by Alan Schom
At dawn on March 7 General Berthier sent an officer to Abd Allah Aga, the commanding officer of Jaffa: “God is good and merciful,” his message began in the traditional Islamic manner, explaining that Bonaparte, who now surrounded the port city, “was touched by the woes that would befall [Jaffa] if it had to be taken by assault” and offered “the safety of its garrison and protection to the city” should it surrender under his terms now. The defiant Turkish commander, however, instead seized and beheaded the unfortunate French truce officer, his only return message his bleeding head delivered on a pike. The French opened fire immediately and as Napoleon later reported to the Directory, by five o’clock that same afternoon: “We were masters of the city, which for the next twenty-four hours was pillaged by us and subject to all the horrors of war in their most hideous forms.”[266]
On surrendering, the entire garrison of four thousand men was disarmed and marched out before two of Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp, Eugène de Beauharnais and Captain Croisier, who promised them that their lives would be spared and then had them bound and paraded before Napoleon’s tent. Coming out and looking at the mass of men filling the field before him, he turned to Bourrienne and said: “What the devil have they [Beauharnais and Croisier] involved me in now? What am I supposed to do with them?” Complaining that there was neither enough food nor water nor even the troops with which to escort them all the way back to Egypt as POWs, Napoleon called a war council to consider the possibilities, which ended in stalemate. This state continuing, an angry Bonaparte appeared on March 10 announcing his decision through Berthier: “The order was given and executed to shoot them.”[267] Half the men were taken away to the beach, lined up and shot or bayoneted (to save ammunition). “As they stepped forward they found death and perished in the surf...I shall limit myself to these few details of this horrible necessity of which I was an eyewitness...That atrocious scene still makes me shiver whenever I think about it...the day of that blood-bath,” Bourrienne recalled years afterward.[268] The final death toll was thought to be about two thousand Arab troops. But simultaneously the French were struck down by another affliction over which they had no control; bubonic plague began rapidly to thin French ranks.
Leaving Jaffa, they marched on Haifa, Kléber easily taking it on March 16. But Haifa was just one of two fortified emplacements controlling the small bay separating it from Acre.
Once again as a result of faulty army intelligence, on reaching the walls of Acre the next day, the French found themselves before another immense fortress with massive stone battlements many feet thick and nearly two miles in circumference, well defended by some 250 cannon strategically situated on the harbor against attack either by land or sea. Although the garrison numbered only five thousand men, as the French were without a navy or heavy siege guns, these men could concentrate on fewer than fifteen hundred feet of ramparts facing the land on either side of the ancient citadel Djezzar used as his headquarters and residence. This small area in turn was buttressed by four formidable stone towers. Djezzar, a former Bosnian slave, may have been in his seventies but for all that he was a tough old character, fearful of no one. What is more, Sir Sidney Smith’s small squadron had arrived in the nick of time two days earlier, adding mobile guns to cover the shoreline and seize the flotilla bringing up half of Napoleon’s siege guns and supplies from Alexandria as they arrived off the port of Haifa. In fact, Smith provided hundreds of trained British gunners and dozens of cannon.[269] In addition, an émigré, Louis de Phélippeaux (Napoleon’s old classmate from the Ecole Militaire and now an official member of Smith’s squadron), also helped advise the Turks on their artillery against the French. Although the rest of the French siege guns were being brought up by Admiral Perrée from Damietta, they would take another month and a half to do so, too little and too late. To make matters worse, Smith escorted transport vessels bearing the Ottoman Army of Rhodes, destined to bolster Djezzar’s garrison by many thousands. Had Napoleon arrived just ten days earlier, as originally planned (instead of being held up at al-Arish), before Smith appeared, the odds of his seizing Acre might perhaps have been greater. But now of course the situation looked bleak. Nevertheless, bringing up his four divisions, he began the one military operation he had always dreaded, the traditional medieval siege of enemy ramparts by trench, mine, and tunnel.
Meanwhile, fearful of being caught outside the walls of Acre in a pincer formed by another Turkish army approaching from Damascus, on March 30 Napoleon sent his trusted aide-de-camp Junot with five hundred men to reconnoiter the interior. Near Nazareth on April 10 they found themselves hopelessly outnumbered and outmaneuvered by an enemy force of thousands. Fortunately Kléber arrived in the nick of time with a contingent of fifteen hunuied, and with these two thousand men briefly succeeded in routing some six thousand Arabs near Cana on the eleventh. On April 15 a cavalry column led by Murat drove inland north of the Sea of Galilee, taking a critical crossing of the Jordan River, to cut off any further flow of troop reinforcements from Damascus. But once again French intelligence and timing proved faulty. A substantial army out of Damascus, comprising twenty-five thousand cavalry and ten thousand infantry, now came unexpectedly face to face with Kléber’s force near the foot of snow-covered Mt. Tabor. Outnumbered, outmaneuvered, with munitions running low and his retreat cut off, even Kléber, it seemed, could not get out of this situation. Then suddenly Napoleon himself appeared over the rock-strewn hills at the head of Bon’s infantry division. Kléber’s astonishment was exceeded only by that of the Turkish force, still outnumbering them nearly 9 to 1. Caught completely unawares by Napoleon’s opening cannonfire, the overwhelmingly superior but ill-disciplined Arab cavalry panicked, scattering before the French, and were last seen dashing for the road to Damascus. Napoleon’s phenomenal luck had once again intervened to give him the surprise victory on April 16, 1799, known as the Battle of Mt. Tabor, permitting the French to extricate themselves and rejoin the rest of the troops before the siege of Acre. In a single blow Napoleon had saved thousand of French troops, and diverted the lethal pincer movement that would have entrapped him at Acre.
The brief triumph at Mt. Tabor was to be the last good military news to come Napoleon’s way, for back at Acre the stalemate continued, and then the situation declined. Moreover, General Caffarelli, who had had an arm shattered by a cannonball and then amputated under primitive conditions, died on April 18, deeply upsetting Bonaparte, who had lost not only an irreplaceable chief of engineers but also one of the very few soldiers in the entire army he genuinely liked, admired, and counted on. Worse, Monge, who had come down with dysentery shortly after his arrival at Acre, was fighting for his life. He had nearly expired twice and was not expected to live, and on his return Napoleon spent hours at his bedside as Monge lay in a coma, occasionally covering his friend with an extra blanket. Thanks to a rugged constitution, however, the indomitable geometrician passed through the crisis by the end of April.[270]
Beyond that welcome news there was little to cheer up the French commander in chief. To be sure the second, smaller shipment of siege cannon that had reached Jaffa on April 15 was finally dragged overland, reaching Acre at the end of the month, permitting Bonaparte to launch his much-vaunted “major assault” on Djezzar’s fortress. Between May 1 and 10 five such assaults were made, and although one of the towers was partially destroyed, and a temporary breach made, it was to no avail, as the daily toll of plague and battle casualties rose. To make matters worse during these final assaults, General Lannes was again severely wounded and put out of action, and on May 10 General Bon was killed, as was Napoleon’s aide-de-camp Croisier.
With three senior generals — Caffarelli, Bon, and Lannes — dead or in the hospital all within the span of a few weeks, Desgenettes handing him a roster of 2,300 sick and wounded, ammunition and food supplies running low, and the Acre defenses stronger than before he arrived, thanks to reinforcements from Rhodes and Sir Sidney Smith’s naval guns, on May 17 Bonaparte announced his decision to li
ft this siege and to return to Cairo. He had had enough. But as usual he had to save face, which in this case he did with such a bald-faced lie as to make even his weary troops laugh. Issuing his Proclamation of Mt. Tabor, he proclaimed his great victory over the Turks, declaring: “After having maintained our army in the heat of Syria for these past three months with only a handful of men, after capturing 40 guns and 6,000 prisoners, after having razed to the ground the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa, and Acre, we will now return to Egypt.” Bourrienne, to whom Napoleon dictated this absurd fabrication (before the still-standing walls of Acre), described all this as “wounding the truth.” The reason for now abandoning the siege of Acre and the entire Syrian campaign, Napoleon announced, was the necessity of fending off a large-scale Turkish landing expected at Alexandria.[271]
Spiking his enormous siege guns after less than three weeks’ use, and leaving General Reynier’s haggard division to form the rear guard of his column, Napoleon set out from Acre on May 20, with the convalescing Monge at his side in his berlin, as Kléber’s much battered division led the way back. The road from Mt. Carmel to Jaffa over the next four days was depressing for the flagging stream of French troops. “A devouring thirst rising from the complete lack of water and excessive heat, an exhausting march through burning sand dunes, combined to demoralize the men,” Bourrienne attested. “I saw officers with amputated limbs thrown from the stretchers by their bearers...I saw amputees, the wounded, those suffering from plague, left by the roadside...while our march was lit up by the villages, hamlets, and towns, and their fields of rich crops, all torched by our angry men. The entire countryside was on fire.” The officers in charge
everywhere themselves spread desolation in their wake, wanting to avenge their military reverses and relieve their sufferings through some form or action. We were entirely surrounded by the dying, pillagers, and arsonists...The brilliant sun in a beautiful sky was hidden by the pall of smoke from our constant conflagrations. We had the sea to our right, and to our left and behind us, the desert we ourselves were laying waste as we advanced.[272]
Reaching Jaffa on May 24, Bonaparte found no boats waiting to evacuate the wounded. In fact Rear Admiral Perrée had abandoned the army and returned to Egypt after delivering the cannon. Knowing he could not carry them himself, but not wishing to leave them to be mutilated by the Turks and Arabs, Napoleon ordered Desgenettes to poison his hospital patients instead. The appalled head of the medical corps adamantly refused and flew into a rage. Nevertheless, Napoleon did make some well-publicized visits to the hospital containing amputees, wounded, plague victims, and ophthalmic cases. Then, instructing that the worst cases be left behind, he ordered the mining of the city’s walls, blowing up the battlements as they departed.
By May 30, having already begun to jettison its stretcher cases, Napoleon’s straggling army reached Gaza, followed by four more grueling days trekking through the Sinai, reaching the newly fortified French garrison at Kadia on June 3. On June 14, 9,760 tattered troops (out of the nearly 13,000 men who had set out with them) reached the gates of Cairo.[273]
Bonaparte’s return to Cairo was preceded by his latest Army Bulletin. He was returning with “many prisoners and flags. I razed Djezzar’s Palace to the ground, along with the ramparts of Acre. There is not a stone left standing, and all the city’s inhabitants have left by sea. Djezzar is seriously wounded.” Lies, every one of his claims, from beginning to end. “I must confess I had found it painful recording these official words at his dictation,” Bourrienne acknowledged, but when he protested, Napoleon replied with a smile: “Mon cher, you arc a simpleton. You really don’t understand a thing.”[274] Bourrienne had to agree; he did not understand this man.
Even before reaching Cairo with his defeated remnants, and the bad news he received there of various revolts in the country during his absence, Napoleon had made up his mind to execute his long-prepared plans to abandon the army and return to France. The excuse he would use was that France was again at war with Austria and Russia — that French armies were faltering and needed his presence to recoup their recent losses. To be sure, the newspapers he had been shown at Acre, courtesy of the ever gallant Sir Sidney Smith, and others later in Egypt that month, had confirmed the deteriorating military position of the French Republic as well as the political situation in Paris. But all that was mere pretext. He had played all his cards here and failed completely. He had lost approximately three thousand men in the Syrian campaign, in addition to the seven thousand or so lost earlier in Egypt. Three of his aides-de-camp had been killed, several generals as well, and numerous others badly wounded more than once. Much of his officer corps had openly protested his command and their very presence in Egypt. Even his own brother Louis had abandoned him. The chief quartermaster of the entire army had been proved a colossal crook and dishonorably dismissed. Despite all the loot taken, there was not enough left in the treasury to pay even what remained of the dwindling army, reduced thus far by nearly one-third since its arrival. The country had revolted against his rule, Cairo leading the way in its destructive torment, and the plague was still taking its daily toll on Egyptians and French alike. And of course his navy had been sunk or captured. His splendid, ill-conceived expedition was a total failure.
Thus Napoleon Bonaparte returned to his palace in Esbekia Square on June 14 a greatly disillusioned man. If he had hoped for some unexpected good news now in Cairo, he found none, not even a glimmer. What is more, the Ottoman squadron escorted by the Royal Navy’s cruisers under Commodore Sir Sidney Smith were now at sea, reportedly heading for Alexandria. He would have to rally his army and sea defenses once more, and then he would sail for France. He had notified Ordonnateur LeRoy well before the old year was out to arm and victual several frigates for a secret destination, and on June 21 reiterated that same order to Rear Admiral Ganteaume. He would leave behind in Egypt an utter shambles, a much reduced army, weakened and in disarray and low morale, with opposition growing daily, even in the usually mute medical corps, chiefly as a result of a final row during the first reconvening of the Egyptian Institute in June.
It all began when Napoleon requested the formation of a committee to report on the effects of the plague during the Syrian campaign, making it perfectly clear that these statistics would be used to explain away his extraordinarily heavy casualties there. General headquarters would be absolved of its own sin and the medical corps held responsible for the high mortality rate. This was simply too much of a lie for Dr. Desgenettes. He leaped to his feet and accused Napoleon personally of having ordered him to poison hundreds of their own wounded and plague victims, in order not to have to bring them back to Egypt, and of making the medical corps responsible for his own military mistakes and for the blunders of his “oriental despotism...I know, gentlemen, I know full well, General, that you want to lord it over everyone. I also know that I have been quite carried away and have said things that will have repercussions far from here. But I shall not retract a single word!” He then and there tendered his resignation from the army and requested permission to return to France. An equally livid Bonaparte categorically refused, though Desgenettes was the last person he wanted to meet in Egypt thereafter.[275]
One of his first tasks on returning to the capital was the most difficult, notifying Paris of the current situation. Napoleon announced that “the campaign in Syria had one great result: we are now the masters of the entire desert, and in consequence we have disconcerted all the projects of our enemies for invading us this year...Our situation here is most reassuring.”[276] The fact is, his last outpost at al-Arish was barely holding on, while most of Egypt, including the entire southern two-thirds of the country, was not yet under firm French control, Desaix’s victories there proving fleeting, for want of supplies and sufficient troops to to garrison pacified areas. Although admitting that the plague had struck hard at Alexandria and Jaffa, Napoleon informed the Directory that it had bypassed Cairo and the rest of Egypt. (The hospitals of Cairo h
ad been crowded with thousands of plague victims for months.) He did admit that the army had lost 5,344 men, and therefore he requested a minimum of 6,000 reinforcements quickly. He added that if he were given 15,000 more, “we [could] go anywhere, even to Constantinople.” And while asking for an additional one hundred surgeons and physicians, and admitting that in fact “by next season we will be reduced to 15,000 men,” which after deducting the hospitalized, laborers, and so on, “will leave us with 12,000,” including every branch of service. If he rounded off casualties to 6,000, this added to 15,000 would have accounted for a total of 21,000, which did not explain what had happened to the remaining 12,000 required to bring the figure back to the original 33,000 or so with whom he had landed on July 1, 1798. Clearly he thought the Directors did not know how to add and subtract. Nonetheless, with his remaining 12,000 men, he conceded, “we will not be in a position to meet a combined land and sea attack.” That being the case, “if it is impossible to send us the help I have requested, then it will be necessary for us to make peace here.”
Less than a fortnight after proclaiming that Egypt was perfectly safe from foreign invasion “this year,” he received a special courier from General Marmont, now acting commander of Alexandria, with a most urgent top-secret dispatch. On that very day, July 11, 1799, the Turkish Army of Rhodes, aboard some sixty troop transports, escorted by British and Russian warships, had anchored in Abukir Bay. What is more, Gen. Mustapha Pasha was landing some fifteen thousand troops, who were quickly overrunning the new French batteries there, and Fort Abukir had fallen while Alexandria was under heavy bombardment. With the added news that Ibrahim Bey’s troops were now re-forming in Gaza, and that Murad Bey was threatening Cairo itself from the south as well, Bonaparte had to act quickly and redeploy his remaining twelve to thirteen thousand men.