Beware of Heroes

by Peter Shankland

  I shall not, of course, deviate from the very confined line your lordship has traced me, as Captain of The Tigre, commanding the blockade of Alexandria; but, as experience has proved the utility of my quitting that blockade, while I was ignorant of being so confined, I trust your lordship will see the necessity of setting me at liberty to act as was concerted at Constantinople, with that discretionary power which circumstances on the spot can alone dictate and decide, otherwise this armament will not only be abortive, but recoil on the capital, necessitous and insubordinate. Be assured, my lord, I have no wish but yours, and that I am your very devoted friend and a humble servant. W. Sidney Smith.

  Nelson was a thousand miles away, and heavily involved in the affairs of Naples: it would be some weeks before he could expect an answer. At the beginning of July the Turkish invasion force, numbering 5,000 men, sailed from Rhodes. Without the discretionary powers for which he had appealed, Sir Sidney could only persuade and advise. He urged the elderly general in command, Mustapha Bey, to enter the Nile Delta, and he left Major Bromley with him as his liaison officer with instructions to guide him towards Damietta or Rosetta.

  When the Turkish fleet appeared off Alexandria, the French commandant, General Marmont, believing himself too weak to repel an assault on the city, ordered the garrison of Rosetta to join him. Mustapha, therefore, could have entered the Nile and landed there unopposed, but when he came in sight of the lonely fort of Abukir, which the French had garrisoned and protected by constructing a large redoubt, he couldn’t resist landing and attacking it. Major Bromley tried in vain to dissuade him. On 15th July the Turks stormed the redoubt, killing all the 300 Frenchmen in it. The fort, with a garrison of only thirty-five, capitulated. The prisoners, in revenge for Jaffa, were about to be slaughtered when Major Bromley intervened and succeeded in saving their lives.

  On the 20th Sir Sidney reached Abukir with the Captain Pasha and another 2,000 men; he found that Mustapha had disembarked his whole force and was constructing defences across the Peninsula of Abukir. It was impossible to persuade him that their one hope of success lay in retaining their mobility and making contact with the inhabitants of the Delta. He stubbornly refused to move. The Captain Pasha, who disliked hearing the whistle of a shot, preferred to remain at anchor in the bay and let the army do the fighting, rather than face the uncertainties of a campaign in the Delta. Mustapha’s position was not ill-chosen for defence, but his front line, intended to include the best wells, was too extensive to be completely manned by the force at his disposal, and one flank was in the air. The main redoubt was unfinished, and his men were already tired of digging.

  Bonaparte was advancing from Cairo with a superior force, and had already reached Rahmaniya. An Arab spy, sent by Adjutant-General Julien, informed him of the weakness of the Turkish lines, and that their force numbered only 7,000. He had 10,000 veterans with him, including 1,000 cavalry in which the Turks were deficient, and so he decided to attack at once without waiting for Kléber whom he had summoned to join him.

  On the morning of the 25th he attacked. At first the Turks resisted bravely, but they were soon overrun by the cavalry and driven into the sea. Mustapha was wounded and taken prisoner. Sir Sidney with two launches enfiladed the advancing French columns, but his carronades were insufficient to stop them: the Turkish launches could not be persuaded to follow him and take part in the action. Boats from The Tigre and the Theseus made heroic efforts to land water, of which there was great need, and they rescued as many as possible of the Turks from the beach and from the sea. In the desperate mêlée, between two and three thousand of the fugitives crowded into the fort where there was practically no food and only a single well containing brackish water. Here they arrested their leaders and fought madly among themselves.

  Colonel Douglas of the marines and Major Bromley forced their way into the fort, sword in hand, and, at great peril to themselves, restored order, so that during the night they were able to evacuate another thousand Turks and ferry them back to the ships. For a whole week the remaining garrison fought with great determination; they drove the French out of the village of Abukir, but they were beaten in the end because they failed to capture any wells. On 2nd August, when many of them had died of thirst, they surrendered.

  Thus Bonaparte was handed an easy victory in the very place that his fleet had been destroyed by Nelson. It was a small victory, but it was just what was needed at the time to wipe out the disgrace of Acre; and he knew very well how to represent it as a big one. He stated in a letter to General Dugua that the Turks had left 1,000 men dead on the field of battle, that 5,000 were shut up in the castle, and that 8,000 had been drowned — a total of about twice the size of the whole Turkish army. In a dispatch to the Directory he again raised the figure of the Turkish casualties, this time to 18,000. This total, out of all proportion to the numbers engaged, or that the Turks could have transported to the place, was accepted without question by the Parisians, who were eager for news of great victories and prone to hero worship. Once more Bonaparte was the new Alexander, ‘Great as the world’, as Kléber expressed it. He could see more clearly than most people what it might lead to.

  Sir Sidney thought that Major Bromley, who had earned the gratitude of both sides, by saving the French prisoners and by evacuating hundreds of Turks, would be the best man to negotiate for the exchange of the prisoners and the return of the wounded. Bonaparte, however, had ordered his generals not to deal with emigres, so he sent his secretary, John Keith, instead; he visited French headquarters several times, and dined with Bonaparte and his officers, and he soon discovered that they had had no news from Europe for a long time and therefore did not know that France had recently sustained several defeats.

  On 6th August, when the French in their turn sent an officer to treat about the prisoners, Sir Sidney gave him the latest newspapers, the Gazette de Francfort, and the Courrier Français de Londres for 6th and 10th June. He also sent word to Bonaparte that the British had intercepted a letter from the Directory ordering him to return to France. Bonaparte, on his way to Cairo to make a triumphal entry after the Battle of Abukir, sat up all night in his tent devouring the newspapers by the light of a candle. With mingled anger and excitement he learnt that the republican armies were being driven out of Germany by the Archduke Charles, and out of Italy by Suvarov. Mantua, Tortona and Turin were besieged. It was clear that France needed him. His hour had come.

  Three days later, on 9th August, Sir Sidney reported to Earl Spencer that he expected Admiral Ganteaume to make an attempt to sail with two frigates and a brig, and that perhaps Bonaparte would go with him, leaving Kléber in command; if so, he thought, Kléber would yield to the clamour of the army and treat for a passage home when there was enough force collected against him to justify such a measure. He also said that he had sent the Theseus to cruise well to the westward of Alexandria to look out for the two frigates.

  On 12th August he took The Tigre to Cyprus for stores hoping that Bonaparte would embark while the coast was apparently clear, and that he or the Theseus would intercept him; but when he reached Cyprus there were no stores to be had because the survivors of Mustapha’s defeated army were there, necessitous and insubordinate, and they had taken everything. He sent his first lieutenant in one of the store ships with a letter to Nelson to warn him of his suspicion that Bonaparte intended to return to France. Both his ships were entirely dependent on fresh supplies because they had exhausted their whole stocks of salt provisions during the defence of Acre. The Theseus went to Rhodes for supplies: she was detained there because the Governor was unwilling to provide them.

  Thus neither of the ships were at sea when Bonaparte sailed on 23rd August with the frigates La Muir on and La Carrère, taking with him some of the generals who were most devoted to him; Berthier, Andréossy, Lannes, Marmont and Murat. Vice-admiral Ganteaume commanded the flotilla. Like Captain Standelet in Le Cheval Marin after he had lost the convoy containing the siege guns, and like Perrée’s squadro
n during the retreat of the French army, they were not intercepted. They were sighted by Lord Keith’s squadron, but their nationality was not recognised. On 9th October Bonaparte landed at Fréjus on the south coast of France.

  The Tigre was still at Cyprus, short of provisions. On 12th October the rabble of Mustapha’s defeated soldiery mutinied, murdered the Governor of the Island, Vice-admiral Patrona Bey, in the council chamber, and were about to massacre the Greek-Christian population in revenge for their rout at Abukir when Sir Sidney went ashore, quelled the mutiny, and persuaded all the warring factions to serve under a single chief, Seid Ali Bey. Then he drove the recalcitrant soldiers down to the beach, forced them to embark, and ordered the fleet to sail at once for another descent upon Egypt, giving it a rendezvous off Damietta. For his defence of Acre, the Sultan had sent him a decoration usually reserved for men of his own race whom he wished to honour: the chalingk, or plume of triumph. It consisted of an aigrette in a setting that blazed with diamonds. On this occasion he had worn it, and he had exercised the delegated authority of the Sultan as if he had been there in person.

  When the island was tranquil again he was informed that the venerable Greek archbishop was on his way to visit him, so he went to meet him outside the gates of Nicosia, the capital. The archbishop, after a lengthy discourse, took the Templar’s cross that he wore and hung it round Sir Sidney’s neck, saying: ‘This formerly belonged to an Englishman, and now I restored it. It belonged to Saint Richard, surnamed Coeur de Lion, who left it in our church at his departure, and it has been preserved in our treasury ever since; eighteen archbishops, my predecessors, have signed the receipt thereof in succession. I now make it over to you in token of our gratitude for saving all our lives — the archbishop, ecclesiastics, laymen, citizens and peasantry.’ Then the Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templar announced that his court had elected Sir Sidney as a knight and as Grand Prior of England, a title once borne by Richard Coeur de Lion.

  *

  Sir Sidney’s resolution not to disobey Nelson went to the four winds of heaven when the mutiny broke out in Cyprus. He not only gave orders, but peremptory orders to the Turkish commanders, and it was obvious that Nelson would have done the same. Both of them believed in obedience as a sacred duty, and both of them believed also that circumstances might arise in which it was an officer’s duty to disobey his orders at the risk of a court martial if he was wrong. A classic example occurred when Nelson was ordered by Lord Keith, who succeeded Lord St. Vincent as Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, to send certain ships to Minorca; he disobeyed, on the grounds that they were required more urgently on the coast of Italy. Their views were fundamentally different: believing Minorca to be threatened, Keith was sending ships to defend it, whereas Nelson would have sent ships to attack the enemy fleet that was threatening it. When the Admiralty expressed its disapprobation of Nelson’s conduct he said in a letter to Lord Spencer,

  ...to say that an Officer is never, for any object, to alter his orders is what I cannot comprehend. The circumstances of this war so often vary, that an officer has almost every moment to consider: What would my superiors direct, did they know what is passing under my nose?

  Nelson was accustomed to being the man on the spot, but in the case of Egypt it was very different: he was the distant senior officer and Sir Sidney was the man in touch with the realities of the situation. On learning that the policy agreed by the accredited representatives of Great Britain and Turkey was to induce the French by all possible means to withdraw from Egypt, he took the strongest exception to it: he wrote to Sir Sidney strictly charging and commanding him never to suffer any one individual Frenchman to quit Egypt. He sent a copy of this order to Lord St. Vincent for his approval, saying that either the captain or the admiral in command of the squadron must give way, and that the Victory of the Nile would be useless if any ship or Frenchman were suffered to return to Europe. He sent another copy to William Windham, Secretary of War, saying that he considered it nothing short of madness to permit ‘that band of thieves’ to return to Europe, and that he never would consent to it.

  Thus Sir Sidney’s duty to his commanding officer and his duty as British Minister to Turkey were again diametrically opposed. His instinct and his training urged him to obey Nelson, but as a minister he had undertaken responsibilities and incurred obligations that could not be disregarded. He could not act in a sense contrary to the treaty he had just signed or to the policy he had just agreed with the Turkish ministers. In any difficult situation he always asked himself what he should do to act uprightly — and it was perfectly clear to him that the agreements with their ally were binding and must be observed, and that his endorsement of the Sultan’s proclamation promising to any French soldier a safe return to France must be honoured. The necessities of the case also demanded this decision: Nelson’s policy was the expression of his own personal feelings, it had no sanction from the British Government, and it was based on the quite erroneous assumption, shared by Lord St. Vincent, that the Turks could defeat the French.

  The cabinet ministers who appointed Sir Sidney had put forward no objections to the policy he had outlined in his dispatches, and to which, through him, Great Britain was committed. Therefore, in spite of Nelson’s orders, he continued his campaign to bring about a peaceful ending to the struggle by inducing the French to abandon their conquest.

  The Turkish government had been gradually mobilising its resources: it had assembled a huge army, which was commanded by the Grand Vizier, and it was moving slowly down through Syria towards Egypt. It was supposed to number 80,000 men, and there may, in fact, have been as many as 45,000 or 50,000. Sir Sidney thought so little of it that he warned Lord Grenville it would be plundered like a rich caravan by the first three French demi-brigades it happened to meet. Nevertheless, it was useful as a threat to support his subversive propaganda among the enemy’s troops, and it might even serve some purpose in Egypt if it could be got there without having to fight a battle. It was to seize a bridgehead for it in the Nile Delta, where the French would be at a disadvantage, that he had intended to use the invasion force that Mustapha Bey had stupidly thrown away at Abukir. Once it had secured a foothold he had meant to ferry the main army over from Gaza bit by bit as reinforcements, the winds at that season of the year being favourable. Because this still seemed to be the best plan of campaign, he decided to make another attempt.

  On 18th October he met the Turkish transports off the coast of Egypt. On the 28th they entered the Damietta branch of the Nile. To cover a landing, The Tigre’s boats seized a ruined castle on the eastern side of the channel, mounted a gun on its walls and drove off a small French force that was attempting to construct a redoubt on the beach. Now the way was open to the interior, and the Turks should have landed, but exasperated by their previous defeat they stayed sullenly in their transports and nothing would persuade them to move.

  After three days, General Verdier appeared on the scene with about 1,000 men. When the Turks saw their hated enemies drawn up to receive them they rowed ashore, charged them and routed them, but then once again they were defeated by their own indiscipline. Their supporting troops rushed forward to share in the success, and threw their own van into confusion. General Verdier brought up his reserves in perfect order, and at the same time launched a cavalry charge on the Turks left which drove them back to the sea. About 800 surrendered, and the rest were picked up from the water by The Tigre’s boats with little interference from the enemy.

  It looked like a complete failure, but the French were dissatisfied also. They were unpaid, they were homesick, they had suffered casualties, and the proclamations distributed by Sir Sidney’s agents were having their effect. Shortly after their victory some of General Verdier’s troops mutinied; the 2nd demi-brigade of light infantry demanded their arrears of pay, threatened him with violence, and proclaimed that if their demands were not satisfied they would treat with the enemy for a passage back to France.

  Before the att
empted landing, Sir Sidney had written to General Kléber, who had taken over the command, to see if he was prepared to discuss the withdrawal of his troops from Egypt.

  Kléber had long ago decided that as a result of the destruction of the French fleet and the disaster before Acre, the objects of the expedition could no longer be realised. He had learned of Bonaparte’s flight, and of his own appointment to succeed him, with anger and astonishment; and he had denounced in the most scathing terms what appeared to him the callous desertion of the Army of Egypt by its commander when he realised that the expedition was a failure, grasping at an opportunity to go home crowned with laurels and leaving it in the mire. The greater part of the army, bitter and disillusioned, thought only of returning to France, and there was a great deal of barrack-room talk about what they would do to Bonaparte when they got there. Only a small minority, led by General Menou who had turned Mohammedan and married an Egyptian woman, wanted to stay where they were and found a permanent French colony.

  As Commander-in-Chief, Kléber had a greater following in the army than Bonaparte had ever had since their arrival in Egypt. His first care was always for the men entrusted to him. They knew, as General Desaix expressed it, that under him they would only be called upon to do what was necessary for their own preservation. He inspected the barracks and the hospitals, and found them so ill-supplied, and so lacking in comfort and sanitation, that he stopped all expenditure on defensive works until they had been brought up to standard. He also stopped work on ‘a superb lighthouse’ that Bonaparte was having built at Pharos, on the site of the original lighthouse that had been one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. ‘It is ridiculous,’ he said, ‘to indulge in objects of luxury when we have left the army unpaid for ten months.’