Neighbouring villagers again threatened to attack Cargèse but the arrival of a detachment of soldiers from Ajaccio prevented serious bloodshed. A substantial proportion of the Greek speaking inhabitants of the village emigrated to Sidi Merouane in Algeria between 1874 and 1876. Of the total population of 1078 in 1872, it is estimated that 235 emigrated, all of them Greek speakers. The large drop in the Greek population was compensated by an influx of Corsicans making the remaining Greek speakers very much a minority. In the 20th century the number of Greek speakers rapidly declined and by 1934 there were only 20 Greek speakers in the village. The last native speaker died in 1976, 300 years after the colonists had first arrived on the island. The historian Nick Nicholas has argued that the exceptionally long time that the colonists took to assimilate was a result of several factors including the substantial size of the colony, the large religious presence and the strong antagonism felt between the Corsicans and the settlers. The census of 1896 recorded 1216 inhabitants but in the first half of the 20th century many young people left the village to find employment in continental France. By 1962 the population had dropped to 665. Since then the expansion of tourism has provided more employment and the population has increased reaching 1,325 in 2017. The large scale emigration from rural communities was a general phenomenon for most of Corsica in the 20th century. For villages away from the coast that have not witnessed the development of tourism, the effects were severe. For example, Évisa (situated 21 km NE of Cargese as the crow flies) had a population of 1089 in 1886, 401 in 1962 and 182 in 2007. Population Churches The village contains two 19th-century Catholic churches that face one another across a small valley overlooking the sea. The church on the east side was built by native Corsicans and descendants of the Greek colonists who had adopted the Latin Rite. The church on the west side, the Greek church, was built by the descendants of the Greek colonists who had retained the use of the Greek rite. From 1964 until 2005, Monseigneur Florent Marchiano conducted services in the two churches on alternate Sundays. On his retirement he was not replaced and instead each Sunday a priest from Vico comes to the village to conduct mass in the Latin church.