The … appearance of a British squadron in the Mediterranean is a condition on which the fate of Europe may … depend … if, by our appearance in the Mediterranean, we can encourage Austria to come forward again, it is … probably that the other powers will seize the opportunity of acting at the same time.
George, Lord Spencer
I feel that I have the zeal and activity to do credit to your appointment, and yet to be unsuccessful hurts me most sensibly. But if they are above water, I will find them out, if possible bring them to battle.
Horatio Nelson
It was Napoleon Bonaparte who broke the back of what came to be known as the First Coalition. After capturing most of northern Italy in the summer of 1796, he defeated in succession four Austrian offensives designed to retake the region and relieve the Austrian garrison besieged in Mantua. In January 1797, he launched an offensive that over the next three months pushed the Austrians back to within 80 miles of Vienna. The Austrians desperately signed the preliminary Treaty of Leoben on April 17, and the elaborate Treaty of Campo Formio on October 18, 1797, both imposed by Bonaparte. Austria recognized France’s acquisition of its Netherlands province (modern Belgium) and the Ionian Islands, territorial expansion to the Rhine, free navigation of the Rhine, Mosel, and Meuse Rivers, and the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics established as French protectorates in northern Italy. In return, France accepted Austria’s takeover of the Venetian Republic. The First Coalition essentially died when Austria dropped out of the war.
Despite these discouraging events, King George III, Prime Minister William Pitt, and the other ministers were deadset to fight on. Pitt and the inner Cabinet made a crucial policy decision on April 6, 1798.1 The Royal Navy would reenter the Mediterranean and square off with the French and Spanish for its control. Many reasons shaped this decision. The decisive victories of Saint Vincent and Camperdown shifted the naval power balance and freed more warships for a Mediterranean fleet. The Channel and Lisbon fleets numbered 34 and 24 ships-of-the-line, respectively. A powerful portion of these vessels could deploy in the Mediterranean Sea.
The catalyst for returning to the Mediterranean now rather than later was word that France’s Toulon fleet was preparing a major expedition, destination unknown. A Mediterranean fleet could nip this expedition in the bud, either through blockade or, ideally, by destroying it at sea. First Lord of the Admiralty, George, Lord Spencer instructed Admiral John Jervis, Earl of Saint Vincent, who commanded the fleet based at Lisbon, to send a squadron to Toulon. He explained why:
The … appearance of a British squadron in the Mediterranean is a condition on which the fate of Europe may … depend … [I]t is as this time to run some risk, in order, if possible, to bring about a new system of affairs in Europe, which shall save us all from being overrun by the exorbitant power of France … it is impossible not to perceive how much depends on the exertions of the great Continent powers … if, by our appearance in the Mediterranean, we can encourage Austria to come forward again, it is … probably that the other powers will seize the opportunity of acting at the same time.’2 Spencer then advised: ‘If you determine to send a detachment into the Mediterranean (instead of going in person with the fleet), I … suggest … putting it under the command of Sir. H. Nelson, whose acquaintance with that part of the world, as well as his activity and disposition, seem to qualify him in a peculiar manner for the service.3
Jervis had actually reached the same conclusions weeks before he received Spencer’s instructions on May 19. On April 20, after hearing of the expedition assembling at Toulon, he asked Nelson to see if there any truth to the rumor. Nelson’s flotilla included 3 74-gun ships of the line and 3 32-gun frigates. On May 19, a storm raged in and for nearly two days and nights walloped Nelson’s flotilla and demasted his flagship, the Vanguard. The men managed to sail to the tiny island of San Pietro, Sardinia, where they repaired their vessels. Nelson learned on May 28, that an expedition led by Bonaparte had sailed from Toulon, destination unknown. Meanwhile, Jervis was once again ahead of the game. He designated 10 ships-of-the-line and smaller warships led by Captain Thomas Troubridge to reinforce Nelson. One of Nelson’s frigates brought word of his squadron’s whereabouts. The reinforcements dropped anchor at San Pietro on June 5.
Nelson now commanded a powerful fleet. The alarming question was just where Bonaparte’s armada was heading. By June 15, Nelson reckoned that ‘they are going on their scheme of possessing Alexandria and getting troops to India.’4 He ordered his captains to spread sail for Egypt. Nelson’s hunch was absolutely right.
During the first few months of 1798, the French government, now called the Directory for its executive council of five directors, debated how to follow up its decisive 1797 victories with an expedition that carried the war to Britain or its empire. They asked General Bonaparte to assess the possibility of invading the British Isles or Ireland. Bonaparte concluded that Britain’s Channel fleet and home defenses were too strong to overcome. He then suggested a target that he and Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord had discussed for months – Egypt. On March 5, the Directory approved the Egyptian expedition and asked Bonaparte to organize and lead it.
Bonaparte got to work in a typical frenzy of 18-hour days that exhausted everyone except himself.5 He launched his expedition just two-and-a-half months later. His armada included 276 officers, 28,000 infantry, 2,800 cavalrymen, 2,000 gunners manning 180 cannons, 1,158 engineers, and 900 civilians, of whom 151 were scientists, historians, and artists, packed into 278 transports. Protecting this flotilla were 13 ships-of-the-line, 8 frigates, and 18 smaller warships commanded by Admiral François Paul de Brueys aboard his flagship, the 120-gun L’Orient.6 Bonaparte sought more than Egypt’s conquest; he wanted to unleash his experts on that ancient land to reveal every possible secret and wonder. As he explained to his soldiers, ‘you are about to undertake a conquest, the effects of which on the civilization and commerce of the world are immeasurable.’7
Only the Royal Navy could possibly thwart Bonaparte’s ambitions. Four British frigates watched Toulon on the horizon. A storm blew them far away on May 18. Bonaparte took advantage of the storm’s aftermath to ride its tailwinds southward. The armada sailed on May 19, with most vessels departing from Toulon and contingents from Marseilles, Genoa, Ajaccio, and Civita Vecchia. The flotillas converged at Malta.
The island of Malta is the Mediterranean Sea’s strategic linchpin, splitting the basin between western and eastern halves. Bonaparte’s armada anchored off Valletta, Malta’s port and capital, on June 9. Ferdinand von Hompesch, Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John that ruled Malta, rejected Bonaparte’s request to squeeze his entire fleet in the port for safety and to replenish its water barrels. Bonaparte used the rebuff as the excuse to land 4,000 troops on June 11, march them to the base of the peninsula with Valletta at its head, and demand that Hompesch surrender. After a short exchange of artillery fire, Hompesch yielded the next day. On June 19, after garrisoning Malta’s fortresses with 3,053 troops and requisitioning supplies and money, Bonaparte ordered the expedition to sail eastward.8
The armada anchored off Alexandria on July 1. Bonaparte led his army ashore beyond cannon shot of the city. After the governor rejected his demand to surrender, he ordered his troops to attack the next day. The French captured Alexandria after suffering several hundred dead and wounded. Bonaparte had triumphed in his campaign’s first two stages. He had taken Malta bloodlessly and Alexandria with minimal casualties. He garrisoned Alexandria with 2,000 men, and led the rest of his troops on a 140-mile march south up the Nile River valley to Cairo. Defending Egypt’s capital were Ibrahim Bey and Mohammed Murad Bey, the head chiefs of the Mameluk class that governed Egypt under Turkish suzerainty; they commanded an army of perhaps 3,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry.
Before leaving on July 5, Bonaparte warned Brueys not to stay exposed at Aboukir Bay any longer than was absolutely necessary. Brueys should either crowd his fleet into Alexandria’s cramped, shallow harbor or sail to Corfu. Brueys not only disobeyed this order, he failed to deploy a picket of frigates beyond the horizon to warn of any approaching British fleet.9
The French army routed the Egyptian army near the Pyramids on July 21, and entered Cairo three days later. After dispatching troops to secure the rest of the country and his scientists to explore it, Bonaparte launched administrative, legal, and economic reforms designed to transform Egypt from a feudal into a modern country. Horrifying news interrupted his efforts on August 14. Nelson’s fleet had destroyed Bruey’s fleet at Aboukir Bay two weeks earlier. Bonaparte and his army were now marooned in Egypt.
In retrospect, it was far more challenging for Nelson to find than destroy the French fleet.10 After Troubridge joined him, Nelson sailed his warships south in desperate hope of somehow locating and battling a vast enemy armada that enjoyed a few weeks’ head start. The British fleet was off Naples on June 17, when Nelson learned that Bonaparte’s expedition was last seen at Malta. A few days later Nelson’s fleet anchored off Malta where he was told that the French armada had sailed east, but no one knew where. Nelson sailed to Alexandria, arriving on June 28, but to his chagrin found not a single French vessel let alone the armada. This was because Nelson had gotten there first. His fleet had sailed straight to Egypt while the lumbering, overloaded French armada sailed closer to North Africa’s coast.
The next day Nelson headed toward Constantinople, reasoning that if Bonaparte was not going to conquer Egypt then perhaps he had instead targeted the Ottoman Empire. After a few days Nelson abruptly changed his mind. The idea of Bonaparte trying to conquer the Ottoman Empire by attacking its capital seemed farfetched. He headed westward and reached Syracuse, Sicily on July 19. No one there was any wiser about Bonaparte’s whereabouts. In despair, Nelson wrote Jervis:
Yesterday I arrived here, where I can learn no more than vague conjecture that the French have gone eastward … I feel that I have the zeal and activity to do credit to your appointment, and yet to be unsuccessful hurts me most sensibly. But if they are above water, I will find them out, and if possible bring them to battle.11
He led his fleet east from Syracuse on July 25, bound once again for Alexandria.
Aboukir Bay is a shallow crescent starting about a dozen miles east of Alexandria. A small fort crowned the crescent’s western horn and 3 miles northeast of that point was tiny Aboukir Island. Starting 3 miles east of there, Brueys anchored his warships bow to stern with a about 160yd of water between them. In doing so, he violated Bonaparte’s instructions to choose between the ports of Alexandria or Corfu. He compounded his disobedience by violating elementary rules of security. None of the cables anchoring the vessels were springed to turn the vessels swiftly to broadside an approaching enemy warship. There was plenty of deep water on the landward side of the vessels that enemy warships could exploit. Most sailors either lolled in makeshift camps ashore or were fetching supplies from Alexandria. Worst of all, Brueys failed to post a series of swift frigates at intervals beyond the horizon to warn of an enemy fleet’s approach.
With the wind at its back, Nelson’s fleet approached Alexandria around midday on August 1, but his lookouts spotted no French vessels massed in the port.12 The fleet reached Aboukir Bay’s west end in late afternoon. What Nelson saw through his spyglass astounded him. The entire enemy fleet was strung out over 2 miles and seemingly unprepared for battle. Nelson signaled his captains to attack in two lines, with one passing seaward and the other landward to rake the French warships from both sides.
French lookouts sounded the alarm but the captains had trouble rousting their sailors to their battle stations. Toward sunset the lead British warships sandwiched and opened fire on the first French warship then steadily passed down the line blasting each in turn. One by one the British warships dropped anchor beside a French warship and fired broadside after broadside into it. About 9.30 that evening Brueys’s flagship L’Orient exploded when fire detonated the magazine. The battle continued through the night and into the next day until every French warship had either been blown up, surrendered, or fled. In all, the British suffered 218 dead and 678 wounded, and lost no ships, while killing 5,235 and capturing 3,305 French, and destroying 2 ships-of-the-line and taking 9 others. Only two French ships-of-the-line managed to cut their cables and escape. As for the French future in Egypt, Nelson noted grimly: ‘I have little doubt but that they will be destroyed by plague, pestilence, and famine, battle and murder, which that it may be soon, God grant.’13
Nelson reorganized the battered warships. Four of the French prizes were damaged beyond salvation; he ordered them stripped of anything useful then blown up. He had Captain James Saumarez lead the six least ravaged British and French warships back to Gibraltar. He then split the remaining warships into three divisions. He assigned two ships-of-the-line and three frigates each to Captains Samuel Hood and Alexander Ball to blockade, respectively, Alexandria and Malta. He sailed to Naples with his flagship the Vanguard and the Culloden, each with 74 guns.
Several reasons drove Nelson to Naples. There was the practical – it was a secure site to repair his warships, revive his exhausted crews, and personally recover from a head wound and malaria. There was the sensual – he was smitten with Emma, British ambassador William Hamilton’s enchanting wife.14 Admiral John Jervis, Earl of Saint Vincent, the Mediterranean fleet commander, had no inkling of how ironic his words were when he showered Emma Hamilton with ‘ten thousand most grateful thanks … for restoring the health of our invaluable friend … Pray do not let your fascinating Neapolitan dames approach too near him, for he is made of flesh & blood & cannot resist their temptation.’15 Most importantly, there was the strategic – the kingdom of Naples spanned southern Italy and the island of Sicily in the heart of the Mediterranean basin.
That kingdom was an enthusiastic British ally. King Ferdinand IV and Queen Maria Carolina were unabashed Anglophiles. The queen’s love for England had swelled with their feverish hatred for France after its revolutionaries guillotined her younger sister, Marie Antoinette. Their prime minister, John Acton, was an expatriate Englishman. The royal couple’s closest friends were William and Emma Hamilton.
The alliance’s strength was only as secure as the royal couple was upon their throne. Severe problems afflicted the Kingdom of Naples. Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina reigned over a realm renowned for its incompetence, corruption, and sloth. The army and navy were poorly led and manned. The royal couple itself was incapable of comprehending let alone implementing reforms that might strengthen their rule. The queen had a backbone wanting in her milquetoast husband, but zeal unguided by reason would lead to disaster. Exacerbated with her own inept generals, Maria Carolina convinced her husband to bring in an outsider to transform the army’s discipline and morale from dismal to professional. Austrian general Karl Mack arrived at Naples in 1798 for this daunting challenge. Mack might have succeeded had he not received orders to test his army in war before it was ready.
Nelson was the worst influence on this catastrophic decision. After he reached Naples on September 22, the Hamiltons threw a banquet and ball to celebrate his decisive win at the Nile and 40th birthday. His nearly unbroken record of victories and the fawning adulation bloated his hubris. Nelson and Maria Carolina pressured a reluctant Ferdinand to provoke war with France.
Ferdinand finally succumbed. On November 22, 1798, he issued an ultimatum that the French must withdraw from Malta and the Papal States. He did not await a reply. The next day, Ferdinand and Mack led 20,000 Neapolitan troops northward to drive the French from the Papal States. Nelson sailed with 5,000 Neapolitan troops packed aboard a flotilla to Livorno to cut off the French retreat and block reinforcements. The outnumbered French withdrew from Rome and Livorno. The king and his army marched into Rome on November 29. Nelson triumphantly disembarked the troops at Livorno on November 28, left Captain Thomas Troubridge in charge, then sailed back to Emma in Naples. The campaign appeared to have met the hopes that inspired it. Actually nothing could have better advanced France’s strategic goals.
After massing troops and supplies, General Jean Championnet launched an offensive that routed the Neapolitans at Civita Castellana on December 4, at Otricoli the next day, and marched unopposed into Rome on December 6; the French had killed, wounded, or captured more than 7,000 Neapolitans while suffering only about 1,000 casualties. Upon learning of these debacles and facing a swelling French army before Livorno, Troubridge reembarked his troops at Livorno and sailed to Naples. On Christmas Day, Championnet marched south toward Naples. One of his columns captured Gaeta with its 3,600-man garrison on January 5, 1799. The Neapolitan army’s remnants fled to Naples. As the French army marched toward them, the king and queen tearfully abandoned half their realm for the other half, with its capital at Palermo. The royal couple, the Hamiltons, Acton, and the rest of the elite sheltered aboard Nelson’s Vanguard, while hundreds more members of their court packed aboard other vessels that sailed to Sicily from December 23 to 26.
The Neapolitan army held out nearly a month before surrendering on January 23, 1799. Two days later, Championnet joined the city’s liberals in declaring the establishment of the Parthenopean Republic. This government did not last long. A very charismatic and fierce 60-year-old priest began its destruction. Ferdinand asked Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo to cross the strait from Messina to Silla, and preach the overthrown of the godless regime in Naples. After massing an army of ill-armed peasants, Ruffo marched toward Naples. Learning of his success, Ferdinand sent General Antonio Micheroux with 10,000 Sicilian troops to join him. Nelson had Troubridge blockade Naples.
As royalist and British forces besieged Naples, the liberals were mostly on their own. On April 22, 1799, faced with overwhelming Austrian and Russian offensives in northern Italy, General Etienne Macdonald, who had replaced Championnet as France’s commander in southern Italy, withdrew northward with all his forces except 500 troops at Fort Saint Elmo in Naples and small garrisons at Brindisi and Bari. A Russian squadron forced the French troops at Brindisi and Bari to withdraw northward on May 4 and 13, respectively.
Determined to administer the coup de grâce to the Parthenopean Republic, Nelson sailed on June 21, and dropped anchor before Naples on June 24. There he was enraged to learn that on June 20, Ruffo and Captain Edward Foote, who commanded the British blockade flotilla, had cut a deal with the 1,500 republican rebels whereby if they capitulated they would be amnestied and transported along with the French garrison to France.
What followed was one of history’s more vicious crackdowns before the twentieth century, and among the more notorious betrayals of all time that has forever partly blackened Nelson’s name. After British marines and Neapolitan troops secured Naples, Nelson had the French garrison in Fort Saint Elmo besieged and thousands of rebels arrested. He justified doing so by obeying the king’s instructions to be merciless to the rebels. During the subsequent treason trials, of the 105 found guilty, 96 were hanged and 5 pardoned. Among them was Commodore Francesco Caracciolo who committed treason against Ferdinand IV by becoming a rebel leader. Meanwhile, British marines and Neapolitan troops captured Capua on July 29 and Gaeta on July 31. King Ferdinand and Queen Maria Carolina returned to Naples to reign again over their entire realm. The allies did not stop there. They marched into Civitavecchia on September 29 and Rome on September 30.
Meanwhile, Admiral George Elphinstone, Viscount Keith, replaced Saint Vincent as the Mediterranean commander.16 He sent orders on June 27, for Nelson to cover Minorca against a possible attack by a combined Spanish and French fleet under Admiral Eustache Bruix that had sailed from Cartagena for an unknown destination. After receiving the order on July 13, Nelson chose to disobey it, reasoning that Minorca was not threatened while the political situation at Naples remained uncertain. Keith repeated his orders on July 9 and 14, but Nelson remained defiant. Eventually Keith learned that Bruix had sailed not to Minorca but the opposite direction, to Cádiz and later on to Brest. This, however, did not excuse Nelson’s blatant insubordination. Keith’s subsequent protest to Whitehall provoked a heated debate among the ministers over just how far to tolerate the transgressions of the Royal Navy’s star captain.
Bonaparte’s conquest of Egypt and Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet profoundly transformed the Mediterranean basin’s strategic landscape. No change was more surprising than the alliance between Turkey and Russia.17 These empires had warred against each other off and on for centuries. For now they shelved their hatreds, fears, and ambitions to act on that venerable law of power – the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Paul I was among the more eccentric, cruel, and erratic of Russia’s tsars.18 His mother, Catherine the Great, so loathed him that she disinherited him and instead bequeathed the throne to his son and her grandson Alexander. But when Catherine died in November 1796, Paul managed to destroy her will and seize the throne. He purged his mother’s advisors and replaced them with those who proclaimed their devotion to him. He invited the would-be Louis XVIII and his entourage to install themselves in a palace at Mittau. Intelligence reports that France’s Toulon fleet was preparing an expedition excited Paul’s paranoia. He jumped to the assumption that France’s revolutionary government had targeted Russia for an attack to retaliate against him for sheltering the Bourbons. In May 1798, Paul ordered Admiral Feodor Ushakov to ready his Black Sea fleet to repel a possible French expedition.
It was Paul’s devotion to the Order of the Knights of Saint John that would propel a Russian fleet and army into the Mediterranean. After becoming tsar, he offered the Knights protection and money. Bonaparte’s conquest of Malta and pensioning of the Knights enraged Paul, who considered these acts personal assaults on himself. He had his ambassador in Constantinople get Sultan Selim III’s permission for Russia’s Black Sea fleet to sail through the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits to the Mediterranean to liberate Malta from the French. When word arrived that Bonaparte had invaded Egypt, Paul wrote Selim calling for an alliance and joint expedition against France. Later this year, in November, the Knights rewarded Paul for all his efforts by declaring him their Grand Master.
Paul’s letter to Selim sailed with Ushakov’s fleet of six ships-of-the-line and seven frigates from Sevastopol on August 23. Meanwhile, Selim III and his advisors had spent over a month debating how to respond to Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt.19 The stalemate had persisted even after they learned on August 12 of the battle of Aboukir Bay. It continued even after the Turks and Russians signed an alliance treaty on August 20. It took the arrival of Ushakov’s fleet at Constantinople to decide the matter. On September 8, Selim ordered Admiral Kadir Bey to devise with Ushakov and British Captain William Sidney Smith, who commanded a small flotilla then at Constantinople, a strategy for their Mediterranean campaign. Selim declared war against France on September 9.
The plan was for the combined fleet to retake the French-held Ionian Islands while sending a small flotilla to blockade Alexandria. The combined fleet sailed on October 1, captured the Ionian islands of Cerigo on October 9, Zante on October 24, Cephalonia on October 28, and Santa Maura on November 13, along with Nicopoli, Albania on November 1. The only significant French resistance was on Corfu, where the siege lasted from November 5 until the garrison surrendered on March 1, 1799. As Russian and Turkish officials got to work jointly ruling the Ionian Islands, the allied fleet split up. Bey’s Turkish fleet headed to Rhodes eventually to transport the Turkish army there to invade Egypt. Ushakov’s Russian fleet protected transports packed with 12,000 troops sailing to reinforce General Alexander Suvorov’s army that was fighting with the Austrians against the French in northern Italy.
These Russian and Turkish diplomatic and military initiatives appeared to complement Whitehall’s strategy and ongoing operations in the Mediterranean. Nelson, however, saw a Russian fleet and troops in the Mediterranean as rivaling British interests and his own ambitions: ‘Malta, Corfu, and those islands are my object after Egypt, and therefore I hope that the Russian fleet will be kept in the East, for if they establish themselves in the Mediterranean, it will be a bad thorn in the side.’20
The French government sought to relieve French forces at Malta, Corfu, and Egypt by sweeping the British from the Mediterranean Sea. In March 1799, the Directors ordered Admiral Eustache Bruix to sail with his fleet from Brest to join Spain’s squadrons. There were 5 Spanish ships-of-the-line at Ferrol, 17 at Cádiz, and 17 at Cartagena. This combined allied fleet would dwarf any British squadrons in its path. The largest was Admiral George Keith’s 16 ships-of-the-line at Cádiz, followed by Admiral John Jervis’s 8 at Gibraltar, Admiral John Duckworth’s 4 off Minorca, Captain Thomas Troubridge’s 4 off Naples, Captain Alexander Ball’s 3 off Malta, Smith’s 2 at Acre, and Nelson’s 1 at Palermo.
Bruix waited until Admiral Alexander Hood, Lord Bridport, moved his blockading fleet of 22 ships-of-the-line off Ushant, leaving just a frigate behind. On April 25, Bruix led 25 ships-of-the-line, 5 frigates, and 2 corvettes from Brest. Three British frigates carried news of this expedition the following day to the Channel fleet. Bridport’s first fear was that Bruix was heading for Ireland so he signaled his captains to sail in that direction. After cruising for several days without spying an enemy fleet, Bridport reasoned that Bruix had headed south, and so sent a fleet of 10 ships-of-the-line led by Admiral Charles Cotton in that direction.
Bruix intended to engage the British squadrons blockading Cádiz, but a storm blew both side’s warships far southward. Rather than beat back against the winds, he sailed directly into the Mediterranean. Jervis watched astonished as the French fleet glided pass on May 5. He sent word to Keith to weigh anchor and join him, warned the other squadron commanders to be on the lookout, and dispatched frigates to trail the French fleet and report back its directions. After Keith reached Gibraltar on May 10, Jervis and Keith sailed with their combined fleet to Minorca to join forces with Duckworth. Learning that Bruix was headed to Toulon, Jervis sailed the fleet in that direction. Ill-health forced Jervis to turn over command to Keith on June 12.
With the blockade lifted, Admiral Jose Massaredo y Salazar’s fleet of 17 ships-of-the-line at Cádiz put to sea on May 17, and reached Cartagena on May 20. Meanwhile, on May 13, Bruix anchored at Toulon where he found conflicting orders to aid French forces in Italy and Egypt. He sailed to Vado, Italy where he put ashore supplies. Then, fearing that Britain’s scattered squadrons had by now gathered to outgun him, he sailed to Cartagena to join the Spanish fleet. After arriving on June 22, Bruix could not convince Massaredo to join him in heading to Alexandria. Instead Massaredo talked Bruix into jointly sailing for Cádiz. The combined fleet spread sails on June 24, then split on July 7 as Massaredo turned into Cádiz and Bruix forged north. Bruix finally dropped anchor at Brest on August 8.
For nearly four months Bruix led the Royal Navy on the war’s wildest non-violent goose chase. It could have resulted in a decisive French and Spanish victory had Bruix attacked rather than bypassed Keith’s fleet at Cádiz in early May. The French alone outnumbered the British by 26 to 16 ships-of-the-line. And had the Spanish sortied with their 17 ships-of-the-line, the odds against Keith would have been overwhelming. This combined fleet could then have sailed to scour Britain’s scattered squadrons from the Mediterranean. And this, in turn, would have empowered Bonaparte to conquer Palestine, thus decisively changing the course of history.
All along Napoleon Bonaparte was going stir crazy at Cairo. He had routed the Mameluks, crushed a rebellion, and implemented reforms designed to transform Egypt into a modern country. But he was cut off from the outside world and he longed to break free. For him the only way out was eastward to the Holy Land, ideally by diplomacy, if necessary by conquest.
The region was split among five pashaliks or Ottoman states, with capitals at Acre, Aleppo, Damascus, Tripoli, and Jerusalem. Acre’s realm extended down the coast to El Arish at the Egyptian border, and thus was the most important to Bonaparte. Acre’s governor was Ahmed Pasha, also known as Djezzar, ‘the Butcher.’ A British visitor to Acre the capital, reported that Djezzar was ‘cruel and oppressive in the extreme … he had put to death the whole of his officers of his customs, whom he suspected of defrauding him … lately, in a fit of jealously, he had put to death all his wives after’ a Frenchmen penetrated his harem; the Frenchman escaped.21
Bonaparte sent Djezzar three letters filled with flowery praise asking him for peace and the expulsion of the Mameluk leaders, Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey, who had taken refuge there.22 Djezzar ignored the first two letters but his reply to the last letter could not have been more pointed – he ordered the messenger decapitated. Bonaparte seized this as an excuse for war. He imagined that if he conquered Palestine and defeated any Turkish attempts to retake it, he might convince the Ottomans to sue for peace and perhaps even ally with France. He marched with 10,000 troops eastward from Cairo on February 10, captured El Arish on February 20, Gaza on February 25, Jaffa on March 7, and opened a siege of Acre on March 19. It was at Acre that his campaign ground to a halt and where, two months later, he was forced into his military career’s first retreat. One man above all was responsible for that.
Captain William Sidney Smith was a flamboyant, courageous, imaginative sea warrior.23 Captain Edward Brenton described Smith as ‘ever present in danger, and the last to retreat from it; equally gallant and enterprising.’24 Smith exceeded Nelson in at least two ways that vitally affected his career. Smith’s ego was even more bloated than Nelson’s and alienated most of his fellow officers. Both men received independent commands because they enjoyed powerful patrons. While Nelson enjoyed Admiral Jervis’s backing, Smith had not one but two patrons at the very pinnacle of British power, Prime Minister William Pitt and First Lord of the Admiralty George, Earl Spencer. Nelson and Smith excelled in the respective independent commands entrusted to them, and simultaneously aggravated resentments among other captains whose seniority they leapfrogged.
Smith joined his 80-gun Tigre to the blockade squadron off Alexandria on March 3, 1799, and relieved Captain Thomas Troubridge of that command four days later. Learning that Bonaparte had invaded Palestine, Smith sailed eastward to help Djezzar defend his realm. What Smith did after reaching Acre on March 15, shifted the course of history. Acre was a walled town but poorly armed. Smith supplied Djezzar with vital amounts of cannons, munitions, and gunners, and assigned engineers to inspect and strengthen Acre’s defenses. As crucially, his flotilla captured the convoy packed with Bonaparte’s siege guns sailing from Egypt. Without Smith’s decisive acts, Acre would have soon suffered the same fate as other Palestinian citadels in Bonaparte’s path.
Bonaparte deployed his army in a crescent just beyond cannon shot of Acre on March 19, and set his men to work zigzagging siege lines toward the city. Meanwhile, Abdullah, the pasha of Damascus, was marching with 25,000 troops to Djezzar’s aid. Learning of his approach, Bonaparte dispatched General Jean Baptiste Kleber with 2,000 troops to block his advance. The French routed the pasha’s advanced guard at Canaan on April 11, and his main army at Mount Tabor on April 16. For now, Bonaparte could concentrate on besieging Acre without constantly looking over his shoulder toward Damascus.
A French supply convoy sailed from Alexandria when the blockading squadron briefly left for Cyprus to fill its empty water casks, reached Jaffa on April 15, and unloaded six siege guns and munitions. It took another three weeks before these guns and munitions could be dragged and placed in Acre’s siege lines. The guns opened fire on May 7. Over the next two days the bombardment toppled one of the towers and opened a high rubble-strewn breach. Bonaparte ordered an assault on May 10. Anticipating this attack, Smith landed all his marines and armed sailors to join the Turks and Arabs on Acres’ walls. The allies repelled the desperate French attack. Bonaparte renewed the bombardment, hoping to bury the defenders beneath their fortress’s rubble. But the walls largely held up as the number of French dead, wounded, and sick steadily climbed. On May 21, Bonaparte finally lifted the siege and began his army’s long march back to Egypt, having left the rotting bodies of over 2,000 of his troops in Palestine.
In a tone half-adulatory, half-mocking, Smith fired a parting shot against Bonaparte:
I, who ought not to love you, should say nothing more; but circumstances remind me to wish that you would reflect on the instability of human affairs … I … your antagonist … have compelled you, in the midst of the sands of Syria, to raise the siege of a miserable, almost defenseless town … Believe me, general, adopt sentiments more moderate, and that man will not be your enemy, who will tell you that Asia is not a theatre made for your glory. This letter is a little revenge that I give myself.25
Bonaparte’s demoralized army stumbled into Cairo on June 14. He tried literally to paper over his debacle with a Bulletin claiming a triumphal return after a glorious victory: ‘I have razed the palace of Djezzar and the ramparts of Acre. Not a single stone remains.’26
Where was Nelson during this time? Nelson’s heart rather than head commanded his movements. He mostly dallied with Emma at Palermo and later Naples. He and the Hamiltons resigned their official duties and sought to return to England by an extraordinary route. Queen Maria Carolina wanted to pay a prolonged visit to her family in Vienna. Nelson repeatedly asked Keith for permission to escort them there. Keith finally yielded on July 13. So Nelson, Emma, pregnant with his child, and her husband William Hamilton joined the queen’s entourage. The result was an unofficial honeymoon tour for Nelson and Emma. At each court along the way, Nelson was feted and awarded with medals and money. The trio eventually made their way to the North Sea and from there sailed to England. They reached Yarmouth on November 6, and took the stagecoach to London, arriving in a snowstorm on November 9, 1800. The celebrations for Nelson there began only after the Londoners dug themselves out of the largest snowfall in a century.
Meanwhile, Smith helped organize an Egyptian bound armada with Turkish admiral Hassan Bey whose combined British and Turkish fleet included 13 ships-of-the-line, 5 frigates, and 58 transports or smaller warships packed with 8,000 Turkish troops from Rhodes. They sailed to Aboukir Bay and landed on July 11, but, rather than immediately march on Alexandria, they camped on the beach as supplies were unloaded.
Upon learning of the landing, Bonaparte mustered 8,000 of his troops and quick-marched them from Cairo to Aboukir Bay. He launched his attack on July 25. The result was slaughter as the French charged the Turks and cut down or drove around 5,000 of them into the sea where they drowned. The French lost about 200 killed and 750 wounded. The French captured large stores of munitions and provisions.
Bonaparte sent a delegation to Smith aboard his flagship, the Tigre, to request a prisoner exchange. Smith was happy to talk. Meanwhile, he handed the French officers a bundle of British and French newspapers. In doing so, he seized the latest chance to wage psychological warfare against a foe he at once admired and loathed. It had the desired effect. The newspapers revealed all the disasters that French armies had suffered over the previous year.
Bonaparte despaired: ‘The scoundrels! All the fruits of our victories have disappeared! It’s essential that I leave.’27 He secretly prepared to escape back to France at the first opportunity. He had two frigates and two corvettes readied with ample provisions, water, and crews. He tapped a score of his most trusted officers and esteemed scientists to accompany him. He returned to Cairo to wrap up his affairs then hurried back to Alexandria. The opportunity came after August 17, when Smith’s flotilla sailed away to Cyprus to replenish its water and supplies, leaving only a Turkish warship to carry on the blockade. Leaving Kleber in command of the 20,000 surviving French troops, Bonaparte and his inner circle packed into the 4 vessels, and, on August 20, sailed toward France.
Bonaparte stepped ashore at Frejus on October 9, reached Paris on October 16, and for the next three weeks enlisted a coterie of generals and politicians behind the Directory’s overthrow. The coup unfolded on November 9 and 10, as Bonaparte and his followers forced the directors to resign and the legislature to name him the First Consul, assisted by two subordinate consuls. Bonaparte had a constitution written that justified these changes and granted him extraordinary military and political powers.
Bonaparte’s priority was peace. He appealed to King George III for negotiations to settle all problems between France and Britain. The king and the Cabinet rejected the offer. Pitt justified this policy as ‘security against a danger the greatest that ever threatened the world – a danger such as never existed in any past period.’ The war would grind on until Bonaparte and the French republic was destroyed, followed by the ‘restoration of the French monarchy’ which ‘would afford the best security to this country and to Europe.’28 What Pitt could not know was that victory was 15 blood-soaked years away.