COMMENCEMENT OF THE MEDIÆVAL PERIOD.
Corsica remained in the possession of the Romans, from whom in later
times it received the Christian religion, till the fall of Rome made it
once more a prey to the rovers by land and sea. Here, again, we have
new inundations of various tribes, and a motley mixture of nations,
languages, and customs, as in the earliest period.
Germans, Byzantine Greeks, Moors, Romanized races appear successively
in Corsica. But the Romanic stamp, impressed by the Romans and
strengthened by bands of fugitive Italians, has already taken its place
as an indelible and leading trait in Corsican character. The Vandals
came to Corsica under Genseric, and maintained themselves in the island
a long time, till they were expelled by Belisarius. After the Goths and
Longobards had in their turn invaded the island and been its masters,
it fell, along with Sardinia, into the hands of the Byzantines, and
remained in their possession nearly two hundred years. It was during
this period that numerous Greek names and roots, still to be met with
throughout the country and in the language, originated.
The Greek rule was of the Turkish kind. They appeared to look upon
the Corsicans as a horde of savages; they loaded them with impossible
exactions, and compelled them to sell their very children in order to
raise the enormous tribute. A period of incessant fighting now begins
for Corsica, and the history of the nation consists for centuries in
one uninterrupted struggle for existence and freedom.
The first irruption of the Saracens occurred in 713. Ever since
Spain had become Moorish, the Mahommedans had been scouring the
Mediterranean, robbing and plundering in all the islands, and founding
in many places a dominion of protracted duration. The Greek Emperors,
whose hands were full in the East, totally abandoned the West, which
found new protectors in the Franks. That Charlemagne had to do with
Corsica or with the Moors there, appears from his historian Eginhard,
who states that the Emperor sent out a fleet under Count Burkhard,
to defend Corsica against the Saracens. His son Charles gave them a
defeat at Mariana. These struggles with the Moors are still largely
preserved in the traditions of the Corsican people. The Roman noble,
Hugo Colonna, a rebel against Pope Stephen IV., who sent him to Corsica
with a view to rid himself of him and his two associates, Guido Savelli
and Amondo Nasica, figures prominently in the Moorish wars. Colonna's
first achievement was the taking of Aleria, after a triple combat of
a romantic character, between three chivalrous paladins and as many
Moorish knights. He then defeated the Moorish prince Nugalon, near
Mariana, and forced all the heathenish people in the island to submit
to the rite of baptism. The comrade of this Hugo Colonna was, according
to the Corsican chronicler, a nephew of Ganelon of Mayence, also named
Ganelon, who had come to Corsica to wipe off the disgrace of his house
in Moorish blood.
The Tuscan margrave, Bonifacius, after a great naval victory over the
Saracens on the coast of Africa, near Utica, is now said to have landed
at the southern extremity of Corsica on his return home, and to have
built a fortress on the chalk cliffs there, which received from its
founder the name of Bonifazio. This took place in the year 833. Louis
the Pious granted him the feudal lordship of Corsica. Etruria thus
acquires supremacy over the neighbouring island a second time, and it
is certain that the Tuscan margraves continued to govern Corsica till
the death of Lambert, the last of their line, in 951.
Berengarius, and after him Adalbert of Friuli, were the next masters
of the island; then the Emperor Otto II. gave it to his adherent, the
Margrave Hugo of Toscana. No further historical details can be arrived
at with any degree of precision till the period when the city of Pisa
obtained supremacy in Corsica.
In these times, and up till the beginning of the eleventh century,
a fierce and turbulent nobility had been forming in Corsica, as in
Italy--the various families of which held sway throughout the island.
This aristocracy was only in a very limited degree of native origin.
Italian magnates who had fled from the barbarians, Longobard, Gothic,
Greek or Frankish vassals, soldiers who had earned for themselves land
and feudal title by their exertions in the wars against the Moors,
gradually founded houses and hereditary seigniories. The Corsican
chronicler makes all the seigniors spring from the Roman knight Hugo
Colonna and his companions. He makes him Count of Corsica, and traces
to his son Cinarco the origin of the most celebrated family of the old
Corsican nobility, the Cinarchesi; to another son, Bianco, that of the
Biancolacci; to Pino, a son of Savelli's, the Pinaschi; and in the
same way we have Amondaschi, Rollandini, descendants of Ganelon and
others. In later times various families emerged into distinction from
this confusion of petty tyrants, the Gentili, and Signori da Mare on
Cape Corso; beyond the mountains, the seigniors of Leca, of Istria, and
Rocca, and those of Ornans and of Bozio.