In those first few days of May the increasingly weary French battalions launched one assault after another, only to be repulsed by the Turkish troops, who fought with a tenacity that the French had not encountered before. There were severe losses on both sides. General Bon was shot dead in the breach as he urged his men forward, and the irrepressible General Lannes was wounded, once again, as he and two companies of grenadiers managed to break into the city, only to discover that Ahmad Pasha’s men had built an inner line of defences.
In the middle of the month Napoleon called his senior officers to a meeting in his tent late in the evening. He watched as they filed in through the flaps and quietly took their seats.The strain and exhaustion of the last sixty days was etched into their faces, and even before he asked them for their views Napoleon knew that the fight had gone out of them and he would have to perform a miracle to persuade them that Acre could be taken. The trouble was, he felt as bitter and tired as they did and he was momentarily tempted to break off the siege and return to Egypt without even asking for their assessment of the army’s chances. Then some inner reserve of determination stirred in him and he resolved to try to persuade them that the fight could yet be won.
‘Gentlemen . . .’ Napoleon smiled faintly. ‘Friends. Berthier tells me that the men are at the end of their endurance, that some of you are openly saying that we cannot take Acre, and that we must retreat. Does any man here wish to say anything?’
Junot stirred uncomfortably. ‘Sir, it’s been two months and we’re no nearer taking Acre than we’ve ever been.’
‘No nearer? I think you seriously underestimate what we have achieved so far. We’ve breached their walls and must have killed thousands of their men. One last—’
‘Sir,’ Lannes interrupted. He wore a bloodstained dressing around his head and looked pained and drawn as he spoke.‘They have built an inner wall. I’ve seen it. We’d have almost as much difficulty overwhelming that as we did the outer wall. And what does it matter how many of them we kill? Yesterday - we all saw it - a flotilla of ships dropped anchor out to sea and they’ve been ferrying in fresh supplies and troops all through the night and the following day. Sir, I’d follow you anywhere, you know I would. But this is a fight we cannot win.’
‘General Lannes is right, sir,’ added Berthier.‘While the enemy can keep being supplied by sea, we are running out of supplies here on land. We’re also running low on ammunition and powder. More worrying still is this morning’s report from Desgenettes. Nearly two and a half thousand of our men are now on the list of sick and wounded. Sir, the army is being bled white by this siege and the assaults we have attempted so far.’ He would have said more, but he caught the wild glint in his commander’s eye and the words died on his lips.
Napoleon stared round the table at his officers. ‘Is there no man here who considers it our duty to continue the fight? Well?’
No one spoke and Napoleon suddenly realised he had lost them. If these men . . . if General Lannes, of all people, had lost faith in victory, then the attempt to take Acre truly was finished. He lowered his head into his hands for a moment and then looked up slowly and nodded.
‘Very well . . . I accept your views. If you will not fight then no man will. I’ll give the order . . . We’ll break camp and march back to Egypt. The siege of Acre is over.’
Chapter 45
‘Having maintained ourselves in the heat of Syria for three months, with only a handful of men, after capturing forty guns and six thousand prisoners; after razing the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa and Acre, we shall return to Egypt. I am obliged to go back there because it is the season of the year when hostile landings may be expected.’
Junot finished reading the proclamation aloud and Napoleon nodded with satisfaction. ‘It strikes a suitably uplifting tone, I think.’
‘Of course, sir,’ Junot agreed in a measured voice. ‘But the fact is that Acre is still in Turkish hands. I wonder if the men will really share your view of our, er, success?’
Napoleon frowned at his subordinate. ‘I’m not a fool, Junot. I know we’ve failed. But I can hardly say that to the men, particularly as we face a hard march back to Egypt. But if they believe that I believe we have achieved something it will put some heart back into them. Got it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then have that copied and distributed to the army at once. On your way out, send Dr Desgenettes in.’
Junot saluted and strode through the tent flaps. Napoleon shifted uneasily on his chair.The next interview was going to be a difficult affair but there was no putting the matter off. As soon as the heavy guns had exhausted their ammunition they were to be spiked before the rearguard pulled back, following the rest of the army. Once the French army began to retreat the enemy would close up on them and harass the column all the way back to the fortified depot at Katia.The army would have to march as fast as it could, and that meant some sacrifices would have to be made, Napoleon reflected. He glanced up as a figure entered the tent.
‘You sent for me, sir.’ Dr Desgenettes stood hat in hand before Napoleon’s desk. He looked pale and exhausted and there was several days’ growth of stubble on his face.
‘Yes. Sit down, doctor.’ Napoleon clasped his hands together as he continued. ‘You know that the army is about to break camp?’
Desgenettes nodded. ‘Junot told me about the retreat, yes.’
Napoleon smiled faintly. ‘The correct term is withdrawal, doctor . . .We will be abandoning the heavy guns, and any other burdens that might slow us down, and that’s why I need to speak to you.’
Desgenettes looked confused for a moment before he realised what his commander was implying, and then his expression instantly changed to anger.‘The men in the hospital.You want to leave them behind? Have you any idea what the enemy will do to them, sir?’
‘They could be treated fairly.’
‘After what happened to the prisoners at Jaffa? If we left them to the Turks we’d be committing murder, sir.’
‘Then, if we cannot take them with us, let’s not leave them to the Turks.’
Desgenette’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you suggesting, sir?’
Napoleon paused, frustrated that the man was forcing him to spell it out. ‘I’m suggesting that for those men who are too sick to move, or who would slow us down, an overdose of opium might be the most humane solution.’
‘You would kill our men?’
‘Not me. You. I want this task carried out by someone who knows what to do.’
‘Sir, I am a doctor - a healer, not a killer.’
‘Is it not the case that a doctor’s duty is to alleviate pain and suffering?’
‘Do not dissemble with me, sir.’ Desgenettes shook his head. ‘I refuse to do it.’
‘It is not a request. It is an order. If you disobey me you will be committing mutiny.’
Desgenettes slapped his chest. ‘Then shoot me! I will not kill our countrymen.’ He paused a moment and looked at Napoleon shrewdly.‘But then I’m forgetting.They’re not your countrymen, sir.’
Napoleon took a sharp intake of breath. ‘How dare you speak to me like that! Doctor, you forget yourself. I am your general and while you wear a uniform you are a soldier first and a doctor second.’
‘My medical oath takes precedence, sir. In any and all circumstances.And you will have to shoot me and my staff before you reach my patients. Then you’ll have to murder them yourselves. I hardly think the rest of the army will approve of such actions, however much they revere General Bonaparte.’
Napoleon glared at him for a long time, wanting more than anything to have this man immediately taken outside and shot for his insubordination, but he knew that the army would not stand for that. Desgenettes, like most doctors, enjoyed the respect, gratitude and open affection of the common soldiers. It would be dangerous to harm the man, Napoleon realised. He forced himself to smile.
‘Very well, doctor, there are now over two thousand men on the sick list.
How do you propose to move them?’
‘A good number of them are walking wounded. The rest can be carried on horses, camels and stretchers. At least as far as Jaffa, where we can put them on ships.’
Napoleon considered the proposal. The siege would be lifted in three days. Time enough to move the sick and wounded to Jaffa. He looked at Desgenettes and nodded. ‘Very well, doctor, you have convinced me. Make the arrangements immediately. You can draw on men from Lannes’s division to act as stretcher-bearers. Now, leave me.’
The rearguard had spiked the siege guns during the night, and as dawn broke on 20 May huge columns of smoke billowed into the sky as General Reynier’s men set fire to the supplies and equipment that were being abandoned by the French army. As soon as the rearguard pulled back, the Turks in Acre swarmed out of the gates to pursue them, forcing Reynier to skirmish all the way to Jaffa. Napoleon had arrived in the port a day earlier and was shocked to discover that only a handful of small ships remained. The houses and merchants’ storerooms along the quay were packed with sick and wounded men.
‘Where is Admiral Perée?’ he demanded.
‘The admiral sailed for Alexandria yesterday, sir,’ Berthier replied.
‘Why? I gave him orders to take Desgenette’s patients on board.’
‘The admiral said he could not risk having any plague victims on his ships. He also said that he must leave before the Royal Navy blockaded the port.’
‘Damn the admiral to hell,’ Napoleon muttered in fury as he gazed at the men slumped in the shade along the quay. The transfer of the sick and injured from Acre had exhausted the patients, and those assigned to help them. Only a small number of them could be found berths in the vessels that remained in the harbour.
‘Tell Desgenettes to have the worst cases loaded on to these ships as soon as possible. Those who are too sick to move, and those who are least likely to recover, are to remain in Jaffa. Tell him that they must be dealt with humanely after all.’
Berthier looked at him curiously but Napoleon just shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll understand the order well enough.’
As the last ships put to sea Napoleon and the rest of the army began the march south along the coast.The wounded who were forced to walk did their best to keep up, and for the first few days their comrades did all that they could to help them along. Then, as exhaustion, hunger and thirst began to take their toll on the men, the weakest were left to fend for themselves, and the tormented cries of stragglers taken and tortured by the enemy haunted the men gathered round the campfires each night. The army trudged into Gaza on the last day of May and filled their canteens and haversacks with the remainder of the rations as they steeled themselves for the crossing of the Sinai desert.
By day the Sinai was smothered by blistering heat that sapped the very last dregs of energy from the men as they limped forward with cracked lips and parched throats. Those of the injured who died were unceremoniously pitched into the sand and left to feed the carrion that swirled in lazy circles as they followed the army across the wasteland. Discipline became as fragile as the bodies that depended on it, and the hostility of the men was evident in their glares and the bitter tone of their muttering whenever Napoleon and his staff rode by. So Napoleon gave up his horse to help carry the wounded, and ordered his staff to do the same, and they walked the rest of the way, alongside the straggling columns of their men.
At last, four days later, the first soldiers arrived at Katia, under the horrified gaze of those watching from the walls of the fortified village. The men of the army that had invaded Syria were barely comprehensible as they croaked their requests for food and water, and when these were brought to them they tore at the food and drank like wild animals.
As Napoleon watched them emerge from the desert and sink down in the shade of Katia’s buildings he had little doubt that the army bore the brand of defeat. Nearly two and a half thousand had died in battle or of the plague. A similar number were sick or wounded, and would not be fit to serve again for some weeks, if at all. Over a third of the army that had set out in high spirits to carve a swath through the Turkish empire had been lost, and would not be replaced.
That much was clear now. There would be no fleet sent from France with reinforcements. Napoleon and his army had been abandoned by the Directory, something the men would realise soon enough. And when they did his authority over them would be tenuous at best. Napoleon had no desire to let Egypt be the end of his career. The future, his future, lay back in Europe. The question was, how could he justify leaving his army and returning to France?
As he pondered this question, Napoleon let his shattered army rest for several days. Uniforms were cleaned and patched.
Weapons were issued to those who had lost theirs and the men set to polishing their buttons and whitening their cross belts in preparation for the triumphal entry into Cairo that Napoleon announced to his men shortly before the understrength battalions began their march from Katia across the Nile delta to the capital. The celebrations, speeches, awards of decorations and presentations of swords and prizes lasted the whole day, and then the men were issued with the very last of the wine and spirits that had been landed with the army nearly a year ago. As the streets of Cairo echoed with the shouts and laughter of drunken revellers Napoleon retired to his bechamber with Pauline Fourès.
‘Can’t you have someone tell them to be quiet?’ Pauline nodded to the shutters as she unlaced her bodice, and flung it across the back of a chair. ‘Thank God I’m out of that. I thought those ceremonies would never end.’
‘Pauline, right now I need to give them anything I can to help bolster their spirits. After the Syrian experience, and the revolts Desaix had to deal with in my absence, their morale has never been lower.They’ve not seen France for over a year, and as things stand they don’t know when they will again. So you do as I say and humour them.’
‘Very well.’ Her lips opened in a seductive smile. ‘Now, can I humour you, my general?’
Napoleon crossed over to her and enclosed her bare body in his embrace, relishing the smooth skin of her back as he ran a hand down towards her hip.
‘You’ve no idea how much I have missed this.’
‘This?’ She laughed playfully and reached a hand behind to pat her bottom. ‘Just this?’
‘Just that.’ He laughed, and she playfully swatted his shoulder. ‘And all that is attached to it.’
A sudden outburst of singing rose up from the street outside Napoleon’s garden and Pauline turned towards the shutters again. ‘I can’t be passionate with that racket going on.’
‘Then don’t be passionate.’ Napoleon led her towards the bed and started pulling off his clothes. ‘Get on the bed.’
Pauline raised her eyebrows in amusement, but did as she was told. As she lay bathed in the moonlight that pierced the shutters, Napoleon tore off his boots, then stockings, trousers and underwear in one, and climbed on top of her, pushing her thighs apart and penetrating her with a gasp of pleasure, and then making love to her as vigorously as he had ever done to any woman before.
‘I think you really needed that,’ Pauline smiled shortly afterwards. ‘I take it there weren’t too many available women on campaign?’
‘Not enough to go round. In any case, I was busy fighting a war.’
Pauline was silent for a moment, before she continued softly, ‘Was it as bad as they say? I’ve heard some terrible stories in the last few days.’
‘They’re all true.’ Napoleon rolled off her, made himself comfortable on his side and then rested his head on her soft stomach.‘The Army of the Orient is all but finished.We can hold on for a few more months, maybe a year. But disease and the fighting will see to us all in the end. Unless we quit Egypt.’
‘Quit Egypt? How? We have no ships and the Directory will not send us any more.’ Pauline stroked his head. ‘Anyway, is it so bad here? I’ve never been happier, living in a palace, with a famous general as a lover. All that would be lost if I
returned home.’
‘Unless I return to France I will not be a famous general much longer,’ Napoleon replied quietly. ‘I must get back to France. I am needed there.’
‘You’re needed here. I need you. Your men need you. If you left, how long do you think they would last?’
‘France’s need is greater.’
‘Your need, you mean.’
Napoleon shrugged.‘It is the same thing at the end of the day. Or will be.’
‘What do you mean?’
THE GENERALS Page 41