of Toulon called in a joint
British and Spanish garrison, and gave up the fleet and the arsenal to
Lord Hood. The republicans laid siege to the town in October. The
harbour of Toulon is deep and spacious; but there was, and still is, a
fort which commands the entrance. Whoever held l'Aiguillette was
master of every ship in the docks and of every gun in the arsenal. On
December 18, at midnight, during a violent storm, the French attacked
and carried the fort. Toulon was no longer tenable. Hastily, but
imperfectly, the English destroyed the French ships they could not at
once take away, leaving the materials for the Egyptian expedition, and
as fast as possible evacuated the harbour, under the fire of the
captured fort. The fortunes of Bonaparte began with that exploit, and
the first event of his career was the spectacle of a British fleet
flying before him by the glare of an immense conflagration. The year
1793 thus ended triumphantly, and the Convention was master of all
France, except the marshes down by the ocean, where Charette defied
every foe, and succeeded in imposing his own terms on the Republic.
But the danger had come that disturbed the slumber of Robespierre, and
the man was found who was to make the Revolution a stepping-stone to
the power of the sword.

XXI

THE EUROPEAN WAR

The French Revolution was an attempt to establish in the public law of
Europe maxims which had triumphed by the aid of France in America. By
the principles of the Declaration of Independence a government which
obstructs liberty forfeits the claim to obedience, and the men who
devote their families to ruin and themselves to death in order to
destroy it do no more than their duty. The American Revolution was not
provoked by tyranny or intolerable wrong, for the Colonies were better
off than the nations of Europe. They rose in arms against a
constructive danger, an evil that might have been borne but for its
possible effects. The precept which condemned George III. was fatal to
Lewis XVI., and the case for the French Revolution was stronger than
the case for the American Revolution. But it involved international
consequences. It condemned the governments of other countries. If the
revolutionary government was legitimate, the conservative governments
were not. They necessarily threatened each other. By the law of its
existence, France encouraged insurrection against its neighbours, and
the existing balance of power would have t