The Holy Rose: Etc.

From the PROLOGUE.
All night long, until within a couple of hours of daybreak, the ships, boats were rowing to and fro between the fleet and the shore, swiftly, yet without haste, as if the work had to be done without delay, yet must be done in order. They were embarking the English and the Spanish troops, for the town was to be abandoned. All night long the soldiers stood in their ranks, waiting for their turn in stolid patience. Some even slept leaning on their muskets, though the season was mid-winter, and though all round them, there was such a roaring of cannon, and such a bursting and hissing of shells, as should have driven sleep far away. But the cannon roared and the shells burst harmlessly, Bo far as the soldiers were concerned, for they were drawn up in the Fort Lamalque, which is on the east of the town, while the cannonading was from Fort Cairo, which is on the west. The Republicans fired, not upon the embarking army, but upon the town and upon the boats in the harbour, where the English sailors were destroying those of the ships which they could not take away with them, so that what had been a magnificent fleet in the evening became by the morning only a poor half-dozen frigates. They burned the arsenal; they destroyed the stores; not until the work of destruction was complete, and all the troops were embarked, did they turn their thoughts to the shrieking and panic-stricken people.
What do we, who all our lives have sat at home in peace and quietness, know of such a night? What do we, who, so far, have lived beyond the reach of war, comprehend of such terror as fell upon all hearts when -- 'twas the night of the eighteenth of December, in the year of grace one thousand seven hundred and ninety three -- the people of Toulon discovered that the English and Spanish troops were leaving the town, and that they were left to the tender mercies of the Republicans? Toulon was their last camp of refuge; Lyons had fallen; Marseilles had fallen. As the English gathered together in the fens and swamps to escape. the Normans, so the Provencal folk fled to Toulon out of the way of the Republicans. As for their tender mercies, it was known already what had been done at Lyons, and what at Marseilles. What would they not do at Toulon, which had not only pronounced against the Republic, but had even invited the English and the Spanish to occupy and hold the town? And now their allies were embarking, and they were without defence....