Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia Part 12

Coming now to the alluvial deposits, we find them extending over the great plains on the eastern coast of the island, the _littorale_ mentioned in an early chapter of this work. The plain of Biguglia, for instance, was formed by one of those vast inundations which have received the name of diluvial currents, and swept away a great number of species of animals. In fact, we find traces of one of these inundations in a breccia formed of the fossil bones of animals in the hills near Bastia. Among these fossil bones Cuvier has remarked the head of a _lagomys_, a little hare without any tail,-a species still existing in Siberia.[22] It would too much lengthen these remarks were we to enter on an inquiry into the age and character of these osseous breccia, but the curious reader is referred to Lyell's "Elements"[23] for some interesting observations on fossil mammalia found in alluvial deposits alternating with breccia. We are not aware, however, that the hills near Bastia are connected with volcanic action as those of Auvergne, to which Mr. Lyell refers.

Indeed, in concluding this notice of Corsican geology, we have only to remark that, although Corsica has no existing volcanoes, it would appear, from fragments preserved in the cabinets of Natural History, that, here and there, a few rare traces of extinct volcanoes of very ancient date have been discovered, in the neighbourhood of Porto Vecchio, Aleria, Cape Balistro, in the Gulf of Sta Manza, and some other places.

CHAP. XVI.

_Approach to Corte.-Our "Man of the Woods."-Casa Paoli.-The Gaffori.-Citadel.-An Evening Stroll._

At Ponte Francardo we left the valley of the Golo, and followed up a stream tributary to it, among hills and woods; being now on the outskirts of one of the great forest districts of Corsica.

When mounting the last hill in the approach to Corte we were joined by an inhabitant of the town, who at first seemed disposed to amuse himself at our expense. He was surprised, as we afterwards found, at meeting two foreigners of somewhat rough exterior, without baggage or attendance, engaged on rather a forlorn enterprise. He told us that not very long before he had met an Englishman under similar circ.u.mstances, and related some ridiculous stories respecting him. But as I do not believe that any of our countrymen have been recently tourists in Corsica, I am disposed to think that the person he made his b.u.t.t was a German traveller,-a mistake we have often found occurring in our own case in remote parts of the Continent. We got, however, into conversation, and it turning on forests,-a subject on which we happened to be rather at home,-finding us to be practical people, and, much as we admired his wild country, not inclined to over-indulgence in sentiment and romance, he altered his tone, and even went into the opposite extreme of supposing that our journey was connected with a speculation in timber. That being his hobby, we soon became great friends. He informed us that he possessed some large tracts of forest, which he should be happy to show us, and our "man of the woods" not only performed his promise, but, being a person of considerable intelligence, gave us much valuable information, and rendered us many services during our stay in Corte.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORTE.]

The approach to Corte on this side is sufficiently striking, though not so picturesque as from the point of view on the road to Ajaccio, from which my friend's sketch, lithographed for this work, was taken. After winding up along a steep ascent, the town suddenly burst on our sight from the summit of the ridge. Its position is admirable. Seated nearly in the centre of the island, in the heart of the elevated _plateau_ described in the preceding chapter, and surrounded by lofty mountains, the pa.s.ses of which admit of being easily defended, with a bold insulated rock for the base of its almost impregnable fortress, the houses of the town cl.u.s.tering round it, and, beneath, a valley of exuberant fertility, watered by two rivers, having their confluence just above, it seems formed to be the capital of an island-kingdom, of a nation of mountaineers. Such it was under the government of Pascal Paoli, and during the earlier period of the English occupation.

We entered the town by the Corso, its modern _boulevard_,-a long avenue planted with trees. This and a suburb beyond the castle, built down the slope of the hill towards the bridge over the Tavignano, are the only regular streets in the place. Roomy and well-furnished apartments were found at the Hotel Paoli on the Corso, where we met with most kind treatment and excellent fare. My notes mention the mutton and trout as being of superior flavour, and a very good red wine of the country. The _confitures_-of which an _armoire_ in the _salle a manger_ contained great store, the pride of our hostess, and the perfection of her art-were delicious, especially one composed of slices of pear and other fruits, larded with walnuts, and preserved in a syrup of rich grape-juice. The coffee, of course, was excellent. Tea we found nowhere, except from our own packets, and made, much to the general amus.e.m.e.nt, in the coffee-pot we improvised at Bastia.

True to his appointment, our "man of the woods" called upon us after we had dined, and accompanied us to the princ.i.p.al _cafe_. It was noisy and disorderly, and we soon adjourned to the hotel and spent the evening in very interesting conversation. An excursion to his forest was arranged.

He told us that it abounded in game; but it was mortifying to find that it was out of his power to afford us any sport, the prohibition to carry fire-arms being so rigorously enforced that no relaxation was allowed in favour of anyone. So the _cha.s.se_ was deferred till we landed in Sardinia.

The next morning was devoted to a survey of the town. The houses and churches are mean, the only objects of interest being the Casa Paoli and the citadel. The house inhabited by Pascal Paoli, when Corte was the seat of his government, is but little changed, though converted into a college founded by the general's will. It has an air of rude simplicity.

There is still the homely cabinet in which he wrote, his library, and a laboratory. The library contained about a score of English books; but we did not discover among them any of those presented by Boswell. In the _salle_ are some second-rate paintings presented by Cardinal Fesch.

The college did not seem to be flouris.h.i.+ng. Perhaps the most curious thing in the house are some remains of the supports of a canopy for a throne, which tradition says Pascal Paoli caused to be erected in the _salle_ on an occasion when his council of state met, the canopy being surmounted by a crown. If Paoli affected royalty, he received no encouragement from his council, and never sat on the throne.

Nearly opposite is an old house formerly belonging to Gaffori, one of the patriot leaders during the Genoese wars. a.s.saulted by the enemy during the general's absence, his heroic wife, with the help of a few adherents, barricaded the doors and windows, and, herself, gun in hand, made such a stout resistance, rejecting all terms of capitulation, and threatening to blow it up and bury herself in the ruins rather than submit, that she held it for several days against all attacks, until her husband brought a strong force to rescue her. The shot-holes made in the walls by the fire of the a.s.sailants are still pointed out.

There is another story connected with the Gaffori family, which the inhabitants of Corte relate with great pride. During the War of Independence, the general's son was carried off by the Genoese and imprisoned in the citadel of Corte, which they then held. a.s.saulted by the Corsicans with great vigour, the Genoese had the inhumanity to suspend the boy from an embrasure where the enemy's fire was the hottest. At this spectacle the a.s.sailants paused in their attack, till the general ordered them to continue their fire. Renucci, who works up the story in his usual florid style, makes Gaffori exclaim, "_Pera il figlio; pera la mia famiglia tutta, e trionfi la causa della patria._" I prefer the version given me by a native of Corte, whose father was an eye-witness of the scene:-"_J'etais citoyen avant que je n'etais pere._"

We shuddered as we looked up from below at the battlement from which the child was suspended. The fire was renewed with still more vigour; but the child marvellously escaped, and the garrison was forced to surrender.

A _permis_ to visit the castle having been obtained from the French commandant, we climbed the rocky ascent by corkscrew steps. At present, the whole area of the rock is embraced by the fortifications which at different periods have grown round the ma.s.sive citadel on its summit, founded by Vincintello d'Istria in the fifteenth century. Recently the French have cleared away some old houses within the _enceinte_ to strengthen the works.

"What can be the use," I said to our conductor, "of strengthening this place now?"

"_Chi sa?_" was the short reply. Our friend, like many other Corsicans we met with, still nourished the visionary hopes which had caused his country so much blood and misery during her long and fruitless struggles for a national independence.

"_La_," said he, pointing to the _grille_ of a dungeon, "_mon pere etait prisonnier._"

On going our rounds, we came to the platform of a bastion formed on the site of some of the demolished houses.

"Here," he said, with emotion, planting his stick on a particular spot, "my mother gave me birth. Here we lived twenty-five years. She used to talk of the English red-coats and the house of King George."

It is now the residence of the family of Arrhigi, Duc de Padoue, and contains a portrait of Madame Buonaparte, Napoleon's mother, and several pictures connected with the events of the emperor's life.

One of the sketches in my friend's portfolio was taken in the recess of a bastion, and it required some manuvring to interpose our Corsican friend's portly person between the sketcher and the French sentry, as he pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed-an office which our patriotic guide performed with much satisfaction-while a liberty was taken contrary to the rules of fortified places.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CITADEL OF CORTE.]

The view from the top of the citadel, the centre of so magnificent a panorama, may be well imagined. We now commanded the confluence of the two rivers, the Tavignano and the Restonica, beneath the walls, the eye tracing up the torrents to the gorges from which they rushed, while the details of the town, the gardens, and vineyards, and the ruined convents on the neighbouring hills, were brought distinctly under view; and the mountains towered above our heads, fitting bulwarks of the island capital.

In the evening we strolled down the eastern suburb, and, crossing the bridge over the Tavignano, rambled on to the hill above, and the ruins of the Franciscan convent where Paoli a.s.sembled the legislative a.s.sembly, and in which the Anglo-Corsican parliament met while Corsica was united to England. The lithographic sketch of Corte was taken from beyond the bridge. Faithful as it is, one feels that neither pen nor pencil can do justice to such a scene. Art fails to lend the colouring of the tawny-orange vines, the pale-green olive-trees, the warm evening tints glowing on the purple hills, the ma.s.s of shade on the mountain sides first buried in twilight, the grey rocks, and, far away, aerial peaks vanis.h.i.+ng in distance.

A pleasant thing is the evening stroll on the outskirts of town or village, where life offers so much novelty. How graceful the forms of those girls at the fountain, dipping their pitchers of antique form and a glossy green! Poising them on their heads with one arm raised, how lightly they trip back to the town, laughing and talking in the sweetest of tongues-sweet in their mouths even in its insular dialect!

A lazy Corsican is leading a goat, scarcely more bearded and s.h.a.ggy than its owner. Others, still lazier, and wrapped in the rough _pelone_ hanging from their shoulders like an Irishman's frieze coat, bestride diminutive mules, while their wives trudge by the side, carrying burdens of firewood or vegetables on their heads and shoulders. Waggons, drawn by oxen and loaded with wine-casks, slowly creak along the road.

It is dusk as we lounge up the suburb, and the rude houses piled up round the base of the citadel look gloomier than ever. Light from a blazing pine-torch flashes from the door of a _cave_; it is a wine vault. The owner welcomes us to its dark recesses. Smeared with the juice of the ruddy grape, he is a very priest of Bacchus; but the processes carried on in his cave are only initiatory to the orgies. Here are vats filled with the new-pressed juice; there vats in the various stages of fermentation. Jolly, as becomes his profession, he gives us to taste the sweet must and drink the purer extract. He explains the process, and tells us that the vintage is a fair average, though the vine disease, the odion, has penetrated even into these mountains.

_Evoe Bacche!_ The fumes of the reeking cave mount to our heads, the floor is slippery with the lees and trodden vine-leaves. We reel to the door, glad to breathe a fresher atmosphere.

Calling at the _cafe_ 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 cla.s.ses 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 _cafes_?

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 ill.u.s.trious 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 const.i.tutional 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 a.s.sociated. 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 wis.h.i.+ng to fill our pages with extraneous matter, till we have linked together our desultory notices by a summary review of the princ.i.p.al 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 const.i.tution, founded as far as possible on the old Corsican inst.i.tutions. 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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.

Intestine divisions had always been the bane of Corsican independence, and even Paoli's just and popular administration could not escape the rivalry of Emanuel Matra, a man of ancient family and great power, who became jealous of Paoli's pre-eminence. All attempts at conciliation on the part of Paoli proving useless, Matra and his adherents rose in arms, and, calling the Genoese to their aid, it was only after a long and b.l.o.o.d.y struggle, and some sharp defeats, that Paoli and the Nationals were able to crush the insurrection; Matra falling, after fighting desperately, in the battle which terminated the war.

Pascal Paoli, being now firmly seated in power, and the island, settled under a regular form of government, growing in strength, the Genoese found themselves unequal to cope with a brave and united people. After some further ineffectual attempts, they once more applied to France for succour, and engaged her to occupy the strong places in the island, as she had already done from 1737 to 1741. French troops accordingly, landing in Corsica, established a footing which has never been relinquished, except during the short period of English occupation. But by the Treaty of Compiegne, signed before the expedition sailed (1764), the French limited their support of the Genoese to a term of four years.

During that period they maintained a strict neutrality towards the Corsican Nationals, confining themselves to the limits of their occupation. Their generals maintained harmonious relations with Pascal Paoli, and, the Genoese power in the island having shrunk to nothing, the patriots had the entire possession of the country, except the fortified places, and the Commonwealth flourished under the firm and active administration of its wise chief. It was at this time that James Boswell visited the island. Residing some time with General Paoli, and admitted to familiar intercourse with him, he collected the materials from which he afterwards compiled "An Account of Corsica, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli," published in London in 1767,-a work, the details of which are only equalled by his _Johnsoniana_ for their minute and vivid portraiture of his hero's life, opinions, character, and habits. The "Account of Corsica" has been the standard, indeed the only English, work relating to that island from that day to the present.

The time fixed by the Treaty of Compiegne for the evacuation of Corsica by the French troops was on the point of expiring. They had already withdrawn from Ajaccio and Calvi, when the Genoese, finding themselves utterly incapable of retaining possession of the island, offered to cede their rights to the king of France. This was in 1768. The Duc de Choiseul, the minister of Louis XV., lent a willing ear to a proposal which opened the way to the conquest of Corsica-a prize, from its situation, its forests, its fertility, worthy the ambition of the _Grand Monarque_. The French generals, receiving immediate orders to cross the neutral lines, soon made themselves masters of Capo Corso, and pushed their successes on the eastern side of the island.

Pascal Paoli, his brother Clemente, and the other national leaders, were not wanting in this crisis of the fate of Corsica, and the people rose _en ma.s.se_ against the overwhelming force that threatened to crush them. The war, though necessarily short, was marked by obstinate bravery on the part of the Corsicans. The French troops having met with many repulses, received a signal defeat at Borgo. There is scarcely a village in the interior that is not ill.u.s.trious for its patriotic efforts at this period. Chauvelin, the French general-in-chief, was recalled, and, ultimately, the Count de Vaux, an officer of experience, took the field as generalissimo of the French army, swelled by successive reinforcements to the vast force of 40,000 men.

The great blow which decided the fate of Corsica was struck at the battle of Ponte Nuovo, of which some particulars are given in a former chapter.[24] This defeat entirely demoralised the island militia, and crushed Paoli's hopes of maintaining the nationality of Corsica.

Retiring to Corte, and thence, almost as a fugitive, to Vivario, in the heart of the mountains, though he might still have maintained a _guerilla_ warfare against the French, he resolved to abandon a forlorn hope, and, pressed by a large body of the enemy's troops, embarked in an English frigate at Porto Vecchio, with his brother Clemente and 300 of his followers.