Genoa, In Desperation And Next Door To Bankruptcy, Resolved To
Sell Her Rights As Suzerain To France, And The Compact Was
Concluded By A Treaty Signed At Versailles In 1768.
Paoli was
finally defeated at Ponte Novo on 9th May 1769, and fled to
England.
On 15th August the edict of "Reunion" between France and
Corsica was promulgated. On the same day Napoleon Buonaparte was
born at Ajaccio.
After a week at Genoa Smollett proceeded along the coast to
Lerici. There, being tired of the sea, the party disembarked, and
proceeded by chaise from Sarzano to Cercio in Modenese territory,
and so into Tuscany, then under the suzerainty of Austria. His
description of Pisa is of an almost sunny gaiety and good humour.
Italy, through this portal, was capable of casting a spell even
upon a traveller so case-hardened as Smollett. The very churches
at Pisa are "tolerably ornamented." The Campo Santo and Tower
fall in no way short of their reputation, while the brass gates
so far excel theirs that Smollett could have stood a whole day to
examine and admire them. These agremens may be attributable in
some measure to "a very good inn." In stating that galleys were
built in the town, Smollett seems to have fallen a victim, for
once, to guide-book information. Evelyn mentions that galleys
were built there in his time, but that was more than a hundred
years before. The slips and dock had long been abandoned, as
Smollett is careful to point out in his manuscript notes, now in
the British Museum.
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