The Government counted for little or nothing; for was it not the symbol of the detested foreign rule?
Its laws were therefore as naught when they conflicted with the unwritten but omnipotent code of family honour.

A slight inflicted on a neighbour would call forth the warning words--"Guard thyself: I am on my guard." Forthwith there began a blood feud, a vendetta, which frequently dragged on its dreary course through generations of conspiracy and murder, until, the principals having vanished, the collateral branches of the families were involved.

No Corsican was so loathed as the laggard who shrank from avenging the family honour, even on a distant relative of the first offender.

The murder of the Duc d'Enghien by Napoleon in 1804 sent a thrill of horror through the Continent.

To the Corsicans it seemed little more than an autocratic version of the _vendetta traversale_.[1] The vendetta was the chief law of Corsican society up to comparatively recent times; and its effects are still visible in the life of the stern islanders.