Evacuation of Toulon

18–19 December 1793, Toulon

Allied withdrawal; part of the French fleet burned and three ships taken

In August 1793 the royalists of Toulon, the home of the French Mediterranean fleet, handed the port to Admiral Lord Hood's British fleet and a Spanish fleet under Juan de Lángara. The Republic's army besieged the town, and in December a young artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, placed batteries on the heights commanding the anchorage and forced the allies out. As they left, Sir Sidney Smith led boats and a fireship into the New Arsenal to burn the French fleet. Six ships of the line went up in flames there, and two more used as prison hulks; the powder ships Iris and Montréal blew up. But the Spanish parties sent to fire the Old Arsenal failed, and the ships there survived, several of them to be destroyed at the Nile five years later. The British took away three ships of the line, and some 15,000 royalist refugees.