Assaults on other points in the line of defence had also been made, and had succeeded; and Toulon was at the mercy of Napoleon’s batteries. The night that followed was one of the most frightful in the annals of war. The English fleet was no longer safe in the harbor, and was preparing to sail away. Toulon was frantic with terror. The royalists, the Girondins, the refugees from Lyons and Marseilles, rushed from their homes, crowded the quays, making every effort to reach the English ships. The Jacobins of the town, now that their turn had come, made the most of it, and pursued the royalists, committing every outrage which hate and lust could prompt. Prisoners broke loose, to rob, to murder, to ravish. The town became a pandemonium. Fathers, mothers, children, rushed wildly for safety to the quays, screaming with terror, and plunging into the boats in the maddest disorder. And all this while the guns, the terrible guns of Napoleon, were playing on the harbor and on the town, the balls crashing through dwellings, or cutting lanes through the shrieking fugitives on the quays, or sinking the boats which were carrying the wretched outcasts away. The English set fire to the arsenal, dockyard, and such ships as could not be carried off, and the glare shone far and wide over the ghastly tumult. Intensifying the horror of this hideous night came the deafening explosion of the magazine ships, and the rain of the fragments they scattered over all the surrounding water. Some fourteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon fled with the English; some other thousands must have perished in the bombardment and in the butcheries of the days that followed. Toulon’s baseness had aroused the ire, the diabolism of the Revolution, and the vilest men of all her ravening pack were sent to wreak revenge. There was Barras, the renegade noble; Fréron, the Marat in ferocity without Marat’s honesty or capacity; Fouché, the renegade priest. And the other Commissioners were almost as ferocious; while from the Convention itself came the voice of Barère demanding the total destruction of Toulon. Great was the sin of the doomed city; ghastly was its punishment. Almost indiscriminately people were herded and mown down with musketry. On one of the days which ensued, Fouché wrote to his friend, Collot d’Herbois: “We have sent to-day 213 rebels to hell fire. Tears of joy run down my cheeks and flood my soul.” Royalist writers do not fail to remind the reader that this miscreant, Fouché, became minister of police to Napoleon. They omit the statement that he was used by Louis XVIII. in the same capacity.