"Eterna faremo Vendetta."—Corsican Ballad.
The origin of the bandit life is to be sought almost exclusively in the ancient custom of the Vendetta, that is, of exacting blood for blood. Almost all writers on this subject, whom I have read, state that the Vendetta began to be practised in the times when Genoese justice was venal, or favoured murder. Without doubt, the constant wars, and defective administration of justice greatly contributed to the evil, and allowed the barbarous custom to become inveterate, but its root lies elsewhere. For the law of blood for blood does not prevail in Corsica only, it exists also in other countries—in Sardinia, in Calabria, in Sicily, among the Albanians and Montenegrins, among the Circassians, Druses, Bedouins, &c.
Like phenomena must arise under like conditions; and these are not far to seek, for the social condition of all these peoples is similar. They all lead a warlike and primitive life; nature around them is wild and impressive; they are all, with the exception of the Bedouins, poor mountaineers inhabiting regions not easily accessible to culture, and clinging, with the utmost obstinacy, to their primitive condition and ancient barbarous customs; further, they are all equally penetrated with the same intense family sympathies, and these form the sacred basis of such social life as they possess. In a state of nature, and in a society rent asunder by prevailing war and insecurity, the family becomes a state in itself; its members cleave fast to each other; if one is injured, the entire little state is wronged. The family exercises justice only through itself, and the form this exercise of justice takes, is revenge. And thus it appears that the law of blood for blood, though barbarous, still springs from the injured sense of justice, and the natural affection of blood-relations, and that its source is a noble one—the human heart. The Vendetta is barbarian justice. Now the high sense of justice characterizing the Corsicans is acknowledged and eulogized even by the authors of antiquity.
Two noble and great passions have, all along, swayed the the Corsican mind—the love of family and the love of country. In the case of a quite poor people, living in a sequestered island—an island, moreover, mountainous, rugged, and stern—these passions could not but be intense, for to that nation they were all the world. Love of country produced that heroic history of Corsica which we know, and which is in reality nothing but an inveterate Vendetta against Genoa, handed down for ages from father to son; and love of family has produced the no less bloody, and no less heroic history of the Vendetta, the tragedy of which is not yet played to an end. The exhaustless native energy of this little people is really something inconceivable, since, while rending itself to pieces in a manner the most sanguinary, it, at the same time, possessed the strength to maintain so interminable and so glorious a struggle with its external foes.
The love of his friends is still to the Corsican what it was in the old heroic times—a religion; only the love of his country is with him a higher duty. Many examples from Corsican history show this. As among the ancient Hellenes, fraternal love ranked as love's highest and purest form, so it is ranked among the Corsicans. In Corsica, the fraternal relation is viewed as the holiest of all relations, and the names of brother and sister indicate the purest happiness the heart can have—its noblest treasure, or its saddest loss. The eldest brother, as the stay of the family, is revered simply in his character as such. I believe nothing expresses so fully the range of feeling, and the moral nature of a people, as its songs. Now the Corsican song is strictly a dirge, which is at the same time a song of revenge; and most of these songs of revenge are dirges of the sister for her brother who has fallen. I have always found in this poetry that where-ever all love and all laudation are heaped upon the dead, it is said of him, He was my brother. Even the wife, when giving the highest expression to her love, calls her husband, brother. I was astonished to find precisely the same modes of expression and feeling in the Servian popular poetry; with the Servian woman, too, the most endearing name for her husband is brother, and the most sacred oath among the Servians is when a man swears by his brother. Among unsophisticated nations, the natural religion of the heart is preserved in their most ordinary sentiments and relations—for these have their ground in that which alone is lasting in the circumstances of human life; the feeling of a people cleaves to what is simple and enduring. Fraternal love and filial love express the simplest and most enduring relations on earth, for they are relations without passion. And the history of human wo begins with Cain the fratricide.
Wo, therefore, to him who has slain the Corsican's brother or blood-relation! The deed is done; the murderer flees from a double dread—of justice, which punishes murder; and of the kindred of the slain, who avenge murder. For as soon as the deed has become known, the relations of the fallen man take their weapons, and hasten to find the murderer. The murderer has escaped to the woods; he climbs perhaps to the perpetual snow, and lives there with the wild sheep: all trace of him is lost. But the murderer has relatives—brothers, cousins, a father; these relatives know that they must answer for the deed with their lives. They arm themselves, therefore, and are upon their guard. The life of those who are thus involved in a Vendetta is most wretched. He who has to fear the Vendetta instantly shuts himself up in his house, and barricades door and window, in which he leaves only loop-holes. The windows are lined with straw and with mattresses; and this is called inceppar le fenestre. The Corsican house among the mountains, in itself high, almost like a tower, narrow, with a high stone stair, is easily turned into a fortress. Intrenched within it, the Corsican keeps close, always on his guard lest a ball reach him through the window. His relatives go armed to their labour in the field, and station sentinels; their lives are in danger at every step. I have been told of instances in which Corsicans did not leave their intrenched dwellings for ten, and even for fifteen years, spending all this period of their lives besieged, and in deadly fear; for Corsican revenge never sleeps, and the Corsican never forgets. Not long ago, in Ajaccio, a man who had lived for ten years in his room, and at last ventured upon the street, fell dead upon the threshold of his house as he re-entered: the ball of him who had watched him for ten years had pierced his heart.
I see, walking about here in the streets of Bastia, a man whom the people call Nasone, from his large nose. He is of gigantic size, and his repulsive features are additionally disfigured by the scar of a frightful wound in his eye. Some years ago he lived in the neighbouring village of Pietra Nera. He insulted another inhabitant of the place; this man swore revenge. Nasone intrenched himself in his house, and closed up the windows, to protect himself from balls. A considerable time passed, and one day he ventured abroad; in a moment his foe sprang upon him, a pruning-knife in his hand. They wrestled fearfully; Nasone was overpowered; and his adversary, who had already given him a blow in the neck, was on the point of hewing off his head on the stump of a tree, when some people came up. Nasone recovered; the other escaped to the macchia. Again a considerable time passed. Once more Nasone ventured into the street: a ball struck him in the eye. They raised the wounded man; and again his giant nature conquered, and healed him. The furious bandit now ravaged his enemy's vineyard during the night, and attempted to fire his house. Nasone removed to the city, and goes about there as a living example of Corsican revenge—an object of horror to the peaceable stranger who inquires his history. I saw the hideous man one day on the shore, but not without his double-barrel. His looks made my flesh creep; he was like the demon of revenge himself.
Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as degrading. Thirst for vengeance is with them an entirely natural sentiment—a passion that has become hallowed. In their songs, revenge has a cultus, and is celebrated as a religion of filial piety. Now, a sentiment which the poetry of a people has adopted as an essential characteristic of the nationality is ineradicable; and this in the highest degree, if woman has ennobled it as her feeling. Girls and women have composed most of the Corsican songs of revenge, and they are sung from mountain-top to shore. This creates a very atmosphere of revenge, in which the people live and the children grow up, sucking in the wild meaning of the Vendetta with their mother's milk. In one of these songs, it is said that twelve lives are insufficient to avenge the fallen man's—boots! That is Corsican. A man like Hamlet, who struggles to fill himself with the spirit of the Vendetta, and cannot do it, would be pronounced by the Corsicans the most despicable of all poltroons. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, does human blood and human life count for so little as in Corsica. The Corsican is ready to take life, but he is also ready to die.
Any one who shrinks from avenging himself—a milder disposition, perhaps, or a tincture of philosophy, giving him something of Hamlet's hesitancy—is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity. To reproach a man for suffering an injury to remain unavenged is called rimbeccare. The old Genoese statute punished the rimbecco as incitation to murder. The law runs thus, in the nineteenth chapter of these statutes:—
"Of those who upbraid, or say rimbecco.—If any one upbraids or says rimbecco to another, because that other has not avenged the death of his father, or of his brother, or of any other blood-relation, or because he has not taken vengeance on account of other injuries and insults done upon himself, the person so upbraiding shall be fined in from twenty-five to fifty lire for each time, according to the judgment of the magistrate, and regard being had to the quality of the person, and to other circumstances; and if he does not pay forthwith, or cannot pay within eight days, then shall he be banished from the island for one year, or the corda shall be put upon him once, according to the judgment of the magistrate."