Corte - Pascal Paoli

The island of Corsica is one of the 18 regions of France. It was colonized the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Etruscans and the Romans. After the Roman empire collapsed, Corsica got invaded by the Vandals and the Ostrogoths. For a short while the island belonged to the Byzantine Empire, then the Franks granted the island to the Pope, in the early 11th century Pisa and Genoa together freed the island from the threat of Arab invasion. The island came under the influence of the Republic of Pisa, later it belonged to Genua for centuries. In 1755 after a long fight for independence from Genoa the independent Corsican Republic was proclaimed, but in 1769, when the island was conquered by France. As the areas near the coast over centuries have been threatened by attacks and raids of pirates many old hamlets and dwellings are wide inland, high in the mountains.
Pascal Paoli (aka "Pasquale Paoli"), born in 1725, is still known as "U Babbu di a patria" on the island, the "Father of the Fatherland".

He was a Corsican patriot, statesman and leader of the resistance movements against the Genoese and later French rule. He became the president of the Executive Council of the General Diet of the People of Corsica, and also designed and wrote the Constitution of the state, supported by his secretary Carlo Buonaparte, the father of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Corsican Republic was a representative democracy asserting that the elected Diet of Corsican representatives had no master. Paoli held his office by election. It made him commander-in-chief of the armed forces as well as chief magistrate. In terms of de facto exercise of power, the Genoese held the coastal cities, which they could defend from the citadels, but the Corsican republic controlled the rest of the island from Corte, its capital.

Following the French conquest of Corsica in 1768, Paoli led the Corsican resistance. Following the defeat of Corsican forces at the Battle of Ponte Novu (1769) he was forced into exile in Britain. He returned after the French Revolution and helped to create the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom which lasted between 1794 and 1796. After the island was re-occupied by France he again went into exile in Britain where he died in 1807.