It was not till the close of the war of Sampiero that the wretched condition of the island became fully apparent. It had become a mere desert, and the people, decimated by the war, and by voluntary or compulsory emigration, were plunged in utter destitution and savagery. To make the cup of their sorrows full, the plague several times visited the country, and famine compelled the inhabitants to live on acorns and roots. Besides all this, the corsairs roved along the coasts, plundered the villages, and carried off men and women into slavery. It was in this state George Doria found the island, when he came over as governor; and so long as he was at the head of its affairs, Corsica had reason to rejoice in his paternal care, his mildness and clemency, and his conscientious observance of the stipulations of the treaty, by which the statutes and privileges of the Terra del Commune had been specially guaranteed.
Scarcely had George Doria made way for another governor, when Genoa returned to her old mischievous policy. People in power are usually so obstinate and blind, that they see neither the past nor the future. Gradually the Corsicans were again extruded from all offices, civil, military, and ecclesiastical—the meanest posts filled with Genoese, the old institutions suppressed, and a one-sided administration of justice introduced. The island was considered in the light of a Government domain. Impoverished Genoese nobili had places given them there to restore their finances. The Corsicans were involved in debt, and they now fell into the hands of the usurers—mostly priests—to whom they had recourse, in order to muster money for the heavy imposts. The governor himself was to be looked on as a satrap. On his arrival in Bastia, he received a sceptre as a symbol of his power; his salary, paid by the country, was no trifle; and in addition, his table had to be furnished by payments in kind—every week a calf, and a certain quantity of fruits and vegetables. He received twenty-five per cent. of all fines, confiscations, and prizes of smuggled goods. His lieutenants and officials were cared for in proportion. For he brought to the island with him an attorney-general, a master of the ceremonies, a secretary-general, and a private secretary, a commandant of the ports, a captain of cavalry, a captain of police, a governor-general of the prisons. All these officials were vampires; Genoese writers themselves confess it. The imposts became more and more oppressive; industry was at a stand-still; commerce in the same condition—for the law provided that all products of the country, when exported, should be carried to the port of Genoa.
All writers who have treated of this period in Corsican history, agree in saying that of all the countries in the world, she was at that time the most unhappy. Prostrate under famine, pestilence, and the ravages of war; unceasingly harassed by the Moors; robbed of her rights and her liberty by the Genoese; oppressed, plundered; the courts of justice venal; torn by the factions of the Blacks and Reds; bleeding at a thousand places from family feuds and the Vendetta; the entire land one wound—such is the picture of Corsica in those days—an island blessed by nature with all the requisites for prosperity. Filippini counted sixty-one fertile districts which now lay desolate and forsaken—house and church still standing—a sight, as he says, to make one weep. Destitute of any other pervading principle of social cohesion, the Corsican people must have utterly broken up, and scattered into mere hordes, unless it had been penetrated by the sentiment of patriotism, to an extent so universal and with a force so intense. The virtue of patriotism shows itself here in a grandeur almost inconceivable, if we consider what a howling wilderness it was to which the Corsicans clung with hearts so tender and true; a wilderness, but drenched with their blood, with the blood of their fathers, of their brothers, and of their children, and therefore dear. The Corsican historian says, in the eleventh book of his history, "If patriotism has ever been known at any time, and in any country of the world, to exercise power over men, truly we may say that in the island of Corsica it has been mightier than anywhere else; for I am altogether amazed and astounded that the love of the inhabitants of this island for their country has been so great, as at all times to prevent them from coming to a firm and voluntary determination to emigrate. For if we pursue the course of their history, from the earliest inhabitants down to the present time, we see that throughout so many centuries this people has never had peace and quiet for so much as a hundred years together; and that, nevertheless, they have never resolved to quit their native island, and so avoid the unspeakable ruin that has followed so many and so cruel wars, that were accompanied with dearth, with conflagration, with feuds, with murders, with inward dissensions, with tyrannous exercise of power by so many different nations, with plundering of their goods, with frequent attacks of those cruel barbarians—the corsairs, and with endless miseries besides, that it would be tedious to reckon up." Within a period of thirty years, twenty-eight thousand assassinations were committed in Corsica.
"A great misfortune for Corsica," says the same historian, "is the vast number of those accursed machines of arquebuses." The Genoese Government drew a considerable revenue from the sale of licenses to carry these. "There are," remarks Filippini, "more than seven thousand licenses at present issued; and, besides, many carry fire-arms without any license, and especially in the mountains, where you see nothing but bands of twenty and thirty men, or more, all armed with arquebuses. These licenses bring seven thousand lire out of poor, miserable Corsica every year; for every new governor that comes annuls the licenses of his predecessor, in order forthwith to confirm them afresh. But the buying of the fire-arms is the worst. For you will find no Corsican so poor that he has not his gun—in value at least from five to six scudi, besides the outlay for powder and ball; and those that have no money sell their vineyard, their chestnuts, or other possessions, that they may be able to buy one, as if it were impossible to exist unless they did so. In truth, it is astonishing, for the greater part of these people have not a coat upon their back that is worth a half scudo, and in their houses nothing to eat; and yet they hold themselves for disgraced, if they appear beside their neighbours without a gun. And hence it comes that the vineyards and the fields are no longer under cultivation, and lie useless, and overgrown with brushwood, and the owners are compelled to betake themselves to highway robbery and crime; and if they find no convenient opportunity for this, then they violently make opportunity for themselves, in order to deprive those who go quietly about their business, and support their poor families, of their oxen, their kine, and other cattle. From all this arises such calamity, that the pursuit of agriculture is quite vanished out of Corsica, though it was the sole means of support the people had—the only kind of industry still left to these islanders. They who live in such a mischievous manner, hinder the others from doing so well as they might be disposed to do: and the evil does not end here; for we hear every day of murders done now in one village, now in another, because of the easiness with which life can be taken by means of the arquebuses. For formerly, when such weapons were not in use, when foes met upon the streets, if the one was two or three times stronger than the other, an attack was not ventured. But now-a-days, if a man has some trifling quarrel with another, although perhaps with a different sort of weapon he would not dare to look him in the face, he lies down behind a bush, and without the least scruple murders him, just as you shoot down a wild beast, and nobody cares anything about it afterwards; for justice dares not intermeddle. Moreover, the Corsicans have come to handle their pieces so skilfully, that I pray God may shield us from war; for their enemies will have to be upon their guard, because from the children of eight and ten years, who can hardly carry a gun, and never let the trigger lie still, they are day and night at the target, and if the mark be but the size of a scudo, they hit it."
Filippini, the contemporary of Sampiero, saw fire-arms introduced into Corsica, which were quite unknown on the island, as he informs us, till the year 1553. Marshal Thermes—the French, therefore—first brought fire-arms into Corsica. "And," says Filippini, "it was laughable to see the clumsiness of the Corsicans at first, for they could neither load nor fire; and when they discharged, they were as frightened as the savages." What the Corsican historian says as to the fearful consequences of the introduction of the musket into Corsica is as true now, after the lapse of three hundred years, as it was then, and a chronicler of to-day could not alter an iota of what Filippini has said.
In the midst of all this Corsican distress, we are surprised by the sudden appearance of a Greek colony on their desolate shores. The Genoese had striven long and hard to denationalize the Corsican people by the introduction of foreign and hostile elements. Policy of this nature had probably no inconsiderable share in the plan of settling a Greek colony in the island, which was carried into execution in the year 1676. Some Mainotes of the Gulf of Kolokythia, weary of the intolerable yoke of the Turks, like those ancient Phocæans who refused to submit to the yoke of the Persians, had resolved to migrate with wife, child, and goods, and found for themselves a new home. After long search and much futile negotiation for a locality, their ambassador, Johannes Stefanopulos, came at length to Genoa, and expressed to the Senate the wishes of his countrymen. The Republic listened to them most gladly, and proposed for the acceptance of the Greeks the district of Paomia, which occupies the western coast of Corsica from the Gulf of Porto to the Gulf of Sagona. Stefanopulos convinced himself of the suitable nature of the locality, and the Mainotes immediately contracted an agreement with the Genoese Senate, in terms of which the districts of Paomia, Ruvida, and Salogna, were granted to them in perpetual fief, with a supply of necessaries for commencing the settlement, and toleration for their national religion and social institutions; while they on their part swore allegiance to Genoa, and subordinated themselves to a Genoese official sent to reside in the colony. In March 1676, these Greeks, seven hundred and thirty in number, landed in Genoa, where they remained two months, previously to taking possession of their new abode. Genoa planted this colony very hopefully; she believed herself to have gained, in the brave men composing it, a little band of incorruptible fidelity, who would act as a permanent forepost in the enemy's country. It was, in fact, impossible that the Greeks could ever make common cause with the Corsicans. These latter gazed on the strangers when they arrived—on the new Phocæans—with astonishment. Possibly they despised men who seemed not to love their country, since they had forsaken it; without doubt they found it a highly unpleasant reflection that these intruders had been thrust in upon their property in such an altogether unceremonious manner. The poor Greeks were destined to thrive but indifferently in their new rude home.
CHAPTER II.
INSURRECTION AGAINST GENOA.
For half a century the island lay in a state of exhaustion—the hatred of Genoa continuing to be fostered by general and individual distress, and at length absorbing into itself every other sentiment. The people lived upon their hatred; their hatred alone prevented their utter ruin.
Many circumstances had been meanwhile combining to bring the profound discontent to open revolt. It appeared to the sagacious Dodici—for this body still existed, at least in form—that a main source of the miseries of their country was the abuse in the matter of licensing fire-arms. Within thirty years, as was noticed above, twenty-eight thousand assassinations had been committed in Corsica. The Twelve urgently entreated the Senate of the Republic to forbid the granting of these licenses. The Senate yielded. It interdicted the selling of muskets, and appointed a number of commissaries to disarm the island. But as this interdict withdrew a certain amount of yearly revenue from the exchequer, an impost of twelve scudi was laid upon each hearth, under the name of the due seini, or two sixes. The people paid, but murmured; and all the while the sale of licenses continued, both openly and secretly.