H.M.S. COCKEREL

ship to those dreadful shores, what

time the troop in arrogant sport fly here

and there exultant on dusty steeds, and

the ground trembles to their halloing,

and their sire incites them to battle with

the brandished spear.

– Valerius Flaccus Argonautica, Book IV, 606-609

Chapter 1

All secure!' Midshipman Anthony Braxton read off the bunting hoisted on Victory. 'Fleet… Will enter Harbour!… In Columns of Divisions!'

'They're just giving us the place, then?' Lieutenant Scott marveled.

'So it would appear, sir,' Captain Braxton grunted, lowering his telescope, lips snug with aspersion-perhaps at French timidity. 'Captain Elphinstone's landing at the fort yonder has cowed 'em, at last. They're streaming out of their forts, inland… nor'west for those farther hills.'

'Well, it beats fighting our way in all hollow, sir,' the Marine captain O'Neal opined darkly as he beheld the towering heights, rough headlands and the many forts and batteries of Toulon.

'Granted, sir,' Braxton grumbled, sounding disappointed, though.

'We've what, barely 1,000 Marines with the entire fleet?' O'Neal said in a softer voice to Lewrie, standing nearer the wheel. 'Had this fleet tried to force a landing against opposition, we'd have lost half on the first fortifications alone.'

'With the city for us, though, sir?' Lewrie scoffed gently. 'I doubt they'd have put up much resistance, even if it had come to that. The Republican diehards were in the minority, thank God. And they were not to know how much we had at our disposal. Twenty-one sail with us, and God knows what over the horizon.'

After rejoining Hood's fleet, it had looked to be the very worst sort of naval service-blockade duty; slowly plodding in neat ordered lines of battle from Marseilles, round Cape Cicie to Toulon and back, parading the might of the Royal Navy, jogging off-and-on that forbidding coast, in hopes that the

French might sally forth for battle. Rumours, and a 'spying out,' under cover of a truce mission by Lieutenant Edward Cooke of Victory, had determined that the French had at least twenty-one sail of the line in port, seventeen of them more or less ready for sea, and frigates and sloops of war, two-a-penny. But for a few fast frigates, ordered to trail their coats into the Bay of Toulon between Cape Sepet and Cape de la Garonne to tempt a response, Hood hadn't tried to enter in force, and the French had remained strangely somnolent.

Those Royalists in Toulon, though, the ones Sir William Hamilton had spoken of… they'd sent a two-man committee to Victory under a flag of truce on 23 August. Lieutenant Edward Cooke had gone ashore on the 24th, then one more time, to carry Hood's reply. Cooke had been shot at by a frigate with Republican sentiments, hailed as a hero and damn near chaired in triumph to a meeting of a Royalist committee intent on surrender, arrested by Republicans on the way back, then freed by a Royalist mob.

Again, on the 26th, he went ashore, returning with a French Navy officer, Captain d'lmbert of the seventy-four- gun Apollon, and the agreement was ratified. Toulon was theirs!

So now Cockerel was inside the Bay of Toulon, slowly heaving her way under a tops'l breeze from the south, beam-reaching towards the inner roads, just north of the peninsula which formed Cape Sepet, the southern guard of the great port, where before they would not have dared.

It helped that the revolutionary government in Paris had just proscribed Var and Provence, warning that troops and guillotines were coming if they did not immediately submit to the Republic.

The situation was what some might call interesting, to say the least. While a fair majority of Toulon was Royalist, declared for some prince now called Louis XVII, there was a moderately sized minority of Republicans, mostly the poor or the bitter, dead set against the aristocracy, the large landowners, and the merchant class. With opportunists on either hand, it went without saying. Yet the French Mediterranean Fleet held only a minority of Royalists, and a majority of Republicans. Rear-Admiral St. Mien, second-in-command, had seized forts facing the inner, Little Road of Toulon, with the crews of seven line-of-battle ships, about 5,000 men, disobeying orders of the staunchly royalist Rear Admiral, Comte de Trogoff, who actually commanded the port.

Early on the 27th, a force of 1,500 men, the greatest portion of two regiments embarked with Hood's fleet, reinforced by about 200 Marines and seamen, under the overall command of Captain George Keith Elphinstone of H.M.S. Robust, had landed at Fort La Malgue, on the right side of the spit of land that divided the Little and the Great Roads, high enough to overlook and dominate St. Julien's much-lower-set forts.

Elphinstone had sent a demand for St. Mien to surrender, and had warned that any vessel which did not enter Toulon 's inner basin, land its powder and send its crew ashore, would be taken under fire.

That was enough for St. Mien. His honour had been satisfied, by token resistance, so he had decamped. And now, Admiral Hood could sail in. Without a shot being fired, without a single casualty, they were in total possession of a French city, an entire French fleet, and a naval base with all its arsenals, powder mills and stocks, foundries for cannon and anchors, and immense quantities of naval stores.

'Hard to think of us taking all this, even were we fifty sail,' Mister Dimmock spoke up, nodding to the Marine captain. 'First, weather Cape Sepet, as we've done. And it's simply stiff with guns. There, young sirs-' he pointed out to the midshipmen with a ferrule in his hand, as they gathered about for a lesson-'near the end of the peninsula, on the highest hill of Cape Sepet, that's… what, Mister Spendlove?'

'C… Croix des Signaux, sir.'

'Aye, the signals cross. That's fairly new. Semaphore tower.' Dimmock beamed his approval. 'The old one, the Great Tower, is further inside the harbour, near Fort La Malgue. Now, below Croix des Signaux, there's Batterie la Croix, north shore of the peninsula. Then west of that, there's Batterie des Freres… 'The Brothers'… go farther west and you come in range of Fort Mandrier, which commands the south side of the Great Road, next to the Infirmarie… sort o' like our Greenwich Naval Hospital back home, 'cross an inlet from Fort Mandrier, just at the thinnest shank of the peninsula, facin' the Golfe de la Veche. Mister Dulwer, would you anchor in the Bay of Toulon, sir?'

'Uhm… perhaps not, sir? Not all the time?'

'Don't sound too definite, will ye now, Mister Dulwer?' the sailing master sighed. 'No, ye'd not. Too deep for the proper scope on cables, e'en do you weight 'em with gun barrels, and a rocky bottom. Levanter comes up, it throws a heavy sea from the east'rd, crost all that open water from Plage de la Garonne. Plage means beach, right, lads? Right. Now, between Batteries Croix and Freres, it's no more'n one sea mile to Cape Bran, on the north shore of the mainland. Batteries there, too… with forty-two-pounders. North tip o' Cape Sepet and Cape Brun squeeze in to mark the entrance to the Great Road. You have a little more shelter in the Great Road. It's still foul holding ground, but shallower'n the bay. West of Cape Bran, there're batteries on a high cliff, on this spit of land… here,' he said, indicating the chart. 'Can't rightly see it from the quarterdeck… all our fleet in the way, ha ha!'

The midshipmen made sure to sound appreciative of Dim-mock's jape.

'Then to the west of those batteries is Fort La Malgue, which we took this morning, on another steep headland. Little water-fort guards the foot of it, Fort St. Louis. West o' La Malgue, there's this peninsula… long, narrow, and steep, almost vertical cliffs. Great Tower on its tip, where it juts southerly, and pinches off the Great Road from the Little Road. Guns a'plenty there, too, mind. This narrow pass, not half a sea mile, from the Great Road to the Little. Le Goulet, Frogs call it… that's the Gullet, in real language. Across the Gullet is where the Frogs tried to make a stand this morning, northern side of the Golfe de la Veche, on Hauteur de Grasse. Big, round hilly thing just on our bows if ye care to look. Two little spurs on its tip. Southern has Fort de Balaguer… the northern Fort L'Eguillette. Lower than La Malgue, so we could've shot howitzers or mortars into them. So that's why the Frogs took French leave, ha ha!'

Another wave of laughter swept the quarterdeck, more sincere this time, over Mister Dimmock's pun, including the officers and seamen.

'The Little Road. Would you anchor there, Mister Dulwer?'