Beware of Heroes: Admiral Sir Sidney Smith's War against Napoleon

by Peter Shankland

  The daily presence of Sir Sidney and Captain Miller ashore to cheer and inspire everything, has roused the courage of the garrison and inspired every man of it with such enthusiasm that they now close with the republicans, and with their sabres cut them up upon all occasions with comparatively little loss to themselves. They rush upon them so suddenly as not to give them time to fire a second round.

  An army for the relief of the town had been slowly assembling at Damascus. By the 5th April it had moved south as far as the Plain of Esdrelon where it was reported by the French reconnaissance force under General Junot. Bonaparte, leaving Lannes and Reynier before Acre, at once prepared to march against it, sending Kléber on ahead to get between the Turks and the River Jordan to cut off their retreat.

  On 15th April, Kléber and Junot found themselves with 2,000 men facing a Turkish army of, possibly 20,000, including, Mamelukes, Janisseries, Arabs, Kurds, etc. He called it ‘a bizarre assemblage of footmen and horsemen of all colours and of all nations’. Seeing that he was so vastly outnumbered, Kléber decided to attempt a night attack on the enemy’s camp; but it was farther off than he had expected, and he arrived in front of it only at 6 a.m. on the 16th. Here the Turks came out against him, in the middle of the plain that stretches to the foot of Mount Tabor. He formed his men into a square and for the whole day fought off incessant attacks by the enemy’s cavalry.

  At four in the afternoon Bonaparte suddenly appeared in the enemy’s rear with General Boil’s Division of 3,000 men and a reserve battery of artillery. He saw Kléber’s small force wreathed in smoke and surrounded by a great mass of horsemen that seemed about to overwhelm it. He ordered a gun to be fired, and then another. The undisciplined Turks, unable to reform to face a new enemy, were bewildered, and when Kléber’s force suddenly advanced towards Bonaparte they broke and fled in all directions. The men of General Bon’s Division, astonished to see the plain covered with flying horsemen when only two shots had been fired, burst out laughing and joined in the pursuit.

  The army bivouacked on the plain. On the following day Bonaparte visited the Convent of Nazareth where he was joyfully received as the protector of Christianity. Only three villages in the neighbourhood refused to acknowledge his supremacy; he ordered them to be sacked and burnt. Alexander had passed that way 300 years before Christ.

  While Bonaparte was waiting to capture Acre, which he expected to do as soon as his second train of siege artillery arrived, he was assiduously cultivating the friendship of all the peoples through whose territories he would have to pass. The next stage on his march to Constantinople would be through the Mountains of Lebanon, inhabited by the powerful Druse tribe, an unorthodox persecuted Mohammedan sect founded in the eleventh century. He calculated that they could provide him with 18,000 first-class fighting men. He intended, after the fall of Acre, to use auxiliaries, as Alexander had done, and to conserve his French troops whom it was impossible to replace.

  The Druses being at deadly enmity with Djczzar, who had persecuted all his neighbours, hailed the news of Bonaparte’s successes with joy. They crowded to the French camp bringing farm produce, fruit and wine, and eagerly bought arms and ammunition. They were very cleanly dressed with pleasant expressions and black bushy beards. He couldn’t use them as assault troops, so he established friendly relations with their leaders and told them he would require their services later on.

  The Sheikhs of all the villages around had put themselves under his protection, he had received delegates from the Pasha of Sidon and from the Pasha of Damascus, who offered him the keys of the city, so the way was clear, after Acre, for the occupation of the whole of Syria right up to Aleppo from where he could either dictate terms to the Sultan or advance on Constantinople. Once master of the Turkish Empire he could return in triumph to Europe without the British fleet being able to intervene, or he could turn his attention to India. He had already sent agents to the Shah of Persia requesting permission to march through his country and establish lines of communication; and he had written to Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore, France’s last Ally in India, announcing his arrival on the banks of the Red Sea with a numerous and invincible army.

  He was always trying to spread the superstitious belief that he was invincible and that the stars were in his favour. He counted upon opposing commanders being half defeated before ever a shot was fired because of the terror of his name. He was not accustomed to having the methods of psychological warfare used against him, so he was not at all pleased to find that Sir Sidney had got hold of copies of his proclamations and was distributing those intended for the Christians to the Moslems, and vice versa; the Moslems were reading his announcement that he was the defender of the Christians, and the Christians were reading his announcement that he was the defender of the Moslems, together with his boasts that he had destroyed the power of the Pope and of the Knights of St. John, and also his blasphemous assertions that he was the instrument of divine providence and that those opposing him were acting contrary to the word of God.

  In the case of the Druses this was particularly unfortunate: not only were they at war with the orthodox Moslems but their ruler, the Emir Beckir, was a Christian. He forbade them to go to the French camp, and when some of them disobeyed he had them arrested and sent to Sir Sidney.

  When Bonaparte returned to the camp at Acre after his victory on the Plain of Esdrelon, which he called, ‘The Battle of Mount Tabor’, he found something that angered him even more: hundreds of copies of the Sultan’s proclamation offering any soldier a free passage home to France had been thrown into the French lines. Each one carried a personal guarantee, signed by Sir Sidney, that the terms would be observed.

  He countered with a personal attack. He issued an order of the day containing a list of accusations. The first one referred to the French prisoners that Sir Sidney had freed from the Bagnio in Constantinople and shipped back to France — he stated that Sir Sidney had had the barbarity to embark them in a vessel contaminated by the plague. This was not believed even by his own soldiers because Sir Sidney already had a great reputation for his humanity among them, and because it was well known that he had sent a guard of British seamen with the prisoners which he would not have done if he had thought that the ship was contaminated. (When Midshipman Beecroft, who commanded the guard, re-joined The Tigre he reported that he had landed all the prisoners at Marseilles in good health. Before they left the ship they had knelt down on the deck and asked for a blessing from heaven on their benefactor.)

  The rest of the order listed some of Djezzar’s atrocities and said they were Sir Sidney’s responsibility because the English provisioned and defended Acre and their flag was flying from many of its towers. And he ended by saying ‘his proceedings during the whole of his cruise having been those of a madman, it is my desire that you issue orders to the various commandants on the coast that all communication is to cease with the English fleet at present cruising in these waters.’

  On 17th April Bonaparte received the welcome news that his second siege train was on the way, and had already been landed at Jaffa; this had been possible because the Lion, her water falling short, had left for Cyprus on 5th April, giving Admiral Perrée an opportunity to sail from Alexandria with the frigates La Junon, L’Alceste and La Courageuse, and the brigs Le Salamine and L’Alerte. He landed seven siege guns and a large quantity of ammunition at Jaffa on the 15th. On the 18th the Lion returned to her station off Alexandria. Captain Dixon, observing that Perrée’s frigates had gone, set sail for Palermo where he arrived on 8th May. Sir Sidney had sent orders by the gunboat La Foudre for him to go to Acre, but she had been captured by Perrée. On 9th May Nelson wrote to Admiral Duckworth:

  Three or four frigates and as many corvettes have made their escape from Alexandria, Sir William Sidney Smith having left it on 7th March. I think they are gone to Tripoli...

  He sent the Lion to join Troubridge off Leghorn.

  The Tigre and the Theseus being committed to the defence of Acre, and Djezzar i
nsisting that if they left the bay even for an hour the garrison would lose heart and surrender at the next assault, the French now had temporary command of the Levant seas. Perrée took advantage of this to capture a Turkish flotilla carrying a battery that it had been one of Major Bromley’s tasks to assemble and embark at Constantinople. This battery also was landed at Jaffa.

  Bonaparte sent his adjutant-general, Boyer, with 200 men, twenty gunners, twelve sappers and a troop of fifty cavalry to bring up all these guns; and he wrote to Poussielgue and to several of his generals in Egypt that he would capture Acre about 24th-25th April. He ordered that Perrée was to be at Sour or at Jaffa between 25th and 29th April: ‘The town of Acre will have been taken then, and I shall send him to Europe with a special mission.’

  By 22nd April the French sappers reached the foundations of the Cursed Tower, but they were in great anxiety because they could hear the defenders countermining. The two tunnels crossed and re-crossed without meeting because the French one was on a lower level, 30 feet down. In case the defenders should again succeed in destroying the mine, Bonaparte ordered that the next assault should be delivered at once, although the siege guns had not yet arrived. Accordingly, on the 23rd, the mine was charged with 4,200 lb of gunpowder, and at 4 a.m. on the following day the French guns started battering the town’s defences. The grenadiers were assembled ready to lead the attack, with the reserves standing ready to support them. Bonaparte, in his detailed orders, had provided, as was customary, for a last-minute issue of brandy to the assault troops, and for a band to play in the front-line trenches while the breach was being stormed.

  When Sir Sidney became aware that a massive assault was being mounted he took The Tigre into the shoal water in order to get closer to the French lines. Then he ordered a boat to take him ashore. When he was about to go over the ship’s side and hasten to the breach, the first lieutenant and the master served him with a written protest against ‘placing H.M.’s ship in danger to be lost’. He read it and calmly replied, ‘Gentlemen, H.M.’s ships are built on purpose to be placed in danger of being lost whenever H.M.’s service requires it, and of that the Commanding Officer is the best judge.’

  At 10.15 a.m. there was a tremendous explosion, and a column of smoke and dust shot up as the mine was sprung. It was intended to demolish the Cursed Tower altogether leaving a clear way into the town, but only part of it fell down. After studying the extent of the damage for a quarter of an hour, Bonaparte ordered the assault to proceed. The grenadiers and sappers had only 60 feet to cover between their trenches and the walls, and the debris from the explosion formed an easy ramp up to the breach. They quickly rushed into the lower part of the tower and tried to break a way through into the town, while the defenders, who had re-occupied the upper part of the tower, attacked them with stones and grenades and finally drove them out with flaming barrels of gunpowder.

  Meanwhile The Tigre raked the trenches with her broadsides, the gunboats joined in, and the single gun in the lighthouse put a French battery out of action. Bonaparte renewed the assault at three in the afternoon, and again on the following day with the same result. The French troops charged up to the shattered tower with the greatest gallantry but failed to retain possession of it, or to break into the town. He used up so much gunpowder in these costly failures that only the supplies landed by Perrée at Jaffa enabled him to maintain the siege.

  On 30th April Phélippeaux collapsed from exhaustion and fever, probably sunstroke, and was taken on board The Tigre. He had designed, and partly constructed two ravelins, earthworks outside the walls, so placed that they outflanked the two main approaches to the breach. They were known as the English Redoubts because each contained a naval 24-pounder manned by gun crews from The Tigre and Theseus. They were taken over and completed by Major Douglas who had worked closely with Phélippeaux. These redoubts inflicted heavy casualties on the assault troops. ‘They involved us in painful incidents,’ Bonaparte wrote to Kléber.

  By 30th April two of his siege guns were in position. With their additional support he directed an attack partly against the tower and partly against the redoubts. It was repulsed after bitter fighting. Then, to take advantage of the Moslems’ religious scruples against fighting at night, he ordered the English Redoubts to be seized under cover of darkness and incorporated in the French lines; his grenadiers got into the redoubts, but a massive sortie drove them out again. On 2nd May Phélippeaux died, deeply mourned by his friends.

  Losses on both sides had been heavy, the ground was covered with bodies, wild dogs roamed and snarled over them and the stench was frightful. Some of the French troops were showing a disinclination to march up to the breach. Occasionally there was a sudden panic, and there was growing criticism of the rashness of the attacks. A young officer violently upbraided Bonaparte with tears for having caused the death of one of his friends. He listened showing no emotion, and it was as if the words had been addressed to someone else. Then he went into his tent and said to Crozier, ‘Exactly thus should an artist depict Niobe weeping for her children. If he starts again I’ll have him shot.’ While waiting for the rest of his siege guns to be mounted, Bonaparte ordered another mine to be driven under the tower to complete its destruction.

  Sir Sidney’s ammunition was running low also. He had had little rest for many weeks, and he was half blinded by the smoke and by the glare of the sun. His men were becoming exhausted by constant duty. He looked in vain for the Turkish fleet and army to come to his assistance from Rhodes. At last he brought out the firman that had been granted him, and sent the Captain Pasha a peremptory order in the name of the Sultan to come to him forthwith: He knew that it was a summons no pasha dared disobey. He appealed to his brother in Constantinople to send him more arms and ammunition, and he again sent orders to the Lion to join him. ‘My one hope is in the Lion,’ he wrote in his report to Lord St. Vincent, unaware that she had left her station off Alexandria and was now at Leghorn.

  The new mine under the Cursed Tower was completed, charged and ready to spring on 5th May; but the siege guns were not quite in position, and General Dommartin, in command of the artillery, asked for more time to bring up his gunpowder. Bonaparte postponed the next assault for twenty-four hours — an unfortunate decision, for during the night of the 5th the defenders dug their way into the mine tunnel and completely destroyed it. In spite of this, the assault was made, but not with the usual élan, and it was a failure. The grenadiers of the 69th demi-brigade refused to march to the assault.

  On 7th May all the siege guns were at last ready for action. Bonaparte had intended to batter the walls for forty-eight hours before assaulting them again, but on that same day he learned of the approach of the Turkish fleet. This decided him to order a massive assault for that evening in order to take the town before reinforcements could reach it. He ordered the bombardment to begin, and he watched whole sheets of masonry come down at every discharge of his siege gun. The walls that had barred his way for so long crumbled into dust and rubble. By evening there was a breach in the curtain wall wide enough for fifty men to enter abreast. ‘Now we have Europe par des reins’ — in a grip she won’t get out of — he exclaimed when General Andréossy made a sketch of the breach for him. The project then uppermost in his mind was to return to Europe via Constantinople as conqueror of the Ottoman Empire.

  The troops were themselves again. They attacked with tremendous determination, and at ten in the evening succeeded in occupying the Cursed Tower but, enfiladed by the English Redoubts and heavily fired upon from the ships and from the town, they had lost 150 men in killed and wounded, including seventeen officers. The defenders tried in vain to dislodge them; at daybreak next morning the tricolour was still waving from the outside angle of the tower. It was the fifty-first day of the siege. Far out to sea and almost becalmed there was a Turkish fleet of nineteen sail, ten of then transports.

  Seeing that the garrison had been severely shaken, and that the French were massing to renew the attack, Sir Sidn
ey decided that a special effort would be necessary to preserve the town. He ordered all the boats to the mole, landed every man who could be spared from working the ships and led them, armed with pikes and cutlasses, up to the breach; they found it had been deserted except by a few intrepid Turks whose principal weapons were heavy stones. Many of the disheartened garrison returned to the breach with the seamen. They found that during the night the French had constructed two traverses across the ditch, parallel walls that protected them from the flanking fire of the redoubts; the walls were composed of sandbags and of the bodies of their dead built in with them. The grenadiers attacked like madmen, in repeated waves, and held their gains so that the rubble of the town walls formed a breastwork for both attackers and defenders, the muzzles of their muskets touching and the spearheads of their standards interlocked.

  During this desperate struggle the Chiftlicks landed, the regiment that had been placed at Sir Sidney’s disposal by the Sultan’s express command. The defenders of the breach fought with renewed courage and the French retired. Djezzar sat imperturbably at the door of his palace distributing cartridges and rewarding the men who brought him the heads of his enemies. Sir Sidney took a party of seamen to the top of the Cursed Tower and was about to attack the section in which the French had fortified themselves, when Djezzar ran up, foaming with rage, and dragged him back, shouting that if his English friend fell the garrison would resist no longer and all would be lost. He knocked down with repeated blows of his fist the Turkish guards who had allowed the English to mount the tower, ‘to their inevitable destruction.’