Siege of Toulon, first glory — 17 décembre 1793

Toulon had surrendered to the British and Spanish fleets; the Convention made its recapture a matter of survival. Appointed commander of the siege artillery, Captain Bonaparte imposed his plan: seize the Éguillette redoubt to drive the enemy ships from the roadstead. The city fell on 19 December and Bonaparte, wounded in the thigh, was promoted brigadier general at twenty-four.

The chief naval base handed to the British

In August 1793 Toulon's federalist notables opened the roadstead to Admiral Hood. With the town the coalition received some thirty ships of the line and the Mediterranean arsenal. For the Convention it was a strategic catastrophe compounded by treason, and the army sent against the place bogged down for four months under successive commanders with no plan.

The plan of a twenty-four-year-old captain

Bonaparte arrived almost by accident: when the artillery commander was wounded, the representative on mission Saliceti, a Corsican like him, had him appointed in his place. His memorandum was brutally clear — Toulon would not be taken by attacking Toulon. The key was the Le Caire peninsula commanding the inner roadstead: if batteries held that headland, the British fleet could no longer anchor and the town would fall of itself.

The British had understood this and built a work there they called Little Gibraltar. Bonaparte set up batteries around it, naming them himself — one was the Battery of Men Without Fear, manned night and day so the guns never cooled.

A general at twenty-four

The assault came in the night of 16-17 December, in driving rain; Bonaparte took a bayonet wound to the thigh. With the fort taken, Hood evacuated on the 18th, burned the arsenal and carried off what he could of the fleet.

On 22 December 1793 he was made brigadier general. Dugommier had written in his report that this young man should be rewarded and promoted, for if he were treated with ingratitude he would promote himself.