Barbary pirates, so that the coast villages and towns were abandoned and
the inhabitants withdrew into the interior, leaving the most fertile
part of the country to fall into the condition of a malarious waste. To
add to all this, in 1576 the population had been decimated by a
pestilence. Emigration _en masse_ continued, and an attempt to remedy
this by introducing a colony of Greeks in 1688 only added one more
element of discord to the luckless island. To the Genoese Corsica
continued to be merely an area to be exploited for their profit; they
monopolized its trade; they taxed it up to and beyond its capacity; they
made the issue of licences to carry firearms a source of revenue, and
studiously avoided interfering with the custom of the _vendetta_ which
made their fiscal expedient so profitable.[3]

Revolt of 1729.

King Theodore of Corsica.

In 1729 the Corsicans, irritated by a new hearth-tax known as the _due
seini_, rose in revolt, their leaders being Andrea Colonna Ceccaldi and
Luigi Giafferi. As usual, the Genoese were soon confined to a few coast
towns; but the intervention of the emperor Charles VI. and the despatch
of a large force of German mercenaries turned the tide of war, and in
1732 the authority of Genoa was re-established. Two years later,
however, Giacinto Paoli once more raised the standard of revolt; and in
1735 an assembly at Corte proclaimed the independence of Corsica, set up
a constitution, and entrusted the supreme leadership to Giafferi, Paoli
and Ceccaldi. Though the Genoese were again driven into the fortresses,
lack of arms and provisions made any decisive success of the insurgents
impossible, and when, on the 12th of March 1736, the German adventurer
Baron Theodor von Neuhof arrived with a shipload of muskets and stores
and the assurance of further help to come, leaders and people were glad
to accept his aid on his own conditions, namely that he should be
acknowledged as king of Corsica. On the 15th of April, at Alesani, an
assembly of clergy and of representatives of the communes, solemnly
proclaimed Corsica an independent kingdom under the sovereignty of
Theodore "I." and his heirs. The new king's reign was not fated to last
long. The _opera bouffe_ nature of his entry on the stage--he was clad
in a scarlet caftan, Turkish trousers and a Spanish hat and feather, and
girt with a scimitar--did not, indeed, offend the unsophisticated
islanders; they were even ready to take serious