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Many of them had resented the dictatorship of Paoli; and they now gladly accepted the connection with France, which promised to enrich their country and to open up a brilliant career in the French army, where commissions were limited to the scions of nobility.
On September 20th he reached London, and the Public Advertizer of October 4th, through its faithful correspondent, informed its readers how 'On Sunday last General Paoli, accompanied by James Boswell, Esq., took an airing in Hyde Park in his coach. On the evening of the 10th he was presented by the traveller to Johnson, who was highly pleased with the lofty port of the stranger and the easy 'elegance of manners, the brand of the soldier, l'homme d'épée.
In the middle of the eighteenth century we find the head of the family, Charles Marie Buonaparte, aglow with the flame of Corsican patriotism then being kindled by the noble career of Paoli. This gifted patriot, the champion of the islanders, first against the Genoese and later against the French, desired to cement by education the framework of the Corsican Commonwealth and founded a university.
I praised, quite by chance, the perfume of the pomatum, and the widow took the opportunity of telling her that she had spent in combs, powder, and pomatum the three livres she had received from her. I recollected then that she had told me the first day that she had left C with ten paoli. I blushed for very shame, for I ought to have thought of that.
I need not tell you I mean General Paoli; who, after his great, though unsuccessful, efforts to preserve the liberties of his country, has found an honourable asylum in Britain, where he has now lived many years the object of Royal regard and private respect ; and whom I cannot name without expressing my very grateful sense of the uniform kindness which he has been pleased to shew me .
Corsican historians, in their eagerness to appropriate the greatness of both Paoli and Napoleon, habitually misrepresent their relations.
The French blushed at conquering him fortune at forsaking him. If he did not emancipate his country, he deserved that his struggle should be immortalised. Too great a citizen for so small a people, he did not bear a reputation in proportion to his country, but to his virtues. Corsica remains in the ranks of conquered provinces; but Paoli must always be in the ranks of great men.
She resisted and their lips met and parted, and the stream of cold water splashed their faces, their necks, their clothes and their hands, and their kisses mingled in the stream. They were a long time reaching the summit of the declivity, as the road was so winding and uneven, and they did not reach Evisa until evening and the house of Paoli Palabretti, a relative of their guide.
On receipt of the news that he had been summoned to Paris and that hostile commissioners had been sent to take his place, Paoli had immediately forwarded, by the hands of two friendly representatives, the temperate letter in which he had declared his loyalty to France. In it he had offered to resign and leave Corsica.
For a brief space Buonaparte clung to the hope of regaining Corsica for the Republic, but now only by the aid of French troops. For the islanders, stung by the demand of the French Convention that Paoli should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged chief made overtures to England for alliance.
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