On the 25th they made a breach and attempted an assault, but were stopped by the counterscarp and the ditch.
On the 26th of March, the besieged, led by no less a personage than Djezzar Pasha himself, attempted a sortie to destroy the works which had already been begun. But being charged with the bayonet, they were at once repulsed and were obliged to retreat within the gates of the city.
Although the French battery consisted of only four twelve-pounders, eight eight-pounders and four howitzers, this feeble battery was unmasked on the 28th, and made a breach in the tower against which the principal attack was directed. Although of heavier calibre than those of the French, Djezzar's cannon were silenced by the enemy, and the towers offered a practicable breach at three o'clock in the afternoon.
A cry of joy burst from the French when they saw the wall crumble and caught a glimpse of the interior. The grenadiers, who had been the first to enter Jaffa, excited by the memory, and thinking that it would be no more difficult to take Acre than it had been to take Jaffa, asked with one accord to be allowed to enter the breach.
Bonaparte had been in the trench with his staff ever since the morning; yet he hesitated to give the order for the assault. However, egged on by Captain Mailly, who told him that he could no longer restrain the grenadiers, Bonaparte decided, and, in spite of himself, the words escaped him: "Well, go then!"
The grenadiers of the sixty-ninth brigade, led by Mailly, dashed at once into the breach; but to their great astonishment where they had expected to find the slope of the moat, they found an escarpment twelve feet high. Then came the cry, "Ladders! Ladders!"
Ladders were thrown into the breach, the grenadiers leaped from the top of the counterscarp down to them, and Mailly seized the first ladder and threw it into the breach; twenty more were at once placed beside the first one.
But the breach was filled with Arnauts and Albanians, who fired at close range, and even rolled down stones upon their assailants. Half the ladders were broken, and in falling carried down those who had mounted upon them. Mailly was severely wounded and fell from the top to the bottom of his. The fire of the besieged was redoubled; the grenadiers were obliged to retreat, and to use the ladders with which they had hoped to scale the breach to climb up the counterscarp again.
Mailly, who was wounded in the foot and could not walk, begged his soldiers to take him with them. One of them put him on his shoulders, and fell with a bullet through the head a moment later. A second took up the wounded man and carried him to the foot of a ladder where he fell with a broken thigh. Eager to put themselves in safety, they abandoned him, and they could hear his voice crying, while no one stopped to reply to him: "At least make an end of me with a bullet, if you cannot save me."
Poor Mailly had not long to suffer. The moats were no sooner evacuated by the French soldiers than the Turks swarmed down into them, and cut off the heads of all who were left.