Toulon.
The Jacobin Power Threatened -- Buonaparte's Fate -- His
Appointment at Toulon -- His Ability as an Artillerist --
His Name Mentioned with Distinction -- His Plan of
Operations -- The Fall of Toulon -- Buonaparte a General of
Brigade -- Behavior of the Jacobin Victors -- A Corsican
Plot -- Horrors of the French Revolution -- Influence of
Toulon on Buonaparte's Career.[39]
[Footnote 39: The authorities for this important epoch
are, primarily, Jung: Bonaparte et son temps; Masson:
Napoléon inconnu; but above all, Chuquet: La jeunesse de
Napoléon, Vol. III, Toulon. The Mémoires of Barras are
utterly worthless, the references in Las Cases, Marmont,
and elsewhere have value, but must be controlled. The
archives of the war department have been thoroughly
examined by several investigators, the author among the
number. The results have been printed in many volumes to
which the above-mentioned authors refer, and many of the
original papers are printed in whole or in part by
them.]
[Sidenote: 1793.]
Coupled as it was with other discouraging circumstances, the "treason
of Toulon" struck a staggering blow at the Convention. The siege of
Lyons was still in progress; the Piedmontese were entering Savoy, or
the department of Mont Blanc, as it had been designated after its
recent capture by France; the great city of Bordeaux was ominously
silent and inactive; the royalists of Vendée were temporarily
victorious; there was unrest in Normandy, and further violence in
Brittany; the towns of Mainz, Valenciennes, and Condé had been
evacuated, and Dunkirk was besieged by the Duke of York. The loss of
Toulon would put a climax to such disasters, destroy the credit of the
republic abroad and at home, perhaps bring back the Bourbons. Carnot
had in the meantime come to the assistance of the Committee of Safety.
Great as a military organizer and influential as a politician, he had
already awakened the whole land to a still higher fervor, and had
consolidated public sentiment in favor of his plans. In Dubois de
Crancé he had an able lieutenant. Fourteen armies were soon to move
and fight, directed by a single mind; discipline was about to be
effectively strengthened because it was to be the discipline of the
people by itself; the envoys of the Convention were to go to and fro,
successfully laboring for common action and common enthusiasm in the
executive, in both the fighting services, and in the nation. But as
yet none of these miracles had been wrought, and, with Toulon lost,
they might be forever impossible.
Such was the setting of the stage in the great national theater of
France when Napoleon Buonaparte entered on the scene. The records of
his boyhood and youth by his own hand afford the proof of what he was
at twenty-four. It has required no searching analysis to discern the
man, nor trace the influences of his education. Except for short and
unimportant periods, the story is complete and accurate. It is,
moreover, absolutely unsophisticated. What does it show? A well-born
Corsican child, of a family with some fortune, glad to use every
resource of a disordered time for securing education and money,
patriotic at heart but willing to profit from France, or indeed from
Russia, England, the Orient; wherever material advantage was to be
found. This boy was both idealist and realist, each in the high degree
corresponding to his great abilities. He shone neither as a scholar
nor as an officer, being obdurate to all training,--but by independent
exertions and desultory reading of a high class he formed an ideal of
society in which there prevailed equality of station and purse, purity
of life and manners, religion without clericalism, free speech and
honorable administration of just laws. His native land untrammeled by
French control would realize this ideal, he had fondly hoped: but the
Revolution emancipated it completely, entirely; and what occurred? A
reversion to every vicious practice of medievalism, he himself being
sucked into the vortex and degraded into a common adventurer.
Disenchanted and bitter, he then turned to France. Abandoning his
double rôle, his interest in Corsica was thenceforth sentimental; his
fine faculties when focused on the realities of a great world suddenly
exhibit themselves in keen observation, fair conclusions, a more than
academic interest, and a skill in the conduct of life hitherto
obscured by unfavorable conditions. Already he had found play for all
his powers both with gun and pen. He was not only eager but ready to
deploy them in a higher service.
The city of Toulon was now formally and nominally invested--that is,
according to the then accepted general rules for such operations, but
with no regard to those peculiarities of its site which only master
minds could mark and use to the best advantage. The large double bay
is protected from the southwest by a broad peninsula joined to the
mainland by a very narrow isthmus, and thus opens southeastward to the
Mediterranean. The great fortified city, then regarded as one of the
strongest places in the world, lies far within on the eastern shore of
the inner harbor. Excellent authorities considered it impregnable. It
is protected on the landward side by an amphitheater of high hills,
which leave to the right and left a narrow strip of rolling country
between their lower slopes and the sea. On the east Lapoype commanded
the left wing of the besieging revolutionary force. The westward pass
is commanded by Ollioules, which Carteaux had selected for his
headquarters. On August twenty-ninth his vanguard seized the place,
but they were almost immediately attacked and driven out by the allied
armies, chiefly English troops brought in from Gibraltar. On September
seventh the place was retaken. The two wings were in touch and to
landward the communications of the town were completely cut off. In
the assault only a single French officer fell seriously wounded, but
that one was a captain of artillery. Salicetti and his colleagues had
received from the minister of war a charge to look out for the citizen
Buonaparte who wanted service on the Rhine. This and their own
attachment determined them in the pregnant step they now took. The
still unattached captain of artillery, Napoleon Buonaparte, was
appointed to the vacant place. As far as history is concerned, this is
a very important fact; it is really a matter of slight import whether
Cervoni or Salicetti gave the impulse. At the same time his mother
received a grant of money, and while favors were going, there were
enough needy Buonapartes to receive them. Salicetti and Gasparin,
being the legates of the Convention, were all-powerful. The latter
took a great fancy to Salicetti's friend and there was no opposition
when the former exercised his power. Fesch and Lucien were both
provided with places, being made storekeepers in the commissary
department. Barras, who was the recruiting-officer of the Convention
at Toulon, claims to have been the first to recognize Buonaparte's
ability. He declares that the young Corsican was daily at his table,
and that it was he himself who irregularly but efficiently secured the
appointment of his new friend to active duty. But he also asserts what
we know to be untrue, that Buonaparte was still lieutenant when they
first met, and that he created him captain. It is likely, in view of
their subsequent intimacy at Paris, that they were also intimate at
Toulon; the rest of Barras's story is a fabrication.
But although the investment of Toulon was complete, it was weak. On
September eighteenth the total force of the assailants was ten
thousand men. From time to time reinforcements came in and the various
seasoned battalions exhibited on occasion great gallantry and courage.
But the munitions and arms were never sufficient, and under civilian
officers both regulars and recruits were impatient of severe
discipline. The artillery in particular was scarcely more than
nominal. There were a few field-pieces, two large and efficient guns
only, and two mortars. By a mistake of the war department the general
officer detailed to organize the artillery did not receive his orders
in time and remained on his station in the eastern Pyrenees until
after the place fell. Manifestly some one was required to grasp the
situation and supply a crying deficiency. It was with no trembling
hand that Buonaparte laid hold of his task. For an efficient artillery
service artillery officers were essential, and there were almost none.
In the ebb and flow of popular enthusiasm many republicans who had
fallen back before the storms of factional excesses were now willing
to come forward, and Napoleon, not publicly committed to the Jacobins,
was able to win many capable assistants from among men of his class.
His nervous restlessness found an outlet in erecting buttresses,
mounting guns, and invigorating the whole service until a zealous
activity of the most promising kind was displayed by officers and men
alike. By September twenty-ninth fourteen guns were mounted and four
mortars, the essential material was gathered, and by sheer
self-assertion Buonaparte was in complete charge. The only check
was in the ignorant meddling of Carteaux, who, though energetic and
zealous, though born and bred in camp, being the son of a soldier,
was, after all, not a soldier, but a very fair artist (painter). For
his battle-pieces and portraits of military celebrities he had
received large prices, and was as vain of his artistic as of his
military talent, though both were mediocre. Strange characters rose to
the top in those troublous times: the painter's opponent at Avignon,
the leader of the insurgents, had been a tailor; his successor was one
Lapoype, a physician. Buonaparte's ready pen stood him again in good
stead, and he sent up a memorial to the ministry, explaining the
situation, and asking for the appointment of an artillery general with
full powers. The commissioners transmitted the paper to Paris, and
appointed the memorialist to the higher rank of acting commander.
[Illustration: In the collection of the Duc de Trevise. Josephine.
From a pastel by Pierre Prud'hon.]
Though the commanding general could not well yield to his subordinate,
he did, most ungraciously, to the Convention legates. Between the
seventeenth and twentieth of September effective batteries under
Buonaparte's command forced the enemy's frigates to withdraw from the
neighborhood of La Seyne on the inner bay. The shot were red hot, the
fire concentrated, and the guns served with cool efficiency. Next day
the village was occupied and with only four hundred men General
Delaborde marched to seize the Eguillette, the key to the siege, as
Buonaparte reiterated and reiterated. He was ingloriously routed; the
British landed reinforcements and erected strong fortifications over
night. They styled the place Fort Mulgrave. It was speedily flanked by
three redoubts. To Buonaparte this contemptuous defiance was
insufferable: he spoke and Salicetti wrote of the siege as destitute
both of brains and means. Thereupon the Paris legates began to
represent Carteaux as an incapable and demand his recall. Buonaparte
ransacked the surrounding towns and countryside for cannon and secured
a number; he established forges at Ollioules to keep his apparatus in
order, and entirely reorganized his personnel. With fair efficiency
and substantial quantity of guns and shot, he found himself without
sufficient powder and wrote imperiously to his superiors, enforcing
successfully his demand. Meantime he made himself conspicuous by
personal daring and exposure. The days and nights were arduous because
of the enemy's activity. In successive sorties on October first,
eighth, and fourteenth the British garrison of Fort Mulgrave gained
both ground and prestige by successive victories. It was hard for the
French to repress their impatience, but they were not ready yet for a
general move: not a single arm of the service was sufficiently strong
and the army was becoming demoralized by inactivity. The feud between
general and legates grew bitter and the demands of the latter for
material were disregarded alike at Paris and by Doppet, who had just
captured Lyons, but would part with none of his guns or ammunition or
men for use at Toulon. Lapoype and Carteaux quarreled bitterly, and
there was such confusion that Buonaparte ended by squarely disobeying
his superior and taking many minor movements into his own hand; he was
so cocksure that artillery alone would end the siege that the general
dubbed him Captain Cannon. Finally the wrangling of all concerned
cried to heaven, and on October twenty-third Carteaux was transferred
to the Army of Italy with headquarters at Nice. He left for his new
post on November seventh, and five days later his successor appeared.
In the interim the nominal commander was Lapoype, really Salicetti
prompted by Buonaparte.
Thus at length the artist was removed from command, and a physician
was appointed in his stead. The doctor was an ardent patriot who had
distinguished himself at the siege of Lyons, which had fallen on
October ninth. But on arriving at Toulon the citizen soldier was awed
by the magnitude of his new work. On November fifteenth the French
pickets saw a Spaniard maltreating a French prisoner on the outworks
of Fort Mulgrave. There was an impulsive and spontaneous rush of the
besiegers to avenge the insult. General O'Hara landed from the
_Victory_ with reinforcements for the garrison. Doppet was
panic-stricken by the fire and ordered a retreat. Captain Buonaparte
with an oath expressed his displeasure. The soldiers cried in angry
spite: "Are we always to be commanded by painters and doctors?"
Indeed, the newcomer had hardly taken command, leaving matters at
loose ends as they were: in a short time he was transferred at his own
suggestion to an easier station in the Pyrenees, it being understood
that Dugommier, a professional soldier, would be finally appointed
commander-in-chief, and that Duteil, the brother of Buonaparte's old
friend and commander, was to be made general of artillery. He was a
man advanced in years, unable even to mount a horse: but he was
devoted to the young captain, trusted his powers, and left him in
virtual command. Abundant supplies arrived at the same time from
Lyons. On November twentieth the new officers took charge, two days
later a general reconnaissance was made, and within a short time the
investment was completed. On the thirtieth there was a formidable
sally from the town directed against Buonaparte's batteries. In the
force were two thousand three hundred and fifty men: about four
hundred British, three hundred Sardinians, two hundred and fifty
French, and seven hundred each of Neapolitans and Spanish. They were
commanded by General Dundas. Their earliest movements were successful
and the commander-in-chief of the besieged came out to see the
victory. But the tide turned, the French revolutionists rallied, and
the sortie was repulsed. The event was made doubly important by the
chance capture of General O'Hara, the English commandant. Such a
capture is rare,--Buonaparte was profoundly impressed by the fact. He
obtained permission to visit the English general in captivity, but was
coldly received. To the question: "What do you require?" came the curt
reply: "To be left alone and owe nothing to pity." This striking
though uncourtly reply delighted Buonaparte. The success was duly
reported to Paris. In the "Moniteur" of December seventh the name of
Buona Parte is mentioned for the first time, and as among the most
distinguished in the action.
The councils of war before Dugommier's arrival had been numerous and
turbulent, although the solitary plan of operations suggested by the
commander and his aides would have been adequate only for capturing an
inland town, and probably not even for that. From the beginning and
with fierce iteration Buonaparte had explained to his colleagues the
special features of their task, but all in vain. He reasoned that
Toulon depended for its resisting power on the Allies and their
fleets, and must be reduced from the side next the sea. The English
themselves understood this when they seized and fortified the redoubt
of Fort Mulgrave, known also by the French as Little Gibraltar, on the
tongue of land separating, to the westward, the inner from the outer
bay. That post on the promontory styled the Eguillette by the natives
must be taken. From the very moment of his arrival this simple but
clever conception had been urged on the council of war by Buonaparte.
But Carteaux could not and would not see its importance: it was not
until a skilled commander took charge that Buonaparte's insight was
justified and his plan adopted. At the same time it was determined
that operations should also be directed against two other strong
outposts, one to the north, the other to the northeast, of the town.
There was to be a genuine effort to capture Mt. Faron on the north and
a demonstration merely against the third point. But the concentration
of force was to be against the Eguillette.
Finally, on December seventeenth, after careful preparation, a
concerted attack was made at all three points. Officers and men were
daring and efficient everywhere. Buonaparte, assuming responsibility
for the batteries, was ubiquitous and reckless. The movement on which
he had set his heart was successful in every portion; the enemy was
not only driven within the interior works, but by the fall of Little
Gibraltar his communication with the sea was endangered. The whole
peninsula, the fort itself, the point and the neighboring heights were
captured. Victor, Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier led the storming
columns. The Allies were utterly demoralized by the fierce and bloody
struggle. Since, therefore, the supporting fleets could no longer
remain in a situation so precarious, the besieged at once made ready
for departure, embarking with precipitate haste the troops and many of
the inhabitants. The Spaniards fired two frigates loaded with powder
and the explosion of the magazines shook the city and its suburbs like
an earthquake. In that moment the young Sidney Smith landed from the
British ships and laid the trains which kindled an awful
conflagration. The captured French fleet lying at anchor, the
magazines and shops of the arsenal, all its enclosures burst into
flames, and one explosion followed another in an awe-inspiring
volcanic eruption. The besiegers were stupefied as they gazed, and
stopped their ears. In a few hours the city was completely evacuated,
and the foreign war vessels sailed away from the offing. The news of
this decisive victory was despatched without a moment's delay to the
Convention. The names of Salicetti, Robespierre, Ricord, Fréron, and
Barras are mentioned in Dugommier's letters as those of men who had
won distinction in various posts; that of Buonaparte does not occur.
There was either jealousy of his merits, which are declared by his
enemies to have been unduly vaunted, or else his share had been more
insignificant than is generally supposed. He related at St. Helena
that during the operations before Toulon he had had three horses
killed under him, and showed Las Cases a great scar on his thigh which
he said had been received in a bayonet charge at Toulon. "Men wondered
at the fortune which kept me invulnerable; I always concealed my
dangers in mystery." The hypothesis of his insignificance appears
unlikely when we examine the memoirs written by his contemporaries,
and consider the precise traditions of a later generation; it becomes
untenable in view of what happened on the next day, when the
commissioners nominated him for the office of general of brigade, a
rank which in the exchange of prisoners with the English was reckoned
as equal to that of lieutenant-general. In a report written on the
nineteenth to the minister of war, Duteil speaks in the highest terms
of Buonaparte. "A great deal of science, as much intelligence, and too
much bravery; such is a faint sketch of the virtues of this rare
officer. It rests with you, minister, to retain them for the glory of
the republic."
On December twenty-fourth the Convention received the news of victory.
It was really their reprieve, for news of disaster would have cut
short their career. Jubilant over a prompt success, their joy was
savage and infernal. With the eagerness of vampires they at once sent
two commissioners to wipe the name of Toulon from the map, and its
inhabitants from the earth. Fouché, later chief of police and Duke of
Otranto under Napoleon, went down from Lyons to see the sport, and
wrote to his friend the arch-murderer Collot d'Herbois that they were
celebrating the victory in but one way. "This night we send two
hundred and thirteen rebels into hell-fire." The fact is, no one ever
knew how many hundreds or thousands of the Toulon Girondists were
swept together and destroyed by the fire of cannon and musketry.
Fréron, one of the commissioners, desired to leave not a single rebel
alive. Dugommier would listen to no such proposition for a holocaust.
Marmont declares that Buonaparte and his artillerymen pleaded for
mercy, but in vain.
Running like a thread through all these events was a little
counterplot. The Corsicans at Toulon were persons of importance, and
had shown their mettle. Salicetti, Buonaparte, Arena, and Cervoni were
now men of mark; the two latter had, like Buonaparte, been promoted,
though to much lower rank. As Salicetti declared in a letter written
on December twenty-eighth, they were scheming to secure vessels and
arm them for an expedition to Corsica. But for the time their efforts
came to naught; and thenceforward Salicetti seemed to lose all
interest in Corsican affairs, becoming more and more involved in the
ever madder rush of events in France.
This was not strange, for even a common politician could not remain
insensible to the course or the consequences of the malignant anarchy
now raging throughout France. The massacres at Lyons, Marseilles, and
Toulon were the reply to the horrors of like or worse nature
perpetrated in Vendée by the royalists. Danton having used the Paris
sections to overawe the Girondist majority of the Convention, Marat
gathered his riotous band of sansculottes, and hounded the discredited
remnant of the party to death, flight, or arrest. His bloody career
was ended only by Charlotte Corday's dagger. Passions were thus
inflamed until even Danton's conduct appeared calm, moderate, and
inefficient when compared with the reckless bloodthirstiness of
Hébert, now leader of the Exagérés. The latter prevailed, the Vendeans
were defeated, and Citizen Carrier of Nantes in three months took
fifteen thousand human lives by his fiendishly ingenious systems of
drowning and shooting. In short, France was chaos, and the Salicettis
of the time might hope for anything, or fear everything, in the throes
of her disorder. Not so a man like Buonaparte. His instinct led him to
stand in readiness at the parting of the ways. Others might choose and
press forward; he gave no sign of being moved by current events, but
stood with his eye still fixed, though now in a backward gaze, on
Corsica, ready, if interest or self-preservation required it, for
another effort to seize and hold it as his own. It was self-esteem,
not Corsican patriotism, his French interest perhaps, which now
prompted him. Determined and revengeful, he was again, through the
confusion of affairs at Paris, to secure means for his enterprise, and
this time on a scale proportionate to the difficulty. The influence of
Toulon upon Buonaparte's fortunes was incalculable. Throughout life he
spoke of the town, of the siege and his share therein, of the
subsequent events and of the men whose acquaintance he made there,
with lively and emphatic interest. To all associated with the capture
he was in after years generous to a fault, except a few enemies like
Auna whom he treated with harshness. In particular it must not be
forgotten that among many men of minor importance he there began his
relations with some of his greatest generals and marshals: Desaix,
Marmont, Junot, Muiron, and Chauvet. The experience launched him on
his grand career; the intimacies he formed proved a strong support
when he forced himself to the front. Moreover, his respect for England
was heightened. It was not in violation of a pledge to hold the place
for the Bourbon pretender, but by right of sheer ability that they
took precedence of the Allies in command. They were haughty and
dictatorial because their associates were uncertain and divided. When
the Comte de Provence was suggested as a colleague they refused to
admit him because he was detested by the best men of his own party. In
the garrison of nearly fifteen thousand not a third were British.
Buonaparte and others charged them with perfidy in a desire to hold
the great fort for themselves, but the charge was untrue and he did
not disdain them, but rather admired and imitated their policy.