The first task of Pasquale Paoli, elected general in April at an assembly at San Antonio della Casabianca, was to suppress the rival faction led by Emanuele Matra, son of Gaffori’s former colleague. By the spring of 1756 this was done, and the Corsicans were able to turn a united front against the Genoese. At this juncture the French, alarmed by a supposed understanding between Paoli and the British, once more intervened, and occupied Pasquale Paoli. Calvi, Ajaccio and San Fiorenzo until 1757, when their forces were once more called away by the wars on the continent. In 1758 Paoli renewed the attack on the Genoese, founding the new port of Isola Rossa as a centre whence the Corsican ships could attack the trading vessels of Genoa. The republic, indeed, was now too weak to attempt seriously to reassert its sway over the island, which, with the exception of the coast towns, Paoli ruled with absolute authority and with conspicuous wisdom. In the intervals of fighting he was occupied in reducing Corsican anarchy into some sort of civilized order. The vendetta was put down, partly by religious influence, partly with a stern hand; the surviving oppressive rights of the feudal signori were abolished; and the traditional institutions of the Terra di Comune were made the basis of a democratic constitution for the whole island.
As regarded the relations of Corsica all now depended on the attitude of France to which both Paoli and the republic made overtures. In 1764 a French expedition under the comte de Marbeuf arrived, and, by agreement with Corsica sold to France. Genoa, garrisoned three of the Genoese fortresses. Though Genoese sovereignty had been expressly recognized in the agreement authorizing this, it was in effect non-existent. French and Corsicans remained on amicable terms, and the inhabitants of the nominally Genoese towns actually sent representatives to the national consulta or parliament. The climax came early in 1767 when the Corsicans captured the Genoese island of Capraja, and occupied Ajaccio and other places, evacuated by the French as a protest against the asylum given to the Jesuits exiled from France. Genoa now recognized that she had been worsted in the long contest, and on the 15th of May 1768 signed a treaty selling the sovereignty of the island to France.
The Corsicans, intent on independence, were now faced with a more formidable enemy than the decrepit republic of Genoa. A section of the people indeed, were in favour of submission; but Paoli himself declared for resistance; and among those who supported him at the consulta summoned to discuss the question was his secretary Carlo Buonaparte, father of Napoleon Bonaparte, the future emperor of the French. Into the details of the war that followed, it is impossible to enter here; in the absence of the hoped-for help from Great Britain its issue could not be doubtful; and, though the task of the French was a hard one, by the summer of 1769 they were masters of the island. On the French conquest. 16th of June Pasquale and Clemente Paoli, with some 400 of their followers, embarked on a British ship for Leghorn. On the 15th of September 1770, a general assembly of the Corsicans was summoned and the deputies swore allegiance to King Louis XV.
For twenty years Corsica, while preserving many of its old institutions, remained a dependency of the French crown. Then came the Revolution, and the island, conformed to the new model, was incorporated in France as a Corsica and the revolution of 1789. separate department (see Renucci, ii. p. 271 seq.). Paoli, recalled from exile by the National Assembly on the motion of Mirabeau, after a visit to Paris, where he was acclaimed as “the hero and martyr of liberty” by the National Assembly and the Jacobin Club, returned in 1790 to Corsica, where he was received with immense enthusiasm and acclaimed as “father of the country.” With the new order in the island, however, he was little in sympathy. In the towns branches of the Jacobin Club had been established, and these tended, as elsewhere, to usurp the functions of the regular organs of government and to introduce a new element of discord into a country which it had been Paoli’s life’s work to unify. Suspicions of his loyalty to revolutionary principles had already been spread at Paris by Bartolomeo Arena, a Corsican deputy and ardent Jacobin, so early as 1791; yet in 1792, after the fall of the monarchy, the French government, in its anxiety to secure Corsica, was rash enough to appoint him lieutenant-general of the forces and governor (capo comandante) of the island. Paoli accepted an office which he had refused two years before at the hands of Louis XVI. With the men and methods of the Terror, however, he was wholly out of sympathy. Suspected of throwing obstacles in the way of the expedition despatched in 1793 against Sardinia, he was summoned, with the procurator-general Pozzo di Borgo, to the bar of the Convention. Paoli now openly defied the Convention by summoning the representatives of the communes Revolt under Paoli. to meet in diet at Corte on the 27th of May. To the remonstrances of Saliceti, who attended the meeting, he replied that he was rebelling, not against France, but against the dominant faction of whose actions the majority of Frenchmen disapproved. Saliceti thereupon hurried to Paris, and on his motion Paoli and his sympathizers were declared by the Convention hors la loi (June 26).
Paoli had already made up his mind to raise the standard of revolt against France. But though the consulta at Corte elected him president, Corsican opinion was by no means united. Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Paoli had British occupation, 1794-1796. expected to win over to his views, indignantly rejected the idea of a breach with France, and the Bonapartes were henceforth ranked with his enemies. Paoli now appealed for assistance to the British government, which despatched a considerable force. By the summer of 1794, after hard fighting, the island was reduced, and in June the Corsican assembly formally offered the sovereignty to King George III. The British occupation lasted two years, the island being administered by Sir Gilbert Elliot. Paoli, whose presence was considered inexpedient, was invited to return to England, where he remained till his death. In 1796 Bonaparte, after his victorious Italian campaign, sent an expedition against Corsica. The British, weary of a somewhat thankless task, made no great resistance, and in October the island was once more in French hands. It was again occupied by Great Britain for a short time in 1814, but in the settlement of 1815 was restored to the French crown. Its history henceforth is part of that of France.
See F. Girolami-Cortona, Géographie générale de la Corse (Ajaccio, 1893); A. Andrei, À travers la Corse (Paris, 1893); Forcioli-Conti, Notre Corse (Ajaccio, 1897); R. Le Joindre, La Corse et les Corses (Paris, 1904); F. O. Renucci, Storia di Corsica (2 vols., Bastia, 1833), fervidly Corsican, but useful; Antonio Pietro Filippini, Istoria di Corsica (1st ed., 1594; 2nd ed., corrected and illustrated with unpublished documents by G. C. Gregori, 5 vols., Pisa, 1827-1832); J. M. Jacobi, Hist. gén. de la Corse, 2 vols., (Paris, 1833-1835), with many unpublished documents; L. H. Caird, History of Corsica (London, 1899). Further works and references to articles in reviews, &c., are given in Ulysse Chevalier’s Répertoire des sources, &c., Topo-bibliographie, t. ii. s.v.
[1] See “Conventions entre quelques seigneurs Corses et l’office de St Georges (1453),” in Bulletin soc. scientif. Corse (1881-1882), pp. 286, 305, 413, 501, 549 and (1883) 147; also the report of the deputies sent by the bank to Pope Nicholas V. in 1453, ib. p. 141.
[2] Hammer-Purgstall, Gesch. des Osmanischen Reichs (Pest, 1840), ii. 288.
[3] Father Cancellotti, who visited every part of the island, estimated the number of murders committed in 20 years at 28,000 (quoted in the article on Corsica in La Grande Encyclopédie).