LITMIR.BIZ

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have casemates, traverses, or splinter-proofs: they have many guns, but generally small and defective—the carriages in general so." ^[115]

      Captain Miller's energy made good some of these defects; but the place was still lamentably weak when, on March 15th, Sir Sidney Smith arrived. The English squadron in the east of the Mediterranean had, to Nelson's chagrin, been confided to the command of this ardent young officer, who now had the good fortune to capture off the promontory of Mount Carmel seven French vessels containing Bonaparte's siege-train. This event had a decisive influence on the fortunes of the siege and of the whole campaign. The French cannon were now hastily mounted on the very walls that they had been intended to breach; while the gun vessels reinforced the two English frigates, and were[pg.207] ready to pour a searching fire on the assailants in their trenches or as they rushed against the walls. These had also been hastily strengthened under the direction of a French royalist officer named Phélippeaux, an old schoolfellow of Bonaparte, and later on a comrade of Sidney Smith, alike in his imprisonment and in his escape from the clutches of the revolutionists. Sharing the lot of the adventurous young seaman, Phélippeaux sailed to the Levant, and now brought to the defence of Acre the science of a skilled engineer. Bravely seconded by British officers and seamen, he sought to repair the breach effected by the French field-pieces, and constructed at the most exposed points inner defences, before which the most obstinate efforts of the storming parties melted away. Nine times did the assailants advance against the breaches with the confidence born of unfailing success and redoubled by the gaze of their great commander; but as often were they beaten back by the obstinate bravery of the British seamen and Turks.

      The monotony was once relieved by a quaint incident. In the course of a correspondence with Bonaparte, Sir Sidney Smith is said to have shown his annoyance by sending him a challenge to a duel. It met with the very proper reply that he would fight, if the English would send out a Marlborough.

      During these desperate conflicts Bonaparte detached a considerable number of troops inland to beat off a large Turkish and Mameluke force destined for the relief of Acre and the invasion of Egypt. The first encounter was near Nazareth, where Junot displayed the dash and resource which had brought him fame in Italy; but the decisive battle was fought in the Plain of Esdraëlon, not far from the base of Mount Tabor. There Kléber's division of 2,000 men was for some hours hard pressed by a motley array of horse and foot drawn from diverse parts of the Sultan's dominions. The heroism of the burly Alsacian and the toughness of his men barely kept off the fierce rushes of the Moslem [pg.208] horse and foot. At last Bonaparte's cannon were heard. The chief, marching swiftly on with his troops drawn up in three squares, speedily brushed aside the enveloping clouds of orientals; finally, by well-combined efforts the French hurled back the enemy on passes, some of which had been seized by the commander's prescience. At the close of this memorable day (April 15th) an army of nearly 30,000 men was completely routed and dispersed by the valour and skilful dispositions of two divisions which together amounted to less than a seventh of that number. No battle of modern times more closely resembles the exploits of Alexander than this masterly concentration of force; and possibly some memory of this may have prompted the words of Kléber—"General, how great you are!"—as he met and embraced his commander on the field of battle. Bonaparte and his staff spent the night at the Convent of Nazareth; and when his officers burst out laughing at the story told by the Prior of the breaking of a pillar by the angel Gabriel at the time of the Annunciation, their untimely levity was promptly checked by the frown of the commander.

      The triumph seemed to decide the Christians of the Lebanon to ally themselves with Bonaparte, and they secretly covenanted to furnish 12,000 troops at his cost; but this question ultimately depended on the siege of Acre. On rejoining their comrades before Acre, the victors found that the siege had made little progress: for a time the besiegers relied on mining operations, but with little success; though Phélippeaux succumbed to a sunstroke (May 1st), his place was filled by Colonel Douglas, who foiled the efforts of the French engineers and enabled the place to hold out till the advent of the long-expected Turkish succours. On May 7th their sails were visible far out on an almost windless sea. At once Bonaparte made desperate efforts to carry the "mud-hole" by storm. Led with reckless gallantry by the heroic Lannes, his troops gained part of the wall and planted the tricolour on the north-east tower; but all further progress was checked by English blue-jackets, [pg.209] whom the commodore poured into the town; and the Turkish reinforcements, wafted landwards by a favouring breeze, were landed in time to wrest the ramparts from the assailants' grip. On the following day an assault was again attempted: from the English ships Bonaparte could be clearly seen on Richard Coeur de Lion's mound urging on the French; but though, under Lannes' leadership, they penetrated to the garden of Gezzar's seraglio, they fell in heaps under the bullets, pikes, and scimitars of the defenders, and few returned alive to the camp. Lannes himself was dangerously wounded, and saved only by the devotion of an officer.

      Both sides were now worn out by this extraordinary siege. "This town is not, nor ever has been, defensible according to the rules of art; but according to every other rule it must and shall be defended"—so wrote Sir Sidney Smith to Nelson on May 9th. But a fell influence was working against the besiegers; as the season advanced, they succumbed more and more to the ravages of the plague; and, after failing again on May 10th, many of their battalions refused to advance to the breach over the putrid remains of their comrades. Finally, Bonaparte, after clinging to his enterprise with desperate tenacity, on the night of May 20th gave orders to retreat.

      This siege of nine weeks' duration had cost him severe losses, among them being Generals Caffarelli and Bon: but worst of all was the loss of that reputation for invincibility which he had hitherto enjoyed. His defeat at Caldiero, near Verona, in 1796 had been officially converted into a victory: but Acre could not be termed anything but a reverse. In vain did the commander and his staff proclaim that, after dispersing the Turks at Mount Tabor, the capture of Acre was superfluous; his desperate efforts in the early part of May revealed the hollowness of his words. There were, it is true, solid reasons for his retreat. He had just heard of the breaking out of the war of the Second Coalition against France; and revolts in Egypt also demanded his [pg.210] presence.^[116] But these last events furnished a damning commentary on his whole Syrian enterprise, which had led to a dangerous diffusion of the French forces. And for what? For the conquest of Constantinople or of India? That dream seems to have haunted Bonaparte's brain even down to the close of the siege of Acre. During the siege, and later, he was heard to inveigh against "the miserable little hole" which had come between him and his destiny—the Empire of the East; and it is possible that ideas which he may at first have set forth in order to dazzle his comrades came finally to master his whole being. Certainly the words just quoted betoken a quite abnormal wilfulness as well as a peculiarly subjective notion of fatalism. His "destiny" was to be mapped out by his own prescience, decided by his own will, gripped by his own powers. Such fatalism had nothing in common with the sombre creed of the East: it was merely an excess of individualism: it was the matured expression of that feature of his character, curiously dominant even in childhood, that what he wanted he must of necessity have. How strange that this imperious obstinacy, this sublimation of western willpower, should not have been tamed even by the overmastering might of Nature in the Orient!

      As for the Empire of the East, the declared hostility of the tribes around Nablus had shown how futile were Bonaparte's efforts to win over Moslems: and his earlier Moslem proclamations were skilfully distributed by Sir Sidney Smith among the Christians of Syria, and served partly to neutralize the efforts which Bonaparte made to win them over.^[117] Vain indeed was the effort to conciliate the Moslems in Egypt, and yet in Syria to arouse the Christians against the Commander of the Faithful. Such religious opportunism smacked of the Parisian boulevards: it utterly ignored the tenacity of belief of the East, where the creed is the very life. The outcome of all that finesse was seen in the closing days of the[pg.211] siege and during the retreat towards Jaffa, when the tribes of the Lebanon and of the Nablûs district watched like vultures on the hills and swooped down on the retreating columns. The pain of disillusionment, added to his sympathy with the sick and wounded, once broke down Bonaparte's nerves. Having ordered all horsemen to dismount so that there might be sufficient transport for the sick and maimed, the commander was asked by an equerry which horse he reserved for his own use. "Did you not hear the order," he retorted, striking the man with

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