It was May 9th: France subjugates Corsica at Ponte-Novo

On May 9, 1769, after two days of fierce fighting on the banks of the Golo River, the French army crushed the Corsican separatists at the Ponte-Novo bridge, a former Genoese fortress on the road from Corte to Bastia. The defeat was total: several hundred Corsicans perished in the battle, including 250 on the bridge itself, and more than 6,000 were wounded. This marked the end of what history would remember as the "Forty Years' War," the long uprising of the Corsican people against the Republic of Genoa and then against the King of France. The leader of the insurrection, Pasquale Paoli, reached the coast with 300 loyal followers and sailed for Livorno. Among those who accompanied him to the shore was his aide-de-camp, a lawyer from Ajaccio named Carlo Buonaparte — whose young wife Laetitia, seven months pregnant, would give birth a few weeks later to a certain Napoleon.

An island sold, a resistance crushed

To understand the Battle of Ponte-Novo, one must go back to May 15, 1768. Weary of financing endless repression against the Corsican rebellion, the Republic of Genoa "provisionally" ceded its rights to the island to France through the Treaty of Versailles. The Duke of Choiseul, who headed the government of Louis XV, decided to put an end to it quickly. An initial army of 20,000 men landed under the command of Lieutenant-General Chauvelin—but suffered a serious defeat at Borgu in October 1768. Six months later, the Count of Vaux resumed the offensive with 24,000 soldiers. On May 8, 1769, Paoli attempted to recapture the town of Lento by committing his troops on three simultaneous fronts. The Corsican Nationalists initially advanced, but encountered French reinforcements who pushed them back to the right bank of the Golo River, where 1,200 soldiers awaited them in a commanding position. Cornered, they had no choice but to attempt to cross the Genoese bridge at Ponte-Novo—and found themselves caught between French fire on one bank and that of the Prussian mercenaries defending the bridge. A low wall built to protect the structure blocked their advance. Many threw themselves into the water and drowned in the swollen Golo River. Voltaire would later write of these combatants: “They made a rampart of their dead to buy themselves time to charge behind them before making a necessary retreat. Valor can be found everywhere, but such actions are seen only among free peoples.”

A subjugated island, and the birth of a destiny

With Corsica pacified, the French established a Superior Council and entrusted the island's government to Count Louis de Marbeuf. Nobles were invited to register their titles: only 86 families agreed, among them the Buonapartes, Genoese settlers established in Ajaccio for several generations. This recognition of nobility, combined with the relationship the beautiful Laetitia Buonaparte maintained with Governor de Marbeuf, allowed the young Napoleon to obtain a scholarship to enter a military school reserved for the aristocracy—the first step on an exceptional path. The defeat at Ponte-Novo thus contained an irony of history: by subduing Corsica, France unwittingly acquired the man who, thirty years later, would dominate the entire island.