Pa'oli, PASQUALE DE, a famous Corsican patriot, was born at Rostino in Corsica, 25th April 1725, son of that Giacinto Paoli who fought bravely, but without success, for independence against the Genoese and their French allies, and died at Naples in 1756. Thither he was carried in 1739 by his father, but returned to take part in the heroic struggle of his country, and in July 1755 was appointed to the chief command in a full assembly of the people. He struggled bravely against disaffection within and a powerful enemy without, governed the island with rare wisdom and moderation, and would have achieved the independence of Corsica had not the Genoese sold it in 1768 to France. For a year he held out against a French army, under the Comte de Vaux, of 22,000 men, but was at length overpowered and forced to make his escape to England, where he was warmly received and granted a pension by the crown. Boswell, who had visited him in Corsica, introduced him to Dr Johnson, who described him as having 'the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.' The two became warm friends; at Paoli's house Johnson wrote to Mrs Thrale he loved to dine. Twenty years later the French Revolution recalled Paoli to Corsica, of which, as a free department of France, he consented to become lieutenant-general and governor; but the excesses of the Convention soon alienated his sympathies, and he organised a fresh insurrection. Despairing of maintaining unaided the independence of the island, he promoted its union with England, but failed to obtain the post of viceroy, and returned a disappointed man to England in 1796. He died near London, 5th February 1807; and in 1889 his remains were exhumed from Old St Pancras Churchyard, and reinterred in his native island.
See Boswell's Account of Corsica (1768), and the Lives of Paoli by Arrighi (Paris, 1843), Klose (Brunswick, 1853), Bartoli (Ajaccio, 1867), and Oria (Genoa, 1869).