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Updated: May 14, 2025
I have requisitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Montpellier.... I am having 5,000 gabions made every day at Marseilles." But he was more than a mere organizer. He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour: "I always found him at his post," wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux; "when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak: he never left the batteries."
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.
Obliged to make his escape in August from that island, to save himself, he joined the army of General Carteaux, then marching against the Marseilles insurgents, whence he was sent by the National Convention with Barras, Gasparin, Robespierre the younger, and Ricrod, as a representative of the people, to the army before Toulon, where, as well as at Marseilles, he shared in all the atrocities committed by his colleagues and by Bonaparte; for which, after the death of the Robespierres, he was arrested with him as a terrorist.
General Carteaux, on the other hand, marched at the head of some troops against the sectionary army of the south; he defeated its force, pursued it to Marseilles, entered the town after it, and Provence would have been brought into subjection like Calvados, if the royalists, who had taken refuge at Toulon, after their defeat, had not called in the English to their aid, and placed in their hands this key to France.
Wishing the Robespierre-Salicetti episode of his life to be forgotten, he strives in his memoirs to create the impression that the Convention had ordered him to take charge of the artillery at Toulon, when in fact he was in Marseilles as a mere passer-by on his journey to Nice, and in Toulon as a temporary adjunct to the army of Carteaux, having been made an active participant partly through accident, partly by the good will of personal friends.
Napoleon now joined the army under Carteaux, which acted against the Marseillais who had declared against the National Convention and occupied Avignon. At this time he became attached to the younger Robespierre, who was a commissioner with the army, and embraced his Jacobin principles.
But some of the people's representatives had had an opportunity of recognizing the sharp eye and the military acquirements of the young captain of artillery; they interceded in his favor, and he was promoted to the army corps which was before Toulon, and at once sent in the capacity of assistant to General Carteaux, with whom also was Napoleon's brother Joseph, as chief of the general's staff.
At first, they relied on the assistance of the insurgents of the south; but these having been repulsed by Carteaux, the Lyonnais placed their last hope in the army of Piedmont, which attempted a diversion in their favour, but was beaten by Kellermann. Pressed still more energetically, they saw their first positions carried. Famine began to be felt, and courage forsook them.
I have requisitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Montpellier.... I am having 5,000 gabions made every day at Marseilles." But he was more than a mere organizer. He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour: "I always found him at his post," wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux; "when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak: he never left the batteries."
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.
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