After the failure of Kleber’s attack the French troops could not be brought to mount the breach again. The plague, which had committed such ravages among them at Jaffa, broke out again, probably from the horribly putrid stench of the great number of unburied bodies, and especially of those built into the epaulements and traverses, added to fatigue and shortness of provisions; a flag of truce was sent in, to propose a cessation of hostilities, to allow them to bury the dead. This Djezzar would not permit. The flag had hardly performed its duties and withdrawn, when a shower of shot and shell from the French batteries announced the commencement of another attack, which was made with fury and desperation. But the garrison was prepared, and the French were once more driven back, with great slaughter. In the night of the 20th of May the French raised the siege, and made a precipitate retreat, leaving twenty-three pieces of battering cannon behind them.
Sir Sidney Smith remained at Acre until the middle of June, rendering the Turks all assistance in once more placing the fortress in a state of defence.
This celebrated siege lasted sixty-one days. The besiegers had marched to the assault no less than eight times, while the besieged made eleven desperate sallies. Bonaparte, in his reports to the French Directory, gave many flimsy reasons for his want of success.
Speaking of it afterwards, at St. Helena, he attempted to put the whole blame of his non-success upon the French naval officers who had failed to engage and drive away Sir Sidney Smith and his squadron. He said that if he had succeeded in his plans the whole face of the world would have been changed. “Acre,” he said, “would have been taken; the French army would have gone to Damascus and Aleppo; in the twinkling of an eye they would have been on the Euphrates; the Syrian Christians would have joined us; the Druses, the Armenians, would have united with us.” Some one remarked, “We might have been reinforced to the number of one hundred thousand men.” “Say six hundred thousand,” Bonaparte replied; “who can calculate the amount? I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies; I would have changed the face of the world!”
FOUDROYANT AND CONSORTS, IN ACTION WITH THE GUILLAUME TELL. 1800.
During the early part of the year 1800, a British squadron, composed of the eighty-gun ship Foudroyant, Captain Sir Edward Berry (the same who was captured in the Leander, after the battle of the Nile, as bearer of despatches), and bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Lord Nelson, the 74-gun ship Alexandria, Captain Ball, the 64-gun ship Lion, Captain Dixon, and the 36-gun frigate Penelope, Captain Blackwood, with two or three sloops and smaller vessels, was stationed off Malta, then in French possession, to prevent succors from being thrown into that island, and to watch the movements of the French ships which were in that safe port.
Among the latter, lying in Valetta, was the French 80-gun ship Guillaume Tell, Rear-Admiral Denis Décrès, and Captain Saunier.
The Guillaume Tell was one of the two French line-of-battle-ships which had escaped from the battle of the Nile, and she had taken refuge at Malta.
Décrès occupied so exalted a position, afterwards, that it will be necessary, before beginning the account of a very remarkable battle, to give some account of his life.