On the 14th of June, after a retreat across the burning sands of Syria almost as disastrous1 as the retreat from Moscow through the snows of the Beresina, Bonaparte entered Cairo in the midst of an immense concourse of people. The sheik, who was awaiting him, presented him with a magnificent horse and the Mameluke Roustan.
Bonaparte had said in his bulletin dated from Saint-Jean-d'Acre, that he was returning to Egypt to oppose the landing of a Turkish force assembled in the Island of Rhodes. He had been correctly informed upon this point, and the lookouts2 at Alexandria signalled on the 11th of July that they had sighted seventy-six sails in the offing, of which twelve were men-of-war, flying the Ottoman flag.
General Marmont, who was in command, sent courier after courier to Cairo and Rosetta, ordering the commander at Ramanieh to send him all the troops at his disposal, and sent two hundred men to the fort at Aboukir to reinforce that point. That same day Colonel Godard, the commander at Aboukir, wrote to Marmont:
The Turkish fleet is moored3 in the roadstead; I and my men will hold out until the last man falls rather than yield.
The 12th and 13th were employed by the enemy in hastening the arrival of some battalions4 which were behindhand.
[Pg 663]
There were one hundred and thirty ships in the roadstead on the evening of the 13th, of which thirteen carried seventy-four guns each, nine were frigates5, and seventeen gunboats. The remainder were transports.
On the following evening Godard and his men had kept their word. He and his men were dead, and the redoubt was captured. Thirty-five men were still shut up in the fort under the command of Colonel Vinache. They held the fort for two days against the whole Turkish army.
Bonaparte learned of this while he was at the Pyramids. He started for Ramanieh, where he arrived on the 19th.
The Turks, now masters of the fort and the redoubt, had landed their whole artillery6. Marmont, who had only eighteen hundred troops of the line, and two hundred sailors composing the nautical7 legion, with which to oppose the Turks at Alexandria, sent courier after courier to Bonaparte. Fortunately, instead of marching upon Alexandria, as Marmont had feared, or upon Rosetta, as Bonaparte had feared, the Turks with their customary indolence contented8 themselves with occupying the peninsula, and throwing out to the left of the redoubt a great line of intrenchments bordering upon Lake Madieh. They fortified10 little mounds11 some five or six feet in front of the redoubt, placing a thousand men in one and two thousand in another. They had eighteen thousand men in all. But they seemed to have come to Egypt for the sole object of being besieged12.
On the 23d Bonaparte ordered the French army, which was now only distant a couple of hours' march from the Turkish army, to advance. The advance-guard, composed of Murat's cavalry13 and three of General Destaing's battalions, with two pieces formed the centre.
The division of General Rampon, who had Generals Fugière and Lanusse under his orders, was on the left. On the right General Lannes's division advanced along the shores of Lake Madieh.
Davoust, with two squadrons of cavalry and a hundred dromedaries, was placed between Alexandria and the army,[Pg 664] with orders to head off Mourad Bey, or any one else who should come to the assistance of the Turks, and to keep communication open between Alexandria and the army.
Kléber was expected, and he was to take command of the reserve. And finally Menou, who had gone toward Rosetta, found himself at dawn near the end of the bar of the Nile, by the ferry which crosses Lake Madieh. The French were within sight of the intrenchments almost before the Turks were aware of their proximity15.
Bonaparte formed the columns of attack. General Destaing, who commanded them, marched straight against the fortified hill at the right, while two hundred of Murat's cavalry, stationed between the two hills, left their positions, and circling both sides of the hill to the right, cut off the retreat of the Turks who were attacked by General Destaing.
Meanwhile Lannes marched against the hill on the left, which was defended by two thousand Turks, and Murat sent two hundred more of his cavalry around that hill.
Destaing and Murat attacked at almost the same moment and with equal success. The two hills were carried at the bayonet's point. The fugitive16 Turks met the French cavalry, and threw themselves into the sea.
Destaing, Lannes, and Murat then marched against the village which formed the centre of the peninsula, and attacked in front. A column left the camp at Aboukir and came to the support of the village. Murat drew his sabre, a thing he never did until the last moment, gave the word to his cavalry, charged the column, and drove it back to Aboukir. Meanwhile Lannes and Destaing captured the village. The Turks fled on all sides only to meet Murat's cavalry as it was returning. The battlefield was already strewed17 with four or five hundred corpses18. The French had only one man wounded. He was a mulatto, a compatriot of my father's, the commander of a squad14 of the Hercules Guides. The French now found themselves upon the highroad which covered the Turkish front.
[Pg 665]
Bonaparte had it in his power to box the Turks up in Aboukir, and harass19 them with bombs and shells while he was awaiting the arrival of Kléber and Régnier with their divisions; but he preferred to deal a decisive blow and have done with them. He ordered the army to march straight at the second line of defence. Lannes and Destaing, supported by Lanusse, still bore the brunt of the battle, and won the honors of the day.
The redoubt which defends Aboukir is the work of the English, and consequently it is constructed on the most scientific plan.
It was now defended by nine or ten thousand Turks. It was connected with the sea by a causeway. As the Turks had not had time to dig far enough in the other direction, it did not connect with the Lake of Madieh. A space some three hundred feet in length remained open, but it was occupied by the enemy and swept by the gunners at one and the same time. Bonaparte ordered an attack to the right and the front. Murat, who was ambushed20 in a grove21 of palms, was to attack on the left, and crossing the space where there was no causeway, under fire of the gunners, was to drive the enemy before him. The Turks sent out four detachments of about two thousand men each, when they saw these arrangements, who marched against our troops.
The battle would inevitably22 be a desperate one, for the Turks realized that they were shut up in the peninsula with the sea before them and a wall of French bayonets behind.
A heavy cannonade directed against the redoubt and the intrenchments of the right was the signal for a fresh attack. General Bonaparte thereupon sent General Fugière forward. He followed the bank, and turned to the right of the Turks. The thirty-second, which was stationed on the left of the hamlet which had recently been captured, was to hold the enemy in cheek, and sustain the eighteenth.
It was then that the Turks left their intrenchments and came to meet the French. The latter uttered a joyful23 shout. This was what they wanted. They rushed upon the enemy[Pg 666] with fixed24 bayonets. The Turks discharged their guns first, then their pistols, and finally drew their sabres. The French soldiers, who were not even checked by the triple discharge, closed in upon them with their sabres.
It was not until then that the Turks realized with what kind of men and weapons they had to reckon. With their guns slung25 over their shoulders and the sabres hanging by their cords they began a hand-to-hand fight, trying to snatch the terrible bayonets from the rifles, which pierced their breasts as they stretched forth26 their hands to grasp them.
But nothing could stop the eighteenth. They continued to advance at the same pace, driving the Turks before them to the foot of the intrenchments, which they attempted to carry by storm; but there the soldiers were driven back by a hot fire which raked them diagonally. General Fugière, who led the attack, received a bullet in the head in the beginning. The wound was a slight one, and he kept on, and spoke27 encouragingly to his men. But when a ball carried away his arm he was obliged to stop.
Adjutant-general Lelong, who came up with a battery of the seventy-fifth, made heroic efforts to induce the soldiers to defy this hurricane of fire. Twice he led them up to it and twice he was repulsed28. The third time he darted29 forward and was on the verge30 of springing over the intrenchments when he fell dead.
Roland, who was standing31 near Bonaparte, had for a long time been asking for a command of some sort, which the latter hesitated to give him, until at length he felt that the moment had come for a supreme32 effort. He turned toward him. "Very well, go!" he said to him.
"Thirty-second brigade!" shouted Roland.
And the gallant33 survivors34 of Saint-Jean-d'Acre ran off after him, led by their major, Armagnac. Sub-lieutenant Faraud, recovered from his wound, was in the first rank.
Meanwhile, Brigadier-general Morange had made another attempt; but he was also driven back, leaving thirty men on the glacis and in the trench9. The Turks thought[Pg 667] that they had conquered. Carried away by their custom of cutting off the heads of the dead, for which they received fifty paras apiece, they left the redoubt in disorder35, and began the bloody36 work.
"All our men are not dead," he cried; "some of them are only wounded. Let us save them."
At that moment Murat caught a glimpse through the smoke of what was going on. He darted forward under the fire of the artillery, passed through it, cut off the redoubt from the village with his cavalry, and fell upon the men who were engaged in the horrible operation of cutting off heads on the other side of the redoubt, while Roland attacked it in front, dashing in among the Turks with his usual reckless daring, where he mowed38 down the harvesters.
Bonaparte saw that the Turks had been taken at a disadvantage by this unexpected onslaught, and he sent Lannes with two battalions. Lannes attacked the redoubt with his usual impetuosity, on the left face and at the gorge39. Pressed thus on all sides the Turks tried to reach the village of Aboukir; but Murat was between the village and the redoubt with his cavalry, and behind him was Roland and the thirty-second brigade, and at their right Lannes and his two divisions.
Their only refuge was the sea. They threw themselves into it wild with terror; for, since they were not in the habit of giving quarter to their prisoners, they preferred the sea, and the chance of reaching their ships, to death at the hands of the Christians40 whom they despised.
At this juncture41 the French were masters of the two hills, where they had begun the assault; of the hamlet where the remainder of those who had been defending the hills had taken refuge; of the redoubt which had cost so many brave men their lives. And now they were before the camp, and the Turkish reserve. They fell upon them.
Nothing could stop the French soldiers, who were drunk with the carnage which they had just perpetrated. Murat's[Pg 668] cavalry fell upon the pasha's guard like a whirlwind, a simoom, a hurricane.
Ignorant of the result of the battle, Mustapha, when he heard the shouting and uproar42, mounted his horse, and placing himself at the head of his icoglans, he rushed to meet the French, encountered Murat, fired upon him at close range, and inflicted43 a slight wound. Murat cut off two of his fingers with the first blow of his sabre. With the second he would have cut off his head, but an Arab threw himself in front of the pasha, received the blow and fell dead. Mustapha gave up his cimeter, and Murat sent him to Bonaparte as a prisoner.
See Gros's magnificent picture.
The remnant of the army took refuge within the fort of Aboukir; the others were killed or drowned.
Never had such annihilation been seen since two armies had marched against each other. Aside from the two hundred Janissaries and the hundred men shut up in the fort, nothing was left of the army of eighteen thousand Turks.
Kléber arrived toward the close of the day. He asked about the battle, and inquired where he could find Bonaparte. Bonaparte was musing44 out on the most advanced point of Aboukir. He was looking at the gulf45 which had swallowed up the French fleet—his sole hope of returning to France. Kléber went up to him and took him by the arm; and while Bonaparte's eyes remained veiled and sombre, he exclaimed: "General, you are the greatest man in the world!"
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1
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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2
lookouts
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| n.寻找（ 某人/某物）( lookout的名词复数 )；是某人（自己）的问题；警戒；瞭望台 | |
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3
moored
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| adj. 系泊的 动词moor的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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4
battalions
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| n.（陆军的）一营（大约有一千兵士）( battalion的名词复数 )；协同作战的部队；军队；（组织在一起工作的）队伍 | |
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5
frigates
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| n.快速军舰( frigate的名词复数 ) | |
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6
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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7
nautical
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| adj.海上的，航海的，船员的 | |
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8
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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9
trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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10
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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11
mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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12
besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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13
cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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14
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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15
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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16
fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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17
strewed
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| v.撒在…上( strew的过去式和过去分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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18
corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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19
harass
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| vt.使烦恼，折磨，骚扰 | |
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20
ambushed
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| v.埋伏( ambush的过去式和过去分词 )；埋伏着 | |
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21
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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22
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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23
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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24
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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25
slung
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| 抛( sling的过去式和过去分词 )； 吊挂； 遣送； 押往 | |
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26
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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27
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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28
repulsed
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| v.击退( repulse的过去式和过去分词 )；驳斥；拒绝 | |
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29
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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30
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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31
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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32
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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33
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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34
survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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35
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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36
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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37
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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38
mowed
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| v.刈，割( mow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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39
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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40
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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41
juncture
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| n.时刻，关键时刻，紧要关头 | |
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42
uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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43
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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44
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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45
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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