page_title: Federalist revolts
section_title: Marseille and Toulon
hierarchical_section_title: Federalist revolts / Marseille and Toulon
caption_attribution_description: English: Destruction of the French Fleet at Toulon 18th December 1793
context_page_description: The Federalist revolts were uprisings that broke out in various parts of France in the summer of 1793, during the French Revolution. They were prompted by resentments in France's provincial cities about increasing centralisation of power in Paris, and increasing radicalisation of political authority in the hands of the Jacobins. In most of the country the trigger for uprising was the exclusion of the Girondins from the Convention after the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793. Although they shared common origins and political objectives, the revolts were not centrally organised or well-coordinated. The revolts failed to win any sustained popular support and were put down by the armies of the Convention over the following months. The Reign of Terror was then imposed across France to punish those associated with them and to enforce Jacobin ideology.
context_section_description: At Marseille, Jacobins loyal to the Convention held the town hall and the club on the rue Thubaneau. The Girondins, the old notable families and prosperous merchants, were well-represented at the more local level in the sectional assemblies.  To balance this influence, the Jacobins had sought, since 1792, to create an armed force of 6,000 men and a judicial committee they could control.  The Girondin sections demanded a revolutionary tribunal which the Jacobins did not control. The conflict between these two camps hardened in early 1793, to the point where the représentants en mission sent from Paris to raise an army though the levée en masse, Moyse Bayle and fr:Joseph Antoine Boisset, had to take refuge in Montélimar.
  After the Insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793 in Paris, the Girondins in Marseilles created a general committee of sections which broke up the Jacobin club and imprisoned its leaders, before trying and executing them in July.  A new town council was elected, which linked up with other Federalist areas and decided to raise an army of its own.  This army seized Avignon on 8 July.
  The response in the départements around Marseille was mixed. In Hérault, the town council of Montpellier condemned the arrest of the Girondins and on 20 June created a Committee of Public Safety for the département; within days a decree of the Convention had ordered the arrest of its members.  Hérault decided not to raise its own army however. Gard was the only département to raise an army, a battalion of 600 men who occupied Pont-Saint-Esprit to maintain communications with Lyon. Drôme remained loyal to the Convention, with the Jacobins in Valence preventing the Federalists from Gard from moving north to join up with Lyon on 24, 25 and 26 June. Thanks to their assistance, a detachment from the Army of the Alps under General Carteaux, sent by the Convention to restore order, was able to enter Avignon, where the Jacobin town authorities were re-established on 25 July.
  Faced with Carteaux's forces, a number of citizens in Marseille abandoned the Federalist cause, leaving it increasingly in the hands of outright monarchists. On 20 August they made contact with Admiral Hood, commander of the British fleet blockading the city, to appeal for food to be allowed in.  Before these negotiations came to anything, Carteaux retook the town on 25 August, supported by an uprising among the Jacobin elements in the city.
  In Marseille the repression which followed the Federalist defeat echoed that of Lyon.  The city was renamed "ville sans nom" ("town with no name") on 28 August and Carteroux set up a revolutionary tribunal that began the Terror in Provence.  In the autumn of 1793 Barras and Fréron extended the repression and there were a number of executions in October on the Canebière. In total, between August 1793 and April 1794, the Revolutionary Tribunal in Marseille tried 975 suspects and acquitted 476 of them; 289 of those convicted were actually executed.
  Although Toulon had been a bastion of Jacobin support until July 1793, the Jacobins were swept out of power by Girondin sections in the second half of the month;  the Jacobin club was sacked, various leading figures were obliged to flee, and those who did not flee were rounded up and held on a pontoon in the harbour. As in Normandy, the Convention's two représentants en mission were arrested and locked up. The loss of Toulon was a disaster for the Republic as almost the entirety of France's Mediterranean fleet was anchored in the port at the time.
  The arrival of Carteaux at Marseille was followed by a royalist takeover in Toulon; the new leaders of the city then surrendered it to the British and their Spanish and Neapolitan allies on 18 August. Carteaux arrived outside Toulon on 8 September and began a lengthy siege - in which the young Napoleon Bonaparte distinguished himself - which lasted until 19 December 1793. Before withdrawing, the British towed away many French battleships and blew up many of those remaining. Around 7,000 refugees left Toulon, including the leaders of the revolt aga
caption: Destruction of the French fleet at Toulon
exif: {}