The next thing to be done was to bring in the two dead or dying men. After much hesitation a party made the attempt, and again it cost one of them his life. Another day passed. At last it occurred to one of them to smoke the bandit out like a badger—a plan already adopted with success in Algiers. They accordingly heaped dry wood at the entrance of the cave, and set fire to it; but the smoke found egress through chinks in the rock. Arrighi heard every word that was said, and kept up actual dialogues with the gendarmes, who could not see, much less hit him. He refused to surrender, although pardon was promised him. At length the procurator, who had been brought from Ajaccio, sent to the city of Corte for military and an engineer. The engineer was to give his opinion as to whether the cave might be blown up with gunpowder. The engineer came, and said it was possible to throw petards into it. Arrighi heard what was proposed, and found the thought of being blown to atoms with the rocks of his hiding-place so shocking, that he resolved on flight.
He waited till nightfall, then rolling some stones down in a false direction, he sprang away from rock to rock, to reach another mountain. The uncertain shots of the sbirri echoed through the darkness. One ball struck him on the thigh. He lost blood, and his strength was failing; when the day dawned, his bloody track betrayed him, as its bloody sweat the stricken deer. The sbirri took up the scent. Arrighi, wearied to death, had lain down under a block. On this block a sbirro mounted, his piece ready. Arrighi stretched out his head to look around him—a report, and the ball was in his brain.
So died these three outlawed avengers, fortunate that they did not end on the scaffold. Such was their reputation, however, with the people, that none of the inhabitants of Monte Rotondo or its neighbourhood would lend his mule to convey away the bodies of the fallen men. For, said these people, we will have no part in the blood that you have shed. When at length mules had been procured, the dead men, bandits and sbirri, were put upon their backs, and the troop of gendarmes descended the hills, six corpses hanging across the mule-saddles, six men killed in the banditti warfare.
If this island of Corsica could again give forth all the blood which in the course of centuries has been shed upon it—the blood of those who have fallen in battle, and the blood of those who have fallen in the Vendetta—the red deluge would inundate its cities and villages, and drown its people, and crimson the sea from the Corsican shore to Genoa. Verily, violent death has here his peculiar realm.
It is difficult to believe what the historian Filippini tells us, that, in thirty years of his own time, 28,000 Corsicans had been murdered out of revenge. According to the calculation of another Corsican historian, I find that in the thirty-two years previous to 1715, 28,715 murders had been committed in Corsica. The same historian calculates that, according to this proportion, the number of the victims of the Vendetta, from 1359 to 1729, was 333,000. An equal number, he is of opinion, must be allowed for the wounded. We have, therefore, within the time specified, 666,000 Corsicans struck by the hand of the assassin. This people resembles the hydra, whose heads, though cut off, constantly grow on anew.
According to the speech of the Corsican Prefect before the General Council of the Departments, in August 1852, 4300 murders (assassinats) have been committed since 1821; during the four years ending with 1851, 833; during the last two of these 319, and during the first seven months of 1852, 99.
The population of the island is 250,000.
The Government proposes to eradicate the Vendetta and the bandit life by a general disarming of the people. How this is to be effected, and whether it is at all practicable, I cannot tell. It will occasion mischief enough, for the bandits cannot be disarmed along with the citizens, and their enemies will be exposed defenceless to their balls. The bandit life, the family feuds, and the Vendetta, which the law has been powerless to prevent, have hitherto made it necessary to permit the carrying of arms. For, since the law cannot protect the individual, it must leave him at liberty to protect himself; and thus it happens that Corsican society finds itself, in a sense, without the pale of the state, in the condition of natural law, and armed self-defence. This is a strange and startling phenomenon in Europe in our present century. It is long since the wearing of pistols and daggers was forbidden, but every one here carries his double-barreled gun, and I have found half villages in arms, as if in a struggle against invading barbarians—a wild, fantastic spectacle, these reckless men all about one in some lonely and dreary region of the hills, in their shaggy pelone, and Phrygian cap, the leathern cartridge-belt about their waist, and gun upon their shoulder.
Nothing is likely to eradicate the Vendetta, murder, and the bandit life, but advanced culture. Culture, however, advances very slowly in Corsica. Colonization, the making of roads through the interior, such an increase of general intercourse and industry as would infuse life into the ports—this might amount to a complete disarming of the population. The French Government, utterly powerless against the defiant Corsican spirit, most justly deserves reproach for allowing an island which possesses the finest climate; districts of great fertility; a position commanding the entire Mediterranean between Spain, France, Italy, and Africa; and the most magnificent gulfs and harbours; which is rich in forests, in minerals, in healing springs, and in fruits, and is inhabited by a brave, spirited, highly capable people—for allowing Corsica to become a Montenegro or Italian Ireland.