At Aboukir and Acre Part 21

As far as possible the midshipmen's mess adhered to regular hours for their meals, but Sir Sidney Smith took his at any time when he could s.n.a.t.c.h them. One or other of the midshipmen came ash.o.r.e each day with a boat's crew, so that at any moment orders could be sent to the _Tigre_ or the _Theseus_. Except at the evening meal, when the fire generally slackened, it was seldom that more than two of the midshipmen's mess sat down together, being constantly employed either in carrying messages or orders, or in keeping a watch at threatened points, in order that Sir Sidney should at once be made acquainted with any movements of the enemy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Siege of ST. JEAN D'ACRE

by the French Army of Egypt from 19. March to 21. May 1799.]

The French had lost no time, for on the 25th their batteries opened fire against this tower, and, after four hours' firing, a breach, considered by the French to be practicable, had been effected.

The Turkish guns had returned the fire, aided by two mortars worked by British sailors, but the Turks believed that their walls were strong enough to stand a prolonged siege, and as the French fire was heavy against the tower, those near it had betaken themselves to safer positions. Sir Sidney Smith was on board the _Tigre_. Djezzar seldom stirred from his palace. He had no capable officer under him, and no one was in the slightest degree aware of the serious damage the French battery was inflicting upon the tower, and there was no thought that an attack could be made upon the town for a considerable time. Edgar had been engaged all the morning with Sir Sidney, and when the latter went on board ship he went into the next house, where he found the others at dinner.

After that was over he proposed a stroll down to the corner against which the French fire was directed. Wilkinson and Beatty agreed to accompany him, but Condor, who had been all day at work seeing guns placed in position, said that he did not care about going out again. On reaching the wall facing the French position they found that there was little doing. A few of the guns were being worked, throwing their shot into the garden between the French batteries and the town. Along the rest of the line the Turks were squatting under the parapet, smoking and talking.

"What are the French firing at?" Edgar asked a Turkish officer.

"They are firing at the tower. They will do no harm. Some of the shots came in at the loopholes; so, as the soldiers there could do no good by staying, they have come out."

"That seems rather a careless way of doing business," Edgar remarked as he translated what the officer said, to his companions. "Well, at any rate we may as well go and see what the effect of their fire is. Their battery is not a heavy one, but as it is not more than four or five hundred yards from the tower it may really be doing some damage."

As they neared the tower at the angle of the wall they found that the ramparts there had been entirely deserted by the Turks.

"This is a rum way of defending a town," Wilkinson remarked. "If this is the way the Turks are going to behave, the sooner we are all on board ship the better."

The French fire was brisk, the thuds of the b.a.l.l.s, as they struck the tower, occurring five or six times a minute. The three officers entered the tower. Two or three holes appeared in the wall of the floor by which they entered it.

"The masonry must be very rotten," Beatty said, "or they would not have knocked holes in it as soon as this."

They descended the stairs into the story below, and uttered a simultaneous exclamation of alarm. A yawning hole some eight feet wide appeared.

"This is serious, Wilkinson. Let us take a look down below."

"Look out!" Wilkinson shouted as a ball pa.s.sed just over their heads and struck the wall behind them. "Stand back here a moment."

He ran forward and looked down.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "there is a breach down to the bottom of the tower level with the lower storey ground, and a heap of rubbish at the foot outside. I don't think it is high enough yet for anyone to get up to the opening, but it will soon be practicable if it is not now. Look!

look! I can see a large body of French among the trees there. They are about to advance to storm the breach. Run, Blagrove, and wake up the Turks. We will go back and fetch up the marines and blue-jackets. The enemy may be in the place in five minutes."

Leaving the tower, Edgar ran along the wall.

"Take your men to the tower at once!" he shouted to the first Turkish officer he saw. "The French are crossing the ditch."

Instead, however, of obeying him the officer and his men ran to one of the steps leading up to the wall, and commenced shouting, "The French are in the town!"

Edgar saw that he had told the news too suddenly, and that it was hopeless for him to try to stop the flood, therefore ran along the wall until he reached the stairs leading down to the open s.p.a.ce in front of Djezzar's palace. As he had been frequently there before, he made his way straight to the apartments where Djezzar transacted business.

"The French have breached the tower, pasha," he said, "and their storming party was about to cross the ditch when I came away. There are no troops there to defend the breach, and those on the wall are flying.

Unless you yourself go out and rally the men to the defence the town is lost."

Djezzar was thunderstruck at the news. He had showed himself brave in battle, but with the fate of Jaffa in his mind he now lost heart altogether.

"It is too late!" he said, and catching up his sword he ran out of the palace, and directed his flight towards the landing-place.

Edgar ran towards the breach again, and on the way came upon his two companions running along, with the marines and blue-jackets after them.

Fortune, however, had done more for the town than its defenders. Led by an officer with sixteen sappers, and followed by twenty-five grenadiers, the French party prepared to mount to the a.s.sault. Their orders were to mount the breach and hold it, and the moment this was done the main body of the storming party were at once to follow. But they met with an unexpected obstacle. Instead of finding, as they had expected, merely a shallow ditch, they found themselves at the edge of a counterscarp, the wall being fifteen feet in depth, with a regular moat filled with water between them and the foot of the breach.

They had brought with them only two or three short ladders, which were intended to be used, if necessary, to aid them in clambering up the heap of rubbish to the breach. The French had no idea of the existence of the counterscarp. The ladders that they had brought were too short to enable them to descend it, and the officer in command hesitated as to what course to adopt. The mysterious silence maintained by the enemy was disquieting. That the Turks had all fled and the tower was undefended did not occur to the officer in command, and he feared that they must have placed mines in the breach, and were for the present abstaining from showing themselves or firing a shot, in hopes of tempting him to make an a.s.sault. Before he could decide what was best to be done there was a loud tramp of feet inside the tower, and then the British sailors and marines showed themselves suddenly at the openings on each floor, and at once opened a heavy fire.

Many of the French fell at once, and seeing that there was nothing to be done, the officer gave the order for the rest to retreat, which they did hastily. Djezzar was furious when he heard what had happened, and questioned Edgar; and, on hearing that the tower had been altogether deserted, as well as the adjacent portion of the wall, he ordered the instant execution of six of the officers and a number of the men for this gross neglect of their duty. He was exasperated that he himself should have shared in the panic that had seized them when informed that the French were a.s.saulting the breach, and that no resistance had been offered by his men; and Edgar congratulated himself that he was not one of his officers. When the old pasha, however, recovered from the state of fury into which he had fallen, he complimented the three British officers highly on the quickness that they had shown, which had, as he rightly said, saved the town, for, had the French found themselves still un.o.bserved, they would a.s.suredly have managed to get down the counterscarp, and to establish themselves in the tower in force before any suspicion of what was going on took place.

The French, whose operations were hidden by the gardens, at once proceeded to drive a gallery in order to blow up the counterscarp, upon which their guns could not be brought to bear, and on the 29th the mine was sprung. It did some damage, but it had not been driven quite far enough. Led by an officer of the staff named Mailly, the French rushed forward as soon as the mine exploded. They clambered down over the breach that had been made on the counterscarp, crossed the fosse by three ladders they had brought with them, and reached the foot of the breach. There was, however, too great a distance between the pile of rubbish at the foot of the wall and the great hole above it for them to enter without fixing their ladders.

As they were in the act of doing this the Turks, who had at their first appearance again been seized with a panic, but had been brought back by a number of their officers, who adjured them to stand, saying that it was better to die fighting the infidel than to be shot by Djezzar, opened a heavy fire. Mailly was killed, several of the grenadiers and sappers fell round him, and the rest retired, meeting, as they climbed the counterscarp, two battalions who had joined them as soon as the breach was reported practicable; but upon hearing from the grenadiers that this was not the case they fell back again after losing their commanding officer and many men from the Turkish fire.

This success greatly encouraged the Turks, who had heard from those who had escaped from Jaffa that no obstacles were sufficient to daunt the French, and from this time Sir Sidney Smith began to entertain hope that the town could be held, of which, owing to the supineness of Djezzar and his troops, he had hitherto been very doubtful. The French at once recommenced mining. In eight days they completely blew up the counterscarp, and on the twelfth carried their gallery under the ditch with the intention of blowing up the whole tower.

By this time the besieged were aware that the French were at work mining. Colonel Phelypeaux had, during the interval since the last attempt, worked indefatigably. The breach had been filled up with combustible materials, a number of sh.e.l.ls had been placed on the platform of the tower, with fuses attached in readiness to hurl down into the midst of a storming party, heaps of great stones had been piled there for the same purpose, and the Turkish soldiers, seeing the readiness and alacrity with which the British worked, had gained confidence. The faint sound of mining under the tower brought about a consultation between Sir Sidney Smith, Captain Wilmot, Colonel Phelypeaux, and the pasha. The engineer officer pointed out to the pasha that it was impossible to say what the result of the firing of the mine might be, as it would depend upon the quant.i.ty of powder employed.

"If a large quant.i.ty is used," he said, "it may entirely blow down the tower and a considerable quant.i.ty of the walls adjoining it, and leave so large a breach that the French would be able to pour in in such force that your troops, who might well be panic-stricken at the explosion, would not be able to make any effective opposition."

"But what can we do to prevent it?" the pasha asked.

"Nothing can be directly done," Sir Sidney said; "but if we make a sally in force we might drive the French back, discover the mine, and carry out the greater part of the powder, and place a small portion under the ditch, and, exploding it, allow the water to run in; or, if the men carry with them a number of fascines, we might establish a work fifty yards from the foot of the wall. This would put a stop to their mining.

An enemy attacking it would, as he advanced, be swept by the guns of the two men-of-war and the gun-boats, and the garrison would further be covered by the fire from the tower and walls. I propose that we should sally out in three columns. The central column, which will be composed of the marines and sailors of our ships, will make straight for the mouth of the mine and force its way in; the other two columns will attack the enemy's trenches on right and left."

"The plan seems to me to be a good one," the pasha said; "it shall be done as you propose."

On the night of the 15th of April two columns of men were gathered at midnight in the street leading to the water-gate, a short distance to the right of the tower, the third column close to a gate some little distance to its left. Lieutenant Beatty was, with his party of marines, to join the landing force, but to their disappointment neither Condor nor the midshipmen were to take part in the sortie, as the little party of seamen were to be held in reserve. Sir Sidney Smith himself intended to take his place on the tower, whence he could watch the operations.

Wilkinson and Edgar were to act as his aides-de-camp, the latter to carry messages to the Turkish officers commanding the two columns, while Wilkinson was to perform the same office to the central column.

"You and Mr. Condor may probably have opportunities of distinguishing yourselves later on," he said; "the other midshipmen may have their turn to-night."

CHAPTER XII.

A DESPERATE SIEGE.

Just as day began to break, the gates were opened, and the columns moved out one after the other. The order that the strictest silence was to be observed was obeyed by the sailors and marines; but the Turks, who were wrought up to a pitch of enthusiasm, made so great a noise that the moment they issued from the gate shots were fired by the advanced pickets, and a few seconds later the roll of drums in the French lines broke out, and it was clear that the whole camp was alarmed. Sir Sidney Smith uttered an exclamation of anger. As concealment was useless, he then sent the two midshipmen to order all the batteries to open fire upon the French trenches, and as the first gun boomed out the ships and gun-boats on both flanks also opened fire, and the trenches by which the French must advance from the village were swept by a storm of shot. The French batteries joined in the din, while the infantry in the advanced trenches opened a heavy musketry fire.

"By Jove, the Turks mean fighting this time!" Wilkinson said, when he and Edgar had both returned from carrying their orders. "Look at them, they are going at the French trenches in gallant style."

The dark ma.s.ses could be plainly made out in the gray light that was now stealing over the sky. Undaunted by the heavy fire of the French, the Turks rushed at the earthworks, scaled them, and engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand fight with their defenders. But the chief attention of the little group on the tower, where Captain Wilmot and Colonel Phelypeaux had also stationed themselves, was riveted upon the fight going on in front of them. Already the French were thronging down from their trenches, and the blue-jackets and marines were engaged in a fierce fight. Knight, second of the _Tigre_, received two b.a.l.l.s in his left arm as he advanced, but upon arriving at the top of the shaft of the mine he and the pioneers at once leapt down into it.

One ran forward to see if it was charged, and brought back news that it was not. Lieutenant Knight and the little party of sailors worked desperately to pull down the props that supported the roof of the gallery, but they had little time allowed them for doing so. Had it not been that the noise made by the Turks had given the alarm so long before they reached the spot the work might have been completed. As it was, they had performed but a small portion of it when an officer ran in to say that they must at once come up, as the party could no longer keep back the swarming throng of the enemy. Colonel Douglas, who was in command, cheered on his hardly-pressed men, who had found the resistance of the French so desperate that they had been unable to drive them out from their advanced trench.

Lieutenant Knight, exhausted by the loss of blood, and his efforts to aid the pioneers, had to be a.s.sisted from the gallery and carried off by the seamen. Major Oldfield, who commanded the marines of _Theseus_, was killed, with two of his men. Mr. Janverin, midshipman of the _Tigre_, and eleven men were wounded. Beatty, and Forbes, a midshipman of the _Theseus_, were both slightly wounded, as were five marines of that ship, and a seaman and two marines of the _Alliance_. As soon as the party began to draw off, a heavy fire was opened on the French by the Turkish troops on the wall. The batteries opened with renewed vigour, while the bugles sounded to order the retreat of the two Turkish corps.

All gained the gates unmolested. The Turks were in high spirits.