Pasquale Paoli

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

Corsica

Pascal Paoli was born in 1725 in Stretta in the community Morosaglia in today's Haute- Corse in Corsica. His father, the General Giacinto Paoli, was short-lived Kingdom of Corsica under King Theodore I of Corsica a kind of chief ministers and went in 1739 with his youngest son Pascal exiled to Naples. 1755 returned Pascal Paoli as a 30 -year-old ensign back of the Corsican Guard of the King of Naples to Corsica and fought as a commander at the head of the Corsican guerrillas the Genoese. He managed to drive them from the interior and include a few port cities.

In the same year Paoli Corsica was a democratic constitution and ruled Corsica temporarily. He appointed capital in Corte. Among other things, he was a friend of the Buonaparte family, who fought with him against the Corsican opponent Marius Matra. Carlo di Buonaparte, Napoleon's father, worked on a Corsican Constitution and Paolis was right hand.

When the Genoese gave the island on May 15, 1768 France to the re- release, Paoli fought against the French. 1768 had them, who had landed with 10,000 men to withdraw. A year later, however, landed 22,000 men under the command of Comte de Vaux and beat the Corsicans on May 9, 1769 in Ponte Novu. Paoli laid down his arms and chose exile. 1790 decided the revolutionary National Assembly the final port of Corsica to France.

Life in exile

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

Paoli's life was marked by the struggle for the goal of a united Corsican nation. But he went a shifting alliances with France and England, and maintained contact 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 mixed role: on the one hand, his Corsican project was the model, on the other hand tried to take living in England in exile Paoli for their own cause. That Paoli not let herself be harnessed to the chariot of the American Revolutionaries, its influence has diminished greatly there, but partly explained by the fact that it was financed by payments of the English king, to whom he thus felt obliged.

In the wake of the French Revolution Paoli returned once over France, where it received the revolutionaries as heroes and champions, back to Corsica. With the radicalization of alienated liberal Paoli of the revolution. Against France and for a renewed independence Corsica he sought an alliance with England, which led to short-term establishment of the Anglo- Corsican Kingdom, which was to secure the English in the battle against France an important base in the Mediterranean off the coasts of France. For the English, but Paoli was too revolutionary and independent in his ideas, so he again went into exile in England soon.

Although he spent 47 years of his life in exile, his work for Corsica is still obvious: The only University of Corsica, Corte goes back to him. Pascal Paoli enjoys even today a high reputation in Corsica, the Corsican refer to him as "U Babbu di a patria ", "The Father of the Fatherland".

His final resting place Paoli has received one of the few non- Britons in Westminster Abbey in London, where today with list of his achievements recalls a memorial plate at him. In 1889 his remains were reburied in the family chapel in Morosaglia ( Corsica).