Pasquale Paoli was born in 1725 in Stretta, in the municipality of Morosaglia, Corsica. His father, General Giacinto Paoli, was a kind of prime minister in the short-lived Kingdom of Corsica under King Theodore I of Corsica and, in 1739, went into exile in Naples with his youngest son, Pasquale. In 1755, Paoli returned to Corsica as a 30-year-old ensign in the King's Corsican Guard and, as commander at the head of the Corsican guerrillas, fought the Genoese. He succeeded in expelling them from the interior and entrenching them in a few port cities.
In the same year, Paoli gave Corsica a democratic constitution and temporarily ruled Corsica. He named Corte its capital. Among other things, he was friends with the Buonaparte family, who fought with him against the Corsican enemy Marius Matra. Carlo di Buonaparte, Napoleon's father, collaborated on a Corsican constitution and became Paoli's right-hand man.
When the Genoese ceded the island to France on May 15, 1768, pending redemption, Paoli fought the French. In 1768, the French, who had landed with 10,000 men, were forced to withdraw. A year later, however, 22,000 men landed under the command of the Comte de Vaux and defeated the Corsicans in the Battle of Ponte Novu on May 9, 1769. Paoli laid down his arms and chose exile. In 1790, the revolutionary National Assembly voted for the final annexation of Corsica to France.