Beware of Heroes

by Peter Shankland

  ‘Abandon everything in a retreat,’ was one of Bonaparte’s maxims, ‘but never abandon your guns.’ This time he was forced to do so. The guns that had been the terror of Europe, that had blasted the demonstrators in the streets of Paris, that had thundered at Lodi and at the Bridge of Areola, that had been dragged with infinite labour over the Alps and across the Rhine and the Danube, lay scattered along the sand with the dead and the dying all the way between Acre and Jaffa.

  The advance guard was harassed by Sir Sidney’s gunboats. When it took refuge inland it was harassed by the Naplousians, kinsmen of the Good Samaritan. Murat’s cavalry went through their villages, chasing out and massacring the inhabitants and setting fire to their houses.

  On 24th May the French army came to white-walled Jaffa on its conical hill, surrounded by its groves and gardens. It was well supplied and fortified, and the troops were allowed to rest four days. The air was filled with the stench of the 4,000 or 5,000 putrefying bodies of the prisoners they had slaughtered on the way up. The port was strewn with helpless wounded who pleaded with all who passed to get them into a ship. They had the greatest fear of being abandoned. The hospitals were full, and there were plague cases in every corner under tents or on the pavement.

  Bonaparte received a delegation of officers, led by Chief Commissioner Daure, who requested that he should open negotiations with Sir Sidney Smith and put the plague-stricken and the wounded under his protection. He replied that apart from the aversion he had as a French general to enter into communication with the commodore, of whom he had had to complain, this course would take too long because he had ended his cruise before St. Jean-d’Acre to hasten in pursuit of Perrée’s squadron, and that it had become in consequence very difficult to reach The Tigre, which that officer commanded.

  His refusal aroused the bitterest resentment. Colonel Vigo Roussillon stated:

  The army brought against Bonaparte a graver accusation: that of not having sought, before leaving Saint-Jean-d’Acre, to save the wounded by sea. They said that it would have been possible to send ships to collect them, and that Sidney Smith had offered to allow them to be taken to Alexandria; that he even proposed to transport them in English ships in order to protect them from the fanaticism of the Turks; and that Bonaparte not only didn’t seek to open any negotiations with the English on this subject, but rejected these offers, and in his pride finally forbade any communication to be held with him on pain of death...All those who mourned a relation, a friend, a comrade, bitterly reproached the general in chief for having abandoned the wounded and sick before Saint-Jean-d’Acre without trying to save them by entrusting them to the English.

  The soldiers commented that the general in chief abandoned the sick, the seriously wounded, and those with amputated limbs, who wouldn’t have been of any use to him even if they had been cured.

  It seems that Desgenettes changed his mind at Jaffa about the use of poison for he recorded. ‘There was a distribution of laudanum to between twenty-five and fifty plague cases who were in the last stages of the disease.’ Peyrusse also mentions this, and says that the hospital was afterwards set on fire. Six vessels, however, sailed from Jaffa with wounded on board. Disobeying orders, they made straight for Sir Sidney’s flotilla and asked for assistance: the wounded had been embarked with such haste that they were unprovided even with food and water. They received all the help that the seamen could give them, including dressings for their wounds and comforts from Sir Sidney’s private store. He wrote in his report:

  Their expressions of gratitude to us were mingled with execrations on the name of their general who had, as they said, thus exposed them to perish, rather than fairly and honourably to renew the intercourse with the English which he had broken off by a false and malicious assertion that I had intentionally exposed the former prisoners to the infection of the plague.

  In these vessels there were some 12-pounder guns and mortars, those that had made the first breach in the walls of Acre. Sir Sidney kept them, but he sent the wounded back to Egypt. He put the Master’s Mate of The Tigre, Mr. Janverin, in charge of them — he was on light duty because of an unhealed bullet wound in his shoulder — to whom he entrusted a letter addressed to the Commandant of the Port of Damietta saying that the English do not consider the wounded to be prisoners. The courier, Ragé, whom Sir Sidney had rescued from the Bagnio in Constantinople and then handed over to Bonaparte, was again captured, in the French ship La Fortune. He was carrying Bonaparte’s dispatches to the Directory.

  When the seamen landed at Jaffa they found seven French soldiers in the hospital, victims of the plague. They prevented the Turks from killing them, and put them on board La Négresse, gunboat, where they were looked after. Four of them recovered. The town was in an uproar and swarming with Turks and Naplousians burning to avenge their wrongs by massacring Christians; but they respected the British flag, and with the help of Ismael Pasha, Governor of Jerusalem, whom he had summoned to meet him there, he was able to restore order.

  Janverin delivered his prisoners to the Commandant of Damietta and was returning to Acre when he was forced by stress of weather to put into Caeserea for shelter. This is his description of what he saw there:

  On our arrival upon the shore, we found the place had been a hospital for the sick and wounded, the horrid remains of which still presented itself in half-burned huts, and corpses which had evidently been poisoned, and the atrocious deed attempted to be hid from human knowledge by the effects of fire...When we had recovered our horror-stricken faculties, we counted in one place alone, not more than six yards square, the mutilated remains of thirty-two bodies; some had evidently suffered amputation, but all bore the unequivocal marks of poison. The bodies had evidently swelled, and from the very light materials of which the huts were composed, had not suffered considerably from the effects of fire. I should estimate the whole number at near three hundred men. I found besides twelve pieces of brass ordnance, which had been sunk to prevent its falling into the hands of the Turks or British.

  The retreating French army reached El Arish, on 1st June, but it still had eighty miles to go to Saliyah, the nearest settlement on cultivated ground. Kléber, still commanding the rearguard, had the onerous task of keeping the shadowing Turks and Arabs at bay and rallying the French stragglers; or leaving them to their fate if they were too exhausted to move. While they were plodding through the desert there was a strong wind from the south-west that parched their lips and filled the air with dust. Their feet sank into the soft sand, their eyes ached from the fierce blaze of the sun. After a short halt on 3rd June, some of Kléber’s men mutinied, refused to march, cursed their officers and threatened an aide-de-camp with their bayonets.

  ‘Let them alone,’ Kléber said. ‘Let them curse us — it’s the only relief they have.’

  He went on without them, knowing that they would follow because they would have been killed by the Arabs if they had stayed behind. It was not long before they overtook him, and then he abused them soundly, saying, ‘You think that to make war is to pillage, to thieve, to shoot, to take your pleasure. No! To make war is to be hungry, to be thirsty, to suffer pain, to die — and it is to obey! Do you hear me, you scoundrels?’

  On 5th June Bonaparte reached Katia, the base from which the expedition had started. Here he met General Menou, whom he had appointed Governor of Palestine, on his way, too late, to take up his office. When he reached Saliyah there was so much resentment and insubordination in his army that he issued the most severe orders to deal with ‘agitators’ who were spreading the spirit of disorder through the various corps. Brigade and battalion commanders were to make lists of the names of these agitators and any time one of them misbehaved his punishment was to be double that of another soldier; he was to be shot on the spot if he stirred up sedition in difficult moments, on a forced march, or in the face of the enemy.

  On 14th June Bonaparte made his triumphal entry into Cairo. All the Egyptians of consequence had been ordered, under pain
of imprisonment, to go out to meet him with gifts and congratulations, attended by every available musician. The soldiers, except for the 69th demi-brigade of grenadiers who had refused to advance to the breach at Acre, were ordered to wear palm fronds in their caps, and palm leaves were strewn in their path. The 69th were dressed ridiculously to keep the pretence that they were not men, but women. Bonaparte entered through the Bab el-Nasr, the Gate of Victory, with drums beating and banners flying. The members of the Dewan and all the military and civil officers escorted him to the Esbekiya Square where the French garrison and the native militia were drawn up for his inspection. The procession took five hours to pass through the Gate of Victory, and for three days and three nights his coming was celebrated with feasts and loud rejoicing.

  None of this relieved the bitterness of those who had lived through the Syrian Campaign. The soldiers had transferred their allegiance from Bonaparte to Kléber. Many of the savants, who had returned disillusioned, recorded the horrors they had witnessed. Horace Say, the mathematician had died in Syria, and Caffarelli, and Venturi the orientalist and chief interpreter.

  Desgenettes refused to falsify his medical returns to make it appear that the failure to take Acre had been due to an increase in the plague. At the Institute of Egypt he fiercely attacked Bonaparte, complaining of his oriental despotism, of his armed guards stationed in the very precincts of a peaceful meeting of scholars, and of the mercenary adulation that surrounded him. ‘I know, General,’ he said, ‘that you are here in another capacity than that of a simple member of the institute, and you want to lord it over everything, and that I have said things that will have repercussions far from here. But I will not retract one single word.’ He then handed in his resignation and requested permission to return to France — a request that was not granted. Bonaparte did not want hostile critics in France.

  Colonel Rousillon commented: ‘Bonaparte, who during the march had had to suffer from his unpopularity with the army, could not have had any doubts about how this unhappy expedition had diminished his prestige in the eyes of the population. Wishing to act out his part to the end, he decreed that the army, and he himself, should make a solemn entry on the 14th, which it was desired should have the appearance of a triumph, to impose upon the Egyptian people who certainly were not fooled by it.’ And Peyrusse summed up: ‘This campaign may be considered as very disastrous for our establishment; the losses it occasioned no longer permit us to undertake any further expeditions, and we have to mourn great men and the best soldiers. The army is resting today from its labours; a proclamation of the general in chief announces new combats. Great God! When shall we stop fighting? I send you herewith his proclamation. The notes I have made on the Campaign of Syria are of the strictest truth. The report of the general in chief, which I attach, will prove to you how great a liar one has to be in politics.’

  The losses, so far as they were disclosed, amounted to 2,200 dead, and 2,300 sick and wounded.

  Kléber did not take part in the triumphal entry into Cairo: his division had been sent to Damietta. In a letter to General Dugua on the 21st June he wrote:

  We have committed enormous sins on Holy Ground, and great follies; but we must let the curtain of the tabernacle fall over all that and take care not to raise it lest the Almighty in his wrath punish us for our temerity.

  Chapter Ten – Divided Loyalties

  Sir Sidney had established an extraordinary ascendancy over the mutually hostile rulers, peoples and religious sects of the Levant: he was the friend of the Sultan, and also of Djezzar, and of the Turks, the Egyptians, the Mamelukes and of the Naplousian Mountaineers. His fame was spreading among the Arabs, many of whom had blood feuds with the French. He stood outside the arena in which they fought each other, a neutral figure in whose integrity all trusted. He visited the Druses and the Maronite Christians in the Mountains of Lebanon where he was met with acclaim.

  With some of his officers he went to see the holy places of Jerusalem, a long day’s ride from Jaffa, and was welcomed by Moslems and Christians alike. The Turkish commandant, wishing to express his gratitude, allowed him the unusual honour of going into the city with his companions armed and in European dress. The superior of the Franciscan Monastery greeted him on behalf of the Christian community, telling him that ‘every Christian in Jerusalem was under the greatest obligation to the English nation, and particularly to Sir Sidney and his officers and ships’ companies, by whose means they had been preserved from the merciless hands of Bonaparte.’ Before returning to The Tigre, Sir Sidney went alone to the Cave of the Annunciation at Nazareth and returned thanks for their victory.

  All his attention was now directed towards carrying the war into the enemy’s territory. His agents were already distributing the Sultan’s proclamation, with his own guarantee added to it, among the French troops in Egypt; the Turkish army was embarking at Rhodes, and he had sufficient naval force to sustain an amphibious campaign in the Nile Delta where they could count upon the support of the inhabitants.

  The Cabinet’s unconventional appointment, by which Sir Sidney’s duties as Minister Plenipotentiary had been combined with a fighting command, had brought success beyond their wildest dreams; it had enabled him to rally the forces and take the decisions necessary to defeat Bonaparte. Owing to the slowness of communications they were not yet aware of their success. The first dispatches received by Sir Sidney after the successful defence of Acre made bitter reading: they contained only censure and disapproval, while the copies of correspondence that came with them reflected the indignation that his appointment had aroused.

  He was astonished to receive a request from Lord Spencer to explain his alleged insubordinate behaviour to Lord St. Vincent at Gibraltar. He had thought that the interview had gone extremely well, and he had no idea how he could possibly have offended. He was also reprimanded by St. Vincent ‘for having given orders to ships not put under his command by Lord Nelson’. He had, of course, done so in the case of the Alliance, but this was not in question. All the trouble was about the Charon which, he had been given to understand, was coming out from England for the express purpose of bringing him his stores and ammunition. He had ordered her, when he was in desperate need of them, to join him at Acre instead of at Constantinople. What he did not know was that the Admiralty had embarked the Military Mission in the Charon also, and put her at the disposal of its leader, General Koehler, who was now mortally offended.

  It transpired that while his countrymen had been fighting for their lives at Acre, the general, instead of hastening to their assistance, had deliberately held the Charon at Constantinople and stayed there himself writing folios of abuse and complaint to London because Sir Sidney, a naval officer, had taken it upon himself to defend a land fortress.

  That Lord St. Vincent, who was for Sir Sidney a sort of father figure, should have reprimanded him instead of supporting him he found harder to bear ‘than the plague, pestilence, famine, battle, murder and sudden death’ that he was accustomed to see around him. In order to make future combined operations with General Koehler possible, he wrote him a firm but reasonable and friendly letter outlining his plans and inviting his co-operation.

  He learned from the dispatches that he and his squadron were not only under St. Vincent’s command, but under Nelson’s sub-command, which was only natural, and indeed essential for supply and administration, and the arrangement would probably have worked if Nelson had allowed him the power of discretion to carry out the duties for which the government had sent him to the Levant, and for which he had proved himself so eminently qualified. But Nelson did not. He wrote that he himself would keep up a proper communication with the Turkish admirals ‘which no Captain of a Man-of-War under my orders must interfere in’; and in a letter to the Admiral of the Turkish Fleet he said:

  Your Excellency will understand that Sir Sidney Smith is Captain of The Tigre; and although destined for the present to serve with part of the squadron in the Levant, is under my command, and that
all plans of operations are to be concerted by me.

  For Sir Sidney the most urgent problem was that he found himself suddenly deprived of all control over the Turkish projected expedition to Egypt. Nelson had forbidden him to write to him about ministerial business unless he wrote jointly with his brother — which was obviously impossible, his brother being 700 miles away in Constantinople. He immediately addressed a private letter to his lordship to explain his difficulty.

  He informed him that in consequence of the plan concerted according to the tenth article of the Treaty of Friendship he had not only the Turkish fleet but the Turkish army put under his orders, ‘not as Captain of The Tigre, of course, but as the king of Great Britain’s minister, and member of the council which decided the armament’. He pointed out that only the authority he had been able to assume over Djezzar and the Captain Pasha had saved Acre, and that had he received Nelson’s orders earlier the place would inevitably have fallen. He ended his letter: