A BANDIT VILLAGE.
Bocognano is, par excellence, the village of the bandits. It was
formerly the home of the brothers Bella Coschia, the latest and most
famous of the bandits of the present generation.
It is difficult to get at the truth regarding these two men, but there
is little doubt that they have never had much to recommend them. Out
of their own village they are generally admitted to have been regular
ruffians; although, in Bocognano, they are declared to be most pleasing
fellows.
There is a little shyness, however, in speaking of their errors,
especially in this neighbourhood, which perhaps is not much to be
wondered at, considering that sixty members of their family inhabit the
village. The younger of the two brothers is only forty-two, and the
elder one not more than fifty; but for some years these wild animals
have shown signs of taming, and now lead a tolerably harmless and
inoffensive life on the mountain side, where, by tacit consent, so
long as they thus keep out of the way, they remain unmolested by the
gendarmes.
A dark ravine on the blue flank of Monte D'Oro, a few miles above and
beyond Bocognano, was pointed out to us as the almost inaccessible home
of the two bandits.
Their native village receives from them the milk of their mountain
goats, and supplies them with the necessaries of life.
By day, the men remain in their rocky stronghold; but at night they
constantly descend the ravine and visit their friends and relations at
Bocognano.
Night and day are the same to these wild, lawless climbers, who leap
down the precipitous crags which separate their cavern dwelling from
the village, with fearless security, in the darkest night.
A gentleman we afterwards met, who had been introduced, by special
favour, to their stronghold, and appeared to have relished his call
much, described them as well-educated men. They could both, he said,
speak and read either French or Italian; and he had seen a letter
written by one of them in the most idiomatic French. The younger
brother, he asserted, became a bandit because of the conscription;
preferring a roving and lawless life, and amateur skirmishes on his own
account with the gendarmerie, to a forced service in the French army.
The Bella Coschias, however, were not of any particular rank amongst
their fellow-villagers, although their name, like that of so many
Corsicans, is one well known and a good one in Italy.
A driver whom we employed later on, and who was much more trustworthy
than our French friend, afterwards told us more of the bandit brothers.
On one occasion, one of them had made his way for some reason to
Ajaccio, and our coachman drove him back by night in a close carriage
to Bocognano--some twenty miles.
This was several years ago, when the man was undoubtedly a _mauvais
sujet_, murdering and evil-doing in every direction, simply for the
gratification of his own bad passions; and yet neither our driver, a
remarkably superior, unprejudiced man, nor his master, a well-to-do
coach owner, dreamt of doing otherwise than protecting the bandit from
the French government.
It will be some time yet before law is recognized in Corsica, or the
natives learn to give up, into its hands, their right of judgment
regarding private feuds and local offenders.
After all, the excuse for this condition of things lies in the
mal-administration of justice under which poor Corsica groaned for
centuries, and which forced public opinion to take the law into its
own hands, and regard the procedure of the courts as only a source of
foreign oppression and complicated misfortune. The same cause probably
has to answer for the vendetta, for so many years the curse of Corsica,
and the disgrace of a noble people.
The vendetta has been the internal disease of the island, breaking
out again and again, and often sapping the strength and destroying the
harmony of the different members of the community.
It was the natural result of a hopelessly corrupt legislature among a
warlike people of strong passions and revengeful propensities; and as
such, must not be judged too hardly.
It is an incontrovertible fact that the law of the vendetta was, in its
first action, not only allowed, but enforced, among the early Jews by
the Mosaic dispensation.
The Corsicans (if we put aside the humanizing effect of Christianity)
have had greater reason and excuse for their practice of private
retribution than ever had the Jews; for the Jews had a court of
unassailable purity presided over by the delegate of the Deity
Himself, whilst the poor Corsican could hope for no verdict unbought
by gold, or uninfluenced by party spirit, and could bring down no
judgment on the head of assassin or robber, save that meted out by
the wrathful strength of his own right hand. But a custom which began
not unreasonably, and with so much excuse, spread until it became a
monstrous horror in the land.
Men were not content with the pursuit and death of the murderer or the
robber only--his whole family became their lawful prey; and, in return,
every member of that family sought to shed the blood of their pursuers.
Children, before they were born, were doomed to the same unrelenting
life of savage hate and bloodshed; and boys of tender years were
brought by the mothers that bare them, before the bloody corpse of
their father, and made to swear, with baby lips, undying vengeance and
murderous retribution, so soon as their hands should be strong enough
to grasp a gun, and their skill sufficient to point it home to the
heart of the foe.
Thus the hand of every man was against his neighbour; and this not
for serious causes only. Soon, the vendetta between different families
began to arise from the most trivial causes. A man spoke slightingly
of another man's friend or relative, or, maybe, his dog--a dispute
occurred as to a date, a measurement, the opinions of a third. A hot
word was spoken: out came the ready dagger, or the ever-loaded gun
or pistol,--a human heart ceased beating, and a murderer fled to the
maquis on the mountain side, or the caverns on the lonely rocks, and
became thenceforth a pariah, issuing only to commit fresh murders,
supported secretly by his relations, but never more known to the world
at large; until at length a retributive bullet laid him low, or his
hiding place was betrayed, and he miserably slain by the military
police of his country.
This hydra-headed monster had grown to such an extent, that between
the years 1770 and 1800, when the vendetta was at its height, some 7000
murders occurred, all on its account; and only the strenuous measures
of the French government succeeded in checking the evil.
It was made penal for a man to carry a gun or any other weapon, except
under certain restrictions, and in certain cases. This law continued in
force for a few years, and worked so well that the number of violent
deaths decreased almost to _nil_. But the law has been rescinded the
last few years, and now again you see every man with his loaded gun.
And the number of murders, although nothing like what it was in former
times, yet has increased again greatly.
This inland region is specially the region of arms. You rarely meet a
peasant without a gun strapped behind his shoulder, and a pistol or two
in his vest; and our driver informed me that they are always carried
loaded.
"With what?" I asked.
"With bullets, of course."
"To kill game?" asked I (knowing, however, that this was not the place
for large game).
"Pour se defendre," said he, with a queer look.
"That means--to shoot one another as soon as a quarrel occurs?"
He shrugged his shoulders silently, and smiled assent.
In the vendetta one touch of barbarity is spared--the women and
children are unassailed.
But instances where women have taken the law into their own hands, and
shot a faithless lover, or even a family foe, are not unusual; and of
course, they are constantly the provoking cause of many a masculine
vendetta.
As a rule, these female murderers are leniently judged. One young
woman, well known to our driver, had, a short time before, openly shot
her lover through the heart with a pistol, but had only been condemned
to six months' imprisonment; while another, for a similar offence,
but probably rather less of provocation, had received sentence of a
year's incarceration. Capital punishment is abolished in Corsica, and
imprisonment for life substituted. It is doubtful whether this latter
penalty, to the free islander, is not a more dreaded calamity than even
the loss of life.
But the fierce and revengeful nature which has fostered the vendetta
is combined with many noble qualities. The Corsican is, and always
has been, honest, hospitable, and truthful; and he would scorn to take
advantage of a lonely stranger. There is something essentially manly
about these people; and the base and petty vices of more so-called
refined countries are unknown to them. There is an immense difference
between them and the people of the neighbouring island of Sardinia, or
that of Sicily.
The Corsicans have a thorough and well-merited contempt for the natives
of Sardinia. "They are nothing, those Sardes, but a race of robbers,
assassins, and liars," said a man to me with emphasis at Bonifacio.
Bonifacio is the nearest Corsican town to Sardinia, and looks across
some narrow straits towards the Italian island with no friendly
feelings.
From what we heard of Sardinia, travelling is neither safe nor
agreeable there. It is not a particularly interesting country save for
its antiquarian remains, being far flatter and less full of natural
beauties than Corsica; and, although it boasts a railway, it is as
far behind its neighbour in civilization and in the character of its
inhabitants, as in the facilities it affords to travellers.
The inns are, I believe, worse, and dirtier than in Corsica; the
roads are not so good, and brigands abound; whilst there is little
in the character of Sardinian scenery to compensate for the domestic
discomfort.
The people are reported sly, and as possessing little of the honesty
and courtesy common in Corsica; on the contrary, they regard travellers
as their lawful prey. The railway trains are occasionally fired at and
pillaged by brigands, and highway robbers still infest the country.
This was never the case in Corsica. For centuries the people have
prided themselves upon their honesty, and a murder for greed of gold
is unknown. The traveller's purse and his person are safe, amongst
the wildest and roughest of the inhabitants. Quarrelling over money
interests is unusual; and a vendetta is said to have been rarely, if
ever, caused by a dispute over such matters.
The killing and slaying amongst the people has been barbarous enough,
Heaven knows; but it has rarely owed its origin to any lower motive
than a mistaken or exaggerated idea of honour, or, at the worst, a love
of lawless freedom and adventure.
The difference between the Corsican bandit and the Sardinian or
Sicilian brigand is the difference of races far apart from each other
as the poles. Notwithstanding their contiguity, the two islands have
rarely had anything to do with each other for many centuries, and the
wild white breakers that roll, nine months of the year, between the
"Bouches de Bonifacio," separate two nationalities that have never
known sympathy.
A Corsican bandit can occasionally be a much nearer neighbour than one
suspects.
A gentleman at Bocognano told us that a bandit, about a year ago, had
spent six months in a cave at the bottom of a garden close to Ajaccio.
During this time, he was regularly supplied at night with food by one
or two friends, at which time also he emerged from his hiding-place
and walked abroad with caution; and, at the end of the six months, took
his departure and escaped to the mountains near. The garden was close
to the house, and the bandit, in his gloomy hole, must have listened
almost daily to the voices of the children playing about, and watched
the householder and his wife as they strolled up and down.
It was only after the bird had flown that the owner was made aware of
the strange visitor he had unconsciously harboured for so long in the
vicinity of his home.
"Did it not give him a shudder to think of the man lying there close
by, night and day?" I asked.
"Oh no," was the reply; "why should he fear? The bandit had no quarrel
with _him_."
Walking through the lonely mountains, and in and out of the wild
country rocks, one feels that one is in the natural country of the
fierce outlaw; but in sunny, modern, cheery little Ajaccio, it is
almost as difficult to realize the existence or the close proximity of
the bandit as it would be in a Belgravian drawing-room.
For some time after leaving the dirty uninteresting-looking little
village of Bocognano, the road continues very fine, descending
constantly among magnificent mountain forms, heaped together in every
direction, and passing under the grateful shade of young-leaved oaks
and budding chestnuts. Miniature Geissbach falls dropped beside us, and
long-haired goats, black, and brown, and parti-coloured, with graceful
heads and large shy eyes, bounded past in terror.
At a village boasting the queer name of Fiasco, we took up our last
relay of horses, and our fifth coachman. He was a young fellow with a
gentle, smiling face and courteous manner. His horses were, contrary to
most of the diligence horses, in excellent condition. They had not a
rough or a sore place upon them apparently, which was more than could
be said for any of the others; and their driver neither required nor
used his long whip, nor did he indulge in the various and inharmonious
yells of the other four coachmen.
This young man was afterwards introduced to us by a fellow-driver as a
nephew and great admirer of the two Bella Coschia bandits.
"He looks kind," said I.
"He is a 'brave homme,'" was the warm reply; "and would not injure a
fly"--which, I have no doubt, was true.
The barbarous condition in which horses, and especially mules, are
driven in Corsica, is much to be deplored. It is a rare exception to
meet with a mule without one or more sores upon its back or legs; and
we sometimes saw them at work with an open wound the size of a saucer
upon them. The flies in summer must be a terrible aggravation to the
sufferings of these poor beasts.
As a rule, however, it is only the draught mules which are thus
wounded; and the riding mules are generally whole and well-looking.
There is great excuse for the condition of the animals in the steep
roads and the wretched pay received by their owners, the charettiers.
Forced to bring heavy loads of wood down mere mountain paths,
dangerously steep and twisting, working often night and day for very
insufficient pay, and often at risk of life and limb to themselves,
these poor charettiers are constrained to overwork their mules, as
they are themselves overworked, and have neither the power nor the
inclination to spare them ill-usage.
Yet, I do not think the Corsican is often a voluntarily cruel driver. I
never, or rarely, saw one of these wood-carters beating or personally
ill-treating his mules. But all over the island there is a tacit
indifference to animal suffering.
I wish the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would
establish a branch for the service of mules and horses in Corsica.
But they would probably find it hot work at first, as these are not a
people who approve of interference in any quarter.
One lady, well known in Ajaccio, who took up a short time ago the
cause of the poor mules, and made an effort to bring to justice one or
two owners of ill-used animals, was rewarded by a small hornet's nest
about her ears; and, I was told, had a note sent her anonymously "à
l'Irlandais," in which she was informed that it was well for her she
was of the weaker sex, or she might have suffered for her temerity!
As we approached the neighbourhood of Ajaccio, the mountains lowered
their heads and soon gave place to wooded hills; and, beyond this,
to fine rocks. Then, as the sun sank slowly towards the horizon, the
fading sunlight fell upon a foaming river following the road, on one
side, and lit up the upper part of the rich shrub-covered cliff which
overhung it on the other.
We were now almost on level land, and a broad plain lay before us,
about six miles long, marshy and malarious, at the end of which was the
wide-stretching Mediterranean, blue and still, with a white tongue of
land reaching out, and dotted with little houses sparkling in the last
rays of evening sunshine.
This bright little town, lying on its white arm far out into the lovely
sea, was Ajaccio. Round it curved many a bay; and beyond it gleamed
many a distant island, as we sped over the plain at an easy gallop,
under young Bella Coschia's gentle rein.
Then came an English-looking lane or two, with grassy banks and
overhanging trees; and then, a sudden turn on to what may be called the
Esplanade of Ajaccio--a broad flat road, shaded by a grateful avenue
of chestnuts and sycamores, winding along the shore of the bay, past
the quay and the statue of Napoleon, and up the hilly street of the gay
little town.
No place could have looked fairer than did Ajaccio on our first view of
it. Sea and sky were glowing crimson with sunset hues, the hills and
promontories on the other side of the bay were a rich purple, while
the houses shone bright and clean against the vivid background, their
windows painted gold, and the streets shaded by fresh-leaved young
trees.
The little town was all astir in the freshness and cool of a lovely
spring evening; for it was just the time when, in Corsica, men, women,
and children are all abroad in the streets.
Gay stalls of oranges and vegetables lined the ascent; bright red
and blue uniforms mixed with blue blouses and brown velveteens; mule
carts, with their jingling bells and scarlet trappings, ran up and down
merrily; and men in their shirt sleeves (and every Corsican seems to
wear a white shirt) sat before their open doors, smoking their pipes,
with children and dogs playing round them, and their wives, in white or
coloured head-gear, standing near in gossip under the trees.
A few young ladies, got up in tight dresses and frizzed hair, likewise
walked, in couples, or arm in arm with a dark-complexioned father,
solemnly up and down; while whiskered Frenchmen sat in front of the
little cafés under their awnings, and sailors of several nations rolled
merrily along the streets, whistling or singing.
Then on through the main street of the town, out again upon the blue
sea, the Place de Napoleon with its fine statues of the first Napoleon
and his four brothers, past the Hôtel de France close by, and up
the Cours de Grandval a little way, planted with its avenue of young
chestnuts,--on to Hôtel Germania, lying against a wooded hill, the last
house in the street, with front door open to welcome the traveller, and
green shutters just being turned back from the shaded windows.
Oh, the delights of once more entering an establishment where the
polished floors shone with cleanliness, where the paper did not hang
in foul strips from the walls, where indescribable odours did not
greet one from every open window and up every staircase, and where the
reptile and the insect knew no abiding-place! Oh, the revelling in tubs
and cold water, the luxury of a bell with some one to answer it, and
the charms of bread not sour, and butter that could be eaten!
Howsoever beautiful be nature, the most æsthetic mind is too much a
slave to the vile body to know perfect mental enjoyment when living in
constant dread of physical discomfort and disgust. Any one who has ever
travelled out of the beaten track will understand the joy with which we
took possession of our dainty little rooms at Ajaccio, after our week's
roughing, and will excuse this rhapsody.