Napoleon in Egypt (66 page)

The Battle of Aboukir, as it came to be called, began at six
A.M.
on July 25, 1799. With Murat forming the vanguard in the center, General Lannes attacked the front line of Turkish defenses on the eastern flank, whilst General Lanusse simultaneously launched an attack on the western flank. The Turkish redoubts and trenches on the latter flank had not yet been completed, and after fierce fighting Lanusse finally achieved a breakthrough. On the opposite flank, Lannes took advantage of the enemy’s confusion, broke through the center and circled to come round behind the enemy line on the western flank. This caused widespread panic amongst the Turkish troops in this sector, who fled where they could in disarray, eventually running for the sea. According to Napoleon: “The enemy threw themselves into the water in an attempt to reach the boats which were more than two miles out at sea; they all drowned, the most horrible sight that I have seen.”
²¹
It must indeed have been a gruesome sight, even for a hardened soldier like Napoleon. Most estimates agree that thousands of Turks died in this stampede. However, the resistance in the second line of Turkish defenses proved much stronger, and as the heat of the day approached, the French found themselves being forced to withdraw by sheer weight of numbers. After the initial French retreat the Turkish soldiers began wandering over the battlefield, as was their custom, cutting off the heads of the dead and wounded.

Murat saw his opportunity and seized it, leading his troops in a furious cavalry charge through the scattered Turkish soldiers, who once again fled in confusion as he swept all before him. Such was the effectiveness of his breakthrough that within minutes he was charging into Mustafa-Pasha’s camp. Captain François, who fought in the battle, tells what happened next: “General Murat burst into the tent of the enemy commander-in-chief, who, on seeing his adversary advancing, ran rapidly towards him. At the very moment when Murat ordered him to surrender he fired a pistol at [Murat], who was hit in the lower jaw by the bullet, but only lightly wounded. General Murat, with a blow of his saber, slashed off two fingers of [Mustafa-Pasha’s] right hand, then had him seized by two soldiers of the 14th Dragoons.”
^*
22

Outside, the battle was all but over. Lannes had taken advantage of the mayhem caused by Murat’s charge, and the Turkish soldiers were now fleeing as the French mowed them down. Once again, thousands ran into the sea, this time on both sides of the peninsula, most of them drowning. Two thousand Turks are said to have been shot down, more thousands to have drowned. At the same time, several thousand managed to gain refuge with the garrison in the fort at the end of the peninsula.

The French victory had been as swift as it was complete. When Kléber finally arrived on the scene early in the afternoon, and saw what had happened, he was overwhelmed. According to Denon, who was present, “in a moment of enthusiasm,” the tall burly Alsatian embraced his diminutive commander-in-chief, exclaiming, “General, your greatness is beyond all bounds, you are out of this world.”
²³
Napoleon had led the French to a fine victory, though he generously gave credit where it was due: “The winning of this battle, which will have so much influence on the glory of the Republic, is due properly to General Murat. His cavalry brigade achieved the impossible.”
²⁴

Murat was promoted to the rank of divisional general, and Napoleon would describe the battle as “one of the most beautiful I have seen,” although he admitted that afterwards “the shore [was] covered with enemy bodies; we have counted more than 6,000; 3,000 have been buried on the field of battle.” In his dispatch to the Directory he reported 100 French dead and 500 wounded. This would seem to be accurate. However, the precise enemy death toll is not so clear. In other reports Napoleon claimed that 9,000 Turkish troops had been killed or drowned, and he revised his estimate of the entire Turkish force up to a total of 18,000 men. This would imply that he had won a victory over an enemy force almost twice the size of his own. Yet before the battle, Mustafa-Pasha claimed that he had only 7,000 men in a fit state to fight after the long sea voyage, a figure which concurs with Sir Sidney Smith’s estimate. Other firsthand witnesses placed the Turkish fighting force at around 9,000, though many French historians continued to accept Napoleon’s original intelligence estimate of 15,000 as being closer to the mark. Such exaggeration ensured Aboukir a permanent place in French history.
^*

But the invasion was not yet fully repulsed. The 5,000 or so Turkish troops who had taken refuge in Fort Aboukir continued to hold out under the command of Mustafa-Pasha’s son, and their resolve was soon stiffened by a detachment of British marines dispatched from the
Tigre
by Sidney Smith. The French began subjecting the fort to artillery fire, and the Turkish officers eventually decided to surrender, yet their men mutinied, having heard what Napoleon had done to the Turkish prisoners at Jaffa. But in the end the continuous French artillery and mortar fire, which went on day and night, proved too much for them. After eight days there were only 3,000 left alive and these were starving, many half crazed from drinking seawater. Captain François vividly describes their surrender on August 2:

They came out to offer themselves up to the vengeance of their victors. The son of the pasha and his lieutenants came out at the head of the Turkish soldiers, who looked like ghosts. They threw down their arms that they no longer had the strength to carry, and all of them bowed down, asking for death. But our commanders and soldiers, forgetting their previous hatred of the enemy, felt for them all the compassion and care evoked by their deplorable state. We gave them food and drink, and in spite of the precautions taken to prevent the illness that comes from eating too much too quickly after having suffered from hunger, three-quarters of those 3,000 men died of indigestion.
²⁵

Napoleon would later claim that “of the enemy who came ashore not a single one escaped.”
²⁶
Like his exaggerated claims concerning the size of the invasion force, this too was not true, particularly in one important instance. Sir Sidney Smith sent longboats from the
Tigre
which managed to rescue a number of the Turkish soldiers who fled into the sea. Amongst those who were able to scramble through the waves, avoiding the French bullets and the desperate clutches of their drowning comrades, was a thirty-year-old regimental officer of Albanian descent called Mohammed Ali, who six years later would become ruler of Egypt.

After the victory, Napoleon issued a triumphant message to his troops: “The name of Aboukir has meant disaster to all Frenchmen; the day of 7 Thermidor [July 25] has now rendered it glorious. This is a victory that will hasten the army’s return to France.”
²⁷
He then attempted to reinforce this fulsome promise with what can best be described as a fantasy about the European situation: “By invading Germany we have conquered Mainz and as far as the Rhine. This, along with our victory here, means that we can repossess our trading establishments in the Indies, as well as those of our allies. In one fell swoop we have put back in the hands of the government the power to force England, despite its naval triumphs, to sign a peace treaty which ensures glory for the Republic.”

Was this perhaps “the fate of the world” to which Napoleon had referred on the eve of the battle? The regaining of a few trading posts in India hardly merited such a dramatic description. And as for the future peace treaty he mentioned, this relied upon French conquests in Europe which seemed highly unlikely in the light of the latest news he had received. It looks as if this triumphant declaration was nothing more than a piece of propaganda, designed to keep the troops happy: this was what they wanted to hear. However, its sheer mendacity points to Napoleon’s indecisive state of mind. He did not know what to do next. He was dithering: for once in his life, keeping his options open had paralyzed his ability to decide. He could still march for Constantinople or India and “decide the fate of the world”; or he could return alone to France on one of Ganteaume’s waiting frigates and take his chances in overthrowing the Directory. This cannot have been a strong possibility in his mind; he would hardly have suggested to his army that they would soon be going back to France if he was seriously thinking of doing so himself and simply abandoning them. This was no way to retain the loyalty of the army. On the other hand, he could remain in Egypt, laying down firm foundations for the establishment of his Oriental empire. At this point, he appears to have viewed none of these possibilities with much conviction. Were they even plausible? Or were they just dreams? It is possible that at this point Napoleon had stage fright before the enormity of his ambitions. For once, all the indications are that he had no particular strategy in mind. However, the events of the next few days would transform his entire strategic outlook, changing his life forever.

XXVII

The Decision of a Lifetime

N
APOLEON
wished to send the many seriously wounded Turkish prisoners back to their ships, in exchange for the French soldiers who had surrendered after being besieged in Aboukir Fort during the first days of the Turkish invasion. With this in mind, he dispatched the young French officer Descorches from Alexandria harbor under a flag of truce to board the
Tigre
and negotiate with Sir Sidney Smith. During the course of these negotiations, Smith realized that the French had evidently not received any news for months about the situation in France and the general situation in Europe. He saw his chance to make mischief, and gave Descorches two of the latest newspapers he had received—
Gazette de Francfort
for June 6, and
Courrier Français de Londres
(an exile newspaper printed in Britain) for June 10—knowing that these would be passed on to Napoleon.

Descorches was handed these papers on August 6 and they would reach Napoleon a few days later as he was on his way back to Cairo. Napoleon spent the night in his tent reading the papers by candlelight from cover to cover. The situation in Europe had taken a dramatic turn for the worse: Austria, Britain and Russia had formed the Second Coalition, which was now at war with France. In southern Germany the French Army of the Rhine had been defeated by the Austrians and pushed back across the Rhine. As a result, the French had been forced to make a tactical withdrawal from most of Switzerland, in order to take up a defensive position around Geneva, almost on the French border. Meanwhile Malta was blockaded, and in Italy things had gone from bad to worse. The Austrians had invaded the French-occupied north, and then been joined by the Russians; Mantua and Turin were under siege, and the French forces were being driven back towards Genoa. Most of the territory Napoleon had conquered in his Italian campaign was now lost, and France was threatened from all sides.

Meanwhile the French Atlantic fleet under Admiral Bruix, consisting of twenty-two battleships and eighteen frigates, had managed to break the British blockade of Brest and sailed into the Mediterranean. This fleet could have been used to ferry Napoleon and his army back from Egypt, but it had put in at Toulon, where once again it was blockaded by the British. The situation within France itself was perilous: the constitution was in danger of being overturned, there was another insurrection in the Vendée, and the Jacobins were calling for a second Terror. At the same time the Directory did little but dither, and the economy was failing fast.

When Napoleon had finished reading the newspaper, he exclaimed: “
So! . . . My presentiments were not wrong; Italy is lost!!! The wretches! All the fruits of our victories have disappeared! I must depart
.”
¹
He came to an immediate decision: he would return to France at once. Only he could save the country. He would leave Kléber in charge in Egypt, and would take with him whoever he needed.

This meant abandoning the Army of the Orient in Egypt, a decision for which Napoleon has been severely condemned. In the eyes of his critics, this was the unprincipled act of a deserter who was intent only upon his own glory. He had received no orders to return to France, and should have been court-martialed for abandoning his post in the midst of a campaign. However, it is now known that this was precisely what the Directory wished him to do. In a letter sent on May 26, the Directory informed him that “the serious and almost alarming turn that the war has taken, requires the Republic to concentrate its forces.”
²
In consequence, it had sent orders to Admiral Bruix in Toulon, in the pious hope

that he would employ all means in his power to make himself master of the Mediterranean and sail to Egypt to bring back the army under your command . . . You will be able to judge for yourself, citizen general, if it is safe to leave part of your army behind in Egypt; and the Directory authorizes you, in this case, to hand over your command to whomsoever you consider best suited to the task. The Directory will be pleased to see you return and take charge of the army of the Republic, which you have up to this time so gloriously commanded.

This letter had been entrusted to Bruix, who had found himself unable to leave Toulon. An attempt was then made to send a copy by another route, but this was intercepted by the British navy. As a result, well before August 1799 Nelson knew that the Directory wanted Napoleon back, and had passed on this news to Sir Sidney Smith. Indeed, Smith had gone so far as to convey the news verbally to Descorches as he was leaving the
Tigre
for Alexandria, confident that it would quickly be passed on to Napoleon. So Napoleon had in fact known that the Directory wished him to return to France, and cannot on this count be accused of desertion. Or can he? His defense would not have stood up in any court-martial. He had no proof of this letter, and in fact from his point of view it would have seemed almost certain that Smith was bluffing.