He held a council of war in Castiglione. Sampiero was overjoyed at the turn affairs had taken; all his wishes were centred in the liberation of his country. He represented to Thermes the necessary and important consequences of the undertaking, and it was forthwith set on foot. Its success could not be doubted. The French only needed to land, and the Corsican people would that moment rise in arms. The hatred of the rule of the Genoese merchants had reached, since the fall of Renuccio, the utmost pitch of intensity; and it had its ground not merely in the ineradicable passion of the people for liberty, but in the actual state of affairs in the island. For, as soon as the Bank saw its power secured, it began to rule despotically. The Corsicans had been stripped of all their political rights: they had lost their Syndicate, the Dodici, their old communal magistracies; justice was venal, murder permitted--at least the murderer was protected in Genoa, and furnished with letters-patent for his personal safety. The horrors of the Vendetta, therefore, of the implacable revenge that insists on blood for blood, took root firm and fast. All writers on Corsican history are unanimous, that the demoralization of the courts of justice was the deepest wound which the Bank of Genoa inflicted on Corsica. Sampiero had sent a Corsican, named Altobello de Gentili, into the island, to ascertain the state of the popular feeling; his letters, and the hope of his coming kindled the wildest joy; the people trembled with eagerness for the arrival of the fleet. Thermes, and Admiral Paulin, whose squadron had effected a junction with the Turkish fleet at Elba, now sailed for Corsica in August 1553. The brave Pietro Strozzi and his company was with them, though not long; Sampiero, the hope of the Corsicans, was with them; Johann Ornano, Rafael Gentili, Altobello, and other exiles, all burning for revenge, and impatient to drench their swords in Genoese blood.