Inspired by the result of the battle of the Nile, England, Turkey, the Mamelukes, and the Arabs made great preparations to drive Napoleon out of Egypt. A Turkish army was to be sent from Rhodes; Achmet, Pacha of Acre, surnamed Djezzar, the Butcher, was raising forces in Syria, and Commodore Sir Sidney Smith was cruising on the coast ready to help Turks, Mamelukes, and Arabs against the French. Sir Sidney had been a political prisoner in Paris, had recently made his escape, and had been assisted in so doing by Napoleon’s old schoolmate, Phélippeaux. Following Sir Sidney to the East, Phélippeaux, a royalist, was now at hand eager to oppose the republican army of Napoleon, and capable of rendering the Turks valuable service. There is no evidence that he was actuated by personal hatred of Napoleon. They had not liked each other at school, and had kicked each other’s shins under the table; but, as men, they had taken different sides as a matter of policy or principle, and it was this which now arrayed them against each other.
Napoleon’s invariable rule being to anticipate his enemy, he now marched into Syria to crush Djezzar before the Turkish army from Rhodes could arrive. Leaving Desaix, Lanusse, and other lieutenants to hold Egypt, he set out with the main army February 11, 1799. El Arish was taken February 20, 1799, and Gaza followed. Jaffa, the ancient Joppa, came next (March 6), and its name will always be associated with a horrible occurrence. Summoned to surrender, the Arabs had beheaded the French messenger. The place was stormed, and the troops gave way to unbridled license and butchery. The massacre went on so long and was so hideous that Napoleon grew sick of it, and sent his step-son, Eugène, and another aide, Croisier, to put a stop to it. He meant, as he claimed, that they were sent to save the non-combatants,—old men, women, and children. He did not mean them to save soldiers, for, by the benign rules of war, all defenders of a place taken by assault could be slain. Misunderstanding Napoleon, or not knowing the benign rules, Eugène and Croisier accepted the surrender of three or four thousand Arab warriors, and brought them toward headquarters. As soon as Napoleon, walking in front of his tent, saw these prisoners coming, he exclaimed, in tones of grief: “Why do they bring those men to me? What am I to do with them?” Eugène and Croisier were severely reprimanded, and he again asked: “What am I to do with these men? Why did you bring them here?”
Under the alleged necessity of the case, want of food to feed them, or vessels to send them away, a council of war unanimously decided that they should be shot. With great reluctance, and after delaying until the murmurs of the troops became mutinous, Napoleon yielded, and the prisoners were marched to the beach and massacred. That this was a horribly cruel deed no one can deny; but the barbarity was in the situation and the system, not the individual. Napoleon himself was neither blood-thirsty nor inhumane. The last thing he had done before quitting France had been to denounce the cruelty of the authorities in dealing with émigrés who were non-combatants. His proclamation, which really invited soldiers to disobey a cruel law, closed with the ringing statement, “The soldier who signs a death-warrant against a person incapable of bearing arms is a coward!”
In passing judgment upon Napoleon, we must adopt some standard of comparison; we must know what military precedents have been, and what the present practice is. Three days after the battle of Culloden the Duke of Cumberland, being informed that the field was strewn with wounded Highlanders who still lived,—through rain and sun and the agony of undressed wounds,—marched his royal person and his royal army back to the field and, in cold blood, butchered every man who lay there. A barn, near the battle-field, was full of wounded Scotchmen; the royal Duke set it on fire, and all within were burned to death.
During the conquest of Algiers, in 1830, a French commander, a royalist, came upon a multitude of Arabs—men, women, children—who had taken refuge in a cave. He made a fire at the cavern’s mouth and smoked them all to death.
In the year 1900, Russians, Germans, and other Christians invaded China to punish the heathen for barbarities practised upon Christian missionaries. A German emperor (Christian, of course) said, “Give no quarter.” Germans and Russians killed everything that was Chinese—men and women and children. Armed or not armed, working in fields or idle, walking in streets or standing still, giving cause or giving none, the heathen were shot and bayoneted and sabred and clubbed, until the streets were choked with dead Chinese, the rivers were putrid with dead Chinese, the very waters of the ocean stank with dead Chinese. Prisoners were made to dig their own graves, were then shot, tumbled into the hole, and other prisoners made to fill the grave. Girls and matrons were outraged in the presence of brothers, sons, husbands, fathers; and were then shot, or stabbed to death with swords or bayonets.
Were it not for examples such as these, the reader might feel inclined to agree with the anti-Bonaparte biographers who say that the Jaffa massacre was the blackest in the annals of civilized warfare.
Rid of his prisoners, Napoleon moved forward on the Syrian coast and laid siege to St. Jean d’Acre. The town had strong, high walls, behind which were desperate defenders. The lesson from Jaffa had taught the Arab that it was death to surrender. To him, then, it was a stern necessity to conquer or die. The English were there to help. Sir Sidney Smith furnished guns, men to serve them, and skilled engineers.
Napoleon was not properly equipped for the siege, for his battering train, on its way in transports, was stupidly lost by the captain in charge. Sir Sidney took it and appropriated it to the defence. In vain Napoleon lingered till days grew into weeks, weeks into months. He was completely baffled. There were many sorties, many assaults, dreadful loss of life, reckless deeds of courage done on both sides. Once, twice, the French breached the walls, made good their assault, and entered the town, once reaching Djezzar’s very palace. It was all in vain. Every house was a fortress, every street an ambuscade, every Arab a hero,—the very women frantically screaming “Fight!”
With bitterness in his soul, Napoleon turned away: “that miserable hole has thwarted my destiny!” And he never ceased to ring the changes on the subject. Had he taken Acre, his next step would have been to the Euphrates; hordes of Asiatics would have flocked to his banner; the empire of Alexander would have risen again under his touch; India would have been his booty; Constantinople his prize; and then, from the rear, he would have trodden Europe into submission. He saw all this on the other side of Acre, or thought he saw it. But the town stood, and the château in Spain fell.