Tenacious (40 page)

The Turkish and Arab troops chattered noisily together within
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the wall. The seamen were there only as gunners and it was these soldiers who would repulse any assault. They seemed outlandish, with their turbans and scimitars, and were an unknown quantity in close combat, but Kydd would lead them and the marines into battle. The seamen would act as a reserve if fighting came down to close quarters.

His thoughts were rudely interrupted as a musket went off near the centre of the wall, then another. Out in the darkness, at the extremity of the light thrown by the watch-fire, he could see the suspicion of a moving shadow, then several more. He ordered the oil fire lit, which flared up with a satisfying
whoomf.

Caught in the sudden light, scurrying figures darted about.

Muskets blazed up and down the parapets, the first shots of the siege, but with little effect. “Cease fire!” roared Kydd. It had probably been a reconnaissance party, spying out the terrain. His men had achieved what they wanted: there would be no more French creeping about at night. He gripped his sword. They knew what to expect in the morning.

At dawn Buonaparte’s cannonade began. During the night his guns had been drawn up in a breach battery directly opposite the Cursed Tower and they opened up in a continuous roll as the light strengthened. Through his feet Kydd felt the vicious thump of solid hits. Some stray balls tore through the air above him, while others struck noisily but ineffectively off the slope of bastions and casemates.

He could distinguish the deep smash of twelve-pounders above the more strident eight-pounders and the bark of lesser pieces, before their own artillery replied. Their siege mortars were now turned on the besiegers, antiquated bronze guns of Djezzar’s own and, most satisfying of all, the twenty-fours landed from
Tenacious
and
Tigre.

Dobbie needed no special instructions. He laid the gun calmly himself, then sent ball after ball into the French positions, making them pay for the privilege of coming within the range needed for their own guns. Kydd could see the earth parapets before the enemy guns flung aside, leaving broken muzzles pointing skywards.

But the ancient Cursed Tower, built at a time before modern iron guns, suffered. The French had correctly estimated it the weakest part of the wall and concentrated savage fire upon it.

Under the remorseless battering the masonry started to crumble, then fall. For five hours it endured bombardment before the last French gun was destroyed.

The facing wall of the tower was now a gaping ruin. Kydd left the gun and hurried to the scene. The tumbled stonework had left the lower part of the tower a dusty cave, a wide pathway to the interior of Acre—a breach in their defences.

Among the babble of excited Turks Kydd caught sight of Phélippeaux, clambering over the fallen rubble. If the customs of war were to hold, they should now treat for a capitulation and withdrawal or later suffer the carnage of a sacking. But if they did, what would be the fate of this brave and resourceful royalist Frenchman?

As the dust settled, all sounds died away in the enemy direction, then came the thunder of massed drums: the
chamade,
a demand to parley. A white flag appeared above the enemy earthworks and waved to and fro. Then a single figure appeared, standing erect with the white flag on a banner staff. Kydd noticed that Smith had arrived next to him.

The figure began a rigid march towards them, stumbling occasionally on the broken ground. At a point within shouting range the man stopped and demanded something in French. Smith stepped forward and replied with a bow and mild words. The
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man came on: he was an officer of proud bearing with scarlet sash and feathered cockade. His eyes flickered rapidly from side to side as he marched.

Gawking onlookers made way for him as he stalked through the breach. He halted, then began a staccato tirade but was interrupted with a gesture from Smith, who turned contemptuously to Hewitt, speaking in English: “The rogue came without a blindfold—he thinks to come as a spy!” He turned back to the officer and barked a command; Turkish soldiers seized him and dragged him away.

“Well, that’s settled,” Smith said. “I’d be obliged, Mr Kydd, if you’d give a reply to Mr Buonaparte on my behalf with your twenty-four?”

“Aye aye, sir!”

The die was cast. Buonaparte would never forgive the insult.

The breach was stopped up hastily with baulks of timber and rubble. At noon there was a sinister movement across the whole width of Kydd’s vision. Unseen trumpets blared at each end of the line, colours were raised and drums began their volleying summons to the flag.

Kydd looked along the wall to the soldiers at the ready.

Obviously frightened, they were calling to each other and looking about them as if to escape. Kydd brandished his sword and strode down the walls. This steadied them to a degree but then the skyline erupted into a mass of advancing troops, Buonaparte’s finest, who had defeated a hundred thousand Mamelukes in an hour at the Pyramids, been victorious at the siege of El Arish and butchered in cold blood the survivors of the Jaffa siege. Firing wildly, many Turks and Arabs broke and fled. Kydd shouted himself hoarse and some hesitated, but most tumbled off the parapets and ran. Kydd returned hastily to the gun, shaken.

Dobbie and the others acknowledged him calmly and a surge of feeling for them came over him. “Grape, then canister,” he croaked, with renewed determination. There would be time to get away only two shots before the French were upon them. Smoke was obscuring his view but he could make out the advance guard running in front. They carried scaling ladders and equipment, and close behind were their armed supporters.

The sheer numbers appalled Kydd, dense masses of troops that faded into the distance, all tramping forwards in an unstoppable wave, even over the bodies of those who fell. In his gut he felt the terror of the helpless. The main wave was going against the Cursed Tower, and their close-packed ranks quickened as they drew nearer, their swords and bayonets rising and falling with a terrible glint.

The final battle for Acre would be won or lost at the tower. He hurried to the breach and saw that it would never stand a determined assault. Kydd stood there with bared sword, waiting for the onslaught. He sensed others forming up behind him, filling the breach with their bodies, and suddenly felt exhilaration, a curious exaltation that he was alive and a man on such a day.

The first wave of the assault reached middle ground, then came to the final distance. Then above the tumult of battle came an avalanche of thuds. Seconds later the entire front of the attacking army crumpled. Whole columns were slapped to the ground or flung skyward, and military formation dissolved into panic-stricken scrabbling. Offshore,
Tenacious
and
Tigre
delivered their ferocious broadsides again, their shot rampaging the length of each wall and converging in front of the Cursed Tower in a welter of blood and corpses. Nothing could stand against what amounted to whole regiments of heavy artillery, and Buonaparte’s assault crumbled.

Most turned to flee, to find the rear of the army still pressing
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them forward. Others stormed on heroically but when they came close to the walls they discovered Phélippeaux’s fosse, a ditch twelve feet deep that made a mockery of ladders intended only for the height of the wall. Rallying, the Turks ran back to the parapets and threw grenades and heavy stones into the ditch, which quickly turned into a killing ground.

Trumpets sounded distantly—the retreat, Kydd realised. He looked down into the fosse. Those surviving, abandoned by their own army, held up their hands. It took main force to prevent the Turks killing the prisoners, who were led away by marines.

It was a galling blow for Buonaparte. Cheated of an easy victory by the same navy that had destroyed his hopes for an Oriental empire, he could no longer expect to take Acre in a frontal attack. Sliding his sword into its scabbard with a satisfying snick, Kydd watched the last of the assault wave scramble to the rear. He was still breathing deeply, aglow with the intoxication of battle on a scale he had never seen before—and he had been ready! He turned and made his way to the gun, but although the columns were repulsed in such disorder, cooler regions of his mind told him that Buonaparte would not be thwarted in his march to glory.

At sunset Kydd left the headquarters where he had been in conference. He had been grateful for the activity: the day’s events had disturbed him. In a man-o’-war there were casualties and he had seen his share at the Nile, but he had been unprepared for the scale of slaughter in a land battle. Hewitt was on the first watch and he must try to catch some sleep—but could he close his eyes on the images of blood and death?

His evening walk took him to the
Tenacious
gun. One of the seamen, whom Kydd remembered only as a reliable member of the afterguard, was sitting on the gun-carriage with his grog can, singing to the others in a low and compelling tenor:

The topsails shiver in the wind,

The ship she’s bound to sea;

But yet my heart, my soul, my mind,
Are, Mary, moored with thee
. . .

Kydd stood transfixed: in this harsh and unfeeling land, away from the clean simplicities of a sea life, these sailors had brought their world with them and were drawing strength from their age-old customs.

He turned to go, but his seaman’s instincts had pricked an alert and he faced back, sniffing the wind. Since morning, it seemed, it had backed a full three points. He had no barometer or other instruments but he felt uneasy.

The dawn came and, as he had suspected, the winds were more in the north, a cooler touch to them after the dry warmth of the desert
khamsin.
The giant bowl of the deep blue sky, brassy with sunlight and usually innocent of cloud apart from playful tufts, was becoming overcast.

Kydd climbed the Cursed Tower with Hewitt. Nothing in the French camp gave a clue to Buonaparte’s plans, but Hewitt seemed unusually reserved.

“Wind’s gone to the nor’ard,” Kydd said.

“If you’d been in the eastern Mediterranean as long as I have, you would have your concerns. It could soon be a nor’-westerly,”

Hewitt told him.

Kydd nodded gravely. Any wind of force from the north-west would place
Tenacious
and
Tigre
on a lee shore. Anchored as they were, as close to the scattered rocky shoals as was possible, they would have to weigh and proceed to sea to make an offing until it was safe to return. And while the ships were away they could no longer maintain their broadsides—Buonaparte would have his chance.

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“I hold to my small hope that Buonaparte is as much a seaman as my sainted aunt Betsy, and will not in anticipation plan a descent, and will be caught off-guard. Is that too much to pray for?” Hewitt said.

The wind strengthened: it blustered and the first raindrops fell. Soon curtains of rain squalls were marching in from seaward, laying the dust and forming myriad rivulets in the drab, yellowish-brown dust but turning the dull iron of cannon to a lustrous gleam. Those who could pulled on rain slicks; others endured. The squalls passed but behind them the wind set in from the north-west, hard and cold.

“Stand to! All hands,
get on th’ wall!
” Kydd roared, driving wet and bedraggled Turks to their stations. An assault would come, it was certain; it was only a question of when.

They stood to for an hour—then two. Hewitt had been right.

As dusk approached it was certain that Buonaparte was not going to mount an assault that day. Now everything depended on the weather: if the wind shifted back during the night the ships could return, but if it stayed in the same quarter the defenders of Acre would face an assault.

With the dawn came the wind, relentlessly in the north-west.

Before the day was out, they would be fighting for their lives, and Smith was still somewhere out at sea in
Tigre
and could play no part. It was entirely up to themselves.

The enemy came without fanfare, a sudden purposeful tide of attackers. The defenders’ guns blasted defiance, but without whole broadsides from the ships there was no deterring their deadly advance. Kydd lost no time in placing himself at the breach, now choked with hastily placed timber and rubble.

On the tower above him the muskets banged away but against such numbers they had little effect. Then a deep rumble sounded.

The front ranks faltered. Kydd’s heart leaped: if the ships had

returned they stood a chance. But a crash gave the lie—it was a thunderstorm.

As the French bore down with scaling ladders to throw up against the walls from the fosse, blustering and chilling rain squalls came. The open ground grew slippery with sticky yellow mud. Firearms were useless in such conditions yet still they came on—hurrying lines, the dull glitter of wet steel, a sea of anonymous faces and a continuous shouting roar.

The first wave reached the fosse. Ladders were thrown down awkwardly, but Phélippeaux had designed well: the width of the ditch did not match the height necessary to reach the parapets and the ladders ended in a tangle of bodies and bloody corpses.

The first breathless Frenchmen arrived at the breach, hard, brutal faces in sketchy blue uniforms, bright weapons, the cutting edge of Buonaparte’s will. Pistols banged out and they scrambled over the rubble to close at last with the defenders.