The Restoration
The Restoration
The Franciscan Convent of Alando, Bozio, site of the Consulta of Bozio
The Franciscan Convent of Alando, Bozio, site of the Consulta of Bozio
If there was one thing that nearly all the factions and personalities of the national movement could agree on, it was the necessity of a new consulta. In fact a national assembly had been proposed by some, including Count Gianpietro Gaffori, nearly a month before, but the presence of Theodore in the south had frustrated these attempts because of the insistence of the royalist partisans that no assembly be convened without the royal presence. Although relatively few in number, the royalists were vocal and militant, and their chief exponent in the Balagna Marquis Simone Fabiani seemed to be in a powerful position at Isola Rossa. Even if the inconciliabili were in the minority, to go ahead without them would risk not only an ideological breach in the national movement but possibily a geographic one as well, with the Tavagna and the interior set against the Balagna and the more pro-royalist areas of the Castagniccia. Not until Theodore’s arrival at newly liberated Corti in late March did the convocation of a new national consulta become feasible. It was ultimately to be held at Bozio on the 2nd of April, some 12 miles east of Corti.
The delegates of the Bozio consulta faced a considerable list of challenges, among the most urgent of which was the establishment of justice. Since the Battle of Ponte Leccia and the dissolution of Theodore’s Corti regime nearly two years before, there had been no effective national leadership. Despite its recent ex post facto recognition by Theodore, the “regency” of Marquis Luca d’Ornano had exerted power only in the western Dila and consisted of little more than d’Ornano’s own network of clans and villages. The sudden withdrawal of the Genoese thus left most of the island as an ungoverned space. Having liberated the interior, the nationals now needed to demonstrate they were capable of ruling it. Banditry and murder had escalated dramatically, and while much of the violence was directed at real or suspected filogenovesi the bandits were not always known for their qualities of patriotism and discernment. The orgy of private vengeance, as useful as it had been to purge the filogenovesi party in the interior, had to be replaced with public justice.
Beyond the immediate restoration of order, the long-term strategy of the national cause was also a point of contention. Outside of certain bases of royal support in the Balagna and the Castagniccia, the preference for negotiation over war enjoyed significant support. While the Genoese position seemed weaker than it had been in years, there was no telling when the war in Europe would be resolved, allowing the French or Austrians to return as Genoese auxiliaries. Without meaningful foreign alliances, there was no reason to think that the rebels would weather a third foreign intervention any better than they had weathered the last two, and despite the British hand in Theodore’s arrival there was little indication that the king had acquired the sort of backing that would prevent the Franco-Austrian conquest of 1739-40 from repeating itself. The worst case scenario was that, by committing to a war which Theodore did not have the resources to win, the Corsicans would forfeit a chance to extract concessions from the Genoese that the rebels in the early 1730s could have only dreamed of.
Against this tendency were the inconciliabili, generally royalist in their sympathies, who denounced any negotiation with the Genoese as misguided or even treasonous. They pointed to the previous fourteen years of war, and the history of Genoese abuses which long preceded it, and concluded that any concession obtained from Genoa would be fleeting. The Republic had a history of reneging on its promises, especially those which had been extracted from it through force; as a consequence, only independence could permanently secure the liberty of the people. Anything less would be a capitulation to the caprice of the Genoese, which was particularly senseless at a time when the Genoese position was so weakened. Count Marcantonio Giappiconi, Theodore’s Minister of War and representative from Tavagna, concisely expressed the frustration of the inconciliabili with their “moderate” foes: “Gianpietro, having the whole loaf in his hands,” he allegedly exclaimed after one of Gaffori’s speeches, “proposes to beg for the crust!”
Also at issue, albeit implicitly, was the place of the king in this new reality. After five years of rule (interrupted by his Amsterdam excursion in 1737), the mere fact of Theodore’s position was not really in doubt. The consulta had effectively been delayed until his arrival, was convened some sense under his auspices, and ended with a signed declaration of the representatives renewing their pledge to recognize Theodore “and none other” as the King of Corsica. While the consulta originated as and remained an essentially (representative) democratic organ of the people, it seems to have been already implicitly accepted that the king possessed a right to preside over, if not to command the assembly, and that his presence gave additional legitimacy to this native institution.[1] Yet those who were in favor of reconciliation could not be entirely pleased with his return, for his presence on Corsica as an active ruler of the nation was clearly incompatible with proposals to negotiate with the Genoese that would presumably - if successful - end in the formal resumption of Genoese sovereignty.[2][A] Rather than disputing the fact of Theodore’s rule, the advocates of negotiation favored approaches which gave no power to the king, placing the establishment of justice and the conduct of negotiations in the hands of commissioners or magistrates elected by the consulta rather than vesting these responsibilities in the king or his ministers.
Theodore had to content himself with “presiding” over the proceedings. Always aware of the theatrics of royal dignity, he had no desire to appear as one of many bickering representatives; certainly he had a personal interest, but he had proxies to promote them. His direct involvement, as far as we know, was limited to an address he gave the consulta “in state” - that is, seated before the assembly in his usual scarlet robes. Theodore, we are told, commended the delegates for their loyalty and their undaunted spirit of resistance towards the oppressors of Corsican liberty. He went on to speak of the situation abroad and of foreign support for their cause, undoubtedly benefiting from the fact that he was better equipped to hold forth on foreign affairs than anyone in Corsica. He possessed, he insisted, firm pledges of support from foreign governments and private persons, and went on to give lists of cargos and sums of money which were at his disposal. It was not possible, however, to realize this support so long as the Corsicans themselves had not determined whether they had the will and the intention to fight for their own liberty.
Theodore did not demand war. Indeed, he reminded the Corsicans that he had once before offered to abdicate if he was an obstacle to the peace and prosperity of Corsica. If the Corsicans believed that to be true now, and were convinced that their aspirations would be fulfilled by the Genoese, then he would quit the island once more. But he followed this with a lengthy list of Genoese abuses and incidents of bad faith in which they had reneged on their promises, a list that the Corsicans themselves knew all too well. Was it the intention of the delegates, he asked, to put their faith once more in Genoa and hope that the sacrifice of blood they had made to this point in their struggle would at last be honored by the Senate of the Republic, or did they prefer to place their trust in themselves and in Almighty God who rewards the righteous?
That, at least, is a summary based on the few accounts we have, which insist the royal address was received with near-universal acclaim. Yet the notion of the consulta being won over to the king’s side by his silver tongue is belied by the fact that the results of the assembly’s deliberation were by no means an unambiguous victory for Theodore and his partisans. Compromises had to be made to preserve the unity of the national front.
The king’s most severe setback was on the matter of the war itself. The desire for at least some extension of an olive branch to Genoa, if only to sound out what the Republic was now prepared to offer, could not be quashed without endangering national unity. The inconciliabili, moreover, were unsuccessful in their attempt to obtain the prerogative of negotiations for Theodore himself, which given Theodore’s own self-interest would have made an obvious farce of the endeavour. The consulta was obliged to bow to the concerns of the “moderates” and proceeded to appoint a troika of commissioners who would be empowered to discover and negotiate, although not agree to, the Genoese proposals for peace. This naturally meant that there would be no general war effort against the Genoese for the time being, which was in the interests not only of the pro-negotiation leaders but the considerable number of fence-sitters who merely wished to avoid confrontation and play for time.
Despite the assembly's disappointing failure to properly renew the rebellion, Theodore was able to gain an endorsement of the siege of Ajaccio. The king and his more belligerent supporters argued that to abandon the siege would seem like weakness, and the pressure which the siege exerted on the Genoese commissioners could only be of value in the prospective negotiations. Perhaps these arguments carried some weight, but the reality was that the consulta really had no say in the matter. There were few delegates from the Dila at Bozio, and virtually none of the troops under d’Ornano’s command were either from the Diqua or in any way beholden to the consulta. Accordingly, the delegates sensibly approved the status quo instead of pointlessly objecting to something that they had no power to change. Yet there was one concrete and important result of this rubber-stamp approval, which was that Gaffori was now compelled to yield the gunpowder he had seized at Morosaglia to be taken south, an act he had previously resisted owing to his personal disagreements with d’Ornano.
On the matter of establishing justice, the consulta voted to establish a local gendarmerie in the form of “flying squadrons” of paid volunteers. To sustain this force, the delegates proposed a 20 soldi (1 lira) tax on all households, which was the first general tax to be authorized by the revolutionary government.[3][B] Perhaps strangely given the overwhelmingly negative response to the recent Genoese attempts to re-introduce the taglia, this proposal met with very little resistance. Far more contentious were the details of who would collect the tax and how the squadrons would be organized. Many of the delegates wanted a decentralized system so as to keep their own district’s resources close at hand, but some worried that this might cause corruption. Not all pieves were equal in terms of resources or the threats facing them, and some local officers might simply pocket some or all of their pieve’s tax money. As a compromise solution, it was agreed that a number of “auditors” would be appointed (as it turned out, by the king) to supervise the collection in various districts, but the squadrons themselves would be under local control. This gave the royal government some tenuous control over these officers, as the royal auditors could in theory withhold or simply not collect taxes from the pieves of intransigent captains, but the consulta was clear that these were essentially police forces who were not to be used as armed forces against the Genoese.
The Bozio consulta certainly appeared to be the nadir of the power of the Theodoran monarchy. The king was compelled to merely preside over what was essentially a legislative session, in which the delegates, not the Diet or the royal ministers, established a tax, raised armed forces, and determined matters of peace and war. It was a product of the weak position of the king both politically and economically. Although a respected figure who was universally acknowledged as king by the delegates, there was no “absolutist” party as such which supported a consolidation of power in his hands (the inconciliabili were “royalist” insofar as they opposed a return to the Genoese fold, but did not necessarily advocate for the centralization of taxation and police power in the monarchy), and Theodore himself lacked either the funds or the military might to control or defy the consulta. Although clearly he exerted some influence, the reigns of governance now seemed to be in the hands of the popular assembly.
The consulta’s power, however, was not as great as it appeared. The body’s great weakness lay in the fact that it was impermanent - the consulta was not a standing organ of government but an extraordinary representative assembly called together at a specific time and for a specific purpose. Theodore’s royal administration, weak as it seemed, was nevertheless permanent - unlike the delegates, who ceased to have any power as soon as the consulta dissolved, Theodore’s ministers held their jobs at the king’s pleasure. As soon as the consulta adjourned, Theodore was soon occupied in filling those posts - confirming his ministers and elevating new ones, making appointments to the Diet, handing out knighthoods, and signing officer commissions. For the moment, however, this government structure was mostly nominal and honorary, for Theodore did not have the money to run an actual government. As ever, the handing out of offices and titles was a way to cultivate some influence, but a vitalization of the royal government would have to wait until the king had something to offer besides signed charters.
After spending Easter at Corti (April 14th), Theodore proceeded north to Isola Rossa, a convenient place to pursue what Theodore viewed as his paramount task: the conscription of foreign support into Corsica’s war. He had been at that for some years, of course, but his credibility was considerably greater now. Not only was he actually on Corsica, but he had in his hands the “Bozio Declaration,” the product of the recent consulta, in which the national delegates had pledged and signed their loyalty to the crown. On Corsica the Declaration was but a scrap of paper; many of the signatories had only a nominal attachment to the king. But foreigners knew nothing of Corsica's internal politics, and on the continent it looked like compelling proof that Theodore did at the very least enjoy the support of Corsica’s rebels. Theodore sent a copy of the Bozio Declaration to Arthur Villettes and Horace Mann, Britain’s ministers to Turin and Florence (respectively), along with a proposal for turning over Calvi and/or San Fiorenzo to the British to serve as military ports and even raising “one or two” Corsican regiments as British auxiliaries in the present war. No action from London was immediately forthcoming, but we know that the ambassadors took this proposal seriously enough to forward it on to Lord John Carteret and his southern secretary, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle. News of the consulta spread into the popular press as well, and earned a mention as far afield as the Pennsylvania Gazette.
While convenient for the conduct of diplomacy, Isola Rossa was even more valuable from an economic standpoint. The small but defensible port town had been the smuggling capital of Corsica during Theodore’s earlier reign, and now that it was in rebel hands illicit traffic immediately resumed. With the French navy chased from the seas by the British Mediterranean squadron, Genoa had to rely on its own small naval force which was already occupied with interdicting smugglers elsewhere on the coast (particularly the eastern shore and Porto Vecchio) and escorting supply ships. This soon proved inadequate. Genoa’s inability to control Corsican smuggling was so profound that Genoa itself appears to have quickly become the second-largest port of supply for Isola Rossa contraband, second only to Livorno. With the war taking a heavy toll on their business, Genoese merchants were increasingly willing to supplement their incomes by selling arms to the Corsicans even if it meant subverting their own government.
With Isola Rossa in hand and much of the productive Balagna vacated by Genoese forces, Theodore could now begin prying loose the rest of the syndicate’s funds which were waiting in Livorno contingent upon deliveries of oil and other goods. He further provided a copy of the Bozio Declaration to the partners in Amsterdam and asked for a loan now that he possessed some actual collateral. Rather predictably he vastly overstated his control over Corsica and its economic resources, but he must have controlled something, for by May it is clear that money was trickling into Theodore’s coffers as well as small but increasingly frequent shipments of arms. Yet the syndicate loan he was angling for remained elusive. The skittishness of the partners was undoubtedly a product of the war in Europe, which by the spring of 1743 had expanded as to directly involve the Dutch Republic. The States General had finally and reluctantly accepted their treaty obligations and raised an additional 20,000 soldiers, bringing the Dutch forces to some 65,000 men overall. As yet these men were not campaigning against France, but as the Anglo-Hanoverian "Pragmatic Army" mustered in the Netherlands under the command of Field Marshal John Dalrymple, Earl of Stair and King George II himself, it seemed to many inevitable that the Dutch would soon join the war in earnest.
Foonotes
[1] A recent work on the Enlightenment origins of western democratic thought has proposed the notion of “hybrid sovereignty” - sovereign power emanating both from God and the popular will - to describe the Corsican government under Theodore, who notably titled himself as “by the Grace of God and Unanimous Consent Elected King of Corsica.” His dual role as an elected representative of the people and a God-sent liberator king was certainly unusual for the period.
[2] It apparently did not trouble the pro-reconciliation delegates that their pledge of allegiance to Theodore, by which they promised to recognize him “and no other” as king, was by its nature impossible to reconcile with a belief that the kingship would, as a product of peace negotiations, eventually reside with the Doge of Genoa (and present claimant to that same royal title). Presumably Theodore noticed this obvious dissonance, but given his position and the need for consensus it was not politic to make a fuss over it. A pledge of loyalty, even undertaken in bad faith, was more useful to him than its absence.
[3] Technically Theodore’s government also collected the tithe (effectively a 5% income tax), of which one-third went directly into the royal coffers while the rest was apportioned between church upkeep and charity. But this was a diversion of a long-standing exaction rather than a new tax - the royal government had seized control of it from the pro-Genoese bishops - and its collection during the revolutionary era seems to have been spotty at best.
Timeline Notes
[A] IOTL, this conundrum was solved in Theodore’s absence by the creation of the “Regency of Corsica,” a national government which claimed to rule in the name of Theodore but ostensibly sought the reestablishment of Genoese sovereignty under favorable terms. An illustration of the regency’s ambivalence towards Theodore himself was its curious declaration that Theodore would not be recognized as king if he returned to Corsica “under the flag of a foreign power.” It remains unclear what exactly the Regency meant by this - were they saying that Theodore ought not to return with foreign support (in which case it would amount to a de facto deposition of Theodore - for how else might he return?) or were they prohibiting Theodore from trying to turn the island over to the sovereignty of another power? Either way, clearly the Regency’s loyalty to Theodore was not unconditional.
[B] The Regency established a similar tax for a similar purpose around this time, although I don’t have information as to how successful the collection efforts were. Evidently the Corsican allergy to taxes did not extend to the delegates they sent to the assembly, although a 1-lira tax was not very high. The infamous due seini amounted to 2/3rds of a lira, but that was on top of the much larger taglia, whereas the 1743 hearth-tax was the only tax imposed by the national government.
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