days the evacuation took place amidst scenes of
misery for the royalist refugees that baffle the imagination. As many as
14,877 were crowded on board the British ships, together with some 8,000
troops. At the same time Captains Sidney Smith, Hare, and Edge, with a
picked body of men burnt or otherwise damaged 27 French warships left in
the harbour, while 18 were brought away by the Allies. Eleven of the
twenty-seven were not seriously injured by the fire, and they afterwards
flew the tricolour. But the loss of 34 warships and nearly all the masts
and other valuable stores was a blow from which the French navy did not
recover until Bonaparte before his Egyptian expedition breathed his own
matchless vigour into the administration. In ships and stores, then,
France suffered far more heavily than the Allies. Their losses elude the
inquiries of the statistician. They consisted in the utter discredit of
the royalist cause throughout France, the resentment that ever follows
on clumsy or disloyal co-operation, and the revelation of the hollowness
of the imposing fabric of the First Coalition. In the south of France
four nations failed to hold a single fortress which her own sons had
placed in their power.

The Nemesis which waits upon weakness and vacillation has rarely
appeared in more mocking guise than at the close of the year 1793. About
the time when Toulon surrendered, the Austrian Government finally came
to the determination to despatch thither the 5,000 men which it had
formerly promised to send. Grenville received this news from Eden in the
first days of 1794, shortly after the surrender of the fortress was
known. Thereupon he penned these bitter words: "If the first promise had
been fulfilled agreeably to the expectation which His Majesty was
justified in forming, the assistance of such a body of disciplined
troops would have sufficed to ensure the defence of that important post;
and the injury which the common cause has sustained on this occasion can
be ascribed only to the tardiness and indecision which so strongly
characterize the Austrian Government."[271] Most tactfully he bade Eden
refrain from reproaches on this occasion and to use it merely as an
argument for throwing greater vigour into the next campaign.

Events pointed the moral far more strongly than Eden could do. As by a
lightning flash, the purblind politicians of Vienna could now discern
the storm-wrack drifting upon them. The weakness of the Piedmonte