Paoli's very first measures struck at the root of abuses. A law was enacted punishing the Vendetta with the pillory, and death at the hands of the public executioner. Not only fear, but the sense of honour, and the moral sentiment, were called into action. Priests—missionaries against the Vendetta—travelled over the country, and preached in the fields, inculcating the forgiveness of enemies. Paoli himself made a journey through the island to reconcile families at feud with each other. One of his relations had, in spite of the law, committed a murderous act of vengeance. Paoli did not hesitate a moment; he let the law take its course upon his relative, and he was executed. This firm and impartial administration of justice made a deep impression, and produced wholesome results.
In the midst of activity of this kind, Paoli was surprised by the intelligence that Emanuel Matra had collected his adherents, raised the standard of revolt, and was marching against him. Matra, who belonged to an ancient family of Caporali from beyond the mountains, had been driven to this course by ambition and envy. He had himself reckoned on obtaining the highest position in the state, and it was to wrest it from his rival that he was now in arms. He was a dangerous opponent. Paoli wished to save his country from a civil war, and proposed to Matra that the sword should remain sheathed, and that an assembly of the people should decide which of them was to be General of the nation. The haughty Matra of course rejected this proposal, boastfully intimating his reliance on his own abilities, military experience, and even on support from Genoa. He defeated the troops of Paoli in several engagements, but was afterwards repulsed with serious loss. In the spring of 1756, he again took the field with Genoese auxiliaries, and made a sudden and fierce attack on Paoli in Bozio. Pasquale, who had only a few men with him, hastily entrenched himself in the convent. A furious assault was made upon the cloister; the danger was imminent; already the doors were on fire, and the flames penetrating to the interior. Paoli gave himself up for lost. Suddenly conchs were heard from the hills, and a band of brave friends, led by his brother Clemens, and Thomas Carnoni, hitherto at deadly feud with Pasquale, and armed by his own mother for the rescue of his foe, rushed down upon the besiegers. The fight became desperate. It is said that Matra fought with unheard of ferocity after all his men had fallen or fled, and that he continued the struggle even when a ball had brought him upon his knee, until another shot stretched him on the earth. Paoli wept over the body of his enemy, to see a man of such heroic energy dead among traitors, and lost to his country's cause. The danger was now happily over, and the party of the Matras annihilated; a few of them had reached Bastia, and waited there in safety with the Genoese, till a favourable opportunity should occur for again emerging.
It was apparent, however, that Genoa was now exhausted. This once powerful Republic had grown old, and was on the eve of its fall. Alarmed at the progress of the Corsicans, she indeed made some attempts to check it by force of arms, but these no longer made such impression as in the days of the Dorias and Spinolas. The Republic several times took Swiss and Germans into her service; and on one occasion attacked Paoli's head-quarters at Furiani in the neighbourhood of Bastia, but without success. She had recourse again to France. The French cabinet, to prevent the English from throwing a garrison into some of the seaports, garrisoned the fortified towns in 1756. But the French remained otherwise neutral, doing no more than keeping possession of these cities, which they again evacuated in the year 1759.
Genoa lost heart. She saw Corsica rapidly becoming a compact and well-regulated state, and exhibiting the most marked signs of increased prosperity. The finances, and the administration generally, were managed with skill; agriculture was advancing, manufactories, even powder-mills, were in operation; the new city of Isola Rossa had risen under the very eyes of the foe; Paoli had actually fitted out a fleet, and the Corsican cruisers made the sea unsafe for Genoese vessels. The whole of Corsica, cleared of family broils, stood completely prepared for defence and offence; the last of the strong towns still in the possession of the Republic were more and more closely blockaded, and their fall seemed now at least not impossible. So rapidly had the Corsican people developed its resources under a wise government, that it now no longer stood in need of foreign aid. Genoa would willingly have made peace, but the Corsicans declared that they would only do this when the Genoese had entirely quitted the island.
Once more the Republic tried war. She again had recourse to the Matra family—to Antonio and Alexius Matra, the latter of whom had once been Regent along with Gaffori. These men, who were, one after the other, made Genoese marshals, and furnished with troops, excited revolts, which were crushed after a short struggle. The Genoese began to see that the Corsicans were no longer to be subdued unless by a serious attack on the part of France, and on the 7th of August 1764, they concluded a new treaty with the French king at Compiègne, according to which the latter pledged himself to hold the seaports for four years. Six battalions of French soldiery now landed in Corsica, under command of Count Marbœuf, who announced to the Corsicans that it was his purpose to observe strict neutrality between them and the Genoese, as he should give effect to the treaty if he merely garrisoned the seaports. It was, however, itself an act of hostility towards the Corsicans, to garrison these towns—a procedure which they were not in a position to hinder; and a neutrality which bound their hands, and forced them to raise sieges already far advanced towards success, did not deserve the name. They complained and protested, but they raised the siege of San Fiorenzo, which was near its fall.
Affairs continued in this undetermined state for four years; the Genoese inactive; the French maintaining an independent position in relation to their allies—occupying the fortified towns, and on terms of friendly intercourse with the Corsicans; these latter in full activity, strengthening their constitution, rejoicing in their independence, and indulging the fond hope that they would come into complete possession of their island after the lapse of the four years of the treaty, and thus at length attain the goal of their heroic national struggles.
All Europe was full of admiration for them, and praised the Corsican constitution as the model of a free and popular form of government. Certainly it was praiseworthy in its simplicity and thorough practical efficiency; the political wisdom of the century of the Humanists has raised for itself no nobler monument.
CHAPTER X.
PAOLI'S LEGISLATION.
Pasquale Paoli, in giving form to the Corsican Republic, proceeded on the simple principle that the people are the alone source of authority and law, and that the whole design of the latter is to effect and preserve the people's welfare. His idea as to the government was that it should form a kind of national jury, subdivided into as many branches as there were branches of the administration, and that the entire system ought to resemble an edifice of crystal, in which all could see what was going on, as it appeared to him that mystery and concealment favoured arbitrary exercise of power, and engendered distrust in the nation.