Carefully as Napoleon had cultivated the native authorities, deferred
to prejudice and custom, and maintained discipline, native opposition
to French rule seems to have been intense. A revolt in Cairo took him
by surprise. It had been preached from the minaret by the Muezzins in
their daily calls to prayer. It broke out with sudden fury, and many
Frenchmen were slaughtered in Cairo and the surrounding villages.
Napoleon quelled it promptly and with awful severity. The insurrection,
coming as it did upon the heels of all his attempts at conciliation,
filled him with indignant resentment, and, in his retaliation, he left
nothing undone to strike terror to the Arab soul. Insurgents were shot
or beheaded without mercy. Donkey trains bearing sacks were driven to
the public square, and the sacks being untied, human heads rolled out
upon the ground--a ghastly warning to the on-looking natives. Such is
war; such is conquest. The conquered must be tamed. Upon this principle
acted the man of no religion, Napoleon, in Egypt, and the Christian
soldier, Havelock, in Hindustan. The Christian Englishmen who put down
the Indian mutiny were as deaf to humanity as was the Deist who quelled
the revolt in Cairo. Like all the cruelty whose injury society really
feels, the crime is in the system, not the individual. War is war; and
as long as Christendom must have war to work out the mysterious ways
of God, we must be content with the thorns as well as the fruits. If
it be a part of the white man’s burden to exterminate black and brown
and yellow races to clear the way for the thing we call Christian
civilization, Napoleon’s course in Egypt was temperate and humane.
Upon all his deeds a blessing might be asked by the preachers who
incited the soldiers of America, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, in the
wars of the year 1900; and the chaplains who went, on good salaries,
to pray for those who shot down Filipinos, Chinamen, or even South
African Boers could just as easily have given pious sanction to the
murders-in-mass committed by Bonaparte.
Inspired by the result of the battle of the Nile, England, Turkey, the
Mamelukes, and the Arabs made great preparations to drive Napoleon out
of Egypt. A Turkish army was to be sent from Rhodes; Achmet, Pacha of
Acre, surnamed Djezzar, the Butcher, was raising forces in Syria, and
Commodore Sir Sidney Smith was cruising on the coast ready to help
Turks, Mamelukes, and Arabs against the French. Sir Sidney had been
a political prisoner in Paris, had recently made his escape, and had
been assisted in so doing by Napoleon’s old schoolmate, Phélippeaux.
Following Sir Sidney to the East, Phélippeaux, a royalist, was now at
hand eager to oppose the republican army of Napoleon, and capable of
rendering the Turks valuable service. There is no evidence that he
was actuated by personal hatred of Napoleon. They had not liked each
other at school, and had kicked each other’s shins under the table;
but, as men, they had taken different sides as a matter of policy or
principle, and it was this which now arrayed them against each other.
Napoleon’s invariable rule being to anticipate his enemy, he now
marched into Syria to crush Djezzar before the Turkish army from Rhodes
could arrive. Leaving Desaix, Lanusse, and other lieutenants to hold
Egypt, he set out with the main army February 11, 1799. El Arish was
taken February 20, 1799, and Gaza followed. Jaffa, the ancient Joppa,
came next (March 6), and its name will always be associated with a
horrible occurrence. Summoned to surrender, the Arabs had beheaded
the French messenger. The place was stormed, and the troops gave way
to unbridled license and butchery. The massacre went on so long and
was so hideous that Napoleon grew sick of it, and sent his step-son,
Eugène, and another aide, Croisier, to put a stop to it. He meant, as
he claimed, that they were sent to save the non-combatants,--old men,
women, and children. He did not mean them to save soldiers, for, by the
benign rules of war, all defenders of a place taken by assault could
be slain. Misunderstanding Napoleon, or not knowing the benign rules,
Eugène and Croisier accepted the surrender of three or four thousand
Arab warriors, and brought them toward headquarters. As soon as
Napoleon, walking in front of his tent, saw these prisoners coming, he
exclaimed, in tones of grief: “Why do they bring those men to me? What
am I to do with them?” Eugène and Croisier were severely reprimanded,
and he again asked: “What am I to do with these men? Why did you bring
them here?”
Under the alleged necessity of the case, want of food to feed them,
or vessels to send them away, a council of war unanimously decided
that they should be shot. With great reluctance, and after delaying
until the murmurs of the troops became mutinous, Napoleon yielded, and
the prisoners were marched to the beach and massacred. That this was
a horribly cruel deed no one can deny; but the barbarity was in the
situation and the system, not the individual. Napoleon himself was
neither blood-thirsty nor inhumane. The last thing he had done before
quitting France had been to denounce the cruelty of the authorities in
dealing with émigrés who were non-combatants. His proclamation, which
really invited soldiers to disobey a cruel law, closed with the ringing
statement, “The soldier who signs a death-warrant against a person
incapable of bearing arms is a coward!”
In passing judgment upon Napoleon, we must adopt some standard of
comparison; we must know what military precedents have been, and what
the present practice is. Three days after the battle of Culloden the
Duke of Cumberland, being informed that the field was strewn with
wounded Highlanders who still lived,--through rain and sun and the
agony of undressed wounds,--marched his royal person and his royal
army back to the field and, in cold blood, butchered every man who lay
there. A barn, near the battle-field, was full of wounded Scotchmen;
the royal Duke set it on fire, and all within were burned to death.
During the conquest of Algiers, in 1830, a French commander, a
royalist, came upon a multitude of Arabs--men, women, children--who had
taken refuge in a cave. He made a fire at the cavern’s mouth and smoked
them all to death.
In the year 1900, Russians, Germans, and other Christians invaded
China to punish the heathen for barbarities practised upon Christian
missionaries. A German emperor (Christian, of course) said, “Give no
quarter.” Germans and Russians killed everything that was Chinese--men
and women and children. Armed or not armed, working in fields or idle,
walking in streets or standing still, giving cause or giving none,
the heathen were shot and bayoneted and sabred and clubbed, until the
streets were choked with dead Chinese, the rivers were putrid with
dead Chinese, the very waters of the ocean stank with dead Chinese.
Prisoners were made to dig their own graves, were then shot, tumbled
into the hole, and other prisoners made to fill the grave. Girls and
matrons were outraged in the presence of brothers, sons, husbands,
fathers; and were then shot, or stabbed to death with swords or
bayonets.
Were it not for examples such as these, the reader might feel inclined
to agree with the anti-Bonaparte biographers who say that the Jaffa
massacre was the blackest in the annals of civilized warfare.
Rid of his prisoners, Napoleon moved forward on the Syrian coast and
laid siege to St. Jean d’Acre. The town had strong, high walls, behind
which were desperate defenders. The lesson from Jaffa had taught the
Arab that it was death to surrender. To him, then, it was a stern
necessity to conquer or die. The English were there to help. Sir Sidney
Smith furnished guns, men to serve them, and skilled engineers.
Napoleon was not properly equipped for the siege, for his battering
train, on its way in transports, was stupidly lost by the captain in
charge. Sir Sidney took it and appropriated it to the defence. In vain
Napoleon lingered till days grew into weeks, weeks into months. He was
completely baffled. There were many sorties, many assaults, dreadful
loss of life, reckless deeds of courage done on both sides. Once,
twice, the French breached the walls, made good their assault, and
entered the town, once reaching Djezzar’s very palace. It was all in
vain. Every house was a fortress, every street an ambuscade, every Arab
a hero,--the very women frantically screaming “Fight!”
With bitterness in his soul, Napoleon turned away: “that miserable hole
has thwarted my destiny!” And he never ceased to ring the changes on
the subject. Had he taken Acre, his next step would have been to the
Euphrates; hordes of Asiatics would have flocked to his banner; the
empire of Alexander would have risen again under his touch; India would
have been his booty; Constantinople his prize; and then, from the rear,
he would have trodden Europe into submission. He saw all this on the
other side of Acre, or thought he saw it. But the town stood, and the
château in Spain fell.
Once he had been drawn from the siege to go toward Nazareth to the
aid of Kléber, who was encompassed by an army outnumbering his own by
ten to one. As Napoleon came within sight, he could see a tumultuous
host of cavalry enveloping a small force of infantry. The throngs of
horsemen surged and charged, wheeled and turned, like a tossing sea. In
the midst was an island, a volcano belching fire. The tossing sea was
the Mameluke cavalry; the island in the midst of it was Kléber. Forming
so that his line, added to Kléber’s, would envelop the enemy, Napoleon
advanced; and great was the rout and the slaughter of the foe. No
organized force was left afield either in Syria or Egypt.
Now that the siege of Acre was abandoned, the army must be got back to
Cairo, and the country laid waste to prevent Djezzar from harassing
the retreat. What could not be moved, must be destroyed. The plague,
brought from Damietta by Kléber’s corps, had stricken down almost as
many as had perished in the siege. To move the wounded and the sick was
a heavy undertaking, but it was done. On the night of May 20, 1799,
Napoleon began his retreat. A terrible retreat it was, over burning
sands, under brazen skies, amid stifling dust, maddening thirst--and
over all the dread shadow of the plague. In their selfish fears, the
French became callous to the sufferings of the wounded and the sick.
The weak, the helpless, were left to die in the desert. Every hamlet
was fired, the fields laden with harvest were in flames, desolation
spread far and wide. “The whole country was in a blaze.”
Napoleon doggedly kept his course, full of dumb rage--seeing all,
feeling all, powerless in the midst of its horrors. At Tentoura he
roused himself to a final effort to save the sick and the wounded.
“Let every man dismount; let every horse, mule, camel, and litter be
given to the disabled; let the able go on foot.” The order so written,
despatched to Berthier, and made known through the camp, Vigogne,
groom to the chief, came to ask, “What horse shall I reserve for you,
General?”
It was the touch that caused an explosion. Napoleon struck the man with
his whip! “Off, you rascal! Every one on foot, I the first. Did you not
hear the order?”
The hungry desert swallowed horses and men. The heavy guns were
abandoned. The army pressed on in sullen grief, anger, despondency. The
chief trudged heavily forward, in grim silence.
On May 24, the French were at Jaffa again. Here the hospitals were full
of the plague-stricken and the wounded. Napoleon visited these men,
spoke encouraging words to them, and, according to Savary, touched
one of the victims of the plague in order to inspire confidence--the
disease being one with whose spread imagination is said to have much
to do. Bourrienne denies this story; but according to a report written
by Monsieur d’Ause, administrator of the army of the East, and dated
May 8, 1829, Napoleon not only touched the afflicted, but helped to
lift one of them off the floor. Substantially to the same effect is the
testimony of the chief surgeon of the army, Desgenettes. Bourrienne
also denies that the sick were taken away by the retreating French.
Monsieur d’Ause reports that the wounded and the sick were put on board
seven vessels (he names the vessels), and sent by sea to Damietta.
This statement is corroborated by Grobert, Commissioner of War, who
gives the names of the officers placed in charge of the removal. A few
of the plague-stricken were so hopelessly ill that Napoleon requested
the surgeon to administer opium. It would put the poor creatures out
of their misery, and prevent them from falling into the hands of
the enemy. Desgenettes made the noble reply which Napoleon himself
quoted admiringly, “My duty is to cure, not to kill.” But Napoleon’s
suggestion was really humane; as he says, any man in the condition of
these hopeless, pain-racked invalids would choose the painless sleep of
opium rather than the prolonged agony of the disease.
In the year 1900 the Europeans, beleaguered by the Chinese in
Tien-Tsin, adopted the view of Napoleon. They killed their own wounded
to prevent them from falling into the hands of the heathen. According
to reports published throughout Christendom and not contradicted,
Admiral Seymour of the British Navy issued orders to that effect. And
when the barbarities which the Christians inflicted upon the heathen
became worse than death, Chinamen did as Seymour had done--killed their
own friends to escape the torture.
Napoleon not insisting on poison, the few invalids who could not be
moved were left alive, and several of these yet breathed when Sir
Sidney Smith took possession of Jaffa.
After another dreadful desert-march, in which Napoleon tramped in
the sand at the head of his troops, the army reached Cairo, June 14,
1799. With all his art, Napoleon only partially made the impression
that he had returned victorious. During his absence there had been
local revolts, soon repressed, and he found the country comparatively
quiet. It was probably a relief to him when news came that the expected
Turkish army had arrived at Aboukir. In open fight on fair field he
could wipe out the shame of Acre. With all his celerity of decision,
movement, and concentration, he was at Aboukir on July 25, 1799,
where the Turkish army had landed. But for an accident, he would have
taken it by surprise. In the battle which followed, the Turks were
annihilated. Out of a force of twelve thousand scarce a man escaped.
Its commander, Mustapha, was taken prisoner by Murat, after he had
fired his pistol in the Frenchman’s face, wounding him in the head. A
blow of Murat’s sabre almost severed the Turk’s hand. Carried before
Napoleon, the latter generously said, “I will report to the Sultan how
bravely you have fought.”--“You may save yourself the trouble,” the
proud Turk answered; “my master knows me better than you can.”
The aid, counsel, and presence of Sir Sidney Smith had not availed the
enemy at Aboukir as at Acre. It was with difficulty that he escaped to
his ships. As to Phélippeaux, he had been stricken by the plague and
was mortally ill, or already dead.
On his return to Alexandria, Napoleon sent a flag of truce to Sir
Sidney, proposing an exchange of prisoners. During the negotiations,
the English commodore sent Napoleon a file of English newspapers and a
copy of the _Frankfort Gazette_. Throughout the night Napoleon did not
sleep; he was devouring the contents of these papers. The story which
they told him was enough to drive sleep away.
It is possible that Talleyrand, by way of Tripoli, may have been
corresponding with Napoleon; and it seems that a letter from Joseph
Bonaparte had also reached him; but Bourrienne, his private secretary,
positively denies that he knew of conditions in France prior to the
battle of Aboukir. Although it is possible he may have received letters
which his private secretary knew nothing about, it is not probable. It
would seem, therefore, that his knowledge of the situation in Europe
was derived from the newspapers sent him by Sir Sidney Smith.