“Le sort de l’Orient est dans cette bicoque; la chute de cette ville est le but de mon expedition.”—Napoleon to Murat
“ . . . the town is not, nor ever has been, defensible, according to the rules of art; but according to every other rule, it must and shall be defended. . . . ”—Smith to Lord St. Vincent
The distinction of being the first to defeat Napoleon Bonaparte, the conqueror of Europe, belongs to an officer of the Royal Navy, Sir William Sidney Smith, a captain at the time.
Defeat is here employed in its broadest sense—the loss of a campaign. True it is that the Austrian General Alvintzy routed the Corsican, November 12, 1796, at Caldiero, some 10 miles midway between Arcola and Verona, inflicting losses of nearly 3,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, but this battle did not make impossible the glory of Arcola nor save Mantua, the object of France’s Italian campaign. At best, Caldiero is a reverse, a check. Napoleon lost a battle, but won his campaign.
But three years later, at the ancient Palestinian town of St. Jean d’Acre, Napoleon not only failed to make a long siege prevail, but, because it could not prevail, was forced to abandon his offensive against Turkey and ultimately his dream of an Eastern Empire. At St. Helena, he said: “With St. Jean d’Acre captured, I could have reached Constantinople and India; I would have changed the face of the world.”1
The world was spared this renovation because Sir William held St. Jean with two ships of the line.
1 The Corsican, edited by Johnson, p. 473.
While Napoleon with 35,000 men, veterans of the glorious years in Italy, was consolidating his conquest of Egypt by what is known as the Battle of the Pyramids (July 21, 1798), Nelson was crushing all but two of the unfortunate Admiral Brueys’ 13 ships in Aboukir Bay (August 1, 1798). Napoleon and his scientists were free to form the Institute of Egypt, to effect the renaissance of science and learning in the land which had given so many of those gifts to the Western world, but they were cut off from France. The Mediterranean was again a British lake, and the lusty Republic did not have a fleet capable of disputing the ownership.
Thus isolated from his home base, Napoleon was forced to look for a land route. There was only one, through Turkey, Asia Minor, and thus to take “Europe in the rear.”2 He considered a diversion towards India, where the English were experiencing internal difficulties, as well as Constantinople, but he did not understand the hardships of desert travel, his troops being poorly equipped for the climate. We cannot say for certain what would have been the climax if the invasion had reached Turkish borders but, considering the useless wastage of lives exclusive of combats, it is most likely that the French force would have been in sad condition for conquest.3
2 Yorck von Wartenburg, Napoleon as a General, I, 141.
3 See Mahan, The French Revolution and Empire, pp.218-19.
There was another factor, however, which inclined Bonaparte to this venture. For many years the Sultan of Turkey, Selim III (1789-1807) had watched his suzerainty over Egypt shadow of a feudal claim rulership devolved upon two beys supported by a strong military caste known as the Mamelukes. When, in 1798, the French broke the armed power of the beys, Selim perceived an opportunity to rebuild Ottoman prestige and sovereignty by destroying the victors in turn. Accordingly, he declared war on France, and sent an army by land through Syria and fitted another on the Island of Rhodes, their combination to be effected in Lower Egypt.
Even at 29 an exponent of the maxim that the best defense is a good offense, Napoleon did not wait for this host to come to him, but immediately set an army in motion to meet his Mohammedan enemies coming through Syria, leaving enough men in Egypt to handle the second army.
Taking 13,000 men in four divisions of 2,500 each under Generals Kleber, Reynier, Bon, and Lannes, as well as 3,000 cavalry, engineers, and artillery, he marched from Cairo across the Isthmus of Suez to Cantara, and thence along the coast of Syria to El Arish where, in February, 1799, he captured the van of his attackers, whom he released upon their honor not to bear arms against their conquerors for a year.4 Proceeding along the coast to Jaffa, he took the city in March after a short siege of three days and, through military necessity, shot all the prisoners, among them the paroled Turks of El Arish, who had surrendered after a desperate resistance. The total was somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 men killed either in the action or the massacre, a fact which incurred for him the odium of scholars whose humanity exceeds their appreciation of practical difficulties.5
The Turks under Achmed Pasha, nicknamed “Djezzar” (the “butcher”), apprehensively holed up in Acre and waited for either the main body of their army or that of the French.
4 Yorck von Wartenburg, p. 142.
5 Ibid., p. 145.
And now we come to Smith. Because the British government had felt that it would be desirable for its military representative in Constantinople to have a rank high enough for him to give orders to the Turkish officers during the joint operations of the Allies, 34-year-old Captain Sir William Sidney Smith enjoyed the singular position of being appointed Joint Minister Plenipotentiary in the field to the Porte with his brother, Mr. Spencer Smith.6 Nelson, then in command of the Mediterranean station, was piqued by this combination of minister and naval officer in his subordinate, since Sir William’s diplomatic status would make him independent, if he chose, of naval jurisdiction, but Smith, through a tactful correspondence in which he placed himself under Nelson’s authority, capably assuaged that excellent Admiral’s ruffled feelings, ever sensitive in matters touching his dignity. Smith explained:
I have not only the Turkish Fleet, commanded by the vice admiral of the Empire, but the Turkish Army put under my orders, not as Captain of the Tigre, of course, but as the King of Great Britain’s minister and member of the council which decided the armament.7
He disclaimed a desire to exercise a free hand. “Your lordship will, I hope, likewise see that the selection of a captain, of the year 1783 only, to fill this important post, has been dictated by a delicacy due my brother.”8
6 John Barrow, Life & Correspondence of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith, pp. 242-45, 248-49, 257-60. See also Mahan, p. 296.
Having first ascertained the strength and dispositions of the Sultan’s forces, Smith left Constantinople in March to confer with Captains Troubridge and Miller, then maintaining the blockade of Alexandria, wherein Rear Admiral Perrée waited to obey Napoleon’s orders to convoy supplies and guns along the shore with a little squadron of 3 frigates and 2 corvettes, at the first opportunity to escape the 2 British 74’s outside the harbor.
In response to Djezzar’s frantic cry for help, Smith dispatched Lieutenant John Westley Wright, R.N., to Acre to arrange the defense of that city, then containing some 3,000 men.
The British learned on March 7 that Napoleon had taken Jaffa. Smith, perceiving that Acre must be the next objective, sent Captain Ralph Willett Miller, R.N., northwards in the Theseus, 74, himself following soon after in the Tigre, 80. He arrived at Acre on March 15, two days before the scouts of the French reached the foot of Mount Carmel.
7 Smith, p. 260.
8 Ibid., p. 249.
It was night when the Frenchmen bivouacked, “and not,” Smith reported, “expecting to find a naval force of any description in Syria, took up their ground close to the water side.” Grape from the unanticipated boats of the Tigre sent the troops up the slope of the mount, and, “the main body of the enemy finding the road between the sea and Mount Carmel thus exposed, came in by that of Nazareth, and invested the town of Acre to the east.”9 Unfortunately to the east, because the seaward sides of the town were in the best state of defense, as Captain Miller described to his superior:
I found almost every embrasure empty except those towards the sea. Many years’ collection of the dirt of the town thrown in such a situation as completely covered the approach to the gates from the only guns that could flank it and from the sea . . . none of their batteries have casemates, traverses, or splinter-proofs: they have many guns, but generally small and defective—the carriages in general so.10
A great stroke of fortune, one of those inexplicable gifts of the gods, made it unnecessary for Smith to dismantle either of his ships. Observing that the invaders gathering before Acre had very few pieces of cannon and knowing the difficulties of dragging guns through the sand, he shrewdly conjectured that Napoleon was sending the bulk of his beloved artillery by sea. Keeping a wary eye to the south, Smith had the satisfaction on March 18 of discovering a small flotilla of 10 vessels, the largest of which was a corvette carrying Bonaparte’s personal property. This corvette and 2 gunboats escaped the Tigre, but the remaining 7 gunboats were captured, their armament totaling 34 guns and 238 men, besides being loaded with battering cannon, ammunition, and every kind of siege equipage.11
9 Ibid., p. 267.
10 Admiralty Records, Mediterranean No. 19, quoted by J. Holland Rose, in the Life of Napoleon I.
11 Smith, p. 268. Wm. Laird Clowes, History of the Royal Navy, IV, 402 and 556.
This circumstance placed substantial pieces in the embrasures commanding the plains. Colonel Picard de Phelypeaux, a French emigré military engineer, who had shared Sir William’s one-time captivity in Revolutionary Paris, speedily erected temporary defenses strong enough to repel repeated assaults by the famous divisions of Kleber and Lannes.12
Curiously, Phelypeaux, whose technical skill contributed so greatly to the successful defense, was an old schoolmate of Bonaparte, leaving the Paris Academy 41st on the list; Napoleon, 42d. Tromelin, another French exile and an excellent artilleryman, worked the Turkish guns not served by the English themselves. Years later, upon application, Napoleon gave him a colonel’s commission in the Imperial Army. The Corsican always emphasized strongly the part of Phelypeaux, because the man was a Frenchman, and any praise would reflect upon his nation and diminish that of Smith; not without some justice, but justice can sometimes be overpaid.
A third of the east and all of the south and west walls of box-shaped Acre are washed by the sea. Thus the French could only storm the north wall and the remainder of the east. Smith anchored the Tigre to the southeast about a mile from shore in 5 fathoms of water. His broadside swept the French trenches, open to the high-angle trajectory of the heavy guns with their 2-mile range. Gunboats, having a shallow draft, were able to move closer to the shore of the bay and put shells straight down the lengths of General Caffarelli’s well-designed earthworks. Captain Miller in the Theseus enjoyed a similar advantage on the northwest. The enemy’s communication trenches only were reasonably safe from the sea batteries, and even these were subject to the mortars and prize cannon mounted on the walls.
12 “To the guidance of this engineer the wisdom and skill of the defense was mainly due. Never did great issues turn on a nicer balance than at Acre. The technical skill of Phelypeaux, the hearty support he received from Smith, his officers and crews, the untiring activity and brilliant courage of the latter, the British command of the sea, all contributed, and so narrow was the margin of success, that it may safely be said the failure of one factor would have caused total failure and the loss of the place.’’ Mahan, p. 298.
(Phelypeaux had received his commission from the British Crown after his escape from Paris with Smith.)
Attacks were thus doomed to failure before they materialized, because the ships of the line could lay down a cross fire that irresistibly smashed across the open ground about the Crusaders’ city, redolent with its memories of Richard the Lionhearted and the Saracen Saladin.
The Turks uncomfortably watched the grim, methodical approach of the invincible troops that had cut a swath from Alexandria to El Arish, and cried for assistance. They had a proper respect for the ability of the general who could humble the beys; besides, they were unequal to western warfare with its cannon and compact maneuvering. Therefore, to raise the morale of Djezzar’s men, Smith landed 500 sailors and marines, who assumed charge of all guns. Then, with this amalgam of cutlass and pistol-armed seamen, the defenders of Acre were equal to the task of checking the Great Man.
The French ran into trouble they had not anticipated. Bourrienne said in his Memoirs:
Besieging artillery was, of necessity, required: we commenced with field artillery. . . . The enemy had within the walls some excellent riflemen, chiefly Albanians. They placed stones, one over the other, on the walls, put their firearms through the interstices, and thus, completely sheltered, fired with destructive precision.13
13 Bourrienne, Memoirs, I, 202.
Why did Napoleon in the face of such an apparent readiness of defense and firmness of purpose persist in his attack upon an impregnable position? Because he had to. If he had skirted Acre, a large force would have been free to cut his extending line of communication with Egypt. He had to subdue or destroy every enemy body in his way. Then, too, he fell into an error; he underestimated his adversaries. Jaffa had fallen easily; Acre might take three days. He did not consider the presence of the ships as embarrassing in any way and always spoke lightly of them, though they ultimately beat him. He always had the contempt of the soldier for the sailor and never, to the humiliation of his admirals, grasped the problems of sea warfare. Units were units, and to him they could and should be moved as such, regardless of weather, foul bottoms and rotten sticks, or the presence of a faster enemy fleet.
He decided to storm. The aide de camp who reconnoitered the defenses received a wound in the hand and poorly executed his mission. He returned without examining fully the refurbished fortifications, reporting that there were no counterscarps. Therefore on March 25, after a preparatory barrage by the artillery consisting of four 12-pdr., thirty 4-pdr., 8 howitzers, and 30 fieldpieces, made a breach in the northeast tower, a party gallantly rushed to the attack only to be stopped and turned back by an unobserved counterscarp before a wide fosse.
Three days later, a feverishly prepared mine overturned half of these obstructions and another raid was attempted. However, the breach was too high to be reached by ladders and the grenadiers had to retire under a grueling cloud of musketry.
Equinoctial gales obliged Sir William to take his big ships from their unsheltered anchorage off Acre to the security of the open sea. The gunboats and a corvette storeship, the Alliance, 22, Captain David Wilmot, R.N., were left to continue offshore operations while, under Wilmot’s orders, in the city, Lieutenant Wright, together with Majors John Douglas and Thomas Oldfield of the Marines, directed the resistance.
Ten days later fair weather permitted Smith to return. He found that, the enemy had profited by our forced absence to push their approaches to the counterscarp, and even into the ditch of the N. E. angle of the town-wall, where they were employed mining the tower, to increase a breach they had already made in it, and which had been found impracticable when they attempted to storm on the 1st instant.14
Sir William heavily bombarded the French lines to hamper their activities, delivering as many as 2,000 shot in a single day. Napoleon, always underrating his adversaries for reasons of morale, noted in his journal:
We have not fired a shot for two weeks; the enemy blaze away like mad: and we merely pick up their cannon-balls humbly, pay 20 sous for them, and pile them up so that we already have about 4,000. That will be enough to pour in a hot fire for about 24 hours, and to batter a fine breach.15
Anxious to learn the direction and extent of the sapping, Sir William resorted to sorties which soon became a routine matter. For this he has been criticized, because it was on these excursions that he suffered the majority of his casualties. However, it would seem vital to the maintenance of Acre for Smith to have accurate information of the French progress that he might make suitable arrangements to hold his post.
14 Smith, p. 277.
15The Corsican, pp. 95-6.
March passed and April came. On the morning of April 7, Wright with pike-armed seamen, and Major Oldfield with the Theseus' marines, made a sally while the Turks created a diversion against the enfilading enemy trenches. The English carried the entrance to the mine, where Oldfield was killed and Wright was shot twice in the right arm. Despite his wounds, the practical sailor explored the pioneer’s gallery, found that it ran some 30 feet below the town ditch straight towards the damaged tower, and then wreaked as much ruin as he could by pulling down the wooden supports. Major Douglas, covering the venture, extricated Wright and brought him back to the lines. Thus the defenders knew where to countermine and expertly applied their knowledge.
There is a rumor of this time, substantiated by Napoleon but denied by Smith’s biographer, that Sir William challenged Napoleon to a duel. Smith, employing every means in his power to beat his opponent, was said to have dispersed proclamations among the French which shook the morale of those who thought of France, inaccessible behind a screen of British ships. In return for this courtesy, Napoleon forbade all communication with the English, because Sir William was “mad.” Receiving the natural result of this official backbiting of a high-spirited man, a challenge, Napoleon writes that, “I laughed at this and sent him back an intimation that when he brought Marlborough to fight with me, I would meet him.” A rather smug and conceited reply to a gentleman wishing to call one out, particularly when the world had yet to rate Napoleon, the victor of one little campaign, albeit one of the most brilliant that has been made, as an equal of the great Duke.16
Barrow’s rebuttal is sound. Smith, he says, knew his duty better than to have so committed himself and the army he commanded, and then produces a statement of Sir William’s denying the truth of the story, the statement being repeated to Barrow by an anonymous friend. Granting the prejudice of both authorities, it is perhaps best to remark that the chivalric custom in the rumor had gone out of fashion centuries before the incident and to leave the ultimate truth to Smith’s conceptions of his responsibilities, influenced or not by his romantic and legendary surroundings.
The digging of the mine went on, the French remaining otherwise inactive, awaiting its completion, while the Tigre and Theseus dropped an occasional ball into the trenches.
16 “ Ibid., p. 488.
On April 23, Napoleon gave General Lannes his orders.
As soon as the mine is fired, the breach is to be stormed. Have a band placed in the first parallel, and have it strike up the instant our men have got into the breach.17
Two days later, the mine was set off, destroying the counterscarp, “but,” say General Montholon, “a vault which was under the tower misled the calculations, and the side next to us was the only part blown up.”18 In the ruins 300 Turks were buried. The grenadiers rushed forward, and 30 of them succeeded in lodging themselves in the lower stories of the tower. Several burning barrels of gunpowder flung down at them made their occupation so unpleasant that the bold veterans of Italy speedily retreated.
In the meantime, Perrée found his opportunity to evade the big ships and cracked on every sail to bring relief to the Army. Knowing better that to pass the cape before Mount Carmel, Perrée contented himself with slipping his frigates into Jaffa, where he landed heavy guns, three 24-pdr. and six 18-pdr., which were dragged to Acre.19
Sir William and Phelypeaux, seeing that the breached section of the town was doomed to destruction by this new artillery, rushed the construction of ravelins, one protecting the north wall and the other the gate at the southeast corner of the town. From this latter position, before many days, British marines were able to deliver a murderous flanking fire.
Napoleon had resolved to deliver a mass attack as soon as the breach should have become practicable. His guns hammered incessantly.
17 Ibid., p. 97.
18 Smith, p. 276.
19 “On the 5th of April, however, the blockading force [off Alexandria] had to go to Cyprus for water, and on the 8th, Perrée got away.” Mahan, I, 300.
Nights devolved into a sporting recess during which the defenders took from the French for their own works, gabions, fascines, and materials that they lacked, burning those that they could not transport.
Within the town, Phelypeaux, soon to succumb to a fatal fever induced by lack of sleep and overwork, with admirable foresight and ability traced second and third lines of defense and set about the construction of impregnable redoubts.
The ravelins were pushed to within 10 yards of the enemy’s nearest approaches.
On May 1 Captain Wilmot was killed by a rifle shot. The next day Phelypeaux died of exhaustion and fever.
Sir William hourly awaited the arrival of the Turkish force from Cyprus. He was well supplied with food and water, but ammunition and men were expendable, and he needed both. However, Hassan Bey had originally received orders to join Smith in Egypt, and therefore directed his fleet of corvettes and transports towards the delta of the Nile. Sir William, anxiously desiring these 12,000 men—equal to Napoleon’s dwindling force—made strong use of his ministerial rank, being able to divert the lethargic, letter-abiding Hassan from the primary rendezvous only by stern use of his authority.
Hassan’s sails appeared May 7, 1799. Napoleon saw them approaching, knew what it meant, and determined to be master of the town before Hassan could effect a landing. He made the biggest effort of the siege. Partial protection from the plunging fire of the ships had been afforded by carefully engineered epaulments and traverses thrown up during nights. Two of the traverses led straight to the tower. In their haste and lack of material, the French had included the bodies of their dead. Only bayonets could be seen above the ranks.
During the next few days, the British guns employed to best advantage were those in the ravelins, an 18-pdr. in the lighthouse castle, and two 68-pdr. carronades mounted in djerms anchored off the mole and commanded by Mr. Bray. These were all within grape range.
Lannes carried his crack division forward to the assault in the gold of a late afternoon sun, recklessly urging his men through the flailing shot until his shouting grenadiers had cleared the outer works before the breach and gained the second story of the northeast tower, ascending to possession over its rubble blasted into the town ditch.
The counterscarps as well as the ditch fell into French control, these embankments barricading the besiegers from the flanking ravelins.
Sir William complacently wrote to the Earl of St. Vincent, Admiral Jervis:
This was a most critical period of the contest, and an effort was necessary to preserve the place for a short time until their arrival [Hassan’s men], I accordingly landed the boats at the mole, and took the crews up to the breach armed with pikes. . . .Many fugitives returned with us to the breach, which we found defended by a few brave Turks, whose most destructive missible weapons were heavy stones, which, striking the assailants on the head, overthrew the foremost down the slope, and impeded the progress of the rest. A succession, however, ascended to the assault; the heap of ruins between the two parties serving as a breast-work for both, the muzzles of their muskets touching, and the spearheads of the standards locked.20
Djezzar Pasha, hearing that the British had left their ships, hastened to them. “The energetic old man, coming behind us, pulled us down with violence, saying that if anything happened to his English friends all was lost.”21
This is a fine picture, a good-natured struggle between the English and the Turks to see who should die at the breach, old Djezzar leaving his place of honor where he distributed cartridges to his men and paid in gold for the heads of his enemies slain in battle.
20 Smith, pp. 286-87.
21 Ibid.
The first of Hassan’s men landed just as the defenders were being driven out of the walls.
But Phelypeaux had done his work well; the French could get no farther than the tower. A system of inner works running from the second north tower to the garden of Djezzar’s seraglio checked hostile movement. Smith, taking advantage of the temporary stalemate, overruled Djezzar’s objections and poured the Chifflick regiment of a thousand men, expressly placed under his personal command, into the garden where they used their European muskets with excellent results.
The breach was now covered. The French might have the tower, but they still lacked an entrance to the city. Confused, they awaited developments and set about consolidation. Sir William now suggested that a sally in force be made from the town gate with the object of gaining the enemy’s nearest parallel, the third. From there, musketry could be directed at the rear and flank of the enemy in the battered tower.
The attempt was made. The Turks were driven back by the French cannon, but Bray’s carronades prevented the enemy from seizing a momentary advantage. As Smith had anticipated, the diversion made the French aware of their awkward position in event their trench could be carried and drew them from the shelter of their parapets and laid them open to the guns. Midshipman Savage of the Theseus casually hurled hand grenades into the tower and drove out those Frenchmen who had not left the lodgment.
Angered, understanding that it was now all or nothing, Napoleon turned his batteries to the task of pounding in the thin wall south of the tower, which was far weaker than the tower itself but which he had inexplicably refrained from or neglected to destroy previously. Djezzar watched a column under General Lasne prepare to attack a little before sunset. Secure in his defenses, he let some 200 Frenchmen enter, then fell upon them with saber and dagger, destroying the party to a man. Lasne was mortally wounded.
Slowly, the immortal Army of Italy was dying. Smith, reading service records taken from the slain, was aware of the greatness of the troops before his muzzles. These were the men who had crushed 5 Austrian armies in lightning-like succession. These were the men of Arcola, Lodi, and Mantua, come to die miserably in the sands thousands of miles from home.
On May 10 Bonaparte shot his last bolt. General Kleber, fresh from the plains of Esdraelon where he had won a glorious victory over the motley 15,000 men sent by the Sultan through Syria for the relief of Acre, threw his division at the breach now wide enough for 50 men to march abreast. Lavalette, an aide de camp, thus describes the scene:
It was a grand and terrific spectacle; the grenadiers rushed forward under a shower of balls. Kleber, with the gait of a giant, with his thick head of hair, had taken his post, sword in hand, on the bank of the breach, and animated the assailants.22
They scaled the ruins and grappled with the Turks, who sallied from their places d’armes, took the traverses, and from the crests of these embankments enfiladed the ditch and filled it with dead and wounded. Smith energetically mounted a battery in the very breach itself, and these guns, together with Bray’s carronades, executed terrible slaughter. The heroic Kleber recoiled from the blasting storm and abandoned his attempt.
On May 14 Sir William wrote to his brother: “Still ... we keep the bull penned, and compare our breach to a mousetrap, in which any mouse or number of mice that come are sure to be caught.”23
22 Ibid., p. 306.
23 Ibid., p. 297.
He sent Captain Miller down to the cape of Mount Carmel to catch Perrée who had been successfully convoying supplies from Alexandria. Unhappily, Captain Miller died, due to a private economy.
He had long been in the practice of collecting such of the enemy’s shells as fell in the town without bursting and of sending them back to the enemy better prepared and with evident effect. He had a deposit on board the Theseus ready for service, and more were preparing when, by an accident for which nobody can account, they exploded at short intervals.24
Lieutenant England took over and chased the frigates from the coast.
Sir William was now, as would seem likely, extremely low on powder and ammunition and earnestly desired that Captain Manley Dixon, R.N., of the Lion, 64, standing off Alexandria, should join him in order that he could supply himself from that ship’s magazines. He sent the Foudre, 8, and a Turkish corvette to acquaint the Captain with his urgent need for assistance. Before Dixon could reply, the siege of Acre was a glorious page in the history of the Royal Navy.
Kleber’s assault had been the climax and denouement, the crescendo of a magnificent dream. Napoleon made a final, futile resort to trickery. Proposing a truce for the purpose of burying the putrefying dead, he took advantage of English deliberation to fling one last wave at the implacable bulwarks of Acre. It failed and “the assailants,” Smith said, “only contributed to the number of the dead bodies in question, to the eternal disgrace of the general who thus disloyally sacrificed them.”25
24 Ibid., p. 299.
“The accident is thus accounted for. The carpenter of the ship and one of the midshipmen who perished were endeavoring to get the fusees out of the shells; the one by an auger, the other by a mallet and spikenail. It may readily be conceived that the latter mode was that by which the shells became ignited; beyond this conjecture nothing is known concerning the origin of this lamentable accident.” James, History, II, 294. [He places the number of shells at twenty 36-pdr. and fifty 18-pdr.]
25 Smith, p. 310.
On the night of May 20 Napoleon raised the siege. He proclaimed to his army:
A few days more and you hoped to capture the pasha in his palace; but at this season of the year the citadel of Acre is not worth the loss of even a few days; the brave lives its capture would cost are needed for more important operations.26
These more important operations brought him back to Egypt, where he deserted his men, escaped Nelson, and returned to France and 18 Brumaire.
The engagement lasted 63 days. The Great Man lost an estimated 5,000 of his 13,000 men, including 8 generals, and left his battering train of 23 guns, so laboriously procured by Perrée, while most of his fieldpieces were later captured at sea, together with all his badly wounded, who had steered for the British ships, certain of Smith’s humanity.27 In all, there were 40 assaults and 26 checking sorties.
26The Corsican, p. 99.
27 A disputable, but average, figure from 6 authorities. Concerning this it is best to quote James. “ ... the loss which the French sustained, in their expedition into Syria, was much greater than they were willing, or even able, to make known.” II, 295.
In putting this indelible stain upon Bonaparte’s military reputation, Smith’s English combat losses were 22 killed, 66 wounded, 4 drowned, and 82 taken prisoner. Miller’s accident, however, brought the total to 66 killed or drowned and 113 wounded.28 All the seamen were engaged in fighting on shore, some 500 acting as regular gunners.
The Sultan gave Smith all the honors of his Empire. Both Houses of Parliament voted their thanks, an unusual procedure for a minor action, and gave him an annual pension of £1,000. He incorporated “Forward, Coeur de Lion” in his coast of arms.
Nothing can ever dim his glory. Napoleon was the victim of his own rashness and Smith’s determined courage, courage backed by intelligence and skill.29
28 Clowes, IV, 403.
29 Mahan, I, 303: “That there was a strong fantastic and vainglorious strain in Smith’s character seems certain, and to it largely he owed the dislike of his own service; but so far as appears, he showed at Acre discretion and sound judgment, as well as energy and courage. It must be remembered, in justice, that all power and responsibility were in his hands, and that the result was an eminent success. Under the circumstances, he had to be much on shore as well as afloat; but he seems to have shown Phelypeaux, and after the latter’s death, Colonel Douglas [promoted by Smith to rank the Turkish Colonels) the confidence and deference which their professional skill demanded, as he certainly was most generous in recognizing their services and those of others.”
There is no bringing up men again and again to the attack, as in the days of Napoleon; and unless discipline and national spirit are of superior quality, unless even the private soldier is animated by something higher than the mere habit of mechanical obedience, panic, shirking, and wholesale surrender will be the ordinary features of a campaign.—Henderson, Science of War.