The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  For his part, Buonaparte had little respect for his nominal superiors. Carteaux had been promoted—in typical revolutionary fashion—from the rank of colonel to that of commander in chief through the intermediate grades of brigadier and major general in the space of only three months, and was clearly not up to the responsibilities and complexities of his present exalted position. Carteaux lost no time in demonstrating his inefficiency by insisting on siting a battery near the gorge of Oulioules, supposedly intended to bring fire on the Allied fleet; when it opened fire, however, it was immediately discovered that the guns had been placed well out of range of their target. Furthermore, he ordered his gunners to heat their shot in their cooking-pots for want of the proper equipment; and, worst of all, he took (virtually) no steps to gather siege material during the two weeks that had elapsed since the defection of Toulon. This was hardly an impressive record.

  With his accustomed energy, the newcomer tried to remedy affairs. Backed by Saliceti’s vast influence, and also that of Paul Barras (another contact that was to prove of the greatest importance in the future), Buonaparte supervised the construction of two batteries—de la Montagne and des Sans-Culottes—on a hillside overlooking the western shores of the Petite Rade. After a short bombardment on September 20, Buonaparte forced Admiral Lord Hood to move his shipping closer to Toulon—in other words, well into the proposed trap. Two days later, by sheer force of persuasion, Buonaparte induced Carteaux to attack Le Caire. However, the commander in chief designated only a handful of men and guns for the operation and it failed miserably. Even worse, the Allies suddenly woke up to the strategical significance of Point l’Eguilette, and at once sent out a considerable force to occupy the promontory more strongly. Working like moles, the British engineers rapidly built a large and imposing earthwork known as Fort Mulgrave—nicknamed “le petit Gibraltar” by the French—on the height overlooking the point, arming it with twenty heavy cannon and four mortars. Once this was complete, even the sanguine Buonaparte had to recognize the unpalatable fact that the execution of his master plan would be no simple or quick matter.

  Meanwhile Buonaparte was hard at work using every possible means to collect the necessary equipment and cannon. He made requisitions here, there and everywhere. Guns were whisked away from Marseilles, from Avignon, from the Army of Italy. Horses and supplies were extorted from the unwilling peasantry by clever use of blackmail. “The sans-culottes of the Midi have only one wish—and that is to purge the territory of the Republic of all tyrants,” he wrote to a Commissary at Valence, no doubt mindful of their recent disloyal conduct. “To achieve this promptly we must procure horses for the artillery park…. The Department of Drome, which has given such proof of its republican spirit, must provide you with considerable resources…. requisition enough horses to form four brigades, and as many oxen as are required for two more—in all 300 animals.”11

  From the outset, however, Buonaparte was dogged by administrative difficulties and confusions; ten-inch mortars arrived with twelve-inch am munition; Marseilles produced six eight-inch mortars but not a single bomb. Buonaparte was continually extemporizing solutions to such problems: hearing, for instance, that Lieutenant Colonel Gassendi of the artillery was near Grenoble on November 4, he requested him to make a detour by way of Saint-Etienne to collect some 10,000 spare musket barrels.12 By dint of superhuman exertions, in the end he was able to collect almost one hundred guns, including a fair proportion of 24-pounders and long-range mortars. Manning them was another problem, but Buonaparte was not at a loss. At his request, the Députés compulsorily re-enlisted retired artillery officers living in the neighborhood, and bodies of infantry were put through intensive courses of gunnery instruction under the eagle eye of the senior gunner.

  All the time Buonaparte was chafing at the delays occasioned by his inefficient superiors and their general lack of purpose and decision. In the end (on October 25) he became so depressed with the prospects of the siege under the present management that he sent an appeal to the Committee of Public Safety for immediate assistance, even though it would involve his own supercession. “The first measure I propose is that you should send up to command the guns some general of artillery who will be able, if only by making use of his rank, to command respect and deal with a crowd of fools on the staff with whom one has constantly to argue and lay down the law in order to overcome their prejudices and make them take steps which theory and practice alike have shown to be axiomatic to any trained officer of this corps.”13 The same document also includes the first known written description of Napoleon’s plan to reduce Toulon by seizing l’Eguilette and establishing batteries on the tip of the promontory. His wrath was only slightly mollified by the news that he had been promoted chef de bataillon or major (October 18). In the end after long delays the Committee sent the aged Chevalier du Teil, the brother of Buonaparte’s old mentor at Auxonne; unfortunately du Teil was too old and infirm to do more than add his verbal support to Buonaparte’s schemes, but this was at least something.

  The main trouble with the conduct of the siege of Toulon was the profusion of plans. Everybody thought that he alone knew what needed to be done for the best; there was no real direction from the top. Buonaparte was convinced that he was right. Lapoype was equally adamant that Toulon should be attacked from the eastern side, and demonstrated his conviction by launching a premature and costly attack on his own authority against Mount Faron on October 1 which was eventually repulsed with heavy loss. Carteaux refused to make up his mind, but was fortunately posted away to take command of the Army of Italy on October 23.

  Any sanguine hopes, however, that “King Log” would be replaced by a more forceful commander were soon dashed, however, when a certain General Doppet (a doctor by profession) arrived to take over the army, a soldier with even less brain than his predecessor. Fortunately his tenure lasted less than three weeks—a fact not a little due to backstairs prompting by Major Buonaparte and his allies Saliceti and Barras—and he was replaced on November 16 by General Dugommier, an able and intelligent veteran. However Dugommier’s assumption of command was not altogether an unmixed blessing, for there arrived almost simultaneously the Committee of Public Safety’s own idea of how the siege should be prosecuted. Drawn up by a certain armchair idealist named d’Arcon, this plan called for the capture of Mount Faron (to Lapoype’s satisfaction), followed by the opening of regular siege lines—trenches, saps, mines and all the rest—and recommended the employment of an imaginary army of 150,000 soldiers for the task. This was ludicrous, but it needed tact to persuade the Parisian bureaucrats that they were wrong.

  Nevertheless, throughout this period of divided councils and indecision, Buonaparte quietly continued making his own preparations. Between October 15 and November 30 he set up a total of eleven new batteries—eight of them containing a total of thirty-eight heavy guns so sited as to neutralize Fort Mulgrave with crossfire, two more (mounting nine cannon) to oppose Fort Malbousquet on the northern shore of the Petite Rade, and the last to bring the fire of six long-range mortars to bear on the city and installations of Toulon itself.14

  Buonaparte was confident that these scientifically placed batteries would suffice to achieve the objects of what he termed the “first period” of the siege, namely the capture of l’Eguilette, the expulsion of the English fleet from La Petite Rade and the cover for a feint attack against the Faron mountain. If it proved necessary, in the “second period” more guns would be brought to bear against Fort Malbousquet prior to its capture by escalade; that achieved, it would only remain to concentrate fire against the arsenal of Toulon and batter a breach between the bastion of that name and its neighbor, le Marais.

  Some of these French batteries were very uncomfortably sited from the point of view of their gunners and garrisons. One in particular, situated immediately below Fort Mulgrave, enjoyed an evil reputation until Buonaparte hit on the idea of setting up a large board outside the entrance bearing the legend, “Batterie des hommes sans peur�
��; from that moment there was never a lack of volunteers for the exposed post.

  Thus weeks passed into months, and still Toulon defied the tricolor. At length on November 25 General Dugommier summoned a council of war—at which Buonaparte served as secretary—and it was decided to implement the scheme Buonaparte had always had in mind: namely, a massive bombardment against the defenses of the promontory, followed by a dawn attack against Fort Mulgrave supported by a feint attack against Mount Faron, and lastly, the establishment of a battery on Point l’Eguilette which could rake the British fleet with red-hot shot.

  However, four days later the Allied garrison conducted a sortie in strength from Fort Malbousquet and virtually destroyed the Battery of the Convention on the extreme left of the line, spiking the seven 24-pounders it contained. Dugommier and Buonaparte in person led up the counterattack, and a hot action ensued which Napoleon later recalled at St. Helena. After siting some guns to sweep the approaches to Ollioules lest the British General O’Hara should exploit his success and press on for the French field parks and stores, “I went over to one of the heights overlooking the lost battery … and with a battalion of 400 men crept along a trench covered with olive branches which led to the height where the battery was. This trench had been dug in order to bring up powder and other provisions. In this way I reached the foot of the battery without being discovered, and from there I directed a violent fire from right and left on the English and Neapolitans who were occupying the battery without it being possible for them to know whence this firing came. The Neapolitans returned the fire without aiming, believing that the English had fired on them. An officer wearing a red coat, whom we then took to be a colonel, climbed on to the breastwork to see what was taking place. A noncommissioned officer of the French battalion fired at him and fractured his arm. The officer we took for a colonel, and who turned out to be General O’Hara himself,* rolled to the foot of the battery which was on the side of the French.”15 Subsequently Buonaparte in person—or so he claimed—took this prize captive and ensured that he received good treatment, returning him his sword. Whether this tale be apocryphal or no, Buonaparte received a written tribute in Dugommier’s report to Paris: “Among those who most distinguished themselves and who gave me the most help in rallying the men and leading them forward are citizens Bonna Parte, Commandant of the Artillery, Arena and Cervoni, Adjutants-General.”16 The sortie was accordingly repulsed, losing 400 killed and 200 prisoners.

  The loss of their commanding general did nothing to rally the morale of the garrison of Toulon. After two more weeks of preparations—including the arrival of a new brigade under André Massena (December 14)—and heavy shelling, Dugommier finally authorized the assault on Fort Mulgrave for December 17. Early that morning, covered by an intense bombardment, 6,000 troops under General Muiron stormed Fort Mulgrave with success (at a cost of 1,000 casualties) while on the northeastern side of Toulon, Brigadier General Massena captured Fort d’Artigues; within a few hours Buonaparte had also made himself master of the smaller fortifications on Point l’Eguilette and the neighboring tower of Balaquier—having a horse killed under him and receiving a bayonet wound in the thigh in the process—and by late afternoon on the 18th a battery often guns was ready to sweep the inner harbor.

  This was the decisive development of the siege: the “moment of truth” when the equilibrium is broken. Hardly had Buonaparte opened fire on the British Fleet than Lord Hood ordered the evacuation of the Petite Rade. The same evening the British troops blew up the arsenal, clear proof that the siege was almost over. A certain naval post captain, Sir William Sidney-Smith, attempted to destroy the French shipping and stores in the basin, but succeeded only in burning ten vessels due to the insubordination of some Spanish assistants. A few hours later the last British and Allied troops sailed from Toulon, packing onto their crowded transports as many citizens of Toulon as possible. Finally, at 9:00

  A.M. on December 19, the Revolutionary forces took possession of Toulon.

  According to Napoleon’s Memoirs, there was no disgraceful massacre of the type that had taken place at Lyons. A few hundred collaborators were rounded up, tried by a special tribunal and then shot. According to Sir William Sidney-Smith, however, the revenge of the French Government was more drastic. “The royalists and the liberated convicts were driven into the great square of Toulon,” he wrote, “and were compressed together into one huge mass. Buonaparte, who then commanded the artillery, fired upon the people, and mowed them down like grass; those who had escaped his fire threw themselves down upon the ground, hoping to avoid their threatened doom, when the future Emperor of the French, taking advantage of the first moment of awful stillness which prevailed after the roaring of the cannon, exclaimed in a loud voice, ‘The vengeance of the French Republic is satisfied—rise and go to your homes,’ which summons the wretched people no sooner attempted to obey than a second murderous discharge of his artillery hurled them into eternity.”17 If this account of events be true, and Sir Sydney’s recollections are not wholly above suspicion—for he subsequently waged something of a personal vendetta against Napoleon’s reputation—the brutal streak in Buonaparte’s nature was clearly evident at an early date; in which case this incident at Toulon must be placed alongside the massacre of Jaffa as one of the most disgraceful episodes of his life. Be that as it may, the Convention, eager to wipe out all memory of the rebellion, ordered the name of the city to be changed to Port-au-Montagne and caused all public monuments and buildings to be destroyed as a token of reprisal.

  So ended the celebrated siege of Toulon. Although technically he was never more than artillery adviser to a succession of commanders in chief, Major Buonaparte was generally recognized as being the mastermind behind the success. On December 22 the Députés-en-Mission provisionally promoted him to the rank of brigadier general in recognition of his services, and this was subsequently confirmed by the Committee of Public Safety on February 16, 1794.

  It was a justified reward. By inspired use of knowledge acquired at Ajaccio and observations made during his many sea journeys to and from Toulon, Brigadier General Buonaparte had hit upon the secret of success by appreciating the military problem correctly. He had then doggedly pressed his views despite a host of practical discouragements and intentional snubs on the part of his superiors until he had won his way. Personally supervising the placing and construction of every battery, and taking part in several hand-to-hand combats with the foe in defense of his beloved guns. Of course the artillery was the true weapon for the task; as he wrote to the Committee in Paris, “It is the artillery that takes places; the infantry can only aid it.”18

  And so at last Napoleon Buonaparte had emerged onto the scene of European History. If Le Souper de Beaucaire helped him toward his initial opportunity, it was the conduct of the siege of Toulon that earned him his first military reputation. But it would be erroneous to believe that his brilliant career was safely assured after December 19, 1793; twenty-three years might be a young age to be promoted brigadier general, but in the French army of the time such preferment was no guarantee of future success. Indeed, since 1789, a series of French governments and their representatives had sacked no less than 680 general officers—or an average of 170 a year. At least half of these, moreover, had been executed by firing squad or the guillotine. Thus promotion to the higher ranks of the armed forces, as well as being a distinction, was also something of a hazard and a liability, with officious and militarily ignorant Députés-en-Mission only too ready to sign a general’s death warrant on the spot if he were so unfortunate as to lose a skirmish on one of their “bad days.” As we shall see in the next chapter, Brigadier General Buonaparte came close to sharing such a fate at least once in the ensuing months, and did in fact lose his new rank no less than three times as successive regimes in Paris followed one after another. A military career was far from being a boring or tedious affair in the uncertain days of the First French Republic.

  General O’Hara was commander of
the British troops and military governor of Toulon.

  3

  BRIGADIER GENERAL OF ARTILLERY

  The early development of Napoleon’s military experience had so far progressed with almost mathematical precision. As a probationary sous-lieutenant at Valence he learns to point a cannon and handle a ramrod. In the years that follow, he accumulates a vast store of learning, mainly drawn from books, supplementing this with a little experience in man-management and leadership in minor policing operations in Corsica and France, learning at first hand the characteristics of both regular and volunteer soldiery under a variety of conditions and coming to distrust the chameleon influence of politics on soldiering. Then, in the abortive expedition to La Maddalena, he learns to site and handle a battery in action—and also comes to recognize the difficulties involved in combined operations and the drawbacks of weak leadership at regimental level. Next, at Toulon, his horizons again widen—he virtually runs a major operation and, through personal contact with the abysmal efforts of Carteaux and Doppet, again comes to realize what opportunities lie before an able soldier. And now, in the two years that separate his emergence at Toulon from his promotion to an independent command in 1796, he practically directs the strategy of an entire army operating in an important theater of war.

  Buonaparte packed all this many-sided experience into the short span of eleven years and emerges to assume his first major command at the age of twenty-six. True, he was fortunate in his time; a career ouverte aux talents was a reality in the 1790s. Yet only the career of Alexander the Great bears comparison to that of Napoleon Buonaparte in respect of rapidity.

  The twenty-eight months between December 1793 and March 1796 saw the emergence of Napoleon the strategical planner, and also, on a lesser plane, of a political opportunist worthy of Machiavelli. The period can be studied from two points of view: first, as a period of theoretical preparation for the triumphs of 1796-97; secondly, as a period of none too steady consolidation of his personal position.