CORSICA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 117, 2 April 1853, Page 4

CORSICA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The following extraordinary narrative which we extract from the Morning Chronicle, will be read with profound interest. In this age of the world, considering the advance in civilization that has been made elsewhere all over Europe, the account it gives of the actual condition of Corsica, furnishes matter for grave wonder and astonishmeut.

." It has been said that, in the ordinary course of retribution in this world, a man's smallest sins, are always more heavily punished than his graver delinquencies ; and we are really sometimes tempted to believe that the obliquities of nations observe the same rule of requital. Among the very lightest .offences of France against independent nationalities, was her annexation of Corsica in 1768; and, indeed, the orig nal injustice has been more than compensated by the unmixed advantages which the island has obtained through the union. It would almost seem, however, as if Corsica had been the commissioned delegate of all the vengeance which Belgium, Spain, Prussia, and Piedmont have scored up against their insatiable neighbour. Corsica at this moment governs France. A Corsican has fastened a yoke upon her heck more galling than the chains of the haughtiest Bourbon, and a Corsican oligarchy is dividing the rich spoils of her patronage, or assisting to crush her spirit and to perpetuate her servitude. During the last war, the foremost missile hurled by the libellists at the Emperor, was his Corsican extraction. But the idiosyncracy of Napoleon was far too strongly marked to admit of his being classed under any particular type of national character: and his mind, in common with those of all his adoptive fellow-countrymen, had been formed and tempered in the fiery crucible of the first revolution. The point of his birth possessed as little real importance as the question which has .been recently agitated respecting the exact day on which it took place. It is far otherwise with Louis Napoleon Bonaparte-rthe son of an Italian and a. Creole—who never set foot on French soil, except to pass and repass on aroad to a prison, from the close of his early childhood to the hour when the means of usurpation were put at his disposal. The present autocrat of France has none of the excellencies or defects, and yery few of the cognisable features, of the French character. He is silent, shy, and morose. His abilities, which are doubtless considerable,.lie not on the surface, but in the depths. Well read, and skilful with his pen, he is essentially .unsocial. Ambitious, he seems comparatively careless of the shows of power. His personal indulgence, though unrestrained, is more systematic than extravagant. Although he is relentless in the purpose of requital, he knows how to conceal his sense of wrong, and to defer his cherished vengeance. Great as is he suffering he has at times inflicted, he appears to be cruel rather at the crisis of opportunity than at the climax of passion. .Such peculiarities are not the tokens of a Frenchman, and they are reproduced at his feet in the crowd of Corsican favourites among whom he scatters the morsels of the dominion which he has engrossed. The office which approaches nearest to that of Prime Minister was filled, till the other day by the Corsican bailiff of the Bonaparte family; and wherever there is a post or a distinction which can be conferred on a relative or a countryman without risk of a public danger from lack of fitness in the recipient, be sure that it is reserved for an Abbatucci,a Gavini, an« ™ghi ' an Ornano, or a Casabianca. What, then, is that little island, whose sons are only prevented by their paucity, or their want of individual capacity, for constituting the entire administrative hierarchy of France ? Corsica, as everybody knows, is a French department. It has a Prefect and Sub-Prefects. It enjoys a Court of Appeal, a Cojirt of First Instance, a Court of Assize, and a satisfactory number of Juges de Paix. It jpossesses a national guard and a gendarmerie. Yet, beneath all this bristling exterior of French governmental mechanism, Corsica is not French. It is Italian ; and beyond this, it is more Italian than Italy itself. It is infinitely more strange, savage, and primitive, than the most backward portions of the peninsula to which it belongs by geographical contiguity and affinity of race. All the singularities which, at any period of our lives, have made up our conception of Italian society—all the social disarrangements which have at any time borne witness, like a running

sore, to a diseased organization of the allj| n communities—may be seen existing, side by side, in that imperial island. Do you wish to make a closer acquaintance with those banditti who, in our fathers' eyes, formed the staple product of Italian soil, and lent its chief interest to Italian travel ? , The whole surface of Corsica is parcelled out among some 200 robberchieftains, each of whom confines himself to his particular district, drawing from it a comfortable revenue of irregular imposts and permanent blackmail; nay, indeed, he will sometimes reside, like an Irish absentee landlord, on the neighbouring coast of Sardinia, and exact, on occasional visits, or by deputy, the proceeds of his patrimonial pillage. Do you wish to create for yourself a belief in Udolpho, and in the tortuous crimes of which that memorable fortress was the theatre? There are 50 Udolphos in Corsica, and each of them has its " mysteries," as dark and as labyrinthine as any which ever unfolded themselves in the brain of Mrs. Radcliffe. Or would you understand that hopeless blending of family quarrels with the heats of faction which bewilders the student of early Italian politics? Every village in Corsica, like the cities of mediaeval Italy, is distracted by asehism of immemorial date between the members and retainers of its two principal families ; while modern political distinctions are absorbed by, and lend intensity, to, the original feud. Even the private wars which, preceding on the letter, of.the lex talionis, decimated Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries with alternate, and therefore infinite revenge, have their, counterpart in a perpetual play of sanguinary outrages. Every man in Corsica walks armed in broad daylight—every man is a client of some great House, and calls himself a Capulet or a Montague—every man is ready at all times to pistol an opponent on much smaller provocation than the biting of a thumb—-while political elections are regarded, as a matter of course, in the light of legitimate occasions for a downright battle. And the Corsican law of honour inexorably demands that .every wound, received in any kiiid of rencounter, must be returned to the offending party or a relative, down to the fourth generation. You have. the. vendetta in Corsica, and you I might have at any, moment the Sicilian Vespers, if the island did not exercise a profitable sovereignty over its foreign masters. Romance, I melodrama, and ancient story, are all realised together in a province of the most sternly governed Empire in all Europe.

" We have not in the least exaggerated the result of the accounts which have just been received from Corsica. The political disturbances of the last four years have given such licence, and communicated such a character of ferocity to the chronic distractions of the island, that the French Executive has been at last compelled to institute an inquiry, and to promise energetic suppression. Our readers will form their own opinion on some of the facts which have been ascertained. In May, 1848, the Filippi and Petrignagni—the two great families of Venzolasco, which is distant but a few miles from Bastia—encountered each other, with their respective clients, at the elections for the National Assembly. A regular engagement ensued, in which two persons were killed and a large number wounded. The rule of retaliation for the injuries then received has, in the interval between 1848 and the present time, caused about ten persons to be taken off by private assassination. One of these was the priest Chiaveldini, a partizan of the Filippi, who was shot while descending the steps of the altar. It should be observed that the contending parties generally reside together in the same village or district; for example, the man-sion-houses of the Filippi and Petrignagni, regularly fortified and sentinelled, are immediately opposite each other, in the street of Venzolasco. One exception, however, is noted in the case of Piela and Canale, near Ajaccio, which are respectively the exclusive strongholds of a particular faction. The inhabitants of the two villages are generally careful to meet only at church, where they scrupulously confine themselves to their respective halves of the building : but if a villager of Piela has to pass through Canale, he takes his rifle as a matter of course—levels it at the windows of each house he passes—and fires if he perceives the least movement, which indeed is only too likely to arise from the preparations of a gentleman so equipped. The feud, however, which is commemorated as of oldest date, and as making the nearest approach to regular war, is that

of the Giustiniani and Forcioli at Cirbellara The town is built on a hill. The castle of the Forcioli is at the bottom, and that of the Giustiniani at the summit The latter consists of four circles or courts, one within another, the family residing for safety in the innermost circle. But inasmuch as this construction is unfavourable for keeping watch on the enemy below, an immensely high tower has been added to the mansion. This tower has been built within the last five years, and is provided with regular embrasures for cannon. . It is noticed too, as a historical fact connected with the feud' in question, that after the scales of warfare had long trembled between the two families, the superiority has recently been secured by the Giustiniani, whose greater wealth has enabled them to enter into a treaty of formal alliance with one or two famous captains of banditti in the immediate neighbourhood. „,..• "But perhaps the incident, or series of incidents, which most strongly illustrates the whole condition of manners in Corsica, is presented by the case of Signor Malaspinade Lunio,with which we will close our selection of examples. The son of M. Malaspina had .demanded in marriage the daughter of an old gentleman belonging to the opposite local faction. He was refused point-blank—an insult which he shortly revenged by shooting the father of the lady whom he had intended to wed. The relatives of the murdered man were instantly on the alert, but they were anticipated by, the police. M. Malaspina the younger was arrested, tried, and condemned to six years imprisonment. Afterwards, however, throng the influence of the Bonapartes, the term of his confinement was abridged to three years—an act of grace which his enemies very reasonably considered as materially altering the state of accounts between themselves and the Malaspinas. A balance having been struck,.at was determined that some act of aggression was absolutely necessary, but what was it to be? The actual offender had still a part of his sentence to expiate, and he was safe from them, for the time, within the walls of a prison. Incredible as it may seem, their final resolution was to murder his father. An ambuscade was planned, and the elder Malaspina was assassinated in one of the government diligences.

" It is remarkable that the completest administrative machinery which the wit of men era devised for producing uniformity in the external habits of a people, should have failed to bring down this singular exception to the common level. It is still more remarkable that the exceptional province should be supplying the empire with a new aristocracy.-There are some who persuade themselves that the eclipse of letters, the discouragement of education, the superstition of the priesthood, and the oppressiveness of the Executive, are not necessarily brutalizing the intellect of France. What sort of influence do they suppose will be exerted by a system which is gradually filling her high places with needy immigrants from a nest of barbarians ?"