“In the early autumn of 1735, being then at the Court of Tuscany, I received sudden and secret orders to repair to Corte, the capital of Corsica, an island of which I knew nothing beyond what I had learnt in casual talk from the Count Domenico Rivarola, who then acted as its plenipotentiary at Florence.  He was a man with whom I would willingly have taken counsel, but my orders from England expressly forbade it.  Rivarola in fact was suspected—­and justly as my story will show—­of designs of his own for the future of the island; and although, as it will also show, we had done better to consult him, Walpole’s injunctions were precise that I should by every means keep him in the dark.

“The situation—­to put it as briefly as I can—­was this.  For two hundred years or so the island had been ruled by the Republic of Genoa; and, by common consent, atrociously.  For generations the islanders had lived in chronic revolt, under chiefs against whom the Genoese—­or, to speak more correctly, the Bank of Genoa—­had not scrupled to apply every device, down to secret assassination. Uno avolso non deficit alter:  the Corsicans never lacked a leader to replace the fallen:  and in 1735 the succession was shared by two noble patriots, Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli.

“Under their attacks the Genoese were slowly but none the less certainly losing their hold on the island.  Their plight was such that, although no one knew precisely what they would do, every one foresaw that, failing some heroic remedy, they must be driven into the sea, garrison after garrison, and lose Corsica altogether; and of all speculations the most probable seemed that they would sell the island, with all its troubles, to France.  Now, for France to acquire so capital a point d’appui in the Mediterranean would obviously be no small inconvenience to England:  and therefore our Ministers—­who had hitherto regarded the struggles of the islanders with indifference—­woke up to a sudden interest in Corsican affairs.

“They had no pretext for interfering openly.  But if the Corsicans would but take heart and choose themselves a king, that king could at a ripe moment be diplomatically acknowledged; and any interference by France would at once become an act of violent usurpation. (For let me tell you, my friends—­the sufferings of a people count as nothing in diplomacy against the least trivial act against a crown.) The nuisance was, the two Paolis, Giafferi and Hyacinth, had no notion whatever of making themselves kings; nor would their devoted followers have tolerated it.  Yet—­as sometimes happens—­there was a third man, of greater descent than they, to whom at a pinch the crown might be offered, and with a far more likely chance of the Corsicans’ acquiescence.  This was a Count Ugo Colonna, a middle-aged man, descended from the oldest nobility of the island, and head of his family, which might more properly be called a clan; a patriot, in his way, too, though lacking the fire of the Paolis, to whom he had surrendered the leadership while remaining something of a figure-head.  In short my business was to confer with him at Corte, persuade the Corsican chiefs to offer him the crown, and persuade him to accept it.