Incapable of taking the island back, Genoa ceded it to France on 15 May 1768. The French monarchy had long been trying to control Corsica for strategic reasons. The Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769 shattered the organised resistance. Paoli went into exile in England, while the guerrilla movement continued until 1774.
Corsica, thrust back into the Ancien Régime, was a laboratory for the innovations planned for the entire Kingdom. The young men of the élite families studied in France, while the island was stripped of its schools; increasing taxes and the enfeoffment of community lands outraged the population.
The Revolution of 1789 was understood by the Corsicans as France's rallying to the ideas that they had defended twenty years earlier. Enthusiastically, the island became part of the “French Empire" on 30 November 1789, while Paoli received a triumphant homecoming welcome and came back to power. But opposition was just around the corner: Paoli, accused of failure in the Sardinian expedition and summoned before the Convention, called on England for help. On 10 June, 1794, the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom was proclaimed: the island, with the King of England as its monarch, adopted its own constitution. This experiment lasted for two years: Paoli went back into exile and Napoleon Bonaparte's victories in Italy made it easy for the French to regain control in 1796.