay down their arms and reconcile with the Republic.

This strategy was a miserable failure. The Corsican leaders refused to believe the Genoese "lies" about Theodore's fate, and with good reason: Theodore was sending them regular missives, approximately once a month, filled with only good news (and no mention whatsoever of his legal trouble). When the offer of amnesty was read to the Corsicans besieging Ajaccio, their reply was to shout "long live Theodore!" and shoot into the air, which so terrified the Genoese messengers that they fled back to the city. The regents Luigi Giafferi, Simone Fabiani, and Luca d'Ornano summoned a consulta in Corti to deal with the Genoese proposal more formally. Theodore's latest letter was read to the delegates, who then voted overwhelmingly to reject any offer of "reconciliation." They published a fiery statement in which they affirmed that Theodore was the only sovereign they would accept, categorically dismissed any peace settlement which did not entail the cession of all Corsican territory to the independent Kingdom of Corsica, and promised violent retribution to all Corsicans who took the Genoese up on their offer of amnesty.

More disappointments followed. An attempt by the Genoese garrison of Ajaccio, around a thousand strong, to break the siege of that city by a surprise sally from the walls was stopped cold by d'Ornano's men. Punitive operations in Fiumorbo and the eastern coast were resumed under Filippo Grimaldi, a pro-Genoese Corsican, but his retribution was so savage—including, Campredon reported, the murder of some local women who had dared to defy the salt ordinances by producing their own salt—that it only inflamed the locals further against the Genoese. The regents replied swiftly, announcing that from then on Genoese atrocities would be met with Hammurabic justice, presumably to be exacted on Genoese prisoners or filogenovesi villages. In Bastia, Count Gio Giacomo Ambrosi di Castinetta cracked down on suspected dissenters and Genoese sympathizers, publicly executing men accused of conspiring with the Genoese to return the city to their control.

The Genoese made overtures to the indifferenti, whose leaders had stayed away from the royalist consulta of Corti, but its leaders, including Ignazio Arrighi and Father Giovanni Aitelli, were reluctant to deal with the Genoese. Their chief complaint, after all, had been with Theodore, and as he was presently absent it was difficult to justify what would amount to a betrayal of the patriot cause. "The rebels," wrote the French minister to Genoa Jacques Campredon to Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux de Maurepas, the French naval secretary, "seem more animated and more united than before the departure of Baron Neuhoff." Theodore, though he had his strengths, was certainly no perfect sovereign, and some seem to have loved him more as a (distant) symbol of hope than as a present, flesh-and-blood king.

Disappointed by these failures, Genoa continued casting about for foreign aid. The French communicated their "dissatisfaction" with the Genoese effort and reiterated their offer of assistance, but the Senate again demurred, suspicious of French intentions. The French, for their part, feared above all that Genoa, having tired of the long and fruitless struggle in Corsica, would sell it to another power, and were now seriously considering acquiring it for themselves, although they did not broach the topic with the Genoese. The French foreign secretary Jean-Jacques Amelot de Chaillou made the government's views clear to Jaques Campredon, the French minister in Genoa:

"It would be desirable that the Republic should be disposed to sell this island. The King would never have countenanced this view while she [Corsica] remained in the power of the Genoese, and his Majesty has not even thought proper, so far, to take part in this revolution, on which only very uncertain conjectures could be formed; But when it comes to dealing with the sale of this island it would not be in the interests of France that any other power should acquire it; So I ask you to keep an eye on what is happening on this subject and to inform me of what you will learn... Spain is not the only one that has views on the island of Corsica. The memorandum which I have received from Vienna, and of which I am sending you a copy, will inform you that the Duke of Lorraine may be suspected of pretending and wanting to excite a party in his favor, and it is proper that you find means of rendering this public knowledge without your appearing to have taken part in it."

Amelot wasn't wrong about Duke Francis of Lorraine. The Duke, anticipating his succession in Tuscany and interested in gaining his own royal title, had been professing friendship to Genoa even as he sought to undermine them. Like the Genoese, he had assumed that Theodore's departure was likely to be final, and so he connived to take control of the rebellion for his own ends. His chosen agent for this task was the obscure figure of Humbert de Beaujeu de la Salle, whom Campredon described as a notorious spy (as well as a defrocked monk and a deserter from the French army). In imperial service, Beaujeu was alleged by Campredon to have negotiated secretly with the rebels on Vienna's behalf, but was approached by the Duke of Lorraine who wanted to use him to gain Corsica for himself. The duke made no secret of the fact that this was not, strictly speaking, an imperial mission. "I absolutely do not want the Emperor to know anything about this undertaking," he wrote Beaujeu, according to Campredon; "he has his own affairs and I have mine." The French, however, were wise to the scheme. For a while, the French suspected that Beaujeu and Theodore might be in league together with Francis as Theodore's new patron, but this is unlikely to have been true. In the end, the plan came to nothing; Beaujeu was showered with money by Francis and offered the lifelong vice-royalty of the island if he should succeed, but he was exposed by the adroit diplomacy of France and soon he tried to back out of the deal, claiming that he could not deceive the emperor. He was then thrown in prison, either by Francis or by the Emperor; nobody could say for certain. The whole affair was a farce, and did nothing but harm the reputation of the Duke of Lorraine in the eyes of the Genoese.

Emperor Charles VI had no ability to intervene given his ongoing war with the Ottomans, but his government sensed that the French might be pushing for a sale of the island and were very much opposed to it. France had no desire to provoke a new conflict with the Habsburgs over something as meager as Corsica, and so in July French diplomats and their imperial counterparts penned an agreement at Versailles. The Emperor permitted the King of France to intervene in Corsica, provided that the Genoese give their agreement, but both parties affirmed that under no circumstances should Corsica be permitted to leave Genoese sovereignty. That guarantee was sufficient for the Habsburgs, and thereafter all that stood in the way of a French expeditionary force was the Genoese Senate.

News of the Versailles agreement greatly alarmed the Sardinians, whose ministers complained to both Paris and London. The French, of course, brushed them off; the Sardinian King Charles Emmanuel III could not seriously contest what the Habsburgs and Bourbons had together agreed upon. The king's only hope was a firm response from the British, but it was not forthcoming. The British government reiterated that it would not countenance the sale of Corsica, but this was no different than the line which the French and Austrians had already adopted, and in no way did the British dispute France's right or ability to intervene on behalf of the Genoese.

Charles Emmanuel III, King of Sardinia, c. 1730

Within days of the Versailles agreement being signed, the Grand Duke Gian Gastone de Medici finally died, leaving Tuscany to Francis. Despite the seemingly obvious fact that Vienna would not be intervening on their behalf and the revelations of Francis' treachery in the Beaujeu affair, the Genoese still held out a foolish hope that their salvation might come from these quarters. In January, 6,000 Austrian troops had arrived in Tuscany to take over from the Spanish garrison, and now that the emperor's son-in-law was the ruler of Tuscany in fact, perhaps some of these troops might be spared for the aid of the Republic. It was soon made clear to them, however, that the Austrian occupation force belonged to the emperor, not to his son-in-law. Francis, for his part, was soon thereafter removed from the picture entirely when he was appointed nominal commander of an Austrian army in the Balkans.[1]

Gian Gastone's death was a blow to the rebels, who had now lost their foremost sympathizer among Europe's sovereigns. Yet while Tuscany's new "Lorrainer" administrators had no particular interest in the Corsican cause, the commander of the imperial troops in Livorno was Lieutenant-General Baron Karl Franz von Wachtendonck, who had once led the imperial intervention force in Corsica. Apparently a distant relation of Theodore, his attitude towards the Corsican rebels was ambivalent. Although the Tuscan government would no longer be directly supporting Theodore or the rebels, Livorno under Wachtendonck's command would prove to be nearly as permissive as it had been under Medici rule. It is worth noting, as well, that Livorno was not quite as all-important as it had been previously, in part because there was by now significant Genoese smuggling to Corsica as well. Much to the chagrin of the Senate, the mercantile class of the Republic appears to have grown so indifferent to their government's flailing misadventure in Corsica that some were quite willing to put profit before patriotism and join the Livornesi in the Corsican black market.

The French now offered a more concrete proposal: 3,000 troops up front, to be ramped up to 10,000 if the original contingent proved insufficient. The costs, however, were also soberingly concrete: 2 million pounds, of which 700,000 would have to be paid up front. The price tag was so extortionate that, after much acrimonious debate, the Senate took the rather uncharacteristic step of resolving to have another go at negotiation with the Corsicans. It was too little, too late; the rebels dismissed every concession the Genoese were willing to offer them, replying that they would consider no proposal in which they would remain under Genoese sovereignty. The word of the Republic was worth less than dirt in Corsica, and no amount of promised reforms made any difference. This time the regents did not even bother to convene a consulta or send a formal reply to the Senate's appeals.

Genoese desperation grew only deeper as rumors spread that Theodore was on his way back to Corsica. The syndicate had done rather well at keeping his departure a secret—so well, in fact, that even the captain of the Yongfrau Agathe, Gustav Barentz, was unaware of the identity of his esteemed passenger, a fact which was only revealed to him by a sealed letter from Boon which Theodore gave to him only after they were well on their way. Yet the syndicate could not conceal the fact that Theodore was no longer in Amsterdam, which fueled speculation as to his whereabouts, including the possibility that he had returned to his kingdom. The Genoese government frantically demanded updates from its consular officers abroad, but it received only vague and conflicting rumors.

For Barentz, it was an understandably tense journey. As it turned out, it was the 28 year old Swede's first time commanding a vessel, and he was expected to not only run a hostile blockade and land contraband on an unfamiliar coast, but to do it while he had an incognito monarch on his little ship. When the Yongfrau Agathe sighted Corsica, he lost his nerve, complaining that he knew no safe anchorages here and that they should make for Livorno or Naples instead. When a sail was sighted to the north, he ordered that the ship beat out to sea; he was sure it was a Genoese warship. Theodore, the only passenger who spoke Swedish (Barentz's Dutch was atrocious), had to talk the jittery young captain down. The Yongfrau Agathe steered back towards Corsica and eventually made its way around the western coast to Isola Rossa, where Colonel Antonio Colonna, Costa's nephew, volunteered to take a small group ashore in a boat. Theodore, after all, had been gone for several months, and had no way of knowing which parts of the island remained in friendly hands. Fortunately for Colonna, Isola Rossa remained friendly, and having received his positive report Barentz sailed the Agathe into the harbor.[A]

It was August 20th. The king was back.

Footnotes
[1] His command was indeed nominal, which was for the best as far as his own reputation was concerned, as Austrian performance in this war left much to be desired. All duties of command were exercised for him by a general, and Francis was kept far from the army—not so much to spare him from enemy action as to shield him from the epidemics which ravaged the camp of the common soldiery.

Timeline Notes
[A] IOTL, the Yongfrau Agathe never brought Theodore to Corsica. He had been recognized at Lisbon, and then the ship was held up for several weeks by the Spanish at Oran. When the ship reached Sardinia, it encountered another Dutch vessel, whose captain informed Barentz that everyone was talking about Theodore's supposedly imminent arrival. Theodore concluded that it was not the right time for his return, as the Genoese seemed to be ready for him; perhaps his courage failed him. For whatever reason, he switched ships and returned to Holland, while Barentz continued to Corsica. Barentz landed some of Theodore's volunteers on the island, but since he could find no safe anchorage (remember, IOTL the Genoese still held all the major ports), he too chickened out and sailed for Livorno. The supplies probably never made it to Corsica. ITTL, I am assuming that the different timeline means the chance recognition of Theodore at Lisbon and the ship's detention by the Spanish never happen, and neither does the encounter with the other Dutch ship. An uneventful voyage is quite plausible, given that the second ship which sailed in 1737 IOTL—the one chartered by dell'Agata—made it to Isola Rossa with no problems (until it reached Isola Rossa, that is, because they mistakenly thought it was in rebel hands; it wasn't, and dell'Agata was arrested and executed by the Genoese authorities there). As a result, ITTL, Theodore lands safely. When I was originally coming up with this TL, that was actually my POD: Theodore lands successfully on Corsica in 1737. I ultimately decided, however, that too much had gone wrong in 1736 for a 1737 POD to be very plausible; in particular, the Corsicans held no ports, Fabiani was dead, and Paoli was still alive. Ultimately I settled on the current POD in an attempt to rectify those things.

Carp · Aug 6, 2017

The Return of the King

Algajola and its citadel

Patience till the winter's snow
Be dissolved from off the land;
Then shall sudden vengeance flow
From the mountains to the strand!
Spreading, catching, far and near,
Like the fiery flame's career.

- Translated from a Corsican vocero, or funeral dirge

The Corsican regency was not much of a government. In the interior, Marquis Luigi Giafferi was no more than a figurehead, and the Corsican pieves and villages retained the precarious autonomy they had possessed since Genoese authority melted away in 1730. The "liberated" coastal regions remained largely under the control of Theodore's military governors. These commanders remained nominally loyal to Theodore, and thus to his regency council, but the full extent of their cooperation with the regents was to allow delegates to be sent to the Corti consulta.

The foremost of these governors, as well as one of the regents, was Marquis Simone Fabiani. His position was crucial, for his territory, the Balagna, was both the source of most of the island's olive oil (which Theodore needed to pay the syndicate) and adjacent to the Genoese citadel of Calvi, the seat of the Genoese colonial government since the fall of Bastia. Fortunately, Fabiani's loyalty was not in doubt; the general gave his sovereign a lavish welcome. Most of the armaments that Theodore arrived with on the Yongfrau Agathe seem to have gone to Fabiani's militia, including both of the cannons.

Further east, the rebel position was not as strong. Northeastern Corsica had been divided between Count Gio Giacomo Ambrosi di Castinetta, in Bastia, and Colonel Giovan Natali, in the Nebbio. These were especially restive regions where pro-Genoese sentiment was still widespread, and their governors handled the resentment of the populace. Natali, before the victory at San Fiorenzo, had distinguished himself chiefly as a guerrilla, and once in power he spent most of his efforts on settling local scores, harassing those who had cooperated with the Genoese as well as longtime rivals of his own Nebbian family. Castinetta had less of a personal interest—he was not from Bastia—but ran the former capital like an iron-fisted tyrant, terrorizing the populace by rousting out suspected Genoese sympathizers and publicly executing them. There were also accusations that Castinetta's proscriptions tended to target men of means, whose wealth was ostensibly seized "for the cause" but in reality lined the count's pockets. Throughout the region, there was an increasing number of violent incidents and outright skirmishes as the rebels found themselves in the unfamiliar role of being an army of occupation instead of fighting one.

Theodore charged Fabiani with the reduction of Algajola, and then made his way east with his followers. The king met Colonel Natali at Oletta—the colonel had established his headquarters in his home village—and gently reminded him that the priorities for the Nebbio were to restore oil production, as it was desperately needed to pay the syndicate, and to fortify San Fiorenzo against possible Genoese counterattack. In fact Natali had hardly bothered with the city the rebels had struggled so hard to take; it was a small village anyway, and had been utterly ruined by bombardment and battle. Nevertheless, it was strategic, and putting Natali to some productive purpose was reason enough in itself. Theodore visited Bastia next, but although appraised of the allegations regarding Castinetta's corruption, there was not much he could do. Castinetta was too important, and if he was enriching himself he at least seemed to be a loyal patriot. He was also probably not wrong about dissenters within the city, for the population was both large and generally sympathetic to the Republic.

Theodore remained in Bastia for a few days before proceeding south into the Castagniccia, where he was enthusiastically welcomed in the pieves of Casinca, Rostino, and Orezza. In Rostino he received the fealty of Clemente Paoli, the 22 year old son of the martyred general Giacinto Paoli, who was made a militia captain and a signore.[A] He was reunited with Captain Giovan Luca Poggi, whom he had placed in command of the "royal guard;" that unit still existed, but a lack of funds had pared it down to around 130 men. Recently on the scene was Marc-Antonio Giappiconi, brother of Theodore's assassinated secretary of war Count Anton-Francesco, who was an officer in the Venetian army who had returned to Corsica. Experienced—and, perhaps more importantly, reliably anti-Genoese thanks to the murder of his brother – Theodore gave him his brother's old office and the rank of major-general.

Theodore, who had been supplied with some spending money by the syndicate, paid Poggi's remaining troops (they were desperately in arrears) and urged Giappiconi and Poggi to work on recruiting more. Perhaps realizing that the liberation of Corsica was bound to be a longer fight than he had anticipated, Theodore's new strategy was to sustain a "regular" battalion, drilled frequently by professional officers, in the hopes that it would be a more effective use of limited funds than the large but ill-trained hordes of irregulars he had previously summoned from the mountains. Poggi, for his trouble, was made a Lieutenant-Colonel and a Count.

Theodore spent two weeks in the Castagniccia, surveying his "realm" and re-establishing personal contacts with the various caprales, colonels, and noblemen who had given their allegiance more than a year before. He visited his provisional capital in Vescovato, where his chancellor Sebastiano Costa noted on the embarrassing "poverty" of the royal dwelling and made some efforts to spruce up the place with fresh paint and colorful banners. Theodore visited the royal mint as well, although it had not been in use for many months thanks to a dearth of specie. His next move was inland to Corti, where he met Count Gianpietro Gaffori, his secretary of state, and Colonel Felice Cervoni, who had been moved from the Nebbio to Niolo before Theodore's departure. He also met Marc-Antonio Raffaelli, one of the leaders of the indifferenti, who had grown disillusioned with their leadership and had decided to switch sides again. Theodore presided over some fairly inconsequential matters of governance at Corti and then ordered Cervoni to prepare his troops to assist Fabiani.

His friend Francesco dell'Agata, meanwhile, had arrived at Livorno. Evidently the captain of the chartered vessel had refused to approach the island after a close encounter with some Genoese patrols. Unlike the Yongfrau Agathe, however, which had been tasked by the syndicate with bringing back oil, dell'Agata's ship was paid for in advance, and the captain had no need to return to the island after offloading his stores. The Genoese consul in Livorno, who knew very well who dell'Agata was, demanded that the port officials move against him and seize his "contraband." The ship and its cargo were briefly impounded, but after a search the imperial officers released the vessel and the goods. Dell'Agata was a Tuscan citizen, he was a known merchant whose goods appeared legitimate, and there was nothing illegal about buying merchandise in Amsterdam and taking it to Livorno. The French consul reported that the cargo included both small arms and "artillery and mortars," and Costa claims that dell'Agata sailed with "six bronze cannon." It appears that much of the cargo was smuggled into Corsica by small feluccas and tartanes, and although the Genoese claimed to have captured one such smuggler this was probably only a portion of the overall purchase.

Foreigners had fought on the side of the Corsican rebels before, most notably Lieutenant-Colonel Antoine Dufour, who had commanded the rebel artillery in 1736.[1] The largest share of them had been the soldiers in the "foreign company" created soon after his arrival. This had started out as a minuscule unit, but deserters from the Genoese army—mostly Germans, and some Spanish—and freed galley slaves had increased its number to around 200 by the time of the Battle of San Fiorenzo. Theodore's return brought new reinforcements. A few dozen Germans came with him to Corsica on the Yongfrau Agathe, and more arrived in Livorno with dell'Agata and made their way to Corsica thereafter. In Tuscany, dell'Agata and other Corsican agents recruited men from the crowds of idle soldiers in Tuscany. They were mostly veterans of the War of Polish Succession, deserters and discharged mercenaries from the great armies which had recently trodden through Italy. Many were German deserters from the imperial armies in Italy or Spanish troops from the Spanish garrison in Tuscany who had stayed behind when that unit was withdrawn.

The influx of men required Theodore to reorganize his foreign contingents. Eighty men, nearly all of them Germans, were formed into a bodyguard company to safeguard the king against assassins. The rest went into the old foreign company, which was now properly a foreign regiment. They included mainly Spanish and German soldiers, although it included some Italians as well as a handful of Dutchmen, Swedes, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Greeks, Turks, and Livonians. In fact Theodore had too many of them, to the point where they were troublesome to pay, feed, and arm. A British newspaper reported in November of 1737 that Theodore had "a life-guard of six hundred Germans;" another source improbably claimed over a thousand. Some of the dross was sent back to Livorno, particularly the freed galley slaves with little combat experience, but several hundred at least remained.

Also along for the ride in 1737 were a few other foreigners we know by name. There was Giraud Keverberg,[2] the son of a Dutch colonel who had been recommended to Theodore by Cesar Tronchin, one of the syndicate's partners, and Denis Richard, a young Englishman from Guernsey who Theodore took on as a personal secretary and whose notes on his tenure as secretary to the King of Corsica would become the only English-language primary source of the Corsican revolution and Theodore's early reign. These men joined the royal "staff," such as it was, which included the king's personal valet Antonio Pino (a Corsican from Capo Corso), his chaplain Antonio Candeotto (a native of Elba who had been doing missionary work in Tunis when Theodore found him in 1735), and other unnamed servants including—so Costa tells us—two cooks, a butler, a surgeon, two squires, three "hunters," and four "Moorish" footmen.

Still on a lean budget and without much of a functioning government, Theodore could do little but wait for more help to arrive. He had promised to return with aid, and the aid he had brought so far was not proving very impressive. Still, it did help Fabiani; with Theodore's arms and guns, plus reinforcements from Niolo and the foreign regiment, he succeeded in gaining the commanding heights over Algajola and closely invested the town, with five guns plunging fire into the Genoese citadel. A large Genoese relief force sent from Calvi was completely routed when, according to the British consul John Bagshaw, the Corsican auxiliaries who made up most of the Genoese army fired their muskets once and then fled the field. Fabiani had also loyally obeyed the king's commands, transmitted from Amsterdam, to amass olive oil to pay the syndicate. He wrote the partners of Lucas Boon in Livorno, by the names of Evers and Bookmann,[3] pushing them to ask the syndicate for supplies, armaments, and money to be sent immediately.

Theodore had good reason to want prompt action, for by now he was aware of the agreements which the Genoese had made with the French. In September of 1737, the Genoese finally accepted the long-proffered aid of France. Denis Richard wrote that the king put on a stoic and serene face to his commanders and followers; he promised them that he would bring sufficient arms and aid for the patriots to withstand any enemy, but at the same time implied that he had contacts with Versailles and assured the Corsicans that His Most Christian Majesty would see that Corsica was a friend of France. Richard was astonished at his reaction in private; upon hearing the news, the king turned white and "was struck dumb with despair." Soon, however, he broke his silence with a laugh. He admired, he said, the cleverness of the French chief minister André-Hercule Fleury, who had deftly played the game and now stood ready to take control of Corsica while Genoa paid him for the privilege. Evidently Theodore suspected from the start that the French aimed at more than merely assisting the beleaguered Republic.

The French would not arrive immediately. Negotiations on the intervention agreement were not concluded until November, and due to winter weather it would not be until February that the first French forces would arrive on the island. Until then, Theodore could only try to do his best to prepare. The little Kingdom of Corsica would soon have to weather the assault of the French colossus, the strongest military power in Europe.

Footnotes
[1] Dufour makes no appearance in 1737, and little more is said of him—the mysterious Frenchman vanished as suddenly as he appeared. His ultimate fate is unknown. It is possible that, as the French government moved ever closer to supporting the Genoese, he decided that it would be best not to remain long enough to become an enemy of the state.
[2] Some sources claim "Giraud" was a pseudonym, which if true means his actual given name is not known.
[3] The man whose name Theodore had assumed on his voyage.

Timeline Notes
[A] The (much) older brother of Pasquale Paoli. Pasquale is 12 years old at this time. Clemente lacked the charisma and education of his younger brother, but IOTL was an important rebel leader in his own right. Giacinto was expelled from the country and went to Naples with his family during the French occupation in 1738, but Clemente returned to Corsica shortly thereafter to take care of the family's interests in Corsica. Clemente gained prominence as a lieutenant of Gaffori, who later became the generalissimo of the Corsican rebels. After Gaffori's assassination in 1753 it was supposedly on Clemente's suggestion that the rebel leaders invited Pasquale to return from exile to lead the patriotic movement. That, at least, is the usual account, but it is somewhat romanticized. Actually, the chief enemies of Clemente and his comrades were not the Genoese but the Matra clan, which constituted a rival power base to the Paoli family of Rostino and their highland allies. Pasquale was appointed as "capo generale" by only one faction of the rebels in 1755, and it took a civil war lasting the better part of a decade before he actually consolidated his control as the undisputed ruler of "national" Corsica. The Matra forces very nearly killed him in 1757; allegedly, only Clemente's swift intervention saved his life and prevented Corsican history from going in a quite different direction. Mario-Emmanuel Matra represented a more "conciliatory" and pro-French rebel faction that was opposed to the Genoese but supportive of French protection/annexation. They lost, and Mario-Emmanuel was killed, but in the end it was their vision of Corsica which became reality.

Carp · Aug 11, 2017

The French Arrive

Infantryman of the Auvergne Regiment

Theodore wasted no time in trying to make the best of the diplomatic situation, and began by penning a letter King Louis XV. Theodore hailed the beneficence, justice, and mercy of the Most Christian King and claimed to have heard the news of the French arrival in Corsica with great joy. Theodore, in his usual grandiloquent prose, welcomed the French with open arms, presenting the French intervention as though it were a mediation between the Genoese and Corsicans rather than an invasion on behalf of the latter. He had no doubt, he wrote, that the "great humanity" of the French king would put in check the "tyranny" of the Republic. This was, of course, nonsense, and Theodore knew it. Yet while the letter was delivered to Paris (by two unnamed Corsican "plenipotentiaries" whose very presence in France elicited another official protest by the Genoese) it was also widely published in Corsica and the continent. Theodore was, in effect, trying to get out in front of the story, and his letter played to multiple audiences. To the Corsicans, he sought to boost morale by suggesting the French were not actually their enemy; to Versailles, he wished to communicate his desire for negotiation and reconciliation; and to the rest of Europe, he wanted to set up an expectation that France was coming as merely a neutral arbitrator, so that they would appear treacherous if in the end they turned their guns on the Corsicans.

Versailles, at least, got the message. While the French government assured the Genoese that it intended nothing less than a prompt and thorough pacification of the island and its restoration to Genoese sovereignty, they clearly had no intention of landing on the beaches of Corsica with guns blazing. The government was reluctant to deal with Theodore, who they were still convinced was a possible English agent, but they were interested in a potential rebel interlocutor, and found him in the person of Father Gregorio Salvini. Salvini, a Balagnese priest, was an agent for the Corsican rebels in Livorno. He had pledged allegiance to Theodore in 1736 and had covertly purchased arms in Livorno to be smuggled into the country. He was also a literate man who had earned his doctorate in civil and canon law in Rome, and had arranged the publishing of the anti-Genoese tract Disinganno intorno alla guerra di Corsica written by the patriot Giulio Matteo Natali in 1736. Recently, he and certain other Corsicans in Livorno had written to the French chief minister André-Hercule Fleury to request French mediation in the Genoese-Corsican war. Whether this letter was done with the knowledge or consent of Theodore is unclear; Salvini was certainly in communication with and a subordinate of Father Erasmo Orticoni, Theodore's foreign minister. Regardless, it suited Theodore's purposes, and the French saw it as the contact within the rebellion they had been looking for. Marquis Jean-Jacques Amelot de Chaillou, the French secretary of state for foreign affairs, sent instructions to Pierre-Jean Pignon, a physician who served as the French consul in Tunis, to go to Livorno and meet directly with Salvini. Amelot made it clear that the matter was to be done in the utmost secrecy, and that the government preferred "ways of conciliation rather than ways of rigor."

On Corsica, the war continued. In December, Algajola fell to the forces of Marquis Simone Fabiani, reducing thereby the Genoese presence in the northwest to Calvi alone. Theodore urged him to besiege that citadel, and even joined him in person; perhaps he thought to wrest this position from the Genoese so as to prevent French forces from having a disembarkation point so near the vital Balagna. Victory, however, would elude the Corsicans this time. The position was simply too strong. The rebels did not have enough artillery, and while they gained the heights south of the city this position was too far to directly bombard the citadel as they had managed at Algajola. Calvi, as the Genoese headquarters in Corsica after the fall of Bastia, had a strong Genoese garrison and was well-stocked with food, water, and ammunition. The Corsicans could cut off Calvi by land, but the Genoese retained control of the sea. Although the siege was maintained through the winter, it accomplished little other than to cause some logistical difficulties for the Republic.

Theodore returned to the Castagniccia in January, dwelling first at Vescovato and then in his first capital of Cervioni. Wherever he was, Theodore continued his efforts at diplomacy, constantly writing letters to any acquaintance or distant relation he could think of, and dictated missives to the syndicate, foreign ministers, diplomats, and consuls. Denis Richard, his English secretary, was kept busy indeed. When not writing letters, he made legislation on various and sundry matters, and when not doing that he took walks in the countryside, attended always by his German life-guard.

Theodore was always coming up with new schemes, most of which never came to fruition. One particularly innovative example which deserves mention here was a proposal, sent to Minister Fleury in January of 1738, suggesting that Pope Clement XII might be persuaded to revive his ancient claim to Corsica, and that in exchange for French recognition of this claim His Holiness might be persuaded to "exchange" Corsica for Avignon, thus ceding that Papal enclave in France to the Most Christian King. That Rome might claim Corsica for its own, following medieval precedent, had occurred to Theodore before, but the Papacy had been unresponsive to his overtures; Theodore now presented the idea to France with the implication that Rome was already on board or at least congenial to the idea. It was an incredible presumption, and one which the French probably saw through at once, but one must at least credit Theodore for trying.

Overall command of the French intervention was vested in the 50 year old Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat, Comte de Boissieux, a nobleman of Auvergne.[1] Boissieux was the nephew of the famous Marshal Villars and had served as his aide-de-camp. Although the Genoese would come to criticize him for inactivity, he was by no means an armchair general. He had been in the thick of the fighting in the Italian theater of the War of Polish succession, having been wounded at Parma and noted for personally leading a bayonet charge at Guastalla in 1734. The force which he would be leading was composed of six infantry battalions, two from the Auvergne Regiment and one each from the regiments of d'Ourouer, La Sarre, Nivernais, and Bassigny. Each battalion amounted to about 500 men, for a total force of 3,000 infantry. No cavalry or artillery was provided, although it scarcely seemed necessary:[A] Boissieux, like Pignon, had been informed of the government's preference to avoid undue "rigor," and it was expected that the very sight of the French army would be sufficient to overawe the rebels and compel their capitulation—or at least reconciliation—without serious opposition. To provide naval support for the intervention, chiefly by patrolling Corsican waters for smugglers, a flotilla of three light frigates was provided; the identity of only one vessel is certainly known, the 26-gun Flore.[2]

The expedition had a difficult start. The French transport fleet set out from Antibes on the 6th of February, but the weather quickly turned foul and the French fleet was scattered by a storm.[B] No ships were lost, but several were driven east and sustained enough damage that they had to put into Livorno for repairs. Boissieux landed at Calvi on the 9th with two battalions. He was welcomed by the Genoese commissioner-general, Giovanni-Battista de Mari, but their relationship was not to be a warm one. Mari, who had long been a skeptic of French assistance, had strong opinions as to how Boissieux and his forces should conduct themselves. Mari's strategy had been one of terror and spoliation, and he demanded that Boissieux immediately march against the rebels, drive them from the Balagna, offer amnesty to all who surrendered and disarmed, and then raze and burn the homes, crops, and orchards of any who refused that generous offer.

Boissieux had no intention of following this advice. His government vastly preferred a peaceful resolution to the rebellion, or at least one of minimal force. A cynic—and Mari was just such a man—might have interpreted this as a desire to demonstrate the mildness and enlightenment of French rule, as contrasted with Genoese brutality, in order to stoke pro-French sympathy on the island and pave the way for its conquest by France. Although no "smoking gun" exists to prove this ulterior motive, it is quite plausible. Boissieux outright refused to make any aggressive moves at this early point, explaining that several of his battalions had not yet arrived because of complications with the weather. His true aim, however, was made quite obvious two days later, when Pignon arrived in Corsica on the orders of Secretary Amelot. Pignon was instructed by Amelot to make contact with the Corsicans, and Boissieux provided him with letters saying that he would happily have talks with members of the "Corsican nation."

These letters were not addressed to Theodore, as the French still considered him an untrustworthy adventurer and thought they might bypass him entirely. Theodore, however, was by now aware of the Pignon-Salvini correspondence (if he had not been before), and ensured that he was made aware of all of Pignon's proposals. Salvini, under his instructions, informed Pignon that the Corsicans would convene a consulta at Casinca to choose representatives and decide upon a course of action. In the meantime, Salvini asked for peace, and promised that the rebels would not initiate hostilities against the French. Boissieux was willing to wait, but demanded that the rebel sieges end as a token of good faith. Reluctantly, Marquis Fabiani drew back from Calvi, and in late February Marquis Luca d'Ornano lifted the long siege of Ajaccio. Boissieux would have to wait longer than expected, however, for it was still winter and there was still snow in the mountains, and owing to logistical difficulties (assuming this was not merely an excuse) the consulta did not actually convene in full until March.

Theodore, when the consulta finally assembled, related to the assembly his recent and fervent hope that the French would come as liberators and allies against Genoese tyranny. The French, however, seemed to have decided otherwise, and at this point he produced a letter from Boissieux to Salvini in which the general stated politely but firmly that while the French desired to bring peace to Corsica, they had not come to annex the island but to restore the sovereignty of Genoa. After the general groan of dismay had passed, Theodore went on with humility and resolve. If his own presence, he said, was ever an obstacle to freedom from Genoese tyranny, he would gladly abdicate that very day; if France had offered to take the isle under her wing, and that was the will of the Corsican people, then he would be the first to submit to their rule, and if his own exile from his beloved kingdom was a condition than he would not hesitate to bid them his farewells. It was probably true—in fact Theodore had written a letter to the King of Naples while he had been in prisoner in Amsterdam, offering him the crown of Corsica in exchange for support, and around the same time he had contacted his old Jacobite friends proposing that with their help Corsica could be made a kingdom for the British pretender James Stuart. He knew the odds against him, and he was clearly willing to surrender his crown if it meant the liberation of Corsica and an honorable position for himself.

The Corsicans, of course, knew none of this, and Theodore did not think it wise to tell them. If France had offered her protection, he said, he would submit, but he would never submit to any arrangement in which the Corsican people would be compelled to return to the rule of the Genoese. That was an uncontroversial opinion, and it drew hearty cheers. If it meant defying the might of France, he went on, so be it, for he would ensure the Corsicans were well-prepared; but Theodore tamped down talk of war, saying that such a fraught endeavor should only be attempted when all peaceful means had failed. Thus, he called upon the representatives to ratify his choice of deputies to be sent to Boissieux: Orticoni, his foreign minister, and Gianpietro Gaffori, his secretary of state. They were easily approved by acclamation. Theodore, again, was being sincere; he certainly did hope that the French could be made to change their stance on Genoese sovereignty. Negotiations, however, were also a way to buy time.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the intervention of the French army in Corsica would have dissuaded the syndicate from its plans to prop up Theodore. Instead, they doubled down. After the Yongfrau Agathe returned to Amsterdam with oil, investment in the scheme had only grown, and the syndicate began preparing a new shipment. All the French intervention seems to have done is convince them that this time they would have to send much more materiel and ensure it was much better protected. The 16-gun Yongfrau Agathe now prepared for its return, but it would be joined by the 12-gun sloop Jacob et Christine; the 40-gun Indiaman Africain; and an escort from the Dutch Navy, the 60-gun warship Preterod. In the holds of the three syndicate ships would be enough munitions to equip an army. Theodore asked for peace, and meant it, but his backers were ready for war.

Footnotes
[1] Technically Boissieux was not a lieutenant-general when he arrived. He was given that rank in March of 1738, less than a month after he arrived on Corsica.
[2] The Flore was a "second order" demi-batterie frigate, meaning that it mounted a partial battery of guns on its second deck—in the case of the Flore, four 8-pounder guns on the lower deck and twenty-two 6-pounders on the upper deck and works. This type of design was abandoned in the second half of the 18th century, in part because the lower gun-ports on these ships were so close to the waterline that rough seas sometimes rendered the lower battery unusable. It was replaced by the "true" frigate beginning in the 1740s, which mounted all its guns on the upper deck and reserved the lower deck for crew quarters and storage. That basic design, frequently augmented with additional guns on the forecastle and quarterdeck, would remain standard for the frigate into the age of steam.

Timeline Notes
[A] Based on what I've read, it seems as if regimental guns were not in use by the French infantry at this time, with even the 4-pounder pieces being under the general command of the artillery corps. This suggests that the initial French force had no artillery at all, although that's hardly incredible—they probably imagined, very sensibly, that they would have little use of it. That list of regiments, by the way, is the same as the OTL list of French regiments which landed in the first French intervention in Corsica around this time. Artillery battalions and several hussar squadrons were eventually posted in Corsica during the first French intervention IOTL, but not until after Boissieux's death in 1739. I'm not aware of the artillery battalions actually doing anything except garrisoning Bastia, and the hussars were soon dismissed because it proved too difficult to find forage for the horses. Corsica is not cavalry country.
[B] Lest you think I am just making the weather favor Theodore, there actually was a storm at about this time, and it really did mess with the French fleet.

Carp · Aug 13, 2017

Soldiers, Smugglers, and Diplomats

Father Erasmo Orticoni, first foreign minister of the Kingdom of Corsica

By late March, Theodore's deputies Gianpietro Gaffori and Father Erasmo Orticoni were on their way to Calvi. Mindful of how previous rebel envoys had been treated by the Genoese, Gaffori and Orticoni requested a guarantee of safe passage from Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat de Boissieux. He did better than that; a company of grenadiers was dispatched a few miles outside of Calvi to escort them, and to make sure that once in the town they were not arrested by Commissioner-General Giovanni-Battista de Mari.

Boissieux treated the envoys very hospitably, but they were not exactly the men he had been hoping for. Boissieux's instructions from Versailles were somewhat conflicted—he was to exhaust all peaceable methods to subdue the rebellion before resorting to violence, but he was also told to avoid any dealings with Theodore, who was presumed to be a likely foreign agent, possibly British. To make peace, he needed high-level interlocutors among the rebels, but while Gaffori and Orticoni fit the bill he was also aware that they were associated with the adventurer-king. When Father Gregorio Salvini had told him by letter that a consulta would be convened to choose representatives, he had welcomed the news and pledged to wait, but he had not known it was to be an affair presided over by Theodore.

Boissieux asked them if they were representing the "Corsican nation," as he had been expecting, or "the Baron Neuhoff." "Why, seigneur," replied Gaffori with a bit too much cheek for a diplomat, "I might just as well ask whether you are a representative of France, or His Majesty King Louis." Boissieux's reply to this is not known, but the dilemma was clearly laid out—while Theodore's "reign" was a very loose one, he was sufficiently well-regarded by the Corsican leaders that it was difficult for Boissieux to negotiate with the "rebel movement" without going through him or his ministers, and that made it impossible for Boissieux to have it both ways. The general was irked but not dissuaded by this, and continued the talks for several more days, but the proposals of Gaffori and Orticoni were nonstarters. They suggested a number of possible alternatives. Of course, they said, independent Corsica could be a friendly and faithful ally of France, or failing this perhaps the French could permit Corsica to be an autonomous principality under the ultimate suzerainty of the French king. Orticoni even re-iterated Theodore's inventive proposal that through the mediation of the Pope, the French could recognize the "ancient claim" of Rome to Corsica in exchange for the cession of Avignon. Such proposals were somewhat beyond Boissieux's pay grade, but his orders were fairly clear. He could not, he reiterated, endorse or accept any proposal which denied the sovereignty of Genoa over Corsica.

To his credit, Boissieux's counter-proposal was humane and generous, and had it been offered a few years before the rebels would have considered themselves lucky. He proposed a general amnesty for all the rebels, forgiveness for all debt incurred by unpaid taxes since 1729, limits on the hated salt tax to put it in line with what the rebels had written into their own 1736 constitution, a mandate that all dioceses on Corsica be filled by Corsican bishops, the construction and funding of a university in Corsica for the native people, and other such concessions. Boissieux was obviously aware of the various demands the rebels had made since the rebellion's inception.

Had the rebels possessed any confidence in the willingness of the Genoese to honor these concessions, perhaps they would have accepted the general's offer, but one further proviso was a deal-breaker—Boissieux insisted that the Corsicans be disarmed. Gaffori and Orticoni, like all of the rebel leaders with half a brain, understood very well that promises by the French were only good so long as the French were present. Disarmament, however, was rather more permanent, and as soon as the French were gone the people would be helpless to resist any arbitrary decision by the Genoese Senate to rescind Boissieux's concessions. Indeed, that exact story had played out in 1734, when the rebels had surrendered to the might of the imperial forces and received promises that their grievances would be addressed if they only gave up their arms, only for the Genoese to rip up the agreement the very moment Austrian boots left Corsican beaches. They were not going to be fooled again.

Boissieux soon came to sympathize with their cause. He had no strong opinion on the Corsican matter prior to his arrival, aside perhaps from a general aristocratic distaste for rebellion, but his experiences soon turned him against the Genoese. Part of it was personal—he came to detest Mari, who fumed at him for meeting with the Corsican envoys and even tried unsuccessfully to engineer their arrest despite them being under French protection. Mari was furious with Boissieux for the offer he had given the rebels; his proposals were well outside his authority, Mari claimed, for the French had no business dictating Genoese policy, and a Lieutenant-General should dare not presume to tell the Senate what taxes it should demand or what universities it should build. Mari refused to even consider amnesty for the ringleaders of the rebellion, a matter on which he was probably less flexible than his government was, but the pitiless Senate seems to have agreed that the Corsicans had to make up the last nine years of lapsed taxes (for how else were they to pay for this ruinous French occupation force?). Driven by desperation, senatorial debates on the subject of Corsica had grown increasingly deranged and on occasion nearly genocidal. A proposal was made by one senator that, when the French had suppressed the rebellion, the island ought to be "depopulated" and resettled with foreign colonists of a "less contumacious race." As far as the Genoese government was concerned - and Mari quite agreed - Boissieux's job was a mere military matter; he was to crush the rebellion with fire and sword and then hand whatever was left over to the Genoese with no questions asked or demands made. Genoa was, after all, paying his troops; why should she not set the agenda?

Boissieux also came to resent the interference and evasiveness of his own government. Pierre-Jean Pignon, who had held talks with Salvini in Livorno under the authority of the French foreign secretary Jean-Jacques Amelot de Chaillou, arrived in Corsica shortly after Boissieux, but his presence was evidently not diplomatic in nature. The general correctly suspected that Pignon's purpose was to inform Amelot and the chief minister Cardinal André-Hercule Fleury of his activities, and complained to his superiors that Pignon was obviously biased towards the Genoese and probably in their pocket. He may also have resented the notion that Fleury trusted the reports of Pignon, a mere doctor and consul, over a count and veteran French general. Boissieux eventually won that contest, and managed to secure Pignon's recall from Corsica in May, but he was unable to make his government see the situation as he saw it. In a letter to Cardinal Fleury, he argued that no resolution was possible given the circumstances, for even if he reduced the island to submission by force the rebels would resume the fight as soon as he was gone. He requested that the government consider the Corsican request to be made subject to France, either as a French province or as a dependent principality, presumably for some Bourbon cadet.

As Boissieux waited for a response to this missive and for the Corsicans to formally consider his own proposal, hostilities continued between the Corsicans and Genoese. Skirmishing in southeast Corsican continued to escalate, with the Genoese in Porto Vecchio and rebel irregulars from La Rocca, Zicavo, and Fiumorbo launching increasingly violent raids and counter-raids against one another. In the west, the Corsican forces under Marquis Luca d'Ornano had duly complied with the French request to lift the siege of Ajaccio, but in April the Genoese took advantage of his to launch their own offensive from that city under the Genoese commandant Soprani. Soprani's force reaved through the countryside destroying orchards, stealing livestock, and burning houses. A furious d'Ornano managed at last to catch him, and on April 26th the rebels ambushed Soprani's force and reportedly massacred 200 Genoese and filogenovesi militiamen. D'Ornano ordered that no quarter be given, and the few men who somehow ended up as prisoners anyway were brought to the outskirts of Ajaccio and hanged within view of the walls. The French at Ajaccio were shocked, but Boissieux only saw the confirmation of his prior conviction that the rebels would never be reconciled with Genoa.

In May, as diplomacy and conflict were proceeding in parallel in Corsica, a curious and sensational document was published in Le Mercure Historique et Politique, the Amsterdam-based French language gazette edited by Jean Rousset de Missy. It purported to be a cargo manifest of a fleet which had just sailed from Texel bearing cargo for King Theodore and his army of liberty-loving patriots. The sums were sobering:

8,000 muskets, half of these with bayonets
4,000 pistols
1,000 "large muskets" (wall guns?)
800 carbines
27 artillery pieces: a dozen 24-pounders, a dozen 12-pounders, and three "large culverins" of 18-pound caliber
6,000 cannonballs of various calibers
100,000 pounds of coarse gunpowder for artillery
120,000 pounds of fine gunpowder for small arms
400,000 gun flints
100,000 pounds of lead shot
2,000 grenades
1,000 "wooden bombs" (bombes de bois)[A]
2,000 lances
500 hunting knives
3,000 bandoliers, military belts, powder horns, etc.
2,000 picks and other tools
8,000 pairs of shoes
Cloth sufficient for 1,000 straw mattresses and canvas for 1,000 tents
400 uniforms and an unstated number of "flags and standards"
50 drums, 24 trumpets, and one "timbale" (kettle drum)
80 chests containing the personal effects of the king, including cash for paying soldiers and "establishing commerce"

To say that this elicited some comment would be a bit too modest. If accurate, it was enough to supply an army—certainly the Genoese army, with a likely strength of less than 6,000 at the time, would have been amply armed by such a cargo. Some of the items are questionable—what, exactly, did the syndicate think the Corsicans would do with two thousand lances? Otherwise, however, it demonstrated as holistic a view of armed rebellion as one could expect from merchants, in which shoes, tools, and tents are no less important than arms. There are reasons to doubt the strict accuracy of the manifest, as its was published in a known pro-Theodore gazette and provided to de Missy by "Baron von Droste," a relative of Theodore. The fact that it was published at all suggests that it was intended as propaganda, either to dismay the Genoese (or French, for that matter) or to assure readers on the continent that Theodore was no joke.

Regardless, the cargo was still substantial enough to require three merchant ships to carry it, and internal letters within syndicate reveal their estimation of the value of the cargo at a considerable half million florins.[1] Even those who have confidently described the manifest as exaggerated must concede that the sums, at least when it comes to small arms, are not necessarily implausible. Amsterdam had emerged as a major hub of the arms trade in the 17th century. That a consortium of wealthy merchants with connections to banking houses in Amsterdam and Switzerland and the apparent tacit approval of the States General (for certainly nobody could have amassed and exported such a sum of arms without the government's knowledge) could have, in 1738, sent several thousand muskets to Corsica is entirely plausible. Compared to the roughly 180,000 firearms exported to the West African coast in the year 1730 alone by the Dutch and British, such a shipment was practically a rounding error.

To ensure compensation for such a princely sum of armaments, the syndicate placed one of their own in command of the fleet, Pierre Keelmann. Not merely an employee but a major investor himself, Keelmann allegedly had 100,000 florins sunk into the venture and could therefore be relied upon to take a very personal interest in full and prompt payment. He was given express instructions by the syndicate to not unload the supplies until that payment was forthcoming, preferably in the form of oil, to the tune of a million florins in value.[B] The exact profit margin expected is unclear, as the half-million estimate for the cargo clearly does not cover the overhead of the expedition, and it may not include the ready cash which Theodore was provided with. Clearly, however, the syndicate expected to profit, and it would not take much of a margin to make the venture notable; the margin on the musket trade to West Africa in those days sometimes sunk as low as 7%.

It would be several months before this fleet was to arrive. In the meantime, the Corsicans appeared to be more isolated than ever. The French had added four galleys to the initial blockading force of three frigates,[2] although those resource-intensive ships were of somewhat less value to the blockade than the cruisers. Yet the blockade failed to stop at least one ship bearing arms to the rebels, a "pinnace" out of Livorno which arrived in April. The manifest of that ship is unknown—it was small, and the contribution could not have been great—but it was notable in that on board was Matthias von Drost (or Mathieu), widely reported on the continent to be a nephew of Theodore.

Matthias von Drost has long been the most obscure of Theodore's relations. The Genoese alleged that he was not a relation of Theodore at all, nor even a German, but a Corsican spy by the same of "Salvini." Perhaps they were confusing him with the rebel spy and agent Father Gregorio Salvini, who was also active in Livorno. The name "Von Drost" suggests a connection to Theodore's uncle Franz Bernhard Johann von Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid, who was commonly known as the Freiherr von Drost from his subsidiary title of Drost zu Altena und Iserlohe and was the probable "Baron von Droste" who was the source for the manifest published by Le Mercure. Yet while Franz Bernhard had several known sons, none of them appear to have been named Matthias, Mathieu, or any variant thereof, and Franz Bernhard had only adopted that title as a kindness to Theodore, who would himself have been the inheritor of the Neuhoff zu Pungelscheid baronetcy had he not been disinherited by his grandfather. It is impossible that Matthias could have been the son of Franz Bernhard, as Franz's actual heir was 13 years old at the time, and one source gives the father of Matthias as "Georg von Drost."

Clearly the Genoese were wrong, for Theodore himself had no doubt that von Drost was his kinsman. Yet if Matthias was a close relation it is unclear why, despite apparently being in Tuscan service, he would have not appeared in Theodore's schemes until 1738. One must remember, however, that "nephew" was used loosely in this era to mean all matter of male relatives, and that drost was a fairly common title (approximately meaning "bailiff") in the region of the Low Countries and Westphalia. It seems most likely that Matthias was a somewhat distant cousin of Theodore, a theory which is supported by the fact that despite being the first one of Theodore's "nephews" to meaningfully contribute to the cause he appears to have never been considered as a plausible successor. Perhaps that only burnishes his image: he alone of the "Neuhoff nephews" cannot be accused of participating in Theodore's scheme in the hope of attaining royal power.

Drost, unlike Theodore's actual nephew Count Charles Philippe of Trévou, was here to stay, and he fit in well. Drost clearly spoke the language, having been in Tuscany for some years, and while he was no military genius he soon demonstrated that he was competent enough to command and charismatic enough for the Corsican militia to obey him. Theodore made him a general, which seemed to pass without comment; while the promotion of a fellow Corsican to such a rank always elicited envious complaints from their peers, the idea that the king might grant his "nephews" that exalted position immediately upon arrival appears to have been uncontroversial. He was, after all, the king's relative, and in a world where even the Popes exalted their nephews (and had, three years earlier, made a Spanish infante a cardinal at the age of 8), such nepotism was viewed as par for the course.

Footnotes
[1] Presumably "florins" is a reference to Dutch guilders, which were also commonly called florins. Based on known exchange rates in 1731, half a million guilders was equal to approximately 1.07 million French livres. Now, perhaps, would be a good time to remind the reader that Theodore was unable to raise money to get out of debtor's prison when the sum was "only" 30,000 florins.
[2] French galleys of the time were generally 3-gun ships, although for such a small armament the caliber was impressive: Two 18-pounder guns and a 36-pounder, all mounted as bow-chasers.
Some mounted an additional pair of 4-pounder guns in the bow.

Timeline Notes
[A] I don't know what this is. Any French speakers care to help me out here?
[B] I've tried to run some math on this, and without going into details, it doesn't really make sense. Part of the problem is the very limited information on prices and exchange rates that we have. It seems as if either Costa's estimate for the value of Balagnese olive oil was horribly off-base or the syndicate was valuing the oil at an extremely low rate, which seems unlikely. Then again, the syndicate was not basing its assumptions off a thorough study of the Corsican olive economy, but the claims Theodore had made in conversations from his jail cell. This was, essentially, a multi-million dollar gun-running scheme based on the equivalent of figures drawn hastily on the back of a napkin.

Carp · Aug 15, 2017

The Syndicate Fleet

A period drawing of the Dutch 52-gun warship Brederode.

On May 20th, the "syndicate armada" departed from the Dutch port of Texel. The syndicate's ships numbered three: the Yongfrau Agathe, a small fluyt of "twelve large guns and four small ones" under Adolphe Peresen; the Jacob et Christine, a 12-gun sloop under the command of Cornelius Roos; and the Africain (or "L'Africain"), a 40-gun Indiaman, under the overall expedition commander Pierre Keelmann. As was common practice at the time for a group of merchant ships sailing in dangerous waters—and they would be passing along the Barbary coast—they were accompanied by a state escort, a warship recorded as the 60-gun "Preterod" under Captain Alexander Frentzel. It seems very likely that this is a misspelling of the Brederode, a Dutch fourth-rate warship of 52 guns launched in 1731.[1] Once through the Strait of Gibraltar, the fleet made stops at Malaga and Alicante in Spain. Thereafter they were headed to Algiers, where they would be delayed on account of a diplomatic mission which Captain Frentzel was commanded to undertake, specifically a negotiation of peace between the States General and the dey of Algiers Ibrahim III. The fleet was delayed here for nearly two weeks, and only reached Cagliari in Sardinia on August 8th.

In the meantime, Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat de Boissieux played a waiting game. He continued his correspondence to his own government, cautioning that if the Corsicans were allowed to remain in the hands of the Genoese they would probably offer the island to the first power that agreed to take them; it might as well be France. He added too that "Theodore de Neuhof, le soi-disant Roi" was very powerful in the interior and complained of the conduct of the Genoese commissioner-general Giovanni-Battista de Mari, who continually demanded that he "put everything to fire and blood."

In early June, Boissieux received his answer. The chief minister Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury penned a reply directly to the "nationals"—Boissieux handed it over to Theodore's delegates, Gianpietro Gaffori and Erasmo Orticoni—informing them that France would not suffer the sovereignty of Genoa over the island to be abridged, but that if the rebels submitted themselves forthwith to His Most Christian Majesty he would hear their claims and ensure they were fulfilled by the Genoese if found to be just and well-founded. Boissieux, reacting to these instructions and aware of the recent hostilities between the Genoese and the Corsicans, ordered Mari to immediately observe a cease-fire. Mari, as usual, was angered at being told to stand down and raged against the "slothful" conduct of Boissieux and his troops, but his position was weak and there was little he could do but comply. Boissieux required the cease-fire to be mutual, and informed the rebels that he would require collateral. He requested that they furnish prominent hostages to guarantee their good behavior, and promised that these hostages would be held comfortably at Toulon and not under any circumstances placed in Genoese custody. He allowed them two weeks to comply.

Boissieux's action immediately brought peace to the island, for both sides feared French power too much to challenge his diktat. Fleury's terms, however, were not acceptable to the Corsicans, as they still refused to place themselves under Genoese power. Nevertheless, Theodore saw the wisdom of being conciliatory, and authorized Gaffori and Orticoni to agree to provide Boissieux with his hostages as soon as volunteers could be found. Additionally, the delegates requested that the French receive a Corsican envoy at Paris so that any Corsican complaints of Genoese bad faith could be provided directly to the French government. Boissieux was not in a position to approve this, but promised that he would submit the matter to Versailles for consideration. Ultimately, Theodore found his hostages, all of whom really were volunteers. There were eight in total, four from the Dila and four from the Diqua, and they included Filippo Maria Costa, a son of Theodore's chancellor Sebastiano Costa, as well as Alerio Francesco Matra, the son of Marquis Saviero Matra.

For the first time Theodore addressed Boissieux directly, sending him a letter in Gaffori's care. In it, according to his secretary Denis Richard, Theodore was apologetic. He explained that while he had no doubt of the honor and beneficence of the French king, the Corsicans had so little faith in the honor of the Genoese that they could not bring themselves to agree to be ruled by them again. Theodore suggested that he would gladly set an example to "his subjects" and submit himself to His Most Christian Majesty, and implied that without that example it was very likely there would be war. All he requested was that Boissieux cease undermining him and agree that he should not be treated as a common outlaw, as was so far the stance of Boissieux and his government. It was, he claimed, only by his own persuasion that the Corsicans had sent delegates and hostages at all, and thus the French had much to thank him for. Richard, who had a fairly critical view of his sovereign and employer, suggested in his memoirs that Theodore had been looking for a way out; perceiving his situation as bleak and aware of the treatment that would await him if he fell into Genoese hands, he wanted a promise of amnesty and safe conduct should he at last quit the kingdom.

Boissieux did not immediately respond, and was not the sort of man to be won over in a single letter. He was mindful of his own government's attitude towards Theodore. He did, however, forward the letter to Fleury, adding that he had seen no evidence so far that Theodore had any British association and that if Versailles truly wanted to remove him from the picture, it might be more successful if it offered him safe passage and a "dignified retreat" rather than referring to him as a common criminal. That seems to comport with Richard's explanation that Theodore was on the verge of flight, although Boissieux only suggested that Theodore might take advantage of such an offer, not that he had specifically requested it.

At the same time that Theodore was making his overture, Franco-Genoese relations took a turn for the worse. In late July, the Genoese discovered that an engineer in the French army had been making detailed sketches of the defenses of Calvi and sending them back to France. Whether Boissieux knew about or authorized this is unclear, but it prompted a fresh objection by Mari and further fueled his suspicion that the French meant only to take the island for themselves. Mari wrote Fleury directly, complaining that Boissieux had become too close to the rebels and demanding his removal. While the cardinal did not necessarily share the general's view of the situation, however, he had done nothing insubordinate, and certainly Fleury was not going to sack Boissieux based on the request of a Genoese functionary.

So matters dragged on through the summer. The hostages, some of whom had to traverse the length of Corsica from the Dila, took time to gather, and Boissieux was sufficiently assured of their good faith as to not stick closely to his two-week guideline. By August 10th they were all accounted for and had been taken to Toulon on a French frigate. Two days earlier, the syndicate armada had reached Cagliari.

The appearance of the Dutch flotilla, particularly after the publication of its alleged manifest in Le Mercure a few months previously, immediately set the Genoese consul in Cagliari, Mongiardino, on high alert. He wrote Mari to report the arrival of these suspicious ships and urged the Sardinian viceroy, the Marquis Carlo-Amadeo di Rivarolo, to inspect or impound them, but Rivarolo declined to do this. In an apparent effort to deceive observers, Captain Keelmann directed the Yongfrau Agathe and the Jacob et Christine to depart Cagliari alone, so that they would not appear to be in a convoy together.

At this point captains Frentzel and Keelmann undoubtedly had a discussion. Frenztel, a navy officer, was quite aware that no French corvette could withstand the firepower of the Brederode, but he was also mindful of the larger political situation. His government tolerated the syndicate, and perhaps even abetted it, but it had no desire for its own ship to open fire on the French Navy on the syndicate's behalf. What the States General needed was plausible deniability, and so far they had it; if at this moment the Brederode departed from the convoy, the Dutch could very reasonably say that they had been escorting a merchant convoy through hostile waters as was common practice, and whether that convoy had at some later point landed at Corsica was not their concern. Keelmann, however, had been made aware that he would have to land in the north of Corsica if he hoped to be paid, and he feared running the gauntlet of the waters around Calvi where the French presence was presumed strongest.

Frentzel agreed to escort the syndicate ships as far as Cape Revellata near Calvi, and the next day the Brederode and Africain left Cagliari. They traveled north up the western coast of Sardinia and reunited with the smaller ships off Alghero before heading into Corsican waters. Their passage up the western coast was uneventful, although they paused briefly at the Gulf of Sagone to allow the Jacob et Christine to set ashore some volunteers of Theodore's who did not want to risk being caught aboard the syndicate ships by any French or Genoese vessel that might overtake them.[2]

A modern reproduction of a 42-gun VOC Indiaman which may have resembled the 40-gun Africain.[A]

One of these volunteers was another of Theodore's "nephews," Johann Friedrich von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg. Johann Friedrich was actually Theodore's first cousin, although at 25 years of age he certainly could have passed for the king's nephew. His father Werner Jobst Lothar was a younger brother of Theodore's father. As the youngest son of Theodore's grandfather Leopold Wilhelm, Werner had been stuck with the smallest share of the patrimony, amounting to the picturesque but minor fief of Rauschenburg on the Lippe river near the Westphalian town of Olfen. Accordingly, Werner had taken the title of Freiherr von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg, and when he died in 1730 the estate and the title had passed to his son Johann Friedrich. The young lord had been active in Theodore's affairs since his arrival in Amsterdam, and now made his appearance in Corsica with a gaggle of German officers and other hopefuls who had been attracted to the scheme by promises of money and position. Johann Friedrich convinced Keelmann to allow them to disembark with some small arms and ammunition from the syndicate's cargo, at least enough to make sure they were well-protected, but Keelmann was insistent that nothing more would be landed without payment.[B]

On the 24th of August, the syndicate fleet sighted two Genoese barca-longas and the Brederode ran up the Dutch ensign. The ships approached, and a Genoese captain demanded that the Dutch fleet heave to. Captain Frentzel refused; they were not in view of any shore, Frentzel felt no obligation to stop for a Genoese ship, and in any case his flotilla vastly outgunned the two little patrol boats. Eventually the Genoese ships departed for Calvi to inform Mari. On the next day, concerned that he had already done too much, Frentzel decided to take his leave of the flotilla and set a westerly course for Port Mahon.

As Isola Rossa was a significant smuggling depot, the northern coast of Corsica was a site of heavy Genoese and French naval patrols. It was also the only rebel-held port in the olive-rich Balagna, which made it ideal for Keelmann's purposes, but after sighting the Genoese barques and the departure of the Brederode Keelmann did not feel like taking chances. He also needed to placate his co-captains Peresen and Roos, who were on the verge of mutiny and demanded that they re-route to Naples or Livorno. Those captains, unlike Keelmann, were only employees and not investors; they were less concerned with the syndicate's enterprise than their own safety, and as far as they were concerned it was more sensible to try and hawk the arms in their holds at a safer port. Keelmann, however, insisted that his orders were to go to Corsica, and threatened the other captains with legal consequences if they took the syndicate's cargo anywhere else.

Keelmann planned to land at Isola Rossa, but as the fleet approached his worst fears were realized. A flotilla of three ships appeared, three Genoese galleys and the French frigate Flore. With a westerly wind at his back, Keelmann and his fellow ships fled. Wearing its sails, the Africain did its best to keep away from its pursuers, but the Flore was a good sight faster than the lumbering Indiaman. Its captain, the Marquis de Sabran, fired a warning shot at the Africain. As a means of confusion, Keelmann ran out the Spanish flag, but did not slow or heave to. When the frigate kept closing, Keelmann ran out the guns to demonstrate to Sabran what he was dealing with.

Sabran undoubtedly knew that he could not stand against the broadside of the Africain alone, and frustratingly the laggardly Genoese were too far behind to assist him. He attempted instead to overtake the Africain and attempt to arrest one of the smaller ships of the flotilla. Soon he was firing his bow chasers at the Yongfrau Agathe to damage her rigging, while Keelmann struggled to try and interpose himself between the frigate and the fluyt without losing too much speed. The Africain fired a warning shot of her own at the Flore, but Keelmann still hesitated to actually engage her.

The chase, lasting several hours, was eventually decided by the appearance of the Mortella tower at the entrance to the Bay of San Fiorenzo. Owing to its strategic position and Theodore's fears of a French landing in the Nebbio, it was one of the few towers which the rebels had actually garrisoned. The guards did not know exactly what was going on, but they certainly recognized the Flore and saw it firing on the other ships and trained their two 18-pounder guns on the frigate. Soon they were ranging the Flore with their guns, and a curl of smoke began rising from the tower—the gunners were warming up their shot furnace and would soon be ready to lob red-hot shot at the frigate. When a shot whistled over the frigate's deck, the Flore veered away, and the flotilla glided into the bay.[C]

Theodore was only a few miles away at Murato and quickly came to San Fiorenzo. He had some goods to offer them, but told a dismayed Keelmann that most of the oil which had been stockpiled was indeed in the Balagna, and it would take time to arrive. Theodore asked that Theodore begin landing the cargo immediately, but Keelmann refused; his orders were clear. Eventually the two agreed to unload a portion of the cargo—specifically, some of the guns—in exchange for what Theodore did have, if for no other reason than to fortify the harbor, as Keelmann feared the French and Genoese would be back and attempt to cut out the fleet from San Fiorenzo.

It had been a near thing, but the arrival of the syndicate fleet was an enormous boon for Theodore. Prior to Keelmann's arrival, if Denis Richard is to be believed, the king was on the verge of flight. On the diplomatic front, Theodore seemed to be running out of time, and there was a growing faction of the rebel leaders who had grown disillusioned with the idea that Theodore would ever delivered the substantial foreign aid he had promised and opined that it might be better to agree to Fleury's terms before they no longer had that opportunity. Theodore had been increasingly worried for his safety, that someone might turn him in or assassinate him for the Genoese reward money or to gain favor with the French, and was uncertain who he could really trust, even among the various volunteers and deserters who made up his "German life-guard." Now, however, Theodore had received such support as to silence all but his most irreconcilable critics, and the weapons and money to raise all of Corsica—that is, if he could manage to get Keelmann to disgorge them from his ships.[D]

Footnotes
[1] Not to be confused with the previous and much more famous Brederode of 1644, which was the flagship of the Dutch navy during the First Anglo-Dutch War.
[2] The ambassador of the States General to France would later claim that, according to his information, the Brederode had accompanied the syndicate vessels along the Corsican coast for fear of Corsican piracy given the "unsettled" situation on the island, which was particularly asinine as it suggested that fear of the rebels was the reason a Dutch warship had been escorting a massive cache of weapons to those same rebels.

Timeline Notes
[A] This is an image of the replica VOC ship Amsterdam, which was wrecked on its maiden voyage in 1749. I was originally going to note that in the caption, but I thought better of it; after all, in a TL with a POD in 1738 which does actually concern the Dutch the same ship may not necessarily get wrecked in the same place by the same storm 12 years later. I don't actually have any information on the Africain except that it was a 40-gun Indiaman of the mid-18th century, and the idea that it looked similar to the Amsterdam is pure conjecture.
[B] Introducing plausible Theodore successor #2 (after Charles-Philippe de Trevou; Matthias von Drost, for reasons mentioned in the last update, isn't a plausible heir unless everyone else kicks the bucket prematurely). Johann Friedrich, the most minor of barons, has a lot less wealth and status than Charles-Philippe, but that may work in his favor: he's got nothing much to return to in Westphalia, while Charles-Philippe has a prestigious position and hunts with King Louis and might not want to give up the Versailles lifestyle. Additionally, once the fighting gets under way between the rebels and the French, there's reason to think a French successor might be less palatable to the people than a German one.
[C] I'm now realizing just how long it's been since I read my C. S. Forester. Hopefully this naval "engagement" actually makes the slightest bit of sense as I've written it. It's a bit of an awkward situation, really—the side that had the most guns doesn't want to fight, but the other side doesn't necessarily know that at first.
[D] IOTL, Keelmann brought Theodore (who was traveling with the fleet) to Corsica as well as some of his followers, but refused to land the cargo because Theodore had nothing to pay him with; at the time the rebels controlled no ports and Theodore's control over the rebels, having been away since 1736, was nonexistent. As soon as Boissieux heard that Theodore had arrived, he made it known that anyone who harbored him would be treated as an outlaw. He soon left with the fleet for Naples, where Keelmann and his fellow captains were arrested by the Dutch consul (who claimed to have received instructions from Boon) for disobeying their orders. French and Genoese diplomatic pressure eventually obtained their release, and the Dutch were forced to recall the consul after French protests. Theodore was briefly imprisoned at Gaeta, but he had friends in the Neapolitan government, and the imprisonment may have just been a pretext to keep him from the clutches of the French and Genoese. The premise of this TL is that, having returned to the island months earlier, controlling several ports, and most importantly controlling the olive country of the Balagna, Theodore is actually able to pay the syndicate, or at least partially.

Carp · Aug 20, 2017

Vespers

Calenzana at the foot of the mountains

"If your sovereign commands should oblige us to submit ourselves to Genoa, let us first drink the health of the Most Christian King, and then die."

- Reply of the Corsican consulta to King Louis XV

Captain Pierre Keelmann was upset at Theodore's apparent inability to pay him, or at least his inability to pay him more than a fraction of what the syndicate was owed. Neither he nor the other captains, Cornelius Roos and Adolphe Pereson, desired to remain on Corsica any longer than was absolutely necessary. At the moment, however, they were not going anywhere. The Marquis de Sabran, who had chased them into the Bay of San Fiorenzo on the frigate Flore, ordered the ships he had available to patrol as close to the bay's entrance as they dared and enforce a close blockade. Sabran had failed to stop the syndicate flotilla from landing, but he might yet prevent them from leaving, and for now the weather was in his favor. The Flore alone had lacked the firepower to take on the Africain, but with additional frigates and galleys he could very well manage it. The Africain's considerable battery concealed the fact that its merchant crew was under-strength and not well trained for battle.

All they could do was wait for Theodore to deliver, and until then Keelmann refused to land the bulk of the cargo. Finding that even his powers of persuasion were no match for the flinty Captain Keelmann, Theodore sent word to Captain-General Marquis Simone Fabiani, the governor of the Balagna, requiring him to gather and transport as much olive oil as possible to the Nebbio. That was not an easy operation, for it involved crossing what the Corsicans called the Agriate, a rugged region of coast dotted with fields and orchards but traversed mainly by shepherds' tracks over hills of broken granite.[A] That would take time, not simply to move the goods but to round up the men and mules to accomplish the task.

Lieutenant-General Count Louis de Frétat de Boissieux had been informed of the progress of the syndicate fleet ever since it had sailed into Cagliari. Nevertheless, there was still some confusion; the Genoese off Calvi had reported four ships flying the Dutch flag, while Sabran sent a dispatch boat back to Calvi describing his encounter with three ships flying the Spanish flag. This was recognized as a thin disguise, however, probably intended to make any Genoese vessels think twice before shooting at Spaniard ships, and Boissieux sent all these observations back to Versailles. In the meantime, he took matters into his own hands.

Although Boissieux clearly sympathized with the rebels and complained constantly of the ingratitude, brutishness, and incompetence of the Genoese, he was nevertheless determined to do his duty, and the landing of several ships purported to be carrying arms angered him. Had not Theodore and his deputies sworn that they had absolute faith in the honor and good-will of France? Had they not promised to uphold a cease-fire? Why, then, were they apparently now arming themselves for war? Boissieux summoned Theodore's delegates, Father Erasmo Orticoni and Gianpetro Gaffori, and demanded an explanation. Orticoni and Gaffori had not been privy to the syndicate's plans, and weakly explained that merchants often ran the Genoese blockade to deliver "needed goods" to the Corsicans, who would otherwise starve. Boissieux was not fooled—smugglers came to Corsica in little tartanes and barques, not in Indiamen and convoys escorted by Dutch ships of the line.

Boissieux took his strongest action yet and issued a proclamation against Theodore. The rebels, he said, only endangered themselves and risked forsaking the friendship of the King of France if they had dealings with this charlatan. Boissieux threatened severe consequences to those that followed or harbored the so-called king. He no doubt remembered Theodore's letter, in which the baron had seemingly had been most conciliatory and desirous of preserving his own safety, and thought that stern threats might flush him out. Had this proclamation been made earlier, perhaps he would have succeeded. Before it was drafted, however, there were already rumors spreading throughout Corsica that Theodore's long-promised aid had finally come. It was said that a heavily armed "Spanish fleet" had come to Theodore's succor, and that the king had finally brought his great fortune from abroad along with a great arsenal of weapons. The Genoese had long threatened to put Theodore's head on a pike and destroy those who consorted with him, to no avail, and Boissieux's threat was scarcely more effective.

The count was hamstrung by a lack of orders from Paris. He was waiting on a settlement being negotiated at Fontainebleau between French, Genoese, and Austrian representatives regarding the terms that were to be imposed upon the Genoese and Corsicans. The fleet had arrived on the 29th of August, but the "Terms of Fontainebleau" would not be ratified for three more weeks, and Boissieux would not receive them until the 4th of October. He was loathe to begin hostilities until the final terms arrived and an ultimatum could be delivered to the Corsicans. He did, however, order his troops to expand their holds on the two beachheads they possessed, and the French forces occupied several strategic villages around Calvi and Ajaccio. In the north, Fabiani obeyed Theodore's commands not to confront the French and there was no armed resistance, but sporadic fighting began in the south, where militiamen in Celavo skirmished with the French and their allies. Boissieux was cautious; he did not want his companies to run headlong into an ambush like the Genoese had done quite recently, and the French stuck largely to the coastal zones. The first blood, however, had been shed.

Captains Peresen and Roos did not want to be in the middle of a rebellion and doubted that Theodore actually intended to pay them. Keelmann was having increasing difficulty keeping them in check. They had their own ships, after all, and the sailors were largely of the same mind as their captains. Keelmann was also afraid that the growing crowds of Corsicans, gathering to gawk at the "Spanish fleet" or impatiently awaiting their long-promised guns and money, might try to take the cargo by force. To placate his comrades, Keelmann promised Peresen and Roos that he would allow them to depart in one week if there was still no sign of payment.

Although often passed over in modern Corsican historiography, Fabiani's extraction of the Balagna's agricultural wealth was frequently neither voluntary nor compensated. The Balagnese had always been mixed in their sympathies and allegiances, and as the rebel forces withdrew eastwards in the face of the creeping French advance, rounding up livestock, looting storehouses, and otherwise taking everything which might settle the bill with the syndicate or sustain the rebel army, some locals must have wondered whether it would not be better to be under the rule of the French. No doubt Boissieux's troops lived off the land where practicable, but at least the French were not selling off the fruits of the country to foreign merchants, as they were already quite well compensated by the Bank of St. George.[1] On the 18th of September the French occupied Calenzana, a key town which was the site of two major rebel victories, and reported being greeted warmly by the populace. Boissieux probably could have recruited auxiliaries from the population if he had been of such a mind, but he continued to demand disarmament and rejected appeals from some Balagnese who asked to be able to keep their weapons to protect themselves against the "men of the mountains" (probably the Niolesi), believing this to be a ploy.

Soon the produce of the Balagna was trickling through the mule-tracks of the Agriate to the Nebbio. Keelmann wanted to trade as the supply came in—a certain number of barrels for these muskets or those cannons—and at first Theodore was willing to go along with that, but soon he started withholding his supply. He wanted, he said, to settle the bill, and buy all of what the syndicate carried. Theodore seems to have known that he could not deliver all the oil the syndicate had hoped for. Perhaps it was a bluff—Theodore may have known that although Roos and Peresen suggested sailing to Naples instead, there was no guarantee that the Neapolitan government would simply buy up such a large quantity of munitions (for certainly no private individual would be making that purchase). Nor could they be confident that they would get a good price at Naples. They could take Theodore's offer, which was below expectations but still significant, or they could leave with nothing and possibly get even less elsewhere.

The syndicate had not appointed Keelmann as the fleet's leader because he was easily persuaded. The longer he waited, however, the more disgruntled his captains and crewmen became. He was dependent on Theodore for food, too, as his ships had not been supplied with the expectation that they would remain at Corsica for weeks on end. Roos and Peresen, after all, were not investors; they had no skin in the game. He held out for a while, pressing Theodore for more and threatening to take his cargo elsewhere, but ultimately Keelmann agreed to disgorge all the cargo in exchange for the oil Theodore had amassed. He procured from Theodore a promise to repay the difference at a later date. Presumably Keelmann knew that such a promise from Theodore didn't mean much, but it was better than nothing. When a favorable wind finally came and the coast seemed clear, the syndicate ships left San Fiorenzo on a northerly heading, intending to come around Capo Corso and make for Livorno rather than to return through the waters between Calvi and France.

On October 5th, Boissieux made the terms of Fontainebleau known to the Corsican delegates. They were not dramatically different from those which Fleury and Boissieux had already offered. The only major additional concession offered was the abolition of galley slavery as a judicial punishment, which was right out of Theodore's playbook. The bottom line, however, was that Boissieux's ultimatum—for that was what it was—still required the Corsicans to accept Genoese sovereignty and give up their weapons. Gaffori and Orticoni knew this to be unacceptable, but they nevertheless promised to take the proposal back to the "Corsican nation." Another consulta was convened, this time as Corti, on the 13th of October. Once more it was chaired by Theodore, but this time the king was in better spirits, for he was armed.

The mood of the delegates arriving at the consulta varied between desperation and resignation. The Corsicans very sensibly feared French power, but rumors of the terms of the Fontainebleau ultimatum had filtered out and the rebel leaders could see no alternative to resistance. Rumors of Theodore's foreign aid, however, had also spread. There was uncertainty as to whether this "armada" was real, or just another empty promise by the king who had already made quite a few. The delegates, from the staunch royalists to nationalists flirting with the indifferenti, looked to Theodore to see if he offered any hope.

It was one of the pivotal moments of Theodore's reign: this time, he delivered. The conciliatory king of the previous consulta was replaced by a defiant sovereign, accompanied by his recently-arrived cousin Johann Friedrich von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg, Corsican guard officers, and his foreign leibgarde, dressed in the green uniforms which had been sent by the syndicate. He enumerated to the delegates the extraordinary quantity of weapons, money, and supplies he had procured, and promised that as long as he lived he would never cease fighting for the freedom of Corsica from tyranny and slavery. There was only one course of action remaining for a self-respecting people: to drive the French and Genoese out of their country once and for all.

The consulta drafted a response to King Louis which was soon to be marveled at by the European gazettes. It referred to the king with the greatest respect, but abandoned the conciliation of their last missive entirely. They rejected the terms of Fontainebleau, and indeed their very premise, as they had been negotiated with French, Imperial, and Genoese diplomats but without a single representative of the Corsican nation. They would never suffer to return to the Genoese yoke, and if necessary would fight the Genoese, the French, and indeed the whole of Europe to gain their freedom. They welcomed and prayed for the friendship of the King of France, but if he sent his armies against them and destroyed them utterly, so be it; they would at least die as free men. Their response ended memorably with a Latin quotation: Melius est nos mori in bello quam videre mala gentis nostrae; "It is better for us to die in battle than to behold the calamities of our people."[2]

Boissieux, exasperated by what he considered an overly dramatic reply, ordered the occupation of the Balagna starting with the recently-captured port of Algajola. His error was in assuming that these conquests would meet with the same lack of opposition which the French had encountered at Calenzana and elsewhere thanks to the pacifying influence of King Theodore. On the 20th, the French advanced on Algajola only to find several hundred Balagnese militia who were dug in and well armed with small arms and artillery. The French force, only about 300 strong, engaged the defenders but withdrew as it became obvious they had neither the numbers nor the preparation to take the position.

This first shedding of blood, alongside the words of the consulta and the king, animated the nation to action. Although the matter of who fired first at Algajola is uncertain, Theodore proclaimed that the French, in "attacking" the nationals at Algajola, had broken their own truce and were attempting to "enslave" the Corsicans by force of arms. Goaded into resistance, within days rebel militia struck French positions around Ajaccio and Calvi in near simultaneous attacks. In the Balagna, they were soon joined by Niolesi fighters streaming down from the mountains as well as Theodore's "regular" forces. On October 24th, French pickets around Calenzana came under attack, and by the following day the French commander there was reporting that his 500-man battalion was being assaulted by more than a thousand Corsicans. They included not only Balagnese militia but Niolesi fighters streaming down from the mountains. The French succeeded in holding their position after a full day of intense fighting, but although Boissieux sent another battalion the rebel attacks only grew more fierce. Rebel militias from further east arrived, and eventually so too did Theodore's "regular" forces, who came bringing muskets for the insurgents and with several pieces of artillery. The French, without any artillery of their own, had no response to this bombardment, and Boissieux wrote that the garrison was now in danger of being surrounded and cut off by more than two thousand Corsican rebels. Outnumbered and outgunned, the French withdrew from the town on the 28th, and were subject to aggressive skirmishing by rebel troops all the way back to Calvi.[B] A similar story played out in the south, where local miltias under Lieutenant-General Marquis Luca d'Ornano drove the French back to the safety of Ajaccio. In the space of one week, the French had been ejected from all positions they had "peaceably" seized from the rebels and had suffered more than 300 casualties.

The shocking news was impossible to suppress, and the continental newspapers began calling it the "Corsican Vespers" in analogy to the Silician Vespers, the 13th century island-wide popular rebellion against French rule in Sicily. In truth, they did not have much in common; although often described as a spontaneous popular uprising, the Corsican Vespers were substantially inspired and backed by Theodore's rebel government and its officers. Nor were they "island-wide," for the French had occupied only a small fraction of Corsican territory. Yet the similarities—a sudden and bloody rebellion by the people of a Mediterranean island against French occupiers—were similar enough for the journalists and coffee-house intellectuals. The name stuck on the continent, and soon on Corsica, for Theodore knew that the Sicilian rebellion had succeeded and actively encouraged the comparison.[C]

Depiction of a Corsican royalist uniform from the 1740s. Uniforms were always in very limited supply among the rebels, and generally speaking they were only worn by soldiers in Theodore's "regular" units (the Corsican "royal guard," the Leibgarde, and the foreign regiment) as well as some Corsican militia colonels and captains.[3][D]

Footnotes
[1] The state bank of the Republic of Genoa.
[2] A slightly abridged Maccabees 3:59.
[3] The first description of the "1738 uniform" describes it as "green with gold braid," but presumably the "gold braid" was only on uniforms for officers as it is hard to imagine the syndicate falling in for such extravagance otherwise. Green as the choice of color must have originated with Theodore. An earlier report mentions that his servants wore "green livery" and the ribbon of the Order of Deliverance was also green. As noted, the vast majority of rebel fighters did not have uniforms, but by early 1739 royalist militiamen often identified themselves with a green cockade.

Timeline Notes
[A] Today, the "Agriates Desert" is a dry, maquis-covered wasteland. In Theodore's time, however, the Agriate—the very name comes from its history of cultivation, as in "agrarian"—was a productive area where wheat, fruit, and olives were grown. In the early 20th century, abandonment owing to the general demographic collapse of Corsica and over-intensive land use (particularly the use of fire for land-clearing) led to desertification and desolation, to the point where the Agriates was apparently considered by France as a possible (underground) nuclear test site. Thus, while hauling barrels of olive oil through the Agriate on the backs of mules ITTL isn't exactly a walk in the park, it's not nearly as daunting as it would be today.
[B] For those keeping track, this is now the Third Battle of Calenzana.
[C] Analogous to OTL, although the key incident of the "vespers" IOTL was the rebel attack on the French garrison at Borgo, which unfolded in a similar manner—the French repulsed the initial attacks, but came under such pressure that even with reinforcements they had to retreat to Bastia. Spread out over various points on the island, Boissieux's 3,000 men was insufficient to defend any one point from a concerted rebel attack, particularly so near the Castagniccia. ITTL, Calenzana is further from the rebels' center of gravity than Borgo, but the rebels now have the benefit of Theodore's arms and "regular" troops.
[D] Blank uniform template courtesy of Not By Appointment.

Carp · Aug 24, 2017

Madonna della Serra

The chapel of Madonna della Serra above Calvi

"The Corsicans are a people as brave and stout-hearted as these English: they will be overcome, I believe, only by prudence and kindness. To maintain the sovereignty of this island, it appears to me to be essential to disarm the inhabitants, and to soften their manners... one can see from the example of the Corsicans, whose courage and virtue gives to the men their love of freedom, that it is dangerous and unjust to oppress."

- King Frederick II of Prussia, Anti-Machiavel, 1740 [A]

Even after the humiliating blow the Corsicans dealt to the French occupying forces during the week-long "Corsican Vespers," Theodore did not abandon the pretense at diplomatic conciliation. Within days of the bloody French retreat from Calenzana he sent an apologetic letter to Versailles by way of Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat de Boissieux. He regretted, he wrote, the recent bloodshed, and claimed that there was still great love for France and her king among the Corsicans. He blamed the Genoese and their scheming negotiators at Versailles for misleading the French into crafting terms which were hateful to the Corsicans and had excited them to "intemperate action." He asked humbly for renewed French mediation, albeit with Corsican delegates at the table this time, and for the time being blithely "authorized" the French to remain in the positions which the Genoese had ceded to them in order to keep the peace.

It was inconceivable that the French, upon suffering hundreds of dead or wounded to Corsican arms, would subsequently reward the rebels by inviting their delegates to Fontainebleau, and Theodore presumably knew this. Indeed, Theodore was playing a game he had played before with Boissieux and would continue to resort to the rest of his life, in which he posed as the "reasonable" counterpart to the popular will as represented by the consulta or the Diet. Frequently, when an action had to be taken which was deleterious to the relations of Corsica with another power, Theodore would allow or encourage it to happen and then send his earnest regrets to the aggrieved party, claiming that he would have done otherwise had the "nation" not been so forceful. In a sense he was playing off the common stereotype of his own subjects as hot-blooded, violent, and impulsive; he was the lone civilized man on an island of savages, the only adult in a room full of truculent children, and that a refined German nobleman would struggle to control such a people had a certain intuitive sensibility to it in the continental mind.

For the moment, however, no amount of soothing words or diplomatic maneuvering could stop events that had been set in motion. Boissieux had been personally humiliated by the uprising; after nine months on Corsica, he had nothing to show for it but failed negotiations and dead Frenchmen, and Mari's constant complaints about Boissieux's inactivity were starting to find more receptive ears at Versailles. Although he was sympathetic to the Corsican cause, Boissieux was a French officer first and foremost, and needed to take strong measures to restore French honor and save his own career.

Boissieux's strongest force was with him in Calvi, but his maneuvers there were severely restricted. After the French defeat at Calenzana, the Corsicans had occupied the mountains above Calvi, and very soon a Moor's Head flag could be seen at the chapel of Madonna della Serra only a mile and a half from the citadel of Calvi. Standing upon a range of granite hills within extreme artillery range of parts of the town, it was the ideal command post from which to direct a siege. The chapel seems to have been occupied spontaneously, but within days the rebels there had been reinforced by a company of militia under Captain Paolo-Maria Paoli, one of the lieutenants of Captain-General Marquis Simone Fabiani, and they would not be the last to arrive.

Fabiani had not started the Third Battle of Calenzana, but he had seen to its conclusion, arriving on the scene by the third day with the Balagnese militia. He had effectively assumed command of all rebel forces in the vicinity, as was arguably his prerogative as governor of the Balagna, vice-president of the war council, and the highest ranking military officer in the kingdom.[1] In the wake of the Vespers, however, he had fallen out with Theodore over strategy. Fabiani wished to take the initiative and drive Boissieux and Mari into the sea; now, he argued, the rebels had the men, the money, the weaponry, and most importantly the will to invest the town and bombard it into submission. Calvi was a nest of filogenovesi; nothing would be lost by flattening it. Delay would only allow the French time to recover and reinforce their position.

Theodore, as mentioned, had only just sent a letter to Versailles authorizing the French garrisons to remain in place. It was hardly consistent to begin bombarding them. Although the king had boasted of his willingness to face any enemy and spoke proudly of the "victories" of the Vespers, he privately feared that the uprising had only enraged the French and prematurely pushed them from passive peacekeeping into active hostility. He had no desire to antagonize Boissieux further. But his position was precarious, for he could also not afford to be seen as weak, or worse yet pro-French; his prime minister, Marquis Luigi Giafferi, had only just published an edict against "traitors to the nation" which promised swift and pitiless justice to those who abetted foreign occupiers, whether Genoese or French. Neither could he afford to alienate Fabiani, who was in effective control of rebel forces in the northwest and one of his most able generals.

Theodore felt he could do little but let Fabiani pursue his own strategy. The king, however, did not endorse it himself, and his assistance to Fabiani was limited. The general's troops were provided with muskets, powder, and shot from the syndicate armory, but crucially Theodore withheld his artillery, citing the difficulties of moving large guns overland across the Agriate and Balagna. Nor did his regular forces, the Guard and the Foreign Regiment, take part, although his chief engineer and artillery officer Major Antone Nobile Battisti was present for at least part of the siege.

Although set back on his heels by the uprising, Boissieux still had a formidable force of 1,200-1,300 battle-ready French infantry at Calvi. Had he acted quickly, when the force at Madonna della Serra consisted of a few hundred irregulars, he might have pre-empted Fabiani's arrival. He hesitated to attack, however, as he had no reliable information on the numbers or disposition of the enemy. By the time the French made an attempt on the hills on the 8th of November, Fabiani and his militia had already been present and preparing their position for several days. The rebels had no artillery, but neither did the French. The initial French attack on the 8th, made by around 400 men, made good initial progress and took the western end of the ridge within 400 yards of the chapel. They found themselves heavily outnumbered, however, and were prevented from moving on the chapel itself by the danger of being flanked from the south. Boissieux sent his first communique to the rebels since the Vespers, demanding that they withdraw from the ridge and cease menacing the town or face imminent battle; Fabiani refused, and instead suggested that Boissieux consider honorable terms of a French surrender.

That suggestion was premature. Boissieux was not afraid to launch an assault; he was merely preparing for it. The probing attack had found that the "chapel," atop a granite outcrop and surrounded by a thick wall, was really more of a small redoubt than a church, and Boissieux had asked Giovanni-Battista de Mari to be able to requisition Genoese artillery to assist in its capture. In a rare moment of cooperation borne of mutual interest, the Commissioner-General had agreed, although his supply was not great; most of the citadel's guns were large garrison pieces which were not only too large to be practical but had no field carriages anyway, limiting the French to a handful of relatively light guns whose purpose had been to sweep the landward approach to the citadel with grapeshot.

French Grenadier of the Auvergne regiment c. 1750

The French launched their second attack on the 12th, sending around 600 men led by two companies of Auvergne grenadiers. They found resistance much stronger than it had been on the 8th, with a heavy musket-fire issuing from behind the cover of thickly-strewn granite boulders. The difficult approach tended to funnel the attackers together, making them even easier targets. Covering fire from the French artillery was devastating to the chapel, which was heavily damaged, but it was only modestly effective at suppressing the fire from the dispersed defenders. Still the unflinching grenadiers and much of the rest of the first wave behind them succeeded in ascending the hill and reaching the walls of the chapel. The "crest" of the hill, however, was something of a shallow bowl, with a second ridge behind the first. Here the Corsicans had made a fallback position and subjected the French to a murderous crossfire. Worse still, the French artillery had no line of sight on this second ridge and could no longer support the attack. The first wave soon retreated. A second wave did only marginally better, contesting the top of the hill with the rebels for some time, but was forced back by the more numerous militiamen. A simultaneous attempt to flank the defenders' position by way of a seaside trail with four fusilier companies was bogged down by rebel sharpshooters, and failed to make progress in a timely enough manner to help the main attack.

The French had made an honorable showing considering that they were assaulting a larger force in an elevated, prepared position without artillery support, but their efforts were not enough to dislodge the royalist militia, and the French had been mauled in the process. A French apothecary (medical officer) present, who kept an extensive journal of the campaign, recorded 86 dead and 177 wounded; Fabiani reported to Theodore that the Corsicans had lost only 36 men with around 80 wounded. For the time being, Boissieux made no further attempt at the rebel overlook. It was not long before Fabiani, against Theodore's wishes, brought two 12-pounder iron guns to the summit which he had possessed during the siege of Algajola. It was not possible to strike the citadel itself, but he could lay shot rather indiscriminately into the outskirts of the town, where the French soldiers were garrisoned because the Genoese refused to allow them into the citadel. That only sunk French morale further, which suffered from both defeat and idleness through the winter, and there were fights reported between the French and the Genoese garrison.

Not all was bad news for the French. The situation in the south near Ajaccio was more fluid, and the French commander there succeeded with a ruse de guerre against the Corsicans: Noting that the rebels had no uniforms, he procured Corsican costumes and dressed his men in them, and in this guise launched a surprise attack that resulted in more than a hundred militiamen killed or captured including two rebel captains. French gains there, however, were only slight; with two battalions it was not possible to either defeat the forces of Lieutenant-General Marquis Luca d'Ornano in the field or hold much territory against him. At Porto Vecchio, raids and counter-raids continued, and the French companies there did little but to make the Genoese feel freer to range further afield with their punitive strikes, which they felt quite free to do now that the truce had fallen apart.

Whether or not the Corsicans could have seriously threatened the French position at Calvi that winter is uncertain. Theodore never committed his artillery to find out. In his defense, however, the time to accomplish this was limited, it was now winter with all the attendant difficulties of the season, and Fabiani did not control a position which could either directly threaten the citadel or cut off its resupply by sea. At least the victory was a boost to the morale of the Corsicans, who could now claim that they had defeated the vaunted French army even without the benefit of surprise. The celebration was understandable, but premature, for soon they would face a mightier force. The Battle of Madonna della Serra convinced Boissieux that the island simply could not be reduced with the forces available to him, and certainly not without better artillery support. The "second wave" of French troops which would arrive on the island in January of 1739 included four more infantry battalions, one each of the regiments of Flanders, Béarn, Cambrésis, and Agenois, as well as several companies of the 1st and 3rd battalions of the Royal Corps of Artillery, bringing the nominal strength of the French force to around 5,500 men.

Footnotes
[1] While Fabiani did not have authority over generals in other theaters, he was the only person during the revolution whom Theodore gave the rank of Captain-General.

Timeline Notes
[A] A real quote, and an example of how widely known and commented on the Corsican revolt was at this time. Although the Anti-Machiavel was published in 1740, Frederick finished it by late 1739, so he was writing this as the French intervention was still ongoing and before Maillebois had completed the island's pacification. When he says "these English" in this quote, he means the ancient Britons, as he discusses their resistance to Roman rule in the previous paragraph.

Carp · Aug 26, 2017

Taking Sides

For all the Corsicans, even in the fortify'd Places, only look out for an Opportunity to shake off the Genoese Yoak; and all People of the best Sense, considering the Situation of the Country, and the untractable Temper of the Natives, who are for that Reason call'd The Devils of Corsica, think it will be a difficult Task to reduce them.

- The Pennsylvania Gazette, October 1738[A]

The French chief minister Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury had no doubts as to how France needed to respond to the assaults and provocations of the rebels. In December, Boissieux received a letter from the minister informing him of the reinforcements already gathering in Antibes and added that the honor of France demanded that the actions of the Corsicans at Calenzana and elsewhere "do not go unpunished." The overall mission, however, remained unchanged, despite the repeated advice of Ambassador Jacques Campredon that the government should use the opportunity to conquer the island for itself. That was the deepest fear of the Genoese Commissioner-General Giovanni-Battista de Mari, but there was no real reason to worry. France had signed a treaty with the Emperor stipulating "that they will never suffer the Island of Corsica, under any Pretence whatsoever, to depart from the Government of the Republic of Genoa," and Fleury fully intended to honor it.

The other object of French ire was the Dutch Republic, which Fleury blamed for stiffening the resistance of the Corsicans and indirectly causing French blood to be spilled. The Spanish flag flown by Captain Pierre Keelmann had not fooled anyone, and the French ambassador Gabriel-Jacques de Salignac, Marquis de Fénelon, delivered a bitter letter of protest to the States General. "The Republic cannot now disagree," wrote Fénelon, "that such a proceeding and the impunity with which it was conducted would show little regard for the King and the friendship of His Majesty." The Dutch ambassador in Paris, Van Hoëy, was likewise summoned to hear the remonstrations of Paris. Until now the States General had received only the protests of the Genoese, which it had arrogantly dismissed, but France had to be handled more delicately.

The Dutch denied any contact with or support for Theodore, but in a statement to Fénelon the government questioned what business it was of France in the first place. If, the Dutch promised, there was a declared state of war between France and "the Corsicans," they would certainly not allow their nationals to support the enemies of His Most Christian Majesty with arms, but it appeared to them that this was not the case. It was a rather staggering claim, for it looked rather like de facto recognition of the Corsican state (if not Theodore explicitly) by the United Provinces—after all, one could not declare war on that which was not in some sense sovereign. Such a declaration would never come from France—it would enrage the Genoese, who would not abide such implied legitimacy for the rebel movement, but more importantly it would undermine the entire premise of the French intervention, to wit, the suppression of unlawful rebellion and the restoration of order to Genoese territory.

France was not to be outplayed by mere rhetorical tricks, and there were limits to how far the Dutch government was willing to go for the sake of a single private trading company. In February of 1739 the French succeeded in pressuring the States General to ban their citizens from having any commerce with the Corsican rebels. It had very little immediate impact on the syndicate, which even before Keelmann's somewhat disappointing report had been disposed to let the matter play out for a while and see how Theodore did with the vast armory they had sold him. Actually, one ship was sailing from Amsterdam with arms for the Corsicans at the very moment the agreement was published, but it was unlikely to be a liability to the Dutch government. Firstly, although probably financed in part by the syndicate it was formally the endeavor of Theodore's "nephew" Matthias von Drost, who was not a Dutch citizen; and secondly, Drost's plan did not involve sailing directly to Corsica, but taking his cargo to Livorno and smuggling it to the island in the traditional manner with small craft. In any case, it would eventually become clear that the States General had no intention of enforcing their pledge in a serious manner, and it is doubtful that this French "diplomatic success" meaningfully changed the course of the revolution.

December was to be the calm before the storm. Mountain snows kept many of the highland militias at home, the French reinforcements would not arrive until the following month, and Boissieux himself was taken ill for a time. In the Nebbio, Theodore did his best to prepare for what seemed likely to be a very serious fight. Attempts were made to revitalize the rather poorly implemented militia system, including shortening the time of rotation and requiring militia battalions to muster regularly at certain locations if they wished to receive munitions and pay for their officers. The "Royal Guard," finding a new glut of recruits, expanded to a nominal strength of 600 men in ten companies, and its name was changed to the "Corsican Guard" (Guardia Corsa), possibly to give it a more patriotic feel or to distinguish it from the Germanic Leibgarde (or Guardia del Corpo) which actually protected the person of the king.[1] Present too in the Nebbio was the Foreign Regiment (Reggimento Straniero), which had been placed under the overall command of Lieutenant-Colonel Karl Christian Drevitz, a former infantry officer of the little army of the Electorate of Cologne. He was only one of at least two dozen such "Colonesi" veterans who served Theodore—Cologne was the king's birthplace—and uniquely for foreign volunteers in Corsica, most of them seem to have continued to wear their blue Electoral uniforms in Corsican service, which was just as well since the king's green uniforms were in short supply.[B]

The dividends of the Vespers were not limited to guard recruitment. Despite Theodore's apprehensions about provoking the French, the outbreak of hostilities had an immediate effect on the "national consciousness." A new wave of patriotism swept the country, and although this ardor was really more for Corsica than its foreign king, Theodore could not help but be identified with the new spirit of resistance and he and his ministers made every effort to ensure it was so. Just like his landing in 1736, as if by magic, he had appeared in the nick of time with arms and supplies to secure the people's liberty, and his stately presence at the consulta left no doubt that regardless of what his actual sway over the islanders was his face and his name were clearly identified with the cause. Although it probably made Theodore flinch, as he was still trying in vain to smooth tensions with Boissieux, Costa wrote that the warcry of the rebels at Calenzana had been "Morte ài Francesi, Evvivu u Re" - Death to the French, Long Live the King.

Another salutary effect of this nationalist fervor was the total collapse of the indifferenti movement. The "indifferents" had long maintained that they were patriots, just not "Teodoresi;" they desired a Corsica free of both Genoa and the Baron Neuhoff. Accordingly, when the French had first arrived on the island, Ignazio Arrighi and the other indifferenti leaders had practically flung themselves at Boissieux. It seemed to be the moment they had been waiting for; a foreign power had arrived to take control of the island in opposition to both the tyrannical Genoa and the charlatan Theodore. Although now frequently depicted as treachery, the idea that French rule would be welcome alternative to that of Genoa had been a fairly uncontroversial stance earlier in the rebellion. Theodore's own prime minister, Luigi Giafferi, had been a leading member of the "pro-French" faction encouraged by Campredon prior to Theodore's arrival, and Theodore's deputies themselves had recently floated the idea of Corsica becoming a subject principality to the Bourbons.

At the very same time that Boissieux had been meeting with Theodore's emissaries, he had also been exchanging letters with Arrighi, who had assured the general of his support. He was to regret it, for having fully and prematurely committed themselves to the French cause the leaders of the indifferenti found the rug pulled out from under them when Boissieux made it abundantly clear that French power had come only to restore Genoese rule. For a time, Arrighi seems to have pretended this was not the case and petitioned Boissieux to encourage Versailles towards another policy (precisely what Theodore was doing at the same time). His hope of a French alternative was dashed to pieces, however, when the terms of Fontainebleau were made public. His vocally pro-French record now put him in the position of appearing to be a Genoese collaborator, and since the indifferenti had boycotted the consulta of Corti due to Theodore's presence there was nobody to speak in his favor when he, Father Giovanni Aitelli, and other indifferenti leaders were denounced by the consulta of Corti as traitors to the nation.

The leaders of the indifferenti turned to Boissieux for succor, but after the Vespers the general was not in a welcoming mood. He received their entreaties coldly, rejecting their clumsy attempts at re-negotiating the French position and making the same demand of them that he made of the other rebels: surrender your arms and submit to Genoese rule. Arrighi resisted, pleading that it was madness to disarm in the face of hostility from "the Baron's men," but Boissieux was unrelenting, and informed him that unless he and his militias surrendered their weapons to the French they would be treated as any other rebels. Arrighi, feeling his had no choice, caved to this demand, but immediately thereafter the royalist Marquis Luca d'Ornano published a decree countermanding Arrighi and offering his own ultimatum: all men of Vico had five days to come to the village of Guagno, with their arms, to surrender and pledge loyalty to the King, or be declared traitors to the nation in absentia. It was the last straw for Arrighi's authority, and he abandoned Vico for fear of being turned over to the royalists. Arrighi's last hope, that the French would establish control in the northwest first and rescue him from d'Ornano, was crushed when the French were defeated at Madonna della Serra.

Spurned by the French, abandoned by many of the locals, and pressed by vastly more numerous and better-armed royalist forces, Arrighi, Aitelli, and a handful of other indifferenti leaders surrendered themselves to the French.[2] Boissieux magnanimously offered them safe passage into exile as an alternative to Genoese "justice." All of them accepted. While this was hardly the end of anti-Theodore sentiment in Corsica, the indifferenti as a semi-cohesive, territory-holding faction had completely ceased to exist by the end of 1738. The Corsicans, or at least their leaders, were now in the main either realisti or filogenovesi.

Corsica at the beginning of 1739 (Click to enlarge)
Green: Royalist territory
Red: Genoese territory
Blue: French or joint Franco-Genoese occupation
Blue striped: French-held territory abandoned during the Vespers
White: Unknown, contested, or neutral

Footnotes
[1] Sometimes called the Royal Corsican Guard (Guardia Corsa Reale) to distinguish them from the 17th century Corsican Guard of the Popes (Guardia Corsa Papale).
[2] Presumably either by boat to Calvi or overland to Ajaccio, as the royalist blockade of Calvi made a land approach to Boissieux's headquarters impossible.

Timeline Notes
[A] Benjamin Franklin's newspaper. The quote is lifted largely from a real quote regarding the Corsicans in the Gazette. Notably, the paper also printed an abridged list of the manifest of the syndicate fleet, claiming 24 guns and 9,000 muskets. In case you were wondering, it records the bombes de bois as "wooden shells."
[B] Drevitz is not fictional, but he is something of a partly-fictionalized or composite character. A certain Lieutentant-Colonel Drevitz indeed served in Corsica and was one of the rebel leaders who IOTL defeated Marchelli at Isola Rossa in 1738, and Germans wearing the uniforms of Electoral Cologne indeed showed up among the Corsican rebels around this time. There is no evidence that Drevitz was one of these men of Cologne, but it seems plausible. A number of Germans in rebel service pop up in these years, including a certain German drummer who was evidently chosen as one of the rebels' emissaries to a French commander. Most of them were probably there because of Theodore, either on account of a preexisting acquaintance with the king or his "nephews" or because they had been hired in Amsterdam or thereabouts by Theodore or Drost. "Karl Christian" is a random fabrication, as Drevitz's given name is not recorded.

Carp · Aug 26, 2017

A Closeup of Madonna della Serra

Hey, not really an update here so much as a look at what I visualized for the Battle of Madonna della Serra, a.k.a. "the Corsican Bunker Hill where they actually win."

All pictures are expandable.

A drone's eye view of the chapel, looking south, giving you a sense of the compound layout. The granite rise behind the chapel is part of the "second ridge" from which the defenders would have rallied and repelled the French attack. The distance from the top of that ridge to the chapel is about 250 yards. That's rather long range for a smoothbore musket, but still at the range where lethal wounds could be inflicted, and though the Corsicans were not good at Frederician-style line combat they were said to be good shots. Entrance to the chapel can only be obtained by the stairs around the back (the south side), which would thus be in the field of fire of the second ridge.

While this is not the chapel that existed in 1738, as it was destroyed during the French intervention, the old chapel occupied the same location. The very fact that it was destroyed "during a siege" in 1740 suggests that even in its original form it was of strategic value, otherwise presumably there would have been no reason to destroy/bombard it.

Another drone shot, but looking north this time. Calvi and its citadel are plainly visible, giving you a sense of the proximity of the rebel position to the town. This view also shows the French path of advance, a shrub-covered slope funneled directly towards the chapel-redoubt which is largely treeless once you get within 300 yards of the chapel.

Okay, okay, this one is just scenery porn, so sue me. A very nice picture of the chapel, showing the access stair at the back, with the Corsican mountains in the background.

LordVorKon said:
Overall, I'd say that if this is the only thing anyone's got to complain about, you're doing a damn fine job, sir.

Fixed, and thanks very much!

Carp · Aug 30, 2017

Second Wave

A French 8-inch bronze mortar, mid 18th century

The French had evidently learned nothing from the mishap suffered by their fleet in the previous year, when an attempt to land soldiers on Corsica in February fell afoul of the notoriously rough winter seas. At least in 1738 the ships had been merely scattered and delayed, and since Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat de Boissieux had not intended to immediately lead them into action this delay did not greatly trouble him. In 1739, however, the landing was attempted even earlier, in early January, and once again a storm scattered the convoy. For most of the fleet, the disruption was minimal. Six companies of the Cambrais regiment, however, had a very different experience when their ships were blown off course to the east.

Four companies were wrecked near Ogliastro, seven miles east along the coast from Isola Rossa, and two more were blown clear into the Bay of San Fiorenzo. Those at Ogliastro were swiftly surrounded by the Balagnese militia, while the pair of tartanes which had blown into the bay were snapped up by the royalist warship Madonna del Rosario, the captured Genoese galley which had featured in the siege of San Fiorenzo and had served as a rebel patrol craft in the bay since.[1] In total, the rebels captured around 200 Frenchmen without losing a man, amounting to more than a third of the entire Cambrais regiment. The regimental staff was not on the transports which were captured, but the rebels took a number of company officers including five captains.

To capitalize on this unexpected windfall, Theodore sent a message to Boissieux proposing that the prisoners be exchanged for Corsicans in French custody. Most of these were militiamen captured near Ajaccio during and after the Vespers, but Theodore also sought the return of the eight hostages which had volunteered to go into captivity in Toulon as a guarantee of the cease-fire. The French had treated them well at first, but after the Vespers the government considered the Corsicans to have breached their promise. The eight hostages, including the sons of Chancellor Sebastiano Costa and Marquis Saviero Matra, were arrested and taken to Marseilles, where they were first imprisoned in Fort St. Nicolas and later moved to the Chateau d'If.[A] Numerically it was an advantageous trade for the French and Boissieux was willing to entertain it, but his government refused. Boissieux proposed instead a more limited trade of French soldiers for the rebels captured at Ajaccio, but Theodore declined, that would entail trading French officers for ordinary rebel militiamen. Theodore instead informed Boissieux that the prisoners would remain in captivity until the hostages were released from the Chateau d'If, and added that the treatment of the French soldiers and officers would be commensurate with the welfare of those hostages.[2]

Notwithstanding the loss of the Cambrais companies, Boissieux's position had still been reinforced by around 800 infantrymen plus a company of artillery. His first priority was breaking the rebel siege. On the 20th of January, he began a bombardment of the rebel position with his new artillery. The rebels quickly abandoned the military crest, but as before could easily withdraw to the summit of the hill where Boissieux's French guns were no more able to reach them than the Genoese pieces before. This left only indirect shell-fire from the French 8-inch mortars. While the mortar fire was inaccurate and does not appear to have caused many casualties, it unnerved the Corsicans, none of whom had ever experienced being shelled before.[3]

While the rebel withdrawal to the summit protected their force, it also limited their visibility and prevented them from firing back with their two 12-pounder guns. Boissieux ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Jean de Sanhard de Sasselange and two battalions to move east along the Calvi beach and then turn inland in an attempt to work around and cut off the rebel position. The royalist commander Colonel Guiliani di Muro had not strongly defended this flank, and even as Sasselange advanced he resisted reinforcing it, still expecting the major French attack to come from his front. After an argument with di Muro, Captain Paolo-Maria Paoli defied his orders and led at least a hundred men to oppose Sasselange, but they could not prevent the French from taking the ridge. Now Boissieux pressed home his attack, and with the French to both their south and north the Corsicans fled eastwards down the hill, hoping to escape by the seaside. Only Paoli's delaying action prevented the Corsicans from being cut off and totally annihilated, and this was paid for at the cost of his life.[B] The French captured the hill along with the rebels' two cannon.

Thanks to his effective tactics, Boissieux had succeeded in breaking the siege with a minimum of casualties. Clearly this was a rebel defeat, particularly bitter after the much-lauded defense of Madonna della Serra in November. Some blame was cast on Fabiani, then at Calenzana, for not reinforcing them. Fabiani, however, argued that he could not have sustained a force large enough to deal with the whole French brigade on the barren and rocky hills near Calvi, and opined after the fact that the position was probably impossible to hold. Most of the rebel forces, however, survived the battle, and there was another benefit which derived from the loss: with the siege broken, Theodore could no longer justify holding back his own forces on the basis that it would be provocative to the French, and sent the Foreign Regiment (strength unknown, probably 200+) and four companies of the Corsican Guard (nominally 240 men) to the Balagna to support Fabiani.

Although the Genoese urged him onward, Boissieux paused to issue a new ultimatum to the rebels in the Balagna. He demanded that they surrender their arms and consign themselves to the King of France, who would guarantee the redress of valid grievances and equitable treatment of the people under Genoese sovereignty. Certainly there were those in the region, particularly in heavily filogenovesi towns like Algajola, who would have been happy to accept, but Fabiani strictly forbade it and declared disarmament or collaboration to be treason. Another letter was dispatched to Theodore, the first such missive Boissieux had sent directly to the king, saying that if his desire for a peaceful resolution was real then he should immediately press the Corsican leaders, particularly Fabiani, to comply with his ultimatum. Theodore sent a vague reply that he would do his utmost to preserve the peace and would speak with Fabiani, but offered no pledges of disarmament.

This pause allowed Fabiani some time to gather the forces which had fled from Madonna della Serra and prepare a defense, but he was pessimistic about the situation. Although he regarded the Genoese army with contempt, Fabiani knew that he was at a disadvantage in the field against French regulars. The Balagna lacked the forbidding mountains that made much of the rest of the island so difficult to conquer, and instead had a long coastline allowing the French to land troops at will. Fabiani garrisoned Algajola and Isola Rossa, but felt that a general coastal defense would disperse his forces into uselessness. Instead, he remained at Calenzana in order to counter any French attack overland.

Two weeks later, as it became clear that the Corsicans were not disarming and Theodore would be of no use in convincing them to, Boissieux launched his Balagnese campaign. As Fabiani predicted, he used his naval supremacy to his advantage, and on February 16th French forces marched eastward around the Bay of Calvi and landed another force at the cove of San Ambrogio to the north. They quickly routed local militia at Lumio and captured the village, placing them within striking distance of Algajola. Fabiani and the Balagnese hurried northwards, but in the Battle of Bracajo on the ridge above Lumio Fabiani's militia army was put to flight by the French. The militia at Algajola put up a spirited defense, but once a flotilla of five vessels (two French frigates and three Genoese vessels) appeared and started bombarding their position, they abandoned the town.

This defeat put Fabiani - and the rebels in general - in a dangerous position. Algajola was less than five miles from Isola Rossa, one of the rebels' most important ports and the primary point of departure for Balagnese oil. Calenzana was too far away to defend it, and Fabiani was forced to relocate his army northeast, to Aregno, as to be in a position to block a French push further into the Balagna. Boissieux took advantage of this, and on February 27th a Franco-Genoese force captured Calenzana from its weakened garrison. Boissieux's offensive was well-executed and a demoralizing blow to the Corsicans, and he wanted to swiftly conclude it with the seizure of Isola Rossa. The French prepared for a new attack along the Balagnese coast, to be supported by the fleet.

The Corsicans, who had always enjoyed a significant numerical advantage over the Genoese, found themselves on a more even footing against much better troops. Boissieux's brigade at Calvi consisted of five battalions, amounting to a nominal strength of about 2,550 men given the average battalion size at this time, but the journal of a French apothecary records that the sum total of losses—killed, wounded, and captured—the force had sustained between its landing and the capture of Madonna della Serra amounted to 684 men. This left Boissieux with something in the neighborhood of 1,800 infantry. Added to this were two companies of Genoese infantry provided by Commissioner-General Giovanni-Battista de Mari, who by now had agreed to provide at least a small auxiliary in the field, with a nominal total of 240 regulars. Fabiani had more men, in the neighborhood of 3,000, but of these no more than 500 were "regular" soldiers with any significant training, and the rest were militiamen who had demonstrated at Bracajo their propensity to flee rather than stand when facing French infantry in the field.

To approach Isola Rossa, the French had to pass beneath the village of Corbara, located on a rocky spur of a north-south mountain ridge. After retreating from Bracajo, Fabiani had made his headquarters in a Franciscan convent on the mountainside near Corbara which overlooked the vale of Nonza, a flat expanse of fields and orchards which the French would have to cross. By this means Fabiani had placed himself and his troops where the French were forced to attack him, and denied them any possibility of surprise. Nevertheless, after previous victories the French were confident, and on March 5th Boissieux led a force of 1,500 men and four 4-pounder field guns over the plain.

The Franciscan Monastery of Corbara. Algajola can be seen in the distance, as well as the plain of farmland the French crossed to begin the Battle of Corbara.

The French encountered a large force of militia in an olive grove just west of the ridge. Succumbing to the well-drilled musketry and artillery support of the French, the Corsicans did not hold long, and fled east. The French advanced quickly after them, and ran headlong into a second line of Corsicans in the woods. This line, however, was composed mainly of regular troops, Corsican Guardsmen and foreign soldiers under Lieutenant-Colonel Karl Christian Drevitz. Drevitz had only been given orders to make a fighting retreat if the militia collapsed, but as many of the fleeing militiamen rallied behind his line he decided to stand instead. In their pursuit, the French had been funneled into a valley narrower than the frontage of their original line, which limited their ability to return fire, and they had left their cumbersome artillery behind them.

A fierce firefight ensued, at times at frightfully close range. With their lines compressed and visibility cut by the wood, the French did not successfully coordinate a charge to overrun the Corsican line. Instead, various companies mounted individual attacks that occasionally met the Corsicans in hand-to-hand combat but fell back under the local superiority of the Corsican soldiers. Fabiani, realizing what Drevitz was doing, led several hundred militia from the village of Pigna, where they came pouring down the steep hillside on the French right. Captain de Vaux, commanding the Auvergne infantry on the right flank, was killed almost immediately after this attack, and the wing fell back in confusion. This soon turned into a general retreat, and the French were driven from the woods.

Losses on both sides had been heavy, and although they had won a tactical victory the Corsicans had suffered more, with more than 300 dead or wounded compared to around 200 on the part of the French. While Fabiani was soon reinforced by more militia, however, Boissieux could not replace his losses locally, and soon he was obliged to make more detachments that dwindled his main force. The geography of the Balagna was a double-edged sword, for while the region had a long coast which was vulnerable to attack it had an equally long frontier with the mountains to the south, territory which the rebels controlled and from which they could launch raids and infiltrate the occupied zone. After the Battle of Corbara, bands of fighters from Niolo, Caccia, and Talcini began attacking Franco-Genoese positions in the south. Boissieux had preferred to garrison these towns with Genoese infantry, as he preferred to keep his field army composed of more reliable Frenchmen, but after Genoese companies was actually driven out of Zilia and Montemaggiore by the Niolesi he was obligated to station French companies there to maintain his conquests. By late March, the French had fought numerous skirmishes but to no real gain, while Boissieux's main force at Algajola had dwindled to less than a thousand men. He could no longer seriously threaten Fabiani's position in the vicinity of Isola Rossa.

Leaving the Genoese in the countryside also produced other problems. De Mari, champion of a scorched earth strategy an an uncompromising foe of "traitors," ordered the razing of orchards in the western Balagna. He claimed that such actions were punishment dealt out to rebels and their suspected sympathizers, but also that the threat of destitution and starvation would cow the other rebels into submission knowing what lay in store for them. Boissieux, despite the outbreak of war, still believed that reconciliation was necessary to end the rebellion. He forbade such actions, but it was difficult to keep the Genoese in check, and de Mari's fury was aroused at the very notion that Boissieux, who he considered little more than a mercenary, dared to tell him how to run Genoese sovereign territory.

In the south, meanwhile, the French position at Ajaccio had also been reinforced by two battalions and a company of artillery, although the latter proved mostly useless. The commander there, Marquis Jean-Baptiste François de Villemur, engaged local militias with some success, but details are thin. Unlike the Balagna, the Dila in the vicinity of Ajaccio had few open expanses outside the immediate environs of the city. After suffering a defeat at Villemur's hands, Lieutenant-General Marquis Luca d'Ornano took to the mountains and waited for opportunities to cut up French columns as they attempted to gain control of villages and valleys in the foothills of the mountains. The lone French battalion at Porto Vecchio received no reinforcements in January and remained principally as a garrison force for the next several months. It was obvious that even more men were needed. A new wave would come, the largest commitment yet of French forces, but it would not arrive until May.

Positions on Corsica at the end of March 1739

Footnotes
[1] The choice of name does not appear to have been Theodore's; it may have been christened by Captain Giovan Lucca Poggi, who had captured and initially captained her. Perhaps the name was owed to the fact that the ship was taken just a few days after the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, which originally commemorated the Battle of Lepanto.
[2] Presumably Theodore had no way of knowing how the hostages were doing in the Chateau d'If, so this was merely a warning to the French not to mistreat or execute them.
[3] The French artillery companies on Corsica possessed chiefly 4 and 8-pounder guns, but none saw frequent use and the 8-pounders virtually none at all. The guns of the French Vallière system of standardized artillery, introduced in 1732, were effective in stationary positions but not very mobile owing to their notorious weight and size. The 8-pounder's barrel alone weighed over a ton. Corsica was an insurmountable challenge for such artillery. The French also did not formally adopt a howitzer into their artillery system until the 1740s, which left mortars as the only pieces capable of bombarding the main rebel force on the summit above Calvi.

Timeline Notes
[A] The island fortress-prison featured in the Count of Monte Cristo, a book which will presumably and unfortunately never be written ITTL.
[B] Another Paoli bites the dust. This Paoli, however, has no relationship to the famous family of Giacinto and Pasquale Paoli; it was a reasonably common family name.

Carp · Sep 14, 2017

The Last Respite

Kinsmen are Teeth.
- Corsican Proverb

The war for Corsica did not merely occupy its participants; it was very much a spectator sport. A key observer was Arthur Villettes, ambassador of Great Britain to the Court of Turin, where King Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia was watching developments on Corsica with increasing alarm. In a letter to Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, Villettes reported that Turin seemed to be undergoing a change of heart regarding King Theodore. The Sardinians had long been apprehensive about French intentions in Corsica, and since the Trévou Affair they had suspected Theodore of being a French agent. His current position as the leader of an anti-French insurgency, however, strongly suggested that this was not true. Although the Sardinians had barred their citizens from having commerce with the Corsican rebels some years before, this now seemed to be a policy against their own interest, and all that stopped them from repealing it outright was the prospect of French fury. Villettes speculated that the Sardinians might be exploring the possibility of following the lead of the Dutch, Tuscans, and Neapolitans by professing to ban trade with Corsica while doing practically nothing to prevent it, and the addition of Nice as an active smuggling port was attractive given its position just 120 miles across the sea from Isola Rossa.

Along with his frequent correspondent Horace Mann, the British consul in Florence, Villettes reported back on other powers waiting in the wings to swoop if France were to falter. Francis of Lorraine, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was still interested, as was Queen Elisabeth Farnese of Spain, who wanted the island for her second son, the landless infante Philip. Mann reportedly uncovered information that the Queen of Spain had, a few years previously, proposed a territorial swap in which her eldest son King Charles of Naples, who was at that time considered a possible successor to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, would cede the Tuscan territory of Lunigiana to the Genoese in exchange for Corsica. That proposal had come to nothing; the Genoese had not yet given up hope of keeping the island, and shortly thereafter Charles was compelled to renounce the Tuscan succession to secure his accession to the throne of Naples-Sicily. Now that Francis ruled Tuscany, however, he was potentially in a position to make the same "Lunigiana offer" to the Genoese, and certainly he valued a royal crown more than a little exclave of Tuscany.[A]

Nevertheless, the chance of the infante Philip gaining Corsica seemed more immediately plausible. He was betrothed to, and in October would marry, Princess Louise Elisabeth, daughter of King Louis XV of France. The French were evidently aware of the Queen's idea to secure Corsica for Philip, and they were not necessarily opposed; it was more tolerable than Spain annexing it directly. Versailles appears to have neither supported nor opposed the proposal, at least not publicly, instead maintaining that it was a matter for Spain and Genoa to decide amongst themselves. Their presence on the island, however, effectively forestalled any such agreement, for while the war was ongoing Genoa still retained hope that it might not have to give up Corsica at all.

That war was not going particularly well for the French allies of the Genoese, and Villettes claimed that there was internal bickering in Paris regarding the conduct of the mission and the performance of Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat de Boissieux. It is unclear what sources Villettes, who was at Turin, was relying on, but it was at least true that the French were not entirely happy with their general, who was criticized by some for being too accommodating towards the Corsicans and too sluggish in command. Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury was not yet ready to sack him, but the French ambassador to Genoa, Jacques de Campredon, would be dismissed in early March amid rumors that he too was unacceptably pro-Corsican.

On the scene since the start of the rebellion, Campredon arguably knew more about Genoa and Corsica than any other French official. He had recently written a comprehensive report on the social and political life of the Genoese elite, going into such detail as to even comment on the senators' romantic dalliances. Politically, he had been a consistent advocate for French annexation, as he had come to the conclusion early on that Genoese sovereignty was unlikely to ever be restored and believed France's only reasonable option to keep the island out of the hands of another power was to take it for herself. It may have been this, rather than supposed sympathy with the rebels, that ultimately forced his removal; while he had not shared these opinions with the Genoese, they probably suspected his position, and his dismissal may have been politically helpful at a time when Versailles was doing its best to assure the Genoese that they had no intentions of conquest. His interim replacement, the French consul Monsieur Coutlet, was quite the opposite; indeed, he was so anti-Corsican that he wrote in support of the idea floated occasionally in the Genoese Senate of simply wiping the slate clean and "depopulating" the island.

On Corsica, the royalists were enjoying their last month before the arrival of the next wave of French reinforcements. The first good news had come early in the month with the arrival of Matthias von Drost, Theodore's cousin. Drost had taken a ship full of arms and supplies with him to Livorno to be smuggled into Corsica from there. It is unclear exactly how extensive the cargo was, or how much of it actually made it to Corsica, but most of the cargo seems to have evaded the blockade. Costa recorded that Drost had arranged for the import of "hundreds" of muskets and artillery amounting to four guns and two mortars. He also brought men, mostly Germans who had been hired in Amsterdam. Those whose names we know include Lieutenant Tobias-Friedrich Bollet of Württemberg, who had been a junior officer in the ducal army; Captain Johann-Gottfried Vater, a 38 year old Saxon and a former lieutenant in the Austrian army, who made the questionable decision to bring his wife Marie and 11-year old son Johann-Polykarp along as well; and Captain Johann-Gottlieb Reusse, of Saxony, who had studied engineering at the University of Leiden and received a commission from Theodore as a captain of engineers. Some were adventurous men who had specifically sought out Theodore; others were deserters with nowhere else to go, debtors whom Theodore had sprung from prison, or vagabonds plucked from off the street by the promise of good pay. The king could indeed pay them and many remained with the rebel cause for years to come, although some found Drost's promises on behalf of Theodore to be more extravagant than reality and did not stay long.

Germans were not the only notable foreign officers in Theodore's service. From the start, Theodore had raised money from his old Jacobite friends in Rome and elsewhere, and a modest number had joined him in Corsica. By the start of 1739 we know the names of three Jacobites among the foreign officers; a certain Captain Macdonald, a Scotsman; Lieutenant-Colonel Callan, an Irishman who had been a quartermaster in Tuscan service; and Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Powers, formerly of Spanish service, who knew Theodore from his days in Madrid.[B] The man Theodore really wanted, however, was his good friend and brother-in-law Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock.[C] The Sarsfields of Kilmallock had been attainted and forced into exile in 1691 for taking the side of the Jacobites in the Williamite War in Ireland. Most of the family ended up in Spanish service. Viscount David, colonel of infantry and commander of the fortress of Badajoz, was killed at the Battle of Villaviciosa in 1710, and his eldest son Dominick lost his life in Sicily in 1718 during the War of the Quadruple Alliance. The title then passed to Edward, David's second son, who became a colonel of dragoons. Theodore had written to him often, offering a commission and pay.

Only in April of 1739 did Kilmallock finally arrive. Perhaps money was a reason: peacetime was not lucrative for a soldier and Kilmallock had a weakness for gambling, and it had been widely reported in recent months that Theodore had come into the possession of a vast sum courtesy of his mysterious foreign backers. He was a good acquisition—witty, bold, very experienced in war, and quite accustomed to working with foreigners in a foreign army. Theodore confirmed his rank as colonel, giving him overall command of the Corsican Guard[1] and the post of Adjutant General. Aside from advising Theodore, his purpose was mainly to train the Guard, which had acquitted itself well enough in a static position at Corbara but had more motivation than proper instruction. Kilmallock was not exactly the strict, hard-nosed disciplinarian that might have been ideal, but he was knowledgeable enough and soon became popular among the troops. Don Chimallu, as the Corsicans called him, had possessed a wild reputation as a young man, and although age had mellowed him somewhat (he was probably a few years younger than Theodore, and thus in his early 40s) he remained a colorful character, a born fighter who loved a good scrap and valued fighting spirit as much as army drill. Notably, he seems to have been the first person to systematically instruct Corsican soldiers in the use of the bayonet; while the Guard had been given bayonets, a relative rarity among the militia, their chief use prior to Kilmallock's arrival had been as cooking implements.[D]

With the battle-lines static and conflict at a fairly low level, Theodore felt free to expend some of his time on matters of administration. Making a trip inland to Corti, he presided over several legal cases, including vendetta killings which had been committed despite his ban on the practice. The most notable administrative development, however, was the first serious enforcement of a proposal that had been made some time ago regarding tithes. Traditionally, the Corsicans were required to pay a twentieth of their income (generally speaking, this meant agricultural produce) to the church. Collection of this tithe, although spotty, had lasted longer than the Genoese state taxes which were immediately repudiated by the rebels, but by now Corsica was completely abandoned by its bishops. With the backing of the Diet, Theodore proclaimed that the tithe would, until further notice, be collected by the state instead. Although the Corsicans detested their absentee bishops, Genoese stooges to a man, they were uneasy with the idea of plundering the church, and there was some opposition to this decree. Theodore promised that of the tithe collected, one-third would be devoted to the sustenance of the churches (for most churches and monasteries remained occupied, and the priesthood and monastic brethren were generally more sympathetic to the revolutionaries than the episcopacy), another third would be used for charity, and only the final third - ordinarily given to the bishops - would be seized for state revenue. This share, amounting to a 1.67% agricultural tax, could not have possibly generated much revenue compared to lucrative oil smuggling.

The final achievement of the month was an audacious attack by Theodore's "nephew" Johann Friedrich Caspar von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg.[2] On the 22nd of April, Rauschenburg led around three or four hundred Niolesi and Talcinesi in a surprise attack in the valley of the Poffiume, falling upon the Franco-Genoese garrison at Cassano just before dawn. Although the shooting started soon after their arrival, a French source claimed the Corsicans had stabbed to death a number of Genoese soldiers who were still in their beds. Those Genoese were not killed or captured immediately threw down their arms and fled, leaving the French companies to their fate. Unprepared, scattered, and outnumbered by around three to one, they resisted valiantly but briefly before being completely overwhelmed. The Corsicans did not hold the village long, retreating back to the mountains after a firefight with the garrison of Montemaggiore less than a mile away whose soldiers had heard the gunfire, but by the time the fighting ended Rauschenburg could boast that his force had killed, wounded, or captured at least 120 men, Genoese and French, and lost only nineteen. The French later claimed at least 30 Corsicans had been killed, but did not dispute their own losses. The immediate effect was to force Boissieux to further strengthen his garrisons and send experienced officers to enforce vigilance and discipline. By early May, Fabiani, Kilmallock, and Drevitz were discussing an attack against Boissieux's main position at Algajola, believing that they had a distinct advantage in numbers and artillery, but these plans were soon scrapped with the arrival of the third wave of French forces.

Boissieux had landed with six battalions and had received another four earlier in the year. In early May, another six battalions of infantry landed in Corsica,[3] this time without incident, bringing the nominal French infantry force up to approximately 8,500 men (although many of the already present battalions were under strength from battle and disease, and thus the actual total was significantly lower). Boissieux had also expressed a desire for light cavalry, as they would be of some use in the Balagna, and accordingly he was provided with three squadrons of hussars.[4] Lastly, the army dispatched to Corsica some "miquelets" of Roussillon, otherwise known as fusiliers de montagne, light mountain infantry who would probably have been more useful had they not numbered only a single company of about 50 men.[5]

Footnotes
[1] The colonelcy of the regiment had been empty since the assassination of Giappiconi. In the interim, Captain Giovan Luca Poggi had led the unit, which during Theodore's absence was barely even company sized. Poggi was promoted directly to lieutenant-colonel upon Theodore's return from the continent and became Kilmallock's executive officer after the latter's arrival.
[2] Johann Friedrich was born in 1713 and thus 26 years old in 1739. Despite being Theodore's first cousin, he was certainly young enough to be his nephew (or even his son), as Theodore turned 45 that year.
[3] One battalion each of the regiments of Royal-Roussillon, Chaillou, Forez, Ile-de-France, Aunis, and Montmorency.
[4] Two squadrons of Rattsky hussars and one of Esterhazy hussars. These hussar squadrons consisted of 150 men each but evidently only 100 horses, and thus had a nominal strength of 300 cavalrymen.
[5] The fusiliers de montagne, also known as miquelets, were not a permanent feature of the French army but rather irregular units raised on a temporary basis for specific conflicts. Typically, several battalions were raised during wartime and then disbanded a few years later when hostilities had ended or they were no longer useful. The battalions raised for the War of Polish Succession were dissolved around the time Theodore arrived in Corsica in early 1736, and thus France had none on hand when the Corsican invasion began. This may help explain why Boissieux apparently only received a single company in May of 1739. What is harder to explain is why the French waited until February of 1739, an entire year after Boissieux's first arrival, to order these mountain troops to be raised. The most likely explanation is that the French believed the Corsicans would quickly be overawed by French might without the necessity of a prolonged period of mountain warfare or anti-guerrilla campaigning, thus rendering the raising of miquelet battalions from scratch an unnecessary expense.

Timeline Notes
[A] You can see Tuscan Lunigiana here; it's the disconnected bit of Tuscany on the Genoese border, separated from the main body of Tuscany by the Duchy of Modena. The Lunigiana-Corsica swap was floated as an idea IOTL, but it doesn't seem to have been seriously considered by the Genoese. Although it would undoubtedly have been a less troublesome province for the Republic than Corsica, it would also have been a sizable loss of land area, and probably of population as well (although I have no figures on the population of the district).
[B] IOTL, Powers left Corsica in late 1736 because he (correctly) believed Theodore's cause was lost. He's stuck around ITTL.
[C] Technically the title was "Viscount Sarsfield," but as Sarsfield was a rather common name the family was known as the Sarsfields of Kilmallock and their lords colloquially titled "Lord/Viscount Kilmallock," which in turn became their chosen title in exile. I've seen "Edward" named "Edmund" in some sources. Kilmallock never came to Corsica IOTL, despite Theodore's invitations, but he remained Theodore's good friend for the rest of his life, and Theodore stayed with him during his later years. ITTL, Theodore's longer and more successful reign, his newfound funding, and the coming of peace after the War of Polish Succession have convinced Kilmallock to take the opportunity, at least for now.
[D] From what I can tell, bayonet usage at this time was not the waist-height method you might be most familiar with from movies, but an earlier method in which the musket was held at shoulder height and wielded more like a pike. The waist-high method was only introduced by the Prussians in the 1740s.

Carp · Sep 15, 2017

"Plan Boissieux" - May 1739
Excerpts from Merganser Publishing's "Rebellion!" Series #24: The Corsican Revolution

Hussar of the Esterhazy Regiment c. 1740

Despite fielding more regular soldiers on Corsica than the Genoese Republic had ever managed, by April of 1739 the French had embarrassingly little to show for it. The corps commander, the Marquis de Boissieux, had spent most of 1738 in fruitless negotiations between the Republic and the revolutionary government of King Theodore von Neuhoff, an exercise doomed to failure because of both the incompatibility of their respective demands and the perceived bias of the French in favor of the Genoese. After the final rejection of the terms of Fontainebleau in October of 1738, Boissieux's military efforts had been uninspired, although admittedly he was hampered both by an initial lack of troops and the tactical limitations imposed upon him by the virtual captivity of the French forces in their three occupied ports. A costly assault was necessary to break out of Calvi, and any initial strategic momentum was bled away by the necessity to garrison western Balagna against raids from Corsican mountaineers under Theodore's young and surprisingly redoubtable cousin, the Baron Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg.

The French reinforcements which arrived in the first week of May increased Boissieux's force to sixteen battalions of infantry (from ten),[1] and added three squadrons of hussars and a company of light infantry. Thus bolstered, Boissieux resolved not merely to redouble his efforts but to shift his strategy. His previous military efforts had been heavily compromised by political considerations, for he was mindful of his initial orders to avoid undue "rigor" and wanted to conciliate, rather than crush, the Corsican rebels. By May of 1739, however, he was aware of the tenuousness of his position in Paris, where the government was impatient to resolve what had been expected to be a quick and relatively bloodless conquest. His superiors were now more concerned with restoring French honor than exemplifying French mercy, and urged Boissieux to assert control of the situation by whatever means necessary.

Calvi and the western Balagna had been, up to now, the primary theater of operations, while French forces elsewhere had been something of a sideshow. The Ajaccio brigade had been reasonably successful in engagements with the Corsicans but wanted for purpose or direction; after breaking the siege of the rebel general Marquis Luca d'Ornano, there seem to have been no clear objectives other than to expand French control in whatever direction it could be maintained, which was not terribly far. Relatively isolated from the rest of the island by tall mountains and steep valleys, French struggles here had contributed little to Boissieux's position in the north. The Porto Vecchio force had amounted to a single battalion, whose presence put the minds of the Genoese at ease but was insufficient to undertake offensive operations.

Although Boissieux still rejected the scorched earth tactics recommended to him by his argumentative Genoese host, Marquis Giovanni-Battista de Mari, he had come to the conclusion that the surest way to reduce the Corsicans to submission was to strangle them by cutting them off from all resupply. This would require the occupation of the island's chief agricultural provinces in the north, the Balagna and the Nebbio, as well as the main rebel ports of Bastia, San Fiorenzo, and Isola Rossa, and the long stretch of eastern coastline whose lagoons and streams were havens for smugglers. This plan also had the advantage of avoiding an invasion of the mountainous highlands where the French would be at a relative disadvantage. Ajaccio, being nowhere near these key objectives, was thus superseded in Boissieux's new plan by Porto Vecchio, which could offer a staging point for French forces to not only take key fortresses on the eastern coast but to traverse the coastal plains all the way to Bastia. Thus, the number of French battalions in Ajaccio actually decreased in May, from four to three, while the Porto Vecchio detachment received the largest share of the new wave of Frenchmen, increasing from a single battalion to five battalions with an accompanying squadron of hussars.

French Expeditionary Corps (9,440 men)
Corps Commander: Lt. Gen. Louis de Frétat, Marquis de Boissieux

Balagnese Brigade (3,120 men)
Maréchal de Camp Jean-Charles de Gaultier de Girenton, Marquis de Chateauneuf le Rouge, Signeur de Rousset
Auvergne Infantry (2nd btn)
Nivernais Infantry
Flandre Infantry
Île de France Infantry
Chaillou Infantry
3rd Btn. Royal Artillery (1 coy)
Rattsky Hussars (2 sqns)

Balagnese Reserve Brigade (1,170 men)
Brigadier Jean de Saignard, Sieur de Sasselange
Auvergne Infantry (1st btn)
Cambrésis Infantry
1st Btn. Royal Artillery (1 coy)

Ajaccio Brigade (1,650 men)
Maréchal de Camp Louis-François Crozat, Marquis du Châtel
Forez Infantry
D'Ourouer Infantry
Béarn Infantry

Eastern Brigade (2,900 men)
Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur
Bassigny Infantry
La Sarre Infantry
Agenois Infantry
Royal-Roussillon Infantry
Aunis Infantry
Esterhazy Hussars (1 sqn)

Capo Corso Brigade (600 men)
Brigade Commander: Brigadier Anne de Montmorency-Luxembourg, Comte de Montmorency et Ligny
Montmorency Infantry
Miquelets de Roussillon (1 coy)

Note: In theory the full complement of an infantry battalion was around 700 officers and men, but in practice battalions were never fully manned even in peacetime owing to recruiting difficulties, desertion, and illness. The theoretical figure also includes regimental staff and other rear-echelon troops not necessarily present in battle. The average combat-effective strength of a French battalion on campaign in this era was judged to be in the neighborhood of 500 to 550 men, and the latter figure has been used as a basis for the above troop numbers. Note, however, that the French force had suffered losses amounting to at least a thousand men by May of 1739, and that these fell particularly hard on certain battalions. In particular, Sasselange's brigade was severely under strength and may have numbered as few as 500 combat-effective soldiers.

In the Balagna, the new strategic plan differed little from the old. A brigade under the Chevalier de Rousset, with five infantry battalions, two squadrons of the Rattsky Hussars, and accompanying artillery would move east to take Isola Rossa and if possible force a decisive battle with the Balagnese militia under Marquis Fabiani. Genoese forces would provide garrisons in "liberated" villages, and they would be supported by a reserve brigade under the Chevalier de Sasselange consisting of two under-strength battalions (the first Auvergne battalion, mauled at Madonna della Serra, and the Cambrésis battalion, which had lost more than a third of its strength to Corsican captivity in its botched landing) and a reserve company of artillery possessing most of the heavier guns (8-pounders and mortars) which were deemed to be impractical in Rousset's brigade but might be of some use in hardening Balagnese garrisons against attack.

The "eastern" brigade under the Marquis de Villemur, consisting of five infantry battalions and a company of hussars based initially in Porto Vecchio, would drive north along the coast with Bastia as its objective. Although not equipped with artillery, this was considered to be a much stronger force than anything the rebels possessed in the east, and rapid progress was expected. At the same time, a much smaller group—a brigade only in name—consisting of the Montmorency Infantry regiment and the small company of miquelets under the Comte de Montmorency would proceed in the opposite direction, landing at Rogliano and attempting to force the Capo Corso. They would be joined by several Genoese companies of Ligurians, grudgingly yielded by Mari, the only Genoese forces in Boissieux's plan not relegated to the status of rear-echelon or garrison troops. Finally, d'Ornano's royalist army in the Dila would face a brigade of three battalions under the Marquis du Châtel; Châtel's job was not to defeat his enemy or even come to grips with him, but merely to pose enough of a threat to prevent d'Ornano from coming to the assistance of the rebel forces in the Diqua.

Planned major axes of operations, Summer of 1739 (Click to expand)

The intent of the plan was to force the Corsicans into an impossible choice. They could devote their full forces to the Balagna and perhaps even hold back Rousset's newly reinforced brigade, but only at the cost of leaving their vital territory in the northeast open to a two-pronged attack from the rear. Alternatively, they could divide their forces to try and face every threat, but Boissieux suspected they had neither the organization nor the experienced troops and officers to make a stout defense everywhere, and a miscalculation on any front could create an opportunity for a French breakthrough. In due time, the northeast would face simultaneous pressure from west, north, and south, and the Corsican position would crumble. Once shorn of their coastal territories, the rebels would be denied any means of rearmament or resupply, and would inevitably be compelled to lay down their arms and accept French terms.

Strategically, the plan was sound enough, and the French made significant headway against the rebels in the weeks that followed. No plan survives contact with the enemy, however, and in 1739 Boissieux's enemy turned out to be the island itself as much as the natives. Operational difficulties were soon encountered which the French command had not fully anticipated. Montmorency's attack, decoy or not, soon proved to be impractical. Advancing down a narrow band of mountains was difficult enough on its own and provided the Corsicans with endless opportunities to delay his advance with a token force, but supply was also an issue; the roads were extremely poor, the Genoese at Rogliano had few mules or carts to offer, the rebels had already plundered the cape of much of its stores, and each of these difficulties was only compounded as Montmorency advanced and stretched his supply line further. Supply by water was complicated both by the absence of good ports and Corsican privateers based out of nearby Bastia and San Fiorenzo who proved very able to dash out of port and attack any unescorted supply ships. Meanwhile, Villemur would meet with early success in his eastern campaign, but was to find out firsthand why the Corsicans had not settled in most of the flatland he was using as a thoroughfare. It was fringed from top to bottom with shallow, mosquito-infested marshes and lagoons, and his brigade would be tramping along their shores just as the hot and pestilential Corsican summer was getting underway.

Footnotes
[1] The French army had 122 infantry regiments consisting of 193 battalions on its rolls in 1740. Assuming consistent battalion size—which was generally true, although the infantry battalions of the Maison du Roi, the French household troops, varied somewhat from the norm—Boissieux's expeditionary force amounted to approximately 8.3% of the overall infantry strength of the French army.

Carp · Sep 27, 2017

The Battle of the Balagna - Day 1
Excerpts from Merganser Publishing's "Rebellion!" Series #24: The Corsican Revolution

The buildup of French forces in the Balagna did not catch the rebels by surprise. They were well informed of the arrival of the third wave of French troops, and Lieutenant-General Marquis Louis de Frétat de Boissieux was took his time to deploy the new forces, arrange for the army's supply, and brief his commanders. In the north, his operational commander was Maréchal de Camp Jean-Charles de Gaultier de Girenton, Marquis de Chateauneuf le Rouge, Seigneur de Rousset.[1] His infantry forces were under the overall command of Brigadier Louis Georges Erasme, Marquis de Contades, while the two squadrons of hussars were under the command of their Hungarian colonel-proprietor Maréchal de Camp Baron Georges de Rattsky.[2] In total, this represented a force of roughly 3,000 combat personnel, a force that on its own was the largest and best-trained force to face the rebels since the imperial intervention in 1733-4.

The overall Corsican commander in the Balagna, Captain-General Marquis Simone Fabiani, understood that his position was difficult. King Theodore had sent all his regular forces (save his personal Leibgarde) to aid Fabiani, but these amounted to only some 700-800 men. He was reliant mainly on the provincial militia, which consisted of around 1,600 Balagnese and some 800 militia from Caccia, Canale, Niolo, and Guicelina. Another force of around 600 men from Talcini, Niolo, and Vico under Theodore's cousin Lieutenant-General Baron Johann Friedrich Caspar von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg was operating in the mountains to the south, having spent the past month launching raids on Franco-Genoese positions in the western Balagna. Around May 18th, just days before the beginning of Rousset's offensive, another 400 men of Caotera and Rostino arrived to reinforce Fabiani's position; the men were well-armed and enthusiastic, but largely untrained and lacking experienced officers.

The "front," as it were, stretched all the way from Corbara in the north to Zilia in the south. The ridge above Zilia, however, which extended northwest to Capo di Bestia, effectively limited the French approach to the space between Corbara and Cateri, less than four miles wide. Fabiani believed that the most likely French attack would concentrate on the north, where they could use their naval dominance to their advantage, and for that reason continued concentrating his forces between Pigna and Corbara has he had done previously at the Battle of Corbara.

Rousset, however, considered the heights of Corbara to be too costly to attack directly, and instead planned an attack with a southerly emphasis. In his plan, Brigadier Claude François d'Alboy, Sieur de Montrosier would launch an attack on the far left of the rebel force at Cateri. Meanwhile, Brigadier Contades would command Colonel Charles de Béziade, Marquis d’Avaray, to make a demonstration against Fabiani's strong point with his battalion and the field artillery, while his remaining two battalions under Colonel Pierre Emmanuel de Crussol, Marquis de Florensac would make an oblique move to the south and then cross the Nonza River to attack Aregno and Praoli.

Fabiani was not blind to French troop movements, and when infantry and cavalry were reported near Lavatoggio on the 20th he considered that an attack on his far left might be more likely than anticipated. He continued to believe that it was more likely to be a feint, however, and was concerned about deploying too far south; his primary aim was to protect Isola Rossa in the north, and if his right flank collapsed the French would be between him and the port. He also was counting on Rauschenburg to reinforce his left flank, but through a miscommunication or misunderstanding Rauschenburg was still at Muro on the day of the attack, more than two miles south of Cateri. On the morning of the French attack, only three militia battalions under Brigadier Giuliano di Muro held the southern half of the line, while virtually all of the regulars were in the north with Fabiani.

The effect of this miscalculation was disastrous. On the 22nd, the French opened fire with their artillery against Fabiani's positions in the north, and D'Avaray advanced over the low ground as instructed. His advance, however, was deliberately slow; it was intended only to occupy Fabiani's attention. Crussol'a battalions moved upstream and instead attacked Muro's militia battalions to the south. Fabiani observed this movement, but hesitated; ultimately he agreed with the urging of Adjutant-General Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock to dispatch the Corsican Guard to the left flank.

In the meantime, Montrosier had thrown his two battalions against the Corsican left at Cateri, a position occupied by the recently-arrived Rostino militia under Lieutenant-Colonel Ignazio Caponi. Caponi had difficulty controlling his troops, and they were soon thrown into chaos by this strong attack and fled en masse down into the Regino valley. With the rebel left collapsing, the way was open for Baron Rattsky to lead his 200 horse across the saddle of Cateri and into the flank of a the Balagnese battalion holding Aregno, which was already hard-pressed or perhaps even beginning to retreat in the face of Crussol's assault. Caught between the French and the Hungarians, this force was all but destroyed; its commander, Colonel Albertini, was killed, and it was thereafter every man for himself, with the militia fleeing in all directions to try and avoid being cut down by Rattsky's sabres. The only Corsican commander to do himself any credit in the south was Colonel Felice Giuseppe, a veteran of the Battle of San Fiorenzo, who stood his ground against the French attack until he saw Albertini's battalion evaporate to his south, and then withdrew in an orderly fashion up the ridge towards Muro's command post at San Antonino.

Actions in the morning

Once Crussol attained the ridge, he ordered an immediate attack on San Antonino, where Muro's command had been reduced to Giuseppe's battalion; his soldiers were winded after fighting up 1,400 feet of elevation, but Crussol hoped to take advantage of his momentum and the retreat of the Corsicans to carry the position, which if taken would render Fabiani's entire position untenable. By that time, however, the Guard had reached the village, and Muro had been relieved by Kilmallock. The hilltop village was a formidable defensive position which was now held by a force equivalent to Crussol's battalions, and it was a testament to the discipline and courage of the French that they made good headway against it, to the point where Corsican soldiers were fighting them from the windows and rooftops. At the village's edge, however, the attack seemed to run out of steam, and Kilmallock led a counter-charge by the Guard with fixed bayonets which sent the French streaming back down the hill. Crussol still held the ridge to the south, but his gambit had failed, and he was now compelled to pause.

In the far south, Montrosier now seemed to be without opposition. Leaving the Flandre Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Textorix[A] to hold Cateri, he advanced northwards towards Crussol's position to size up the situation. Baron Rattsky, in the meantime, descended into the valley to the southeast to scout the upper Regino and harass Caponi's retreating battalion. It was fortunate for the French that he did, for he found not only Caponi's men but Rauschenburg's highland battalions, which had advanced northwards after hearing gunfire from the north. Rattsky skirmished in the woods near Avapessa with the Corsicans, but found himself heavily outnumbered and pulled back to the saddle. The French were aware of Rauschenburg's presence in the area but had seriously underestimated his numbers, which—now reinforced by part of Caponi's command—now numbered some 800-900 men. Although out of contact with Fabiani, Rauschenburg decided to attack towards Cateri; Rattsky hurriedly sent out riders to inform Textorix and Montrosier, and his dismounted squadrons managed to delay the rebels long enough for the Flandre Infantry to arrive. Unsure as to the overall situation of the battle or how many troops Textorix and Rattsky actually had, Rauschenburg opted to pull back after an hour-long skirmish.

Actions in the afternoon

With the arrival of Brigadier Montrosier and the Chaillou battalion, Crussol wanted to order another attack on San Antonino. Upon surveying the situation, however, Montrosier opined that the position was too strong and impossible to flank. His reluctance may have been in part a command issue; Colonel Crussol was under Brigadier Contades' command, and taking the heights at San Antonino had been Contades' responsibility. Contades was technically senior to Montrosier, and had been placed in overall command of Rousset's infantry, but Contades had not advanced up from the valley and Crussol himself could not give orders to a superior officer. Perhaps Montrosier really did see the attack as hopeless, or perhaps he wanted to preserve both his battalion and his own reputation from association with the failure of Crussol, and by extension Contades, to take the village. He delayed until the arrival of a rider from Rattsky informing him of the situation to the south, which was his cue to return to Cateri to defend against the "large force" of Corsicans that had been reported. Rauschenburg, however, had already called off his attack and was withdrawing up the Regino valley to try and re-establish contact with Fabiani and avoid the possibility of being flanked.

Lieutenant-Colonel Karl Christian Drevitz, in command of the foreign regiment, had urged Fabiani to counterattack against D'Avaray's position in the Nonza valley as it became clear that the bulk of the French forces was to the south, but Fabiani was reluctant to give up his high ground or to launch a frontal attack over open ground directly into the French artillery. Several companies of militia were diverted to the south to further strengthen Kilmallock, but no further assault was forthcoming. Contades, arriving at Aregno late in the afternoon, attempted to gather forces for an assault but found that Montrosier had already descended into the Regino valley, and by the time contact was reestablished it was too late in the day to make another attempt at San Antonino. Rattsky's hussars had moved south to the village of Muro, which had been Rauschenburg's headquarters that morning, and his men disarmed the inhabitants.

All forces now withdrew to quarters for the night. Contades set up pickets on the ridge and made his own headquarters at Caferi, while Montrosier camped near Muro along with Rattsky's regiment. Towards the end of the day, several companies from Sasselange's reserve brigade joined Rousset's command to shore up his position in the north, and a Genoese company arrived to occupy Lavatoggio. Fabiani maintained his position, but withdrew Colonel Giuliani's Balagnese battalion to the ridge to act as a reserve in the following day, capable of reinforcing where necessary. Survivors of Albertini's battalion and bands of local and "foreign" (that is, non-Balagnese) irregulars who had gravitated towards the battle over the course of the day gathered at Poggio, behind the ridge, in an effort to organize reinforcements. Rauschenburg withdrew up the valley and, finally getting back in contact with Fabiani, encamped his men so as to oppose any flanking maneuver around San Antonino.

Positions at the end of the day

Rousset had clearly won the day. Although excuses can be made for Fabiani, who was bound by his need to guard Isola Rossa above all else and was not well-supported by Rauschenburg, he was nevertheless out-generaled by Rousset on the first day of the battle. Although the rebels outnumbered the French overall, Rousset managed to concentrate four regular battalions (and two hussar squadrons) against three battalions of militia with predictable results. The Corsicans had taken heavy losses, particularly in Albertini's battalion, which was largely destroyed; some remnants remained and were reorganized, but many other survivors simply deserted, and the unit ceased to exist as a fighting force. The well-executed withdrawal of Giuseppe's militia and the timely intervention of Kilmallock and the Guard, however, prevented the French from using the momentum from their victory to carry away the rebel position entirely. Contades and Montrosier may also deserve some blame; the former, for leading from too far behind, preventing him from promptly taking advantage of opportunities, and the latter for declining an attack on San Antonino and chasing after Rauschenburg in the valley instead of waiting for new orders from Contades.

The most unfortunate senior Corsican commander (aside from Albertini, who was killed) was undoubtedly Brigadier di Muro, who had now presided over both the loss of Madonna della Serra in February and the collapse of the Corsican left in the first day of the battle for the Balagna. This latter defeat was arguably not his fault; it would have taken an unparalleled military genius to hold off Rousset's offensive with the forces Fabiani had assigned to Muro's sector. Nevertheless, the association of his name with two serious defeats permanently destroyed his reputation, and for the remainder of the battle he was effectively little more than an aide-de-camp to Kilmallock.

Footnotes
[1] "Maréchal de camp" is often - but erroneously - translated into English as "field marshal." The rank of maréchal de camp was equivalent to a British major-general, ranking above a brigadier (which was not considered a true general rank) and below a lieutenant-general like Boissieux. Lieutenant-generals were outranked only by a Maréchal de France, of which there were none on Corsica during the intervention.
[2] A Hungarian cavalry officer originally in imperial service, Ráttky György (rendered in French as "Georges Rattsky" or "Rattzky") was a participant in the failed anti-Habsburg Rákóczi Uprising (1703-11) and one of the founding commanders of the French hussars, who were at this time still an "ethnic" unit of Hungarian cavalrymen rather than merely a descriptor of a type of light cavalry. Because Hungary proper was not available for French recruiting, however, the French could raise these men only from among emigres (like Rattsky) and Hungarian populations under Ottoman control (principally in Wallachia and Serbia). Correspondingly, their numbers were quite limited. They were considered good light troops, excellent for scouting, raiding, and skirmishing in terrain which proper cavalry might find unsuitable, which made them perfect for the Corsican theater.

Timeline Notes
[A] This seems like it should be the name of an Asterix character, but no, it's the name of an actual French officer.

Carp · Sep 30, 2017

The Battle of the Balagna - Day 2
Excerpts from Merganser Publishing's "Rebellion!" Series #24: The Corsican Revolution

The village of San Antonino, viewed from the south

The first engagement on the morning of the 23rd was just after dawn, when a company of Rattsky's hussars scouting down the Regino Valley encountered a band of rebel soldiers encamped near the hamlet of l'Alzeta.[1] If the Corsicans were intended to be a picket or scouting element, they did not do their jobs well, and were taken quite by surprise; the hussars charged before their opponents could get a proper volley off, cutting down two dozen men and scattering the rest into the woods. It was an inauspicious beginning for the Corsicans, who had been driven back on the previous day and were now preparing to receive another assault.

Maréchal de camp Rousset's plan for the day was uncomplicated. The previous day had been his first encounter with the Corsicans, and he was not terribly impressed. True, they had held San Antonino, but Rousset seems to have ascribed this more to miscommunication and rivalry between Contades and Montrosier than any particular strength of the rebels or their commanders. The Corsicans had been easily forced from their positions in the south and completely taken in by his bluff in the north. They were clearly no match for disciplined and courageous Frenchmen, and so Rousset sent out orders for a broad attack all along the line; his officers were to hit the Corsicans everywhere, break their spirits, and drive them from their positions. To minimize any questions of jurisdiction between Contades and Montrosier, he gave them distinct tasks; Contades would resume the attack on San Antonino, the hinge of the rebel line, and Montrosier would advance down the valley towards Rauschenburg's suspected position. Meanwhile, the Marquis d'Avaray would attack Fabiani's northern position and would overcome any superior numbers by virtue of the quality of his troops, a few companies of reinforcements from Sasselange's brigade under Major Salnoue, and artillery support from Major Gouville's 4-pounder battery.[2] Rousset himself advanced his command post to a low hill west of Praoli, which gave him a vantage point on both Fabiani's northern position and San Antonino.

Following the skirmish at l'Alzeta, the hussars located Rauschenburg's main body. He had arrayed his troops in a position guarding the flank of San Antonino on the valley floor in a patchwork of fields, olive orchards, and marshy streams. Rattsky ordered his men to maintain contact while Montrosier advanced, and engaged in some desultory skirmishing with the Corsicans to little effect on either side. The battle proper, however, began first in the north, and was opened by the sound of Gouville's battery opening fire.

The first serious infantry engagement was on the ridge, where Crussol's Île-de-France regiment and the Auvergne second battalion under Major Chamontin advanced on San Antonino from the south and west. As on the previous day, the hilltop town—Rousset's report described it as a "fortress," although it had no military architecture as such—proved a formidable position, forcing the French to scramble over rocky terrain and giving the Corsicans plenty of walled terraces and streets to use as parapets from which to pour fire down upon them. As in the previous afternoon, the engagement moved into close quarters, and according to legend local villagers hurled stones and roof tiles down on French soldiers attempting to push into the town. With their lines disrupted by the terrain as well as the walls and streets, the French soon lost their cohesion and were bloodily repulsed. Briagier di Muro, who after his humiliating defeat in the previous day was eager to face down rumors of cowardice, insisted on taking to the front and was seriously wounded.

In the north, d'Avaray's forces engaged the Corsicans, but after several volleys the marquis discovered that he was merely trading fire with a screening element of militia. Lieutenant-Colonel Drevitz had decided to withdraw his foreign regiment further up the hill with the start of the artillery bombardment, and partially screened as they were by woods much of Gouville's bombardment thus far had been wasted on thinly-spread militia skirmishers. D'Avaray, not wishing to make the same mistake that had cost the French the earlier Battle of Corbara, advanced slowly to allow Gouville to move up his guns, although at the cost of letting his men stand under the sporadic but reasonably accurate fire of the militia in the woods.

Day 2, Early Morning

Rousset had hoped that the attacks all down the line would be similarly timed, but he had not counted on Rauschenburg withdrawing nearly three miles down the valley. As a result, by the time Montrosier's infantry encountered the enemy and deployed into lines, the French forces further north had already been engaged for nearly two hours. Montrosier faced the largest opponent, numerically speaking, but Rauschenburg's command was also the only section of the Corsican line with no regular troops; his highland militia were hardy men, but had little training in "conventional" tactics. Most were not equipped with bayonets, and those who had them were untrained in their use. Rauschenburg's attempt to face Montrosier in a classic line battle failed spectacularly, as the serried ranks of Frenchmen marched unflinchingly through the rebels' ragged musket-fire, responded with thunderous and well-disciplined volleys, and then charged with cold steel. The Corsican line quickly disintegrated, and soon Rattsky's hussars were riding up the field with bared sabers to hunt down the rebels put to flight.

By this time Contades had already begun another assault on San Antonino, and Chamontin's battalion was ordered to flank around the ridge to the north of the village. This stroke was parried only by the intervention of Giuliani's battalion of militia, which Fabiani had withdrew from the northern front the previous evening as a reserve. Giuliani flanked Chamontin's troops and forced them to withdraw and reform, causing Crussol to abort his frontal attack on the village as it was now unsupported. To the north, d'Avaray was making steady progress but was continuing to take casualties. He had come to grips with Drevitz's foreigners, who offered a decent enough resistance but ultimately fell back in the face of continued artillery bombardment. Fabiani, too, had several guns at Corbara, and of larger caliber, but while these provided some counter-battery fire of middling effectiveness the gunners found that supporting Drevitz was not possible given the rough and forested terrain and the difficulty of sufficiently depressing their guns.

Day 2, Late Morning

By noon, the Coriscans were hard-pressed on the ridge and had totally given way in the south; a greater slaughter of Rauschenburg's men was averted only by the marshy ground, which made the going difficult for the hussars, and the retreat of the militia into the woods where they had some protection. Colonel Cervoni distinguished himself, retiring with his men up the wooded slopes of the Capo del Bujo where they managed to drive off a hussar company and force several French infantry companies to wheel about from the main attack to confront them. Returning to traditional guerrilla tactics, Cervoni's Niolesi militia melted away into the mountains, eluding capture or destruction.

Now aware of the disaster in the south and with his own command post at the Convent of Corbara taking sporadic musket and cannon fire, Fabiani realized the necessity of a retreat and concentrated his efforts on trying to extricate as much of his force as possible from the ridge. Battisti was ordered to spike and destroy his few artillery pieces, which were too heavy to retreat with. Kilmallock led a withdrawal from San Antonino down the back side of the hill, a more difficult transit than moving across the ridge but one which masked his retreat from the view of Contades. A third and final French assault on San Antonino was like kicking down an open door; to the surprise of Crussol, who led the attack, the defenders had vanished.

A desperate and bloody battle was now fought in the woods northeast of San Antonino. Kilmallock had withdrawn his command into this small and steep-sided valley to escape from Contades, but hundreds of militia from Rauschenburg's command had also fled this way from the south. It had the makings of a deathtrap, and the Corsicans suffered heavy casualties as Montrosier's infantry attempted to push their way in. Colonel Caponi, of Rostino, was wounded and captured. Ultimately, however, many of the Corsicans fled up the valley and back up onto the ridge, where Giuliani's men and elements from other regular and militia units fought a successful delaying action against Crussol while the rest of the army retired. They were aided by the fact that d'Avaray had led his main force to Corbara instead of swinging south in the hopes of taking the Corsican artillery, while Textorix's battalion was still reorganizing from the battle in the woods and did not push up the valley in a timely enough manner to stop Giuliani from disengaging.

Day 2, Early Afternoon

The retreating rebel battalions converged at Santa Reparata di Balagna. Fabiani briefly considered making a stand here, but the Corsicans were in disorder and there was a general feeling of panic. Keeping only a picked group of regulars and Balagnese militia, Fabiani made his way to Isola Rossa, while the remainder of the Corsican army retreated (some would say "fled") east under Kilmallock. The French did not effectively arrest this retreat; Montrosier's command was too dispersed and disorganized, Contades' battalions were bloodied and exhausted, d'Avaray had turned his force north towards Corbara, and Rattsky's hussars, the men most able to harass the rebel retreat, had been pursuing the flight of some of Rauschenburg's men down the Regino valley and were too far away to assist.

It was a decisive defeat for the Corsicans, and the most serious they had suffered since Theodore's arrival. Not only had they lost more than a thousand men (albeit probably more to flight and desertion than outright deaths), but the loss of the Balagna, the island's most productive province, now seemed all but certain. Isola Rossa had no serious fortifications aside from a few coastal defense towers, and Fabiani decided that evening that with Corbara in French hands a defense of the port was not feasible. As the French Navy was standing guard offshore, he organized an evacuation by land, taking as many valuables and military stores as his men and civilian volunteers could carry and withdrawing eastwards. Rousset, who believed the Corsicans would try and defend the town, did not actually launch an attack until the 25th, two days after his victory, by which point Fabiani was long gone.

Day 2, Late Afternoon

Montrosier was the hero of the day, gaining an overwhelming victory in the south with a textbook demonstration of superior French discipline and élan. Rousset gave him his personal commendation, but this aroused the jealousy of Contades, Montrosier's superior officer, who felt that Montrosier's failure to support him against San Antonino on the first day of the battle had been motivated by Montrosier's glory-seeking and contributed to Contades' lackluster performance against the rebel strong point in the center. Baron Rattsky also came under some criticism for his "overzealous" pursuit in the Regino valley and his failure to keep in contact with Rousset's command, but to some extend any failings of his were attributed to the "unruly" nature of the Hungarians.

The victory probably saved the career of the Marquis de Boissieux, who had been under increasing criticism back home for his "lenient" treatment of the rebels and his failure up to this point to decisively defeat them. He had shown that he could wield the iron fist as well as the velvet glove, and had recovered the French honor which had been lost at Madonna della Serra and Corbara; his previous demands that he needed reinforcements to deliver a sound blow to the rebels now seemed to be vindicated. Boissieux, however, had not yet given up on conciliation, and even as his other brigades executed their missions elsewhere on the island he sent out new missives to the rebels, hoping that their defeat in the Balagna had been sufficient to shake their resolve. Meanwhile, the French had lost the better part of a battalion's worth of troops over the course of the two-day battle (including killed and wounded). Some of those wounded, of course, would eventually recover, but Boissieux could not replace his losses without appealing for more reinforcements from France, something he was loathe to do unless it was truly necessary.

The battle and the loss of the Balagna were difficult blows for the Corsicans in general and Theodore in particular. There were, however, bright spots in the conduct of the Corsicans in battle. The Guard had defended San Antonino against all attack, withdrawing only when Fabiani gave the order, which demonstrated that properly trained and equipped Corsican soldiers under experienced officers could successfully stand up to the French. Heroic defenses and rearguard actions by Cervoni, Giuseppe, Poggi, and Balisone over the course of the battle displayed the high caliber of Corsican field officers and their ability to organize fighting retreats, always a difficult maneuver and one which was to prove extremely useful as the war went on.

The lesson learned by the Corsican generals at the battle—Fabiani, Kilmallock, and Rauschenburg—was that save under very favorable circumstances with well-trained troops, like at San Antonino, they could not face French infantry on French terms and expect to win. Rauschenburg in particular had been humiliated by his defeat, but irregular warfare was more in his wheelhouse anyway, and the shift in strategy after the Battle of the Balagna suited him well.[A] Ahead, however, loomed the prospect of the invasion of the Nebbio, and fighting was still raging in the east, where Lieutenant-General Count Andrea Ceccaldi squared off against the Marquis de Villemur, arguably Boissieux's most talented brigadier.

Footnotes
[1] French hussar squadrons were divided into two companies each, so this represents a unit of about 50 horsemen.
[2] Colonel D'Avaray was technically part of Contades' brigade, but he had autonomous command of the French left as Contades was present with the forces in the center attacking San Antonino.

Timeline Notes
[A] The early life of Johann Friedrich von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg is unknown, or at least I haven't been able to discover anything about him, including any earlier military service. He very well could have been a junior officer somewhere, which would be a fairly common career path for a minor German baron with a meager estate. It seems safe to assume he never had high command, and thus even in a "best-case" scenario Rauschenburg was probably promoted directly from Lieutenant to Lieutenant-General. One should hardly be surprised that in his first major battle as a senior officer, in a foreign country and leading foreign militiamen against French regulars, he falls on his face. Yet historically he held out in the mountains as a guerrilla leader for nearly a year after the whole country had fallen to the French. This is clearly not a man devoid of military talent; he's just more of a Che Guevara than a Napoleon.

Carp · Oct 5, 2017

Villemur's March

The Genoese fortress of Aleria, a.k.a. "Fort Matra"

The French spring campaign opened with a fantastic success at the Battle of the Balagna, in which French regulars swept away the Corsican militia and sent the largest army the rebels had ever fielded running for the hills. The consequences of this defeat were extensive. Most of the province fell to the French immediately thereafter, or at least was no longer available for royalist exploitation, and Isola Rossa was abandoned without a fight, closing the rebels' most active smuggling port. More than a thousand rebel soldiers were killed, wounded, or absent, many having deserted the fleeing army. In the Balagna, where support for the rebellion was always lower than the interior, many residents proclaimed their loyalty to France (and, somewhat less enthusiastically, to Genoa). Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat, Marquis de Boissieux was pleased, for he remained convinced that winning the good will of the Corsican people was essential to the suppression of the rebellion. In this he was opposed to Commissioner-General Giovanni-Battista de Mari, who demanded the destruction of fields, orchards, and houses of those Balagnese who were suspected of siding with the rebels. While Boissieux probably curbed the worst of Mari's intended retribution, he relied on the Genoese to garrison much of the Balagna and it was difficult to keep Mari's soldiers from quietly enacting revenge under the commissioner's likely orders.

Although for the most part the Genoese had avoided sending Corsican regular battalions to the island, since 1730 the Genoese had relied heavily on Corsican filogenovesi militiamen to fight the native insurgency. Although not extraordinary troops, they were necessary to support the undermanned and overstretched Genoese Army. Since the Genoese had a harder time finding men than muskets, there was no reason not to hand out arms to loyalist militiamen as long as they could be generally counted on not to defect to the rebels (an increasingly common occurrence after the fall of the Nebbio). The policy of the French, however, was to disarm the Corsicans regardless of their professed loyalty, which was obviously incompatible with raising local auxiliary troops. This reflected a French suspicion of the Corsicans generally, which Boissieux shared; while the Genoese had a long history on Corsica and some ideas as to which communities (and even which families) could be trusted, the French saw only undifferentiated boarskin-shod rustics who could very plausibly vanish into the night with their Genoese-provided musket and join the rebellion. The French government, aware of Corsican martial reputation, apparently liked the idea of recruiting Corsicans into the French army either as part of the Régiment Royal-Italien or perhaps a régiment étranger of their own,[A] but this was something to be executed once the pacification was complete or very nearly so, and there was no intention that such locally-raised forces would be used to fight on Corsica itself.

The enormity of the recent defeat was not lost on King Theodore, who put on a brave face but confided to his chancellor Sebastiano Costa that it might be necessary to prepare a ship for Livorno or Naples in case Maréchal de Camp Rousset moved upon the Nebbio, as once the coast was lost it would be nearly impossible to escape the island or the Genoese executioners. Very soon, however, Boissieux started undermining his own victory. Believing that the Battle of the Balagna had taken the wind out of the sails of the rebels and confident that his reputation among his superiors had been restored, he renewed diplomatic contacts with his foes. There was not much progress to be made on that front; the basic terms, as laid out at Fontainebleau, had not changed. While extending the olive branch, however, he wished to demonstrate good will by sheathing the sword, and instead of pressing on eastwards Rousset's brigade halted and busied itself with disarming the rebels and maintaining the security of the Balagna. There were, of course, logistical preparations to make—the Nebbio could not be reached save through the rough terrain of the Agriate, a place as poor for supply lines as it was ideal for the maquisards—but with Captain General Simone Fabiani's force greatly diminished and in disarray the rebels could not have offered much of a fight. His pause gave the royalists precious time to recover from the shock of their recent defeat and to try and organize some resistance.

On the eastern shore, Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur was advancing northwards from Porto Vecchio with a force nearly as large as Rousset's, consisting of five infantry battalions and a squadron of hussars under Lieutenant-Colonel Chevalier Zsigmond David. His achievements thus far were less impressive than Rousset's, but for good reason; he had much more ground to cover, and his opponents were less willing to offer open battle than Fabiani and the Balagnese. His primary antagonists in the south were the two brothers Milanino and Carlo Lusinchi, who commanded the militia of Zicavo.[1] The Zicavesi were fanatical royalists, and like the Niolesi, their northern counterparts, they were far more adept at irregular warfare than the continental style. The Zicavesi had been active in Fiumorbo for some time before the French arrival, and used the coastally-adjacent province as a base from which to harass Villemur's progress. They were not so bold—or suicidal—as to confront him directly, but they were active adversaries nonetheless.

Fiumorbo is unique in that it is the only district on the eastern coast between Porto Vecchio and Bastia without a coastal plain. The region's mountains march right up to the sea. This compelled Villemur to take narrow tracks through the mountains and divide his troops into multiple columns, lest his army turn into a miles-long line filing down a single mule track. The Lusinchi brothers contested every village with his battalions; local militia took shots at his advance guard and then retired, or waited until a column had nearly passed them and then surprised the rearguard. Zsigmond David's hussars were invaluable troops for fending off such attacks, but his single squadron of around a hundred cavalrymen could not be everywhere. Soon the Corsicans began choosing particularly steep and well-wooded hillsides to stage their attacks, compelling the hussars to dismount or break off their pursuit.

There was particularly hard fighting at the village of Conca. The Corsicans could not prevent the French from occupying the village, but as soon as Villemur continued northwards the Zicavesi stormed back in and meted out justice to any "traitors to the nation" who were alleged to have provided the French with food or information. Fear of reprisals made the local population reluctant to cooperate with Villemur's men. Villemur could be threatening too—he was not so hesitant to destroy property as Boissieux, and ordered that the houses of suspected rebels be razed—but since the active fighters he was contending with were mostly Zicavesi, they had no houses in Fiumorbo to destroy and could not be coerced in that manner. Villemur found his attempts to disarm and pacify the thinly-populated region accomplished little except to slowly attrit his battalions by incessant skirmishes, and was conscious of his larger goal to reach Bastia and conquer the eastern coast along the way.

His columns converged at the coastal village of Solenzara on the 27th, at the southern end of the eastern coastal plain. After a day of rest there, he resumed the march northwards. It was nearly 60 miles to Bastia as the crow flies, and clearly there was no chance of keeping a supply line through Fiumorbo open without heavy French occupation. That did not bother Villemur much; he determined that he could receive sufficient supplies by sea from the Franco-Genoese naval forces, and any deficit could be met by forage. The army encamped at Ghisonaccia on the coastal plain on the 29th and reached Aleria on the 31st.

The fortress of Aleria, situated on a low hill overlooking the lagoons, had been one of the first targets of the Corsican rebellion. In 1729, revolting Corsicans had stormed the fort, massacred the Genoese garrison, and seized the contents of the armory. It had remained vacant until the arrival of Theodore in 1736, who gave it to the powerful Matra clan. Their patriarch Saviero Matra had been the first to host the new king, and for his support he was granted the rank of marquis, the position of hofmarschall, and the governorship of the pieve of Serra as his reward. Matra, however, did not offer resistance to Villemur; he capitulated immediately, handing over the fortress without a fight and offering Villemur his full cooperation. In his defense, the fortress of Aleria had but a few dozen men as its garrison, for up to now it had not been a strategically important post. Furthermore, Matra had no military experience or rank,[2] and Serra's militia numbered fewer than 150 men. It should also be remembered that Matra's son, Alerio Francesco Matra, was one of the Corsican hostages who had volunteered to go into French custody and was presently imprisoned in the Chateau d'If; the marquis probably did not want to put him in further danger. With Matra's acquiescence, Villemur disarmed the small garrison and took possession of the fortress.

Aleria was a useful position to hold, as it overlooked the Tavignano estuary and the Alerian lagoons, favored spots for smugglers to load and unload small craft. It also held potential as a staging point for campaigns into the Castagniccia, the inland heart of the rebellion, and its position on a low hill overlooking the broad coastal plain made it difficult for the rebels to approach. Yet there was a reason that the nearby countryside was so thinly populated: the lagoons and marshes which surrounded the fortress were plagued by malaria during the summer and the month of June had just arrived.

Villemur encamped at Aleria for four nights, during which time he sent two "flying columns" consisting of an infantry battalion and a company of hussars to reconnoiter the area and confiscate weapons in Serra pieve. Matra's cooperation meant that there was little resistance, and the small provincial militia was disbanded. One of these columns had ranged as far north as Linguizzetta, which was only five miles from Theodore's original capital of Cervione and his coronation site at Alesani, and found no evidence of rebel activity there. On the 4th of June, Villemur ordered his brigade to strike camp and proceed northwards.

Theodore and his commanders had been made aware of Villemur's progress north by the Lusinchi brothers. Summoning his war council (of which Fabiani was vice-president), Theodore cast about for a strategy. Fabiani opined that facing Villemur on the coastal plain would probably end no better than the engagement with Rousset in the Balagna. All agreed, however, that if Rousset resumed his offensive eastwards while Villemur approached Bastia, the Nebbio would be as good as lost and the rebellion put in serious danger of collapse. If the French were to be defeated, it would have to be piecemeal, which meant confronting Villemur before he could move far enough north to coordinate his attack with Rousset. Lieutenant-General Count Andrea Ceccaldi volunteered to lead a force against him.

Although Fabiani was the highest-ranking general in the kingdom, Ceccaldi was by 1739 arguably its most successful. Alongside Marquis Luigi Giafferi, now Theodore's prime minister, Ceccaldi had led the rebels at the First Battle of Calenzana, an engagement in 1732 in which the Corsican rebels had surprised and crushingly defeated a battalion of the imperial army. More recently, he had been the victor of the Battle of Rutali in which the Genoese expeditionary force under Colonel Marchelli had been routed, and was the highest ranking officer (under Theodore himself) at the Siege of San Fiorenzo. To fight, however, he needed an army, and that did not presently exist. Theodore would not assign him his regulars, who he believed were needed to guard against Rousset's expected advance, nor could the local militia be spared. On very short notice, Ceccaldi raised around 300 men from the pieves of Casinca and Casaconi, his home turf, but as Villemur had nearly ten times as many this was not terrifically inspiring. Nevertheless, it was with these few hundred men that Ceccaldi began his march south, determined to at least delay the French.

Ceccaldi, however, was not alone, for Matra was not quite as much of a turncoat as it seemed. Although he willingly collaborated with the French and did nothing to directly undermine them, he discreetly sent a message to his son-in-law, Count Gianpetro Gaffori, then at Corti, explaining the situation.[B] Gaffori, up to this point, had not been much of a military man. Theodore had made him his secretary of state and subsequently the president of the mint; in the latter capacity he had overseen the striking of Theodore's crude issue of barely-silver coinage in 1736. He was a colonel of the Corti militia, but this position was owed mainly to the fact that his father Filippo Antonio Gaffori was the podesta of the town, and thus far his duties as colonel seem to have been more administrative than operational. Nevertheless, upon receiving his father-in-law's letter Gaffori decided on his own initiative to gather local forces and lead them against the French. He mustered around 400 men in Talcini and Vallerustie and marched on Alesani.

Meanwhile, Ceccaldi had made a detour inland into Rostino to find more troops. Several hundred were mustered, in large parts through the efforts of the young Captain Clemente Paoli, who joined the campaign personally. Ceccaldi remained in the valley for several days trying to raise as large a force as he could. On the 5th of June, however, he received word that Gaffori was at Alesani with more men, and decided to join him there. On the 7th, the rebel forces rendezvoused at the very chapel in which Theodore had been crowned with a laurel wreath. That same day, Villemur led two battalions and the hussars to Cervioni, just four miles from the royalist encampment.

Positions on Corsica around the start of June 1739
Green: Royalist controlled
Red: Genoese controlled
Blue: French or Franco-Genoese occupation
White: Neutral or unknown

Footnotes
[1] The Lusinchi brothers were hardly just backwoods rabblerousers. Their family was a prominent military dynasty in the mercenary service of Venice, and both Carlo and Milanino had served as officers in the Venetian army (as Captain and Major, respectively). It is possible that as soldiers or junior officers they saw battle against the Turks in the Second Morean War. Their father had also been a Venetian officer, and served as a lieutenant-general of the rebel movement until he was assassinated by men in the pay of Genoa in 1731. Their commanding officer in the Venetian army and fellow Corsican, Anton-Frencesco Giappiconi, had been Theodore's minister of war and was also slain by the bullet of a Genoese assassin. Theodore had little reason to doubt their loyalty to the nationalist cause.
[2] While hofmarschall ("Court Marshal") sounds military enough, it was an administrative post. In Germany, a hofmarschall oversaw the provisioning and maintenance of the royal court and household, but since Matra remained in Serra through most of Theodore's reign it was clearly an honorary position.

Timeline Notes
[A] IOTL, this was actually realized. After Maillebois (Boissieux's replacement) completed the conquest of the island, there were many Corsicans interested in French service. Most of these were former rebels who were likely to be severely punished or even executed under a restored Genoese administration; the family names of Costa, d'Ornano, and Orticoni are among those which appear on the initial list of recruits. The result was the Régiment Royal-Corse, which fought in the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War. In that latter conflict, the unit was briefly dissolved and turned into a subsidiary battalion of the Régiment Royal-Italien, but it was reconstituted as its own regiment two years later. When France invaded Corsica in 1768, the regiment successfully petitioned the king to be excused from having to fight their own countrymen. The regiment was reorganized after the conquest and finally disbanded in 1788, with its troops moved chiefly into new light infantry formations.
[B] IOTL, Gaffori is best known as the leader of the Corsican rebellion until his assassination in 1753, but his wife Faustina Matra is a local heroine in her own right. According to legend, when Corti came under attack while her husband was away, the militia defending it wanted to surrender. They were dissuaded from doing so by Faustina, who held a lit match over a barrel of gunpowder and promised to kill herself and take all of them with her if they gave up. The defenders held out until relief came.

Carp · Oct 8, 2017

The Battle of Alesani

Soldiers of the La Sarre regiment c. 1750

King Theodore had not just chosen Cervioni as his capital upon his arrival in 1736 because of its proximity to his landing site north of Aleria. It was the largest town on the eastern plain (technically on the hillside rising above the plain) between Porto Vecchio and Bastia,[A] it was the seat of the Diocese of Aleria, and it served as the gateway to the Castagniccia, the most populated region of the Corsican highland and home to many rebel leaders and soldiers. Boissieux anticipated that its capture would be a psychological blow to the Corsicans—even if the king did not actually reside there anymore—but it also appeared to be a valuable strategic point, a perfect bridgehead from which to launch attacks into the heartland of the rebellion.

It was also almost totally undefended, although amusingly it did have artillery. A few years earlier, Chancellor Sebastiano Costa had selected two of the "small pieces" which Theodore had initially brought to Corsica and were not particularly useful as siege guns to sit on either side of the entrance to Theodore's "palace," actually the former residence of the bishop, so as to give the place a more imposing feel. As these were not actually intended for use, however, there was no powder or shot for them. The local militia of Campoloro, Cervioni's pieve, numbered about 200 men under Colonel Francesco Gio Suzzoni, but they had not seen significant action since 1737 and had made no preparations for the defense of the village. When French forces approached, most of the local militiamen took to the hills or stashed their weapons under their floorboards to avoid confiscation.

Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur had encamped his army near the mouth of the Alesani river on the night of June 6th, and on the following morning he led three battalions of infantry and a hussar squadron towards the village of San Andrea di Cotone about a mile south of Cervione. Meeting only the most fleeting resistance, he left one battalion there and personally led the other two (plus the hussars) to Cervioni itself. The town capitulated without a fight, and Theodore's "capital" fell into the hands of the French. The town was searched for munitions, although except for Costa's display cannons not much was found, as the militia had hidden or escaped with most of the local weaponry. The town was then plundered of its food stores, which were invaluable to Villemur.

After breaking his supply lines in Fiumorbo, Villemur had counted on maritime supply to keep his army marching, but Genoese support had been spotty at best. The primitive Genoese logistical system was already severely strained by the upkeep of nearly ten thousand Frenchmen, a significantly larger force than the entire Genoese army, and the Genoese navy already had its hands full supplying the French in the Balagna as well as the troops of Brigadier Anne de Montmorency-Luxembourg, Comte de Montmorency, whose progress down the rugged Capo Corso was positively glacial compared to Villemur's swift advance northwards. Moreover, the Corsicans were actively interfering with supply attempts, as armed feluccas and other ships crewed by royalist privateers operating from Bastia and the lagoons of the eastern coast menaced Genoese shipping. The ramshackle "Corsican navy" - really just fishermen and smugglers with muskets—was no match for an actual warship, but they could certainly snap up a Genoese barque laden with stores. That required the Genoese to protect their shipments with galleys or armed feluccas of their own, but organizing such convoys only added to the time, cost, and inconvenience of supplying Villemur's column, particularly since he seldom stayed in one place for long.

Villemur enjoyed a luncheon with his officers at Theodore's table, apparently even breaking open a bottle of Theodore's treasured Rhenish wine which had been left in the cellar. One of Villemur's officers proposed that they torch the place afterwards, but the brigadier declined, and for good reason—the "palace" was the bishop's residence, and the absent bishop of Aleria was none other than Camillo de Mari, a close relation of the Genoese Commissioner-General Giovanni-Battista de Mari.

The town was secured, but soon Villemur's attention was diverted by the sound of gunfire from the south. Taking a few companies of infantry and the hussars to investigate, Villemur found his battalion at San Andrea under attack by rebel militia. The French garrison had the matter well in hand; the militia were not much more than an annoyance. There were, however, a fair number of them—one or two hundred, Villemur guessed—and they retired up the valley when pursued. Villemur ordered Colonel Charles-Claude-Joachim d’Audibert, Comte de Lussan, to take his regiment of La Sarre and a company of hussars to scout up the valley.

In that direction lay the forces of Lieutenant-General Count Andrea Ceccaldi and Count Gianpetro Gaffori, who had recently rendezvoused at the Convent of Alesani. Between them they had around 900 men. The skirmishers at San Andrea had in fact been their own scouting party, led by Captain Clemente Paoli, who had been specifically instructed not to get into any serious firefight with the French. Paoli now sent back a messenger reporting that there were at least a thousand Frenchmen there (somewhat of an overstatement; there were probably no more than 700) including cavalry, and that they were advancing up the valley. Ceccaldi did not like his chances much, but it was good terrain; the valley was heavily wooded and traversable only by narrow paths along steep slopes.

That afternoon, Lussan reached the small village of Ortale. After searching the village for arms, he reportedly found an old monk who informed him that the rebels had a stash of munitions at the convent just across the valley, only a mile away. Lussan descended into the valley floor, but cautiously, assigning the hussars to scout ahead. They encountered a few dozen militiamen and quickly dispersed them, but as they pushed ahead in pursuit the woods around Lussan's main column erupted in gunfire. The hussars, occupied in front, had not adequately screened his flanks, and he had marched straight into an ambush by Gaffori's highlanders. The hussars, meanwhile, had reached the outskirts of the village of Piazzali only a quarter mile away, and the fifty horsemen found themselves confronted by a force of nearly 300 waiting militia. The company captain - evidently the third most senior hussar officer - was mortally wounded in the opening volley, and the horsemen turned and fled. Lussan's infantry, meanwhile, were evidently made of sterner stuff; Lussan quickly organized them into lines facing outwards and the French blasted off volleys into the woods. With the rebel militia taking cover behind trees, however, it was easier for the Corsicans to hit the tightly-packed rows of white-coated Frenchmen than it was for the French soldiers to hit their targets, and being surrounded with no clear idea of how many men he faced, Lussan could not simply order an advance to flush them out with bayonets. Once the hussars appeared at his front, riding hastily in retreat, Lussan decided the best course of action was to withdraw. The French made a fighting retreat through the woods to Ortale, foiling the Corsicans' attempt to cut them off, and once he had made a defensible perimeter at the village the rebels broke off the attack. The old monk, he noted, was long gone. Ceccaldi had not destroyed Lussan's battalion as he had hoped, but he had exacted serious casualties, with nearly a hundred Frenchmen dead or wounded at slight cost to his own force. As Lussan withdrew downriver, the Corsicans returned and kept up the pressure until he finally neared San Andrea.

Upon his return, Villemur's officers clamored for revenge. Villemur was no fool; he knew perfectly well that his army was at a disadvantage in the narrow, forested valleys of the Castagniccia, and he had no information as to the size of the enemy force, which was at least considerable enough to ambush and defeat a battalion. Villemur had confidence in the superior training of his troops and considered it unlikely that the Corsicans had as many men under arms as him, but there was no guarantee that the Corsican force would stand and fight, and a venture inland would draw him away from the coast and delay his progress north. Nevertheless, he did not want to leave a major enemy force to its own devices, and he must have been acutely conscious of Rousset's overwhelming victory in the north. It would no doubt reflect poorly on him by comparison if he were to allow Lussan's ambush to go unpunished and decline battle altogether against what was qualitatively and quantitatively an inferior foe. Villemur was an intelligent and effective officer, but he also had a concern for honor and glory common among the noblesse d'épée who led the armies of France, to say nothing of a concern for his own reputation and career. At length, he decided that a punitive expedition was in order, but as it was late in the day the plan would not be executed until the morning of the 8th.

The Valley of Alesani

On the 8th of June, Villemur led four battalions up the valley, with the fifth remaining behind at Cervioni along with the wounded from earlier fighting. With nearly 2,000 men advancing in two columns on either side of the river, Villemur presented a difficult target for an ambush. Still significantly outnumbered, Ceccaldi withdrew up the valley as the French advanced. Villemur faced only feeble resistance; a company of militia attempted to oppose his advance at Perelli and broke immediately once the French opened fire.

The valley of Alesani was (and today remains) a classically Corsican landscape, a well-forested valley hemmed in by the mountains. While there were few fields and no large towns, the valley was nevertheless home to several thousand people, spread in dozens of small villages throughout the landscape like an archipelago in a sea of green. The secret to their survival was the forest itself, a dense woodland of cork and chestnut. The chestnut was the bread of the highland Corsicans; it was not for no reason that the region was known as Castagniccia.[B] Alesani—not only a valley, but its own small pieve—had long been a rebel stronghold, but it had not been a theater of war since the initial outbreak of the rebellion.

Now Villemur went to work. Having easily conquered the valley, his men began looting it. Admittedly the locals had little in the way of valuables, but the soldiers ransacked houses looking for munitions and raided village granaries. The chestnuts of Alesani, after all, could feed soldiers as well as they could feed peasants, and Villemur needed any supplies he could forage. Villemur's actions went beyond expediency, however; he ordered the villages of Ortali and Piazzali to be burned to the ground as retribution for Lussan's ambush. Most outrageously to the Corsicans, he commanded his soldiers to start cutting down chestnut trees, directly threatening their livelihood. It had been the Genoese themselves who, in the 16th century, had attempted to improve the food production of the island by forcing its residents to plant chestnut trees, but now the easy availability of the chestnut in the mountainous interior had caused the Genoese to consider it the "food of the rebellion," used to sustain revolutionaries and bandits in their mountain fortresses, and Villemur shared their conviction that striking at this food supply was good anti-guerrilla policy.

Ceccaldi, then on the other side of the Col d'Arcarotta in the vale of Orezza, found Villemur's actions to be a good recruiting tool. Corsica was not a large island, nor the Castagniccia a wide country, and news traveled fast. Before the day was over, there were already armed men from Moriani and Orezza streaming into his camp, both militiamen and irregular volunteers. Some, he later wrote to Costa, were just there on the chance of getting free gunpowder and shot for their old snaphaunces, but many came armed to the teeth, asking where the Frenchmen were and when they would have the opportunity to kill them. Still, Ceccaldi held back, and Villemur was allowed to occupy the valley without opposition.

For the French, it was an unsettling night. Bonfires glimmered on the mountains on all sides of the valley, and the night was pierced by the eerie trumpeting of conch horns. Late that night, companies of militia picked their way around the valley's edge, guided by local villagers. Come dawn, firefights began erupting all over the valley. Although nominally in command, Ceccaldi's role was probably minimal; he could not have had any meaningful command and control over company-sized bands of Corsicans creeping into the valley in the morning's twilight. The attack was left to the initiative of individual captains and colonels, who were instructed to hit hard where they could and retreat into the woods if opposed. He could do little else; the militia was chafing for action, and he may have decided that if he kept trying to hold them back he would lose control of the "army" entirely. Although probably apocryphal, the situation was well captured by a tale often told after the battle: when asked by one of his captains what the plan of operations was, Ceccaldi responded with "why, if you see a Frenchman, shoot him!"

The action of June 9th is not particularly well documented, but French reports are sufficient to give us the gist of it. Spread throughout the valley, quartered in villages or bivouacked in the open, the French soldiers found themselves under attack by Corsican militia emerging from the trees and seeming to come from all directions. Villemur had anticipated a morning attack and instructed his captains accordingly, but the French were caught off-guard by the degree to which the Corsicans were able, with the help of local guides, to infiltrate the valley and strike at villages and encampments well behind the expected "front" near the Col d'Arcarotta. The fighting was fierce, and the "savagery" of the Corsicans was noted by the French: a company of Villemur's own Bassigny Regiment was surrounded and annihilated near the village of Milaria, with the Corsicans allegedly falling upon the wounded with their knives and massacring them all. After this confused battle was well under way, Ceccaldi and Gaffori crested the col with about 800 men and attacked French-held villages in the north of the valley.

The day's fighting was tactically inconclusive. The French fell back from the northern valley and a number of outlying villages in an effort to regroup and face Ceccaldi. Once he felt he no longer had the advantage of French disorder, however, Ceccaldi withdrew, leaving only local militia to continue desultory skirmishing. Villemur made the decision to withdraw from Alesani entirely, although not before burning several more villages and executing a number of locals who were suspected of assisting the rebels. In the end, both sides claimed victory; Ceccaldi announced that the French had been driven out of Alesani, while Villemur recorded that the main Corsican attack against him had failed and his incursion into Alesani had met its two major objectives; to wit, to punishing the locals for their support of the rebels and foraging supplies for his army. Those objectives, however, had been dearly bought. Combined with Lussan's ambush the previous day, Villemur recorded 413 casualties (dead, wounded, and incapacitated from all causes), more than 14% of the nominal strength of his initial force.[1] Particularly worrying were the losses among the Esterhazy Hussars, his sole cavalry squadron, which suffered such losses among both men and beasts that Lieutenant-Colonel Zsigmond David reported that he could field no more than 40 horsemen. Villemur's claim to have "punished" the people of Alesani rang a bit hollow after such losses and his precipitous evacuation from the valley.

Although the rebel force in the mountains had obviously not been destroyed, Villemur still had an appointment to make, and decided there was little more he could accomplish in Campoloro. The French remained two more nights at Cervioni, and finally struck camp to resume their northwards march on the 11th. By then, however, Villemur's army was starting to suffer casualties from an enemy that was more elusive but just as deadly as the Corsicans. An increasing number of his soldiers were starting to come down with aches and fevers, common symptoms of malaria, the scourge of Corsica's eastern plain and the reason why Aleria had declined from a Roman city to a sodden ruin.[C]

Ceccaldi had also suffered losses, both from battle and desertion, as many of the soldier-for-a-day irregulars considered the day's work a resounding victory and promptly went home. By the next morning, however, he still counted at least a thousand men in his ersatz army, and morale was high. There was talk of pressing on to Cervioni and attacking the French there, but Ceccaldi felt this was unlikely to succeed, and he was concerned that Villemur would evade him and turn northwards. Instead, Ceccaldi led the army back through Orezza and down the valley of the Fiumalto towards San Pellegrino. He and Villemur would meet again very soon.

Footnotes
[1] Villemur claimed that more than 800 Corsicans were killed. Costa claimed only 200, but Costa was nowhere near the fighting at the time and was prone to exaggeration for the purpose of propaganda; he also claimed the French casualties were "at least six hundred." Ceccaldi appears to have made no official count. Since the royalist forces were in large part irregulars, it may be that an accurate count was impossible. Alternately, perhaps the Corsican casualties really were high, and Ceccaldi purposefully made no count as to allow Costa and other royalist spokesmen to give favorable figures.

Timeline Notes
[A] "Large," of course, is a relative term. I don't have population figures for most Corsican settlements in the 18th century, but in 1800 Cervioni had only a thousand residents.
[B] "Chestnut" is castagna in Italian (and castagnu in Corsican). It was estimated c. 1770, following the French conquest of Corsica, that 70% of all trees in the Castagniccia region were chestnuts.
[C] The absolute minimum incubation period for the types of malaria found on Corsica is about a week, with most cases beginning to show symptoms between 9 and 18 days after infection. Villemur's first night of camping on the coastal plain was the 29th of May, and his army was based among the lagoons of Aleria between the 31st of May and the 4th of June. It seems reasonable that by the 11th, cases would have started appearing, and it's only going to get worse from here.

Carp · Oct 9, 2017

Bad Faith

General Ceccaldi directing his troops [A]

As Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur fought his way northwards, a state of truce prevailed in the Balagna. King Theodore and his officers do not seem to have expected the diplomatic overtures which Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat, Marquis de Boissieux made to them following the French victory in the north. Theodore admitted that it was "curious" that Boissieux, who so clearly had the upper hand, had not chosen to immediately attack the royalists in the Nebbio while they were weak. Still, if Boissieux wanted to talk, Theodore would talk, while his lieutenants scrambled to come up with some plan for the defense of the country.

Yet Boissieux seems to have resorted to negotiation precisely because he was the stronger party, and he knew it. The Corsicans had faced the French and lost badly; there was no reason to think they would do better the second time around with fewer men and a demoralized army. Perhaps negotiations gave them time to prepare, but it would not be enough time for the Corsican militia to transmute itself into a fighting force capable of besting the finest army in Europe. Boissieux also understood better than any of his subordinates that fighting the Corsicans in the mountains would be a different game altogether. While his overall strategic plan assumed that the rebellion could be strangled by capturing the coastal regions and cutting off all resupply, the strangulation would not be instantaneous, and some die-hards might well hold out in the mountains.

The best outcome—for himself, for his men, and, he believed, for the Corsicans—was a capitulation by the rebel command, and he was willing to offer generous terms to accomplish it. The leaders of the rebellion would, he wrote, only suffer exile; they would not be permitted to return to Corsica, but they would avoid any further punishment and would not be handed over to the Genoese. Even Theodore himself was included in this offer. Boissieux, however, was also firm. The terms of Fontainebleau were not open for negotiation, and the surrender demanded was unconditional; the Corsicans would have to consign themselves utterly to "the equity and clemency of His Majesty." Perhaps having learned from his earlier failed negotiations, Boissieux also set a time limit. Any of the Corsican rebel leaders who had not tendered their surrender within 20 days of his pronouncement would lose all hope of clemency, and those Corsicans who continued in their resistance would be subject to "the full rigors of war."

Again playing the would-be collaborator, Theodore tried his best to drag out the end date, telling Boissieux that he needed more time to bring the Corsican generals around. A consulta would have to be called, of course, and here Theodore appeared to place his monarchy on a surprisingly liberal footing. As he had been made king by the will of the people, he wrote to Boissieux, he could not very well take such a drastic step as surrendering the country without consulting them, which meant a fully constituted consulta of all the parishes. But Boissieux was not having it. If Theodore was king, went his dismissive reply, then he should order his subjects to surrender; and if he was not a king, then he was merely a rebel, and should surrender himself immediately or be treated as a common bandit.

Boissieux's ultimatum was issued on the 26th of May, three days after the Battle of the Balagna, which made the deadline the 15th of June. On the 10th, however, a messenger riding hard from Orezza brought news to Theodore of the action at Alesani which had transpired over the previous two days. Ceccaldi's "victory" was most welcome, but Theodore seized at once upon the "atrocities" which Ceccaldi claimed Villemur had perpetrated. On the 12th, a letter reached Boissieux in which Theodore castigated him for ordering the plunder and burning of Corsican villages and the murder of innocent people (by which he presumably meant Villemur's summary executions of suspected rebels). He accused Boissieux of treachery, having extended an olive branch with one hand and then plunged a dagger into the back of the Corsicans with the other. How, indeed, could he entrust his people's fate to the "equity and clemency" of a king who represented himself with such faithless and barbarous servants?

Boissieux did not trust Theodore. He was beginning to see Theodore for what he was—that is, a highly accomplished liar—and suspected that his accusations were mere fabrications, a means to catch him off guard or trick him into giving the rebels more time. He did not reply to Theodore's accusations. He did, however, demand an accounting from Villemur, as this letter was the first he had heard about the Battle of Alesani. Villemur had not made contact in several days, and Boissieux dispatched a frigate to find him and bring him this urgent query.

Meanwhile, Villemur's progress was being delayed by the sick and wounded, and their number was rising every day as disease took its toll on his brigade and rations were gradually scaled back to stretch out supplies. Villemur wanted to leave the invalids behind with a battalion to supervise their evacuation while the rest of the brigade went on ahead, but Cervioni did not seem like the right place to do this—it was too exposed, too close to the enemy, and several miles from the coast. A single battalion posted there might be overrun by the rebels he fought just up the valley, and given what had happened to the doomed company of his own Bassigny Regiment at Milaria it seemed within the realm of possibility that the rebels would do the unthinkable and slaughter the invalids.

In Villemur's opinion, the better option was San Pellegrino, a Genoese watchtower less than fourteen miles up the coast. It seemed like the ideal place to relocate the invalids and for the whole army to pause and receive new supplies. Although no great fortress like Calvi, the Torre di San Pellegrino was a stout enough structure to have resisted a rebel siege for months even with artillery (though the rebel artillery was crewed by amateurs). It had fallen to the Corsicans, but so far the Corsicans had never stood and faced Villemur's brigade, and the brigadier suspected they were not about to start now. If they did make a stand and held the tower, Villemur's lack of artillery would be somewhat problematic, but it could be made up for by the naval gunnery of the French and Genoese fleets.

In fact Villemur had tried to arrange this well in advance. On the 4th of June, the day he departed from Aleria, he had given instructions to a Genoese captain to bring troops to occupy the fortress and to prepare warships to assist him against San Pellegrino if it turned out to be rebel-occupied. On the 10th—the day after the Battle of Alesani—he had submitted a report of the previous day's events, as well as his request for both fighting and supply ships to meet him at San Pellegrino as soon as possible, to the commander of a Genoese tartane. Unluckily for Villemur, that tartane was attacked by Corsican corsairs off the coast of Biguglia. The ship escaped, but only by beating far out to sea; it appears to have landed at Portoferraio on Elba and did not attempt a return to Corsica until several days later, when it was too late to make any difference. Villemur's first message on the 4th regarding armed ships did come through, and the Genoese had a flotilla of three galleys in the vicinity, but they were unsure where and when Villemur was going to be, and after seeing no sign of him at San Pellegrino on the 10th they were forced to sail south to take on fresh water.

Ceccaldi had no special knowledge of Villemur's plans, but any fool could have predicted Villemur's next move; there was no other way to go but north. After crossing the Fiumalto near San Pellegrino, the coastal plain widened significantly, and from there it was only 18 miles more to Bastia. If Villemur could not be stopped at San Pellegrino it seemed likely the next battle would be on the outskirts of Bastia itself. That proximity to Bastia, however, also meant proximity to the rebel forces in the Nebbio.

Theodore had been holding his forces back in the Nebbio in anticipation of an attack by Rousset, but Ceccaldi's letter arriving on the 10th changed his calculations entirely. Ceccaldi wrote that he was certain Villemur would be on the move north to San Pellegrino as soon as possible. Theodore, realizing that it was only two days to San Pellegrino and still five days until the end of Boissieux's deadline, did the math and announced a new strategy: he would steal a march on Villemur by leading the regulars and several companies of militia to San Pellegrino, joining with Ceccaldi's forces, and attacking the French with their combined forces. There would then be enough time to return to the Nebbio before Boissieux's grace period ended and before Boissieux received news of what had happened. It would, Theodore claimed, be a "stroke of lightning" as had been accomplished in 1736, when the rebels had force marched to Porto Vecchio, taken the defenders by surprise, and stormed the city.

The plan was not well-received. Chancellor Sebastiano Costa and Prime Minister Liugi Giafferi thought it quite mad, and Fabiani demanded that if it was to be done it should certainly not be led by the king, urging him to appoint Giafferi, Count Castinetta (Colonel Gio-Giacomo Ambrosi di Castinetta, military governor of Bastia) or Viscount Kilmallock (Adjutant-General Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock, Theodore's brother-in-law) instead. All were reluctant to bet on another field engagement with the French forces that had already demonstrated in the Balagna that they could steamroll Corsican militia in open terrain with the greatest of ease.

The king, however, would not change his mind, and could not be overruled. Although Theodore had a sense of self-preservation and had flown from difficult positions in the past, he had also demonstrated personal bravery in battle. He told Fabiani and the rest of the war council that, as king, he would not allow his subjects to face peril for the national cause while refusing to face it himself. His English secretary Denis Richard offered an alternative and somewhat less flattering explanation, saying that the aesthetics of the noble king fighting a decisive battle for the fate of his country appealed to him. But Theodore demonstrated a certain fatalism as well; as he explained to the council with a wry smile, if Villemur defeated Ceccaldi at San Pellegrino, they would all be lost in a week's time anyway; it made no sense to not throw everything they had into stopping Villemur here and now. After quickly penning his outraged (and thoroughly hypocritical) letter to Boissieux, Theodore was on the move.

So it came to pass that on the evening of June 11th, when Ceccaldi arrived at San Pellegrino, Villemur was encamped six miles to his south at San Nicolao and Theodore was nine miles to his north at Borgo. Ceccaldi, having received a letter from Theodore, understood his duty very well: he had to hold back a French army twice the size of his own until his king arrived with reinforcements. "You must do," Theodore wrote him, "all that is in your power to do."

Timeline Notes
[A] Edit: Thanks to @eustacethemonk for the big version of this picture!

Carp · Oct 11, 2017

(I know what you really want is a BATTLE, but here's a bio of Andrea Ceccaldi instead, since he's been at the center of the narrative recently, and some background on his mentor Luigi Giafferi. As with my previous discussion of Saviero Matra, this is based on the real facts of Ceccaldi's life but subject to my own interpretation and elaboration as best as I can manage. Fortunately a bit more is known about Andrea than Saviero.)

Count Andrea Ceccaldi: A (Partial) Life

Andrea Ceccaldi was born in 1692 in the village of Vescovato. The Ceccaldi family were important landowners in the region and had an important role in Corsican history; Andrea's relative Marcantonio Ceccaldi was perhaps the first historian of the Corsican people, a peer of the famous patriot Sampiero who acquired considerable wealth and status from his marriage into the Genoese family of Da Mare, which held the lordship of Capo Corso. Marcantonio had been a partisan of the Genoese against the French, who at that time were contesting Corsica, but his brother Gio Paolo was his political opposite, and for his opposition to the Republic his house in Vescovato was razed by the Genoese commander Stefano Doria. Andrea was Gio Paolo's direct descendant. The Ceccaldi family legend was that they were descended from the renowned Roman family of Colonna, but Marcantonio had questioned this, thinking it more likely that the family was descended from simple shepherds and the Colonna link had been invented to give the family a less embarrassing origin story.

Although wealthy and privileged (at least by Corsican standards), Andrea's early life was darkened by tragedy. In 1699, when he was seven years old, his father and grandfather were both murdered. The circumstances are unclear and the primary impetus was probably personal or familial, but even family vendettas were often tied up with politics in Corsica. Whatever the details of the matter, Andrea took up the anti-Genoese politics of his ancestor Gio Paolo early in his life and never wavered from them. He was raised by his uncle, and in 1715 married Bastiana Bagnaninchi. This was particularly notable because Bastiana's elder sister, Paola Giacinta, was the wife of Luigi Giafferi. Ceccaldi's early career would be dominated by his association with Giafferi, a man who was 24 his senior, and until Theodore's arrival the singular man of the Corsican revolution.

By the time Andrea was a young man, Giafferi was already one of the greatest personages of the island. Giafferi was a native of Talasani, just six miles south of Vescovato, and one of the Council of Twelve, the Genoese-supported body of Corsican noblemen which was allowed a modicum of limited local authority and which was famously denounced by Simone Fabiani in 1730 as "the assassins of Corsica." Giafferi was evidently elected to the position of "speaker" in 1706, the main advocate for the Corsican people (or, more cynically, the Corsican nobility) in Genoa. In this capacity he advocated for reform of the Corsican administration, particularly of the onerous tax system, but with little success.

Giafferi retained this privileged place for many years. The accession of Gerolamo Veneroso to the position of Doge of Genoa in 1726 seemed to bode well for Giafferi's cause, as Veneroso had been a well-liked governor of Corsica in 1708-1710, but Giafferi was unable to get the Senate to undertake his reforms. Veneroso's replacement in 1728 was the hard and unyielding Luca Grimaldi, under whose tenure many Corsicans perished in the famine of 1728, and who responded to the outbreak of the Corsican revolt in 1729 with violent repression. Giafferi, who had since returned to Corsica, aligned himself with the rebels early on and deserves the lion's share of the credit for developing a spontaneous rebellion against arbitrary taxation into a cohesive patriotic movement.

In 1730, Giafferi was elected to be one of the first "generals of the nation," an honor which he shared with Domenico Rafaelli and Andrea Ceccaldi. Giafferi was indisputably the most influential and powerful of the first triumvirate, and led the Corsicans in several engagements. The rebellion seemed to falter in 1732, when imperial troops arrived and broke the rebel siege of Bastia, but Ceccaldi achieved fame that year by crushingly defeating a Genoese-Imperial force at Calenzana under Lieutenant-Colonel de Vins and the Genoese governor Camillo Doria. The memory of ancestral slights was always long among the Corsicans, and Ceccaldi relished the defeat of Camillo, whose Doria ancestor had destroyed his ancestor's house centuries before. The emperor, however, would not be dissuaded by a single defeat, and after thousands more imperial troops were dispatched the Corsicans accepted Vienna's terms. Ceccaldi was among those Corsican leaders who agreed to go to Liguria as hostages and were then traitorously imprisoned in Savona and sentenced to death. It was this matter in which Theodore first entered the Corsican scene, allegedly playing a key role in gaining freedom for the prisoners of Savona.

Ceccaldi did not immediately return to Corsica. Instead, he entered the service of the newly-crowned King Charles of Naples in 1734 and was granted a colonel's commission. One wonders if the appointment was not more political than military, for in early 1735 he was back in Corsica arguing for Spanish-Neapolitan annexation, and he visited Madrid along with Orticoni to petition that his employer King Charles take the Corsican crown. Although grateful to Theodore for his role in saving him from execution, Ceccaldi was still pro-Spanish enough in 1736 to suggest during the negotiations over Theodore's coronation that the Corsicans should try once more to appeal to the Spanish, a suggestion which was famously shut down by the reply of his own brother Sebastiano that "the King of Spain thinks of Corsica as much as the Emperor of China."

Not long after besieging Bastia, Theodore dined at Ceccaldi's house, and this dinner seems to have been a pivotal point in their mutual relationship. Ceccaldi's Spanish allegiance was soon forgotten, and he became a strong partisan of King Theodore. The two men were nearly the same age—Theodore was two years younger—and got along well, and Ceccaldi had been impressed by the king's decisive leadership and his personal bravery at the Battle of Furiani. During his stay with Ceccaldi, Theodore granted him a nearby estate seized from the Genoese, and it was not long thereafter that Theodore chose Vescovato to be his new provisional capital, replacing Cervioni, ostensibly because it was closer to the action in the north. It may also be that he felt secure in Ceccaldi's home territory, demonstrating a trust that Ceccaldi never betrayed. When Colonel Marchelli invaded the Nebbio, it was Ceccaldi whom Theodore charged with stopping his progress, and he delivered the victory that crushed the last Genoese hopes of reversing Theodore's success on their own. His role in the siege of San Fiorenzo was less spectacular than his performance at Rutali, but still demonstrated his competence and ended in another important victory.

Giafferi was still the grand old man of the national cause, but his direct influence was waning. He had devoted his sizable political capital to Theodore in 1736, and is credited with ensuring the king's smooth election and convincing the powerful Matra clan to join the royalist and nationalist camp. By the time of Boissieux's conquest of the Balagna in mid-1739, however, Giafferi was 71 years old. He still had years of life ahead of him, but his physical condition no longer allowed him to endure the rigors of campaigning. Even his political sense seemed to be ebbing somewhat; his regency during Theodore's stay in Amsterdam had been idle and ineffective, and although he was formally Theodore's prime minister men like Costa and Gaffori seem to have had more influence on the king's policy. With Giafferi in his twilight and having built his own reputation as a commander, Ceccaldi was finally emerging from the shadow of his elder brother-in-law.

Carp · Oct 14, 2017

The Battle of San Pellegrino

The River Fiumalto today, near the site of the Battle of San Pellegrino

In the early morning of June 12th, Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur ordered his army to begin the last leg of the march to San Pellegrino. He seems to have doubted that the rebels would make a stand there—they had avoided every opportunity to face him so far. If they did hold the fortress, however, it would present a problem, as he had no artillery and the warships he had demanded were not yet in sight. Nevertheless, it was possible that the fortification could be taken by storm—Villemur did not know the exact details of San Pellegrino, but was aware that many of the island's towers were 16th century edifices meant to serve as watchtowers against Barbary pirates, not actual fortresses—and even if it could not, he could at least begin its investment, and hope that naval aid would arrive soon.[A]

Villemur's plan was to make his advance as early and quickly as practicable. Of course, a swift advance could not be managed with his growing numbers of sick and wounded; they would need to remain behind temporarily. The better part of the Regiment d'Aunis under Lieutenant-Colonel René de Poilly, Sieigneur de Maresville, remained encamped near San Nicolao with those who could not make the quick pace. He would follow the rest of the brigade once Villemur secured San Pellegrino or at least completed its investment. This vastly improved the mobility and flexibility of Villemur's force, but it also further diminished its numbers. With all the casualties and incapacitated men thus sustained in the campaign, plus the absence of most of Poilly's battalion, the force which remained to Villemur was only around 1,500 men, just over half of what he had started with in Porto Vecchio.

Villemur's opponent, Lieutenant-General Count Andrea Ceccaldi, could not even boast that many. By the morning of the 12th, he had no more than a thousand men, a mix of Talcinesi and Castagniccian militia and several hundred local militia and volunteers from Tavagna and Casinca. Between the coastal tower of San Pellegrino and the mountains was a two-mile gap crossed from west to east by the river. The Fiumalto was of some value as an obstruction, but in June it was no longer swollen with melt-water from the mountains and fordable on foot along most of its lower course. Practically, however, the gap was narrowed in the east by thick marshlands around the river's mouth (to say nothing of the guns of San Pellegrino, if occupied), and in the west by woods descending from the mountainside, leaving a span of little more than a mile through which an infantry formation could feasibly maneuver.

That morning, Ceccaldi dispatched several hundred men south of the Fiumalto to waylay his enemy. The path that Villemur would have to take was squeezed between the coast and heavy woodlands, providing the Corsicans with an opportunity to flank and harass their column. Villemur, however, managed to surprise his opponents with the speed of his advance. The Corsicans were not ready for him, and their attempted "ambush" devolved into mere skirmishing. Villemur dispatched a detachment which soon drove them off. Another skirmish erupted at the bridge over the river d'Olme, only a mile south of the Fiumalto, but the French crashed through the small force of militia there and captured the bridge. Villemur's small force of dragoons, scouting ahead, came under fire from the Fiumalto and reported this to Villemur, but the tall shrubs and marsh grasses on the river's banks concealed the size and disposition of the enemy.

Corsican shooting from the rushes by the river's edge and the woods on the French left succeeded only in inconveniencing the French army. Colonel Armand de Bourbon, Comte de Malauze,[1] commander of the Agenois Regiment on the French left, detached several companies to hold off the skirmishers in the woods, and the main body of the French army pushed to the river. The Corsicans there soon fled, abandoning their position, and the French made their crossing. As they reorganized their line on the north side of the river, they continued to take scattered fire from the retreating Corsicans, but to little effect.

It was only after forming up on the opposite bank that Villemur realized he was up against a different sort of force than he had thought. King Theodore had also gotten an early start that day, intending to rendezvous with Ceccaldi at the Fiumalto and present a united force to the French. He had failed at that—the royal army was still about a mile north of the river—but as the gunsmoke began to clear around the river's banks, the Corsican column was made obvious. The "royal army" did actually seem vaguely like a real army; Villemur noted Theodore's "Moor's head" flag, the sound of drums and trumpets, and even a few hundred men wearing uniforms. Villemur felt he had no choice but to face them, and it seemed like a good enough opportunity to do it; the ground between the armies was largely open terrain, if marshy in places, which seemed to offer an advantage to the French.

For perhaps the first time in the war, the Corsicans sought a line battle and advanced in ranks against the enemy. Theodore's force outnumbered the French only slightly, with some 1,700 troops on the field compared to Villemur's 1,500 (though slightly degraded from this by the morning's skirmishing), including his "regulars" in the Guardia Corsica and the Reggimento Straniero, led by Adjutant-General Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock and Lieutenant-Colonels Giovan Luca Poggi and Sir John Powers. Soon the battle was joined.

To ward off the Corsican sharpshooters in the woods on the French left, Villemur had dispatched Lieutenant-Colonel Zsigmond David and his hussars, as well as two companies of the Agenois Regiment. Above the French left, however, hidden by the hills and woods, was not a few bands of skirmishers but an entire battalion-sized corps of militia under General Ceccaldi, who had devoted only a few hundred of his men to defending the river. It is unclear if this was a deliberate flanking strategy or an escape attempt; with the French hot on his heels and Theodore still at least a mile away, Ceccaldi may have reasoned that his best move was to withdraw up the Fiumalto valley into the mountains, where he was at an advantage, rather than retreating over the open ground of the plain. Theodore's arrival, however, created a situation where the French army was now fully engaged with a foe to its north while Ceccaldi was largely unengaged—and undiscovered—to their west. Realizing his position and the weak forces arrayed against him, Ceccaldi ordered a full assault. David's screening force now found itself facing not merely a few Corsicans sniping from the trees, but at least 600 militiamen charging downhill at them through the woods. David's force of two infantry companies and a severely under-strength hussar battalion, under a hundred men in total, was swiftly overwhelmed.

Up to this point, the French were holding admirably. Although somewhat outnumbered by the Corsican line, the superior drill and discipline of the French infantry was a considerable asset. But the Corsicans, too, were holding, and if their fire was more sluggish and ragged than their opponents they were nevertheless giving no ground. Kilmallock, not a stranger to combat, later called the engagement “the hottest fire I have ever witnessed.” The collapse of Lt. Col. David’s screening force, however, left Ceccaldi free to fall upon the Agenois regiment holding the French left. Ceccaldi’s militia did not merely flank Malauze’s regiment, but fully enveloped it, actually advancing from behind and to the left of the French line.

It was difficult in the best of times for close-ranked line infantry to shift their facing, let alone when under heavy fire from multiple directions. Malauze’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Chevalier de Ligny, was shot and killed trying to maneuver the companies on the far left to face the new enemy. Villemur, realizing that his position was compromised, attempted to lead a fighting withdrawal, but this intended retreat began to turn into a rout as the panicking soldiers thought of nothing but avoiding encirclement. As soon as the French line began to pull back, the royalist trumpets sounded a charge and the Corsicans surged after the enemy. The French line collapsed.

They were saved from annihilation by the fact that the Corsicans had no cavalry, and by the exceeding bravery of the French grenadiers, who made a stand at the single bridge over the Fiumalto while their comrades fled. They managed to hold back the tide for a brief but critical period, at the cost of being encircled and shredded by fire. Major de la Riviere of the Bassigny Regiment, who led this desperate holding action, was captured, but he had been shot four times and died of his wounds on the following day. Even with his heroics, however, it was a crushing defeat for the French army. Villemur’s force suffered nearly 600 casualties, more than a third of his attacking force, including 280 men taken prisoner. The prisoners included the Comte de Malauze himself, one major (other than de la Riviere), and six captains. Hundreds of muskets, bayonets, and swords were captured, to say nothing of boots, which Malauze recalled being eagerly stripped from the dead and dying by the militiamen. Malauze's regiment nearly ceased to exist; the Corsicans had captured or killed all their field officers and taken their standards, and at the end of the day Villemur counted only 68 men of the regiment who were present and able to bear arms, about two companies. The Corsicans, meanwhile, suffered just over 300 casualties, a little over half of the French count.[B]

Villemur was defeated, but not destroyed. After returning to San Nicolao, he estimated his total combat-ready force to be around 1,200 men. That was still a considerable amount, but clearly insufficient to turn about and face the Corsicans at San Pellegrino. Villemur decided he had no choice but to withdraw towards Cervioni. Theodore did not pursue him, instead entrusting the task of harassing the retreating French to Ceccaldi and his militia. Theodore's plan did not allow him to remain away from the Nebbio any longer than necessary, but he was also wary of causing too much injury to the French, on the basis that a truly catastrophic defeat, or indeed the loss of a whole brigade, would create an insult to French honor so great that Versailles would have no choice but to avenge it with thousands more men.

Footnotes
[1] The Counts of Bourbon-Malauze, as their name implies, were indeed cadets of the House of Bourbon, but they were not Princes of the Blood. Their line, also known as the House of Bourbon-Lavedan, issued from a bastard son of a 15th century Duke of Bourbon, before the Bourbons gained the French throne.

Timeline Notes
[A] I have no pictures of San Pellegrino to offer you. Many Genoese towers, or at least their ruins, are still around today, but the tower of San Pellegrino was blown up by the Genoese in 1762 to prevent it from falling into the hands of Paoli's revolutionaries. Nothing remains today except remnants of its foundation. All we really know is that it was square, unlike most Genoese towers on Corsica which were round.
[B] I didn't feel up to making another set of battle-maps, so please accept this Wikibox as a small consolation prize, because that's apparently a thing. It's like the same information already in the update, but less detailed and in a box!

Carp · Oct 20, 2017

Fight Another Day

The highlands of the Agriate, with the Bay of San Fiorenzo and Cap Corse in the distance

Rumors of the defeat of Brigadier Jean-Baptiste François, Marquis de Villemur at San Pellegrino had come to the ears of Lieutenant-General Louis de Frétat, Marquis de Boissieux within days, but Boissieux initially dismissed them as contradictory and implausible. There were claims that the army had been all but wiped out and that their commander had been captured, no doubt owing to confusion between the captured Colonel Armand de Bourbon, Comte de Malauze and Villemur himself. The loss was indeed not as staggering as the rumors had claimed, but Boissieux was nevertheless stunned by the actual scale of the defeat when Villemur's report finally reached him on the 17th.

Operationally speaking, the Boissieux’s plan was thoroughly ruined. He had intended for the Corsicans to be oppressed from all sides, threatened by advances from north, west, and south and unable to offer a coherent defense. The advance from the north, however, had been slowed to a crawl by bad terrain, poor logistics, and the resistance of the Corsicans, who forced Brigadier Anne de Montmorency-Luxembourg, Comte de Montmorency et Ligny to pay for every inch of progress. With Villemur driven back from San Pellegrino, the advance from the south had been stopped cold as well.

Yet Boissieux soon got over his shock, and his course of action remained largely unchanged. By the time Villemur's report arrived, the general's deadline had recently expired and he had already ordered Jean-Charles de Gaultier de Girenton, Marquis de Chateauneuf le Rouge, Seigneur de Rousset, to make final preparations for marching on the Nebbio. Strategically, Boissieux still believed his plan sound—to cut off the rebels from all succor and supply by ejecting them from the coastal regions. Such a strategy had already proved effective once before, as the imperial intervention of 1732 had followed a very similar trajectory: the Austrian forces had initially struggled against the Corsicans, but with the application of superior numbers they had been able to capture the coastal districts and compel the rebels to come to terms without having to actually invade the interior. All that had changed after San Pellegrino was that this strategy would have to be accomplished by one great advance from the west with Rousset's force, and given the poor Corsican performance against that force in the Balagna there was good reason to think it would still be a success.

While the morale of the Corsican troops was undoubtedly buoyed by their unambiguous defeat of a French army in the field, the Corsican prospects of holding the Nebbio remained grim. San Pellegrino had been fought against a diminished, disease-weakened force of no more than 1,500 men with no artillery and a trivially small detachment of cavalry, by a rebel force with at least a 5:3 numerical advantage and the benefit of favorable terrain. In contrast, the Balagnese corps of Rousset was twice as large, possessed two hussar squadrons and a battery of field artillery, and would be much better supported by the Franco-Genoese naval forces. The Agriate, through which that force would have to pass, was congenial territory for guerrillas but was unlikely to mask a whole battalion as the Castagniccian woods had at San Pellegrino. Past those maquis-covered hills, the French would descend into the Nebbio's landscape of farmland, orchards, and gently-rolling hills.

It was not just the physical geography of the Nebbio which posed a problem for the royalists. Its inhabitants, nearly as much as the people of Bastia, were largely uncooperative and frequently outright hostile to the rebels. Being on the northern coast and quite close to the Genoese capital of Bastia, the Nebbio had generally prospered under Genoese rule and its economy was tied closely to that of the colonial metropole. The rebellion had brought only hardship to most, and tensions were exacerbated further by Theodore's extractions of "contributions" from its people (justified on the basis that, since they were mostly filogenovesi anyway, there was no harm in alienating them further) and the harsh rule of Colonel Giovan Natali, the royalist governor of the Nebbio. Natali was a native of the province, but this was a two-edged sword; he knew the territory, but he also used his power to pursue old scores and personal grudges against various people and rival clans in the name of punishing "traitors to the nation." On the 16th of June, not long after Theodore had returned to the Nebbio with his victorious forces, Natali's enemies struck back; unknown assailants ambushed him and his bodyguards near Patrimonio and left him dying on the road, riddled with bullets. That the assassins were never caught despite this brazen attack in rebel-held territory is further testament to just how disgruntled and uncooperative the locals had become. Although Natali's death ended his abuses, it hardly helped matters in the district, which seemed to be spiraling out of control at the very moment when it was in greatest danger of invasion. The rebels themselves were now concerned about the prospect of rebellion.

There was, Costa informs us, a lively debate in the war council upon Theodore's return. A number of Theodore's commanders, inspired by the recent success, urged that all forces be gathered for a defense of the Nebbio from Rousset's army. Colonel Antonio Colonna, Costa's nephew, was one of them, as was Brigadier Giuliani di Muro, who though still recovering from being wounded at San Antonino probably wanted to make another attempt at recovering his honor. Count Gio-Giacomo Ambrosi di Castinetta, governor of Bastia, also voiced his support; his was a powerful position, and he was sure to lose it if the Nebbio fell, as Bastia would then become indefensible. Adjutant-General Edward Sarsfield, Viscount Kilmallock, was not bullish on their prospects but believed that it was a necessary fight, for he thought the loss of such a prize—including the Genoese capital itself—would be too deleterious to morale.

Captain-General Simone Fabiani, the most senior general and vice-president of the war council, was adamantly opposed to a grand confrontation for the Nebbio. If any lesson had been learned in the Balagna, he argued, it was that the French could not easily be opposed in the open field, and the forces which the royalists now possessed were even fewer than those he had commanded in the Balagna. Furthermore, he pointed out, the royal army had been fortunate to maintain its best troops in its retreat from the Balagna, and they might not be as lucky if subjected to another defeat. Speaking in his support was Colonel Felice Giuseppe, the hero of San Antonino (who may have done so for no other reason than his contempt for Muro), as well as Theodore's cousins Johann Friedrich Caspar von Neuhoff zu Rauschenburg and Matthias von Drost, whose positions rather depended on the king remaining alive and in power, not beaten or dead on the field. Rauschenburg had also experienced the worst of a field battle with the French firsthand and was not eager to repeat the experience.

Theodore remained regally aloof from the initial discussion, but retained the final word, and in the end sided with Fabiani. Costa says that it was simply a matter of trusting Fabiani's judgment. Theodore, however, may have also felt that he had special knowledge which his councilors lacked. Unlike his subjects, Theodore knew France (or at least thought he did). He had, after all, been raised to manhood in the French royal court, and alone of all his advisers and generals had served in the French army. His instinct was that the war for his crown would ultimately be won not on any Corsican battlefield, but in the halls of Versailles.

While it can be argued that Theodore consistently overestimated his own skill at foreign policy and frequently attempted the outlandish or impractical with little success—"a visionary and a madman," as Lord Carteret would describe him a few years later—his approach in this case was not without merit. The French would never run out of regiments, but King Louis XV and his minister Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury could run out of will to continue the fight. So far the cost to the French had only been in blood, a commodity which Versailles spent rather freely, as the financial burden of the intervention had been borne solely by the Genoese. The French, however, had already sent the maximum force authorized and paid for by treaty; to ramp up their presence further would require either paying for it themselves or compelling the Republic to pony up more money, and neither was terribly palatable. Cardinal Fleury had assured the king that the Corsican expedition would be no drain on the finances of state, and the Genoese already considered the existing price to be extortionate, to say nothing of new expenses. Exasperated by Boissieux's conduct, dismayed with French setbacks, and increasingly gripped by paranoia that the French would take the island for themselves, the Genoese senators were not in a cooperative mood, and their public finances were in a shambles already. It surely did not help that Ambassador Jacques de Campredon, the old French hand in Corsica who knew better than anyone how to work the Genoese Senate, had recently been sacked.

Theodore presumably did not know the specifics of this fraying relationship—nor the details of the treaty of intervention, which was notionally a secret pact— but he was correct to assume that his enemies' greatest weakness was political, not military. His interest lay less in economic problems than the balance of power, for he had correctly ascertained that British influence in the Mediterranean was what the French feared most. Early in his reign he had sought to allay those fears by any means possible (while nevertheless still appealing to London for assistance), but as hope of an understanding with the French faded over the course of the intervention, he began to place his hopes more and more in the idea that the British could be convinced to step in and make France back down for fear of sparking a greater war. Fleury's grand aim, after all, was to preserve peace with Britain, and presumably he would not hesitate to leave his Genoese allies hanging if the Corsican war seriously endangered that peace.

Although Theodore never explicitly articulated a grand strategy, his approach to the war by the summer of 1739 was essentially Fabian in nature (appropriately enough, given that his chief general was Fabiani) - to attrit, exhaust, and wear down the enemy, through interminable marches and constant ambushes in the rugged interior, with the ultimate objective of either convincing the French that the maximalist terms of Fontainebleau were not worth enforcing or convincing Britain that the nascent Kingdom of Corsica was strong and sturdy enough to merit a gesture of support which would compel the French to moderate their position. The danger, of course, was that a Fabian strategy can plausibly succeed only when time is on the side of the one employing it. Theodore seems to have been relying entirely on the assumption that the patience of the rebel Corsicans, oppressed and besieged on their own island by a powerful army, would last longer than that of the French king and his ministers. In the summer of 1739, that was not the safest of bets.

In accordance with this strategic vision, the priority of the nationals now became the evacuation of the Nebbio. Since the arrival of the "syndicate armada," most of the war materiel disembarked in the Nebbio which was not immediately distributed had remained in that province, predominantly at San Fiorenzo or Theodore's "northern capital" of Murato. If the Nebbio was to fall, however, it would all have to be removed—dozens of artillery pieces, thousands of small arms, more than a hundred thousand pounds of gunpowder, tens of thousands of pounds of shot, and so on—or else be lost to the French. In fact this had already begun under Fabiani's orders following the fall of the Balagna, when it was feared the French would launch an immediate follow-up attack, but Villemur's advance up the eastern coast had threatened to cut off the ongoing withdrawal. Fortunately, Villemur had been stopped less than a day's march from the Golo valley, the chief artery for the transport of Corsican heavy weapons into the interior by mule-back. After San Pellegrino, efforts were redoubled and given all available resources. Boissieux was undoubtedly correct that the rebellion, cut off from the sea, would eventually wither and die, but with the powder, weapons, and money Theodore still held in reserve he could potentially prolong his survival for months, perhaps even years.

A secondary logistical difficulty was what to do with the French prisoners. The Corsicans held nearly 500 French soldiers, enough to populate an entire French battalion, and feeding and guarding them proved to be no easy task. Some had been held at Bastia and San Fiorenzo, but if the northeast district was to be evacuated they could not remain there. Once more, Theodore send a message to Boissieux offering an exchange, not merely for Corsican militiamen but the eminent hostages at the Chateau d'If. His highest ranking captive, Colonel Armand de Bourbon, Comte de Malauze, seemed likely to be a good bargaining chip. In the meantime, as Theodore awaited a response, Malauze was reportedly well-treated by the man he referred to as the "King of the Rebels," who invited him to dinner regularly. Some of his officers were baffled as to his preference for the Frenchman's company, but Theodore, starved for news from the continent and interested in any political developments he might turn to his advantage, was eager to hear the latest gossip from Paris.

News from the rest of Corsica was less than encouraging. It was reported that the Franco-Genoese force at Ajaccio had captured Cinarca and that the western province of Vico, previously the domain of the indifferenti, was on the cusp of defecting to the French; the brigade of Maréchal de Camp Louis-François Crozat, Marquis du Châtel seems to have been substantially outperforming its envisioned role of merely acting as a force-in-being in Ajaccio to keep Lieutenant-General Luca d'Ornano occupied. There were rumors that d'Ornano himself, Theodore's foremost commander in the Dila, was in negotiations with du Châtel or Boissieux. That was a danger not only because of the psychological impact of such a high-profile defection, but because it would expose the interior to attacks from both the north and south.

On June 22nd, Rousset's brigade entered the Agriate. A comparatively rich agricultural region, the province was nevertheless almost deserted; most farming had been carried out by the Genoese and done seasonally, with few permanent residents, and since 1730 this seasonal exploitation had been infrequent. The dense maquis was then interspersed with weed-filled fields, overgrown olive groves, and pasture turning slowly into wild land, and dotted with pagliaghji, the drystone dwellings for farmers and livestock characteristic of the region. Using the mountains and the maquis as their refuge, Colonel Giuseppe's militiamen of Caccia and Canale harassed the French columns, but their effectiveness was limited. Rousset had chosen to take the coastal route, which was longer but kept him further from the mountains and secured at least one flank against the raiders. By the 26th, the French had reached the Torre di Mortella at the mouth of the Bay of San Fiorenzo. Although formerly occupied by the rebels, the Corsicans did not have much faith in the ability of a single six-pounder gun to hold back Rousset's whole corps, and the French found the tower abandoned. On the next day, the first French battalions marched into San Fiorenzo. The rebels had stripped most everything of worth from the town and burned their little fleet, including the Genoese galley which they had captured during the siege of the town. Its charred timbers were still smouldering on the beach when Rousset's men raised the Genoese flag upon the citadel.

While the rebels would not contest the plain, they retained the mountainous fringes of the Nebbio. The French were now in the same strategic position that the ill-fated Genoese Colonel Marchelli had been in 1736, and Marchelli's attempts to break through the mountains to Bastia had ended in disaster. The royalists were more numerous, better armed, and better prepared than they had been in 1736, but the French army was not the Genoese army, and Rousset was not Marchelli.

Situation in Corsica around the end of June 1739
Green: Royalist controlled
Red: Genoese controlled
Blue: French or joint Franco-Genoese occupation
White: Unknown, neutral, or uninhabited

King Theodore's Corsica

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