Meanwhile affairs at Toulon were approaching the crisis which ended its tenure by the British and their allies.  The garrison had never been sufficient to man properly the very extensive lines, which the peculiar configuration of the surrounding country made it necessary to occupy for the security of the town; and the troops themselves were not only of different nations, but of very varying degrees of efficiency.  Under these conditions the key of the position, accurately indicated by Napoleon Bonaparte, then a major and in command of the artillery, was held in insufficient force, and was successfully stormed on the night of December 16, 1793.  It was immediately recognized that the ships could no longer remain in the harbor, and that with them the land forces also must depart.  After two days of hurried preparations, and an attempt, only partially successful, to destroy the dockyard and French ships of war, the fleets sailed out on the 19th of December, carrying with them, besides the soldiery, as many as possible of the wretched citizens, who were forced to fly in confusion and misery from their homes, in order to escape the sure and fearful vengeance of the Republican government.  The “Agamemnon” was in Leghorn, getting provisions, when the fugitives arrived there, and Nelson speaks in vivid terms of the impression made upon him by the tales he heard and the sights he saw.  “Fathers are here without families, and families without fathers, the pictures of horror and despair.”  “In short, all is horror.  I cannot write all:  my mind is deeply impressed with grief.  Each teller makes the scene more horrible.”  He expressed the opinion that the evacuation was a benefit to England, and it unquestionably was.  He had not always thought so; but it must be allowed that the hopes and exultation with which he greeted the acquisition of the place had sufficient foundation, in the reported attitude of the people of Southern France, to justify the first opinion as well as the last.  The attempt was worth making, though it proved unsuccessful.  As it was, the occupation had resulted in a degree of destruction to the French ships and arsenal in Toulon, which, though then over-estimated, was a real gain to the allies.

FOOTNOTES: 

[18] Turin was capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which embraced the island of that name and the Province of Piedmont.

[19] This statement, which apparently depends upon a memoir supplied many years later by the first lieutenant of the “Boreas,” is not strictly accurate, for Nelson himself, in a letter written shortly after her arrival in the West Indies, mentions that several of her ship’s company had been carried off by fever (Nicolas, vol. i. p. 111); but it can doubtless be accepted as evidence of an unusually healthy condition.

CHAPTER IV.

REDUCTION OF CORSICA BY THE BRITISH.—­DEPARTURE OF LORD HOOD FOR ENGLAND.—­THE “AGAMEMNON” REFITTED AT LEGHORN.