Stript of the colouring shed round it by sentiment and romance, _banditisme_, in its latter days at least, has been a very common-place affair. Great numbers of the Corsicans, too indolent to work, were happy to lead a vagabond life, harbouring in the woods and mountains with a gun on their shoulders, and as ready to shoot a man as a wild beast. “_C'est qu'en général_,” said the Préfet, in the address already quoted, “_ces crimes proviennent moins du banditisme que de la déplorable habitude de marcher toujours armés, par suite de laquelle les moindres rixes dégénèrent si souvent en attentats contre la vie._” One hears continually for what trifles assassinations have been perpetrated; and a recent traveller informs us that his life was threatened for having merely resisted the extortionate demand of his guide to the mountains.
The hardships to which the bandit is exposed in his wild life in the _maquis_ cannot be much greater than those of the shepherd who, from fear or favour, shares with him his chestnuts, his goat's milk, and cheese. The _gendarmes_, indeed, are sometimes on his track, but there is stirring adventure in eluding their pursuit, triumph in the ambuscade to which they become victims, glory even in death heroically met. With all its perils and hardships, such a life of lawless independence has its charms; and the bandit knows that his memory will be honoured, and his death, if possible, revenged. But who laments the unfortunate _gendarme_ who falls in these encounters? Who pities the widow and orphans of men as bold, resolute, and enterprising as those against whom they are matched? In the tales of banditti life, the ministers of justice are _sbirri_, conventionally a term of disgrace; all the sympathy is with the culprit against whom the _gendarmerie_ peril their lives in an arduous service.
The brigands must live by plunder in one shape or another. It is not likely that bands of armed men, the terror of a whole neighbourhood, would be always content with the mere subsistence wrung from the scanty resources of the poor shepherds. Not that they robbed on the highways; it answered better to levy contributions, under pain of death, from such of the defenceless inhabitants as were able to pay them. Mr. Benson tells a story of one of the most celebrated of the bandit chiefs, who levied black mail in the wild districts bordering on the forest of Vizzavona.