It was during this siege that young Napoleon Bonaparte first won fame and promotion when his plan, involving the capture of fortifications above the harbour, was credited with forcing the city to capitulate and the Anglo-Spanish fleet to withdraw.

After the arrest of the Girondist deputies on the 2 June 1793, there followed a series of insurrections within the French cities of Lyon, Avignon, Nîmes, and Marseille known as Federalist revolts.

Upon the announcement of the recapture of Marseille and of the reprisals which had taken place there at the hands of the revolutionaries, the royalist forces, directed by the Baron Xavier Lebret d'Imbert, requested support from the Anglo-Spanish fleet.

Toulon hoisted the royal flag, the fleur de lys, and d'Imbert declared the eight-year-old Louis XVII King of France on the first of October.

[4][5] Although France had a large army due to its levée en masse, the Republic could not easily rebuild its navy, which had been the third largest in Europe,[6] if the Allies and Royalists destroyed or captured much of it.

Bonaparte had been in the area escorting a convoy of powder wagons en route to Nice and had stopped in to pay his respects to his fellow Corsican, Saliceti.

Despite the mutual dislike, Bonaparte was able to muster an artillery force that was sufficient for a siege of Toulon and the fortresses that were quickly built by the British in its immediate environs.

With the help of his friends, the deputies Saliceti and Augustin Robespierre, who held power of life and death, he was able to compel retired artillery officers from the area to re-enlist.

The problem of manning the guns was not remedied by this solution alone, and under Bonaparte's intensive training he instructed much of the infantry in the practice of employing, deploying and firing the artillery that his efforts had recently acquired.

To deal with his superiors who were wanting in skill, he proposed the appointment of a general for command of the artillery, succeeding himself, so that "... [they could] command respect and deal with a crowd of fools on the staff with whom one has constantly to argue and lay down the law in order to overcome their prejudices and make them take steps which theory and practice alike have shown to be axiomatic to any trained officer of this corps".

Carteaux, reluctant, sent only a weak detachment under Major General Henri François Delaborde, which failed in its attempted conquest on 22 September.

Hood attempted to silence it, without success, but the British fleet was obliged to harden its resolve along the coast anew, because of the high seabed of Mourillon and la Tour Royale [fr].

On 11 November, Carteaux was dismissed and replaced by François Amédée Doppet, formerly a doctor, whose panic upon witnessing the death of his aide-de-camp beside him would cause an attempted attack against Fort Mulgrave on the 15th to fail.

[12] On the 17th, he was succeeded by General Jacques François Dugommier,[13] who immediately recognised the virtue of Bonaparte's plan, and prepared for the capture of Little Gibraltar.

[14] These ships contained the gunpowder stores for the entire fleet and due to the danger of explosion were anchored in the outer roads, some distance from the city.

As darkness fell Republican troops reached the shoreline and contributed musketry to the fusillade; Smith replied with grapeshot from his boats' guns.

The French Republican prisoners on board had initially resisted British efforts to burn the ships, but with the evidence of the destruction in the arsenal before them they consented to be safely conveyed to shore as Smith's men set the empty hulls on fire.

[16] With all the available targets on fire or in French hands, Smith withdrew once more, accompanied by dozens of small watercraft packed with Toulonnais refugees and Neapolitan soldiers separated during the retreat.

Although his force was well within the blast radius, on this occasion none of Smith's men were struck by falling debris and his boats retired to the waiting British fleet without further incident.

[15] In addition to the soldiery, the British squadron and their boats took on board thousands of French Royalist refugees, who had flocked to the waterfront when it became clear that the city would fall to the Republicans.

In total the British fleet rescued 14,877 Toulonnais from the city; witnesses on board the retreating ships reported scenes of panic on the waterfront as stampeding civilians were crushed or drowned in their haste to escape the advancing Republican soldiers, who fired indiscriminately into the fleeing populace.