CHAPTER XII.
PATRIOTIC STRUGGLES—GIAMPOLO DA LECA—RENUCCIO DELLA ROCCA.
Two bold men now again rise in succession to oppose Genoa. Giampolo da Leca had, as we have seen, become connected with the Fregosi. Although these nobles had resigned their title in favour of the Bank, they were exceedingly uneasy under the loss of influence they had sustained. Janus, accordingly, without leaving Genoa, incited his relative to revolt against the governor, Matias Fiesco. Giampolo rose. But beaten and hard pressed by the troops of the Bank, he saw himself compelled, after a vain attempt to obtain aid from Florence, to lay down his arms, and to emigrate to Sardinia with wife, child, and friends, in the year 1487.
A year had scarcely passed, when he again appeared at the call of his adherents. A second time unfortunate, he made his escape again to Sardinia. The Genoese now punished the rebels with the greatest severity—with death, banishment, and the confiscation of their property. More and more fierce grew the Corsican hatred towards Genoa. For ten years they nursed its smouldering glow. All this while Giampolo remained in exile, meditating revenge—his watchful eye never lifted from his oppressed and prostrate country. At last he came back. He had neither money nor arms; four Corsicans and six Spaniards were all his troops, and with these he landed. He was beloved by the people, for he was noble, brave, and of great personal beauty. The Corsicans crowded to him from Cinarca, from Vico, from Niolo, and from Morosaglia. He was soon at the head of a body of seven thousand foot and two hundred horse—a force which made the Bank of Genoa tremble for its power. It accordingly despatched to the island Ambrosio Negri, an experienced general. Negri, by intrigue and fair promises, contrived to detach a part of Giampolo's followers, and particularly to draw over to himself Renuccio della Rocca, a nobleman of activity and spirit. Giampolo, with forces sensibly diminished, came to an engagement with the Genoese commander at the Foce al Sorbo, and suffered a defeat, in which his son Orlando was taken prisoner. He concluded a treaty with Negri, the terms of which allowed him to leave the island unmolested. He returned to Sardinia in 1501, with fifty Corsicans, there to waste his life in inconsolable grief.
Giampolo's fall was mainly owing to Renuccio della Rocca. This man, the head of the haughty family of Cinarca, saw that the Genoese Bank had adopted a particular line of policy, and was pursuing it with perseverance; he saw that it was resolved to crush completely and for ever the power of the seigniors, more especially of those whose lands lay beyond the mountains, and that his own turn would come. Convinced of this, he suddenly rose in arms in the year 1502. The contest was short, and the issue favourable for Genoa, whose governor in the island was at that time one of the Doria family. All the Dorias, as governors, distinguished themselves by their energy and by their reckless cruelty, and it was to them alone that Genoa owed her gratitude for the important service of at length crushing the Corsican nobility. Nicolas Doria forced Renuccio to come to terms; and one of the conditions imposed on the Corsican noble was that he and his family were henceforth to reside in Genoa.
Giampolo was, still living in Sardinia, more than all other Corsican patriots a source of continual anxiety to the Genoese, who made several attempts to come to an amicable agreement with him. His son Orlando, who had newly escaped to Rome from his prison in Genoa, sent pressing solicitations from that city to his father to rouse himself from his dumb and prostrate inactivity. But Giampolo continued to maintain his heartbroken silence, and listened as little to the suggestions of his son as to those of the Genoese.
Suddenly Renuccio disappeared from Genoa in the year 1504; he left wife and child in the hands of his enemies, and went secretly to Sardinia to seek an interview with the man whom he had plunged into misfortune. Giampolo refused to see him. He was equally deaf to the entreaties of the Corsicans, who all eagerly awaited his arrival. His own relations had in the meantime murdered his son. The viceroy caught the murderers, and was about to execute them, in order to show a favour to Giampolo. But the generous man forgave them, and begged their liberation.
Renuccio had meanwhile gathered eighteen resolute men about him, and, undeterred by the fate of his children, who had been thrown into a dungeon immediately after his flight, he landed again in Corsica. Nicolas Doria, however, lost no time in attacking him before the insurrection became formidable, and he gained a victory. To daunt Renuccio, he had his eldest son beheaded, and he threatened the youngest with a like fate, but allowed himself to be moved by the boy's entreaties and tears. The unhappy father, defeated at every point, fled to Sardinia, and then to Arragon. Doria took ample revenge on all who had shown him countenance, laid whole districts of the island waste, burned the villages, and dispersed the inhabitants.
Renuccio della Rocca returned in the year 1507. This unyielding man was entirely the reverse of the moody and sorrow-laden Giampolo. He set foot on his native soil with only twenty companions. Another of the Dorias met him this time, Andreas, afterwards the famous Doge, who had served under his cousin Nicolò. The Corsican historian Filippini, a Genoese partisan, admits the cruelties committed by Andreas during this short campaign. He succeeded in speedily crushing the revolt; and compelled Renuccio a second time to accept a safe conduct to Genoa. When the Corsican arrived, the people would have torn him to pieces, had not the French governor carried him off with all speed to his castle.
Three years elapsed. Suddenly Renuccio again showed himself in Corsica. He had escaped from Genoa, and after in vain imploring the aid of the European princes, once more bidding defiance to fortune, he had landed in his native country with eight friends. Some of his former vassals received him in Freto, weeping, deeply moved by the accumulated misfortunes of the man, and his unexampled intrepidity of soul. He spoke to them, and conjured them once more to draw the sword. They were silent, and went away. He remained some days in Freto, in concealment. Nicolo Pinello, a captain of Genoese troops in Ajaccio, accidentally passed by upon his horse. The sight of him proved so intolerable to Renuccio, that he attacked him at night and killed him, took his horse, and now showed himself in public. As soon us his presence in the island became known, the soldiers of Ajaccio were sent out to capture him. Renuccio fled into the hills, hunted like a bandit or wild beast. The peasantry, who were put to the torture by his pursuers, as a means of inducing them to discover his lurking-places, at last resolved to end their own miseries and his life. In the month of May 1511, Renuccio della Rocca was found miserably slain in the hills. He was one of the stoutest hearts of the noble house of Cinarca. "They tell," says the Corsican chronicler, "that Renuccio was true to himself till the last, and that he showed no less heroism in his death than in his life; and this is, of a truth, much to his honour, for a brave man should never lose his nobleness of soul, even when fate brings him to an ignominious end."