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. Meanwhile Paoli had formed the plan of placing the island under the protection of the English Government. No course lay nearer or was more natural than this. He had already entered into communication with Admiral Hood, who commanded the English fleet before Toulon, and now with his ships appeared on the Corsican coast. He landed near Fiorenzo on the 2d of February. This fortress fell after a severe bombardment; and the commandant of Bastia, General Antonio Gentili, capitulated. Calvi alone, which had withstood in previous centuries so many assaults, still held out, though the English bombs made frightful havoc in the little town, and all but reduced it to a heap of ruins. At length, on the 20th of July 1794, the fortress surrendered; the commandant, Casabianca, capitulated, and embarked with his troops for France. As Bonifazio and Ajaccio were already in the hands of the Paolists, the Republicans could no longer maintain a footing on the island. They emigrated, and Paoli and the English remained undisputed masters of Corsica. A general assembly now declared the island completely severed from France, and placed it under the protection of England. England, however, did not content herself with a mere right of protection--she claimed the sovereignty of Corsica; and this became the occasion of a rupture between Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo, whom Sir Gilbert Elliot had won for the English side. On the 10th of June 1794, the Corsicans declared that they would unite their country to Great Britain; that it was, however, to remain independent, and be governed by a viceroy according to its own constitution.