The War for All the Oceans

by Roy Adkins

  Nelson had not been fully informed of Smith’s mission, nor had he yet received Smith’s diplomatically worded letter written a few days earlier, in which he said: ‘Your lordship will, I hope, likewise see that the selection of a captain [himself], of the year 1783 only, to fill this important post, has been dictated by a delicacy due to my brother . . . rather than to any undue preference of me to older and better officers, who have had the honourable advantage of distinguishing themselves under your orders, but who could not be so acceptable to my brother as his near relation. ’11 He added: ‘I cannot conclude without offering my share of the tribute of admiration and gratitude, which is so readily and so liberally paid to your lordship, and to your gallant companions in arms at the Nile.’12

  It was left to St Vincent to smooth over the situation, establishing that Smith in his role as naval officer was junior to Nelson, while Smith the diplomat was outside his jurisdiction. In truth both men were essential to stop the French. Nelson was rightly worried about Italy, and especially Naples, which was an important Mediterranean base for the British, while Smith was concerned to confine the French to Egypt. Nelson had missed his chance to catch Napoleon at sea, and his direct sea warrior’s approach now had to give way to the subtle strategies of Smith. In the next few months, as Nelson came to appreciate Smith’s mission, he became more amiable, ending one letter: ‘Be assured, my dear Sir Sidney, of my perfect esteem and regard, and do not let any one persuade you to the contrary. But my character is, that I will not suffer the smallest tittle of my command to be taken from me, but with pleasure I give way to my friends whom I beg you will allow me to consider you.’13

  Immediately after the Battle of the Nile, Nelson had clung to the idea of defeating the French in Egypt and wrote to one of his captains: ‘I rely on the exertions of all my gallant friends in the squadron to complete the destruction of the French Army, &c. I shall not go home until this is effected.’14 Yet Nelson had already done everything possible: the French war fleet had been destroyed, their transports were trapped at Alexandria, blockaded by the squadron of Captain Troubridge, while Napoleon and his army were inland. Once Sir Sidney Smith assessed the situation at Constantinople, a treaty was signed with the Turks, and he then set off for Alexandria.

  By now Napoleon was preparing to march on Constantinople and possibly force a way down the Silk Road to India. From intercepted letters and from his spies among the French troops, Smith was well informed and took action to counter Napoleon. On 6 February 1799 the French advance guard was on the move, but urged into action by Smith, the governor of the city of Acre, Achmet Pasha, usually known as Djezzar the Cutter from his reputation for cutting throats, had sent a force of Turkish troops, Mamelukes and Albanian mercenaries to the small coastal fortress of El Arish, on the Egyptian border in the Sinai Peninsula. The French arrived there two days later and began to besiege the stronghold, but the siege guns had already been found too heavy and cumbersome to be moved through swamps and deserts. Instead they were loaded on to transport ships to take them to Acre once they could evade the British blockade, since Acre was the first place they were likely to be needed. The bombardment of El Arish was actually conducted with field guns, and it took a whole day of constant firing before there was the smallest breach in the walls. Djezzar’s defenders put up a strong opposition, but finally surrendered on the 20th. The unexpected delay was a blow to the French, checking their momentum and allowing time for defences to be prepared against them in Syria. On top of that, when they finally took over El Arish they encountered people sick with the plague.

  Napoleon continued northwards through Syria, leading around thirteen thousand French troops. The campaign went smoothly from then on until they reached Jaffa on 3 March. The city was taken by storm and the French slaughtered everyone they encountered, including all manner of civilians and some two thousand soldiers who were trying to surrender. At least two and a half thousand other soldiers took refuge in the citadel. After surrendering they were killed in cold blood because Napoleon felt he could not afford to leave such a large force in his rear any more than he had the means to keep them captive. It was a two-day massacre that appalled many French troops, and when the plague began to affect them immediately afterwards, some said it was divine retribution.

  A serious problem for Napoleon was lack of information. He could send out scouts in advance of his army, but with the British Navy in command, he did not know what was happening along the coast. Communication between Egypt and France was all but impossible, and in one of many letters intercepted by the British a French soldier told his brother: ‘I write you the present, hoping it will have the good fortune to reach you, in spite of the prodigious difficulties we find in sending or receiving a letter by sea, on account of the total destruction of our fleet. The English are at this moment complete masters of the Mediterranean. We are reduced, therefore, to the disagreeable necessity of trusting all our correspondence with France to neutral vessels. Even these can only hope to convey it by escaping the vigilance of the English, for if they are taken they are burnt.’15 Ironically, his brother might just have seen the contents of this letter, as it was one of a selection that was published, in the original French and in English, as a British propaganda exercise. With naval intelligence denied him, Napoleon was forced to plan his campaign blindly, barely knowing the local situation, unaware of the wider picture and prey to any misinformation that Sidney Smith could fabricate.

  Smith reached Alexandria in early March, taking over the blockade of that coast, and immediately wrote to the Admiralty that he was happy to allow the French to evacuate Egypt, as long as they left their weapons behind - contrary to Nelson’s wishes, who wanted total surrender of the French. This difference in approach between Nelson and Smith reflected the contrary views in the Admiralty and Foreign Office that arose from opposing objectives - the Admiralty was seeking to win the war at sea, while the Foreign Office wanted to establish a peaceful and stable Europe, for which a change of regime in France was necessary. For years the British Secret Service had been working with French Royalists in an attempt to restore the monarchy in France, and the key to such a restoration was the French army. What Britain and its allies needed was a charismatic French general who could unite the army in a counter-revolution against the government and step aside in favour of the monarch. Several prominent generals had talked with the Royalists, but despite a few false starts, none had been galvanised into action. Napoleon himself had tentatively negotiated with French Royalists and British agents in France before being distracted by his Egypt expedition.

  Even if the Turkish armies could be prodded into action, Smith believed they were unlikely to defeat the French. It was a better solution to allow the French to withdraw, and he ended his letter to the Admiralty: ‘I mention this, thus early, to enable your Lordship to judge of probabilities in this quarter where everything is in embryo, dependent on Turkish armies which may never be what they are promised to be. On n’attrape pas des mouches avec du vinaigre - ainsi je leur offre du miel [one does not catch flies with vinegar - therefore I offer them honey]; and it is not to Buonaparte alone that I offer this pont d’or [golden bridge], but by other channels indirectly to all individuals of his army. I hope to come at those, by this means [subversion] that are out of the reach of our shells.’16 To help him infiltrate the French, Smith had brought a group of French Royalists, including some who had assisted his escape from prison and who could no longer serve as agents in France because their identity was known. John Wright, who had escaped from the Temple with Smith and was afterwards promoted to lieutenant, was sent ashore on a spying mission, ‘landed by Sir Sidney Smith, in his own barge, at a short distance from Alexandria in the night-time, not openly as a British naval officer, but bearded, moustachioed, and shawled à la Turque, and for the express purpose of gathering valuable information . . . he was constantly employed by Sir Sidney as a spy’. 17

  Smith remained off Alexandria for a few days only. Once he receiv
ed intelligence that Jaffa had fallen, he set sail in the Tigre for Acre, deciding this was the best place to confront the French in their march northwards. He arrived there just before them. On 17 March Napoleon reached Haifa, from where he could look across the bay to the walled city of Acre. The sight did not please him, for in the bay were two British warships, as well as British and Turkish gunboats. The next day was foggy, and when the French ships arrived with the siege guns, with what appeared to be excellent timing, they did not see the British warships until it was too late. Six of the nine French ships were captured, and at a stroke Napoleon had lost his siege artillery. At first he was not worried by this setback. The fortifications of Acre were old, out of date and looked dilapidated, as Bourrienne reported:Although surrounded by a wall flanked with good towers, with a broad and rather deep ditch, and defended by outworks, this little fortress did not appear capable of holding out for a long time against French bravery and the skill of our corps of engineers and artillery. But the ease and rapidity with which Jaffa had been taken blinded us a little over the apparent similarity of the two places and the difference of their respective locations. At Jaffa we had sufficient artillery; at St Jean d’Acre [St John of Acre, its French name] we didn’t. At Jaffa we had to deal only with a garrison left to itself; at St Jean d’Acre we had to deal with a garrison propped up by reinforcements of men and supplies, supported by the English fleet, and assisted by European science.18

  The fortifications at Acre had been built by the crusading Knights of St John. Acre was their final stronghold in Syria, and the walls were intended to last. The town was on a promontory, surrounded by sea for two-thirds of its circumference and protected on the landward side by a crenellated wall strengthened with several towers. The British Navy controlled the bay, and the French could attack only the landward side of Acre. Colonel Phélippeaux, a French Royalist who had helped Smith escape from prison in Paris and accompanied him to England, was landed at Acre a few days before Smith arrived. He was a skilled military engineer, and aided by Captain Miller of the Theseus, he immediately set about strengthening the defences, and Smith then supplied more cannons and a stock of gunpowder and ammunition. The unexpected delay in taking the fortress of El Arish allowed time for these defences of Acre to be refurbished - otherwise the French would probably have taken the town with ease, before so many of them fell sick with the plague, which was now taking hold.

  A key factor in the struggle for Acre was the morale of the opposing sides. Before the arrival of Phélippeaux and Smith, Djezzar was seriously considering abandoning the town and retreating. The strengthened defences and the supplies that Smith brought in gave him new confidence. Turkish troops usually fought ferociously, but were ill-disciplined and at times their lines collapsed in panic, but the sailors and marines from the British ships stood fast and encouraged the Turks to keep fighting. Smith, a flamboyant figure, also used his personal charisma to the full to inspire the men he led, just like Napoleon. He was an easily recognisable figure, and one sailor described him as ‘of middling stature, good-looking, with tremendous moustachioes, a pair of penetrating black eyes, an intelligent countenance, with a gentlemanly air, expressive of good nature and kindness of heart’.19 Acre was so small that it could barely contain the defenders, yet their morale was rising - even though they were fewer than five thousand facing over ten thousand French troops. Morale among Napoleon’s forces, digging in for a long siege and fearful about the spread of plague, was already flagging.

  On 22 March, while the besieging French were preparing for an attack, Smith proposed an exchange of prisoners, pointing out that he had managed to keep one officer in particular out of the hands of Djezzar, who had a tendency to torture and kill such prisoners. Smith wanted back his own men who had been captured at Haifa the previous day while attempting to take some French sloops anchored there. Napoleon agreed to the exchange and sent Smith his thanks, continuing: ‘Do not doubt . . . the wish that I have of being pleasant to you, nor of my eagerness to seize the occasion of being useful to the men of your nation who the hazards of war are making miserable.’20 It was the last polite word that Napoleon ever said to Smith.

  Having made camp out of range of the guns of Acre, the French set up their own batteries to concentrate fire on the largest of the landward towers, which they would soon name the Cursed Tower. The French, ignorant of the extent of the defences, sent an army officer, Captain Mailly, under a flag of truce to demand a surrender. His real purpose was to report back on the layout of the fortifications, but Djezzar, with customary ruthlessness, threw him in prison. French patrols attempting to reconnoitre were driven off by the defenders, and so Napoleon had only a partial knowledge of the fort when he ordered the first assault on 27 March.

  The attackers aimed for a small breach that had been made the day

  Map of the French siege of Acre

  before when bombarding the walls. Smith, though, had already ensured the breach was blocked and the area covered by extra guns. The French charged the walls, but the attack faltered when they suddenly spotted the dry moat, which was 15 feet deep and 20 feet wide and could be fired on from the ships and boats in the bay. After climbing down the moat with ladders and up the other side, they found the ladders were too short to scale the wall and were forced to retreat under fire.

  When he lost his siege guns, Napoleon had sent back to Egypt for more, but they would take some time to arrive. The cannons that the French were using to bombard the walls were running low on ammunition, and they were reusing cannonballs fired by the British, as General Montholon recalled: ‘From time to time a few horsemen or waggons were made to appear, and then this commodore [Smith] approached the shore, and poured a rolling fire from all his batteries, and the soldiers, who got five sous for each ball which they brought to the director of artillery, ran and picked them up. They became so accustomed to this manoeuvre, that they pursued their search in the midst of the cannonade, while laughter resounded on every side.’21 While the French were offering rewards for cannonballs, Djezzar was offering rewards for enemy heads. So far he had parted with little of his treasure, as none of the French had managed to get past the moat, which was now strewn with corpses, decomposing in the fierce sunlight and producing a noxious stench that was a constant torment to the defenders.

  Among the dead in the moat was the mutilated body of a French general, who had worn an impressive uniform. The body had been stripped and beheaded by the Turks, and the sight particularly offended Daniel Bryan, a seaman of the Tigre described as an ‘honest, though - the truth must be told - somewhat obtuse-minded tar’.22 He asked why nobody had buried the corpse and was told, ’Go and do it yourself.’23 So he did. Other sailors tried to stop him and even offered to go in his place, but he replied, ‘No! you are too young to be shot yet; as for me, I am old and deaf and my loss would be no great matter.’24 They lowered him down the wall on a rope with a pick and shovel, and an eyewitness recalled how ‘his first difficulty, not a very trivial one, was to drive away dogs’25 that were feeding on the corpses. Then the French spotted him and ‘levelled their pieces - they were on the instant of firing at the hero!’26 Bryan called out, ‘Mounseers, a-hoy! ’vast heaving there a bit, will ’e? and belay over all with your poppers for a spell.’27 Fortunately a French officer who understood what he meant stopped the soldiers firing, and ‘instantaneously the din of arms, the military thunder, ceased; a dead, a solemn silence prevailed’.28

  With the French looking on, Bryan ‘very leisurely then scrambled over the entrenchment into the ditch, the muzzle of the enemy’s muskets still following his every motion. All this did not in the least disturb his sang froid; but going up to the French general, he took his measure in quite a business-like manner, and dug a very decent grave close alongside.’29 Then Bryan, ‘shaking what was so lately a French general very cordially and affectionately by the hand, he reverently placed him in his impromptu grave, then shovelled the earth upon and made all smooth above him’.30 He next
set up a stone at the head of the grave and ‘with the peculiar air of a British sailor, took a piece of chalk from his pocket, and tried to write, “Here you lie old CROP [headless corpse].”’31

  Back on board the Tigre, Smith sent for the sailor, and the following exchange took place: ‘“Well, Dan, I hear you buried the French general?” “Yes, your Honour.” “Had you any body with you?” “Yes, your Honour.” “Why Mr. — says you had not.” “But I had, your honour.” “Ah, who had you?” “God Almighty, Sir.” “A very good assistant, indeed. Give old Dan a glass of grog.”’32

  While Napoleon was head to head with Smith at Acre, Nelson at Palermo in Sicily was occupied with keeping the Mediterranean free of the French and also with his new relationship with Emma. The British blockades of the French in Malta and Egypt had to be maintained, and in the short term Sicily had to be defended. Nelson’s subordinate, Rear-Admiral Sir John Duckworth, was focusing on the western Mediterranean, but the biggest threat was the French fleet that had just escaped the British blockade of Brest, and which might head into the Mediterranean.