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Updated: May 18, 2025
"Man," said I, "you shall tell us your story as soon as ever you have helped us to a safe lodging. But here are we and there, coming towards us along the quay, are two comrades four Corsicans in all, whose lives, if the Genoese detect us, are not worth five minutes' purchase." "Then, excuse me," said Mr. Fett, becoming serious of a sudden, "but isn't it a damned foolish business that brings you?"
My readers must know that among the Corsicans to mutilate an enemy's horse is at once a vengeance, a challenge, and a mortal threat. "Nothing but a bullet-wound can expiate such a crime."
Favier informed him confidentially, that he was employed to draw up a memorial to prove to the king and his ministers the necessity of supporting the republic of Genoa against the independent Corsicans; that this memorial had been demanded of him secretly by the Genoese ambassador, and by a femme de chambre of the Duchesse de Grammont, favourite sister of the Duc de Choiseul, interested, like the brothers of the Du Barry , in supplying the army: that 500 louis were the price of this memorial and the blood of the Corsicans; and he offered a portion of this intrigue and its profits to Dumouriez who pretended to accept this, and then hastening to the Duc de Choiseul, revealed the manoeuvre, was well received, believed he had convinced the minister, and was preparing to return, conveying to the Corsicans the subsidies and arms they expected.
In their periodic struggles against Genoese encroachments and tyranny, the Corsicans had produced a line of national heroes. Sampiero, one of these, had in the sixteenth century incorporated Corsica for a brief hour with the dominions of the French crown, and was regarded as the typical Corsican. Dark, warlike, and revengeful, he had displayed a keen intellect and a fine judgment.
It became clearer every day that the Convention had moral support beyond the ramparts of Paris, and within the city it was possible to maintain something in the nature of a Jacobin salon. Many of that faith who were disaffected with the new conditions in Paris the Corsicans in particular were welcomed at the home of Mme. Permon by herself and her beautiful daughter, afterward Mme.
We had reached and become involved in an exceptionally bad spot a spring apparently rendering the clay so soft that the entire road for about thirty yards had been worked into a perfect quagmire, into which we sank above our knees at every step, the tenacious clay holding our feet almost as though they had been in a vice when, without the slightest warning of any kind, a withering volley of musketry was poured in upon the devoted band from the bushes on both sides of the road, and while the smoke still enveloped us out dashed some thirty or forty Corsicans, armed, some only with their clubbed muskets, others flourishing in addition long double-edged knives of a most bloodthirsty appearance.
Corsica had at that time been long, and on the whole victoriously, engaged in a struggle to free itself from the hated rule of Genoa. The leader of the Corsicans was a man of high birth, character and abilities, Pascal Paoli, who had acted since 1753 at once as their General and as the head of the civil administration.
My despatches or whatever they were were for Count Lorenzo; and though I was of course unacquainted with their contents, I surmised that they had relation to some probable assistance to be rendered by the English to the Corsicans.
So far as I can see, their dirt does not detract from their astuteness perhaps it aids it, by removing one source of mental preoccupation, cleanliness. The old distinction between Livornese and Tunisian Jews is slowly becoming effaced. If there is one class of these immigrants whom the ordinary French employe hates more than another it is his own countrymen, the Corsicans.
"Ah!" said the colonel, catching him by the two wrists, and holding him at arm's length with steady northern nerve and muscle. "I know you Corsicans too well to turn my back to one."
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