[Year 2
now all ready, there sits a grimmer gravity than ever, compressing a hotter central-fire than ever. Yonder, thou seest, is Fort l'Éguillette; a desperate lion-spring, yet a possible one; this day to be tried!—Tried it is; and found good. By stratagem and valour, stealing through ravines, plunging fiery through the fire-tempest. Fort l'Éguillette is clutched at, is carried; the smoke having cleared, we see the Tricolor fly on it; the bronze-complexioned young man was right. Next morning, Hood, finding the interior of his lines exposed, his defences turned inside out, makes for his shipping. Taking such Royalists as wished it on board with him, he weighs anchor; on this 19th of December 1793, Toulon is once more the Republic's!
Cannonading has ceased at Toulon; and now the guillotining and fusillading may begin. Civil horrors, truly: but at least that infamy of an English domination is purged away. Let there be Civic Feast universally over France: so reports Barrère, or Painter David; and the Convention assist in a body.[1] Nay, it is said, these infamous English (with an attention rather to their own interests than to ours) set fire to our store-houses, arsenals, war-ships in Toulon Harbour, before weighing; some score of brave war-ships, the only ones we now had! However, it did not prosper, though the flame spread far and high; some two ships were burned, not more; the very galley-slaves ran with buckets to quench. These same proud Ships, Ship l'Orient and the rest, have to carry this same young Man to Egypt first: not yet can they be changed to ashes, or to Sea-Nymphs; not yet to sky-rockets, O ship l'Orient; nor become the prey of England,—before their time!
And so, over France universally, there is Civic Feast and high-tide: and Toulon sees fusillading, grapeshotting in mass, as Lyons saw; and 'death is poured out in great floods, vomie à grands flots'; and Twelve-thousand Masons are requisitioned from the neighbouring country, to raze Toulon from
- ↑ Moniteur, 1793, Nos. 101 (31 Décembre), 95, 96, 98, etc.
