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On governments so prepared to be enkindled, yet hesitating before the prestige of French success and feeling the mutual distrust inseparable from coalitions, the news of the battle of the Nile fell like a brand among tinder. The French fleet was not only defeated, but annihilated. The Mediterranean from the Straits to the Levant was in the power of the British navy, which the total destruction of its enemy relieved from the necessity of concentration and allowed to disperse to every quarter where its efforts were needed. The greatest general and thirty thousand of the best troops France possessed, with numbers of her most brilliant officers, were thus hopelessly shut off from their country.
After the victory, conscious of its far-reaching importance, Nelson took measures to disperse the news as rapidly as his want of small vessels would permit. The "Leander" sailed on the 5th of August with the first despatches for Lord St. Vincent off Cadiz, but was on the 18th captured by the "Généreux," seventy-four, one of the two ships which had escaped from Aboukir Bay. To provide against such an accident, however, the brig "Mutine" had also been sent on the 13th to Naples, where she arrived on the 4th of September, bringing the first news that reached Europe, and which Nelson asked the British minister to see forwarded to all the other courts. The captain of the "Mutine" started the next day for England, by way of Vienna, and on the 2d of October, 1798, two full months after the battle, reached London with the first accounts.
Conscious of the effect which events in Egypt might have upon British influence in India, Nelson also sent a lieutenant, on the 10th of August, to make his way overland through Alexandretta and Aleppo to Bombay. This officer bore dispatches to the governor, informing him both of the landing and numbers of Bonaparte's expedition, and also of the fatal blow which had just befallen it. The news was most timely. The French had been actively intriguing in the native courts, and Tippoo Saib, the son and successor of Hyder Ali, Sultan of Mysore, their former ally in the days of Suffren, had openly committed himself to his father's policy. It was too late for Tippoo to recede, and he was erelong embarked in a war, which ended in April, 1799, in his death at the assault of Seringapatam and the overthrow of his kingdom; but on the other native states the striking catastrophe produced its due impression. In their operations against Tippoo the British were not embarrassed by troubles in other quarters.
"The consequences of this battle," sums up a brilliant French naval writer, "were incalculable. Our navy never recovered from this terrible blow to its consideration and its power. This was the combat which for two years delivered the Mediterranean to the English, and called thither the squadrons of Russia; which shut up our army in the midst of a rebellious population, and decided the Porte to declare against us; which put India out of the reach of our enterprise, and brought France within a hair's-breadth of her ruin; for it rekindled the scarcely extinct war with Austria, and brought Suwarrow and the Austro-Russians to our very frontiers." 223 Great Britain, the Sea Power so often and so idly accused of backwardness in confronting France, of requiring continental support before daring to move, was first to act. Long before news of the battle, before even the battle was fought, or the alliance of Austria and Russia contracted, orders had been sent to St. Vincent to detach from Nelson's force to the support of Naples, hoping there to start the little fire from which a great matter should be kindled. These "most secret orders" reached Nelson on the 15th of August. 224 He had just dispatched to Gibraltar seven of the British fleet with six of the captured French vessels, the whole under charge of Sir James Saumarez. Setting fire to the three other prizes, he intrusted the blockade of Alexandria to Captain Hood, with three ships-of-the-line, and with the three then remaining to him sailed for Naples on the 19th. From the wretched condition of his division 225 the passage took over a month; but on the 22d of September he anchored in the bay, where the renown of his achievement had preceded him.
On his way, Nelson had been informed that a Portuguese squadron, commanded by the Marquis de Niza, had entered the Mediterranean to support his operations. At his request this division, which had appeared off Alexandria on the 29th of August, 226 but refused to remain there, undertook the blockade of Malta, until such time as the repairs of the British ships should allow them to do so. The natives of the island had risen against the French on the 26th of August, and driven them from the open country into the forts of La Valetta. Niza took his station off the port, about the 20th of September, and on the 24th Sir James Saumarez appeared with his division and the prizes. The following day the two officers sent General Vaubois a summons to surrender, which was as a matter of course refused. Saumarez went on to Gibraltar; but before doing so gave the inhabitants twelve hundred muskets with ammunition, which materially assisted them in their efforts, finally successful, to deprive the enemy of the resources of the island. Nelson sent off British ships as they were ready, and himself joined the blockading force on the 24th of October, though only for a few days, his presence being necessary in Naples. The garrison was again by him formally summoned, and as formally rejected his offers. From that time until their surrender in September, 1800, the French were in strict blockade, both by land and water.
In October of this year Lord St. Vincent went to live ashore at Gibraltar, both on account of his health, and because there, being the great British naval station of the Mediterranean, he was centrally placed to receive information, to give orders, and especially to hasten, by his unflagging personal supervision, the work of supply and repair upon which the efficiency of a fleet primarily depends. The division off Cadiz, numbering generally some fifteen of the line, kept its old station watching the Spaniards, under the command of Lord Keith,—one of the most efficient and active of the generation of naval officers between St. Vincent and Nelson, to the latter of whom he was senior. Within the Mediterranean Nelson commanded, under St. Vincent. The blockade of Egypt and Malta, and co-operation with the Austrian and Neapolitan armies in the expected war, were his especial charge. He was also to further, as far as in him lay, the operations of a combined Russian and Turkish fleet, which had assembled in the Dardanelles in September, 1798, to maintain the cause of the coalition in the Levant. This fleet entered the Mediterranean in October; but instead of assuming the blockade of Alexandria and the protection of the Syrian coast, it undertook the capture of the Ionian Islands. All of these, except Corfu, fell into its power by October 10; and on the 20th Corfu, the citadel of the group, was attacked. Nelson saw this direction of the Russo-Turkish operations with disgust and suspicion. "The Porte ought to be aware," he wrote, "of the great danger at a future day of allowing the Russians to get a footing at Corfu." 227 "I was in hopes that a part of the united Turkish and Russian squadron would have gone to Egypt,—Corfu is a secondary consideration.... I have had a long conference with Kelim Effendi on the conduct likely to be pursued by the Russian Court towards the unsuspicious (I fear) and upright Turk.... A strong squadron should have been sent to Egypt to have relieved my dear friend Captain Hood; but Corfu suited Russia better." 228 At the same time Turkish troops, under the pashas whose good dispositions Bonaparte had boasted, swept away from France the former Venetian territory on the mainland, acquired by the treaty of Campo Formio.
While Bonaparte's Oriental castles were thus crumbling, through the destruction in Aboukir Bay of the foundation upon which they rested,—while Ionia was falling, Malta starving, and Egypt isolated, through the loss of the sea—the Franco-Spanish allies were deprived of another important foothold for maritime power. On the 15th of November Minorca with its valuable harbor, Port Mahon, was surrendered to a combined British military and naval expedition, quietly fitted out by St. Vincent from Gibraltar.
The year 1798 in the Mediterranean closed with these operations in progress. At its beginning France was in entire control of the land-locked sea, and scarcely a sail hostile to her, except furtive privateers, traversed its surface. When it closed, only two French ships-of-the-line fit for battle remained upon the waters, which swarmed with enemy's squadrons. Of these two, refugees from the fatal bay of Aboukir, one was securely locked in Malta, whence she never escaped; the other made its way to Toulon, and met its doom in a vain effort to carry relief to the beleaguered island.
CHAPTER X
The Mediterranean From 1799 to 1801
Bonaparte's Syrian Expedition and Siege of Acre.—The Incursion of the French Brest Fleet Under Admiral Bruix.—Bonaparte's Return to France.—The French Lose Malta and Egypt
AFTER the destruction of his fleet, Bonaparte resumed the task of subduing and organizing Egypt, which had by that misfortune become more than ever essential to his projects. In the original conception of his eastern adventure the valley of the Nile had borne a twofold part. It was, in the first place, to become a permanent acquisition of France, the greatest of her colonies,—great not only by its own natural resources, susceptible as was believed of immense development, but also by its singular position, which, to a power controlling the Mediterranean waters, gave the military and commercial link between the eastern and western worlds. To France, bereft of the East and the West Indies, childless now of her richest colonies, Egypt was to be the great and more than equal compensation. But this first object obtained, though in itself a justification, was but the necessary step to the more dazzling, if not more useful, achievement of the destruction of the British power in India, and the creation there of an empire tributary to France. "Thus, on the one side Egypt would replace San Domingo and the Antilles; on the other, she would be a step towards the conquest of India." 229
Measured by the successes of a few handfuls of British in the empire of the Moguls, the army brought by Bonaparte into Egypt was more than able to subdue that country, and to spread far and wide the obedience to the French arms. Like the founders of the British Indian Empire, the French general found himself face to face, not only with military institutions incomparably weaker and less cohesive than those of Europe, but with a civil society—if such it can be called—from which the element of mutual confidence, and with it the power of combined resistance, had disappeared. The prestige of success, the knowledge that he could command the services of a body of men superior in numbers as in disciplined action to any aggregation of units that could be kept steadily together to oppose him, was sufficient to insure for him the supremacy that concentrated force will always have over diffused force, organized power over unorganized. In military matters two and two do not make four, unless they are brought together in concerted action. Unfortunately, at the very moment of the most brilliant demonstration of his genius and of the valor of his troops, there had fallen upon one part of his command a reverse more startling, more absolute, than his own victories, and inflicted by a force certainly not superior to the one defeated. The Orientals, who could count upon no sufficient stay in men of their own race, now saw hopes of succor from without. They were not disappointed. Again a British naval captain, in the moment of triumphant progress, stopped the advance of Bonaparte.
The autumn and early winter of 1798 were passed in the conquest and overrunning of upper Egypt by Desaix, who left Cairo for this purpose on the 25th of August, and in the settlement of the affairs of the lower Nile upon such a basis as would secure quiet and revenue during the absence of the commander-in-chief. An insurrection in Cairo in October, provoked partly by dissatisfaction with intended changes, partly by the rumor of the Porte having declared war upon France, gave Bonaparte in quelling it an opportunity to show the iron firmness of his grip, and afterwards to manifest that mixture of unrelenting severity towards the few with politic lenity towards the many, which is so well calculated to check the renewal of commotion.
In November, when the weather became cooler, a detachment of fifteen hundred men was sent to occupy Suez, and toward the end of December Bonaparte himself made a visit of inspection to the isthmus, by which he must advance to the prosecution of his larger schemes. While thus absent he learned, through an intercepted courier, that Djezzar, the Pasha of Syria, had on the 2d of January, 1799, occupied the important oasis of El Arish in the desert of Suez, and was putting its fort in a state of defence. 230 He at once realized that the time had come when he must carry out his project of advance into Syria, and accept the hostility of Turkey, which he had wished to avoid.
The singular position of isolation in which the French in Egypt were placed, by the loss of the control of the sea, must be realized, in order to understand the difficulties under which Bonaparte labored in shaping his course of action, from time to time, with reference to the general current of events. Separated from Palestine by two hundred miles of desert, and by a yet wider stretch of barren sand from any habitable land to the west, Egypt is aptly described by Napoleon himself as a great oasis, surrounded on all sides by the desert and the sea. The intrinsic weakness of the French navy, its powerlessness to command security for its unarmed vessels in the Mediterranean, had been manifested by the tremor of apprehension and uncertainty which ran through the officials at Toulon and in Paris, when, after the sailing of Bonaparte, they learned of Nelson's appearance. The restless activity of the British admiral, and the frequent sight of his ships in different places, multiplied, in the imagination of the French authorities, the numbers of hostile cruisers actually on the sea. 231 A convoy of twenty-six large ships, for the completion of whose lading the expedition could not wait, lay in Toulon during the summer months, ready to sail; but no one dared to despatch them. From time to time during the outward voyage Bonaparte sent urgent messages for their speedy departure; but they never came.
If this fear existed and exercised such sway before the day of the Nile, it may be imagined how great was the influence of that disastrous tidings. Not only, however, did a moral effect follow, but the annihilation of the French fleet permitted the British cruisers to scatter, and so indefinitely increased the real danger of capture to French ships. Surrounded by deserts and the sea, the commander-in-chief in Egypt saw, on and beyond both, nothing but actual or possible enemies. Not only so, but being in utter ignorance of the attitude of most of the powers as well as of European events, he could not know what bad effect might result from action taken by him upon imperfect information. His embarrassment is vividly depicted in a letter dated December 17, 1798: "We are still without news from France, not a courier has arrived since July 6; this is unexampled even in the colonies." 232 The courier mentioned, leaving France in July, had reached Bonaparte on the 9th of September; but the vessel which brought him had been obliged to run ashore to escape the British cruisers, and only one letter from the Directory was saved. 233 The next tidings came on the 5th of February, when a Ragusan ship, chartered by two French citizens, succeeded in entering Alexandria. "The news," he said, "is sufficiently contradictory; but it is the first I have had since July 6." He then first learned definitely that Turkey had declared war against France. 234 His troops were at that moment in the desert, marching upon Syria, and he himself on the point of following them.
Up to that time Bonaparte had hoped to cajole the Porte into an attitude of neutrality, upon the plea that his quarrel was solely with the Mamelukes on account of injury done by them to French commerce. On the 11th of December he had sent to Constantinople a M. Beauchamp, recently consul at Muscat, with instructions how to act in the twofold contingency of war having been declared or not. At that time he expected that Talleyrand would be found in Constantinople as Ambassador of France. 235 The news by the Ragusan enlightened him as to the actual relations with Turkey; but the disquieting rumors before received, coinciding with his ultimate purpose to advance upon India through Syria, had already determined him to act as the military situation demanded. 236 He had learned that troops were assembling in Syria and in the island of Rhodes, and divined that he was threatened with a double invasion,—by the desert of Suez and by the Mediterranean Sea. True to his sound and invariable policy, he determined to use his central position to strike first one and then the other, and not passively to wait on the defensive until a simultaneous attack might compel him to divide his force. During the violent winter weather, which would last yet for six weeks or two months, landing on the Egyptian coast was thought impracticable. 237 For that period, probably for longer, he could count upon security on the side of the sea. He would improve the interval by invading Syria, driving back the enemy there, breaking up his army, and seizing his ports. Thus he would both shut the coast to the British cruisers off Alexandria, which drew supplies from thence, and make impossible any future invasion from the side of the desert. He counted also upon the moral effect which success in Syria would have upon the negotiations with the Porte, which he conceived to be in progress. 238
The first essential point in the campaign was to possess El Arish, just occupied by the troops of Djezzar. General Reynier advanced against it with his division on the 5th of February, 1799. The Turks were by him routed and driven from the oasis, and the fort besieged. Bonaparte himself arrived on the 15th, and on the 20th the garrison capitulated. The corps destined for the expedition, numbering in all thirteen thousand men, having now assembled, the advance from El Arish began on the 22d. On the 25th Gaza was taken. On the 3d of March the army encamped before Jaffa, and on the 7th the place was carried by storm. A port, though a very poor one, was thus secured. The next day there entered, from Acre, a convoy of Turkish coasters laden with provisions and ammunition, which fell a welcome prize to the French, and was sent back to Hayfa, a small port seven miles south of Acre, for the use of the troops upon arrival. On the 12th of March the army resumed its march upon Acre, distant about sixty miles. On the 17th, at five in the afternoon, a detachment entered and held Hayfa, to provide a place of safety for the flotilla, which, coasting the beach, slowly followed the advance of the troops. From Hayfa Bonaparte could see the roadstead of Acre, and lying there two British ships-of-the-line, the "Tigre" and the "Theseus," both under the command of Sir Sidney Smith, the captain of the former; who, as ranking officer on the spot, represented the naval power of Great Britain, about again to foil the plans of the great French leader.
Sir Sidney Smith, to whom now fell the distinguished duty of meeting and stopping the greatest general of modern times, was a man who has left behind him a somewhat singular reputation, in which, and in the records commonly accessible, it is not always easy to read his real character. He was not liked by St. Vincent nor by Nelson, and their feeling towards him, though much intensified by the circumstances under which he now came to the Mediterranean, seems to have depended upon their previous knowledge of his history. The First Lord, in assigning him to this duty, felt obliged to take an almost apologetic tone to Earl St. Vincent. "I am well aware," he wrote, "that there may perhaps be some prejudices, derived from certain circumstances which have attended this officer's career through life; but, from a long acquaintance with him personally, I think I can venture to assure your lordship that, added to his unquestioned character for courage and enterprise, he has a great many good points about him, which those who are less acquainted with him may not be sufficiently apprised of. I have no doubt you will find him a very useful instrument to be employed on any hazardous or difficult service, and that he will be perfectly under your guidance, as he ought to be." 239 In the concluding sentence Earl Spencer sums up Sir Sidney's real character, as far as it can be discerned in the dim light of the recorded facts—or rather in the false lights which have exaggerated some circumstances and distorted others. He was bold and enterprising to Quixotism; he was a most useful instrument; but so far from having no doubt, the First Lord must have had very serious, if unacknowledged, doubts as to how far he would be under the guidance of St. Vincent, or any one else, out of signal distance. A self-esteem far beyond what the facts warranted, a self-confidence of the kind which does not inspire confidence in others, an exaggerated view of his own importance and of his own services, which was apt to show itself in his bearing and words, 240—such seem to have been the traits that alienated from Sir Sidney Smith the esteem of his contemporaries, until his really able, as well as most gallant, conduct at Acre showed that there was more in him than the mere vainglorious knight-errant. His behavior even there has been distorted, alike by the malevolence of Napoleon and by the popular adulation in Great Britain, which, seizing upon the brilliant traits of energy and valor he exhibited, attributed to him the whole conduct of the siege; 241 whereas, by entrusting the technical direction of the defence to an experienced engineer, he made proof of a wisdom and modesty for which few of his contemporaries would have given him credit. At this time Smith had received some severe snubbings, which, administered by men of the standing of St. Vincent and Nelson, could not be disregarded, and may have had a wholesomely sobering effect.
The circumstances of his coming to the Mediterranean were as follows. Having been a prisoner of war in Paris for nearly two years, he escaped through the stratagem of a French royalist, Phélippeaux, about a week before Bonaparte left the city for Toulon. 242 The incidents of his release were dramatic enough in themselves, and, in common with all his adventures, were well noised abroad. He became a very conspicuous figure in the eyes of the government, and of the public outside the navy. In October, 1798, he was given command of the "Tigre," with directions to proceed to Gibraltar and put himself under St. Vincent's orders. At the same time he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to the Porte, being associated in that capacity with his younger brother, Spencer Smith, who was already ambassador at Constantinople; the object being that, with the diplomatic rank thus conferred, he should be able to direct the efforts of the Turkish and Russian forces in the Levant, in case the military officers of those nations were of grade superior to his. This somewhat complicated arrangement, which presupposed in the Turks and Russians a compliance which no British naval officer would have yielded, was further confused by the instructions issued, apparently without concert, by the Foreign Office to Smith himself, and by the Admiralty to St. Vincent. The latter clearly understood that Smith was intended to be under his command only, and that merely pro formâ; 243 but under no obedience to Nelson, although his intended scene of operations, the Levant, was part of Nelson's district. This view, derived from the Admiralty's letter, was confirmed by an extract from the Foreign Office instructions, communicated by Smith to Nelson, that "his (Smith's) instructions will enable him to take the command of such of his Majesty's ships as he may find in those seas (the Levant) unless, by some unforeseen accident, it should happen that there should be among them any of his Majesty's officers of superior rank." 244
Nelson, of course, was outraged. Here was intruded into his command, where he had achieved such brilliant success, and to the administration of which he felt fully equal, a man of indifferent reputation as an officer, though of unquestioned courage, authorized to act independently of his control, and, as it seemed, even to take his ships. He was hurt not only for himself, but for Troubridge, who was senior to Smith, and would, so Nelson thought, have done the duty better than this choice of the Government. The situation when understood in England was rectified. It was explained that diplomatic rank was considered necessary for the senior naval officer, in order to keep in the hands of Great Britain the direction of combined operations, essentially naval in character; and that Smith had been chosen to the exclusion of seniors because of his relationship to the minister at Constantinople, who might have felt the association with him of a stranger to be an imputation upon his past conduct. Meanwhile St. Vincent, indignant at what seemed to him Smith's airs, had sent him peremptory instructions to put himself under Nelson's orders. Thus, in the double character of naval captain and minister plenipotentiary to Turkey, Smith went up the Mediterranean; where he did first-rate service in the former capacity, and in the latter took some action of very doubtful discretion, in which he certainly did not trouble himself about the guidance or views of his naval superiors.
In compliance with orders from Lord St. Vincent, Nelson in January sent Troubridge with some bomb-vessels to Alexandria, to bombard the shipping in the port; after performing which service he was to turn over to Sir Sidney Smith the blockade of Alexandria and the defence of the Ottoman Empire by sea, of which Nelson thenceforth washed his hands. 245 The bombardment was maintained during several days in February, doing but little harm; and on the 3d of March Sir Sidney, having made his round to Constantinople, arrived and took over the command. Troubridge left with him the "Theseus," seventy-four, whose captain was junior to Smith, with three smaller vessels; and on the 7th sailed to rejoin Nelson. This was the day that the French stormed Jaffa, and the same evening an express with the news reached the "Tigre." Smith at once sent the "Theseus" to Acre, with Phélippeaux, the French officer who had aided him to escape from Paris and had accompanied him to the East.
Of the same age as Bonaparte, Phélippeaux had been his fellow-pupil at the military school of Brienne, had left France with the royalists in 1792, and returned to it after the fall of Robespierre. He had naturally, from his antecedents, joined the party of reaction; and, after its overthrow in September, 1797, was easily moved to aid in Sir Sidney's escape from Paris. Accompanying him to England, he received from the Crown a colonel's commission. To the guidance of this able engineer the wisdom and skill of the defence was mainly due. Never did great issues turn on a nicer balance than at Acre. The technical skill of Phélippeaux, the hearty support he received from Smith, his officers and crews, the untiring activity and brilliant courage of the latter, the British command of the sea, all contributed; and so narrow was the margin of success, that it may safely be said the failure of one factor would have caused total failure and the loss of the place. Its fall was essential to Bonaparte, and his active, far-seeing mind had long before determined its seizure by his squadron, if the British left the Levant. "If any event drives us from the coast of Egypt," wrote Nelson on the 17th of December, 1798, "St. Jean d'Acre will be attacked by sea. I have Bonaparte's letter before me." 246 As the best port and the best fortress on the coast, Acre was the bridgehead into Palestine. To Syria it bore the relation that Lisbon did to the Spanish Peninsular War. If Bonaparte advanced, leaving it unsubdued, his flank and rear would through it be open to attack from the sea. If it fell, he had good reason to believe the country would rise in his favor. "If I succeed," said he at a late period of the siege, when hope had not yet abandoned him, "I shall find in the city the treasures of the Pasha, and arms for three hundred thousand men. I raise and arm all Syria, so outraged by the ferocity of Djezzar, for whose fall you see the population praying to God at each assault. I march upon Damascus and Aleppo. I swell my army, as I advance, by all malcontents. I reach Constantinople with armed masses. I overthrow the Turkish Empire. I found in the East a new and great empire which shall fix my place in posterity." 247 Dreams? Ibrahim Pasha advanced from Egypt in 1831, took Acre in 1832, and marched into the heart of Asia Minor, which the battle of Konieh soon after laid at his feet; why not Bonaparte? Damascus had already offered him its keys, and the people were eager for the overthrow of the pashas.
On the 10th of March Sir Sidney Smith himself left the blockade of Alexandria, and on the 15th anchored with the "Tigre" off Acre. He found that much had already been done, by Phélippeaux and the "Theseus," to make the obsolete fortifications more fit to withstand the approaching siege. Sending the "Theseus" now to cruise down the coast towards Jaffa, it fell to himself to deal the heaviest and most opportune blow to Bonaparte's projects. Some light coasters had sailed with a siege train from the Damietta (eastern) mouth of the Nile, which the British never had ships enough to blockade. On the morning of the 18th they were seen approaching Acre, under convoy of a small corvette. The "Tigre" at once gave chase, and captured all but the corvette and two of the coasters. The cannon that should have been turned against the walls were landed and served to defend them; while the prizes, receiving British crews, thenceforth harassed the siege works, flanking the two walls against which the attacks were addressed, and enfilading the trenches. The French, having by this mishap lost all their siege guns proper, had to depend upon field-pieces to breach the walls until the 25th of April, when half a dozen heavy cannon were received from Jaffa. 248 This time was simply salvation to the besieged and ruin to the assailants; for, in the interval, the skill of Phélippeaux and the diligence of the men under him prepared the place to withstand attacks which at an early period would have caused its fall.
