Terra di Comune.

The Bank of San Giorgio.

Milanese intervention.

An assembly of the chiefs of the Terra di Comune now decided to offer
the government of the island to the Company or Bank of San Giorgio, a
powerful commercial corporation established at Genoa in the 14th
century.[1] The bank accepted; the Spaniards were driven from the
country; and a government was organized. But the bank soon fell foul of
the barons, and began a war of extermination against them. Their
resistance was finally broken in 1460, when the survivors took refuge in
Tuscany. But order had scarcely been established when the Genoese
Tommasinoda Campo Fregoso, whose mother was a Corsican, revived the
claims of his family and succeeded in mastering the interior of the
island (1462). Two years later the duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza,
overthrew the power of the Fregoso family at Genoa, and promptly
proceeded to lay claim to Corsica. His lieutenant had no difficulty in
making the island accept the overlordship of the duke of Milan; but
when, in 1466, Francesco Sforza died, a quarrel broke out, and Milanese
suzerainty became purely nominal save in the coast towns. Finally, in
1484, Tommasino da Campo Fregoso persuaded the duke to grant him the
government of the island. The strong places were handed over to him; he
entered into marriage relations with Gian Paolo da Leca, the most
powerful of the barons, and was soon supreme in the island.

Within three years the Corsicans were up in arms again. A descendant of
the Malaspinas who had once ruled in Corsica, Jacopo IV. (d'Appiano),
was now prince of Piombino, and to him the malcontents applied. His
brother Gherardo, count of Montagnano, accepted the call, proclaimed
himself count of Corsica, and, landing in the island, captured Biguglia
and San Fiorenzo; whereupon Tommasino da Campo Fregoso discreetly sold
his rights to the bank of San Giorgio. No sooner, however, had the
bank--with the assistance of the count of Leca--beaten Count Gherardo
than the Fregoso family tried to repudiate their bargain. Their claims
were supported by the count of Leca, and it cost the agents of the bank
some hard fighting before the turbulent baron was beaten and exiled to
Sardinia. Twice he returned, and he was not finally expelled from the
country till 1501; it was not till 1511 that the other barons were
crushed and that the bank could consider itself in secure possession of
the island.

If the character of the