Arrived in Ajaccio “exhausted and stiff” after a sleepless night in diligence, the general is more interested in the landscapes and the inhabitants than in the military buildings. A tourist visit recorded in a picturesque story
In June 1887, two senior officers are sent to Corsica for a general inspection of the military establishments and fortifications, a journey which should take them from Bastia towards Ajaccio, cut and Bonifacio.
Among them is General Piarron whose story of travel across the island, nourished by tourism and sociology, sheds some light on daily life at the beginning of the IIIe Republic.
The same year, Prince Roland Bonaparte makes a tour of Corsica in search of its roots. The story published by his traveling companion, the writer Émile Bergerat, under the title “The hunting of the mouflon,” sometimes joins that of General Piarron, by the distanced and ironic tone.
Piarron admits, the state of military buildings in Corsica interests him much less than the inhabitants of the island and their so different customs: “I had the opportunity to realize the falsity of the ideas of a continental like me on Corsica. “(1)
The general and his colleague land in Bastia. To get to Ajaccio, they choose to take the train. Still limited to the Bastia-Corte section, the rail network has not yet been inaugurated. The two generals who travel in civilian clothes are nevertheless authorized to take it.
After Corte, the locomotive gives way to “a stagecoach, a real, an old stagecoach from the old days,” and its slowness gives the two generals the opportunity to go into ecstasies on the remarkable sites that are the valley of Golo. and the prospect of Monte Rotondo, then to visit Corte ‘very picturesque old town on its rock. “
General Piarron arrives “exhausted and stiff in Ajaccio” after a chaotic trip which will not remain his best memory: “Departure in the night for Ajaccio by the filthy diligence, with somewhat excited fellow travelers who talked without stopping, smoking detestable cigars. The car was full of chips. Impossible to extend my legs wedged between those of my opposite. Impossible to sleep. The night prevented me from seeing anything of the crossing of the central ridge of the pass of Vizzavona, but the dawning day allowed me to admire the magnificent chestnut trees rolling down from the pass. “
The imperial city reveals its charms. “A pretty town at the bottom of a blue gulf, surrounded by mountains that are still quite green in June, with beautiful walks shaded by plane trees and flower gardens. “ A scene catches the general’s attention.
A man in a large black velvet hat, rifle in his arm, walks down the busy boulevard leading to the port, “Like a lignard from the Versailles army in my street during the Commune battles … A life of hunted game. At the time, I could hardly believe my eyes. “
The Place du Diamant facing the sea is the scene of social rites every evening. “Men only walk along two parallel lines, the clients of the power in office on one side, their enemies on the other, watching each other with a sidelong glance. The women are in black and hardly show themselves except for compulsory outings. “
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“The modest room occupied by Bonaparte in 1793”
After a stop in Propriano, the two generals take the direction of Sartène where they are greeted by the mayor, who, dressed in elegant white pants, leads them “with a certain pomp” to his supporters’ café overlooking the square. His recent election was marked by tragedy. A man was dead, hit by a gunshot from a window.
To curb the scourge of banditry, a battalion of voltigeurs composed exclusively of Corsicans had been created in 1822, then dissolved. But General Piarron is quick to clarify “That the term bandit does not imply any dishonor in Corsica, because very few of these ‘outlaws’ engage in acts of true banditry, they are simply outlaw and always find support among people who have espoused their quarrel particular. “
The two officers arrive in Bonifacio, a city that its cliffs make impregnable. On the promontory, a battery was being built, “and the fragments of rocks which fell into the sea in front of the cave produced the sound of a loud cannon fire. “
“At the citadel, I visited the modest room occupied for a few days by Bonaparte, then lieutenant-colonel of artillery, in February 1793, during the expedition to Sardinia which ended so short. On the median of the Citadel, almost on the edge of the cliff, stand two poor military buildings in front of which we tried to make two trees grow. They grew painfully up to roof height, but didn’t want to know anything to get past them. They are miserably shaved from there, as with a scythe, by the merciless wind. “
General Piarron returned to Corsica for a new inspection mission in 1888. He then took his wife and colleague his daughter there, according to a route from Bastia to La Balagne via the Agriate. A sign that Corsica was of both tourist and military interest. “These ladies had free time to entertain themselves during the tedious hours of the inspection. “
A high-ranking official with a duty of reserve, General Piarron could not indulge in political digressions on the situation of Corsica, a republican island after being imperial for a long time. The writer Emile Bergerat, on the other hand, dispenses with such scruples by spreading his comments without blush. Referring to the triumphant visit of the President of the Republic Sadi Carnot who arrived in Bastia by train in 1890: “I have been told that where there is no railroad, there is no trade or industry either. “(2)
Noting a lack of communications and economic opportunities: “The French department it constitutes threatens to remain fallow and fallow despite the riches (silver mines, granite and marble quarries, vineyards, olive groves, citrons) that nature has lavished on it.” Corsica is indeed poor, like a simple Sologne. »
But thanks to travel literature, its poverty is less and less ignored. Well-known writers and journalists in need of notoriety praise the beauty of this island struck by a malaise that makes it so unique: “Since Mérimée, Corsica has lived almost exclusively on the artistic reputation that this archaeologist gave him on holiday.” » However, the island now aspires to develop by promoting resources other than wild sites and picturesque bandits.
(1 et seq.) General Piarron. Memories and road pages: France, Algeria, Corsica, Madagascar, Uruguay, Balkans. (1876-1914) (2 et seq.) Émile Bergerat. Antelope hunting. A little philosophical trip to Corsica.
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