Pasquale Paoli

• 1. Introduction

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  Pasquale Paoli was born on the 6th of April 1725 in the hamlet of Stretta, a village in the commune of Morosaglia in the mountains of Corsica. He would go on to write a constitution before most nations had conceived of such a document, lead a republic that governed most of an island, help shape the political imagination of the American Sons of Liberty, and become the unlikely godfather figure to the young Napoleon Bonaparte. By the time he died in London on the 5th of February 1807, he had lived through two exiles, a French conquest, and a brief experiment in which the British Crown served as sovereign head of state over his Corsican homeland. How a physician's son from a highland hamlet became one of the most celebrated political figures of the Enlightenment era is a story that moves from Naples to Corte to Westminster and back again. What does it mean to build a nation from scratch in the mountains? And what happens to that nation when larger powers decide they want it for their own?

• 2. A Father's Exile, a Son's Education

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  Giacinto Paoli, Pasquale's father, was a physician and patriot who became one of three "Generals of the People" in the Corsican nationalist movement fighting the Republic of Genoa. The Genoese, long accepted as rulers of Corsica, had by 1729 come to be seen as failing their subjects. High murder rates from the custom of vendetta, coastal raids by Barbary pirates, oppressive taxes, and economic depression had eroded any goodwill toward Genoa. That year's rebellion began over a single new tax. When the Genoese could not suppress it on their own, they called in the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire and then Bourbon France. Defeated by professional armies, the Corsican rebels yielded the violence but preserved their organisation. After surrendering to the French in 1739, Giacinto took his then 14-year-old son Pasquale into exile in Naples, while an older brother, Clemente, stayed behind as a liaison to the revolutionary assembly. In Naples, Giacinto recognised he had a talented son and committed to giving him a thorough classical education. The Enlightenment that Paoli would later embody was neo-classical in its art and sentiments, and his Neapolitan years shaped that sensibility deeply. A story told of him captures his cast of mind: encountering an old man on a road reciting Virgil, Paoli walked up behind him, clapped him on the back, and resumed the recitation from the exact point where the stranger had stopped. In 1741, he joined the Corsican regiment of the royal Neapolitan army and served in Calabria under his father. By 1754, the young Paoli had become notable enough among the Corsican exile community that his opposition to a plan to invite the Knights of Malta to take command prompted him to propose a native Corsican government instead. His father wrote to an ally named Vincente recommending a general election. Vincente called that election at Caccia, and the outcome put Pasquale at the head of Corsican resistance.

• 3. The Corsican Republic

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  In November 1755, a popular vote ratified a constitution that declared Corsica a sovereign nation independent from Genoa. Linda Colley credits Paoli with writing the first ever written constitution of a nation state. It was composed under Enlightenment principles, and it established a representative democracy in which the elected Diet of Corsican representatives acknowledged no master. Paoli was elected president, not appointed, by representatives of the pievi, the 68 ancient administrative units that each grouped several parishes. Only 16 of those 68 were represented at the first election, and Paoli won over rival candidate Emmanuele Matra. His dual role made him both commander-in-chief of the armed forces and chief magistrate. The republic's capital was Corte, set in the Corsican interior, while the Genoese retained the coastal cities, which they could defend from their fortified citadels. In practice this meant that Paoli's government controlled the highlands and interior, and Genoa clung to the coast. Paoli turned immediately to institution-building. He founded a university at Corte, and his Corsican Constitution of 1755 was written in Italian. When the university he established at Corte opened in 1765, it used Italian as its teaching language. These were not coincidental choices: Paoli regarded Corsican as an Italian dialect and wanted Italian as the island's official language. His republic lasted fourteen years, long enough to develop legal structures, conduct elections, and build civic infrastructure. Genoa, unable to retake the island and deeply in debt for past French military assistance, eventually resolved the problem in the most drastic way possible.

• 4. French Conquest and First Exile

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  By the Treaty of Versailles in May 1768, Genoa ceded Corsica to France. It was a purely transactional arrangement: the only way Genoa could repay its debts to France was to hand over the island. France moved to conquest in September 1768. Paoli fought a guerrilla campaign from the mountains, but in 1769 his forces were defeated at the Battle of Ponte Novu by vastly superior French troops. He took refuge in England, and Corsica officially became a French province in 1789. In London, Paoli's personality immediately drew him into the circle around Samuel Johnson. The group, which had by then taken shape as The Club, was composed largely of successful men of a liberal outlook. Paoli's behaviour in this company was noted. He would show visitors his bullet-ridden coat and then expect a gratuity for the privilege of seeing it, a kind of theatrical self-presentation that amused a circle that had started its careers in leaner circumstances. James Boswell, the circle's chronicler, recorded Paoli's memoirs in a book titled An Account of Corsica. After meetings with King George III, Paoli received a Crown pension, with an informal understanding that if he returned to Corsica in authority, he would support British interests against the French. This was not a formal treaty, and neither man at the time could have anticipated future circumstances. Paoli became sincerely pro-British, developed genuine personal affection for the King, and when the French Revolution came, that predisposition drew him into the royalist camp. The editor of the New York Journal had described Paoli in 1768 as "the greatest man on earth", and across the Atlantic the American Sons of Liberty had taken him as an inspiration.

• 5. Revolution, Rupture, and Napoleon

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  In 1790, the revolutionary National Assembly in Paris incorporated Corsica into France and granted amnesty to exiles. Paoli sailed immediately for Corsica and arrived in time for departmental elections at Orezza, where he ran for president and was elected unanimously. Among the election's organisers was Napoleon Bonaparte, a young Jacobin and active admirer of Paoli, who did not run himself but was working at this time on a history of Corsica. Napoleon had even written to Paoli asking for his opinion on portions of the manuscript and requesting historical documents. The gap between the two men opened quickly. Paoli found the history amateurish and too impassioned and refused to supply the documents. The break widened on the question of the execution of the French king. Paoli was a royalist sympathiser, and when the revolutionary government ordered him to move against Sardinia, he placed his nephew in command of the expedition and gave him secret orders to lose. He was in this instance acting as a British agent, since Britain had interests in Sardinia it could not protect if the French occupied it. Napoleon was dispatched as a colonel commanding two companies of Corsican guard, reinforced by men from Marseille, to assault La Maddalena Island in February 1793. The attack failed: the island had been reinforced just before the assault, and the commander Pietro Paolo Colonna-Cesari did not take the military action the situation required. The defenders appeared to know in advance where the strike would come. Napoleon perceived the failure, assumed de facto command, and barely escaped. The experience destroyed his admiration for Paoli. Napoleon and the entire Bonaparte family denounced Paoli as a traitor before the French National Convention. In May 1793, Paolists detained Napoleon on his way to his post, ransacked the Bonaparte home, and the Corsican parliament formally outlawed the Bonaparte family. These events accelerated Napoleon's shift from Corsican to French nationalism. Napoleon never fully shed his complicated feelings about Paoli; his emotions remained mixed for the rest of his life.

• 6. The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom

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  Paoli summoned a consulta, an assembly, at Corte in 1793, presided over it himself, and formally declared Corsica's secession from France. He then appealed to the British government, which was at war with revolutionary France, for protection. In 1794, Britain sent a fleet under Admiral Samuel Hood. Hood's fleet had just been expelled from the French port of Toulon by a revolutionary army following a plan devised by Napoleon Bonaparte, who was promoted to Brigadier General for that success. The fleet's operations around Corsica included the Siege of Calvi, and Paoli's cooperation with Hood proved effective. For a brief period, Corsica became a protectorate in which King George III was accepted as sovereign head of state. This arrangement was called the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom and lasted from 1794 to 1796. It was not an incorporation into the British Empire, and the relationship between Paoli's government and British authority was never clearly defined. Questions of jurisdiction and sovereignty went unresolved. Eventually the Crown invited Paoli to resign and return to exile in Britain, this time again with a pension. He had no other realistic path. He set sail for England in October 1795. France reconquered the island shortly after, and Corsican sovereignty ceased as a practical matter until the following century.

• 7. Legacy Across Two Continents

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  Several towns across the United States carry the name Paoli. Among them is Paoli, Pennsylvania, named after a tavern called General Paoli's Tavern, which had served as a meeting point for the Sons of Liberty and as a homage to the "General of the Corsicans". Ebenezer McIntosh, a leader of the Sons of Liberty, named his son Paschal Paoli McIntosh in his honour. The American revolutionary movement saw in Paoli's republic a proof that self-governance was possible. After Paoli's death in London on the 5th of February 1807, he was buried in Old St. Pancras Churchyard. His name appears on the 1879 Burdett-Coutts Memorial Sundial, which records important graves that had since been lost. A bust was placed in Westminster Abbey. In 1889, his bones were brought back to Corsica on a British frigate and interred at the family home in Morosaglia under a memorial written in Italian. The memorial language was in keeping with his own convictions. In a letter written in 1768 against the French invasion, Paoli had appealed to shared Italian identity, writing that Corsicans "first of all feel Italian by language, origins, customs, traditions." Nicolo Tommaseo, who collected Paoli's Lettere, considered him a precursor of Italian irredentism, though Paoli himself lived generations before that movement took organised form. The Corsicans had given him another name long before any of these posthumous honours: "Babbu di a Patria," Father of the Fatherland.