Derne: Defiance
THE COMMANDER OF Bashaw Yussef’s forces at Derne put a price tag on William Eaton’s head, offering $6,000 for the trophy detached from his body and double that amount for the general delivered alive as a prisoner. “Why don’t he come and take it?” Eaton snarled in a rhetorical flourish in his diary. For the other Christians, commander Hassan Bey dangled a mere $30 per head.
The ten Americans and fifty Christian mercenaries hunkered down in the small fort in the harbor under the American flag, and the troops loyal to Hamet spread out across the city. The remaining U.S. Navy ship, Argus, pointed its cannons shoreward.
Meanwhile, Yussef’s cavalry and the tribes on his payroll encircled the city. The situation was turning into a kind of a stalemate, with the Bedouin’s loyalty the key to tipping the balance to victory. “We want nothing but cash to break up our enemy’s camp without firing another shot!” wrote Eaton in large passionate letters in his diary.
Daily spy reports, mostly from Bedouin women able to move freely between the camps, revealed that Yussef’s forces planned numerous attacks but that the Bedouin refused to join in. The freewheeling tribes, with their slow-loading muskets, apparently didn’t like American-style warfare: the whoosh of sudden cannonballs and the relentless charging of men with bayonets.
Each day brought a fresh rumor of an impending attack. All Eaton could do was try to retain control of Derne until he heard back from Commodore Barron. Any future plans depended on reinforcements and supplies. At the moment, he was surrounded on the land side, and to make the situation more challenging, he was penniless. To feed his troops, Eaton convinced Hull to let him barter more prize goods from the Argus, trading with the Bedouin for mutton, milk, and eggs.
To shore up defenses, Eaton and his engineer, Jean Eugene, directed the digging of a long trench along one side of town to repel a cavalry charge. Captain Hull allowed sixteen men from the Argus to come ashore to help, including Eaton’s stepson Eli E. Danielson and Pascal Peck, the midshipman who had made the trek across the Libyan desert. And while the men were coming ashore, Eaton thought up a ruse. To delude the enemy into thinking more American soldiers had arrived, Eaton and Hull kept the shore boat coming and going all day from the Argus. The same marines took the little boat ride back and forth. No additional marines actually remained ashore, but to a watcher on a nearby hill, it appeared that a steady stream of marines was pouring into Fort Enterprise. The bluff might buy time.
Tired of conflicting spy reports about troop strengths and locations, Eaton, despite having his arm in a sling, decided to go on a scouting mission; he also opted to take along the two teenage midshipmen, his stepson and Peck; they sneaked out of town on foot and slipped as close as they dared to the enemy’s main camp. They discovered the main force to be bivouacked three miles in back of the hill on the southeast approach to town. When Captain Hull later learned that his young midshipmen had accompanied Eaton, he immediately ordered the crew of the shore boat to find them and instantly bring them back to the Argus. Hull’s implication was clear: Risk your own life in a reckless mission but don’t take my boys along.
Throughout the wait for Barron’s response, Eaton dwelled on questions he couldn’t answer. Would Barron surprise him with reinforcements? Would caution prevail? Would the commodore abandon Hamet in the midst of his enemies? His ruminations were rudely interrupted.
A sandstorm suddenly hit Derne. “Five o’clock, P.M. Overwhelmed with the Scyroc [sirocco] or hot wind of the desert,” wrote Eaton in his diary. “It come in as a hurricane and brought with it a column of heated dust, which resembled the smoke of conflagration, and turned the sun in appearance to melted copper and swept everything to the ground that had life and filled everything with a hot subtile sand, or rather powder. We were distressed for breath—the lungs contracted: blood heated like a fever and a perspiration covered the surface of the body. It lasted 3/4 of an hour.”
Another traveler described the onset of a sirocco in the same region. He said the air almost seemed to tremble and then the upper part of the sky turned an odd yellow, while the lower sky grew a darkening red. The heat felt like an oven door was suddenly opened. The whirling sand intruded everywhere.
On Saturday, May 25, the sirocco renewed its attack on Derne and blew in from the southwest. “So piercing was the heat,” wrote Eaton, “that the white pine boards of our folding table and book coverings in our tents warped as if before a close fire. The heated dust penetrated everything through our garments;—and indeed seemed to choak the pores of the skin. It had a singular effect on my wound, giving it the painful sensations of a fresh burn. The skin, after perspiration, became dry and parched, and the lungs compressed and inflamed. Water standing in tumblers in a few minutes became heated to such a degree as not to be borne in the hand and even stones, naturally cold, were so hot that the soldiers were obliged to suspend labor at the trenches.”
The men wrapped layers of cloth around their heads and faces, and tried desperately to breathe. They curled up, tried to cocoon themselves. This biblical misery lasted hour after hour, throughout the day. The relentless whooshing sounds deafened them. The wind blew so hard at the Argus in the harbor that Hull was afraid the anchor cable would snap; so he ordered the men to veer out the entire hundred fathoms of cable, letting the ship waggle out to sea. It was tossed and pounded like a toy boat on a long string. About 2:30 A.M., the storm finally broke.
Now began the cleanup. Men stripped off all clothes and shook them out. They washed themselves in the Mediterranean to banish the dust. The soldiers had to clean and oil all their weapons, especially the firing locks of their guns. They performed endless shoveling and sweeping to clear the streets. The digging out was apparently all-consuming because the normally prolix Eaton wrote nothing in his diary for May 26 or May 27. Perhaps the wound was hurting much more, in the wake of being coated in sand and roasted.
On May 28, Eaton was tired of waiting, of shoring up defenses. He had sent his letter of victory in Derne to Barron on May 1. The journey to Malta can take as little as three days, and four weeks had passed. His nature was to attack.
In the morning, the enemy sent out a raiding party of 60 men on foot and a small cavalry troop, and they attacked an encampment of Bedouin loyal to Hamet, living at the edge of Derne. In the chaos, the attackers drove off cattle and camels. Hamet’s troops galloped out of the city after the raiders, and caught up with them before the mountain southeast of town. They shot several of them and recovered the animals.
Eaton, the instant he heard of the raid and the pursuit, decided on a bold move to rush to try to cut off their retreat. His officers, who had sworn passionate loyalty a week earlier, now followed him as he led the march on foot. Lieutenant O’Bannon, in blue uniform jacket and cocked hat, and Midshipman Mann, and eager Farquhar, and a handful of marines and two dozen Greeks marched double time out from the harbor fort and up along a ravine parallel to the one taken by the enemy. Just past the crest of the mountain, Eaton’s marchers caught up with the raiders. They exchanged a round of gunshots; then while the enemy was reloading, Eaton ordered a charge of bayonets. Simple geometry favored the Americans. The sharp blades, mounted on the end of long muskets, can impale man or horse. The enemy fled.
The American force pursued and shot and killed their captain and five men, wounded several others, and captured two prisoners. Not one of Eaton’s men was injured.
The enemy “beat to arms,” in Eaton’s words. It’s unclear if they used a drum like European armies or if some other sound rallied them. In any case, several hundred men mounted up and advanced in a body toward the small American force, but then halted and remained outside musket shot. They lined up their ranks, hovering, their leaders debating.
A charge would probably wipe out the American-European platoon.
While the enemy hesitated, Eaton led a retreat back toward Derne. The enemy did not attack or follow. The former army captain later surmised: “They [perhaps feared] that we were an advanced party aiming to draw them into an ambush on disadvantageous ground.”
Spies reported the enemy planned swift retribution.
The following morning, May 29 (as Lear made his written offer for peace in Tripoli), the enemy gathered in formation of more than a thousand men on the hill behind Derne, ready to attack. “About nine in the morning they advanced their whole force and posted themselves on an eminence in fair view—Proper stations were taken on our part to receive them.”
The cannons in the harbor battery were aimed toward the hill, as were the fieldpieces. The men climbed into the trenches; Hamet scattered troops around the city.
The enemy commander, Hassan Bey, ordered the attack, but the Bedouin at the last moment refused to advance. They marched away from the hill, and the attack was canceled.
Hassan Bey knew that he would probably be executed if he failed on this mission for Bashaw Yussef, so he opted for a new strategy: assassination.
Eaton’s journal: “A Mirabout (saint) who has experienced some charities from me . . . states that two women, one at camp, and the other in town, have engaged to take me off by poison—and that the commander in chief of the enemy has already made them large presents, among other things, a diamond ring, brilliant solitaire, in anticipation of this Service. The Saint cautioned me against accepting any presents of pastry cooking, preserves or fruit from any persons of the town.”
Finally, on May 31, the USS Hornet reached Derne from Malta. Contrary winds had bedeviled the journey. The Arabs onshore, seeing the return of this U.S. Navy ship, celebrated, firing off their guns and performing feats of horsemanship. They had no idea about the contents of Commodore Barron’s orders.
Eaton dodged his way amid the joy-shooting Arabs on the beach, and then pigtailed sailors rowed him out to the Hornet. On the shifting deck, Eaton read the blunt discouraging words about Hamet. “He must be held as unworthy of further support and the Co-operation as a measure too expensive and burdensome.” No more supplies would be given to Hamet, no more ammunition, no more money. Barron was sending food, but only for the Christian troops. Tobias Lear, peace negotiator, had already been dispatched to Tripoli.
Each bit of bad news was a body blow to Eaton. He struggled hard to control his temper, and he knew that for now no one but Captain Hull must know about this abrupt change of plans.
To Hull, who also received orders, the decision was now simple: a matter of orchestrating a safe evacuation. To Eaton, who had found Hamet in Upper Egypt and prodded him across five hundred miles of Libyan desert, it was anything but simple.
“You would weep, Sir,” he wrote to Barron, “were you on the spot, to witness the unbounded confidence placed in the American character here, and to reflect that this confidence must shortly sink into contempt and immortal hatred; you would feel that this confidence at any price, should be carried through the Barbary regencies, at least to Tripoli, by the same means that it has been inspired here—But if no further aids come to our assistance and we are compelled to leave the place under its actual circumstances, humanity itself must weep: The whole city of Derne, together with numerous families of Arabs who attached themselves to Hamet Bashaw and who resisted Yussef’s troops in expectation of succour from us, must be abandoned to their fate—havoc & slaughter will be the inevitable consequence—not a soul of them can escape the savage vengeance of the enemy.”
Eaton expected many would be massacred; he knew the town would be looted. Eaton was outraged at the prospect of using Hamet as a tool to achieve a cheaper ransom and peace. “Could I have apprehended this result of my exertions, certainly no consideration would have prevailed on me to have taken an agency in a tragedy so manifestly fraught with intrigue, so wounding to humane feelings, and, as I must view it, so degrading to our national honor.”
Eaton calmed himself long enough to point out some practical considerations. If negotiations failed in Tripoli, then Derne, a valuable city, will have been needlessly abandoned to the enemy; he also noted that even if the treaty carried some protections for Hamet and his allies, by the time those details reached Derne after U.S. forces leave, it would be too late to help them: They would be dead, wounded, or robbed. Eaton said he would prefer a “manly defeat” over this “mode of safety.”
After much soul-searching, the naval agent for the Barbary Regencies came to a remarkable conclusion. “I consider it due to the confidence of [the U.S.] Government and a bond imposed by all the injunctions of humanity to endeavor to hold this port till the last moment in hopes that some happy occurrence may take place to secure our own and at the same time to assist the interests of our friends. And I most devoutly pray Heaven that the blood of innocence may not stain the footsteps of us who have aimed only to fight the enemies of our Country.”
On June 1, as Tobias Lear awaited word on his latest peace proposal, Eaton decided to remain steadfast in Derne. Each morning, a drumroll would accompany the raising of the American flag, which would then flap in defiance of the enemies ringed in the hills above.