Pasquale Paoli, who led the Corsican republic from 1755 to 1769, probably never considered himself a revolutionary. To him, the struggle to liberate Corsica from its Genoese masters was a nation state’s legitimate bid for independence and he regarded himself on a par with other heads of state. Today, he is much less well known outside Corsica than his compatriot Napoleon Bonaparte, and yet he was a towering figure of his era.
