Of those in the first category, only the Commerce de Marseille 120 and Pompée 74 were taken by the British. Six of the 74s were totally destroyed by fire, but the Tonnant 80 and four 74s, although damaged in various degrees, were later repaired by the French. The remaining four 74s were those used for reparation purposes. Of the five frigates, four were taken into the service of the Royal Navy and one given to the Sardinians. Only two of the corvettes were destroyed at the evacuation. Seven had already been put into British service (of which three were to be lost during the ensuing Corsican campaign). Of the other two, one assumed the Spanish flag, the other the Neapolitan.
Of the group refitting in the New Basin, the 120-gun Dauphin Royal was not burned by the Spanish party detailed for the task – was she the ‘flagship’ mentioned by Smith as having fired upon his demolition party? – although the 80 and one of the 74s were destroyed. The other 74, Puissant, under a French royalist crew, served with distinction throughout the campaign, eventually being taken over by the British. The sole frigate, although damaged by fire, was later repaired by the French.
With respect to the final group, the Spanish appear to have made little effort to carry out their task. Thus of the ships of the line, only the 80 and one 74 were total losses, the remaining six 74s being repaired by the French. From the five frigates, the Lutine was commissioned by the British, two were blown up when serving as powder magazines, while the remaining pair was refitted by the enemy, as were the two corvettes.
On the building ways were one 74 and a 40-gun frigate. Only the latter was destroyed.
It will be noted that, while the British commissioned, and eventually acquired, a significant number of the French ships, most of them frigates and corvettes, the Spanish took but one corvette into their service.
Of the British prizes, the huge Commerce de Marseille proved to be a white elephant. As was usual with French ships, she was well constructed and sailed well, but her hull form gave her an unacceptably deep draught. Worse, her scantlings proved to be inadequate, so that her hull was quickly strained by hard sailing. She was soon reduced in status, first to a store ship, then to a prison hulk, in which capacity she was broken up in 1802. More valuable was the Pompée 80, a Sané-designed ship whose fine characteristics went on to influence British design. She served until 1811 before also being reduced to prison service. As such, she lay in Portsmouth for many years and her name, anglicized to Pompey, curiously became the popular name for Portsmouth itself.
The only other line ship retained by the British, the Puissant 74, was never commissioned for sea service by the Royal Navy.
THE FRENCH SHIPS spared by the allies’ sins of omission went on to cause considerable nuisance in the Mediterranean. It was more than appropriate, therefore, that one of Admiral Hood’s most loyal admirers, Horatio Nelson, was able to rectify some of his senior’s errors at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798.
Here, in Aboukir Bay, the British fleet all but annihilated the French force that had brought Buonaparte’s army to Egypt. Of the enemy ships taken or destroyed, eight (one 120, one 80, five 74s and a frigate) had been among those recovered by the French following the allies’ evacuation of Toulon. As they comprised two-thirds of the force that had transported the army, it has to be conceded that General Callwell had a point when he concluded that, had Hood done his job properly, there would probably have been no French invasion of Egypt.
ALTHOUGH NELSON’S GREAT victory at Aboukir was fought nearly five years after the affair at Toulon, it was not quite the last of the reverberations thus created, for there remained the important business of the prize money. The dream of every sailor, an inducement that offset to a degree the rigours and dangers of naval service, prize money was calculated in accordance with arcane rules, made the more mysterious by the government’s overriding rights of interpretation. The result often meant that awards were paid a considerable time after the event. So it was with Toulon.
Hood’s own proclamation that the French squadron was being held in trust, for eventual return, precluded making any claim for capture. Subsequent events, of course, dictated that such a return was no longer feasible. Good planning, and a timely removal of the ships to a place of safekeeping would, therefore, have benefited Hood as much as the British nation. As it was, some were taken, others destroyed, some only damaged. Prize money as such was not usually paid for enemy ships destroyed; yet there were exceptions, for a delighted and relieved Parliament would be pleased to reward Nelson for ships destroyed at both Aboukir and at Copenhagen. A further exception would be in the award made to Vice Admiral Sir Andrew Mitchell, whose force accepted a surrendered Dutch fleet without a fight in 1799.
Due and eventual deliberation by a Committee of the Privy Council decided that a total award of £265,336 should be made, an amount apparently calculated only on the value of the ships and stores brought away. As commander-in-chief, Lord Hood was entitled to a share of one-eighth. The award was made in 1804, over a decade after the event, and the year in which Hood celebrated his eightieth birthday. None the less, he lived long enough to enjoy it, not dying until 1816, by which time his erstwhile nemesis, now Napoleon Bonaparte, was languishing on St Helena. A task well finished.
Afterword
IT IS A RATHER FUTILE occupation to speculate on the many ‘ifs’ of history, but it is difficult not to detect the influence of the Toulon affair extending even to the Second World War, a century and a half later.
Following the Dunkirk evacuation in May and June of 1940, Winston Churchill moved up from First Lord to Prime Minister, presiding over a British nation that hourly expected invasion. With the capitulation of France and the entry of Italy into the war, the Royal Navy had lost a powerful ally and gained an equally formidable foe, drastically shifting the balance of naval power. Now immobilized by armistice terms, a large proportion of the French fleet lay in Toulon, still its premier base in the Mediterranean. In various ports of the French colonies in Africa, however, lay further squadrons and units of the French navy. Those at Mers-el-Kebir (Algeria) and at Dakar (Senegal) were particularly powerful.
From a British perspective, there appeared every chance that the Germans would fail to honour the terms of their armistice with France, seizing the Toulon fleet to compensate for the considerable deficiencies in their own. In such an eventuality, an already unfavourable balance of power would shift even more disastrously against the Royal Navy.
Churchill was renowned for his deep sense and understanding of history and its lessons. He undoubtedly knew of the extent to which the French ships allowed to survive by Lord Hood so long before had continued to be a nuisance. He understood that, to minimize risk, the detached French squadrons must at all costs be prevented from joining the main fleet at Toulon. There was no room for half-measures, particularly at Mers-el-Kebir, where the squadron was within a day’s steaming of Toulon.
On 3 July 1940, therefore, the Admiralty ordered the heavy ships of Force H, under Admiral Somerville, to proceed to Mers-el-Kebir. Discussion began in an air of great urgency, the French senior officer, Admiral Gensoul, informing the British that under no circumstances would he allow his squadron to fall into enemy hands. The British responded that, while they did not doubt French intentions, they believed that the Germans could not be relied upon to abide by the terms of the armistice. Accordingly, Gensoul was presented with an ultimatum, with the options of joining the British to fight on as allies, to sail to a British port for internment, to sail to a French Caribbean port for supervised demilitarization, or to scuttle his ships where they lay. Failing acceptance of any of these, he would be fired on by the British.
French pride had already been badly hurt by their defeat, and Gensoul almost certainly did not wish to be seen as a latter-day Trogoff, supinely handing over his squadron to the British while under threat. He prevaricated for hours, communicating with Paris as Somerville’s capital ships stood off and on, in imminent danger from submarine attack.
Under heavy pres
sure from his government to resolve the issue, Somerville none the less continued the parley for nearly ten hours before being obliged, as a last resort, to open fire. The action was brief. Within minutes, nearly 1,300 Frenchmen lost their lives. By supreme irony, Somerville was wearing his flag in the battle cruiser HMS Hood. It had been a demonstration of ruthless violence, but it served to inform the world that Britain had the will to fight on.
France then lay partitioned and in the unoccupied south the Toulon fleet lay idle for twenty-eight months, except for such activity as it was permitted under the terms of the armistice. Then, in November 1942, the allies landed in North Africa and, on that pretext, Axis forces rolled into the French south. Toulon proved to be the primary objective and, on the 14th, there occurred a near re-enactment of the panic events of 1793, the fleet being scuttled even as the German army stormed into the arsenal.
This action confirmed two things. First, that the French did keep their word in doing everything possible to keep their fleet from falling into enemy hands, but second, it showed that the British suspicions had been right in assuming that, given the right circumstances, the enemy would not hesitate to try to seize it. Churchill, despite the enormity of the act at Mers-el-Kebir, had been right.
Select Bibliography
Allerdyce, Alexander, Memoir of the Hon. George Keith Elphinstone, KB, Viscount Keith, Admiral of the Red (Edinburgh and London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1882)
Bertaud, Jean-Paul (trans. R. R. Palmer), The Army of the French Revolution. From Citizen-Soldiers to Instrument of Power (Princeton: University Press, 1988)
Brenton, Edward Pelham, The Naval History of Great Britain from 1783 to 1836 (London: Henry Colburn, 1837)
Callwell, General C. E., Military Operations and Maritime Preponderance: Their Relations and Interdependence (London: Blackwood, 1905)
Chevalier, Edouard, Histoire de la marine française sous la première République (Paris: Hachette, 1886)
Clowes, Sir William Laird, The Royal Navy. A History (7 vols.) (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1897–1903)
Cormack, William S., Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy. 1789–1794 (Cambridge: University Press, 1995)
Cottin, Paul, Toulon et les Anglais en 1793, d’après des documents inédits (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1898)
Crook, Malcolm, Toulon in War and Revolution. From the ancien régime to the Restoration. 1750–1820 (Manchester: University Press, 1991)
Fortescue, The Hon. J. W., A History of the British Army (13 vols.) (London: Macmillan & Co., 1906)
Hampson, Norman, A Social History of the French Revolution (London: Routledge, 1956)
Hampson, Norman, La Marine de l’An II. Mobilisation de la Flotte de l’Océan. 1793–1794 (Paris: Libraire Marcel Rivière, 1959)
Herbert, John Beresford, Life and Services of Admiral Sir Thos. Foley, GCB, Rear Admiral of Great Britain (Cardiff: Daniel Owen, 1884)
Hibbert, Christopher, The French Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982)
Hood, Dorothy, The Admirals Hood (London: Hutchinson, 1941)
Hoste, Lady Harriet, Memoirs and Letters of Captain Sir Edward Hoste, Bart, RN KCB KMT (2 vols.) (London: Richard Bentley, 1835)
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Lacour-Gayet, Georges, La marine militaire de la France sous le règne de Louis XVI (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1905)
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Index
Adet, ref1
Admiralty, ref1
Aigle, ref1, ref2
Albert de Rions, comte d’, ref1, ref2, ref3
American War of Independence, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Amsterdam, ref1
Anselme, General, ref1, ref2
Antwerp, ref1, ref2
Apollon, ref1, ref2
Argod, Commandant, ref1
Army of Italy, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8
Army of the Alps, ref1, ref2
Army of the Pyrenees, ref1
Artigues, ref1
Artois, comte d’, ref1
Assembly of Notables, ref1, ref2, ref3
Austria: and the Netherlands, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4; and Pillnitz Declaration, ref5; Louis XVI declares war on, ref6; invades France, ref7, ref8; war with France, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12; support in Italy, ref13, ref14; split in the alliance, ref15; hopes of troops for Toulon from, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19
Avignon, ref1, ref2, ref3
Bailly, Jean-Sylvain, ref1, ref2
Balaguier, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Baltic, ref1, ref2
Barbados, ref1, ref2
Barham, Lord (Sir Charles Middleton), ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Barlow, Robert, ref1
Barras, Paul, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Basterot, François-Gabriel de, ref1, ref2
Batavian Republic, ref1
Batterie de la Convention, ref1, ref2, ref3
Batty, Richard, ref1
Belgium, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Belle Ile, ref1, ref2
Belluno, Duke of (Claude-Victor Perrin), ref1
Beresford, Charles, ref1
Bernier, Abbé, ref1
Berwick, ref1
Bigot de Morogues, ref1
Board of Admiralty see Admiralty Bordeaux, ref1
Bourgainville, comte de, ref1
Boyd, Sir Robert, ref1, ref2, ref3
Brégaillon, ref1, ref2
Brereton, Captain, ref1, ref2
Brest, ref1; d’Orvilliers at, ref2; disaffection, ref3, ref4; order restored, ref5; Childers’ incident, ref6; fleet mutinies, ref7; deportees from Toulon retained, ref8; arsenal, ref9
Bridport, Lord see Hood, Alexander
Brienne, Loménie de, Archbishop of Toulouse, ref1, ref2
Brignole, ref1
Brisbane, Lieutenant, ref1
Britain: and American Revolution, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4; industrial revolution, ref5; Baltic trade, ref6, ref7; and the Scheldt, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11; naval power, ref12, ref13; reactions to French Revolution, ref14; French threat in the Channel, ref15; French invasion attempt, ref16; loss of American colonies, ref17, ref18; concern over Revolutionary ideas, ref19; boosts military manpower, ref20; and the West Indies, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24; allies at start of war, ref25; takes Dutch overseas colonies, ref26; and France’s move on the Netherlands, ref27; France declares war on, ref28, ref29; problems in the dockyards, ref30; problems in relations with Spain, ref31; intentions in France, ref32; priorities for troop allocation, ref33; West Indies, ref34, ref35; support for Louis XVII, ref36; promises more troops to Hood, ref37; see also Royal Na
vy
Brûlé, ref38
Brunet, General, ref1
Brunet, J-J, ref1
Brunswick, Duke of, ref1, ref2
Brunswick Declaration (1792), ref1
Buonaparte, Napoleon: earlier career, ref1; joins Carteaux, ref2; plans to take Toulon, ref3, ref4; starts to harass Petite Rade, ref5; relations with Carteaux, ref6; given a free hand, ref7, ref8; improves effectiveness of his forces, ref9; hones plans to take Toulon, ref10; final assault, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14; wounded, ref15, ref16; promoted, ref17; and Corsica, ref18
Burgoyne, General, ref1
Calonne, Charles-Alexandre de, ref1, ref2, ref3
Campbell, Archibald, ref1
Campbell, Duncan, ref1
Cap Brun, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Cap Cépet, ref1
Cape Henry, ref1
Cape Sicié, ref1
Carteaux, Jean-François, ref1, ref2: occupies Avignon, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6; advance on Marseille, ref7; advances on Toulon, ref8, ref9; first skirmishes, ref10, ref11; appraises Toulon’s weaknesses, ref12; Buonaparte visits, ref13; Toulon’s letter to, ref14; relations with Buonaparte, ref15, ref16; troops increase, ref17; Hood inflicts reverse on, ref18; diverts the river Las, ref19; Lapoype and, ref20, ref21, ref22; moved to Army of Italy, ref23
Castries, marquise de, ref1, ref2, ref3
Catherine II, Empress of Russia, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Cervoni, ref1, ref2
Channel Islands, ref1
Chapman, Frederik Hendrik af, ref1
Chatham, Earl of, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Cherbourg, ref1
Childers, ref1
Choiseul, duc de, ref1
Churchill, Sir Winston, ref1
Cléopatre, ref1
Cochrane, ref1, ref2
The Fall of Toulon Page 36
