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 masses could be plainly made out in the gray[Pg 218] 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 balls 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 assisted 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[Pg 219] 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. According to their custom at the time, they had cut off the heads of their fallen foes and brought in sixty of these trophies.
The French loss had been considerably greater, for from the desperate nature of the fighting the Turks had been unable to decapitate the greater part of their fallen foes. In addition to the heads they also brought in a great number of muskets and some intrenching tools. The last were an extremely valuable prize, as the garrison had been much hampered in their work by the small number of available picks and shovels. Although, so far as the main object of the sortie, it had been a failure, the result was, upon the whole, a satisfactory one. The Turks had met the French in fair fight, and had held their own against them, and they were so pleased that during the rest of the siege they never once wavered. The attack, too, showed the French that their enemy was not to be despised, and compelled them to take much greater precautions than before, and to maintain, at all times, a strong force in their advanced trenches.
On the 25th a tremendous explosion was heard, and the troops from all quarters rushed towards the tower to repel the expected assault. Had the mine been carried a few feet farther, the whole tower would have been destroyed, but the French miners had come across a vault[Pg 220] which projected a little distance beyond the tower above it, and believing that its wall was that of the tower itself, they had placed the charge against it. Although therefore a partial failure, the effect was tremendous. A portion of the outer wall of the tower was blown down, some two hundred Turks, who formed its garrison, and some pieces of cannon, were buried in the ruins. A small party of French rushed forward before the smoke had cleared away and established themselves in the lower stories. The Turks, however, rallied very quickly from the shock, and opened so tremendous a fire from the walls, aided by the cross-fire from the ships, that no reinforcements could reach the party in the tower, and the next morning early they evacuated the place, which was rendered untenable by the fire of the Turks in the story above them.
So soon as they had left the building the enemy concentrated their batteries upon it. At the sound of the explosion Sir Sidney Smith, with the sailors and marines of his guard, at once rushed through the streets to the tower.
"Bravo, the Turks!" Wilkinson exclaimed, as he and Edgar ran along by the side of the sailors. "Listen to their musketry fire! It is clear that they are standing their ground anyhow, and that there is no panic this time."
Sir Sidney was greatly relieved when, on his arrival at the tower, he found that, although shaken and shattered, it still stood an obstacle to an entry into the town. He went along the wall, warmly praising the Turkish officers and men for their courage.
"That is a weight off my mind, colonel," he said to Phelypeaux. "I have been scarcely able to close an eye for the last week. That mine has been a perfect nightmare to me. There was no saying when it was going to explode, and although the Turks have worked hard at that[Pg 221] countermine we set them to dig, I had little hope that you would be in time, as you had to take it right under the foundations of the tower. I think that we must congratulate ourselves heartily that it has been no worse."
"I think so, indeed, Sir Sidney. The Turks have certainly behaved admirably to-day. I thought they would when they once got over their idea that the French were invincible. They have always proved themselves splendid soldiers when well led, and I have no doubt the example of your men, and their carelessness of danger, have animated them with a determination to show that they too can fight."
From the time of their entering Palestine the French had been amply supplied with provisions of all sorts by the natives. As soon as he crossed the frontier from Egypt, Bonaparte had sent proclamations broadcast among the people. A large proportion of the inhabitants of the hill country were Christians, and the assurances that he came to free them from the domination of the Turks, just as he had freed Egypt, was received with enthusiasm by the simple and ignorant people, who knew very little of what was passing in the world around them. The consequence was, that as he marched north from Jaffa, deputations met him, comprising most of the leading men. These received presents, and promises that they should never again fall under the dominion of the Turks; while they, on their part, promised to supply cattle, corn, wine, and wood to the utmost extent of their resources. These promises they faithfully kept, and also did good service in aiding the transport of stores landed at Jaffa.
Sir Sidney now endeavoured to counteract the effect of Napoleon's proclamations, and by means of native emissaries landed by the ship's boats at various points along the[Pg 222] coast, sent out a large quantity of addresses of his own, telling them that Napoleon was, it was true, at war with the Sultan, but that this was no question of religion, and that he was but endeavouring to pass through Syria, in order to make his way to Europe, his retreat by sea having been cut off; and that he would be perfectly ready at any time to make terms with the Sultan, and would leave them, without a moment's thought, to the vengeance of the Turks, against whom they were now helping him. He added, that Djezzar Pasha, being convinced that they had been deceived by Bonaparte, and were acting in ignorance of the true state of things, promised solemnly that all who, now that the truth was told to them, withdrew their aid from the French, should be pardoned for the course that they had hitherto taken.
These papers soon bore fruit. The English were known to be favourable to the Syrian Christians, and the assurances of Sir Sidney Smith had great weight, and there was soon a sensible decrease in the amount of provisions and supplies brought into the French camp.
The breach widened under the heavy fire kept up continuously upon it by the French batteries, and as it was evident that other assaults would be made at that spot, the engineers began to throw out a ravelin, or advanced work, from the foot of the walls on each side of the breach, so as to take any assaulting party in flank. On the 1st of May the French, thinking that the breach must now be practicable, advanced for the fourth time.
A heavy gale had blown all day, the ships of war and gun-boats were rolling heavily at their anchorage, and it was doubtless thought that they would be unable to use their guns. In the afternoon, therefore, a body of men ran forward with six scaling-ladders; crossing the moat as before, they planted their ladders and attempted to mount the[Pg 223] breach. They were, however, assailed by so heavy a fire of musketry from the Turks that the leading party were literally swept away. In spite of the heavy weather, the ships joined their fire to that of the batteries, and a storm of shot and shell was rained upon the trenches, and the 2000 men who had been seen to advance in readiness for the assault, finding it impossible to issue from their shelter, retired to their camp. The marines of the two men-of-war had manned the new works, and their fire contributed much to the repulse of the French.
Sir Sidney Smith, in his despatches home, expressed his regret at the heavy loss of life encountered by the French in their desperate attempts to perform the impossible feat of entering by a breach that could only be reached by scaling-ladders. The point of attack had certainly been badly chosen, for, while the masonry of the upper chamber tower was very rotten, that of the lower part was excellent; whereas the walls themselves were, in most places, badly built, and could have been demolished in a very short time by the heavy guns the French now had in their batteries. Thirty of these had been landed at Jaffa, and brought up to the front.
In addition to the sortie of the 16th April, Sir Sidney Smith kept the besiegers constantly on the alert by landing parties from the ships' boats on the flanks of their lines of trenches. The attacks were sometimes pushed home, the earthworks were overthrown, the fascines carried off for use in the redoubts, guns spiked, and intrenching tools captured, and these attacks greatly added to the labour imposed upon the besiegers, who were compelled not only to keep strong bodies in the advanced trenches but to defend the whole line of attack against flank surprises by their enterprising foes.[Pg 224]
The Turks vied with the British in activity, making frequent night attacks on the trenches, and generally succeeding in carrying off a number of fascines, which were greatly needed, and were of special utility in the construction of the ravelin. The day after the repulse of the fourth attack the garrison suffered a heavy loss in the death of Colonel Phelypeaux, who died of fever brought on by want of rest and exposure to the sun. On the same day another, and almost as serious a loss, was sustained, for Captain Wilmot was killed by a musket shot while in the act of mounting a gun in the breach.
The midshipmen had, two days before, lost one of their comrades named Morris, who, with three seamen, was killed in one of the sorties, eight other blue-jackets of the Tigre being wounded at the same time. On the night of the 2nd of May the enemy made two desperate attempts to capture the English ravelins, but the marines in charge, aided by the fire from the walls and ships, held their ground, and repulsed the French with much loss. Every day the fighting increased in fury. Between the 1st and 9th the French made no less than five attacks upon the breach; these were all beaten off with very heavy loss; while the defenders, on their part, made frequent sorties to compel the assailants to stand on the defensive, and to interfere with their attempts to carry the approaches up to the foot of the walls.
The fire of the vessels was still maintained, but the besiegers had so raised and strengthened the earthworks protecting their traverses and trenches that they were now able to go backwards and forwards to the front with but little danger from the ships' fire.
Edgar had now lost the companionship both of Condor and Wilkinson. These had both gone back to their ship, for the death of Morris and the wounding of Forbes and[Pg 225] Lieutenant Knight had left the ship short of officers. Condor acted as junior lieutenant until the latter was fit for service again, and both he and Wilkinson took part in the boat attacks and the sorties from the town. Edgar was therefore now in command of the blue-jackets on shore, who were held always in readiness to run to the aid of the garrison at any spot where there might be sudden danger.
It was believed that the French were again mining in several places, and although Colonel Douglas, who had succeeded Phelypeaux in command of the engineering operations, set parties at work to drive countermines, the work progressed slowly, and it was difficult to ascertain the precise direction in which the enemy were driving their galleries. Edgar still acted as interpreter to Sir Sidney Smith, and was the bearer of his orders to the Turkish officers. He was very glad that it was but seldom that he was called upon to accompany his chief in his visits to the tower, for the stench here from the unburied bodies of the French and of the Turks overwhelmed by the explosion was overpowering............