An Island Entire Unto Itself: A Portrait of Corsica at the End of the 18th Century

By the end of the 18th century, Corsica had been occupied by France for over thirty years. Islanders yearned to recover their lost independence, and the French Revolution gave them the opportunity. Their leader, Pasquale Paoli, realized that alone they could never defeat the well-organized French forces. He offered Corsica to King George III of England, on condition that the French were driven from the island. Based on documented historical fact, the author paints a detailed portrait of Corsica through the captivating adventures of Damian Berra, a young man from what is today the Swiss canton of Valais. After wandering through Lombardy to the Ligurian coast, as the victim of a press gang on a French frigate, he becomes marooned on Corsica, an island infested with bandits and crippled with vendettas, where murders are seven times more numerous than in mainland France. The story also describes the attempts of the English to administer an island they eventually called “The Ungovernable Rock.”

• | Author: Nigel Patten
• | Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing
• | Publication Date: Jul 25, 2019
• | Number of Pages: 320 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1949483983
• | ISBN-13: 9781949483987