They then talked of the European situation, as far as they knew it. Roger could give only such information as he would have picked up as a prisoner when captured off Malta by Sir Sidney Smith in March. He gave a sketchy account of the Neapolitan war, adding that he understood that the French had finally subdued
Naples early in February and that England, Russia and Turkey had formed another Coalition against France.
Bourrienne's information, from neutrals and blockade-runners, was little better, but he could add that Austria had joined the Coalition and had declared war on France on March 12th. Rumour had it that the French were now having great difficulty in keeping control of the population in the recently created Republican States in Italy. No despatch from the Directors had reached Bonaparte since March. In this last despatch, they had given him the choice of striking at either Constantinople or India; but, as it had left Paris as far back as November, such news as it contained was already stale.
This exchange of views over, Roger went out into the brilliant May sunshine. The assaults on Acre were being continued with unflagging vigour and the General-in-Chief had gone up to the front to supervise them personally; so Roger was free to visit Zanthe. He found her outside her tent. A small table had been procured for her and she was sitting at it playing against herself the oldest paper game in the world, a form of noughts and crosses.
Not far from her two Mamelukes stood, leaning on their weapons. When Roger asked what they were doing, she replied, 'General Bonaparte has detached six of them from his regiment of Mamelukes to act as a guard of honour for me. I am greatly touched by this attention; but, alas, it is going to make it still more difficult for you to come to me at night without your visits becoming common knowledge.'
'I fear it is,' he agreed. 'We must do our best to remain patient.' As he had received no orders, he enjoyed a picnic lunch with her and remained talking to her for most of the day. Then, as the shadows lengthened, he went to the big marquee.
It was May 10th. For thirty-six hours the all-out assault had now been raging. The troops who had penetrated to the streets of Acre the previous afternoon had been halted and cut off. Two hundred of them had taken refuge in a mosque and held it all through the night. Sir Sidney Smith, who had come ashore to take personal charge of the city's defence, had generously saved this little party from massacre by forcing the Turks to allow it to withdraw; but that had put an end to the French penetration of the city. The Turkish troops who had been brought by sea were now taking up positions to defend the breaches made in the walls, and the French had suffered so severely that Bonaparte had decided to put a stop to the assaults.
In the French camp there were now twelve hundred wounded, but the British Squadron, which had become an integral part of the city defences, dared not leave its moorings; so the coastal waters from a few miles south of Acre were no longer under its control, and many of the French wounded were carried down in litters to the little port of Haifa, from which they were being sent by ship to Egypt. The indomitable Lannes still miraculously clung to life. He had already been severely wounded in the assault on Jaffa and on the previous day, when twice wounded, his Grenadiers had had to drag him out of the battle by his feet. The doctors said of him that his bones must be made of rubber, as it seemed that when hit by musket balls they bent but rarely broke. Bonaparte ordered a special litter to be made for him which sixteen Turkish prisoners were to carry in teams of eight.
Between the 11th and 18th of May the siege continued, but with less intensity; so Roger was not called on to run much risk in delivering orders from the General-in-Chief to officers commanding units down in the plain. Zanthe slept through the hottest hours of the day and spent the rest of the time sitting outside her tent. Some French books had been found for her to read and in the evenings a little Court, composed of Roger and friends whom he had introduced to her, surrounded her. All of them, having been deprived for so long of female society, found delight in her company.
It was on the evening of the 18th that Bonaparte sent for Roger and said, ' Breuc, have a comfortable litter made for Her Highness, and take as many prisoners to carry it as you wish. Tomorrow she is to set off to Egypt and, as I shall not require you on our march, you have my leave to accompany her.'
' On our march! . . Roger exclaimed.' Can you mean . . . ? '
The Corsican nodded. ' Yes. You will speak of this to no one. So far, I have told only Bourrienne and a few members of my personal Staff who will have to make the necessary preparations. If it got about that I mean to retreat, the whole garrison of Acre might sally forth and overwhelm our rearguard. But on the night of the 20th I intend to break off the siege.'
' It was a terrible decision to have to take,' Roger murmured.
'1 had no alternative. Scattered about Egypt we now have only some ten thousand troops, and a despatch from Menou informs me that trouble is brewing there. In high summer, too, conditions will be favourable for an invasion and I cannot doubt that the Turks will despatch a great Army by sea for an attempt to re-conquer the country. If I do not return there all my labours to make it a prosperous French colony will have been in vain and, with the loss of the ports, we would lose our one hope of receiving reinforcements.'
' You think then that there is still a chance that the Directory may send them? '
' One can but hope. The Brest Fleet under Admiral Bruix is still intact. With that of the Spaniards it could form a formidable armament and stand a good chance of bringing troops round to us through the Mediterranean. For months now I have been sending despatch after despatch, urging this course upon the Directors. It may be that they are so eaten up with jealousy of me that, rather than aid me to further triumphs, they would sooner see a French Army founder here. But it may be that I am unjust and that all my despatches have been captured by the accursed English.'
' They have proved a most ugly thorn in our side here,' Roger commented.
' You are right there. Had it not been for them, I should have been in Acre weeks ago and by now halfway to Constantinople. Do you know that the Sheiks have already offered me the keys of Damascus? Could we but advance the whole of Syria and the Lebanon would rise to aid us. But it is not to be. One man has robbed me of my greatest ambition. Nelson did no more than cut us off in Egypt, and there I proved that we could be self-supporting. But this Sir Smith has dealt me a vital blow. To my mind, he far surpasses any other English Commander. He has shown not only the greatest tenacity but the highest intelligence in handling his very limited forces, and in addition he has throughout maintained a most chivalrous attitude towards our wounded and our prisoners. Whatever his future may be he must now go down in history as the man who changed the fate of the whole Eastern world.'
As Roger left the tent with Bonaparte's generous tribute ringing in his ears he could not help recalling the contempt with which the British in Palermo had spoken of Sir Sidney Smith, dubbing him 'The Swedish Knight' and 'The Great Plenip'. He wondered if Nelson was still there, bewitched by Emma and dancing attendance on the despicable King and Queen of the Two Sicilies. But of one thing there could be no question. Sir Sidney had inflicted on Bonaparte his first defeat. Time was to show that on land no other British Commander, with the exception of Wellington, would ever defeat him.
On the following day Roger and Zanthe set off southward. He rode beside her litter, they were escorted by her Mameluke guard who kept in order the prisoners who acted as bearers and the rear was brought up by two camels carrying Zanthe's Arab woman servant and the baggage. That afternoon they crossed the river Kishon and in the evening made camp on the far slope of Mount Carmel. No longer fearing that his actions would be reported to Bonaparte to the detriment of Zanthe's reputation, Roger and his beautiful mistress spent a night of delight together.
During the next three days they followed the coast along the edge of the plain of Sharon, reaching Jaffa on the evening of the 22nd. Roger would have liked to press on, but the bearers were by then in very poor shape. As prisoner
s, their rations for the past ten days had been barely sufficient to keep life in their bodies. Most of them were suffering from dysentery and three, from complete exhaustion, had already had to be left at the wayside with a flask of water to fend for themselves. Soon after leaving Jaffa they would be entering the hundred miles of almost uninhabited coast with its long stretches of desert, where the going would be hard and water scarce; so before proceeding on this worst part of the journey Roger decided to give his people two days' rest.
While on the march there had always been other little caravans, mostly carrying wounded, within sight and, on the first day they spent in a little camp they made among some palm trees outside the town, the number of these increased considerably. On the second day the advance guard of the retreating Army arrived, and with it Bonaparte.
Food of all kinds had already reached famine prices; but Roger went into the town hoping still to be able to buy with gold some boxes of figs, dates or other preserved foods that would not be affected by the heat. In the muski he ran into Eugene de Beau-harnais, bent on the same errand. That normally cheerful young man was looking exceptionally glum, and Roger soon learned the reason.
There had been only a few sailing boats in which to send off sick and wounded from Haifa, but here there were many more and, with his indefatigable energy, Bonaparte was arranging for his hundreds of casualties to be shipped to Egypt. But it was not that which so perturbed Eugene. His step-father had visited the hospitals, urging everyone there who was capable of standing to get up and go aboard one of the ships in the harbour, rather than remain to be captured by the Turks. He had then gone into the plague ward and had spoken to the poor wretches there. It was a noble gesture but Eugene condemned its rashness, declaring that should his beloved step-father fall a victim to the plague the retreating Army would founder and be lost without his leadership.
Roger agreed with him. Then, during the few minutes that they continued to talk, Eugene urged Roger to set off from Jaffa with as little delay as possible. He said that, as soon as the retreat began, the Nablousian tribesmen had come down from the mountains in hordes, to harass the columns and cut off stragglers. The General-in-Chief had decreed a policy of scorching the earth. Every village and all crops were being burnt, and the wells stopped up, so that the Army would leave a great area of desolation behind it. But it was feared that it would not entirely stop these fierce irregulars and the pursuing Turkish cavalry.
Eugene's warning determined Roger to make a start that evening, but when he got back to his small camp he was met by terrible news. One of the Turkish prisoners had been vomoting and the others declared there could be no doubt that he had caught the plague. He had been carried some distance apart and a friend of his had volunteered to stay behind and do what could be done for him.
But that was not the end of the matter. Zanthe, having been brought up in Constantinople, which was rarely free from cases of plague, knew a certain amount about the disease. She assured Roger that the pestilence was not catching through the breath nor, if care were exercised, through touch, but was conveyed by fleas that lived on animals.
Roger was aware that the Arabs had inherited the knowledge of the ancient civilizations and that, in many respects, their medicine was still in advance of European doctoring. He accepted without question what Zanthe said and, when she insisted that one of their camels must be the carrier and that both of them should be killed, he felt that not to follow her advice would be flying in the face of Providence.
He had the camels taken away and slaughtered; but only with great reluctance, for he was now faced with the problem of how they were to proceed. Zanthe's woman could walk with the men; but they would need the tent to shelter them from the blazing sun during the middle of the day, and the spare litter-bearers, after their spells of carrying Zanthe, would collapse if they then had to take up burdens of food and water which, to start with must be sufficient for several days' journey.
He still had enough money on him to buy a score of camels at their normal price, but in the present circumstances he doubted if it would buy a couple. He proved right. Going into the town again, he spent the whole evening endeavouring to buy animals; but he could find no sellers until at last he came upon a peasant whom he persuaded to part with his donkey for five gold pieces.
It was by then too late to start that night; so they set off very early next morning. Even so, they now found themselves in the midst of the Army. Only a few of the regiments had been halted in Jaffa, to assist the engineers in destroying its defences. The main body had been ordered to reach Egypt with as little delay as possible, and was taking advantage of the cool of the night for the greater part of the marches.
The condition of both officers and men was pitiful. Their uniforms were faded, torn and blood-stained, and every third man had a bandage round his head or face or his arm in a sling. The horses of those who were mounted were skin and bone, as were also those which drew guns or light vehicles. The bands no longer had the strength to play. The only words uttered were curses and in quarrels over water. There were still many seriously wounded among them, either being carried in hammocks and reclining on the water and ration carts. Attempt was no longer made to march in formation. They trudged blindly on in ragged little groups, in couples and singles. All discipline had ceased to exist.
It was now less than a month until the longest day in the year. The sun rose each morning soon after five o'clock. By nine it was blazing down from a brassy sky; by midday the barren land became as hot as the inside of a furnace. During the hours of intolerable heat the troops threw themselves down on the burning sands and lay as though dead until well into the afternoon. They suffered most terribly from sunburn and frequently some poor wretch would go off his head with sunstroke.
On the fourth day out from Acre an order was passed down from the General-in-Chief that the wounded must be everybody's first consideration. All mounted men, officers included and of whatever rank, were to give up their horses to the sick or injured. For two days past Roger had not been feeling very well, so he was most loath to give up his mount; but since he had to do so he felt that Zanthe was his first consideration. They had lost three more bearers, which had reduced their number to nine, and it was a pitiful sight to see six of them at a time staggering along with the litter. Should many more of them collapse the litter would have to be abandoned, and he then intended to mount Zanthe on his horse. Although she was not wounded he knew that no Frenchman would cavil at her riding it. So to keep the animal with them he made her mount it there and then, which also relieved the wretched bearers and gave them a better chance of surviving as they then had only to carry the baggage in the litter.
Zanth£'s hard Mameluke guard were bearing up well and, although Roger had to walk himself, he felt decidedly better. Next day, however, he developed a splitting headache. By midday he knew that he was running a high temperature and he assumed that his wretched state could be put down to a touch of sunstroke; but he was puzzled by a stiffness that seemed to be affecting his limbs and the strong light began to hurt his eyes.
When these disorders came quite suddenly upon him he was lying beside Zanthe in the shade of the tent. Seeing his distress she anxiously questioned him, then, undoing his tunic, slid her hands up to his armpits. Under the left one her fingers felt a lump. Her great tawny eyes distended with terror, but she did not cry out. With a sob in her voice, she said:
' My love! My love! It is useless to conceal it from you. Four to six days is the usual period for the horror to reveal itself after one has been infected. Oh, that accursed camel! A flea from it has given you the plague.'
21
Plague and the Great Temptation
Had it not been for Zanthe there is little doubt that at the age of thirty-one Roger would have died in Palestine. During that terrible retreat the French Army went to pieces. The men fought among themselves for water. In many cases wounded officers who were being carried in litters were abandoned at night by the bearers
, who stole the supply of water that had been allotted to the officers, and their valuables. Anyone showing symptoms of the plague was driven away by his comrades and left to die alone or be butchered by the Arabs. As the French retreated, setting fire to every village, farm and field of crops that they left behind them, the numbers of desperate, homeless Arabs seeking vengeance constantly increased. Like the carrion crows that hung in clouds on the rear and flanks of the Army, bands of these Arabs pressed on it night and day, forcing it to keep to the shore and falling upon any small parties rash enough to seek shelter or water by leaving the main, straggling line of march.
The course of Roger's affliction was no exception to the rule. First the rather seedy feeling for a day or so, recovery to normal spirits for about forty-eight hours then, almost without warning, the onset of stiffness, blinding headaches, nausea and rise in temperature. He was overcome so swiftly that he would not have been capable even of sending the Mamelukes among the retreating Army to try to find a doctor or a senior officer who would at least have ensured that he would not be abandoned by the roadside, and but for Zanthe that would have been his fate.
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Neither could a European woman have saved him, however great her courage and devotion, for the Mamelukes and Turks would certainly have made off with the water and left her to die with him. As it was, when she told them that the Effendi was smitten with the pestilence they accepted the situation with the fatalism of Orientals and, through a mixture of devotion and fear, continued to accept her orders. The devotion of the Mamelukes was partly inspired by. Bonaparte's having entrusted her safety to them; since, as a great leader of fighting men, he had inspired an almost religious respect in them, and partly because she was a beautiful woman. The element of fear, which equally affected the Turkish prisoners, was due to the fact that, as the daughter of a Sultan, she had in her veins the Blood of the Prophet; so to abandon her would have meant certain hell-fire in the Hereafter.
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