…the city of Toulon, killing an estimated three hundred and taking captives.

The surviving captives will be freed from captivity in the Balearic Islands in 1185.

Toulon, located on the Mediterranean Sea about thirty miles (fifty kilometers) east of Marseille, was called Telo Martius by the Romans, who used it as a naval station.

Provence had become part of France in 1486.

Soon afterwards, in 1494, Charles VIII of France, with the intention of making France a sea power on the Mediterranean, and to support his military campaign in Italy, begins constructing a military port at the harbor of Toulon.

His Italian campaign fails, and 1497, the rulers of Genoa, who control commerce on this part of the Mediterranean, blockade the new port.

Barbarossa is by this point becoming a liability; on September 6, he had threatened to depart if he were not given the means with which to resupply his fleet.

In response, Francis orders that the population of Toulon—except for "heads of households"—be expelled, and that the city then be given to Barbarossa, who will use it as a base for his army of thirty thousand for the next eight months so that they can continue to harass the Holy Roman Empire, and especially the coast of Spain and Italy, as well the communications between the two countries.

Barbarossa is also promised that he will receive help from the French in reconquering Tunis if he stays through the winter in France.

The Ottoman fleet, with its one hundred and galleys and thirty thousand troops, has able to use Toulon as a base to attack the Spanish and Italian coasts under Admiral Salih Reis.

They raid Barcelona in Spain, and Sanremo, Borghetto Santo Spirito, Ceriale in Italy, and defeat Italo-Spanish naval attacks.

Sailing with his whole fleet to Genoa, Barbarossa negotiates with Andrea Doria the release of Turgut Reis.

France provides about ten million kilograms of bread to supply the Ottoman army during the six months it stays in Toulon, and for the provisioning of the following summer's campaign and return to Constantinople.

It seems the involvement of Francis I to this joint effort with the Ottomans is rather halfhearted however, as many European powers are complaining about such an alliance against another Christian power.

Relations remain tense and suspicious between the two allies.

Francis, increasingly embarrassed by the Ottoman presence, is unwilling to help Barbarossa recapture Tunis; therefore, the Ottoman fleet—accompanied by five French galleys under Antoine Escalin des Aimars—sails for Istanbul in May 1544, pillaging the Neapolitan coast along the way.

Prince Eugene tries to take the French naval port of Toulon in July 1707.

Eugene had crossed the Var on the 11th, and—although hampered by the negligence and inefficiency of Victor Amadeus II of Savoy—had reached Frejus.

He is in touch with the British fleet under admiral Shovell by the 16th, but Victor Amadeus' procrastination causes further delays.

This gives time for the troops that the Duke of Berwick is sending home from Spain to reinforce Marshal René de Froulay de Tessé at Toulon before the arrival of the Allies on July 26.

Tessé on August 14 retakes the crucial heights of Santa Catarina, which the Allies had stormed a week earlier; and Eugene, finding his retreat menaced and little chance of taking Toulon, has to abandon his attempt on August 22, and fall back across the Var, having lost ten thousand men in this ill-fated enterprise.

Shovell, before he evacuates, bombards the French harbor and is able to sink two French ships of the line and damage severely two others.

The campaign's only fruit is that, in order to prevent their ships falling into the enemy's hands, the French have sunk their whole squadron of more than forty six ships of between fifty and one hundred and ten guns in the harbor.

King Louis XIV had given orders that they be sunk and later be refloated.

He was concerned that the Royal Navy would burn the ships; the three-deckers would lie with only their upper decks showing above the water.

Much of the damage sustained, however, proves irreparable; it is estimated that the French Navy had lost fifteen ships of the line in this operation, and thereby its ability contest the English control of the Mediterranean.

Estimates indicate an overall death rate of between twenty-five percent to fifty percent for the population in the larger area, with the city of Marseille at forty percent, the area of Toulon at above fifty percent, and ...

The retreat of Admiral Matthews' fleet has left the sea lanes temporarily under French and Spanish control.

Supplies pour into Philip's camp.

Twenty thousand Frenchmen under Louis François I, Prince of Conti, are now dispatched to combine with Philip's twenty thousand Spaniards, their goal being to force a passage into Lombardy and to unite with the Spanish army in the south.

The use of the galley for war purposes had practically ceased by the end of the reign of Louis XIV in 1715, but the French Navy does not incorporate the corps of the galleys until 1748.

From the reign of Henry IV, Toulon has functioned as a naval military port, Marseille having become a merchant port, and served as the headquarters of the galleys and of the convict rowers (galériens).

After the incorporation of the galleys, the system sends the majority of these latter to Toulon, the others to Rochefort and to Brest, where they work in the arsenal.

Convict rowers also go to a large number of other French and non-French cities: Nice, Le Havre, Nîmes, Lorient, Cherbourg, Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, La Spezia, Antwerp and Civitavecchia; but Toulon, Brest and Rochefort predominate.

At Toulon the convicts remain (in chains) on the galleys, which are moored as hulks in the harbor.

Their shore prisons have the name bagnes ("baths"), a name given to such penal establishments first by the Italians (bagno), and allegedly deriving from the prison at Constantinople situated close by or attached to the great baths there.

All French convicts will continue to use the name galérien even after galleys have gone out of use; only after the French Revolution will the new authorities officially change the hated name—with all it signifies—to forçat ("forced")