The troops of the army said to be of the "
Carmagnoles", under the command of General
Jean François Carteaux, arrived at Toulon on 8 September, after those troops had recovered
Avignon and
Marseille, and then
Ollioules. They joined up with the 6,000 men of the Alpine Maritime Army, commanded by General
Jean François Cornu de La Poype, who had just taken
La Valette-du-Var, and sought to take the forts of
Mont Faron, which dominated the city to the East. They were reinforced by 3,000 sailors under the orders of Admiral , who refused to join his defecting superior,
Jean-Honoré de Trogoff de Kerlessy. A further 5,000 soldiers under General La Poype were attached to the army to retake Toulon from the
Army of Italy. The Chief of Artillery,
Elzéar Auguste Cousin de Dommartin, having been wounded at Ollioules, had the young captain
Napoleon Bonaparte imposed upon him by the special representatives of the
National Convention and Bonaparte's friends—
Augustin Robespierre and
Antoine Christophe Saliceti. Bonaparte had been in the area escorting a convoy of powder wagons en route to
Nice and had stopped in to pay his respects to his fellow Corsican, Saliceti. However, in spite of this effort, Bonaparte was not as confident about this operation as was later his custom. The officers serving with him in the siege were incompetent, and he was becoming concerned about the needless delays due to these officers' mistakes. He was so concerned that he wrote a letter of appeal to the Committee of Public Safety requesting assistance. To deal with his superiors who were wanting in skill, he proposed the appointment of a general for command of the artillery, succeeding himself, so that "... [they could] command respect and deal with a crowd of fools on the staff with whom one has constantly to argue and lay down the law in order to overcome their prejudices and make them take steps which theory and practice alike have shown to be axiomatic to any trained officer of this corps". After some reconnaissance, Bonaparte conceived a plan which envisaged the capture of the forts of and on the hill of Cairo (), which would then prevent passage between the small and large harbours of the port, so cutting maritime resupply, necessary for those under siege. Carteaux, reluctant, sent only a weak detachment under Major General
Henri François Delaborde, which failed in its attempted conquest on 22 September. The allies, now alerted, built Fort Mulgrave, named in honour of the British commander,
Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave, on the summit of the hill. It was supported by three smaller ones, called Saint-Phillipe, Saint-Côme, and Saint-Charles. The apparently impregnable assemblage was nicknamed by the French "Little Gibraltar". Bonaparte was dissatisfied by the sole battery—called the "Mountain", positioned on the height of Saint-Laurent since 19 September. He established another, on the shore of Brégallion, called the "
sans-culottes". Hood attempted to silence it, without success, but the British fleet was obliged to harden its resolve along the coast anew, because of the high seabed of
Mourillon and la . On the first of October, after the failure of General La Poype against the "Eastern Fort" of Faron, Bonaparte was asked to bombard the large fort of Malbousquet, whose fall would be required to enable the capture of the city. He therefore requisitioned artillery from all of the surrounding countryside, holding the power of fifty batteries of six cannon apiece. Promoted to Chief of Battalion on 19 October, he organised a grand battery, said to be "of the Convention", on the hill of Arènes and facing the fort, supported by those of the "Camp of the Republicans" on the hill of Dumonceau, by those of the "Farinière" on the hill of Gaux, and those of the "Poudrière" at Lagoubran. On 11 November, Carteaux was dismissed and replaced by
François Amédée Doppet, formerly a doctor, whose panic upon witnessing the death of his
aide-de-camp beside him would cause an attempted attack against Fort Mulgrave on the 15th to fail. On the 17th, he was succeeded by General
Jacques François Dugommier, who immediately recognised the virtue of Bonaparte's plan, and prepared for the capture of Little Gibraltar. On the 20th, as soon as he arrived, the battery "
Jacobin" was established, on the ridge of l'Evescat. Then, on the left, on 28 November, the battery of the "Men Without Fear", and then on 14 December, the "Chasse Coquins" were constructed between the two. Two other batteries were organised to repel the eventual intervention of the allied ships, they were called "The Great Harbour" and the "Four Windmills". Pressured by the bombardment, the Anglo-Neapolitans executed a sortie, and took hold of the battery of the "Convention". A counter-attack, headed by Dugommier and Bonaparte, pushed them back and the British General
Charles O'Hara was captured. He initiated surrender negotiations with Robespierre the Younger and
Antoine Louis Albitte and the Federalist and Royalist battalions were disarmed. Following O'Hara's capture, Dugommier, La Poype, and Bonaparte (now a colonel) launched a general assault during the night of 16 December. Around midnight, the assault began on Little Gibraltar and the fighting continued all night. Bonaparte was injured in the thigh by a British sergeant with a bayonet. However, in the morning, the position having been taken, Marmont was able to place artillery there, against l'Eguillette and Balaguier, which the British had evacuated without confrontation on the same day. During this time, La Poype finally was able to take the forts of Faron and Malbousquet. The allies then decided to evacuate by their maritime route. Commodore
Sydney Smith was instructed by Hood to have the delivery fleet and the arsenal burnt. == Destruction of the French fleet ==