The republicans menaced the town on two sides.  Carteaux with some 8,000 men held the hills between Toulon and Ollioules, while a corps 3,000 strong, under Lapoype, observed the fortress on the side of La Valette.  Badly led though they were, they wrested the valley north of Mount Faron from the allied outposts, and nearly completed the besiegers’ lines (September 18th).  In fact, the garrison, which comprised only 2,000 British troops, 4,000 Spaniards, 1,500 French royalists, together with some Neapolitans and Piedmontese, was insufficient to defend the many positions around the city on which its safety depended.  Indeed, General Grey wrote to Pitt that 50,000 men were needed to garrison the place; but, as that was double the strength of the British regular army then, the English Minister could only hold out hopes of the arrival of an Austrian corps and a few hundred British.[21]

Before Buonaparte’s arrival the Jacobins had no artillery:  true, they had a few field-pieces, four heavier guns and two mortars, which a sergeant helplessly surveyed; but they had no munitions, no tools, above all no method and no discipline.  Here then was the opportunity for which he had been pining.  At once he assumes the tone of a master.  “You mind your business, and let me look after mine,” he exclaims to officious infantrymen; “it is artillery that takes fortresses:  infantry gives its help.”  The drudgery of the last weeks now yields fruitful results:  his methodical mind, brooding over the chaos before him, flashes back to this or that detail in some coast fort or magazine:  his energy hustles on the leisurely Provencaux, and in a few days he has a respectable park of artillery—­fourteen cannon, four mortars, and the necessary stores.  In a brief space the Commissioners show their approval of his services by promoting him to the rank of chef de bataillon.

By this time the tide was beginning to turn in favour of the Republic.  On October 9th Lyons fell before the Jacobins.  The news lends a new zest to the Jacobins, whose left wing had (October 1st) been severely handled by the allies on Mount Faron.  Above all, Buonaparte’s artillery can be still further strengthened.  “I have despatched,” he wrote to the Minister of War, “an intelligent officer to Lyons, Briancon, and Grenoble, to procure what might be useful to us.  I have requested the Army of Italy to furnish us with the cannon now useless for the defence of Antibes and Monaco....  I have established at Ollioules an arsenal with 80 workers.  I have requisitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Montpellier....  I am having 5,000 gabions made every day at Marseilles.”  But he was more than a mere organizer.  He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour:  “I always found him at his post,” wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux; “when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak:  he never left the batteries.”  There, amidst the autumn rains, he contracted the febrile symptoms