1799.

MASSACRE OF JAFFA.

227

Alexandria was celebrated by a general massacre of the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex. It was Bonaparte who provoked, and afterwards punished by a like massacre the insurrection of the people of Cairo. At Jaffa, the order for the murder of nearly four thousand prisoners of war was given under his own hand, and, in person, he superintended the execution of a command which his own officers, rude and unscrupulous as they were, obeyed, with murmurs of indignation and disgust. Bonaparte was not the first conqueror, who, from a cruel policy, has put prisoners to death; but Bonaparte was the only military chief, so far as history affords an authentic record, who sought to dispose of his own disabled soldiers by putting them to death. It is a wellestablished fact that, after the retreat from Acre, Bonaparte proposed to the medical officers at the hospital at Jaffa to get rid of the sick by poison.

The massacre of the garrison of Jaffa had the effect of making the troops of Djezzar fight with Siege of Acre. the desperate resolution of men who foreknew the fate of submission or defeat. The defences of Acre were in bad condition, and on the land side not a single gun was mounted. The place was in fact pronounced by Sir Sidney Smith not to be defensible, according to any rules of art, nor, of itself, worth defending. But the English commodore determined, nevertheless, that it must and should be defended, for the purpose of stopping the progress of French conquest, and convincing the multitude assembled on the surrounding heights that the invaders were not invincible.* Weak as the place was, the loss of the battering train greatly protracted the siege. For fifty days, a series of assaults on the one side, and of sorties on the other, were attended with no other result than loss of life. At length a few field-pieces

* See Sidney Smith to Lord Nelson, 2nd May.

228

DESPERATE DEFENCE OF ACRE.

CH. XXXIX.

which the French had brought with them effected a practicable breach in the crumbling walls; and, at the same time, a fleet of transports under Hussein Bey, which had been anxiously expected by the garrison, anchored in the roads. Bonaparte determined on storming the place before the reinforcements could be landed. An incessant cannonade was kept up by the French all the night of the 7th of May, and in the morning the storming parties advanced to the breach. The newly arrived troops had by this time nearly disembarked, and were forming on the shore; but the English commodore, who was eagerly watching the operations, seeing that they would not be in time, hastily collected a few boats' crews and led them into the breach. The appearance of a handful of sailors in the foremost post of danger inspired more confidence among the soldiers of Djezzar than all the troops of Hussein, or any other reinforcement of their countrymen could have done. The French had by this time obtained possession of a portion of the works, and the tri-coloured flag streamed from one of the towers. They pressed forward to the great breach fifty yards in width, and here a deadly struggle, hand to hand, took place. The assailants at length gave way, and ultimately retired, after repeated efforts at different points to carry the place by assault. Baffled in fair and open conflict, Bonaparte made a villanous attempt to surprise the garrison by fraud. A flag of truce was brought in, proposing a cessation of arms to bury the dead; and during the negotiations, while the flag was still flying, the French, under cover of shot and shell, rushed to the assault.* Happily, the garrison had

*It would appear hardly credible, that even Bonaparte could be guilty of such infamous conduct, were not the fact stated by Sir Sidney Smith himself in his despatch to Lord Nelson, May

30. Two attempts to assassinate the commodore had previously been made at the instigation of Bonaparte, as Sir Sidney believed, though he does not state the grounds of his belief.

1799.

SIEGE OF ACRE RAISED.

229

not been thrown off their guard, and the murderous attempt was defeated with slaughter and disgrace. Sir Sidney Smith sent back the fraudulent messenger to the French General with a letter, expressing in unmeasured language the sentiments, with which an officer and a gentleman could not fail to regard such a flagrant breach of the laws of honour and of war.* On the 20th of May, Bonaparte raised the siege of Acre, after remaining before the place sixty-one days. He gratified his spleen before departure by bombarding the public buildings, and destroying the palace of the Pacha.

Bonaparte's

In a despatch to the French Directory, Bonaparte affirmed that he had taken Acre, but that he had abandoned his conquest in conse- despatch. quence of the plague. Had he succeeded in planting the republican flag on the ruins of Acre, his position would have been untenable. The sea was commanded by English and Turkish ships and gunboats. The native chiefs who had hitherto stood aloof from dread of the invincible invader, reassured by the successful defence of Acre, came pouring in from the mountains and the plains, to stop the advance and harass the retreat of the French army. It was indeed with great difficulty that the French General, leaving behind the greater number of his wounded and his artillery, could bring off the shattered remnant of the insolent host which two months before had marched upon St.. Jean d'Acre, with an assurance of easy triumph. The line of retreat was covered with corpses and blasted with ruin, the invaders laying waste the country as they marched in the wanton rage of disappointment and revenge. On the 16th of June, twenty-seven days after their repulse from.

*Bonaparte affected to treat this letter as a challenge; and to speak with contempt of Sir Sidney Smith as a madman unworthy of notice. Bourrienne

reprobates the insolence of his patron, and does justice to the reputation of the distinguished commodore. -Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 295.

230

BONAPARTE'S ESCAPE FROM EGYPT. CH. XXXIX.

Acre, and five months after their departure from Egypt to effect the conquest of Syria, Bonaparte and his weary followers re-entered Cairo. They were received nevertheless with triumphal honours, their approach having been heralded as usual with bulletins of victory and unrivalled feats of arms. Bonaparte had not enjoyed many days' repose before intelligence arrived that a Turkish fleet had anchored at Aboukir, that the fort had been taken, and that Alexandria was about to be invested. With his usual rapidity and decision, the French General attacked the assailants in their intrenchments, drove them forth at the point of the bayonet, took all their cannon and fieldequipments, and regained possession of the fort. But while he continued to issue bombastic proclamations, to keep the people of the country in awe, and to delude his army, which had frequently been on the point of mutiny, he could no longer conceal his desperate situation from the Government at Paris. He told them plainly, that unless they would send him large reinforcements of men and arms, the country must be given up. He did not then know the reverses which the French arms had sustained in Europe; nor that during his absence the Directory had lost almost all that his valour and conduct had won. The intelligence soon after reached him through English and French newspapers, which were said to have been sent him by Sir Sidney Smith. His resolution was immediately taken. He determined to return to France without delay. Having delegated the command of the army to Kleber, and announced his departure in general orders, Bonaparte, accompanied by Berthier, Murat, Lannes, and Marmont, quitted or rather escaped from Egypt, on the night of the 22nd of August.

The expedition had, in fact, proved a total failure. The conquest of Egypt and Syria would have enabled the French, on the one hand, to convert the

1799. INTRIGUES OF TIPPOO WITH THE FRENCH. 231

dominions of the Grand Turk into a Byzantine republic, and, on the other, to threaten the British Empire in India. The victory of the Nile and the defence of Acre had frustrated both of these designs. The re-establishment of the French in India was the main object of the expedition. Long before the preparations were commenced at Toulon, French agents had been busy at Seringapatam, flattering Tippoo Sultan, who inherited the martial spirit if not the ability of Hyder Ali, with the hope of French assistance in expelling the English from Hindostan. Accordingly, in December 1797, Tippoo sent an embassy to the French Governor of the Mauritius, asking for ten thousand French soldiers and thirty thousand negroes, to co-operate with the army of Mysore in hostilities against the East India Company; and proposing that the territory of the Company should be equally divided between the Sultan and the French Republic. In the event of the Governor at the Mauritius not being empowered to conclude a treaty of this importance, the Mysorean envoys were accredited to the Directory at Paris. It was, however, the policy of Tippoo to keep this negotiation secret until he should be in a condition to defy the British forces, which lay within eight days' march of his capital. On the other hand, it seemed to the French Governor equally politic to commit the Sultan of Mysore to an irreparable breach with the Government at Fort St. George. Neither party, in fact, could trust the other. Besides the Oriental contempt for European infidels with which Tippoo was fully possessed, he had been assured by his ministers that the French were seldom true to their engagements, and that Ripaud, the principal French agent at Seringapatam, was a lying adventurer, in whom no confidence whatever could be placed. Malartie, the Governor of the Mauritius, on his side, was not ignorant that Hindostan was, beyond any other