(August 28th). This event shot an electric thrill through France. It
was the climax of a long series of disasters. Lyons had hoisted the
white flag of the Bourbons, and was making a desperate defence against
the forces of the Convention: the royalist peasants of La Vendee had
several times scattered the National Guards in utter rout: the
Spaniards were crossing the Eastern Pyrenees: the Piedmontese were
before the gates of Grenoble; and in the north and on the Rhine a
doubtful contest was raging.

Such was the condition of France when Buonaparte drew near to the
republican forces encamped near Ollioules, to the north-west of
Toulon. He found them in disorder: their commander, Carteaux, had left
the easel to learn the art of war, and was ignorant of the range of
his few cannon; Dommartin, their artillery commander, had been
disabled by a wound; and the Commissioners of the Convention, who were
charged to put new vigour into the operations, were at their wits' end
for lack of men and munitions. One of them was Salicetti, who hailed
his coming as a godsend, and urged him to take Dommartin's place.
Thus, on September 16th, the thin, sallow, threadbare figure took
command of the artillery.

The republicans menaced the town on two sides. Carteaux with some
8,000 men held the hills between Toulon and Ollioules, while a corps
3,000 strong, under Lapoype, observed the fortress on the side of La
Valette. Badly led though they were, they wrested the valley north of
Mount Faron from the allied outposts, and nearly completed the
besiegers' lines (September 18th). In fact, the garrison, which
comprised only 2,000 British troops, 4,000 Spaniards, 1,500 French
royalists, together with some Neapolitans and Piedmontese, was
insufficient to defend the many positions around the city on which its
safety depended. Indeed, General Grey wrote to Pitt that 50,000 men
were needed to garrison the place; but, as that was double the
strength of the British regular army then, the English Minister could
only hold out hopes of the arrival of an Austrian corps and a few
hundred British.[21]

Before Buonaparte's arrival the Jacobins had no artillery: true, they
had a few field-pieces, four heavier guns and two mortars, which a
sergeant helplessly surveyed; but they had no munitions, no tools,
above all no method and no discipline. Here then was the opportunity
for which he had been pining. At once he assumes the tone of a master.
"You mind your busi