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Updated: May 29, 2025
Ludovico, who has already been mentioned and who was the marquis from 1444 to 1478, had for two years at his court the celebrated Franchino Gaffori. This master, born near Lodi in 1451, was the son of one Betino, a soldier. The boy went into the church in childhood and studied ecclesiastical music under a Carmelite monk named Johannis Godendach.
They had but one partizan with an influential name, a son of the old-time patriot Gaffori, the father-in-law of Buttafuoco. The overwhelming majority of the natives were little changed in their temper.
It spoke for itself in the ring of his voice, in the glooms and lights of his eyes, as we lay on either side of our wood fire; and I listened, till the embers died down, to the deeds of Jean Paul de Leca, of Giudice della Rocca, of Bel Messer, of Sampiero di Ornano, of the great Gaffori and other chiefs, all famous in their day, each in his turn assassinated by Genoese gold.
Gaffori appeared on the scene, but neither the magic of his name, the troops that accompanied him, nor the adverse representations of the council, which he brought with him, could allay the discontent. He therefore remained for three days in seclusion, and then departed in secret.
I heard how Gaffori besieged his own house; how the Genoese, having stolen his infant son, exposed the child in the breach to stop the firing; and how Gaffori called to them "I was a Corsican before I was a father," and the cannonade went on, yet the child miraculously escaped unhurt.
Both classes, however, claimed to be true patriots. During the War of the Austrian Succession it seemed for a moment as if Corsica were to be freed by the attempt of Maria Theresa to overthrow Genoa, then an ally of the Bourbon powers. The national party rose again under Gaffori, the regiments of Piedmont came to their help, and the English fleet delivered St. Florent and Bastia into their hands.
These brave islanders then formed a government for themselves, under two leaders, Gaffori and Matra, who had the title of protectors. The latter is represented as a partisan of Genoa, favouring the views of the oppressors of his country by the most treasonable means. Gaffori was a hero worthy of old times. His eloquence was long remembered with admiration.
When Gaffori advanced to batter the walls, they held up the child directly over that part of the wall at which the guns were pointed. The Corsicans stopped: but Gaffori stood at their head, and ordered them to continue the fire. Providentially the child escaped, and lived to relate, with becoming feeling, a fact so honourable to his father.
Under the leadership of the same dauntless Gaffori who in 1740 had been chosen along with Matra to be a chief commander, the Genoese were once more driven from the highlands into the coast towns. At the height of his success the bold guerrilla fell a victim to family rivalries and personal spite.
The man, by his own account, followed the trade of a bird-stuffer; which was just an excuse for laziness, for no soul ever entered his shop but to hear him talk of his campaigning under Gaffori and under the great Pascal Paoli's father, Hyacinth Paoli.
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