A cry arose in Corsica.  Paoli resolved to defend the independence of his country against France, as he had defended it against Genoa.  For several months now French garrisons had occupied the places still submitting to Genoa; when they would have extended themselves into the interior, Paoli barred their passage; he bravely attacked M. de Chauvelin, the king’s lieutenant-general, who had just landed with a proclamation from Louis XV. to his new subjects.  “The Corsican nation does not let itself be bought and sold like a flock of sheep sent to market,” said the protest of the republic’s Supreme Council.  Fresh troops from France had to be asked for; under the orders of Count Vaux they triumphed without difficulty over the Corsican patriots.  Mustering at the bridge of Golo for a last effort, they made a rampart of their dead; the wounded had lain down amongst the corpses to give the survivors time to effect their retreat.  The town of Corte, the seat of republican government, capitulated before long.  England had supplied Paoli with munitions and arms; he had hoped more from the promises of the government and the national jealousy against France.  “The ministry is too weak and the nation too wise to make war on account of Corsica,” said an illustrious judge, Lord Mansfield.  In vain did Burke exclaim, “Corsica, as a province of France, is for me an object of alarm!” The House of Commons approved of the government’s conduct, and England contented herself with offering to the vanquished Paoli a sympathetic hospitality; he left Corsica on an English frigate, accompanied by most of his friends, and it is in Westminster Abbey that he lies, after the numerous vicissitudes of his life, which fluctuated throughout the revolutions of his native land, from England to France and from France to England, to the day when Corsica, proud of having given a master to France and the Revolution, became definitively French with Napoleon.

[Illustration:  Defeat of the Corsicans at Golo——­256]

Corsica was to be the last conquest of the old French monarchy.  Great or little, magnificent or insignificant, from Richelieu to the Duke of Choiseul, France had managed to preserve her territorial acquisitions; in America and in Asia, Louis XV. had shamefully lost Canada and the Indies; in Europe, the diplomacy of his ministers had given to the kingdom Lorraine and Corsica.  The day of insensate conquests ending in a diminution of territory had not yet come.  In the great and iniquitous dismemberment which was coming, France was to have no share.

Profound disquietude was beginning to agitate Europe:  the King of Poland, Augustus III., had died in 1763, leaving the unhappy country over which he had reigned a prey to internal anarchy ever increasing and systematically fanned by the avidity or jealousy of the great powers, its neighbors.  “As it is to the interest of the two monarchs of Russia and Prussia that the Polish commonwealth should preserve its right to free