History of Corsica

Common card · No. 413679

The history of Corsica goes back to antiquity, and was known to Herodotus, who described Phoenician habitation in the 6th century BC. Etruscans and Carthaginians expelled the Ionian Greeks, and remained until the Romans arrived during the Punic Wars in 237 BC. Vandals occupied it in 430 AD, followed by the Byzantine Empire a century later. Raided by various Germanic and other groups for two centuries, it was conquered in 774 by Charlemagne under the Holy Roman Empire, which fought for control against the Saracens. After a period of feudal anarchy, the island was transferred to the papacy, then to city states Pisa and Genoa, which retained control over it for five centuries, until the establishment of the Corsican Republic in 1755. The French gained control in the 1768 Treaty of Versailles. Corsica was briefly independent as a Kingdom in union with Great Britain after the French Revolution in 1789, with a viceroy and elected Parliament, but returned to French rule in 1796. Corsica strongly...

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