The Fall of Toulon

by Bernard Ireland

  Poor pay, or even, on occasion, no pay, spelt shortage or even destitution for a sailor’s family, so evasion of call-up and desertion were common. A deserter in the Royal Navy could usually expect to be summarily executed if apprehended and this, too, was the ultimate theoretical punishment for his French counterpart. A degree of official pragmatism, however, saw such a sentence rarely applied. After all, if the navy was already short of personnel, what purpose would be served by killing those it did have? Savage physical punishment was an alternative but, again, was less often applied than stoppage of pay and privileges, such as they were. Persistent offenders were made to serve longer spells, even a lifetime, in the service. Small wonder that serving the nation was, itself, seen as a form of prison sentence. Disobedience, mutiny or incitement to mutiny were most likely to attract capital or severe punishment, the latter including service in the galley squadron still maintained in the Mediterranean.

  TOULON WAS AN EXAMPLE of what would later be called a ‘company town’, being dependent for employment, directly or indirectly, on the arsenal. French royal yards, like their British equivalents, tended to be overmanned in order to guarantee sufficient skilled labour in time of emergency. The average ouvrier therefore enjoyed the comparative luxury of protected employment and, at least in peacetime, a leisurely pace of work, free health care and a contributory pension scheme. In return, his rate of pay was somewhat less than that to be expected in private yards.

  However, the American War had so depleted the national wealth that economies were necessary across the board, dockyards being no exception. Following what was already common commercial practice, therefore, the labour force was reduced by about two-thirds and naval work put out to competitive tender. As most of the workers ‘released’ by the yard found re-employment in new private enterprises established to take advantage of the revised system, there existed a powerful solidarity between workers within and without.

  A typically French paternalism was evident as groups of workers were gradually driven to tendering for work at entirely unrealistic low prices in order to remain employed. The then intendant of Toulon, Pierre-Victor Malouet, believed that society had a duty to support all its members and found means to pay small retainers to key workers and to subsidize contractors for the training of apprentices.

  As the l780s progressed, however, state funding was steadily reduced and paid irregularly. By 1788 contractors were being paid over four months in arrears, individuals three. Official reports spoke of ‘a spirit of rebellion’ about which authority could do nothing. Genuine hardship was evident across the town, accompanied by a natural sense of grievance. Hope that action was being taken was engendered by the compilation of the cahiers de doléances and the reactivation in 1787 of the ancient Estates General for all that it would be dominated by the landowning nobility.

  Shortfalls in production ensured that the cost of grain, cooking oil and meat, all staples, rose inexorably. In past times, more severe increases had occurred without causing unrest but in the particularly straitened circumstances in which Toulon found itself demonstrations began, initially directed at property. Punishments meted out by the courts failed to prevent their proliferation.

  The commandant of the arsenal was d’Albert de Rions, a 61-year-old veteran of proven ability who had served with de Grasse and Suffren. He was determined to maintain order, seeing this to be the only way in which the naval base could continue to function. In law and order he saw security for his workers and the populace at large, together with a continuing respect for individual rights. D’Albert pleaded with the minister of marine for funds with which to pay arrears in wages and to keep the yard working full time. He resolutely opposed the increasingly arrogant behaviour of the militia, now known as the Milice Nationale, and endeavoured to prevent dockyard workers from joining. To the commune of Toulon he was ‘deeply imbued with aristocratic prejudices’.

  In the midst of social upheaval the arsenal succeeded for a while in remaining detached. A first clash arose over what should have been the trivial matter of wearing cockades, or favours, either the tricolour of the Revolution or the black Austrian symbol of royalist sympathy. The milice attracted a considerable element of troublemakers and in November 1789 one patrol arrested an officer who was sporting a black favour. Strong representations to the municipal leaders gained his release, the military authorities demanding, though not receiving, an apology.

  As was the way during the Revolution, the civic Permanent Committee complained directly to the National Assembly in Paris. This produced no direct result from an organization which already had more than enough with which to concern itself, but the commandant’s own impulsiveness then inflamed the situation further.

  Accusing them of troublemaking, d’Albert dismissed two employees of the arsenal. As they were also members of the milice, however, this action was popularly denounced as victimization. D’Albert was entreated by the civic authorities to reinstate them but refused, regarding this as a sign of weakness. The pair were promptly elevated to the status of martyrs and the following morning a large proportion of the workforce refused to work, appearing instead outside d’Albert’s official residence, where he was meeting with a deputation from the Permanent Committee in an effort to take action against the mob; deprived of his most obvious symbol of authority, the commandant belatedly acceded to the committee’s demands. Enraged by rumours that the marines had been ordered to fire on civilians, however, the mob overran the building, seized d’Albert and several of his staff and consigned them to cells as common prisoners.

  Proceedings at Toulon considerably alarmed the National Assembly, which was reminded by the minister of marine that a quarter of the nation’s naval strength was here hostage to events. Debate aired the usual polarized points of view: whether ultimate authority rested with the National Assembly or with the crown and its representatives; whether serving naval officers should be dismissed en masse and be replaced by men ‘not suspected by the people’.

  Released by order of the assembly, d’Albert was none the less refused permission to plead his case before it. Although he and his staff were now cast in the role of counter-Revolutionaries defying the ‘people’s will’, he was fortunate in that, for once, the assembly agreed a moderate outcome. Despite a plea from no less an orator than Robespierre, that he feared that the assembly would be seen as encouraging the ‘enemies of liberty’ above ‘patriotism’, the verdict was that both sides had acted in what they considered the nation’s best interests.

  Ominously, the prisoners were finally released, early in 1790, by order of the National Assembly, a demand from the king’s minister having been ignored. The refusal of the assembly to consider prosecuting the municipal leaders gravely undermined the authority of the navy. Pointing out the imminent danger of a total collapse in discipline if the National Guardsmen concerned were to go unpunished, every available officer at Toulon signed a petition, which was sent to the assembly. The response was an anodyne statement from the minister of marine adjuring d’Albert’s successor to act with circumspection and to avoid any action that might inflame the situation. It was clear that final authority no longer rested with the minister. The civic authorities, meanwhile, extended membership of the militia to a total of 4,000, a considerable proportion of the town’s eligible male population.

  As a royal government could no longer support naval officers in the maintenance of discipline, and the National Assembly favoured interference by the civic authorities ‘in the name of the people’, the immediate future looked bleak. One French commentator noted that naval officers had become outlaws: ‘Anyone sanguine or patriotic enough to remain at his post would come, by virtue of his origin, and without further enquiry, to the prison or to the scaffold.’ Matters had not yet quite degenerated to that extent but the prophecy would prove to be accurate enough.

  IN OCTOBER 1789, while Commandant d’Albert de Rions was still struggling to keep the Toulon arsenal functioning in the face of a growing tide
of dissent and disobedience, the National Assembly took a fundamental step in reshaping the French navy according to Revolutionary ideals. A twelve-man Marine Committee was formed with the broad brief of looking in depth at the current structure and administration of the service, to evaluate similar foreign institutions and to recommend the size and form of an affordable fleet, ‘founded on reason’ and best suited to the nation’s needs.

  To undertake this very necessary review were appointed initially, and very liberally, six of the nobility and six of the Third Estate. Of the former group, five were officers from the navy, one from the army. Of the latter, four were drawn from the world of commerce and the merchant marine, one was a lawyer and the other the late intendant at the Toulon yard. Here were a dozen eminently sensible men, well qualified to carry out what was required of them. Already, however, the contagion of social division had taken hold to the extent that men of like professional opinion and training were irrevocably divided by their origins. To stoke the fires of controversy further, six more members were added to the committee in the following June. Of these, only one was a naval officer of the Grand Corps.

  Despite time-consuming wrangling, the committee did a thorough job. Ironically, however, its main findings resulted in decrees which caused upheaval in the service at precisely the wrong time. Its prime target, naturally, was the unpopular Grand Corps and the whole procedure for selecting naval officers. The nationwide collection of complaint and injustice contained in the cahiers of 1789 included much criticism that capable men from the merchant service and experienced non-commissioned officers were unable to advance their careers in the face of what was effectively a closed shop populated exclusively by the nobility.

  A first objective, then, was to abandon privilege and to promote equality, the noble ideal of the Revolution. The king would still be recognized as the supreme commander of the service but appointments within its officer corps would now be a matter for the body appointed by the assembly. The assembly would also vote annual budgets.

  More idealism, and the opinions of the commercial element of the Marine Committee, was evident in the fleet now being dedicated primarily to the protection of French commerce and the colonies which stimulated it. Emphasis on the use of the navy as an instrument of national policy was played down, interestingly inasmuch as the assembly was careering down a path that would shortly lead to war with half of Europe.

  The new scheme for the provision of officers would favour a core of professionals who would join the service at the age of 15. As aspirants they would spend five years under training. Men between the ages of 18 and 30 could also be recruited to the lowest grade of officer, the enseigne. This required four years’ sea time and the passing of an examination and, while being fully open to men of the merchant service, was the obvious next step for the aspirant, who would have more knowledge of the specialist skills required by the regular navy.

  Beyond the age of 24, a suitable enseigne could hold a minor command, which commission entitled him to be classed entretenu, or salaried. The remainder, or non-entretenu, had no naval pay or rights and formed a qualified reserve pool within the merchant service.

  Switching from one service to the other appears to have been regarded as perfectly in order up to the age of 40, by which time enseignes were expected to have passed for lieutenant. By this age, of course, a man would have had his best years and, as Mahan has pointed out, a period of commercial prosperity would be sufficient to rob the regular navy of its best men.

  For the moment, the assembly had to recognize the existing situation and, while it could abolish the whole officer corps by decree, its initial selection of replacements would necessarily be from its ranks. Those not selected were treated generously, their basic entitlement on retirement being ‘at least’ two-thirds of their then-current pay. Any that had served a minimum of ten years in the rank that he was then holding would be retired in the next higher.

  We have already seen how recruitment for the lower deck was through obligation placed upon able-bodied men in coastal communities. Personnel from this service were made eligible for service in groups, or classes. Administering the system in each area were retired naval officers, themselves responsible to an intendant-général.

  To the extent that an individual, beyond his liability for service, was free to pursue his chosen occupation, the classe system appealed to the Marine Committee. Although the system was therefore to remain, its method of supervision had to change, for a majority on the committee maintained that a seaman before his actual mobilization was a ‘citizen of the State’ and as such was entitled to be directed by an elected representative rather than a member, retired or otherwise, of the military. In imposing this change the committee effectively removed the responsibility of manning the fleet from central authority to virtually unregulated local democracy.

  Nor did the Marine Committee approve of the system in the dockyards, whereby the naval commandant exercised authority over the administrative intendant. Here again, by virtue of his connection with the Grand Corps, a commandant was inevitably seen as an agent of royal executive power. Rather than return to the earlier arrangement, where the intendant possessed the greater authority, the committee decided to add yet another level of management by creating the post of overall director, to be known as the ordonnateur civil.

  IN SEPTEMBER 1790 the great arsenal of Brest followed Toulon into mutinous chaos. A new naval penal code had been approved by the Constituent National Assembly with the laudable aim of removing the arbitrary nature of punishment through the institution of a standard tariff. Rather unfortunately, the ex-commandant of the Toulon arsenal, d’Albert de Rions, had been posted to Brest as squadron commander. It was among the crews of his ships that disaffection arose, triggered by provisions in the penal code to which they took exception.

  Still wearied with his recent experiences, d’Albert pleaded to the minister of marine that either the affected crews be broken up or that commissioners be appointed to restore order. Now effectively powerless, the minister, the comte de Luzerne, could only refer the matter to the assembly, which took no action. Their demands disregarded, the seamen responded by refusing to allow a small squadron to sail for the West Indies as ordered.

  For over a year Brest had been administered by a body which styled itself the General Council of the Commune. This had insisted upon, and received, expressions of loyalty from the commandant of the arsenal and the senior officer of the army garrison. Despite this, both officers were still regarded with some suspicion, a suspicion that became outright hostility with the establishment in the city of an extreme Jacobin Club.

  The civic authorities made continuous efforts to increase their control of the military, mainly through endlessly eroding the authority of its officers. Appeals by the latter to their relevant ministers had no effect and the council succeeded in gradually alienating the ratings and their officers, groups that had previously harboured no particular animosity toward each other.

  Matters deteriorated suddenly when, on 14 September, the Léopard 74 arrived alone. Her crew had mutinied during the previous month while off San Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), had sent their captain and most of his officers ashore and had then embarked the colony’s rebel assembly and a regiment of mutinous troops. Upon arrival at Brest, the self-appointed commanding officer reported directly to the municipality rather than to the naval authorities. He and the crew were fêted by the city as Revolutionary patriots.

  The arrival of the Léopard incited mutiny aboard other ships in port. Their commanding officers appealed to their admiral to restore order but d’Albert, his authority already undermined by experience at Toulon, was ignored. Unable to continue, he resigned his commission.

  A number of junior officers then made a general appeal to the rebel crews in an effort to persuade them that their officers were being unfairly branded as counter-revolutionaries. They were met with a mixture of indifference and outright hostility, although, in some ships, relat
ionships between crew and officers remained normal.

  In Paris, the assembly was well aware that the current troubles with the navy were not in the national interest. The national reputation had taken a knock due to the inability to stage a naval show of strength either to support Spanish allies during the Nootka Sound affair or, in India, to back the activities of the rebel Tippu Sultan.

  Interestingly, therefore, the assembly invoked the king’s authority to despatch two special commissioners to Brest. Arriving at the end of September, these joined with two municipal officials successfully to enlist the assistance of the Jacobins to restore order. This, however, remained on condition that the assembly modify the penal code.

  The commissioners’ report none the less undermined further the waning authority of ships’ officers in praising the ‘patriotism’ of the mutineers, the citizens and the civil authorities of Brest, while commenting that they, the commissioners, were ‘well persuaded’ that the officers would put every effort into consolidating the work of ‘the Friends of the [new] Constitution’.

  On 19 October the Constituent Assembly received the final report on the situation in Brest. Concerned at the state to which affairs had degenerated, it proposed to censure the municipality for exceeding its authority. Moderates, in fact, demanded that curbs be applied to the new ‘aristocracy of the municipalities’. The penal code, in addition, would stand unaltered. Once again, however, it proved all too easy for the assembly’s extremists to reverse such intentions by playing on the universal distaste for the monarchy and by denouncing ministers as being the instruments of its power. Breakdown of discipline in the fleet, it was claimed, had stemmed from the incompetence of the minister of marine.