Part 22

The English ship seems to have been faster than her opponent, for she soon placed herself within comfortable firing distance, when she hoisted her colors, and the Bayonnaise did the same. The French ship then shortened sail, and the action began; the interchange of broadsides continuing for about an hour, the English account stating that, at the end of that time, the Bayonnaise was suffering very much. It is certain that the Ambuscade was suffering, for one of her main-deck twelve-pounders, just abreast of her gangway, had burst. Now James, and other English naval historians scout the idea that such an accident should have any effect upon an action, when it relates to so dauntless a spirit as that of Commodore Rodgers, in command of an American frigate, outnumbered by an English squadron. But in this case it is _their_ ox which is gored, and they make the most of it, even going so far as to trace the capture of the English ship to that cause. By this unfortunate accident her gangway was knocked away, the boats on the boom were stove, and other damage done; while eleven men were wounded.

It is true that the bravest and best disciplined ship’s company has its ardor dampened by an occurrence of the kind, as they feel that the next gun may, at any moment, in its turn sacrifice its crew. The good fame of a gun is as important as that of a woman, and the bursting of a gun during an engagement is one of the most unfortunate accidents which can occur to any ship, be the destruction great or small. In addition to this, all the English naval historians combine in saying that the Ambuscade had an exceptionally bad crew; and James devotes as much space to proving this, and also that this 24-gun corvette ought not to have taken an English ship of 32 guns, as he does to most general actions. The accident to the gun seems to have caused so much confusion on board the English ship that the French corvette made sail to take advantage of it, and make her escape from a disagreeable predicament. This act on her part seems to have recalled the Ambuscade’s Captain to a sense of his duty, and that ship soon overtook the Bayonnaise again--coming up to leeward, to recommence the action--but at first, owing to a press of sail, shooting a little too far ahead.

The Bayonnaise was, at this time, much damaged in hull, rigging and spars, and had suffered a heavy loss in officers and men--among others, her Captain and First Lieutenant--wounded. The commanding officer of the troops who were passengers then suggested to the only sea-officer left on deck the trial of boarding the English ship, which was so much the more powerful in weight of metal. The plan was assented to, the boarders called away, the corvette’s helm was put up, and she was allowed to drop foul of the Ambuscade, carrying away with her bowsprit the quarter-deck barricade, wheel, mizzen-rigging and mizzen-mast of the English frigate. It is evident that the latter must have been in a bad state to permit this to be done.

The Bayonnaise then swung round under the Ambuscade’s stern, but still remaining foul of her, having caught the English ship’s rudder chain, either by a grappling iron or by the fluke of an anchor, and the French now, by a vigorous use of musketry, commanded completely the quarter-deck of the Ambuscade.

The marines of the Ambuscade kept up a fire in return, but were overpowered by the steady, close fire of the French soldiers, and in a very short time the First Lieutenant was handed below, wounded in the groin, when he almost immediately expired.

Almost at the same moment Captain Jenkins was shot in the thigh, breaking the bone, and was necessarily removed from the deck, as was the Lieutenant of Marines, from wounds in the thigh and shoulder.

Scarcely had these left the deck when the Master was shot through the head, and instantly killed. The only surviving Lieutenant, who had left his sick bed to take part in the defence, was now wounded in the head.

The gunner at this moment came on deck, and reported the ship on fire below and abaft, which so alarmed the uninjured portion of the crew, on account of the neighborhood of the magazine, that they left their quarters on the gun-deck, and went below.

The fire was occasioned by some cartridges which had been carelessly left upon the rudder head, and which, on the discharge of a gun through the cabin window or stern port, into the bows of the Bayonnaise, had exploded, badly wounding every man at the gun, besides blowing out a part of the Ambuscade’s stern, and destroying the boat which was hanging there.

In the height of all this confusion on board the Ambuscade the French soldiers, who, throughout, had behaved splendidly, charged across the bowsprit of their vessel, which formed a bridge to the quarter-deck of the Ambuscade, now undefended, and, after a short struggle on the main deck, found themselves in possession of the frigate. There is no doubt that this result was most humiliating to a nation who had grown to consider themselves irresistible by sea, when the odds were not too great. The great advantage of the Ambuscade, her gun force, was not made the most of; and although she was evidently the faster vessel, the Frenchman, from superior tactics, was enabled to make his superiority in musketeers tell. In fact, the whole story shows that the English ship was sadly deficient in discipline and drill. It was immediately given out that the majority of her crew “were the scum of the British navy,” but the great trouble appears to have been with the captain himself. This officer had been promoted to the command of the Ambuscade from the Carnatic, 74, where he had been first lieutenant, and he had brought with him from that ship a party of seamen whom he chose to call the “gentlemen Carnatics,” and distinguishing those men whom he found on board the frigate by the very opprobrious epithet of “blackguard Ambuscades.” One can hardly speak calmly of the fact that such an idiot as this was placed in such a responsible position; and, as he himself had raised two parties in his ship, the only wonder is that she made so good a defence. When Captain Jenkins and his surviving officers and ship’s company were, some months later, exchanged, a court-martial was, of course, held upon him, for the loss of the Ambuscade. The Captain was suffering still from the effects of his dreadful wound, and he and the rest were acquitted, in spite of the evidence showing that his ship was in bad discipline, and that the action had been conducted in a lubberly manner, on the part of the English, from first to last. No questions appear to have been pressed as to why the Bayonnaise’s character was not earlier ascertained, whereby confusion would have been avoided in the opening of the engagement, and the Ambuscade might have obtained the weather-gage, and kept her adversary from boarding; while in that position, her superiority in metal should have told. It was proved that the hammocks were not in the nettings, in spite of the musketry being so much used, and other equally shameful points were made manifest. Yet Jenkins was acquitted, and the sentence of the court avoided even naming the ship by which he had been captured. The French took their prize into Rochefort, and great were the rejoicings, not without cause, for a French corvette had captured an English frigate. Richer was promoted by the French Directory, over one grade, to that of _Capitaine de Vaisseau_, and the crew properly rewarded. The gallant officer in command of the troops, to whom so much of the credit of the action is due, was killed on the Bayonnaise’s deck.

SIR SIDNEY SMITH AND HIS SEAMEN AT ACRE. A.D. 1799.

In March, 1799, Commodore Sir William Sidney Smith, in command of the English 74-gun ship, Tigre, then lying off Alexandria, was invested by the British government with the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary to the Sublime Porte.

In consequence of an express received from Achmed Djezzar, Governor of Syria, with the information that Bonaparte had invaded that country, and had carried Jaffa by storm, and that the French were also preparing an expedition by sea, Sir Sidney sent off the Theseus, Captain Miller, to Acre, as well as a small vessel to reconnoitre the Syrian coast and rejoin the Theseus at Caïffa.

Acre was the next town and fortified place on the coast, north of Jaffa, and was in a bay of the same name, the southern port of which was the headland celebrated from very ancient times as Mount Carmel. The bay is very much exposed to winds from every quarter but the east and south, and at all times is a rough and uncertain anchorage. Just within the southern cape of Carmel, where the Mount drops away and the country becomes flat, is the town of Haïffa or Kaïffa, and beyond that, at the turn of the bay, before one comes to Acre, is the mouth of the river Kishon. This mouth, except when the river is in flood, is obstructed by sand bars, and is generally to be forded, with care.

On the 13th of March the Theseus, a 74, arrived at Acre, and on the 15th the Tigre, Alliance and Marianne also anchored in that port; and Sir Sidney Smith, finding that the Turks were disposed to defend the place, used every exertion to put the walls in a state to resist an attack. On the 17th the Theseus was sent to the southward, and Sir Sidney, with the boats of the Tigre, proceeded to the anchorage of Caïffa, under Mount Carmel. That evening, after dark, the advanced guard of the French was discovered, mounted on asses and dromedaries, and passing along the coast road, close to the seaside, and a launch, with a 12-lb carronade, was sent to the mouth of the river, to defend the ford.

At daybreak the next morning this launch opened a most unexpected fire on the French column, and compelled it to change its route, so that when they took the Nazareth road they became exposed to the attacks of the Samaritan Arabs. The guns of the British ships preventing the French from making an attack from the north, they invested Acre on the northeast side, where the defences were much stronger. As no artillery was used in replying to the British boats, it was evident that the French had none with them. Expecting that a flotilla was to bring artillery up to them, a lookout was kept, and, on the morning of the 18th a French corvette and nine sail of gun vessels was seen from the Tigre. They were promptly chased and the gun-boats taken, but the corvette escaped. The prizes were full of battering cannon, ammunition and siege stores, which they had brought from Damietta.

These guns, which had been intended for the destruction of Acre, were now landed for its defence, and the gun-boats employed to harass their late owners, and cut off supplies.

That same day an English boat expedition met with a disastrous repulse in an attack upon four French transports, which had come into Caïffa anchorage with supplies for the French army, losing heavily in officers and men; and soon after all the English vessels were obliged to put to sea, on account of bad weather, and were not able to return again until the 6th of April.

In the meantime Bonaparte had been pushing the siege operations with the energy peculiarly his own, and it seemed impossible for the Turkish garrison and the English sailors to resist his determined approach. During the absence of the British ships he had pushed his approaches to the counter-scarp, and in the ditch at the northeast angle of the town was mining the towers to widen a breach already made by his field pieces. As much danger was apprehended from this approach, a sortie was determined on, in which the English seamen and marines were to bear a prominent part. They were to force their way into the mine while the Turks attacked the enemy’s trenches on the right and left. The sortie took place just before daylight, but the Turks rendered abortive the attempt to surprise the enemy by their noise and impetuosity. The English sailors, armed with pikes and cutlasses, succeeded in entering the mine, and destroyed its supports, and partly filled it up. The marines supported and protected them while doing this, and the party was covered on its return by a cross fire from one of the ships. This sortie much delayed Bonaparte’s operations; but, in the meantime, Rear-Admiral Perrée of the French navy, who had been hovering about the coast with a squadron, succeeded in landing supplies and some 18-lb guns, at Jaffa, which were immediately brought up, overland. Napoleon attached the utmost importance to the speedy capture of Acre, which was necessary to the success of his plans, and he pushed the siege with tremendous energy, and reckless disregard for the lives of his troops. The garrison continued to make sorties, under cover of the boats of the English squadron, but the 1st of May found the French successful in establishing a breach, from the concentrated fire of twenty-three pieces of artillery. They then made a desperate attempt to storm the place.

The Theseus was moored on one side of the town, and the Tigre on the other, while the gun-boats and launches flanked the enemy’s trenches.

Notwithstanding a tremendous fire from the shipping, and in the very face of a heavy fire from the walls of the town, the French bravely mounted to the assault; but, in spite of all their efforts, were repulsed with great slaughter. Several English officers and seamen were killed in this affair, and Colonel Philipeaux, a French Royalist officer of engineers, serving with the English against Bonaparte, died of excessive fatigue.

The French continued to batter in breach, and continued their attempts to storm; in spite of which Sir Sidney Smith managed to construct two ravelins, within musket shot of the besiegers. All this involved the most extreme fatigue on the part of both the besiegers and the besieged. Frequent sorties were made, which impeded the French in their work; and on May 7th a reinforcement of two Turkish corvettes, and twenty-five transports with troops, arrived.

Bonaparte determined to make one more effort to capture the place before these troops could be landed. Although the British fire from the vessels was kept up, Bonaparte had succeeded in throwing up epaulements and traverses, with his great engineering ability, which in a great degree protected his working parties from the naval party. The pieces which annoyed him most were in the light-house tower, and in the north ravelin, and two 68-pounders, mounted in native flat-bottomed vessels and throwing shells. These were all manned by the English seamen.

In spite of all this, Bonaparte gained ground, and having battered down the northeast tower of the walls, the ruins formed a sort of ladder, and at daylight on the 8th of May the French stormed again, and succeeded in planting their colors on the outer angle of the tower.

Their position was sheltered by two traverses, which they had constructed during the preceding night, composed of sand-bags and bodies of the dead built in with them, and forming a wall so high that only their bayonets could be seen above them.

In the meantime the reinforcement of Turkish troops, under Hassan Bey, were being debarked, which only increased Bonaparte’s endeavors to get possession of the place before they could be put in position.

It was a most critical moment, and Sir Sidney, to gain time, himself led the British seamen, mostly armed with pikes, to the defence of the breach. Here he found a few Turks, who were hurling huge stones down upon the French. The latter, being reinforced, charged up, and the fight became a hand-to-hand one.

According to the ancient custom of the Turks, Djezzar Pasha had been sitting in his palace rewarding such as brought to him the heads of his enemies; but when he heard that Sir Sidney was on the breach he hastened there to persuade him to retire, saying that “if harm befell his English friends all would be lost.” Hassan’s troops were now close at hand, and Sir Sidney led up the Chifflic regiment, armed and disciplined in the European style, and made a determined sally. They were beaten back, however, by the desperate fighting of the French, with great loss; but in doing so, the latter were obliged to expose themselves, and suffered terribly from the flanking fire of the English guns.

Napoleon had entered Syria with about fifteen thousand men, and many of his best generals, but by this time his losses had been so great that he feared he should be unsuccessful in his undertaking of seizing the whole of that country, for which undertaking he had made such exertions and sacrifices. But he was not the man to retire from any enterprise before he had exhausted all his resources.

On the 9th and 10th he continued to batter the defences, day and night, in preparation for one final, desperate effort. Every shot brought down large pieces of the wall, which was less solid than the tower they had been so long battering, and a new breach was effected, to the southward of their first lodgment. Bonaparte was now distinctly seen by the defenders most energetically directing operations from an elevated mound called after Richard Cœur de Lion, addressing his generals with great energy of gesture, and sending off aides-de-camp in every direction. The night before he had himself inspected the breach closely, rousing the enthusiasm of his veteran troops by the way in which he exposed himself, at the very foot of the walls, to the hottest fire. About noon he made dispositions for storming. Kleber’s grenadiers were to lead, their chief, Venoux, saying, “If Saint Jean d’Acre is not taken this evening you may be certain that Venoux is dead.” And he did, indeed, die, that evening, at the breach.

Just before sunset a massive column of the French was seen advancing, and it was suffered by the Turks to mount the breach, but, in the Pasha’s garden, came upon a second and almost impregnable line of defence, erected by Philipeaux in view of just such an event. Here the Turks rushed upon them in overwhelming numbers, and the advance of the French were massacred almost to a man. The rest retreated precipitately, leaving General Rambeaud dead, and carrying off General Lannes, wounded. A reinforcement of English coming up, the officers very nearly suffered the fate of the French advance, for many of the newly arrived Turkish troops did not know the English uniform, and took them for French. The fighting consequent upon this assault did not terminate until the next day.

Kleber’s division had been ordered to the assault again, but were met by a sortie, in which the besieged gained the third parallel of the attack, and spiked some of the French guns, and Kleber, instead of storming the fortress, was occupied in recovering their works, which involved great loss on both sides. During the progress of the siege, a dreadful accident occurred on board the English ship Theseus--seventy large shells exploding on her poop--killing and wounding eighty-seven of her officers and ship’s company. The ship herself was dreadfully shattered.

After the failure of Kleber’s attack the French troops could not be brought to mount the breach again. The plague, which had committed such ravages among them at Jaffa, broke out again, probably from the horribly putrid stench of the great number of unburied bodies, and especially of those built into the epaulements and traverses, added to fatigue and shortness of provisions; a flag of truce was sent in, to propose a cessation of hostilities, to allow them to bury the dead. This Djezzar would not permit. The flag had hardly performed its duties and withdrawn, when a shower of shot and shell from the French batteries announced the commencement of another attack, which was made with fury and desperation. But the garrison was prepared, and the French were once more driven back, with great slaughter. In the night of the 20th of May the French raised the siege, and made a precipitate retreat, leaving twenty-three pieces of battering cannon behind them.

Sir Sidney Smith remained at Acre until the middle of June, rendering the Turks all assistance in once more placing the fortress in a state of defence.

This celebrated siege lasted sixty-one days. The besiegers had marched to the assault no less than eight times, while the besieged made eleven desperate sallies. Bonaparte, in his reports to the French Directory, gave many flimsy reasons for his want of success.

Speaking of it afterwards, at St. Helena, he attempted to put the whole blame of his non-success upon the French naval officers who had failed to engage and drive away Sir Sidney Smith and his squadron. He said that if he had succeeded in his plans the whole face of the world would have been changed. “Acre,” he said, “would have been taken; the French army would have gone to Damascus and Aleppo; in the twinkling of an eye they would have been on the Euphrates; the Syrian Christians would have joined us; the Druses, the Armenians, would have united with us.” Some one remarked, “We might have been reinforced to the number of one hundred thousand men.” “Say six hundred thousand,” Bonaparte replied; “who can calculate the amount? I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies; I would have changed the face of the world!”

FOUDROYANT AND CONSORTS, IN ACTION WITH THE GUILLAUME TELL. 1800.

During the early part of the year 1800, a British squadron, composed of the eighty-gun ship Foudroyant, Captain Sir Edward Berry (the same who was captured in the Leander, after the battle of the Nile, as bearer of despatches), and bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Lord Nelson, the 74-gun ship Alexandria, Captain Ball, the 64-gun ship Lion, Captain Dixon, and the 36-gun frigate Penelope, Captain Blackwood, with two or three sloops and smaller vessels, was stationed off Malta, then in French possession, to prevent succors from being thrown into that island, and to watch the movements of the French ships which were in that safe port.

Among the latter, lying in Valetta, was the French 80-gun ship Guillaume Tell, Rear-Admiral Denis Décrès, and Captain Saunier.

The Guillaume Tell was one of the two French line-of-battle-ships which had escaped from the battle of the Nile, and she had taken refuge at Malta.

Décrès occupied so exalted a position, afterwards, that it will be necessary, before beginning the account of a very remarkable battle, to give some account of his life.

This very distinguished French naval officer was born in 1762, and died in 1820. He entered the navy early, and won his first promotion under Count De Grasse, in America, while he afterwards distinguished himself in the frigate squadron which France sent to the East Indies to annoy the English commerce. In 1793 he was a “_capitaine de vaisseau_,” but was deprived of his rank by the Revolutionists, because he was a noble. Escaping the guillotine, when thousands of others perished, he was restored to his rank in the navy in 1795. In 1798 he attained the rank of Rear-Admiral, and in that capacity was present at the capture of Malta. He then served at the battle of the Nile, and came back to Malta with the few French vessels that escaped. These were soon blockaded by the English in the harbor of Valetta. Décrès, in conjunction with General Vaubois, conducted the defence of Malta, which continued for seventeen months.