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Rh The object of the French in assisting the Genoese was not the acquisition of the island for themselves so much as to obviate the danger, of which they had long been aware, of its falling into the hands of another power, notably Great Britain. The Corsicans, on the other hand, though ready enough to come to terms with the French king, refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of Genoa even when backed by the power of France. A powerful French force, under the comte de Boissieux, arrived in the spring of 1738, and for some months negotiations proceeded. But the effect of the French guarantee of Corsican liberties was nullified by the demand that the islanders should surrender their arms, and the attempt of Boissieux to enforce the order for disarmament was followed, in the winter of 1738–39, by his defeat at the hands of the Corsicans and by the cutting up of several isolated French detachments. In February 1739 Boissieux died. His successor, the marquis de Maillebois, arrived in March with strong reinforcements, and by a combination of severity and conciliation soon reduced the island to order. Its maintenance, however, depended on the presence of the French troops, and in October 1740 the death of the emperor Charles VI. and the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession necessitated their withdrawal. Genoese and Corsicans were once more left face to face, and the perennial struggle began anew.

In 1743 “King Theodore,” supported by a British squadron, made a descent on the island, but finding that he no longer possessed a following, departed never to return. The Corsicans, assembled in diet at Casinca, now elected Giampietro Gaffori and Alerio Matra as generals and “protectors of the fatherland” (protettori della patria), and began a vigorous onslaught on the Genoese strongholds. They were helped now by the sympathy and active aid of European powers, and in 1746 Count Domenico Rivarola, a Corsican in Sardinian service, succeeded in capturing Bastia and San Fiorenzo with the aid of a British squadron and Sardinian troops. The factious spirit of the Corsicans themselves was, however, their worst enemy. The British commander judged it inexpedient to intervene in the affairs of a country of which the leaders were at loggerheads; Rivarola, left to himself, was unable to hold Bastia—a place of Genoese sympathies—and in spite of the collapse of Genoa itself, now in Austrian hands, the Genoese governor succeeded in maintaining himself in the island. By the time of the signature of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, the situation of the island had again changed. Rivarola and Matra had departed, and Gaffori was left nominally supreme over a people torn by intestine feuds. Genoa, too, had expelled the Austrians with French aid, and, owing to a report that the king of Sardinia was meditating a fresh attempt to conquer the island, a strong French expedition under the marquis de Cursay had, at the request of the republic, occupied Calvi, Bonifacio, Ajaccio and Bastia. By the terms of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Corsica was once more assigned to Genoa, but the French garrison remained, pending a settlement between the republic and the islanders. In view of the intractable temper of the two parties no agreement could be reached; but Cursay’s personal popularity served to preserve the peace for a while. His withdrawal in 1752, however, was the signal for a general rising, and once more, at a diet held at Orezza, Gaffori was elected general and protector. In October of the following year, however, he fell victim to a vendetta and the nation was once more leaderless. His place was taken for a while by Clemente Paoli, son of Giacinto, who for a year or two succeeded, with the aid of other lieutenants of Gaffori, in holding the Genoese at bay. He was, however, by temperament unfitted to lead a turbulent and undisciplined people in time of stress, and in 1755, at his suggestion, his brother Pasquale was invited to come from Naples and assume the command.

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 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 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 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 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