I beg leave, therefore, to submit to Y. Lp. the necessity of making an urgent requisition to Sir Robt. Boyd [Governor of Gibraltar] for a reinforcement of two battalions of infantry, with as large a detachment of artillerymen as he can spare from the necessary duties of his garrison (for we have not one Artilleryman in the Garrison except a few Gunners from the Spanish ships).
Recognizing the other specialist weakness, he added hopefully, ‘I wish also to have an officer of Engineers’.
The Admiralty responded quickly to Hood’s forwarding of Mulgrave’s appraisal. Within the week a letter had been despatched to Boyd (copied to Hood) informing the governor that the admiral ‘may find it necessary to have recourse to that garrison for the assistance of troops in the present emergency’.
In the knowledge that Gibraltar’s spare military strength would, nevertheless, be insufficient, the Lords Commissioners signalled on 25 September that the government was to lose no time in assembling a ‘respectable’ military force. This would be headed by Major General O’Hara, who would command not only the contingent from Gibraltar but also ‘all other forces collected for the defence of Toulon’. The letter enclosed the commission appointing O’Hara governor of Toulon.
Considerable reliance had been placed on the Kingdom of Sardinia as a source of fighting men. For a British subsidy of £5 million and promise of the recovery and restitution of Nice and Savoy, Sardinia had contracted to raise an army of 50,000, of which 20,000 would be placed at British disposal.
As the Sardinians lacked suitable transport, Hood despatched the Colossus to Cagliari. She returned on 24 September with just 350 troops. Meanwhile, the Bedford and Leviathan had been sent to Oneglia for the same purpose. Between them, they returned with about 800. Over the following month a further 800 were ferried in, but that was it. Of 20,000 promised, 2,000 thus materialized. Much, therefore, depended upon the Neapolitans, the first substantial numbers of whom were not expected before the end of September.
COMMODORE ROBERT LINZEE and Admiral Hood were brothers-in-law, the latter having married Linzee’s sister, Susannah, daughter of the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth. On 8 September, early in the campaign, Hood sent Linzee on a mission of some importance.
Paoli’s Corsican patriots had already cleared the campagne (interior) of what the population viewed as French occupation forces. These had retreated into the three main townships of Bastia, Calvi and San Fiorenzo. As already related, Britain viewed the island as a well-situated forward base for operations against the French in the Mediterranean, although any occupancy of Toulon on a permanent basis would have negated its value. The rebels, in insufficient strength to eject the French from their strongholds, made a strong appeal to the British for assistance, approaching their envoys in Turin and Genoa as well as Hood in Toulon.
Presented with the prospect of a second easy success, Hood could hardly refuse to act. At a time when all his ships were stretched to provide the manpower necessary to improve Toulon’s defences, therefore, the admiral gave Linzee a small squadron. The newly promoted commodore broke his broad pendant in the Alcide 74, having under his command the Courageux 74 (herself taken from the French and already 40 years old, having spent most of her life in British service), the Ardent 64 and two frigates, the Lowestoffe 32 and Nemesis 28. Linzee’s orders were to induce the French garrisons to capitulate.
Considering the significance of this mission, it appears strange with hindsight that Hood complicated matters by directing Linzee to make a risky detour. At Villefranche, near Nice, were anchored two French frigates, Badine and Vestale. Under a flag of truce, a sealed letter was to be taken ashore for delivery to the senior French captain.
Two of the Nemesis’s officers were nominated for this rather dangerous errand while Linzee, as ordered, waited offshore for twenty-four hours for a response. Discussions were in progress ashore when a messenger arrived with news that the local représentants in Nice required the officers be brought to their presence. Blindfolded, they were duly conducted to where Barras, Fréron, Ricord and the younger Robespierre awaited them. Their despatches were confiscated and examined, proving to be offers of amnesty from Hood, a proclamation from Langara addressed to the Army of Italy and a letter from Trogoff inviting the two frigates to join him in Toulon.
Hood had here made a total miscalculation in handing the republicans a propaganda coup. The représentants gathered the civil and military authorities, together with an excited crowd, in a public square. Before the assembled throng the emissaries’ despatches were burned with ceremony and a short, defiant address read:
Perisse à jamais la royauté! Tel est le cri de vingt cinq millions de républicains français. Cette Nation libre et puissante ne peut avoir rien de commun avec les despotes et les esclaves: elle ne doit et ne veut communiquer avec eux qu’a coups de canon. Elle n’a pas besoin, pour combattre et vaincre ses ennemis, d’avoir, comme eux, recours à la trahison, à la perfidie et à la scélératesse.
(Let royalty be dead for ever! Such is the cry of the 25 million French republicans. This free and powerful nation can never have anything in common with despots and slaves. She must not nor wishes to communicate with those who are nothing but noise. She has no need to fight and vanquish her enemies or to have, like them, recourse to treason, treachery and villainy.)
To complete their humiliation, the pair were marched back to their boat accompanied by a large crowd, ‘en chantant des airs patriotiques’. Linzee’s subsequent actions are not relevant to events at Toulon other than that they kept his squadron away at a time when the extra manpower would have been useful. It is worth mentioning, however, that he enjoyed no success in Corsica. Local partisans failed to support his shows of strength before the fortified towns, leading Hood to lose patience, labelling Paoli ‘a composition of art and deceit’.
The affair caused the commander-in-chief considerable embarrassment in having to admit to Dundas that he had ‘received no one Instruction about Corsica, and my sending a squadron there was a spontaneous action of my own’.
Given sea superiority, however, Hood was very inclined to use it, so Linzee’s was not the only expedition launched. As related, the British frigate Aigle, on entering neutral Genoa with despatches, was impeded there by the French frigate Modeste, whose crew behaved in a manner designed to insult the British. This vessel and her smaller consorts were in port in order to escort a pending grain convoy, sent coastwise for the benefit of the Army of Italy.
Diplomatic representations having failed to dissuade the Genoese merchants from persisting in what was, for them, a lucrative trade, Hood resolved to kill two birds with one stone. On 14 September he wrote to Francis Drake, the British minister at Genoa, of that republic’s showing ‘a glaring and highly unbecoming partiality in favour of French regicides, to the prejudice of our most gracious sovereign and country’. His letter continued:
[I] have therefore sent R. Adm. Gell with a squadron to Genoa and communicate with Y. Ex. [Your Excellency]; and I must request Y. Ex. … make known to the Doge and Senate that unless Mr. Tilly [the Chargé d’Affairs, described elsewhere as the ‘agent from the Convention at Paris’] is ordered to depart the Genoese territories within twelve hours, the port of Genoa shall be blockaded, and not a ship or vessel suffered to go in or out …
Hood then referred to the ‘numberless instances’ in which the Genoese had departed from ‘a fair and honourable neutrality’ and demanded that their government make an ‘instant, candid and explicit declaration’ of its attitude to Britain, for ‘avowed enemies are infinitely more sufferable than false friends’. Almost as an afterthought the admiral added that: ‘R. Adm. Gell has my orders to seize the Modeste French frigate, the moment he arrives.’ A most un-neutral action! On 26 September Gell duly sailed with a powerful squadron, his flagship St George being accompanied by three 74s (Bedford, Captain and the royalist French Scipion), five smaller craft and two fireships.
The French account has the St George and Bedford entering harbour at
Genoa at 11 a.m. on 5 October, the latter ship ranging alongside the Modeste as her crew were having a meal. The British demanded that she follow the example of the Scipion and raise the pavillon royal, the royal ensign. Not surprisingly, runs the account, this requirement was met with what was described as a ‘refus énergique’, whereupon a volley was laid upon her deck by marines stationed in the Bedford’s tops. A light brow, or bridge, was thrown across and the Frenchman rapidly boarded. All who resisted were cut down; all who sought escape overboard were shot. According to which French version is believed, their casualties were either forty to fifty dead, or five dead and thirty injured. British sloops, meanwhile, overwhelmed the two accompanying French tartanes.
As might have been anticipated, this precipitate action promoted a furious exchange of diplomatic notes between London and Genoa. Still more impressed by the nearby French army than by the British fleet, the Genoese bowed to French demands and expelled all foreigners except for the French. Genoa was immediately blockaded, so was unavailable for the transit of the 5,000 Austrian troops then imminently expected for the reinforcement of Toulon.
The alternative port for this urgent operation was Leghorn (Livorno), although the Austrians quickly used the rupture with Genoa as an excuse for their troops now having to be deployed to safeguard Lombardy. Leghorn was within the territory of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany whose authorities, intimidated by a powerful French presence close by, had detained shipments of grain bound for the British at Toulon. There lay in the port the loaded British merchantman Captain and the Spanish Bahama, guarded by the fine French 44-gun frigate Impérieuse.
To emphasize British displeasure, Gell detached his three 74s to Leghorn, which action was sufficient to persuade the Grand Duke to eject the French entirely. Tilly had already issued orders that the Impérieuse should be destroyed rather than captured. She had, therefore, been transferred to the naval facility at Fezzano, where her armament had been landed prior to her scuttling. A joint Anglo-Spanish force was, however, able to temporarily take over the base, rearm the frigate, remove her from her mud berth and sail her to Toulon.
The French 74, Scipion, was left at Leghorn under orders to assist a squadron of British ships under Vice Admiral Cosby in lifting and transporting the 5,000 still-expected Austrians. The wait was, of course, protracted and, in the November, the ship suddenly caught fire. Hastily towed from the harbour, she blew up with the loss of 150 of her crew. The disaster was ascribed to sabotage on the part of members of the crew of the Modeste who had elected to serve aboard the two-decker.
In the Modeste and the Impérieuse (later renamed Unité) the Royal Navy acquired two excellent frigates. Representations were made by Langara to Hood, and by the Spanish ambassador in London to Grenville, that the two ships, as the remainder of the French ships at Toulon, should be held in trust in the name of Louis XVII. The Admiralty’s more robust view, however, was that both ships had been taken elsewhere, and away from hostile crews. They remained British prizes.
IN AN AGE WHEN the process of ship design was still more art than science, the British freely acknowledged that the French had the advantage. Captured vessels were prized for their sailing qualities and were, invariably, stemmed in dock to have their lines ‘taken off’. The chance to acquire an immense quantity of knowledge about both the French ships and Toulon arsenal was not lost on Vice Admiral Sir Charles Middleton (later Lord Barham) who, until recently, had held the post of comptroller of the navy and who retained a keen interest in its material welfare. In a long letter, dated 13 October 1793, he brought to the attention of the Earl of Chatham, First Lord of the Admiralty, the ‘many articles of information which it may be desirable to procure while Toulon is in our possession’.
Canny and careful, Middleton proposed sending out a party of experts, including ‘a shipwright, a draftsman [sic], a storehouse clerk, a blacksmith, a caulker, a mastmaker and a ropemaker’. Significantly, none of these was senior staff and Middleton made the point that, to use their expertise would be ‘without any considerable expense to government’.
He posed, in total, about one hundred questions, the range of which reflects his great experience. With respect to Toulon itself, the procurement of accurate plans of the arsenal and anchorages was obvious. He was also interested in storehouses and magazines: how many were there and how arranged for the best handling of their contents, and how far were they from the wharves? As to the stores – what was laid apart for decommissioned ships? What was earmarked and what for general use? The decommissioned ships: were they laid up in tiers or alongside? Masts in or out? Stored? Covered? How coppered, etc.? Masts and yards, dimensions? Of what materials? Where procured? How constructed, etc.? Docks and slips: how many? Dimensions? Covered? Height of any roof? Building? Sources of timber? Is it supplied rough or ready framed? What proportion? What is the construction time for a 74 from keel-laying to launch? What types of machine have been introduced? How many? Size and purpose?
Middleton’s curiosity appeared limitless. If the French enjoyed any superiority or advantage over the Royal Navy then this, surely, was the chance to discover how and why. So detailed were his requirements, however, that his operatives could never have completed their task in the time available.
SEVERAL DAYS OF CONSTANT attention from Buonaparte’s batteries were sufficient to convince Hood of the French intention to take the western promontory. He warned Mulgrave that such a move would prevent the use of the inner roads by the fleet but, although the latter fully appreciated the implications, he could not react immediately as his forces were already stretched in the improvement of vital defensive positions.
Hood, greatly concerned, fortunately insisted on action and, during the night of 21/22 September, ferried about 600 British and Spanish troops from Toulon. His instincts, or intelligence, were correct for on the following day this force was able to inflict a sharp reverse on the republicans. Carteaux was keen on measuring the strength of the defence, but there were subsequent allegations by the French that he was so angry that the représentants had backed Buonaparte’s strategy against his own that he deliberately committed an under-strength force. For whatever reason, the action provided the defenders with a considerable fillip. They suffered two dead and ten injured, but the French assessment of their casualties was simply ‘ne nous sont pas connus’.
The 23rd saw a concentrated effort by the fleets to suppress the batteries. For this, the British divisional flagship St George was joined by two Spanish ships (San Juan Nepomucena and San Ildefonso) and the British-crewed French frigate Iphigénie, supported by one of the improvised floating batteries. In eleven hours of bombardment the senior Spanish ship alone fired near 1,700 rounds, suffering considerable damage in return, resulting in one dead and ten wounded. The inhabitants of the neighbouring village of La Seyne had pledged neutrality but, being observed to be actively assisting the republicans, they too were bombarded, obliging the place’s evacuation.
Ships regularly reported batteries silenced but, each night, they were rehabilitated by the French. Only by following up a close bombardment with a landing party, to spike the cannon and to blow up powder stores, could the allies fully succeed. The shore, however, was too strongly held.
On 27 September one of the St George’s 32-pounders burst with damaging results. One large piece of the shattered weapon was driven upward through two decks, dismounting a 24-pounder on the way. The number of casualties is, however, variously reported.
The French 74 Puissant was allotted the task of covering the floating batteries. This she did admirably, having eventually to be withdrawn owing to accumulated damage. Her royalist commanding officer, the 49-year-old Pierre-Jacques Féraud, who had fought against Hood in the West Indies, was now warmly commended by him.
As the navies strove to suppress the growing ring of enemy batteries, the allied command was greatly heartened by the arrival at the end of September of the first contingent of Neapolitans, from the only allied state to honour its treaty com
mitments fully. Its final contribution would be three 74s, four frigates and four smaller vessels, together with over 6,000 troops. On 27 September the first 2,000 arrived, a battalion of grenadiers and two of fusiliers under the overall command of Prince Pignatelli-Cerchiara. They were enthusiastically received by the populace and Toulon’s General Committee when they were reviewed on the town’s Champ de Bataille by Mulgrave and Gravina. Their arrival cheered the defenders, too, and resulted in such an optimistic change in Hood’s despatches that London was pleased to accept that all was well. Which was never the case.
THE LACONIC ENTRIES in the ‘lieutenant’s logs’ of the various ships involved provide an interesting mix of ship’s routine and daily happenings. The Britannia noted the Neapolitans’ arrival, together with routine fleet comings and goings: ‘His Majesty’s ship[s] Fortitude, le Clair, Camel and Vulcan, a Spanish line-of-battleship, a Frigate and a Brig, also a Neapolitan Squadron (with a rear admiral) consisting of two Line of Battle Ships and four Frigates with 2000 troops for the Garrison.’
As with most vessels, the Britannia provided landing parties and fire cover for activities ashore: ‘9 September. Unmoored and carried small Bower anchor farther inshore to guard the pass to the Hospital [i.e. the neck of the Saint-Mandrier peninsula].’ On the same day: ‘Sent a Lieutenant, two Midshipmen and 30 Seamen to guard the pass on shore.’ Then, with a detached view of events: ‘19 September … sailed a french Ship with Democrats. St. George and floating batteries Cannonading the Enemy.’
Ordinary ship’s business was also duly noted. Amid more warlike activities the entry for 16 September includes ‘Employed painting the Ship’. On the 23rd: ‘At 1 fired 21 Guns in commemoration of His Majesty’s Coronation, at 15mpt [i.e. 15 minutes past] the Spanish Fleet sailed.’
The Fall of Toulon Page 25