Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the thirteen regions of France, located west of Italy, southeast of France, and north of Sardinia. The island was once a Greek colony, and it was later conquered by the Etruscans and Carthage before the Roman Republic annexed the island in 260 BC as a result of the First Punic War. The Lombards conquered the island from the Byzantine Empire during the 6th century, but King Pepin the Short of the Franks conquered the island during the 750s and granted it to Pope Stephen II and the Papal States. The Republic of Pisa would come to rule the island, but the defeat of Pisa at the 1284 Battle of Meloria led to the rival Republic of Genoa coming to rule over the island. In 1729, a tax revolt against the Genoese broke out on the island, led by Luigi Giafferi. In 1755, Pasquale Paoli proclaimed the formation of a Corsican Republic, but French general Noel Jourda de Vaux and an army of 168,000 troops conquered the island in 1769. Genoa sold the island to the Kingdom of France, which was seeking to reestablish its superiority in the Mediterranean after its defeat in the Seven Years' War. From 1794 to 1796, Great Britain occupied the island during the French Revolutionary Wars, and France would continue to rule over Corsica for several more centuries. In 2015, Corsica had a population of 326,898 people.
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