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Toulon was half destroyed in the last war, and its rebuilt whole is dominated by the military and associated industries. The arsenal that Louis XIV created is today one of the major employers of southeast France, and the port is home to the French Navy's Mediterranean fleet. The shipbuilding yards of La Seyne have, however, been axed, closing the book on a centuries-old and at times notorious industry. Up until the eighteenth century, slaves and convicts were still powering the king's galleys, and following the Revolution, convicts were sent to Toulon with iron collars round their necks for sentences of hard labour. After 1854 convicts were deported to the colonies in whose conquest ships from Toulon played a major part.
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