The American Revolution — and a Corsican connection

As I watched the first three stages of the 100th Tour de France, which took place in Corsica, I spent one morning researching the historical references to this Isle of Beauty, as it is known.

The Tour de France is accompanied by a bit of travelogue. ITV4 commentators told us at the weekend that people watch the Tour just as much for the regional information and historical insights as they do the cycling.

One of the major personalities viewers learned about was Pasquale (sometimes ‘Pascal’ for the French) Paoli. The Corsicans call him ‘Babbu di a Patria’, father of the nation.

Paoli lived between 1725 and 1807. He followed his father in fighting for independence for the island. He went on to govern much of it between 1755 and 1769. Paoli’s modern ideals would go on to inspire the American patriots and capture the imagination of other great minds of the Enlightenment.

The site Terracorsa offers this brief history of the man still revered today:

In 1755 Pasquale Paoli (son of Ghjacintu [Jacinto, Hyacinth]) was proclaimed General of the Corsican Nation.

He was the greatest of a long line of Corsican heroes during their long struggle for freedom. He made Corte his capital and declared this newly independant state a constitutional democracy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on whose theories the constitution was based, offered his admiring support.

Paoli built a new port at Ile Rousse because Calvi and Bastia were still under Genoese domination. In 1765 he founded a university in Corte, which lasted only 25 years [however, because of the lobbying of the nationalist movement, it reopened in the 1980s].

He also founded the first Corsican printing presses, the first operative mint, a gazette. He opened mines, started an arms factory and promoted the cultivation of potatoes.

Ghjacintu and Pasquale were in exile in Naples during the latter’s youth. The father made sure the son was well educated there. Not only did Pasquale learn many of the classics by heart (e.g. Virgil), he had begun to absorb all the best ideas from the Enlightenment by the time he returned to Corsica.

Later, whilst he and Napoleon Bonaparte — also born in Corsica — were on the same side with regard to independence, Paoli went on to empathise with French royalists after the King was executed.

Paoli then instigated an English annexation of Corsica which resulted in the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom. It was short-lived, lasting a little over two years between July 1794 and October 1796. The British were at war with France at the time. France had declared Paoli a traitor. He asked for British protection and mooted the idea of making it an autonomous kingdom, as Ireland was at the time.

Finding the idea of a Mediterranean base attractive, the British sent a fleet under the leadership of Admiral Samuel Hood to Corsica in 1794. It was during that operation that Horatio Nelson lost the sight in his right eye as he tried to capture the northwestern port of Calvi.

The British added Corsica to George III’s dominions, appointing Sir Gilbert Elliot as viceroy. Not surprisingly, Elliot had different designs to Paoli as to the island’s governance and independence.

In 1796, the Spanish pledged reinforcements to the French to recapture Corsica. The British decided to retreat and invited Paoli to move to England. The government provided him with a pension and, once in London, Paoli was warmly welcomed by all the great and good of that time: Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, the Garricks and more.

By now, you must be wondering what Paoli has to do with the American Revolution, particularly as he plight his troth to the British.

The American colonists urging independence admired Paoli’s use of Enlightenment principles. He was elected to his post as president and wrote Corsica’s constitution. He installed the Corsican Republic, essentially a representative democracy.

He and his men were also good in combat. Of the French defeat of Paoli and his army in 1769, Voltaire wrote:

The main weapon of the Corsicans was their courage. This courage was so great that in one of those battles, at a river called Golo, they made a rampart of their dead to have time to reload behind them before making a necessary retreat; their wounded were mingled among the dead in order to strengthen the rampart. Such actions one only sees among free peoples.

Paoli was an inspiration for the patriots’ group, Sons of Liberty. One of the founding Sons of Liberty members, Ebenezer McIntosh, named his son after the Corsican leader, calling the lad Paschal Paoli McIntosh. Furthermore:

In 1768, the editor of the New York Journal described Paoli as “the greatest man on earth“.

The Sons of Liberty started as an underground group championing ‘no taxation without representation’, which became their well known motto. All of the 13 colonies had a Sons of Liberty chapter.

They took their name from what might seem an unlikely source of support, the British (Irish) Army officer and Member of Parliament, Isaac Barré, whose ancestors were French Huguenots.

Although Barré was part of the British establishment, he was vehemently opposed to excessive British taxes on the American colonies and called the settlers ‘Sons of Liberty’.

In their defence he said:

They planted by your care! No, your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated, inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe and actuated by principles of true English liberties, they met all hardships with pleasure compared with those they suffered in their own country from the hands of those who should be their friends.

An independent America remembered both Paoli and Barré by naming towns after them.

There are five towns in the United States called Paoli — in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Indiana and Oklahoma. Paoli, Pennsylvania

was named after “General Paoli’s Tavern” a meeting-point of the Sons of Liberty and homage to the “General of the Corsicans”.

Paoli, Oklahoma was so named after railway workers from the town in Pennsylvania settled near their work further south. Paoli, Indiana was a stop on the Underground Railroad, enabling slaves to escape to freedom — something which would have dovetailed nicely with Paoli’s ideals.

As for Barré, the towns named Barre in Massachusetts and Vermont are in his honour as is — partly — Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. (The other person remembered is John Wilkes.)

Meanwhile, back in England, Westminster Abbey has an impressive cenotaph (large plaque and bust) dedicated to Paoli. Upon his death in 1807, Paoli was buried in St Pancras churchyard. In 1889, a British frigate took his remains to Corsica, where they were buried in the grounds of his family’s home.

The story of America’s independence never fails to reveal new information. Corsica was a turn up for the books as was Isaac Barré’s empathy with the colonists.

I wish all my American readers a happy Fourth of July wherever they find themselves celebrating this holiday.

May they never forget the determination, intelligence and ideals of the Founding Fathers and those who fought for freedom.