Napoleon in Egypt (54 page)

Napoleon knew that he had a problem where prisoners were concerned. As far as possible he was expecting his army to live off such supplies as it could gather, or capture, along the way. He barely had sufficient supplies for his own army, let alone additional hundreds or even thousands of prisoners. Nor could he spare all the men who would have to be left behind to guard these prisoners. He was left in a quandary, to which he had not yet found an answer.

But there was worse to come at El-Arish. When the French entered the fort they found “its interior in great disorder. The yard was filled with riderless horses on the loose, dead bodies and overturned equipment.”
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Several hundred had been killed inside the fort during the siege, and many more were wounded. But most ominous of all, the French found “an entire room was jammed full of people dying of the plague.”

Napoleon was now eleven days behind the schedule he had drawn up for the campaign, and was already displaying signs of impatience. A skeleton French garrison was left at El-Arish, and the expeditionary army moved on up the coast with Kléber’s division in the lead. Unfortunately his native guide mistook the way and they became lost in the desert, whereupon a furious Kléber had him shot on suspicion of treason. Meanwhile the other three divisions continued north, entering the plain of Gaza, where Napoleon reported on February 26: “There has been a terrible wind and for the last three days the shore has been battered by mountainous waves. We are soaked to the skin with mud up to our knees. It is as cold here as it is in Paris at this time of year.”
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But there had been some improvements, for they were now out of the Sinai desert: “The countryside is more beautiful than we expected: the citrus trees, olive groves and uneven terrain are almost exactly like the Languedoc.” This resulted in a distinct improvement in morale. As Bernoyer remembered, “I experienced without doubt the same happiness as the Israelites arriving in the Promised Land.”
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On February 24 the French advance party approached the town of Gaza, and as Bernoyer recalled: “We saw a sizable detachment of cavalry who made a show of wanting to attack us, and General Murat received the order to charge them. Afraid of combat, these bullshitters then took flight with such haste that they simply abandoned Gaza to us.”
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Kléber and his exhausted division eventually caught up with Napoleon at Gaza, where Napoleon reported: “We have found here more supplies and ammunition than one would have believed possible. More than 30 thousand rounds of ammunition, and a great quantity of cannon balls capable of being used by our artillery.”
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A few days later Napoleon’s forces reached Ramla, some eight miles inland from the coast, whence the Arab population had fled, leaving the French to be welcomed by the numerous local Christians, who saw them as their saviors. By now scores of the French pack camels were succumbing to the cold and wet climate, and the army itself was faring little better. Napoleon ordered his physician-in-chief Desgenettes to set up a hospital in a nearby Greek Orthodox monastery, where he could treat the 700 soldiers who were now on the sick list. These included the wounded and those who had succumbed to the harsh conditions, but ominously, amongst them were also thirty-one soldiers who had developed the pus-filled buboes which signaled the onset of the plague.

On March 3 Napoleon arrived at Jaffa (by the site of modern Tel Aviv), which stood on a hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by a fortified wall. He laid siege to the city, and for the next three days his inadequate field guns ineffectually pounded the walls.

Napoleon was becoming increasingly irked by all these delays inflicted on him by an obstinate Turkish garrison commander, the appalling weather, the exhaustion and sickness of his men, and now another stubborn city governor. He was desperate to reach Acre, where the decisive action of the campaign would take place. With Djezzar defeated, and Acre taken, he could proceed—but to where? Constantinople? India? Or back to France? No one knew, and it is probable that he did not know himself. Years later, in his memoirs, he insisted that his aim had been to defeat Djezzar, thereby fomenting unrest throughout the Levant, “and then to decide what to do according to the circumstances.”
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Once again he left his options open. As ever, he held firm to his profound belief in his “destiny,” which “directs all my operations.” In many ways, this was his substitute for self-knowledge.

The garrison troops at Jaffa defended bravely, despite the almost continuous French bombardment. The French sappers attempted to approach the city wall undercover of the orange orchard growing at its foot, so as to lay explosives and detonate a breach, but they were constantly repulsed by gunfire, and even by sorties from the besieged garrison. All this resulted in considerable French loss of life. When finally a breach was opened, Napoleon duly sent an emissary into the city under a flag of truce, making his usual offer according to the rules of war: if the garrison surrendered he would spare their lives, if not they could be slaughtered to the last man. According to Napoleon’s subsequent report to the Directory, “At daybreak on 17 Ventôse [March 7] I sent a messenger to the governor: he cut off the head of my emissary and made no reply. At seven o’clock firing began. By one o’clock I judged we had a suitable breach.”
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The men took up their positions in the advance trenches, ready for the final assault. Above them on the walls they could see the head of the decapitated French emissary hanging from a pole at the top of the tower. But this only served to harden the hearts of the French soldiers, who were exasperated by the enemy’s refusal to surrender, making it necessary for them to risk their lives in what they saw as a needless assault.

By now a number of soldiers from Bon’s division had begun scouting around some of the city’s defenses away from the main confrontation—with the aim of mounting a diversionary attack. According to Captain François, they “discovered a sort of breach in the wall beside the sea and took advantage of it to make a daring entry into the city. But they were repulsed by the inhabitants, and several had their throats slit. Those who had escaped with their lives ran to the division headquarters, yelling that their massacred comrades be avenged. This event took place just prior to the moment when Bonaparte ordered the assault.”
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Such news had a rousing effect on the soldiers preparing to charge the breach, although much more effect would certainly have been due to alcohol. The first wave of a charge into the breach in the wall of a besieged city invariably suffered heavy casualties—far more so than a charge in battle. For this reason men preparing to make such a charge would be issued with a copious amount of alcoholic spirits, to loosen their inhibitions and give them courage. Hence those taking part in this assault would have been drunk, their emotions roused beyond their conscious control, as they roared (literally) through the hail of bullets towards the walls.

The men charged in through the main breach, and the side breach, bayonets at the ready, their blood up for revenge. What happened next is best described by those who were there. In the words of Private Millet: “There was a terrible carnage, men, women and children were put to the bayonet. The massacre did not cease, even when the drummer sounded the order to assemble. It was a frightful spectacle to see so many innocent victims mixed up amongst the authors of this carnage, their dying cries ringing out in the streets and houses. All around was the spectacle of death. The French soldiers, with fury in their eyes, massacred everyone they could find.”
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Witness after aghast witness tells the same tale. This is Malus, but it could have been from any of a dozen French memoirs: “The soldiers went on the rampage all over the city, slitting the throats of men, women, old people, children, Christians, Turks, any in human form were victims of their fury.”
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Seemingly, amidst the confusion many of the defending soldiers had tried to surrender, but the French continued slaughtering remorselessly, with their drunkenness prolonging the rape and rampage on into the night. In the course of this massacre some 2,000 Turkish soldiers lost their lives, but several thousand more managed to take refuge, barricading themselves in the citadel.

The following morning Napoleon dispatched two of his aides to discover what was going on, and to broadcast orders in his name calling a halt to the mayhem forthwith. Inexplicably he chose for this task two of his most junior aides—his seventeen-year-old stepson Beauharnais, and his equally young and inexperienced companion Crosier. When they entered the the city, both wearing the brightly colored official sashes that indicated that they were bearing Napoleon’s orders, Beauharnais and Crosier came across a mob of bloodied, drunken French soldiers jeering and firing up at the windows of the citadel where the Turkish soldiers had taken refuge. Crosier bravely forced his way through the crowd and ordered them, in the name of their commander-in-chief, to cease firing. At the sight of his official sash, the soldiers took heed of his words and fell silent, whereupon the bey in charge of the Turkish soldiers, also recognizing the significance of the sashes, called down to the two young men. He promised to surrender on condition that he and his men were not maltreated like the other Turkish soldiers, and their lives were spared. On his own initiative, Crosier agreed to this proposal, and the Turkish soldiers all laid down their arms and filed silently out of the citadel. The French soldiers, now suitably sobered, formed a guard and escorted them through the carnage and squalor of the city streets to Napoleon’s headquarters. Bourrienne described how Beauharnais and Crosier “led the prisoners to the camp in two troops, one of around 2,500 men, the other of around 1,500. I was walking with [Napoleon] in front of his tent when he caught sight of the mass of men arriving. . . . He said to me with a feeling of deep sorrow, ‘What am I supposed to do? Have I any provisions to feed them? Or boats to transport them to Egypt or France? What the devil can I do with them all?’”
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As Bourrienne went on to explain: “Beauharnais and Crosier were subjected to the strongest possible dressing-down. But the damage had been done. We had 4,000 men on our hands.”

Napoleon now found himself faced with an all but impossible situation: he had 4,000 men whom he could not feed and did not know what to do with. To march them back to Egypt would require a guard of several hundred soldiers whom he could not afford to lose from his campaign force, and he certainly could not press them into his army and expect their loyalty after what had happened within the walls of Jaffa. In addition to this, as he revealed in his memoirs and other sources confirm: “Among the prisoners were found to be three Albanians from the garrison at Al-Arish, who revealed that all the garrison had turned up at Jaffa, violating the terms of their surrender and parole.”
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Of the 4,000 prisoners taken, as many as 1,000 of them were found to be former members of the garrison at El-Arish.

According to the rules of war all the prisoners taken at Jaffa could be slaughtered: their commander had dismissed Napoleon’s offer of surrender. (What would he have done if they
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all surrendered?)Thus Napoleon knew that he had a right to kill them. The safe conduct promised by Crosier and Beauharnais was irrelevant; armies did not run according to the word of junior aides. But could he really order the slaughter of 4,000 men in cold blood? The only real alternative would have been to abandon his march on Acre—and beyond. All Napoleon’s dreams, his destiny, rested on this decision.

Of those who witnessed these days at Jaffa, it is Bourrienne’s testimony that rings most true: “The prisoners were made to sit down en masse in front of our tents. Each had his hands tied behind his back by a cord. Their faces were set in a dull fury. They were given a little biscuit and unleavened bread from the already depleted provisions of our army.”
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Napoleon called a meeting of his divisional generals in his tent in order to decide what to do, but no decision was reached. According to Bourrienne, “The soldiers were complaining about their insufficient rations, at the same time there were murmurings and discontent at seeing their bread given to the enemy . . . the reports were alarming, especially that of General Bon. . . . He believed we were facing nothing less than a mutiny.” Bourrienne was present at these meetings and took part in the discussions. After the first of these ended inconclusively, the entire camp was in a state of rising tension. “Another meeting was called, to which all the divisional generals were summoned. They discussed for several hours what steps should be taken. . . . [It was agreed that the prisoners] could not be released, for they would just go straight to Acre to reinforce Djezzar. . . . It was necessary to be there to appreciate fully the horrible necessity. . . . It is for posterity to judge our unanimous decision. . . . The order was given to shoot them.” After a brief statement of the ensuing events, Bourrienne ends in anguished reticence. “I will add no further details of the horrible necessity of which I was an eyewitness.” Others were to be less squeamish.

La Jonquière, the quasi-official historian of the Egyptian campaign, who had access to documents that remain unpublished, quotes from a long letter sent by the army paymaster Peyrusse to his mother in France:

By order of the commander-in-chief, the Egyptians, the Moroccans and the Turks were formed into separate groups.

Next day the Moroccans were all led down to the seashore, and two battalions began to shoot them. The only way they could try to save themselves was by throwing themselves into the sea; they did not wait, and all of them frantically attempted to swim away. There was easily time to shoot them and very soon the sea was red with blood and covered with corpses. A few were lucky enough to reach some rocks and save themselves; soldiers were sent after them in boats, to finish them off. . . . When this execution was finished, we fondly hoped that it would not be renewed, and that all the other prisoners would be spared. When the 800 Egyptians were sent off back to Cairo, our hopes were confirmed, but we were soon undeceived when next day 1,200 Turkish artillerymen, who had been kept in front of the commander-in-chief’s tent for two days without food, were led off to be slaughtered. Our men had been told not to waste their ammunition and they worked up enough ferocity to run them through with their bayonets. Among the victims we found many children who had clung to their fathers as they were both killed.
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