Driving through states such as Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio, a visitor will come upon several towns and streets all named “Paoli.” This may puzzle a visitor. Why would towns with clearly Italian names exist in the middle of the Rust Belt? yet, there is a relatively unknown story behind the origins of their names, which is connected to the drafting of the very first modern constitution based upon the principles of the Enlightement. Today we will look at the connection between the towns named Paoli, the Founding Fathers and the American Constitution, and the small Italophone island of Corsica, where men such as Thomas Jefferson found inspiration for their own magnum opus drafted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
18th Century Corsica
The small, poor Mediterranean island of Corsica is hardly a place where anyone would have expected constitutionalism to first appear. In 1754, the island, famous mostly for banditry and clan feuds, belonged to the Republic of Genoa. Unlike today, the islanders spoke either Italian (such as the family of one Napoleone Buonaparte) or the closely related Corsican language (among commoners). In 1725, a revolt against Genoese rule was quashed, resulting in a series of foreign powers, including France, Spain, Austria, Wurttemburg, and the Papal States all vying for influence on the island. After an English attempt to install a German adventurer as king failed, Corsican nationalists began to consider alternative forms of government to monarchy.
Corsica was part of the Italianate world with a similar culture to Tuscany, Italy’s major intellectual and artistic center. Italy small, relatively open republics and statelets proved fertile ground for the ideas of Enlightenment rationalism, which found followers on the peninsula. This strain of thinking, associated with figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Milton, Mill, Locke, and Montesquieu, placed reason and rationality over divine revelation. Politically, this manifested in the preference among Enlightenment thinkers towards nation states united by a common language and culture over the multi-ethnic monarchies of 18th century Europe.
Implicitly, it also rejected the divine right of kings, instead developing the idea of natural rights as endowed by the Creator. This ideology, which manifested itself in many forms throughout Europe’s history, was a major threat to the monarchies of the era. In 1755, however, there was little chance of it making much headway on the mainland. Instead, it would be on the tiny island of Corsica where the first true experiment in Enlightenment Republicanism began. The man who would lead it, and who likely inspired George Washington to do the same in America, was an exile in Naples named Filippo Antonio Pasquale de Paoli.
Pasquale Paoli and the Republic of Corsica
Pasquale Paoli was born in 1725, the son of Corsican nobility who were exiled to Naples following a failed uprising against Genova in 1739. HIs introduction to Enlightenment philosophy came under his teacher, the priest Antonio Genovesi, who like many Catholic clergy of the era, paid lip service to church doctrine while embracing Enlightenment ideas deemed hostile to Catholicism. Genovesi was a follower of John Locke, who emphasized private property, religious tolerance, and a government by social contract (i.e. the consent of the governed). Paoli’s later career suggests that he eagerly imbibed these ideas from his teacher. Following his education and a stint in the Neapolitan Royal Army, Paoli returned to Corsica in 1755 to find the island in a state of ferment.
On July 15th, 1755, Corsica’s notables met in Sant’Antonio della Casabianca and declared the island an independent republic from Genova. Paoli, much like George Washington in the American Revolution, was named commander of the island’s forces given his experience in the Neapolitan army. The Genoese, whose glory days were long past, were unable to defeat the Corsicans, and by 1756, Paoli’s forces had mostly driven them from the island with the exception of the city of Bonifazio and few other small coastal towns. Paoli now decided to establish a government in the Italian tradition, rejecting monarchy and opting for a republic, with the vision of eventually uniting all of Italy under his leadership. Only this time, it would have a constitution based on the enlightenment model that would clearly define the structure and role of government vis-a-vis its citizens.
Photo by Dino Olivieri.
Licensed under CC BY 2.0
Forging the Republic
The basis of Paoli’s republic was a ten-page constitution the very first of its kind. The preamble of the constitution, which defines its purpose, is remarkably similar in spirit to the preamble of the American Constitution. In the preamble, the Corsican constitution seeks to “form a durable and permanent government, transforming it into its own constitution to assure the happiness of the nation.” One cannot help but notice the similarity here to the idea of “a more perfect union.” The idea behind the constitution was the creation of a state that would have a government that was in some way accountable to the people it claimed to represent. In the Corsican constitution, the idea of a representative republic with separation of powers is seen in its infancy.
The Corsican constitution’s main innovation was the creation of an independent, national diet to which the entire population, regardless of rank, was subject to. Legislative bodies existed elsewhere in Europe, but often, were dependent upon the ruling monarch. The Corsican constitution enshrined the consulta, originally a local legislative body, as a national parliament that met once a year and through presidential decree. The diet regulated internal national policy, taxation, and laws independent of the executive. Despite being elected for life, the president served at the diet’s pleasure and could be removed with a vote of no confidence.
The Corsican constitution established the principle of representation within the diet. Representatives were elected for three-year terms. Men aged twenty-five and above were permitted to vote. Women were allowed to vote in local elections for mayors (podestà). There were, however, two major issues with the Corsican government. First, members of the Council of State, the executive body in charge of overseeing foreign relations, justice, and war, were elected for life. Secondly, the judiciary was not independent. The Council of State appointed the highest ranking judges for life without any input from the diet, allowing the executive to ”stack the deck” in the higher courts. But even this problem was balanced. Local judges were elected, so the Council of State had no direct say at the local level. Furthermore, the institution of il Sindicato was established to address abuses within the justice system. This council consisted of four people elected from the diet, so although the diet could not appoint judges, it could remove them.
The Corsican constitution, despite its issues, was remarkably democratic for its time, and while not perfect, had built-in mechanisms to prevent the executive from amassing too much power. While Paoli was president for life in Corsica, the power to amend the constitution rested with the diet. The diet took advantage of this power, most notably abolishing life terms for the members of the Council of State in 1764 and instituting one-year terms. So, there was a nascent system of checks and balances that may have developed further given a chance. Unfortunately for Paoli, the Corsican Republic did not last long enough to see the results of this radical experiment in government.
Ponte Novu
Photo by Piero Montesacro.
Licensed under CC BY 2.5
Despite Paoli’s success in establishing Corsica as an independent nation, he could only draw a single recognition from the Bey of Tunis. Meanwhile, the Genoese had not forgotten about Corsica. Unable to reconquer it, the Republic of Genova sold the island to France in 1768. Louis XV promptly invaded the island, but Paoli was able to defeat him at Borgo. In 1769, France tried again, sending an experienced army under the veteran commander Noël Jourda, comte de Vaux, to seize the island.
De Vaux landed at Bastia in the northeast and marched inland to seize the Corsican capital of Corte. A Corsican force under General Carlo Salicetti barred their way with 12,000 men at Ponte Novu, a Genoese bridge on the Golo River. Salicetti deployed his the eastern bank of the river, while de Vaux opposed him on the western bank. The battle began when Corsican troops crossed the river and drove French forced from the town of Lento. A French counterattack drove the Corsicans back towards the Golo River. However, unbeknownst to Salicetti, a 1,200 strong French force had taken control of the hills overlooking Ponte Novu. Corsican forces panicked as they were shot at from the high ground and fell back towards the bridge. Despite the setback, the battle was not over. Salicetti ordered his men to regroup around their defensive positions on the eastern side of the bridge, hoping to funnel the French into the narrow space.
To ensure a line of retreat, Salicetti had left a detachment of Swiss and Prussian mercenaries to guard Ponte Novu. To his horror, however, as Corsican forces crossed the bridge back to their own lines, the German troops fired on them and allowed the French across. The Corsican army disintegrated. Salicetti managed to cobble together bands of soldiers and guerrillas to check the French advance, but the republic’s leadership was too divided by family feuds and personal rivalries to muster a cohesive response. To worsen matters, sections of the Corsican nobility threw their support behind the French, and Paoli was forced to flee to Livorno in Italy.
Aftermath
Paoli continued his attempts to restore the Corsican Republic until his death in 1807. His dream of a united Italy under Corsican leadership died with him. Corsica was progressively Gallicised to the point that Italian is barely spoken on the island today. Despite his failure, Europe gushed with admiration for Paoli. Voltaire memorialized him and the Corsican people in Le Précis du Siècle de Louis XV. The British traveler James Boswell was equally glowing in his admiration. But nowhere was Paoli more respected than in Britain’s Thirteen Colonies, where he would inspire a revolution that would indelibly alter views of government and the rule of law.
In America, Paoli remains an unknown and elusive figure, relegated to the dustbin of history. Yet in the years leading up to the American revolution, common people and America’s Founding Fathers lionized the Corsican patriot. The instigator of the Boston Riots of 1766, Ebenezer MacKintosh named his son after Paoli. The New York Journal referred to him as “the greatest man on earth.” The Sons of Liberty viewed him as their founding inspiration, and Benjamin Franklin praised Paoli’s Corsicans as the first to truly fight for their liberty in the Western world. A young Alexander Hamilton, meanwhile, served in a New York militia regiment called the Corsicans. It would be up to these men to carry on Paoli’s fight for constitutionalism. Ultimately, Paoli’s vision for a constitutional government would not be realized in his homeland, but on the battlefields of North America, where, on July 4th, 1776, inspired by his own deeds, a new nation was born.
Sources and Further Reading
Dorothy Carrington’s “The Corsican constitution of Pasquale Paoli” provides an excellent summary of the structure of Corsica’s government using unpublished material from Corsica’s archives. Paoli’s influence in America is succinctly discussed in this article. The constitution itself is available in French here. The original Italian is almost impossible to find online, but is available in print here. Although Italian is no longer spoken in Corsica, the closely related Corsican language lingers in the rural areas and has a large inventory of music. Strangely, despite the Enlightenment influence in Corsica’s creation, Paoli picked one of these songs, an Italian Marian hymn Dio vi salvi Regina as the country’s anthem. This beautiful song can be heard here or here in two different styles.