Two armies were immediately marched upon Toulon, the place invested, and a regular siege commenced. Three months had passed away, during which time no apparent progress had been effected toward the capture of the town. Every exertion was made by the allied troops and the royalist inhabitants to strengthen the defenses, and especially to render impregnable a fort called the Little Gibraltar, which commanded the harbor and the town. The French besieging force, amounting to about forty thousand men, were wasting their time outside of the entrenchments, keeping very far away from the reach of cannon balls. The command of these forces had been intrusted to Gen. Cartaux, a portrait-painter from Paris, as ignorant of all military science, as he was self-conceited. Matters were in this state when Napoleon, whose commanding abilities were now beginning to attract attention, was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-general, and invested with the command of the artillery train at Toulon. He immediately hastened to the scene of action, and beheld, with utter astonishment, the incapacity with which the siege was conducted. He found batteries erected which would not throw their balls one half the distance between the guns and the points they were designed to command. Balls also were heated in the peasants' houses around, at perfectly ridiculous distances from the guns, as if they were articles to be transported at one's leisure. Napoleon requested the commander-in-chief, at whose direction these batteries were reared, to allow him to witness the effect of a few discharges from the guns. With much difficulty he obtained consent. And when the general saw the shot fall more than half-way short of the mark, he turned upon his heel, and said, "These aristocrats have spoiled the quality of the powder with which I am supplied."