Short answers, pulled from the story.
Toulon is the major naval centre on France's Mediterranean coast and home base of the French Mediterranean Fleet, including the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and her battle group. The city's military port has been central to French naval power since Charles VIII began constructing it in 1494.
On the 27th of November 1942, French naval officers scuttled the French Fleet at Toulon to prevent it from falling into German hands after Germany occupied southern France under Case Anton. Allied bombing the following year destroyed much of the port and killed five hundred residents.
Toulon was called Telo Martius in Roman times and was one of the two principal Roman centres for manufacturing purple dye, produced from a local sea snail called murex and from oak acorns. The purple colour was used in imperial robes.
Toulon is the setting of the bagne, the notorious prison where the protagonist Jean Valjean serves nineteen years of hard labour. It is also where Valjean first meets his pursuer Javert, and a portion of the old prison wall still stands at the entrance of the Old Harbour.
Napoleon Bonaparte served as an artillery captain during the 1793 siege of Toulon, when French Republican forces retook the city from Girondins, royalists, and the British who had occupied it. The siege helped launch his military career.
The statue was discovered on the Greek island of Milo in 1820 and seen by French naval officer Emile Voutier, who persuaded the French Ambassador to Turkey to purchase it. Voutier transported it to Toulon on his ship, the Estafette, from where it was taken onward to the Louvre.