Wanderings in Corsica: Its History and Its Heroes. Vol. 2 of 2

by Ferdinand Gregorovius

In this house of Gaffori's, Carlo Bonaparte lived with his wife Letitia in 1778; it was a house worthy to give origin to a Napoleon.

Many memories of Paoli are connected with a house which bears the name of the Palazzo de Corte, and was the seat of Paoli's government, and his residence. Here is the room in which he worked, a mean-looking little place enough, as beseemed the legislator of the Corsicans. They tell that the great man, who was not safe from the balls of the assassin, kept the windows of this room always barricaded; and in fact, the window-shutters are still to be seen lined with cork, as they were in his time. The National Assembly had decreed him a guard of twenty-four men, acting in this like the ancient democracies of Greece; he had another body-guard always in the room beside him, consisting of six Corsican dogs. I cannot help being reminded here of his contemporary and admirer Frederick the Great, and how he too, in his cabinet, was always surrounded by dogs; but these were kept for amusement or ornament merely—the pretty Biche, and the graceful Alcmene, and other greyhounds. The scene is characteristically different. If Paoli were painted in the company of his dogs, as Frederick the Great has so often been represented surrounded by his, it would make rather a wild picture: the Corsican hero in his mean-looking cabinet, writing by the fireplace, wrapped in a coarse woollen gown, behind a barricaded window, grim, shaggy wolf-hounds crouched upon the floor—there we have a Corsican historical genre painting.

In another room, formerly the hall where the Council of Nine sat, are preserved some very interesting relics; the rods, to wit, which were to have supported the canopy of Paoli's throne. Paoli and a throne? Impossible! Had the great democrat a hankering after kingly emblems? So it is affirmed; the story is as follows:—One day workmen were seen erecting a throne in the National Palace. It was of crimson damask, hung with gold fringes, and supported, above the Corsican arms, a golden crown, so placed that when Paoli seated himself, it stood over his head. To suit the throne, there were nine smaller crimson chairs, for the members of the Council of Nine. When the councillors had assembled in the hall, the door of Paoli's room opened, and Paoli, as it is said, in a magnificent robe of state, his head covered, and his sword by his side, entered, and moved towards the throne. A murmur of astonishment and displeasure instantly arose among the councillors, followed by a deep silence. Paoli stopped, was disconcerted, and he never took his seat upon the throne.

I have found so many confirmations of this story, that it seems to me almost presumption to doubt it. If it is true, it is a remarkable trait in the character of the great man, and at least a proof that human weakness everywhere asserts its sway, and that no mortal is safe from the moment when he may be overcome by vanity and outside show. Paoli and a throne—there can hardly be a greater contradiction. Liberty and the Corsican people were the noble man's loftiest throne, and no potentate ever occupied one more glorious than that plain arm-chair on which Paoli sat, the legislator and deliverer of a people.

His enemies have accused him of aiming at regal authority, but they wrong him in this, and Paoli's history gives the lie to the charge. Did he wish, perhaps, by means of regal emblems, to secure from foreign countries and from his own people a greater degree of respect for the state over which he presided, and which still bore the time-honoured appellation of the Kingdom of Corsica? We have no other instances of his indulging in kingly pomp. He, and all the other members of the government, went about in the common dress of the country; their clothes were of the Corsican wool, they lived like the simplest commoners. The heads of the state were distinguishable from the people only by their superior intelligence, and it was merely to give the French, in matters of exterior as well as in those of more importance, the impression of a regular and formal government, that he ordered the members of the Supreme Council to wear a distinct dress, a green coat, gold-laced—green and gold being the Corsican colours. He and they put on this official dress for the first time, when French officers came first to Corte. The country's rulers were to appear in a manner becoming their dignity. This was, however, a concession to French etiquette which we cannot but lament, because in making it Paoli ceased to maintain himself superior to appearances, and abolished the beautiful democratic equality which had previously expressed itself even in dress, by some pieces of gold lace. The Corsicans were entitled to wear their woollen blouse with greater pride than the French their glittering uniforms. Trifling and subordinate as these matters may in themselves appear, they nevertheless furnish material for thought. For time makes unessential differences essential, and of extrinsic makes intrinsic. There is in time an invisible influence for evil, which gradually stains all that is pure, dwarfs all that is great, debases all that is noble. In this world of ours, it is so and not otherwise; exalted virtue is a phenomenon confined to the period of struggle towards a great aim. In Corsica it has often made me sad to think, that all those heroic exertions of its people, all those battles for freedom, have proved fruitless; and that now, in the land of Sampiero, of Gaffori, and of Paoli, "the vain nation" bears rule. Yet it would have been an experience still more sad, had the state of Paoli sickened of itself, and yielded to human selfishness. For my part, I do not believe that it would have escaped this universal fate. For true freedom exists only in Utopia. Mankind appears to be capable of it only in the highest, most sacred moments.

On one occasion Paoli received in this Palazzo Nazionale a very splendid embassy. A ship of Tunis had stranded on the coast of Balagna, and Paoli had not only restored to the shipwrecked strangers all the property of which the peasantry of the region had deprived them, but hospitably entertained them, and sent them home to the Bey of Tunis under the conduct of two officers, and well supplied with every necessary for their journey. The Bey thereupon sent an embassy to Paoli to thank him, and convey to him the assurance that he would remain eternally his and his country's friend, and that no Corsican would ever sustain injury within the bounds of his territories. The ambassador from Tunis kneeled down before Paoli, and, putting his hand to his forehead, said in Italian, Il Bey ti saluta, e ti vuol bene—the Bey greets thee, and wishes thee well. He brought him as presents, a beautiful, splendidly caparisoned horse, two ostriches, a tiger, a sabre set with diamonds; and after residing some days in Corte, returned again to Africa.

Close to Corte lies the old convent of the Franciscans—a ruin of considerable size. In Paoli's time, the Corsican parliament assembled in the church of this convent; and from its pulpit not a few noble patriots have lifted their earnest voices. Many and not vain sacrifices were made to liberty in this church, and her name was not heard as an empty phrase. Those who called upon it, also died for it. In the year 1793, a general assembly of the Corsicans had met on the open ground before the convent; the time was stormy, for the grayhaired Paoli stood impeached of high treason by the National Convention of France. Pozzo di Borgo, that unrelenting enemy of Napoleon—like him, a citizen of Ajaccio—climbed upon a tree, and delivered a powerful and fiery speech in defence of Paoli, whose accusers, the furious clubbists, Arena and the Bonapartes, were here declared infamous.

At the present day, wandering about in the streets of the little city, which are silent as the grave, and beneath whose shady elms here and there, poor-looking Corsicans idle in dreamy listlessness, one can hardly believe that scarcely a hundred years ago such an obscure, secluded nook was the seat of the most enlightened political wisdom of the age.

Paoli founded a university in Corte; and he here called the first Corsican printing-press and the first Corsican newspaper into existence. From this university knowledge and enlightenment were to spread like a flood of light over the mountains, and into all the valleys of Corsica, dispelling the mediæval barbarism of her inhabitants. I have already, in the History of the Corsicans, mentioned this university, and spoken of its high merits as a patriotic institution. Many of Corsica's ablest men have been its pupils—talented advocates, who form in this island the majority of the literary class. Carlo Bonaparte, Napoleon's father, studied at this university. The young institution fell, however, when the country lost its freedom. Paoli on his deathbed set apart a legacy for its restoration, and with the help of this capital a sort of college was re-established in the year 1836. There are at present a director and seven professors for the sciences connected with it, but its condition is not very flourishing. An institution of this academic kind is also perhaps less suited to the wants of Corsica than good commercial schools.

I found among the Corsicans many learned and highly cultivated men, and here in Corte I became acquainted with a gentleman, the extent of whose reading in the literature of the Romanic languages astounded me. He is the son of one of the brave captains who, after the battle of Ponte Nuovo, remained in arms till the last moment, and whom I have mentioned by name. His memory is so retentive, that he knows by heart the best passages of all the great Italian, French, and Latin authors, and that it is a slight matter for him to repeat whole pages of Tasso or Ariosto, and long extracts from Voltaire or Macchiavelli, or from Livy, Horace, Boileau, or Rousseau. Talking with him of literature on one occasion, I asked him if he had ever read any works of Goethe. "No," said our well-read friend, "Pope is the only English author with whom I am acquainted."