Pasquale Paoli: An Enlightened Hero, 1725-1807 - gebunden oder broschiert

'Pasquale Paoli: an enlightened hero 1725-1807' was written by Peter Adam Thrasher. This engrossing biography of the famous Corsican statesman General Paoli was the first ever to appear in English. It also provides numerous fascinating sidelights on 18th-century European history. 18th Century Corsica was a wild country. For over four centuries, the Genoese had ruled by exploiting the vendetta. For the island was of great strategic importance in the Mediterranean, and both the French and the English coveted it. The Corsicans themselves wanted only their freedom. At the age of 29, Paoli was chosen by the Corsican nationalists to be their political and military leader: their 'General'. It was 1755. General Paoli was able to unite the clans and succeeded in driving back the Genoese into the coastal towns. He began to organize Corsica as an independent state and to develop the economy. The constitution he conceived and put into practice was more democratic than any of his time. From all over Europe, it was acclaimed by leaders of the Enlightenment: Rousseau, Voltaire, Frederick the Great. From England, it drew a visit from James Boswell. Paoli, already a hero of the Enlightenment, now became an English hero as well. But in 1768, the Genoese sold the island to the French. After a fierce struggle, the Corsicans were defeated by French troops, and Paoli was forced to flee to London where he remained in exile for 20 years, much respected in intellectual circles, a friend of Johnson, Burke and Reynolds. With the French Revolution, he returned in triumph, at the age of 64, but to an uneasy presidency, fraught with plots by ambitious republicans, including the young Napoleon Bonaparte. Finally outlawed by the Convention in Paris, Paoli invited the British fleet, under Admiral Hood, to take over the island, and in 1974, George III became, briefly, King of Corsica. Paoli left Corsica in 19795, disgusted with the misgovernment of Sir Gilbert Eliot and died in 1807 in England