Chauvelin had brought his ten new battalions into the field, but they had met with a repulse from the Corsicans in Nebbio. Deeply humiliated, the haughty Marquis sent new messengers to France to represent the difficulty of subduing Corsica. The French government at length recalled Chauvelin from his post in December 1768, and Marbœuf was made interim commander, till Chauvelin's successor, Count de Vaux, should arrive.
De Vaux had served in Corsica under Maillebois; he knew the country, and how a war in it required to be conducted. Furnished with a large force of forty-five battalions, four regiments of cavalry, and considerable artillery, he determined to end the conflict at a single blow. Paoli saw how heavily the storm was gathering, and called an assembly in Casinca on the 15th of April 1769. It was resolved to fight to the last drop of blood, and to bring every man in Corsica into the field. Lord Pembroke, Admiral Smittoy, other Englishmen, Germans, and Italians, who were present, were astonished by the calm determination of the militia who flocked into Casinca. Many foreigners joined the ranks of the Corsicans. A whole company of Prussians, who had been in the service of Genoa, came over to their side. No one, however, could conceal from himself the gloominess of the Corsican prospects; French gold was already doing its work; treachery was rearing its head; even Capraja had fallen through the treasonable baseness of its commandant, Astolfi.
Corsica's fatal hour was at hand. England did not, as had been hoped, interfere; the French were advancing in full force upon Nebbio. This mountain province, traversed by a long, narrow valley, had frequently already been the scene of decisive conflicts. Paoli, leaving Saliceti and Serpentini in Casinca, had established his head-quarters here; De Vaux, Marbœuf, and Grand-Maison entered Nebbio to annihilate him at once. The attack commenced on the 3d of May. After the battle had lasted three days, Paoli was driven from his camp at Murati. He now concluded to cross the Golo, and place that river between himself and the enemy. He fixed his head-quarters in Rostino, and committed to Gaffori and Grimaldi the defence of Leuto and Canavaggia, two points much exposed to the French. Grimaldi betrayed his trust; and Gaffori, for what reason is uncertain, also failed to maintain his post.
The French, finding the country thus laid open to them, descended from the heights, and pressed onwards to Ponte Nuovo, the bridge over the Golo. The main body of the Corsicans was drawn up on the further bank; above a thousand of them, along with the company of Prussians, covered the bridge. The French, whose descent was rapid and unexpected, drove in the militia, and these, thrown into disorder and seized with panic, crowded towards the bridge and tried to cross. The Prussians, however, who had received orders to bring the fugitives to a halt, fired in the confusion on their own friends, while the French fired upon their rear, and pushed forward with the bayonet. The terrible cry of "Treachery!" was heard. In vain did Gentili attempt to check the disorder; the rout became general, no position was any longer tenable, and the militia scattered themselves in headlong flight among the woods, and over the adjacent country. The unfortunate battle of Ponte Nuovo was fought on the 9th of May 1769, and on that day the Corsican nation lost its independence.
Paoli still made an attempt to prevent the enemy from entering the province of Casinca. But it was too late. The whole island, this side the mountains, fell in a few days into the hands of the French; and that instinctive feeling of being lost beyond help, which sometimes, in moments of heavy misfortune, seizes on the minds of a people with overwhelming force, had taken possession of the Corsicans. They needed a man like Sampiero. Paoli despaired. He had hastened to Corte, almost resolved to leave his country. The brave Serpentini still kept the field in Balagna, with Clemens Paoli at his side, who was determined to fight while he drew breath; and Abatucci still maintained himself beyond the mountains with a band of bold patriots. All was not yet lost; it was at least possible to take to the fastnesses and guerilla fighting, as Renuccio, Vincentello, and Sampiero had done. But the stubborn hardihood of those men of the iron centuries, was not and could not be part of Paoli's character; nor could he, the lawgiver and Pythagoras of his people, lower himself to range the hills with guerilla bands. Shuddering at the thought of the blood with which a protracted struggle would once more deluge his country, he yielded to destiny. His brother Clemens, Serpentini, Abatucci, and others joined him. The little company of fugitives hastened to Vivario, then, on the 11th of June, to the Gulf of Porto Vecchio. There they embarked, three hundred Corsicans, in an English ship, given them by Admiral Smittoy, and sailed for Tuscany, from which they proceeded to England, which has continued ever since to be the asylum of the fugitives of ruined nationalities, and has never extended her hospitality to nobler exiles.
Not a few, comparing Pasquale Paoli with the old tragic Corsican heroes, have accused him of weakness. Paoli's own estimate of himself appears from the following extract from one of his letters:—"If Sampiero had lived in my day, the deliverance of my country would have been of less difficult accomplishment. What we attempted to do in constituting the nationality, he would have completed. Corsica needed at that time a man of bold and enterprising spirit, who should have spread the terror of his name to the very comptoirs of Genoa. France would not have mixed herself in the struggle, or, if she had, she would have found a more terrible adversary than any I was able to oppose to her. How often have I lamented this! Assuredly not courage nor heroic constancy was wanting in the Corsicans; what they wanted was a leader, who could combine and conduct the operations of the war in the face of experienced generals. We should have shared the noble work; while I laboured at a code of laws suitable to the traditions and requirements of the island, his mighty sword should have had the task of giving strength and security to the results of our common toil."
On the 12th of June 1769, the Corsican people submitted to French supremacy. But while they were yet in all the freshness of their sorrow, that centuries of unexampled conflict should have proved insufficient to rescue their darling independence; and while the warlike din of the French occupation still rang from end to end of the island, the Corsican nation produced, on the 15th of August, in unexhausted vigour, one hero more, Napoleon Bonaparte, who crushed Genoa, who enslaved France, and who avenged his country. So much satisfaction had the Fates reserved for the Corsicans in their fall; and such was the atoning close they had decreed to the long tragedy of their history.
BOOK III.—WANDERINGS IN THE SUMMER OF 1852.
"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,