CHAPTER V.

CALVI AND ITS MEN.

The miasma of the marsh made the Borgo of Calvi—the little suburb—unhealthy. More salubrious is the air of the fortress above, which encloses the city proper. I ascended to this old Genoese citadel—the strongest fortification in Corsica next to Bonifazio. Above the gate, I read these words—_Civitas Calvis semper fidelis_. Calvi was unfailingly true to the Genoese. Fidelity is always beautiful when it is not slavish, and Calvi was in fact a Genoese colony. The proverbial fidelity of Calvi, as expressed in the motto over its gate, has become in more than one sense historical. When the republican General, Casabianca, after the heroic defence of Calvi against the English, was obliged to capitulate in the year 1794, one of the stipulations of surrender was, that the old inscription above mentioned should remain untouched. This condition was honourably fulfilled, as the inscription itself still testifies.

There is only one point in regard to which Genoa and the "ever-faithful" Calvi are at feud. For the Calvese affirm that Columbus was a fellow-countryman of theirs. They say that his family, admittedly Genoese, had at an early period settled in Calvi. A very earnest contest was in fact for some time maintained about this question of birth, as formerly the seven cities disputed about the cradle of Homer. It is affirmed that Genoa suppressed the family register of the Colombos of Calvi, and changed the name of one of the streets of the town, the Colombo Street, into the street _Del Filo_. I find it also recorded that inhabitants of Calvi were the first Corsicans who sailed to America. I am informed further, that the name Colombo still exists in Calvi. Corsican authors even of the present day claim the great discoverer as their fellow-countryman; and Napoleon, during his residence in Elba, proposed instituting historical researches in regard to this point. We shall forbear attempting to settle it; Columbus in his will calls himself a native Genoese. The world might become envious if it were established that fate had bestowed upon the little Corsica the man who was greater even than Napoleon.

Valiant men enough do honour to Calvi; and when we look at this little town within the fortress, and see that it is nothing but the heap of black and shattered ruins to which the bombs of the English reduced it, we read in its chronicle of desolation the history of departed heroes. Very strange is the aspect of a city, which, shattered by a bombardment almost a century ago, remains still at the present day in ruins. The clock of time seems here in Corsica to have stood still. An iron hand has maintained its grasp upon the past—upon the old popular customs—the dirges of the Etruscans, the family feuds of the Middle Ages, the barbarism of the Vendetta, the ancient, simple modes of life, and the ancient heroism; and as the people live in cities that have become gray in ruin, they live socially, in a state that, for the cultivated nations, is hoary tradition.

In the principal church of Calvi, whose Moorish cupola is pierced by the balls of the English, they show the tomb of a family that bears the dearest, the most precious of all names—the name Libertà—Freedom! It is the old heroic family of the Baglioni which has this title. In the year 1400, when certain aristocrats in Calvi had made themselves tyrants of the town, and were on the point of putting the city into the hands of the Arragonese, a young man named Baglioni arose, and suddenly, with his friends, attacked the two tyrants in the citadel, as once Pelopidas fell upon the tyrants of Thebes, put them to the sword, and called the people to freedom. From that call—Libertà! Libertà!—came the surname which his grateful fellow-citizens immediately gave him, and which his family has ever since borne. The three heroic brothers, Piero, Antonio, and Bartolommeo Libertà, were descendants of Baglioni. They had emigrated to Marseilles. This city was in the hands of the League, and, though left alone, continued to defy Henry IV. after he had entered Paris, and received the submission of the House of Guise. Casaux, the consul of the League, was the tyrant of Marseilles; he had determined to surrender the town to the Spanish fleet, which was commanded by the celebrated Andreas Doria. Piero Libertà, with his brothers and other bold men of Marseilles, conspired to rescue the city. Piero collected them in his house, and, when they had matured their plan, they proceeded daringly to its instant execution. They burst into the citadel of Marseilles, and, with his own hand, Piero Libertà sent a lance through the throat of the consul Casaux. When he had either slain or disarmed all the guards, he shut the doors of the castle, and, with the bloody sword in his hand, he ran through the city, shouting, "Libertà! Libertà!" The people rose at his call, ran to arms, stormed the towers and fortifications of Marseilles, and freed the city. Immediately the Duke of Guise took possession of Marseilles in the name of Henry IV., and he dated from the Camp of Rosny, the 6th March 1596, a memorial eulogizing Piero Libertà. He made him supreme judge of Marseilles, captain of the Porta Reale, governor of _Nostra Donna della Guardia_, and heaped upon him other honours besides. This happened at the same time that another Corsican, Alfonso Ornano, the son of Sampiero, won Lyons for the King of France, on which occasion Henry IV. called out: "Now am I king."

Piero Libertà died not many years after the deliverance of Marseilles. The town buried him in state, and placed his statue in the City Hall. These words were engraven on the pedestal of the statue: _Petro Libertæ Libertatis assertori, heroi, malorum averrunco, pacis civiumque restauratori, &c._

The reproductive power that characterizes the Corsican families is truly remarkable. Any one who has directed attention to the history of this nation will have found, that almost universally the abilities of the father descend to the son and the son's sons.

It is not with a light heart that I now pass from the tomb of the family of Libertà, to that field of Calenzana, where lie graves of Schiavitù—of Slavery. They are the graves of five hundred brave Germans, sons of my fatherland, who were bought and sold, and who fell there at Calenzana.

I have told how it was in the history of the Corsicans. The Emperor Charles VI. had sold a corps of German auxiliaries to the Genoese, and the Genoese despatched them to Corsica. On the 2d of February 1732, the Corsicans under their general, Ceccaldi, attacked the German troops at Calenzana; these latter were commanded by Camillo Doria and Des Devins. After a fearful struggle the imperial troops were beaten, and five hundred Germans lay dead on the field of Calenzana. The Corsicans buried the strangers who had come to fight against the liberties of their country, on the beautiful mountain-slope between Calvi and Calenzana. Beneath a foreign soil rest there the bones of my unhappy countrymen. Rocks of dark, blood-tinged porphyry stand near. Myrtles and flowering herbs crown the graves. And still every year at the Festival of All-Souls, the clergy of Calenzana visit these graves of their foes—_Camposanto dei Tedeschi_, as people call the field of Calenzana; and sprinkle with consecrated water the ground where the poor mercenaries fell. Such is the vengeance the Corsican takes upon the foes who come to assassinate his independence! I feel as if on me—one of the few Germans who have ever stood upon the graves of the mercenaries of Calenzana, and probably the only German who has thus made public mention of them—devolved the duty of thanking, in the name of my country, the noble Corsican people for their generous sympathy and wide-hearted humanity.

The Corsicans gave my countrymen a grave; I will write their epitaph:—

We came, five hundred luckless mercenaries, Sold by the Emperor to Genoa, To crush the freedom of the Corsicans— We came, and paid the penalty in blood; We expiate the crime in foreign graves. Call us not guilty, give us tender pity, The foeman's soil a pitying shelter lends. Despise not, wanderer, children of a time So dark; ye who now live, wipe off the stain!

Those were in truth dark times when our fathers were sold like a brutish herd, and sent to Corsica, it might be, or to America. But Pasquale Paoli arose here—in the other hemisphere Washington; and beyond the Rhine, the rights of man became clamorous. The reproach of these old times was wiped away, and with the rest of it, the reproach of Calenzana; for the children of those who lie here in slavish graves fought for wife and child and the independence of their country, fought for European freedom, and vanquished the Corsican despot.

The sun is setting; it throws its splendours on the gulf, and the rocky hills of Calenzana are all a-glow. How magical is this southern haze of distance, and how delicate the tones of the colouring! All transition has a profound effect upon the human soul. On the boundary line where the transition is made from Being to non-existence, or from non-existence to Being, lies the fairest and deepest poesy of life. It is not otherwise in history. Its most wonderful phenomena invariably occur on the boundary where two different periods of culture touch, and pass the one into the other; as in Nature, the seasons of the year and the times of the day exhibit the most glorious phenomena when they are merging into one another. I believe it is the same with the history of the individual. Here too, the transitions from one period to another, from one phase of culture to another, are full of enchantment, and more fruitful than all other periods, for it is in them alone that the germs of poetry and productive power are developed.

There is a world-forsaken loneliness about Calvi which is almost fabulous. No movement on the still mirror of the gulf—no ship on all those miles of sea—no bird cleaving the air—the black tower rising yonder on the snow-white strand like a dark shape in a dream. But here sits an eagle, a magnificent creature, resting with a grave majesty—now he takes flight, and with mighty strokes of his pinions makes for the hills. He is satiated with blood.—There I have started a fox, the first I have met with in Corsica, where these animals attain an astonishing size, and, like wolves, commit depredations among the sheep. He was sitting much at his ease upon the shore, apparently enjoying the rose-red of the waves, and quite lost in the contemplation of nature, for he was in such a brown study that I got within five paces of him. Suddenly Master Reynard jumped up, and as the strand was narrow I had the pleasure of stopping his way, and making him lose his composure for a minute or two. Hereupon he doubled cunningly, turned the enemy's flank, and ran merrily away into the hills. He is very well off in Corsica, where the beasts make him their king, as there are no wolves.

After dark, I stepped into a boat, and rowed about in the gulf. What a glorious night-picture! The sky of Italy set with sparkling stars—a magic transparency in the atmosphere—away at the extremity of the headland a flashing beacon—lights in the castle of Calvi—one or two sleeping ships on the water—herdsmen's fires on the dark hills above—the waves phosphorescing round the boat, and the drops sparkling as they fall from the oars—in the deep stillness the sounds of a mandoline borne from the shore.