The following is the description it gives of the island of Corsica: "Corsica is one of the largest islands of the Mediterranean sea, lying above Sardinia. It is about twenty-five German miles long, and twelve broad. On account of its atmosphere, it is not considered very healthy; yet the land is pretty fertile, although varied by much hill-country, and having many barren places. The inhabitants are famed for their bravery and hardihood in war; but they are at the same time said to be wicked, revengeful, cruel, and rapacious. Moreover, they go by the name of coarse Corsicans—a character whose fitness I shall not here dispute."
The news of the landing of Theodore was, according to this little book, communicated in letters from a correspondent in Bastia, dated the 5th April. We shall quote from these letters.
"In the harbour of Aleria an English ship lately arrived, which is said to belong to the consul of that nation at Tunis; and in it there came a person, in outward appearance of high distinction, whom some took to be a royal prince, others an English nobleman, and whom a few supposed to be the Prince Ragotzy. This much is known, that he professes the Romish religion and bears the name of Theodore. His dress is in the fashion of the Christians who travel in Turkey, and consists of a long scarlet furred coat, peruke and hat, with a cane and sword. He has a retinue consisting of two officers, a secretary, a chaplain, a lord high steward, a steward, cook, three slaves, and four lackeys: in addition, he has brought with him out of Barbary ten cannons, above 7000 muskets, 2000 pairs of shoes, and a great quantity of provisions of all kinds—among them 7000 sacks of grain, as well as several chests full of gold and silver coins—among them a strong plate-chest with silver handles, and full of whole and half zechins. The whole treasure is reckoned to amount to two million pieces of eight. The leading men among the Corsicans received him with great marks of honour, and addressed him as Your Excellency, and gave him the titles of a viceroy. He immediately made four of the Corsicans colonels, and assigned to each a hundred pieces of eight per month; then he raised and equipped four companies, and presented a musket, a pair of shoes, and a zechin to every common soldier: a captain receives eleven pieces of eight per month, but, when the companies shall be in a state of full efficiency, he is to receive twenty-five. He has taken up his residence in the episcopal palace at Campo Loro, before which four hundred men with two cannons keep guard. It is rumoured that he means to go to Casinca, not far from St. Pelegrino, and that he only waits for some large war-ships, which, it is said, will arrive about the 15th of this month, in order to attack the Genoese with all his forces by land and sea, and for this purpose he means to raise many additional companies. It is confidently affirmed that he has been sent by a Catholic potentate in Europe, who means to support him in every way in all his undertakings; consequently, at Genoa, they are in the greatest alarm, and look upon the supremacy of the Genoese in this island to be as good as lost. We have just received here some later intelligence, to the effect that the afore-mentioned stranger regulates his household in a more and more regal style, and is always accompanied to church by a body-guard; that he has appointed one Hyacinth Paoli his treasurer, and has raised one of the most distinguished men of Aleria to the rank of knight."
People were now naturally very eager to learn something about the life and family of Theodore. His adventures and his connexions pointed chiefly to romantic Spain and to Paris. The following letter, written to a friend in Holland by a Westphalian nobleman, and quoted in the little German book which we have referred to, will give us some information on this point.
YOUTH-ROMANCE OUT OF THE LIFE OF THEODORE OF CORSICA.
IN THE FORM OF A LETTER.
"Sir,—I have too great a pleasure in giving you satisfaction, as far as it is in my power, not to be willing to impart to you all that is known to me of the life of a man who now begins to make an appearance in the world.
"You have no doubt read in the newspapers that Theodore von Neuhoff, on whom the Corsicans have conferred the crown, was born in Westphalia, in a district belonging to the King of Prussia. This is true; and I can the more easily confirm it, because he and I studied together, and for some years lived in intimate friendship. The memory of those instances which antiquity affords us of persons of moderate rank who have mounted a throne has been almost entirely lost; but Kuli Cham in Persia, and Neuhoff in Corsica revive such things in our own times. The latter was born in Altena, a little town in Westphalia, whither his mother had gone to pay a friendly visit to a nobleman, after she had prematurely lost her husband, who died, leaving her a widow and pregnant with Theodore.
"His father was captain of the Bishop of Münster's body-guard; and his grandfather, who had grown gray in arms, had commanded a regiment under the great Bernhard von Galen. At the death of the father, the affairs of the family were in great confusion; and had it not been for the activity of a cousin, on whom their management devolved, they would have been in a lamentable condition. When ten years old, he was put to the Jesuits' College at Münster to prosecute his studies, and there he in a short time made good progress. I entered the same college a year afterwards. His father's estate bordered on ours, and we had from our earliest childhood formed a friendship which became closer and stronger as we grew older. He was of a size beyond his years, and his lively and fiery eyes already indicated spirit and courage. He was very industrious, and our teachers continually held him up to us as an example. This, which in the other scholars gave rise to envy, gave me, on the contrary, pleasure, and awoke in me a desire to emulate his industry. We remained together six years at Münster. When my father heard of our intimacy, he proposed not to separate us, but to make him my travelling companion and give him the means of maintaining himself respectably.
"We were sent to Cologne to continue our studies. We seemed to have been transported to a new world, for we were now freed from the limited existence to which school tyranny had confined us, and began to taste the sweetness of freedom. Perhaps, indeed, I should have misused it, had not the good sense of my companion withheld me from every kind of dissipation. We were boarded in the house of a professor, whose wife, though somewhat in years, was of a cheerful disposition, and whose two daughters, as lively as they were beautiful, united these two qualities with a very prudent demeanour. After the evening meal, we generally amused ourselves with games or walked in a garden which belonged to the family, and which lay near the city gate.
This agreeable mode of life had lasted for about two years, when it was disturbed by the arrival of the Count von M——, whom his father had placed in the same house in which we lodged. He had a tutor, who was a native of Cologne, a man who had for many years had private haunts of his own, not perhaps of the most reputable kind, to which he was so addicted that he neglected his pupil. As we saw that the young Count's time frequently hung heavy on his hands, we were the first to make a proposal to him to join our little society—an offer which he accepted with pleasure.