Wanderings in Corsica: Its History and Its Heroes. Vol. 1 of 2Gregorovius, Ferdinand
History
Wanderings in Corsica: Its History and Its Heroes. Vol. 1 of 2
Gregorovius, Ferdinand
Corsica (France) -- Description and travel; Corsica (France) -- History
respectfully into the cradle of the little child, the offspring of
Teodoro and his queen. Teodoro met his death in the year 1827.
Gallocchio is another celebrated outlaw. He had conceived an attachment
for a girl who became faithless to him, and he had forbidden any
other to seek her hand. Cesario Negroni wooed and won her. The young
Gallocchio gave one of his friends a hint to wound the father-in-law.
The wedding guests are dancing merrily, merrily twang the fiddles
and the mandolines--a shot! The ball had missed its way, and pierced
the father-in-law's heart. Gallocchio now becomes bandit. Cesario
intrenches himself. But Gallocchio forces him to leave the building,
hunts him through the mountains, finds him, kills him. Gallocchio now
fled to Greece, and fought there against the Turks. One day the news
reached him that his own brother had fallen in the Vendetta war which
had continued to rage between the families involved in it by the death
of the father-in-law, and that of Cesario. Gallocchio came back, and
killed two brothers of Cesario; then more of his relatives, till at
length he had extirpated his whole family. The red Gambini was his
comrade; with his aid he constantly repulsed the gendarmes; and on one
occasion they bound one of them to a horse's tail, and dragged him so
over the rocks. Gambini fled to Greece, where the Turks cut off his
head; but Gallocchio died in his sleep, for a traitor shot him.
Santa Lucia Giammarchi is also famous; he held the bush for sixteen
years; Camillo Ornano ranged the mountains for fourteen years; and
Joseph Antommarchi was seventeen years a bandit.
The celebrated bandit Serafino was shot shortly before my arrival in
Corsica; he had been betrayed, and was slain while asleep. Arrighi,
too, and the terrible Massoni, had met their death a short time
previously--a death as wild and romantic as their lives had been.
Massoni was a man of the most daring spirit, and unheard of energy;
he belonged to a wealthy family in Balagna. The Vendetta had driven
him into the mountains, where he lived many years, supported by
his relations, and favoured by the herdsmen, killing, in frequent
struggles, a great number of sbirri. His companions were his brother
and the brave Arrighi. One day, a man of the province of Balagna, who
had to avenge the blood of a kinsman on a powerful family, sought him
out, and asked his assistance. The bandit received him hospitably,
and as his provisions happened to be exhausted at the time, went to a
shepherd of Monte Rotondo, and demanded a lamb; the herdsman gave him
one from his flock. Massoni, however, refused it, saying--"You give me
a lean lamb, and yet to-day I wish to do honour to a guest; see, yonder
is a fat one, I must have it;" and instantly he shot the fat lamb down,
and carried it off to his cave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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