Fort Lamalgue: Toulon’s Eastern Defensive Fort
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page6 sections
History
Fort Lamalgue is an eighteenth-century French military fortification on a height in Toulon’s Mourillon district. Built between 1764 and about 1789, it protected the city’s eastern land approaches and supported Fort Saint Louis against attacks from the sea.
Origins and construction
The position gained renewed importance during the 1707 siege of Toulon, when Austro-Savoyard forces used batteries on the neighboring height of La Malgue to attack Fort Saint Louis. After almost ten days of bombardment, Fort Saint Louis could no longer be used and was abandoned. This enabled the city and port to be shelled from the roadstead, a partly sheltered anchorage less enclosed than a harbor. Toulon’s defenses were strengthened afterward.
A small dry-stone redoubt with two half-moons was begun at La Malgue in 1738 to protect the entrance to the small roadstead. A half-moon was a detached, usually crescent-shaped defensive work placed before a fortification. The present Fort Lamalgue followed in 1764 under Millet de Monville, the director of fortifications. Funding became more reliable after the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763, but construction advanced slowly and was completed around 1789. The fort was designed for a garrison of 600 men.
Revolutionary and nineteenth-century uses
After General Joubert was mortally wounded at the Battle of Novi on 15 August 1799, the First Consul ordered his remains to be placed at Fort Lamalgue. The First Consul was the chief executive office held by Napoleon Bonaparte from 1799 to 1804, while Joubert was a French general of the Revolutionary period. The fort was then known as Fort Joubert for a time. Joubert was later buried in the church at Pont-de-Vaux, his native village.
Fort Lamalgue served mainly as a prison during the Revolutionary period, after the Var uprising of 1851, and until 1923. Abd el-Kader, the Algerian religious and military leader who resisted the French conquest of Algeria, was held there for several weeks in 1848. After his surrender to General de Lamoricière, he had been promised exile to Saint-Jean-d’Acre or Alexandria. He and part of his family reached Toulon on 11 January 1848, while his retinue was placed at Fort Malbousquet.
The fort had not been prepared for his arrival and was poorly suited to house his family. Abd el-Kader was accompanied by three wives, four younger children, and his 75-year-old mother. Appeals from the Toulon poet Charles Poncy, Colonel Eugène Daumas, and government commissioner Émile Ollivier for exile in the East or for his release failed. Abd el-Kader, his family, and his retinue left Toulon by boat for Sète on 23 April 1848, later continuing to Béarn and the Château de Pau.
Military headquarters and later administration
During the Second World War, Fort Lamalgue became the headquarters of the admiral commanding French forces in the Mediterranean. The Naval School, evacuated from Brest to the Lot, moved into the fort at the beginning of the 1941 academic year.
On 27 November 1942, the order to scuttle the French fleet at Toulon was transmitted from Fort Lamalgue to ships in the naval arsenal. An arsenal is a military complex for storing, maintaining, and supplying weapons, equipment, and warships. The fort also contained the general telephone exchange and was the first fortification attacked by German forces advancing from the east.
Fort Lamalgue now accommodates services responsible for managing French Navy personnel, including a pay-computing center and an archive for administrative files. A street in Toulon’s Lamalgue district and one of the fort’s casemates commemorate Abd el-Kader.
Remains
Fortification layout
Fort Lamalgue stands on elevated ground east of Toulon and is organized around a large ceremonial courtyard. Its defensive plan includes four bastions, projecting structures that allowed defenders to fire along the faces of adjoining walls. Each bastion contains a casemate, a protected chamber built into a fortification for guns, troops, storage, or other military purposes. One of these casemates bears the name Abd el-Kader, preserving the memory of his detention within the fort.
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