Jefferson's War

by Joseph Wheelan

  The restrictions didn’t matter. Hamet had decided to attack by land rather than by sea, wisely reasoning that if he sailed, he would have to depend on his followers making their way cross-country without his leadership. Most of them probably would never reach Derna. The decision resolved a host of problems that Lieutenant Isaac Hull had foreseen, chief among them being space; if even 100 of Hamet’s force sailed to Derna on the Argus, there would have been no room for their provisions.

  The expedition’s audacity invested the sojourners’ preparations with an electric quality. They would have to cross 460 miles of rocky, arid wasteland before Hull could resupply them at Bomba. Would they be able to carry enough food and water to last them until then? Would Hamet, as he claimed, be able to marshal support among the desert inhabitants, or would they only encounter hostile Bedouin tribes? Once the invaders reached Bomba, they would be only three days from Derna, Tripoli’s second-largest city. And from Derna, it was but another 100 miles to Benghazi. If an attack on Benghazi succeeded, U.S. warships would carry the army the last 400 miles to Tripoli itself for the climactic assault.

  Hamet camped at Arab’s Tower, 30 miles west of Alexandria’s old port, while Eaton and O‘Bannon went into Alexandria to recruit soldiers.

  Hull had begun signing up mercenaries in the port city while Eaton was waiting in Demanhour for Hamet, but the jittery Turkish officials ordered him to hand over some Maltese whom he had recruited, then demanded that he stop altogether. Hull discharged everyone he had signed, closed his Alexandria house, and moved aboard the Argus. The French whisperings about Eaton’s party really being British spies were damaging enough, but Yusuf made matters worse by sending an envoy to Alexandria to persuade the governor and admiral to stop Hamet from leaving Egypt. The envoy was remarkably frank with the governor. The bashaw, he said, feared that his people would rally to Hamet’s standard, and he would have to flee or lose his head. Yusuf was weary of the war with America, the envoy said.

  Yusuf’s growing concern over his brother’s movements was becoming increasingly evident in Tripoli as well. He “is now very attentive upon your transactions with his brother in Alexandria—a Camp is going against Derne ,” Nissen, the Danish consul in Tripoli, wrote in sympathetic ink to Consul Davis in Tunis. Yusuf’s agent in Malta, Gaetano Schembry, was urging the bashaw to intensify his ill-treatment of the Philadelphia prisoners to force America to agree to peace. Nissen warned in his secret message to Davis: “... you Sacrifice your prisoner’s life here in case of success.”

  Even before Eaton’s rendezvous with Hamet, gloom had pervaded the bashaw’s castle over the protracted war. And then the 1804 grain harvest was so poor that in October, Yusuf had halted all grain sales—except to his household. This had precipitated a fierce argument with Murad Reis, his Scottish son-in-law, who had planned to buy barley in the market. Yusuf lost his temper with Murad—the grand admiral was drunk and insolent—and struck him and threw him in prison. Later, when tempers cooled, the bashaw released him and blamed their quarrel on a servant. The servant was punished with 500 bastinados. In November, Yusuf suffered an epileptic seizure. “His people thought he was possessed with the devil,” wrote Cowdery. A marabout, a Moslem holy man, was summoned to drive the devil out; the seizure’s abatement was ascribed to his incantations. In December, Yusuf presided over his son’s marriage to Hamet’s eldest daughter, a “very handsome” twelve-year-old.

  While Hamet enlisted Arab supporters, Eaton and Lieutenant O‘Bannon tramped the streets of Alexandria looking for European soldiers of fortune. Hull opened a $10,000 line of credit in Alexandria and had given Eaton $3,000 cash for recruitment expenses. Eaton spent it and an additional $3,000 before completing preparations for the expedition. Eaton estimated the expedition would cost at least $20,000, a bargain by any measure. Before parting with Hull, Eaton got another $7,000 advance and instructed Hull to have $7,000 more for him at Bomba. Eaton well knew that in North Africa, where only one’s tribe and Islam commanded absolute loyalty, money was the third-best guarantor. “Cash will do much with the inhabitants of this Country; even those whom it will not engage to fight, will by it be engaged not to fight: With it we can pass generally.”

  A more diverse army probably never assembled under U.S. auspices. There were Greeks, Italians, Tripolitans, Egyptians, Frenchmen, Arabs, Americans, and British—eleven nationalities in all. Of the 400 or more expeditioners, just 10 were Americans: Eaton, Lieutenant O‘Bannon, Marine Sergeant Arthur Campbell, 6 Marine privates, and Midshipman Paoli Peck from the Argus. Two Englishmen had signed on—Richard Farquhar and his brother Percival. (But only one Farquhar actually went on the expedition; it is unclear which, for Eaton referred to both as “Richard”; one of the Richards was turned out for embezzling $1,332.) Selim Comb, a Turk, was in charge of the 25 cannoneers, who had no cannons. Captain Luco Ulovix and a Lieutenant Constantine led 38 mixed European and Egyptian infantry, mostly Greeks. The rest consisted of Hamet and his 90 Tripolitan attendants, and up to 300 Arab cavalry and footmen under Sheiks il Taiib and Mahomet. Scores of horses, 107 camels, and some jackasses carried the food, water, and ammunition.

  The ragtag army was a patchwork of clothing, uniforms, and military bearing, ranging from the unwavering discipline of the uniformed Marines to the irascible, erratic Arab cavalrymen, who were as apt to mutiny as to charge recklessly. As a former Army combat officer, Eaton clearly saw his little army’s shortcomings and tried to remedy them. He needed 100 Marines, 100 stands of arms, cartridges, and two brass fieldpieces with trains and ammunition, he told Barron.

  Of the motley band Eaton and O‘Bannon scraped up in Alexandria, no one had a life story matching that of the incomparable Johan Eugene Leitensdorfer. He was the courier who had handed Hamet Eaton’s message in Miniet urging the rendezvous in Rosetta. Leitensdorfer happened to be between engagements, a rarity for a man who lived on the run, over a lifetime in which he practiced thirty occupations, served in five armies, and married three women without a divorce. Eaton made Leitensdorfer one of his top officers.

  Leitensdorfer was born Gervasso Prodasio Santuari near Trent in the Tyrol in October 1772. He studied for the priesthood, but found it wasn’t for him. He quit, married, and went to work as a surveyor. Yet the ordinary workaday life did not suit him either, and he joined the Austrian army, acquiring the taste for adventure and the wanderlust that would dominate his life. He fought the Turks at Belgrade and the French at Mantua, where he deserted rather than be hanged for dueling. Changing his name to Carlo Hossando, he joined Napoleon’s army. The French learned of his previous service in the enemy army and arrested him on suspicion of being a spy. He escaped from prison after drugging his guards with opium and fled to Switzerland, where he became Johan Eugene Leitensdorfer. His family sent him money, which he used to buy watches and jewelry, then peddled his wares throughout Spain and France.

  Under his new name, he rejoined the French army in time for the invasion of Egypt in 1798. He assisted the French with their Egyptian agricultural and economic projects. When the British drove out the French three years later, he opened a coffeehouse, bought a home in Alexandria, and married a Coptic woman, while still married to his first wife in the Tyrol. His career as a coffeehouse proprietor lasted only until the British withdrew from Egypt in 1803. Once again feeling the pull of the religious life, he sailed to Messina and became a novice at a Capuchin monastery. But he found that he didn’t want to be a friar, and soon became a street magician in Constantinople. Then he enlisted in the Turkish army and was sent back to Egypt. When the Mamelukes defeated his unit in battle, he deserted, hid among the Bedouins, and made his way back to Constantinople, where he converted to Islam, circumcised himself with his own razor, and became a dervish, adept at sorcery and tricks, with the new name of Murat Aga. He roamed the Black Sea’s south shore, peddling excerpts from the Koran written on small slips of paper, which he sanctified by rubbing them against a shaved spot on top of his head.

  While wandering rugge
d northern Turkey, Leitensdorfer encountered the bashaw of Trebizond, who had been struck blind. Claiming he could restore the bashaw’s sight, Leitensdorfer blew caustic lime into his eyes and washed it out with milk, then started him on a “sweat cure.” Midway through it, Leitensdorfer himself began to sweat, doubtless imagining what might happen to him if the cure didn’t work. He decided not to wait around to find out and joined a caravan bound for Persia. Bandits overtook and robbed the travelers. While plundering the caravan, the chatty thieves informed them of the bashaw’s miraculous recovery of his eyesight. Leitensdorfer hurried back to Trebizond to claim a rich reward, and then joined a Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca. At Jedda on the Red Sea, he met a Lord Gordon, a gentleman Scot who was on a tour, and became his interpreter. They traveled to Abyssinia and Nubia. Back in Cairo, Leitensdorfer quit Gordon, returned to Alexandria, separated from his second wife, and joined Eaton.

  His adventures with Eaton were by no means the final chapter. He drifted to Palermo, married a third time, but couldn’t settle down. So he sailed to the United States. He became a surveyor of public buildings in Washington, D.C., under Benjamin Latrobe. Later, as a watchman at the U.S. Capitol, he lived in a room in the north wing, cooking for himself, making shoes and maps, and catching birds. Congress awarded Leitensdorfer 320 acres in Missouri for his service with Eaton, and paid him a rate for each mile he traveled with the expedition. Later, a Viennese theater production about his incredible life drew large audiences.

  Eaton drew up a formal agreement with Hamet titled “Convention between the United States of America and his Highness, Hamet, Caramanly , Bashaw of Tripoli.” The remarkable document, written by Eaton, and signed and witnessed on February 23, 1805, in Alexandria, contained fourteen articles and an additional “secret” one that committed Hamet to handing over Yusuf and Murad Reis to Barron as surety of Hamet’s fulfillment of the other pledges that he made.

  In exchange for Eaton’s supplying Hamet with arms and ships to restore him to the throne, Hamet agreed to a host of terms, all contingent on his becoming bashaw: releasing the Philadelphia captives without ransom; repaying the United States for its monetary support with the tribute he would collect from Denmark, Sweden, and the Batavian Republic; granting America most-favored-nation status; and henceforth levying no tribute on the United States. In other words, in gratitude for America’s help, Hamet would end hostilities forever and treat America as an equal. The convention also made Eaton general and commander in chief of the invasion force collecting in Alexandria.

  Sanguine about the expedition’s prospects, Eaton boasted to Barron: “I cannot but flatter myself that we may realize the success of our calculations on this coalition; and that you will have the glory of carrying the usurper a prisoner in Your Squadron to the United States; and of releiving our fellow citizens from the chains of slavery without the degrading conditions of a ransom.”

  Turkish troops swooped down, snaring Hamet’s servants on March 2 as the last expedition provisions were being loaded onto a boat in Alexandria. Then they began advancing on Hamet’s camp at the Arab’s Tower. Panic broke out among Hamet and his attendants. Only Lieutenant O‘Bannon’s firm intervention prevented mass flight.

  The reason for the surprise raid, Eaton noted with relief, was only a neglected bribe. “We found the impediments raised to us were occasioned by influence of the supervisor of the revenue, who had not yet been bought.—The day was spent in accommodating the affair.”

  Eaton joined Hamet at Arab’s Tower. At 11:00 A.M. on March 8, 1805, the patchwork army began marching into the wasteland to the west.

  XIV

  AMERICA’S LAWRENCE

  From Alexandria to this place there is not a living stream, nor rivulet, nor spring of water.

  —William Eaton, in his journal of the expedition

  Wherever General Eaton leads, we will follow. If he wants to march us to hell, we’ll gladly go there.... The General always knows what to say and do, in any situation.

  —Lieutenant Presley O‘Bannon, USMC, from his account of the desert march

  As befitted a commander in chief, William Eaton led the way in a flashy general’s uniform with epaulets. With him were the Marines, also sharp in their blue and scarlet uniforms. The army’s martial appearance then fell off sharply to a hodgepodge of uniforms and castoff raiment from an assortment of armies, and then descended even further to flowing Moslem robes, hats, turbans, and headdresses and drab European civilian attire. The expedition’s officers and Arab cavalry traveled on horseback, while the rest of the army was afoot, their supplies carried on the backs of camels. The army trekked 15 miles during its first day on the march. It camped on a high bluff near the coast and found good water.

  The army followed the curve of the Mediterranean shoreline westward, sometimes a day’s march inland, sometimes closer to the sea. It was the same line of march followed by Alexander the Great 2,136 years before, and by previous and subsequent waves of conquerors and wayfarers from the Mediterranean and East: Berbers, Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, and Arabs. During World War II, Rommel and Montgomery would duel along this 40-mile-wide corridor; their operations and supply officers would consult maps of Eaton’s expedition.

  The route threaded through arid country that compared favorably with the blazing ocean of sand a day’s march south, but was by no means hospitable. In March and April, temperatures hovered between 90 and 100 degrees by day, and plunged to freezing at night. During the “winds of 50 days” during early spring, fine sand blew continually all day, sometimes rising on great whirlwinds that, when backlit by the sun, resembled moving pillars of fire. The gritty sand got into the eyes and mouth, into weapons and food. When the wind died, clouds of black flies appeared to torment the travelers.

  To reach Derna 520 miles away, the sojourners must skirt the Qattara Depression, cross the Desert of Barca, a northern arm of the Libyan Desert, and ascend the rocky Libyan Plateau overlooking the coast. While the region’s meager rainfall supported scruffy vegetation—wildly extravagant compared with the forbidding sands to the south—a journey through the dry country was survivable only if one knew where to find the water. Somehow Eaton always did. Lieutenant Presley O‘Bannon noted with obvious admiration, “General Eaton’s instincts are uncanny.”

  The Marines were unsure of Eaton at first because he wasn’t one of them and was prone to grandiosity, which aroused the down-toearth Marines’ suspicions. However, the Marines soon became his staunchest allies. “Wherever General Eaton leads, we will follow,” O‘Bannon wrote. “If he wants to march us to hell, we’ll gladly go there ... The General always knows what to say and do, in any situation.”

  Two days into the march, the camel drivers and Arab footmen went on strike. They refused to take another step unless Eaton immediately paid them the money he had promised them at the end of the march: $11 per camel. It turned out that Sheik il Taiib had spread the rumor that the Christians intended to cheat them. Eaton refused to pay. The Arabs refused to march. Eaton ordered the Christians to start back for Alexandria, “threatning to abandon the expedition and their Bashaw, unless the march in advance proceeded immediately.” The camel drivers relented.

  Three days later, a courier rode up with the news that Derna had revolted. The governor reportedly was hiding in his castle, and the province awaited Hamet’s triumphal arrival. The electrifying report launched a nearly tragic chain of events. The Arab cavalry fired their weapons into the air in celebration. Hearing the gunfire, the Arab footmen bringing up the rear with the baggage thought the caravan was being attacked by desert nomads. They instantly turned on their Christian escort, intending to kill and rob them in the confusion of the attack before the nomads reached the baggage train. A massacre was narrowly averted by the intervention of a single Arab who insisted they verify they were being attacked before commencing the slaughter. Cooler heads prevailed. The alleged Derna insurrection, it turned out, never occurred.

  Chronic theft reached crisis
proportions. Barley and provisions disappeared daily. Two days after the near-massacre, Arabs stole all the cheese and a musket, bayonet, and ammunition from the Marines’ tent. Cheese was one thing, weapons another. Thereafter, the Marines safeguarded the muskets by sleeping on top of them.

  The army sometimes came upon the faint traces of the region’s ancient conquerors and inhabitants. They drew water from deep Roman wells and cisterns, and at the castle at Massou (now Matruh), they bathed in stone baths built for Cleopatra, and explored a valley dotted with the ruins of ancient gardens and mansions. The vestiges of the irrecoverable past deeply impressed the Americans. At a ruined ancient castle with an immense cistern, Eaton examined scattered, eroded grave markers bearing Turkish and Arabic inscriptions marking the final resting places of Islamic pilgrims, “expressive of little else than an ejaculation.” One of Eaton’s foreign officers found two copper coins “with Greek inscriptions but so effaced as not to be intelligible....”

  The brief interregnum ended with another outburst of fractious self-interest that threatened to destroy the expedition. The camel drivers again refused to continue, claiming Hamet had contracted with them to pack the caravan’s provisions only to Massou—and hadn’t paid them anything at the outset of the expedition, as Eaton had been led to believe. They were right; Hamet had made the partial deal and not told Eaton. Eaton promised them cash if they could travel two more days; he hoped to meet desert tribesmen by then and hire a fresh caravan. Eaton gave them his last $533 and $140 borrowed from his Christian soldiers. For the moment, it seemed to satisfy them. But during the night, most of them started back to Egypt. In the morning, only forty camels remained. Their drivers refused to go on, and then they deserted, too, the next day, March 20. At this unhappy juncture, Sheik il Taiib and some of the other chiefs announced they would not march farther until a courier was sent to Bomba to find out whether U.S. vessels had arrived with fresh provisions. A rumor made the rounds, further undermining the army’s morale: that Yusuf had dispatched 800 cavalry and an infantry force to defend Derna, and that it had already passed Benghazi. This report proved mostly accurate.