Pasquale Paoli

Pasquale Paoli

Paoli in old age

Pasquale Paoli ( Italian : Filippo Antonio Pasquale de Paoli , Corsican : Filippu Antone Pasquale de Paoli , French : Pascal Paoli ) (born April 6, 1725 in Stretta / Morosaglia , Corsica ; † February 5, 1807 in London ) was a Corsican revolutionary and Resistance fighters .

Corsica

Pasquale Paoli was born in Stretta in the municipality of Morosaglia in Corsica in 1725. His father, General Giacinto Paoli, was a kind of chief minister in the short-lived Kingdom of Corsica under King Theodor I of Corsica and in 1739 went into exile in Naples with his youngest son Pasquale . In 1755, Paoli returned to Corsica as a 30-year-old ensign in the King's Corsican Guard and fought the Genoese as a commander at the head of the Corsican guerrillas . He succeeded in driving them out of the interior and locking them in a few port cities.

In the same year, Paoli gave Corsica a democratic constitution and temporarily ruled Corsica. He made Corte the capital. Among other things, he was friends with the Buonaparte family, who fought with him against the Corsican opponent Marius Matra. Carlo di Buonaparte , Napoléon's father, worked on a Corsican constitution and became Paoli's right-hand man.

When the Genoese surrendered the island to France on May 15, 1768 until it was redeemed, Paoli fought the French . In 1768 these, which had landed with 10,000 men, had to withdraw. A year later, however, 22,000 men landed under the leadership of the Comte de Vaux and defeated the Corsicans on May 9, 1769 in the battle of Ponte Novu . Paoli held up and chose exile . In 1790 the revolutionary national assembly decided the final annexation of Corsica to France.

Life in exile

On his way to England, Paoli was received and honored as a freedom hero throughout Europe. He met Joseph II , among others, and Goethe , who later described this encounter in poetry and truth .

Paoli's life was marked by the struggle for the goal of a united Corsican nation . For this he entered into changing alliances with France and England and maintained contacts with Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Frederick the Great , Catherine II of Russia, the Pope , the young United States of America , the Turkish Sultan and the Bey of Tunis .

For the American rebels, Paoli played a double-edged role: on the one hand, his Corsican project was a role model, on the other hand, they tried to win over Paoli, who lived in exile in England, for their own cause. The fact that Paoli did not allow himself to be harnessed to the American revolutionaries' car has greatly reduced his influence there, but this can be explained, among other things, by the fact that he financed himself through payments from the English king, to whom he felt obliged.

In the course of the French Revolution , Paoli returned to Corsica once more via France, where the revolutionaries received him as a hero and champion. With the radicalization, the liberal Paoli alienated himself from the revolution. Against France and for a renewed independence of Corsica, he sought an alliance with England, which led to the short-term establishment of the Anglo-Corsican kingdom , which was supposed to secure an important base in the Mediterranean off the coast of France for the English in the fight against France .

Although he spent 47 years of his life in exile, his work for Corsica can still be seen today: the only university in Corsica in Corte goes back to him. Today's flag of Corsica goes back to his initiative - he introduced it in 1762, taking up an older symbol and redesigning it. Paoli still enjoys a high reputation in Corsica today, the Corsicans refer to him as "U Babbu di a patria", "The father of the fatherland". Paoli died in London in 1807. He was one of the few non-British to have his final resting place in Westminster Abbey in London, where a plaque commemorates him with a list of his achievements. In 1889 his bones were reburied in the family chapel in Morosaglia on Corsica. The Paoli monument was erected for him in Ajaccio in Corsica .

literature

• Daniel Eisenmenger: The forgotten constitution of Corsica of 1755 - the failed attempt to create a modern nation , in: History in Science and Teaching 61 (2010), H. 7/8, pp. 430–446.
• Michel Vergé-Franceschi: Pasquale Paoli: un Corse des Lumières ; 2005
• Antoine-Marie Graziani: Pascal Paoli. Père de la patrie corse , Paris 2004 (2nd edition)
• Jean-Marie Arrighi (ed.): La constitution de Pascal Paoli 1755 , Ajaccio 1996
• N. Tommaseo: Lettere di Pasquale de Paoli , in: Archivio Storico Italiano , Series 1, Volume 11, and Della Corsica. Nuova series, Volume 11, Part 2
• Peter Adam Thrasher: Pasquale Paoli. To enlightened Hero (1725-1807) London, 1970
• Pompei: De L'état de la Corse ; Paris, 1821
• Giovanni Livi: Lettere inedite di Pasquale Paoli ; in Arch. stor. Italian, series 5, volumes 5 and 6
• Bartoli: Historia di Pascal Paoli ; Bastia, 1891
• Lencisa: P. Paoli e la guerra d'indipendenza della Corsica ; Milano, 1890

Web links

Commons : Pasquale Paoli  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biography ( memento from August 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on corsica.net