Part 12

One of the sketches in my friend's portfolio was taken in the recess of a bastion, and it required some manœuvring to interpose our Corsican friend's portly person between the sketcher and the French sentry, as he passed and repassed—an office which our patriotic guide performed with much satisfaction—while a liberty was taken contrary to the rules of fortified places.

[Illustration: CITADEL OF CORTE.]

The view from the top of the citadel, the centre of so magnificent a panorama, may be well imagined. We now commanded the confluence of the two rivers, the Tavignano and the Restonica, beneath the walls, the eye tracing up the torrents to the gorges from which they rushed, while the details of the town, the gardens, and vineyards, and the ruined convents on the neighbouring hills, were brought distinctly under view; and the mountains towered above our heads, fitting bulwarks of the island capital.

In the evening we strolled down the eastern suburb, and, crossing the bridge over the Tavignano, rambled on to the hill above, and the ruins of the Franciscan convent where Paoli assembled the legislative assembly, and in which the Anglo-Corsican parliament met while Corsica was united to England. The lithographic sketch of Corte was taken from beyond the bridge. Faithful as it is, one feels that neither pen nor pencil can do justice to such a scene. Art fails to lend the colouring of the tawny-orange vines, the pale-green olive-trees, the warm evening tints glowing on the purple hills, the mass of shade on the mountain sides first buried in twilight, the grey rocks, and, far away, aērial peaks vanishing in distance.

A pleasant thing is the evening stroll on the outskirts of town or village, where life offers so much novelty. How graceful the forms of those girls at the fountain, dipping their pitchers of antique form and a glossy green! Poising them on their heads with one arm raised, how lightly they trip back to the town, laughing and talking in the sweetest of tongues—sweet in their mouths even in its insular dialect!

A lazy Corsican is leading a goat, scarcely more bearded and shaggy than its owner. Others, still lazier, and wrapped in the rough _pelone_ hanging from their shoulders like an Irishman's frieze coat, bestride diminutive mules, while their wives trudge by the side, carrying burdens of firewood or vegetables on their heads and shoulders. Waggons, drawn by oxen and loaded with wine-casks, slowly creak along the road.

It is dusk as we lounge up the suburb, and the rude houses piled up round the base of the citadel look gloomier than ever. Light from a blazing pine-torch flashes from the door of a _cave_; it is a wine vault. The owner welcomes us to its dark recesses. Smeared with the juice of the ruddy grape, he is a very priest of Bacchus; but the processes carried on in his cave are only initiatory to the orgies. Here are vats filled with the new-pressed juice; there vats in the various stages of fermentation. Jolly, as becomes his profession, he gives us to taste the sweet must and drink the purer extract. He explains the process, and tells us that the vintage is a fair average, though the vine disease, the oïdion, has penetrated even into these mountains. _Evoe Bacche!_ The fumes of the reeking cave mount to our heads, the floor is slippery with the lees and trodden vine-leaves. We reel to the door, glad to breathe a fresher atmosphere.

Calling at the _café_ on the Corso, not from choice but by appointment with our “man of the woods,” we find it, as before, dirty, disorderly, and noisy. Where, we ask ourselves, are the gentlemen of Corte? But what has any one, above the classes who toil for a livelihood, to do in Corte, except to lounge the long day under the melancholy elms in the Corso, and wile away the evenings by petty gambling in its wretched _cafés_?

CHAP. XVII.

_Pascal Paoli more honoured than Napoleon Buonaparte.—His Memoirs.—George III. King of Corsica.—Remarks on the Union.—Paoli's Death and Tomb._

The suppression of brigandage, security for life and property, the stains of blood washed from the soil, the shame in the face of Europe wiped out,—these are signal benefits which claim from the Corsicans a warmer homage to the younger Napoleon than they ever paid to the first of that name. Not even the honour of having given an emperor to France, a conqueror to continental Europe, enlisted the sympathies, the enthusiasm, of the islanders in the wonderful career of their illustrious countryman. A party, a faction, the Salicete, the Arena, the Bacchiochi, the Abatucci, rallied round him in the first steps of his political life, and the Cervoni, the Sebastiani, soldiers of fortune, of the true Corsican stamp, fought his battles, and were richly rewarded. Some of his countrymen, to their honour, adhered to him to the end, sharing his exile in St. Helena. But the great emperor was never popular in his own country; he neither loved, nor was beloved by, his own people. He did nothing for them, as before remarked, but construct the great national roads; and that was purely a military measure. He left them—designedly, it would seem—to cut one another's throats, and despised them for their barbarism.

Pascal Paoli was, and ever will be, the popular hero of the Corsicans. He fought their last battles for the national independence; moulded their wild aspirations for liberty and self-government into a constitutional form; administered affairs unselfishly, purely, justly; encouraged industry, and checked outrage. He was a man of the people, one of themselves, and he never forgot it; nor have they.

In an Englishman's eyes, Pascal Paoli has the additional merit of having conceived a just idea of the advantage his country would derive from the closest union with the only European power under whose protection a weak State struggling for freedom could hope for repose. He did homage to our principles, and the public feeling was with him in England as well as in Corsica.

A work on Corsica that did not tell of banditti, that did not speak of Pascal Paoli, would fail in the two points with which the name of this island is instinctively associated. References to the great Corsican chief have repeatedly occurred in these Rambles, connected with localities, and may again. We have visited his birthplace, the scenes of his last campaign and disastrous defeat, and now the seat of his government, Corte. We must not leave it, though impatient to proceed on our journey and by no means wishing to fill our pages with extraneous matter, till we have linked together our desultory notices by a summary review of the principal occurrences in Pascal Paoli's remarkable life, and of the strange event which terminated his political career,—the creation of an Anglo-Corsican kingdom united for a time to the British Crown.

Pascal (Pasquale) Paoli was born at Rostino on the 25th of April, 1725, being the second son of Giacinto Paoli, one of the leaders of the Corsican people in their last great struggle against the tyranny of the Genoese. Compelled by the course of events to retire to Naples in 1739, Giacinto Paoli was accompanied by his son Pascal, who, inheriting his father's talents and patriotism, there received a finished education, both civil and military. Being much about the court, the young Corsican acquired, with high accomplishments, those polished manners for which he was afterwards distinguished; and he held a commission in a regiment of cavalry, in which he did good service in Calabria.

Recalled to Corsica in 1755, at the early age of thirty, to take the supreme management of affairs in consequence of the divisions prevailing among the patriot leaders, the expulsion of the Genoese became his first duty; and he soon succeeded, at least, in freeing the interior of the island, and confining their occupation to the narrow limits of the fortified towns on the coasts. His next step was to remodel, or rather to create, the civil government; and in so doing he introduced an admirable form of a representative constitution, founded as far as possible on the old Corsican institutions. It was, in fact, a republic, of which Pascal Paoli was the chief magistrate, and commander of the forces. One of the earliest acts of his administration was a severe law for the suppression of the bloody practice of the _vendetta_, followed in course of time by measures for the encouragement of agriculture, and by the foundation of a university at Corte. The necessity of meeting the Genoese on their own element led him to get together and equip a small squadron of ships, no country being better fitted than Corsica, from its position and resources, to acquire some share of naval power in the Mediterranean. With this squadron, after repulsing the Genoese fleet, he landed a body of troops in the island of Capraja, lying off the coast of Corsica, and succeeded in wresting it from the Republic.

Intestine divisions had always been the bane of Corsican independence, and even Paoli's just and popular administration could not escape the rivalry of Emanuel Matra, a man of ancient family and great power, who became jealous of Paoli's pre-eminence. All attempts at conciliation on the part of Paoli proving useless, Matra and his adherents rose in arms, and, calling the Genoese to their aid, it was only after a long and bloody struggle, and some sharp defeats, that Paoli and the Nationals were able to crush the insurrection; Matra falling, after fighting desperately, in the battle which terminated the war.

Pascal Paoli, being now firmly seated in power, and the island, settled under a regular form of government, growing in strength, the Genoese found themselves unequal to cope with a brave and united people. After some further ineffectual attempts, they once more applied to France for succour, and engaged her to occupy the strong places in the island, as she had already done from 1737 to 1741. French troops accordingly, landing in Corsica, established a footing which has never been relinquished, except during the short period of English occupation. But by the Treaty of Compiegne, signed before the expedition sailed (1764), the French limited their support of the Genoese to a term of four years. During that period they maintained a strict neutrality towards the Corsican Nationals, confining themselves to the limits of their occupation. Their generals maintained harmonious relations with Pascal Paoli, and, the Genoese power in the island having shrunk to nothing, the patriots had the entire possession of the country, except the fortified places, and the Commonwealth flourished under the firm and active administration of its wise chief. It was at this time that James Boswell visited the island. Residing some time with General Paoli, and admitted to familiar intercourse with him, he collected the materials from which he afterwards compiled “An Account of Corsica, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli,” published in London in 1767,—a work, the details of which are only equalled by his _Johnsoniana_ for their minute and vivid portraiture of his hero's life, opinions, character, and habits. The “Account of Corsica” has been the standard, indeed the only English, work relating to that island from that day to the present.

The time fixed by the Treaty of Compiegne for the evacuation of Corsica by the French troops was on the point of expiring. They had already withdrawn from Ajaccio and Calvi, when the Genoese, finding themselves utterly incapable of retaining possession of the island, offered to cede their rights to the king of France. This was in 1768. The Duc de Choiseul, the minister of Louis XV., lent a willing ear to a proposal which opened the way to the conquest of Corsica—a prize, from its situation, its forests, its fertility, worthy the ambition of the _Grand Monarque_. The French generals, receiving immediate orders to cross the neutral lines, soon made themselves masters of Capo Corso, and pushed their successes on the eastern side of the island.

Pascal Paoli, his brother Clemente, and the other national leaders, were not wanting in this crisis of the fate of Corsica, and the people rose _en masse_ against the overwhelming force that threatened to crush them. The war, though necessarily short, was marked by obstinate bravery on the part of the Corsicans. The French troops having met with many repulses, received a signal defeat at Borgo. There is scarcely a village in the interior that is not illustrious for its patriotic efforts at this period. Chauvelin, the French general-in-chief, was recalled, and, ultimately, the Count de Vaux, an officer of experience, took the field as generalissimo of the French army, swelled by successive reinforcements to the vast force of 40,000 men.

The great blow which decided the fate of Corsica was struck at the battle of Ponte Nuovo, of which some particulars are given in a former chapter.[24] This defeat entirely demoralised the island militia, and crushed Paoli's hopes of maintaining the nationality of Corsica. Retiring to Corte, and thence, almost as a fugitive, to Vivario, in the heart of the mountains, though he might still have maintained a _guerilla_ warfare against the French, he resolved to abandon a forlorn hope, and, pressed by a large body of the enemy's troops, embarked in an English frigate at Porto Vecchio, with his brother Clemente and 300 of his followers.

The conquest of Corsica cost France largely both in men and money, it appearing by the official returns, that the loss sustained in killed and wounded was 10,721 men, while the expense of the war was estimated at 18 millions of livres. The fate of the Corsicans met with general sympathy. Rousseau on this occasion accused the French people of the basest love of tyranny:—“_S'ils savoient un homme libre à l'autre bout du monde, je crois qu'ils y iroient pour le seul plaisir de l'exterminer._”

After a short stay in Italy, Pascal Paoli proceeded to England, landing at Harwich on the 18th of September, 1769. The succeeding twenty years of his life were spent in London. He was well received by the king and queen, and the ministers paid him the attention due to his rank and services. But, though an object of much general interest, he shunned publicity, living in Oxford Street in a dignified retirement. He joined, however, in good society, and associated with the most eminent literary men of the day, among whom it was observed that his talents and accomplishments as much fitted him to shine, as at the head of his patriotic countrymen. Boswell had the happiness of introducing him to Johnson, and revelled in the glory of exhibiting his two lions on the same stage.

The French Revolution opened the way for Pascal Paoli's return to Corsica, with the prospect of again devoting himself to the service of his country under a constitutional monarchy, the form of government he most approved. At Paris, the unfortunate Louis XVI. and his queen received him with marks of favour, La Fayette greeted him as a brother, and the National Assembly gave him an enthusiastic reception. He was named President of the Department of Corte and Commander of the National Guard.

Landing in Corsica, amidst the congratulations of his countrymen, all flocked round him, and mothers raised their babes in their arms that they might behold the common father of their country. The hopes of the Corsicans again revived; for, if they had not a national and independent government, they were members of a free state, with the man of their choice to administer affairs.

Paoli was, however, soon disgusted with the excesses of the French Revolution, and, like all citizens of distinguished merit, he fell under the suspicions of the, so-called, Committee of Public Safety. Summoned to the bar of the National Convention, and declining to appear, he was proclaimed an enemy of the Republic, and put out of the protection of the law. Preparations were made for exterminating the Paolists, who flew to arms, resolved once more to assert the nationality of the Corsican people, and throw off their dependence on France. But intestine divisions again weakened the efforts of the patriots, and Corsica was divided into two parties—the Paolists and the Republicans; the Buonaparte family at this time supporting the patriot chief.

In the face of the new invasion threatened by the French Republic, Paoli perceived that there was nothing to be done but to call the English, whose fleet hovered on the coast, to the aid of the Nationals, and place the island under British protection. The firstfruits of this alliance were the reduction of San Fiorenzo and the surrender of Bastia to the bold attack of Nelson already described.[25] The fall of these fortresses was succeeded by the siege of Calvi, in which Nelson also distinguished himself; and on the reduction of that place—Ajaccio and Bonifacio being already in the hands of the patriots—the French troops withdrew from the island.

Corsica being once more free to establish a national government, the representatives of the people, assembled in a convention at Corte on the 14th of June, 1794, accepted a constitution framed by Pascal Paoli, in conjunction with Sir Gilbert Elliot, the British Plenipotentiary. By this national act the sovereignty of Corsica was hereditarily conferred on the King of Great Britain with full executive rights; the legislative power, including especially the levying of taxes, being vested in an assembly called a parliament, composed of representatives elected in the several _pièves_ and towns. All Corsicans of the age of twenty-five years, possessed of real property (_beni fondi_), and domiciled for one year in a _piève_ or town, were entitled to vote at the elections. The king's consent was required to give force to all laws, and he had the prerogative of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the parliament. A viceroy, appointed by the sovereign, with a council and secretary of state, were to execute the functions of government. The press was to be free. In short, the kingdom of Corsica—so called even under the dominion of the Genoese Republic—was to be a limited monarchy, with institutions nearly resembling those of Great Britain, except that there was no House of Peers.

The subject has some interest, even at this present day, as showing how the principles of a limited monarchy were adapted by such a man as Pascal Paoli to a _quasi_-Italian nation, than which none could be more ardent in their love of freedom, or have made greater struggles in its cause. The Constitutional Act[26] will be found in the appendix to Mr. Benson's work. It is curious also to find that in the time of our George III. a kingdom in the Mediterranean was as closely united to the Crown of Great Britain, as the kingdom of Ireland was at that time.

Sir Gilbert Elliot was appointed viceroy. Unfortunately, with the best dispositions, his government was not administered with the tact required to conciliate so irascible a people as the Corsicans. While the viceroy was personally esteemed and beloved, he pursued a course of policy little calculated to calm the irritation which speedily arose. Pascal Paoli felt disappointment at not having been nominated viceroy, and was suspected of secretly fomenting the disaffection to the government. So far from this, he published an address to his countrymen, endeavouring to allay the ferment, and induce obedience to the English authorities. Jealousy, however, of his great and well-earned influence over the Corsicans appears to have led to his removal from the island. Towards the close of the year 1795 the king's command that he should repair to England was conveyed to him, couched, however, in gracious terms. He immediately obeyed, and arrived in London towards the end of December.

No sooner had Paoli departed than discontent assumed a more alarming form. His presence and example had kept many calm who had been secretly hostile to the English, but who now openly displayed their animosity. Petitions were presented to the viceroy by some of the leading inhabitants assembled at Bistuglio, declaring the grounds of Corsican opposition, and proposing means of conciliation; while many bodies of the disaffected assembled in the wild neighbourhood of Bocagnono. These disorders, coupled with the mutual distrust with which the Corsicans and English viewed each other, finally led to the abandonment of the island by the latter; and, accordingly, between the 14th and 20th of October, 1796, the viceroy and troops, under the protection of Nelson, embarked for Porto Ferrajo, leaving the island once more a prey to French invasion.

Foreign writers sneer at the ignorance and mismanagement which so soon alienated the minds of the Corsicans from those whom they had lately hailed as their liberators and protectors; and it may perhaps be lamented that so noble a dependency of the British Crown was thus lost. Its commanding position in the Mediterranean, its fine harbours and magnificent forests, made it a most desirable position, at least during the revolutionary war. Such was Nelson's opinion, expressed in a letter to his wife when a descent on the coast was first contemplated. Added to these, its products of corn, wine, and oil, capable of almost indefinite augmentation under a good system of government, gave it great value as a permanent possession. What are Malta and Gibraltar? Merely rock fortresses, compared with such an island, capable of defence by the bravest people in the world, and possessed of such resources that, so far from being a burden on the finances, a very considerable surplus of the revenue now flows into the Imperial exchequer. Nothing was wanting but to reconcile the natives to the rule of their new masters, making it, as it constitutionally professed to be, national. This was doubtless a difficult task with a spirited people, alien in race, religion, and habits. The ministers of the day committed a great error in not giving the vice-royalty to Pascal Paoli. He was a thorough Anglo-Corsican, and perfectly understood the working of a constitutional government. The union had been his policy, and he alone could have carried it out.

Whether the annexation of the island to the British Empire would have survived the deliberations of the Congress of Vienna is another question. One does not see why it should not have done so. We retained the Ionian Islands, less important in many respects, and with a population as turbulent, it seems, and as alien, as the Corsicans. The possession of Corsica by the Bourbons was very recent, and acquired by the most flagrant injustice. The French were scarcely more popular than the English with the national party; nor are they, according to the impression made during our Rambles, at the present day. The island had been offered to Napoleon, and might have become his island-empire. Had it even followed the fate of Genoa, its former mistress, and been assigned to Sardinia, there would be reason now for all friends of constitutional government to rejoice; and the Corsicans, essentially an Italian people, would more easily have amalgamated with their rulers.