Napoleon in Egypt (61 page)

Monsieur le Général,

As your instructions to your emissary Beauchamp contained the words, “If you are asked whether the French would agree to leave Egypt” and your advice [was] that he should reply, “Why not?” . . . I did not wish to ask you the question, “Are the French willing to leave Syria?” before you had made an attempt to square up your forces against ours, since you could not be convinced, as I am, of the impracticability of your enterprise. But now that you have seen this place defended, as it can be, by virtue of its position, as well as its fortifications, and through the bravery of its garrison that is now no less numerous than its besiegers, and now that you can see that it becomes stronger day by day rather than being weakened by two months of siege, I ask you the following: “Are you willing to evacuate your troops from Ottoman territory before the arrival of the great allied army changes the nature of this question?”

Believe me, Monsieur le Général, my only motive for suggesting this is my desire to avoid further bloodshed.
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This characteristically impudent letter would seem to have been a bold bluff by Smith, judging from the pessimism inadvertently revealed in his earlier report about the effects in Constantinople and Vienna of a French victory. Although Acre was certainly well supplied by now, his claim that it “becomes stronger day by day” was palpably untrue. Likewise, his suggestion that a “great allied army” was on the way had no actual substance. The Turks were still taking an inordinate time assembling an army at Rhodes, and there was certainly no likelihood of this being joined by forces from its British and Russian allies.

Yet Napoleon was not aware of this. He fully realized that the Turkish fleet would eventually bring an Ottoman army to Egypt, and he now had to contend with the possibility that the British or the Russians might have embarked upon similar plans. But by this stage he had more pressing concerns. Despite his professed distress to Bourrienne at seeing “the blood of so many brave men uselessly spilt,” and Sir Sidney Smith’s letter suggesting a means of avoiding further bloodshed, he was determined to go ahead with his final assault. To this end, Kléber had been ordered to march his division back from the Palestinian hinterland to join the besieging forces. Napoleon vowed that he himself would lead this assault in a do-or-die mission, an indication of how much importance he placed on the capture of Acre. Once again he would expose himself to death and put his destiny to the test. However, he was eventually dissuaded from this rash act by his generals. Instead, he decided that Kléber’s grenadiers should lead the assault on the main breach, with Kléber himself ordered to keep to the rear, so that he could properly direct operations. (If Napoleon himself was not to lead the charge, no other general was going to steal his thunder.)

Early on the morning of May 10, Napoleon’s final assault on Acre began. Inspired by stirring words from their general, and a generous issue of brandy, Kléber’s men charged into the breach. Valiantly disobeying his orders, Kléber joined the leaders of the charge, encouraging them on with his saber-wielding example.

But now Hassan Bey’s Turkish reinforcements sprang a surprise, launching a brave counterattack from the other, smaller breach, seizing the trenches before the battered central tower. General Bon’s division, which was intended to support Kléber’s in a two-pronged attack, was now forced to fight its way through the trenches in front of the walls, and during the course of this action Bon was killed. In the end, both prongs managed to penetrate the walls, only to be driven back by fierce fire from the reinforced defendants.

The French now regrouped in the heat of the day. By this stage the recaptured trenches before the walls had become a stinking morass of rotting flesh amongst the sandbags of the protective breastworks. To this were now added the unburied dead of the assault two days previously, as well as the dead and howling dying of the attack just abandoned. The battleground on either side of the walls had become a killing field piled with hundreds of French and thousands of Turkish bodies.

Napoleon stood at the forward siege battery, assessing the situation, with his telescope resting on the parapet of the trench. He was far from being out of danger himself, for according to his aide Lavallette, at one point “a bullet hit the upper parapet, the general-in-chief fell into the arms of General Berthier, and we thought him dead, but luckily he had not been hit.” Lavallette described what happened next:

Kléber’s grenadiers, who were back in their trenches, began demanding with loud shouts a renewal of the assault, but Napoleon hesitated, until he was finally persuaded by these brave men and gave the signal. It was a grand and terrific spectacle: the grenadiers rushed forward under a shower of cannon balls. General Kléber, with the gait of a giant, took his place on the bank of the breach, sword in hand, roaring his men on with a stentorian voice. The sight of all these men hurling themselves forward at the enemy, through the noise and smoke of the cannons, the yells of their fellow soldiers, and the howling of the Turks, made one’s heart surge with a raging enthusiasm. There was no doubt that the city was ours at last, when suddenly the column stopped.
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According to Sir Sidney Smith, the French grenadiers “absolutely refused to mount the breach any more over the putrefied bodies of their unburied companions, sacrificed in former attacks by Bonaparte’s impatience and precipitation, which led him to commit such palpable errors . . . He seemed to have no principle of action but that of pressing forward.”
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Not surprisingly, Lavallette saw it somewhat differently: “Finally we learned what obstacle was preventing any more troops from advancing. During the interval between the two assaults the enemy had filled the ditch on the other side of the breach with all kinds of inflammable material [including a mine], and with furious and repeated barrages killed all who appeared before them . . . the ditch was vomiting out flames, a thick explosion of the materials with which the mine was charged . . . came out of the ground and overthrew every one. . . . Kléber, in a great rage, struck his thigh with his sword; but the General-in-Chief, judging the obstacle to be insurmountable, gave a gesture and ordered a retreat.”
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This was to be Napoleon’s last attempt to take Acre, although the siege was to persist for another ten days. On the evening after his last attack Napoleon outlined his immediate plans in his regular report to the Directory. The reason he would make no further attempt to overrun the city was because “it would cost more lives than I am willing to lose. In any case, the summer season is too advanced. The goal that I set myself is fulfilled: Egypt now calls me. I am setting up a battery of 24 pounders to raze to the ground Djezzar’s palace and the principal buildings of the town. I am going to fire in around a thousand mortar shells, which will, in such a cramped space, cause a great deal of damage. Having reduced Acre to a heap of stones, I will come back across the desert ready to confront the European or Turkish army which will attempt to land in Egypt sometime in the months of Messidor or Thermidor [i.e., between mid-June and mid-August].”
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This was the first setback, the first hint of defeat, that Napoleon had suffered on the field of battle. His reaction was much as one might have predicted: a characteristic blend of vindictiveness and self-deception, which would gradually deepen as he attempted to overcome this blow to his superlative pride. Sir Sidney Smith, for his part, read the situation more realistically. He judged that morale in the French camp would now be at its lowest since the expedition began—lack of victory, the many dead and wounded, as well as the constant nagging fear of the plague and its continuing toll, would all be having their cumulative effect. In an effort to increase these debilitating factors, Smith now embarked on a propaganda campaign, having leaflets scattered from the battlements which were carried on the wind to the French camp. These contained a proclamation, purporting to come from the Sublime Porte, even carrying its official imprimatur, though it was almost certainly written by Smith himself. It was addressed “to the generals, officers and soldiers of the French army which has arrived in Egypt,” and opened by blaming the Directory for “completely ignoring the rights of man” and sending the army to Egypt “in violation of the laws of war.” It went on to warn the French that “at this very moment innumerable armies and immense fleets are already on their way across the sea” to attack them. There then followed an offer:

Those amongst you, of whatever rank, who wish to escape from this danger which threatens you, must, without the least delay, indicate your intentions to the commanders of the land and sea forces of the allied powers, who give safe guarantee that they will have them shipped wherever they desire to go, and will issue them with passports so that they will have free passage and need have nothing to fear from the allied fleets or any other battleships they encounter on their way.

This was undersigned by Smith, who described himself as “minister plenipotentiary of the King of England to the Ottoman Port and actual commander of the allied fleet at Acre.”
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Some French memoirs of those present patriotically claim that this proclamation only had the effect of strengthening the resolve of the French soldiers, but Napoleon himself would later admit that Smith’s proclamation “certainly shook some of [my troops], and I therefore published an order stating that he was mad, and forbidding all further communication with him.”
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Napoleon had already sent word to Admiral Perrée to prepare to sail up the coast and collect the wounded, and he now quickly began making preparations for his entire army to move on, but not before he had received an amazingly personal and provocative letter from Smith: “General, I am [aware] that for some days past you have been making to raise the siege; the preparations in hand to carry off your wounded, and to leave none behind you, do you credit.”
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The unspoken insinuation here is that, according to the rules of war, Napoleon would require Smith’s permission if Perrée’s ships were to land and collect the wounded without being fired upon. Smith now addressed himself intimately to Napoleon, uncannily selecting the very topic which to Napoleon was most sacred, and to which he was most susceptible—namely his destiny, which Smith had the effrontery to compare with his own. (His somewhat garbled style would seem to be a reflection of extreme exhaustion.)

I, who ought not to love you, to say nothing more: but circumstances remind me to wish that you would reflect on the instability of human affairs. In fact, could you have thought that a poor prisoner in a cell of the Temple prison—that an unfortunate for whom you refused, for a single moment, to give yourself any concern, being at the same time able to render him a signal service since you were then all-powerful—could you have thought, I say, that this same man would have become your antagonist and have compelled you in the midst of the sands of Syria to raise the siege of a miserable, almost defenseless town. Such events, you must admit, exceed all human calculations. Believe me, general, adopt sentiments more moderate; that a man will not be your enemy who shall tell you that Asia is not a theatre made for your glory. This letter is a little revenge that I give myself.

Smith was in the Temple at the time of Napoleon’s triumphant return to Paris from his Italian campaign, and now had the impudence to suggest that Napoleon should have remembered the man—a pirate in French eyes!—who had thwarted him so many years previously at the siege of Toulon.
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Napoleon was furious, and in order not to reveal Smith’s insults pretended to his officers (and later even convinced himself) that Smith had had the impertinence to challenge him to a duel. He claimed to have laughed at this, insisting that he could only accept such a challenge from a “Marlborough” (a reference to the great British general; in other words, only a military commander of the same supreme rank as himself). Smith always denied that he had issued such a challenge, but delighted in pointing out that he would have been quite entitled to do so, for “at the time we were of equal rank—he, General Bonaparte, commander-in-chief of the French army in Egypt, and I, General [
sic
] Smith, commander-in-chief of the Turkish army,
so
specially constituted by the Emperor Selim.”
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From now on, Napoleon determined to have nothing further to do with Smith. On May 21 the siege of Acre was called off, and the French army began its long march back to Egypt. The siege had lasted sixty-two days and had resulted in heavy losses all round. Inside Acre the final toll amongst the citizens, the besieged army, and the division of Turkish reinforcements has been estimated as high as 15,000—a huge figure, accounting for almost 250 lives per day, to say nothing of the wounded. Despite this, surrender had been out of the question for Djezzar, and his troops had probably thought likewise—after seeing what had happened to their colleagues at Jaffa. French losses had also been heavy. Napoleon would later claim that his entire Syrian campaign resulted in 500 killed and 1,000 wounded. However, according to the historian La Jonquière, who had access to the Ministry of War archives, the French casualties on the Syrian campaign probably amounted to around 1,200 killed, another 1,000 dead of disease, and 2,300 wounded, which accounts for more than a third of the forces with which Napoleon had set out for Syria. These casualties were spread through all ranks: besides Caffarelli and Bon, five other generals lost their lives, as did half a dozen savants, the most distinguished being de Venture and Say. Amongst Napoleon’s aides, Crosier was dead and Beauharnais wounded.
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