Jefferson's War

by Joseph Wheelan

  Eaton was aware of Hamet’s failings and the good reasons for the government’s tepidness toward the operation. But like Bainbridge, Eaton believed that only a ground campaign would force Yusuf to make an honorable peace. With Dearborn opposed to committing U.S. troops, Hamet represented the one hope of attacking Tripoli with a land force and America’s winning peace on its terms. Because of his brief tenure as bashaw a decade earlier, Hamet still was familiar to Tripolitans, although not especially beloved. More importantly, Eaton believed Hamet would be loyal to the United States if it helped him snatch the throne from his brother Yusuf. Eaton said that organizing an expedition around Hamet was the difference between “taking a vicious horse by the heels” and having one with a bridle already in its mouth, its reins ready to seize. The expedition would be the capstone of Eaton’s life.

  After obtaining Jefferson’s blessing for the Hamet alliance, Eaton dispatched his stepson, Eli Danielson, to Philadelphia and New York to withdraw money that Eaton had made in land speculation to augment whatever government funds he would get. Danielson purchased tents, saddles, and cooking gear, and Eaton ordered a scimitar from a New York smith, to be made of Toledo steel.

  Eaton knew the Navy neither supported his plan nor him personally. Some of the Navy’s antipathy toward him dated to Morris’s detention in Tunis, for which Eaton still was blamed by naval officers. They also had closed ranks against Eaton because of his complaints about Captain Alexander Murray. Bainbridge, Murray, Morris, and Barron all disparaged Eaton’s project at various times, although Murray came around after meeting Hamet on Malta. He even transported Hamet to his short-lived government position at Derna. Significantly, Preble, the most aggressive commodore to command the Mediterranean squadron, supported the plan, but he had now been superseded by Barron.

  Eaton worked hard to win over Barron during their long Atlantic crossing on the President. The trouble wasn’t just Eaton, it was Hamet’s unsuitability, and it also was the Navy’s secondary role. Barron initially refused to advance Eaton cash, arms, or ammunition, and turned Eaton down when he tried to raise money by seeking reimbursement for the ransom he had paid for Anna Maria Porcile. Eaton argued that he was owed the ransom money because the U.S. government had made him release her before he was able to collect from her father. Eaton complained to Smith that he had to get an advance on his salary—$1,000, nearly a full year’s pay—so that he could hire mercenaries and buy provisions. “If my project succeed, the government will take the benefit of a miracle,” he wrote exasperatedly to Smith, in a letter asking that a $50,000 fund be established at Malta for the operation. (It never was.) He vowed to personally fulfill the promises made to Hamet, even if his government did not. “If it fail, government sacrifices nothing; though my family may feel a sacrifice.” While Barron eventually loosened the purse strings, it would never be enough to satisfy Eaton.

  Yet Barron followed Smith’s orders dutifully, although choosing to interpret them in the narrowest sense that obligated him to commit the fewest resources. Hull’s verbal orders, which the lieutenant later recited in a sworn statement, stated that Hamet would receive the squadron’s support at Derna or Benghazi, “and I will take the most effectual measures with the forces under my Command for co-operating with him against the usurper, his brother; and for reestablishing him in the regency of Tripoli.” But this was before Barron was laid low by a liver infection that nearly killed him and, consequently, fell under the spell of advisers such as Lear who opposed the government’s support of Hamet and favored a quick, negotiated settlement with the bashaw.

  Eaton, however, was determined to overcome all obstacles, formidable though they would be. To Preble, whom he admired for his bold attacks on Tripoli and whom he considered a friend, he described the result he hoped to effect through his alliance with Hamet. “How Glorious would be the exhibition to see our fellow citizens, in captivity at Tripoli, march in triumph from a dungeon to their tyrant’s palace and display there the flag of the United States.”

  The Argus arrived at Alexandria on November 25, 1804, firing a 17-gun salute—the world’s newest republic paying its first official visit to one of the oldest cities still extant. Founded in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, Alexandria had been ruled at various times by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, and Ottomans. The Americans gazed in wonder at the ancient and medieval buildings, mosques and homes ranged on the hills to the south of the harbor, and the city’s 6,000 residents gazed back at the Americans with intense curiosity.

  In the backwash of the Napoleonic wars, Egypt’s 4 million inhabitants were convulsed in 1804 by civil war and anarchy. Napoleon’s lightning invasion in 1798 was launched with the intent of adding a colony and providing a forward base for a campaign against British India. French troops quickly captured Alexandria and moved on to Cairo, defended by the Mamelukes, former Ottoman slaves of Kurdish, Turkish, and Circassian descent whose power in Egypt now rivaled the Ottomans. The Mamelukes fielded a formidable cavalry—“Let the Franks come; we shall crush them beneath our horses’ hooves!” a Mameluke prince reportedly exclaimed—but they were overmatched against the French, whose artillery and firepower were decisive at the Battle of the Pyramids in 1798. The French took control of all of Egypt.

  Then disaster struck on August 1, 1798, when the French fleet, anchored in Abukir Bay at Alexandria, was annihilated by Lord Horatio Nelson. With Napoleon and his army stranded and blockaded by the British fleet, the Turks readied invasion armies to reclaim Egypt. But the shrewd Napoleon thwarted them by launching a preemptive strike against Turkish forces massing in Syria and later wiping out a Turk army landed at Abukir Bay. Then, in 1799, he slipped away to France, leaving his army behind. The British and Turks regrouped. In 1801 they attacked and defeated the French. Turkey’s sultan reasserted his sovereignty over Egypt, but in reality this only marked the commencement of a death struggle for supremacy between the Mamelukes and Ottomans that would last a decade. In the lawless countryside, rival armies and ragged bands of deserters and highwaymen pillaged and murdered without check. The only guarantors of safety were arms and numbers.

  Into this chaotic mix waded Eaton and a handful of able men—Marine Lieutenant Presley O‘Bannon, Richard Farquhar, Lieutenant Joshua Blake, Midshipman George Mann, Eaton’s stepson, Eli Danielson, two seamen, and a Marine enlisted man. They had to find Hamet before there could be any march into the Tripoli regency 300 miles to the west, and they did not know where Hamet was. The search party boarded a cutter at Alexandria and sailed to the mouth of the Nile River at Rosetta, about 20 miles northeast of Alexandria. While waiting for the tide to carry them into the Nile, they walked on a beach where French and British troops had fought in 1801. It was “covered with human Skeletons, ghastly monuments of the Savage influence of avarice and ambition on the human mind,” observed Eaton.

  They started up the Nile for Cairo, a river journey of more than 100 miles, hoping to learn from the Ottoman viceroy, Ahmed Pasha Khorshid, where Hamet might be. By this time, Eaton had seventeen well-armed men with him, thanks to the kindness of the British agent at Cairo, Major E. Misset, who had loaned Eaton his secretary and several men for the journey.

  William Eaton arguably was America’s first modern intelligence operative, as the appellation later would apply to agents who gathered information in hostile territory and then analyzed and acted on it. A striking blue-eyed man of slightly above average height, Eaton was both a thinking man and a man of action. Above all, he possessed the ability to concentrate his force on a single object. Well-educated and articulate, he was fluent in at least four Arabic dialects, all learned during his Barbary consulship. He also could speak four American Indian languages, and at Dartmouth had studied French, Latin, and Greek. His prodigious daily output of letters and journal entries rivaled any diplomat’s. He also happened to be a crack rifle shot, could hit a target with a knife thrown from 80 feet, and was an expert with the scimitar, a weapon that had captivated him during his early days in T
unis; he had mastered the art of twirling it over his head—a trick few besides the janissaries of Constantinople could perform proficiently.

  Eaton’s affinity for indigenous people and knack for adapting to their environment would prove indispensable during the rigorous months ahead. These traits had made him a gifted scout and spy under General “Mad Anthony” Wayne in the Ohio country, when he donned buckskins and infiltrated the Miami Indian villages, and on the Spanish frontier in southeast Georgia—places where he had become adept at living off the land, engaging in guerrilla warfare and rapid movement. When Jefferson, Madison, and Smith approved Eaton’s plan to restore Hamet to Tripoli’s throne, it is unlikely that they realized to what extent success would depend on Eaton’s abilities.

  On the Nile, the Eaton party passed scenes worthy of Dante’s pen—indiscriminate killings, villages ransacked so many times that nothing of the slightest value remained, and starving refugees. Bandits and armed deserters from the warring armies robbed one and all. “Egypt has no master,” Eaton wrote to Sir Alexander Ball, the governor of Malta. “The Turkish soldiery, restrained by no discipline sieze with the hand of rapine, everything for which passion creates a desire,” and the Mamelukes were no better. “Wild Arabs” roved the banks of the Nile, ready to pounce on the defenseless. They carefully avoided the well-armed Americans and British in Eaton’s two boats, each equipped with a swivel-mounted gun. Along the way, Eaton’s party hunted pigeons and fowl; if the sight of their arms didn’t discourage the Arabs, the loud reports of gunfire certainly did. They reached Sabour as Arabs were driving off the villagers’ herds; the day before, the same village had been plundered by 500 Albanian deserters from the Turkish army.

  At Sabour, the people welcomed the sight of the Americans’ redand-blue uniforms and round hats. (The French wore triangular hats.) “They kissed our hands; and with prostrations to the ground and eyes inflamed with anguish implored English succor,” Eaton wrote to Ball, suggesting the time for an English reoccupation might be at hand. In fact, everywhere they went, the people wanted to know if they were English and when they planned to return and restore order. Egyptians, Eaton said, preferred the English because they “pay for every thing; the French pay nothing and take everything—They don’t like this kind of deliverers.” Eaton impressed the natives with his rifle marksmanship by splitting an orange twice with three shots at 32 yards.

  In Turkish-ruled Cairo, Eaton learned Hamet had joined the other side, the Mamelukes. No one knew exactly where he was. Moreover, his alliance with the rebels made a rendezvous awkward, with Turkish troops controlling the countryside between Cairo and the Mamelukes’ strongholds to the south, and the Mameluke redoubts themselves under attack.

  Cairo’s viceroy, Khorshid, politely overlooked the fact that their ally had joined the enemy, and made the Americans welcome. Cairo, more populous (260,000) than anyplace most of the Americans had ever seen, put on a show for the visitors. They were escorted to the palace in a torchlight parade through the city. Spectators lined the road for a mile and a half, eager to see the men from the New World, who were accompanied by some of Khorshid’s attendants and six splendidly liveried Arabian horses.

  At the palace, Khorshid rose from an embroidered purple sofa with damask cushions to greet them ceremoniously. They drank coffee, smoked pipes, and ate sherbet while the viceroy peppered them with questions about the United States, its geography, government, and people. Eaton made the most of the situation, describing at length the customs of the American people and explaining that the Barbary War was being fought to vindicate U.S. rights. He compared the Barbary pirates and the Ottomans in a manner flattering to the Turks. Eaton said Americans and Turks were alike, and drew startling—but not necessarily accurate—parallels between Islam and the peculiar offshoot of Christianity he claimed Americans practiced: the worship of one God, with no unnecessary bloodshed.

  With the ice broken by Eaton’s flattery, the viceroy brought up the ticklish subject of Hamet. He had intended to honor his predecessor’s promises to aid Hamet until his unfortunate alliance with the Mamelukes. Eaton, who knew that everything depended on the viceroy’s support, interjected that “it was more like God to pardon than to punish a repenting enemy.” His homage to the viceroy’s godlike powers and his other flattery utterly disarmed Khorshid; he promised to send emissaries to locate Hamet and to permit Hamet to join Eaton and leave Egypt unmolested. It was a supreme diplomatic victory for Eaton. He cemented their relationship by announcing that he wished to name Dr. Francesco Mendrici, formerly the Tunis bey’s doctor, to be the agent for the United States in Cairo. Khorshid certainly raised no objections; Mendrici happened to be his chief physician.

  The viceroy’s envoy traced Hamet to the Upper Egypt city of Miniet, where 3,000 besieged Mamelukes recently had thrown back 8,000 attacking Albanians and Turks. Eaton sent a letter suggesting that they meet in Rosetta, where Hamet could seek British protection.

  Eaton impatiently awaited a response in Cairo, acutely aware that all of his hopes for driving Yusuf from power with a land expedition hinged on Hamet’s reply. Would he join Eaton? Had he abandoned hopes of regaining his throne? Eaton knew that without his cooperation, there could be no insurgency, no invasion.

  The reply, which came quickly, was all that Eaton had hoped for. After mildly rebuking Eaton for delaying, Hamet said he was leaving Miniet for the home of a sheik friend to begin preparing for the expedition. “Thus you must assist from the sea and I from the land, and God will aid us in establishing peace and tranquility.”

  A few days later brought another letter from Hamet: “I cannot but congratulate you and felicitate myself after so much apprehension doubt and solicitude, that we now calculate with certainty on the success of our expedition....” He already was headed down the Nile to meet Eaton. Bring plenty of money, he said unnecessarily—Eaton well knew that money was everything in North Africa. “Do not think about money because the occasion demands heavy expenditure. It is a matter of making war, and war calls for money and men.”

  They agreed to rendezvous near Lake Fiaume, 190 miles from the Mediterranean coast and on the edge of Egypt’s Western Desert. Eaton embarked from Alexandria at the head of a troop of mounted men consisting of Lieutenant Blake, Midshipman Mann, and twenty-three others. Less than halfway to Lake Fiaume, Turkish troops stopped them at their lines, the outermost frontier of Turk-controlled territory, and would not permit them to go on. Eaton and his men had no choice but to settle into Demanhour, governed tyrannically by the local Turkish army commander known as the Kerchief. Eaton went to work trying to win over the harsh, dour leader, flattering him for his troops’ military bearing, and stating that he was undoubtedly a man of valor. Few could resist Eaton’s charm for very long. Soon the Kerchief and Eaton were on excellent terms, and the Kerchief had no problem with Eaton’s notifying Hamet that he was in Demanhour and inviting him to join him there.

  While he waited, Eaton watched the Turkish troops drill, visited the Kerchief, and reconnoitered the village, whose inhabitants were as intensely curious about the Americans as they were about the villagers. Eaton began to notice a mournful-looking boy lurking around his lodgings. The boy shied away whenever Eaton invited him inside. Eaton made inquiries about him, and learned that the boy’s father, a prominent, wealthy villager, had owned the house where Eaton was staying. But when the Turks came, they beheaded him and appropriated all of his property, including his home. The boy, five brothers and sisters, and their mother lived only a few doors down from Eaton. Softhearted when it came to women and children, Eaton gave the family all of the pocket money that he had. “The child kissed my hand; and wept! God, I thank thee that my children are Americans!” To his wife Eliza, he wrote: “There is more pleasure in being generous than rich ... Man wants but little, and not that little long.”

  Unaccountably, the Kerchief cooled toward the Americans. Turkish guards suddenly appeared outside the Americans’ quarters and accompanied them on their walks. Eaton
tried to learn from the Kerchief the reason for the chill, but the leader was closed and suspicious. Finally, Eaton teased out the problem: The French consul was spreading it about Egypt that Eaton and his men were British spies who were using Hamet to aid the Mameluke rebels. It was believable enough, given the rumors already abroad that the British were secretly subsidizing the Mamelukes. Once again, the Americans had been caught in England and France’s crossfire.

  Eaton so thoroughly allayed the Kerchief’s suspicions that when Hamet reached Demanhour on February 5 with his suite of 100 attendants, they were greeted by salutes from the Kerchief’s honor guard. “Tents were pitched for the accommodation of his people, and provision made for their refreshment—the Bashaw sleeps tonight at the Kercheifs house, and tomorrow afternoon we depart for Alexandria....” However, the French consul’s slander damaged Hamet in Alexandria. The governor and admiral forbade him to set foot in the city, and refused to let him embark by ship from there.