CHAPTER II

     Buonaparte commands the Artillery at Toulon—­Fall of Toulon—­The
     Representatives of the People—­Junot.

Buonaparte’s first military service occurred, as we have seen, in the summer of 1793.  The king of France had been put to death on the 21st of January in that year; and in less than a month afterwards the convention had declared war against England.  The murder of the king, alike imprudent as atrocious, had in fact united the princes of Europe against the revolutionary cause; and within France itself a strong reaction took place.  The people of Toulon, the great port and arsenal of France on the Mediterranean, partook these sentiments, and invited the English and Spanish fleets off their coast to come to their assistance, and garrison their city.  The allied admirals took possession accordingly of Toulon, and a motley force of English, Spaniards, and Neapolitans, prepared to defend the place.  In the harbour and roads there were twenty-five ships of the line, and the city contained immense naval and military stores of every description, so that the defection of Toulon was regarded as a calamity of the first order by the revolutionary government.

This event occurred in the midst of that period which has received the name of the reign of terror.  The streets of Paris were streaming with innocent blood; Robespierre was glutting himself with murder; fear and rage were the passions that divided mankind, and their struggles produced on either side the likeness of some epidemic frenzy.  Whatever else the government wanted, vigour to repel aggressions from without was displayed in abundance.  Two armies immediately marched upon Toulon; and after a series of actions, in which the passes in the hills behind the town were forced, the place was at last invested, and a memorable siege commenced.

It was conducted with little skill, first by Cartaux, a vain coxcomb who had been a painter, and then by Doppet, an ex-physician, and a coward.  To watch and report on the proceedings of these chiefs, there were present in the camp several Representatives of the People, as they were called—­persons holding no military character or rank, but acting as honourable spies for the government at Paris.  The interference of these personages on this, as on many other occasions, was productive of delays, blunders, and misfortunes; but the terror which their ready access to the despotic government inspired was often, on the other hand, useful in stimulating the exertions of the military.  The younger Robespierre was one of the deputies at Toulon, and his name was enough to make his presence formidable.