One chilly night last February a French submarine from Algiers sneaked through the Mediterranean, surfaced in Corsica's Ajaccio harbor long enough to let Captain Colonna d'Istria, young scion of an old Corsican family, slip ashore.
During the next seven months he labored to arouse his indolent countrymen. It was not hard to do: 2,503 years of bloody history had engendered in them a hatred for foreigners, a natural bent for vendettas and guerrilla fighting in the blood-red rocks, the snow-capped peaks. D'Istria armed the Corsicans with 10,000 submachine guns (dropped by parachute,...