The War for All the Oceans

by Roy Adkins

  In Naples the republic was not a success and was not supported by the majority of the population. Being propped up by French troops, it would be vulnerable once they were withdrawn to fight elsewhere, and so in February 1799 King Ferdinand sent his agent, Cardinal Fabrice Ruffo, to rally Royalist support there. Ruffo was not just a cardinal, but a local magnate and a writer on military science. The King was pessimistic about Ruffo’s chances and therefore gave him wide-ranging powers, but having recruited a band of peasants and assorted criminals, Ruffo was a runaway success. His undisciplined and uncontrollable ‘army’ rampaged through the countryside around Naples, butchering anyone even suspected of republican or French sympathies.

  By the time of Napoleon’s first assault on Acre at the end of March, Ruffo’s ruffians were within 40 miles of Naples and closing in. Somewhat alarmed at his success, Ferdinand tried to reduce Ruffo’s powers and instructed him that he was not, on any account, to offer terms of surrender to the rebels - in reality, Ruffo was not in sufficient control to guarantee anything. At this stage Nelson was not directly involved, but had to provide support for the Neapolitan monarchy because Naples was such an important strategic base for the British Navy. Nelson was still recovering from the wound over his eye, but he had the benefit of living ashore at Palermo, in surroundings more comfortable than aboard ship. Nelson’s involvement with Emma was also deepening, but discreetly, and Cornelia Knight, who had been evacuated from Naples with the Hamiltons, recorded that ‘there was certainly at that time no impropriety in living under Lady Hamilton’s roof. Her house was the resort of the best company of all nations, and the attentions paid to Lord Nelson appeared perfectly natural. He himself always spoke of his wife with the greatest affection and respect, and I remember that, shortly after the battle of the Nile, when my mother said to him that no doubt he considered the day of that victory as the happiest in his life, he answered, “No; the happiest was that on which I married Lady Nelson.”’33

  While Nelson rested and applied all his intellectual energy to British naval strategy in the western Mediterranean, Smith at Acre was fully occupied with stopping Napoleon. The first failed French assault was followed by an attempt to set fire to the timbers blocking the breach in the wall by firing red-hot shot at it, but the engineer Phélippeaux had already anticipated that tactic and covered the wood with bales of cotton soaked in water. While Smith was away for a few days, his ships having been blown offshore by a storm, Djezzar took the opportunity to indulge his cruelty by murdering some of the French captives, including the unfortunate Captain Mailly, who had entered the city under a flag of truce. Their bodies were thrown into the sea, and as Bourrienne recalled, ‘This cruel pasha undertook a great number of similar executions. The waves frequently washed dead bodies on the shore, and we came upon them while bathing.’34 Djezzar was proving difficult to control, being more interested in butchering the French than organising effective resistance. Smith, however, had the measure of Djezzar, and wrote in a letter to St Vincent: ‘What seems to have more effect on him, than anything else, is the idea I have thrown out, that if the enemy are suffered to come into the town I must, in my own defence, batter it down about their ears.’35

  By the time Smith’s ships were back on station in early April, the French had launched another assault that failed, but more seriously they had driven their trenches almost to the walls and were trying to dig a mine under the Cursed Tower. The only way to counter this was by a sortie outside the walls, an attack that was led by Lieutenant John Wright and the Major of Marines, Thomas Oldfield, while the Turks provided a diversion elsewhere. The sailors and marines charged through heavy fire to the mouth of the mine, but when Wright entered with his men he realised that the demolition teams had not been able to follow. They pulled down the timber shoring so that the roof collapsed, but could not destroy the mine completely. As they came out the French attacked, and both Wright and Oldfield were wounded. Their bodies were visible to the British from the walls, and so Smith called to one of his men,a gigantic, red-haired, Irish marine . . . named James Close. Pointing to the mass of carnage that lay sweltering in the ditch below, where the slightly wounded and the actually dying were fast hastening into mutual corruption under the burning sun . . . [Smith] said, ‘Close, dare you go there, and bring us the body of poor Wright?’ ‘What darn’t I do, yer honour?’ was the immediate reply, and, exposed to the musketry of the enemy, wading through blood, and stumbling over dead bodies and scattered limbs, he, unhurt, at length found Wright, not killed, but only wounded, and he brought him away safely from these shambles of death.36

  Other marines were searching for Major Oldfield and found him at the same time as the French, who thought he was one of their officers. A fight ensued over the body, which the French won and carried him off. He died later from his wounds, but Wright survived. Reporting on the sortie, Smith noted that at the end of the fighting ‘the Turks brought in about sixty heads, a greater number of muskets, and some entrenching tools, much wanted in the garrison’. 37

  For the French, still without siege guns, mining remained the best strategy, and by mid-April they had reopened the mine and driven it under the Cursed Tower. On the morning of the 24th the mine was blown up, but its position had been miscalculated, and instead of the whole tower being brought down, only the front wall of the lower storey collapsed. The French troops stormed into the breach, but could get no further, and were driven back by the missiles showered from above.

  Smith was expecting more Turkish troops by sea from Rhodes and overland from Damascus, as well as more guns and ammunition from Constantinople. To counter this, French forces were detached from the army at Acre, and in a series of skirmishes and battles they managed to rout the Turkish reinforcements that were travelling by land. Sometimes fighting against overwhelming odds, the discipline of the French infantry consistently defeated the flamboyant but erratic Turkish cavalry.

  Despite these French successes, Acre remained a problem. Napoleon could not continue his march on Constantinople and the Silk Road, leaving such a stronghold to cut his lines of communication and supply. Nor did he have enough troops to leave behind to contain the fortress. Because of Smith, replacement siege guns could not be landed at Acre, but they began to be landed at Jaffa to the south and hauled overland. Napoleon, though, was not prepared to wait and ordered an assault on Acre for 24 April. Another mine had by now been dug under the Cursed Tower, and the blowing up of this mine launched the assault, but once again it only brought down part of the tower wall. As before, the charging French troops were blocked at the base of the tower and pelted with rocks and grenades from above, and finally powder kegs filled with a burning mixture of gunpowder and sulphur were dropped on to the attackers. These missiles, known as stink-pots, gave off clouds of choking smoke - those soldiers who were not suffocated by the blasts and fumes from the exploding kegs were forced to retreat.

  Time was pressing, and Napoleon ordered another assault for the following day, but although the French managed to fight their way a little further into the tower this time, they were again beaten back. Smith seemed to be everywhere at once, constantly moving from his flagship, where he directed the naval operations and tried to maintain correspondence, into the city to lead the fighting on the walls during the assaults, and even outside the city on reconnaissance missions. The French recognised that he was a key figure of the resistance, and there were two failed attempts to assassinate him.

  Ominously, the replacement siege guns began to arrive at the end of April. It would take another six days to set them up and bring them into action, but they would then dramatically increase the available fire-power. By 1 May Smith was so busy that his report to the Admiralty consisted of only two sentences: ‘We have, since my letter of the 7th of April, been every hour employed in resisting the vigorous attacks of a most desperate enemy, and hitherto with success, which is all I have time to say at present, as the increased fire from his batteries gives us ample employment just at this m
oment. P.S. The enemy has made a fourth attempt to scale the walls, and is beaten back.’38 The following day Colonel Phélippeaux, the French Royalist who had worked so hard to improve the defences and block any breaches, died of a fever.

  On 7 May, the fifty-first day of the siege, the newly installed French guns began a continuous bombardment as preparation for another assault. Smith recorded that ‘the constant fire of the besiegers was suddenly increased tenfold. Our flanking fire from afloat was, as usual, plied to the utmost, but with less effect than heretofore, as the enemy had thrown up epaulments and traverses [defences built of earth and sandbags] of sufficient thickness to protect them.’39 According to Smith, their position as defenders was now desperate: ‘We have been long anxiously looking for a reinforcement, without which we could not expect to be able to keep the place as long as we have.’40

  Just when it looked as if Acre would fall to the French, the situation changed once again - that very evening, after only a few hours of bombardment, the first of the ships carrying reinforcements and supplies arrived. In reaction, Napoleon increased the effort to take Acre before the reinforcements were landed. This time the French troops at last occupied the second storey of the tower, having successfully demolished the upper part. They managed to hold this position overnight, but with reinforcements starting to land, Smith could see that this was a critical point. He therefore ordered ashore a party from the British ships and personally took charge of them in defence of the breach in the wall, holding it until the reinforcements arrived. These boosted the morale of the defenders, and despite fierce fighting the French assault was repulsed. Smith, though, was realistic in his assessment of the situation, writing to St Vincent on 9 May:Buonaparte will, no doubt, renew the attack, the breach being . . . perfectly practicable for fifty men abreast; indeed the town is not, nor ever has been, defensible, according to the rules of [military] art, but according to every other rule, it must and shall be defended. Not that it is in itself worth defending, but we feel that it is by this breach Buonaparte means to march to further conquest. ’Tis on the issue of this conflict, that depends the opinion of the multitude of spectators on the surrounding hills, who wait only to see how it ends to join the victor . . . The magnitude of our obligation does but increase the energy of our efforts, in the attempt to discharge our duty, and though we may and probably shall be overpowered, I can venture to say, that the French army will be so much further weakened, before it prevails, as to be little able to profit by its dear bought victory.

  The spectators on the surrounding hills were split into two broad factions, Christians and Muslims, and Napoleon had already tried to persuade both sides to join him. To the Christians he had distributed a leaflet claiming that he was a successor to the Crusaders and a defender of the Christian faith, while a proclamation in Arabic was circulated to the Muslims pointing out that he had already destroyed the power of the Pope in Rome and the Knights of St John in Malta and calling himself a defender of Islam. Smith distributed copies of these documents to the opposite faction to that for which they were intended. Napoleon was discredited, and some of the Christians went so far as to ally themselves with Smith. He also dropped bundles of leaflets into the French trenches, spelling out an offer from the Sultan at Constantinople for a free passage back to France for any soldier who surrendered. The initial effect was to raise indignation and harden the resolve of the French, but in the long term it helped undermine their morale. Napoleon was furious and accused Smith of various atrocities. Bourrienne noted Napoleon’s reaction to Smith’s propaganda campaigns, writing that ‘he believed that by denigrating his adversary, he would mask his setbacks. He wrote on 2 June . . . “Smith is a crazy young man, who wishes to make his fortune and to make his presence felt. The best way of punishing him is never to respond to him . . . he is a man capable of doing anything.”’41

  Having survived the latest massive assault, and with the garrison bolstered by reinforcements, Smith was pleased with the effects that his propaganda was having on the Christians and Muslims, and declared that he had ‘the satisfaction to find Buonaparte’s career further northward effectually stopped by a warlike people inhabiting an impenetrable country’ .42 Napoleon realised that his position was almost untenable, but refused to give up as he told Bourrienne: ‘I see that this wretched dump has cost me a good number of men, and wasted much time. But things are too far advanced not to attempt one last effort. If I succeed, as I believe I will, I shall find in the town the pasha’s treasures, and weapons for 300,000 men. I will stir up and arm all of Syria . . . I will march on Damascus and Aleppo . . . I will reach Constantinople with a huge army. I will overthrow the Turkish Empire. I will found in the East a new and great Empire that will ensure my place in posterity.’43 It was not to be.

  The final French assault, the eleventh of the siege, was launched on 10 May. Napoleon was eventually persuaded not to lead the charge himself, but General Kléber took control instead, while the defenders at the breach were led by Smith. Despite starting well, the French were beaten to a standstill, and realising it was hopeless, Kléber ordered a retreat. In the aftermath of this battle, Smith wrote to Napoleon:General, I am acquainted with the dispositions that for some days past you have been making to raise the siege; the preparations in hand to carry off your wounded, and to leave none behind you, do you great credit. This last word ought not to escape my mouth - I, who ought not to love you, to say nothing more: but circumstances remind me to wish that you would reflect on the instability of human affairs. In fact, could you have thought that a poor prisoner in a cell of the Temple prison - that an unfortunate for whom you refused, for a single moment, to give yourself any concern, being at the same time able to render him a signal service, since you were then all-powerful - could you have thought, I say, that this same man would have become your antagonist, and have compelled you, in the midst of the sands of Syria, to raise the siege of a miserable, almost defenceless town? Such events, you must admit, exceed all human calculations. Believe me, general, adopt sentiments more moderate, and that man will not be your enemy, who shall tell you that Asia is not a theatre made for your glory. This letter is a little revenge that I give myself.44

  Napoleon decided to cut his losses and retreat to Egypt, and so on 20 May the French started to march back the way they had come just over two months before. The unexpectedly determined defence of Acre had stopped Napoleon’s expedition in its tracks, sapping it of energy, and Smith’s psychological warfare had turned the people of the country against it. Napoleon was so enraged by Smith’s propaganda that he could not bring himself to open the customary negotiations about evacuation of the wounded. Instead, as Smith reported to Nelson, the French ships were ‘being hurried to sea without seamen to navigate them, and the wounded being in want of every necessary, even water and provisions, they steered straight to his Majesty’s ships, in full confidence of receiving the succours of humanity, in which they were not disappointed’.45 Of the wounded Frenchmen who surrendered Smith wrote that ‘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’.46

  Napoleon had selected the best of his troops for the campaign in Syria, and by the time he returned to Egypt over a third of them were dead or disabled.

  It took four months for the news of the Anglo-Turkish victory at Acre to filter back to Britain, and it was greeted with quiet satisfaction rather than the rejoicing that had hailed Nelson’s victory the year before. However, motions of thanks to Smith were passed by both Houses of Parliament and he was awarded an annuity of £1000. Nelson now had a clear picture of what Smith’s mission had been, and generously wrote to him that ‘the bravery shown by you and your brave companions is such as to merit every encomium which all the civilised world can bestow. As an individual, and as an admiral, will you accept of my feeble tribute of praise and admiration, and make them
acceptable to all those under your command.’47 The Turkish Sultan Selim III awarded Smith the Chelengk (Plume of Triumph), as had been awarded to Nelson for the Battle of the Nile, and for a time Smith joined Nelson as a British national hero.

  In all probability, it was only Napoleon who fully appreciated the scale of Smith’s achievement at this time. To the British, it seemed merely as if Smith had curbed French expansion, while Nelson had deprived them of a fleet. In fact, it was Smith who stopped Napoleon’s advances on India, whereas Nelson had only hindered them, and Acre was the first defeat on land for the so-called invincible general. Without Smith and his men to strengthen the resolve of Djezzar, the Turks would have retreated, possibly as far as Constantinople, and it would have been much more difficult to stop the French army once it had gained momentum. Napoleon might not have made it as far as India, but it is quite likely he would have been left in control of Syria and the Silk Road trade route. Napoleon had now suffered two major defeats, both at the hands of officers and men of the British Navy. He himself would not be defeated on land by an Englishman again until the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon admired Nelson, and even acquired a bust of the admiral, but Smith had shaken his nerve.

  FOUR

  FROM NAPLES TO COPENHAGEN

  Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them.

  Advice given by Nelson to the young lieutenant

  Thomas Cochrane at Palermo in 17991

  While Napoleon retreated from Acre to Egypt, Nelson prepared to return to Naples after his forced retreat. In early June 1799 Ruffo’s army closed in on the city. The French troops and Neapolitan rebels took refuge in the forts, leaving the population to be terrorised by Ruffo’s butchers, who took revenge on anyone they fancied, but were too disorderly to form a force capable of attacking the forts. Midshipman George Parsons of the Foudroyant described them as ‘banditti under the [leadership of ] primate Cardinal Ruffo, and who (I suppose in derision) were denominated the Christian army. These scoundrels, unchecked by law or justice, with no force to restrain them, freely indulged their licentious habits, and, with tiger-like ferocity, waded deep in blood.’2