William Sloane - The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4)

But the great French minister was a master of diplomacy and would not yield. In his designs upon Corsica he had little to fear from European opposition. He knew how hampered England was by the strength of parliamentary opposition, and the unrest of her American colonies. The Sardinian monarchy was still weak, and quailed under the jealous eyes of her strong enemies. Austria could not act without breaking the league so essential to her welfare, while the Bourbon courts of Spain and Naples would regard the family aggrandizement with complacency. Moreover, something must be done to save the prestige of France: her American colonial empire was lost; Catherine's brilliant policy, and the subsequent victories of Russia in the Orient, were threatening what remained of French influence in that quarter. Here was a propitious moment to emulate once more the English: to seize a station on the Indian highroad as valuable as Gibraltar or Port Mahon, and to raise high hopes of again recovering, if not the colonial supremacy among nations, at least that equality which the Seven Years' War had destroyed. Without loss of time, therefore, the negotiations were ended, and Buttafuoco was dismissed. On May fifteenth, 1768, the price to be paid having been fixed, a definitive treaty with Genoa was signed whereby she yielded the exercise of sovereignty to France, and Corsica passed finally from her hands. Paoli appealed to the great powers against this arbitrary transfer, but in vain.

The campaign of subjugation opened at once, Buttafuoco, with a few other Corsicans, taking service against his kinsfolk. The soldiers of the Royal Corsican regiment, which was in the French service, and which had been formed under his father's influence, flatly refused to fight their brethren. The French troops already in the island were at once reinforced, but during the first year of the final conflict the advantage was all with the patriots; indeed, there was one substantial victory on October seventh, 1768, that of Borgo, which caused dismay at Versailles. Once more Paoli hoped for intervention, especially that of England, whose liberal feeling would coincide with his interest in keeping Corsica from France. Money and arms were sent from Great Britain, but that was all. This conduct of the British ministry was afterward recalled by France as a precedent for rendering aid to the Americans in their uprising against England.

The following spring an army of no less than twenty thousand men was despatched from France to make short and thorough work of the conquest. The previous year of bloody and embittered conflict had gone far to disorganize the patriot army. It was only with the utmost difficulty that the little bands of mountain villagers could be tempted away from the ever more necessary defense of their homes and firesides. Yet in spite of disintegration before such overwhelming odds, and though in want both of ordinary munitions and of the very necessities of life, the forces of Paoli continued a fierce and heroic resistance. It was only after months of devastating, heartrending, hopeless warfare, that their leader, utterly routed in the affair known as the battle of Ponte Nuovo, finally gave up the desperate cause. Exhausted, and without resources, he would have been an easy prey to the French; but they were too wise to take him prisoner. On June thirteenth, 1769, by their connivance he escaped, with three hundred and forty of his most devoted supporters, on two English vessels, to the mainland. His goal was England. The journey was a long, triumphant procession from Leghorn through Germany and Holland; the honors showered on him by the liberals in the towns through which he passed were such as are generally paid to victory, not to defeat. Kindly received and entertained, he lived for the next thirty years in London, the recipient from the government of twelve hundred pounds a year as a pension.

The year 1770 saw the King of France apparently in peaceful possession of that Corsican sovereignty which he claimed to have bought from Genoa. His administration was soon and easily inaugurated, and there was nowhere any interference from foreign powers. Philanthropic England had provided for Paoli, but would do no more, for she was busy at home with a transformation of her parties. The old Whig party was disintegrating; the new Toryism was steadily asserting itself in the passage of contemptuous measures for oppressing the American colonies. She was, moreover, soon to be so absorbed in her great struggle on both sides of the globe that interest in Corsica and the Mediterranean must remain for a long time in abeyance.

But the establishment of a French administration in the King's new acquisition did not proceed smoothly. The party favorable to incorporation with France had grown, and, in the rush to side with success, it now probably far outnumbered that of the old patriots. At the outset this majority faithfully supported the conquerors in an attempt, honorable to both, to retain as much of Paoli's system as possible. But the appointment of an intendant and a military commander acting as royal governor with a veto over legislation was essential. This of necessity destroyed the old democracy, for, in any case, the existence of such officials and the social functions of such offices must create a quasi-aristocracy, and its power would rest not on popular habit and good-will, but on the French soldiery. The situation was frankly recognized, therefore, in a complete reorganization of those descended from the old nobility, and from these a council of twelve was selected to support and countenance the governor. The clergy and the third estate were likewise formally organized in two other orders, so that with clergy, nobles, and commons, Corsica became a French pays d'état, another provincial anachronism in the chaos of royal administration. The class bitterness of the mainland could easily be and was transplanted to the island; the ultimate success of the process left nothing to be desired. Moreover, the most important offices were given into French hands, while the seat of government was moved from Corte, the highland capital, to the lowland towns of Bastia and Ajaccio. The primeval feud of highlanders and lowlanders was thus rekindled, and in the subsequent agitations the patriots won over by France either lost influence with their followers, or ceased to support the government. Old animosities were everywhere revived and strengthened, until finally the flames burst forth in open rebellion. They were, of course, suppressed, but the work was done with a savage thoroughness the memory of which long survived to prevent the formation in the island of a natural sentiment friendly to the French. Those who professed such a feeling were held in no great esteem.

It was perhaps an error that Paoli did not recognize the indissoluble bonds of race and speech as powerfully drawing Corsica to Italy, disregard the leanings of the democratic mountaineers toward France, sympathize with the fondness of the towns for the motherland, and so use his influence as to confirm the natural alliance between the insular Italians and those of the peninsula. When we regard Sardinia, however, time seems to have justified him. There is little to choose between the sister islands as regards the backward condition of both; but the French department of Corsica is, at least, no less advanced than the Italian province of Sardinia. The final amalgamation of Paoli's country with France, which was in a measure the result of his leaning toward a French protectorate, accomplished one end, however, which has rendered it impossible to separate her from the course of great events, from the number of the mighty agents in history. Curiously longing in his exile for a second Sampiero to have wielded the physical power while he himself should have become a Lycurgus, Paoli's wish was to be half-way fulfilled in that a warrior greater than Sampiero was about to be born in Corsica, one who should, by the very union so long resisted, come, as the master of France, to wield a power strong enough to shatter both tyrannies and dynasties, thus clearing the ground for a lawgiving closely related to Paoli's own just and wise conceptions of legislation.