Islam and the French — Plans to Revolutionize the East — The News from Europe — Bonaparte's Recommendations to the Directory — The Invasion of Syria — Murder of Turkish Prisoners — Importance of Acre — The Battle of Mount Tabor — The Siege of Acre — Desperate Courage of Besiegers and Besieged — Defeat of Bonaparte — His Estimate of Human Life — The Retreat to Egypt.
1798—99
"This is the moment," said Bonaparte, on hearing how Brueys's splendid fleet had been annihilated, and the line of retreat to France cut off, "when characters of a superior order assert themselves." "The English," he cried on another occasion, "will compel us to do greater things than we intended." So far from his activity being diminished in the isolation of Egypt, it was redoubled. To preserve the fiction of his mission as the restorer of Ottoman power, the tricolor and the crescent floated everywhere side by side, while prayers were said for both France and Turkey in the mosques. The utmost respect was paid to the Koran and its precepts. Menou and a number of others made an open profession of Islam. To soothe all popular apprehension, existing institutions were changed only to strengthen them, while contemplated reforms were to follow in proportion as increasing public enlightenment demanded them. In particular, the utmost respect was paid to marriage customs, and no license among the common soldiers was tolerated. In marked contrast was Bonaparte's own conduct. An intercepted letter written from Alexandria to his brother Joseph expressed jealous doubts of Josephine's fidelity—or, rather, a certainty of her infidelity. From that instant his own licentiousness became a scandal even to the loose notions of his train. But outwardly he affected the inflated speech of a semi-divine messenger; once, while visiting the burial crypt in the pyramid of Cheops, he pretended to a mufti that he was a proselyte, and pronounced with an air of conviction the Mohammedan creed. Every element in the population, however,—Copts, Turks, Greeks, and Arabs,—was courted, and made to share in the administration. Printing-presses were established, and the French scholars, though surprised and disenchanted by what they found, united into an institute, and began the study of every possible improvement in political, social, and domestic economy. Nor was the army forgotten: the captured Mamelukes and other available youth were enrolled in the French battalions, and taught the drill and discipline of war. Even the scattered Bedouin received the conqueror's flattering attentions with ever lessening distrust.
All this was part of a plan to effect a religious and political revolution in the East, the two to move hand in hand, by an appeal to Mohammedan zeal for coöperation with those who had already destroyed Christianity in Europe. Talleyrand was to have been the representative in Constantinople of the same idea. But in disregard of his promise he stayed at home, and neither the Sultan, as the political and religious head of Islam, nor its devotees, were for a moment deceived. On the well-known principle that offers of peace come best while war is hottest, Bonaparte's iron hand was shown in certain most stringent regulations, and one determined insurrection was put down with merciless rigor. The domestic relations of the people were sacred, but they must buy indemnity with the payment of all their cash; and treasure, wherever found, was seized for the army chest. The old city barriers of Cairo were broken down, and fortified turrets were built in their places. Resistance of any kind met with quick punishment, and heads fell throughout the land with such regularity and frequency as to force from the natives a recognition of Bonaparte as el Kebir, the Exalted.
The utter isolation of summer, autumn, and winter would have been intolerable but for such occupations. Only a single official despatch, and that a most insignificant one, reached Egypt from France during this interval; and the rush of events in Europe was for months utterly unknown to the castaway army. In fact, but two efforts were made to forward news—an astounding proof of the feeling in Paris. The Directory had failed in their attempts to cajole the Sultan, and a message from Bonaparte arrived too late to influence him; for, on receipt of news from Nelson's victorious fleet, the Turkish monarch hesitated no longer, and accepted the proffered alliance of Russia. The only certain news from Europe which was generally disseminated in Cairo was contained in a package of Italian newspapers brought into Alexandria by a blockade-runner. Through them it was known that the invasion of Ireland, having been precipitated by a misunderstanding between the secret society of United Irishmen and the Directory, had failed; that Malta and Corfu were blockaded; that the Spanish fleet was significantly inactive; and that all Europe was arming for the renewal of hostilities in the spring. Bonaparte made every effort to communicate with Paris. Some of his frequent despatches certainly reached their destination; but, going by circuitous routes, they were belated. This very fact, however, went far in France to surround him with a halo of romance, and to glorify the legend, never eradicated from French imaginations, that the national arms had subjugated the land of the Pharaohs. As every day revealed the incapacity of the Directory in the face of an exasperated and united Europe, the fancied splendor of Bonaparte's feats neutralized any remnants of suspicion remaining in the minds of the people regarding their absent victor. The conquering republic was over the sea; it was a spurious one which had remained at home to be humiliated.
Disquieting rumors of Bonaparte's death, said to have been spread by English and Russian agents, were prevalent during a part of December; but while at their height they were allayed by the arrival, direct from the seat of war, of a budget dated October seventh. The condition of the colony was described in glowing terms, but the gist of the despatches was that the Spanish admiral must be goaded to activity, and that the fleet from Brest must be sent to coöperate with him in the Mediterranean, in order to restore the prestige of France in the East. As for the writer himself, he hoped, should war break out again in Europe, to return in the spring. Meantime, the Neapolitans were marching on Rome, a fact which inclined the vacillating and harassed directors to act on the suggestions of their real master, although they kept his recommendations secret.
It was, therefore, not entirely without a coördination of plans that the Army of Egypt, strengthened and refreshed, made ready to move in February. The Turks, under the viceroy, Achmet, styled Jezzar, the Butcher, were mustering in Syria, and it was necessary to anticipate them. Kléber was put at the head of twelve thousand men, and, after dispersing the eight hundred Mamelukes who had retreated in the direction of Rahmaniyeh, he advanced some days' march to El Arish, which was at once beset. Bonaparte tarried at Cairo for a few days, and then having learned that the congress at Rastadt was still sitting, and that war, though imminent, was not yet declared, set out, reaching El Arish on February seventeenth, 1799. Three days later the Turkish garrison, composed largely of volunteers, surrendered. They were paroled, and ordered to march toward Damascus. Gaza fell with the exchange of a few musket-balls, and important munitions of war were delivered into the hands of the French. On March fourth the invaders were before Jaffa, which had a garrison of four thousand men, a part of Jezzar's army. After three days' bombardment a breach was made in the walls, and two thousand troops who had taken refuge behind caravansary walls surrendered under promise of their lives; the rest, it is said, had been killed in a massacre which immediately followed the assault.
No French victory was ever marked by more unbridled license than that which the victorious troops practised at Jaffa. But what followed was worse. Although the prisoners of war were too numerous for the ordinary usage, yet they should have been treated according to the terms of quarter they had exacted. On the seventh a council of war unanimously voted that the old rule under which no quarter is given to defenders in an assault should be applied to them. For two days Bonaparte hesitated, but on the ninth his decision was taken. A few Egyptians were sent home, and the remainder of the prisoners, together with the eight hundred militia from El Arish, were marched to the beach, and shot. In the report to the Directory the total number was put at twelve hundred. Two eye-witnesses estimated it—one at three thousand, the other at four thousand. "I have been severe with those of your troops who violated the laws of war," wrote the author of the deed to Jezzar. No mention of the fact or excuse for it was made in any other portion of his correspondence at the time. All winter long he had been dealing as an Oriental with Orientals, and this was but a piece of the same conduct. The code of Christian morality was far from his mind. In January, for instance, he had ordered Murat to kill all the prisoners of a hostile tribe in the desert, whom he could not bring away; and in the same month identical orders were issued to Berthier concerning another horde. The plea which is made by the eulogists of Napoleon, and by some recent military writers, for this wholesale execution, is that among these slaughtered men the garrison of El Arish, which had surrendered, had been found again with arms in their hands; that they were deserving of death according to all the laws of war; and that, as to the rest, there were no French prisoners for whom to exchange them, and no provisions to support them; consequently their presence with the army would jeopardize its success, and it was therefore justifiable to diminish the enemy's resisting power by their execution. Those who believe that in any war, whether just or unjust, the practice of barbarity is excusable if it lead to speedy victory will agree with that opinion.
Bonaparte had foreseen that of all the Syrian towns the Pasha's capital, St. Jean d'Acre, which was on the shore, and not inland like the places so easily taken, would make the strongest resistance. Accordingly he had provided a siege-train, and had despatched it by sea from Alexandria. The English squadron in those waters, now in command of Sir Sidney Smith, was in the offing when the French army arrived on the coast. Approaching in order to open fire, the English admiral became aware after a few shots that his enemy had no artillery. Divining the reason, he swiftly put to sea, and easily captured their transports. Phélippeaux, a French emigrant who had graduated from the military school at Paris only two days before Bonaparte, was sent by Smith to superintend the fortification of the city with the very guns destined for its destruction. The siege of Acre thus became a task quite different from any hitherto imposed on the French. Supported by an English fleet, and easily provisioned under protection of their guns, the city might have made a determined stand even against an enemy with cannon; but to one without artillery it was likely that its resistance would be effectual. And so it proved; for under the ancient Gothic walls of a city whose name recalled the fleeting dominion of the Frank crusaders, Bonaparte's dreams of an Oriental empire vanished forever. On March nineteenth he sat down before them, with really no dependence except on fate. In spite of discouragements, however, a breach was effected on the twenty-eighth by means of a mine, but the assault was repulsed.
Day followed day without an important incident, until in the third week an army of twenty-five thousand men, under Abdullah, approached from Damascus to relieve Jezzar. Kléber set out to check their march, and the first skirmish of advance-guards occurred at Nazareth. For eight hours Junot, in the van with a few hundred men, stood firm against a tenfold force; and even when the whole French division arrived the overwhelming superiority of the Turkish numbers was not perceptibly diminished. Bonaparte was not far behind. Leaving a respectable array before the town to keep up appearances, he hurried away with the rest, and by a forced march debouched on April sixteenth into the plain of Esdraelon. In the distance, at the foot of Mount Tabor, he could see a cloud of dust and smoke, in the midst of which the ranks of Kléber's division seemed buried beneath the masses of his foe. Throwing his fine cavalry on the Turkish flanks, the commander-in-chief, at the head of the infantry, caught his enemy unawares from behind the whirling sand which had concealed his presence. The result was an utter rout of the Turks, who fled by the mountain passes in complete disorder.