The Kabbalist

by Katz, Yoram

  “I have the original,” said Jeanne apologetically, “but I did not want to bring it with me, and I assumed an English translation would be easier to understand in Israel. I did translate it myself, and the translation is true to the original.”

  Professor Eldad shook his head in obvious disappointment but went on reviewing the document. Within seconds, his eyebrows arched in wonder. “Well, well… what do you say about that… a letter from the emperor,” he cried excitedly. “But, of course, he was not yet emperor when he wrote it. I assume Pascal de Charney is the family member you have referred to.”

  “Yes, Professor. We are the de Charneys of Normandy.”

  “De Charney of Normandy…” mumbled Eldad. “It strikes a bell…” He passed his hand through his fair and thinning hair, an action which probably represented an effort at recall but resulted mainly in making an even a bigger mess of his hair. Jeanne did not make any effort to help him, and he exerted himself for a while before giving up. “I don’t know…” he muttered at last, as if waking from a dream, and went back to his reading.

  Having finished, he raised his head, removed his glasses and looked at Jeanne. “An interesting letter,” he said. “It is a pity that the poor fellow died that way. It was a pointless death in an unnecessary campaign that turned out to be a fiasco. During this campaign, Napoleon occasionally demonstrated his rare military genius, but some significant flaws as well. Napoleon had no rival in managing battles on the move, but he seemed to be less adept at a static kind of warfare like a siege. In Acre, he met a sophisticated and cruel opponent. The whole management of the siege was problematic. Napoleon was pressed for time. He did not have a worthy naval force, which is mandatory for laying siege to a peninsula city. He also lacked a component that he usually had in abundance – luck.”

  “Why had he come here in the first place?” asked Luria and immediately regretted it.

  “Good question!” cried Eldad and immediately assumed the role of a lecturer. He cleared his throat and rose from his chair behind the desk. He started wandering around the small room, maneuvering among the piles of documents that populated the floor. “This question has a few possible answers. First, we must understand the historical background. About ten years after the bloody revolution, France was governed by a directory of five members. Napoleon was a brilliant artillery officer, who came from nowhere and in just a few years rose to the rank of General, defeated the Austrian Empire and became the darling of the nation. In fact, he became so popular, that the directory, threatened by his popularity, preferred having him as far away from Paris as possible. However, this went well with Napoleon’s plans. He wanted a big and flashy campaign in order to stay in the public’s eye. He might have also seen himself as a kind of modern Alexander and the East beckoned him. Another reason for this undertaking was the concern that if France did not take over Mamluk-governed Egypt, France’s arch enemy, Britain, would, in order to secure another path to India, which it intended to colonize.

  The professor paused for a moment. “You are familiar with the term ‘Mamluk’, aren’t you?” he inquired. Jeanne nodded, but Luria looked embarrassed. Eldad explained shortly who the Mamluks were, before resuming his lecture.

  “In May 1798, Napoleon left the port of Toulon with 400 ships at the head of his expeditionary force of 30,000 soldiers. By July, he had already defeated the Mamluk army in Egypt and established French rule in Cairo. He then suffered a blow. Nelson, the British Admiral, completely annihilated the French fleet at Abukir, not far from Alexandria. At one fell swoop, the British won total control of the Mediterranean and Napoleon was cut off from supplies and reinforcements. And here,” Eldad raised his voice dramatically, “we must ask, why did Napoleon decide, in such a complicated situation, to invade the Holy Land?”

  He did not wait for a reply. “Well, Napoleon was aware of the British-Ottoman coalition forming against him and, rather than wait for his opponents to make their move, he chose to go north and strike at the Turkish forces first.”

  Eldad would have undoubtedly gone on forever, but Jeanne stopped him by handing over to him a second document. It was the letter of Gaston de Chateau-Renault.

  “Another letter?” exclaimed the professor in surprise and delight. Again, he went through the ritual of desperately searching for his glasses, this time discovering them on his forehead.

  Having read the first few sentences, he raised his head, casting a perplexed look at them over the rims of his glasses. “De Chateau-Renault… de Chateau-Renault…” he mumbled, once more trying to recall a name that sounded familiar to him. He gave up and resumed his reading, but after a few more sentences he suddenly slapped his knee. “Of course,” he cried aloud. “The poor de Chateau-Renault brothers!” He then continued reading quietly till the end of the letter. Having finished, he removed his glasses and mused for a while. “Fascinating document!” he finally said. “Young Gaston was extraordinarily perceptive. The sly old fox did indeed trick the French into a trap he had set for them and then had them shot like sitting ducks.”

  “The sly old fox?” wondered Luria.

  “Ahmed El-Jazzar, of course,” explained Eldad.

  “Who was he?”

  “Jazzar Pasha was the ruler of the precinct, who fought Napoleon from inside Acre,” explained Jeanne.

  “That is correct,” said the professor. “Ahmed Pasha of Acre was nicknamed ‘El-Jazzar’ – ‘The Butcher’ in Arabic. Born in Bosnia, he was sold in childhood as a Mamluk to Egypt, where he climbed the ladder to serve the Turkish Sultan. He was a capable architect and engineer, but also a suspicious and vindictive tyrant, whose cruelty became a local legend. People were scared to death of him. Many people in Acre, including his most senior advisors walked around missing an eye, a nose or an ear, as a reminder of faults the governor had found in them. El-Jazzar managed the defense of Acre, even though he was approaching eighty at the time.

  “A few months before his invasion, Napoleon tried to get in touch with El-Jazzar. He sent him an emissary with a rather arrogant letter, which infuriated the old man. The poor emissary was one of the de Chateau-Renault brothers mentioned in the letter you have just given me. He paid with his head.”

  “Professor Eldad,” said Luria. “I admit I never meant to attend such a comprehensive history lesson, but now I am intrigued. As I seem to be the most ignorant among the three of us, can I ask you to summarize for me, in a nutshell, the story of this expedition, which ended with the Acre fiasco?”

  “Gladly.” Eldad did not waste a second. “In February 1799, Napoleon left Cairo at the head of 13,000 soldiers. He took with him light field cannons and sent the big guns and most of his siege equipment with a small flotilla, which sailed along the shores as the army moved on. His intelligence indicated that a British-Turkish invasion of Egypt was due in June, and he had to have a decisive victory over the Turks by then. He hoped such a victory would break up the British-Turkish coalition, and gambled that the three months he had would be enough. By the end of February, he conquered Gaza and turned north. The next big offensive was directed against Jaffa, with 6,000 Muslim soldiers and civilians within its walls. A small delegation was sent to offer terms to the besieged. Its members were promptly executed and their severed heads were displayed upon the walls, for all the French to see. The infuriated French then stormed the city. Wholesale massacre, rape and looting ensued. Thousands of people died, and the French took more than 3,000 soldiers as prisoners. Most of these soldiers were marched on the next day to the Jaffa shore, where they were killed with bayonets to save ammunition, in a massacre which is considered to this day a major blight on Napoleon’s name. The General then continued north. He entered Haifa, which El-Jazzar’s men had deserted without a fight, ordered by the old man back to Acre for the last stand. Napoleon climbed Mount Carmel to the location of the Stella Maris Monastery, which was prepared by his men as a rear hospital for his troops.”

  “The Carmelite Monastery?” asked Luria, surprised.


  “Yes, indeed,” said Eldad, “the very place that got us together four years ago.”

  Luria wanted to say something, but thought better of it.

  Eldad went on. “From the vicinity of the monastery, there is a good view of Acre. Napoleon fixed his glass on it and was shocked to discover two British ships of war anchored near the city. The ships, under Commodore Sydney Smith, arrived there a few days earlier to support the Turks and El-Jazzar. Napoleon immediately realized the danger for the cargo ships which carried his supplies, guns and siege equipment. He promptly sent warning to his small flotilla, which was anchored in Tantura (today’s Dor), preparing to move towards Acre, but by the time his messengers got there, the ships had already left. Of the nine ships, six were captured by the British, and their heavy guns were incorporated into Acre’s defense batteries. The remaining three took to sea and fled all the way to France. This was a major blow for the planned siege of Acre.”

  Eldad took a deep breath. “As a lecturer I resort, every so often, to anecdotes to keep the students attentive. Here are two anecdotes for you. The man who organized the Acre defense with great skill, and put the guns lost by Napoleon to use, was Colonel Antoine de-Phelipoux, a Frenchman of noble descent, who was a personal friend of Sydney Smith, the British commander. De-Phelipoux, who joined the British to fight revolutionary France, was an ex-classmate of Napoleon in the military academy in Paris. He finished first in the class where Napoleon was third. The two were bitter enemies from the day they met.”

  He smiled. “And here is another small detail. One of those who witnessed Sydney Smith’s ships arriving at Acre, was a young Hassid and Kabbalist of twenty seven, who happened to be visiting the Holy Land at the time, and found himself in the middle of a war. He interrupted a tour of a few months, in which he had visited Haifa, Tiberias, Safed and Meron, and hurriedly caught a ship from Acre back to Europe. This man became, in due course, one of the most influential men in Hassidic history. His name was…”

  “Rabbi Nachman of Breslau,” said Luria.

  The professor was taken aback. “Very good; I am impressed.”

  “I have relatives among the Breslau Hassidim,” explained Luria. “One of them mentioned this story to me.”

  “OK, then. Let’s get back to our narrative now,” Eldad pressed on. “Napoleon advanced on Acre, and on March 28th made the first attack upon the walls. The Frenchmen succeeded in breaching the northeastern corner of the wall and charged in. However, the attack failed, and Napoleon decided to wait for heavier guns and ammunition from his Egyptian base. Since it now turned out that it was going to be a long siege, he had to secure the area. In three weeks, Napoleon’s men took over the valley of Jezreel and the Galilee and reached Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. During this takeover, the French fought the ‘Battle of Tabor’, in which they defeated a much bigger Turkish force which had arrived from Damascus to join forces with the local Arabs.”

  “Hold on a second,” interrupted Luria. “Did they arrive at Safed?”

  “Yes. A small force occupied Safed, driving away the Turkish garrison. Why?”

  “Just my curiosity, I was born in Safed. Please go on.”

  “By the end of April, the long-awaited guns had arrived. However, the sand in Napoleon’s hourglass was running out. Now he had another serious problem on his hands – The Plague. The disease assumed epidemic proportions among his troops, causing many casualties. Napoleon did not lose time and on May 10th started his offensive on the walls. But this was not the creative Napoleon from other campaigns. He repeated the same offensive plan he had used in March – concentrating his forces at the northeast corner of the wall - and fell right into an elaborate trap prepared by El-Jazzar and de-Phelipoux. The besieged, who had successfully guessed Napoleon’s move, prepared a new, internal line of fortifications and let the French storm through the outer wall. Once inside, the Frenchman found themselves channeled into a walled valley of death, with their enemies shooting at them from both sides. Hundreds were killed or captured. The next wave was broken as well. The soldiers’ morale was now so low that Napoleon, arriving to cheer them up, was booed away. He was left with no choice but to withdraw. He ordered Acre bombarded with all his remaining ammunition and on May 21st, his expeditionary force started withdrawing.

  “This was not a simple affair. The army started retreating, dragging the wounded with it. In Haifa, matters grew worse when the sick and wounded, treated in the Stella Maris Monastery up Mount Carmel, joined the retreat. At one stage, Napoleon considered leaving opium doses for the wounded and encouraging them to commit suicide rather than fall into the hands of the avenging Turks. The gloomy procession made its way south. In Jaffa they stayed awhile, to inflict upon it total destruction, and on June 14th the army entered Cairo in triumph.”

  “Triumph?” Luria was nonplussed.

  “Napoleon decided this was a triumph. He could not afford failure. Neither his reputation nor his deterrence capacity towards the Egyptians permitted it. He made sure the soldiers got refreshed and received brand new uniforms, and then staged a big parade. All in all, Napoleon lost a third of his men on this misguided adventure. However, he was back in time to get ready for the British-Turkish invasion he was expecting, and by the end of July he annihilated the Turkish expeditionary force in what is known as the second battle of Abukir. A month later, Napoleon left Egypt and sailed to France, never to return. He left behind him a cut-off army with no supply lines, under the command of General Kléber. In November of the same year, he assumed his rule over France.”

  Eldad passed his gaze over Jeanne and Luria like an actor finishing his piece and examining the effect he had on his audience. “And this, in a nutshell, is the story of Napoleon’s visit to this land,” he concluded on a dramatic note. “He stayed about four months and left only death and destruction in his path, on top of a humiliating military fiasco.”

  Silence descended upon the room for a while. Finally, Eldad turned to Jeanne. “The letters you showed me are interesting,” he said, “but they do not present any new or yet-unknown facts. Now, how can I help you?”

  “Professor Eldad,” said Jeanne, “you must have noticed in Gaston's letter that before his death, Pascal wished to make sure his father received a certain package he had prepared for him. This package never made it through.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I have found the journals of Pascal‘s father, Roland. He never got it."

  “Do you have any idea what that package contained?” wondered Eldad.

  “A souvenir, perhaps, that Pascal wanted his father to have.” Jeanne directed a quick glance at Luria. “His efforts to make sure it got to his father in every scenario show that he deemed it important, but I don’t really know, and I want to find it.”

  The professor looked incredulous. “You expect to find it now? After 200 years?”

  “I know the chances are slim, but I feel compelled to try. These findings may have a historical value, but are even more important to me from the personal and family perspective.”

  “I see,” said Eldad. “And how do you plan to go about it?”

  “There is the lead in the letter I just showed you. I guess we can start there.”

  “Lead? What lead?”

  “Captain Bernard Moreau. The man in whose hands the missing package was entrusted.”

  “And what do you know about him?”

  “Captain Moreau did return to France. Roland de Charney went to see him. He noted this in his journals. He traveled to Bernard’s home to meet his son’s friend and, of course, to retrieve the package Pascal had gone into such great lengths to send him.”

  “Did the journals say what he had expected to find?”

  “Not a word about it. It was just referred to as ‘the package’. One might suspect he consciously avoided mentioning anything that would give away its content.”

  “OK. But he did not receive it. What happened?”

  “Bernard did not h
ave it.”

  “What do you mean he did not have it? What did he say?” asked Eldad impatiently.

  Jeanne sighed. “He did not say anything. Bernard suffered cerebral damage and couldn’t even talk intelligibly. Roland de Charney met an imbecile cripple who drooled and mumbled incoherently. In his journal entry, Roland wrote that he considered himself lucky compared to Bernard’s father, who had to see his beloved son reduced to such a humiliating condition.”

  “And the package?” Eldad could not conceal his curiosity.

  “It was never found. The senior Moreau told Roland that Bernard had nothing on him when he arrived.”

  “So where do you expect to start looking for it?” The professor sounded disappointed.

  “The last piece of knowledge we have, locates this package in today’s Israel, outside the walls of Acre, in the baggage of a wounded French staff officer…”

  “Wait a moment,” said Eldad, rising suddenly from his chair, excited. “I can think of a place where a wounded French officer could have ended up. What is more natural than a hospital?”

  “A hospital? What hospital?” wondered Jeanne.

  It was beginning to dawn on Luria.

  “Stella Maris! The monastery at the tip of Mount Carmel!” cried out the professor. “I told you that the monastery served as the rear hospital for Napoleon’s army. There is a very good chance that Bernard Moreau was treated there, though I doubt they have records. The place was completely destroyed by the vengeful Turks.”

  “This is a very good idea!” Jeanne was now all fired up. “So we do have a starting point.” She thought for a while. “The package might have been lost on the way to the hospital, during the retreat to Egypt or during the sail back to France, but yet, this is worth looking into. Thank you, Professor.”