The reproductive power that characterizes the Corsican families is truly remarkable. Any one who has directed attention to the history of this nation will have found, that almost universally the abilities of the father descend to the son and the son's sons.

It is not with a light heart that I now pass from the tomb of the family of Libertà, to that field of Calenzana, where lie graves of Schiavitù—of Slavery. They are the graves of five hundred brave Germans, sons of my fatherland, who were bought and sold, and who fell there at Calenzana.

I have told how it was in the history of the Corsicans. The Emperor Charles VI. had sold a corps of German auxiliaries to the Genoese, and the Genoese despatched them to Corsica. On the 2d of February 1732, the Corsicans under their general, Ceccaldi, attacked the German troops at Calenzana; these latter were commanded by Camillo Doria and Des Devins. After a fearful struggle the imperial troops were beaten, and five hundred Germans lay dead on the field of Calenzana. The Corsicans buried the strangers who had come to fight against the liberties of their country, on the beautiful mountain-slope between Calvi and Calenzana. Beneath a foreign soil rest there the bones of my unhappy countrymen. Rocks of dark, blood-tinged porphyry stand near. Myrtles and flowering herbs crown the graves. And still every year at the Festival of All-Souls, the clergy of Calenzana visit these graves of their foes—Camposanto dei Tedeschi, as people call the field of Calenzana; and sprinkle with consecrated water the ground where the poor mercenaries fell. Such is the vengeance the Corsican takes upon the foes who come to assassinate his independence! I feel as if on me—one of the few Germans who have ever stood upon the graves of the mercenaries of Calenzana, and probably the only German who has thus made public mention of them—devolved the duty of thanking, in the name of my country, the noble Corsican people for their generous sympathy and wide-hearted humanity.

The Corsicans gave my countrymen a grave; I will write their epitaph:—

We came, five hundred luckless mercenaries,

Sold by the Emperor to Genoa,

To crush the freedom of the Corsicans—

We came, and paid the penalty in blood;

We expiate the crime in foreign graves.

Call us not guilty, give us tender pity,