The siege of Toulon took place during the War of the First Coalition. Following the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, a Federalist revolt against the French First Republic broke out in the city of Toulon, France. The Federalists were soon supplanted by more numerous French Royalists, aided by the First Coalition, which sent forces to help them hold the city. An Anglo-Spanish fleet arrived on 28 August transporting 13,000 British, Spanish, Neapolitan and Sardinian troops. As Toulon was strategically vital, being a major naval port which was then host to a third of the French Navy's ships of the line, the French Republican government quickly moved to recapture the city.
French Republican troops soon arrived in the area around Toulon and began laying siege to the city. The defenders constructed several forts around Toulon to defend the city from Republican attacks, but these were eventually captured by the besiegers, who constructed several artillery batteries to bombard Toulon. This made the position of the defenders untenable, and a council of senior defending officers agreed to evacuate the city on 18 December. During the evacuation, British and Spanish forces burnt or captured several French warships, temporarily crippling much of the French Navy. Republican troops entered Toulon on 19 December and summarily executed up to 800 Royalist prisoners. One of the Republican commanders at the siege, Napoleon Bonaparte, would go on to enjoy a prodigious military career and eventually become Emperor of the French.
Background
After the arrest of the Girondist deputies on 2 June 1793, there followed a series of insurrections within the French cities of Lyon, Avignon, Nîmes, and Marseille known as Federalist revolts. In Toulon, the Federalists evicted the local chapter of the Jacobins, but were soon supplanted by more numerous French Royalists. Upon the announcement of the French Republic's recapture of Marseille and the Republican reprisals committed there, the commander of the Royalist forces in Toulon, Xavier Lebret d'Imbert, requested support from the First Coalition. On 28 August, a combined Anglo-Spanish fleet under British Admiral Sir Samuel Hood and Spanish Admiral Juan de Lángara arrived at Toulon transporting 13,000 British, Spanish, Neapolitan and Sardinian troops. D'Imbert delivered the port of Toulon to the Allies. Reinforcement ships arrived gradually: the allied forces participating in repelling the French siege included an army, marines, and local French oppositionists.
Toulon hoisted the royal flag, the fleur de lys, and d'Imbert declared the eight-year-old Louis XVII the king of France on 1 October. This result produced a potentially mortal situation for the French Republic, as the city had a key naval arsenal and was the base for 26 ships of the line (about one-third of the French Navy's total). Without this port, the French could not hope to challenge the Allies, and specifically the British, for command of the sea. In addition, Toulon's loss would send a dangerous signal to others preparing to revolt against the Republic. Although France had a large army due to its levée en masse, the Republic could not easily rebuild its navy, which had been the third largest in Europe, if the Allies, Royalists and Federalists destroyed or captured much of it. Both the strategic importance of the naval base and the prestige of the Revolution demanded that the French recapture Toulon.
Siege
I have no words to describe Buonaparte's merit: much technical skill, an equal degree of intelligence, and too much gallantry ...
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 Mont Faron, which dominated the city to the East. They were reinforced by 3,000 sailors under the orders of Admiral Jean René César de Saint-Julien de Chabon, who refused to join his defecting superior, Jean-Honoré de Trogoff de Kerlessy. A further 5,000 soldiers under General La Poype were attached to the army to retake Toulon from the Army of Italy.
The Chief of Artillery, Elzéar Auguste Cousin de Dommartin, having been wounded at Ollioules, had the young captain Napoleon Bonaparte imposed upon him by the special representatives of the National Convention and Bonaparte'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 the Avignon insurrection (July 1793), and was imposed on Dommartin in this way despite the antipathy between the two men.
Despite the mutual dislike, Bonaparte was able to muster an artillery force that was sufficient for a siege of Toulon and the fortresses that were quickly built by the British in its immediate environs. He was able to requisition equipment and cannon from the surrounding area. Guns were taken from Marseille, 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'Éguillette and Balaguier on the hill of Cairo (French: colline du Caire), 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 Henri François Delaborde, which failed in its attempted conquest on 22 September. The allies, now alerted, built Fort Mulgrave, named 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 assemblage 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 François Amédée Doppet, formerly a doctor, whose panic upon witnessing the death of his aide-de-camp beside him would cause an attempted attack against Fort Mulgrave on the 15th to fail. On the 17th, he was succeeded by General Jacques François 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 "Jacobin" 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 organised 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 Charles 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, La Poype, 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, La Poype 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.
Destruction of the French fleet
Lángara ordered Don Pedro Cotiella to take three ships into the arsenal to destroy the French fleet. Sir Sidney Smith, who had recently arrived, volunteered to accompany him with his ship Swallow and three British ships. Cotiella was tasked with sinking Toulon's hulks; one was a disarmed former British frigate captured during the American Revolutionary War, Montréal, and the other was the French frigate Iris. These ships contained the gunpowder stores for the entire fleet and due to the danger of explosion were anchored in the outer roads, some distance from the city. He was then instructed to enter the Old Arsenal and destroy the ships there. The dock gates had been barred against attack and manned by 800 former galley slaves freed during the retreat. Their sympathies were with the advancing Republicans so to ensure that they did not interfere, Smith kept his guns trained on them throughout the operation. His boats were spotted by the Republican batteries on the heights and cannonballs and shells landed in the arsenal, although none struck Smith's men. As darkness fell Republican troops reached the shoreline and contributed musketry to the fusillade; Smith replied with grapeshot from his boats' guns.
At 20:00 Captain Charles Hare brought the fire ship HMS Vulcan into the New Arsenal. Smith halted the ship across the row of anchored French ships of the line, and lit the fuses at 22:00. Hare was badly wounded by an early detonation as he attempted to leave his ship. Simultaneously, fire parties set alight the warehouses and stores ashore, including the mast house and the hemp and timber stores, creating an inferno across the harbour as Vulcan's cannons fired a last salvo at the French positions on the shore. With the fires spreading through the dockyards and New Arsenal, Smith began to withdraw. His force was illuminated by the flames, making an inviting target for the Republican batteries. As his boats passed the Iris, however, the powder ship suddenly and unexpectedly exploded, blasting debris in a wide circle and sinking two of the British boats. On Britannia all of the crew survived, but the blast killed the master and three men on Union.