THE GENERALS (53 page)
Authors: Simon Scarrow
For a moment Napoleon was tempted to order Eugène to the rear, but there was truth in what the boy had said. An officer, above all men, must prove himself in battle if he was to win the respect and loyalty of his comrades, common soldiers and officers alike. He nodded slowly. ‘Very well, then. But promise me that you will not take any unnecessary risks. If anything happens to you, your mother will never forgive me.’
Eugène smiled. ‘I’ll be careful then, sir. For your sake.’
‘You rascal!’ Napoleon pinched his cheek. Then he turned to Lannes. ‘God bless you and good luck, my friend.’
Lannes patted the musket lying beside him. ‘Fuck that. I’d rather put my faith in a stout heart and a good weapon, sir.’
‘Then I’ll see you in hell.’ Napoleon slapped him on the shoulder and started to make his way back to the nearest battery to watch the assault as General Lannes rose up, musket in hand.
‘Soldiers of the 8th! On your feet!’ Lannes waited until they were ready, faces tense and bodies poised, and then raised his arm and punched it towards the breach. ‘Charge!’
From the battery Napoleon watched as Lannes and his men surged forward over the narrow strip of ground between the end of the trenches and the town wall. Their cheers and throaty war cries echoed back off the masonry as they reached the rubble and began to scramble up. The Turks on either side of the breach began to open fire on their attackers, and were quickly wreathed in puffs of smoke. Several soldiers had fallen by the time Lannes and the first of his men gained the breach, where the Turks surged forward to defend the town. Napoleon strained his eyes as he tried to spot Eugène but the impetus of the charge quickly carried Lannes and the others through the gap and into the streets of Jaffa.
Once the sounds of the fighting had died away Napoleon made his way down the trench and up on to the ground in front of the breach, accompanied by fifty of the guides, who watched the walls on either side closely as they guarded their general.The rubble shifted under his boots and he had some difficulty in scrambling through the breach.There were bodies in the streets, scores of them. Mostly Turks, cut down in the ferocious assault mounted by Lannes and his men. Napoleon encountered only a handful of wounded Frenchmen as he passed through the town. Near the harbour Dr Desgenettes and his men were treating a group of severely injured soldiers, stretched out in a row on the street.The doctor looked up from his work as Napoleon and the guides marched by, but quickly wiped his brow and turned back to his patients.The main street through the town gave out on to the harbour, and Napoleon stopped in surprise at the sight that met his eyes. On the beach next to the harbour were thousands of Turks, huddled tightly together as they sat under the watchful eyes of the French guards. As Napoleon approached the exhausted French troops slumped on the foul-smelling quay, another batch of prisoners was marched out of a side street to join their comrades. They wore the distinctive red and green turbans of the men who had surrendered at El Arish. Napoleon felt a cold rage seep through his veins.
He found General Lannes sitting on a divan that had been hauled out on to the quay and dragged into the shade cast by the wall of a mosque. Napoleon was greatly relieved to see Eugène sitting on a chair nearby, talking animatedly with some of the younger officers of Lannes’s division.
Napoleon thrust his arm towards the prisoners. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
Lannes rose to his feet and stood stiffly before his commander. ‘Sir?’
‘I take it that they are prisoners.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I told you not to show the enemy any mercy.’
‘I know that, sir. But they fought hard and fair before they were forced to give up.’
‘Fine. And what do you propose to do with them now?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Lannes admitted. ‘I hadn’t considered that yet.We’ve only just finished mopping up the last of the resistance.’
‘We can’t have any prisoners.’ Napoleon spoke with quiet intensity. ‘We have no spare supplies to feed them with, no spare troops to guard them, and, in any case, those from El Arish have broken the terms of their parole . . .’
Lannes stared at him with a pained expression. ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’
‘I want you to dispose of the prisoners. All of them.’
Lannes glanced round at the figures packed on the beach.‘But there must be nearly three thousand of them.’
‘I’m not interested in the number, General, just the outcome. You have your orders, now carry them out.’
‘Wait!’ Eugène called out, striding towards Napoleon with an angry expression. ‘You can’t do it, sir. I took the surrender of the men from the citadel. I gave them my word that they would be well treated.’
‘On whose authority did you make such a promise? Not mine.’>
‘I . . . I gave them my word they would be spared, sir.’
‘Then you gave them what was not in your power to give. The dishonour is yours, Eugène, and you will be responsible for the consequences,’ Napoleon said coldly. ‘General Lannes, you will take the prisoners in batches to the beach on the other side of the harbour from here, and there you will dispose of them. I don’t care what method you use as long as the job is done. The execution parties will be under the command of Captain Beauharnais.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Napoleon leaned close to his stepson. ‘Let this be a lesson to you. Next time you will obey my orders to the letter.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Eugène replied through clenched teeth.
‘Good.’ Napoleon turned to Lannes. ‘Carry on then, General.’
They exchanged a salute and then Napoleon and the guides turned and marched back through the town. As they reached the street where they had earlier encountered Desgenettes, the doctor emerged from an entrance into a courtyard and hurried over to Napoleon. He looked afraid as he saluted his general.
‘Sir, I’ve found . . . something.You must come and see.’
‘What? What is it, doctor?’
Desgenettes glanced past Napoleon to the ranks of the guides behind him. ‘Please, sir, come with me, and tell these men to stay here.’
Napoleon was still furious with Lannes and Eugène and he shook his head.Whatever it was the doctor wanted to show him would have to wait. The army had to be readied for the advance to Acre. But there was an imploring look in the man’s eyes and after a moment’s hesitation Napoleon nodded irritably.
‘Very well, then, but make it quick.’
Desgenettes turned and led the way back through the arch into the courtyard beyond. To one side there was a narrow doorway leading into some kind of storage room and as they approached it Napoleon could hear groaning, and the fevered mutterings of sick men. He paused on the threshold and saw that the floor inside the storeroom was covered with crude mattresses on which men lay, covered with soiled rags. The stench of the place was overpowering and Napoleon raised a hand to cover his mouth and nose.
‘What is this place? A hospital?’
‘No, sir.’ Desgenettes leaned over the nearest man and carefully lifted the corner of the blanket that covered him. The man’s jaw was slack and hung open and his eyes gazed sightlessly at the ceiling and Napoleon realised he was dead. Then he saw the swollen lumps on the man’s neck and round his armpits. Some had burst and glistened with blood and pus.The stench hit Napoleon like a blow and he had to struggle to keep himself from vomiting.
‘Buboes,’ Desgenettes explained, and let the blanket drop back over the body. He gestured to the other men in the room, most still moving fitfully as they mumbled and cried out. ‘They’ve all got the same symptoms.’ He turned to Napoleon. ‘This isn’t a hospital, sir. It’s a plague house.’
Chapter 43
‘That delay at El Arish is about to cost us dearly,’ Napoleon said as he surveyed the new earthworks and other fortifications that had been erected around Acre. Some of Ahmad Pasha’s engineers were still toiling away digging a ditch in front of the large bastion that dominated the city’s walls. The enemy was in a strong position indeed, he reflected. Acre was built on a spur of land that thrust out to sea at an angle to create the harbour. A mole protected the harbour and at the end of the mole stood a lighthouse. The landward side of the city was defended by massive walls and outer works and through his telescope Napoleon could see the barrels of artillery pieces, positioned to sweep the open ground before the city the moment the French launched an assault.Two British warships were anchored outside the harbour, out of range of Napoleon’s field guns in case the French decided to use heated shot.
‘This is going to be tricky. We can only attack on a narrow front, and they can use the mole and the English ships to enfilade our positions. We cannot blockade them, which means the English can bring in supplies and reinforcements at will. Well then, if we can’t starve them out, we’ll have to blast them out. This has to be settled by an assault on the city.’ He turned to Berthier. ‘Any sighting of Admiral Perée’s ships?’
‘Not yet, sir. But they should reach Haifa any day.The artillery train is already there and will bring the siege guns up to Acre the moment they are landed.’
‘Good. Then we’ll see how tough those walls really are.’
Napoleon’s telescope picked out a group of men who had appeared on top of the main bastion. Most were in flowing robes and turbans, and there were a few Europeans amongst them in blue coats with gold epaulettes.Two of the figures stepped on to a platform just behind the ramparts and gazed out towards the French lines. With a thrill of excitement Napoleon realised he must be looking at Ahmad Pasha himself, the man the Turks called
Djezzar
- the Butcher - a sobriquet awarded in recognition of the man’s legendary ferocity and the abject cruelty he visited on his enemies. That Ahmad Pasha had survived into his seventies in the brutal world of Turkish politics was tribute to his ruthlessness.
Djezzar
- the Butcher - a sobriquet awarded in recognition of the man’s legendary ferocity and the abject cruelty he visited on his enemies. That Ahmad Pasha had survived into his seventies in the brutal world of Turkish politics was tribute to his ruthlessness.
Two can play at that, Napoleon reflected coldly. News of the massacre of Turkish prisoners at Jaffa must have reached Acre by now.Ahmad Pasha and his forces would be in no doubt about the merciless nature of their opponent. Although he took little pleasure in the deed, Napoleon knew that it would unsettle many of the enemy soldiers and he needed every advantage he could wring out of the situation. The French army might well be a match for any soldiers the Sultan and his allies could field, but it was terribly outnumbered and right at the end of a slender line of communications stretching all the way down the coast towards Egypt. Just one setback might shatter Napoleon’s army.The men’s morale was low enough as things stood.The climate, the hostility of the native peoples, and the exhaustion and discomfort of the desert marches together with the bloody assaults on El Arish and Jaffa, had all taken their toll on the French soldiers.
And now the plague had broken out in their ranks. Napoleon had forbidden Dr Desgenettes and his staff to breathe a word about the plague victims they had encountered at Jaffa. The plague house had been sealed off and placed under guard so that its unhappy occupants would die in secret. But, somehow, somewhere in Jaffa, the plague had found its way into the blood of the French soldiers as they looted the city. Already nearly fifty men had been diagnosed with the terrible disease and the first of them had died that morning. Desgenettes had taken over a Greek Orthodox monastery off the road between Jaffa and Acre, and new cases were hurriedly taken out of the sick tents and moved to the makeshift hospital. It was only a matter of time before the secret was out and the men would have one more dread to add to their burden.
Napoleon switched his attention from Ahmad Pasha to the naval officer standing beside him.That must be Sir Sidney Smith, the commander of the small squadron that Admiral Nelson had detached to the Levant to harry the French army. The English naval captain was obviously determined to win a reputation for himself. Even here on the fringe of the civilised world, Napoleon pondered, it came down to a conflict between France and England. It was amusing, Napoleon reflected, that even though they were separated by only a narrow stretch of water, they were obliged to fight each other in conflicts spread right across the world.
The naval officer raised his telescope and swept it over the French lines until it foreshortened into a glinting dot and then he stopped. For a moment the two foes scrutinised each other down the lengths of their telescopes, until the Englishman lowered his glass and waved cheerily before turning away to confer with Ahmad Pasha.
‘We’ll see who’s still smiling in a week’s time,’ Napoleon muttered.
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