The Fall of Toulon

by Bernard Ireland

  In the course of his service, Buonaparte had made the acquaintance of two men who would now prove influential. The first, Augustin Robespierre, was the younger brother of one of the all-powerful Committee of Public Safety. The other, Christophe Saliceti, was a fellow Corsican but, like Buonaparte, had been opposed to the island’s independence movement. Both, therefore, had been branded Francisé, i.e. those who supported the French ‘occupiers’.

  Both Robespierre and Saliceti were highly political and, in these times of rapid promotion, had been made représentants du peuple. Both were attached to the Revolutionary armies in the south, Robespierre with that of General Lapoype and Saliceti with Carteaux. Together with two further représentants, Gasparin and the grimly efficient Paul Barras, Saliceti had become a virtual commissar, whose word was law.

  Himself attached to Carteaux’s army, Buonaparte had idled away some hours in composing a pamphlet which argued, in reasonable terms, why the counter-revolutionaries’ case could not be justified in opposing the necessary cleansing of the nation through the current upheaval. This tract had been seen by, and had impressed, both représentants and, undoubtedly with an eye to the main chance, Buonaparte decided to pay a brief social call on Saliceti.

  Following the rebuff at Ollioules, Carteaux still had his headquarters at Le Beausset, which lay conveniently on the route that Buonaparte’s powder convoy was following through the difficult country north of the Faron Ridge. For the general, the arrival of the confident young artillery man was propitious. It will be recalled that his artillery specialist, Major Dommartin, had been severely injured in the course of Elphinstone’s assault on Ollioules. The planned operations against Toulon would involve extensive use of cannon in both mobile and siege warfare roles. At the moment, Carteaux lacked both the cannon and a chief of artillery but, with a nod from Saliceti, Buonaparte was replaced as convoy escort commander. Within hours, he found himself at La Seyne, looking across at Toulon, some 4,000 yards distant, and the comings and goings of the powerful allied fleet.

  From where he stood, the city was beyond the effective range of what weapons were to hand. Buonaparte set to work to assess the situation and to prepare recommendations. He consulted all available local cartography and covered all accessible ground on foot before coming to the same conclusions as those before. This is a significant point, for many Napoleonic hagiographies have credited him totally with the plan.

  Traditionally, the British were content to fight with their backs to the sea, sure in the knowledge that the Royal Navy would reinforce, supply and, if required, evacuate them. This applied also to Toulon, and Buonaparte readily grasped that, if he could prevent free access by sea, the town must eventually capitulate. The keys were the two promontories that enclosed the Petite Rade, both fortified and both covering the only deep-water channel. The eastern promontory was powerfully held, had Fort la Malgue at its back, and formed one end of the mutually supportive eastern defence chain. His interest therefore settled on the more vulnerable western promontory, particularly on the intense allied activity creating the new defences of Fort Mulgrave.

  Well aware of the superior firepower of the allies, both ashore and afloat, Buonaparte badly needed to increase his own resources, which amounted to only eight 24-pounders, three 16-pounders and two mortars. Typical of his kind, over-promoted, having been advanced three ranks in as many months, Carteaux was a man still unsure of his abilities. Like his colleague Lapoype, he planned to take Toulon by conventional siege warfare. The brash new artilleryman, however, had the ear of the représentants, with whom even generals did not dissent.

  As his seniors grudgingly accepted the inevitable, Buonaparte took effective action. Backed by the necessary authority within six weeks he had assembled over 100 pieces of artillery, mostly of the useful, medium-calibre, 24-pounder long cannon and heavy mortars. In the meantime, working parties prepared two sites for batteries in the village of Brégaillon, just north of La Seyne. These had clear arcs down the Petite Rade and, in Revolutionary fashion, were named Sans-culottes and La Montagne. Anticipating the need of many more gunners, Buonaparte further exploited his influence to organize the enforced mobilization of all retired artillery men in the region and to initiate large-scale training.

  ON THE DATE of Hood’s entry, the General Committee of Toulon had, in all confidence, fairly thrown down the gauntlet to General Carteaux in the open letter which, provocatively, was dated ‘28th August, Year One of the reign of Louis XVII’. It read:

  A mass of honest Marseillais, victims of their great devotion to [living in] peace with their fellow citizens are, at this moment, detained at your order; they groan in your shackles; and, after having wiped clean [the effects] of all the outrages from which their recognized probity should absolve them, await in horrible confinement the death reserved for blackguards.

  Is it you, General, who has authorized this iniquitous abuse of power? And are you able to accept that these atrocities are committed on your orders? … We cannot believe that you do not have it within your power to cease these bloody actions of despotic authority, but if these hideous executions continue to soil the walls of Marseille, the General Committee of the Sections warns you of the indignation that has gripped the people of Toulon, who carry [the desire] to exact exemplary vengeance.

  We retain here two députés of the Convention, and the parents of two others, whom we reserve as hostages; and we declare to you that they will be subjected to the same [punishment] as you have inflicted on innocent victims, of whom you claim to be protectors.

  The letter continued with the underlying justification for this bold front: ‘The English, already one with us, and our friends, have brought about our security. Thirty thousand men, whether English or Spanish, will soon be ready to assist in our vengeance; our city and Marseille are under their protection.’

  The growling response from représentants Gasparin, Escudier and Saliceti was, in contrast, dated ‘du Bausset, le 14 séptembre, l’an second de la république française’. It was addressed to those who had gathered in Toulon to oppose the principles that had ‘raised the banner of revolution, [participating in] a terrible treason which had delivered that city into the hands of the enemies of the republic’. It charged the directory of the départmente of the Var to arrest, according to law, all those not domiciled in the town, and regarded as émigrés.

  The représentants with the Army of Italy, the much-feared Barras and Fréron, also wrote in response to a similar missive, urging not only the arrest of ‘une infinité de mauvais citoyens … se sont réfugiés à Toulon’ (‘a huge number of renegade citizens … [who] have taken refuge in Toulon’) but also the sequestration of the estates ‘furnished or unfurnished’ of all those of the town’s citizens who remained ‘uncommunicative’.

  There continued a war of words, much of it plain rhetoric but some of it more specific and of ominous portent. The Moniteur gazette of 11 September published the National Convention’s latest decree. Of its ten articles, the first stated that: ‘Trogoff, contre-amiral, commandant l’escadre de Toulon; Chaussegros, capitaine des armes, et Puissant, ordonnateur de la marine du même port, sont déclarés traîtres à la patrie.’ As traitors, their estates were forfeit to the state.

  Rear Admiral Saint-Julien, by contrast, was given honourable mention, more for his stand against the great treason than for any particular skills shown by him in opposing it. His lack of foresight had been condemned in detail by Puissant, who claimed that in the days prior to Hood’s entry, a time when much of the French squadron was minded to oppose the British, Saint-Julien not only failed to issue the appropriate instructions but also gave no positive leadership and, for much of the time, was the worse for drink.

  Like the two outlawed with him, Puissant had been a stout supporter of the new republic until overtaken by events. He had certainly made every effort to keep the arsenal free of the effects of local upheavals. His vitriolic outbursts were now directed at those contemporaries, such as Saint-Julien,
who were being promoted to the lower order of heroes in the Revolutionary pantheon.

  It is possible, indeed, that Puissant was not the committed traitor that the National Convention had branded him for, on 9 September, the very date of his condemnation, he was also the subject of a despatch from Elphinstone to Hood. ‘Two men of credit’ had declared Puissant to be a ‘commis’ (agent) of the Paris Jacobins and acting under their direction. ‘He obeys orders’, it was stated, ‘with the utmost dilatoriness.’ It was probable that he greatly disliked the idea of collaboration but, in making his sentiments obvious, earned the suspicion of both sides.

  That the ensuing struggle would be personal and bloody was hinted at in Article IV of the same decree. All English [sic] personnel captured on French soil were to be regarded as hostages for the actions of Admiral Hood and the Toulon sections toward the imprisoned représentants Baille and Beauvais, the wife and child of General Lapoype and ‘et des autres patriots opprimés et incarérés à Toulon’ (‘other patriots oppressed and incarcerated in Toulon’).

  Even as both sides squared up for a final decision at Toulon, as threats and insults, decrees and proclamations flew back and forth, the Convention in Paris received more stunningly bad news. The Brest fleet had mutinied on 13 September.

  It has already been related how, since the previous May, Vice Admiral Morard de Galles had been slowly assembling a fleet in the anchorage in the lee of the Quiberon peninsula. Troubled by the extent of the counterrevolution in the Vendée and in Brittany, the Convention reasonably assumed that the British would take advantage of the situation to land an expeditionary force. Morard de Galles’s growing strength was intended as what, today, would be termed a ‘rapid reaction force’, charged with the disruption and defeat of any such landing during its vulnerable initial phase.

  His crews had settled to a new disciplinary regime where protestations of patriotism and endless political meetings were deemed more beneficial than the constant exercise of the fleet. Only through the latter, however, could the fleet be welded into an efficient entity, capable of meeting the British on equal terms. The British, indeed, were expected imminently, as conditions for their involvement were very favourable, with the whole of the local coastline outside the main centres being under rebel control and abounding in good anchorages.

  Morard de Galles had been ordered to patrol especially the waters between the Ile de Groix (off Lorient) and Belle Ile (off the Quiberon peninsula). This he did, but the poor seamanship thus displayed only served to emphasize the level of inefficiency to which the French navy had been allowed to sink. As offshore incarceration extended from weeks to months, the insubordination of the lower deck grew worse. A secondary purpose in keeping the crews at sea was to deny them the opportunity to desert, and to isolate them from the counter-revolutionary influences that the suspicious, even paranoid, minds of the Convention and local sections were convinced permeated the city of Brest. Because of hostility elsewhere ashore, crews could not be landed for recreational purposes, and corrosive inactivity took its inevitable toll. Within a mile of their own shores, personnel were suffering from scurvy and the effects of contaminated drinking water.

  Despite the admiral’s increasingly gloomy reports to Paris, his orders stood. When, on 10 August, news came of the acceptance by the republic of its new constitution, celebration was in order and Morard de Galles summoned his commanding officers to a reception aboard the flagship. Discussion turned to criticism of the fleet’s situation. Autumn was fast approaching and seasonal south-westerly gales could be expected. From this quarter the anchorage enjoyed only limited cover from the peninsula and offshore islands. As the mainland would, in those circumstances, become one long lee shore, the fleet required either a better anchorage or more searoom.

  The seamen were not adequately clothed for colder weather and their need for shore leave was obvious, leading the senior officers to propose that the fleet should move 100 miles up the coast to its base in Brest. The admiral duly contacted the minister of marine and, for once, was rewarded with a prompt and unequivocal response. It was, however, unfavourable. He was reminded that, as commander-in-chief, the responsibility for the fleet was his. His instructions he received from Paris and had nothing to do with any council of subordinate officers. The importance of his mission was stressed and existing instructions were to be observed until the end of the month.

  Evidence of growing unrest abounded in the generally surly mood of the men, and there were reported cases of minor sabotage. Early in September came orders to form and detach a squadron to intercept a large allied convoy, known to be on its way to Spain and the Mediterranean from Dutch ports. Morard de Galles protested that his fleet and crews were no longer in a condition to mount such an operation while, tactically, it made no sense to divide his forces if the British were to be expected at any time.

  Before this problem could be resolved, news came through of the defection at Toulon. Rumour then abounded until, on 12 September, commanding officers were able to muster their crews, to read them the Convention’s official announcement of that event. The result was a general disaffection that, virtually simultaneously, affected the whole fleet. It was not, however, either the republic or the Convention against which the seamen directed their anger but those they saw as directly responsible for the appalling conditions under which they existed. Deputations visited the flagship, and senior officers addressed the crews of each private ship. None the less, the admiral was obliged to inform Paris that, should he order the fleet, or any part of it, to sea, his instruction would simply be ignored.

  On 15 September the fleet remained under Quiberon in a state of barely contained fury as it awaited the arrival of a représentant en mission, the outcome of whose visit could have dire consequences for the principals involved. He, Bernard-Thomas Tréhouart, arrived five days later and, observing the state of things, immediately ordered a return to Brest.

  Here, the fleet was divided into groups, classed according to their degree of non-cooperation. Each ship was separately quarantined as depositions were taken to identify the main agitators. Several had already been put in custody before 7 October, on which date arrived Jeanbon Saint-André with unlimited authority to crush the rebellion. Jeanbon was convinced that a ‘federalist’ plot was afloat to destroy the fighting abilities of the French republic’s fleet. This, he maintained, had succeeded temporarily in Toulon but, although he detected adequate evidence of it in Brest, resolute action would prevent a repetition. Once again, the popular response was to blame the officer corps which, despite its tribulations to date, still contained many of aristocratic origin. Many of these were popular with their crews and of uncontested professional ability.

  The overall result of Jeanbon’s investigations was not the mass punishment that might have been expected. Once again, the lower deck and junior officers were able to convince their interrogators that they represented that undefined force, the will of the people, and were acting against repressive elements that still existed in the service. Commanding officers, when pressed, declared that their crews were not in a state of mutiny but merely expressing their rights as free citizens.

  Montagnard dogma might well have agreed with such nonsense but Jeanbon was faced with a fleet which, quite simply, could not do its job. One way or another, it had to be brought back into a state of effectiveness. Once again, the easiest course was to blame the officers. Jeanbon’s report recommended a final ‘purification’ of the navy, with the ‘full, complete, absolute dismissal of all the ex-nobles’. The ‘eternal plots of [this] caste’, he went on, ‘condemns it irrevocably to political nonexistence.’

  Morard de Galles was, to his own relief, dismissed from his troublesome command but, in all truth, could be accused of nothing worse than being ineffective. Imprisoned briefly, he suffered no more than having his naval career put ‘on hold’ for some years. A few lesser officers were tried and executed to give the illusion of effective action but the main outcome was a policy of
retaining the ‘Bleus’, sacking all who were of aristocratic background or of the old Grand Corps, and replacing them with officers from the merchant service, many of them patriotic firebrands known, popularly, as ‘pistols’.

  The French navy thus continued in its cycle of regular upheaval. Under yet more men promoted beyond their experience or ability, there re-emerged a sort of order. This, however, was not synonymous with efficiency.

  LORD MULGRAVE ARRIVED in Toulon on 7 September from Turin in order to reassume his duties as colonel of the 31st Regiment. Admiral Hood, who had a high opinion of him, requested London to promote him brigadier in order to improve his ranking relative to allied officers, but Dundas preferred to transfer Major General O’Hara from Gibraltar and to appoint him governor of Toulon in place of Rear Admiral Goodall.

  Among the multiplicity of problems that beset Admiral Hood was the presence of about 5,000 French seamen who had remained loyal to Saint-Julien and the Revolution and who had been promised repatriation. Mostly from Brittany, they were known to the local French as ‘Ponentais’ or ‘Westerners’. Having disarmed their ships under varying degrees of sufferance, they now took to roaming the streets. Emboldened by the comparatively slight presence of allied troops, they quickly became a threatening nuisance, unsettling an already apprehensive populace and the large number of refugees. Hood could not afford to redeploy further troops to patrol the town. He was also aware of strongly republican elements in the town, currently laying low. Given time, these would inevitably collude with the leaders of the seamen to create a major problem.

  On 13 September, Hood voiced his fears in a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty, stating that ‘although kept in constant alarm by Carteaux’s army in the West and that of Piedmont in the East … I am more afraid of the enemy within’. He had been assured by the General Committee on 22 August that what he described as ‘these turbulent, disaffected Seamen’ would be repatriated but, failing any action, he now took the initiative.