The stratagem succeeded. The letters of credence with which the traitor had been furnished at Genoa satisfied the commandant of the truth of his mission, and he consented to deliver up the place to Da Mare, on condition that the town should be saved from pillage, and the soldiers conducted to Bastia, and embarked for Genoa. But when the Turks saw those brave men, who had foiled all their assaults by an obstinate defence, file out of the place, they fell on them, and massacred them without mercy. Moreover, Dragut demanded that Bonifacio should be put into his hands, or that he should receive an indemnity of 25,000 crowns. It was impossible to deliver up a town to be sacked by the Turks, the inhabitants of which it was policy to conciliate, nor could De Thermes provide the sum required. He promised, however, speedy payment, and sent his nephew to the Turks as an hostage. Dragut then sailed for the Levant, in dudgeon with his allies, and disgusted with an enterprise which had terminated so little to his honour. Bonifacio, with the rest of Corsica, was soon afterwards restored by the treaty of Château-Cambresis to the Genoese, who repaired and considerably added to the fortifications.
One easily conceives that the rock fortress must have been impregnable in ancient times, if bravely defended. Even now it is a place of considerable strength, garrisoned by the French, who have erected barracks and improved the works. But the place still singularly preserves the character of a fortified town of the Middle Ages. Nothing seems changed except that French sentries pace the battlements instead of Genoese. There are the old towers, walls, churches, and houses;—the houses, tall and gloomy, many of them having the arms of Genoese families carved in stone over the portals. A network of narrow and irregular streets spreads over the whole _plateau_ within the walls, which rise from the very edge of the cliffs. There is not a yard of vacant space, except an esplanade and _place d'armes_, where the promontory narrows at its southern extremity. The only entrance is under the vaulted archway of the barbican, still as jealously guarded as if Saracen, Turk, or Spaniard threatened an attack. This tower commands the approach from the Marino by the broad ramp, a long inclined plane, at a sharp angle, the ascent of which, _en échelon_, by the troops of diminutive mules and asses employed for conveying all articles necessary for subsistence and use in the town, it was painful to witness. The streets are as void of every kind of vehicle as those of Venice, and almost as unsavoury as its canals. There is scarcely room for two loaded mules to pass each other. Every morning, nearly the whole population pours forth, with their beasts of burthen, to their labour in the country, there being no villages in the canton; returning to their homes in the evening. They are an industrious race, snatching their subsistence from a barren soil.
