"You will do well to hold your tongue yourself," replied one of them; "you had better be careful, you are not out of our hands yet."
"How old are you?" asked Pichegru, seeing that he looked very young.
"Sixteen," replied the soldier.
"Gentlemen," said Pichegru, "if ever we return to France we must not forget this child; he promises well."
Five hours elapsed before the vessel got under way; she did so at last, however, and after sailing for an hour, she stopped in the open roadstead. It was nearly midnight.
Then there was a great commotion on deck. Among the innumerable threats which greeted the exiles at Rochefort, cries of "Into the water!" and "Drink out of the great cup!" had been most frequent, and had reached the prisoners' ears. No one expressed his thought, but they each expected to find the end of their tortures in the bed of the Charente. The vessel to which they had been transferred was doubtless one of those which had a movable plug—an ingenious invention of Nero's to rid himself of his mother, and utilized by Carrier to drown the royalists.
They heard the order to put two of the ship's longboats into the water; then an officer commanded every one to stand to his place in a loud voice. Then, after a moment's silence, some one called the names of Pichegru and Aubry.
They embraced their companions and went on deck. A quarter of an hour passed. Suddenly the names of Barthélemy and Delarue were called.
Doubtless the two others had been made away with, and now it was their turn. They embraced their comrades, as Pichegru and Aubry had done, and went on deck, from which they were made to pass into a little boat, where they had to sit side by side in the thwart. A sailor placed himself upon another thwart opposite; the sail was hoisted and they were off like a shot. The two exiles kept feeling the planks with their feet, fancying that they could see the hole which had already swallowed up their comrades.
But this time their fears were without foundation; they were merely being transferred from the brigantine "Brilliant" to the corvette "Vaillante," whither two of theircompanions had preceded them and where the others were to follow. They were received by Captain Julien, in whose face they sought in vain to read the secret of their destiny. He affected to look severely at them, but when he was alone with them he said: "Gentlemen, it is plain to be seen that you have suffered terribly. But have patience; while executing the orders of the Directory, I shall overlook and neglect nothing that can add to your comfort."
Unhappily for them, Guillet had followed them. He heard the last words, and an hour later Captain Julien was replaced by Captain Laporte.
Strange freak of Fate! The "Vaillante," a corvette carrying twenty-two guns, which the exiles were now boarding, had recently been built at Bayonne; and Villot, who was commanding general of the district, had been chosen to christen her. He himself had selected the name "Vaillante."
The exiles were sent between decks; and as it did not occur to any one to give them anything to eat, Dessonville, who suffered more than any of the others from lack of food, asked: "Do they really propose to let us die of hunger?"
"No, no, gentlemen," said an officer named Des Poyes, laughing. "Do not be uneasy, you will have your supper."
"Only give us some fruit," said the dying Barbé-Marbois; "something to cool our mouths."
A fresh burst of laughter welcomed this request, and some one threw the poor famished creatures a couple of loaves of bread from the deck.
"What a delicious supper," exclaims Ramel, "for poor devils who had eaten nothing for forty hours. And yet a supper we often thought of with regret, for it was the last time that we were given any bread."
Ten minutes later twelve hammocks were distributed to the prisoners; but Pichegru, Ramel, Villot and Dessonville received none.
"And where are we to sleep?" asked Pichegru.
"Come on deck," replied the voice of the new captain,"and I will see that you are told." Pichegru and the others who had not received hammocks did as they were told.
"Put these men in the Lion's Den," said the captain; "that is the lodging set aside for them."
The Lion's Den is the cell set aside for sailors who are condemned to death. When the exiles between decks heard this order they gave vent to angry cries.
"No separation!" they cried. "Put us in that horrible cell with those gentlemen, or leave them here with us."
Barthélemy and his faithful Letellier—that brave servant who had refused to leave his master—dashed on deck; and seeing their four comrades in the clutches of soldiers who were dragging them toward the cell, they slid rather than climbed down the ladder, and found themselves in the hold with them.
"Here!" cried the captain from the top of the hatchway; "come back here, or I will have you driven up with the bayonet." But they lay down.
"There is neither first nor last among us," they retorted; "we are all guilty or we are all innocent. You must treat us all alike."
The soldiers advanced toward them with bayonets levelled, but they did not move. It was only when Pichegru and the others insisted upon it that they returned to the deck. The four were then left in the deepest darkness in the horrible cell, which was foul with exhalations from the hold. They had neither hammock nor coverings, and could not lie down, for the cell was too narrow, nor yet stand up, for it was too low.
The twelve others crowded between decks were not much better off; for the hatches were closed, and, like their comrades, they had no air and could not move about.
Toward four o'clock in the morning the captain gave the order to set sail; and amid the shouts of the crew, the creaking of the rigging, the roaring of the waves breaking against the corvette, like a sob from the sides of the vessel itself, came the last cry: "Farewell, France!"
And like an echo from the entrails of the hold the same cry was repeated, almost unintelligibly, on account of the depths whence it came: "Farewell, France."
The reader may perhaps wonder that I have dwelt so long upon this melancholy tale, which would become more melancholy still, were we to follow the ill-fated exiles to the end of their journey of forty-five days. But the reader would probably not have my courage, which I owe to the necessity not of rehabilitating them—I leave to history that task—but of directing the compassion of future generations toward the men who sacrificed themselves for France.
It has seemed to me that the old pagan saying, "Woe to the vanquished!" has always been brutal, and is nothing less than impious in these days of modernity; and by some instinct of my heart I always incline toward the vanquished and my sympathies are ever with them.
They who have read my books know that I have described with the same degree of impartiality and sympathy the demise of Joan of Arc at Rouen and the passing of Mary Stuart at Fotheringay, the appearance of Charles I. upon the scaffold at Whitehall and of Marie Antoinette on the Place de la Révolution.
But there is one peculiarity of historians which I have ever deplored, and that is that they marvel at the tears a king can shed, without studying as carefully the burden of agony which oppresses that poor human machine when dying, when it is supported by the conviction of its innocence and integrity, whether it belong to the middle or even the lower classes of society.
Such were these men whose sufferings I have endeavored to describe, and for whom we find not a single historian expressing regret, and who, by the clever expedient adopted by their persecutors of confusing them with men like Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, were first despoiled of the sympathy of their contemporaries, and then cheated of their inheritance of the compassion of posterity.
When we announced to you, dear readers, the importance in matter of size alone of our novel of "The Whites and the Blues," that is to say, when we warned you that it would comprise a certain number of volumes, we said at the same time that it was the sequel of "The Companions of Jehu."
But as our plan comprised the description of the great events of the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, from 1793 to 1815—that is to say, to offer you a panorama of the twenty-two years of our history—we have filled nearly three volumes with descriptions of the principal crises of the Revolution, and have only reached the year 1799, in which our story of "The Companions of Jehu" begins.
If several of our characters, who play parts in that novel also appear in "The Whites and the Blues," it will not be surprising if at five or six points of the fresh episode upon which we are about to enter, the two narratives coincide, and if some of the chapters of the first book are repeated naturally enough in the second, since the events are not only on parallel lines, but are often identical.
Once we have passed the execution of Morgan and his companions, our novel will in reality become a sequel to "The Companions of Jehu," since the third and only remaining brother of the family of Sainte-Hermine becomes the hero and principal personage of the volumes which remain to be published under the title of "The Empire."
We give this explanation, dear readers, that you may not be surprised at this coincidence between the two books; and if we dared to ask so much at your hands, we would beg you to read again "The Companions of Jehu" when reading the "Eighth Crusade."
Do I need to add, dear readers, that this new work is the most strictly historical of any that I have undertaken, and was conceived, composed and written in pursuance of a great object; that, namely, of obtaining the perusal of ten volumes of history under the guise of ten volumes of romance? The events related in "The Whites and the Blues" are the most important of our age; and it is essential that our people, who have played such a leading rôle for the last seventy years in the affairs of Europe, and who are called upon to play a still greater part, should know these grand pages of our annals as they deserve to be known.
Then when restorations follow revolutions, and revolutions follow restorations, when each party, at the moment of its elevation, raises statues to those who represent it—statues destined to be cast down by the opposite party, only to give place to others—feeble minds and short-sighted visions falter before all these great men of the moment, who become traitors, and whom their contemporaries find no more difficulty in dishonoring than they did in exalting. It is therefore well for a keener eye and a more impartial mind to say: "This is plaster and this is marble; this is lead and this gold."
There are statues which are thrown from their pedestals and which rise again of themselves. There are, on the contrary, those which fall of themselves and which are shattered in their fall. Mirabeau, after having been carried to the Pantheon with great pomp, has no statue to-day. Louis XVI., after being tossed into the common ditch, has his memorial chapel.
Perhaps posterity has been rather severe with Mirabeau, and equally lenient toward Louis XVI., but we must bow alike before its severity and its indulgence. And yet, without envying Louis XVI. his memorial chapel, we would like to see a statue erected to Mirabeau. The more guilty of the two, in our opinion, was not he who sold but he who bought.
On the 7th of April, 1799, the promontory on which Saint-Jean-d'Acre is built, the ancient Ptolemais, seemed to be wrapped in as much thunder and lightning as was Mount Sinai on the day when the Lord appeared to Moses from the burning bush.
Whence came those reports which shook the coast of Syria as with an earthquake? Whence came that smoke which covered the Gulf of Carmel with a cloud as thick as though Mount Elias had become a burning volcano?
The dream of one of those men, who with a few words change the whole destiny of the world, was accomplished. We are mistaken; we should have said, had vanished. But perhaps it had vanished only to give place to a reality of which this man, ambitious as he was, had never dared to dream.
On the 10th of September, 1797, when the conqueror of Italy heard at Passeriano of the 18th Fructidor and the promulgation of the law which condemned two of the directors, fifty-four deputies, and a hundred and forty-eight private individuals to exile, he fell into a profound revery.
He was doubtless calculating, in his mind, the influence which would accrue to him from thiscoup d'état, which his hand had directed although Augereau's had alone been visible. He was walking with his secretary, Bourrienne, in the beautiful park of the palace. Suddenly he raised his head and said without any apparent reference to what had gone before: "Assuredly, Europe is a mole-hill. There has never been a great empire or a great revolution save in the East, where there are six hundred millions of men."
Then when Bourrienne, totally unprepared for this outburst, looked at him in astonishment, he seemed to lose himself again in revery.
On the 1st of January, 1798, Bonaparte—who had been recognized in his box, in which he was trying to conceal himself, at the first performance of "Horatius Coclès," and saluted with an ovation and cries of "Long live Bonaparte!" which shook the building three times—returned to his house in the Rue Chantereine (newly named the Rue de la Victoire) wrapped in melancholy, and said to Bourrienne, to whom he always confided his gloomy thoughts:
"Believe me, Bourrienne, nobody remembers anything in Paris. If I should do nothing for six months I should be lost. One reputation in this Babylon replaces another; they will not see me three times at the theatre before they will cease to look at me."
Again, on the 29th of the same month, he said to Bourrienne, still absorbed in the same dream: "Bourrienne, I will not stay here; there is nothing to be done. If I do remain I am done for; everything goes to seed in France. I have already exhausted my glory. This poor little Europe cannot furnish enough;I must go to the East."
Finally, when he was walking down the Rue Sainte-Anne, with Bourrienne, about a fortnight before his departure on the 18th of April, his secretary, to whom he had not spoken a word since they left the Rue Chantereine, in order to break the silence which annoyed him, said: "Then you have really decided to leave France, general?"
"Yes," replied Bonaparte, "I asked to be one of them, and they refused me. If I stay here I shall have to overthrow them and make myself king. The nobles would never consent to that; I have sounded the ground and the time has not yet come. I should be alone. I must dazzle the people. We will go to Egypt, Bourrienne."
Therefore it was not to communicate with Tippoo-Sahib across Asia, and to attack England in India, that Bonaparte left Europe.
"I must dazzle the people." In those words lay the true motive for his departure.
On the 3d of May, 1798, he ordered all the generals to embark their troops. On the 4th he left Paris. On the 8th he reached Toulon. On the 19th he went aboard the admiral's vessel, the "Orient." On the 25th he sighted Leghorn and the island of Elba. On the 13th of June he took Malta. On the 19th he set sail again. On the 3d of July he took Alexandria by assault. On the 13th he won the battle of Chebrouïss. On the 21st he crushed the Mamelukes at the Pyramids. On the 25th he entered Cairo. On the 14th of August he learned of the disaster of Aboukir. On the 24th of December he started, with the members of the Institute, to visit the remains of the Suez Canal. On the 28th he drank at the fountains of Moses, and, like Pharaoh, was almost drowned in the Red Sea. On the 1st of January, 1799, he planned the expedition into Syria. He had conceived the idea six months earlier.
At that time he wrote to Kléber:
If the English continue to overrun the Mediterranean, they will perhaps force us to do greater things than we at first intended.
If the English continue to overrun the Mediterranean, they will perhaps force us to do greater things than we at first intended.
There was a vague rumor concerning an expedition which the Sultan of Damascus was sending against the French, in which Djezzar Pasha, surnamed "The Butcher," because of his cruelty, led the advance-guard.
The rumor had taken definite shape. Djezzar had advanced by Gaza as far as El-Arich, and had massacred the few French soldiers who were there in the fortress.
Among his young ordnance officers, Bonaparte had the brothers Mailly de Château-Renaud. He sent the younger with a flag of truce to Djezzar, who, in defiance of military law, took him prisoner. This was a declaration of war. Bonaparte, with his customary rapidity of decision, determined to destroy the advance-guard of the Ottoman Empire.
In case of success, he himself would tell later what were his hopes. If repulsed, he would raze the walls of Gaza, Jaffa, and Acre, ravage the country and destroy all the supplies, making it impossible for an army, even a native one, to cross the desert.
On the 11th of February, 1799, Bonaparte entered Syria at the head of twelve thousand men. He had with him that galaxy of gallant men who gravitated around him during the first and most brilliant part of his life.
He had Kléber, the handsomest and bravest horseman in the army. He had Murat, who disputed this double title with Kléber. He had Junot, who was such a remarkable shot that he could split a dozen balls in succession on the point of a knife. He had Lannes, who had already earned his title of Duc de Montebello, but had not yet assumed it. He had Reynier, who was destined to decide the victory of Heliopolis. He had Caffarelli, who was doomed to lie in that trench which he had dug.
And in subordinate positions he had for aides-de-camp Eugene de Beauharnais, our young friend of Strasbourg, who had brought about the marriage between Josephine and Bonaparte by going to ask the latter for his father's sword. He had Croisier, gloomy and taciturn ever since he had faltered in an encounter with the Arabs and the word "coward" had escaped Bonaparte's lips. He had the elder of the two Maillys, who was determined to deliver or avenge his brother. He had the young Sheik of Aher, chief of the Druses, whose name, if not his power, extended from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean.
And, finally, he had an old acquaintance of ours, Roland de Montrevel, whose habitual intrepidity had, since the day of his capture at Cairo, been doubled by that strange desire for death which we have seen him display in "The Companions of Jehu."
On the 17th of February the army reached El-Arich. The soldiers had suffered greatly from thirst during the journey. Only once did they find refreshment and amusement at the end of their day's stage. That was at Messoudiah, or "The Fortunate Spot," on the shores of the Mediterranean, at a place composed of small dunes of fine sand. Here chance led a soldier to imitate Moses' miracle. As he thrust his stick into the ground, the water gushed forth as from an artesian well. The soldier tasted it, and finding it excellent, he called his comrades and shared his discovery with them. Every one then punched his own hole and had his own well. Nothing more was needed to restore the soldiers to cheerfulness.
El-Arich surrendered at the first summons. On the 28th of February the green and fertile plains of Syria came in sight. At the same time, mountains and valleys, recalling those of Europe, could be plainly discerned through a light rain—a rare thing in the East.
On the 1st of March they camped at Ramleh—the ancient Rama, where Rachel gave way to her great despair, which the Bible describes in this nobly pathetic verse:
In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentations and weepings and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they were not.
In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentations and weepings and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they were not.
Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and Joseph passed by Rama on their way to Egypt. The church which the monks gave Bonaparte for a hospital was built on the very spot where the holy family stopped to rest.
The well whose fresh, pure water slaked the thirst of the whole army was the very same which, seventeen hundred and ninety-nine years before, had refreshed the holy fugitives. He also was from Rama, that disciple Joseph, whose pious hand wrapped the body of our Lord Jesus Christ in the shroud.
Perhaps not one man in the whole vast multitude knew the sacred tradition. But one thing they did know, and that was that they were not more than eighteen miles from Jerusalem.
As they walked beneath the olive trees which are perhaps the most beautiful in all the East, and which the soldiers ruthlessly cut down to make their bivouac fires, Bourrienne asked Bonaparte: "General, shall you not go to Jerusalem?"
"Oh, no," he replied, carelessly; "Jerusalem is not within my line of operations. I do not care to get into trouble with the mountaineers on these bad roads; and then on the other side of the mountain I should be attacked by a large body of cavalry. I have no ambition to emulate the fate of Crassus."
Crassus, it will be remembered, was massacred by the Parthians.
There is this that is strange in Bonaparte's life, that while he was at one time within eighteen miles of Jerusalem (the cradle of Christ) and at another within eighteen miles of Rome (the cradle of the Papacy), he had no desire to see either Rome or Jerusalem.
Two days before, within a mile of Gaza (which means in Arabic "treasure" and in Hebrew "strong")—the same Gaza whose gates were carried away by Samson, who died with three thousand Philistines beneath the ruins of the temple which he had overthrown—they had met Abdallah, Pasha of Damascus.
He was at the head of his cavalry. That pertained to Murat's department. Murat took a hundred men from the thousand which he commanded, and with his riding-whip in his hand—for when opposed to the Mussulman, Arab, and Maugrabin cavalry he rarely deigned to draw his sabre—he charged them vigorously. Abdallah turned and fled toward the town. The army followed him and took up its position on the opposite side.
They arrived at Ramleh the day after this skirmish.From Ramleh they marched upon Jaffa. To the soldiers' great satisfaction, the clouds gathered above their heads for the second time, and the rain fell. A deputation was sent to Bonaparte in the name of the army, asking that they be allowed to take a bath. Bonaparte granted the permission and ordered a halt. Then each soldier pulled off his clothes and revelled in the luxury of feeling the cool rain upon his burning body. Then the army started again, refreshed and joyous, and singing the "Marseillaise" with one accord.
Abdallah's Mamelukes and cavalry no more dared wait for the French than they had dared wait at Gaza. They returned to their city firm in their belief that every Mussulman is safe so long as he is behind a wall. This garrison of Jaffa was composed of a singular medley, who, drunk with fanaticism, were now about to set the best army in the world at defiance.
There were representatives there from all parts of the East—from the extreme end of Africa to the uttermost confines of Asia. There were Maugrabins with their long white coats. There were Albanians, with their long guns mounted in silver and inlaid with coral. There were Kurds, with their long lances ornamented with ostrich plumes. There were Aleppians, who all wore, either on one cheek or the other, the mark of the famous button of Aleppo. There were men of Damascus with curved swords of such finely tempered steel that they could cut a silk handkerchief floating in the air. There were Nataloians, Karamanians, and negroes.
On the 3d they arrived before the walls of Jaffa, and on the 4th the city was invested. On the same day Murat made a reconnoissance around the ramparts to determine on which side it would be best to attack. On the 7th everything was in readiness to bombard the city.
Bonaparte desired to try conciliatory measures before beginning the bombardment. He knew the meaning of a struggle against such a population, even were he victorious.
He dictated the following summons:
God is merciful and pitiful.General Bonaparte, whom the Arabs have surnamed the "Sultan of Fire," charges me to tell you that Djezzar Pasha commenced hostilities in Egypt by taking the fortress of El-Arich; that God, who is always on the side of justice, gave the victory to the French army, who recaptured the fortress, from which he desires to drive the troops of Djezzar Pasha, who ought never to have entered it; that Jaffa is surrounded on all sides; that the batteries will begin in two hours to batter down the walls with shot and shell, and destroy the defences; that his heart is touched by the thought of the harm that would befall the city and its inhabitants should it be taken by assault; that he offers a safe-conduct and protection to the garrison and the inhabitants of the city, and that he will consequently postpone the bombardment until seven o'clock in the morning.
God is merciful and pitiful.
General Bonaparte, whom the Arabs have surnamed the "Sultan of Fire," charges me to tell you that Djezzar Pasha commenced hostilities in Egypt by taking the fortress of El-Arich; that God, who is always on the side of justice, gave the victory to the French army, who recaptured the fortress, from which he desires to drive the troops of Djezzar Pasha, who ought never to have entered it; that Jaffa is surrounded on all sides; that the batteries will begin in two hours to batter down the walls with shot and shell, and destroy the defences; that his heart is touched by the thought of the harm that would befall the city and its inhabitants should it be taken by assault; that he offers a safe-conduct and protection to the garrison and the inhabitants of the city, and that he will consequently postpone the bombardment until seven o'clock in the morning.
The summons was addressed to Abou-Saib, the governor of Jaffa. Roland held out his hand to take it.
"What are you doing?" asked Bonaparte.
"Do you not need a messenger?" replied the young man, laughing; "it may as well be I as any one else."
"No," replied Bonaparte; "on the contrary, it had better be any one else than you, and better a Mussulman than a Christian."
"Why so, general?"
"Because while Abou-Saib may perhaps cut off the head of a Mussulman, he would most certainly cut off that of a Christian."
"All the more reason," replied Roland, shrugging his shoulders.
"Enough," said Bonaparte: "I do not wish it."
Roland went off into a corner pouting like a spoiled child.
Then Bonaparte said to his dragoman: "Ask whether there is any Turk or Arab, in short any Mussulman, who will undertake to deliver this despatch."
The dragoman repeated the question aloud.
A Mameluke from the dromedary corps came forward.
"I will," said he.
The dragoman looked at Bonaparte.
"Tell him what he risks," said the general-in-chief.
"The Sultan of Fire wishes you to know that you risk your life in taking this message."
"What is written is written," replied the Mussulman, and he held out his hand.
He was given a white flag and a trumpeter. They approached the town on horseback, and the gates opened to receive them. Ten minutes later there was a great commotion on the ramparts just in front of the general's camp. The trumpeter appeared, dragged roughly along by two Albanians. They ordered him to sound his trumpet to attract the attention of the French army.
He sounded the call. Just as all eyes were fixed upon the walls, a man approached holding in his hand a severed head wearing a turban. He extended his arm over the ramparts; the turban fell off, and the head dropped at the foot of the wall. It belonged to the Mussulman who had carried the summons. Ten minutes later the trumpeter came out of the same gate through which he had entered, but he was alone.
The next morning at seven o'clock, as Bonaparte had said, six pieces began to thunder one after the other. At four o'clock the breach was practicable, and Bonaparte ordered the assault. He looked around for Roland to give him the command of one of the regiments which were to enter the breach. Roland was not there.
The carabineers of the twenty-second light brigade and the chasseurs of the same brigade, supported by the artillery and the engineers, rushed forward to the assault, commanded by General Rambeau, Adjutant-general Nethervood, and Vernois. They all mounted to the breach; and in spite of the fusillade which met them in front, and the showers of grape from the few cannon which had not been silenced, and which took them from behind, they waged a terrible fight over the fallen tower.
The struggle lasted for a quarter of an hour, and thebesiegers had not been able to enter the breach, nor had the besieged succeeded in forcing them back. All the efforts on both sides seemed to be concentrated on the spot, when suddenly Roland appeared upon the dismantled tower holding a Turkish standard and followed by some fifty men. He waved the standard crying: "The city is taken!"
This is what had happened: That morning about six o'clock, the hour of dawn in the East, Roland had gone down to his bath in the sea, and there had discovered a sort of breach in the angle made by a wall and a tower. He had assured himself that the breach led into the city; then he took his bath and returned to the army just as the bombardment had begun. There, as he was well known to be one of Bonaparte's privileged favorites, and at the same time one of the most recklessly daring officers in the army, cries of "Captain Roland! Captain Roland!" resounded on all sides.
Roland knew what that meant. It meant, "Haven't you something impossible to attempt? Here we are."
"Fifty volunteers!" he cried.
A hundred offered themselves.
"Fifty!" he repeated.
And he selected the fifty, taking every other man in order not to hurt their feelings. Then he took two trumpeters and two drummers, and leading the way himself, he conducted them through the hole he had found into the city. His fifty men followed him.
They met a party of about one hundred men carrying a flag. They fell upon them and harried them with their bayonets. Roland seized the flag, and it was that one which he had waved from the ramparts. He was hailed by shouts from the whole army; but he thought the time had now come to use his drums and trumpets.
The whole garrison was at the breach, not expecting any rear attack, when they suddenly heard the drums beside them and the French trumpets behind them. At the same time, two discharges of musketry and a hailstorm of bulletsfell among the besieged. They turned, only to see gun-barrels reflecting the rays of the sun and tri-colored plumes waving in the wind in every direction. The smoke drifting toward them on the sea-breeze concealed the small number of the French rear attacking party. They believed that they had been betrayed. A frightful panic ensued, and they deserted the breach.
But Roland had sent ten of his men to open one of the gates. General Lannes's division poured in, and the besieged found French bayonets where they had thought to find the road clear for flight. By a reaction common to ferocious people, who, never giving quarter, never expect any, they seized their arms with renewed fury, and the combat began again with all the appearance of a massacre. Bonaparte, being ignorant of what was happening within the walls—seeing the smoke rising along the ramparts and hearing the rattle of musketry, while no one returned, not even the wounded—sent Eugene de Beauharnais and Croisier to see what was going on, bidding them to return and report at once.
They both wore the emblem of their rank, the aide-de-camp's scarf, on their arm. They had been impatiently awaiting the word which would permit of their taking part in the fight. They entered the town at a run and penetrated to the very heart of the carnage. They were recognized as envoys of the commander-in-chief, and as they were supposed to be the bearers of a message the firing ceased for a minute. A few of the Albanians could speak French. One of them cried: "If our lives are spared we will surrender at once. If not, we will fight until the last one of us is killed."
The two aides-de-camp had no means of knowing Bonaparte's secrets. They were young and they were actuated by sentiments of humanity. Without authority they promised the poor fellows that their lives should be spared. The firing ceased, and the prisoners were taken to the camp. There were four thousand of them.
As for the soldiers, they knew their rights. The town had been taken by assault. After the massacre came the pillage.
Bonaparte was walking in front of his tent with Bourrienne, impatiently awaiting news, and having no other of his intimates at hand, when he saw two troops of armed men leaving the town by different gates. One of them was led by Croisier, and the other by Eugene de Beauharnais. Their young faces shone with joy.
Croisier, who had not smiled since he had had the misfortune to displease the commander-in-chief, was smiling now, for he hoped that this fine prize would conciliate the master. Bonaparte understood the whole thing. He grew pale, and said sorrowfully: "What do you suppose I am going to do with those men? Have I food to give them? Have I ships to send the wretched creatures to France or Egypt?"
The two young men halted ten feet from him. They saw by the rigid expression of his face that they had made a mistake.
"What have you there?" he asked.
Croisier dared not reply, but Eugene spoke for both.
"As you see, general, prisoners."
"Did I tell you to take any prisoners?"
"You told us to stop the carnage," replied Eugene, timidly.
"Yes," replied the general, "of women, children, and old men I did; but not of armed soldiers. Do you know that you have forced me to commit a crime?"
The young men understood and retired in dismay. Croisier was weeping. Eugene tried to console him; but he shook his head and said: "It is all over with me; the first opportunity that offers I shall let myself be shot."
Before deciding upon the fate of the unfortunate prisoners, Bonaparte decided to call a council of the generals. But soldiers and generals had bivouacked outside the town. The soldiers did not stop until they were weary. Besides the four thousand prisoners, they left nearly five thousand dead. The pillage of the houses lasted all night. From time to time shots echoed through the night. Dull cries of anguish resounded incessantly in the streets, the houses, and the mosques.
They came from soldiers who were dragged from their places of concealment and slaughtered; by inhabitants who were trying to defend their treasures; by husbands and fathers who were striving to defend their wives and daughters from the brutality of the soldiers.
But the vengeance of Heaven was hidden beneath all this cruelty. The plague was in Jaffa, and the army carried the germs of it away with them.
The prisoners were, in the first place, ordered to sit down together in front of the tents. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Their faces were downcast, more from dread of what was in store for them than from anger. They had seen Bonaparte's face darken when he perceived them; and they had heard, although they had not understood it, the reprimand which he had bestowed upon the young soldiers. But what they had not understood they had divined.
Some of them ventured to say, "I am hungry"; others, "I am thirsty."
They brought them all water and gave each of them a piece of bread, taken from the soldiers' rations. This reassured them a trifle.
As fast as the generals returned they were bidden to repair at once to the general-in-chief's tent. They deliberated a long time without arriving at any decision. On the following day the diurnal reports of the generals of division came in. All complained of insufficient rations. The only ones who had eaten and drunk their fill werethose who had entered the town during the fight and were therefore entitled to take part in the pillage. But they constituted merely a fourth of the army. All the rest complained at having to share their bread with the enemy, who had been rescued from legitimate vengeance; since, according to the laws of war, Jaffa having been taken by storm, all the soldiers who were within its walls should have perished by the sword.
The council assembled once more. Five questions were proposed for its deliberation.
"Should the men be sent to Egypt?"
But this would require a large escort, and the army was already over-weak to defend itself against the deadly hostility of the country. Besides that, how could they and their escort be fed until they reached Cairo, when they would be obliged to travel through the enemy's country, previously laid waste by the army which had just passed through it and which had no food to give the prisoners to start with.
"Should they put them on shipboard?"
Where were the ships? Where could they be found? The sea was like a desert, or at least it was dotted by no friendly sails.
"Should they be restored to liberty?"
In that case they would go straight to Saint-Jean-d'Acre, to reinforce the Pasha, or else into the mountains of Nablos. Then in every ravine they would be assailed by an invisible army of sharpshooters.
"Should they incorporate them, disarmed as they were, in the Republican army?"
But the provisions, already scanty for ten thousand men, would be still more inadequate for fourteen thousand. Then they ran great danger from such comrades in a hostile country. At the first opportunity they would deal out death for the life which had been left them. What is a dog of a Christian to a Turk? Is it not a pious and meritorious act in the eyes of the Prophet to deal death to the infidel?
Bonaparte rose as they were about to propose the fifth condition.
"Let us wait until to-morrow," he said.
He himself could not have told what he expected to gain by waiting. It was for one of those strange chances, which sometimes prevent a great crime, and which, when they intervene, are called the interposition of Providence.
He waited in vain. On the fourth day, the question, which they had not dared to ask had to be confronted:
"Should the prisoners be shot?"
The murmurs were increasing, and the evil was growing. The soldiers might at any moment throw themselves upon the prisoners, and thus lend an appearance of revolt and assassination to that which was in reality an outcome of the necessities of the case.
The sentence was unanimous, with the exception of a single vote. One of those present did not vote at all. The unfortunates were to be shot.
Bonaparte hastened from his tent and gazed searchingly out to sea. A tempest of human emotions was surging in his breast. He had not at that period acquired the stoicism born of numerous battlefields. The man who later looked upon Austerlitz, Eylau, and Moscow without moving a muscle, was not sufficiently familiarized with death to throw such prey to him at one fell swoop without a tremor of remorse. On the vessel which had conveyed him to Egypt his pity and compassion had astonished everybody. During such a journey it was impossible to avoid occasional accidents, or that some men should not fall overboard. This accident occurred several times during the crossing on board the "Orient." At such times only was it possible to compass all the human feeling in Bonaparte's heart.
As soon as he heard the cry, "Man overboard!" he would dart up on deck if he were not already there and order a boat to be lowered. From that moment he would not rest until the man was found and saved. Bourrienne had orders to reward with great liberality the men who hadundertaken the task of rescue, and if there were among them a sailor who deserved punishment for neglect of duty, he pardoned him and rewarded him with money besides.
One dark night the splash of a body falling into the water was heard. Bonaparte as usual rushed from his cabin to the deck, and ordered a boat to be lowered. The sailors, who knew that not only were they doing a good deed, but that they would be rewarded for it afterward, threw themselves into the boat with their customary activity and zeal. After five minutes of ceaseless questioning on Bonaparte's part, "Has the man been saved?" he was rewarded with a shout of laughter.
The man who had fallen into the water was a quarter of beef from the store-room.
"Double the reward, Bourrienne," said Bonaparte; "it might have been a man, and the next time they might think it was merely a quarter of beef."
The order for this execution must emanate from him. He delayed giving it, and the time was passing. Finally he called for his horse, leaped into his saddle, took an escort of twenty men, and rode away, crying: "Do it!"
He dared not say, "Fire!"
A scene like that which ensued cannot be described.
Those great massacres which occurred during the course of antiquity have no place in modern history. Out of the four thousand a few escaped, because, having thrown themselves into the water, they were able to swim out to some reefs where they were beyond the range of the musketry.
Neither Eugene de Beauharnais nor Croisier dared show themselves before Bonaparte until they reached Saint-Jean-d'Acre and were compelled to take their orders from him.
The French were encamped before Saint-Jean-d'Acre on the 18th. In spite of the English frigates lying in the harbor, some of the young officers, among them the Sheik of Aher, Roland and the Comte de Mailly, asked permission to go and bathe in the roadstead. The permission was accorded.
When they were diving De Mailly found a leather sack, which was floating under water. The bathers were curious to know what it contained and swam with it to the bank. It was tied up with a cord, and apparently concealed a human body.
The cord was untied, the sack opened, and Mailly recognized the head and body of his brother, who had been sent a month before with a flag of truce to Djezzar Pasha, who had beheaded him when he perceived the dust made by the advance-guard of the French.
Since it is our good fortune to have readers sufficiently intelligent to encourage us to write a book in which romance is relegated to the second place, we shall doubtless be permitted to detail not only the modern, but also the ancient history of the places which we visit with our heroes. There is much charm for the poet, the historian, even the dreamer, in treading upon soil composed of the ashes of past generations; and nowhere more than in the region we are now treading do we find traces of those great historical catastrophes which, becoming less substantial and fainter in outline as the years roll past, finally disappear like ruins and the spectres of ruins amid the ever-thickening shadows of the past.
This is true of the city which we have just left, throbbing with shrieks of anguish, overflowing with carnage and blood, with its walls battered to pieces and its houses in flames. The rapid movement of our narrative, and our desire to enter modern Jaffa with our young conqueror, have hitherto prevented us from telling you what manner of place was the Jaffa of olden days.
Jaffa in Hebrew signifies beauty. Joppa in Phœnician means height.
Jaffa is to the eastern gulf of the Mediterranean what Jiddah is to the Red Sea. It is the city of pilgrims. Every Christian pilgrim on his way to visit the tomb of Christ takes in Jaffa on the road. Every Mussulmanhadjiwho goes to Mecca to visit the Prophet's tomb takes in Jiddah on his way.
When we read the great works of to-day on Egypt—works in which the most learned men of the day have united their efforts—we are astonished to find so few of these luminous points which, placed in the dark night of the past, illuminate and attract the traveller like beacons.
We are about to attempt what they have neglected to do.
The author who assigns to Jaffa (the Joppa of the Phœnicians) the most ancient place in history is Pomponius Mela, who affirms that it was built before the deluge.
Est Joppe ante diluvium condita.
And Joppa must have built before the deluge, since the historian Josephus, in his "Antiquities," says, with Berosius and Nicolas of Damascus, not exactly that the Ark was built at Joppa—for that would be in contradiction with the Bible—but that it stopped there. They assure us that in their time fragments of it were still shown to incredulous travellers, and that they used as a remedy, which was efficacious in all cases as a universal panacea, the dust of the tar which was used to coat the Ark.
It was at Joppa, if we may believe Pliny, that Andromeda was chained to the rocks, to be devoured by the sea-monster; there she was delivered by Perseus, mounted on the Chimera and armed with the head of Medusa, which turned the beholder into stone.
Pliny affirms that during the reign of Adrian the holes through which Andromeda's chain had been passed were still visible; and Saint Jerome—a witness who cannot be accused of partiality—declares that he saw them.
The skeleton of the sea-monster, forty feet long, was thought by some of the people of Joppa to be that of the divinity Ceto. The water of the fountain in which Perseusbathed after killing the monster was ever afterward tinged with his blood. Pausanias tells us so, and declares that he saw the rose-tinged water with his own eyes. Ceto, a goddess of whom Pliny speaks (colitur fabulosa Ceto), and who is called Derceto by historians, was the name which tradition gave to the unknown mother of Semiramis.
Diodorus relates the pretty fable of the unknown mother with the quaint charm which makes poetry of this fable without robbing it of its sensuousness.
"There is," he says, "in Syria a city called Ascalon, overlooking a deep lake in which fish abound, and near it is a temple dedicated to the celebrated goddess whom the Syrians call Derceto.
"She has a head and a face like a woman's; all the rest of the body is that of a fish. The learned men of the nation say that Venus, having been offended by Derceto, inspired her with a passion for a young priest as intense as that which she had awakened in Phedrus and Sappho. Derceto had a daughter by him; but she repented so bitterly of her fault that she caused the youth to disappear, abandoned the infant in a desert place full of rocks, and threw herself into the lake, where her body was transformed into that of a siren. For this reason the Syrians worship the fish as gods, and abstain from eating them.
"But the little girl was saved and fed by doves, who came in great numbers and made their nests among the rocks where she had been left to die.
"A shepherd found her and brought her up with as much care as if she had been his own daughter, and named her Semiramis, or 'the daughter of the doves.'"
If we may believe Diodorus, it is to this daughter of the doves, the haughty Semiramis, the wife and murderess of Ninus, who fortified Babylon and laid out those magnificent gardens, the envy and the admiration of the ancient world, that the Orientals owe the splendid costume which they wear to this day. When she had reached the height of her power, having conquered Egyptian Arabia, a partof Ethiopia, Libya, and all Asia as far as the Indus, she felt the need of inventing a costume for her travels which should be at once convenient and elegant, in which she could not only perform the ordinary duties of life, but also ride horseback and fight. This costume was adopted by all the people whom she conquered.
"She was so beautiful," says Valerius Maximus, "that one day when an insurrection broke out in her capital, just as she was at her toilet, she had only to show herself, half naked and with her hair unbound, to restore order."
Perhaps we may find the reason for Venus' hatred of Derceto in Higinus.
"The Syrian goddess who was worshipped at Hierapolis," he says, "was Venus. An egg fell from heaven into the Euphrates; the fishes brought it to the bank, where it was hatched by a dove. Venus issued from it, and became the goddess of the Syrians, while Jupiter, at her request, placed the fishes in the sky; and she in gratitude harnessed her nurses to her chariot."
The famous temple of Dagon, where the statue of the god was found overturned before the Ark with both hands broken, was situated in the city of Azoth, between Joppa and Ascalon.
Read the Bible, that great treasure-house of history and poetry, and you will see that the cedars of Lebanon, brought for the building of the Temple of Solomon, came from the gates of Joppa. You will see that the prophet Jonah came to the gates of Joppa to embark for Tarsus when he was flying from the face of the Lord.
Then, passing from the Bible to Josephus, whose writings may be called the continuation of it, you will see that Judas Maccabeus, to avenge his two hundred brethren who had been treacherously slain by the inhabitants, came with sword and firebrand and set fire to the ships anchored in the port, and put to death with the sword all who had escaped the fire.
We read in the Acts of the Apostles as follows:
There was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and alms deeds which she did.And it came to pass in those days that she was sick, and died: whom when they had washed they laid her in an upper chamber.And for as much as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.Then Peter arose and went to them, when he was come, they brought him to the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats which Dorcas had made when she was with them.But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down and prayed; and turned to the body and said, "Tabitha, arise!" And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.And he gave her his hand and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows he presented her alive.And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord.And it came to pass that he tarried many days in Joppa with one Simon, a tanner.
There was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and alms deeds which she did.
And it came to pass in those days that she was sick, and died: whom when they had washed they laid her in an upper chamber.
And for as much as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.
Then Peter arose and went to them, when he was come, they brought him to the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats which Dorcas had made when she was with them.
But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down and prayed; and turned to the body and said, "Tabitha, arise!" And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.
And he gave her his hand and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows he presented her alive.
And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord.
And it came to pass that he tarried many days in Joppa with one Simon, a tanner.
It was there that the servants of the centurion Cornelius found him when they came to beg him to go to Cesarea. It was in Simon's house that he had the vision bidding him carry the Gospel to the Gentiles.
At the time of the rising of the Jews against Rome, Sextus besieged Joppa, took it by storm and burned it. Eight thousand of the inhabitants perished; but it was soon rebuilt. As the new city was constantly sending forth pirates, who infested the coasts of Syria and made expeditions as far as Greece and even Egypt, the Emperor Vespasian took it again, razed it to the ground from the first to the last house, and built a fortress on its site.
But in his Jewish wars, Josephus relates that a new city soon sprang up at the foot of the fortress of Vespasian, which became the seat of a bishopric, or rather of a bishop, from the reign of Constantine,A.D.330, until the invasion of the Arabs in 636. This bishopric was established duringthe First Crusade, and made subject to the metropolitan See of Cesarea. Finally it was converted into a county, and embellished and fortified by Baldwin I., Emperor of Constantinople.
Saint Louis also came to Joppa; and Joinville, his ingenuous historian, tells of the sojourn which he made with the Comte de Japhe, as the good chevalier Frenchifies the name.
This Comte de Japhe, who was Gautier de Brienne, did his best to clean and whitewash the city, which was in such a deplorable state that Saint Louis was ashamed of it, and took it upon himself to build its walls and beautify its churches. Saint Louis received the news of his mother's death while there.
"When the sainted king," writes Joinville, "saw the archbishop of Tyre and his confessor entering his apartments with expressions of sorrow, he asked them to go with him to his chapel, which was his refuge from all the ills of the world.
"Then when he had heard the fatal news, he fell upon his knees, and with clasped hands he exclaimed, weeping: 'I thank thee, O God, that thou didst lend my mother to me, while it seemed best to thee, and for that, in thy good pleasure, thou hast taken her again to thee. It is true that I loved her above all other creatures, and she deserved it; but since thou hast taken her from me, may thy holy name be blessed for evermore.'"
The works erected by Saint Louis were destroyed in 1268 by the Pasha of Egypt, Bibas, who levelled the citadel to the ground, and sent the wood and precious marbles of it which it was composed to Cairo to build his mosque.
Finally, when Monconys visited Palestine, he found at Jaffa only a castle and three caves hollowed out of a rock. We have told of its condition when Bonaparte entered it, and in what state he left it.
We shall return once more to this town, which to Bonaparte was neither Jaffa the Beautiful, nor Jaffa the Lofty, but Jaffa the Fatal.
On the 18th, at daybreak, while the army was crossing the little stream of the Kerdaneah, on a bridge thrown over it during the night, Bonaparte, accompanied only by Roland de Montrevel, the Sheik of Aher, and the Comte de Mailly, whom he was utterly unable to reconcile to his brother's death, do what he would, ascended a little hill not far from the town to which he had laid siege.
From its summit he could see the whole country, including not only the two English vessels, "Tiger" and "Theseus," rocking upon the breast of the sea, but also the troops of the Pasha, occupying all the gardens around the city.
"Let all that rabble be dislodged from those gardens," he said, "and driven back into the town."
As he had addressed no one in particular, all three young men started off like three hawks in pursuit of the same prey. But he cried in his harsh voice: "Roland! Sheik of Aher!"
The two young men, when they heard their names, stopped their horses, which were tugging at their bits, and returned to their places beside the commander-in-chief. Mailly went on with a hundred sharpshooters, a like number of grenadiers and voltigeurs, and spurring his horse to a gallop, charged at their head.
Bonaparte had great confidence in the omens of war. It was for that reason that he had been so greatly displeased with Croisier's hesitation during their first engagement with the Bedouins, and had reproached him so bitterly for it.
He could see the movements of the troops through his glass, which was an excellent one, from where he stood.He saw Eugene de Beauharnais and Croisier, who had not dared to speak to him since that unfortunate day at Jaffa, take command, the former of the grenadiers and the latter of the sharpshooters, while Mailly, with the utmost deference to his companions, led the voltigeurs.
If the commander-in-chief was looking for a ready omen he should have been content. While Roland was impatiently gnawing at his silver mounted riding-whip, and the Sheik of Aher on the contrary was watching the fray with all the patience and calmness of an Arab, Bonaparte saw the three detachments pass through the ruins of a village, a Turkish cemetery, and a little wood whose freshness plainly showed that it was watered by a spring, and hurl themselves upon the enemy in spite of the brisk firing of the Arnauts and the Albanians, whom he recognized by their magnificent gold embroidered costumes and their long silver-mounted rifles, and rout them at the first charge.
The firing on the French side began vigorously, and continued with increasing vigor, while above it they could hear the loud explosion of the hand-grenades, which the French soldiers threw with their hands, and with which they tormented the fugitives.
They all arrived about the same time at the foot of the ramparts; but the posterns being closed behind the Mussulmans, and the walls being enveloped with a girdle of fire, the three hundred Frenchmen were forced to beat a retreat, after having killed about one hundred and fifty of the enemy.
The three young men had displayed marvellous gallantry, and had performed prodigies of valor in their emulation of each other.
Eugene had killed an Arnaut, who was a head taller than he, in a hand-to-hand encounter; Mailly had approached within ten paces of a group which was making a stand, had discharged both barrels of his pistol at them, and had then rejoined his own men with a single bound. Croisier, for his part, had sabred two Arabs who had attacked him at the same time, cutting open the head of oneof them and breaking the blade of his sabre in the breast of the second, and had returned with the bloody hilt dangling from his wrist.
Bonaparte turned to the Sheik of Aher and said: "Give me your sword in exchange for mine." And he detached his own sword from his belt and handed it to the Sheik.
The latter kissed the hilt, and hastily handed him his own.
"Roland," said Bonaparte, "go and present my compliments to Eugene and De Mailly; as for Croisier, you will simply say to him: 'Here is a sword which the commander-in-chief has sent you. He has been watching you.'"
Roland set off at a gallop. The young men to whom Bonaparte had sent these congratulations leaped in their saddles for joy, and embraced each other. Croisier, like the Sheik of Aher, kissed the hilt of the sword which had been sent him, threw away the scabbard and broken hilt of the old one, and put the one Bonaparte had given him at his belt, saying: "Thank the commander-in-chief for me, and say to him that he will have reason to be satisfied with me at the first assault."
The entire army had gradually ascended the hill where Bonaparte was stationed like an equestrian statue. The soldiers shouted with delight when they saw their comrades drive the Maugrabins before them as the wind scatters the sand of the sea. Like Bonaparte, the army could see no great difference between the fortifications of Saint-Jean d'Acre and those of Jaffa; and, like Bonaparte, they did not doubt that the city would be taken at the second or third assault.
The French were ignorant that there were two men within the walls of Saint-Jean d'Acre who were worth more in themselves than a whole army of Mussulmans.
They were Sidney Smith, the English Admiral who commanded the "Tiger" and the "Theseus," which were gracefully cradled on the waters of the Gulf of Carmel, and Colonel Phélippeaux, who had charge of the defensiveworks and the fortress of Djezzar the Butcher. Phélippeaux had been Bonaparte's friend and schoolfellow at Brienne, his rival at college and in his mathematical successes. Fortune, chance, or accident had now cast his lot among Bonaparte's foes.
Sidney Smith, whom the exiles of the 18th Fructidor had met at the Temple, had by a strange freak of fate escaped from his prison and reached London, where he resumed his place in the English army just at the time of Bonaparte's departure from Toulon.
It was Phélippeaux who had undertaken the rescue of Sidney Smith, and he had succeeded in his daring enterprise. False orders had been prepared, under the pretext of removing the captive from one prison to another. A stamped fac-simile of the minister of police's signature had been obtained at a heavy price. From whom? From him perhaps; who knows?
Under the name of Loger, and attired in an adjutant-general's uniform, Sidney Smith's friend had presented himself at the prison and exhibited his false order to the clerk. He examined it closely, and was forced to admit that it was correct in every particular. But he said: "You will need a guard of at least six men for a prisoner of such importance."
The pretended adjutant-general said: "For a man of such importance I shall need only his word." Then, turning to the prisoner, he added: "Commodore, you are a military man as well as I; your parole, that you will not seek to escape, will suffice for me. If you will give it I shall need no escort."
And Sidney Smith, like the honorable Englishman that he was, would not lie even to escape. He replied: "Sir, if it will satisfy you, I will promise to follow you wherever you may go."
And Adjutant-general Loger escorted Sidney Smith to England. These two men were now turned loose upon Bonaparte.
Phélippeaux undertook the defence of the fortress as we have said; Sidney Smith was to provide the arms and the soldiers.
And there, where Bonaparte expected to find only a stupid Turk in command, as at Gaza and Jaffa, he found all the science of a compatriot, and all the hatred of an Englishman.
That same evening Bonaparte ordered Sanson, the chief of the engineering brigade, to reconnoitre the counterscarp. The latter waited until it was very dark. It was a moonless night well suited to such operations. He set out alone, traversed the ruined village, and the gardens from which the Arabs had been dislodged and driven in the morning. Seeing a black mass ahead which could be nothing else than the fortress, he got down on his hands and knees to feel the ground step by step. Just as he discovered a more rapid angle which made him believe that the moat was without facing, he was discovered by a sentinel whose eyes were probably accustomed to the darkness, or who in common with other men shared that propensity of the animals which enables them to see in the dark.
His cry "Who goes there?" rang out in the darkness.
Sanson did not reply. The cry was repeated a second, then a third time; a shot followed, and the ball shattered the outstretched hand of the general of the engineers. In spite of his terrible sufferings the officer made no sound; he crawled back again, thinking that he had studied the moat sufficiently, and made his report to Bonaparte.
The trench was begun on the following day. They took advantage of the gardens which were the ancient moats of Ptolemais, whose history we will relate later, as we did that of Jaffa.
They used an aqueduct which crossed the glacis, and in ignorance of the fatal support which Djezzar possessed to the undoing of the French, they gave the trench but three feet of depth.
When the giant Kléber saw the trench he shrugged hisshoulders and said to Bonaparte: "That is a fine trench, general: it will scarcely reach to my knees."
On the 23d of March Sidney Smith captured the two large vessels which were bringing Bonaparte his heavy artillery and the army its supplies. The French watched this capture without being able to prevent it, and found themselves in the strange position of besiegers being fought with their own weapons.
On the 25th they made a breach and attempted an assault, but were stopped by the counterscarp and the ditch.
On the 26th of March, the besieged, led by no less a personage than Djezzar Pasha himself, attempted a sortie to destroy the works which had already been begun. But being charged with the bayonet, they were at once repulsed and were obliged to retreat within the gates of the city.
Although the French battery consisted of only four twelve-pounders, eight eight-pounders and four howitzers, this feeble battery was unmasked on the 28th, and made a breach in the tower against which the principal attack was directed. Although of heavier calibre than those of the French, Djezzar's cannon were silenced by the enemy, and the towers offered a practicable breach at three o'clock in the afternoon.
A cry of joy burst from the French when they saw the wall crumble and caught a glimpse of the interior. The grenadiers, who had been the first to enter Jaffa, excited by the memory, and thinking that it would be no more difficult to take Acre than it had been to take Jaffa, asked with one accord to be allowed to enter the breach.
Bonaparte had been in the trench with his staff ever since the morning; yet he hesitated to give the order for the assault. However, egged on by Captain Mailly, who told him that he could no longer restrain the grenadiers, Bonaparte decided, and, in spite of himself, the words escaped him: "Well, go then!"
The grenadiers of the sixty-ninth brigade, led by Mailly, dashed at once into the breach; but to their great astonishment where they had expected to find the slope of the moat, they found an escarpment twelve feet high. Then came the cry, "Ladders! Ladders!"
Ladders were thrown into the breach, the grenadiers leaped from the top of the counterscarp down to them, and Mailly seized the first ladder and threw it into the breach; twenty more were at once placed beside the first one.
But the breach was filled with Arnauts and Albanians, who fired at close range, and even rolled down stones upon their assailants. Half the ladders were broken, and in falling carried down those who had mounted upon them. Mailly was severely wounded and fell from the top to the bottom of his. The fire of the besieged was redoubled; the grenadiers were obliged to retreat, and to use the ladders with which they had hoped to scale the breach to climb up the counterscarp again.
Mailly, who was wounded in the foot and could not walk, begged his soldiers to take him with them. One of them put him on his shoulders, and fell with a bullet through the head a moment later. A second took up the wounded man and carried him to the foot of a ladder where he fell with a broken thigh. Eager to put themselves in safety, they abandoned him, and they could hear his voice crying, while no one stopped to reply to him: "At least make an end of me with a bullet, if you cannot save me."