The Bella Coschias, however, were not of any particular rank amongst their fellow-villagers, although their name, like that of so many Corsicans, is one well known and a good one in Italy.
A driver whom we employed later on, and who was much more trustworthy than our French friend, afterwards told us more of the bandit brothers. On one occasion, one of them had made his way for some reason to Ajaccio, and our coachman drove him back by night in a close carriage to Bocognano—some twenty miles.
This was several years ago, when the man was undoubtedly a mauvais sujet, murdering and evil-doing in every direction, simply for the gratification of his own bad passions; and yet neither our driver, a remarkably superior, unprejudiced man, nor his master, a well-to-do coach owner, dreamt of doing otherwise than protecting the bandit from the French government.
It will be some time yet before law is recognized in Corsica, or the natives learn to give up, into its hands, their right of judgment regarding private feuds and local offenders.
After all, the excuse for this condition of things lies in the mal-administration of justice under which poor Corsica groaned for centuries, and which forced public opinion to take the law into its own hands, and regard the procedure of the courts as only a source of foreign oppression and complicated misfortune. The same cause probably has to answer for the vendetta, for so many years the curse of Corsica, and the disgrace of a noble people.
The vendetta has been the internal disease of the island, breaking out again and again, and often sapping the strength and destroying the harmony of the different members of the community.
It was the natural result of a hopelessly corrupt legislature among a warlike people of strong passions and revengeful propensities; and as such, must not be judged too hardly.
It is an incontrovertible fact that the law of the vendetta was, in its first action, not only allowed, but enforced, among the early Jews by the Mosaic dispensation.
The Corsicans (if we put aside the humanizing effect of Christianity) have had greater reason and excuse for their practice of private retribution than ever had the Jews; for the Jews had a court of unassailable purity presided over by the delegate of the Deity Himself, whilst the poor Corsican could hope for no verdict unbought by gold, or uninfluenced by party spirit, and could bring down no judgment on the head of assassin or robber, save that meted out by the wrathful strength of his own right hand. But a custom which began not unreasonably, and with so much excuse, spread until it became a monstrous horror in the land.
Men were not content with the pursuit and death of the murderer or the robber only—his whole family became their lawful prey; and, in return, every member of that family sought to shed the blood of their pursuers.