ce and quickly sized up the strategic situation. He recommended training the artillery on the British encampment on a promontory overlooking Toulon’s harbour, rather than on the city itself.
He could see that seizing control of the British position would allow him to fire on the harbour itself, rather than the town, and to drive out the British fleet, leaving the defenders without a supply-line from the sea.
The general in charge, however, made a half-hearted attempt on the promontory which succeeded only in alerting the British to their danger: they reinforced the promontory so heavily that it was dubbed ‘Little Gibraltar’.
‘The Men Without Fear’
Napoleon had been denied what was to become one of his later trade-mark routes to success: acting with great speed to surprise the enemy, exploiting a weakness that they had not recognised. Denied this, his next move represented another classic Napoleonic strategy: apply overwhelming force.
He requisitioned artillery from all around the region, and established a series of batteries that were given stirring patriotic names – ‘The Convention’, ‘Camp of the Republicans’, ‘The Jacobins’, ‘The Men Without Fear’. This in itself was a clever piece of leadership, demonstrating Napoleon’s instinctive grasp of motivation.
The battery of ‘The Men without Fear’ was indeed sited in a very exposed and dangerous position, but it never lacked for volunteers, keen to prove their bravery. Legend has it that Napoleon himself worked on this battery, wielding a ramrod alongside his gunners. He probably did.
The original general in charge of the siege was dismissed by the politicos; he was succeeded by a former doctor – a classic example of the danger of letting political cadres take control of an army. He in turn resigned in recognition of his own incompetence and was succeeded at last by an experienced soldier, Dugommier, who recognised the merit of Napoleon’s strategy and gave it his full support.
After repulsing one British attack on the French gun emplacements, Napoleon and Dugommier together led a counter-attack, during which Napoleon captured General O’Hara, the British commanding officer. Napoleon was promoted to Colonel. Later he led the final, successful, attack on the British position and was wounded in the thigh by a bayonet. It was, astoundingly, the only wound that he was ever to receive in battle, despite his legendary insouciance about exposing himself to enemy fire. As his career progressed, this insouciance (or bravery) seemed to come from a genuine fatalism: he believed that he would not be killed until he had fulfilled his destiny.
Napoleon meets Josephine
The British fleet were indeed driven out of the harbour by French artillery, Toulon fell and Napoleon was the hero of the day, emerging as General of Brigade. His success brought him further to the attention of the Committee of Public Safety. It also brought him to the attention of Paul Barras, then a member of the National Convention and Commissioner of the French Army.
Barras was (incidentally) to introduce Napoleon to a mistress of his, whose minor aristocrat husband had been killed in the Terror, and of whom Barras was growing slightly (but not yet irrevocably) tired – the young but far from innocent Josephine Beauharnais, Napoleon’s future wife and, despite their infidelities and Napoleon’s later divorce of Josephine and remarriage, the love of his life.
Less than one year after the siege of Toulon, the revolutionary excesses of the Terror had burned themselves out. Barras was one of many in the Convention sickened by the excesses of the Jacobins and fearful of who might be its next victims: after a revolt of moderates in the Convention, Barras led the National Guard to arrest the Robespierre brothers, and others, on the night of July 27th 1794.
Augustin threw himself out of a window to his death; Maximilien was either shot in jaw by a member of the National Guard or wounded himself in an attempted suicide – he was guillotined the next day, without trial, with nineteen of his colleagues. Napoleon subsequently spent two wee