The royalists, confident the counter-revolution had come, began to massacre the Jacobins in the town. The white flag of the Bourbons was run up, displacing the red, white, and blue. The little boy, son of Louis XVI., who was lying in prison at Paris, was proclaimed king under the name of Louis XVII. Sir Samuel Hood, commanding the British fleet, sailed into the harbor and took possession of about twenty-five French ships, “in trust” for the Bourbons; General O’Hara hurried from Gibraltar with troops to aid in holding this “trust”; and to the support of the English flocked Spaniards, Sardinians, and Neapolitans. Even the Pope could not withhold his helping hand; he sent some priests to lend their prayers and exhortations. When it became known throughout France that Toulon had revolted, had begun to exterminate patriots, had proclaimed a Bourbon king, had surrendered to the British the arsenal, the harbor, the immense magazines, and the French fleet, a tide of furious resentment rose against the town. There was but one thought: Toulon must be taken, Toulon must be punished. The hunger for revenge said it; the promptings of self-preservation said it; the issue was one of life or death to the Revolution. The Convention realized the crisis; the Great Committee realized it; and the measures taken were prompt. Commissioners hurried to the scene, and troops poured in. Barras, a really effective man in sudden emergencies, Fréron, Salicetti, Gasparin, Ricord, Albitte, and Robespierre the Younger were all on hand to inspirit the army and direct events. Some twenty odd thousand soldiers soon beleagured the town. They were full of courage, fire, and enthusiasm; but their commander was a painter, Carteaux, whose ideas of war were very primitive. To find where the enemy was, and then cannonade him vigorously, and then fall on him with muskets, was about the substance of Carteaux’ military plans. At Toulon, owing to peculiarities of the position, such a plan was not as excellent as it might have been at some other places. Besides, he had no just conception of the means needed for such a work as he had undertaken. Toulon, with its double harbor, the inner and the outer, its defences by land and by sea, to say nothing of the fortresses which Lord Mulgrave had constructed on the strip of land which separated and commanded the two harbors, presented difficulties which demanded a soldier. Carteaux was brave and energetic, but no soldier; and week after week wasted away without any material progress having been made in the siege.