second year, was brought into personal communication with Paoli, who took so prescient a view of the future emperor's character, and at the close of one interview said to him prophetically, ‘You were cast in an antique mould; you are one of Plutarch's men. The whole world will talk of you’ (Stendhal, Vie de Napoléon, i. 85). Paoli was rapidly estranged from the republican government at Paris. He was attacked in numerous pamphlets, some of which are very scurrilous, issued at Paris by Philippe Buonarroti and others (a number of these are bound together in the British Museum, F. 1116). The execution of the king made him despair of obtaining any further advantage from Corsica's association with France. His hope thenceforth was to secure the political independence of his fellow-countrymen by bringing them under the protection of England. The Bonapartes being directly opposed to this policy, and in favour of Corsica's amalgamation with France, Paoli ordered the summary arrest and expulsion of every member of that family from the island. They fled from Calvi to Marseilles, while the Paolists burned the family mansion at Ajaccio and sacked the whole property of the Bonapartes in Corsica. At Paris Paoli's name was inscribed on the list of proscription. In the meantime Paoli rallied his compatriots around him in Corsica, and applied to the British commanders in the Mediterranean, both naval and military, to assist him in driving the French garrisons out of the island. This was successfully accomplished with the co-operation of Admiral Viscount Samuel Hood [q. v.] and General Sir David Dundas. A sufficient force was landed at Fiorenza on 8 Feb. 1794, and Bastia surrendered on 10 June. A deputation meanwhile had been despatched to London by Paoli, offering, in his name, the sovereignty of Corsica to George III. The acceptance of this offer by the king of England was announced on 17 June, and two days afterwards Sir Gilbert Elliot (later raised to the peerage as first Lord Minto) [q. v.] provisionally assumed viceregal authority over the Corsicans. Paoli had expected to be nominated viceroy, but on learning of Elliot's formal appointment in 1795, he for a second time settled in England. On leaving Corsica he earnestly recommended his compatriots to remain firm in their allegiance to the British crown as their only security for political independence. In 1796, however, disaffection to English rule was so widespread that the English evacuated the island, which has since been united with France.
On returning to London Paoli resumed his pension, and though he lived, according to his wont, in a most liberal and hospitable manner, he contrived to save enough to leave his relatives in Italy no inconsiderable property. His house was at No. 200 Edgware Road, where, on 5 Feb. 1807, after a short and painful illness, he died at the age of eighty-two. His remains were interred on 13 Feb. in the old catholic cemetery at St. Pancras, at the end of what was thenceforth called the Paoli Avenue. A tomb was erected on which was engraved a long Latin inscription penned by Francisco Pietri. A cenotaph to Paoli was afterwards placed in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey, over which was placed a white marble bust of him by Flaxman. Eighty years after his interment his remains were, by permission of the British government, exhumed on 31 Aug. 1889 (see Times, 2 Sept.), and were removed to Corsica, in obedience to the express desire of its inhabitants. A monument was raised in his honour upon the site of his birthplace by the council general of the island.
Lamartine has well said of Paoli, in his ‘History of the Girondins,’ that his glory is out of all proportion to the smallness of his country: ‘Corsica remains still in the place of a mere province, but Paoli assumes his among the ranks of great men.’ The nobility of his character was illustrated by his whole life, both in exile and in power, by his daring on the battlefield and his wisdom in council, by his own heroic acts and by the striking tributes paid to him by the greatest among his contemporaries. Alfieri inscribed to him his tragedy of ‘Timoleon.’ Frederick the great sent him a sword of honour emblazoned with the words ‘Patria Libertas.’ Napoleon, in spite of the deadly antagonism in which they had parted, had the magnanimity, at the close of his career, to express his regret, in the ‘Memorials of St. Helena,’ that he had never been able, in the midst of all his preoccupations with great affairs, to summon Paoli to his side, to consult with him, when, as emperor and king, he was virtually master of Europe. Besides Flaxman's bust of Paoli in Westminster Abbey, there is another admirable effigy of the Corsican general in the portrait painted by Richard Cosway in the Royal Gallery at Florence. A fine engraving from this forms the frontispiece to Klose's life of the patriot, while another engraved portrait appears in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for 1768 (p. 174). Paoli's only literary remains are a volume of letters and manifestos.
