Midshipman Graham and the Battle of Abukir Read online

  One rider had been thrown forward so far that he landed almost at the feet of the French soldiers. He was stunned by his fall and evidently wounded because he groaned, nevertheless he began to crawl, reaching for his musket, which had fallen with him.

  “Sir?” Corporal Émile asked.

  “Deal with it, Corporal,” Clément said.

  Émile took two steps forward, kicked the Bedouin onto his back and plunged a bayonet into his chest. The rest of the company watched with utter indifference as the Bedouin’s arms and legs flailed, then he choked and fell back dead. In one smart motion Émile gave a sharp twist to his rifle, tugged out his long bayonet and stepped back into line, leaving the inert and bloody body of the Bedouin in the sand.

  Clément didn’t waste any time. “Get any water he had and then form up, men. Reload on the march and don’t forget to take Captain Horace with us.”

  “The other enemy wounded, Captain?” Émile asked as a formality.

  “We won’t waste time on them. Their ‘companions’ will come back soon enough to loot their own. They don’t have anything we want, other than water perhaps,” Clément responded.

  The men were grinning as they did as they were ordered and resumed their march. They liked their captain, he had started his career as one of them, so if Horace was his friend they would take him with them no matter how tired they were.

  “That shook the bastards up!” Hugo muttered to Gérard as they plodded on.

  “Hum,” his companion muttered back. “I could do with a good horse right now, my legs are complaining.”

  “Your legs never stop complaining,” Hugo grunted.

  “Close up there,” Corporal Émile called. “You, Hugo, have you reloaded yet?” he demanded.

  “Done, Corporal,” Hugo replied.

  The whole company picked up the pace. No one wanted to be out here in the dark. The Bedouin would surely return.

  Their breathing was labored as they staggered the last kilometer towards the picket lines and into the scattered encampment where the rest of the army had settled in for the night. Most of the men were too tired to go any further and collapsed where they were halted within the picket lines. Captain Clément and Corporal Émile detailed a couple of the men who could still stand to come with them and obtain water. No one cared about food at that moment, just water to slake their burning thirst.

  Clément, exhausted though he was, saw that his men were given water and chivied them to find a place near to a fire, where he negotiated with the men already there to share some of their meagre rations with his own men. After this, he made sure Horace was taken to a makeshift medical tent where the doctors were doing their best to save the lives of those wounded who had made it thus far. He made sure that an orderly had begun to attend to his friend before leaving.

  *****

  He then searched out and reported to his commander, Colonel Estagne, who greeted him with a wan smile. “If you keep this up, Captain, you will soon outrank the others because they will all be dead!” He laughed at his own wit. “You have a knack for survival. I see, though, you have been wounded.” His voice held some concern.

  Captain Clément gave him a tired salute. “This, Sir?” He touched his bandaged head. “It is nothing.” He grimaced. “My men are indifferent to hardship, so I must pretend to be so, too.”

  His colonel grunted. He was well aware of how tough his captain was. Clément went on to describe the final engagement and then the condition of the men.

  “My comrade Horace, who has a thigh wound, was saved by my men’s care and by the twenty men charged with carrying him in turns on a stretcher. Five of our unit died crossing the desert. An hour ago we held off a charge by the Bedouin, back about two kilometers.”

  “There was mention of a brisk firefight back up the road an hour or so ago. That must have been you, Captain. I suspect it was a last effort to cut us up. Pity any of those still out there.” His colonel sighed and scratched his five days’ growth of beard.

  “You did well to bring in that many men. I shall mention you in my report when we get back. With any luck we might have made it through the worst of it.”

  He indicated a leather cup and a small bottle on the collapsible table nearby. “Join me for a cup of brandy?”

  Clément nearly shook his head. All he wanted to do was obtain another long drink of water and put his head down for a week, but he nodded and stayed. His gray-haired colonel was a decent man, brave beyond doubt, yet somewhat aloof, an aristocrat. He didn’t mingle with his men, leaving that to his company commanders. He did, however, have the ear of Général Bonaparte, and Clément was curious to know how things had gone at the top end of the army.

  “You know that Captain Francis du Pont died of exhaustion? This is a true test of our men. It is a soldier’s lot to endure, even more than to just survive a battle. Some men have it and others do not,” the colonel remarked as he began to pour the clear liquid.

  Clément nodded as he took a swig of the plum brandy. It burned its way down his dry throat and settled like fire in his empty stomach. The colonel listed the names of the officers who had not appeared, most having perished along the way. It was depressing news. His colonel went on to describe the gossip from the headquarters.

  “Bonaparte is set on getting back to Cairo as soon as possible, but I suspect it will not be with us looking like a band of gypsies,” he remarked. “Headquarters is still seething at the debacle at Acre, and that damned English Commodore, Sir Sidney Smith, is being cursed by everyone. We’ll just have to get over it and hope that we can get back to France before too long.”

  “You will have to submit some names of your men for a promotion,” he continued. “We have lost so many NCOs. Bring their names to me and I’ll sign off on them immediately. We can’t have great gaps in our ranks because of a lack of sergeants.”

  Clément agreed. He was prepared for this and had already marked out several men for promotion to Corporal; Émile was going to get the rank of Sergeant.

  The stragglers limped in all that night and some even arrived at dawn. It became clear to those who had survived that they had lost a great number of men on that last leg of the march, and not all of them due to wounds or the heat. The Arabs had picked off every man they could. The stories told by those who had heard the screams as they were tortured to death were chilling.

  The arrival of dawn revealed a disconsolate army. The men were revived somewhat by the plentiful and clean water available, also there was fresh food to be had. Even though they were still on the edge of real safety, Napoléon ordered the army to rest and recuperate while he thought about his next move. Those who understood the urgency began to work on reviving the morale of the men. Inspections were called and promotions in the ranks were made. Painfully the army collected itself and regrouped, so that within a week, although ragged and patched, it was once again a force to reckon with.

  Chapter 2

  Strategy

  Along the way back from Acre, Napoléon had been thinking. This was not at all what he had envisioned for his army upon their return to Egypt. Indeed, he had imagined taking Constantinople before he even considered coming back to the Nile. Had it not been for that damned English admiral, Sir Sydney Smith, he might well have taken Acre, and from there he could easily have taken Cyprus and then gone on to the fabled city of Constantinople.

  He paced slowly up and down the narrow confines of his tent, barely aware of the bustle of the camp all around as men re-organized themselves into their former companies and regiments. Even he had to acknowledge that his army was not in any shape to sound or look victorious. It was an army of men who resembled beggars and an army in retreat, although it was not part of his make-up to admit that they were a defeated army.

  He paused and looked out of the tent opening at the bright sunlit sand. During his relatively short time in Egypt he had learned that it was the strong the Fellaheen looked up to. Not the vanquished. He could not possibly arrive at the gates of
Cairo with his men in this condition. He shook his head vehemently.

  “Call Colonel Estagne at once. I need to talk to him,” he called out to the sentries. One of them immediately snapped to attention and ran off to comply with the order.

  While he waited, Napoléon formulated a plan.

  Colonel Estagne hurried into the tent, clicked to attention then snapped a salute. “Mon Général?” he queried his leader’s back.

  Napoléon turned from his thoughtful stance and said, “Ah, there you are, Estagne. Inform the generals that I have decided to spend some time in Katya resting the men. I will meet them this evening at dinner to discuss the overall plan, but for the time being I want them to separate the wounded from the fit men to send them to recuperate on the coast.”

  Colonel Estagne breathed a silent sigh of relief. He had not known how they could have marched much farther without some rest.

  “You are to send an equerry, someone able like Ensign Andre perhaps, who will take a letter from me posthaste to Cairo and deliver it to Général Dugua. He is to observe complete discretion but he is to send food and plenty of it, as quickly as possible, along with clean new uniforms and boots to our army. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mon Général.”

  “Find Général Murat and ask him to come and see me.”

  “Yes, Mon Général. Immediately.”

  Estagne saluted and left hurriedly.

  Later that evening, Napoléon and his generals picked at their stringy boiled food. The only consolation was that there was still plenty of wine, albeit somewhat vinegary, to wash down the horrible concoction the cooks had valiantly tried to produce.

  Sipping his wine and trying not to grimace at the sour taste, Napoléon enlarged upon his plan.

  “You all know by now the kind of people we are dealing with here in Egypt. The Fellaheen are simple people, and although we have treated them fairly they are easily led by their treacherous sheiks. If they get the idea that we are an army in retreat, their leaders, ever on the look out for weakness, will cause problems. I want to at least give the illusion our men are well-fed and in high morale when we arrive back in Cairo.”

  He said to Murat, “You will have to provide an escort for the messenger who leaves at dawn. I must have that letter get through. We have no way of knowing how dangerous the road is between here and Cairo. I need to prepare the way for our victorious army, with its great success in the Syrian campaign, to make a triumphant entry into the city.”

  Général Murat smiled in wry agreement. “I shall make sure that the messenger gets to Cairo, Mon Général.”

  *****

  It was while the army was resting at Katya that Général Menou appeared. Napoléon had appointed him governor of Palestine almost three months previously. Menou had been so reluctant to leave Rosetta, and his new wife, that he had only made it this far in his journey to Syria.

  When the general was shown to his tent, Napoléon had his back to him and kept him waiting for some very long moments. Finally he turned and looked the corpulent officer up and down with contempt. Menou, wearing the loose clothing of the Arabs, was definitely not dressed as a French officer should be. He looked more like a gaudy sheik. This served only to incense Napoléon, who had not been in a good frame of mind towards his wayward general to begin with. He strode up to his officer, his face suffused with rage.

  “Good of you to come,” he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “I was under the impression that you were to go to Palestine and be my governor!” Napoléon almost shouted this last sentence. Bonaparte barely came up to the shoulder of his errant general, his uniform was stained and dusty and his knee boots were scuffed, but there was no doubt whatsoever as to who was the dominant presence in the tent. Menou, sweating in the afternoon heat but even more from the ire of his leader, quailed under the fierce glare but even so attempted to defend himself. Napoléon, seething with anger at what he considered desertion by a senior officer, was not in the mood for excuses. He cut him off before he could speak.

  “Be quiet! I am still talking. I should have you arrested and sent back to Cairo for court martial and then shot!” He turned his back on the frightened man.

  “You are dismissed from the position, it no longer exists for you, and it remains to be seen if I shall pursue the charges of desertion and dereliction of duty. In the meantime, you will take yourself off with your entourage, Abdullah Menou, as I hear you call yourself now, and stay in Rosetta on pain of death. You are dismissed.”

  Menou knew better than to argue with this diminutive man facing him like an angry cockerel. Napoléon’s erstwhile general saluted, then slunk out of the tent and made his way past the hostile officers gathered outside waiting to talk to Bonaparte. Having suffered the rigors and hardships of the siege of Acre and the long trek across the desert, these men despised Général Menou and wished him gone. They had hear the angry words of their general and such was their anger that many were the muttered threats of reprisal, should he show his face anywhere near them again.

  Clément, who had been in attendance upon his colonel, was there to witness the scene. Once again he marveled at the power of Napoléon over his men. One would never know, he reflected to himself, that we are a defeated army.

  His general might well have carried out his threat to Menou but he had much more pressing issues to deal with. It was important, however, that Menou stay in Rosetta and not go to Cairo, where he might have let it be known how depleted was the French army. He ordered one of his generals to provide an escort with explicit instructions to make sure Menou remained in exile.

  *****

  Not very long after their arrival at Katya, and feeling somewhat more rested, Captain Clément walked over to the tent where his friend Horace lay on a crude pallet. The casualties were to be taken up towards the coast to recover from their injuries, or to be repatriated to France if their wounds were too severe. Horace’s wound might just be severe enough to get him a trip home.

  “At least you will have rest and good food, while we will have to go and parade in Cairo looking like a lot of popinjays with those ridiculous palm fronds he wants us to wear on our shakos,” he told his friend.

  “Ah, but after the parade you will doubtless avail yourself of the women and the wine, so I don’t think I am getting the best of the bargain,” Horace said with a grin. “My, my, but those surgeons are a rough crowd and no mistake,” he winced as he shifted on his bed. “They just dump whoever is unfortunate enough to be next on the surgery table, already so covered in blood it resembles a butcher's block, and get to work without even saying good morning.”

  His friend looked alarmed. “Will you be all right?”

  “Oh yes, they are competent, that isn’t in doubt, and the orderlies are experienced. I suspect it’s because they have seen so much that just another person lying on the table has become meaningless.”

  “We now you can loll about in one of the new carriages they have designed for the likes of you and enjoy a ride to the seaside,” Clément told him. He was referring to the light carriages designed to carry wounded men rapidly and in relative comfort to and from the Surgeons.

  “No women there, I fear,” Horace said, pretending gloom.

  Clément laughed, “Perhaps you are right, but cheer up Horace, my old friend. You might have ended up as so many others did in the hands of the Bedu. You will be well out of this, though. I can just imagine the beaches and the calming sound of the sea, with a horizon empty of those cursed English ships. Take good care, Horace, and see if you can’t get onto a ship and back to France. This fly-infested country is no place for any of us.”

  They shook hands, and Clément turned away to see to his men, who were forming up for inspection in the remnants of their uniforms: their once white trousers and green jackets (which distinguished them from the Grenadiers), the red epaulettes with white cross bands torn and stained, or simply worn out. Some of the men didn’t even have hats anymore; those that did wore them at a
ll angles, and the distinctive red pom-poms were, for the most part, missing. To his professional eye however, the things that mattered were the muskets, bayonets and cutlasses, which were clean and polished and ready for use.

  “We can’t possibly go into Cairo like this,” he thought to himself as he looked at the remains of his company. “As for victory...what victory?”

  Captain Clément, who had once himself been a private soldier, looked his men over with critical eyes and pretended disgust. “I have no idea why I should have been put in charge of a bunch of brigands like you. Just look at you!” he joked.

  “Do not fear, Mon Capitaine,” the irrepressible Hugo said. “We will take on anyone you like and still beat the merde out of them.”

  The other ragamuffins facing the captain grinned their agreement. Morale was as high as ever, it would seem.

  Clément had to turn aside. Though he stifled a laugh, there were tears in his eyes.

  Chapter 3

  An Incident in Cyprus

  Sir Sidney Smith, having harassed the French all he could, proceeded by way of Beruta road to Larnaca road, Cyprus, in order to refit his little squadron.

  The tiny fleet of ships sailed into Larnaca on the south coast of Cyprus in the first week of June. Most of the ships were badly in need of maintenance and this was the only port where they could affect meaningful repairs. HMS Theseus, although so damaged from an explosion it could hardly be called an effective war ship, was able to hold station while Sir Sidney took his other ships for re-victualing and re-supply. He brought with him the Alliance and the bomb ketches, all of which needed fresh supplies.