NEUHOF, THEODORE STEPHEN, BARON VON (c.
1690-1756), German adventurer and for a short time nominal king of Corsica, was a son of a Westphalian nobleman and was born at Cologne. Educated at the court of France, he served first in the French army and then in that of Sweden. Baron de Goertz, minister to Charles XII., realizing Neuhof's capacity for intrigue, sent him to England and Spain to negotiate with Cardinal Alberoni. He returned to Sweden and then went to Spain, where he was made colonel and married one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting. Deserting his wife soon afterwards he repaired to France and became mixed up in Law's financial affairs ; then he wandered about Portugal, Holland and Italy, and at Genoa he made the acquaintance of some Corsican prisoners and exiles, whom he persuaded that he could free their country from Genoese tyranny if they made him king of the island. With their help and that of the bey of Tunis he landed in Corsica in March 1736, where the islanders, believing that he had the support of several of the Powers, proclaimed him king. He assumed the style of Theodore I., issued edicts, instituted an order of knight
hood, and waged war on the Genoese, at first with some success. But he was eventually defeated, and civil broils soon broke out in the island; the Genoese having put a price on his head and published an account of his antecedents, he left Corsica in Nov. 1736, ostensibly for foreign assistance. He returned to the island in 1738, 2739 and 1743, but the combined Genoese and French forces drove him out. Arrested for debt in London he regained his freedom by mortgaging his "kingdom" of Corsica, and sub sisted on the charity of Horace Walpole and other friends until his death in London on Dec. 11, 1756.