Calvi is the leading town of the smallest of the arrondissements of Corsica. This arrondissement contains six cantons, thirty-four communes, and about 25,000 inhabitants, and extends over almost the entire north-west of the island, mountains and coast. Not one half of it is under cultivation, for the whole district of coast from Galeria lies completely waste. The Balagna alone is well cultivated, and it has also the larger proportion of the population.
The little city of Calvi, containing at present about 1680 inhabitants, owes its origin to Giovaninello, lord of Nebbio, the bitter enemy of Giudice della Rocca, and an adherent of Genoa. The town, therefore, became subject to Genoa, and it remained constantly true to the Republic. Like the Bonifazians, the Calvese were allowed important privileges. In the time of Filippini, Calvi contained four hundred hearths; and he terms it one of the principal cities of Corsica for two reasons—its antiquity, and the handsomeness of the houses, as he adds, "in comparison with those of the interior." The Bank of Genoa, he says, built the fortress; and, according to some, its erection cost 1850 scudi.
Calvi lies on the tongue of land which terminates one of the ranges of hills that encircle the extensive basin round the gulf. These hills are bare, and consist of granite and porphyry. They form an imposing amphitheatre. Olives and vines thrive on their slopes, and their base is covered with yew, and shrubbery of myrtle, albatro, and tinus, the blossoms of which supply the bees with honey. From this arises the bitterness of the Corsican honey, to which allusion is made by Ovid and Virgil. Calenzana particularly abounds in honey. A stream flows through the valley of these hills, and forms in the neighbourhood of Calvi a marsh, the exhalations of which are dangerous. This marsh has the name of La Vigna del Vescovo—the Bishop's Vineyard—and its origin is connected with one of those significant popular traditions which so much amuse the traveller in Corsica.
CHAPTER V.
CALVI AND ITS MEN.
The miasma of the marsh made the Borgo of Calvi—the little suburb—unhealthy. More salubrious is the air of the fortress above, which encloses the city proper. I ascended to this old Genoese citadel—the strongest fortification in Corsica next to Bonifazio. Above the gate, I read these words—Civitas Calvis semper fidelis. Calvi was unfailingly true to the Genoese. Fidelity is always beautiful when it is not slavish, and Calvi was in fact a Genoese colony. The proverbial fidelity of Calvi, as expressed in the motto over its gate, has become in more than one sense historical. When the republican General, Casabianca, after the heroic defence of Calvi against the English, was obliged to capitulate in the year 1794, one of the stipulations of surrender was, that the old inscription above mentioned should remain untouched. This condition was honourably fulfilled, as the inscription itself still testifies.
There is only one point in regard to which Genoa and the "ever-faithful" Calvi are at feud. For the Calvese affirm that Columbus was a fellow-countryman of theirs. They say that his family, admittedly Genoese, had at an early period settled in Calvi. A very earnest contest was in fact for some time maintained about this question of birth, as formerly the seven cities disputed about the cradle of Homer. It is affirmed that Genoa suppressed the family register of the Colombos of Calvi, and changed the name of one of the streets of the town, the Colombo Street, into the street Del Filo. I find it also recorded that inhabitants of Calvi were the first Corsicans who sailed to America. I am informed further, that the name Colombo still exists in Calvi. Corsican authors even of the present day claim the great discoverer as their fellow-countryman; and Napoleon, during his residence in Elba, proposed instituting historical researches in regard to this point. We shall forbear attempting to settle it; Columbus in his will calls himself a native Genoese. The world might become envious if it were established that fate had bestowed upon the little Corsica the man who was greater even than Napoleon.
Valiant men enough do honour to Calvi; and when we look at this little town within the fortress, and see that it is nothing but the heap of black and shattered ruins to which the bombs of the English reduced it, we read in its chronicle of desolation the history of departed heroes. Very strange is the aspect of a city, which, shattered by a bombardment almost a century ago, remains still at the present day in ruins. The clock of time seems here in Corsica to have stood still. An iron hand has maintained its grasp upon the past—upon the old popular customs—the dirges of the Etruscans, the family feuds of the Middle Ages, the barbarism of the Vendetta, the ancient, simple modes of life, and the ancient heroism; and as the people live in cities that have become gray in ruin, they live socially, in a state that, for the cultivated nations, is hoary tradition.
In the principal church of Calvi, whose Moorish cupola is pierced by the balls of the English, they show the tomb of a family that bears the dearest, the most precious of all names—the name Libertà—Freedom! It is the old heroic family of the Baglioni which has this title. In the year 1400, when certain aristocrats in Calvi had made themselves tyrants of the town, and were on the point of putting the city into the hands of the Arragonese, a young man named Baglioni arose, and suddenly, with his friends, attacked the two tyrants in the citadel, as once Pelopidas fell upon the tyrants of Thebes, put them to the sword, and called the people to freedom. From that call—Libertà! Libertà!—came the surname which his grateful fellow-citizens immediately gave him, and which his family has ever since borne. The three heroic brothers, Piero, Antonio, and Bartolommeo Libertà, were descendants of Baglioni. They had emigrated to Marseilles. This city was in the hands of the League, and, though left alone, continued to defy Henry IV. after he had entered Paris, and received the submission of the House of Guise. Casaux, the consul of the League, was the tyrant of Marseilles; he had determined to surrender the town to the Spanish fleet, which was commanded by the celebrated Andreas Doria. Piero Libertà, with his brothers and other bold men of Marseilles, conspired to rescue the city. Piero collected them in his house, and, when they had matured their plan, they proceeded daringly to its instant execution. They burst into the citadel of Marseilles, and, with his own hand, Piero Libertà sent a lance through the throat of the consul Casaux. When he had either slain or disarmed all the guards, he shut the doors of the castle, and, with the bloody sword in his hand, he ran through the city, shouting, "Libertà! Libertà!" The people rose at his call, ran to arms, stormed the towers and fortifications of Marseilles, and freed the city. Immediately the Duke of Guise took possession of Marseilles in the name of Henry IV., and he dated from the Camp of Rosny, the 6th March 1596, a memorial eulogizing Piero Libertà. He made him supreme judge of Marseilles, captain of the Porta Reale, governor of Nostra Donna della Guardia, and heaped upon him other honours besides. This happened at the same time that another Corsican, Alfonso Ornano, the son of Sampiero, won Lyons for the King of France, on which occasion Henry IV. called out: "Now am I king."
Piero Libertà died not many years after the deliverance of Marseilles. The town buried him in state, and placed his statue in the City Hall. These words were engraven on the pedestal of the statue: Petro Libertæ Libertatis assertori, heroi, malorum averrunco, pacis civiumque restauratori, &c.