The Fall of Toulon Read online

  Having thus provoked considerable response, Joseph reconsidered his options, finally losing interest in 1785 when France concluded a treaty with the northern Netherlands, then termed the United Provinces. This served only to inflame the internal factionalism that resulted in the aforementioned state of quasi-civil war of 1787.

  In 1786 Prussia’s king, Frederick II (‘the Great’) had died, but his successor, Frederick William II, continued his policies. His intervention during 1787 in support of the Dutch revolutionaries was seen as a means of weakening the Austrian position.

  This same year saw Turkey, anticipating a Russian move to seize the Caucasus, launch a pre-emptive attack. As a Russian ally, Austria needed little encouragement to join in, and Turkey was quickly under pressure.

  Catherine decided to transfer a Russian battle squadron from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, with an eye to accessing the Black Sea. Along the entire route, however, there existed no base upon which the Russians could rely. Despite her recent rebuffs of British goodwill, the empress none the less approached the prime minister, Pitt. He took restrained pleasure in adopting a strictly neutral, and diplomatically unhelpful, stance, an attitude repeated by the Dutch when they, similarly, were approached. In thus abandoning the project, Catherine reflected upon how valuable would access to the Scheldt have been had Austria established the mastery of it.

  To offset spells on half-pay, British naval officers commonly served in the Russian navy. They were much valued but a crisis was sparked through the appointment by the Russians to high command of the American hero John Paul Jones. This renegade son of Cumberland had caused the British much trouble during the American War of Independence a decade earlier. His appearance in Russian uniform led to the threat of mass British resignations and Jones was relegated to a minor command.

  Smarting from earlier loss of territory, Sweden took the opportunity to move against Russian Finland. His nation by now in decline, Sweden’s Gustav III was chancing his arm, his much-reduced deep-water fleet having been augmented by a specially developed, shallow-water fleet designed for use in the Gulf of Finland. Developed by another son of an English north countryman, Frederik Hendrik af Chapman, its craft were intended for amphibious operations, with priority placed on low draught and manoeuvrability. As Catherine had not been able to transfer the bulk of her Baltic fleet to the Mediterranean as planned, however, it was able to involve the Swedes in a series of fierce engagements. In this war (1788–90) the Swedes had rather the better of the maritime action but the eventual peace benefited neither side.

  Denmark, taking advantage of Sweden’s preoccupation, tried to settle old differences by invading from its adjacent Norwegian territory. Britain, in a triple alliance with Prussia and the Netherlands, enforced a Danish withdrawal on pain of intervention, and brokered the peace settlement between Sweden and Russia. As the latter had appeared likely winners, the British gained by preventing them securing yet more ground in the Baltic.

  Like Turkey, Sweden had a long-standing relationship with France but, with the latter by now so beset with internal problems and without any coherent foreign policy, Britain viewed Russia as the greater potential threat. The Swedish intervention successfully diverted Russian military strength from the Turkish front. As the latter were heading for total defeat and Britain endeavoured to maintain the balance in the north, Russia suddenly concluded a defensive alliance with Austria. Worse, France and Spain, while agreeing to remain neutral in the war against Turkey, pledged to intervene militarily should either Russia or Austria be attacked by a third party.

  As this agreement came about at the time of the fall of the Bastille, the French undertaking would, in practice, have had little substance but, for the Triple Alliance, a potentially unfavourable situation was alleviated when, in 1790, Austria’s belligerent Joseph II died. Both he and his successor, the more moderate Leopold II, were brothers to the detested French queen, Marie Antoinette.

  Leopold feared the Prussians more than he wished to aid Russia, and when the former looked to intervene militarily on the side of the Porte, he moved quickly to negotiate an end to hostilities. The Treaty of Reichenbach saw Austria and Turkey agree to re-adopt their pre-war frontiers, Austria’s reward being the return of its territory in Belgian Flanders.

  The Triple Alliance attempted similar mediation between Russia and Turkey, but was rebuffed by the strong-willed Catherine. Appalling slaughter on both sides, however, began to dent their enthusiasm for war and when, early in 1791, Britain and Prussia issued an ultimatum, threatening military intervention unless she withdrew from Ottoman territory, Catherine indicated her willingness to cease hostilities in exchange for the retention of ground gained on the north shore of the Black Sea. Fighting ceased in August 1791, although a formal peace had to wait a further year.

  Events in the upper Baltic and a dispute with the Spanish over fishing and trading rights on the American Pacific coast (for example, Nootka Sound in 1790), had stimulated the British government to increase the number of fully commissioned ships in the Royal Navy. This force existed as a latent threat behind British diplomacy aimed at achieving favourable balances of power.

  IN BRIEFLY REVIEWING EVENTS elsewhere in a restless Europe, we have anticipated somewhat those in France itself. With the carrying of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 public unrest crossed the symbolic line that separated it from outright revolution. On the following day, the reaction of King Louis XVI was wisely conciliatory and unostentatious. He stood down the troops and addressed what was now termed the National Assembly, assuring deputies that he had no designs on its continued existence.

  On 17 July the king went to Paris, where his progress was through streets lined with crowds that cheered but carried all varieties of improvised weaponry. His authority, he knew, now lay within the gift of a fickle populace. Arriving at the Hôtel de Ville, he both accepted and wore the red-white-and-blue cockade and, rather ineffectually, addressed a throng described as ‘delirious’.

  Tempered by a nagging fear of ultimate retribution, the joy of the crowds proved brittle and short-lived. They were hungry. Even the new assembly could not conjure up cheaper bread and grain overnight. In the provinces, increasingly desperate to provide for their dependents, countrymen banded together and rounded on the seigneurie on the basis of a false rumour that this action met with the approval of the assembly.

  Despite this obvious nonsense, crimes, initially perpetrated against property, soon turned more personal. Central authority quickly broke down and the raising of local militia proved ineffective because, once armed, individuals simply defected to join those with whom their sympathies lay. In the National Assembly, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, the supervisor of debate, noted of the people that now ‘all knew how to command but none how to obey’.

  Then, on 4 August, came the extraordinary meeting of the assembly, where the two privileged estates, those of the aristocracy and clergy, panicked, believing the public mood indicated that they eventually would lose everything. Hysterically, the members vied to grant the greater concession toward dismantling what was still a largely feudal society. This developed into a mass donation of valuables to assist the depleted national treasury.

  Now a notable in the assembly as well as heading the new National Guard, the marquis de Lafayette pressed for a Declaration of the Rights of Man, similar to that adopted by the Americans. The king vetoed the proposal, fearing that he might yet be called to account for agreeing to the erosion of the power of the privileged classes while conferring rights on the citizenry at a time when their parallel obligations as members of society were being conveniently overlooked.

  On 5 October 1789, fed by rumours of continuing highlife and excess at Court, an apparently spontaneous gathering of women protesting at the price of bread, the recurrent theme, developed in Paris. Agitators quickly worked them into a powerful anger and, having first invaded the National Assembly, they marched on to Versailles to demand that the king return to Paris. In this they were supported by
a powerful contingent of the National Guard, whose discipline had broken down despite Lafayette’s personal presence. After some violence, the great procession returned in triumph to the capital with the royal family as trophies. Received with ironic acclaim, Louis was moved into his new quarters. Already the assembly had restyled him as ‘King of the French’ rather than as ‘King of France’.

  ALTHOUGH ALL WERE DEDICATED to establishing a new order, the deputies of the National Assembly were divided into all shades of opinion, from the diehard Revolutionaries, through the moderates to the relative conservatives. On the left sat a group of, largely, Bretonnais, who, on the establishment of the assembly, had developed a rhetoric calling for revolution by whatever means necessary. Because they frequently met separately, as a faction, at the convent of the Jacobin friars, they eventually adopted the title of Societé des Jacobins, a name that would become synonymous with some of the Revolution’s worst excesses.

  A great majority of the Jacobins wanted the king deposed and an end to the monarchy. The more moderate element preferred a constitutional monarchy based on that of Britain. This group drifted away from the extremists, forming a faction known generally as the Feuillant Club. As the National Assembly metamorphosed into a constituent, then a legislative, assembly and the early moderates were increasingly displaced by hotheads whose idea of revolution extended to little more than an idealistic dismantling of the established order, the Feuillant group became the only check on the inexorable slide into anarchy. As several of its more influential members hailed from Bordeaux in the Gironde, the faction as a whole became known as the Girondists.

  While this group, too, embraced a wide range of opinion, it is generally true to say that they looked for no more than major reform of the existing social system, with monarchy, nobility and clergy stripped of much of the privilege with which they haughtily distanced themselves from the mass. The Girondists included some of the better brains of the assembly, which enabled their moderating influence to survive as long as it did in the face of opposition from the Left, which had by far the better orators.

  The Montagnards (literally, ‘mountain men’), formed an inner group of what might be termed the hard Left, taking their name from the raised level of the back benches that they occupied. As the remainder – the undecideds, the fearful and the less committed – occupied the centre of the chamber, between the major groups, they were referred to as the ‘plain’, or Marais (literally, the ‘marshes’). Typical of middle-of-the-roaders, they exerted little influence except when voting was close.

  Remorselessly, sector by sector, the assembly assaulted the very fabric of the nation. Hereditary titles were abolished, together with all insignia and trappings that marked a person’s elevation above his fellow citizen. Extensive lands and property owned by the church were taken into public ownership against the issue of official bonds. A ‘civil constitution’ was imposed on the clergy, reducing the number of bishoprics and obliging its members to face election and to distance themselves from Rome. Religious orders, with the exception of those devoted to teaching or charitable work, were abolished.

  All clergy were now expected to take a civic oath, a matter of great resentment and outright opposition. In early 1791 came the election of the first bishops of the new constitutional church. Not surprisingly, these procedures were roundly condemned by Rome. The Bourbon rulers of France were devout Roman Catholics and his new obligation to sanction a civic oath so vehemently opposed by the clergy was repugnant to the king.

  The first anniversary of the taking of the Bastille was marked by a national Fête de la Fédération. In Paris this was an ambitious affair, in the course of which deputies and spectators, representatives of the armed services and militias and, finally, the royal couple themselves pledged to remain faithful to the nation, the new constitution and the law. For Louis, accustomed to absolute power, it must have been a deeply humiliating and depressing experience.

  On 2 April 1791 Mirabeau died. He had been increasingly at loggerheads with the Jacobins over their excessive demands. The latest of these was that the émigrés, mostly landed gentry terrified by events into retreating to neighbouring states, should be obliged to return on pain of being declared rebels and having their goods and properties forfeit to the state.

  Mirabeau had increasingly recognized that it was easier to start a revolution than to control what resulted. Together with other ‘founding members’ of the revolt he had been a moderating influence against forces demanding ‘liberty for all’, an ideal apparently synonymous with a total reconstruction of the established order. This went as far as demanding impeachment of the king ‘for crimes against the People and the State’. Although the assembly had been issuing and enforcing decrees on the strength of its own authority, Mirabeau’s hope had been that the yet-to-be finalized national constitution would somehow still include the monarchy in the decision-making process.

  Helped by a good harvest, the mood in Paris was returning to something like normality when the Pope’s forthright condemnation of the newly elected clergy triggered a new upsurge of resentment. For months the king had been quietly advised by well-wishers to break free of his virtual confinement and to seek sanctuary across a friendly border, both for his own safety and that of his immediate family, and from where he might then act as a focus for a counter-revolutionary war.

  At Easter 1791 the royal family boarded their coach to celebrate Mass at Saint-Cloud. They were confronted by an angry mob, ablaze with Revolutionary fervour, which prevented their vehicle from leaving the Tuileries. It was probably this frightening experience that finally resolved Louis to flee.

  On the night of 20 June, with the assistance of loyal friends, the family successfully evaded staff and guards to leave by coach. Progress was slow, however, and the alarm was raised very early next morning. Predictably making for the nearest friendly frontier, they were intercepted at Varennes near the border with the Austrian Netherlands. On the strength of a decree from the assembly, signed by Lafayette, the coach was brought back to Paris, escorted by a motley throng of citizens and National Guardsmen. Paris streets and vantage points were packed by silent crowds, forbidden by edict either to applaud or to insult.

  Shortly after the royal return, on the second Bastille anniversary, another extreme faction, the Cordeliers Club, believing that the Revolution was losing its momentum, produced a petition demanding yet more ‘Revolutionary democracy’. Invited to the Champ de Mars to sign it, the public arrived in large numbers. As usual, it took little to foment trouble, in this case two perceived miscreants who were summarily hanged. Disturbance quickly spread to the point where Lafayette ordered out the National Guard. As warning volleys were fired into the air, hotheads denounced the actions as the ‘people’s police’ oppressing the people. Order was restored only when a further volley was directed into the crowd. The fifty killed became the new martyrs of the Left and moderates forfeited much of their support.

  Across France, many minor clergy remained implacably opposed to the signing of any new code that would loosen their ties with Rome. In this, they very often had the support of the majority in their congregations. Ordinary citizens, who wished nothing more than to stand clear of the problems besetting their nation, were thus now torn between a reluctance to abandon a trusted priest and an official requirement to support a reform that, elsewhere, was widely felt to be necessary.

  Recalcitrant priests, together with army officers, had been fleeing in droves and, in neighbouring territories, threats to the Revolution were becoming discernible. European monarchies were interrelated by marriage, and many émigré French nobles, in remaining loyal to their king, acted as rallying points for those who detested and feared the course of events in their own country.

  The French queen, Marie Antoinette, appealed directly to her brother, Leopold II of Austria. ‘Force has overturned everything’, she wrote, ‘and force alone can rectify the situation.’ Despite Austria’s fundamental differences with Prussia, there
fore, they came together for the sake of the future of European monarchies. In the so-called Declaration of Pillnitz of August 1791 they jointly demanded that Louis XVI’s sovereign rights be respected on pain of intervention if (and this was the rub) other European monarchies assisted. Britain, in particular, had no vested interests in being involved.

  As the Pillnitz signatories were well aware of this in advance, their declaration was designed only to put heart into the still-sizeable portion of the French population sympathetic to the idea of a constitutional monarchy. It had, however, entirely the wrong result. The assembly’s Left saw conspiracies everywhere, at home and abroad. The calls, ever more insistent, were for France to take the initiative and to declare war on those forces that would destroy the Revolution.

  In accepting the proposed new constitution in principle, Louis retained his right of veto. He used it to nullify the assembly’s decree that émigrés be pronounced ‘traitors to the Nation’, to be condemned in absentia to a suitable death and to have their estates declared forfeit. A week later he vetoed a second decree that fought to deprive priests who would not accept the new code of both their living and their pension.

  In January 1792, responding to the growing clamour for war, the Legislative Assembly demanded of Austria that it remove the threat implicit in the Pillnitz Declaration. To emphasize the point, the assembly took it upon itself to override any veto from the king. Austria’s response was blunt. Feeling confident in the disordered state of France, it demanded not only a full restoration of the monarchy but the restitution of once-Austrian border territory. For good measure, concessions were also to be made to the Pope, slighted by demands on the French clergy. Three weeks later, on 7 February, Austria and Prussia concluded an alliance. As matters approached a climax, there came a complication: the death of Austria’s Leopold II. Where he had been viewed as something of a moderate, his son, Francis II, who succeeded him, was much under the influence of advisors and liable to be unpredictable. The resulting increased likelihood of armed intervention from abroad emboldened Louis further.