We now approach one of the most brilliant actions of the English navy, achieved by the admiral whose exploits so indisputably asserted the right of Britain to the dominion of the ocean. Our limits require that we should state but briefly a tale, at which every heart in our islands will long glow; and we are the more willingly concise that our readers possess it at length in one of the best written popular histories in the English language.[387]
BATTLE OF ABOUKIR.
Although unable to enter the harbour of Alexandria, the French admiral believed his squadron safely moored in the celebrated bay of Aboukir. They formed a compact line of battle, of a semicircular form, anchored so close to the shoal-water and surf, that it was thought impossible to get between them and the land; and they concluded, therefore, that they could be brought to action on the starboard side only. On the 1st August, the British fleet appeared; and Nelson had no sooner reconnoitred the French position, than he resolved to force it at every risk. Where the French ships could ride, he argued with instantaneous decision, there must be room for English vessels to anchor between them and the shore. He made signal for the attack accordingly. As the vessels approached the French anchorage, they received a heavy and raking fire, to which they could make no return; but they kept their bows to the enemy, and continued to near their line. The squadrons were nearly of the same numerical strength. The French had thirteen ships of the line, and four frigates. The English, thirteen ships of the line, and one fifty-gun ship. But the French had three eighty-gun ships, and L'Orient, a superb vessel of one hundred and twenty guns. All the British were seventy-fours. The van of the English fleet, six in number, rounded successively the French line, and dropping anchor betwixt them and the shore, opened a tremendous fire. Nelson himself, and his other vessels, ranged along the same French ships on the outer side, and thus placed them betwixt two fires; while the rest of the French line remained for a time unable to take a share in the combat. The battle commenced with the utmost fury, and lasted till, the sun having set and the night fallen, there was no light by which the combat could be continued, save the flashes of the continuous broadsides. Already, however, some of the French vessels were taken, and the victors, advancing onwards, assailed those which had not yet been engaged.
Meantime, a broad and dreadful light was thrown on the scene of action, by the breaking out of a conflagration on board the French admiral's flag-ship, L'Orient. Brueyes himself had by this time fallen by a cannon-shot.[388] The flames soon mastered the immense vessel, where the carnage was so terrible as to prevent all attempts to extinguish them; and the L'Orient remained blazing like a volcano in the middle of the combat, rendering for a time the dreadful spectacle visible.
At length, and while the battle continued as furious as ever, the burning vessel blew up with so tremendous an explosion, that for a while it silenced the fire on both sides, and made an awful pause in the midst of what had been but lately so horrible a tumult.[389] The cannonade was at first slowly and partially resumed, but ere midnight it raged with all its original fury. In the morning, the only two French ships who had their colours flying, cut their cables and put to sea, accompanied by two frigates; being all that remained undestroyed and uncaptured, of the gallant navy that so lately escorted Buonaparte and his fortunes in triumph across the Mediterranean.
Such was the Victory of Aboukir, for which he who achieved it felt that word was inadequate. He called it a conquest. The advantages of the day, great as they were, might have been pushed much farther, if Nelson had been possessed of frigates and small craft. The store-ships and transports in the harbour of Alexandria would then have been infallibly destroyed. As it was, the results were of the utmost importance, and the destinies of the French army were altered in proportion. They had no longer any means of communicating with the mother-country, but became the inhabitants of an insulated province, obliged to rely exclusively on the resources which they had brought with them, joined to those which Egypt might afford.
Buonaparte, however surprised by this reverse, exhibited great equanimity. Three thousand French seamen, the remainder of nearly six thousand engaged in that dreadful battle, were sent ashore by cartel, and formed a valuable addition to his forces. Nelson, more grieved almost at being frustrated of his complete purpose, than rejoiced at his victory, left the coast after establishing a blockade on the port of Alexandria.
We are now to trace the means by which Napoleon proposed to establish and consolidate his government in Egypt; and in these we can recognise much that was good and excellent, mixed with such irregularity of imagination, as vindicates the term of Jupiter Scapin, by which the Abbé de Pradt distinguished this extraordinary man.[390]
ADMINISTRATION IN EGYPT.
His first care was to gather up the reins of government, such as they were, which had dropt from the hands of the defeated beys. With two classes of the Egyptian nation it was easy to establish his authority. The Fellahs, or peasantry, sure to be squeezed to the last penny by one party or other, willingly submitted to the invaders as the strongest, and the most able to protect them. The Cophts, or men of business, were equally ready to serve the party which was in possession of the country. So that the French became the masters of both, as a natural consequence of the power which they had obtained.