BATTLE OF THE NILE. 1ST. AUGUST, 1798.
This battle is called by the French Aboukir, the name of the bay in which it took place, and it is really a more proper name for the action, as only a small mouth of the Nile opened into the bay.
Beside the great naval action, Aboukir has given its name to a bloody and decisive land battle, which took place July 25th, 1799, between the French and a Turkish army. We may dispose of the latter briefly before taking up the more important sea fight, although in point of time the latter precedes it a year.
Bonaparte having learned of the landing of a Turkish army of 18,000 infantry at Aboukir, advanced to attack them, at the head of only about 6000 men. The Turks, who were mostly Janissaries, had a very considerable force of artillery, and were in part commanded by English officers. Being strongly intrenched at the village of Aboukir, they should have beaten off the French force easily; but, at the word of command from Bonaparte, Generals D’Estaing, Murat and Lannes attacked the entrenchments with desperate courage, and, after a terrible fight, which lasted some hours, the Turks were fairly driven into the sea. Thousands of bodies floated upon the bay, which the year before had borne the corpses of so many French sailors, who had perished from gun-shot or by fire. Perhaps for the first time in the history of modern warfare, an army was entirely destroyed.
It was on this occasion that Kleber, at the close of the fighting, seized Bonaparte in his arms, and embracing him, exclaimed: “General, you are the greatest man in the world!”
A year previous to the event just recorded, while Bonaparte was occupied in organizing his new conquest of Egypt, fortune was preparing for him one of the most terrible reverses which the French arms had ever met, by sea or by land.
What must have made it harder for him to bear was, that when leaving Alexandria to go to Cairo he had very strongly recommended Admiral Brueys, who commanded the fleet which had brought him to Egypt, not to remain at the anchorage of Aboukir, where the English could, he thought, take him at a disadvantage. In fact, Napoleon’s military mind foresaw just what afterwards happened.
Brueys at first thought of taking his fleet to Corfu, but lost precious time in waiting for news from Cairo, and this delay brought on the disaster which had a very important influence in moulding the destiny, not only of Egypt, but of the whole of Europe.
Learning of the departure of a large body of troops, and of a strong fleet, from Toulon, but in entire ignorance of the object of their expedition, Nelson, after vainly seeking for them in the Archipelago, in the Adriatic, at Naples, and on the coasts of Sicily, at last learned with certainty that they had effected a landing in Egypt. He made all sail at once for Alexandria, determined to fight the French fleet the moment it was found, and wherever it might be. He found it at Aboukir bay, just to the eastward of Alexandria, on the 1st of August, 1798; and we shall now give a general sketch of what ensued, and after that the particulars of this important action—from both French and English sources.