H.M.S. COCKEREL

chuckling over their silly foreboding-yet looking more to the hills, and wondering…

And through all those weeks, Lewrie was busy with Zele. Daily they sailed out to do battle, carefully selecting a new anchorage each dawning, which would take the French gunners hours to pinpoint. But the French shifted their batteries each night, returning the favour to make themselves equally elusive.

Down to the far south, behind La Seyne, there were several new batteries to deal with, on the Heights des Moulins and Reinier, above the civilian port, the next hill back from the Hauteur de Grasse, upon which stood Forts de Balaguer and L'Eguillette. The forts were manned by Coalition troops, as was Fort Mandrier and the lesser batteries on Cape Sepet 's peninsula. The French had no hope of rushing across the narrow tongue of land which connected Sepet to the mainland. That thin land bridge, called Les Sablettes, which formed the bottom of the Golfe de la Veche, was bare as a baby's bottom, and two field guns could do terrible slaughter to troops attempting to rush across it, packed into a killing ground along the road, which bridged a salt marsh.

Yet the batteries atop the heights, twenty-four-pounder siege guns and howitzers, could scald the Little Road, deny any use of the Golfe de la Veche, and torment the defenders of Fort Balaguer. From anchorages at the south end of the Little Road, using de Crillart's thirty-two-pounders and his experienced gunners, Lewrie engaged those guns on the heights. Or hid in the shallows near the north shore of Hauteur de Grasse, and let Don Luis de Esquevarre pound them with his mortars. Some nights, they did not return to port, but hid in the Little Road under cover of darkness, all lights extinguished and under oars, to sneak out through the Gullet and anchor round Fort Balaguer. There they mortared French gun batteries from shorter range, letting the Army at the fort report their fall-of-shot with wigwag signals. Or dared the shoals of the Golfe de la Veche, off the Infirmarie, to hammer the batteries on the heights at an oblique angle with thirty-two-pounders, somewhat safely out of French arcs of fire through narrow openings in their breastworks.

It became quite a game, an exciting though rather noisy sport, to match wits with the Republican gunners. But no matter how many times a breastwork was pounded into gravel, no matter how many earth-and-wicker gabions were burst, or guns dismounted, and no matter how many French artillerists they slew, the French guns were always back in action in a day or two, in a new position, and no amount of mortaring or cannonading seemed to deter them.

On 8 October, Lieutenant Colonel Nugent led a night storming raid on the southern batteries: Spaniards, Piedmon-tese, British troops, with sailors and Marines under Lieutenant Walter Serecold. Once more, pluck and daring paid for all. There'd been 300 French in the batteries, with another 1,200-1,300 infantry in their rear for support. The Heights des Moulins and Reinier were no less steep or treacherous than those of Pharon. Yet they annihilated the French gunners and routed the rest. Under field-artillery fire, they could not haul away their prizes, so they spiked or destroyed the guns, burning the carriages and mounts, blowing off the trunnions, effectually making scrap metal of a four-pounder, a six-pounder, two sixteens, three twenty-four-pounder siege guns and two huge thirteen-inch brass mortars. Then returned to their quarters in the forts without harm!

But the French came back, hauled new pieces uphill to replace the old, rebuilt their breastworks and gabions, dug a little deeper in the hills, like soldier ants rebuilding their hive after children had kicked it over. Like the tide, they came back. And got just a touch closer to Toulon.

Lieutenant General Valdez had come into port on 18 October to replace Rear-Admiral Gravina. And the senior Spanish navy officer, Admiral Don Juan de Langara, went with Valdez to Admiral Lord Hood to insist that Valdez be given complete command of all troops in the enclave (His Most Catholic Majesty had given him that grandiloquent appointment). Hood demurred, pointing out that Toulon had surrendered to Britain alone, that allied troops supplied men on the stipulation that the British command. And that Major General O'Hara already had been given that command by His Britannic Majesty, King George III.

Hood had sent so many ships away on various missions that there were scarcely ten sail of the line in harbour, while Langara still had his original seventeen. Langara put his three-decker flagship alongside Victory, placed two other 1st Rates at bow and stern, hinting more than strongly that he'd open fire if Valdez wasn't proclaimed as supreme commander of the allied forces at Toulon. To his credit, Admiral Hood would not be bullied, and Victory beat to Quarters. Valdez and Langara backed down, and returned their ships to their berths.

And Major General O'Hara did arrive a few days later, as did a Major General Dundas, with a commission to replace Admiral Goodall as military governor of Toulon. Unfortunately, O'Hara did not bring the troops expected; a mere 750 men from the garrison of Gibraltar came to Toulon with him, half of the number ordered to be transferred.

More Sardinians dribbled in, the last promised draft of Neapolitans came, a few Piedmontese, a few more trickles of

able-bodied French Royalists-civilians for the most part__

driven in by the advancing Republican columns, with then-guns and their guillotines.

By the beginning of November, 1793, they had on hand:

French Royalists…1,542

Piedmontese…1,584

Neapolitans…4,832

Spaniards…6,840

British…2,114

Of the 16,912 men total, no more than 12,000 were fit for duty, the rest off in hospital sick or wounded, and of those fit, 9,000 were tied to the perimeter, scattered all across the many posts, with only a meagre 3,000 available to respond to a French thrust.

Chapter 9

'How did it go ashore, sir?' Lieutenant Scott asked when Lewrie came back aboard Zele from headquarters.

'Routed 'em, thank God,' Alan replied sleepily, too sleepy to be enthused. 'O'Hara's aide-de-camp was crowing merry. Six hundred Frogs dead or wounded, he said. We lost sixty-one or so.'

'Bloody good odds, then,' Scott crowed in his turn. 'And damned good return on investment.'

'They think the Frogs threw an entire corps against us,' Lewrie yawned. It was barely first light, and a chill mist hung over Toulon. He'd been roused long before his usual hour-nothing new in the Navy-but with a bit more urgency than usual, too urgent to allow him his morning tea or chocolate or a morsel of bread. 'Think of it, a whole corps! That's what… three divisions? Nine or ten thousand? If we'd lost Fort Mul-grave, we'd have lost the whole of the Heights de Grasse and both the forts by the Gullet. Then where'd we be, I ask you? If they have that many to throw at us on a whim, then…'

'Aye, and we'll keep on killing 'em, sir,' Lieutenant Scott boasted with his usual scorn for French courage and skill, 'at ten or twenty to one. They'll go bankrupt, wagerin' at those odds. On a whim.'

'It's too early to argue the toss,' Lewrie sighed. 'Have we anything hot yet?'

'Frog coffee, sir,' Scott scoffed. He was a tea-and-beer man. When forced to drink coffee prepared in French fashion, he found it a too-hot, too-stout and bitter brew.

'Gittons?' Lewrie called. 'Send down to the galley for a mug of coffee for me. I'll be in the chart space.'

'Aye, sir.'

'Mister Scott, round up Lieutenant de Crillart and the Comandante, if you'd be so kind. We've something new planned for today.'

'Here, sirs,' Lewrie said, with a jab at the chart with a ruler. 'On the east, for a change… in the Plaine de la Garde. We hold Forts Malgue and St. Catherine on the east side of town, the batteries at Cape Brun, the Post of Bran, and little Fort St. Margaret, about at the midpoint of the coast… here, to protect the Bay of Toulon. A few days ago, the Frogs… pardonnez-moi, Charles… the Republicans, under General Lapoype, moved into Fort La Garde and occupied it. And the ridge here, in the middle of the plain behind it. I'm told we had La Garde long enough to ruin it… blew its powder vaults, toppled the parapets, disabled the guns there…'

'No way to 'old eet, so far from ze ozzer posts, wizout cavalry for ze resupply, hein?' de Crillart surmised.

'Exactly, Charles,' Lewrie agreed, much more agreeable with his second steaming mug of coffee in his other