King Theodore's Corsica

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The First Jews in Corsica​

Lift up my steps, O Lord, my savior,
I'd go to my country with a placid joy;
an ignorant people pursues me now,
and taunts me with a thunderous noise.
Take me, quickly, to a Galilee mountain,
and send your anger across their skies;
there I'll see your light, my crown,
and say: Now I can die.

- Freha bat Avraham bar Adiba

Prior to the Treaty of Monaco, no Jewish community ever existed in Corsica, and with one sole exception there is no evidence of any Jews ever dwelling on the island before the 1740s.[1] When the Jewish agent Salomon Levi arrived in Corti in 1743, Count Gianpietro Gaffori commented that he was probably the first Jew to ever set eyes on the town. Presumably this state of affairs would have continued into modern times but for King Theodore, who demonstrated a commitment to religious liberty unique among Christian rulers of his time.

Ironically, the Jewish settlement of Corsica began with failure. As an inducement for the Jewish merchants of Livorno and Tunis to invest in his scheme, Theodore had offered them a settlement of their own on Corsican soil. Knowing that Aleria, once the Roman capital of the isle, was now a ruin, Theodore proposed it as the site for said settlement despite the fact that he himself had never been there. But Aleria had been abandoned for good reason: the site was infested with malaria. Even if the place had been healthier, Aleria was far from any population center and lacked a natural harbor; it was hardly an attractive site for settlement by Jewish tradesmen and merchants who, on the whole, had little experience in agriculture.[2] Moreover, the history of the Greeks in Paomia suggested that an insular, segregated village of foreigners on Corsican soil was not necessarily a recipe for harmonious living.

The offer was quietly withdrawn after both Theodore and his investors came to realize that it was not feasible. Yet while some of Theodore’s backers grumbled about broken promises, the king’s offer of full citizenship was unaltered. As a consequence, Jewish settlement on Corsica would take a more traditional form. Rather than building their own settlement in the wilderness, the Jews of Corsica would establish themselves among Corsica’s native population in the cities - chiefly Ajaccio, a city whose initial appeal lay in its important role in the Mediterranean coral trade, an industry in which the Jews of Livorno already played a prominent role.

Although Ajaccio had long been an important center of coral fishing, it had only ever been an exporter of raw material. Most of the raw coral harvested by Corsican fishermen was brought to trade fairs elsewhere, particularly in Genoa and Livorno, where brokers assessed the quality of the coral, negotiated prices, and supplied the coral workers (who in Livorno were predominantly Jews). Although coral was carved into a variety of items, including individually crafted works of art, most Mediterranean coral was ultimately cut and polished into beads in “factories.” These crimson beads were a particularly important commodity because they were one of Europe’s few exports which was actually in demand in the Far East, particularly in India where Mediterranean coral beads were exchanged for diamonds and sapphires.

Thus, the Jews who first established themselves in Ajaccio were coral brokers and their agents who perceived that moving to Ajaccio might be a good business decision. By relocating, they could cut out middlemen, avoid tariffs, and benefit from lower transportation costs. Moreover, Theodore’s pledge of equality meant that they would suffer none of the extra taxes or arbitrary confiscations which Jews elsewhere were often forced to bear. Even in Livorno, where the Jewish community enjoyed considerable liberties, their “nation” was still subjected to a special tax.

Of course Ajaccio had its drawbacks - Livorno was well-established as an international port with all the infrastructure that entailed, while Ajaccio was a sleepy fishing town of a few thousand people. Moreover, the Jewish communities of Livorno, Tunis, and other cities were tight-knit, and many were reluctant to leave these communities to be the first Jews in a new land. Theodore’s promises were grand, but it was unclear whether they would really be kept, or whether his vaunted equality would prove as ephemeral as the Aleria settlement. For these reasons initial immigration was modest; by 1752 the Jewish community of Ajaccio numbered no more than 20 persons, of whom nearly all were associated with the coral industry, and it is unclear whether even these few were actually permanent residents as opposed to seasonal business travelers. By comparison, Livorno had at least 3,500 Jewish residents.

Ali Pasha, Bey of Tunis​

The first real "wave" of immigration came in 1752 as a consequence of a dynastic struggle in Tunisia. The instigating event was the revolt of Younis Bey against his father, Ali Pasha, the Bey of Tunis. Younis had led Tunisian forces during the Franco-Tunisian War of 1741-42, but his success gained him the envy of his brothers and the suspicion of his father, as family coups were hardly rare in the region. After discovering a plot by his brothers to force him into exile, Younis rebelled, seized control of the Bardo palace, and drove his father and brothers from the capital. Yet Ali Pasha was far from vanquished. He rallied his men in the countryside and counterattacked with a larger force. After fierce fighting within the city, Younis fled, but was betrayed by one of his soldiers and imprisoned by his father.

When Younis initially seized control of the city, he tried to secure the loyalty of his troops with a special privilege: the freedom to plunder the houses of the Christians and Jews of Tunis for five days. One Tunisian rabbi who witnessed these events recorded what followed: "The plunderers came to this city, lovely Tunis… that was a war in which there came the robber, the plunderer, and the enactor of harsh decrees. He left us like an empty vessel, for the money as well as the chattels came to an end and everything that is called property passed away." Arbitrary confiscation was nothing new for the Jews of Tunis; the Bey commonly levied an extra tax on the Jews whenever his treasury was getting low. But the “sack” of 1752 was particularly egregious, and while Ali Pasha had not been personally responsible for the plunder the episode only further demonstrated the precarity of Jewish life in Tunisia.

The Tunisian Jewish community was divided into two groups, known as the grana and the twansa. The grana (from the Arabic name for Livorno, al-Ghurna) were Livornesi Jews, typically of Spanish and Portuguese descent, who had immigrated in the last century. Fluent in Italian and closely linked with the Jews of Livorno by blood and business ties, they tended to be well-off merchants, bankers, and skilled tradesmen, and occupied high positions in the Tunisian court. Most Tunisian Jews - around 90% of the total - were twansa (from Touansa, “Tunisian”), native Maghrebi Jews who spoke an Arabic dialect and enjoyed considerably less wealth, privilege, and social position. Yet even though the grana were more privileged, their status did not protect them from arbitrary taxation and had not shielded them from plundering in the sack of 1752.

A family of Tunisian Jews​

The Tunisian Jews who came to Ajaccio immediately after the sack of 1752 were virtually all grana, and for good reason. Tunisian grana merchants had been among Theodore’s earliest backers, and they were more likely than the twansa to have the resources to emigrate. The grana spoke Italian and dressed in the European fashion, so living in Ajaccio would present them with no great difficulties. The twansa, in contrast, were not as quick to come to Ajaccio. Unlike the cosmopolitan grana, who were latecomers to Tunisia, the twansa were deeply rooted in the land of their ancestors. To them, Corsica was a truly foreign country with a language and customs they did not know. But as word spread of the toleration of Jews in al-Kursika, a few twansa families with the means to emigrate and the drive to start again in a new country followed the footsteps of the grana.

The Bar Adiba family was one of the earliest and probably the most notable twansa house to make the move, arriving in Ajaccio in 1753. Although grouped with the twansa because of their origins in the Maghreb, the Bar Adiba family was not actually Tunisian, but Moroccan, having immigrated to Tunis in the 1730s to escape persecution. Their “roots” in Tunisia were thus not particularly deep. Hearing of the liberties granted to certain grana in Corsica, the family patriarch Avraham bar Adiba sent one of his sons to Ajaccio and moved his whole family there by 1754. Avraham was a merchant and learned man who established himself in Ajaccio as a trader in leather and textiles. The most famous member of his family, however, was his daughter Freha bat Avraham, one of the most renowned Jewish women of the age. Unusually, Avraham had secured an excellent education for his daughter, and by her early 20s she was already described as an esteemed rabbanit (a female Torah scholar) and an excellent poet. As she wrote in Hebrew, Freha was little-known by the native Corsicans, but she came to be a renowned figure in European Jewry and is considered one of the finest Hebrew poets of the 18th century. Not solely limited to verse, Freha also wrote books and essays on Jewish theology and philosophy which enjoyed wide recognition even amongst the almost exclusively male club of European Jewish scholars and intellectuals who came to refer to her as “the Pearl of Corsica.”[A]

In some sense the presence of the grana and other culturally Italian Jews was less obtrusive in Ajaccio than the presence of the Greeks, for although they both practiced their own mysterious religious rites the Jews actually dressed and spoke like Italians (things which the Greeks were still only slowly acclimating to). The twansa, however, were another matter; as far as the Corsicans concerned they were indistinguishable from Arabs, and the Corsicans held a very dim view of “Saracens.” Unlike the Greeks, however, who struggled to preserve their ethnic character and identity, the twansa tended to be eager to assimilate. In Tunisia the separation of the grana and twansa had been officially enforced with the encouragement of the grana themselves; the clothing of the twansa was regulated by law, and the grana had insisted on maintaining their own separate religious authority and even their own kosher slaughterhouse. In Ajaccio, however, the Jews were legally treated as individuals rather than regulated communities, which led eventually to the blending of these groups as the twansa adopted Italian dress and language to fit in better with the natives and emulate the higher-status grana.

Tunisian Jews were not the only Jews to come to Ajaccio. Although most Livornesi Jews were happy to stay where they were, by the mid-1750s there was a continual trickle of Jewish immigration from Livorno to Ajaccio. Many, perhaps most, were tradesmen and brokers involved with the coral trade, but there were also those who arrived to experience “emancipation,” mostly younger men who were less economically established and more willing to take a chance. A few came to Corsica to enter the king’s service specifically. The most notable was Emanuel Calvo, a native of Salonika who had studied medicine at the University of Padua and practiced in Livorno before being recruited as Theodore’s court physician in the mid-1750s. Calvo would become a close confidant of the king and would prove something of a source of controversy; although a very competent doctor, he also developed an interest in the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism later in life, subjects of great personal interest to the king.

The relatively easy settlement of the Jews in Ajaccio during Theodore’s reign was in part a consequence of the underdeveloped economy. In other European cities, the new settlement of Jews was often opposed by merchants and skilled craftsmen who saw them as competition; in Leipzig, for instance, an alliance of merchants, goldsmiths, and city councilmen consistently opposed the settlement of even small numbers of Jews and attempted to have existing ones expelled. Ajaccio, however, was a small town of fishing, coral harvesting, and agriculture; the Genoese had always treated the presidi as depots for the export of goods and materials, not centers of manufacture and commerce. Ajaccio’s native tradesmen were cobblers and carpenters, not merchants and jewelers. The Jews who settled in Corsica in the 1750s were mainly merchants, coral brokers, tanners, and tailors, and the occasional complaints of Ajaccio’s tailors were not sufficient to cause problems.

At the very moment when Jews were first discovering Corsica, the Republic of Genoa was attempting to restore its own Jewish community. The Republic had created a Jewish charter in 1710 which allowed Jews to settle legally in Genoa (prior to this they had been formally expelled but lived in the city nevertheless in a sort of benign neglect), but although the charter called for a construction of a ghetto this was never implemented. The more zealous Genoese demanded it, but the mercantile classes argued that ghettoization would be economically detrimental. As a consequence, no action was taken for many years; the government strictly required Jews to wear badges but made no effort to control their movement or residence.

Monument in the Jewish cemetery of Genoa​

In 1730, the newly elected Pope Clement XII denounced the laxity of Genoa’s Jewish regulations and demanded ghettoization. The government was willing to comply, but their project was derailed by a prominent nobleman who opposed the ghetto on the basis that the proposed location was too close to his house. With the process proving more contentious than expected, many senators began to wonder whether it would not be simpler and cheaper to simply expel the Jews. That Genoa was also wrestling with the Corsican revolt at the same time probably did not help matters; there was not much funding to spare. In 1737 the Senate finally decided upon expulsion, giving all Jews in Genoa six years to leave. Despite concerns raised during this time that the expulsion might hurt trade, this was accomplished on schedule by 1743, excepting only three families who were given special permission because of their involvement in commerce.

The economic devastation of the War of Austrian Succession prompted a reversal of this policy in the hope that the city might revive its fortunes by attracting wealthy Jews. In 1752 a new charter was promulgated which formally invited the Jews to return and live in Genoa. It was, for its time, quite liberal; neither ghettos nor badges were required, nor would the Jews have to endure mandatory sermons, although they would be closely monitored by the state and prohibited from public religious displays. This new charter immediately came under criticism from Pope Benedict XIV, who argued that to allow Jews their freedom without even distinguishing them by a badge was dangerous to the Catholic community. This time the Genoese refused to back down, and the Senate thumbed its nose at the pope’s attempted interference in their affairs. It may not have been entirely a coincidence that in this same year Pope Benedict snubbed the Genoese and decided in favor of the Corsicans regarding the appointment of bishops in Corsica, and in the following year signed a concordat with Theodore.

Of course Theodore’s attitude towards the Jews was even more liberal than that of Genoa, but Theodore’s religious policy remained mostly abstract in 1752-53. The number of Jews in the kingdom was still very small, and unlike the Genoese Theodore had not published his policy in a charter circulated as far as Amsterdam. Theodore had skirted around the issue in the discussions over the concordat, claiming that the need for formal regulations was not urgent as Corsica had never had a Jewish community and the Jewish presence there was limited to a few “roaming merchants and exiles.” Although he was being evasive, by the numbers Corsica was hardly a great Jewish haven in the 1750s; through the end of the decade even Genoa had more Jews than Theodore’s kingdom, mainly by virtue of its status as a major trading port. As the Jewish population in Ajaccio steadily increased, however, Benedict would grow more and more alarmed by the lack of any Jewish regulation and Theodore’s continued disregard for his complaints.

Immigration to Corsica dropped to almost nothing in the late 1750s as a consequence of war and its attendant uncertainties, but it would rebound at the end of the decade and continue to rise thereafter. The community in Ajaccio began to come into its own in the 1760s, spurred by the restoration of peace, political realignment, and Theodore’s active efforts to “poach” Jews from Tuscany. Their presence would not come without controversy either domestically or abroad, and Theodore’s refusal to bend before the threats and blandishments of the Church on this matter would lead to a breach with Rome. It cannot be denied, however, that there were real economic dividends, as the 1760s saw the establishment of coral-working workshops in Ajaccio - perhaps the country’s first real manufacturing sector - and the establishment of ties with the Sephardic banking community which would provide the Corsican government with greater access to capital.[3]


Footnotes
[1] In 1515, the Protectors of the Casa di San Giorgio (the Genoese state bank, which at that time controlled Corsica) wrote a letter to their officials in Corsica requesting that a Jewish physician named Jacob be permitted to live in Corsica along with his family in order to practice medicine. This is the only known evidence of Jewish habitation on Corsica prior to the 18th century. Whether Jacob actually did move to Corsica is unclear, as is his ultimate fate; he is not mentioned again in extant sources.
[2] Not necessarily by choice. Jews faced severe restrictions on land ownership throughout much of Europe.
[3] Corsica’s early dependence on Jewish capital was a consequence of the poverty of the country. Whereas Britain and France could (and did) cover expenses by borrowing money from their merchants and nobles, Corsica did not have a capital-rich native class which could lend to the government in this manner, nor did its government have the reputation or political leverage to get very favorable interest rates in foreign debt markets.

Timeline Notes
[A] Freha was a real person. She apparently received a full religious education, very unusual for her gender, and from an early age acquired a reputation for learning and poetic talent. From the Late Medieval period until modern times, her poems are the only sacred poems by a Maghrebi Jewish woman which we know of. Apparently she also wrote prose in her short career, although these works are no longer extant. Unfortunately her true potential will never be known. In 1756, when Freha was probably still in her 20s, Tunisia was wracked by civil war and Tunis was sacked by marauding Algerian soldiers. Unlike the 1752 sack in which the non-Muslim population was merely robbed, the 1756 Algerian sack saw widespread rape and murder. Thousands were killed. Avraham and his sons fled the city, but for unknown reasons Freha did not join them. When the mayhem had subsided Avraham returned to Tunis, but his daughter was nowhere to be found and was never seen again. Avraham built a synagogue in her memory where their old family house had been, and it became a place of pilgrimage for the Jewish women of Tunis. ITTL, her family emigrates to Corsica following the sack of 1752 and Freha enjoys the bright career that might have been hers had she not met an early and violent end.

 

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Estrangement

Henri Léonard Jean Baptiste Bertin

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French policy from the outbreak of the Corsican Revolution to “King Theodore’s War” was quite consistently opposed to Corsica’s separation from the Genoese state. It was not, as the British often suspected, that the French wanted the island for themselves; although individual ministers and ambassadors had sometimes flirted with the notion of French annexation, most notably in 1735, it had never been particularly attractive to King Louis XV. Certainly Louis and his advisors wished to deny Corsica to their rivals, particularly the British, who might use the island to disrupt French trade and imperil the kingdom’s security, and French annexation was an obvious means to avert such an outcome. But while Corsica was of strategic importance for France, so too was Genoa.

Although France held no territory in Italy, access to Italy was considered to be a strategic necessity. As long as the “Family Compact” endured, France needed to be able to defend the Italian domains of its Spanish ally, and in the event of another war between Vienna and Versailles it would be beneficial if the French were able to strike at Habsburg possessions in Lombardy. As the last war had demonstrated, however, British naval power meant that access to Italy by sea could not be guaranteed. France could only count on a land route into Italy, and for this there were only two options. One was through the territory of the evasive and duplicitous King of Sardinia, whose cooperation was hardly assured and could only be obtained at great cost. The other was through the Republic of Genoa, a much weaker and traditionally friendlier state. Consequently, French support for the Genoese in Corsica was intended not merely to deny Corsica to France’s enemies, but to maintain Genoa as a French client. A French annexation of Corsica might accomplish the former, but only by sacrificing the latter.

France’s about-face on this issue in 1749 was a consequence of Genoa’s complete rout from Corsica. With rebel forces now in control of virtually the entire island (save Bonifacio), the Genoese were no longer in any position to deny France’s rivals access to Corsican ports. France could either devote itself wholly to the reduction of the island - which was at that moment militarily and economically untenable - or come to an accomodation with the government which actually controlled those ports. Even so, King Louis had been loathe to deviate from his pro-Genoese policy for fear of turning the republic permanently against him, particularly given that the relationship between France and the Republic had already been badly strained by France’s “betrayal” of the Genoese at Aix-la-Chapelle. His eventual decision to recognize Corsican independence was due entirely to François Claude Bernard Louis de Chauvelin, who had assured Louis and his ministers that the Genoese government was quite eager to rid itself of the island. With deft diplomacy, Chauvelin argued, France could achieve a “perfect peace” - a resolution of the festering Corsican problem in a way that would keep both Corsica and Genoa within France’s sphere of influence.

In late 1749 Chauvelin had looked like a genius, but by 1752 Louis and his ministers were beginning to regret their trust in him. The years since Monaco had not been kind to Chauvelin’s “perfect peace.” Chauvelin himself had been caught entirely by surprise by the Genoese Revolution and had been forced to flee the city in a rather undignified manner. His superiors were hardly eager to hear of a popular revolt, but they were even more chagrined by the fact that the uprising had been quashed with Austrian troops. Empress Maria Theresa was not really interested in curbing French influence; her intervention in Genoa was chiefly a means to prop up the state so as to contain King Carlo Emanuele III of Sardinia and prevent him from profiting from Ligurian chaos. Nevertheless, the French worried that Genoese dependence on Austrian arms would wall France out of Italy entirely. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Ligurian Sea King Theodore had surprised everyone by wedding an Austrian duchess who was suspected in Versailles of being a pawn of Habsburg interests, and at the end of 1751 had entered into closer relations with Britain to the detriment of French interests in Tunisia. Chauvelin had promised that he could keep both Genoa and Corsica in the French orbit, but now it seemed as if France might be left with neither.

In Corsica, the French response to this dilemma was more stick than carrot. Chauvelin had contrived Corsica’s 15 million livre debt primarily as a means to control the island rather than to profit from it, but France’s own difficult financial situation coupled with Theodore’s unacceptably free-wheeling approach to “clientage” suggested to the French ministry that it was high time for the Corsicans to begin paying what they owed. Demanding interest from Corsica, however, was like squeezing blood from a stone. The state was perpetually broke, and the only person with a substantial sum of money - Queen Eleonora - had taken great pains to wall her fortune off from her husband and his government (and thus the French). But the French did not have much sympathy, for the reports of Pierre Emmanuel, Marquis de Crussol-Florensac detailed how the Corsican government hardly demanded any taxes and sold salt to the people at a rate that would be unthinkably low in France.

The French sought to correct this native “mismanagement” by dispatching Henri Leonard Bertin in 1753 to straighten out Corsican affairs. A 33 year old bureaucrat from a recently-ennobled family of Périgord, Bertin had served most recently as intendant of Roussillon. What the French probably had in mind was for Bertin to be another Guillaume du Tillot, the minister of finance for the newly installed Duke Felipe of Parma, who not only acted as France’s agent in the Parmesan court but pursued bold reforms of the duchy’s economy. Yet whereas Parma was an autocratic state where Felipe could staff his administration how he saw fit, Corsica operated under a constitution which demanded that “all the dignities, offices, and honors to be attributed in the kingdom be reserved for Corsicans alone, to the perpetual exclusion of any foreigner.” In an attempt to accommodate the French and satisfy his own government, Theodore gave Bertin an office in the household rather than the ministry, naming him as “Private Treasurer.” This did little to reassure Prime Minister Gianpietro Gaffori, who immediately perceived Bertin as a rival for power, his position in the household also earned him the ire of Queen Eleonora. The French, who already believed her to be an Austrian plant, assumed her animus was based on an inveterate hatred for France; in truth she was jealously guarding her control over the court finances, which she considered to be her private fiefdom.

To his credit, Bertin did have some worthwhile ideas. He initially welcomed the unusual posting as an opportunity, as Corsica seemed like it might be a tabula rasa where the latest modern and “enlightened” reforms could be introduced without the opposition of entrenched elites which seemed to always scuttle reform in France. Bertin outlined a plan for Corsica which involved a restructuring of the Catasto Reale, the modernization of agriculture, the surveying and exploitation of mineral resources, and an equitable system of taxation which would tap the resources of the wealthy. But Bertin’s program was hobbled by the perception that he was a foreign minder working for the benefit of France, and while Bertin was a capable administrator he was a poor politician who had no talent for convincing hostile factions to support his plans.

The centerpiece of Bertin’s program was the sovvenzione (“subvention”), a 5% tax on the gross product of land. The tax managed to win the grudging acceptance of the dieta, if only because Theodore made it abundantly clear that if Corsica could not service the French debt their very sovereignty would be in danger. Yet while the tax increased the government’s revenue, it fell far short of expectations. The Corsicans nicknamed it the Decima Borbonica (“Bourbon Tithe”), and believing that the funds mainly went to line the pockets of the French they frequently under-reported their yields or evaded the tax altogether. They found this easy as Corsica’s nascent bureaucracy was insufficient to the task and collection duties were often delegated to rural elites who felt the same way about the sovvenzione as the peasants. Getting accurate information about who owed what also proved extremely difficult because the government’s land survey was still years away from completion. The implementation of the sovvenzione caused Corsican cooperation with the surveyors (who were mostly French) to fall off dramatically, as the farmers correctly anticipated that the completion of the survey would make tax evasion harder. In his frustration, Bertin only managed to further alienate Gaffori by accusing him of deliberate mismanagement.

Bertin’s other schemes met similarly disappointing fates. He drafted a plan to reopen the old iron mine at Farinole and restore the nearby foundry at Murato, both long abandoned, but even with Theodore's support could find neither the funding nor the skilled labor to realize this plan. He thought to energize Corsican forestry by the construction of roads, but to procure the labor for this attempted to push through a plan of French-style corvée labor; Bertin imagined that a means to pay tax through labor would be welcome in cash-poor Corsica, but did not reckon with the absolute revulsion the Corsicans had for servitude (particularly of the unpaid variety). Bertin demanded fee hikes at ports and raising the coral levy, but here he was accused of partiality: French shipping was conveniently exempted from his added fees, while the greatest competitors of the coral fishermen (and thus the indirect beneficiaries of Bertin’s higher coral tax) were their French counterparts. Without a formal position in the government and facing the opposition of Count Gaffori, the queen, and virtually everyone else aside from Theodore himself, Bertin could not do much to enact his proposals or enforce those which were enacted. In 1755 he resigned this fruitless and thankless post after less than two years in office and pronounced Corsica to be “thoroughly ungovernable.”

Bertin’s early tenure overlapped with a visit from Theodore’s nephew, Charles Philippe de Bellefeulac, Comte du Trévou, the only son of his late sister Marie Anne Leopoldine. The Comte du Trévou had not been on Corsica since 1736, when he had briefly attended his uncle in a search for foreign adventure. It had been disappointing; Theodore welcomed him but urged the count to return to France where he could be of more use, and when Charles Philippe grudgingly departed he was captured by the Genoese and forced to apologize to his own government.

Much had changed since then. In 1736, the count had been an impetuous 17 year old cadet; in 1753, he was a 34 year old veteran officer, a captain in the elite Gardes Françaises. Publicly he declared that he was merely paying a visit to his esteemed uncle, who was now theoretically a friend of France, but everyone - especially Theodore’s other “nephews” - was convinced that he could have no other motive than to gain the Corsican throne for himself. He was, after all, the king’s closest male relative, having the advantages of both gender and legitimacy over his half-sister Elisabeth Cherrier Jeanne de Saint-Alban, the new Princess of Capraia. Theodore’s own writings from the 1730s suggest that, at least at that time, he viewed Charles Philippe as his likely successor.

Theodore received his nephew warmly, but Charles Philippe had no local support. Count Gaffori and the other ministers were respectful, but agreed privately that the Comte du Trévou had no evident interest in Corsica and would probably serve merely as a vessel for French policy, a concern which was particularly acute at this time. The law was on their side, for the Corsican constitution demanded that Theodore’s heir had to reside in the kingdom, something Charles Philippe clearly had no intention of doing. No doubt a royal crown appealed to him, but the count’s attachments in France were significant. He had a family of his own now, and he was a man of means and status who hunted with King Louis himself. To leave the social circle of Versailles for Corsica was hardly attractive, and Charles Philippe was more interested in glory than the practical politics which would be required to establish himself on an island already abundant with would-be successors.

Federico, Principe di Capraia was not on hand to meet this potential challenger, as he had departed for the continent earlier that year. Don Federico had not been to his estates in Westphalia since his father’s death in 1747, and his presence was badly needed to straighten out his affairs there. He did, however, spare some time on his journey for a visit to Lunéville, the seat of the court of Lorraine where his wife had influential kinsmen. Elisabeth’s niece was married to Charles-Juste, the son of the elderly Marc de Beauveau, Prince de Craon, who had resigned as Regent of Tuscany in 1749 and returned to Lorraine, while Charles-Juste’s sister Marie Françoise Catherine, Marquise de Boufflers, nicknamed “La Dame de Volupté” (“the Lady of Delight”), was the mistress of the reigning duke Stanisław Leszczyński, father-in-law of the King of France. Although not much of a cultural or philosophical heavyweight himself, Prince Frederick was welcome at Stanisław’s court, where the duke and his hangers-on were interested to hear stories of the famous le Roi-Laurier.

18th century drawing of the Château de Lunéville in Lorraine
​

The prince’s stay in Lunéville was not long, but this visit to his in-laws had a useful consequence. Frederick had sought their assistance, particularly that of the Prince of Craon, in making an appeal to Emperor Franz Stefan on Elisabeth’s behalf. This would eventually bear fruit in the following year when the obliging emperor, in his capacity as the head of the House of Lorraine, signed an act officially legitimating the Princess of Capraia. Although the act of legitimation explicitly denied her any inheritance rights, it declared her to be a recognized member of the extended House of Lorraine and permitted her to bear the surname of d’Harcourt. As the legitimate house of Lorraine-Guise-Harcourt was entirely extinct - Elisabeth’s father had died without male issue and his legitimate daughters were all deceased - this declaration offended precisely nobody and cost the emperor nothing. Signed in November of 1754, the edict arrived in time for the birth of Frederick and Elisabeth’s first son, baptised Théodore François Joseph (Teodoro Francesco Giuseppe), in May of 1755.[1] In further recognition of their mutual (if distant) relation, Emperor Franz became the child’s godfather by proxy.[2]

While this act of imperial benevolence demonstrated a warming in Austro-Corsican relations, Franco-Corsican relations were plunging into an unrecoverable tailspin. Bertin’s resignation was damaging, but the real problem was that Theodore’s relationship with Versailles, already badly damaged, could not withstand the strain of war.

Although there was little eagerness for another war in either London or Paris, Britain and France were pulled inexorably back into conflict by festering disputes on the peripheries of their empires. In India, the British and French (more specifically, the British East India Company and the French Compagnie de Indes) were already on opposite sides of a proxy war in the Carnatic. In North America, disagreements over the precise boundary between British and French territories led to increasingly bold acts by colonial forces, who attempted to bolster their nations’ rival claims by building forts and expelling rival traders from disputed territory. Ever greater provocations would eventually lead to actual shooting between Canadiens and British colonial troops in 1754. Thanks to the support of their native allies the French possessed an early advantage in these engagements, which in turn spurred the British to send regular forces to bolster the colonials. The French could not help but see this as an escalation and replied by sending forces of their own, which the British attempted to arrest by the exercise of their naval power. All the courts of Europe could plainly see that war was imminent. The great question was whether a conflict begun in the colonies would stay there, as the Anglo-Spanish war of 1739 had done before it was subsumed in the broader War of the Austrian Succession, or whether this new Anglo-French war would spill over into Europe.

This question divided even the ministers of the French government. Some cautioned that hostilities should remain bottled up in the Americas (and India), believing that opening a war in Europe would be both risky and ruinously expensive for the French state, which was still laden with debt from the last war. The proponents of a European war, however, wielded powerful arguments of their own. The strength of the British navy and Britain’s great advantage in colonial manpower (compared to the thinly populated territories of New France) gave her the upper hand in any colonial war in the Americas. In Europe, however, Britain was exposed and vulnerable. Hanover could be overwhelmed by the French army and taken as a valuable bargaining chip, and England itself lay tantalizingly close to French shores; despite the failure of previous enterprises, a coup de main against England would gain a French victory no matter what transpired in the dark forests of America.

Such a strategy was too bold for King Louis, and even those who believed a European war inevitable were not keen to stir up a hornet's nest by launching a French army into Germany or toppling the Hanoverians. An offensive in the Mediterranean, however, seemed like a proportional and politically acceptable compromise between colonial sequestration and continental conflagration. An invasion of British-held Menorca would deny the British a valuable base and was unlikely to draw British allies into the war. Better still, the prospect of the island’s return to Spain might tempt the reluctant Fernando VI to join the fight alongside his Bourbon cousin. Without their vital naval base at Port Mahon the British would be ill equipped to defend their recent acquisition of Tabarka, allowing the French to eject them from the Barbary Coast and indeed all the Mediterranean east of Gibraltar.

Corsica was an unwelcome complication to this plan. If Corsica’s neutrality were assured France would have no cause for alarm, but Theodore’s old alliance with the British and his behavior since 1749 suggested that he could not be trusted. In the view from Versailles, France’s gracious toleration of Theodore and his truculent people thus far was an indulgence which they could not afford in a time of war. To truly ensure that the British would gain no purchase on the Granite Isle, it would be necessary for the French to secure it themselves, whether Theodore and the Corsicans wanted them there or not.


Footnotes
[1] “François” was evidently chosen to honor both the emperor and Prince Frederick’s father Franz Bernhard, while “Joseph” was the name of Elisabeth’s own father, the last Comte d'Harcourt.
[2] The proxy was Charles de Nay, son of Emmanuel de Nay, Comte de Richecourt, Craon’s successor as president of the Tuscan regency and a key figure in Austro-Corsican relations during his tenure (1749-1757). The count and King Theodore shared an interest in agricultural and economic reform in their respective territories, as well as a mutual involvement in Freemasonry. They were occasional correspondents and cooperated to smoothly implement commercial agreements between Corsica and Livorno following Corsica’s independence in 1749. Richecourt would return to Lorraine after suffering a stroke, but his son Charles would settle permanently in Tuscany, having been enfeoffed with the imperial marquisate of Treschietto in the Tuscan Lunigiana.

 

[Carp]

Ultimatum

The Siege of Fort St. Philip

​

The opening months of the Anglo-French war in the Atlantic clearly demonstrated the dominance of the British Navy over their French rivals. The British had gotten the better of the French in the minor naval engagements thus far, and in late 1755 British cruisers snapped up hundreds of French ships in the Atlantic, most of them merchant vessels. Yet this success was arguably in spite of the leadership of the British prime minister Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, who despite being chiefly responsible for the policy of escalation and provocation that had led to war had done little to prepare for it. The Royal Navy still suffered from cutbacks under the tenure of his late brother Henry Pelham, and as events in the Mediterranean would soon show, he had left key British positions dangerously vulnerable.

From late 1755, Newcastle was convinced that the French were set upon an invasion of England - so convinced, indeed, that for months he ignored or dismissed reliable reports that the French were preparing for action in the Mediterranean. Even when the buildup at Toulon was acknowledged, Newcastle believed that it was most likely bound for Corsica, as the approach the French had made to the Corsicans in January (to be discussed below) was known to him. As a consequence, at the beginning of 1756 the British Navy had only four ships of the line in the entire Mediterranean theater and woefully inadequate garrisons at Gibraltar and Menorca. Newcastle deigned to send reinforcements only because of strong public and parliamentary outcry, and by the time he did the French were already on the move. Their target was Menorca and the naval base at Port Mahon, a position second only to Gibraltar in importance. The port was commanded by Fort St. Philip, an extremely formidable fortress but furnished with a garrison that was too small to fully man its defenses.

From the start, the relief fleet under Vice-Admiral Temple West was plagued with difficulties. Their launch was considerably delayed by a dearth of sailors and bad weather. Upon reaching Gibraltar, West found that the garrison there was so thin that the Governor refused to give West more troops, fearing for the safety of his own position. West’s crew shortage was such a problem that in order to make his fleet combat-capable he had to strip sailors from his frigates to man his ships of the line and even use ordinary army soldiers as crewmen. Worse still, the Admiralty had assumed that West would be able to rendezvous with the ships already in the Mediterranean, but two ships of the line and two frigates were blockaded at Port Mahon. When Vice-Admiral West finally met his French opponents in June of 1756 he would find himself outmatched.

The result was a crushing defeat. West succeeded in making contact with the Menorca garrison and began landing troops, but the untimely arrival of the French fleet under Admiral Roland-Michel de la Galissonière forced him to call off the operation and prepare for action. Galissonière, by no means a hot-headed captain, knew that he was under strict orders to defend the land operation and initially kept his distance, but he soon realized that his ships were larger and more numerous (13 French ships of the line to 11 British) and that the wind had turned in his favor. He pressed the attack, and although West fought bravely he was outnumbered, outmanned, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. The French captured two ships, the 64-gun Trident and the 50-gun Isis, and damaged the 60-gun Kingston so badly its crew had to scuttle it to avoid capture.[1] Three British captains were lost, two killed and one captured. The rest of the British fleet was heavily damaged and escaped a much greater disaster only because Galissonière, faithful to his orders, did not abandon his transports to pursue them. “None of their ships long withstood the fire of ours,” Galissonière wrote in his report, “and our vessels suffered but little.” The battle had proved enough of a distraction for the British ships blockaded at Port Mahon to slip away, but this was a small comfort.[A]

With his fleet battered and his men thoroughly demoralized, there was no chance that West could challenge Galissonière again. He resolved to do what he could to aid the besieged garrison by using his frigates and lighter ships to disrupt French supplies, but such mischief could only delay the garrison’s fall, not prevent it. Galissonière became a national hero and was given a marshal’s baton by a grateful King Louis XV; West was scapegoated by Newcastle and dismissed from the service. The defeat so stunned Newcastle and his ministers that they gave serious thought to suing for peace, perhaps offering a favorable boundary settlement in the Americas for the return of Minorca, but the disaster caused such public indignation that Newcastle dared not attempt it. Within a few months Newcastle too was to become a casualty of Menorca, falling from power in October as a consequence of his failures.

Since the beginning of serious hostilities at sea in 1755, King Theodore and his prime minister, Count Gianpietro Gaffori, were in complete agreement that the best course for Corsica was neutrality. To side against France would be suicidal, but to side clearly against Britain would endanger Corsican access to the Tabarka concession.[2] Corsica would allow the ships of the belligerent ports into its harbors - which were, after all, free ports - but following the example of Livorno, strict rules of neutrality would be observed to avoid any accusation of partiality. Confident that Corsica’s neutrality would be respected, Theodore saw no need to expand the army or take any defensive precautions, things which the state did not really have the money for anyway.

The first sign that this policy might not be tenable for Corsica came in January of 1756, when the French government proposed to assist the island’s defense by stationing two infantry battalions in Corsica and requested that the Corsicans terminate their trade with the British, whose officers at Tabarka and Port Mahon purchased some of their foodstuffs and naval stores from Corsica. Gaffori politely declined the offer of troops and demurred on the proposed embargo, pointing out that such an action would be provocative and unwarranted given that Britain and France were not actually at war. Theodore conveyed his own regrets to the French envoy, claiming that he had sympathy for the French position but could not go against his government. The French did not immediately force the issue, but the matter was not forgotten.

Following the Battle of Menorca and the fall of Fort St. Philip, the French turned once again to Corsica. They had installed a strong garrison at Menorca to prevent its recapture, but no such force was guarding Corsica. The French feared that Theodore might come to some arrangement with the British, a fear that was stoked by reports that the Anglophile Corsican ambassador to Britain, Pasquale Paoli, had held private meetings with the Duke of Newcastle. Even if Theodore’s pledge of neutrality was serious, the British could always strongarm him into cooperation. Don Carlos of Naples had folded like a wet rag and backed out of the war when the British had menaced Naples with the guns of the Royal Navy in 1742; how could weak little Corsica be expected to show any more backbone?

The Corsicans had refused France’s protection in January, but after the fall of Menorca their compliance was no longer optional. On June 8th, Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, the commander of the siege of Port Mahon - and Princess Elisabeth’s brother-in-law - arrived without warning at Ajaccio with 44 sail, including eight ships of the line. The highest ranking Corsican official present at that time was the provincial luogotenente, Marquis Luca d’Ornano, who thus received Richelieu and his demands. Noting that a state of war now existed between France and Britain (the British had declared in May), the duke informed d’Ornano that “for the protection of the Corsican people” it was necessary for the Corsican government to agree to His Most Christian Majesty’s terms. They included the occupation of Ajaccio, Calvi, and San Fiorenzo by French troops, the cessation of all trade with Britain and her allies, and other measures intended to bring Corsican policy into line with French aims, including the recall of Ambassador Paoli from London.

D’Ornano complained that this was not proper behavior for an ally and asked for more time, as he could hardly make these concessions on behalf of the entire Corsican government. Richelieu would allow this, but demanded to be able to bring his ships into the harbor and land his forces. Controversially, d’Ornano complied, claiming later that resistance was pointless. Although the citadel of Ajaccio was a reasonably strong fortification, the city was completely unprepared for attack - there were no gunners, no troops except the part-time presidial dragoons, and hardly any powder in the citadel’s magazine.

When the Corsican foreign minister Giovanni Vincente Garelli arrived four days later to negotiate with Richelieu, he found that the city was already effectively under French control. With the French occupation now a fait accompli, Garelli signed the “Convention of Ajaccio” on June 13th, accepting virtually all the French demands. He managed to make only a few modifications to the terms, of which the only one of importance was that the French agreed to compensate the Corsican government for provisioning the French forces. Richelieu remained only long enough to supervise the occupation of Calvi and San Fiorenzo. In total, the French occupation forces amounted to around 3,500 men - seven battalions of infantry and a small detachment of engineers and artillerymen - under the command of Maréchal de Camp Guy-André-Pierre de Montmorency, Marquis de Laval, who established his headquarters at Calvi.

Mere days after the signing of the convention, West was relieved by Vice-Admiral Edward Hawke, who arrived at Gibraltar with six more ships of the line. Unfortunately for Hawke, there was nothing to be done to salvage the situation. Menorca had surrendered, Corsica was occupied, and Galissonière had returned to Toulon with his fleet. All Hawke could do until the end of the year was to cruise the Western Mediterranean, protecting British merchants and attacking French shipping as he was able.

The French occupation of Corsica did not lead immediately to violence between the Corsicans and their French “allies.” Corsica’s neutrality had been violated, but the French aim appeared to be to secure the island rather than topple the government. Although he was privately outraged by the complete lack of consideration or courtesy shown him by the French, Theodore publicly preached calm and cooperation. When the consulta of 1756 met at Corti in August, the Marquis de Laval came personally to assure the delegates of France’s good will, and neither Theodore nor Prime Minister Gianpietro Gaffori uttered a word against him. This was not to say that everyone was happy to see the French return to Corsica; the “French Invasion” of 1738-41 was still a recent memory, and the controversial reforms and exactions of Henri Léonard Bertin had not endeared the French to the Corsican people. But because the French forces were confined to three coastal towns, most Corsicans did not have to suffer their presence, and the assurances by both Laval and their own leaders that this was a temporary state of affairs mollified them. The occupation might be an indignity, but it remained preferable to war. In fact only one Corsican official preached war, and he was not even on Corsica.

Pasquale Paoli, Ambassador to Great Britain​

Cavaliere Pasquale Paoli had arrived in London in 1753 as the Kingdom of Corsica’s first ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Although he had been chosen chiefly because he was one of the few Corsicans who could speak English, he turned out to be the perfect man for the job. As an ambassador from the wild land of Corsica he was at first a mere curiosity, but Paoli was no backwoods rustic. Schooled in the academy at Naples, fluent in multiple languages, and possessed of an extraordinary memory, he was a cultured, charismatic, and highly literate man who could easily hold a conversation with the British luminaries of his day. Although Paoli was a pauper as ambassadors went - his stipend from Corsica was rather slim - he was given lodging by the Dutch ambassador and his austere lifestyle became a core part of his image. Brilliant yet humble, erudite yet unassuming, Paoli cultivated a reputation as a “man of virtue,” the ideal combination of polished Enlightenment education and simple rural rectitude. He was not himself a warrior and had never been in battle, but he could certainly point to his family’s brave deeds in defense of liberty; his brother had lost an eye at Ponte Novu, and his father had lost his life fighting the Genoese. Paoli was not the captivating social butterfly and unparalleled raconteur that Theodore had been during his stay in London, but he nevertheless became a popular and much admired figure.

The French were correct to call Paoli an Anglophile; he was an admirer of Britain’s success and came to regard Britain to be a model for Corsica in many respects. Still, when war arrived he dutifully followed his instructions to preserve Corsican neutrality. Following the Convention of Ajaccio, however, Paoli went rogue. Instead of resigning his post and returning to Corsica as Foreign Minister Garelli had ordered, Paoli simply ignored Garelli’s instructions. The Convention, he maintained, amounted to nothing more than extortion, a worthless treaty extracted from the Corsicans at the point of French bayonets. Paoli’s stipend was cut off, but this was of no importance; he had plenty of well-wishers in London who provided for his needs. From this point on, “Ambassador” Paoli became a one-man government-in-exile who crafted his own foreign policy as he saw fit, and the sole objective of this policy was to convince the British to invade Corsica.

Paoli’s case was strategic. With the loss of Menorca, the British position in the Mediterranean was hobbled. Corsican ports would provide the British navy with ample provisions as well as bases scarcely a hundred miles from the French coast from which British privateers could wreak havoc on French trade. Diplomatically, it would be a chip at the negotiating table; the British could refuse to withdraw their forces unless the French withdrew theirs (from Menorca, for instance). Paoli also reminded the British of his peoples' valiant struggle against the French and their record of service on the continent, assuring anyone who would listen that several regiments of loyal auxiliaries could be raised from the population.

Best of all, all this could be achieved with only minor exertion on the part of Britain. As Paoli portrayed it, occupied Corsica was a roiling cauldron seething with hatred for the French occupiers. A mere token effort - a handful of warships, a few battalions of troops, and some shiploads of guns and munitions - would be sufficient to raise the Corsicans in rebellion once more. Surrounded by the Corsicans on land and the British at sea, the French garrisons would have no choice but to surrender, handing the British a new base of operations and a much-needed morale boost after their disastrous defeat at Menorca.

Sketch of William Pitt​

The invasion Paoli urged would not materialize in 1756, but his argument caught the attention of a rising figure on the British political scene, William Pitt. A voice of belligerence in Parliament since the beginning of his political career, Pitt was a vituperative critic of Newcastle and was despised by King George II for his opposition to subsidies for Hanover during the War of the Austrian Succession. Initially, Paoli was chiefly of interest to Pitt because the “fall” of Corsica was yet another means to discredit Newcastle, but Paoli’s proposed scheme was right up Pitt’s alley. Firmly against a “Hanoverian policy” and continental commitments, Pitt believed that Britain’s strategy ought to be to use its naval power to protect its trade, disrupt the trade of its enemies, and dismantle the overseas empires of its rivals. A naval “descent” on Corsica would certainly aid in protecting and interdicting trade, and it would be a highly visible and popular victory (as what patriotic Englishman would not applaud the “liberation” of Corsica from French tyranny?).

The problem, of course, was that Paoli’s characterization of the situation in Corsica was nowhere near the truth. He had no idea what the popular response to the occupation was, and the population he described as teetering on the verge of insurrection was, for the moment, completely quiescent. Although he intimated to the British ministers that he had the support of his king, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Theodore or his government supported or were even aware of his lobbying on their behalf. Because the French had expelled Britain’s envoy in Corsica, however, the British knew little more than Paoli did, and Paoli’s description of Corsican fury was exactly what the British expected from the “malcontents” who had waged war for twenty years against the Genoese, French, and Austrians to secure their freedom.[B]


Footnotes
[1] For the Isis, this was a homecoming. The ship was originally French, but was captured during the War of the Austrian Succession. After returning to Toulon, the place of its construction, it was given its original name back - the Diamant.
[2] This was working exactly as intended, for securing Corsican neutrality was one of the reasons Britain had bought Tabarka and opened the concession to the Corsicans in the first place.

Timeline Notes
[A] The Menorca campaign ITTL occurs around the same time as the OTL Menorca campaign, but with some different people and a different outcome. IOTL, the relief force was led by Admiral Byng, who was more evenly matched with the French (in part because the British ships at Port Mahon were able to slip away just before the French blockaded them) but nevertheless fought an inconclusive battle in which no ships were lost before withdrawing and leaving Menorca to its fate. As a consequence, he was accused of cowardice, court martialed, and executed by firing squad. His execution was the source of Voltaire’s famous quip in Candide ("In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others"). ITTL, West gets caught at a disadvantage, fights, and loses three ships in the process. Although this is a worse outcome for Britain, it’s a marginally better outcome for the fleet’s commander - West gets cashiered, but nobody can accuse him of being a coward, so at least he doesn’t get shot. It is possible this will have some long-term effects on Britain - some writers and historians have claimed that Byng’s death, while a gross injustice, probably did “encourage the others” by teaching Britain’s naval officers that aggression and risk-taking were preferable to a slavish adherence to the Admiralty’s rules of engagement. It’s also a better outcome for Galissonière. It is believed that Louis planned to make him a Marshal of France IOTL, but he fell sick and died on his way back to Paris and never received it.
[B] I did tell you Paoli was going to play a part eventually, didn’t I? He’s been mentioned before, but this is his entrance into the story as a major character.

 

[Carp]

The Turbulent Isle

Maréchal de Camp the Marquis de Laval​

The commanding officer of the French forces in Corsica, Guy-André-Pierre de Montmorency, Marquis de Laval, reported soon after his arrival that the response of the islanders to French occupation was that of peaceful, even eager acceptance. Urged by their leaders to submit peacefully, the Corsicans did not resist, and not a shot was fired despite the sudden and not entirely cordial manner in which the French had arrived. Laval’s impression of the situation, however, was colored by his decision to make his headquarters at Calvi. From a military point of view, this was sensible: Calvi boasted the strongest fortress on the island and it lay the closest to France. Yet Calvi was also not very representative of the rest of Corsica. Its population remained largely Corso-Genoese, mostly pre-Revolutionary residents who had swallowed their filogenovesi pride and opted to stay put, along with a minority of Genoese emigres who had fled the crackdown on the Assembly government in 1750. The old residents had never really warmed to the new regime and saw the French as their friends and protectors; in the siege of 1745, after all, it had been the French who defended their city while the British and naziunali reduced their homes to rubble. It was no wonder that they welcomed Laval and his Frenchmen with open arms.

The case of Ajaccio was altogether different. Here, too, the initial French occupation had gone smoothly, helped by the ready cooperation (too ready, some said) of the regional luogotenente Marquis Luca d’Ornano. Although the Ajaccini were in the main more “Corsican” and more sympathetic to the Theodoran state than the Calvesi, they were not necessarily die-hard naziunali and did strenuously object to a few battalions of Frenchmen taking up residence in the citadel. It did not take long, however, for the French to seriously alienate one of the city’s most important groups - its coral fishermen.

Ajaccio’s coral fishermen did not exclusively work in Tunisian waters, but the Tabarka concession was nevertheless valuable. This outpost off the Tunisian coast, acquired by the British just a few years before, was the lone survivor of the French Mediterranean offensive of 1756; the French considered it to be a low priority and simply did not have the time or resources to pursue it before British reinforcements arrived in the theater. The French had placed their hopes in a proxy, Muhammad Rashid, who sought to overthrow his reigning cousin Ali Pasha, the Bey of Tunis, who had himself usurped the crown from Muhammad’s late father. Muhammad Rashid finally struck in the autumn of 1756, backed with French funds and the forces of the Dey of Algiers. This operation, however, quickly turned into a shockingly brutal and destructive civil war in which Muhammad Rashid, Ali Pasha, and the French consul in Tunis all ended up getting murdered. The implosion of the Tunisian state was not exactly good for the British, but at least it meant that no native power would be working with the French to eject them from Tabarka in the immediate future. It also meant that, since Tabarka remained an active British base, the French authorities in Corsica prohibited the Ajaccini from having any contact with the outpost.

This was a particularly foolish act because it incensed the Corsicans without actually accomplishing anything. With the French navy having withdrawn to Toulon, Laval and his officers in Ajaccio could not possibly enforce their prohibition directly, and thus took to interrogating fishermen and brokers returning from their voyages. Those who were suspected of breaking the ban had their cargoes impounded and sometimes their boats as well. The accused took their grievances to the local courts, but this was usually a futile effort as the French did not feel themselves bound by the rulings of Corsican judges. It was widely suspected by the fishermen that, just as with Bertin’s coral taxes, Laval’s ban was really just a means to spare French coral fishermen from competition (which was not actually true, as the Compagnie Royale D’Afrique had suspended all operations in Tunisia as a consequence of the civil war and the patrols of the British Navy).

Tensions in the city were further exacerbated by French efforts to raise military forces in Corsica, and in particular the involvement of the Greeks in this affair. Since the fall of the city to the naziunali, the Corsican Greeks had remained a distrusted minority. Although Theodore had treated them favorably, he had lacked the resources to resettle them elsewhere, and bowing to the demands of the Corsicans he had declared that the Greek community should remain disarmed. In early 1757, the Busacci brothers - the very same Greek brothers who had led the failed “uprising” against the naziunali following the surrender of Ajaccio - received approval from the French commandant in Ajaccio, Colonel Jean Baptiste Calixte, Marquis de Montmorin, to begin forming a volunteer cavalry unit under French sponsorship. This not only contradicted the government’s prohibition on the Greeks carrying arms, but infuriated the Corsicans of Ajaccio, who saw the Greeks in general and the Busacci brothers in particular as traitors and resented being policed by armed Greeks as in Genoese times.

Ajaccio’s other notable minority, the Jewish community, was pushed in the opposite direction. Most Jewish families in Ajaccio were involved in the coral industry in some fashion and perceived the French restrictions on the coral fishermen as an attack on their own livelihood as well. The situation was not helped by the fact that Laval suspected from the start that the Jews were inclined to be hostile foreign agents, as he was aware that the Jews which had settled in Menorca under British rule had supported the garrison against the French invasion. The situation was further strained by the arrival of a new wave of Jewish immigration in 1757, a consequence of the Tunisian civil war and the “terror regime” in Tunis led by Ali Pasha’s vicious and tyrannical son Younis. Alarmed by the influx of Jews into the city, in February of 1757 Montmorin banned the Jews from residing in the upper town and ordered them to be moved to the Borgu (the suburbs), considering them to be a threat to security.

Until mid-1757, discontent with the French occupation remained largely contained within Ajaccio. It was perhaps inevitable, however, that the French “mission” in Corsica would evolve from mere port protection to exploitation. As the French attempted to capitalize on their victory at Menorca with a naval building program to contest the sea with the British, they soon found themselves facing shortages of all kinds of naval stores. There were not enough guns to arm the ships coming off the blocks, forcing the French to substitute smaller caliber guns and strip coastal batteries of their cannon. Masts, timbers, and all other naval stores were in equally short supply. Corsica, an island rich in timber and pine resin, was an obvious source for some of these much-needed goods.

A dense grove of Corsican Pine in the Restonica Valley​

In principle, at least, the French had promised in the Convention of Ajaccio that all exactions from Corsica would be compensated fairly. Because cash was in short supply, however, and because Corsica already owed France a considerable debt, Laval began “compensating” the Corsican government by giving them credit towards that debt. This was all well and good but it did not put any real money in Corsican government coffers, which meant that despite being “compensated” on paper the Corsican government did not actually have the hard currency necessary to pay workers and farmers whose product was appropriated by the French garrison. The government resorted to increasingly dubious schemes to remain solvent, including taking on more debt, assessing “advance taxes” on the promise of lower taxes in the future, and demanding cash payments on taxes and fees that could ordinarily be paid in kind.

The Corsicans also bore more direct effects of French demands. Since 1756 Laval’s men had conscripted local labor to help repair and modernize the defenses of the presidi. This was not popular, but it was paid (albeit not very well) and it appeared to be for the benefit of the occupied towns. French demand for naval stores, however, convinced Laval to order the implementation of Bertin’s abandoned corvée scheme in order to build roads into the wooded valleys of upper Corsica, as military labor proved to be insufficient to the task. This was bitterly - and sometimes violently - resisted by the locals, who aside from a rather meager wage saw no benefit to the French trying to haul away their forests. By 1757 the French had also begun directly seizing ships for the war effort, necessary to replace the enormous volume of merchant shipping which had been lost to British privateers and cruisers. Rarely were these seizures compensated at anywhere near the actual value of the ships. Not even the Corsican Navy was spared, and Salvatore Viale, the Secretary of the Navy, quietly ordered the “frigate” Cyrne and several smaller ships to relocate to Malta to avoid possible seizure.

Laval’s efforts to secure Corsica and use its resources for the benefit of the war effort also conflicted with the interests of the other major foreign party in Corsica, the Dutch traders of the Nederlands-Corsicaanse Compagnie. Although the States General carefully maintained the neutrality of the Dutch Republic in the present war, Laval suspected that the NCC’s sympathies were with the British and considered their privileged position to be both a strategic and commercial threat to France. Laval could not actually terminate the company’s agreement with the Corsican government, but he could seize the timber and naval stores the NCC required to repair and maintain their ships (arguing that these were strategic resources needed for the French war effort) and dispatched soldiers to the NCC’s “factory town” of Isola Rossa to inspect their warehouses and cargoes. The Dutch found themselves between two fires, harassed both by the French in Corsica and by English privateers at sea who did not always strenuously observe the rights of neutral ships.

These mounting pressures were aired publicly at the consulta generale of August 1757. Every consulta generale thus far had been rather politically diffuse and disorganized; each delegate came with his own ideas and his own concerns, and there were no real political parties or other coherent attempts to define or advance a platform aside from narrow shared interests among delegates from the same pieve or presidio. This remained largely true in 1757, but the events of the past year resulted in a few outspoken dissenters making the “French situation” a topic of general debate. The procuratori unexpectedly turned their ire towards the Marquis de Laval himself, who was once more in attendance but swiftly came to regret it as the delegates subjected him to withering verbal attacks. Rather than taking this on the chin, Laval left the consulta later that morning. The attacks continued in his absence, but soon the procuratori turned on Gaffori and d’Ornano, who were accused of being French doormats.

The controversy at the consulta of 1757 did not actually result in any concrete action; it was a public airing of grievances by a vocal minority. Nor did it indicate a real revolutionary spirit, as just because the procuratori felt brave enough to denounce Laval to his face did not mean that they were ready to take up arms. Theodore himself suffered no criticism, for his reputation remained unassailable, and although Gaffori was made into the general whipping-boy at Corti he still enjoyed the confidence of the king, which was the only thing he needed to remain in power. Nevertheless, the consulta was not without consequence. The events of the consulta disseminated stories of French abuses, which had been fairly localized, across the island. Gaffori resolved to press the French for better terms, but Laval had taken his treatment at Corti as a personal humiliation and was no longer interested in compromise.

The man most determined to inflame this crack into an open breach was Don Giovan, Principe di Morosaglia, who had long been at odds with Count Gaffori and was delighted to watch him squirm in front of the procuratori. Don Giovan was not a master of politics, but the opportunity this presented to him was too obvious to miss. Opposition to the French occupation was not only a means to strike at Gaffori, but a way to diminish the popular standing of Don Federico, Principe di Capraia by way of his conspicuously French wife Elisabeth d’Harcourt, and given his own reputation as a indomitable anti-French machiaro Don Giovan was a perfect fit for the role of an agitator against the “unjust” occupation. He did not call publicly for war - not yet, anyway - but became a harsh critic of French “confiscations,” forced labor, and exemptions from Corsican law. While the prince neither wrote editorials nor started up a speaking tour, he still had a great deal of respect among the interior Corsicans and privately encouraged their leaders to resist not only French demands but the government’s own policies which served the French.

While Don Giovan’s agitation was targeted mainly at inland Corsicans and their sense of national honor, resistance was also growing in Ajaccio. In the autumn of 1757, pamphlets written by a certain “Giovanni Verde”[1] began to appear in the city decrying French abuses and claiming that the ultimate plan of King Louis XV was to conquer the island and sell it back to the Genoese. It was immediately declared to be contraband by Montmorin, but the city council objected, insisting that the French - who were, after all, only there for their protection - had no right to ban literature or arrest Corsicans for reading it. In an attempt to mollify them, Montmorin demanded that d’Ornano deal with the matter. D’Ornano complied, ordering the presidial dragoons to arrest anyone in possession of the pamphlets, but this was somewhat less than successful; in one instance the dragoons tried to arrest a man in the middle of the day who was reading a pamphlet only to find themselves pelted with trash and stones by the angry residents, forcing them to retreat without their perpetrator.

The origin of the “Verde Pamphlets” was especially mysterious because there was at the time no printing press in Ajaccio. Montmorin came shortly to suspect the Jews were behind it, and not entirely without reason; a stack of them was discovered on board a Livornesi ship partly owned by a Jewish merchant, and Livorno was the site of several Jewish-owned printing houses with close connections to certain Ajaccio Jewish families. This evidence was circumstantial but it was sufficient for Montmorin to order invasive searches of Jewish homes and cargoes, night raids of their properties, and the shuttering of the small house which was serving as the community’s synagogue (which the colonel referred to in a letter as a “den of vile conspiracies”). If Montmorin expected that his actions would only upset the helpless Jews, however, he was sorely mistaken. It was not much of a stretch for the Corsicans to imagine that they too might have their homes raided by Frenchmen in the night, particularly since the Jews were hardly the only ones reading “Verde’s” missives. The city council, which had not opposed the banishment of the Jews from the upper town and had complained to Theodore about the new influx of Jews from Tunis, suddenly rallied to their defense and demanded that French troops not be used for what was clearly a Corsican law enforcement matter. Montmorin, pointing out that the Convention said the French were there in part to preserve the “peace and order” of the Corsican presidi, brushed this demand aside.

Despite the agitation of Don Giovan and “Verde,” even as the winter of 1757 approached Corsica was not the roiling cauldron of insurrection which Ambassador Pasquale Paoli was describing to statesmen in London. Arguably only Ajaccio met that criteria, and even there popular anger against the French did not necessarily mean that the citizens were ready to take up arms in revolt. As luck would have it, however, when Rear Admiral Charles Saunders received orders in October of 1757 to collect intelligence on the situation in Corsica, his main sources of information were British Livornesi merchants whose information came mainly from Livornesi traders (including many Jews) who did business mainly in Ajaccio. Saunders was thus led to believe that Ajaccio was representative of the general situation in Corsica as opposed to being a local hotbed of sedition.

Saunders’s orders had come about as a consequence of the fall of Newcastle and the rise of William Pitt, who was now Secretary of State for the Southern Department and, though not prime minister, the most prominent man in government. Although Pitt was a critic of Hanoverian policy and an advocate of pursuing the war in the colonies, it was not possible to ignore Hanover altogether so long as he served as the king’s minister, particularly now that the electorate had been left vulnerable by the desertion of the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa from her old alliance with Britain. Pitt still opposed British “boots on the ground” in Germany but it was necessary for the British to do something besides bankrolling the Hanoverian “army of observation” (a mostly German force).[A] The solution, to Pitt, was a policy of “naval descents” - that is, amphibious raids - which were intended not only to damage France directly by “disturbing and shaking the Credit of their Public Loans” and “impairing the Strength and Resources of their Navy,” but to “compel the enemy to employ in their own Defence a considerable Part of their forces designed to invade [Hanover].”

Places of Note in the Mediterranean Theater

​

An intervention in Corsica offered only a partial fulfillment of these goals. Certainly it seemed plausible that taking the island would impair French naval efforts, as well as causing economic damage to France (and sparing the same to Britain) by its utility as a base for privateers. It could not, however, compel the French to shift their forces from Germany; control of the sea around Corsica was necessary for such an operation, and if Britain could achieve this control the French would be hard pressed to reinforce their Corsican garrisons even if they thought it desirable. But just as important as any strategic goal was the anticipated effect of a successful invasion on British morale, which was flagging after the disaster at Menorca and other setbacks. Corsica was possibly an even greater prize than Menorca, and if as Paoli claimed its “liberation” could be accomplished with forces already on hand it would also be more cheaply bought than Menorca, an exceedingly strong fortress with a prodigious garrison.

Unlike Menorca, however, the conquest of Corsica presented several possible approaches. Although the British hoped, as Paoli assured them, that the Corsicans would rise up with a mere demonstration, Pitt and his advisors agreed that the British landing should take the form of an attack against one of the three French garrisons so as not to waste the element of surprise and to ensure that the “demonstration” was as effective as possible. Calvi was quickly discounted; the British had taken it once before, but only with significant “native” assistance and the exploitation of an undefended cove which the French, if they had learned their lesson, would not be leaving undefended a second time. San Fiorenzo was more feasible, but the bay was considered to be very well defended, suggesting that a British attack would have to be made via a landing at Bastia and a march overland into the Nebbio. This would be logistically challenging, give the French advance warning, and deny the British the use of their naval artillery.

This left Ajaccio. The city’s key weakness which had allowed the rebels to capture it in 1743, the position of the heights of Aspretto overlooking the harbor, still remained. The British were unsure whether “Fort Costa,” the position which the rebels had constructed on this hill, still existed - and, if so, whether it was garrisoned by the French - but if it could be taken, the French garrison would be at the mercy of the British. Surely if the ragtag Corsican rebels had managed to subdue the city in this manner, the armed forces of Great Britain could manage it with ease. It was thus decided that the primary blow would fall here, at Ajaccio. This would be followed by an expedition against Bastia which would force Theodore’s government to fall in line (if Ajaccio alone was not sufficient), allow the British to deliver arms and munitions to the patriotic farmers of the Diqua who were ready to throw off the Bourbon yoke (or so claimed Paoli), and potentially set up an attack on San Fiorenzo. Calvi, as ever the toughest nut to crack, would be left for last, once the full support of the Corsicans had been secured.


Footnotes
[1] Or “John Green.” It is generally assumed that Verde was a reference to the color of the royalist cockade during the Revolution.

Timeline Notes
[A] As you can see, by 1757 this timeline's "diplomatic revolution" has indeed happened to the extent that Austria has abandoned Britain and Britain has turned to Prussia. I think the switching of alliances would be hard to avoid; even if Frederick had not acted first in OTL, it appears that Austria was planning their own offensive in the following year, and they had no intention of going to war with France at the same time. How exactly this all unfolds ITTL is, for now, a mystery, but it will not be following the exact same course of events as OTL.

 

[Carp]

The Mystery of the Corsican Hat​

I know, I’ve got an update to do. But right now I’d rather post about hats.

I’ve referred to Corsican dress a few times, and for the most part it’s pretty unremarkable - there’s a lot of wool and a lot of brown. The pilone, the characteristically Corsican hooded cloak, has been mentioned a few times. But if there’s one thing that really stands out whenever you see a picture of 18th century Corsicans, it’s the hat.

The Corsicans (specifically, Corsican men) were universally said to wear a peaked cloth cap. How exactly this looked, however, is a little bit unclear. The classic Corsican berettu of the 19th and 20th centuries is a soft felt cap, as modeled by this fine turn of the century gentleman:

"Get off my lawn"

​

That’s a rather common style of cap, and hardly unique. Earlier writings and depictions usually describe the Corsican cap as being a “Phrygian” cap. Sometimes that appears to be depicted in the manner of the French Revolutionary Phrygian cap, which is basically just a shorter version of the above berettu.

Okay, so far so good. But if you spend any time finding pictures of 18th century Corsicans, you will pretty quickly come across a different kind of cap altogether, something that frankly looks like a jester might have worn it:

I’m not sure what the practical value of this sort of “cone hat” was, but it’s certainly distinctive. Did Corsican hats really look like this or was this a rather fanciful re-imagining of Corsican headgear by people who had not seen it firsthand?

And then there’s the really weird stuff. Ready?

Seriously, what are those cheek things for?​

What on earth is this? Is that a… ribbed hat? With little cheek-cloth things? What the hell is going on?

I suspect this hat did not actually exist. It’s just too silly, and it appears in art very rarely. But it does remind me of something real: an ancient Greek phrygian helmet, which often had similar cheek-guards attached (albeit ones made out of metal, because obviously):

It makes me wonder if some artist heard “Phrygian cap” and thought “oh, so you mean like a Phrygian helmet” and made a cloth version of a Greek bronze helmet. That would certainly explain those cloth cheek coverings. It might also explain why this portrait of Napoleon in “Corsican costume” shows him wearing a helmet with a similar design:

100% Authentic Corsican​

Just to add a little bit more confusion, Austrian light troops in the 19th century wore a "Corsican hat" (Korsehut) which was a predecessor of the slouch hat, and has, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing to do with Corsica.

Not Corsican.​

 

[Carp]

Between Two Fires

Plan of Ajaccio in the 1760s

​

On May 14th 1758, Ambassador Pasquale Paoli beheld the island of Corsica from the deck of the British flagship Prince. It had been five years since he had last seen his country, the final two of which had been spent in a strenuous attempt to convince the British government to liberate Corsica from her French occupiers. Despite the favor which was shown him by many in the British elite, Paoli and his plans had been repeatedly put off because of ministerial instability in London, political wrangling, and a general preference for American over European operations. Unbeknownst to Paoli, however, the delay would prove invaluable. His predictions of Corsican opposition to the French were wholly untrue when he first uttered them in 1756, but two years on the relationship was considerably more strained.

Although the ascent of William Pitt to prominence as Southern Secretary had brought Paoli’s dream to fruition, the British had not invested heavily in the “Corsican expedition.” It was to be accomplished primarily with resources already in the theater, which had not originally been intended for Corsican action: the remnants of the doomed Menorca relief expedition and further forces sent to strengthen Gibraltar against a further French attack which never came. What had ultimately convinced the British ministry to strike at Corsica was not a reassessment of the importance of the Mediterranean theater, which was still considered peripheral, but the realization that Corsica would be a useful base for the oversight and blockade of Toulon - as well as the desire for a morale boosting victory in a war that was not going particularly well for the British thus far.

The British task force under the command of Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders consisted of nine ships of the line, four frigates, two bomb vessels, and around thirty five auxiliary ships (transports, supply ships, bomb tenders, and sloops). The ground forces, led by Major-General Henry Seymour Conway, amounted to approximately 2,500 men comprised of three regiments of foot and four companies of marines. Although this was smaller than the French presence on Corsica - around 3,000 regulars - the French forces were divided amongst three citadels separated by miles of difficult terrain and would be unable to reinforce one another. Moreover, it was expected that the British would be supported by the Corsicans following the uprising which Paoli confidently predicted. Despite this dependence on Corsican goodwill, however, no attempt was made the liaise with the Corsicans prior to the landing in order to maintain operational secrecy; even Paoli was not informed of the details of the plan until the fleet was actually in the Mediterranean, and his offer to land at Corsica prior to the British arrival was refused.

The expedition had a promising start. Upon entering the Gulf of Ajaccio, the fleet immediately captured a number of Corsican fishermen who proved completely willing to tell Saunders everything they knew about the numbers and disposition of the French. General Conway and his forces disembarked on the plain of Campo di Loro and attempted to outflank the French bastion of Fort Costa while Saunders launched a naval bombardment. Although the fort’s earthworks proved resistant to cannonballs, the plunging shells from the bomb vessels proved deadly and came very close to detonating the fort’s magazine. Outnumbered, poorly protected, and fearing that the British would cut them off from Ajaccio, the French at Fort Costa chose to destroy their guns and abandon their position.

Major General Henry Seymour Conway

​

The 37 year old General Conway was an accomplished gentleman; he was handsome, honest, amiable, and well-educated. As a soldier he was personally fearless, and his reputation for bravery combined with the patronage of the Duke of Cumberland had gained him the rank of major-general at a relatively young age. He had been denied command of a amphibious “descent” against France in the previous year by King George II himself on the basis that he was too young, but it turned out for the best; that operation had been a debacle from the start and Conway was one of the few subordinate officers involved who came out of the affair with credit rather than censure. Pitt had recommended him for Corsica, a much smaller affair, and the king had somewhat reluctantly agreed.

While undoubtedly courageous, courage is more valuable in a soldier than a general, and Conway was the perfect example of a man promoted past his level of competence. The shy and reserved Conway eagerly followed orders but was full of indecision and self-doubt when giving them. He seldom had ideas of his own, and his lack of confidence meant that he was constantly seeking the consensus and approval of his subordinates. His hesitation after the capture of Fort Costa was not entirely his fault; he was burdened by instructions from the ministry to avoid any undue harm to the Corsicans or their property, which made him reluctant to storm or bombard the city. Nevertheless, Conway allowed bickering among the British commanders and his own fear of failure to paralyze him, and ended up waiting fruitlessly for Corsican politics to develop in his favor as he squandered time and resources waiting outside Ajaccio.

The first Corsican official to confront the British was Marquis Luca d’Ornano, luogotenente of Ajaccio, who had not been in the city at the time of the landing and rode into the British camp under a flag of truce. According to Paoli, the rather irate d’Ornano stormed into the camp demanding to speak to their commander. When Conway made an appearance and greeted the marquis, d’Ornano brushed aside his pleasantries and demanded brusquely “Alors, sommes-nous en guerre?” “En paix, monsieur,” replied Conway serenely, “si votre souverain l'aura.”[1]

Paoli, meanwhile, broke free of his British handlers and made for the interior, hoping that he would be able to rouse his government against the French. These hopes quickly proved misplaced. Foreign Minister Giovanni Vincente Garelli, Paoli’s superior, acidly pointed out that Paoli was “two years late” (referring to Paoli’s recall back in 1756) and was presumably interested to know why Paoli had not only failed to give his government advance notice of a foreign invasion but had actually joined it. Whatever his response, Paoli was not disciplined; given that his ambassadorial credentials had already been withdrawn two years before, he could not even be fired. The king informed Paoli of his displeasure through Garelli, but privately Theodore could not help but admire the audacity of it, immediately suspecting that Paoli had played a role in pushing the British to act. “What can be done with such a man?” the king mused to Prime Minister Gianpietro Gaffori, according to secretary Carlo Rostini. “Eventually we will either have to shoot him, or make him a minister.”

The king’s immediate response to the invasion was to do nothing. Theodore seems to have privately hoped for a British victory, as this might provide him with a means to escape his attachments and debts to France which had become debilitating and destabilizing. Because a British victory was by no means obvious, however - either in Corsica or anywhere else - Theodore temporized. His provisional neutrality was not controversial; even Paoli, chastened by his chilly reception at court, did not call openly for war. More controversial, however, was the question of whether Corsica ought to prepare for war.

Several ministers and prominent noblemen called for the militia to be mobilized to ensure that (further) threats to the kingdom’s sovereignty could not be made without opposition. Theodore opposed the idea, mainly because his present lack of an army was a good excuse for doing nothing: Once he had soldiers, he would have to explain to both the French and the British why he did not use them. Since he could hardly make this argument openly, however, the king instead warned that mobilization could be seen as a “provocation” and a violation of neutrality, and complained about the costs involved.

The government’s inaction was an irritation not only to those “partisan” Corsicans who favored the French or British, but to a far larger number who feared that Corsica was allowing itself to be trampled upon by foreign invaders while doing nothing to defend itself. There were calls to summon an early consulta, as the annual consulta generale was not scheduled until August, but the prime minister declined. Yet government paralysis did not prevent the Corsicans themselves from taking action. Individual pievi began stockpiling gunpowder and mustering men under the authority of their caporali or local notables. Some had support in high places; Don Giovan, Principe di Morosaglia, actively encouraged the northern mountain pievi to arm and organize their militias and purchased gunpowder with his own money. Count Gaffori, who had initially supported Theodore’s policy of neutrality, began to fear that official inaction might cause the situation to spin out of control.

This interminable delay was a source of tremendous frustration to Conway, who had expected Paoli’s promised uprising to accomplish his mission for him. As it began to dawn on him that the ambassador’s promises might have been empty, the general appealed directly to d’Ornano, offering him arms and money to join the British side. The marquis was not normally one to turn down such largesse, but this time he declined. Luca d’Ornano was a French sympathizer; he had kinsmen among the French nobility and two Marshals of France in his family tree, and never let anyone forget it. More importantly, however, d’Ornano was no more convinced of British success than King Theodore, and he had no desire to burn his bridges with both the French and his own government by taking a side in a war in which the kingdom remained steadfastly neutral.

As Conway dithered, the British position grew increasingly dispiriting. The French had possessed ample time to shore up their defenses around the city, while Saunders was now refusing to commit his ships to an attack; some of his vessels had taken damage aloft from counter-fire from Fort Costa, and the admiral feared that a duel with the citadel would leave his ships too damaged to stop a French attempt to break out of Toulon for the Atlantic, a nightmare which Saunders fretted over daily. Meanwhile, the British soldiers suffered under the hot Corsican sun and malaria began spreading through their ranks. With the “uprising” nowhere to be seen and his supply of able-bodied soldiers swiftly diminishing, Conway faced a decision point.

On June 22nd, Conway convened a council of war to decide whether the siege - and thus Corsica - should be abandoned. Saunders thought that it should; he had always considered the affair to be a pointless sideshow, and pointed out that the native support which the enterprise had been predicated upon had not materialized. Conway’s army subordinates, however, did not share this opinion. Conway’s senior colonel was the 55 year old John Arabin, the son of a French Huguenot family which had settled in Dublin and became considerable landowners. Arabin was an experienced and dauntless officer who was said to have marched his detachment a hundred miles through Scotland in the midst of a snowstorm in only three days. The junior colonel on Conway’s staff was indeed junior, the 31 year old James Wolfe, but despite being the inexperienced son of a general he was no mediocre product of aristocratic nepotism. Brilliant and energetic, a tireless disciplinarian who was nevertheless beloved by his men, Wolfe’s limited experience would prove no handicap. Significantly, all three of them - Conway, Arabin, and Wolfe - knew each other, having served together under Cumberland in the Jacobite campaign.

Arabin and Wolfe both argued for an immediate attack on Ajaccio. Notwithstanding recent losses to disease, they were confident that they outnumbered the French defenders. As usual, Conway hesitated; he was pessimistic about the whole endeavour and feared the bloody consequences of a direct assault, but he also hated the idea of slinking away in defeat from his first independent command. Amidst this indecision, however, a critical development played right into the hands of the colonels. For some time the British had been aware of dissidents within the city who were willing to cooperate with the British, and at just the right moment these contacts finally delivered. Detailed notes were smuggled out of the city and passed to Colonel Arabin regarding the dispositions of French troops, their patrol routes, the state of their supplies, and the condition of the city’s defenses. With this intelligence coup in hand, Arabin and Wolfe were finally able to convince Conway to commit to an attack. Saunders reluctantly agreed to commit some of his assets to a bombardment, and on the 26th the British engaged the defenders by land and sea.

The French managed to hold back this attack with well-aimed gunnery, but the British assault on the 26th was intended mainly as a demonstration and to probe the French defenses. On the advise of his colonels, Conway feigned a withdrawal on the following day, demolishing works on Fort Costa and pulling his men back from their lines outside the city. Instead of evacuating, however, the British returned to their positions under cover of night and launched a second assault on the city hours before dawn on the morning of the 28th.

The night attack did not go off without a hitch. Wolfe’s column went the wrong way in the darkness and arrived late, leaving Arabin on the left flank to fight the defenders alone, and the feigned evacuation had not caused the French to led their guard down quite as much as Conway had hoped. Nevertheless, the darkness muted the effect of the French batteries and the British still held a strong numerical advantage. When Wolfe’s column finally struck on the right flank, the French collapsed, and British forces seized the outer bastion overlooking the borgu. The British were repulsed from the citadel itself, but Colonel Jean Baptiste Calixte, Marquis de Montmorin quickly decided that his position holed up within the citadel was untenable. Denied access to the supplies and cisterns in the upper town, he could not resist for long. On July 6th he surrendered with his garrison and received the honors of war.

In conquered Ajaccio, the British finally received the welcome they had been expecting. Despite the violent fall of the city, the damage was relatively light and the population was happy to be rid of the increasingly onerous French presence. Cavaliere Giuseppe Maria Buonaparte and the rest of the city elders held a welcome ceremony for Conway and his officers. But there was also a darker side to liberation, for hardly had the French flag come down from the citadel than a spontaneous riot erupted against the Greeks. In fact the Busacci brothers and their pro-French volunteers were not even at Ajaccio; they had been reassigned to the north. Micaglia Stefanopoli and his son Giorgio-Maria, the most prominent Greek leaders left in the city, were rivals of the Busacci family and had opposed collaboration with the French. This distinction was lost upon the rioters, however, who assaulted the Greeks and looted their homes. The British forcibly suppressed the riot, though not before a Greek man was killed and many others injured.

Notwithstanding this victory, the British were in no position to continue the campaign. Counting the dead, the sick, and the wounded, General Conway’s 2,500 men had declined to scarcely 1,500 able-bodied soldiers. The plan had originally called for a landing at Bastia to take the island’s largest city and spark a rebellion in the north, but Conway now considered this to be overly optimistic. Saunders suggested demolishing Ajaccio’s defenses and then evacuating, but Conway - once again preferring to wait on events - delayed any final decision pending the result of the looming consulta, so as to give the Corsicans one last chance to recognize their “true interests.” To that end, he dispatched Colonel Arabin to Corti to personally represent British interests. In the meantime, Saunders and the majority of the fleet sailed to the French coast to cruise off Toulon.

Admiral Charles Saunders

​

Count Gaffori realized that the fall of Ajaccio had rendered the “policy of inaction” extremely precarious. Corsica was now an active theater in the Anglo-French war, and future conflict looked ever more likely as the French had dispatched another battalion from Antibes to reinforce Guy-André-Pierre de Montmorency, Marquis de Laval in the north. Local pievi were arming themselves, tensions were flaring between the Corsicans and the French in the Balagna and Nebbio, and Gaffori’s rivals like the Prince of Morosaglia were trying to use the conflict to undermine the prime minister politically. Under mounting pressure, Count Gaffori finally bowed to demands to hold the consulta generale early so as to elect a new dieta with a mandate to address the crisis. The procuratori, already elected in May, would convene at Corti on July 20th, about three weeks ahead of schedule.

Gaffori went into the consulta believing that neutrality was still the only reasonable option, and that this belief was shared by King Theodore. As the consulta generale began, the election of Carlo Grimaldi d’Esdra of Castifao - an ally of Gaffori - as president of the consulta suggested to the prime minister that things were going his way. The ground, however, was not as solid as it seemed. Theodore was pleased with the British victory and appears to have agreed with Morosaglia and Queen Eleonora that the kingdom’s interests were best served by an alignment with Britain. He may also have been influenced by Colonel Arabin, who arrived in Corti well before the consulta. A practicing lawyer before becoming a soldier, Arabin proved a capable diplomat, and as a polyglot French-Irish Freemason he easily ingratiated himself with the king and his circle of ex-Jacobite courtiers.

Acrimonious debate was to be expected, as there were both pro-French and pro-British procuratori, and Gaffori planned to position himself as a reasonable voice of moderation. Immediately prior to his planned speech, however, the floor was ceded to Giovan Felice Valentini, a representative of the pieve of Rostino and cousin of Pasquale Paoli. Nobody expected much; then in his early 30s, Valentini belonged to a family of caporali but was too young to have been in the influential “first generation” of rebel leaders, and his family was counted among those in Gaffori’s faction. What began as a rather ordinary speech, however, quickly escalated into an attack on the “policy of inaction” in general and the prime minister in particular. After recounting French support for “Genoese tyranny” and the Corsican blood shed by French soldiers, Valentini stunned the chamber by daring to give Gaffori the rimbeccu: “I swear before God, I would rather forsake Paradise than be the coward Gianpietro, who shirks [his countrymen’s] blood and fears to avenge them!”[2]

Popular legend has it that the assembly briefly descended into chaos and that Gaffori was too shocked to respond. This seems to be a bit overblown; Gaffori was well known for both his oratory and his iron nerves, and the slanderous blustering of a young notabile is unlikely to have flustered him for long. Natali wrote that the minister’s speech was delivered without incident. But Gaffori was legitimately troubled by the realization that the king’s opinion was not quite his own. Valentini was probably acting on his own accord, but a considerable amount of similar (if less vituperative) criticism came from the “royal electors” appointed by the king (including Morosaglia). Upset by this lack of support, Gaffori went to the king directly and offered his resignation. It was a good bluff; whatever game Theodore may have been playing, he knew very well that he had no good replacement for Gaffori, who still held the balance of power in the consulta. Theodore declined to accept his resignation and assured his minister that he still enjoyed the royal confidence.

With this royal intrigue defused, Gaffori turned back to the consulta, where he faced not only division and rancor among the delegates but the meddling of Colonel Arabin who was set upon stirring up anti-French sentiment. The absence of any counterbalance to the colonel was chiefly the fault of the Marquis de Laval. Laval had personally attended the last two consulte, but he had come under such impertinent criticism in the 1757 consulta that he declined to attend this present assembly, leaving that duty to the French consul. When the time came, however, the consul was absent. The arrival of French reinforcements had infuriated the king; it was not so much that it was a violation of the Convention of Ajaccio (although it was a violation), but the fact that Laval had not thought it necessary to seek Theodore's approval or even notify him of the decision. In retaliation, Theodore dismissed the French consul from court shortly before the opening of the consulta, inadvertently leaving the field to Arabin.

Still, Count Gaffori held his ground. The assembly passed resolutions calling for the “defensive” mobilization of the militia and condemning the arrival of additional French forces, but Gaffori succeeded in keeping them below the two-thirds threshold, which meant that they lacked legislative force and depended on the approval of the ministry (that is, the approval of Gaffori) for their execution. Having quashed both Theodore's scheming and a revolt in the consulta, the count appeared to have weathered the storm. Yet he had failed to reckon with the myopic blundering of Laval, who seemed determined to ruin everything.

At the end of the consulta of 1758, a Franco-Corsican breach was still far from inevitable. Arabin’s influence had been considerable but not decisive, and the colonel himself had reported to Conway that his mission had been unsuccessful. Gaffori still held the government on its moderate course and assured the French that the situation was well in hand. Laval, however, chose to take umbrage with what he saw as intolerable affronts by an ungrateful king and his people: the expulsion of the French consul, the warm reception of the invader Arabin at the royal court, and the outrageous provocations of the consulta (despite Gaffori’s insistence that their resolutions were quite toothless). The marquis could not let such behavior go unanswered, and determined that a strong response was necessary to remind the Corsicans of their proper allegiance. It would be the worst mistake of his career.


Footnotes
[1] “So, are we at war?” “At peace, sir, if your sovereign will have it.”
[2] Technically giving the rimbeccu - publicly goading a person for failing to avenge a murder - was a capital crime. Valentini was not prosecuted, however, probably because it was questionable whether giving the rimbeccu was legally actionable if the murdered party was not an individual person but the “martyrs of the Revolution." The chief danger of the rimbeccu, after all, was that it fueled the vendetta, and Gaffori was hardly about to go on a killing spree against Frenchmen as a consequence of Valentini’s insult. Gaffori did not pursue the matter, having no desire to lower himself to the level of feuding with Valentini, and he appears to have been satisfied once Valentini was censured by president Grimaldi d’Esdra for disrupting the “peace and good order” of the consulta. Nevertheless, Valentini’s kinship with the Paoli clan would have consequences for the relationship between Gaffori and the Paoli brothers, who up to this point had been solidly within Gaffori's faction.

 

[Carp]

The Devoted

The Church of the Annunciation, Borgo, built in the 17th century

​

On the night of October 22nd 1758, nineteen men gathered at the Church of the Annunciation in Borgo and swore an oath to drive the French from Corsica by any means necessary. They were not disgruntled peasants or bandits, but notabili of some standing in the northeast, including Giuseppe Barbaggi of Murato, a bureaucrat and academic; Luigi Angelo Zerbi of Oletta, a diplomat and canon of the cathedral of Bastia; Francesco Antonio Saliceti of Patrimonio, a parish priest; his brother Giovan Carlo Saliceti, a royalist army officer; and Ignacio Domenico Baldassari of Furiani, another former officer of the Corsican army. They and their followers became known as I Devoti (“the devoted”) - either because of their devotion to the cause, or because their oath was dedicated to Saint Devota, one of Corsica’s patronesses.

Although tensions between the French and the Corsicans had been building slowly for several years, the devoti ultimately owed their existence to the British conquest of Ajaccio, and more directly to the crisis this created between the French and Corsican leadership. The few months between Ajaccio’s fall and the oath of the devoti at Borgo were pivotal in the final breakdown of this relationship, fueled by the weakness of the Corsican government, the double-dealing of King Theodore, and - perhaps most importantly - the prickly inflexibility of maréchal de camp Guy André Pierre de Montmorency, Marquis de Laval, who showed that he was completely incapable of de-escalation.

Laval had not expected the British invasion - and, in fairness, neither had anyone in his government. The French had fielded more than 10,000 soldiers in their own conquest of Corsica, and believed that a similar British effort would be sheer folly; with the loss of their vital base at Port Mahon, the logistical challenges to such an operation would be insurmountable. Accordingly, the French occupation of Corsica was not intended to repel a dedicated British assault, but rather to thwart British “gunboat diplomacy” against Corsica and ensure that its strategic ports were closed to British privateers. But the British, misled by the rosy predictions of Pasquale Paoli, had embarked on the operation not to conquer Corsica but to spur a native rebellion, and this limited goal combined with the parsimony of their own government meant that the British landed fewer than 3,000 men on the island - a much weaker force, certainly, but also one which was easier to supply.

What surprised the Marquis de Laval even more than the British landing, however, was the attitude of the Corsican government. It was not that the maréchal expected them to rise immediately to arms against the British; the French were there precisely because the Corsicans lacked the means to defend themselves. But Laval was genuinely baffled by the offense taken by Theodore to the arrival of French reinforcements - who, whatever the technicalities of the Convention, were there to protect Corsica - as well as the king’s decision to dismiss the French consul and give a warm welcome to Colonel John Arabin, an enemy officer. That the 1758 consulta generale would condemn French reinforcements in the face of a British invasion beggared belief. Despite some local friction between the French and the Corsicans under occupation, the maréchal had presumed that the “malcontents” were a vocal minority and his abuse at the previous consulta had been the work of grandstanding local politicians. Laval’s decision to headquarter himself in Calvi probably did not help his perspective; it was an isolated city whose largely Corso-Genoese population was indifferent to the royal government and welcoming to the French.

The activities of Colonel Arabin at Corti strongly suggested that the British were not merely seeking to occupy Ajaccio but to make a play, both military and diplomatic, for Corsica itself. Although initially Laval had been most concerned with the prospect of additional British landings, he soon came to fear that Arabin and an “Anglophile clique” led by the likes of Pasquale Paoli, Giovan Felice Valentini, and the king’s Scottish and Irish retainers already had their hooks in the king, and that the British would use this faction - together with leverage from their control of Ajaccio - to force the king to side with them. After all, showing up unannounced at Ajaccio with an army was exactly how the French had “convinced” Theodore’s government to accept their occupation in the first place.

Laval faced a dilemma. Military logic demanded a defensive stance, as his forces were limited and he still suspected that the British had more troops in reserve. Confining his forces to San Fiorenzo and Calvi - or better yet, just Calvi, the island's finest fortress - would give them the best chance at thwarting a British attack. Political logic, however, went in the opposite direction. If the French shut themselves within Calvi they would be effectively ceding the rest of the island to the British, who would be able to cajole and intimidate the Corsican government without hindrance. A retreat into safety would save the French army, but it would also lose Corsica, which the ministry would not tolerate.

Forced to contest the island with the British, Laval naturally cast his eye towards Bastia. The French had not occupied the city earlier because it was deemed to be of no military value; Bastia was on the wrong side of the island for raiding the French coast and its harbor was too small and shallow for ships of the line. Yet as a piece of leverage on King Theodore and his government, its value was apparent. It was the largest city on the island, Corsica’s main link with the Italian ports, and the chief residence of the royal household. This time Laval notified Theodore of his intentions, but did not wait for a reply from Corti before ordering a detachment of 800 men to take control of the city. Their orders were to secure the palace and the citadel and man its defenses. If the British arrived with a force too strong to repel, they were instructed to spike the citadel’s guns, cripple its fortifications, and destroy its arsenal before withdrawing to San Fiorenzo.

The French took the city without a fight, but not without incident. At the palazzo dei governatori, where Queen Eleonora and much of the royal household were presently residing, their way was blocked by around 60 soldiers of the king’s foreign guard who refused the French entry. The guard, however, was under orders not to fire on the French, and ultimately could not resist being forcibly disarmed by the much larger French column. The French then proceeded to take over much of the palace and use it as quarters for their troops. This was not entirely without justification; much of the palace had yet to be renovated and went unused by the Neuhoffs, while both the Genoese and Corsicans had both used the palace as a barracks in the recent past. It would, however, be a major blow to the reputation of the French on Corsica.

Front Gate of the Palace of the Governors

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Rumors soon spread of the humiliation of Theodore’s guard and offenses against his family, which collectively became known as l’oltraggio di Bastia (“The Outrage of Bastia”). Although the factual basis of these stories is dubious, tales were told of the arrogant French soldiers getting drunk on the king’s wine, trampling upon the Corsican flag, and harassing Theodore's family and servants. Most incendiary was the tale of the Prince of Capraia’s pregnant wife, Elisabeth Cherrier Jeanne d'Harcourt, who was allegedly forcibly dragged out of her apartment by French grenadiers. It certainly did not help that the princess suffered a miscarriage five weeks later, which was immediately blamed upon French cruelty and maltreatment. Formerly regarded with suspicion by the Corsicans - who referred to her rather contemptuously as A Donna Francese (“the French Lady”) - Princess Elisabeth was transformed by this episode of dubious veracity into a symbol of injured national pride. The Corsicans were nothing if not sensitive to family honor; this was, after all, a country where merely touching a woman not your own was sufficient grounds to launch a vendetta. If the French thought so little of Theodore as to disrespect him in such a flagrant manner, what regard could they possibly have for the Corsican people?

The Corsicans of the northeast had more concrete grievances as well. The farmers of the Nebbio had long grumbled about the French presence, and the events of July 1758 - the peak of harvest season - fanned this smoldering discontent into a wildfire. The French practice of “compensating” the government for stores and supplies with cancelled debt had bled the state’s treasury dry, and the attempts by the Corsican authorities to requisition grain on the mere promise of future payment were not very successful. The luogotenente of Bastia, Don Simone Ginestra - himself a native of the Nebbio - was so completely disgusted by his lack of resources and the demands of the French that he simply gave up and washed his hands of the matter. The French in the northeast would now have to perform their own requisitions, and the seizure of grain and supplies by French soldiers - often with little or no payment - created immediate and intense hostility.

The combination of these forced requisitions, heavy-handed policing by the French and Greeks, and resentment stirred up by the l’oltraggio di Bastia finally broke the patience of the locals. On September 15th, a farmer from Patrimonio who had hidden grain from the French was beaten by Greek troopers of the Busacci squadron; two days later, as one of the troopers was getting water from a well near the village, a Corsican man walked up to him and shot him in the head in broad daylight. With the local government under Don Simone incapable of making any serious effort at keeping order, the French took matters into their own hands. Increasingly, men were detained or beaten on suspicion of conspiring against the occupiers or merely for insulting the French and their auxiliaries. The old revolutionary slogan from twenty years before began to make an appearance once more - "Morte ài Francesi, Evvivu u Re."

On the night of October 3rd, an explosion ripped through an old monastery in the valley of the Nebbio which had been commandeered as a barracks. Conspirators had smuggled several barrels of gunpowder into the monastery and lit the fuse as the garrison lay asleep. The resulting explosion was probably smaller than the conspirators had hoped and was far from sufficient to level the building, but nevertheless three French soldiers were killed and more than twenty wounded.

The French quickly tracked down two of the conspirators, who were arrested and interrogated. Yet being simple farmers, someone must have given them the gunpowder, and the French soon had a suspect: Don Giuseppe Ginestra of Oletta, the younger brother of the very same Simone Ginestra who was the luogotenente of Bastia (and also the brother of Don Salvadore Ginestra, Theodore’s Minister of Agriculture). Ever since the fall of Ajaccio, Don Giuseppe had been part of a group of local notables who had been stockpiling arms and munitions for the local militia. In French eyes, the evidence against him was damning: he had recently been seen in the company of one of the arrested conspirators, had made large purchases of gunpowder (and other munitions) over the last month, and went on the run immediately after the monastery bombing. But it was Giuseppe’s connections which particularly infuriated the French. As Don Simone was supposed to be in charge of security in his province, the French immediately blamed him for his brother’s escape. At best he was incompetent; at worst, he had actively colluded in this heinous act.

Count Gianpietro Gaffori immediately denounced the bombing and promised justice, but finding an arrangement with the French proved difficult. The Marquis de Laval wanted Don Simone sacked, which was easy enough; Theodore was reluctant but Gaffori seems to have convinced the king that removing a governor was worth keeping the peace with the French. But in return Gaffori wanted the arrested suspects to be tried in a Corsican court, which Laval refused to allow. The affair remained at an impasse until October 11th, when the French garrison at Bastia attempted to detain Don Simone for questioning. The luogotenente was tipped off and barely managed to escape the city before the French came for him. His flight only further convinced the French of his complicity.

With the provincial government effectively dissolved by Don Simone’s escape, Laval instructed his commander in Bastia, Colonel Jules Marc Antoine de Morell, Comte d'Aubigny, to take provisional responsibility for maintaining order. Aubigny informed Lisandro Farinola, the podesta of Bastia, that he was to continue in his duties but would now take orders from the French, at least until a satisfactory new luogotenente was appointed. Among Aubigny's first actions following this de facto institution of martial law was to publicly hang the two bombing conspirators at Bastia. Meanwhile, the French forces in the Nebbio moved to seize arms and munitions. A Franco-Greek force met with some resistance at Murato, where around 35 armed Corsican militiamen had assembled on the green outside the local church, but this small troop was dispersed with warning shots without any casualties on either side. Various small arms, as well as a cache of munitions for the local militia, were taken by the French.

Church of San Michele, Murato
​

It is said that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it, and it certainly seems as though the French had failed to learn from the experience of the Genoese. By exploiting the farmers, degrading the symbols of Corsican national pride, confiscating weapons, and seeking to maintain order with brutal and heavy-handed tactics, the French turned the people against them. The Marquis de Laval believed that his actions were sensible and necessary to keep the peace, but so had the Genoese; his officers were confident that by holding the strong points of the province with regular forces they could subdue any insurrection, but the Genoese had once been confident of this too. The nineteen devoti of Borgo did not seem like much of a match for the approximately 1,600 French regulars and auxiliaries stationed between Bastia and San Fiorenzo, but their numbers would soon grow.

As this new uprising against the French began, the Corsican government continued to keep its distance and maintain its official neutrality. Theodore could do little else, as his wife and relations were effectively French hostages. Even this, however, did not stop the king from plotting. Theodore had seemingly backed off from his flirtations with the British after Gaffori’s resignation gambit during the consulta, but a series of British maritime successes in 1758 and the deteriorating situation in the northeast inspired him to resume negotiations. These negotiations would be conducted in secret, hidden even from Gaffori, using Theodore’s old ex-Jacobite friend Sir John Powers as an intermediary.

The king’s chief aim was to keep the British on the island, as he was concerned that a British evacuation from Ajaccio would leave him wholly at the mercy of the French occupiers. But Theodore was also exploring the possibility of a full defection and what sort of terms the British would offer him for it. Aside from the obvious necessity of military assistance and protection in the present war, his wish list was mainly financial - a British commitment to wiping out Corsica’s debt to France, subsidies to re-arm and rebuild the army, and more favorable terms for Anglo-Corsican trade. But Theodore was reluctant to concede too much for these goals, as he was also mindful of the future. If Corsica became a mere British satellite the French would always see his island as a threat to be stamped out, and sooner or later they would manage it. The fortunes of Britain might wax and wane, but France would always loom a hundred miles off the Corsican coast. Theodore wished to escape French dominion, but he also worried that his country could not afford to become France’s perpetual enemy.

 

[Carp]

Macchiari​

A monk rallies the people against the French, 19th c. illustration.

With such resolutions and Roman spirits, what cannot a brave people do? - The Caledonian Mercury, June 1759

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Despite the deteriorating relationship between the Corsicans and the French, the British did not perceive that the Corsican situation in mid-1758 was necessarily developing to their advantage. Major-General Henry Seymour Conway had delayed the second part of the campaign, and the French occupation of the city in July foreclosed this possibility entirely. Colonel John Arabin had made an impression at Corti, but the Corsican government remained ostensibly neutral and no national uprising had materialized. In August, Conway concluded that the British plan to take Corsica had failed, and that the only remaining question was whether Britain should retain Ajaccio or raze its defenses before withdrawing as Admiral Charles Saunders had recommended. Vacillating as usual, Conway decided to ask London for instructions.

Despite the failure of the original plan, the British ministry had several reasons to remain on Corsica. Ajaccio was much closer to France than Gibraltar, and provided a means of support for the British warships off Toulon and privateers in French waters. Although the lack of a local infrastructure to support fleet operations was problematic, the Admiralty considered it a useful position to hold - at least so long as it was not threatened by land. But the other factor that made British statesmen sit up and take notice was the fact that France had responded to the landing by reinforcing their position on Corsica. One of the original criticisms of the Corsica plan was that unlike attacks on coastal France, an assault on Corsica would not force the French to redirect forces away from Hanover, the only theater of Britain’s war where the British Navy offered no advantage. Plainly, however, they were interested enough in the island to make at least some effort to shore up their position there, and every battalion stationed on Corsica was a battalion not on the continent.

Yet despite France and Britain both committing themselves to keeping Corsica, neither Conway nor his counterpart Guy André Pierre de Montmorency, Marquis de Laval made any attempt to engage one another. Conway did not have the forces to attack the French, and could not depend on a decisive intervention by the Mediterranean squadron as long as it was occupied with keeping watch on Toulon. Laval had the superior force, but he was tied down in the north by his fear of another British landing and the growing native insurgency in Bastia province.

King Theodore thus found himself in an enviable position as the man holding the balance of power. With the aid of Corsican auxiliaries and logistical support, Conway could potentially press the French back into their presidi and besiege them. Conversely, if Theodore backed Laval, the British position at Ajaccio would become extremely tenuous. This latter course was not very likely given Theodore’s own preferences and the growing hostility between the Corsicans and the French, but it remained plausible, and officially the Corsican government continued to declare its faithfulness to the Convention of Ajaccio.

Theodore, who was negotiating with the British in secret without the knowledge of Count Gianpietro Gaffori, cast his own ministers as the villains. It was an old trick of the king’s, often played - to present himself as the sympathetic and rational man lamentably restrained from action by a difficult people (or, in this case, their difficult government). The actual negotiations were largely conducted in Turin, between Theodore’s personal agent Sir John Powers and the British ambassador to Sardinia Sir James Gray.[1] Gray was a seasoned diplomat, described as “wise and prudent” by his Sardinian counterpart, but he relied on General Conway for his impressions of the political situation on Corsica. Conway was an honest but also rather credulous man, hopeless at politics, who relayed the king’s official line with little interrogation: that Theodore favored a deal with Britain, but Gaffori and the rest of the ministers feared to break with France and were suspicious of the intentions of the “heretical” English. The inference was that for the right price - and strong guarantees of British military support - Theodore could prevail over his reluctant cabinet.

Obviously the Corsicans would require British subsidies and military support to expel the French and keep them from returning. The details, however, remained unsettled. Gray knew that foreign subsidies were politically sensitive in Britain and desired to keep expenditures to a minimum. He was also exasperated by Theodore’s recurrent demands for more British troops. It seemed to Gray as if Theodore wanted the British to drive the French out on their own with the Corsicans merely cheering them on. Gray, who knew that London would probably not be sending more battalions, was insistent that the Corsicans would have to provide the lion’s share of the manpower. Ships, money, muskets, and even Conway’s redcoats could be provided, but ultimately redeeming Corsican soil would require a willingness to shed Corsican blood.

In late 1758 that willingness was not much in evidence even among the devoti. The original conspirators seem to have imagined their “uprising” as a traditional armed conflict modeled after Theodore’s campaigns; they would rally the militia to defeat the French as they had done at San Pellegrino and Ponte Novo. But the devoti were too few in number and too local in character to raise the sort of armies which would have made this possible. The French could not have been greatly discomfited by a “muster” in November which saw no more than “three score hillmen with old muskets and worn flints” assemble at Vescovato. The devoti had hoped to be commanders of a new rebellion, but at the moment they were captains without soldiers. The French were widely resented, but that did not mean that Corsican peasants were standing in line to fight them on behalf of this little clique of disgruntled notables.

An alternative to this ineffective posturing was provided by Ignacio Domenico Baldassari, one of the original devoti and a former officer in the French Régiment Royal-Corse. His experiences in the French army had instilled in him a deep skepticism of militia forces. Rather than waiting for some future mass uprising, Baldassari assembled a company of motivated young radicals to fight the French in the manner of the petite guerre. His followers would descend from the mountains to attack patrols and guard posts and then fade back into the macchia, for which they were given the popular name macchiari. Aided by the terrain, the local population, and well-heeled sympathizers among the Corsican elite (including Don Giovan, Principe di Morosaglia himself) they quickly made themselves an enormous nuisance to the French. The French, unlike the Genoese, could not simply bolt themselves within their citadels; British naval power obligated them to control the productive lands of the province and to keep the land route between Bastia and San Fiorenzo open.

The escalation of this conflict was welcomed by the British, but the sluggish pace was maddening. It was particularly galling in light of the fact that, by January at the latest, Sir James Gray had a very promising draft Anglo-Corsican treaty in hand. Yet despite the progress of negotiations in Turin, Theodore hesitated at the precipice and refused to take the plunge. The stakes were high, and the overall outcome of the war still seemed in doubt. To exert some pressure, the British threatened to withdraw from Ajaccio, but since the Admiralty still desired the base it was mostly an empty gesture; all that was done was a partial redeployment to Gibraltar.

It was in February, at Borgo, that the stalemate finally began to collapse. This hilltop town just ten miles south at Bastia was little used by Baldassari’s men, but the devoti had nevertheless made it a conspicuous target. It was the conspiracy’s founding site, as well as the location of a considerable magazine. Having caught wind of these armaments, Colonel Jules Marc Antoine de Morell, Comte d’Aubigny decided to do exactly what the French had done at Murato and send a column of men to seize the cache of munitions. This time, however, d’Aubigny miscalculated. Unlike Murato, Borgo was a formidable defensive position, and the locals had advance warning of the raid; the devoti apparently were not the only ones with intelligence leaks. But Borgo also had a special resonance. It was here that, fifteen years before, the enraged Corsicans had risen up on their own and driven Boissieux’s Frenchmen from the town in a bloody battle.

The hilltop village of Borgo​

When 200 French soldiers approached Borgo, they found not an armed rabble milling about in the churchyard but a company of militiamen hunkered down on a high ridge behind a hastily erected breastwork of earth and logs. An officer sent forward to demand that the locals disperse was informed by the devote Giuseppe Barbaggi that the Borghigiani did not recognize French authority, and that nothing short of a royal order would compel them to disband. It soon became evident that the Corsicans were not bluffing. The French launched an attack, but taking the fortified crest of Borgo in the face of distressingly heavy and accurate musketry proved beyond their means - or at least beyond the willingness of the French to suffer casualties. After a rather short engagement, the French withdrew to Bastia, intending to return with more men and heavier firepower. The “Second Battle of Borgo,” however, was not to be followed by a third.

The blood shed at Borgo accomplished what neither the devoti nor Baldassari’s more successful macchiari had been able to do on their own. Even in the absence of a national press, word of the engagement quickly spread - word that the Borghigiani had stood fast against foreign invasion (though many of the militiamen were from elsewhere, including Barbaggi, who was from Murato) and smashed a battalion of French soldiers (though the French suffered only 24 casualties). Motivated by fear of another attack, and perhaps a desire by the younger generation to take part in another “revolutionary” victory, armed men from the Castagniccia streamed into the village. Prominent notables encouraged them with increasingly belligerent pronouncements. Anarchy loomed, and it seemed possible that the crisis would bring down the government. Theodore was largely exempt from public scorn, with the most popular theory being that his inaction was a consequence of his family being held “hostage” in Bastia, but Count Gaffori was more vulnerable. It seemed quite likely that when the consulta generale next convened they would be demanding the resignation of the man already mocked by a few brave souls as “Don fà nunda” (“Don Do-Nothing”).

Either reluctantly pressed by events or happily seizing an opportunity, Theodore surprised even his own cabinet by summoning the French envoy to Corti and giving him a stern upbraiding before the court. The French forces, he declared, had gone far outside the bounds of the Convention of Ajaccio and had even launched an unwarranted attack against a Corsican village. As such, he demanded that the French forces return to their treaty-specified posts at Calvi and San Fiorenzo and abandon all other positions in Corsica. He further declared that Laval and d’Aubigny no longer enjoyed the trust of His Serene Majesty and demanded their immediate removal. If these demands were unmet, he suggested that he would be within his rights to consider the Convention abrogated in its entirety.

Of course Theodore could not expel the French. But Theodore always wanted to be the center of attention, and this action restored the king to his “proper” role as the protagonist on center stage, not a helpless bystander. Moreover, while his words had been harsh, they were not altogether intemperate. He had not simply ripped up the Convention as some of the more bellicose princes and notabili demanded, but rather cast himself as its strict adherent. He certainly knew that France could not - would not - return to following the letter of the Convention; aside from the blow to their prestige, it would require them to give up Bastia and would probably render their position at San Fiorenzo indefensible. Yet by framing the conflict in this manner he cast himself as the victim and the French as the faithless party. This would not deter France - indeed, it would infuriate them - but it made his course of action more palatable to the “pro-Convention” faction in his kingdom.

Although perhaps not intentionally, it was also a propaganda coup in Britain. While the Corsican expedition was certainly covered in the British press, the Corsicans themselves were not particularly sympathetic subjects. Theodore, after all, had “betrayed” Britain in the Treaty of Monaco and allied with France, and it was difficult to call Conway’s rather underwhelming Corsican campaign a blow against “French tyranny” once it became clear that the Corsicans were not particularly eager to rise up against them. Anti-ministry papers lambasted the expedition as pointless and ridiculed the idea that the Corsicans would rise up against their fellow Catholics. The skirmish at Borgo and Theodore’s theatrical turn against France, however, came as heaven-sent proof of Gallic tyranny. Here was France running roughshod over a small island of liberty-loving people and their king making a brave stand against Bourbon might, demanding only - and vainly - that France keep her word.

Theodore’s demands were for the most part ignored. The only one which was ultimately met was the removal of Laval, who had already been requesting a transfer for months.[2] This provided Theodore with cover to switch sides and enact his draft agreement with the British, if he so desired. But it would be the British, not the Corsicans, who would provide the final push. Certainly British action was prompted in part by the de facto rebellion in the northeast, but it also had much to do with shifting leadership within the British forces, who would now take their orders from the newly-promoted Brigadier General James Wolfe.



Footnotes
[1] Despite taking no part in the war, the Kingdom of Sardinia was notionally an ally of the Bourbons and Habsburgs at this time. Nevertheless, Carlo Emanuele feared French encroachment in Corsica. He had disapproved of the circumstances of the Treaty of Monaco and was further dismayed by the Convention of Ajaccio, which he interpreted as part of a slow-moving plot to dominate Corsica - perhaps even annex it to France - the result of which could only be to further encircle and constrain the Savoyard state. Although he offered no overt support to the British or Corsicans, it is clear that Carlo Emanuele was aware of the Anglo-Corsican talks going on in his capital and knowingly provided his good offices. His officials at the port of Finale also seem to have been less than diligent in preventing the smuggling of weapons and gunpowder into Corsica for the use of the devoti.
[2] Laval had come to profoundly hate his assignment and the Corsicans in general. Of all the various French senior officers who presided over French occupations of Corsica in the 18th century, none - not even the defeated Boissieux - came do detest them quite as openly as the Marquis de Laval.

 

[Carp]

Concador​

The Conca d'Oro, northern Nebbio, with the Bay of San Fiorenzo in the background

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Following the Siege of Ajaccio, French and British forces on Corsica would not encounter one another for nearly a year. Although British and French ships occasionally pursued one another in Corsican waters, the two occupations otherwise existed in parallel, and no attempt was made by either party to eject the other from the island. Many factors contributed to this inactivity - the naval stalemate at Toulon, the difficult Corsican terrain which separated the Dila from the Diqua, the reluctance of the British to devote scarce ground forces to the Mediterranean theater, the precarious neutrality of the Corsican government, and reluctant British leadership on the ground.

This last factor changed at the beginning of 1759 when Brigadier-General James Wolfe gained command of British forces in Corsica. He had arrived on the island as a junior colonel, but the death of Colonel John Arabin in December, Wolfe’s promotion to brigadier, and the reassignment of Major-General Henry Seymour Conway to the German theater in January propelled him to his first independent command. Unlike the hesitant Conway, Wolfe was eager for action, but eagerness alone did not provide him with the resources he needed. Britain had never considered the Mediterranean theater to be of great importance compared to America, Germany, or the English Channel. Since his arrival in Corsica the British garrison in Ajaccio had actually decreased because of concerns with Gibraltar’s security, and with most of their naval assets tied up at Toulon the navy devoted only a handful of frigates and sloops to patrolling Corsican waters. This proved insufficient to cut the French occupying forces off from the mainland.

Only in early 1759 did action on Corsica become feasible. This was partially because of Wolfe’s own agitation, as he had friends in the ministry who had secured his promotion and now wished him to succeed (not the least of which was William Pitt). More importantly, however, it was also because the British were now increasingly certain that a breakout from Toulon was imminent. The French, like the British, put paramount importance on the Atlantic theater; with a sufficient force here they could contest the sea lanes to America, or better yet launch an invasion directly against Britain herself. In 1758 the decision was made to move the bulk of the Mediterranean squadron to link up with naval forces in the Atlantic. The problem was that the squadron was simply not ready.

Despite their victory at Minorca in 1756 the French had not followed this triumph with a forceful naval policy in the Mediterranean. With Minorca and Corsica in French hands, it scarcely seemed necessary, and funds for the navy were desperately needed elsewhere. This neglect and lack of funding not only ceded the initiative to the British but caused the Toulon fleet to fall into a miserable state, with the squadron beset by declining morale and a critical shortage of sailors, guns, and naval stores. This trend could not be reversed with a snap of the fingers, and thus considerable effort had to be devoted to preparing the squadron to sail through the blockade, past Gibraltar, and into the Atlantic. This process would take months, require considerable expense, and - critically - could not be done in secret.

The British observed and noted the intensive preparations beginning at Toulon, but they were not privy to the reasons for them. Certainly an escape to the Atlantic was considered (and thought to be the most dangerous), but closer targets were also available - namely, Gibraltar and Ajaccio. Ajaccio did not have Gibraltar’s arsenals and naval facilities, but it was much closer to Toulon than Gibraltar was, and the British had gone through some effort in the preceding months to turn it into a secondary naval base.[1] British ground forces in the theater were limited, and if the French landed a few thousand more troops on Corsica they could easily destroy this valuable advance position, driving the British back to Gibraltar.[2]

This newfound concern for Corsica redounded to Wolfe’s benefit, as he finally began to receive the resources he desired. By March he had amassed 2,100 foot and marines at Ajaccio, as well as around 400 Corsican volunteers trained and armed under British auspices. A small detachment of warships and bomb vessels was also allocated to his enterprise. The general objective was to destroy the French occupation forces, which would not only deny the French a foothold on Corsica (making an invasion from Toulon much more difficult) but put the ports of Calvi and San Fiorenzo in British hands for the use of the navy and privateers. In preparation, the blockade of the island was intensified, and in March a party of British marines landed on Capraia and captured the island. The Corsican podesta in the island issued a formal protest but stood down without firing a shot.[3]

The new French commander on Corsica, Maréchal du Camp Charles Armand, Marquis de Monti, commanded a superior force but held a vastly inferior position. By late 1758 the French force had stabilized at six battalions, amounting to nearly 3,000 regulars, but they were not all in one place. One battalion held Calvi, while the remainder occupied the Bastia lieutenancy, which included the Bastia and San Fiorenzo garrisons as well as detached companies holding strategic villages between those two towns. Monti was quite aware that an invasion might be coming, but his orders prevented him from abandoning Bastia and it was necessary to hold the interior Nebbio in order to preserve his lines of communication. His only local auxiliaries of value, the Greek cavalrymen of the Busacci squadron, were too few to relieve the French from occupation duties in the interior.

Although the macchiari and other Corsican “subversives” were not a serious threat to French control, they had a great deal of information on the local terrain and the disposition of French troops. Don Pasquale Paoli, who had previously been out of favor with both his own government and the British on account of his overly ambitious predictions, now came back into the picture as an operative for Wolfe, relaying information between partisans in the Nebbio and the British command. The devoti also operated in Bastia, where the key figure smuggling messages out of the city was Sister Cristina Rivarola, an Ursuline nun and the daughter of the late Don Domenico Rivarola, who took advantage of the fact that the French soldiers never suspected that a nun would be at the center of a spy ring. General Wolfe had a low opinion of the Corsicans as soldiers, but admitted in his despatches that the “Machiars” were his invaluable eyes in the north.

Based in part on this intelligence, Wolfe chose San Fiorenzo as his target. Bastia may have been the island’s largest city, but San Fiorenzo was more strategically important - it was the Bay of San Fiorenzo, not Bastia’s small harbor, through which supplies and reinforcements reached the French in the northeast. The main problem was gaining access to the bay, for the Genoese towers around the bay’s perimeter were significantly tougher than they looked. A probing expedition by two British warships in late 1758 had been ably fended off by the Torre di Mortella at the bay’s entrance. But Wolfe’s Corsican contacts had made him aware that this tower was vulnerable to landward attack; it had a pair of 18-pounder guns facing the sea, but only a single 6-pounder falcone which pointed inland.

Saleccia Beach​

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On the night of May 8th, two thousand British infantrymen and marines made landfall at Saleccia beach, an attractive landing site three miles to the west of Mortella Tower.[A] The landing went off without a hitch, but Wolfe’s hope of a lightning victory was dashed by the difficulty of moving even his lightest guns up the ridge overlooking the bay. The Marquis de Monti was slow to react, apparently convinced that Bastia was the real target and the landing at Saleccia might just be a distraction, but when a Greek scout reported the size of the fleet offshore he rushed to reinforce San Fiorenzo. He was too late to save Mortella, which surrendered on the morning of the 10th after a short bombardment, but British ships could still not safely operate in the bay as long as the battery of Fornali to the south was still operational. Fornali had more guns than Mortella, and Monti had by now strongly reinforced the garrison there. But the real key to its defense was that the ridge above was even more formidable than the terrain above Mortella. Monti’s chief engineer had confidently declared that emplacing guns there was impossible.

It was thus all the more shocking when, on the morning of the 15th, Monti and his officers observed that the British had managed to haul two pieces of artillery atop a rocky outcrop on the ridge. It was a phenomenal feat, made possible by the sweat and expertise of disembarked sailors who labored day and night with ropes, tackles, and hand tools. From this high position the guns could launch a plunging fire of shot and shell into the French defenses, while the French guns at Fornali, mounted on battery carriages, could not elevate sufficiently to return fire. By the 17th the outcrop battery had increased to five guns, and the fire was unrelenting. Monti concluded that the position was untenable, and ordered a withdrawal just hours before a planned British assault. Fornali’s loss made San Fiorenzo untenable, as British ships of the line would soon be sailing into the bay. The French withdrew from San Fiorenzo, burning the harbor and the village behind them.

The French withdraw eastwards towards Bastia. The Marquis de Monti knew that Bastia was a poor defensive position and feared being caught between Wolfe and the British Navy; certainly if the British could emplace guns over Fornali, they could drag them over the mountain and emplace them over Bastia. But despite his misgivings, Monti did not have better options. Some of his officers suggested withdrawing westward, marching overland to Calvi, a far better position. But there were no roads over the Agriate, making it a difficult march, and particularly perilous given that the British commanded the sea. It was entirely possible that Wolfe might re-embark and land to the west while his column was trudging through the macchia, thus cutting him off from Calvi. Monti decided instead to retreat eastwards over the Pass of Teghime, where he would station a strong rearguard to confound the British and hopefully force them to cross further south, where the terrain was more in Monti’s favor if he chose to engage them in the field. As so often happens in war, however, Monti’s plans were interrupted by events which nobody expected.

Despite various indignities suffered by the townspeople, Bastia had not been a hotbed of subversion against the French. Certainly there was a great deal of anger on the part of the city’s fishermen, traders, and boat-builders, who suffered from the interruption of trade and the French seizure of vessels for their own use. But a substantial garrison kept the dissenters in line, and the burden of war fell unevenly. There were many who had done rather well from the French occupation, as an occupying army and its officer corps created a demand for goods and services of their own. One such prospering entrepreneur was the beautiful and witty Maria Domenica Varese, Bastia’s most famous courtesan, who ran a fashionable establishment where French officers relaxed in the closest thing Corsica had to a cultured Parisian salon.[B]

Wolfe’s landing, however, caused widespread anxiety. Many residents remembered the last time Bastia had been contested between hostile armies fifteen years before, which had resulted in the city being shelled by the British fleet and then looted and burned by royalist irregulars. The imminent prospect of another siege, presumably by the British, was enough to put everyone on edge. But what turned this apprehension into feverish dread was the destruction of San Fiorenzo by the retreating French. If that was to be the fate of towns the French were unable to keep, then Bastia was doomed; either the French would hold the city and the Bastiesi would cower beneath a rain of British shells, or the French would abandon the city and leave it a smoldering cinder in their wake.

As it happened, the 20th of May was Rogation Sunday, the beginning of Rogation Days, a period of fasting and prayer in the Catholic faith preceding the Feast of the Ascension. This was traditionally a time to beseech God for the deliverance of the people from calamity, which at this moment seemed especially poignant. Rogation Days in Bastia were traditionally observed with a mass procession, a solemn affair in which men and women alike walked barefoot and some brave penitents dragged iron chains or struck their backs with sharp implements in a show of penance. Such was the feeling of disquiet that the local religious authorities decided that the procession on Monday the 21st would be led by a priest bearing Bastia’s own Black Christ (U Christu Negru), a large crucifix of dark oak said to have been miraculously found floating in the sea by two Bastiese fishermen in 1428.

A modern procession with the Black Christ (U Christu Negru) of Bastia
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The French garrison commander at that moment, Lieutenant-Colonel François-Auguste, Chevalier de la Ferronays, was quite aware of the mood in the city. On the 20th, when the news of the burning of San Fiorenzo had reached the city, a restive crowd had gathered outside the citadel and the city elders had petitioned him for assurances that he would not fire the town. Ferronays handled the matter with tact: The crowd was peaceably dispersed, and he reassured the councillors that his troops would do no such thing. To burn a little fishing village was one thing; to raze the island’s largest city was quite unthinkable. Far from seeing the next day’s procession as a threat, the chevalier appears to have seen it as a means to relieve the tension, presumably by channeling popular anxiety into harmless religious expression.

Nevertheless, several factors combined to make the situation dangerous. Monday’s procession was planned to begin at the Cathedral of Santa Maria, which was situated within the walls of the citadel. The plaza in front of the cathedral was not particularly large and the procession was unusually well-attended. Although the marchers would leave the citadel once the procession got started, thousands of Bastiesi would still be gathering within the citadel that morning, packing into the small plaza and overflowing into the streets and alleys of the terranova. By concentrating all available forces in the Nebbio to oppose the British, Monti had left Ferronays with only half a battalion to hold Bastia. But even this was a deceptively high estimation of his strength, as many of the men who Monti had left behind at Bastia were invalids - injured, sick, and recovering soldiers who ranged from “light duty only” to “completely bedridden” - and not all his able-bodied soldiers would be within the citadel that morning, as sentries were needed elsewhere in the city and at the Tower of Furiani to the south. His real strength is uncertain but it is generally believed that on the 21st he held the citadel with fewer than a hundred able-bodied men.

Things started to go wrong even before the ceremonies started. Allegedly, as the crowd was gathering at the plaza a French soldier was heard to crack a joke about the “barefoot Corsicans,” which was heard by some Corsican men who took offense and began taunting the soldiers, calling King Louis a “godless whoremonger.” Rumors of French retreats or an advancing British fleet swirled through the milling crowd. The bishop’s opening sermon might have calmed the crowd, but it turned out that virtually nobody could actually hear the bishop on a temporary platform in front of the cathedral, as the crowd was vast and the bishop was apparently struggling with a cold. It was a particularly hot and stifling 20th of May, and the press of people trying to get close enough to hear the bishop’s hoarse mumbling probably did not improve matters.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria and its square today​

The Chevalier de Ferronays was in attendance, as was Don Federico, Principe di Capraia along with his wife Elisabeth d’Harcourt and their children Maria Anna and Teodoro Francesco (ages 7 and 4, respectively). Ferronays had encouraged the visiting prince to attend, presumably as a means of showing Franco-Corsican amity and dispelling rumors about ill-treatment of the princess at French hands. They had a small escort of French troops with them, but Ferronays had not wanted to distract or alarm the populace with a show of force.

Then Princess Elisabeth abruptly left the plaza, followed swiftly by her husband and children along with a few French soldiers. Elisabeth, who was pregnant again, was not feeling well and worried that she was going to faint in the heat. But the crowd was not privy to this information, and all they could see was the prince and his family being hurriedly removed from the plaza by French soldiers. This, or some other unknown trigger, led to an altercation and shouting which quickly spread. Suddenly part of the restless crowd was surging after Don Federico and his escort. Ferronays tried to hold back the crowd, but he had only a handful of men with him. Someone got too close to a bayonet and blood was spilled, whereupon the furious mob overpowered the soldiers. Ferronays was struck in the head with a rock and blacked out. The soldiers who had left the plaza with Elisabeth were cornered by angry, barefoot Corsicans brandishing whips and chains, who wrested away their weapons and “liberated” the prince and his family.

Don Federico did not particularly want to be liberated, but he did not have much of a choice. Although some later claimed that the prince was a secret devote who was trying to whip up the mob, it seems clear that the prince was mainly interested in getting his family to safety in a situation that was swiftly turning ugly. To this end he informed the Corsicans that if they were going to “escort” him anywhere, as they insisted, it should be to the palace, as his wife was feeling ill. What filtered back through the crowd, however, was merely the exhortation to march on the palace, and suddenly the prince was “leading” a mob through the streets. The bishop, who had long since lost control of the situation, could only watch with bewilderment as his “procession” suddenly started marching off without him.

With the prince at its head the mob proceeded to the Pavilion of the Dodici in front of the Governor’s Palace, where they were met by a small detachment of French soldiers. A standoff ensued, and the mob started hurling abuse (and objects) at the soldiers. The prince walked up to a young French sergeant and briefly conversed with him, presumably trying to find some resolution, but this was cut short when the guard detail inside the palace apparently lost its nerve and raised the drawbridge. This not only cut off the retreat of the soldiers in the pavilion but was immediately perceived by the mob as an affront. As the crowd began pelting the soldiers with increasing number of rocks, the prince’s bodyguard, Sir David Murray, urged Don Federico to leave the pavilion for his own safety. Heavily outnumbered, apparently abandoned by his own officers, and in danger of being stoned to death where he stood, the French sergeant stood down and his men were disarmed by the mob.

A cry then went out to storm the adjacent Bastion of San Giovanni Battista, which protected the gate and also had secondary access to the palace. Evidently the door between the bastion and the courtyard was simply unlocked. The soldiers stationed here were caught entirely by surprise, but they did not give up their position as easily as the detail in the courtyard and opened fire on the Corsicans. This only further enraged the rioters, who along with stones and chains were now also armed with muskets seized from the French. The soldiers of the bastion were totally unprepared to repulse the attack. Five French soldiers and seven Corsicans were killed before resistance collapsed, and several more soldiers were beaten or simply murdered by the furious mob thereafter. A number of the soldiers barricaded themselves in a storeroom and emerged later, after receiving the prince’s word that no harm would come to them.

The extent to which the uprising which became known as La revolta scalza (“the Barefoot Revolt”) was truly spontaneous is still debated today. Certainly it was not a planned event, but it is clear that there were devoti sympathizers in the city who hoped to take advantage of Ferronays’ anemic garrison and were in the crowd during the Rogation festivities. In particular, the attack on the San Giovanni Battista bastion seems to have been spearheaded (or at least hijacked) by a militant minority. Their objective was undoubtedly the bastion armory and powder magazine, and having seized it they armed themselves and began passing out muskets and sabres to the crowd.

It is not difficult to see why the French response to this uprising was so dismal. Many soldiers did not initially respond to the uproar in the streets as they had been expecting a loud religious procession with plenty of shouting and wailing. Even occasional gunfire may not have caused any alarm, as the Corsican custom of celebratory gunfire - even at religious events - was well-known. The garrison’s commander had been incapacitated at the very beginning of the revolt, and the French detachments scattered around the citadel in various bastions and barracks were unable to communicate with one another or establish a new command. These isolated groups quickly fell one after the other, in some cases without a shot being fired. The palace fell quickly after rebels in the bastion of San Giovanni gained access via the parapet, as the palace itself was “garrisoned” largely by invalids. Only at the bastion of Santa Maria did a French contingent successfully hold its ground, dispersing rioters outside with gunfire. The senior officer at this bastion, a lieutenant, led a sortie towards San Giovanni in an attempt to recapture the magazine, but he was wounded and forced to retreat in the face of the newly-armed mob. This bastion surrendered only when the “rebels” wheeled a cannon into the cathedral square and threatened to start blasting away.

Adrenaline eventually began to ebb, giving way to uncertainty. It became clear that nobody, not even the devoti partisans, actually had a plan beyond “drive out the French.” Some now came to the realization that shedding the blood of French soldiers might actually have consequences, particularly given that a substantial French army lay just over the mountains and was marching in their direction. The citizens turned to the Prince of Capraia and begged him to take command of the city’s defenses.

Don Federico was understandably reluctant to do this, as he had no desire to take responsibility for the day’s bloodletting and must have known that the Bastiesi stood no chance against a French army thousands strong. The prince, however, could see no other option, for despite being offered “command” it was clear that the Corsicans would not countenance simply returning the citadel to the French. In an attempt to maintain some semblance of neutrality, Don Federico ordered all able-bodied French captives to be taken outside of the city and released with their arms; as Corsica and France were not at war, he explained to the apprehensive Bastiesi, he could not reasonably keep prisoners of war. He wrote a message informing the Marquis de Monti that, although the day’s violence had not been intended, he could not re-admit French soldiers to Bastia based on the king’s earlier declaration that the French were to return to their treaty-mandated posts. Another message was sent to a British ship cruising off the coast, the 32-gun frigate Juno, informing them of the situation and requesting that they refrain from violating the neutrality of Bastia.

The “Barefoot Revolt” resulted in only a handful of French casualties, but it was a disastrous setback for the Marquis de Monti. The ill-prepared rabble in Bastia would ordinarily be no obstacle to the French, and it remained possible that the French might simply burn the rest of the city in retaliation. But the prince’s rabble did control the citadel, and Monti had neither guns nor time to besiege the fortress, certainly not with the British army nipping at his heels. Although he seethed with fury at the “betrayal” of the Corsicans when he received word of the revolt on the morning of the 22nd, Monti’s first priority was to extricate his army. Reversing course, he ordered his men to march back down into the Nebbio and turn south towards Oletta. Wolfe, observing Monti from the southwest, now moved to cut him off and formed his lines along the road running southeast from San Fiorenzo to Oletta.

Fraser's Highlanders c. 1759​

On the afternoon of the 22nd, the Battle of Concador began with the French grenadiers leading a mass infantry attack against the British line.[4] Monti did not have his full force, as some companies were still trailing behind from having to march back down the mountains, but he believed it was critical to engage the British as they were still forming up and before they had an opportunity to bring up artillery from San Fiorenzo. Owing to the oblique order of the British line arrayed on the road, however, as well as skirmishing in Oletta on the French left between French pickets and Wolfe’s Corsicans, the two lines did not meet evenly. The French right engaged the enemy first, receiving the concentrated fire of several British battalions as they opened up at close range with double-shotted muskets. Meanwhile, the French left stopped short and engaged in a rather indecisive and long-distance firefight with their British counterparts. The French right was shattered in this engagement, suffering heavy casualties, and Monti was forced to pull back and regroup. The marquis reordered his line and led a second attack, first on horseback and then on foot after his horse was shot out from under him. By this time, however, the British had brought several guns into action. The French fought tenaciously, but when Monti fell mortally wounded and the British guns began raking the tattered French lines, the advance stalled out. A counter-charge by Fraser’s Highlanders on the British right started a general French retreat.[5] Pursuit was prevented by the loss of daylight, but the French had nowhere to go. Monti died that night at the village of Patrimonio, and at noon on the 23rd at the Church of St. Martin his officers surrendered to General Wolfe.


Footnotes
[1] Ajaccio’s principal use was for careening. Ship hulls (particularly wooden hulls) are inevitably “fouled” by sea life growing on them, which increases drag and thus decreases their speed. This was a particular problem for a blockading squadron, as their ships would become heavily fouled while the blockaded fleet in port would have the advantage of being able to put to sea with “clean” hulls, making their chances of escaping the blockade much better. To address this, a blockading squadron would have to rotate ships out regularly to be “careened,” the process of beaching a ship and turning it on its side to have the sea life scraped off its hull. Having a nearby port to perform this task was highly beneficial, allowing the fleet to clean its ships frequently (and thus keep them at peak performance) without sacrificing the strength of the blockade by having ships constantly absent on long voyages. Aside from performing such maintenance, the navy also procured some provisions and naval stores at Ajaccio, but the city could only supplement the supplies of Gibraltar and the victualling fleets, not replace them.
[2] Britain still controlled Tabarka, but the value of this island as a military installation was questionable. The port was not suitable for large warships, the Genoese-built fortifications were old and needed work, and the collapse of the Regency into civil war meant that procuring supplies from the Tunisian hinterland was difficult.
[3] He may not have been able to do so anyway. Upon landing the British took an inventory of the fortress, and found that what little gunpowder there was in the magazine was fouled and probably useless.
[4] “Concador” was not the name of a nearby village, but rather an Anglicization of Conca d’Oro, “valley of gold.” The French, possibly borrowing from the English, named the battle “Conquedor.” In Corsica the engagement is more usually known as the Battle of Oletta.
[5] The attack of Fraser’s Highlanders made a profound impression on the Corsicans present, who - observing from the British right - perceived this charge “with pipes and broadswords” as the decisive action of the battle. Initially this view of Concador was popular in Britain too, particularly in Scotland. It was seized upon by prominent Scottish loyalists seeking to redeem their country’s honor in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion, and immortalized in art by the celebrated painting “The Highlanders at Concador.” Modern scholarship has placed more emphasis on the unsung efforts of the units on the British left, who were heavily engaged early in the battle and suffered a much higher casualty rate than the Highlanders. It is for the most part generally agreed now that the left wing battalions did the heavy lifting that day, and the principal contribution of the Scots at Concador was to break an already demoralized and wavering enemy.

Timeline Notes
[A] You can see a landing on Saleccia Beach on film. It was used to represent Omaha Beach in the 1962 D-Day epic The Longest Day starring John Wayne and Henry Fonda.
[B] Called the “Corsican Cleopatra,” Madame Varese (1714-1775) really did run such a salon and was an intimate of several successive French commanders stationed in Bastia.

 

[Carp]

Changing of the Guard

The French evacuate San Fiorenzo under British bombardment, 1759

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The surrender of the French army at Patrimonio appeared to put Corsica securely in the grip of Brigadier-General James Wolfe. Only Calvi remained in French hands, garrisoned by a single battalion. With Ajaccio under his control and Bastia just a day’s march from his army encampment at Patrimonio, General Wolfe was in a strong position to dictate terms to the Corsicans. Wolfe, however, would not take on the role of a conqueror, for he and the ministry knew very well that the conduct of the British forces on Corsica would have repercussions far beyond that little island’s shores.

One of the most controversial aspects of Britain’s strategy in their war with France was her treatment of neutral states. British warships and privateers had crippled the French merchant marine in the early years of the war, not only stifling French commerce with other nations but severing the flow of goods and supplies between France and her colonies. In 1758 the French government responded by ending France’s trade monopoly with her West Indies colonies, allowing merchants of neutral states to participate. Foreign merchants - in particular, the Spanish and Dutch - were happy to oblige, enticed by the prospect of breaking into the lucrative West Indies trade.

When diplomacy failed to stop this neutral participation, the British decided to change the rules. Henceforth, the British government declared that it would “not allow in war what was not allowed in peace;” that is, if foreign merchants had been unable to carry commodities to or from French ports prior to the war, they would not be allowed to do so during the war. To enforce this decree, the British authorized both their warships and privateers to detain and search neutral shipping at will. Although the British maintained that they were closing a “loophole,” these inspections and seizures gave great offense to foreign powers who perceived Britain’s policy as a violation of their neutrality and sovereignty. The French government, keen to isolate the British and turn international opinion against them, used this policy to portray Britain as an arrogant, lawless, predatory state, and France herself as the champion of neutral rights and free commerce. A French victory, they claimed, would be a victory for the rights of all nations; a British victory would benefit only Britain, to the detriment of everyone else. This war of words was about more than just rhetorical points, for the adherence of neutral powers to one side or another might sway the course of the war.

Initially, the French occupation of Corsica had elicited little opprobrium in Britain. Certainly the French had gone about their occupation in a brusque and forceful way, but in 1756 Corsica was still viewed in Britain as a satellite of France. Only from late 1757, as unrest in Ajaccio and disquiet at the consulta were spun into the makings of a rebellion by Pasquale Paoli, did this ambivalence begin to change. After the British landing in 1758, the “Corsican crisis” was catapulted into the popular newspapers. The turbulent consulta of 1758, the seizure of Bastia, the alleged “indignities” against the royal family, the outbreak of violence in the Nebbio, and every rumored skirmish or raid of the “machiars,” “machyars,” or “machiaros” were all extensively covered by the London gazettes. As they had in the 1740s, the British press once more praised the simple and honest Corsicans, a people “brave and free” fighting for their liberty against “Bourbon despotism.” King Theodore, whose reputation in Britain had been damaged by the “betrayal” of the Treaty of Monaco, was fully rehabilitated after the “Rout of Borgo” (as the English called it) and his defiant repudiation of the French occupation of Bastia.

One reason the “Corsican crisis” received so much attention in Britain was that the French occupation of the island rovided a useful counter-narrative to France’s portrayal of itself as the champion of neutral states. The British gleefully pointed out the rank hypocrisy of France claiming to be the selfless defender of the rights of minor powers while simultaneously oppressing the poor Corsicans, cutting off their trade, and plundering their country. To what extent this actually changed any minds in foreign courts is unclear, but the British could not resist making an argument which played so well into their self-image as a bastion of liberty opposed to the odious tyranny of Versailles. In keeping with this narrative, it was politically necessary for General Wolfe to treat Corsica not as a conquered foe, but as a liberated friend.

In fact secret negotiations in Turin between the British and Theodore’s private agents had resulted in a favorable “understanding” long before Wolfe’s landing at Saleccia Beach. Theodore - still seeking to preserve the veneer of neutrality - could not possibly sign anything while the French controlled Bastia, but Concador had been so decisive that the king was now free to move his secret diplomacy into the open. Instead of a betrayal, Theodore could portray any treaty with the British as forced upon him by necessity.

On the 15th of June, British and Corsican representatives signed the Convention of Bastia.[1] In this document, the British agreed to recognize and respect Corsican neutrality, to evacuate their forces from Capraia and the Nebbio within 60 days, and to surrender all Corsican nationals in their custody to the Corsican government (specifically, the Greeks of the Busacci squadron). The Corsican government agreed to withdraw from the Convention of Ajaccio of 1756 and nullify all of its provisions, to suspend all payments on their debt to the French government, to abide by the rules of conduct for maritime commerce as dictated by Britain, and to repatriate all French nationals in their custody as soon as they were well enough to travel.

The most strategically important clause, however, concerned Ajaccio. Britain, after all, still had a war to win. To justify their continued use and occupation of the port, the British insisted upon leasing Ajaccio from the Corsican government at a price of £10,000 per annum “until the conclusion of the present hostilities.” This was presented at the negotiations in Bastia as a non-negotiable forced lease, but one suspects that the terms had already been privately discussed in Turin. It is now known from correspondence within the British foreign ministry that the British envoys further contrived to put a “sweetener” of £5,000 directly in Theodore’s pocket. The French had tried to secure Corsica’s loyalty with debt; the British preferred credit.

Ajaccio in the early 19th century

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The British did not have to worry about the security of their position on Corsica for very long. Less than two months after Conchador the British won another victory at the Battle of Cape Nao. The stunning defeat of Monti had only further convinced the French ministry that the Mediterranean was a waste of resources, and further strengthened their resolve to send the Toulon squadron to another theater where they could be of more use. When the ships fitting out at Toulon was deemed ready, the French took advantage of advantageous weather to slip through the British blockade. The British, however, doggedly pursued them, and the French fleet - undoubtedly slowed by the scarcity and inexperience of their crews - was forced to engage the British off Cape Nao, not far from Ibiza. Although the French had a small advantage in numbers, the British ships boasted more skilled crews and heavier armaments. After a sustained clash, the French fleet managed to withdraw and seek shelter at the Spanish port of Cartagena.

On paper, the Battle of Cape Nao was only a narrow British victory; the French merely lost two ships, only one of which was usable by the British (as they were forced to scuttle the other). Yet the battle effectively neutralized the French Mediterranean squadron for the remainder of the war. It had taken an extraordinary effort over more than a year to repair, outfit, and crew the fleet in Toulon so it would be ready to sail; the heavily damaged squadron would now need another such overhaul. In 1760, however, the French government dramatically slashed the navy’s budget. As the French ships languished in Cartagena under a smothering British blockade, desertion skyrocketed, robbing the fleet of irreplaceable experienced sailors. A few French frigates would slip out of the port to harass British trade, but the squadron was broken as a fighting force.

Together, Concador and Cape Nao ended the war in the Mediterranean. The French evacuated their troops from Calvi in August 1759, managing to sneak through British patrols and return their garrison to Antibes. By 1760, British patrols and privateers - many operating from Ajaccio and other Corsican ports - had virtually extinguished French Mediterranean trade. In Marseilles, naval insurance could not be bought at any price. The French Barbary outposts at Cape Negre and La Calle, abandoned by their operators, were razed by the British. The Western Mediterranean was now a British lake.

The French still held Minorca with a strong garrison and would keep it for the rest of the war, but the British did not consider its recovery to be a priority. Ajaccio was sufficient for their present needs, and Corsica itself was perceived as a bargaining chip of equal or greater value. Notwithstanding Britain’s public commitment to Corsican “neutrality,” British policymakers quietly discussed using the threat to remain on Corsica indefinitely as a means to force France to relinquish Minorca at the peace table. In the meantime, Wolfe and his men were withdrawn from Corsica by October of 1759, leaving only a single British battalion at Ajaccio.

The role of Corsica in the larger war is often downplayed. Modern historians have correctly pointed out that Concador, though much celebrated in Britain, was strategically insignificant. The French presence in northern Corsica did not threaten the British at Ajaccio, and French losses were slight. Most of Monti’s army was ultimately exchanged or returned to France under parole; ostensibly these parolees were prohibited from fighting the British for one year, but this did not really diminish French manpower. The French government simply assigned them to coastal defense and internal policing duties which freed up other troops for the front lines. Unlike Wolfe’s “vanity campaign” (in the words of one highly critical historian) in the Nebbio, however, British control of Ajaccio had more strategic import. Without this base the British would have been forced to operate out of Gibraltar, which is nearly five times further from Toulon. It cannot be doubted that this would have significantly affected the efficiency of the Toulon blockade, resulting in fewer ships on station with more heavily fouled hulls. Whether the British still would have thwarted the French squadron’s escape in 1759 under these poorer circumstances cannot be known, but the fact that they were thwarted was a major contributing factor to the ultimate failure of the French attempt to launch an army across the English Channel later that year. Although it is purely a fanciful speculation, it is at least possible that - following this line of causality - Ambassador Paoli saved the Hanoverian monarchy.

For the Corsicans, the summer’s events marked the end of what is generally known today as il decennio francese - “the French decade” - between the Treaty of Monaco in 1749 and the Convention of Bastia in 1759. The partnership between France and Corsica had begun with promise; French officials saw themselves as the vanguard of a civilizing mission to pull Corsica into the modern era and showcase the benefits of French science, administration, and law. But these lofty aims were tainted by a popular perception that France, like Genoa, was intent on treating Corsica as a colony rather than an ally. Bertin’s well-meaning projects of economic rejuvenation ran aground upon the exploitative “Monaco Debt,” France’s own economic imperatives (for instance in the coral industry), and his own failure to grasp the cultural and political nuances of the land he was attempting to remake. War had strained the Franco-Corsican relationship to the breaking point, and the waning years of la decennio francese saw France abandon its lofty goal of national rejuvenation for hard-handed political realism and repression.

Fortunately for its people, Corsica would not simply be passed from one master to another. In the negotiations which would ultimately resolve the Anglo-French war, it became clear to both sides that a permanent British base on Corsica was not compatible with a lasting peace. For the British, a base on Corsica was a useful but hardly vital forward position; for the French it was a mortal threat. Corsica under British occupation was so intolerable to the French that it would be an ever-present incitement to war, and a war over Corsica was not one which necessarily favored Britain. This was not Minorca, commanded by one garrison within a single vast fortress; it was a whole island in close proximity to France with numerous harbors and beaches. This rendered it indefensible - or at least, defensible only by a massive garrison which would be intolerable to the British government in peacetime.

The solution - fortuitously for Theodore - was neutrality. From the British perspective, a “robust neutrality” guaranteed by British arms would still be of some use to Britain in wartime (as neutral Livorno had been in past conflicts), while posing less of a provocation to France. Certainly this did not mean the absence of British influence; “neutrality” was a vague and fluid concept, and there was a world of difference between a friendly neutral and a hostile one. But the need to preserve the plausible appearance of neutrality, as well as Britain's desired reputation as a benevolent power, meant that Britain could not seize the same dominant position in Corsica that the French had held in the decennio francese. Their objectives would have to be achieved through subtler methods.

One of these methods - bribery - has already been mentioned; another involved bringing Austria into Corsican affairs. Although relations between London and Vienna were not exactly cordial, the two states had not actually been at war, and diplomatic relations - though strained - were not cut off. As the threat of British force alone might not be sufficient, the British reasoned that France might still be dissuaded from violating Corsican neutrality if doing so would offend France’s own ally. To this end, British policy in the 1760s was to encourage closer Austro-Corsican relations - and, more controversially, to support the royal ambitions of Don Federico, Principe di Capraia, whose familial links to the House of Lorraine (among other things) made him appear best suited for the role Britain wanted a Corsican monarch to play.


Footnotes
[1] Theodore was not present in Bastia at this time. His absence may have been a purposeful attempt to keep the British at arm’s length to avoid putting the king’s neutrality into further doubt.

 

[Carp]

Nemesis

Prussian soldiers make a stand at Soldin​

One might argue that the Anglo-French War of 1756 began in the Mediterranean, as it was France’s invasion of Minorca which goaded Britain into declaring war. This invasion, however, was merely an escalation of a conflict which had begun half a world away. From 1754, the two powers had clashed in North America over disputed boundaries in the Ohio Valley. The British had been the losers in these early engagements, and responded by launching a devastating but undeclared war against French merchant shipping, as well as interdicting French fleets bearing men and supplies to bolster their colonial forces. The Minorcan expedition was a further escalation which prompted mutual declarations of war, but the Mediterranean was merely a secondary theater to what was originally and principally a colonial war.

By the time the Mediterranean was lost to the French in 1759, the outcome of that colonial war was still in some doubt. The French proved themselves quite formidable in land engagements, and particularly early on the French and their Indian allies regularly defeated British regular and colonial forces. After a series of naval victories in 1758 and 1759, however, including the decisive Battle of Cape Nao, Britain achieved near total supremacy in the Atlantic. Louisbourg fell to the British in 1758 after a costly siege, which combined with this naval supremacy allowed the British to blockade the St. Lawrence estuary, the artery of New France. The French were not yet vanquished, as the failure of the badly bungled British siege of Quebec in 1759 demonstrated. But the cumulative effects of the blockade, the growing familiarity of the British and colonials with American warfare, and - most critically - the arrival of a new wave of British reinforcements in early 1760 threatened to overwhelm the embattled French colonial forces.

With the French on the defensive in the New World and French colonies in the West Indies falling one after another, it was clear that only European victories could save the French colonial empire. The seizure of Minorca had not given the British pause, but the conquest of the Electorate of Hanover might make King George II rethink his country’s overseas belligerence. Here, however, the Anglo-French contest overlapped with the Third Silesian War, which pitted King Friedrich II of Prussia against Austria, France, and Russia.[1] This parallel war was effectively a continuation of the War of Austrian Succession, as Empress Maria Theresa had never accepted Friedrich’s theft of Silesia as legitimate or permanent. The Empress had in fact been preparing to start a war of her own, probably slated for 1757, but Friedrich had preempted her. Alarmed by the grand alliance which had arisen about him, the King of Prussia launched a surprise attack against the Electorate of Saxony (ostensibly neutral, but secretly in league with Austria). Before the Austrians could react, the Saxon army was surrounded, Dresden was occupied, and Friedrich was preparing to march on Bohemia.

Friedrich had formed a low opinion of the Austrians from his experiences in the prior war, but these were not the same old Austrians. Since 1748 the Austrian army had undertaken serious reforms in tactics and organization, as well as a thorough overhaul of the artillery corps. Its generals, too, were made of better stuff; the venerable mediocrities who had served Austria so poorly in the 1740s had largely left the stage and were replaced by younger, more capable commanders.

Friedrich’s Austrian counterpart was the 51 year old Field Marshal Maximilian Ulysses, Graf von Browne, who had distinguished himself in Italy and Provence in the War of Austrian Succession and was one of the few senior Austrian commanders to have emerged from that war with a good reputation. He had opined at court that the King of Prussia was, in his opinion, a considerably overrated general, and got an opportunity to test that assertion when he became the first Austrian commander to face the Prussians in battle in 1756. In this year he engaged Friedrich twice along the Elbe at the battles of Leitmeritz and Altendorf. Browne retreated from both battles and withdrew from Saxony, allowing Friedrich to claim the victory, but nevertheless achieved his strategic objectives for the campaign - halting the Prussian advance into Bohemia for the year and rescuing 11,000 starving and desperate Saxon soldiers from Prussian encirclement - while parrying every Prussian attempt to cut off his retreat.

Marshal Browne and King Friedrich​

The empress’s decision in early 1757 to subordinate Browne to Prince Karl Alexander, the brother of Emperor Franz Stefan, brought the Austrian cause to its lowest point. Browne disagreed with Prince Karl on almost everything, and they quarreled so violently it was reported they nearly came to blows. Their relationship broke down entirely after the Battle of Prague, in which Browne (commanding the right wing) led a counterattack which arguably turned an Austrian defeat into a bloody draw and compelled the Prussians to fall back from Prague as more Austrian reinforcements arrived. To Browne’s great fury, Prince Karl accepted credit for this “victory” despite the fact that he had been incapacitated with an asthma attack for most of the battle, and declined Browne’s pleas to immediately pursue the Prussians (although given the state of the Austrian army after the battle, this may not have been possible). After another explosive argument between the two, the prince relegated Browne to a reserve command, spurring Browne to send a letter to Vienna offering his resignation. Before the empress could consider this, however, Prince Karl - finally following the Prussians after regrouping his forces - strode confidently into a trap and was disastrously defeated by Friedrich at the Battle of Welbern.

With the Austrians recovering from this blow, Friedrich turned to the French, who had overrun most of Hanover and were now invading Saxony from the west alongside imperial troops. Friedrich expected more of a fight from the French than the Austrians, but the vaunted French army made a shockingly poor showing compared to their great feats under the late Maurice de Saxe. Deficient in leadership, organization, tactics, and the quality of their soldiers, the French blundered their way into Friedrich’s jaws and suffered one of the worst defeats in French history at the Battle of Auerstedt. This Prussian victory re-energized the British, who lavished Friedrich with subsidies and pledged more British troops to the continent. It also effectively decoupled the Anglo-French and Austro-Prussian wars, as after Auerstedt the French no longer had the stomach to send further armies against Friedrich. Although Prussian and Austro-Imperial forces did take part in the campaigns in Hanover, the two wars proceeded mostly in parallel after 1757.

Welbern and Auerstedt were Friedrich’s twin masterpieces, but 1757 was a summit to which Friedrich would not return. The Austrians profited from the humiliation at Welbern, as it forced the empress to choose between reclaiming Silesia and gratifying her brother-in-law. In the end she chose the former, removing Prince Karl from active service and restoring Browne to overall command. The departure of the French, meanwhile, was more than compensated for by the arrival of the Russians, who had invaded East Prussia in 1757 and would make their first forays into Brandenburg in 1758 under General Pyotr Saltykov. The Austrians opened that year’s campaigning with an invasion of Silesia, and Browne redeemed the reputation of Austrian arms with his own tactical masterpiece. At the Battle of Soldin, an overconfident Friedrich attacked a strong Austrian position with poor reconnaissance, only for the Prussians to be bled white by Austrian light troops and surprised by a massive counterattack. The Prussians were swept from the field and hounded in their retreat by Browne’s vicious hussars and Croat grenzers. Friedrich himself was very nearly captured by a squadron of vengeful Saxon chevaulegers.

Friedrich was by no means Browne’s inferior, and got the better of the marshal a few months later at the Battle of Löbau. But while Browne would gain no more Soldins, neither would he give Friedrich more Welberns. The marshal would continually try and circle around Friedrich with a swift march, take some advantageous position which threatened the Prussian lines of retreat and supply, and then dare Friedrich to attack him. Browne lost more often than he won, but always managed to withdraw in good order, and the Prussians frequently lost just as many men as the Austrians - or even more - attempting to dislodge him. Most importantly, Browne’s aggressive maneuvering was successful in keeping Friedrich from relieving his Silesian garrisons, which fell one by one to a second Austrian army under Leopold Joseph von Daun. By 1759 the Prussian king was on the defensive; with Brandenburg itself under threat, he no longer had the capability to contest Silesia with his main force.

In that year it became clear to all that Prussia was in a desperate state. Although Friedrich was still capable of swift maneuvers and unlikely victories, his army had become a shadow of its former self. Constant bloody battles with Austrian and Russian armies had severely depleted his supply of veteran soldiers and officers, who could only be replaced with inexperienced conscripts. This depletion led to disaster at the decisive Battle of Küstrin, in which Friedrich attempted to quickly defeat the Russian army before they could link up with the Austrians for the season. Contrary to his expectations, the Russians held on despite horrendous losses, and an Austrian advance corps under General Franz Moritz von Lacy arrived faster than anyone expected on the Prussian flank. For the first time in the war, part of the Prussian line simply broke and fled, and soon the entire army was in a disorganized retreat westward.

Browne arrived too late for the battle, but upon receiving word of the Prussian disintegration he abandoned both the Russians and his own supply train to give chase. Friedrich was making a desperate fighting retreat westwards with his rearguard, harassed constantly by the Austrian light cavalry and bands of Russian cossacks. He managed to slip out of every attempt to encircle him until the village of Strausberg, twenty miles east of Berlin, where General Franz Leopold von Nádasdy finally managed to cut him off. Friedrich lost his horse and was struck in the leg by a musket ball. Wounded and surrounded, the King of Prussia took an overdose of opium. At a barn in Strausberg on September 3rd, Friedrich breathed his last.

Browne stormed into Berlin, and his conduct there elicited much controversy. The marshal was beloved by his men and usually had little difficulty controlling them, but the strenuousness of the forced march and the opportunity of despoiling the enemy’s capital caused discipline to unravel. The Austrians began indiscriminately looting the city, and Browne either could not or did not care to reign them in. Hundreds of civilians lost their lives. Most blamed the Croats, notorious plunderers whom Browne had quartered in the city, but the army’s orgy of vengeful greed appears to have been a multinational affair.

Yet the war was not yet over, and Prussia seized one final moment of glory. Although Friedrich was succeeded as king by his young nephew, command of the army was vested in his younger brother Prince Heinrich, himself a very able commander. In his zeal to strike a finishing blow Browne had far outpaced his supplies, and the Russians (who had suffered heavily at Küstrin) made no move to support him. After amalgamating the scattered remnants of Friedrich’s army with his own corps, Heinrich marched on Berlin and threatened to encircle the city, forcing the marshal to hurriedly evacuate. Heinrich defeated Browne’s disordered and exhausted troops at the Battle of Luckenwald, capturing the marshal’s baggage and forcing Browne to retreat all the way to the Saxon border, while the Russians drew back into Pomerania of their own accord and wintered in Polish territory.

Prince Heinrich of Prussia​

Although Prussia was spent, its enemies were also losing the will to fight. The Russian supply situation was a mess and Austria’s finances were so badly strained that minister Wenzel Anton Kaunitz doubted if the empire could sustain another year of campaigning. Prince Heinrich, however, was not looking to drag the conflict out any further. Despite his success at Luckenwald, he knew the country was in tatters and his ramshackle army was in no condition to liberate Silesia or Saxony from the Austrians. Heinrich had been urging his brother to make peace since 1758, and now he was in a position to make it himself. At the outset of the war, the empress had dreamed of dismantling Prussia utterly, but with her bête noire Friedrich out of the picture and Prince Heinrich now ready to relinquish Silesia - the original bone of contention - she authorized Kaunitz to pursue a more limited peace. The Silesian War continued in 1760 but the campaigning was desultory. The Russians re-occupied East Pomerania and then hardly stirred at all. Replacing Browne, Field Marshal Daun launched an offensive into Brandenburg to keep the pressure on, but did so at a glacial pace and with exceeding caution. He had no desire to throw away with a careless blunder what had taken years to win.

The main obstacle to peace was the position of France. The Silesian War could not be definitively concluded without them, but French forces occupied the scattered lands of Prussian Westphalia and King Louis did not wish to relinquish them for nothing. France floated the prospect of annexing Mark and Cleves, which could then be traded to Austria for equivalent portions of the Austrian Netherlands. This proposal, however, was scuttled by a stunning French defeat at the Battle of Hameln at the hands of an Anglo-Hanoverian army. With the French economy in ruins, its navy defeated, and the colonial war going poorly, France badly needed Austrian assistance to turn the German campaign around. The empress, however, could not spare a significant army so long as the war with Prussia remained hot. It thus became imperative for the French to end the Silesian War, with or without territorial compensation from Prussia.[2]

On June 25th, representatives of Prussia and her enemies put the finishing touches on the Treaty of Prague. Austria regained Silesia and Schwiebus, gaining no new territory but reclaiming all that had been lost to Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession. Saxony received the Prussian enclave of Cottbus and the "Crossen corridor," a small but strategically significant piece of land connecting the Electorate of Saxony with the Kingdom of Poland. Russia acquired East Prussia, which was later traded to Saxony in the Treaty of Krakow for Courland and a swath of Polish territory on the Russian border. Sweden’s costly but strategically insignificant contribution to the war gained them the islands of Usedom and Wolin which they had lost in 1720. Prussia kept its Rhenish territories, but the treaty stipulated that they would remain under French occupation until the end of the war with Britain, and Prussia was obliged to pay a considerable indemnity for their relief. The Prussians further pledged to give no assistance to Britain in the ongoing war.

The Treaty of Prague caused panic in London, and indeed it seemed as thought it would be a disastrous blow. Shortly after the treaty was signed, General Daun marched 30,000 men to Stolberg on the western frontier of Saxony, forcing the Anglo-German forces to beat a hasty retreat northwards. Yet despite having ample opportunity to cut them off, Daun allowed them to escape back into Hanover. Daun was naturally cautious and Austria and Britain were not actually at war. But the real reason for Daun's failure to move was his orders from the empress, which instructed him to conserve his forces, guard his supply lines, and otherwise exercise utmost prudence. Maria Theresa had pledged to support her French allies, but she had been annoyed by their failure to support her adequately against Prussia and she was unwilling to actually risk anything on their behalf. Faithful to his instructions, Daun spent his time methodically reducing Hesse-Kassel and fussing over his logistics while the Anglo-German forces were allowed to regroup in Hanover unmolested. French protests against Daun’s “tardiness” and their high esteem for Browne eventually led to Daun's removal and replacement by Marshal Browne in September, but the empress’s priorities remained the same.

The final blow came in late August, when the news arrived from America that Quebec had finally fallen to British forces. New France was now utterly at the mercy of the British. In Versailles, this loss forced a grim reckoning with the facts. It was possible, perhaps even likely, that they might still conquer Hanover. At the speed things were going, however, it seemed very unlikely that this would be accomplished in the remainder of 1760. Another year of campaigning would be required, but the very idea made the French treasury groan. Moreover, even if fortune favored the French in Hanover, any gains there were likely to be offset by further British gains in America, gains which they were almost certain to make with rapidity now that Quebec was in their hands. Thus, even after another long and ruinously expensive year of fighting, Louis’s ministers could not promise that he would possess any more leverage than he had now - and possibly even less if the Hanoverian campaign foundered or the Austrians failed to fully live up to their obligations. It was time to sue for peace.

Although some British politicians clamored for the total spoliation of France, the situation in Germany tempered these maximalist demands. The Austrians hinted that if Britain continued to hold out for all the marbles, the empress-queen might be forced to declare war and actually take the Hanoverian campaign seriously. Given Austria’s difficult financial situation this may have been an empty threat, but the British were inclined to take it seriously. The replacement of Daun with the energetic Browne, whose reputation was by now considerable, seemed to lend credibility to her ultimatum. There was also the possibility that Louis might renege on the Treaty of Prague and return to his previous designs on Prussian Westphalia, and the prospect of France making gains in Germany or the Netherlands was not at all appealing to the British government. Britain would emerge the victor, but her victory would not be total, and France’s abasement incomplete.

The war finally ended on October 10th, 1760 with the Treaty of Paris. In Europe, France withdrew from the Netherlands, dismantled the fortifications of Dunkirk, and vacated the territories of Prussia and the pro-Hanoverian German princes. In North America, France ceded the Ohio River valley and the whole of Canada to Britain, save only for the Isle Saint-Jean which was restored to France along with rights to the Newfoundland fishery.[A] France the rest of their North American territory and regained the islands of Guadeloupe, Dominica, and Martinique. A most unusual proposal submitted to the British ministry by none other than King Theodore of Corsica, who proposed the cession of a “minor island” in the West Indies to Corsica as compensation for wartime losses and as an experiment in “the productive exercise of liberty,” was not seriously entertained.[3] France’s West African outposts were returned in full. In India, the French effectively lost their position in Bengal but retained their base at Pondicherry in the south, while the British recovered Madras; as it happened, British forces in India regained Madras on their own less than two weeks after the treaty was signed.

In the Mediterranean, France returned Minorca to Britain in exchange for Britain’s evacuation from Corsica and the return of Ajaccio to Corsican sovereignty. France renounced “all debts and indemnities” concerning the Kingdom of Corsica, and both powers agreed that they would not station troops on “the Isles of Corsica and Capraia.” France recovered its trading outpost of La Calle (the Bastion de France) in Algiers, but renounced the Royal African Company’s rights to coral fishing on the Tunisian coast east of Tabarka.

The “Four Years’ War,” as it was known in Europe (though the fighting in America had started years earlier), was in some ways a return to the European status quo. Austria recovered her lands and her reputation, firmly demonstrating that she was not - or at least was no longer - the derelict and toothless beast which King Friedrich had derided in the 1740s. Prussia was restored to its “proper place,” but Prince Heinrich’s stalwart defense ensured that it was merely trimmed rather than dismantled. What stung most was the apparent loss of the royal dignity, as without Ducal Prussia the state was merely the Electorate of Brandenburg and its possessions.[4] Although crippled in the short term by the devastation of war, the electorate was not greatly diminished in size or resources from what it had been before Friedrich’s ill-fated rule, and would return to European politics in time.

The effects of the war, however, went beyond borders and titles. The alliances hastily forged in 1756 had held, but only barely. The new Franco-Austrian alliance was particularly badly frayed, for the French could not help but resent the fact that while they had lost much of their empire, their “ally” the empress had regained everything she had lost and emerged from the war more powerful than ever. As in 1748, it seemed that French blood and fortune had been thrown away just to enrich France’s ungrateful allies. The Austrians, meanwhile, looked apprehensively to the east, for Russia too had emerged from the war looking more formidable than ever before. The succession of the ambitious and belligerent Peter III to the Russian throne in 1761 contributed to their anxiety. The next round of crises in Europe would come not from beaten-down Brandenburg or embittered France, but from a Russian state which was newly cognizant of its influence. As for Britain, the island kingdom had gained the most from the recent war, but the growth of its overseas empire had come at the cost of its alienation from the continent.[B]

The borders of Europe at the end of 1760 following the treaties of Prague, Paris, and Krakow
​

Footnotes
[1] Other states participated in minor roles. Sweden joined the Austrian side in an attempt to regain Western Pomerania, but their small and ill-prepared army did not accomplish much.
[2] After Friedrich’s death, the British had attempted to use their funding of Prussia as leverage over Austria. British representatives proposed to the empress a reciprocal withdrawal of support - they would cut off their subsidies to the Prussians if Austria would pledge to give no assistance to the French. As tempting as this was, however, the empress was reluctant to betray her French allies. The Austrian diplomats strung the British along until negotiations fell through in the summer of 1760, resulting in Prussia exiting the war without any intervention by Britain.
[3] This eyebrow-raising attempt by the King of Corsica to establish a colonial empire seems to have been only partially motivated by material gain. Theodore, a lifelong abolitionist, proposed nothing less than the gradual dismantling of the institution of slavery on a “minor island” of the West Indies as a test case, as he proposed that slavery was not only immoral but economically inefficient. In his missive to the British he used his own kingdom as an example, arguing that the poverty of Corsica was solely due to the Genoese dominion of the Corsicans, who “before Our arrival” were “slaves in fact, and free only in name.” Thus, he wrote, they were “devoid of any desire to improve, or in any way contribute to the productive industry or civilization of their isle, as they had no expectation of reward thereby… rather in a perverse fashion, the greater their toil, the greater the rewards which accrued to the men who held them in fetters.” He confidently predicted that under wise and rational governance, a population of “free negroes and mulattoes” would be just as productive as a slave colony, if not more so. Although this “wise and rational governance” was assumed to be governance by white Europeans - the king was not so progressive as to propose that the “negroes and mulattoes” should rule themselves - it was nevertheless a proposal ahead of its time. It was also wildly impractical for reasons too numerous to list, and as a result historians have tended to doubt the king’s sincerity. Theodore, however, never gave any indication that the proposal was in jest.
[4] Some joked that the elector ought to style himself “King in Lauenburg,” one of the small Polish fiefs which Brandenburg still controlled outside the borders of the empire.

Timeline Notes
[A] Isle Saint-Jean is OTL’s Prince Edward Island. IOTL the French attempted to preserve some colonial presence on the St. Lawrence Bay to access the fishery. Their first choice was Cape Breton Island, but this was too strategically important and Britain wouldn’t allow it. Saint-Jean/PEI was also proposed by France as an alternative, but ultimately all Britain would give them was Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.
[B] Posting this update makes me a little nervous because the SYW isn’t a specialty of mine, but I hope my alt-SYW is at least plausible. I have tended to focus on the “Silesian” theater as I’m most familiar with that; apologies for not giving more details on, say, the Canadian campaign, but I’m afraid this isn’t the TL for that sort of thing. Keeping Browne around was my main tool, and I really do think Austria would have done better if he had not been killed at the OTL Battle of Prague in 1757. Frederick’s death is a bit dramatic, but having him die helps achieve more “moderate” peace - firstly because Frederick was personally hated by his enemies, and secondly because Prince Henry was much more interested in negotiation even if it required some concessions. The end result is something that’s clearly different than OTL, but perhaps not entirely unrecognizable. France does marginally better in the colonies, while “Prussia” is trimmed and bloodied but emerges from the war with most of its core territory still intact. The other major difference ITTL is that because the war ends earlier, Spain never enters it, meaning that Florida is still Spanish and Louisiana is still French.

 

[Carp]

The Lily and the Asphodel​

Emblem of the Constitutional Society. "Virtue Preserves Liberty."​

The high visibility of the antics of the macchiari, particularly in the foreign press, tends to obscure the fact that dissent against the French occupation was not universal. Certainly there was widespread dissatisfaction with the country’s management under French supervision, but plenty of Corsicans grumbled about taxes and impositions without resorting to terrorism. The devoti were always a small clique of northeastern agitators who were not even representative of the local notabili, let alone all Corsicans. Anglophile Corsicans ("filoinglesi") attempted to portray Francophiles ("filofrancesi") as former filogenovesi or “criptorepublicani,” and this may have been true of the Calvesi, who had never really been reconciled to the rule of the naziunali and had welcomed the French with open arms. But the Calvesi did not speak for all Corsican filofrancesi, and there were numerous prominent Corsicans with impeccable nationalist credentials who were suspicious of British intentions and desired reconciliation with France.

The most prominent filofrancesi were found among the signori or sgio, the aristocratic landlords of the south. As great families with large landholdings worked by sharecroppers and field hands, they considered themselves to be the local equivalent of the great French landowning aristocracy, and as they had largely fallen within the “Austrian occupation zone” during the Revolution they had never suffered at France’s hand. The sgio were highly suspicious of urban-dwellers and their interests. French restrictions on the coral and shipping industries, which had incensed the Ajaccini to no end, made little difference to noble landlords. True, the great landowners not been entirely happy with the policy of the French under Bertin - particularly the imposition of the sovvenzione - but this was easily dismissed as overreaching by a meddlesome bureaucrat.

The situation in the north was altogether different. Northern Francophilia was chiefly an urban phenomenon, common among the residents of Calvi, Algajola, and Bastia (although Francophilia had ebbed in Bastia as a consequence of the recent French occupation). There was no landowning aristocratic class in the north equal to the sgio. The population of the northern interior - where most Corsicans lived - consisted of smallholding farmers, pastoralists, and middling notabili, whose image of France was still shaped by the Revolution. The generation which had fought and bled to defy the first French invasion yet lived, and a new generation of their children had been raised on stories of San Pellegrino and Ponte Novo.

Although southern aristocrats and northern urbanites did not make up a large proportion of the population, they possessed a potent weapon in religion. The English, after all, were notorious heretics; their very presence put Corsican souls in danger. Even among those who resented the French occupation, the actions of the macchiari - who shot at Catholic soldiers and joined forces with invading “Lutherans” - were not entirely seemly at a time when the rest of the Catholic world seemed to be rallying together against Protestant powers. Time and again, the filofrancesi appealed to Catholic solidarity and stoked fear of religious “pollution” to rally Corsicans to their side. Inevitably their invective came to include the Jews, who had eagerly welcomed the English into Ajaccio and posed the same threat to religious purity. Their religious emphasis may have inspired the popular nickname for the Francophile nobility - gigliati, "lilied ones" - which was either a reference to their piety, as the lily had a long association with the Resurrection and the Virgin Mary, or a less complimentary reference to the fleur-de-lis of France.

The filoinglesi were a somewhat broader group of prominent northern naziunali, urbanites and capocorsi involved in maritime industries, and foreign-educated notabili of an “enlightened” bent. Although these groups came to their pro-English position by different means, the popular appeal of the filoinglesi was essentially nationalistic. While the filofrancesi appealed to religious identity, the filoinglesi spoke in the language of patriotism and national grievance, waving the bloody shirt of the Revolution and associating France with Genoese tyranny. The devoti were fond of describing their uprising as “la grande vendetta,” well-deserved vengeance for the Corsican blood shed by King Louis and his minions since the 1730s. Better to do business with heretics, they declared, than to be vittoli - traitors to the nation.

It is possible to overestimate the importance of the English-French divide in Corsican politics. Anglophilia and Francophilia were frequently just proxies for other, more fundamental cleavages in Corsican society - landlords versus sharecroppers, Enlightenment reformists versus Catholic traditionalists, north versus south, urban versus rural, and so on. In a land with few roads and no means of mass communication, these cliques could not organize into popular movements or “political parties” as such. While some segment of “the people” might occasionally be mobilized for a certain purpose by appeals to religion or nation, the spat between filofrancesi and filoinglesi was mainly a quarrel between elites. Yet because these elites also constituted the ruling class of the kingdom, their divisions had consequences for the governance of the nation.

In the wake of the French occupation, the Corsican government was left with a dire financial crisis. French impositions and expropriations had left the government bankrupt, discredited, and largely nonfunctional. Many Corsicans had simply stopped paying taxes altogether, and most government ministries had effectively shuttered from a lack of funds. The royal household was solvent, but Queen Eleonora refused to bail out the national government from her coffers. The British £10,000 annual “rent” for Ajaccio was like manna from heaven to Count Gianpietro Gaffori’s destitute ministry, but it was only a temporary windfall and provoked the suspicion of filofrancesi who feared that the island was in the process of being turned into an English colony.

Gaffori’s attempts to deal with this crisis were frustrated by the dieta, which was substantially controlled by the sgio and other prosperous notabili who resisted any sort of progressive taxation. They suggested instead to raise the taglia (capitation), which was constitutionally limited to three lire but stood at only one lira at present, or to establish tariffs which would naturally fall more heavily on the cities than the rural aristocracy. But Gaffori was loathe to do the former, fearing that raising the taglia would provoke a revolt, and King Theodore refused to allow the latter given his commitment to free ports and open trade.

Gaffori's solution was clever, but it further alienated him from landowning interests. To avoid a real fight with the dieta, Gaffori sidestepped them by reviving the sovvenzione, the 5% tax on the gross product of land introduced by the French administration. This tax had fallen into abeyance along with most of Bertin’s abandoned “enlightened” reforms, but because the dieta had already approved it in 1753 Gaffori could argue that no further consent was necessary. This was an unpopular step which provoked opposition from both the sgio and more modest proprietari, and the implementation of the tax was dogged by the same problems that the French had encountered - the ambitious and expensive Catasto Reale (the island-wide land survey) remained unfinished, the farmers had scarcely any hard cash to pay the tax, and enforcement was lacking. Gaffori attempted to address these deficiencies in various ways, from allowing payment in kind to hiring foreign surveyors, but revenues remained far below optimal.

Gaffori’s trouble with the dieta stemmed in part from the peculiarities of Corsican “democracy.” Although in theory all property-owning households could vote, representation was not proportional, and thinly-populated rural pievi had disproportionate influence relative to their population. Because the procuratori were not elected by secret ballot, but in public assemblies, the process could easily be manipulated or controlled by powerful clans. Intimidation and bribery (often in the form of favors rather than hard cash) were serious problems, and violence was not unknown. Particularly in the south, where many farmers were dependent on sharecropping great estates, it was not feasible for ordinary people to oppose the local don for political office. In some places pieve offices had actually been hereditary before the revolution, and the effect of “Theodoran democracy” was merely to put an elective rubber stamp on what was still a de facto hereditary succession. Far from being accidental, such loose oversight was a purposeful attempt to avoid angering local elites. In this way the gigliati, despite being a small group of elite landowners, were able to throw considerable weight around in the consulta generale.

Yet not all power flowed from the consulta. The consulta generale could not legislate on its own without a supermajority the gigliati could never hope to achieve, and the dieta was capable of restraining the king only on matters of war and the imposition of taxes. The entire apparatus of state - not only cabinet ministers but judges, secretaries, military officers, and provincial luogotenenti - was appointed by royal prerogative, and the king increasingly favored the filoinglesi for these positions. Theodore’s favoritism, however, had little to do with foreign policy or any specific cultural affinity for the English. Political Anglophilia tended to coincide with support for commerce and free trade, policies which the king had long advocated. But above all Theodore wished to protect freedom of conscience, which he had come to see not only as beneficial to Corsica, but as his lasting gift to humanity.

By the end of 1760, Theodore’s position - both in Corsica and in history - seemed secure. The Treaty of Paris had recognized the kingdom’s sovereignty and neutrality. Corsica was free of foreign occupiers and unburdened of the coercive “Monaco debt.” Theodore’s desire for fame and respectability which had motivated him all his life seemed fulfilled; the “Laurel King” who had risen from a debtor’s cell to a royal palace was known across the continent. Certainly his kingdom had many problems, and he was not blind to them. The king never lost interest in the affairs of the kingdom and was continually crafting legislation and proposing new plans for Corsican prosperity. The security of his position, however, also allowed him to think beyond mere practical politics for the first time in many years and consider what kind of legacy he would leave to Corsica and the world.

Despite his reputation in some quarters as a slippery trickster, Theodore was a man of strong moral conviction. His views on religious liberty and abolitionism were radical for the time. Such views were still controversial among the Corsican public, but they won Theodore praise from “enlightened” intellectuals and philosophes who praised him as a visionary liberator. “Not content with merely lifting the fetters from [the Corsicans’] bodies,” wrote one admirer, “he has lifted the fetters from their minds.” Theodore, who was always a bit vulnerable to flattery, eagerly took up the proffered mantle of Europe’s foremost crusader for liberty. Prior to the Treaty of Paris, he asked the British to give him an island in the West Indies so that he might prove that a colony of “free negroes” would be even more productive than slaves. When the newly crowned Tsar Peter III declared religious freedom in his domains, Theodore was certain that Peter was following his lead and wrote the Tsar a fulsome letter of praise and congratulations.[1]

Peter III, Tsar of Russia

​

Yet Theodore could not be certain that his liberal vision would last beyond his death. The Corsicans remained a deeply conservative and religious people, and his heirs might not share the strength of his convictions. Fear of a conservative reaction against his reforms was responsible for finally convincing him to abandon any residual notion of leaving the succession to his nephew Charles Philippe, Comte du Trévou, whose candidacy was floated by some of the gigliati as a long-shot way of restoring French influence. The same fear motivated his attacks against the Church in the early 1760s, which would eventually lead to excommunication and the most serious political crisis of Theodore’s postwar reign. It also inspired him to cultivate native Corsican politicians who shared his views, in the hopes of creating a political class which would not merely accept freedom of conscience in deference to the king, but would cherish and defend it of their own volition.

Theodore’s vehicle to accomplish this was the Constitutional Society (Società Costituzionale), better known as the Society of the Asphodel (Società dell'Asfodelo). Its origins are somewhat obscure. There is some evidence that its earliest members were associated with a briefly-existing Masonic lodge in Ajaccio set up by British officers during the 1758-60 occupation, but the Society denied any association with Freemasonry despite considerable similarities. Members of the society had to profess a faith in God, but the order was not explicitly Christian and admitted Jews from the start. The Society was indifferent to nobility, and members were supposed to treat one another with equal collegiality - at least within the context of the society’s meetings. The notional head of the Society was Theodore himself as Grand Patron (gran patrono), but actual governance was provided by a commendatore (a title evocative of the knightly orders) who was elected by the members.

The Constitutional Society was ostensibly dedicated to preserving Corsican independence and the 1736 royal constitution, as well as promoting “classical virtue” and “true piety.” In practice, it was a social club for liberal nationalists. The society also served as a venue for the circulation and discussion of texts from modern Enlightenment thinkers, which were not always easily procured in Corsica. The society was not formally Anglophile, and indeed conducted most of its business in French, the language of the philosophes. Nevertheless, the Society’s support for freedom of conscience, its acceptance of non-Catholics, and its vaguely Masonic trappings tended to attract more filoinglesi than filofrancesi.

The Constitutional Society’s better-known name - the Society of the Asphodel - supposedly originated from a comment by Giuseppe Maria Masseria, an Ajaccian lawyer and member of the Society, who exclaimed “let [the gigliati] have the lily; I find there is no flower more beautiful than our asphodel.” For the Corsicans, this flower was laden with symbolism. A humble and hardy plant, the asphodel - known locally as the taravellu - grew abundantly in mountain meadows and upon rocky outcrops. Its bulbs were ground up and eaten by the poor in times of famine, and it had come to be identified during the Revolution with naziunale rebel bands in the mountains who subsisted on chestnuts and asphodel bulbs. Powerful curative properties were also ascribed to the plant in Corsican folk medicine. So closely identified was the flower with the island that it was commonly said that a Corsican who had gone abroad and forsaken his homeland had “forgotten the asphodel.” In the mid-1760s, as Theodore’s battle with the Church escalated, members of the Society started wearing asphodels in their hats or lapels to show that their allegiance to Corsica (and Theodore) came before their allegiance to foreign powers - including Rome.

A field of asphodels in Corsica​

“Hidden” meanings of the asphodel provided - and still provide - fodder for conjecture and conspiracy theories. Not merely a national symbol, the asphodel also had a certain mystic reputation on the island. Corsican mazzeri, “dream hunters” with quasi-shamanic powers who were said to foretell deaths, carried asphodel stalks as their weapons when they “fought” the mazzeri of other villages in dream-battles.[A] The flower was also known in some parts of Corsica as the fiori di morti (“flower of the dead”), possibly an echo of its role in ancient Greece, where the asphodel was associated with the land of the dead and was often placed upon graves. In the Odyssey, Homer describes the afterlife as a “meadow of asphodel,” and in some depictions Hades is shown with a spring of asphodel in his hand, and his bride Persephone wearing a garland of asphodel flowers. The Constitutional Society was hardly a cabal of mystics, but it is the nature of any “secret society” to generate rumors. Its superficial resemblance to a Masonic lodge and its associations with Theodore - who really was a “mystic,” as well as a Rosicrucian, alchemist, and probable Freemason - gave such rumors plenty of fuel. Some have gone so far as to suggest that Theodore himself suggested the symbol of the asphodel, not Masseria, as some sort of coded reference to his own esoteric interests.

Theodore’s personal connection to the society was rather vague. In the official version of events, he was merely “offered” the honorary position of Grand Patron by the already-existing Society, and despite being the nominal head he never attended its meetings. The purpose and interests of the Society, however, were so complementary to his own that it is difficult to believe he was not involved somehow in its formation. Minimizing his own involvement may have been a political necessity, and the royal presence was probably not conducive to lively philosophical discussions. Yet despite maintaining a certain distance from the Society itself, Theodore showed great favor to its members and often tapped Asphodelians for government positions. “Wearing the asphodel” was certainly never required for high office, but in the last years of Theodore’s reign it became increasingly helpful - a trend that was deeply resented by the gigliati, who perceived themselves as Corsica’s natural leaders and defenders of its Catholic faith.


Footnotes
[1] Theodore also proposed in this letter to serve as a mediator between Russia and Denmark in their incipient dispute over Schleswig. Peter did not take him up on this offer, but the two rulers did strike up a regular correspondence which would eventually result in a Russo-Corsican treaty of trade and friendship.

Timeline Notes
[A] For more on the unusual Corsican mazzeri and their dream battles, I recommend Dorothy Carrington's The Dream-Hunters of Corsica. Carrington theorized that the tradition of the mazzeri was a remnant of ancient religious practice which survived the introduction of Christianity.

 

[Carp]

Royal Testament

Arms of the Crown Prince of Corsica
​

Since the Revolution, King Theodore had continually put off the matter of who would succeed him to the throne of Corsica. In the absence of an heir of the body, the Constitution of 1736 declared that the king could “designate a successor of his relation,” but Theodore had never exercised this clause. Perhaps Theodore was truly undecided as to who would best succeed him; perhaps he was expecting to eventually be succeeded by his own child. Some have suggested his reticence was a purposeful means to motivate the various Neuhoff princes and keep them in his service by hinting that any one of them might still wear the crown. Perhaps he simply avoided the question because it was a reminder of his own mortality.

Another possibility is that his first choice was not politically palatable. Evidence suggests that from the start of his reign, Theodore believed he had a clear and logical successor: Charles Philippe de Bréfeillac, Comte du Trévou. Charles Philippe was the only surviving son of Theodore’s only sibling Marie Anne Leopoldine (also known as Elisabeth Charlotte, d. 1725), and was thus Theodore’s closest male relative and only actual nephew.[1] Theodore could not have known Charles Philippe well - he had been wandering through Europe as a spy and alchemist during the boy’s childhood - but Theodore had been very close to his sister and had been godfather to her first son Theodore-Hyacinthe (who had died young). Not long after he was crowned, Theodore sent a letter to King Louis XV asking him to allow Charles Philippe to travel to Corsica “so the people may see I have an heir.”

Since then, however, the prospect of Charles Philippe actually being named as heir had become increasingly untenable. Before long France became the enemy, and would not be reconciled with the revolutionaries until the Treaty of Monaco in 1749. In the intervening years, Theodore’s other relations - chiefly Matthias von Drost (now Don Matteo, Principe di Porto Vecchio) and the Baron Rauschenburg (now Don Giovan, Principe di Morosaglia) - had rendered invaluable service to Theodore and the national cause. The Baron Pungelscheid (now Don Federico, Principe di Capraia) had been a latecomer, arriving in Corsica only in 1746, but he was still in time to have a notable revolutionary career of his own, leading forces on Capraia and the continent. All three of these men had lived on Corsica thereafter. In contrast, after a brief visit to his uncle in 1736 Charles Philippe left the island and did not return until 1753. He had no revolutionary credentials and was a complete unknown in Corsica, both to the public at large and the Corsican elites.

The Comte du Trévou’s absence was due to the fact that he had much more to lose. None of Theodore’s German cousins had fantastic prospects; Don Giovan had only a small barony and Don Matteo appears to have had no estates at all. Don Federico was the wealthiest of the three, but even he was a mere baron whose aspirations in Westphalia could go no further than a decent position in the Prussian army or state bureaucracy. Charles Philippe may not have been a peer of the realm, but he was a count, an officer of the prestigious Gardes Françaises, and a nobleman with some prominence at court who hunted with King Louis. Had Charles Philippe thrown in his lot with Theodore during the Revolution, all of this might have been forfeited. L'Affaire Trévou - his unauthorized visit to Corsica in 1736 - was very nearly a personal disaster for the young count, which he survived only by denying any association with the rebels and throwing himself upon the king’s mercy. King Louis had generously forgiven the whole matter as a mere youthful indiscretion, but Charles Philippe learned his lesson.

Even in 1753, when the count returned to Corsica with France’s blessings, Theodore may still have hoped to install Charles Philippe as his heir. Certainly the French ministry would have been delighted to secure the succession of a loyal French aristocrat to the Corsican crown. Yet despite his enthusiastic welcome by Theodore, Charles Philippe’s reception elsewhere was not as encouraging. Theodore’s cousins rightfully perceived him as a threat to their own ambitions, and Count Gianpietro Gaffori was equally hostile. Even those southern nobles who would later be considered among the gigliati do not seem to have warmed much to Trévou in 1753; Corsica’s French alignment did not seem to be in danger at the time, and Trévou was utterly unknown to them. After 1759 some of them repented of their earlier indifference and supported Charles Philippe’s candidacy, but this advocacy only soured Theodore on the notion, as he had come to fear that the pious filofrancesi were only backing his nephew as a means to overturn his enlightened reforms. Theodore was clearly still fond of Charles Philippe, but he did not necessarily trust his nephew to continue his legacy, particularly if his succession was secured with the support of the gigliati.

By 1760 it was clear to all that the other option - succession by an heir of Theodore’s body - was extremely unlikely. Queen Eleonora was now 45 years old. Over the years she had been pregnant a few times, but all had ended in miscarriage or stillbirth - and her last known pregnancy had been almost five years earlier. It was no longer possible to deflect the apprehensions of the Corsican elites, who were anxious about the prospect of a contested succession. By the end of the Four Years’ War the king was 66 years old, and although he seemed to be in rude health history was rife with examples of sudden royal deaths. Now that both a biological heir and the Comte du Trévou were off the table, there was no reason for Theodore to delay his choice any longer.

Don Matteo had always been a longshot given his meager resources, his more distant relationship to the king, and his decision to marry into a Corsican family. His selection was probably unlikely in any circumstances, but his candidacy was truly destroyed by his sister-in-law Bianca Rossi, the sister of Count Antonio Colonna-Bozzi and Don Matteo’s wife Maria Rosa. A devoted Francophile, Donna Rossi - some nicknamed her La Giglia Bianca - was discovered shortly after the war to have been the leader of a spy ring collecting information on General Wolfe’s army in Ajaccio and passing it to the French. There was no evidence that Don Matteo was involved in this conspiracy, and in any case Donna Rossi had done nothing illegal; the English had technically been invaders, and the French allies. Nevertheless the familial association made him suspicious in the eyes of the filoinglese, and he was already unacceptable to the filofrancesi because of his patronage of their bête noire, the arch-filoinglese and proud Asphodelian Pasquale Paoli.

This narrowed the field to only two men. Don Giovan was a genuine revolutionary hero; he had led the resistance in the mountains even when Theodore himself fled the country, and had put his life at risk for the national cause on numerous occasions. But the Prince of Morosaglia was also stubborn and irascible, traits which had arguably served him well as a defiant rebel leader but had proved less useful in garnering elite support. His relationship with Count Gaffori had never really recovered from their falling out during the Revolution, and the powerful prime minister was a quiet but diligent opponent of his succession. Some were also concerned by the fact that, despite the fact that he was married and now 47 years old, he was still without children. Don Giovan remained popular among the common people, but found himself with few real supporters at court and within the ministry.

Don Federico had seemed an unlikely candidate at the end of the Revolution. Although he had won a name for himself with his celebrated conquest of Capraia, he was perceived as too young, too foreign (his Italian was terrible), and of little worth compared to the heroic Prince of Morosaglia. By 1760, however, his position had improved tremendously. The Prince of Capraia was now a 35 year old man, and his Italian was much improved (if still noticeably accented). He was richer than Don Giovan, having both the hereditary Neuhoff-Pungelscheid estates and a substantial dowry (as well as under-the-table funding from the British government). Through his marriage to Elisabeth Cherrier Jeanne d’Harcourt, Don Federico had associated himself with the prestigious House of Lorraine, and Emperor Franz Stefan himself had agreed to be the godfather of Don Federico’s eldest son. With three children - Elisabeth had borne a second son in September 1759 - he offered the prospect of dynastic continuity.

Don Federico’s candidacy also seemed like it might offer some compromise between the nascent factions of filofrancesi and filoinglesi beginning to form at court (who had yet to acquire the names of “Lilies” and “Asphodels”). The Prince of Capraia was rather vague as to his ideological convictions, but he was clearly no Catholic zealot; he had been raised in religiously cosmopolitan Westphalia, fought in the army of a Protestant state, and continued to be an admirer of Prussia despite its recent humbling. His “leadership” in the Barefoot Revolt had further endeared him to the filoinglesi. But Don Federico was careful not to cozy up to the likes of Paoli and the devoti, something which Don Giovan had made the mistake of doing; observing the gap which had opened between Count Gaffori and his former ally, the Prince of Morosaglia had recently been courting Paoli and his supporters as a possible counterbalance. It was not the worst idea, but the timing was wrong; for the moment Gaffori remained supreme and Paoli held no official position at court or in the government. Paoli’s rise to power was still some years in the future, and in the meantime this ill-advised maneuvering only alienated the filofrancesi. This did not mean that the filofrancesi were completely supportive of Don Federico, but they could at least take some solace in his undeniably French wife, who might serve as a tether to French culture and policy.

What probably mattered most, however, was that Don Federico had married the king’s favorite. Theodore seems to have truly adored Elisabeth and treated the Princess of Capraia as his own daughter. Given the family resemblance, foreign visitors sometimes assumed she was his daughter. Such obvious favor naturally lent itself to speculation that Theodore might actually choose Elisabeth as his successor, which was within his right; the constitution clearly stated that the king could choose anyone “of his relation, man or woman.” There were problems with this option, however, that were not limited to general Corsican sexism. Despite the emperor’s act of legal legitimation, Elisabeth was unquestionably born out of wedlock, and the claim of the Comte du Trévou - her elder, legitimate, and male half-brother - seemed infinitely superior to her own by any normal standard of 18th century dynastic law. Succession wars had been fought over much less. By crowning her husband instead, Theodore would ensure the crown would eventually pass to her children while putting the succession on much firmer ground.

In March of 1761, Theodore promulgated the Testament on the Succession of the Kingdom, better known in Corsica as simply the Testamento Reale del 1761. In this document Theodore declared that, in compliance with the constitution, he hereby designated the Prince of Capraia as his successor “to the crown of Corsica and all dignities, powers, and regalia thereof.” He went on to stipulate that If the prince’s line was exhausted - seemingly an unlikely scenario given his three children, but still possible - the crown would pass to the Prince of Morosaglia and his heirs, implicitly passing over both the Comte du Trévou and Don Federico’s sisters. The legality of this clause was somewhat dubious; the constitution stated only that Theodore could designate his successor, not that he could preordain the entire order of succession thereafter. In the event, however, nobody raised serious objections. Nobody on Corsica even knew Don Federico’s sisters, and the few nobles who lamented the displacement of the Comte du Trévou were not vocal or numerous enough to matter.

The man who lost the most from the Royal Testament was obviously the Prince of Morosaglia, who must have bitterly regretted that Theodore had not made his decision ten years earlier when he had still been the clear favorite. Don Giovan’s “privileged” place in the succession was not much comfort; the chance that he would outlive Don Federico, who was 12 years his junior, as well as all of Don Federico’s children was vanishingly remote. As much as he fumed over the loss of his chance at wearing a royal crown, however, his more immediate concern was for his finances. Don Giovan still enjoyed the large dowry brought to him by his marriage to Princess Maria Camilla Cybo-Malaspina, but apart from some acreage he had bought in Corsica the little barony of Rauschenburg remained his only income-bearing estate. Theodore had apparently considered splitting the terre della corona or providing some appenage to the other princes, but he was convinced by Queen Eleonora - who was close to Princess Elisabeth and also supported Don Federico’s succession - that it would be best for the dynasty and the state if the royal patrimony was conserved as “one and indivisible.” The princes already received stipends from the royal household, but they were pitifully inadequate to maintain a “proper” aristocratic lifestyle on their own, particularly given Princess Maria Camilla’s expensive tastes.

Don Giovan’s financial difficulties provided Don Federico with the means to get rid of him for good. The two princes had always seen each other as rivals, and having won the crown Don Federico did not want Don Giovan sticking around on Corsica as a competitor for elite allegiance and popular affection. With the right inducements, Don Federico believed he could convince Don Giovan to quit the island willingly. Giovan was open to the possibility; aside from the fact that he needed the money, he was not excited about the prospect of bowing to a man he still considered to be an undeserving upstart.

So it was that the princes, despite their mutual animosity, concluded an arrangement that would serve both parties. Don Federico offered to cede the estates of Eibach and Rade to his cousin, as well as the revenues of all the other hereditary Neuhoff estates in Westphalia for the rest of Don Giovan’s life. The crown prince knew he would not be able to spare much time or attention for his German estates anyway, and the loss of revenue would be mitigated by the acquisition of the terre della corona when Theodore died. In exchange, Don Giovan would abandon Corsica and cede all his property on the island to Don Federico.

It took some time for Don Giovan to resign himself to his fate and accept this offer, but in October of 1761 he finally stepped on a ship bound for Livorno and bade the island farewell. Corsica had been his home for the last 25 years, and in that time few people had fought harder than him to secure the independence of his adopted country. In the end, he was rewarded for this service with exile. But Don Giovan was not forgotten by the Corsicans, particularly the mountaineers who had been his most devoted followers during the Revolution, and became something of a folk hero. When in later years the caprai of Niolo took up arms in protest of enclosure and land reform, one of their rallying cries was “Evvivu Don Giovan!” It was a fitting tribute to the prince who had never shunned poor shepherds and had shivered, starved, and fought alongside them even in the darkest trials.[A]

With his chief rival out of the way, the Prince of Capraia could be confident that his succession was truly secure. Of course Don Matteo remained on the island; he had put down familial roots in Corsica and would never be convinced to leave it. But Don Matteo also lacked Giovan’s ambition, and although he remained politically active the Prince of Porto Vecchio was content to be “merely” one of the great magnates of the kingdom. So long as he was recognized as a prince and cousin of the king and treated accordingly, he would happily support Don Federico’s succession. Even the rather remote threat posed by the potential claim of Charles Philippe did not trouble Don Federico for very long, as the Comte du Trévou took ill and died in 1763 at the age of 44. The Prince of Capraia was now able to enjoy a new prominence both in Corsica and upon the international stage. No longer merely one of Theodore’s various relations, he was now the unchallenged heir and future King of Corsica, and he was courted by both domestic elites and foreign interests who knew he represented Corsica’s future. Yet his position as royal heir gave him no formal power, and until the actual day of succession it was still King Theodore’s Corsica.


Footnotes
[1] As noted before, the other Neuhoff princes, while often termed “nephews,” were actually his cousins - Don Giovan and Don Federico his first cousins, and Don Matteo a more distant relation.

Timeline Notes
[A] It seems like a melancholy end for the Prince of Morosaglia, the Lion of Niolo. But we haven’t quite seen the last of Rauschenburg: Don Giovan will not be returning to Corsica, but he still has a part to play back in Germany. We’ll return to him and a few other continental Neuhoff relations soon.

 

[Carp]

Exodus

Tunisian Berber irregular, 18th century​

Ali Pasha, the Bey of Tunis, had risen to power with treachery, rebellion, and murder, and was fated to fall from power in the same way. Ali Pasha had originally acquired his throne in an uprising against his uncle Hussein, the founder of the dynasty. This civil war lasted from 1735 until 1740, but with the aid of the Algerians Ali was eventually able to defeat his uncle, who was captured and beheaded by Ali Pasha’s son Younis. Hussein’s sons, Muhammad Rashid and Ali, managed to escape their father’s downfall and took refuge in Algiers.

Having seized power and driven out his rivals, Ali Pasha turned against the Europeans who controlled a string of outposts on Tunisia’s northern coast. It was an auspicious moment, as in the 1740s both France and Genoa were occupied with crises in Europe. Leading his father’s army, Younis captured Tabarka and Cap Nègre and took hundreds of Genoese and Frenchmen into slavery. This prompted a war with France, but a French attack on Tabarka turned into a catastrophic failure and the French ultimately offered Ali Pasha generous terms for peace.

His ascendancy, however, would not last forever. The sons of Hussein were able to convince the Algerians to switch sides, and they invaded Tunis with an Algerian army in 1746. This attempt failed because of a mutiny among the Algerians, but Ali Pasha remained insecure. His position was shaken by the rebellion of his own son Younis, who had gained the loyalty of the Turkish garrison and used them to briefly seize control of the city before his father was able to return with an army and overcome him in 1752. Shortly thereafter, the hopes of Muhammad and Ali were renewed by the accession of a new and warlike Dey of Algiers, Baba Ali, in 1754. Fearing another Algerian invasion, Ali Pasha turned to the British for assistance and agreed to lease them Tabarka in exchange for a subsidy. But this only further convinced the French to support Ali Pasha’s rivals in Algiers, and the British were distracted and spread too thin to render any concrete aid to Ali Pasha. In 1756 the brothers made their move, once more with an Algerian army at their backs. Once more Ali Pasha's janissaries turned on him, and the bey was captured by the Algerians, who then subjected Tunis to a bloody and brutal sack. Hundreds - perhaps thousands - were slaughtered.

The brothers now expected to take their rightful place in Tunis, only to find that the commander of the Algerian troops, Ahmed Bey of Constantine, was in no hurry to leave. He quarreled with the brothers over the division of loot and the conduct of his forces, but his true aim was to annex Tunis to his own beylik. Baba Ali, however, feared the ambitions of his subordinate, and ultimately Ahmed Bey withdrew from Tunis with his soldiers, “persuaded” by a recall order from Algiers and a hefty bribe from the brothers. Ali Pasha was dragged back to Algiers with him, and was strangled in prison a month later.

As soon as the Algerians were gone, the janissaries of Tunis decided that they had no need for the sons of Hussein. They rose in rebellion and captured Muhammad, while Ali barely managed to escape. At first they ruled the city themselves, leading a "revolutionary" government which was mainly concerned with robbing the population blind, but news that Ali was recruiting an army to lead against them convinced the Turks to try and shore up their authority. They liberated Younis, who had been languishing in prison since his rebellion in 1752, and declared him to be the new bey. Younis's first act was to have Muhammad beheaded. He then turned on the Foreigners' Quarter, for Younis hated the French almost as much as he loved separating heads from shoulders, and French support for Hussein’s sons provided him with an ideal pretext. Without warning, his janissaries stormed the French consulate, savagely murdered the consul, and killed or imprisoned all the other foreigners they could find.

Fearing for his life, the Corsican consul Cristoforo Buongiorno fled to the house of Charles Gordon, the British consul, whose home was an island of tranquility amidst nightmarish violence. Bloodthirsty as he was, Younis was not foolish enough to risk war with both France and Britain. Gordon happily sheltered every foreigner that was able to make it to his door. In a letter to the Corsican foreign minister Giovanni Vincente Garelli, Consul Buongiorno described how he and the other "refugees" had watched from the window as the Turks paraded outside Gordon's house, waving the French consul’s head on the end of a lance. At any other time this outrageous act would certainly have led to a swift and forceful response from France, but in 1757 the French could not spare anything for Younis’s chastisement. They could do nothing but watch in horror as their plan backfired horrendously.

Fortunately, Younis’s reign of terror would be short-lived. Although Younis ruled the city of Tunis, his cousin Ali had succeeded in rallying the Bedouin tribes to his cause. This army was soon joined by Berbers, urban Arabs, and disaffected kulughlis (the sons of Turks and native women) who had been dismissed from the army by Ali Pasha. In the spring of 1759, Ali’s army assaulted the capital, defeated the janissaries, and captured Younis as he tried to flee the city. In the spirit of reciprocity, Ali had his cousin beheaded. Ali ibn Hussein - thereafter known as Ali II or Ali Bey [1] - still found himself in danger, as Younis's son Isma’il had escaped to Tripoli and fully intended to return, but Isma’il made his move prematurely in 1760 and was rather easily defeated and driven off.

Ali II, Bey of Tunis​

Although Ali’s father Hussein had won effective independence from the Ottomans and curbed the political power of the Turkish janissaries in 1705, he and every Tunisian bey after him had still relied on the janissaries as a military strike force. Initially, Ali Bey seemed as though he would follow in their footsteps, if for no other reason than to ward off the threat posed by Isma’il. Yet he had not forgotten that the Turks had turned on Ali Pasha twice, and were directly responsible for freeing Younis, murdering his brother, and ravaging his city. After Isma’il’s defeat, Ali Bey began recruiting more kulughlis and Arabs into the standing army to counterbalance the Turkish forces.

Thinking themselves indispensable, the overconfident janissaries rose in revolt in 1761 under the leadership of the Tunisian Dey Muhammad Kazdaghli, demanding that the army be Turkish-only to the exclusion of all Arabs. At first the bey appeared conciliatory and promised to fulfill their demands, but this was merely a ploy. His loyal soldiers launched a surprise attack on the janissary barracks, overwhelming the Turks and killing many. Facing imminent destruction, the Turks offered to surrender and handed over Kazdaghli, no doubt expecting that Ali would simply punish the instigating officers. Ali accepted their surrender - and then ordered all the rebels to be immediately put to death.​

Ali Bey was no Tunisian nationalist. His dynasty was Turkish in origin - his father, Hussein, was the son of a Cretan-born janissary - and the core of his standing army was composed of kulughlis, mamluks, and Zuwawa horsemen from Algeria,[A] none of them native Tunisians. Having rid himself of the Turks in spectacular fashion, however, he had no choice but to rebuild the state on a native foundation. Despite his ruthlessness against the Turks, Ali Bey was magnanimous towards the rest of his subjects, promising to forgive his enemies and actively promoting the welfare of Bedouins, urban Arabs, and Berbers alike. Ali Bey gained a reputation as a wise, just, and pious ruler who abolished harsh taxes on the peasantry, enacted important economic reforms, gave stipends to the clerics, and gained the trust of the Tunisian khassa (“notables” or “elites”). Gradually, he even began to explore including the natives within the regular army apparatus. Nevertheless, his reforms could not rejuvenate his devastated country overnight, and he was severely weakened by the loss of the Turks, who despite their disloyalty had been effective soldiers. He was compelled to pay tribute to the Algerians to forestall a new invasion, and recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III like his predecessors.

The French derived no benefit from Ali’s victory. Although they had backed the brothers’ rebellion early on, the situation in the Western Mediterranean had changed drastically since the expedition of Muhammad and Ali had kicked off in 1756. Now Britain was the dominant naval and commercial power, while France had been forced to renounce its rights to Cap Nègre and the valuable Tunisian coral trade in the Treaty of Paris. Ali Bey could see the writing on the wall, and quickly ratified Ali Pasha’s treaty with Britain and confirmed their rights to Tabarka. The concession would now be managed by the newly chartered Barbary Company,[2] which received preferential tariff rates at all Tunisian ports. This gained Ali Bey a respectable British subsidy, but he hoped for more - specifically, British military support against the Algerians. The British, however, were not in the mood to install a major garrison in Tunisia or involve themselves in a new conflict, and for the time being the bey’s hopes were unfulfilled.

Tunisian kulughli soldier​

This turn towards Britain also meant closer relations with the Corsicans, and in 1762 Ali Bey renewed the 1734 treaty of alliance which had been signed by a then-uncrowned Theodore and Ali’s father Hussein Bey. As part of this agreement the bey repatriated 60 enslaved Corsicans, who were given a royal welcome in Bastia. King Theodore happily portrayed their return as a concession from the Tunisians, and did not publicize the fact that it had only been accomplished with some British pressure and a compensatory bribe to the bey. Some have suggested that Ali Bey’s genial attitude towards the Corsicans was personal, as he was himself half-Corsican; his mother, Lalla Jannat, was a Corsican woman who had been captured in a raid, enslaved, and taken as a concubine by Hussein Bey before becoming his third wife (c. 1709). But Corsica was also increasingly important to Tunisia’s economy and the Anglo-Tunisian relationship, for the expulsion of France from the Tunisian coast opened the door for Corsicans to take a dominant position in the Tunisian coral fishery.​

Although the British and Corsicans did well enough out of the civil war, it had been disastrous for the Tunisian Jews. Hundreds had perished during the Algerian sack of 1757, and Younis gladly put the Jews at the disposal of his Turkish soldiers to be plundered and harassed as they pleased. By the time Ali Bey finally stabilized the situation and liquidated the janissaries in 1761, most of the grana, Tunis’s Italian-speaking Jews, had fled the country. Some returned under the more enlightened government of Ali Bey, but the community never recovered, which had as much to do with economics as the trauma of war. The Treaty of Paris and the arrival of the Barbary Company began a new period of British dominance in Tunisian commerce, and the old Jewish merchants found they could not compete with the much lower tariff rates which the English had been granted by treaty. Although the Livorno-Tunis trade remained principally in the hands of the remaining grana, the Company steadily devoured everything else.

Tunisian anarchy, English monopoly, and the postwar boom of the Corsican coral industry opened a new chapter in the history of Corsican Jewry. In 1753 there had been fewer than 30 Jews permanently residing on the island; in 1762, less than a decade later, this figure had grown to five hundred.[3] By 1765 there were two Jewish-owned “coral factories” in the city producing coral beads for the Indian trade which together employed about a hundred workers, both Jewish and Christian. There were Jewish tailors, leatherworkers, butchers, and a glassmaking workshop. Ajaccio’s first rabbi, Abraham Isaac Castello, had himself been a coral-worker in Livorno before founding a printing shop; he was not only a talented scholar and philosopher who King Theodore once called “the wisest man in the kingdom,” but also introduced the city’s first printing press. In 1763 a Tunisian Jew opened the island’s first coffeehouse, which was a frequent haunt of the Constitutional Society.

The native Ajaccini had mixed opinions as to the changing face of their city. The wave of Jewish immigration was part of a larger postwar trend, as the once sleepy Genoese entrepôt of Ajaccio developed into a modest but increasingly busy center of commerce, manufacturing, and culture. Before the Revolution, seeing a foreign (that is, non-Genoese) ship in the harbor had been an occurrence worthy of note; now it was an everyday event, at least during the sailing season. The foreign presence brought prosperity, but not for everyone - coral fishermen and carpenters were certainly better served by the new economy than tailors and traders, who faced daunting new competition. In general, however, the Jews and other foreigners created more jobs than they took.

Yet not everyone had economics foremost in their minds, and the benefits of growth had to be weighed against the peril to one’s soul. It was one thing for a few Jews or “Lutherans” to visit the city, or even to live there; nobody had begrudged the king his English followers or raised an outcry against the presence of Dutch oil merchants. Now, however, heretics and unbelievers seemed to be flooding into Ajaccio at a rapid rate, and it seemed conceivable that they might tempt native Corsicans into damnation. In 1762 the Jewish community requested permission from the city’s anziani to buy a house to serve as a dedicated synagogue; the council initially agreed, then reversed its decision because of public outcry, and then reversed itself again in 1763 thanks to royal pressure and written assurances from the Jewish leaders that Christians would not be allowed inside under any circumstances or otherwise “recruited.” That seemed to resolve the matter, but other crises would soon follow.

Still, the relative acceptance which the Jews found in this previously all-Catholic city was surprising for the time. It may be that the Ajaccini really did see the benefits of immigration trumpeted by Theodore, or that the isolated Corsicans were simply too ignorant to have the same antisemitic prejudices of mainland Italians. Perhaps the shared animosity of the Jews and Ajaccini towards the odious French occupation created a lingering sense of solidarity. One could also blame the condition of the Corsican church, which had many priests but a weak and largely powerless hierarchical structure, rendering any organized campaign against “apostates” difficult. Of course, the more perverse explanation is that the Corsicans simply had a more convenient target for their xenophobia: the Greeks.

The surrender of the French after the Battle of Concador not only delivered the French army into British custody, but the auxiliary cavalrymen of the Greek “Busacci squadron” as well. After the signing of the Convention of Bastia in June 1759, the Greeks were handed over to Corsican authorities. Their status and ultimate fate was a matter of some contention. The Greeks were widely despised, particularly in the Nebbio, where Busacci and his horsemen had eagerly served as France’s enforcers to requisition supplies and violently suppress the macchiari. But they were not prisoners of war, because Corsica had not been at war; nor could they be declared traitors, as that would imply that all who helped the French were traitors (including many important native Corsicans). Count Gianpietro Gaffori promised to hold individual trials for those who were accused of murder or theft, but then backtracked. The count realized that if the Greeks actually got their day in court they would simply claim that they were French soldiers acting under orders. Given the political divide between filofrancesi and filoinglesi, Gaffori feared this would simply inflame tensions for no benefit. Ultimately the Greeks were simply disarmed and returned to Ajaccio.

Nobody expected them to receive a warm welcome from the largely filoinglese Ajaccini, but the busaccini (as they were nicknamed) were also shunned by their fellow Greeks. There was a fierce rivalry between the Busacci brothers and Giorgio Stefanopoli, who vied for leadership of the overall Greek community and strongly disagreed on the community’s future. Stefanopoli believed that the Greeks ought to integrate, reconcile with the “natives,” and make Corsica their permanent home. The Busaccis, on the other hand, believed that the Corsicans would never respect them and “integration” could only mean the loss of their culture and identity. The ultimate goal of the busaccini had always been emigration, and since Theodore refused to let them go, they had pledged themselves to the King of France in the hope that he would recognize their service and help them leave Corsica for good. Stefanopoli not only received the wayward busaccini with ill grace, but petitioned the Corsican government to have the Busacci brothers deported. Once the war was over, Theodore reluctantly agreed. The Busacci brothers did finally manage to emigrate, but not quite in the way they had imagined: They were forced to leave all their property behind and dropped off in Marseilles with a handful of followers, family members, and fellow officers. They hoped to gain some pension or assistance from King Louis XV in recognition of their service, but to no avail; the French wanted nothing more to do with them.

Giorgio Stefanopoli thus emerged as the undisputed leader of the Greco-Corsican community, but “integration” did not prove as easy as he had hoped. The Ajaccini did not pay much attention to the Busacci-Stefanopoli rivalry and tended to consider all the Greeks to be traitors and French sympathizers. Stefanopoli sought royal assistance, hoping that his loyalty to Theodore might be rewarded with money or land, but it was politically untenable for the king to show favor to the Greeks. Sympathetic to their plight, Theodore proposed to make use of the Greeks by forming an all-Greek unit of “Royal Lacedaemonians” for the army, but his ministers assured him that this was folly. Although the Greco-Corsicans had proved themselves to be both skilled farmers and capable soldiers, neither vocation seemed to be open to them in Corsica.


Footnotes
[1] Formally, ‘Abu’l Hasan ‘Ali ibn Hussein Pasha, Beylerbeyli of Tunis.
[2] Also known as the “Second Barbary Company” as not to be confused with the short-lived Elizabethan-era trading company of the same name. The original Barbary Company had been established chiefly to conduct trade with Morocco, but was dissolved in 1597 when its charter expired. After this the Barbary Coast was presumably included within the remit of the Levant Company, whose main business was in the Eastern Mediterranean, but the Levant Company’s exclusive rights were revoked in 1754.
[3] Five hundred Jews was still a mere fraction of Livorno’s Jewish community, which numbered around four thousand, but it was far in excess of the Jews living in Genoa. Even after concerted efforts by the Republic to attract Jews to help revive the economy, the city could boast no more than 70 souls in 1763.

Timeline Notes
[A] The Zuwawa are the namesake of the French “Zouaves,” the soldiers who became famous for their Algerian-inspired baggy pants.

 

[Carp]

An Opening Chasm

Pope Clement XIII
​

“[Toleration is] an impiousness which outrages God; an extravagance that dishonors reason; a fatal scandal which precipitates eternal damnation.”
- Father Claude-Adrien Nonnotte​

In January of 1760, Pope Benedict XIV died of gout. A scholarly and upstanding pontiff, Benedict was generally well-regarded and his death evoked kind eulogies even from beyond the Catholic world.[1] Within the Catholic hierarchy, however, Benedict’s tenure was evaluated more critically. The main objection to Benedict’s reign was that he had been too lax in opposing the growing trend of “regalism” or “jurisdictionalism,” the subjection of the Church to state and royal authority.

Conflicts between royal and ecclesiastical power were nothing new in Europe, but a new ideal of the absolutist state had emerged since the late 17th century - rationalized, bureaucratized, and centralized, with the monarch permitting no internal rivals to his authority. This ideal of “enlightened absolutism” was not fully realized anywhere, but it represented a vision of society that was incompatible with preserving the old balance of power between church and state. The Catholic Church had long enjoyed a special legal, political, and economic status in secular society, but its unique position was coming under increasing attack from ministers who sought to consolidate royal power and philosophes who mocked the Church’s privileges as founded upon nothing more than dusty tradition and irrational superstition. Venerable institutions like the Inquisition, ecclesiastical mortmain, the parallel system of ecclesiastical law, and the Society of Jesus were all targeted as intolerable affronts to rational governance and royal power.

Although he did not welcome this trend, Benedict had tried to address it through adaptation and compromise. The pontiff believed that by yielding to royal courts on strictly political and legal matters, he would enjoy a freer hand in spiritual matters. Regalism, after all, was not the only threat to the Church. The Catholic faith - perhaps religion itself - was being undermined by the heretical tracts of impious philosophes who openly embraced deism or even atheism. Benedict considered this intellectual secularism to be a more dangerous enemy than regalist ministers, who could serve as Rome’s allies against perversions of the faith. Accordingly, he signed many generous concordats with Catholic states, offering concessions that alarmed many of his own cardinals and ministers who feared that Benedict was ceding ancient privileges too readily and merely encouraging greater usurpations.[2] Although the Curia obeyed him while he lived, after Benedict’s death there was broad agreement within the College of Cardinals that Benedict had gone too far. His successor, they believed, needed to take a firmer stand against the regalist threat.

The man they chose, the Venetian Carlo Rezzonico, was in many ways a compromise candidate between the more hard-line cardinals (the “zelanti”) and the representatives of the Catholic monarchies. Rezzonico - thereafter Clement XIII - was known as pious but not fanatical, friendly to the Jesuits but not their devoted partisan. What mattered most to the conclave, however, was that he was unequivocal in his commitment to arresting both creeping regalism and Enlightenment secularism. He firmly believed that the authority of the Church in society had to be preserved against both its political and philosophical enemies, who too often had seen Benedict’s eagerness for conciliation as weakness.

Certainly this was true of King Theodore of Corsica, who despite being among the weakest of Europe’s sovereigns ultimately proved himself to be one of the boldest regalists of all. Cardinal Carlo Alberto Cavalchini, who had negotiated the Concordat of 1753 as Apostolic Visitor to Corsica, had seen this coming; he had warned the pope that Theodore might be encouraged, not pacified, by the significant concessions Benedict had authorized. It did not take long for Cavalchini to be proven entirely correct. Almost immediately after the concordat was signed Theodore began to renege on his promises, particularly when it came to returning Church estates seized by the naziunali. Citing his state’s financial difficulties, the king continually delayed the return of these lands, which he continued to administer and profit from.

What made Theodore notorious in Rome, however, was not his usurpation of property but his position in the vanguard of religious liberty. Battling the “tolerantism” of the philosophes was a major preoccupation of Catholic apologists who saw religious liberty as inextricably linked with “indifferentism,” deism, and atheism. To his great infamy in Rome, Theodore had far exceeded the philosophes by conjuring religious liberty from the page into the real world, and in a form that went too far even for some “tolerantist” writers. It was not merely that Theodore welcomed the Jews [3] - Tuscany long done that in Livorno, and Genoa was lately seeking to do the same - but that Jews in Corsica suffered none of the “disabilities” that dogged them everywhere else in the Catholic world. There were no ghettos, no badges, no (unique) taxes, no mandatory sermons, no restrictions on land ownership or profession - in other words, nothing to separate Jews from Catholics in any formal respect. Clement was not particularly antisemitic by the standards of 18th century popes, but this flew in the face of Catholic doctrine, which called for the strict separation of Jews from Catholic society. Curial officials denounced Theodore’s policies as “dangerous to religion and morality.”

Theodore had arrived on the political scene at a time when religious tolerance was the subject of intense philosophical debate across the continent. The philosophes, typified by Voltaire and his war of words against “l'infâme,” were inveterate opponents of religious fanaticism and championed the cause of tolerance. Yet this did not necessarily mean that they were well disposed towards the Jews, as many of the philosophes considered the Jewish people to be a prime example of a fanatical and superstitious culture, just as unenlightened and retrograde as the Catholic Church which Voltaire so despised. When it came to the Jews, the key question debated by the philosophes was whether they could be “regenerated” and cured of the defects of their religion, as Montesquieu proposed; or whether their corruption was essential to their “Asiatic” nature, as Voltaire argued.

Accordingly, while Theodore was generally well-regarded among the enlightened men of letters, the love was neither universal nor given without qualifications. Montesquieu was among the most prominent voices of approval; before his death in 1755, he offered some generally positive thoughts on independent Corsica and Theodore’s religious liberty, which he thought to be prophetic for the future of Europe. Voltaire, in contrast, always considered Theodore to be a somewhat risible figure and thought Theodoran tolerance to be a quixotic enterprise on an island of superstitious Catholics and fanatical Jews. The great Encyclopedist Denis Diderot had praised Theodore’s rule, although he also offered sharp criticism for some of the king’s decisions (like establishing a hereditary nobility). His comrade, the extremely prolific but lesser-known Encyclopedist Louis de Jaucourt, a liberal noble and fervent abolitionist, was an ardent Theodoran admirer and ended up writing the glowing entry for Corsica in the Encyclopédie. A more mixed assessment was offered by David Hume, who in 1762 penned a critique of “what we may call absolute, or Theodoran liberty.”[4] No such ambiguity was present in the writings of the so-called anti-philosophes, who were united in their condemnation. Giambattista Roberti, a Jesuit professor of philosophy at Bologna, published a scathing attack on Theodoran “tolerantism,” while Claude-Adrien Nonnotte, another Jesuit polemicist, spared a moment from his work Les Erreurs de Voltaire to ridicule Theodore and Corsican “indifferentism.”

Theodore had no aspirations to be a philosopher, and did not directly respond to his critics. The king was too conscious of his image, however, to simply ignore what was said of him, and he sent letters of appreciation to his prominent defenders. He exchanged correspondence with Jaucourt and wrote at least one letter to Diderot offering his aid to the Encyclopédie (although it is unclear if any such aid ever materialized). The king’s most consequential correspondence, however, was with the controversial philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau, who had offered words of praise for the Corsicans in his work Du contrat social.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau​

Rousseau found himself in considerable difficulty after the publication of Émile, a book which focused mainly on Rousseau’s theory of education but included a chapter on religion which Voltaire described as “forty pages against Christianity, among the boldest ever known.” The book was condemned and burned in both France and Rousseau’s native Geneva, and he was threatened with arrest. Whether Theodore had actually read the book is unclear, but upon hearing of Rousseau’s trouble, the king sent him a letter which caught Rousseau by surprise. He not only offered encouragement, but enclosed a sum of money and proposed that Rousseau come to Corsica where he would be free to live and write.

Although he was deeply touched by Theodore’s unsolicited generosity, Rousseau declined Theodore’s offer of protection. It was not in Rousseau’s nature to follow after royal patronage; he had famously dodged a royal audience with King Louis XV years earlier and refused a royal pension, to the great bewilderment of his friends. But aloofness proved harder to sustain when under persecution, and the precarity of his situation eventually persuaded Rousseau to reconsider his earlier refusal. Gradually he seemed to grow ever more infatuated with the idea of visiting this near-mythical land of rustic freedom.

In March of 1763, he boarded a ship from Nice to Bastia, where upon his arrival he was furnished with lodging in the city and a modest stipend at the expense of the royal household.[A] An invitation to court followed, which Rousseau characteristically declined, claiming illness from the voyage. Theodore, however, was not King Louis; a week later the king simply rode across town and visited Rousseau himself. There are regrettably no records of their private conversation, which was to be their only face-to-face meeting, but his later letters suggest that Rousseau was favorably impressed with the king. Rousseau was also visited by a delegation from the Constitutional Society led by cavaliere Geronimo Pozzo di Borgo, who had organized an “expedition” of Asphodelians to Bastia for the sole purpose of meeting the great man of letters now on Corsican soil. Rousseau humored these philosophical enthusiasts by allowing himself to be inducted as a member. This did not make much difference to Rousseau, who thought it little more than a lark, but the stature of the Society could only benefit from their association with one of the best-known philosophers in Europe. Despite his warm welcome, however, Rousseau was not very impressed by Bastia - perhaps unsurprising from the man who opined that “cities are the abyss of the human species.”

Rousseau considered leaving the island, but was convinced to stay a while longer by Domenico Arrighi, a respected judge and statesman who was notable for having served as the president of the first consulta generale in 1750. Arrighi, interested by Rousseau’s notions on legislation, became a friend of the philosophe and introduced him to a number of his fellow Balagnesi, including the writer and historian Bonfiglio Guelfucci and Count Giovan Paolo Quilici, the son of a revolutionary general. Count Quilici regaled Rousseau with his own stories of the revolution as well as the deeds of his late father, who had led the Corsican forces at the siege of Calvi alongside the king. The count then offered to put Rousseau up in a cottage in his own hometown of Speloncato in the eastern Balagna, which he suggested was closer to the “authentic” Corsica than cramped and squalid Bastia. Rousseau resolved to at least visit this “cradle of liberty,” and ended up residing in this hilltop village for several years until it was safe to return to the continent. In Speloncato he devoted himself to the task of defending his works and attacking the Genevan government, which took the form of a series of published letters known collectively as the Lettres écrites de Corse (“Letters written from Corsica”).

Speloncato, overlooking the Balagnese coast​

Pope Clement could not have seen Theodore’s sheltering of Rousseau as a positive sign. As cardinal, Clement had supported the condemnation of Diderot’s Encyclopédie and other works of the philosophes, and one of his first acts as pope was the publication of a strongly-worded encyclical “against the books of the libertines and the impious.” Émile was officially condemned in Rome in September 1762, accused of containing “enormous perversities” and “evil doctrines against the faith.” Rousseau, of course, was only one man, but his decision to flee to Corsica rather than capitulating to religious persecution and censorship made him a hero to anticlerical radicals. Theodore was now resented in Rome not only as an abettor of “tolerantism” in his own kingdom, but a promoter of impiety on the broader European stage.

Backlash against the king’s policies, however, was not just a foreign problem. In November of 1763 a local village priest stirred up a crowd in the Borgu of Ajaccio, claiming that Jews and Lutherans were subverting religion and that the printing house owned by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Castello was publishing “calumnies against the Bible and the true faith.” The mob was somewhat unimpressive in its resolve; their attempt to enter the upper town was thwarted by a barred gate, and they promptly gave up. Turning back to the Borgu, however, the crowd took the opportunity to attack foreigners and ransacked the house of a Jewish tailor, who was badly beaten. Marquis Luca d’Ornano, the royal luogotenente, ordered the arrest of a number of men who had participated in the riot but subsequently let them go without charge.

Upset by this “lawlessness,” Theodore ordered Captain Achille Murati of the Dragoni Reali to occupy the city and institute martial law. The 31 year old Captain Murati, who had been a macchiare during the French occupation, quartered his squadron in the lower town and began arresting anyone suspected of rioting. Some were fined and released, while a few who were implicated in the assault on the tailor were imprisoned. The instigating priest was also arrested and charged with rioting and sedition. But these harsh tactics backfired; imprisoning a priest for merely voicing his concerns for the faith was seen by many as odious and tyrannical, and the hard hand of “la dragonate” offended local leaders. Marquis d’Ornano was furious that his authority had been countermanded, and although the anziani had no love for rioters they objected to Captain Murati’s suspension of their civic authority.

Theodore withdrew the dragoons and restored power to the anziani, but despite the urging of his cabinet he refused to give clemency to the prisoners. Word soon reached Francesco Salvatico Guidi, the Archbishop of Pisa, who condemned the king’s act.[5] Seeing that public sympathy was against him and fearful of compromising his popularity, Theodore finally relented and ordered the release of the prisoners, but he deeply resented what he saw as the Church’s support for “seditionists.” The king did not care much about Rome’s criticism of his policies, for Corsica’s peasants did not read anti-enlightenment apologetics; most did not read anything at all. Rome’s apparent support for the Borgu riot, however, suggested to Theodore that the Church was actively attempting to turn the people against him.

In other circumstances, cooler heads may have restrained Theodore from further escalation. The king, however, was soon to be bereft of one of his most influential advisors. Queen Eleanora had suffered from a “malady of the stomach” since late 1763, but had taken pains to conceal it from everyone but her handmaidens. In the spring of 1764, however, her condition began to rapidly deteriorate. The king’s doctor, Emanuel Calvo, diagnosed her with a bleeding ulcer of the stomach; it is also possible that she suffered from stomach cancer. In any case, nothing could be done, and on June 26th the first Queen of Corsica died in her bed in the Palace of Bastia. Carlo Rostini claimed in his memoirs that the queen, who rarely spoke of personal and familial matters, told him shortly before her death that Theodore was “the most remarkable man I have ever met,” and that her only regret was that God had not seen fit to bless her with Theodore’s children.

Theodore was clearly deeply affected. Theodore had never resented Eleanora for her failure to bear children, and until the end they remained close. Strong-willed, perceptive, and sensible, she had exerted a stabilizing influence on Theodore and helped moderate his tempers and fancies in much the same way that Chancellor Costa had before his death. She had exerted almost total control over the royal household and budget, and was a shrewd administrator who enjoyed her husband’s complete trust. The queen’s death not only deprived the king of an able partner, but robbed Corsica of one of the few people who possessed great personal influence over the king. Eleanora had never been an openly political figure, but in private her advice was known to carry great weight with Theodore and the king was known to seek her advice on appointments to the ministry. Princess Elisabeth d’Harcourt was a capable successor in the role of royal hostess, but the king saw her as a daughter, not a partner, and she had hardly a shadow of the queen’s political influence.

The relationship between Eleanora and Gaffori had never been warm, but the queen and the prime minister shared a grudging respect. Despite their occasional sparring, Eleanora had recognized the resolve and ability of the “man of stone,” while Gaffori appreciated that he could count on the queen to redirect Theodore when he was being more fanciful than sensible. He immediately regretted her absence, as his relationship with the king had been steadily deteriorating in recent years. Gaffori’s immediate response when he heard the news of her death was concise: “God help us all.” His trepidation proved justified - the next few years would see the king’s excommunication, the collapse of Gaffori’s ministry, a foreign refugee crisis, and the kingdom on the brink of war.


Footnotes
[1] Horace Walpole memorably eulogized him as “loved by papists, esteemed by Protestants, a priest without insolence or interest, a prince without favorites, a pope without nepotism, an author without vanity, a man whom neither intellect nor power could corrupt.”
[2] In a reflection of this practical spirit towards the secular world, Benedict became the first pope to recognize the Hanoverian succession in Britain and accept that the deposition of the Stuarts was an accomplished fact.
[3] Indeed, he actively solicited their settlement. The Corsican consul in Livorno published an advertisement which declared that “industrious men of good character... regardless of sect or conscience” could settle in Corsica and become citizens, and pamphlets on Corsican liberty are known to have circulated in Jewish communities as far away as London and Amsterdam.
[4] Although generally considered a supporter of religious toleration, Hume considered “Theodoran liberty” to be unsound. Toleration, Hume argued, was good in part because it was useful; specifically, it helped to preserve the peace and order of society. As such, religions did not necessarily merit toleration if they were politically corrosive by their nature. To Hume, Catholicism itself was a prime example of a religion which was deserving of suppression, as it invited a foreign power (that is, the pope) to intrude into society and exert an influence which might be contrary to the national interest.
[5] Guidi had been a longtime observer of the Corsican Revolution. He had become Archbishop of Pisa back in 1734 and would still be archbishop after Theodore’s death, attaining one of the longest reigns in the history of the archdiocese. Unlike the Archbishop of Genoa, who was always the Republic’s partisan, Guidi had not been heavily involved in the unrest on the island. He was ever mindful of the fact that although his master in Rome generally favored Genoa, his other master - the Grand Duke of Tuscany, now Holy Roman Emperor - supported Theodore and the rebels. His denunciation of Theodore’s actions after the Borgu Riot was thus somewhat uncharacteristic, and may have been prompted by the new direction the Curia was taking under Clement XIII.

Timeline Notes
[A] IOTL, Rousseau found refuge in the Principality of Neuchatel, which had been in personal union with Prussia since 1707. ITTL, however, Frederick is no longer alive to be Rousseau’s patron and protector.

 

[Carp]

Anathema​

In May of 1764, King Theodore struck at the economic foundations of the Church in Corsica with a series of edicts. Firstly, all the revenues of vacant sees and benefices would hereby accrue to the crown; secondly, ecclesiastical mortmain was drastically reformed and gifts of land to the Church were restricted; thirdly, the tithe was definitively declared to be a royal prerogative; finally, the last of these edicts ordered the closure of dozens of monasteries which were deemed too small to be viable and the expropriation of their lands and properties. Theodore argued that these measures were necessary to protect the kingdom’s finances and ensure the good stewardship of its agricultural land, which was of particular importance at this time given the great Italian famine of 1764.[1] Nevertheless, many guessed that these acts were really intended to punish the Church after their “interference” in the Borgu Riot arrests of the previous autumn, and interpreted the May Edicts as the king’s vengeance.

These edicts were much less consequential than they appeared. The financial implications were fairly minor: Theodore was already in control of most of the Church’s landed revenues thanks to his occupation of ecclesiastical property, significant gifts of land to the Church were rare, the tithe was already in de facto royal hands since the Revolution, and monastic holdings made up a vanishingly small sliver of Corsican arable land. Nor did the decrees stir up great domestic controversy, even among the clergy. Most of the monasteries targeted for closure really were tiny, with the vast majority having fewer than half a dozen monks. Such communities depended on local charity and their holdings were often little more than a communal garden. The measure was welcomed by many in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Corsica as a step towards reform, as it was thought that the consolidation of monastic houses would make it easier to restore discipline and regularity to the island’s often wayward monks.

In Rome, however, Theodore’s decrees were seen as part of a broader context of regalist attacks upon the Church across Europe. In many Catholic countries this aggression was particularly focused on the Society of Jesus, which was perceived as holding too much wealth and influence and suspected of being more loyal to Rome than to their national kings. The Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1759, and France eventually followed suit in 1763. In the minor Bourbon court of Parma, the fiercely anticlerical prime minister Guillaume du Tillot had recently imposed new taxes on Church property and restrictions upon ecclesiastical mortmain, which were especially galling to Rome because the Papacy still claimed Parma as its own fief.[2] It did not go unnoticed that Theodore’s edict against mortmain appeared to be directly cribbed from Tillot’s policy in Parma. Theodore’s impudence thus represented not merely the greed of one eccentric kinglet, but the newest salvo against a Papacy under siege.

Consequently, the policy of Pope Clement XIII towards Corsica was not primarily about Corsica. Every new usurpation of ecclesiastical rights further exposed Rome’s weakness, and inspired monarchs to take ever bolder moves against Church authority and prerogatives. Some within the Curia believed that the Pope needed to make an example of someone, and the parvenu King of Corsica seemed like the perfect candidate. Despite his grudging recognition by the European powers he was still seen in many courts as something of a joke or curiosity, and having been alienated from France in the recent war it seemed unlikely that the Bourbons would rush to his defense.

On July 3rd - just a week after Eleanora’s death - Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, the head of the Roman Inquisition, published a condemnation of Theodore’s various infringements on ecclesiastical lands and monastic establishments. The Corsican clergy were instructed to disregard the king’s new edicts as illegal and to preach against his usurpations. Here, however, Rome committed a serious blunder. Faithful to the principles of ecclesiastical hierarchy, the Curia did not transmit its orders directly to Corsica’s curates or bishops, but to the responsible archbishops. For the Diocese of Mariana in the north this was Giuseppe Saporiti, the Archbishop of Genoa, as despite the concessions Theodore had won in 1753 the establishment of a native archbishop for Corsica was not among them.

Giuseppe Saporiti, Archbishop of Genoa​

Theodore could not have asked for a better enemy. A Genoese native, Saporiti had been archbishop since 1745, and like all Genoese archbishops during the rebellion he had been an overt partisan of the Republic and enemy of the naziunali. Saporiti enthusiastically embraced this opportunity to undermine Theodore, and gave instructions to the Bishop of Mariana on how to proceed. As it happened, however, the chancellor of the Diocese of Mariana was Luigi Angelo Zerbi, who was not only a fierce naziunale but one of the founding members of the devoti. When Saporiti’s instructions passed through his hands, he immediately handed the letter over to the foreign minister, Don Pasquale Paoli.

Don Pasquale had been working diligently since the end of the French occupation to reenter national politics. After returning to Corsica in the care of the British Navy, he was shunned by his old ally Prime Minister Gianpietro Gaffori and his ministry. But Gaffori could not control the pieve elections, and thanks to the support of his own influential clan Don Pasquale was elected as a procuratore for Rostino in 1759. He failed in a bid to be elected to the Diet in that year, but eventually succeeded in 1761. This achievement was a testament to his own charisma and clan network, but also a symptom of Corsica’s postwar political fragmentation and Gaffori’s increasingly tenuous hold on power.

Although the French and British armies had sailed away, their presence had seriously degraded the unity of the Corsican state. The power of the central government had never been strong, but foreign occupation had discredited and weakened Gaffori’s authority. As was typical in Corsican history, the weakening of formal authority encouraged a return to local and familial politics. The royal luogotenenti were becoming difficult to control, and often abused their authority to steadily turn the provinces into their own private fiefdoms. Vendetta killings, which seem to have declined in the immediate post-independence era, were back on the rise. The broad coalition of interior, northern naziunali which had made up Gaffori’s vague “faction” in the late 1740s and early 1750s was splintering into smaller regional and clan alliances. Simultaneously, the prime minister was subjected to increasing criticism from both the aristocratic gigliati and a small but outspoken cadre of educated “liberals.” Although his actual position was unchallenged, Gaffori relied on an ever-narrower base of support in the consulta and no longer had the ability to shape the Diet - or carry out national policy - as he wished.

Gaffori’s weakness allowed Paoli to advance his political career despite the prime minister’s hostility, mainly by flattering the king. Despite being elected to a body whose principal duty was to restrain royal power, Paoli ingratiated himself to Theodore by his staunch support of the king’s policies, particularly when it came to religion and economics. Both an Anglophile and an Asphodelian, Paoli was a vocal promoter of commerce and free trade and an outspoken defender of immigration and religious liberty. Along with his considerable personal charisma, this adherence ensured his swift rise. None missed the fact that Paoli’s election to the dieta was strongly supported by - and would have been impossible without - the “royal electors,” those procuratori appointed directly by Theodore.

Still, frustrated by the relative powerlessness of the Diet, Paoli yearned for a post in the royal ministry. The opportunity came sooner than he expected with the resignation of Foreign Minister Giovan Vincente Garelli in 1762, who ostensibly bowed out due to infirmity but was probably a casualty of British diplomatic pressure. The British could not bring themselves to trust the man who had signed the Convention of Ajaccio with the French, and suspected Garelli of Francophile leanings. The British consul wrote acidly to his superiors that Garelli was not only a “slavish” follower of the Bourbon envoys, but “just as arrogant as he is incompetent.” To the delight of the British - and the chagrin of Gaffori - Theodore appointed Paoli as Garelli’s replacement over the strong objections of the prime minister.

Pasquale Paoli in the 1760s

​

Despite fears that Paoli would show himself to be a dangerous radical, his appointment was not followed by any ministerial purge or sudden pivot in Corsican foreign affairs. His only controversial appointment was to tap the old revolutionary Father Gregorio Salvini of Nessa as the kingdom’s envoy to Rome. Salvini was certainly qualified for the job; he had acquired his doctorate in civil and canon law in the Roman academy and knew Roman politics well. But although Salvini was a clergyman trained in the heart of the Catholic world, he was also a firebrand naziunale who had been one of the earliest propagandists of the revolt. No mere armchair revolutionary, Salvini had also famously smuggled gunpowder to the insurgents and made his way onto the Republic’s “no amnesty” list of the most notorious rebels. Although now approaching 70 years of age, Salvini was still sharp and declared himself up to the task.

Paoli acquired the “Saporiti letters” in July 1764, just weeks before the consulta generale, and was set upon using them. Taking the rostrum during the general session, Don Pasquale produced the letters from his waistcoat and claimed to have uncovered a “conspiracy” between Genoa and the Curia to undermine the kingdom. It is generally agreed that Paoli probably hoped to frame further regalist acts - for Theodore was already planning his next moves - as a defense against Genoa rather than an attack upon Rome. But Paoli was too successful, as sympathetic delegates turned their fury squarely on the Republic and began calling for war with Genoa. Tensions between Corsica and her former colonial master had been growing since the late 1750s, aggravated mainly by disputes over maritime rights, a subject which the Treaty of Monaco had not addressed. The Corsicans accused the Genoese of harvesting fish and coral in their waters and allowing foreigners to use Bonifacio as a base for this exploitation. Economic rivalry, however, was not the only incentive to belligerence. Certainly some of those who advocated war stood to benefit materially from securing Corsican waters, but many others saw a victorious nationalist war as a cure for the nation’s political disunity and malaise.

Despite this outcry, no war was constitutionally possible without the support of the king, and Theodore was dead set against it. His public position was that while he would defend Corsican interests, he was loathe to breach the dearly-bought peace with Corsicans now enjoyed, and did not intend to impugn the honor of the crown by breaching the Treaty of Monaco. More pragmatically, the king also knew that the kingdom was manifestly unready for war, and suspected that even if victory was possible the great powers would not let him get away with it. In particular, a new Corso-Genoese war would certainly trigger a crisis with Austria, which was generally friendly towards the Corsican government but had also been positioning itself as the Republic’s protector since the Genoese Revolution.

In the end the belligerent flame burned itself out. The incident merely provided a further demonstration that the consulta, an impermanent body of amateurs which required a two-thirds supermajority to do anything of consequence, was not a legislature worthy of the name. It also provided a further demonstration to Gaffori, who was convinced that stirring up war had been Paoli’s aim all along, that the upstart foreign minister was a dangerous liability who would drag the country into disaster.

This debacle notwithstanding, Theodore evidently considered the “Saporiti conspiracy” to be sufficient grounds for further action. A list of new decrees was drawn up, no longer confined to ecclesiastical lands but aiming at the fundamental relationship between church and state. It proved to be too much for Gaffori, who as prime minister was charged with enforcing the king’s decrees. Although he was no zealous defender of Rome, Gaffori disagreed with what he saw as needless provocation and was uncomfortable being the Church’s antagonist. He had swallowed the May edicts, but he was unwilling to continue in the direction Theodore was now leading.

Gaffori declared his intent to resign rather than promulgate the new edicts. It was a tactic that the count had used several times before, and had always been successful. Theodore, however, apparently understood what Gaffori did not - that the count was no longer the “indispensable man” he had once been. His political dominance was waning, and the host of notabili who would welcome his downfall was larger than ever. Rather than being cowed by Gaffori’s threat, the king accepted his resignation.

Statue of Gianpietro Gaffori in Corti​

The fall of Gaffori ministry caught even his enemies by surprise. Fearing to alienate powerful families that might take dismissal as a mortal insult, Theodore rarely sacked his officials. Giafferi had served as prime minister - eventually in name only - until he dropped dead, and many assumed that Gaffori would follow his example. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that Don Gianpietro would accept his “resignation” with ill grace and turn against the king, perhaps even rising in revolt. In the event, however, Thedore was wise enough to handle Gaffori’s resignation with tact. In recognition of his long and faithful service, the king elevated the outgoing prime minister to the rank of marquis and awarded him a life pension. Gaffori went quietly; at the moment he probably did not have the support to do otherwise. At 60 years of age he was not quite ready for retirement, but his decades of political dominance were finished.

Paoli seemed to be the most dynamic force in the ministry and enjoyed the favor of the king, but would not be Gaffori’s successor. The king may have suspected that appointing Gaffori’s rival to succeed him would provoke Don Gianpietro and would not be healthy for national political unity. The king instead settled upon Count Simone Pietro Frediani, a 65 year old nobleman from the village of Penta in Casinca. Frediani was chosen more for his loyalty and agreeability than any particular political skills: He had been an unwavering royalist since 1736, had a respectable (if not particularly notable) revolutionary career, and was on good terms with Gaffori. Paoli, however, was hardly frozen out. He was appointed as Secretary of State, a move which suggested where real influence lay - Gaffori himself had served in this capacity during the prime ministry of the senescent Don Luigi Giafferi, and had been the real power within the government. Contrary to some expectations, however, Frediani was not a mere cipher. Although not blessed with great gifts as a statesman, he sensibly tried to position himself as a moderating, uniting force between disparate factions.

Now the king could proceed with his plans. To address the immediate “threat” the king issued the Rescritto alla consulta generale del 1764, an official reply to the concerns raised in the assembly. This document declared that, to defend the country from foreign clerical “subversion,” formal communication between the Corsican clergy and Rome was illicit unless authorized by the crown. Appeals to Rome were prohibited. The rescript also claimed that the king possessed the inherent privilege of the regium exequatur, the right to delay the promulgation or publishing of papal decrees until they were given royal approval.[3] This latter assertion was particularly bold; no less a king than Carlos III of Spain had himself claimed the regium exequatur in 1762, only to quietly rescind the decree less than a year later under ecclesiastical pressure.

This time the Papacy did not settle for half-measures. A heated debate between Father Salvini and papal representatives in Rome failed to lead anywhere, with Salvini playing the role that Paoli had intended and insisting that every decree thus far was the legitimate exercise of sovereign power. Following this abortive attempt at negotiation, the papacy unleashed its ultimate sanction. Citing the annual bull In Coena Domini, which imposed latae sententiae excommunication upon those who committed “the usurpation of church goods, or their sequestration without leave of the proper ecclesiastical authorities” and “the subjection of ecclesiastics to lay courts,” Pope Clement handed down the Monitorio di Corsica in November of 1764, a papal brief which declared Theodore “and all his accomplices” to be under anathema.[A]

Theodore and his ministers had expected some pushback, but they seem to have been legitimately caught off guard by the strength of Rome’s response. Although Theodore was admittedly claiming privileges by sudden fiat which other (and far more powerful) kings had accumulated over centuries, technically nothing in the Rescritto was novel. Certainly they had not expected such a draconian punishment as excommunication, which had not been levied against a head of state for more than a hundred years.[4]

Frediani advised the king that they should consider negotiating a de-escalation, but Rome had inadvertently ensured that this was impossible. To the king’s indignant fury, he discovered that the Monitorio contained language which implied that Rome still maintained its ancient claim to Corsica as part of the papal patrimony. This convinced him that backing down would not merely be a retreat from regalist policy, but an admission that the King of Corsica was no longer truly sovereign over his own island. Citing the Rescritto, the king refused to grant the exequatur to In Coena Domini or the Monitorio di Corsica, declaring that they were not valid in the kingdom and that any person publishing, circulating, or even possessing them was guilty of treason. On November 26th the king suspended diplomatic relations with the Holy See, ordering the recall of Father Salvini and the immediate expulsion of Rome’s representatives from the country. With all communication between Corsica and Rome terminated, the diplomatic spat between Theodore and Clement had become a de facto schism.


Footnotes
[1] An unusually dry winter followed by a cold and wet spring led to widespread crop failures in 1764, beginning a cycle of famine and disease that continued through 1767. The epicenter of the famine was the Kingdom of Naples, where up to 5% of the entire population perished. Although the direct effects of the famine were mostly limited to southern and central Italy, the effects of the catastrophe in Naples were felt as far away as Piedmont, causing high bread prices and considerable anxiety. There was no mass death in Corsica in 1764, but the island was not completely isolated from the Italian market and these were years of belt-tightening for the Corsican poor.
[2] The first Duke of Parma, Pier Luigi Farnese, was granted the duchy as a fief by his (illegitimate) father, Pope Paul III. Because of its original status as a papal fief, Rome’s official position was that after the death of Antonio Farnese in 1731, the last male line Farnese duke, Parma ought to have reverted to the papacy. The European powers ignored this claim and allowed the duchy to pass to the infante Carlos (later Carlos II of Spain), then to Austria, and finally to Carlos’s brother Felipe, all in the face of the Pope’s strong objections.
[3] The exequatur (meaning “let it be executed”) originated during the Western Schism when there were multiple papal claimants. Concerned that his faithful followers might be deceived by false decrees from his rivals, Pope Urban VI authorized certain ecclesiastics to confirm the authenticity of papal bulls before they were allowed to go into legal force, and certain lay princes eventually gained this authority as well. It was soon realized, however, that a monarch with this power might withhold a bull’s confirmation indefinitely, not because he doubted a decree’s authenticity but simply because he disliked it. In time, certain kings claimed that the right to grant or withhold this authorization was an inherent power of the crown rather than a privilege given to them by Rome, and the regium exequatur was born. Despite attempts by the Church to quash the practice, it was too useful for kings to give up and eventually became widespread.
[4] The last sovereign to suffer this sanction was the Duke of Parma in 1641, who launched an invasion of the Papal States in a dispute over the lordship of Castro.

Timeline Notes
[A] This update is easier to read if you know a little bit of ecclesiastical Latin. A latae sententiae (“sentence passed”) excommunication, sometimes known as an “automatic excommunication,” occurs without a legal process or anyone having to officially declare it so. Certain sins - apostasy, for instance - make one automatically excommunicated whether or not anyone else knows of the sin; the very act of sinning makes one ipso facto an excommunicate. In this case, according to In Coena Domini usurping church goods incurs just such an excommunication. By publishing the “Monitorio di Corsica” Clement is technically not "excommunicating" Theodore, but rather informing him that he is presently in a state of anathema for his sins, which is why it’s a monitorio (a warning, from the Latin monēre, “to warn”). The distinction, however, is probably lost on most non-theologians of the time.

 

[Carp]

The Pariahs

Expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain​

If Pope Clement XIII believed that placing Theodore under anathema would bring the wayward monarch to heel, he was quite mistaken. The King of Corsica would not be making any barefoot walks to Canossa. Theodore was not personally troubled by the Monitorio, and the immediate domestic effects of the brief were minimal. The ban on its dissemination, coupled with the general illiteracy and isolation of the Corsican population, meant that the news spread slowly and was muddled by rumors and half-truths. Corsica only had one real newspaper, the Ragguagli della Corsica (“Accounts of Corsica”), which did not circulate widely outside of Bastia and was a solidly pro-government paper.[1]

Rather than being placed on the defensive, Theodore quickly decided that Clement, having used his ultimate sanction to little apparent effect, had nothing left in the quiver. He forged on with his planned “reorganization” of the Corsican church, now completely unhindered by the fear of any further response. Although it is generally agreed that the post-Monitorio reforms were drawn up principally by Theodore himself, they fell to Secretary of State Pasquale Paoli to promulgate, as apparently Prime Minister Simone Pietro Frediani preferred to let his subordinate handle this business. For this reason they are known in Corsican history as the Grida Paolina, or “Paoline Edicts.”

The Grida Paolina continued Theodore’s regalist agenda of ecclesiastical subordination to the crown, reiterating the prohibition on appeals to Rome and subjecting clergymen to secular courts. The new edicts, however, went much further than merely restating old policies. Seminaries were now to be state institutions, entirely subject to the ministry. Marriage was declared to be a civil contract which, though it might be marked by a religious ceremony, was not within the legal competence of the Church. Claiming that the “excess” of clergy on Corsica “retarded the natural increase of the population,” the edicts placed a cap on the number of priests and monks in the kingdom, forbade men from taking religious vows in excess of that amount, and forbade all women from taking religious vows before the age of forty.

Just as inflammatory as the provisions of the Grida Paolina was the language used to justify it. Most infamously, the preamble to the edicts included this statement:

...all matters concerning the nation which have not been divinely granted to the Church by Christ and his Apostles are subject to the supreme command and authority of the Sovereign as provided in the Constitution of Corsica.

This language suggested a very narrow view of the Church’s remit and an expansive commitment to regalism. The Curia also observed that it appeared to question the doctrine of apostolic succession, for by claiming that the Church could only concern itself with those matters which “Christ and his Apostles” had placed within its jurisdiction - as opposed to, say, those matters which Clement considered to be within its jurisdiction - the text implied that the Pope was an inferior substitute to the Apostles, rather than wielding their full authority as delegated to him by Saint Peter.

Yet while the Paoline Edicts caused a great stir in Rome, Theodore’s estimation proved essentially correct. Having already placed the king under anathema, Clement had no further remedies at his disposal. The pope could only hope for a strong popular reaction against Theodore’s regalism, but the provisions of the Grida Paolina were not as provocative domestically as they were in Rome. Marriage, for instance, was already a civil contract in much of rural Corsica. Couples were usually wed in a secular ceremony (symbolizing the joining of two clans) without the presence of a priest; a “church wedding” was often delayed until the wife’s first childbirth, and sometimes skipped entirely. The cap on the number of priests was the only provision which had a significant impact on traditional life, but because this merely limited the number of future priests - nobody was actually defrocked or deprived of a curate because of the Paoline Edicts - a popular outcry did not immediately materialize.

Within Corsica, the most strenuous objection to the reforms came not from the bottom of society, but those at the top. The promulgation of the Grida Paolina in 1765 was the catalyst for the consolidation of the gigliati and asfodelati as distinct court factions, who coalesced around opposition to or support for the new edicts (respectively). As it was not politically tenable to oppose the king directly, the gigliati focused instead on Don Pasquale, who was not technically the author of his eponymous edicts but was certainly the leading advocate for regalism within the ministry. Paoli’s position, however, was unshakable; he served at the pleasure of the king, and the king could not be persuaded to dismiss him.

The “anti-Paolists” at court had to content themselves with the knowledge that Theodore would probably not be king for much longer. By the time the king celebrated his 70th birthday in 1764, it was clear that his years were finally catching up with him. Once a barrel-chested, broad-shouldered picture of physical vigor, Theodore had grown stooped with age and flabby from a lack of activity. His regular walks and rides, which Theodore himself credited for his robust health, had been curtailed by arthritis. His demeanour, too, had changed; particularly after his wife’s illness and death, he had grown noticeably more distant and reserved. His old affable and gregarious nature was still evident, but his temper was shorter, and his interest in court life declined precipitously. So precipitously, in fact, that in 1765 the king abandoned the royal court altogether.

Eleanora had preferred to reside in Bastia, but Theodore had always preferred Ajaccio and visited the city often. In the summer of 1765, the king abruptly decamped to Ajaccio and made it his permanent residence. He established himself at the Palazzo Agostiniano, the former seminary which Eleanora had renovated into a seasonal royal residence. It was a modest residence by royal standards - the grounds covered only two acres - but the four-story palazzo by the sea was quite sufficient for Theodore’s purposes. The king was by no means a hermit; his palace was directly adjacent to the upper town and he frequently entertained local noblemen, civic leaders, poets, intellectuals, consuls, and foreign travelers. Word spread among the foreign contingent that getting a dinner invitation at the Palazzo Agostiniano was remarkably easy, as Theodore was always keen to interrogate his foreign guests about news and politics. The king’s time was increasingly devoted to these social events at his palazzo, alongside personal correspondence, drawing up plans for public works, and plumbing the mysteries of the universe.

In his old age, the king who had once been known as “the Alchemist of Magdeburg” rediscovered his old passion for mysticism and the esoteric “sciences.” With the assistance of his personal doctor Emanuel Calvo,[2] the king made extensive studies of the kabbalah and experimented with magical healing and divination. He collected curious and esoteric texts, from supposed “ancient texts” to modern works like the Arcana Cœlestia of the visionary mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Most famously, the king struck up a regular correspondence with the mysterious Neapolitan nobleman and alleged dark sorcerer Raimondo di Sangro, principe di San Severo. Raimondo and Theodore had much in common: They were both accomplished polyglots (Raimondo spoke Hebrew and Arabic, among more common tongues), were deeply intrigued by esoteric mysteries, were associated with Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, and were practicing alchemists.[3] The contents of this correspondence have been the source of much speculation over the years, but their letters unfortunately do not survive today.[4]

Kabbalistic divinity map, Amsterdam, 18th century​

The exact nature of Theodore’s religious beliefs remain the subject of speculation. Certainly by the 1760s he was not a Catholic in any meaningful sense, which explains why his personal break with the Church made no impression on him whatsoever. Yet although Theodore was clearly a “freethinker,” there is no evidence that the king ever embraced the atheism or vague deism that was then in fashion among continental intellectuals. He was sincerely spiritual, and was fascinated by mystical arts which contemporary philosophes mocked as foolish superstitions.

For his part, Theodore always strenuously insisted that he was a Christian. Some have dismissed this as dissimulation, for the king readily concealed his unusual beliefs and practices from the Corsican people. Theodore, however, may not have seen any conflict between Christianity and esotericism. He is sometimes said to have been a universalist, adhering to the “perennial philosophy” that the world’s formal religions all shared a single basis of metaphysical truth. In the perennial esoteric mind, Kabbalism, alchemy, and the “primordial traditions” of the ancients were not rivals of Christianity, but alternate - and perhaps complementary - means of reaching the same metaphysical epiphany.

While the king explored metaphysics in Ajaccio, the business of the court and the government continued at Bastia, where the crown prince Don Federico and his wife Donna Elisabetta now presided in Theodore’s stead. This may have given the crown prince some useful experience, but although he held court he did not rule; all major decisions still had to pass Theodore’s desk, and the government ministers still served at the king’s pleasure. This proved awkward, for while Theodore gave his government a rather long leash it was still necessary for Frediani, Paoli, and even the crown prince to occasionally travel back and forth between Bastia and Ajaccio to discuss and implement policy. This was not a sustainable way to rule a country, and it caused considerable aggravation to Paoli and the asphodelati. They saw very clearly that the king’s absence weakened their position at court, and watched with unease as their enemies sought to ingratiate themselves with the prince and princess in preparation for the inevitable succession.

Theodore’s excommunication did not pass without notice on the continent. Although the state of Theodore himself did not elicit much sympathy in foreign courts, many statesmen were sincerely surprised and dismayed by Rome’s heavy-handed and retrograde response. Catholic governments from Lisbon to Vienna were either mulling over similar reforms or had already begun implementing them, and had optimistically assumed that in this modern age the Church simply knew better than to stand in the way of enlightened governance. Certainly Rome could not be allowed to treat other monarchs in the same way it had treated Theodore. “The Roman Curia,” remarked the Austrian state chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, “has to be made aware that it can no longer dictate to rulers in matters other than church doctrine.” Mindful of his deeply pious empress, Kaunitz was always cautious when it came to ecclesiastical matters, but even he was convinced that Rome needed to be taught that royal sovereignty could suffer no infringement.

Vienna, however, would not take the lead in the next round of regalist action. That honor would go to Spain, where a confluence of events in 1766 led to a coordinated expulsion of the Society of Jesus from all Spanish domains around the globe. In that year, Spain finally felt the effects of the general southern European famine which had first struck Naples two years earlier, causing unrest and rioting which was conveniently blamed on Jesuit instigators. This same year saw the death of the queen mother Elisabeth Farnese, one of the political protagonists of the War of Austrian Succession and the most influential pro-Jesuit voice at the court of her son King Carlos III. Freed of this restraint, Carlos and his government struck a swift and mortal blow against the Jesuits, who were rounded up without warning and placed on ships. The king’s officials were sternly informed that if even one Jesuit remained in their jurisdictions for any reason - even an old priest on his deathbed - their lives would be forfeit.

The intended destination of the Spanish Jesuits was naturally Rome, but throwing them upon the pope’s doorstep proved more difficult than expected. Clement refused to accept them, believing that doing so would be tantamount to recognizing the validity of their expulsion. This placed the Spanish captains in a bind. They could not land at Civitavecchia, but neither could they return to Spain - at least, not if they valued their lives. The Spanish ships spent weeks hovering indecisively off the coast of Lazio, hoping in vain for some diplomatic resolution, but were eventually forced to deal with a more pressing matter: their dwindling supplies of food and water. The captains consulted their charts for a nearby, non-Bourbon port where supplies might be obtained, and the port they chose was Bastia.

The Spanish might have feared a chilly reception given Corsica’s present relations with Rome, but they were pleasantly surprised. Although the port of Bastia itself could not accommodate the flotilla, the Corsican authorities were perfectly willing to allow the Spanish to purchase supplies at Bastia and ferry water and provisions to their ships anchored off the coast. The captains spread the word to their fellows, and soon most of the “Jesuit fleet” had converged on the city. Yet while this resolved the fleet’s immediate needs, the underlying problem remained - what were they going to do with all these Jesuits?

Unlike the Bourbon monarchs, Theodore had never made anti-Jesuitism part of his regalist program. On the continent, statesmen and kings envied the Society’s vast wealth and properties and looked with suspicion at their control over education across much of the Catholic world. The Society was perceived as the covert enemy of the new enlightened monarchism, seeding unrest and indoctrinating new generations to obey the Pope and despise kings. In Corsica, however, Jesuits had virtually no power or influence of any kind. Corsica was home to only a very small number of Jesuits, who possessed no significant property and had no role in secular education. Expelling this handful of powerless priests never even occurred to Theodore and his regalist accomplices. On the contrary, the king himself was personally sympathetic to the Society, perhaps because he himself was the product of an excellent Jesuit education.

With the captains begging him for help, the Spanish vice-consul at Bastia approached the government about the possibility of landing their “cargo” on Corsican soil. He was rebuffed by Paoli, who insisted that the kingdom could not possibly provide for the exiles and privately feared that a large number of Jesuits would inflame religious tensions. Paoli, however, was not the only influential man in the kingdom. Seeking a more cooperative official, the vice-consul turned to Don Santo Antonmattei, Minister of Commerce and the Navy and Corsica’s staunchest Hispanophile.

Although new to Corsican politics, Santo Antonmattei was one of Corsica’s most successful sons. Born in the Capo Corso village of Morsiglia in 1710, he had made a fortune in the New World as a merchant captain carrying goods between Peru, Panama, and Spain.[5] In 1753 the Spanish crown commissioned him as an inspector of fortresses and port facilities in the Viceroyalty of Peru, and for his services in this capacity he was ennobled by King Ferdinand VI. By the late 1750s he owned a factory in Cadiz and was certainly one of the richest Corsicans alive. Rather than settling in Spain for a comfortable retirement, however, Don Santo returned to his hometown in 1760 and assumed the role of the local patron and philanthropist, funding public works and aiding post-occupation recovery efforts. As it happened, the king was seeking someone to head a new amalgamated ministry of “commerce and the navy,” and decided that Antonmattei was the ideal candidate: He was an experienced captain, a successful businessman, and an expert in maritime trade. He was also rich, a very useful trait for a minister given the government’s limited ability to fund its own departments.

View of the village of Morsiglia

​

Politically, Don Santo was something of a wildcard. His wealth, nobility, and Bourbon sympathies seemed to make him a natural ally of the conservatives. Yet Don Santo was also a supporter of liberal trade policies, and as a self-made businessman from a northern fishing village he was not a good cultural fit with the old southern landed aristocracy who comprised the gigliati. Paoli and Antonmattei usually agreed on economic policy, but their relationship was nevertheless stormy; Don Pasquale was suspicious of Don Santo’s Spanish loyalties, and resented the fact that a man who had been absent for the entire Corsican Revolution had been rewarded with a ministerial post.

Favorable to both Spain and the Society of Jesus, Don Santo bypassed Paoli and Frediani and went to the king directly. He argued that the Jesuits - many of whom were from the Americas - had agricultural and educational expertise that Corsica desperately needed. This piqued Theodore’s interest, but he shared Paoli’s concern that the kingdom simply could not support so many needy foreigners. The vice-consul, however, proposed a possible solution. King Carlos had already pledged to pay an annual pension of 100 pesetas to each Jesuit so long as they remained within the Papal States, as a way to encourage these “troublemakers” to stay put. If the king was willing to broaden this offer to include Corsica, it would reduce the dependence of the exiles upon state charity. After exchanging messages with his superiors, the vice-consul procured Madrid’s consent to this arrangement and a royal guarantee for the pensions of any Jesuits landed in Corsica.

Not all the Spanish Jesuits ended up in Corsica. In total, more than five thousand Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish Empire, more than half of whom were from the American colonies. Even with the promised subsidy, the Corsican government was not prepared to accept so many refugees. Even those that were allowed to land did not all stay; many preferred to make their way to Rome or seek opportunities on the continent even if this meant forfeiting their pensions. Corsica, after all, was not the most attractive place of exile. Padre Antonio López de Priego, a native of Puebla, was singularly unimpressed; “The Corsicans are baptized Christians,” he wrote in a letter to his sister, “but they are so illiterate that in comparing them to the most barbarous Indian tribes I do them no injustice whatever.” Yet more than a thousand Jesuits - mostly Americans - did choose to stay, and would end up playing an important role in the history of the young kingdom.

Pope Clement fell ill and died in early 1768. His successor was Carlo Alberto Guidobono Cavalchini, the very same Cardinal Cavalchini who had served as Apostolic Visitor to Corsica in the 1750s. Cavalchini - now Pope Benedict XV - was no Corsican partisan, but he was a pragmatist. Benedict quickly backed away from Clement’s stubborn and ruinous hostility towards the Catholic monarchies. Bowing to foreign pressure, the pope ordered the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1770, dissolving the order entirely. Yet as Rome and Corsica were still at diplomatic loggerheads, Theodore’s government refused to grant this bull the regium exequatur, and it was never officially promulgated in the kingdom. In a twist of fate, Corsica became the only Catholic country in which the Society of Jesus was not proscribed.[A]


Footnotes
[1] Bonfiglio Guelfucci, the editor of the Ragguagli, was a staunchly royalist Servite friar and revolutionary propagandist who would later achieve fame as one of Corsica’s foremost 18th century historians. The Ragguagli aspired to be a both a political and literary gazette, including both poetry and political or topical essays. Technically his publication was preceded by the Magazzino di Ajaccio, but the Magazzino was a trade publication containing ship arrivals, exchange rates, and snippets of foreign news for a small audience of Ajaccini traders and shipowners, with no domestic political content.
[2] Although only an enthusiast himself, Calvo had been an associate of the late Rabbi Moshe Luzzatto, a prominent Jewish theologian and mystic who claimed to have received angelic inspiration.
[3] Raimondo di San Severo is best known for his marvelous and rather dubious inventions, including an ever-burning lamp, a printing press which could print in multiple colors, a self-driving carriage drawn by “wooden horses” which could traverse both land and water, and a means of producing artificial gemstones. He was also the subject of fearful rumors that he was a diabolical magician who performed human sacrifice and subjected his animals and servants to deranged experiments. The prince possessed two "anatomical machines" which still exist today, full-scale models of a human circulatory system made of metal wire built around a human skeleton, which were said to have been created by injecting an alchemical quicksilver solution which turned the subject's blood into solid iron. A statue of a “veiled Christ,” which resides in the Sansevero chapel, was so arrestingly lifelike that some believed the prince had used black magic to transmute a living person into cold marble.
[4] Very few of Theodore’s papers survive from this period, which is why we can only venture a guess at Theodore’s beliefs and specific interests. It is generally believed that Prince Federico thoroughly destroyed Theodore’s library and papers upon his accession to the throne, as he considered Theodore's "hobbies" to be a potential embarrassment to the monarchy. Naturally, this alleged cover-up provided plenty of fodder for conspiracy theorists. Some later claimed that the alchemist-king’s “secrets” were actually safeguarded by the Asphodelians, spirited away to the Prince of San Severo, or hidden by some shadowy agents of the Freemasons or the Knights Templar.
[5] Details of Antonmattei's mercantile career are scarce, but in 1750 he is recorded as the captain of the 30-gun El Toscana carrying a cargo of wax and cinnamon worth a million piastres.

Timeline Notes
[A] The arrival of the Jesuits in Corsica is based on real events. When Spain expelled the Jesuits from her empire in 1767, the Pope really did turn them away at Civitavecchia, and many of the ships went to Corsica and landed the exiles there. Without support from either Paoli's national government or the Genoese, hundreds of Jesuits organized their own community and survived on contributions from foreign sympathizers. Within two years of their arrival, however, Corsica was invaded by the French. As the Jesuits had already been banned from France, they were forced out once more, with most of them heading to mainland Italy.

 

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The Royal Corsican Navy

Model of the Corsican 24-gun frigate Capraia

​

Given the small size and limited means of the Corsican kingdom in the 1760s, the state’s need for a navy may not be immediately apparent. The kingdom could never hope to assemble a fleet strong enough to ward off the great powers, nor did it have a large amount of merchant tonnage to protect. Yet the kingdom still possessed maritime interests which made some sort of armed naval capability essential, as King Theodore and his ministers were well aware. Re-establishing the navy after the Treaty of Paris became one of the king’s first priorities.

The primary maritime threat to Corsica was posed by the Barbary “regencies,” whose corsairs had long menaced Christian trade in the Mediterranean. The Barbary corsairs had been in decline during the early 18th century, but the general European wars in the 1740s and 1750s created a favorable environment for a comeback.[1] Whatever protection France had offered Corsican shipping by its presence was lost after the “liberation” of 1759. Corsica and Tunis had a treaty of peace, but the other regencies - Algiers in particular - saw the island as fair game. Many other states, including great naval powers like France and Britain, found tribute to be cheaper than protecting their merchant fleets and simply bought peace from the corsairs. Corsica, however, would not pay. Even if the meager state finances had allowed it, the very notion of giving tribute to the Corsicans’ ancient enemies - the rapacious Moors who had terrorized the isle for a thousand years - was intolerable.

When Don Santo Antonmattei took charge of the new ministry of “commerce and the navy” in 1761, he was starting virtually from scratch. The “navy” consisted of only one warship: The Cyrne, a 10-gun sloop purchased from the British which had seen service in “King Theodore’s War” a decade earlier. Its crew had taken it to Malta during the French occupation to avoid seizure, and when it returned it was in a sorry state from neglect and poor maintenance. Corsica had neither the facilities nor the craftsmen to make the necessary repairs. To make a fresh start, Theodore authorized Don Santo to send an “expedition” to England with instructions to purchase “a swift frigate, in good repair, of 20 to 30 guns” and to recruit experienced sailors and artisans. His chosen envoys were his close friend and fellow Morsiglian Giacomo Giacomini di Porrata, who had also been a merchant captain in the Americas; and Giovan Battista Peri (or Perez), a Corsican-born Knight of Malta and an experienced corsair captain. They were also accompanied by Giovan Felice Valentini, a cousin and close political ally of Secretary of State Pasquale Paoli, who was taking up his post as Corsica’s new ambassador to Great Britain.

It was a good time to be in the market for secondhand ships. Now that the war was over, English ports were full of prizes of war and other surplus. The Admiralty was not interested in selling its most recent classes of ships, but they were willing to part with some older ships which no longer represented the cutting edge of frigate design. Porrata and Peri made a thorough excursion: They met with the Senior Naval Lord Admiral Edward Boscawen, visited the naval yards at Plymouth and Liverpool, and sought out sailors and officers languishing on half-pay who would agree to return to Corsica with them.

The ship they chose was the Rose, a 24-gun “post ship” launched in 1743 which they managed to acquire for £910.[2] Back in Corsica it was re-christened as the frigate Capraia, an homage to the crown prince. Armed with a main battery of 9-pounder guns, the Capraia was a powerful ship for its size and a match for most corsair vessels in a one-on-one fight. Its sailing qualities, however, left something to be desired. As British post ships often spent long periods of time “on station” overseas, more consideration was given to seaworthiness, cargo space, and crew comfort than speed or weatherliness.

One of the ships Porrata and Peri had examined in England was the Saltash, a sister ship of Corsica’s own Cyrne (ex-Merlin). They did not buy it as their instructions called for the purchase of a frigate, but they were intrigued by the substantial changes which the British had made to it. They had completely changed the sail plan, replacing the sloop’s two-masted snow rig with a three-masted ship rig, and had substantially increased its armament from ten to fourteen 6-pounder guns. Porrata and Peri took some measurements, and upon their return suggested to Antonmattei that a similar overhaul might be attempted with the aging Cyrne. The ship was taken to Livorno for repairs and refitting, which proved rather expensive but successfully returned the ship to service.

Initially the navy’s only other type of vessel was the felucca, a common type of single-masted fishing boat. In naval service these were equipped with oars and armed with petriere (swivel guns) and sometimes one or two small carriage guns. Although too weak to fight corsairs, they could easily catch and overawe an unarmed smuggler and remained in use as coastal patrol vessels. Over the course of the 1760s the navy also acquired larger “tartans” or tartane, one or two-masted lateen-rigged merchant vessels, which became its favored auxiliary ships. The tartana actually had a deck (unlike the open felucca) and could carry more cargo and a more respectable armament. Naval tartane were typically equipped with 4 to 8 “falcons” (probably 3 or 4 pounder carriage guns) along with petrieri. We know the names of only two such ships, the Ventura and the Rondone, but the navy possessed at least four tartane in 1768.[3]

The Corsican navy got off to a rough start, and 1764 was a particularly ignominious year. In June, a naval felucca and a private merchant pinco were taken by the Algerians off Capo Muro, just 15 miles from Ajaccio. Just two months later the navy very nearly lost its new flagship off the coast of Bastia when it was approached by five corsair vessels under oars. Thanks to its own sweeps and several civilian craft which tied tow ropes to the frigate, the Capraia managed to crawl back within range of Bastia’s citadel, and the corsairs were warned off by fire from the shore battery.

In response to these events the navy commissioned two galiots from Corsican shipbuilders, the Santa Devota and the Beato Alessandro. These were small galleys with sixteen banks of oars and lateen sails, armed with three guns in the bow and a number of petrieri and spingardi. With their shallow drafts they could pursue corsair vessels hiding in inshore waters, and could also serve as towing ships. These ships proved very useful additions to the fleet, and assisted the sailing warships in capturing a handful of small corsair vessels in Corsican coastal waters.

Model of a 16-bench galiot ​

Adequately crewing even this modest fleet was a major challenge. Some English sailors had been recruited by Porrata and Peri, but they did not last long; within weeks of their arrival Peri complained that the English were “particularly partial to our wine” and constantly drunk. Most were dismissed within a few months. As Corsican manpower was insufficient, the navy turned to other foreign sources, particularly Livorno and Malta. In 1770 only half the navy’s ordinary sailors were actual Corsicans.

The supply of native officers was considerably better. The kingdom had a modest but enthusiastic pool of experienced naval officers, most of whom were veterans of Maltese service - sometimes as actual knights, like Peri, but mostly as private corsairs who raided Turkish shipping under the legal protection of Maltese letters patent. Some had already sailed under a Corsican flag as privateers during the Revolution. These ex-corsairs had plenty of maritime experience and knew the Barbary enemy well, but most had served on feluccas and galleys and had little experience with modern sailing warships. To train them, the navy sought out foreign officers. British lieutenants Cole and Oakeley were hired by Porrata and Peri in England and fared better than their other countrymen, serving out their full contracts. A Dutchman, Lieutenant Pieters, was hired in 1763 on similar terms. The foreigners were known for imposing strict discipline, which did not endear them to either the crews or the proud ex-corsair Corsican officers. Nevertheless, they seem to have trained effective crews and imparted valuable skills to the Corsican officers.

The strategy of the Corsican navy during the 1760s was exceedingly conservative. Given the small size of the navy, the loss of even a single vessel meant losing a large investment in money, materiel, and manpower. It would be a massive blow to the strength of the navy and the prestige of the kingdom. As a result Corsican warships rarely left the coast, and after 1764 they were prohibited from sailing alone under most circumstances. The navy offered battle with the corsairs rarely and only under highly favorable conditions, such as when the squadron managed to find a single vessel or a handful of small ships cruising along the coast or hiding in a cove. Nevertheless, the navy had plenty of duties to keep its ships occupied. Because of Corsica’s difficult terrain and poor infrastructure, naval transport was often the fastest and cheapest way to move soldiers, goods, provisions, money, artillery, and munitions between the presidi, and this cargo needed to be protected. Naval transport was also necessary for the government’s salt provision, as most salt was produced on the eastern coast and needed to be moved elsewhere for distribution and sale. Although the navy’s anti-corsair patrols attract the most historical interest, by far the most common duty of Corsica’s warships was escorting the tartane, feluche, and private merchant craft.[4]

Model of a Corsican tartana​

The only true “expedition” of the Corsican Navy in the 1760s was in 1767, when the Capraia and Cyrne took part in a joint cruise with the Sardinian Navy. The Kingdom of Sardinia was also trying to establish its first sailing navy and had followed essentially the same playbook as the Corsicans, sending a mission to England to purchase ships and hire sailors. As the main interest of the Sardinians was protecting their regular convoys between Finale and the island of Sardinia, which passed directly through Corsican waters, a capable Corsican squadron that could help keep those waters free of pirates was absolutely in their interest. After several years of training and convoy duty, Sardinia’s British officers suggested embarking on a long cruise to give the crews some experience and perhaps capture a few prizes.

The combined fleet - the 40-gun San Carlo, the 36-gun San Vittorio, the 24-gun Capraia, and the 14-gun Cyrne - cruised for 78 days, visiting Sicily, Malta, and the Barbary coast. The fleet sighted two unidentified xebecs off Pantelleria which escaped, but had better luck on the return journey, when they sighted an Algerian flotilla off the southwestern coast of Sardinia and gave chase. Several ships escaped, but the fleet managed to overtake a barque and a galiot, which were hopelessly outgunned and surrendered after a brief cannonade.

As even this little flotilla represented a considerable cost to the state, the Corsican government was always looking for alternative means to raise money and defray its expenditures. The navy’s ships often carried private goods or civilian passengers for a fee when they did not have pressing official business. In 1763 the government approved a tax on maritime insurance known as the sicurtà (“security”) which went directly to the naval budget. Even with these revenue sources the navy only stayed afloat - literally - with the help of private donors, including the king himself, Prince Federico, Don Santo, and a handful of other noblemen. There was also a “subscription” started by Jewish traders in Ajaccio to help fund the construction of the galiots; as their business was trade and coral fighting piracy was a matter of self-interest, but it was also a means to demonstrate their patriotism and loyalty to the state at a time when the religious future of the kingdom seemed uncertain.

Spoiler: Corsican Warships of the 1760s

Capraia (ex-Rose), Frigate
Launched: 1743 (Commissioned 1762)
Armament: 20x9pdr (UD), 4x3pdr (QD), 12 swivels
Broadside: 96 lbs
Crew: 140 men
Length: 108 feet
Burthen: 445 tons

Cyrne (ex-Merlin), Ship-rigged Corvette
Launched: 1744 (Commissioned 1749)
Armament: 14x6pdr, 14 swivels
Broadside: 42 lbs
Crew: 110 men
Length: 91 feet
Burthen: 270 tons

Santa Devota, Galiot
Launched: 1765
Armament: 1x9pdr and 2x3pdr (bow), 10 swivels
Crew: 60
Length: 72 feet
Burthen: ?

Beato Alessandro, Galiot
Launched: 1766
Armament: 1x9pdr and 2x3pdr (bow), 10 swivels
Crew: 60
Length: 72 feet
Burthen: ?

Footnotes
[1] As an example, in 1737 the fleet of Algiers numbered fewer than twenty fighting ships, and the most formidable of them had a mere 18 guns. In 1760 this fleet had grown to twice its earlier size and included a pair of 26 gun xebecs.
[2] In British service the Rose mounted twenty 9-pdrs on the upper deck, two 9-pdrs on the lower deck, and two 3-pdrs on the quarterdeck. This configuration with a single pair of guns on the lower deck was something of a throwback; all future British frigates mounted their main guns only on the upper deck. In Corsican service the lower ports appear to have gone unused, and the main battery was only twenty 9-pounders. The Capraia remained a 24-gun ship, however, because the Corsicans added an additional pair of 3-pdr guns to the quarterdeck. This made the small quarterdeck rather crowded but also more defensible, which was considered worthwhile given the reliance of the Barbary corsairs on boarding tactics.
[3] The navy was always in need of tartanes and picked them up whenever it could get them at a discount. The Ventura was bought off the stocks in Livorno when the original owner went bankrupt, while the Rondone was a prize purchased from Tunisian corsairs in Ajaccio.
[4] The Capraia also served as the “royal yacht,” used by the king and his family members to traverse the isle when necessary. The frigate’s armament, seaworthiness, and (relative) roominess made it perfectly suited to transport Corsican dignitaries and royals.

 

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The Royal Corsican Army
Excerpts from Merganser Publishing's "Lace Warriors" Series #53: The Corsican Army
​

Almost everywhere mountainous, not terribly fertile and, for that very reason, sparsely populated, this island is nevertheless distinguished by four precious gifts from nature: Horses small in size and slender in shape, but tireless at work and almost made of iron; very generous wines, highly prized at the tables of great men, who make them their delights; very famous guard dogs; but above all, valiant, impetuous men, born for fighting, enemies of repose, so much so that Corsican soldiers have always been held in great honor in Italy and among other nations.

- Inscribed upon a 16th century map of Corsica in the Vatican by Ignazio Danti

Atypically for an 18th century monarch, King Theodore was sceptical of the value of a standing army for his kingdom. Certainly he required a modest royal guard, and he had supported the creation of the Royal Dragoons in 1754 to clamp down on vendetta killings and enforce the law in the rugged interior. He had personally pushed for the reestablishment of a navy, believing that an armed squadron was necessary to protect trade and fight the corsairs. When it came to a true army however - an armed force which existed not to defend the royal household, mete out justice, or guard commerce, but simply to defend the country - the king had always been dismissive. He scoffed at the idea that a few battalions of infantry could offer any meaningful protection against the intervention of a great power, and felt that an army would be a deplorable diversion of money and manpower from the economic development of the country. The kingdom’s independence could only be protected in the same manner in which it had been gained: with nationalist militia forces in the mountains.

Theodore’s beliefs were generally uncontroversial in the years immediately following independence, and in any case the kingdom’s strained finances and considerable debt made the maintenance of any such force impractical. The French occupation, however, changed some minds. “A few battalions of infantry” might not have driven the French from the country, but some argued that the kingdom’s complete lack of an army had encouraged the French to take greater liberties with Corsican property and sovereignty. Even before the end of the Four Years’ War, a “pro-military” faction began to emerge which did not share Theodore’s view of the essential uselessness of a standing army. They offered various practical arguments, but shared above all a conviction that a national army was a matter of national pride and status, without which Corsica would not be taken seriously by foreign powers.

The turning point came in 1764, when the “Saporiti Conspiracy” threatened to bring Corsica and Genoa to the brink of war. Although neither the king nor his ministers were interested in conflict with the Republic, the episode underlined just how powerless the kingdom actually was. Even if the Corsicans could never hope to field a regular army capable of deterring the likes of France, they might yet deter (or threaten) Corsica’s less formidable neighbors, the Republic included. The pro-military faction began to gain more traction and found prominent supporters in the cabinet and even the royal household, with the crown prince himself urging Theodore to consider some move towards a standing force.[1]

In early 1766 the king finally agreed to a compromise with the “militarists” by authorizing the creation of a royal military commission, staffed by ex-officers and foreign veterans, to study the matter and offer recommendations. To signal that the committee would be taken seriously, Theodore appointed Count Marcantonio Giappiconi, who had retired from the cabinet in 1762 after 25 years as minister of war, as its chair. After months of work, the commission ultimately compiled its recommendations as the Piano Generale del Militare Corso and submitted them to the government. Although Theodore made some revisions, he surprised many by signing off on the majority of the proposals. The revised plan was subsequently adopted by the new minister of war, Count Innocenzo di Mari, as the “1767 Establishment” of the Royal Corsican Army.[2]

Corsican Uniforms around 1770 (click to expand)​

The 1767 Establishment

The Piano Generale generally agreed with Theodore’s assessment that the militia was the bedrock of national defense, and offered various reforms to the militia system. But the plan also recommended the creation of a “model regiment” of regular infantry which could garrison the presidi, train officers, provide marine detachments to the navy, and serve as a professional core for the militia in the event of an attack. For reasons both political and practical, Giappiconi’s commission suggested that the “model regiment” be organized on Austrian doctrine.

The “Austrian” the ministry hired to assist them with this task was Baron Jakob von Lockhart, a well-traveled soldier of fortune. A Scotsman, James Lockhart had joined the Jacobite uprising in 1745 at the age of twenty. After the uprising’s failure, Lockhart managed to escape capture and fled all the way to Persia, where he enlisted in the army of Nader Shah. He did not remain long in Persian service, however, as in 1748 he enlisted in the Austrian army just in time to see the last few months of the War of Austrian Succession. By the outbreak of the Four Years’ War he was a captain of grenadiers, and so impressed his superiors with his energy and courage that by war’s end he had been promoted to lieutenant-colonel and made a baron by Maria Theresa.[3][A]

Baron Lockhart seems to have been a bit loose with his own qualifications - he either told the Corsicans or allowed them to believe that he was a former “officer” in the Persian army (he was not), an Austrian “general” (he was not that either), and that he had been recommended to them by the Austrian high command (also not true). Nevertheless, he was serious about his offer to “teach the Corsicans to be proper soldiers,” and was given wide latitude to assemble, organize, and drill the regiment as he saw fit. Baron Lockhart served in Corsica for just two years before returning to the Austrian army, but his specifications for the regiment formed the basis for the Regolamento del 1769 per la Fanteria Corsa, which would remain the official reference for drill and procedures in the Royal Corsican Army for decades.

Spoiler: Organization and Regiments of the Corsican Army

Esercito Reale Corsa (Royal Corsican Army)[4]
Guardia Reale, 150 men:

Guardia Nobile del Corpo, 30 men in one squadron​

Guardia Trabanti del Corpo, 120 men in one company​

Truppe Regolati, 960 men:

Reggimento Dragoni Reali, 360 men in three squadrons of two companies​

Reggimento di Piede, 600 men in one battalion of six companies​

Truppe Ausiliarie, 480 men:

Bombardieri, 120 men in three companies​

Dragoni Presidiali, 360 men in nine companies​

Guardia Nobile del Corpo. The Noble Life Guard or Adligen-Leibgarde, frequently referred to as the Guardia Nobile (“Noble Guard”) or the Guardia Nera (“Black Guard”), originated in the early 1760s as a part of the royal household but little is known about the unit before the 1767 Establishment. Ostensibly this was an independent company of heavy cavalry, but the Noble Guard was principally a ceremonial household guard which acted as the sovereign’s personal escort. Troopers were required to be native-born Corsicans under the age of 30 from noble families who professed the Catholic faith. Aside from merely adding to the prestige of the crown, this showpiece guard unit was intended to teach military skills to - and cultivate the loyalty of - the sons of noble families who served as the king’s honored companions.

Troopers were to ride a black cavalry horse and to be armed with a carbine, a pair of pistols, and a pallasch (broadsword). Owing to the lack of cavalry horses on Corsica and the expense of importing them, it seems more likely that they rode the native horse or paganacciu (which, though not much of a warhorse, was indeed available in black). The king himself was the ex officio captain of the squadron, and his own military uniform was essentially a fancier version of theirs. Actual command was exercised by a tenente capitano (“lieutenant-captain”).

Guardia Trabanti del Corpo. The Trabant Life Guard or Trabanten-Leibgarde, variously known as the Guardia Verde (“Green Guard”), Guardia dei Granatieri (“Grenadier Guard”), or simply I Trabanti (“the Trabants”),[5] was an independent grenadier company which evolved from the king’s old foreign regiment. Although Theodore’s foreign troops during the revolution had been mainly German, in the 50s and 60s they were joined by increasing numbers of Scots, Irishmen, and (non-Corsican) Italians. The company rolls of this extremely eclectic unit also included Dutch, Englishmen, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Swiss, and one Courlander. While the Noble Guard served as a ceremonial escort the Trabants were the crown’s day-to-day security force, standing guard at the royal residences and providing bodyguards for the extended royal family.

The Trabants were to be armed with a musket, a bayonet, and a saber. The captain of this company was styled as comandante and ranked as a major. By tradition, all orders in the company were given in German. Enlisted men were required to wear mustaches.

Dragoni Reali. The Royal Dragoons were a national gendarmerie created to combat banditry and enforce justice. Although not part of the Royal Guard, the dragoons gained a reputation as an elite unit and recruiting was highly selective. The Piano Generale advised that prospective troopers should display superior initiative, moral integrity, marksmanship, and physical fitness. They were certainly the most active unit of the army during peacetime, as they were continually employed in patrolling Corsica’s rugged terrain and hunting down outlaws and bandits. They received only the most rudimentary cavalry training, as it was assumed that in wartime they would serve as “mounted light infantry” rather than cavalry.

Theoretically, dragoons were to be armed with a carbine, a brace of pistols, and a cavalry saber. In practice they were given considerable latitude to equip themselves how they (or their captain) wished. Carbines were popular but not always available, and troopers might instead carry an infantry musket or cispra (a very long, small-caliber musket). Cavalry sabers were rarely worn and probably not issued to most dragoons, who preferred more practical tools like knives, hatchets, or hangers. The mount of choice was the small but surefooted paganacciu, the native Corsican horse.[6] In contrast to the clean-shaven infantry and the mustachioed Trabants, the Royal Dragoons were permitted to grow full beards, which probably began as a practical concession but quickly became a jealously guarded privilege.

Reggimento di Piede. The Regiment of Foot was assembled in 1767 under the supervision of Baron Lockhart as a “model regiment” organized and trained to Austrian standards. The regiment consisted of one battalion with six companies, five of fusiliers and one of grenadiers. Grenadiers received a slightly higher salary than fusiliers and were exempt from certain menial duties. The infantry’s peacetime duties were primarily to garrison the presidi, maintain public order, and provide marine detachments to the Corsican Navy.

All infantrymen were issued a musket and bayonet. Grenadiers also carried a short saber or “hanger.”

Bombardieri. Formed in 1764 after the near-loss of the Capraia to corsairs demonstrated the acute need for trained garrison artillerymen, the bombardieri were citizen-gunners based on the Genoese model. They were typically recruited from the ranks of urban tradesmen, preferably those with relevant skills (e.g. carpenters, smiths, wheelwrights, coopers). Though they were part-timers, the bombardieri were under army jurisdiction and subject to military justice while on duty. They were required to pass a technical exam and were placed on active duty for a portion of every year to make sure their skills didn’t get too rusty. Bombardieri were paid while on active duty and received a number of perks, including exemption from militia duty and the right to wear a sword with civilian clothes. The 1767 Establishment organized them into three companies based out of Bastia, Calvi, and Ajaccio, each headed by a capo bombardiere.

Bombardiers were issued a linstock and a short saber. The linstock had a spearhead on the end and could theoretically be used as a half-pike, but the saber was a more practical weapon of self-defense. The bombardieri companies frequently marched with their full panoply in civic parades and celebrations.

Dragoni Presidiali. The “presidials” were auxiliaries who served as a provincial constabulary. They were raised by and reported to the royal luogotenenti and were not formally part of the army. These part-time gendarmes were required to undergo periodic training and show up for active duty for a portion of every month on a rotating calendar, although inactive men might be called up in an emergency. Their duties were to patrol the roads, carry out the acts of the luogotenente, enforce local justice, and assist the army with maintaining the general peace. Although established as 40-man companies on paper, in reality their numbers varied widely according to the needs and resources of the individual luogotenente. Like the bombardieri, they were exempt from militia duty and allowed to carry a sword in civilian dress.

Presidials were expected to provide their own horse and musket, and many carried pistols or swords as well. As a consequence, most presidials were local proprietari and notabili with sufficient means to own a riding horse, although a luogotenente could subsidize his presidials from his own pockets if he so desired.

Recruitment and Lifestyle

The Corsican government always had more recruits than it could afford to enlist, and not just because of the traditional prestige of military service in Corsican society. Because of the scarcity of arable land and the Corsican tradition of dividing land between sons, there were many young men of respectable families who nevertheless found themselves without enough land to support themselves adequately. For such downwardly-mobile peasants, wearing the king’s uniform was seen as an honorable and stable alternative to working another man’s land as a farm laborer or sharecropper. This abundance of volunteers allowed the army to maintain some standards. Certainly its soldiers were usually poor and often illiterate - they were Corsicans, after all - but unlike many of its continental counterparts, the Corsican army never stooped so low as to dredge up indigents, vagabonds, or petty criminals to fill its ranks.

During peacetime, a Corsican soldier was required to be on patrol duty only 60 hours per month - ten six-hour shifts. At most other times he was permitted to wear civilian clothes. He lived in the barracks, but the barracks was open and families were allowed to visit regularly. Women and children were common sights in Corsican garrisons. Their substantial amount of off-duty time meant that many soldiers also held down part-time jobs with local artisans and tradesmen, which supplemented their rather modest army salary. A soldier might occasionally be called away from this routine for special tasks, most notably marine duty on a warship, but this was relatively uncommon.

This is not to say that a soldier’s job was a lark. Penalties for desertion or being absent from patrol were severe, and discipline was not forgotten in peacetime. Drill was rigorous, and inspections of uniforms and arms were frequent. Soldiering was a somewhat dangerous profession even during peacetime, for the close quarters of men in the barracks meant that they died from outbreaks of contagious disease at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the population. Yet such hazards were not unique to the Corsican army, and the status and perks of soldiering were considered by many to be worth the risks.

Uniforms

The 1767 infantry uniform was designed to accommodate the ministry’s demand for the strictest economy. It was shorter and tighter than coats of the Revolutionary era so as to save money on fabric, in keeping with the general trend in European military fashion away from the long tails and voluminous sleeves which had been popular in the early 18th century. Other cost-saving features included the narrow false cuffs, the small front lapel, the use of undyed wool ("natural black" for the coat, plain white for the waistcoat and breeches), and a lack of any dyed inner coat lining. Only the cuffs, lapels, and collar of the coat required dye (although sometimes the "natural black" coat was further darkened with an inexpensive gall dye).

This rather conventional and austere uniform was mainly notable for the choice of headgear. The tricorne had been the dominant military hat on the continent since the late 17th century, but in the mid-1760s the Austrians had officially adopted the kaskett, a round leather cap with a false front, as the standard headgear for all line infantry. Baron Lockhart assured the skeptical ministry that while the leather kaskett was more expensive than a cloth tricorne, it symbolized a “modern” army and would actually save money in the long run as it would not need to be replaced as often. The Corsican caschetto bore a tombac plate embossed with the royal cipher (“TR” for Theodorus Rex surrounded by laurel branches and surmounted by a crown). Tricornes continued to be worn by commissioned officers.[7]

The uniforms of the royal guard units retained a somewhat more “French” look with larger cuffs and no lapels, but some changes were made under the influence of the 1767 uniform (including a shorter coat). The Royal Dragoons were compelled to adopt the 1767 uniform but resisted the caschetto, which they deemed both impractical and demeaning (as it was “infantry” headgear). They retained their French-style dragoon forage caps.

Spanish M1757 Infantry Musket​

Weaponry

The arms ordinances of the 1767 Establishment must be seen as highly aspirational. Although the Corsican government had a substantial hoard of smuggled and captured small arms on hand at the end of the Revolution, a survey of government arsenals in the wake of the French occupation painted a grim picture - the small arms were of obsolete designs and mismatched calibers, and many were unsafe or inoperable owing to poor maintenance, heavy wear, or missing parts. The best specimens were given to the royal guard, while the dragoons not infrequently had to - or preferred to - use their own personal firearms.

Such was the inadequacy of this stockpile that the navy felt it necessary to purchase 300 “reconditioned” Dutch muskets in 1763 to equip its sailors. These were older surplus muskets from government arsenals which were purchased by private gunsmiths and refurbished for export. This particular batch had barrels which were reinforced with brass bands and cut down by several inches to make them more durable and less awkward to use on a ship. Another purchase of reconditioned Dutch weapons was made by the army in 1767, but this shipment seems to have been less than satisfactory given a complaint by Minister di Mari that the Dutch vendors had sent them the same quality of guns “which I am told they trade to the Africans.”

“Modern” weaponry was introduced only in 1769, when the ministry purchased 250 brand new muskets from the Spanish government. The Spanish “M1757” musket was heavily influenced by French muskets, which had always been held in high esteem by the naziunali and comprised some of the best pieces in Corsican arsenals. The M1757 had a somewhat fragile lock, but was otherwise considered to be well-engineered, reliable, and accurate (for a musket). Initially intended only for the royal guard and the infantry grenadiers, these weapons proved so popular that the ministry soon began “manufacturing” them domestically. This involved importing barrels and locks from abroad and contracting Corsican gunsmiths to assemble the finished product. The result, known to modern firearms historians as a “Bastia musket” (as they were proofed and marked at the royal armory in Bastia), was a virtual clone of the M1757 albeit with a beech stock instead of the more expensive walnut. No carbine version was produced in this period, as the M1757 was already somewhat short for an infantry musket and the army deemed it suitable for dragoon use.

Footnotes
[1] Prince Federico’s militarism went further than most; he was inclined to see Corsica’s military tradition as a resource no less valuable than olives, wine, or timber, which might be profitably employed in the manner of the “mercenary” principalities of Germany. This was not on the table in the 1760s, but it served Federico’s interest to support the creation of an army which he might one day utilize as Theodore’s successor.
[2] Count Innocenzo was appointed to the ministry in 1762 at the age of 45. His father, Brandimarte “Brandone” di Mari, was a notable from the Castagniccian village of Taglio who served as one of the Dodici (the advisory council of Corsica under Genoese rule). When the rebellion broke out Brandimarte defected to the insurgents almost immediately, and was one of the leaders of the first rebel attack on Bastia in 1730. Upon Theodore’s arrival in 1736, Brandimarte rallied to the king’s banner and was made a hereditary knight and a colonel. Theodore later elevated him to the dignity of count and awarded him with the Order of the Redemption. His son Innocenzo, who was 19 years old at the time of Theodore’s coronation, fought at Borgo and San Pellegrino and led a company of Tavagnese militiamen at the final siege of Bastia.
[3] It is unclear exactly how Lockhart came to the attention of the Corsican war ministry, but the influence of the “Jacobite network” seems likely. Scottish and Irish exiles, most of them either Jacobites or descendants of Jacobite families, were prominent in both the Austrian army and Theodore’s royal guard.
[4] It must be emphasized that the troop numbers used by the 1767 Establishment were on paper only. All 18th century armies were under-strength in peacetime, and the Corsican army was no exception, although its numbers were limited more by available funds than problems recruiting. The actual strength of the regiment of infantry seems to have hovered around 400 soldiers.
[5] A “trabant,” meaning “satellite” or “companion,” was a bodyguard of a landsknecht officer. From the 16th century the name began to be applied to the bodyguards of princes, most famously the Swedish Drabanten of Gustav Vasa. In the 18th century certain ceremonial palace guard units of Sweden, Bavaria, Saxony, and various small German states still retained the name. The Grand Dukes of Tuscany were protected by a unit of German/Swiss Trabanti until the end of Medici rule in 1737.
[6] Small and inelegant, the native paganacciu would have been laughably out of place in a continental cavalry unit but was well-suited to the duties of the Royal Dragoons. The short and plain-looking Corsican horse did not impress many foreign observers, but the Corsicans appreciated their strong, compact frames, their resistance to fatigue, their “valorous” character, and their incredible surefootedness. This last trait is best illustrated by the accounts of French officers during the First Intervention. “The Corsicans atop their ponies,” one officer wrote after an encounter with some mounted naziunali, “charged at us across terrain we could not even walk over.” Another marvelled at a Corsican horse which “galloped down a steep hill on which one of our own horses would have killed itself a hundred times over.”
[7] Another “Austrianism” introduced by Lockhart was the feldzeichen (“field sign”), a sprig of leaves (for the Austrians, oak in summer and fir in winter) affixed to the hats of Austrian soldiers to distinguish their own troops from those of other white-coated armies. This was not really a problem for the black-coated Corsicans, but nevertheless Lockhart had his regiment wear a feldzeichen of laurel during field exercises (possibly as a nod to the “laurel crown” of King Theodore). This “rametto d’alloro” caught on and became something of a symbol of the infantry.

Timeline Notes
[A] James Lockhart was a real person who apparently did go all the way from Scotland to Persia, enlisted in the army of Nader Shah, and then came back to Europe to start a very successful career in the Austrian army. “Jakob von Lockhart” was eventually made a major general and a count of the empire, and died in 1790. He was the possessor of the “Lee Penny,” a magical amulet acquired by an ancestor while crusading in Spain which was said to have phenomenal healing powers, and kept it in a golden snuffbox given to him by Maria Theresa. Among other exploits, he is claimed to have held a fake funeral for his (still living) brother in order to cheat British inheritance laws; the casket was full of stones.

 

[Carp]

Sowing the Seeds

A basket of Corsican citrons​

Despite King Theodore’s great interest in promoting trade, the Corsican economy was overwhelmingly a rural economy - and not a very advanced rural economy at that. The crops, tools, and methods used by the Corsican farmer had remained virtually unchanged for centuries. A new generation of Corsican notables, raised in a free state and increasingly aware of the advances being made in “enlightened” Europe, set their minds to the task of bringing Corsican agriculture - and thus Corsica - into the modern age.

Corsican “ignorance” of modern crops and techniques had shocked Henri Léonard Bertin, who had famously complained in the 1750s that the Corsicans “know nothing except how to fire a musket.” Bertin, however, was sometimes too quick to blame the Corsicans for their own poverty. He had railed against the “irrational” crop selection of the peasants, who often planted crops in unsuitable soils and climes, but the rugged terrain and lack of roads forced villages to make subpar choices: If you cannot reliably import grain you must grow your own, no matter how unfavorable the conditions are for wheat. Isolated from any “national” market, let alone international trade, most villages could not grow cash crops even if they had possessed the means and expertise.

Bertin also observed many social and legal obstacles to prosperity, some of which have already been mentioned. The need for diverse holdings and the practice of partible inheritance led to landholdings often being small and scattered.[1] Land rights were often complex, with multiple owners and discrete shares of property (a room in a house, one part of an irrigation system, or even a branch of a chestnut tree). Traditional grazing rights on stubble and fallow fields interfered with enclosure, the planting of “un-grazable” crops (like the potato), and the use of year-round crop rotation.

The dull business of land reform was never one of Theodore’s favorite subjects, but he did issue some constructive edicts in the 1750s. The division of land parcels below a certain size was prohibited, and the threshold was revised upwards in later years. Land dowries were banned, and a man’s eldest married son (or eldest son, if none were married) was declared his sole legal heir if he died intestate. A registrar’s office was established to record wills and deeds, and efforts were made to send advocates and notaries to rural communities to help draft these documents. More transformative reforms, however, had to wait for the new generation of “enlightened” Corsican leaders. Secretary Pasquale Paoli and his fellow “Asphodelians” in the post-1764 government considered land reform to be a priority. Like the proponents of enclosure in England, they argued that village commons and open fields were inefficient and discouraged the adoption of modern techniques and methods. They drafted proposals to allow farmers to enclose their own land and to buy out or dissolve competing use rights, to allow villages to enclose and privatize their own corporate commons, to encourage the cultivation and enclosure of “wastelands," and to offer incentives for farmers to adopt new crops and methods.

The ultimate objective of the enlightened reformers, however, was radically different from that of the English gentry. The English were moving inexorably towards “landlord capitalism,” in which large, consolidated estates were worked by wage labor. To this end it was necessary to dispossess the peasantry not only from the commons but their own smallholdings, in order to grow the great estates and create a “free but landless peasantry” which was entirely dependent upon wages. But the Corsican reformers had no desire to create “great estates,” nor were they in favor of wage labor or wholesale dispossession. On the contrary, they envisioned enclosure as strengthening the landholding peasantry, as the privatization of common land would presumably allow more peasants to ascend to the ranks of proprietari, those who subsisted wholly off their own property. While this might dispossess poorer peasants who were dependent on the commons, the reformers argued that this problem would be solved by the cultivation of more acres and increased productivity from the new techniques that land reform would enable.[2]

Their arguments were not purely economic. Many asfodelati saw enclosure as a means to undermine the power of the gigliati, their political rivals, believing that a peasantry which was more secure in its own property would be less vulnerable to the influence and encroachments of the estate-owning sgio. Reformers pointed out that a majority of vendetta killings involved disputes over land or inheritance, and claimed that enclosure, exclusive fee-simple ownership, and well-regulated inheritance laws would end the vendetta as an institution. More broadly, reformers argued that free proprietorship would ensure the civic morality of the people, as the free, independent, patriotic proprietario was the only sure foundation of Corsican “democracy” and national defense.

Despite this enthusiasm, Paoli and his allies soon became discouraged by a lack of support from the crown. The Corsican government did not have effective legislative powers, which made them dependent upon the king’s edicts for real reform. Theodore, however, was always a bit nervous about making any drastic moves that might cost him his popularity among the peasantry. Taking on the Church was quite radical enough without also undertaking the Herculean task of completely transforming rural life. The king’s own idea of agricultural development did not involve peasant land reform so much as the encouragement of cash crops grown for export.

Corsican olives had attracted the kingdom’s first significant foreign backer, the Dutch syndicate later known as the Nederlands-Corsicaanse Compagnie (NCC), which established a “factory” at Isola Rossa in the 1750s for the barreling and export of oil. The early years after independence had been promising, but the Company’s presence had been little appreciated by the French. After the Convention of Ajaccio the French seized control of Isola Rossa and effectively shut down the NCC’s operations. The Company regained control of its factory in 1760, but business never resumed. A plunge in grain prices after the Four Years’ War ruined a number of over-leveraged bankers and speculators and led to a general banking crisis in Amsterdam. One of the most spectacular collapses involved the firm of Leendert de Neufville, an NCC shareholder whose father Pieter de Neufville had been one of the original founders of the Syndicate. For the NCC, whose books were already deep in the red, this disaster proved to be the final straw. The Company was dissolved in 1762 and its remaining assets in Corsica were acquired by the crown. Individual Dutch merchants would continue to buy oil in Corsica but they enjoyed no special favor, and their share of this trade grew ever smaller in comparison to the activity of British, French, and Danish merchants.

Corsican women gathering olives near Isola Rossa, early 20th century​

In an unfortunate twist for the NCC, the years following the Company’s collapse saw the beginning of a sustained rise in olive oil prices across Europe. Rising prices in the late 1760s can be linked to the 1764-67 famine in Naples, a major oil producer, but demand was also growing over the long term as a consequence of a new phenomenon: the Industrial Revolution. The steam engines and mechanical looms beginning to appear in Britain could not function without lubrication, and olive oil was considered to be the best industrial lubricant available. Corsican olive oil, however, was not favored for this purpose - it wasn’t good enough.

The olive oil produced in Corsica was of a low grade marked by relatively high acidity. This was perfectly suitable for common consumption and for soapmaking, which had been the NCC’s main use for Corsican oil. Low-acidity oil, however - known as olio fino or “virgin” olive oil - worked better as a lubricant, burned more efficiently in lamps, lasted much longer before turning rancid, and was preferred at the tables of the wealthy. Olio fino was thus in great demand, and could command up to twice the price of common oil. To make olio fino, however, it was necessary to prune the trees regularly and pick olives earlier, when they were harder and less ripe. These practices were largely foreign to Corsica, and crushing unripe olives required new and stronger milling machines and presses. Although the island had many streams capable of powering mills, very few Corsicans had the capital or knowledge to construct and operate the required marchinery.[3] Some screw presses were introduced into the Balagna in the 1760s, but milling technology still lagged well behind the continent and marketable olio fino comprised a negligible fraction of Corsican output.

Oil and wine continued to be the isle’s most important agricultural exports, but new crops also began to make an appearance. Theodore had conceived the “crown estates” as not merely a source of revenue for himself and his household, but a “laboratory” in which new and beneficial plants could be tested and cultivated. The director of this research was Salvadore Ginestra, a Roman-educated botanist and Theodore’s minister of agriculture. Although Ginestra experimented with a number of different crops, his most promising experiments in the 1760s involved tobacco. Tobacco, in fact, had been grown on Corsica since the late 16th century and was still widely cultivated; peasants sowed their tobacco in empty livestock pens during spring (as the soil there came pre-fertilized), harvested the leaves in August, and dried them in open air. The variety they planted, however, was Nicotiana rustica, which was a hardy variety but produced a strong, harsh smoke. This was good enough for the pipes of the peasants, but there was no export market for N. rustica. Sophisticated tobacco consumers preferred the milder and smoother Nicotiana tabacum.

Ginestra managed to obtain N. tabacum seeds from France, and after several false starts he eventually succeeded in establishing tobacco farms in in western Corsica at Cargese (near the former Greek colony of Paomia) and Campo dell'Oro at the mouth of the Gravona. In the 1770s N. tabacum cultivation was also introduced to the upper Tavignano, east of Corti. The growing and production process proved challenging; N. tabacum was a temperamental crop requiring intensive labor and large amounts of fertilizer, and Ginestra’s plantations were necessarily limited in scale. Corsica did not export any significant quantity of tobacco in the 1760s, but Ginestra's experimental farms were the start of a very successful venture. Within just a few decades tobacco would become one of Corsica’s primary exports, and by the end of the century Ajaccio would be almost as well known for fine cigars as for coral beads.

The potato, a fellow nightshade, was also introduced to Corsica in this period. The potato had existed in Italy for 200 years, but it had never caught on owing mainly to the conservatism of the peasantry and the feudal society they lived in. The Neapolitan famine of 1764 re-ignited Italian interest in this New World crop, although it must be conceded that this interest was mainly confined to the enlightened literati and had little immediate effect on Italian farmers. Potatoes in Corsica were only marginally more successful. Ginestra purchased a load of potatoes from English traders in 1764 and established a few plots, and in 1768 Theodore issued a famous “potato edict” in which he required all tenants on crown land, as well as all holders of estates over a certain size, to grow a potato patch using seed potatoes from the crown estates.

Trying to establish potato culture by fiat did not turn out very well. Corsican farmers knew nothing about potato cultivation - or potato consumption, for that matter. Many gave up rather quickly, claiming that their land was unsuitable, and the edict was largely repealed after Theodore’s death. The potato also suffered from a problem of perception, for even Ginestra did not consider the potato (which he called a tartufo, “truffle”) as a field crop. In his opinion it was a garden crop that was best used as a “flour extender,” not a staple in its own right. Thus, while small-scale potato cultivation did continue in the 1770s (mainly in the north and east), it remained largely restricted to garden plots alongside crops like beans and lettuce and did not catch on among the wider peasantry.

Alongside new plants, this period also saw the revival of old crops with new and potentially lucrative applications. Chief among these was the citron, known locally as the alimea. The Corsican citron, grown largely in Capo Corso and the vicinity of Bastia, was a particularly sweet variety of the fruit and was highly regarded for the production of succade (candied peel) and jam. Corsica had long been one of the major producers of citrons and the fruit had been an important export in the Genoese period, but its production had been disrupted by the Revolution and the ensuing emigration of Genoese proprietors in Capo Corso. Traditionally, citrons had been shipped whole to Genoa where they were pulped and brined in preparation for export, and these methods and facilities had to be established from scratch in post-independence Corsica. Nevertheless, by the 1760s citron exports were booming - thanks, in large part, to the Jews.

An early 18th century silver etrog box from Germany​

Known as the etrog or esrog in Hebrew, the citron had great ritual and symbolic importance in Judaism. In particular, a fresh etrog was a component of the ritual feast of Sukkot. In the 16th century, rabbinical authorities ruled that only ungrafted citrons could be used for religious purposes, which ruled out most citrons from Italy and Spain where the fruit trees were typically grafted to improve their hardiness. For once, Corsica’s lack of agricultural sophistication actually became an advantage, as by the 18th century it was one of the few places in Europe where ungrafted citrons were still produced. As citrons could not be grown in the colder climates of central and northern Europe, Ashkenazi communities were particularly dependent on the Yanover Etrog (“Genoa citron,” so called because it was exported from Genoa), as well as etrogim from Apulia and Ottoman Greece.

As citron production recovered and news of Theodore’s “emancipation” spread, buying a Corsican etrog was seen by many Ashkenazim as not only the fulfillment of a ritual duty but an act of support for Theodoran tolerance, the Judeo-Corsican community, and Jewish emancipation more generally. Various rabbis from central Europe in the late 18th century not only affirmed the suitability of Corsican etrogim, but declared that they were preferred for ritual use over citrons imported from other nations. For prosperous Ashkenazi families, obtaining a Corsican etrog for Sukkot was simultaneously a symbol of status, solidarity, and piety. Whole, ungrafted Corsican citrons were exported as far as Poland and Russia, where the treasured fruits were carefully kept in decorative wooden or silver boxes by families who had never even seen a citron tree.[4] This trade was very lucrative for Corsican citron growers, especially because the Jews wanted their citrons whole, which meant that their product could be sold immediately at a good price without any of the processing or brining that was normally necessary for citron export.[5]

Another other old crop used in a new way was mulberry, which had been introduced to the island by the Genoese in the 16th century alongside the chestnut. Up to this point the Corsicans had grown the mulberry mainly for fruit and fodder (as the leaves could be fed to animals), but Theodore had realized from the very beginning of his reign that Corsican mulberry trees were no different than those grown on mainland Italy to feed silkworms. Building a Corsican silk industry had long been one of his aspirations, but it was not until the 1760s that he was able to find the capital and expertise to make it a reality.

A key figure in this enterprise was the Tuscan radical Filippo Mazzei, a physician turned merchant who sailed to London in 1756 and fell in love with “English liberty.” He had worked there as a language teacher and befriended Ambassador Paoli. Upon returning home, however, he was condemned by the Pisan Inquisition for attempting to import an “immense quantity of banned books” and had to flee Tuscany. He took refuge in Corsica, where his friend Paoli was now Secretary of State, and became convinced that the Corsican Kingdom was the “sole redoubt” of liberty and enlightenment in Italy. Although the Corsican government was no British parliamentary monarchy, there was no oppressive feudal order and censorship was nonexistent. He visited Rousseau, was inducted into the Order of the Asphodel, and personally offered his services to King Theodore.

Diagram of a Piedmontese reeling machine, c. 1750​

In 1766 Mazzei managed to smuggle live cocoons out of Lucca which were successfully established at a royal mulberry orchard near Oletta. In that year Theodore chartered the Royal Silk Company (Compagnia Reale di Seta), a semi-autonomous royal corporation created to pool private investment in Corsican silk production. Funding was secured from Corsican, Jewish, and particularly English investors. The British silk industry was facing a crisis of supply, and new sources of good quality raw silk were eagerly sought after.[6] The Company hired a number of Piedmontese experts while Mazzei obtained British-made reeling machines. These machines were set up in a “filature” (a facility for silk reeling) at Oletta, and a more advanced water-powered reeling mill was built at Rutali in 1770. A London newspaper claimed in 1769 that the new Corsican silkworms were “healthy and vigorous” and that the quality of Corsican silk was “as fine as, if not superior to” Piedmontese silk. This must be taken with a grain of salt - and whatever the quality, the quantity produced in the Nebbio were very modest - but clearly Corsica was capable of making a decent and marketable product.

Although clearly not all of his ideas had met with wild success, Theodore regarded his agricultural export policy in the 1760s with considerable pride. Corsica’s presence in international trade was growing and Corsican ports were busier than they had ever been under the stultifying rule of the Genoese. Most Corsicans, however, remained distant from these new developments. The commercial production of oil, wine, citrons, tobacco, and silk was concentrated mainly in the northern plains, Capo Corso, and the vicinity of Ajaccio. Although the rural economy of the interior certainly benefited from the prolonged peace and export revenues did fund projects in the interior (particularly roads), there was a growing sense that most Corsicans were being left behind. This perception only made the demands of the reformers more urgent. A reckoning was coming - but it would not be on Theodore’s watch.


Footnotes
[1] The equal division of property between sons is often held up as the Corsican norm, but in practice this was far from absolute. Corsican families were not ignorant of the problems of infinitely dividing the family patrimony; a common saying in the Niolo was “parte richessa, torna poverta" (part the wealth and poverty follows). As such, many farmers circumvented or simply ignored this custom to concentrate the wealth in the hands of a single married son (usually, but not always, the eldest). Other sons might continue to live with the family and remain unmarried (known as fa a ziu, “to act as an uncle”) or might be encouraged to emigrate, which was historically a major source of Corsican mercenaries. In general, the poorer a family was, the more likely they were to practice impartible inheritance. Thus, far from resenting the Theodoran move towards single-heir inheritance as a violation of custom, many peasant families welcomed it as codifying and strengthening a practice which was essential to their survival.
[2] Notably, the reformers were not against all commons. They were perfectly fine with maintaining most coastal lowlands as commons for seasonal farming and grazing, as due to endemic malaria much of this land could not be permanently cultivated anyway. To enclose these lands would be a virtual declaration of war upon all the shepherds in Corsica, a prospect which nobody relished.
[3] There was also an incentive problem. In Corsica, mills were generally leased to tenants by their owners. The amount of the lease was the same regardless of how many olives the tenant milled or how much oil they yielded, so mill owners gained nothing from investing in new technology to increase efficiency or enhance the quality of oil produced.
[4] Empress Maria Theresa famously imposed an annual tax of 40,000 florins on the Jews of Bohemia for the right to import citrons, knowing full well what they would pay dearly to procure them.
[5] Some of the earliest Jewish settlement in Bastia was associated with the citron trade. While the citrons themselves were grown by gentile Corsicans, it was useful to have a few resident Jewish merchants who could verify the ungrafted nature of the plants and assist foreign buyers with arranging purchases.
[6] The British considered Italian silk to be the highest quality, but it was expensive and sometimes restricted; the King of Sardinia had banned all raw silk exports to protect his domestic silk weavers. Persian and Indian silk was cheaper, but of mediocre quality. In their quest for alternatives the British had attempted to establish sericulture in Georgia and South Carolina, but it failed to catch on. The main problem was slavery, as silk production required a skilled workforce and simply could not compete with the per-acre profit margins of slave-harvested cash crops like indigo and rice.