Napoleon Bonaparte leading the attack at the Siege of Toulon, 17th December 1793.
The Siege of Toulon (18 September - 18 December 1793) was an
early Republican victory over a Royalist rebellion in the Southern French city of
Toulon. It is also often known as the Fall of Toulon.
The troops of the army said to be of the
"Carmagnoles", under the command of General Jean François Carteaux,
arrived at Toulon on 8 September, after those troops had recovered Avignon and
Marseille, and then Ollioules. They joined up with the 6,000 men of the Alpine
Maritime Army, commanded by General Jean François Cornu de La Poype, who had
just taken La Valette-du-Var, and sought to take the forts of Mount Faron,
which dominated the city to the East. They were reinforced by 3,000 sailors
under the orders of Admiral de Saint Julien, who refused to serve the British
with his chief, Trogoff A further 5,000 soldiers under General Lapoype were
attached to the army to retake Toulon from the Army of Italy.
The Chief of Artillery, commander Elzear Auguste Donmartin,
having been wounded at Ollioules, had the young captain Napoleon Bonaparte
imposed upon him by the special representatives of the Convention and
Napoleon's friends —Augustin Robespierre and Antoine Christophe Saliceti.
Bonaparte had been in the area escorting a convoy of powder wagons en route to
Nice and had stopped in to pay his respects to his fellow Corsican, Saliceti.
Bonaparte had been present in the army since Avignon, and was imposed in this
way despite the mutual antipathy between these two men.
Despite the mutual dislike between Bonaparte and his
commanding officer, the young artillery officer was able to muster an artillery
force that was worthy of a siege of Toulon and the fortresses that were quickly
built by England in its immediate environs. He was able to requisition
equipment and cannon from the surrounding area. Guns were taken from
Marseilles, Avignon and the Army of Italy. The local populace, which was eager
to prove its loyalty to the republic which it had recently rebelled against,
was blackmailed into supplying the besieging force with animals and supplies.
His activity resulted in the acquisition of 100 guns for the force. With the
help of his friends, the deputies Saliceti and Augustin Robespierre, who held
power of life and death, he was able to compel retired artillery officers from
the area to re-enlist. The problem of manning the guns was not remedied by this
solution alone, and under Bonaparte's intensive training he instructed much of
the infantry in the practice of employing, deploying and firing the artillery
that his efforts had recently acquired.
However, in spite of this effort, Bonaparte was not as
confident about this operation as was later his custom. The officers serving
with him in the siege were incompetent, and he was becoming concerned about the
needless delays due to these officers' mistakes. He was so concerned that he
wrote a letter of appeal to the Committee of Public Safety requesting
assistance. To deal with his superiors who were wanting in skill, he proposed
the appointment of a general for command of the artillery, succeeding himself,
so that "... (they could) 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".
After some reconnaissance, Bonaparte conceived a plan which
envisaged the capture of the forts of l'Eguillette and Balaguier, on the hill
of Cairo, which would then prevent passage between the small and large harbours
of the port, so cutting maritime resupply, necessary for those under siege.
Carteaux, reluctant, sent only a weak detachment under Major General Delaborde,
which failed in its attempted conquest on 22 September. The allies now alerted,
built "Fort Mulgrave", so christened in honour of the British
commander, Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave, on the summit of the hill. It
was supported by three smaller ones, called Saint-Phillipe, Saint-Côme, and
Saint-Charles. The apparently impregnable collection was nicknamed, by the
French, "Little Gibraltar".
Bonaparte was dissatisfied by the sole battery—called the
"Mountain", positioned on the height of Saint-Laurent since 19
September. He established another, on the shore of Brégallion, called the
"sans-culottes". Hood attempted to silence it, without success, but
the British fleet was obliged to harden its resolve along the coast anew,
because of the high seabed of Mourillon and la Tour Royale. On the first of
October, after the failure of General La Poype against the "Eastern
Fort" of Faron, Bonaparte was asked to bombard the large fort of
Malbousquet, whose fall would be required to enable the capture of the city. He
therefore requisitioned artillery from all of the surrounding countryside,
holding the power of fifty batteries of six cannon apiece. Promoted to Chief of
Battalion on 19 October, he organised a grand battery, said to be "of the
Convention", on the hill of Arènes and facing the fort, supported by those
of the "Camp of the Republicans" on the hill of Dumonceau, by those
of the "Farinière" on the hill of Gaux, and those of the "Poudrière"
at Lagoubran.
On 11 November, Carteaux was dismissed and replaced by
Doppet, formerly a doctor, whose indecision would cause an attempted surprise
against Fort Mulgrave to fail on the 16th. Aware of his own incompetence, he
resigned. He was succeeded by a career soldier, Dugommier, who immediately
recognised the virtue of Bonaparte's plan, and prepared for the capture of
Little Gibraltar. On the 20th, as soon as he arrived, the battery
"Jacobins" was established, on the ridge of l'Evescat. Then, on the
left, on 28 November, the battery of the "Men Without Fear", and then
on 14 December, the "Chasse Coquins" were constructed between the
two. Two other batteries were organized to repel the eventual intervention of
the allied ships, they were called "The Great Harbour" and the
"Four Windmills".
Pressured by the bombardment, the Anglo-Neapolitans executed
a sortie, and took hold of the battery of the "Convention". A
counter-attack, headed by Dugommier and Bonaparte, pushed them back and the
British general, O'Hara, was captured. He initiated surrender negotiations with
Robespierre the Younger and Antoine Louis Albitte and the Federalist and
Royalist battalions were disarmed.
Following O'Hara's capture, Dugommier, Lapoype, and
Bonaparte (now a colonel) launched a general assault during the night of 16
December. Around midnight, the assault began on Little Gibraltar and the
fighting continued all night. Bonaparte was injured in the thigh by a British
sergeant with a bayonet. However, in the morning, the position having been
taken, Marmont was able to place artillery there, against l'Eguillette and
Balaguier, which the British had evacuated without confrontation on the same
day. During this time, Lapoype finally was able to take the forts of Faron and
Malbousquet. The allies then decided to evacuate by their maritime route.
Commodore Sydney Smith was instructed by Hood to have the delivery fleet and
the arsenal burnt; this has been described as the "most crippling blow to
the French navy in the second half of the 18th century".
The troops of the Convention entered the city on 19
December. The Suppression, directed by Paul Barras and Stanislas Fréron, was
extremely bloody. It is estimated that between 800 and 2,000 prisoners were
shot or slain by bayonet on Toulon's Champ de Mars. Bonaparte, treated for his
injuries by Jean François Hernandez, was not present at the massacre. Promoted
to Brigadier General on 22 December, he was already on his way to his new post
in Nice as the artillery commander for the Italian Army. A gate, which
comprises part of the old walls of the city of Toulon, evokes his departure; a
commemorative plaque has been affixed there. This gate is called the Porte
d'Italie.
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