ABSTRACT
The struggle with the Church from the mid-1760s had undoubtedly drawn together the reforming princes and administrators and the intellectual groups, both ‘philosophers’ and Jansenists. Ecclesiastical reforms intertwined with economic and administrative measures. The decade from the mid-1760s was characterized by faith in the possibilities of collaboration. The progress of the reforms was accompanied by the growing hopes and enthusiasms of the philosophes, even in states where there was little reforming activity. The mid-1770s witnessed a change in the relationship between rulers and intellectual reformers. In these years the older generation of administrators disappeared, the new rulers emerged in the fullness of their powers. The prolonged struggle of the Corsicans rapidly lost the contours of reality for the more radical intellectuals as it was transformed into the symbol of a democratic, egalitarian society.
