his native country as a surgeon in the French
army, whose progress he followed as far as Venice. Here he joined the
expedition to Corfu, from which he did not return to Italy till 1798. At
first he favoured French policy in Italy, contributed to the annexation
of Piedmont by France in 1799, and was an admirer of Napoleon; but he
afterwards changed his views, realizing the necessity for the union of
all Italians and for their freedom from foreign control. After the
separation of Piedmont from France in 1814 he retired into private life,
but, fearing persecution at home, became a French citizen. In 1817 he
was appointed rector of the university of Rouen, but in 1822 was removed
owing to clerical influence. Amid all the vicissitudes of his early
manhood Botta had never allowed his pen to be long idle, and in the
political quiet that followed 1816 he naturally devoted himself more
exclusively to literature. In 1824 he published a history of Italy from
1789 to 1814 (4 vols.), on which his fame principally rests; he himself
had been an eyewitness of many of the events described. His continuation
of Guicciardini, which he was afterwards encouraged to undertake, is a
careful and laborious work, but is not based on original authorities and
is of small value. Though living in Paris he was in both these works the
ardent exponent of that recoil against everything French which took
place throughout Europe. A careful exclusion of all Gallicisms, as a
reaction against the French influences of the day, is one of the marked
features of his style, which is not infrequently impassioned and
eloquent, though at the same time cumbrous, involved and ornate. Botta
died at Paris in August 1837, in comparative poverty, but in the
enjoyment of an extensive and well-earned reputation.

His son, Paul Emile Botta (1802-1870), was a distinguished traveller and
Assyrian archaeologist, whose excavations at Khorsabad (1843) were among
the first efforts in the line of investigation afterwards pursued by
Layard.

The works of Carlo Botta are _Storia naturale e medica dell' Isola di
Corfu_ (1798); an Italian translation of Born's _Joannis Physiophili
specimen monachologiae_ (1801); _Souvenirs d'un voyage en Dalmatie_
(1802); _Storia della guerra dell' Independenza d'America_ (1809);
_Camillo_, a poem (1815); _Storia d'Italia dal 1789 al 1814_ (1824,
new ed., Prato, 1862); _Storia d'ltalia in continuazione al
Guicciardini_ (1832, new ed., Mil