Ajaccio is the capital and largest city of Corsica, France. It forms a French commune, prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud, and head office of the Collectivité territoriale de Corse. It is also the largest settlement on the island. Ajaccio is located on the west coast of the island of Corsica, 210 nautical miles (390 km) southeast of Marseille.
Corsican is a Romance language consisting of the continuum of the Italo-Dalmatian dialects spoken on the Mediterranean island of Corsica (France) and on the northern end of the island of Sardinia (Italy). Corsican is related to the varieties of Tuscan from the Italian peninsula, and therefore also to the Florentine-based standard Italian.
Filippo Antonio Pasquale de' Paoli was a Corsican patriot, statesman, and military leader who was at the forefront of resistance movements against the Genoese and later French rule over the island. He became the President of the Executive Council of the General Diet of the People of Corsica and wrote the Constitution of the state.
A Moor's head, since the 11th century, is a symbol depicting the head of a black moor. The term moor came to define anyone who was Muslim or had black skin.
L'Île-Rousse is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica.
The first Corsican Constitution was drawn up in 1755 for the short-lived Corsican Republic independent from Genoa beginning in 1755, and remained in force until the annexation of Corsica by France in 1769. It was written in Tuscan Italian, the language of elite culture and people in Corsica at the time.
Saint-Florent is a commune in Haute-Corse department on the island of Corsica, France. Originally a fishing port located in the gulf of the same name, pleasure boats have now largely taken the place of fishing vessels.
The Corsicans are a Romance Italic ethnic group. They are native to Corsica, a Mediterranean island and a territorial collectivity of France.
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of the French mainland, west of the Italian Peninsula and immediately north of the Italian island of Sardinia, the nearest land mass. A single chain of mountains makes up two-thirds of the island. As of January 2024, it had a population of 355,528.
The Battle of Ponte Novu took place on May 8 and 9, 1769 between royal French forces under the Comte de Vaux, a seasoned professional soldier with an expert on mountain warfare on his staff, and the native Corsicans under Carlo Salicetti. It was the battle that effectively ended the fourteen-year-old Corsican Republic and opened the way to annexation by France the following year.
The flag of Sardinia, called the flag of the Four Moors or simply the Four Moors, represents and symbolizes the island of Sardinia (Italy) and its people. It was also the historical flag and coat of arms of the Aragonese, then Spanish, and later Savoyard Kingdom of Sardinia. It was first officially adopted by the autonomous region in 1950 with a revision in 1999, describing it as a "white field with a red cross and a bandaged Moor's head facing away from the hoist in each quarter".
The history of Corsica in the medieval period begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the invasions of various Germanic peoples in the fifth century AD, and ends with the complete subjection of the island to the authority of the Bank of San Giorgio in 1511.
The history of Corsica goes back to antiquity, and was known to Herodotus, who described Phoenician habitation in the 6th century BCE. Etruscans and Carthaginians expelled the Phoenicians, and remained until the Romans arrived during the Punic Wars in 237 BCE. Vandals occupied it in 430 CE, followed by the Byzantine Empire a century later.
Italian irredentism in Corsica was a cultural and historical movement promoted by Italians and by people from Corsica who identified themselves as part of Italy rather than France, and promoted the Italian annexation of the island.
The Corsican Republic was a short-lived state on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea. It was proclaimed in July 1755 by Pasquale Paoli, who was seeking independence from the Republic of Genoa. Paoli created the Corsican Constitution, which was the first constitution written in the Italian language. The text included various Enlightenment principles, including female suffrage, later revoked by the Kingdom of France when the island was taken over in 1769. The republic created an administration and justice system, and founded an army.
The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom, also known officially as the Kingdom of Corsica, was a client state of the Kingdom of Great Britain that existed on the island of Corsica between 1794 and 1796, during the French Revolutionary Wars.
The Genoese towers in Corsica are a series of coastal defences constructed by the Republic of Genoa between 1530 and 1620 to stem the attacks by Barbary pirates.
Corsican nationalism is the concept of a cohesive nation of Corsica and a national identity of its people. The Corsican autonomy movement stems from Corsican nationalism and advocates for further autonomy for the island, if not outright independence from France.
The French conquest of Corsica was a successful expedition by French forces of the Kingdom of France under Comte de Vaux, against Corsican forces under Pasquale Paoli of the Corsican Republic. The expedition was launched in May 1768, in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War. A French expeditionary force was landed on the island of Corsica, then ruled by the Corsican Republic. Marching inland to overcome any Corsican opposition, the French force initially suffered an unexpected defeat at the Battle of Borgo. But a new commander, the Comte de Vaux, was appointed to lead the expedition, and decisively defeated the Corsican army at the Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769, effectively bringing an end to Corsican resistance.
