"As regards us, brave youths, none—I swear by the manes of our fathers!—not one will wait a second call; before the face of the world we must show that we deserve to be called brave. If foreigners land upon our coasts ready to give battle to uphold the pretensions of their allies, shall we who fight for our own welfare—for the welfare of our posterity—for the maintenance of the righteous and magnanimous resolutions of our fathers—shall we hesitate to defy all dangers, to risk, to sacrifice our lives? Brave fellow-citizens! liberty is our aim—and the eyes of all noble souls in Europe are upon us; they sympathize with us, they breathe prayers for the triumph of our cause. May our resolute firmness exceed their expectations! and may our enemies, by whatever name called, learn from experience that the conquest of Corsica is not so easy as it may seem! We who live in this land are freemen, and freemen can die!"
CHAPTER XI.
CORSICA UNDER PAOLI—TRAFFIC IN NATIONS—VICTORIES OVER THE FRENCH.
All the thoughts and wishes of the Corsican people were thus directed towards a common aim. The spirit of the nation was vigorous and buoyant; ennobled by the purest love of country, by a bravery that had become hereditary, by the sound simplicity of the constitution, which was no artificial product of foreign and borrowed theorizings, but the fruit of sacred, native tradition. The great citizen, Pasquale Paoli, was the father of his country. Wherever he showed himself, he was met by the love and the blessings of his people, and women and gray-haired men raised their children and children's children in their arms, that they might see the man who had made his country happy. The seaports, too, which had hitherto remained in the power of Genoa, became desirous of sharing the advantages of the Corsican constitution. Disturbances occurred; Carlo Masseria and his son undertook to deliver the castle of Ajaccio into the hands of the Nationalists by stratagem. The attempt failed. The son was killed, and the father, who had already received his death-wound, died without a complaint, upon the rack.
The Corsican people had now become so much stronger that, far from turning anxiously to some foreign power for aid, they found in themselves, not only the means of resistance, but even of attack and conquest. Their flag already waved on the waters of the Mediterranean. De Perez, a knight of Malta, was the admiral of their little fleet, which was occasioning the Genoese no small alarm. People said in Corsica that the position of the island might well entitle it to become a naval power—such as Greek islands in the eastern seas had formerly been; and a landing of the Corsicans on the coast of Liguria was no longer held impossible.
The conquest of the neighbouring island of Capraja gave such ideas a colour of probability; while it astonished the Genoese, and showed them that their fears were well grounded. This little island had in earlier times been part of the seigniory of the Corsican family of Da Mare, but had passed into the hands of the Genoese. It is not fertile, but an important and strong position in the Genoese and Tuscan waters. A Corsican named Centurini conceived the idea of surprising it. Paoli readily granted his consent, and in February 1765 a little expedition, consisting of two hundred regular troops and a body of militia, ran out from Cape Corso. They attacked the town of Capraja, which at first resisted vigorously, but afterwards made common cause with them. The Genoese commandant, Bernardo Ottone, held the castle, however, with great bravery; and Genoa, as soon as it heard of the occurrence, hastily despatched her fleet under Admiral Pinelli, who thrice suffered a repulse. In Genoa, such was the shame and indignation at not being able to rescue Capraja from the handful of Corsicans who had effected a lodgment in the town, that the whole Senate burst into tears. Once more they sent their fleet, forty vessels strong, against the island. The five hundred Corsicans under Achille Murati maintained the town, and drove the Genoese back into the sea. Bernardo Ottone surrendered in May 1767, and Capraja, now completely in possession of the Corsicans, was declared their province.
The fall of Capraja was a heavy blow to the Senate, and accelerated the resolution totally to relinquish the now untenable Corsica. But the enfeebled Republic delayed putting this painful determination into execution, till a blunder she herself committed forced her to it. It was about this time that the Jesuits were driven from France and Spain; the King of Spain had, however, requested the Genoese Senate to allow the exiles an asylum in Corsica. Genoa, to show him a favour, complied, and a large number of the Jesuit fathers one day landed in Ajaccio. The French, however, who had pronounced sentence of perpetual banishment on the Jesuits, regarded it as an insult on the part of Genoa, that the Senate should have opened to the fathers the Corsican seaports which they, the French, garrisoned. Count Marbœuf immediately received orders to withdraw his troops from Ajaccio, Calvi, and Algajola; and scarcely had this taken place, when the Corsicans exultingly occupied the city of Ajaccio, though the citadel was still in possession of a body of Genoese troops.
Under these circumstances, and considering the irritated state of feeling between France and Genoa, the Senate foresaw that it would have to give way to the Corsicans; it accordingly formed the resolution to sell its presumed claims upon the island to France.
The French minister, Choiseul, received the proposal with joy. The acquisition of so important an island in the Mediterranean seemed no inconsiderable advantage, and in some degree a compensation for the loss of Canada. The treaty was concluded at Versailles on the 15th of May 1768, and signed by Choiseul on behalf of France, and Domenico Sorba on behalf of Genoa. The Republic thus, contrary to all national law, delivered a nation, on which it had no other claim than that of conquest—a claim, such as it was, long since dilapidated—into the hands of a foreign despotic power, which had till lately treated with the same nation as with an independent people; and a free and admirably constituted state was thus bought and sold like some brutish herd. Genoa had, moreover, made the disgraceful stipulation that she should re-enter upon her rights, as soon as she was in a position to reimburse the expenses which France had incurred by her occupation of the island.
Before the French expedition quitted the harbours of Provence, rumours of the negotiations, which were at first kept secret, had reached Corsica. Paoli called a Consulta at Corte; and it was unanimously resolved to resist France to the last and uttermost, and to raise the population en masse. Carlo Bonaparte, father of Napoleon, delivered a manly and spirited speech on this occasion.