Calling at the café on the Corso, not from choice but by appointment with our “man of the woods,” we find it, as before, dirty, disorderly, and noisy. Where, we ask ourselves, are the gentlemen of Corte? But what has any one, above the classes who toil for a livelihood, to do in Corte, except to lounge the long day under the melancholy elms in the Corso, and wile away the evenings by petty gambling in its wretched cafés?
CHAP. XVII.
Pascal Paoli more honoured than Napoleon Buonaparte.—His Memoirs.—George III. King of Corsica.—Remarks on the Union.—Paoli's Death and Tomb.
The suppression of brigandage, security for life and property, the stains of blood washed from the soil, the shame in the face of Europe wiped out,—these are signal benefits which claim from the Corsicans a warmer homage to the younger Napoleon than they ever paid to the first of that name. Not even the honour of having given an emperor to France, a conqueror to continental Europe, enlisted the sympathies, the enthusiasm, of the islanders in the wonderful career of their illustrious countryman. A party, a faction, the Salicete, the Arena, the Bacchiochi, the Abatucci, rallied round him in the first steps of his political life, and the Cervoni, the Sebastiani, soldiers of fortune, of the true Corsican stamp, fought his battles, and were richly rewarded. Some of his countrymen, to their honour, adhered to him to the end, sharing his exile in St. Helena. But the great emperor was never popular in his own country; he neither loved, nor was beloved by, his own people. He did nothing for them, as before remarked, but construct the great national roads; and that was purely a military measure. He left them—designedly, it would seem—to cut one another's throats, and despised them for their barbarism.
Pascal Paoli was, and ever will be, the popular hero of the Corsicans. He fought their last battles for the national independence; moulded their wild aspirations for liberty and self-government into a constitutional form; administered affairs unselfishly, purely, justly; encouraged industry, and checked outrage. He was a man of the people, one of themselves, and he never forgot it; nor have they.
In an Englishman's eyes, Pascal Paoli has the additional merit of having conceived a just idea of the advantage his country would derive from the closest union with the only European power under whose protection a weak State struggling for freedom could hope for repose. He did homage to our principles, and the public feeling was with him in England as well as in Corsica.
A work on Corsica that did not tell of banditti, that did not speak of Pascal Paoli, would fail in the two points with which the name of this island is instinctively associated. References to the great Corsican chief have repeatedly occurred in these Rambles, connected with localities, and may again. We have visited his birthplace, the scenes of his last campaign and disastrous defeat, and now the seat of his government, Corte. We must not leave it, though impatient to proceed on our journey and by no means wishing to fill our pages with extraneous matter, till we have linked together our desultory notices by a summary review of the principal occurrences in Pascal Paoli's remarkable life, and of the strange event which terminated his political career,—the creation of an Anglo-Corsican kingdom united for a time to the British Crown.
Pascal (Pasquale) Paoli was born at Rostino on the 25th of April, 1725, being the second son of Giacinto Paoli, one of the leaders of the Corsican people in their last great struggle against the tyranny of the Genoese. Compelled by the course of events to retire to Naples in 1739, Giacinto Paoli was accompanied by his son Pascal, who, inheriting his father's talents and patriotism, there received a finished education, both civil and military. Being much about the court, the young Corsican acquired, with high accomplishments, those polished manners for which he was afterwards distinguished; and he held a commission in a regiment of cavalry, in which he did good service in Calabria.
Recalled to Corsica in 1755, at the early age of thirty, to take the supreme management of affairs in consequence of the divisions prevailing among the patriot leaders, the expulsion of the Genoese became his first duty; and he soon succeeded, at least, in freeing the interior of the island, and confining their occupation to the narrow limits of the fortified towns on the coasts. His next step was to remodel, or rather to create, the civil government; and in so doing he introduced an admirable form of a representative constitution, founded as far as possible on the old Corsican institutions. It was, in fact, a republic, of which Pascal Paoli was the chief magistrate, and commander of the forces. One of the earliest acts of his administration was a severe law for the suppression of the bloody practice of the vendetta, followed in course of time by measures for the encouragement of agriculture, and by the foundation of a university at Corte. The necessity of meeting the Genoese on their own element led him to get together and equip a small squadron of ships, no country being better fitted than Corsica, from its position and resources, to acquire some share of naval power in the Mediterranean. With this squadron, after repulsing the Genoese fleet, he landed a body of troops in the island of Capraja, lying off the coast of Corsica, and succeeded in wresting it from the Republic.