William Pitt and the Great War

by J. Holland Rose

H.M.S. "Victory," Hières Bay, Dec. 21, 1793.[269]

... The works suffered much. The number of men killed and wounded was considerable. The weather was rainy and the consequent fatigue great. At 2 a.m. of the 17th, the enemy, who had every advantage in assembling and suddenly advancing, attacked the fort in great force. Although no part of this temporary post was such as could well resist determined troops, yet for a considerable time it was defended; but, on the enemy entering on the Spanish side, the British quarter, commanded by Captain Conolly of the 18th regiment, could not be much longer maintained, notwithstanding several gallant efforts were made for that purpose. It was therefore at last carried, and the remains of the garrison of 700 men retired towards the shore of Balaguier, under the protection of the other posts established on those heights, and which continued to be faintly attacked by the enemy. As this position of Balaguier was a most essential one for the preservation of the harbour, and as we had no communication with it but by water, 2,200 men had been placed there for some time past. On the night preceding the attack, 300 more men had been sent over, and on the morning of the 17th, 400 were embarked still further to support it.

When the firing at Balaguier ceased, we remained in anxious suspense as to the event, till a little before daylight, when a new scene opened by an attack on all our posts on Mt. Pharon. The enemy were repulsed on the east side, where was our principal force of about 700 men, commanded by a most distinguished officer, the Piedmontese Colonel, de Jermagnan, whose loss we deeply lament; but on the back of the mountain—near 1,800 feet high, steep, rocky, deemed almost inaccessible, and which we had laboured much to make so—they found means once more to penetrate between our posts, which occupied an extent of above two miles, guarded by about 450 men; and in a very short space of time we saw that with great numbers they crowned all that side of the mountain which overlooks the town.

In this despatch David Dundas proclaimed his own incompetence. For some time it had been obvious that the Republicans were about to attack Fort Mulgrave, which everybody knew to be essential to the defence of the fleet. Yet he took no steps to strengthen this "temporary post" so that it might resist a determined attack. He also entrusted one half of the battery to the Spaniards whom he had declared to be "everything that is bad." On his own showing, as many as 2,500 allied troops were near at hand on the Balaguier or Eguilette heights to act as supports, before Bonaparte's attack began; and 400 more were sent thither soon afterwards. A spirited attack by those troops on the victors at Fort Mulgrave on its blind side might have retrieved the day; but a panic seized part of the supports, whom Sidney Smith describes as rushing like swine towards the sea though the enemy was only in a condition to attack "faintly." Hood was furious at this spiritless acceptance of defeat; and in his despatch to Whitehall censured the troops for not making a timely effort;[270] but as David Dundas had all along opined that the place was untenable, he decided to hold a council of war. It registered the wishes of the desponding chief. The officers decided that it was impossible either to retake the two positions lost, or to establish a post on the outer, or Cepet, peninsula, capable of protecting the roadstead from the cross fires which the French would pour in from the Balaguier and Cape Brun promontories.

During the next three days the evacuation took place amidst scenes of misery for the royalist refugees that baffle the imagination. As many as 14,877 were crowded on board the British ships, together with some 8,000 troops. At the same time Captains Sidney Smith, Hare, and Edge, with a picked body of men burnt or otherwise damaged 27 French warships left in the harbour, while 18 were brought away by the Allies. Eleven of the twenty-seven were not seriously injured by the fire, and they afterwards flew the tricolour. But the loss of 34 warships and nearly all the masts and other valuable stores was a blow from which the French navy did not recover until Bonaparte before his Egyptian expedition breathed his own matchless vigour into the administration. In ships and stores, then, France suffered far more heavily than the Allies. Their losses elude the inquiries of the statistician. They consisted in the utter discredit of the royalist cause throughout France, the resentment that ever follows on clumsy or disloyal co-operation, and the revelation of the hollowness of the imposing fabric of the First Coalition. In the south of France four nations failed to hold a single fortress which her own sons had placed in their power.

The Nemesis which waits upon weakness and vacillation has rarely appeared in more mocking guise than at the close of the year 1793. About the time when Toulon surrendered, the Austrian Government finally came to the determination to despatch thither the 5,000 men which it had formerly promised to send. Grenville received this news from Eden in the first days of 1794, shortly after the surrender of the fortress was known. Thereupon he penned these bitter words: "If the first promise had been fulfilled agreeably to the expectation which His Majesty was justified in forming, the assistance of such a body of disciplined troops would have sufficed to ensure the defence of that important post; and the injury which the common cause has sustained on this occasion can be ascribed only to the tardiness and indecision which so strongly characterize the Austrian Government."[271] Most tactfully he bade Eden refrain from reproaches on this occasion and to use it merely as an argument for throwing greater vigour into the next campaign.

Events pointed the moral far more strongly than Eden could do. As by a lightning flash, the purblind politicians of Vienna could now discern the storm-wrack drifting upon them. The weakness of the Piedmontese army, their own unpreparedness in the Milanese, the friendliness of Genoa to France, and the Jacobinical ferment in all parts of Italy, portended a speedy irruption of the Republicans into an almost defenceless land where they were sure of a welcome from the now awakened populace. So long as Toulon held out, Piedmont and Milan were safe. Now, the slackness of Austria enabled her future destroyer to place his foot on the first rung of the ladder of fame, and prompted those mighty plans for the conquest of the Italian States which were to ensure her overthrow and his supremacy.

Well might Eden dwell on the consternation prevalent at Vienna early in 1794. For, along with news of the loss of Toulon, tidings of defeat and retreat came from the Rhineland. Able and vigorous young generals, Hoche and Pichegru, had beaten back Austrians and Prussians from the hills around Wörth and Weissenburg; so that the Allies fell back with heavy losses towards the Rhine. Thus, on the whole, the efforts of Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, Holland, and some of the smaller German States had availed merely to capture four fortresses, Mainz, Condé, Valenciennes, and Quesnoy. It is not surprising that public opinion in England, even in loyal circles, became clamorous against the conduct of the war.[272]

Not the least of the misfortunes attending the Toulon episode was that the logic of events, and also the growing savagery of the Reign of Terror, edged Pitt away from his standpoint of complete neutrality as to the future government of France. How could the ally of the Toulonese Royalists profess indifference on that topic? On 5th October he wrote as follows to Grenville respecting the powers to be granted to Sir Gilbert Elliot at Toulon:

I do not see that we can go on secure grounds if we treat with any separate districts or bodies of men [in France] who stop short of some declaration in favour of monarchy: nor do I see any way so likely to unite considerable numbers in one vigorous effort as by specifying monarchy as the only system in the re-establishment of which we are disposed to concur. This idea by no means precludes us from treating with any other form of regular Government, if, in the end, any other should be solidly established; but it holds out monarchy as the only one from which we expect any good, and in favour of which we are disposed to enter into concert.[273]