As the landscape turned pale gray with the coming sun, I saw how hasty Bonaparte had been. His trenches were still too shallow and a score of his men had already been hit. Several French guns had been disabled in his reservoir battery because their earthworks were inadequate, and the old aqueduct was chewed by our fire, spraying his huddled troops with masonry. Their ladders looked absurdly short.
Nonetheless, there was a great shout, a waving of the tricolor, and the French charged. Always, they had elan.
This was the first time I’d seen their reckless courage from the other side, and it was a frightening sight. The centipede charged and swallowed the ground between trenches and moat with alarming swiftness. The Turks and British marines tried to slow them with gunfire, but the expert French covering fire forced our heads down.
We picked off only a few. They spilled down the lip of the moat to its bottom. Their ladders were too short to reach—their scouting had been hasty—but the bravest jumped down, braced the stunted ladders, and allowed comrades to follow. Others fired across the moat into the breach they’d made, killing some of our defenders. The Ottoman troops began to moan.
“Silence! You sound like my women!” Djezzar roared. “Do you want to learn what I will do to you if you run?” Now the French infantry propped their scaling ladders on the other side of the moat. The tops were several feet short of the breach, an inexcusable miscalculation. This was the moment, when pull-1 4 8
w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
ing themselves up, that they might grasp a suspended chain. Left uncharged, it would allow them to flood inside the city and Acre would suffer the fate of Jaffa. But if electrified . . .
The bravest Turks leaned over to fire or hurl down stones, but as soon as they did they were hit by Frenchmen aiming across the moat.
One man gave a great cry and fell all the way to the bottom. I fired a musket myself, cursing its inaccuracy.
A few Ottomans began to desert their guns. The British sailors tried to stop them, but they were panicked. Then Djezzar descended from the top of the tower to block their exit, waving his Prussian saber and roaring. “What are you afraid of?” he shouted. “Look at them! Their ladders are too short! They can’t get in!” He leaned out, discharged both pistols, and handed them to a Turk. “Do something, old woman! Reload these!”
His men, chastened, started firing again. As frightened as they were of the formidable French, they were terrified of Djezzar.
Then a flaming meteor fell from the tower.
It was the keg of gunpowder I’d suggested. It hit, bounced, and exploded.
There was a thunderous roar and a radiating cloud of wood splinters and metal bits. The clustered grenadiers reeled, the closest blown to bits, others severely wounded, and still more stunned by the blast.
Djezzar’s men whooped and began firing into the milling French in earnest, adding to the havoc below.
The assault thus ended before it could properly begin. With their own cannon unable to fire too close to their charge, their ladders too short, the breach too small, and the resistance newly stiffened, the French had lost momentum. Napoleon had gambled on speed over tedious siege preparation, and lost. The attackers turned and began scrambling back the way they’d come.
“See how they run?” Djezzar shouted to his men.
And indeed, the Turkish troops began to shout in amazement and new confidence. The ruthless Franks were retreating! They were not invincible after all! And from that moment a new confidence seized the garrison, a confidence that would sustain them in the long dark t h e
r o s e t t a k e y
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weeks to come. The tower would become the rallying point not just for Acre but for the entire Ottoman Empire.
When the sun finally crested the eastern hills and fully lit the scene, the havoc was apparent. Nearly two hundred of Napoleon’s troops lay dead or wounded, and Djezzar refused to slacken fire to let the French recover their injured. Many died, screaming, before the survivors could finally be carried to safety the next night.
“We have taught the Franks Acre’s hospitality!” the Butcher crowed.
Phelipeaux was less satisfied. “I know the Corsican. That was just a probe. Next time he will come stronger.” He turned to me. “Your little experiment had better work.”
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The failure of Napoleon’s first assault had a curious effect on the garrison. The Ottoman soldiers were heartened by their successful repulse, and for the first time attended to their duties with proud determination instead of fatalistic resignation. The Franks could be beaten! Djezzar was invincible! Allah had answered their prayers!
The British sailors, in contrast, sobered. A long succession of naval victories had made them cocky about “facing the frogs.” The courage of the French soldiers, however, was noted. Bonaparte had not retreated. Instead his trenches were being dug forward more vigorously than ever. The seamen felt trapped on land. The French used scarecrows to draw our fire and dug out our cannonballs to fire back at us.
It didn’t help that Djezzar was convinced the Christians in Acre must be plotting against him, even though the attacking French were from a revolution that had abandoned Christianity. He had several dozen, plus two French prisoners, sewn into sacks and cast into the sea. Smith and Phelipeaux could no more stop the pasha than Napoleon could have stopped his troops at the sack of Jaffa, but many English concluded their ally was a madman who could not be controlled.
