The Fall of Toulon

by Bernard Ireland

  Hood took a majority decision and the council agreed the following:

  ◊ That the survivors from the garrisons of the positions on the Faron heights should fall back on the town in light of the impracticability of mounting any attack to recover those positions;

  ◊ That the forts of Pomets, Les Moulins, Saint-Antoine and Saint-André should be evacuated while it was still possible for this to be done in an orderly fashion;

  ◊ That the garrisons of Malbousquet, Missiessy, Artigues and Sainte-Catherine should be augmented and ordered to hold on at all costs;

  ◊ That the inhabitants of Toulon should be informed that, should the occupying powers deem evacuation necessary, those who wished to go could take passage on one of several mercantile auxiliaries present, and that the General Committee would put the necessary arrangements in hand;

  ◊ That the sick and wounded would be embarked without delay;

  ◊ That those French ships which were armed and effective would leave with those of the allies and the remainder, along with the magazines and arsenal, should be destroyed. Preparations for these actions should be put in hand but not carried through until the last moment [author’s italics].

  Opinions were invited from the various allied representatives. Admiral Langara reportedly wished to use his frigates to evacuate his troops to the offshore Iles d’Hyères immediately, but was refused. The loyal French, alarmed at the likely fate of the town, wished to continue the fight. Féraud, the commanding officer of the Puissant, proposed retaking Fort Mulgrave, using a couple of smaller ships to transport and support the grenadiers of the Royal Louis regiment, under the command of Colonel le Boisgelin.

  While Hood no doubt appreciated the fighting spirit of his French allies, he knew that their proposals were born of desperation and they were refused. To implement the council’s decisions, the necessary orders were immediately written and despatched. The allied command had reacted to its reverses exactly as Buonaparte had predicted. The republicans now had only to maintain pressure to ensure that retreat became total evacuation.

  On the same day, the 17th, the first garrisons to pull out were those of the two Saint-Antoines. While observing closely, the republicans allowed the abandonment to proceed without interference before immediately taking over.

  Throughout the day, warships’ boats riskily brought off groups of survivors from the western promontory, rearguards and individuals who had gone to ground. Although the boats were closely covered by naval guns, the enemy appeared sated, letting events largely take their course rather than engaging in more bloodshed.

  Again, the log of the Princess Royal is informative in its summary although, being written almost contemporaneously with events, varies in detail:

  December 17. Capture of Fort Mulgrave. The enemy put nearly the whole of the garrison to the sword, very few escaping. The number of the British amount to about 250, the rest Spaniards. The Neapolitan camp, consisting together with the reinforcement from the town of about 1500, kept the enemy at a stand till about 7, when it was determined to withdraw all troops from that Post. All the launches and other craft being ready to embark them received orders with the Nemesis and Ariadne to cover them, for which purpose got out springs and brought our guns to bear. By 10.30 the whole of the troops were embarked without loss … [At] noon got everything in readiness to move the ship, being within musket shot of the two batterys [sic] now in the enemy’s possession.

  The Neapolitan command early showed signs of yielding to the now powerful psychological pressure exerted by an imminent and overwhelming menace. The colonel commanding the garrison at the Cap Brun redoubt indicated that he would pull out if attacked. This was echoed by his opposite number at the Cap Cépet battery on the Saint-Mandrier peninsula. In light of what happened next it would appear that the whole Neapolitan contingent to the coalition forces had been issued with prior orders.

  Without notice, and without any acquiescence by the allied high command, the Neapolitan garrison of the Missiessy position spiked its guns and marched out. This left Fort Malbousquet vulnerable to attack from the rear and brought about a rapid withdrawal by its apprehensive Spanish garrison. As the enemy had anticipated, the whole allied defence was unravelling.

  During the rest of the 17th and over the following night, the Neapolitans systematically abandoned their positions. Cap Brun was not attacked but was deserted anyway, the remaining Piedmontese being obliged to leave. To this was added Cap Cépet and the position controlling the Sablettes isthmus.

  The actual timing and sequence of these desertions is rather confused but the disgust felt by Hood at the conduct of some of his allies is clear in his preliminary report to Minister Dundas, written two days later:

  Very early in the morning [of the 17th] Don Langara came to me and expressed great impatience for a council of all the principal officers of navy and army to be called, at which, late in the afternoon, it was decided to retire at a fixed time after proper regulations were made for it. But on that very night the whole of the Neapolitans stole off from the town without the consent or knowledge of the governor … The unaccountable panic that has taken hold of the Neapolitan troops made the retreat absolutely necessary to be effected as soon as possible, and prevented the execution of a settled arrangement for destroying the French ships and arsenal …

  By the morning of the 18 December the whole population of Toulon was close to panic. Sounds of battle in the small hours of the 17th had been followed by much activity on the part of small craft and ships’ boats bringing in the surviving troops from the western promontory. As the day progressed further military detachments arrived in the town following their abandonment of outposts. As if by prior arrangement, the Neapolitans began boarding their own ships for evacuation.

  The General Committee did its best to convey to the populace the need for an orderly withdrawal for all those who wished to take passage on the transports but, as the day wore on, the trickle of people became a flood, a multitude pleading for assistance. This was despite General Dundas’s considerable efforts to have reassuring proclamations publicly posted, military patrols doubled and instructions given for citizens to remain in their homes and not to form crowds. They were requested to make necessary preparations if desirous of leaving but then to await orders to report for any orderly embarkation.

  By midday on the 18th the republicans had taken over the positions at Artigues, Sainte-Catherine, Sablettes and Cap Brun. Fort Pomets was a ruin following the withdrawal of its British naval garrison. Here, its commanding officer, Lieutenant Brisbane of the Britannia, blew the magazine containing 500 barrels of powder. All returned safely to their ship. In the various fortifications, hurried departures saw many cannon left in a serviceable condition. These, and others in Malbousquet, were used, where they could be brought to bear, to bombard the town, further increasing the general sense of panic.

  The embarkation of the Neapolitans caused more apprehension to the general populace although uninformed service personnel thought that they were either being transported to recover the western promontory or were leaving following a dispute with the British.

  Hood’s decision to evacuate, however, ‘could not be defer’d beyond that Night, as the Enemy commanded the Town and Ships by their Shot and Shells. I … directed the Boats of the Fleet to assemble by eleven O’Clock near Fort le Malgue’. Although, to avoid the creation of further alarm, these preparations were not made public, the general intentions of the allied military soon became apparent.

  Already under intermittent, though not yet fierce, bombardment, those British warships still in the Petite Rade were ordered to shift their berths to the outer anchorage. Coming alongside in the arsenal, however, were the royalist French warships Puissant and Iphigénie which, together with gunboats, had been engaged in incessant dueling with Buonaparte’s shore batteries. Liberally scarred by their efforts, their duty was now done, their battle lost. Their final service would be to help save that that could be saved. A discouragi
ng sight was the loading of personal effects of Admiral Trogoff and other senior officers. Even more obviously, British cavalry units were to be seen embarking.

  A world away, yet separated by only half a mile of water, the warships awaited their orders, their logs noting events as dispassionately as ever. That of the Britannia: ‘… At 9 hove up and Warped to the eastward of Cape Sepet [sic]. The Troops and many of the Inhabitants embarking on board the Fleet.’ In view of the warships’ yet unfulfilled priority of embarking the fighting troops, it would seem that it was against Hood’s intentions to embark civilians at this stage, although the Britannia’s lieutenant was not specific as to the nationality of the ships involved.

  A massive surge toward the quays began when Admiral Gravina, who was known to feel keenly that the ordinary citizens of Toulon had been badly let down by the coalition, let it be known that evacuation was definitely planned. Churches, full of supplicants, emptied as confirmation of the worst quickly spread. Clutching necessities and boxes of items most dear to them, families, couples and single folk, young, old and infant, joined the flood of humanity heading for the ships. Any ship would do, the only hope for evading the fate of their fellows in Marseille, which town, savaged into submission by the forces of the Convention had now, ominously, been renamed by it as ‘La Ville sans Nom’.

  As daylight again faded, an estimated 20,000 thronged the quaysides, everywhere encumbered by handcarts, boxes and baggage discarded by those more anxious to save themselves when ships refused to accept their bulky belongings. On the open space of the Champ de Mars a military party, endeavouring to maintain order, fired warning shots over the head of the throng. This promoted near-panic on the nearby quays as it was feared that the republicans were upon them. There were screams of ‘Voici Carteaux!’ for, while few knew of his supersession for incompetence, all knew of his reputation at Marseille and Avignon.

  As the town dissolved into increasingly uncontrollable chaos, it suddenly became Hood’s responsibility to destroy the arsenal and those ships of the French Toulon squadron that could not be brought out. Both he and Admiral Langara had received unambiguous orders from their respective governments as to their actions in this event, yet there is no evidence of any prior preparation or plan. Hood’s naivety seems to have matched that of the less-experienced Captain Nelson, who was confident that a single fireship would suffice to destroy both the French fleet and an arsenal the size of a small town. As so often throughout history, an unpleasant decision had been deferred to the point at which events took charge, dictating the outcome.

  RECENTLY ARRIVED AT Toulon was the 29-year-old Sir Sidney Smith. In a service which abounded in ‘characters’, Smith still contrived to stand out, becoming one of that band of senior commanders (including Cochrane, Charles Beresford and, dare one say, Nelson) who combined a wayward genius with unbounded personal courage and talent for leadership, yet who were touched by a weakness for self-publicity and a facility for making influential enemies within the establishment.

  From a non-naval and not particularly wealthy background – his parents were ‘trade’ – Smith had been packed off into the Royal Navy at the age of 13. Following two years on the North American station, he returned as midshipman before being posted to the Sandwich 98, wearing the flag of Admiral Sir George Rodney. During an eventful commission he then saw considerable action, including the ‘Moonlight Battle’ off Cape St Vincent and at the Saintes.

  Smith’s obvious qualities caught the attention of his admiral, who gave him command of the 16-gun sloop Fury. This was in the West Indies, then a place to die as easily from disease as by enemy action. Thus, in 1782, the command of the Alcmene 32 fell vacant and Rodney, still greatly impressed by Smith, made him post captain. While not unique, it was certainly exceptional to find a frigate commanded by a 19-year-old, but these protracted wars did offer exceptional opportunity to exceptional men.

  None the less, the end of the American War of Independence saw an immediate run-down of the fleet and a mass shift of unemployed naval officers, of whom Smith was one, to half-pay. Smith’s enquiring mind drove him to spend his time travelling, and it thus happened that he was on the Baltic when, in 1789, hostilities began between Sweden and Russia. Having become acquainted with Swedish society and, as usual, having widely advertised his opinions, Smith was summoned by no less than King Gustav III himself, who invited him to serve as a squadron commander in the Swedish navy.

  The Admiralty refused Smith permission to accept the appointment but, as considerable latitude was allowed for half-pay officers to ‘keep their hand in’, a blind eye was turned to Smith’s acting as unofficial naval adviser to the king. As an ‘adviser’, in the widest possible sense, he was involved in a considerable amount of action and, although the Swedes profited none too well from the war, Gustav knighted Smith for his services. The honour could not be assumed without the acquiescence of the British monarch but, at the specific request of Gustav, George III invested Smith in 1792, from which point he became known in the service, with some irony, as the ‘Swedish Knight’.

  Still on half-pay, Smith gravitated to the Levant, attracted not only by the war then being waged between Turkey and Russia, but also by the fact that his brother, Charles Spencer Smith, was about to be appointed British ambassador to the Porte. Due to good connections already established he was also apparently engaged on an errand for the British Foreign Office.

  On hearing of the French declaration of war on Britain, Smith began to make his way home for re-employment. He set about this in typical Smith style for, happening to be in the port of Smyrna, he noticed many British seamen there, unemployed. At this, he purchased a local craft (‘one of the lateen-rigged, fast-sailing craft of the Archipelago’), renamed her the Swallow Tender and hired forty men (‘truculent fellows’) for crew.

  Having ‘sailed down the Mediterranean in search of the English fleet’, Smith and his irregulars turned up at Toulon early in December. He made himself known to Hood, offered his services and (being Smith), proceeded to criticize the general conduct of the campaign. While any addition to his small fund of skilled and willing manpower must have been welcome to the admiral, the fact that Smith and his men were volunteers made their employment difficult. Smith proposed the formation of a light, inshore flotilla to harass the enemy along the coast, but Hood declined.

  With the panic of 18 December, however, the admiral discovered the ideal role. As he later reported to Dundas in London:

  I ordered the Vulcan fireship to be primed, and Sir Sidney Smith, who joined me from Smyrna about a fortnight ago, having offered his services to burn the ships, I put Captain Hare [of the Vulcan] under his orders, with the Lieuts. Tupper and Gore of the Victory, Lieut. Pater of the Britannia and Lieut. R.W. Miller [actually Middleton] of the Windsor Castle …

  Thus, while the half-pay Smith had no official status, he now commanded commissioned service personnel. To assist this small band with the enormous, and extremely hazardous, task of destruction Smith was also given a mixed flotilla of three British and three Spanish-manned ‘gunboats’ as well as the Vulcan. The three British craft were crewed by 300 selected men, commanded by the lieutenants named. Langara’s vessels had a further 260 crew and were commanded by Lieutenants Riquelme, Cotiella and Trujillo. They had in company a second fireship, the San Luis Gonzago.

  By the time that Smith’s force had secured in the arsenal, the day was well advanced. The governor had ensured that the dockyard’s massive gates had been locked and barred for, despite the general mayhem, many of the yard workers, having sought some protection in discarding their white Bourbon cockades, were already trying to force their way in, in order to prevent the allies destroying their livelihood. No doubt in their intended action they sought also to re-establish their credentials in the eyes of the représentants, shortly expected.

  A more direct menace to Smith’s men was from the crews of the French fleet’s galley flotilla, also secured in the main basin. For the most part the dregs o
f the fleet, these men, 500 to 600 in number, would normally have been confined to their craft but some, at least, appeared to be on the loose. Taking no chances with this sullen bunch, Smith had them rounded up and penned again in their flimsy vessels. Encouraged to keep quiet by the simple expedient of having cannon trained upon them, they were assured that they would be harmed only if they misbehaved. Although successful, this measure further drained Smith’s resources of both manpower and time.

  Shot and shell were now landing indiscriminately over a wide area, most of it from the new incumbents of Malbousquet. Despite the resulting random danger, however, Smith considered the cannonade an asset, helping to cow the galley crews and encouraging the emerging republicans among the town’s citizens to remain under cover.

  As daylight faded the enemy could be seen advancing, followed shortly by his opening ‘an irregular though quick fire on us from the Boulangerie [facing the west wall of the arsenal from across the tidal moat, empty at low water] and the heights which overlook it’. Worried that the enemy should realize the ‘insufficiency’ of his force, Smith kept the conventionnels at a distance with irregular bursts of grapeshot. He also stationed a gunboat and a couple of discovered field pieces to cover a wicket gate, a weakness and likely point of entry.

  Meanwhile, due to ‘the steadiness of the few brave seamen that I had under my command’, Smith could see preparations slowly advancing with combustible matter of all descriptions being located in storehouses. Ships lying in the Petite Rade were prepared by the British, those in the two dockyard basins by the Spanish.