tched from France to make short and thorough work of the
conquest. The previous year of bloody and embittered conflict had gone
far to disorganize the patriot army. It was only with the utmost
difficulty that the little bands of mountain villagers could be
tempted away from the ever more necessary defense of their homes and
firesides. Yet in spite of disintegration before such overwhelming
odds, and though in want both of ordinary munitions and of the very
necessities of life, the forces of Paoli continued a fierce and heroic
resistance. It was only after months of devastating, heartrending,
hopeless warfare, that their leader, utterly routed in the affair
known as the battle of Ponte Nuovo, finally gave up the desperate
cause. Exhausted, and without resources, he would have been an easy
prey to the French; but they were too wise to take him prisoner. On
June thirteenth, 1769, by their connivance he escaped, with three
hundred and forty of his most devoted supporters, on two English
vessels, to the mainland. His goal was England. The journey was a
long, triumphant procession from Leghorn through Germany and Holland;
the honors showered on him by the liberals in the towns through which
he passed were such as are generally paid to victory, not to defeat.
Kindly received and entertained, he lived for the next thirty years in
London, the recipient from the government of twelve hundred pounds a
year as a pension.

The year 1770 saw the King of France apparently in peaceful possession
of that Corsican sovereignty which he claimed to have bought from
Genoa. His administration was soon and easily inaugurated, and there
was nowhere any interference from foreign powers. Philanthropic
England had provided for Paoli, but would do no more, for she was busy
at home with a transformation of her parties. The old Whig party was
disintegrating; the new Toryism was steadily asserting itself in the
passage of contemptuous measures for oppressing the American colonies.
She was, moreover, soon to be so absorbed in her great struggle on
both sides of the globe that interest in Corsica and the Mediterranean
must remain for a long time in abeyance.

But the establishment of a French administration in the King's new
acquisition did not proceed smoothly. The party favorable to
incorporation with France had grown, and, in the rush to side with
success, it now probably far outnumbered that of the old patriots. At
the outset this majority faithful