A port handed to the enemy
In the summer of 1793 the French Revolution was at war with half of Europe and with itself. In Toulon, home of the French Mediterranean fleet, royalists opened the port to a British and Spanish fleet under Admiral Samuel Hood. For the Republic it was a disaster: the fleet, the arsenal and a fortified harbour in enemy hands.
The captain with a plan
The army sent to retake the town was short of almost everything, including competent artillery. Its new artillery commander was a young Corsican, Napoleone Buonaparte. He looked at the map and saw that the town itself did not matter. Whoever held the heights at the narrows of the inner harbour could fire on the fleet, and the fleet could not stay. On one of those heights the British had built a strong redoubt, Fort Mulgrave. The French soldiers called it Little Gibraltar.
A night of rain
For weeks Bonaparte built batteries and argued with generals. The decisive assault came in the night of 16 to 17 December, in pouring rain. The first attack was thrown back. Bonaparte went forward with the reserve column, his horse was killed under him and he was wounded in the thigh by a bayonet. By morning Little Gibraltar was French, and the forts at L’Éguillette and Balaguier were abandoned.
Fire in the harbour
Hood saw that the harbour could no longer be held. On 18 and 19 December the allies evacuated, taking thousands of royalist inhabitants with them. Captain Sidney Smith set fire to the arsenal and many of the French ships left behind. When the Republic’s troops entered the town, harsh reprisals followed.
What came of it
Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier general on 22 December 1793. Several men who would follow him for years were already at his side, among them Andoche Junot and Jean-Baptiste Muiron. Toulon was the start of the career that would end, twenty-two years later, at Waterloo.