A Call to Arms

by William C. Hammond

  When the table was in order, Eaton said, smiling, “That is most kind of him, Captain. I have certain . . . obligations due our Arab friends. ‘Mercenaries’ is hardly the word to describe these fellows. ‘Bandits’ serves better, ‘extortionists’ perhaps better still. The greater the perceived inconvenience or danger, the higher the wages they demand. I have had no such trouble with my European soldiers, even as their Arab allies were receiving higher payments or promises of payments. From that simple observation you may deduce your own conclusions about Arab versus Western culture. I can assure you, gentlemen, that these Arabs drew their own conclusions about us long ago. It grieves me no end, since I once admired the Arabic culture. I even taught myself several of its dialects and pestered my friend Pickering to appoint me consul to Tunis.” He cut off a slab of mutton and chewed contemplatively before taking a sip of wine. “My Lord, this is delicious.” He dabbed at his lips with a cloth napkin. “I haven’t tasted such fine food in many months. My compliments to your steward, Captain Cutler. And to your son for agreeing to be my liaison officer, knowing full well the gastronomic sacrifice he was making.”

  Richard smiled. “Midshipmen don’t normally eat this sort of fare, General. Unless they pay for it themselves, which few can do on a midshipman’s wage. Except for the wine, which was drawn from my personal stores, this dinner is compliments of the United States Navy.”

  “As is your son,” Eaton observed quite sincerely. “I predict he will go far in the service if that is his chosen profession. James is an exceptional young man. I would be hard-pressed to do without him. You must be very proud of him.”

  “His mother and I are both very proud of him,” Richard said softly.

  Lt. John Dent, the burly, dark-haired captain of the schooner Nautilus, asked into the ensuing silence, “General, apart from what you just said, how do you find our Arab allies? Specifically, how will they respond in battle? Can we rely on them?”

  “You raise excellent questions, Lieutenant,” Eaton replied. “Since I haven’t had occasion to test them in battle, I can only speculate. However, along the march it was my great fortune to come upon a Bedouin tribe. They are local warriors, Tripolitans, and they despise Yusuf Karamanli. Their courage is not in question, and I have several hundred of them in my cavalry. I shall rely upon the ferocity of these Bedouins coupled with the discipline of the Europeans, the grit of our Marines, and the support of our Navy when I get to Derne. If I have those four elements, I could not care less how the Egyptians perform.”

  “As to naval support,” Richard Cutler cautioned, “we may not be able to bring all our guns to bear at all times. I have studied the harbor at Derne, and I have interrogated the masters of captured merchantmen. The waters of the harbor are shallow, a fathom or two at best, for almost a quarter-mile from shore. My thought is to lighten Nautilus and Hornet as best we can and position them in close. Argus and Portsmouth can provide covering fire from farther out. Our guns won’t be as accurate at that distance, but so be it.”

  “Agreed,” Hull said without hesitation.

  “Is that why,” queried Lt. Samuel Evans, the bold-faced captain of Hornet, “the shore battery at Derne has only eight cannon facing seaward?”

  Richard nodded. “Yes. The Tripolitans believe that Derne cannot be effectively attacked by sea.”

  “Then so be it, as you say, Captain Cutler.” All eyes turned to General Eaton, who sat there smiling. “What you are telling us simply means we shall have to attack Derne by land, which has been my intention all along. For us to declare victory we must not just raze the town, we must take control of it.” He held up his glass of wine as if in a silent toast to victory. “By the bye, I have a serious need of fieldpieces. I have Greek cannoneers in my army but no cannon for them to service. Might any of you have several to spare?”

  Richard glanced at Hull, who said, “My understanding, General, is that Constellation is carrying fieldpieces for you. Unfortunately, it’s been a fortnight since Commodore Barron or I have heard from Captain Campbell, so we must assume that he has been delayed. I had assumed you would make such a request, however, and I propose we offload several guns from one of our vessels.” He shifted his gaze to Hornet’s captain. “May I suggest a pair of your brass 6-pounders, Sam? They are the lightest of the guns in our squadron, and as such we’d have the least difficulty getting them ashore and up a cliff, if need be. And offloading two of your guns would lighten your sloop. Of course, it would also reduce your number of guns to eight.”

  “Eight guns will suffice,” Evans said.

  “Well spoken, Lieutenant,” Hull remarked. He glanced at Eaton. “Is this acceptable to you, General?”

  “Most acceptable, Captain Hull,” Eaton replied. “And thank you most cordially, Mr. Evans.” His tone turned animated. “I’ve had some experience with brass 6-pounders, in the Northwest Territory while serving under General Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. You have heard of it? Well then, I can tell you that I should no more wish to be on the business end of one of those cannon than were the Shawnee and other tribes of the Western Confederacy. Those cannon won the day for us. I will be most pleased to deliver the same message here as I did there.”

  “When, exactly, do you intend to do that, General?”

  “On the twenty-seventh, Lieutenant Dent, three days hence,” Eaton replied. “Tomorrow, at the quickstep, we should reach Derne by late afternoon. That gives us the next day to reconnoiter, secure the cannon, and decide on our battle plan. I cannot finalize my plan until I have a chance to assess the town’s defenses. But here is my thinking as of today, based on what Hamet Karamanli and others have told me about Derne . . .”

  BY THREE BELLS in the afternoon watch, massive cumulonimbus clouds were joining forces on the eastern horizon and the barometer was falling. Of greater concern to Josiah Smythe, there was a feel to the air and a look to the sea that augured wind, and a lot of it. Richard Cutler sensed the danger too and ordered Eaton rowed to the beach. He then signaled the other vessels in the squadron that he was making sail to put distance between Portsmouth and a lee shore. Argus, Nautilus, and Hornet acknowledged and followed in her wake once they had their boats aboard and secured to their chocks.

  Ashore, the allied army moved inland to where the terrain was less rocky and more permeable. As they had since the first day of the march, Europeans and Arabs pitched their tents well apart from each other. Dawn the next morning broke warm and cloud-free after heavy rains and winds had pummeled the two campsites overnight. A quick breakfast of rice and beans, and the Marine drummer struck his familiar tattoo. Soldiers formed in ranks, and the army marched at double-time for much of the day. Late that afternoon their efforts were rewarded by the sight of high, undulating hills that Hamet confirmed marked the eastern boundary of the valley at Derne.

  Eaton studied the crests of the hills. As best he could determine, and as scouts riding ahead soon confirmed, there were no enemy spotters stationed there.

  “No doubt,” Eaton commented that evening to Presley O’Bannon as they were about to review the next day’s tactics, “the royal governor believes that Derne can no more be attacked by land than by sea.”

  “And why shouldn’t he?” the Marine lieutenant responded. “What general in his right mind would march an army 450 miles across a harsh, barren desert to attack his town?”

  “No general I know,” Eaton replied with a laugh.

  Early the next morning, Midshipman Cutler, Sergeant Campbell, and the two Greek army officers rode northward to a promontory that Jamie’s father had recommended as the only location along the coast east of Derne where a 1,500-pound fieldpiece might be hauled up a twenty-foot cliff using man and horse power. Also to be hauled up: supplies of gunpowder, musket balls, flannel bags of grapeshot, and twenty round shot.

  Eaton, Hamet Karamanli, and Lieutenant O’Bannon, meanwhile, climbed the highest hill on the eastern boundary. Lying flat on their bellies, they surveyed the town of Derne. What they saw below
them surprised both Eaton and O’Bannon, despite what Hamet had previously told them. The valley—perhaps a mile and a half long and half a mile wide—was surrounded by hills on three sides and seemed even more fertile than the valley of the Eu ed Alli. To their right, against the harbor to the north, lay the town of five thousand citizens. To their left, from the town’s southern limits to the hills in the far distance, stretched green fields of vegetables and fruit orchards. Eaton noted the lack of permanent walls around the town—Hamet had told them there weren’t any because Derne had not been threatened by anyone in anyone’s memory—but on the eastern edge of town, the one immediately below them, they noted a series of long stone buildings, one ending when the next began. The buildings formed a natural barrier and ended on a parallel with the most impressive building of them all, a majestic marble structure of ornate architecture with two minarets and tiers of grand terraces fringed with multicolored flora. On the two highest tiers—one facing northward, the other southward—two large cannon had been turned with tackle and handspikes to aim eastward.

  “The governor’s palace?” Eaton asked Hamet.

  “Yes,” Hamet confirmed. “Those cannon weren’t there when I was governor.”

  “Thirty-four pounders,” Eaton mused after sizing them up. “Ugly buggers, aren’t they? We’d do well to steer clear of their sights.”

  O’Bannon indicated a building perhaps fifty feet in front of the palace by the harbor. “There lies the fort, sir,” he said.

  He was pointing at a fair-sized structure with a single rounded turret on its western side, above which fluttered the green-and-white flag of Tripoli. Jutting out in front of it and into the harbor waters lapping at its base was a platform housing a battery of eight medium-sized howitzers set within stone embrasures.

  “That’s the Navy’s problem,” Eaton said. He focused his attention on what lay directly below them: an open space fifty feet or so wide between the northern end of the long stone buildings and the eastern side of the harbor fortress. That gap was closing fast. Arab soldiers and citizenry were hard at work digging a ravine and erecting earthworks along the ravine’s eastern edge. “We’ll have a time breaching that,” Eaton muttered to himself. “But breach it we must.” He lifted his gaze beyond the ravine to the town of Derne, visible at that angle as a jumble of narrow streets meandering between limestone residences. Most of these were stylish, three-story affairs with grapevine-draped iron stairways leading from the street up to the front door.

  “It’s exactly as you described it, Hamet,” Eaton said, peering through the glass. “I must say, this town has much to commend it. Pity we may have to demolish it.” He shifted his glass to the southwest corner of the town, on the opposite side from where the long stone buildings began. “What is that structure over there? It looks like another fort.”

  “It’s a castle,” Hamet replied. “A very old castle. It’s used mostly for storage. It’s not heavily defended because it’s not safe to walk on the upper floors. If we could take it, we could use the first floor as our base.”

  “I agree,” Eaton said. He searched further. “Those earthworks to the south and west don’t look as formidable as those below us. So the enemy must believe that if an attack comes, it will come from where we are now. That’s where they’re concentrating their forces and artillery.”

  “Consider, General,” O’Bannon observed, a glass at his eye, “why they believe that. If we strike from the south or west, we’d have to charge from those hills”—he indicated the hills fringing the southern and western horizons—“across a mile of open ground. That would give the enemy, what, three or four rounds at us before we could answer with one. We’d suffer heavy losses, losses we cannot afford.”

  Eaton nodded slowly. “I daresay you’re right, Lieutenant. So we attack from here. That will mean charging down a steep slope into the teeth of enemy fire. But I grant you, it’s a far shorter distance to the town than from across those fields.”

  O’Bannon had another thought to contribute. “When we force our way into the town, we’ll have to guard against ambush from every house on every street. Our spies report that many homes have had holes knocked through their walls. That makes every citizen of Derne a potential sniper. That could in fact be the enemy’s fallback strategy: lure us in and then pick us off one by one.”

  Eaton grimaced. “You’re full of good cheer this morning, aren’t you, Lieutenant. But again I must agree with you. So we’ll need to place our chances in the hands of God and in the heat of the moment. If the Navy can neutralize the shore batteries and if we can take the palace, perhaps that will convince the good people of Derne to switch loyalties and declare for Hamet. We may even persuade them to employ those sniper tactics against the governor’s soldiers.”

  As Eaton and O’Bannon continued to contemplate the pros and cons, Hamet Karamanli spoke up. “General,” he said in a decisive tone, “I have a different proposition.”

  “Oh? And what might that be?”

  “I suggest we split our forces. You and your Europeans attack from here. My cavalry will attack from there.” He pointed toward the southern hills. “On horseback, we will reach those defenses before the enemy can fire a second round. If at the same time you can blast your way through those earthworks below us, together we will cause enough confusion and fear to our enemy to give us victory.”

  Before answering Hamet’s proposal, Eaton cast his gaze out to the distant horizon where he could just barely make out the royals of a naval squadron standing off and on the pirate coast, its presence invisible to anyone in the town below him. After too many moments of dead silence, Hamet asked sourly, “What is it, General? You do not trust me?”

  Eaton looked squarely at him. “I trust you, Hamet,” he replied. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. But I have a harder time trusting the officers who lead your cavalry. Sheik Mahomet has certain qualities I admire. Sheik el Tahib, however, has none. On this march he has treated me more as an enemy than an ally.”

  Hamet blinked. “You speak the truth, General,” he said. “At least what your heart tells you is the truth. I realize that the ways of my people and my religion seem odd to you, perhaps even heretical. But understand: your Christian ways seem the same to us Muslims. Let us put all that aside, shall we? Let us not dwell on our differences. Let us dwell instead on what has kept us together across hundreds of miles of desert. As you say, we are here now. We have achieved what many believed impossible. Derne is our destiny, General, yours and mine. My soldiers understand this, and they are not cowards. They will fight—for me, for glory, for money—it does not matter what, they will fight. They will follow me—because I will be leading them into battle, not Sheik el Tahib. If Allah wills it, I will be first to die for my cause. At stake, for me, is not just my throne. I fight for that, of course, but I fight also for my people. And I fight for my family. Do not forget that my brother still holds my wife and children hostage in Tripoli.”

  As Hamet spoke, Eaton stole a glance at O’Bannon, who was staring wide-eyed at Hamet.

  “You speak like a prince, Hamet,” Eaton declared with admiration. “I am as impressed by your words as I am with your proposed battle plan.” He did not mention that Hamet’s plan was identical to the one he had discussed three days earlier on Portsmouth’s quarterdeck. “Before we proceed, however, I suggest we offer our enemy the opportunity to surrender. We shall send an offer to the governor and see how he responds.”

  Within the hour an unarmed Bedouin tribesman rode through the enemy defenses toward the governor’s palace under a white flag. The message he carried was written by the hand of Gen. William Eaton and bore his signature and that of Hamet Karamanli. The message informed the royal governor that an allied army was assembled outside the town and was prepared to attack. Eaton urged the governor to surrender Derne to Hamet and accept him as the rightful bashaw of Tripoli.

  Twenty minutes later, the Bedouin reached down from his horse and handed Eaton a sealed envelope. Ea
ton broke the seal and read:

  Your bead or mine.

  —Mustafa Bey, Governor

  Eaton tore the letter in two. “Gentlemen,” he informed his officers, “we attack at dawn tomorrow.”

  • • •

  AT 7:15 the next morning Eaton ordered a stack of red cedar logs set ablaze atop the highest peak on the bluffs east of Derne. It was the signal to the American squadron to launch their bombardment.

  “Signal ashore, Richard,” Agreen Crabtree told Richard as Portsmouth’s captain stepped up onto the quarterdeck from his cabin. As the ship’s bell at the break of the forecastle chimed seven times and a quartermaster’s mate called out the hour, Agreen handed Richard a glass and pointed at a distant puff of black smoke.

  “I see it, Agee.” Richard lowered the glass and glanced at the other vessels in the squadron. Hornet and Nautilus had seen the signal and were crowding on canvas. Argus, too, was adding sail.

  Richard studied the shore battery. “Have the men eaten breakfast?” he inquired. He noted that the conspicuous toil going on to the left of the fortress for the past two days had ceased, and that soldiers there were armed and taking position within the ravine they had fashioned abaft the earthworks.

  “They have.”

  “The guns are run out?”

  “Both sides, as ordered.”

  “Very well. Inform Mr. Smythe that I want her brought in, but no closer than a half-mile off the beach. That will bring our guns well within range.”

  “A half mile, aye, Captain.” Agreen strode the short distance to the helm to inform the ship’s master, and then passed word for Peter Weeks, the boatswain.

  As the squeal of boatswains’ pipes drove sailors to their stations, Richard called out for the senior midshipman standing nearby at the ready.

  Timothy Osborne snapped a smart salute. “Aye, Captain.”

  “Please pass word for Lieutenant Corbett.”