ALERIA AND THEODORE
Aleria is a little hamlet on the east coast of Corsica. In the days
when the Romans held the island there was a population of about 20,000.
To-day there is but a mere handful of dirty houses. In those times
there was a residence for the governor and several important public
buildings. All that is left to remind us of the Romans consists of
a few formless heaps of stone, and the oyster-shell island in the
neighbouring Lake of Diana.
As I rode into Aleria on my bicycle one sunny afternoon, I was greeted
by a crowd of children and a shower of stones. The little ones seemed
quite good-natured, but their stony welcome was rather too vigorous to
be pleasant. Everybody in Corsica throws stones, and most people can
aim straight. A shepherd will bring back a straggler into the flock
with a well-directed pebble; a muleteer will guide his mule in the
same way; the dogs are so used to this kind of message that if a man
but stoop to the ground, they expect a visit from a lump of granite,
and fly with all the speed they possess.
The three most interesting things to be seen in Aleria to-day are the
inn, the village bakehouses, and the old Genoese fort. The inn is a
poor specimen of a place of rest for a weary traveller. It contains a
shop, where wine and hair-oil, biscuits and tin-tacks, straw hats and
jam, are sold to the people of the hamlet; a dark kitchen; one bedroom
for all the family, and another for all the guests. The breakfast
served in the morning is not a tempting one. All the food that can be
obtained is sour bread without butter, bacon, or jam, and black coffee
without either milk or sugar. Sour bread and black coffee form the
usual breakfast of the Corsican peasant, and are all that the traveller
can obtain in out-of-the-way places.
In the towns the ovens in which bread is baked are usually inside the
houses, but in the villages bread is baked in stone bread-ovens placed
by the road-side. Some villages seem to possess more bread-ovens than
houses. Aleria certainly has a full share. If the number of ovens
be limited, the people have to take their turn at baking the family
loaves, and only one baking-day in each week can be allowed to each
family. Corsican bread is hard enough on the day when it is baked.
On the seventh, when it is thoroughly stale, it requires a hammer
and chisel to make a hole in the crust. On baking-days big bundles
of blazing shrubs are first put into the oven, and the whole of the
interior is made almost red-hot. The ashes are swept out with a branch,
and the loaves are placed on the hot stones and left there for about a
couple of hours.
The old Genoese fort is picturesque, but useless. Its presence,
however, reminds us of the strange history of King Theodore. In a
previous chapter we have stated that the Genoese got possession of
Corsica about the middle of the fourteenth century, and that they
kept it for nearly 400 years. The people made many attempts from time
to time to get rid of the foreigners, whom they hated violently, on
account of their cruel and oppressive rule. One of the most interesting
chapters in the story of this struggle for freedom is that which
relates the doings of Theodore van Neuhoff. He was a German, born at
Metz in 1696, and brought up as a page at the Court of the Duchess of
Orleans. He led a very roving life, and in the course of his wanderings
he arrived one day at Genoa. It happened that at that very time a
number of Corsicans had been brought as prisoners to the city. Theodore
talked to the captives, and from them he learned of the efforts which
the Corsicans were making to be free. From Genoa he went to Leghorn,
where he met a powerful Corsican nobleman. He promised this man that he
would undertake to drive the Genoese out of the island in less than a
year provided only that in return he should be elected King of Corsica.
The proposal was considered and accepted, and early on the morning of
March 12, 1736 (that is, during the reign of our King, George II.),
he arrived at Aleria. The people crowded to the shore to welcome the
new-comer, whom they expected to bring arms and ammunition. Theodore
was dressed in a curious fashion. He had on a long Persian vest of
scarlet silk, Moorish trousers, yellow shoes, and a Spanish hat and
feather. He carried a pair of pistols in his belt, a sabre at his side,
and a truncheon in his hand by way of a sceptre. With him were sixteen
attendants--two Frenchmen, eleven Italians, and three Moors. Everyone
anxiously watched the discharge of the ship’s cargo. This included 10
pieces of cannon, 4,000 muskets, 3,000 pairs of shoes, 700 sacks of
grain, a great deal of ammunition, and some casks filled with money.
Theodore handed all these things over to the chief men of the island,
telling them that more would soon follow.
He was taken to a village not far away, and there in the village
church he was solemnly crowned as Theodore I. As the people were too
poor to buy him a crown of gold, he had to be satisfied with one of
plaited oak and laurel leaves. It was not long before all his money
was spent. No more arrived, and the subjects of the new King began to
grumble. Theodore wished them farewell for a time, and came over to the
continent of Europe to get fresh assistance. He fell into debt, and was
imprisoned at Amsterdam, but in 1738 he returned to Aleria accompanied
by three men-of-war, a number of gunboats, and some vessels bearing
stores. This time he brought 27 pieces of cannon, 7,000 muskets with
bayonets, 1,000 muskets of a larger size, 2,000 pistols, 24,000 pounds
of coarse powder, 100,000 pounds of fine powder, 200,000 pounds of
lead, 400,000 flints, 50,000 pounds of iron, 2,000 lances, and 2,000
grenades and bombs. But to his great disappointment, he found that
during his absence the very people who had crowned him King had entered
into a league with France, and would no longer receive him as their
Sovereign. But he did not give up hope, and after a visit to England
he once more returned to Corsica, bringing with him gifts of guns and
money. The people took his gifts willingly enough, but they refused to
take him as their ruler, and in despair he finally left the island and
came back to England.
Soon after his arrival in London he was thrown into the King’s Bench
Prison for debt. In order to regain his liberty, he made over his
kingdom of Corsica to his creditors. On leaving the gaol, he was taken
in a sedan chair to the house of the Portuguese Minister. The Minister
was not at home, and as Theodore had no money with which to pay the
chairmen, he told them to carry him to the house of a tailor in Soho.
There he died three days later. He was buried at the cost of a small
tradesman named John Wright, who had known him in better days, and who
generously wished to save the exiled monarch the shame of a pauper’s
funeral.
Theodore rests to this day in St. Anne’s Church, Soho London. On the
wall of the church there is a tablet to his memory, which bears an
epitaph written by Horace Walpole, and which concludes with these words:
“The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings;
But Theodore, this moral learn’d ere dead,
Fate pour’d its lessons on his living head,
Bestow’d a kingdom and denied him bread.”