Paoli, as President of the Assembly, and Lieutenant-general of the Corsican National Guard, now devoted himself entirely to the affairs of his country; in the year 1791 he also undertook the command of the Division, and of the island. Although the French Revolution had silenced the special interests of the Corsicans, they began again to demand attention, and this was particularly felt by Paoli, among whose virtues patriotism was always uppermost. Paoli could never transform himself into a Frenchman, or forget that his people had possessed independence, and its own constitution. A coolness sprang up between him and certain parties in the island; the aristocratic French party, namely, on the one hand, composed of such men as Gaffori, Rossi, Peretti, and Buttafuoco; and the extreme democrats on the other, who saw the welfare of the world nowhere but in the whirl of the French Revolution, such as the Bonapartes, Saliceti, and Arenas.
The execution of the king, and the wild and extravagant procedure of the popular leaders in Paris, shocked the philanthropic Paoli. He gradually broke with France, and the rupture became manifest after the unsuccessful French expedition from Corsica against Sardinia, the failure of which was attributed to Paoli. His opponents had lodged a formal accusation against him and Pozzo di Borgo, the Procurator-general, libelling them as Particularists, who wished to separate the island from France.
The Convention summoned him to appear before its bar and answer the accusations, and sent Saliceti, Lacombe, and Delcher, as commissaries to the island. Paoli, however, refused to obey the decree, and sent a dignified and firm address to the Convention, in which he repelled the imputations made upon him, and complained of their forcing a judicial investigation upon an aged man, and a martyr for freedom. Was a Paoli to stand in a court composed of windy declaimers and play-actors, and then lay his head, grown gray in heroism, beneath the knife of the guillotine? Was this to be the end of a life that had produced such noble fruits?
The result of this refusal to obey the orders of the Convention, was the complete revolt of Paoli and the Paolists from France. The patriots prepared for a struggle, and published such enactments as plainly intimated that they wished Corsica to be considered as separated from France. The commissaries hastened home to Paris; and after receiving their report, the Convention declared Paoli guilty of high treason, and placed him beyond the protection of the law. The island was split into two hostile camps, the patriots and the republicans, and already fighting had commenced.