The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon's Life in His Own Words

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French ( Français) is the official and most widely spoken language on the island. Corsican, the native tongue and an Italo-Dalmatian language, is recognized as one of France's regional languages. Italian is also widely spoken. Azéma, Jean-Pierre; Wieviorka, Olivier (1997). Vichy, 1940-44 (in French). Paris: Perrin. pp.231–33.

The Corsican Republic was unable to eject the Genoese from the major coastal fortresses of Calvi and Bonifacio. After the Corsican conquest of Capraia in 1767, the Republic of Genoa sold the island to France, as France was trying to reinforce its Mediterranean position after its defeat in the Seven Years' War. In 1768, as part of the Treaty of Versailles, Genoa conceded the region to France to repay its heavy debts. French troops became stationed at forts to try to subdue the republicans. After an initial successful resistance culminating with the victory at Borgo, the Corsican republic was crushed by a large French army led by the Count of Vaux at the Battle of Ponte Novu. This marked the end of Corsican sovereignty. Despite triggering the Corsican Crisis in Britain, whose government gave secret aid, no foreign military support came for the Corsicans. However, nationalist feelings still ran high. On 3 October, royalists in Paris declared a rebellion against the National Convention. [60] Paul Barras, a leader of the Thermidorian Reaction, knew of Bonaparte's military exploits at Toulon and gave him command of the improvised forces in defence of the convention in the Tuileries Palace. Bonaparte had seen the massacre of the King's Swiss Guard there three years earlier and realized that artillery would be the key to its defence. [27] Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Napoleon escaped in February 1815 and took control of France. [6] The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. The British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic, where he died in 1821 at the age of 51. Corsican". UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. UNESCO. 27 April 2011 . Retrieved 24 November 2012.Tourism plays a big part in the Corsican economy. The island's climate, mountains, and coastlines make it popular among tourists. The island has not had the same level of intensive development as other parts of the Mediterranean and is thus mainly unspoiled. [ why?] Tourism is particularly concentrated in the area around Porto-Vecchio and Bonifacio in the south of the island and Calvi in the northwest. [ citation needed] Fewer and fewer people speak a Ligurian dialect, known as bunifazzinu, [49] in what has long been a language island, Bonifacio, and in Ajaccio, the aghjaccinu dialect. In Cargèse, a village established by Greek immigrants in the 17th century, Greek ( Ελληνικά) was the traditional language: [50] whereas it has long disappeared from spoken conversation, Biblical Greek is still the liturgical language and the village has many Greek Orthodox parishes. Corsica has a population of 351,255 inhabitants (January 2023 estimate). [1] Historical population of Corsica Year About 3,500km 2 (1,400sqmi) of the total surface area of 8,680km 2 (3,350sqmi) is dedicated to nature reserves ( Parc naturel régional de Corse), mainly in the interior. [27] Corsica contains the GR20, one of Europe's most notable hiking trails.

Chrisafis, Angelique (16 March 2022). "France may offer Corsica 'autonomy' as it struggles to quell protests | France". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 19 March 2022. Between the late 1950s and the 1970s, proposals to conduct underground nuclear tests in the Argentella mines, the immigration of 18,000 former settlers from Algeria (" Pieds-Noirs") in the eastern plains, and continuing chemical pollution ( Fanghi Rossi) from mainland Italy increased tensions between the indigenous inhabitants and the French government. Tensions escalated until an armed police assault on a pieds-noirs-owned wine cellar in Aleria, occupied by Corsican nationalists on 23 August 1975. This marked the beginning of the Corsican conflict, an armed nationalist struggle against the French government. Ever since, Corsican nationalism has been a feature of the island's politics, with calls for greater autonomy and protection for Corsican culture and the Corsican language, or even full independence. Some groups supporting independence, such as the National Liberation Front of Corsica, have carried out a violent campaign that includes bombings and assassinations targeting buildings and officials representing the French government; periodic flare-ups of raids and killings culminated in the assassination of Prefect Claude Érignac in 1998. Lately, the drive towards independence has taken a more electoral approach, where Corsicans elected pro-autonomist, or pro-independence parties overwhelmingly in the past few elections. [20] One must exclude from this practice the Corsican women who, exasperated by the violence, in 1995 created the “Manifesto for life” with the motto “For Life against arms”. 12,000 Corsicans have signed their manifesto and 40,000 joined in the demonstrations in Ajaccio and Bastia. The SOS-Women victims of Violence and the Delegation for Women's Rights should also be mentioned. Napoléon Inconnu, 1789-1790, op.cit., t.II, p.127. Paoli found them “too partial” (his letter to Joseph, 15.8.1791). During his stays in Corsica between 1791 and 1793, the mood of Napoleon's texts takes on new accents. We are far from his speculative writings of yesteryear. His interests now become more pragmatic. He writes as a man of action in search of strategies and solutions. He drafts regulations, writes apologetic memoranda and draws up military projects, all related to Corsica. ( 71) These are the last echoes of his infinite ravishment for his island.There are three works of interest in this context: Baron Fain, Mémoires, Arléa, 2000; J. Tulard, Les Vingt Jours, Louis XVIII ou Napoléon?, Fayard, 2001; D. de Villepin, Les Cent-Jours ou l'esprit de sacrifice, Perrin, 2001.

The bonapartism keeps its nostalgia although it is Paoli who is in vogue today. A direct descendant of Jérôme, the younger brother of the Emperor, Charles-Napoléon, called the Prince, he is a politician in Ajaccio and was a candidate at the municipal elections in March 2001, admittedly with a modest score. He has just completed a book on the hybrid relations between his ancestor and Paoli. By doing so, Napoleon shows his republican card, but also remains faithful to the Corsican ways: threat, warning, action. At night, posters are put up by patriots. Governor Barrin has to face deputations sent to him to make him authorize the gathering of the militia. Two different Frances face each other: the monarchist of the Judases, stagnant, the revolutionary of the citizens, moving on. The political substance having shifted, great were the stakes in this confrontation. It was essential to have the decrees of the National Assembly carried out in Corsica.A separatist, Paoli – considered by the National Assembly as the “moral dictator” of the Corsicans ( 67) – had wished for the independence of the island. Having navigated other shores, Napoleon, doped by the opium of the Revolution, wanted a federative tie linking it to France, ( 68) with a guarantee of some autonomy. He dreamt of “the Corsicans being masters in their house, self-governed, the ones given the jobs and free from all reminders of the conquest”. ( 69) In 2000, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin agreed to grant increased autonomy to Corsica. The proposed autonomy for Corsica would have included greater protection for the Corsican language ( Corsu), the island's traditional language, whose practice and teaching, like other regional or minority languages in France, had been discouraged in the past. According to the UNESCO classification, the Corsican language is currently in danger of becoming extinct. [66] However, plans for increased autonomy were opposed by the Gaullist opposition in the French National Assembly, who feared that they would lead to calls for autonomy from other régions (such as Brittany, Alsace, or Provence), eventually threatening France's unity as a country. [67]

Corsica paid a high price for the French victory in the First World War: agriculture was disrupted by the years-long absence of almost all of the young workers, and the percentage of dead or wounded Corsicans in the conflict was double that of those from mainland France. Moreover, the protectionist policies of the French government, started in the 1880s and never stopped, had ruined the Corsican export of wine and olive oil, and forced many young Corsicans to emigrate to mainland France or to the Americas. In reaction to these conditions, a nationalist movement was born in the 1920s around the newspaper A Muvra, having as its objective the autonomy of the island from France. In the 1930s, many exponents of this movement became irredentist, seeing annexation of the island to fascist Italy as the only solution to its problems. Under Benito Mussolini annexation of Corsica had become one of the main goals of Italy's unification policy.The Region of Corsica". french-at-a-touch.com. Archived from the original on 23 March 2014 . Retrieved 23 March 2014. The majority of the foreign immigrants in Corsica come from the Maghreb (particularly Moroccans, who made up 29.0% of all immigrants in Corsica at the 2019 census) and from Southern Europe (particularly Portuguese and Italians, 23.9% and 12.5% of immigrants on the island respectively). [38] Place of birth of residents of Corsica