“My death will be the shame of my life if I do not die the death of the brave. » Jean-Baptiste Cervoni (1765-1809), general baron of the Empire, has his name engraved on the Arc de Triomphe. Nothing at first sight predestined him to have the career he did.
His grandfather Felice (around 1700-Rome 1740) and his great-uncle Gio Batta to whom he owed his first name in the Corsican tradition which requires giving newborns the first names of the last deceased in the family, had resisted the troops of Louis Gio Batta was also strangely dead, the victim of a strange Cortenese gunshot, fired from the Casa of Gio Pietro Gaffori who was perhaps not as "national" a leader as we would like to believe since he was building his magnificent Casone in the Corte countryside… thanks to the 6,000 pounds pension granted by the king. But Gaffori could not be incriminated, since he was playing the violin, at the same time, at the window of a house located almost opposite. He was nevertheless worried.
The political situation in Corsica was indeed difficult at the time. Gio Pietro Gaffori himself was assassinated shortly after and John the Baptist's father, Tomaso Cervoni (Soveria 1726-Soveria 1810), known as "Thomé", neighbor of Corte since he resided in Soveria, opposite Tralonca, unless 20 minutes on horseback from the future Pauline capital, was part, in 1754, of a provisional Cortenese government, "rebellious" in Genoa. Thereupon, Pascal Paoli, raised in Naples alongside his father since 1739, landed in Corsica and became the general of the Nation, facing the Republic of Genoa; but also facing his island rivals, including the Matras, old Corsican gentlemen.
In 1757, the situation worsened. A fight to the death begins. To allow Paoli to win it, Felice's wife begs her son to go and assist her at the convent of Bozio, despite her resentment towards Paoli, appointed sole general of the Corsican nation (1755) while he undoubtedly and legitimately hoped for collegial power, having been among the five members ensuring the transition between Gaffori and Paoli (1754-1755). Born Morelli, a native of Lama, the legend wanted to popularize her memory: the legend attributes particularly strong words to her: “I curse the milk that you sucked from my breast! I renounce the name of mother if you hesitate”… It would therefore be she who would have armed the arm of her son Tomaso, with efficiency, since he managed to kill Matra just below the said convent at the time when the matrists would have been in the process of set fire to the doors of the convent inside which Paoli was located (1).
Years of training
Married to Maria Catarina (around 1739-after 1794), and soon father of little Jean-Baptiste, baptized on May 29, 1765, born in his father's house in Soveria (2), Tomaso quickly went into exile in the Italian peninsula (3) – as his late father did in 1740 – and it is therefore in Rome that the future general of the Empire studied in the former Jesuit college that Louis XV is in the process of expelling from the kingdom (4). He excels in science and literature and loves Italian poetry (5), Latin verses, and quotations. He will use it all his life.
The bar was to be his destiny. Carlo Bonaparte has a doctorate in law from the University of Pisa. His eldest son, Joseph, was born in Corte in 1768, too. But the admission of Jean-Baptiste to the Royal-Corsica regiment as a private soldier, on July 10, 1783, sealed his future. Dismissed on October 10, 1786, at the request of his father, he left to study law in Pisa, like the future ambassador of the tsar in Paris, Pozzo di Borgo, born in Ajaccio in 1764. Received a doctorate in law in 1787 (like Pozzo ), and here he is, a lawyer in La Porta with the Superior Council of Corsica, from January 7, 1788.
He was twenty-four years old when the Revolution broke out in France. Corsican to the depths of his soul, he regards Paoli as the hero of his island. Didn't the future Emperor of the French, twenty years old in 1789, write: "I was born when the homeland [Corsica] was perishing. Twenty thousand French people vomited on our shores..." Of a generation born at the time of the arrival of the royal troops of Mr. de Marbeuf on the island, and of the Corsican defeat of Paoli at Pontenovo (May 8, 1769), a little further down than his village Soveria, Jean-Baptiste resembles his contemporaries, Joseph and Napoléon Bonaparte, or Charles-André Pozzo di Borgo. But this generation, often born before the Franco-Genoese treaty of 1768 (this is its case like that of Pozzo) finds itself faced with a cruel choice: Versailles where the Revolution seems to want to take away the entire millennial political-social edifice (the monarchy ), or London where scientists (Jenner) invent marvelous vaccines (against smallpox), while in France the scaffold will soon guillotine the scientists (Lavoisier).
However, the choice of young Cervoni is the same as that of young Bonaparte. Bastia and Ajaccio asked the four Corsican deputies present at the National Assembly in Paris to “unite the island of Corsica with the French monarchy”. On November 30, the Corsican deputy Antoine-Christophe Saliceti voted for this attachment of "the island of Corsica to the French imperium [territory]", thanks to Mirabeau (great-grandson of Giovanna Lenche, Cap Corsina). Cervoni supports the decree. Married on February 18, 1789, to Marie-Élisabeth Sicurani, aged sixteen, he was head of one of the divisions of the Directory of Corsica in 1790. Then he rejoined the army and commanded the national guard of the department of Golo ( the other being the Liamone). In April 1792, he became secretary to the department's commissioners (Arrighi and Cesari).
With the Republic proclaimed in September 1792, despite the birth of his daughter Irene (1792), he returned to the continent because “he put the sword above the toga” (6). He was promoted to second lieutenant in the 22nd cavalry regiment, formerly Royal-Navarre-cavalerie, on December 22, 1792. Aide-de-camp of his compatriot – General Joseph-Marie de Casabianca (de Vescovato) – he was wounded in the Army of the Alps (the right leg: June 1, 1793, in the Nice campaign, at the assault of Sospel). In September 1793, he was a "military agent in the Army of Var" with Saliceti (then adjutant general at the port of Toulon) and Gasparin, an Avignon squire whose descendants took the name Gaspari in 1840 to "soul » to an old house in Morsiglia at Cap Corse (7)…
The recovery of Toulon
Adjutant general in turn, battalion commander (October 26, 1793) at the request of Saliceti, he distinguished himself during the siege of Toulon which had to be taken back from the English, with Bonaparte (Corsica from Ajaccio), captain of artillery of twenty-four years, Saliceti (Corsica from Saliceto), representative on mission, Arena (Corsica from Île-Rousse) and Gasparin (Avignon resident who would like to be Corsican)! He was wounded again in the thigh and right arm but he managed to retake from the English the redoubt (small fortification) known as "Maubousquet" (November 30, 1793), one of the strategic locations of the port-arsenal of Toulon, former lordship of Pontevès, Provençal officers of illustrious lineage who served in the King's galleys (8). On 10 Frimaire, General-in-Chief Dugommier, from the Ollioules Headquarters, informed the citizen-minister of the bravery of the Corsicans and cited him with Bonaparte and Arena. He writes: “I cannot praise the good conduct of those of our brothers in arms who wanted to fight; among those who distinguished themselves the most and who helped me the most to rally and push forward were the Bonaparte citizens, commanding the artillery; Arena and Cervoni, adjutants general. »
On December 18, thanks to the plan established by Bonaparte on the 12th, and proposed that day to the war council, Toulon was recaptured from the English after two days of combat. On the 19th, commanding the vanguard, despite his three very recent wounds, Cervoni entered Toulon first at dawn (4 a.m.), through the Porte de France (east of the city), after a terrible assault. All civilians are allowed to return home peacefully. The next day, December 20, he was promoted to adjutant general, and brigade chief under Masséna. The honor of announcing to the Convention the recapture of Toulon from the English fell to him on the orders of Dugommier, which was an excellent way of making oneself known in high places (as in the days of the monarchy)! In four days, on horseback, Cervoni arrived in Paris. On December 24, he appeared at the bar of the Assembly: “The emotion was at its height. »
The First Italian Campaign
Returning to the South on January 14, he was promoted to brigadier general at the age of 29 (January 14, 1794), although he had been a second lieutenant a year earlier! This former lawyer, graduated from no military school, participated in the Oneglia expedition under Mouret (April 5-25), took part with distinction in the victory of Cairo in Piedmont (September 24), in the Masséna division, and the General-in-Chief Dumerbion wrote to the Convention that he was one of those “who distinguished themselves the most” with Masséna. It then belonged to Freytag's division (July 1, 1795). Apostille "young officer, intelligent and brave", moved to the division of Laharpe, and decided the victory of Loano (November 24, 1795) where he merited the praise of General-in-Chief Masséna because he seized at the head of 1 300 men from the heights of Burdonetta and Melegno, deemed inaccessible, at the head of his 1,300 men. The Directory sends him its congratulations.
On December 6, 1795, he took command of the 1st brigade (Meynier division), and, on the 24th, he was confirmed by the Directory in his dignity as brigadier general. In March 1796, he replaced Saint-Hilaire in command of the 3rd brigade of the Laharpe division. Passed to the 1st brigade of the same division, he resisted with incredible vigor, an entire day, at the head of his 3,000 men, at Voltri, to the 19,000 Austrians of the Austrian general Beaulieu, but he had to fall back, at the night, on the orders of his leaders who feared seeing him overwhelmed by forces so superior in number. He then fell back in good order on Laharpe's division and joined it at Madona-di-Savone. On April 14, he distinguished himself at Dego, ensuring the victory of Cossaria, hence further congratulations from the Directory (notably on his courage), on a report from Bonaparte; the Directory wrote to him: “The work of the last campaign had made your courage known to the Directory too much for it not to know in advance that by making you experience the first shock, the Austrians were giving you the first advantage. » Indeed, General Provera's division was forced to lay down its arms!
Commanding the place of Savona (April 17, 1796), he was then attached to the headquarters of the Army of Italy (April 29). With Dupas, Lannes, and Augereau, he took a decisive part in the removal of the Lodi bridge (May 10). Indeed, thirty pieces of artillery carrying death into the French ranks, and the 4,000 grenadiers stopped for a moment.
Cervoni rushes with Berthier, Masséna, Dallemagne, Lannes, and battalion commander Dupas and they put themselves at the head of the troops. On May 14, he negotiated in Parma, as an envoy of Bonaparte. On the 20th, he was part of Kilmaine’s vanguard. On June 1 (under Masséna), and on the 29 (under Despinoy), Cervoni continued the campaign and participated in the victory of Castiglione on August 5 over the Austrians. From October 24, he commanded the Lombard legion that he organized, fought at Arcole (November 15), at Rivoli (January 16, 1797), and participated in the surrender of besieged Mantua where the Austrians had locked themselves up.
Commander-in-Chief in Rome
Cervoni seems everywhere at once: called to headquarters on March 8, 1797, sent to Corsica on the 13th, recalled to the Army of Italy (30,000 men), he commanded the 1st Light Infantry Brigade in place of Motte. It was part of the Masséna division (August 5, 1797) and the 4th Serrurier division (September 15). At the beginning of 1798, after the Treaty of Campo-Formio, he served in the army of England.
Recalled to the army of Italy, appointed governor of Rome where the French troops entered (February 10, 1798), he harangued the crowd from the top of the Loggia of Montecitorio and supervised the organization of the provisional government of the Roman Republic (February 15, 1798). Promoted to division general (February 15, 1798) by Berthier, commander-in-chief in Rome, he informed Pius VI – with great deference – of the dissolution of the papal government: “Holy Father. I feel great displeasure at being obliged to sadden your Holiness. » He does it “with all the consideration and consideration that one owes to misfortune” according to Baldassari (but it is an abbot who is speaking). This great respect for the pope is undoubtedly linked, as with Pascal Paoli, to the fact that the sovereign pontiff was then one of the rare "elected" sovereigns... It was Cervoni who in any case published the act of installation of the provisional government. Perhaps with pleasure if we believe Thibaudeau because “he displayed irreligion; the sight of a cassock excited his bile. When he was obliged to go to Church for a ceremony, he was scandalized by his behavior. He maintained this spirit among his subordinates”….On the 20th, the old pope, elected for twenty-three years, left for Tuscany, and then reached Turin, via Siena.
In March 1798, Cervoni commanded the vanguard of the army of Rome then the 2nd military division (June 15), then the 24th (January 2, 1799), and became commander-in-chief of the nine Departments united in Brussels (February 13, 1799). ) “because of his poor eyesight” (Thibaudeau).
Under the Consulate
After 18 Brumaire (November 1799), he was sent with Saliceti to Bastia as commander of the 23rd military division (January 26, 1800), a position previously held by Pascal Paoli! As in Toulon in 1793, Cervoni spared the populations, including in Fiumorbo where the Russians had several agents favorable to an occupation of the island by the troops of Paul I.
Commander of the 8th military Division November 12, 1800), stationed in Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône, Var, Vaucluse, Alpes-Maritimes, Basses-Alpes), always because of his eyesight (“The First Consul judged him cleaner to serve in the interior than in the armies" writes Thibaudeau), he knew how to win - for eight years - the esteem and affection of all the inhabitants through the moderation of his conduct, while facing the blockade English, to the royalist threats and the jealousies of Prefect Thibaudeau: "General commanding the division, he had precedence over the prefects", but not over Thibaudeau once named Councilor of State. Overall “he was loved” (Thibaudeau) because he handled humor and affected a real cheerfulness according to his contemporaries.
Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1804, Cervoni, regularly regarded as a general and baron of the Empire, nevertheless already spent most of his career from 1786 to 1804, for almost twenty years, when he only had five years left to live.
The last campaign
Protected by Madame Mère who regrets that he is the eldest of the marshals of France and that he did not receive the baton - perhaps because he was the lover of Pauline Bonaparte (9) according to his direct descendant, our relative and old friend Jean-Baptiste Ajaccio-Cervoni, from Rogliano -, Napoleon (who will never forgive him for this "adventure"), nevertheless appointed him, at his request and that of Lannes especially, chief of staff to the 2nd corps of the Grande Armée on April 12, 1809 under the orders of his friend Lannes after eight years stationed in Marseille (1800-1809).
He misses the army. As early as 1805, he wrote: “While you all believe me to be absorbed in the wonders and grandeur of the new Empire, I spend my time foraging like a lost and solitary bee in the groves and meadows of the Muses. » He follows Lannes in terrible battles: battles of Tann, then Abensberg and Anshat; injured three times in his youth, his leg never healed, increasingly myopic, “always armed with a binocular” (Thibaudeau).
Holder of a sedentary post since 1800, he died on the battlefield at Eckmühl, near Regensburg, on Victory Day (April 22, 1809), his chest pierced by a cannonball! His eighty-four-year-old father died shortly after in Soveria, on September 23, 1810. Did he have time to learn the Emperor's orders? On February 10, 1810, Napoleon ordered that a statue be erected in memory of Cervoni, on the Concorde Bridge. The sculptor Chinard de Lyon produced the sketch, presented at the Salon of 1811. It is today in the Prints Cabinet of the National Library of France but the events which swept away the Empire did not allow this project to be carried out.
In January 1815, his widow, born Marie-Élisabeh Securani (10) (1772-1827), holder of 6,000 francs of life pension, was barricaded in her house in Cioti-de-Moriani, with a few supporters: she was the first to raise the blue-white-red flag in Corsica, before the return of the Emperor from the island of Elba. Received by Napoleon during the Hundred Days, she died on October 5, 1827, and her tomb remains in the church of her native village of San Giovanni-di-Moriani where Cervoni came to marry her on February 18, 1789. He was almost 25 years old. She is sixteen and a half years old.
Of their four children, Faustina (1790-1793) and Thomas (Corte December 31, 1797-1811) died young, the latter just after being made Baron of the Empire with an endowment on the death of his father. Their other son Louis-César (Bastia December 21, 1800-1833) (11), also Baron of the Empire in 1809 with an endowment of 8,000 francs annually, studied at the Marseille high school with his brother, married in 1818, in Vescovato (Haute -Corsica), Caroline (1802-1866), daughter of General François de Casabianca, peer of France. Their daughter, Irène (Corte 1792-Marseille 1849), raised by Mme Delacroix in Bordeaux, then by the Emperor in Saint-Denis, married General Baron de Maupoint de Vandeuil (1766-1849), also Baron of the Empire (12 ).
(1) A painting, also offered in 1926 by doctor Colonel Santelli to the town hall of Soveria, illustrates this scene.
(2) A plaque was affixed to this birthplace of the general: “Here was born on August 29, 1765, Jean-Baptiste Cervoni, division general. » Affixed in 1926 by doctor-Colonel Santelli, former director of the Saint-Mandrier hospital (near Toulon), also commander of the Legion of Honor, died in 1929; and her niece Caroline Morazzani, goddaughter of her paternal uncle Mgr Morazzani, apostolic nuncio. The date of birth appears false, Cervoni having been baptized in the parish by the vice-parish priest Tomaso Leschi (vice-parrochus).
(3) Following the impossible agreement with Mr. de Vaux and several local Corsican notables, including Nicolo Paravicini (family of Napoleon's grandmother), Lorenzo Giubega (godfather of Napoleon), Domenico Giubega, Gio Tomaso Arrighi (future Arrighi family of Casanova) Domenico Arrighi and Boerio (of Corte).
(4) Felice Simonpietri from Ortinola (hamlet of Centuri), born in 1764, studied at the same time in the same college, hence the subsequent friendship between their respective descendants in Centuri until today.
(5) “Italian poets were very familiar to him,” writes Thibaudeau.
(6) Letter from Thibaudeau.
(7) They even bought in Morsiglia (hamlet of Camorsiglia) the old tower of the ambassador of Philip II (Andrea Gaspari de Morsiglia) to the Sultan of Morocco to allow Agénor Gasparin to become senator of Corsica in 1840, d where his appointment to the Ministry of the Interior under Louis-Philippe: it was this Gasparin who gave the name Arcole in Paris to the current rue d'Arcole between the bridge of the same name and the square of the Notre-Dame cathedral. The Tower was later bought by Louise de Vilmorin.
(8) Michel Vergé-Franceschi, General officers of the Royal Navy, State doctorate thesis, Librairie de l’Inde, 7 vols., 1990, 3,547 p.
(9) “He had very free morals,” writes Thibaudeau who adds: “He loved women, was successful, was neither faithful nor constant, and remained friends when he ceased to be a lover […]. He did not live with his wife who remained in Corsica. She had three young children with him. »
(10) Born on August 4, 1772 in San Giovanni di Casatu, pieve of Moriani, daughter of Carlo Luiggi Sicurani (born in Poggio d'Orezza) and Signora Anna Catalina Battisti.
(11) Buried in Soveria with his grandfather. He is the father of Antoine Cervoni (1823-1910),
husband of Miss Franceschi (1835-) daughter of Dominique Franceschi (Centuri (Merlacce) 1794-Centuri (Merlacce) 1886), mayor of Centuri.
(12) At the time, as in 14-18, especially in Corsican families, there was a reluctance to talk about the exact circumstances of the death of fathers and brothers on the front. Irene, sixteen and a half years old in 1809, believed that her father had been killed in his tent, by a stray bullet which had passed through the canvas while he was shaving. Kind of gentle death announced to a teenager. She transmitted this legend to Baron de Vandeuil, her son, who took it at face value. See Michel Vergé-Franceschi, Jean Baldacci, A Corsican family in mourning in 1914, ed. Colonna, 2013, Corsican Book Prize 2014.
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