When Buonaparte and his army were safely landed in Egypt, policy seemed to demand that the naval squadron, by which they had been escorted, should have been sent back to France as soon as possible. The French leader accordingly repeatedly asserts, that he had positively commanded Admiral Brueyes, an excellent officer, for whom he himself entertained particular respect,[385] either to carry his squadron of men-of-war into the harbour of Alexandria, or, that being found impossible, instantly to set sail for Corfu. The harbour, by report of the Turkish pilots, was greatly too shallow to admit without danger vessels of such a deep draught of water; and it scarce can be questioned that Admiral Brueyes would have embraced the alternative of setting sail for Corfu, had such been in reality permitted by his orders. But the assertion of Buonaparte is pointedly contradicted by the report of Vice-Admiral Gantheaume, who was himself in the battle of Aboukir, escaped from the slaughter with difficulty, and was intrusted by Buonaparte with drawing up the account of the disaster, which he transmitted to the minister of war. "Perhaps it may be said," so the despatch bears, "that it would have been advisable to have quitted the coast as soon as the disembarkation had taken place. But, considering the orders of the commander-in-chief, and the incalculable force afforded to the land-army by the presence of the squadron, the admiral thought it was his duty not to quit these seas."[386]

Looking at the matter more closely—considering the probability of Nelson's return, and the consequent danger of the fleet—considering, too, the especial interest which naval and military officers attach each to their peculiar service, and the relative disregard with which they contemplate the other, we can see several reasons why Buonaparte might have wished, even at some risk, to detain the fleet on the coast of Egypt, but not one which could induce Brueyes to continue there, not only without the consent of the commander-in-chief, but, as Napoleon afterwards alleged, against his express orders. It is one of the cases in which no degree of liberality can enable us to receive the testimony of Buonaparte, contradicted at once by circumstances, and by the positive testimony of Gantheaume.

We now approach one of the most brilliant actions of the English navy, achieved by the admiral whose exploits so indisputably asserted the right of Britain to the dominion of the ocean. Our limits require that we should state but briefly a tale, at which every heart in our islands will long glow; and we are the more willingly concise that our readers possess it at length in one of the best written popular histories in the English language.[387]

Although unable to enter the harbour of Alexandria, the French admiral believed his squadron safely moored in the celebrated bay of Aboukir. They formed a compact line of battle, of a semicircular form, anchored so close to the shoal-water and surf, that it was thought impossible to get between them and the land; and they concluded, therefore, that they could be brought to action on the starboard side only. On the 1st August, the British fleet appeared; and Nelson had no sooner reconnoitred the French position, than he resolved to force it at every risk. Where the French ships could ride, he argued with instantaneous decision, there must be room for English vessels to anchor between them and the shore. He made signal for the attack accordingly. As the vessels approached the French anchorage, they received a heavy and raking fire, to which they could make no return; but they kept their bows to the enemy, and continued to near their line. The squadrons were nearly of the same numerical strength. The French had thirteen ships of the line, and four frigates. The English, thirteen ships of the line, and one fifty-gun ship. But the French had three eighty-gun ships, and L'Orient, a superb vessel of one hundred and twenty guns. All the British were seventy-fours. The van of the English fleet, six in number, rounded successively the French line, and dropping anchor betwixt them and the shore, opened a tremendous fire. Nelson himself, and his other vessels, ranged along the same French ships on the outer side, and thus placed them betwixt two fires; while the rest of the French line remained for a time unable to take a share in the combat. The battle commenced with the utmost fury, and lasted till, the sun having set and the night fallen, there was no light by which the combat could be continued, save the flashes of the continuous broadsides. Already, however, some of the French vessels were taken, and the victors, advancing onwards, assailed those which had not yet been engaged.

Meantime, a broad and dreadful light was thrown on the scene of action, by the breaking out of a conflagration on board the French admiral's flag-ship, L'Orient. Brueyes himself had by this time fallen by a cannon-shot.[388] The flames soon mastered the immense vessel, where the carnage was so terrible as to prevent all attempts to extinguish them; and the L'Orient remained blazing like a volcano in the middle of the combat, rendering for a time the dreadful spectacle visible.

At length, and while the battle continued as furious as ever, the burning vessel blew up with so tremendous an explosion, that for a while it silenced the fire on both sides, and made an awful pause in the midst of what had been but lately so horrible a tumult.[389] The cannonade was at first slowly and partially resumed, but ere midnight it raged with all its original fury. In the morning, the only two French ships who had their colours flying, cut their cables and put to sea, accompanied by two frigates; being all that remained undestroyed and uncaptured, of the gallant navy that so lately escorted Buonaparte and his fortunes in triumph across the Mediterranean.

Such was the Victory of Aboukir, for which he who achieved it felt that word was inadequate. He called it a conquest. The advantages of the day, great as they were, might have been pushed much farther, if Nelson had been possessed of frigates and small craft. The store-ships and transports in the harbour of Alexandria would then have been infallibly destroyed. As it was, the results were of the utmost importance, and the destinies of the French army were altered in proportion. They had no longer any means of communicating with the mother-country, but became the inhabitants of an insulated province, obliged to rely exclusively on the resources which they had brought with them, joined to those which Egypt might afford.

Buonaparte, however surprised by this reverse, exhibited great equanimity. Three thousand French seamen, the remainder of nearly six thousand engaged in that dreadful battle, were sent ashore by cartel, and formed a valuable addition to his forces. Nelson, more grieved almost at being frustrated of his complete purpose, than rejoiced at his victory, left the coast after establishing a blockade on the port of Alexandria.

We are now to trace the means by which Napoleon proposed to establish and consolidate his government in Egypt; and in these we can recognise much that was good and excellent, mixed with such irregularity of imagination, as vindicates the term of Jupiter Scapin, by which the AbbÉ de Pradt distinguished this extraordinary man.[390]

His first care was to gather up the reins of government, such as they were, which had dropt from the hands of the defeated beys. With two classes of the Egyptian nation it was easy to establish his authority. The Fellahs, or peasantry, sure to be squeezed to the last penny by one party or other, willingly submitted to the invaders as the strongest, and the most able to protect them. The Cophts, or men of business, were equally ready to serve the party which was in possession of the country. So that the French became the masters of both, as a natural consequence of the power which they had obtained.

But the Turks were to be attached to the conqueror by other means, since their haughty national character, and the intolerance of the Mahometan religion rendered them alike inaccessible to profit, the hope of which swayed the Cophts, and to fear, which was the prevailing argument with the Fellahs. To gratify their vanity, and soothe their prejudices, seemed the only mode by which Napoleon could insinuate himself into the favour of this part of the population. With this view, Buonaparte was far from assuming a title of conquest in Egypt, though he left few of its rights unexercised. On the contrary, he wisely continued to admit the pacha to that ostensible share of authority which was yielded to him by the beys, and spoke with as much seeming respect of the Sublime Porte, as if it had been his intention ever again to permit their having any effective power in Egypt. Their imaums, or priests; their ulemats, or men of law; their cadis, or judges; their sheiks, or chiefs; their Janissaries, or privileged soldiers, were all treated by Napoleon with a certain degree of attention, and the Sultan Kebir, as they called him, affected to govern, like the Grand Signior, by the intervention of a divan.

This general council consisted of about forty sheiks, or Moslems of distinction by birth or office, who held their regular meetings at Cairo, and from which body emanated the authority of provincial divans, established in the various departments of Egypt. Napoleon affected to consult the superior council, and act in many cases according to their report of the law of the Prophet. On one occasion, he gave them a moral lesson which it would be great injustice to suppress. A tribe of roving Arabs had slain a peasant, and Buonaparte had given directions to search out and punish the murderers. One of his Oriental counsellors laughed at the zeal which the general manifested on so slight a cause.

"What have you to do with the death of this Fellah, Sultan Kebir?" said he, ironically; "was he your kinsman?"

"He was more," said Napoleon; "he was one for whose safety I am accountable to God, who placed him under my government."

"He speaks like an inspired person!" exclaimed the sheiks; who can admire the beauty of a just sentiment, though incapable, from the scope they allow their passions, to act up to the precepts of moral rectitude.

Thus far the conduct of Buonaparte was admirable. He protected the people who were placed under his power, he respected their religious opinions, he administered justice to them according to their own laws, until they should be supplied with a better system of legislation. Unquestionably, his good administration did not amend the radical deficiency of his title; it was still chargeable against him, that he had invaded the dominions of the most ancient ally of France, at a time when there was the most profound peace between the countries. Yet in delivering Egypt from the tyrannical sway of the Mamelukes, and administering the government of the country with wisdom and comparative humanity, the mode in which he used the power which he had acquired, might be admitted in some measure to atone for his usurpation. Not contented with directing his soldiers to hold in respect the religious observances of the country, he showed equal justice and policy in collecting and protecting the scattered remains of the great caravan of the Mecca pilgrimage, which had been plundered by the Mamelukes on their retreat. So satisfactory was his conduct to the Moslem divines, that he contrived to obtain from the clergy of the Mosque an opinion, declaring that it was lawful to pay tribute to the French, though such a doctrine is diametrically inconsistent with the Koran. Thus far Napoleon's measures had proved rational and successful. But with this laudable course of conduct was mixed a species of artifice, which, while we are compelled to term it impious, has in it, at the same time, something ludicrous, and almost childish.

Buonaparte entertained the strange idea of persuading the Moslems that he himself pertained in some sort to their religion, being an envoy of the Deity, sent on earth, not to take away, but to confirm and complete, the doctrines of the Koran, and the mission of Mahomet.[391] He used, in executing this purpose, the inflated language of the East, the more easily that it corresponded, in its allegorical and amplified style, with his own natural tone of composition; and he hesitated not to join in the external ceremonial of the Mahometan religion, that his actions might seem to confirm his words. The French general celebrated the feast of the prophet as it recurred, with some sheik of eminence, and joined in the litanies and worship enjoined by the Koran. He affected, too, the language of an inspired follower of the faith of Mecca, of which the following is a curious example.

On entering the sepulchral chamber in the pyramid of Cheops, "Glory be to Allah," said Buonaparte, "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet." A confession of faith which is in itself a declaration of Islamism.

"Thou hast spoken like the most learned of the prophets," said the mufti, who accompanied him.

"I can command a car of fire to descend from heaven," continued the French general, "and I can guide and direct its course upon earth."

"Thou art the great chief to whom Mahomet gives power and victory," said the mufti.

Napoleon closed the conversation with this not very pertinent Oriental proverb, "The bread which the wicked seizes upon by force, shall be turned to dust in his mouth."[392]

Though the mufti played his part in the above scene with becoming gravity, Buonaparte over-estimated his own theatrical powers, and did too little justice to the shrewdness of the Turks, if he supposed them really edified by his pretended proselytism. With them as with us, a renegade from the religious faith in which he was brought up, is like a deserter from the standard of his country; and though the services of either may be accepted and used, they remain objects of disregard and contempt, as well with those to whose service they have deserted, as with the party whom they have abandoned.

The Turks and Arabs of Cairo soon afterwards showed Buonaparte, by a general and unexpected insurrection, [October 22,] in which many Frenchmen were slain, how little they were moved by his pretended attachment to their faith, and how cordially they considered him as their enemy. Yet, when the insurgents had been quelled by force, and the blood of five thousand Moslems had atoned for that of three hundred Frenchmen, Napoleon, in an address to the inhabitants of Cairo, new-modelling the general council or divan, held still the same language as before of himself and his destinies. "Sheriffs," he said, "Ulemats, Orators of the Mosque, teach the people that those who become my enemies shall have no refuge in this world or the next. Is there any one not blind enough to see, that I am the agent of Destiny, or incredulous enough to call in question the power of Destiny over human affairs? Make the people understand, that since the world was a world, it was ordained, that having destroyed the enemies of Islamism, and broken down the Cross,[393] I should come from the West to accomplish the task designed for me—show them, that in more than twenty passages of the Koran my coming is foretold. I could demand a reckoning from each of you for the most secret thoughts of his soul, since to me everything is known; but the day will come when all shall know from whom I have my commission, and that human efforts cannot prevail against me."

It is plain from this strange proclamation, that Buonaparte was willing to be worshipped as a superior being, as soon as altars could be built, and worshippers collected together. But the Turks and Arabs were wiser than the Persians in the case of young Ammon. The Sheik of Alexandria, who affected much devotion to Buonaparte's person, came roundly to the point with him. He remarked the French observed no religious worship. "Why not, therefore," he said, "declare yourself Moslem at once, and remove the only obstacle betwixt you and the throne of the East?" Buonaparte objected the prohibition of wine, and the external rite which Mahomet adopted from the Jewish religion. The officious sheik proposed to call a council of the Moslem sages, and procure for the new proselytes some relaxation of these fundamental laws of the Prophet's faith. According to this hopeful plan, the Moslems must have ceased to be such in two principal articles of their ritual, in order to induce the French to become a kind of imperfect renegades, rejecting, in the prohibition of wine, the only peculiar guard which Mahomet assigned to the moral virtue of his follower's, while they embraced the degrading doctrine of fatality, the licentious practice of polygamy, and the absurd chimeras of the Koran.

Napoleon appears to have believed the sheik serious, which is very doubtful, and to have contemplated with eager ambition the extent of views which his conversion to Islamism appeared to open. His own belief in predestination recommended the creed of Mahomet, and for the Prophet of Mecca himself he had a high respect, as one of those who had wrought a great and enduring change on the face of the world.[394] Perhaps he envied the power which Mahomet possessed, of ruling over men's souls as well as their bodies, and might thence have been led into the idea of playing a part, to which time and circumstances, the character of his army and his own, were alike opposed. No man ever succeeded in imposing himself on the public as a supernatural personage, who was not, to a certain degree, the dupe of his own imposture; and Napoleon's calculating and reflecting mind was totally devoid of the enthusiasm which enables a man to cheat himself into at least a partial belief of the deceit which he would impose on others. The French soldiers, on the other hand, bred in scorn of religion of every description, would have seen nothing but ridicule in the pretensions of their leader to a supernatural mission; and in playing the character which Alexander ventured to personate, Buonaparte would have found in his own army many a Clitus, who would have considered his pretensions as being only ludicrous. He himself, indeed, expressed himself satisfied that his authority over his soldiers was so absolute, that it would have cost but giving it out in the order of the day to have made them all become Mahometans; but, at the same time, he has acquainted us, that the French troops were at times so much discontented with their condition in Egypt, that they formed schemes of seizing on their standards, and returning to France by force. What reply, it may be reasonably asked, were they likely to make to a proposal, which would have deprived them of their European and French character, and levelled them with Africans and Asiatics, whose persons they despised, and whose country they desired to leave? It is likely, that reflections on the probable consequences prevented his going farther than the vague pretensions which he announced in his proclamations, and in his language to the sheiks. He had gone far enough, however, to show, that the considerations of conscience would have been no hinderance; and that, notwithstanding the strength of his understanding, common sense had less influence than might have been expected, in checking his assertion of claims so ludicrous as well as so profane. Indeed, his disputes with the Ottoman Porte speedily assumed a character, which his taking the turban and professing himself a Moslem in all the forms, could not have altered to his advantage.

It had been promised to Buonaparte, that the abilities of Talleyrand, as minister of foreign affairs, should be employed to reconcile the Grand Signior and his counsellors to the occupation of Egypt.[395] But the efforts of that able negotiator had totally failed in a case so evidently hopeless; and if Talleyrand had even proceeded to Constantinople, as Napoleon alleged the Directory had promised, it could only have been to be confined in the Seven Towers. The Porte had long since declared, that any attack upon Egypt, the road to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, would be considered as a declaration of war, whatever pretexts might be alleged. They regarded, therefore, Buonaparte's invasion as an injury equally unprovoked and unjustifiable. They declared war against France, called upon every follower of the Prophet to take the part of his vicegerent upon earth, collected forces, and threatened an immediate expedition, for the purpose of expelling the infidels from Egypt. The success of the British at Aboukir increased their confidence. Nelson was loaded with every mark of honour which the Sultan could bestow, and the most active preparations were made to act against Buonaparte, equally considered as enemy to the Porte, whether he professed himself Christian, infidel, or renegade.

Meantime, that adventurous and active chief was busied in augmenting his means of defence or conquest, and in acquiring the information necessary to protect what he had gained, and to extend his dominions. For the former purpose, corps were raised from among the Egyptians, and some were mounted upon dromedaries, the better to encounter the perils of the desert. For the latter, Buonaparte undertook a journey to the Isthmus of Suez, the well-known interval which connects Asia with Africa. He subscribed the charter, or protection, granted to the Maronite Monks of Sinai, with the greater pleasure, that the signature of Mahomet had already sanctioned that ancient document. He visited the celebrated fountains of Moses, and, misled by a guide, had nearly been drowned in the advancing tides of the Red Sea.[396] This, he observes, would have furnished a splendid text to all the preachers in Europe.[397] But the same Deity, who had rendered the gulf fatal to Pharaoh, had reserved for one, who equally defied and disowned his power, the rocks of an island in the midst of the Atlantic.

When Napoleon was engaged in this expedition, or speedily on his return, he learned that two Turkish armies had assembled, one at Rhodes, and the other in Syria, with the purpose of recovering Egypt. The daring genius, which always desired to anticipate the attempts of the enemy, determined him to march with a strong force for the occupation of Syria, and thus at once to alarm the Turks by the progress which he expected to make in that province, and to avoid being attacked in Egypt by two Turkish armies at the same time. His commencement was as successful as his enterprise was daring. A body of Mamelukes was dispersed by a night attack. The fort of El Arish, considered as one of the keys of Egypt, fell easily into his hands. Finally, at the head of about ten thousand men, he traversed the desert, so famous in biblical history, which separates Africa from Asia, and entered Palestine without much loss, but not without experiencing the privations to which the wanderers in those sandy wastes have been uniformly subjected. While the soldiers looked with fear on the howling wilderness which they saw around,[398] there was something in the extent and loneliness of the scene that corresponded with the swelling soul of Napoleon, and accommodated itself to his ideas of immense and boundless space. He was pleased with the flattery, which derived his Christian name from two Greek words, signifying the Lion of the Desert.

Upon his entering the Holy Land, Buonaparte again drove before him a body of the Mamelukes, belonging to those who, after the battles of the Pyramids and of Salahieh, had retreated into Syria; and his army occupied without resistance Gaza, anciently a city of the Philistines, in which they found supplies of provisions. Jaffa, a celebrated city during the time of the Crusades, was the next object of attack. It was bravely assaulted, and fiercely defended. But the French valour and discipline prevailed—the place was carried by storm—three thousand Turks were put to the sword, and the town was abandoned to the license of the soldiery, which, by Buonaparte's own admission, never assumed a shape more frightful.[399] Such, it may be said, is the stern rule of war; and if so, most of our readers will acquiesce in the natural exclamation of the MarÉchal de Montluc, "Certes, we soldiers stand in more need of the Divine mercy than other men, seeing that our profession compels us to command and to witness deeds of such cruelty." It was not, however, to the ordinary horrors attending the storm of a town, that the charge against Buonaparte is on this occasion limited. He is accused of having been guilty of an action of great injustice, as well as of especial barbarity. Concerning this we shall endeavour to state, stripped of colouring and exaggeration, first the charge, and then the reply, of Napoleon himself.

After the breach had been stormed, a large part of the garrison, estimated by Buonaparte himself at twelve hundred men, which Miot[400] raises to betwixt two and three thousand, and others exaggerate still more, remained on the defensive, and held out in the mosques, and a sort of citadel to which they had retreated, till, at length, despairing of succour, they surrendered their arms, and were in appearance admitted to quarter. Of this body, the Egyptians were carefully separated from the Turks, Maugrabins, and Arnaouts; and while the first were restored to liberty, and sent back to their country, these last were placed under a strong guard. Provisions were distributed to them, and they were permitted to go by detachments in quest of water. According to all appearance they were considered and treated as prisoners of war. This was on the 7th of March. On the 9th, two days afterwards, this body of prisoners were marched out of Jaffa, in the centre of a large square battalion, commanded by General Bon. Miot assures us, that he himself mounted his horse, accompanied the melancholy column, and witnessed the event. The Turks foresaw their fate, but used neither entreaties nor complaints to avert it. They marched on, silent and composed. Some of them, of higher rank, seemed to exhort the others to submit, like servants of the Prophet, to the decree, which, according to their belief, was written on their forehead. They were escorted to the sand-hills to the south east of Jaffa, divided there into small bodies, and put to death by musketry. The execution lasted a considerable time, and the wounded, as in the fusillades of the Revolution, were despatched with the bayonet. Their bodies were heaped together, and formed a pyramid which is still visible, consisting now of human bones as originally of bloody corpses.

The cruelty of this execution occasioned the fact itself to be doubted, though coming with strong evidence, and never denied by the French themselves. Napoleon, however, frankly admitted the truth of the statement both to Lord Ebrington and to Dr. O'Meara.[401] Well might the author of this cruelty write to the Directory, that the storming of Jaffa was marked by horrors which he had never elsewhere witnessed. Buonaparte's defence was, that the massacre was justified by the laws of war—that the head of his messenger had been cut off by the governor of Jaffa, when sent to summon him to surrender—that these Turks were a part of the garrison of El Arish, who had engaged not to serve against the French, and were found immediately afterwards defending Jaffa, in breach of the terms of their capitulation. They had incurred the doom of death, therefore, by the rules of war—Wellington, he said, would have, in his place, acted in the same manner.

To this plea the following obvious answers apply. If the Turkish governor had behaved like a barbarian, for which his country, and the religion which Napoleon meditated to embrace, might be some excuse, the French general had avenged himself by the storm and plunder of the town, with which his revenge ought, in all reason, to have been satisfied. If some of these unhappy Turks had broken their faith to Buonaparte, and were found again in the ranks which they had sworn to abandon, it could not, according to the most severe construction of the rules of war, authorise the dreadful retaliation of indiscriminate massacre upon a multitude of prisoners, without inquiring whether they had been all equally guilty. Lastly, and admitting them all to stand in the same degree of criminality, although their breach of faith might have entitled Buonaparte to refuse these men quarter while they had arms in their hands, that right was ended when the French general received their submission, and when they had given up the mean of defence, on condition of safety for life at least.[402]

This bloody deed must always remain a deep stain on the character of Napoleon. Yet we do not view it as the indulgence of an innate love of cruelty; for nothing in Buonaparte's history shows the existence of that vice, and there are many things which intimate his disposition to have been naturally humane. But he was ambitious, aimed at immense and gigantic undertakings, and easily learned to overlook the waste of human life, which the execution of his projects necessarily involved. He seems to have argued, not on the character of the action, but solely on the effect which it was to produce upon his own combinations. His army was small; it was his business to strike terror into his numerous enemies, and the measure to be adopted seemed capable of making a deep impression on all who should hear of it. Besides, these men, if dismissed, would immediately rejoin his enemies. He had experienced their courage, and to disarm them would have been almost an unavailing precaution, where their national weapon, the sabre, was so easily attained. To detain them prisoners would have required a stronger force than Napoleon could afford, would have added difficulty and delay to the movement of his troops, and tended to exhaust his supplies. That sort of necessity, therefore, which men fancy to themselves when they are unwilling to forego a favourite object for the sake of obeying a moral precept—that necessity which might be more properly termed a temptation difficult to be resisted—that necessity which has been called the tyrant's plea, was the cause of the massacre at Jaffa, and must remain its sole apology.

It might almost seem that Heaven set its vindictive brand upon this deed of butchery; for about the time it was committed the plague broke out in the army. Buonaparte, with a moral courage deserving as much praise as his late cruelty deserved reprobation, went into the hospitals in person, and while exposing himself, without hesitation, to the infection, diminished the terror of the disease in the opinion of the soldiers generally, and even of the patients themselves, who were thus enabled to keep up their spirits, and gained by doing so the fairest chance of recovery.[403]

Meanwhile, determined to prosecute the conquest of Syria, Buonaparte resolved to advance to Saint Jean d'Acre so celebrated in the wars of Palestine. The Turkish Pacha, or governor of Syria, who, like others in his situation, accounted himself almost an independent sovereign, was Achmet; who, by his unrelenting cruelties and executions, had procured the terrible distinction of Djezzar, or the Butcher. Buonaparte addressed this formidable chief in two letters, offering his alliance, and threatening him with his vengeance if it should be rejected.[404] To neither did the pacha return any answer; in the second instance he put to death the messenger. The French general advanced against Acre, vowing revenge. There were, however, obstacles to the success of his enterprise, on which he had not calculated.

The pacha had communicated the approach of Napoleon to Sir Sidney Smith, to whom had been committed the charge of assisting the Turks in their proposed expedition to Egypt, and who, for that purpose, was cruising in the Levant. He hastened to sail for Acre with the Tigre and Theseus, ships of the line; and arriving there two days ere the French made their appearance, contributed greatly to place the town, the fortifications of which were on the old Gothic plan, in a respectable state of defence.

Sir Sidney Smith, who so highly distinguished himself on this occasion, had been long celebrated for the most intrepid courage, and spirit of enterprise. His character was, besides, marked by those traits of enthusiasm at which cold and vulgar minds are apt to sneer, because incapable of understanding them; yet without which great and honourable actions have rarely been achieved. He had also a talent, uncommon among the English, that of acting easily with foreign, and especially with barbarous troops, and understanding how to make their efforts availing for the service of the common cause, though exerted in a manner different from those of civilized nations. This brave officer having been frequently intrusted with the charge of alarming the French coast, had been taken on one occasion, and, contrary to the laws of nations, and out of a mean spirit of revenge, was imprisoned in the Temple, from which he was delivered by a daring stratagem, effected by the French Royalist party. He had not been many hours at Acre, when Providence afforded him a distinguished mark of favour. The Theseus, which had been detached to intercept any French vessels that might be attending on Buonaparte's march, detected a small flotilla stealing under Mount Carmel, and had the good fortune to make prize of seven out of nine of them. They were a convoy from Damietta, bound for Acre, having on board heavy cannon, platforms, ammunition, and other necessary articles. These cannon and military stores, destined to form the siege of Acre, became eminently useful in its defence, and the consequence of their capture was eventually decisive of the struggle. General Philippeaux, a French royalist, and officer of engineers, immediately applied himself to place the cannon thus acquired, to the amount of betwixt thirty and forty, upon the walls which they had been intended to destroy. This officer, who had been Buonaparte's school-fellow, and the principal agent in delivering Sir Sidney Smith from prison, possessed rare talents in his profession. Thus strangely met under the walls of Acre, an English officer, late a prisoner in the Temple of Paris, and a French colonel of engineers, with the late general of the army of Italy, the ancient companion of Philippeaux,[405] and about to become almost the personal enemy of Smith.

On the 17th March, the French came in sight of Acre, which is built on a peninsula advancing into the sea, and so conveniently situated that vessels can lie near the shore, and annoy with their fire whatever advances to assault the fortification. Notwithstanding the presence of two British ships of war, and the disappointment concerning his battering cannon, which were now pointed against him from the ramparts, Buonaparte, with a characteristic perseverance, which, on such an occasion, was pushed into obstinacy, refused to abandon his purpose, and proceeded to open trenches, although the guns which he had to place in them were only twelve pounders. The point of attack was a large tower which predominated over the rest of the fortifications. A mine at the same time was run under the extreme defences.

By the 28th March a breach was effected, the mine was sprung, and the French proceeded to the assault upon that day. They advanced at the charging step, under a murderous fire from the walls, but had the mortification to find a deep ditch betwixt them and the tower. They crossed it, nevertheless, by help of the scaling-ladders which they carried with them, and forced their way as far as the tower, from which it is said that the defenders, impressed by the fate of Jaffa, were beginning to fly. They were checked by the example of Djezzar himself, who fired his own pistols at the French, and upbraided the Moslems who were retreating from the walls. The defences were again manned; the French, unable to support the renewed fire, were checked and forced back; and the Turks falling upon them in their retreat with sabre in hand, killed a number of their best men, and Mailly, who commanded the party. Sorties were made from the place to destroy the French works; and although the cries with which the Turks carry on their military manoeuvres gave the alarm to the enemy, yet, assisted by a detachment of British seamen, they did the French considerable damage, reconnoitred the mine which they were forming anew, and obtained the knowledge of its direction necessary to prepare a counter-mine.

While the strife was thus fiercely maintained on both sides, with mutual loss and increased animosity, the besiegers were threatened with other dangers. An army of Moslem troops of various nations, but all actuated by the same religious zeal, had formed themselves in the mountains of Samaria, and uniting with them the warlike inhabitants of that country, now called Naplous, formed the plan of attacking the French army lying before Acre on one side, while Djezzar and his allies should assail them upon the other. Kleber, with his division, was despatched by Buonaparte to disperse this assemblage. But though he obtained considerable advantages over detached parties of the Syrian army, their strength was so disproportioned, that at last, while he held a position near Mount Tabor, with two or three thousand men, he was surrounded by about ten times his own number. But his general-in-chief was hastening to his assistance. Buonaparte left two divisions to keep the trenches before Acre, and penetrated into the country in three columns. Murat, at the head of a fourth, occupied the pass called Jacob's Bridge. The attack, made on various points, was every where successful. The camp of the Syrian army was taken; their defeat, almost their dispersion, was accomplished, while their scattered remains fled to Damascus. Buonaparte returned, crowned with laurels, to the siege of Acre.

Here, too, the arrival of thirty heavy pieces of cannon from Jaffa seemed to promise that success, which the French had as yet been unable to attain. It was about this time that, walking on the Mount which still retains the name of Richard Coeur de Lion, Buonaparte expressed himself to Murat in these terms, as he pointed to Saint Jean D'Acre:—"The fate of the East depends upon yonder petty town. Its conquest will ensure the main object of my expedition, and Damascus will be the first fruit of it."[406] Thus it would seem, that, while engaged in the enterprise, Buonaparte held the same language, which he did many years after its failure when at St. Helena.

Repeated and desperate assaults proved, that the consequence which he attached to taking Acre was as great as his words expressed. The assailants suffered severely on these occasions, for they were exposed to the fire of two ravelins, or external fortifications, which had been constructed under Philippeaux's directions, and at the same time enfiladed by the fire of the British shipping. At length, employing to the uttermost the heavy artillery now in his possession, Buonaparte, in spite of a bloody and obstinate opposition, forced his way to the disputed tower, and made a lodgment on the second story. It afforded, however, no access to the town; and the troops remained there as in a cul-de-sac, the lodgment being covered from the English and Turkish fire by a work constructed partly of packs of cotton, partly of the dead bodies of the slain, built up along with them.

At this critical moment, a fleet, bearing reinforcements long hoped for and much needed, appeared in view of the garrison. They contained Turkish troops under the command of Hassan Bey. Yet near as they were, the danger was imminent that Acre might be taken ere they could land. To prevent such a misfortune, Sir Sidney Smith in person proceeded to the disputed tower, at the head of a body of British seamen, armed with pikes. They united themselves to a corps of brave Turks, who defended the breach rather with heavy stones than with other weapons. The heap of ruins which divided the contending parties served as a breast-work to both. The muzzles of the muskets touched each other, and the spear-heads of the standards were locked together. At this moment one of the Turkish regiments of Hassan's army, which had by this time landed, made a sortie upon the French; and though they were driven back, yet the diversion occasioned the besiegers to be forced from their lodgment.

Abandoning the ill-omened tower, which had cost the besiegers so many men, Buonaparte now turned his efforts towards a considerable breach that had been effected in the curtain, and which promised a more easy entrance. It proved, indeed, but too easy; for Djezzar Pacha opposed to the assault on this occasion a new mode of tactics. Confiding in his superior numbers, he suffered the French, who were commanded by the intrepid General Lannes, to surmount the breach without opposition, by which they penetrated into the body of the place. They had no sooner entered, than a numerous body of Turks mingled among them with loud shouts; and ere they had time or room to avail themselves of their discipline, brought them into that state of close fighting, where strength and agility are superior to every other acquirement. The Turks, wielding the sabre in one hand, and the poniard in the other, cut to pieces almost all the French who had entered. General Rambaud lay a headless corpse in the breach—Lannes was with difficulty brought off severely wounded. The Turks gave no quarter; and instantly cutting the heads off of those whom they slew, carried them to the pacha, who sat in public distributing money to those who brought him these bloody trophies, which now lay piled in heaps around him. This was the sixth assault upon these tottering and blood-stained ramparts. "Victory," said Napoleon, "is to the most persevering;"[407] and contrary to the advice of Kleber, he resolved upon another and yet more desperate attack.

On the 21st May the final effort was made. The attack of the morning failed, and Colonel Veneux renewed it at mid-day. "Be assured," said he to Buonaparte, "Acre shall be yours to-night, or Veneux will die on the breach."[408] He kept his word at the cost of his life. Bon was also slain, whose division had been the executioners of the garrison of Jaffa. The French now retreated, dispirited and despairing of success. The contest had been carried on at half a musket shot distance; and the bodies of the dead lying around, putrified under the burning sun, spread disease among the survivors. An attempt was made to establish a suspension of arms for removing this horrible annoyance. Miot says that the pacha returned no answer to the proposal of the French. According to Sir Sidney Smith's official reports, the armistice for this humane purpose was actually agreed on, but broken off by the French firing upon those who were engaged in the melancholy office, and then rushing on to make their last unsuccessful charge and assault upon the breach. This would have been a crime so useless, and would have tended so much to the inconvenience of the French themselves, that we cannot help suspecting some misunderstanding had occurred, and that the interruption was under a wrong conception of the purpose of the working party.

This is the more probable, as Sir Sidney Smith, who reports the circumstance, was not at this time disposed to put the best construction on any action of Buonaparte's, who, on the other hand, regarded the British seamen with peculiar dislike, and even malignity. The cause of personal quarrel betwixt them was rather singular.

Buonaparte had addressed the subjects of Achmet Djezzar's pachalik, in terms inviting them to revolt, and join the French; yet was much offended when, imitating his own policy, the pacha and Sir Sidney Smith caused letters to be sent into his camp before Acre, urging his soldiers to mutiny and desertion. Sir Sidney also published a proclamation to the Druses, and other inhabitants of the country, calling on them to trust the faith of a Christian knight, rather than that of an unprincipled renegado. Nettled at these insults, Buonaparte declared that the English commodore was mad; and, according to his account, Sir Sidney replied by sending him a challenge. The French general scornfully refused this invitation, unless the challenger would bring Marlborough to meet him, but offered to send one of his grenadiers to indulge the Englishman's desire of single combat. The good taste of the challenge may be doubted, if indeed such was ever sent; but the scorn of the reply ought to have been mitigated, considering it was addressed to one, in consequence of whose dauntless and determined opposition Buonaparte's favourite object had failed, and who was presently to compel him, for the first time, to an inglorious retreat.

Another calumny, circulated by Buonaparte against the English commodore, was, that Sir Sidney Smith had endeavoured to expose his French prisoners to the infection of the plague, by placing them in vessels where that dreadful contagion prevailed. This charge had no other foundation, than in Buonaparte's wish, by spreading such a scandal, to break off all communication between the commodore and the discontented of his own army. After the heat excited by their angry collision had long subsided, it is amusing to find Napoleon, when in the island of Saint Helena, declaring, that his opinion of Sir Sidney Smith was altered for the better, since he had become acquainted with the rest of his countrymen, and that he now considered him as a worthy sort of man—for an Englishman.

The siege of Acre had now continued sixty days since the opening of the trenches. The besiegers had marched no less than eight times to the assault, while eleven desperate sallies were evidence of the obstinacy of the defence. Several of the best French generals were killed; among the rest Caffarelli,[409] for whom Buonaparte had particular esteem; and the army was greatly reduced by the sword and the plague, which raged at once among their devoted bands. Retreat became inevitable. Yet Buonaparte endeavoured to give it such a colouring as might make the measure seem voluntary. Sometimes he announced that his purpose of going to Acre was sufficiently accomplished when he had battered down the palace of the pacha; at other times he affirmed he had left the whole town a heap of ruins; and finally, he informed the Directory that he could easily have taken the place, but the plague being raging within its walls, and it being impossible to prevent the troops from seizing on infected clothes for part of their booty, he had rather declined the capture of Acre, than run the risk of introducing this horrid malady among his soldiers. What his real feelings must have been, while covering his chagrin with such flimsy pretexts, may be conjectured from the following frank avowal to his attendants in Saint Helena. Speaking of the dependence of the most important affairs on the most trivial, he remarks, that the mistake of the captain of a frigate, who bore away, instead of forcing his passage to the place of his destination, had prevented the face of the world from being totally changed. "Acre," he said, "would otherwise have been taken—the French army would have flown to Damascus and Aleppo—in a twinkling of an eye they would have been on the Euphrates—the Syrian Christians would have joined us—the Druses, the Armenians would have united with us."—Some one replied, "We might have been reinforced to the number of a hundred thousand men."—"Say six hundred thousand," said the Emperor; "who can calculate the amount? I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies—I would have changed the face of the world."[410]