Hi! HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE NELSON In the dress he wore when he received his mortal wound, October zi, 1805 From an engraving- after the painting by A. W. Devis HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE : THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR (1703-1815) BY W. H. FITCHETT, B.A., LL.D. AUTHOR OF " DEEDS THAT WON THE EMPIRE" "FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG,' ETC WITH PORTRAITS, FACSIMILES, AND PLANS IN FOUR VOLUMES VOLUME II THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SEA NEW EDITION LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1909 [All rights reserved] "England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example." — Pitt's last public words. " A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remem- bered with pride by remote descendants." — Macaulay. Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Cq At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh CONTENTS PERIOD IV.— NELSON AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SEA CHAP. I. THE RETURN FROM THE EAST . II. WASTED EXPEDITIONS III. THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT IV. ALEXANDRIA : AND AFTERWARDS V. NAPOLEON AND ENGLAND VI. THE POLICY OF THE CONSULATE VII. THE LEAGUE OF THE NORTHERN POWERS VIII. COPENHAGEN . IX. THE TRUCE OF AMIENS X. THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA XL NEW PLANS XI r. THE GREAT BLOCKADES XIII. napoleon's SEA-STRATEGY XIV. TRAFALGAR : THE TACTICS XV. TRAFALGAR ; THE FIGHT . xvi. pitt's death . XVII. THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM XVIII. A PROCESSION OF ADVENTURES XIX. FROM EGYPT TO SICILY . XX. A PERISHED NAVY . XXI. THE BASQUE ROADS . PAGE 7 19 34 46 68 80 9i 105 125 141 151 162 176 195 218 239 248 268 281 294 307 LIST OF PORTRAITS Lord Nelson ,,,,,». Fr ontispkce (After the portrait by Devis) Sir Ralph Abercrombt. , , , To face page 20 Lord Hutchinson ..,„,, > « » 56 Sir David Baird ..,,,< 3 59 M 64 Napoleon Bonaparte . 1 » r> „ So Viscount Sidmouth (Addington) , , 1 • ji „ 88 Sir Hyde Parker . 1 3 11 •> 94 Lord Nelson ...... ■ ■ zi - 120 (After the portrait by Edridge) Lord Barham ...... ' > 'A » 168 Admiral Cornwallis 3 , • »s * I7S Lord Collingwood . ► • 58 2lS Sir Thomas Masterman Hard* , > » » -, 23S William Pitt ... . . 1 s> K >, 244 Sir John Stuart . , > » y> „ 286 Lord Gambier . , > » • » „ 3°S Lord Cochrane , , . • • n ,, 318 LIST OF PLANS PAGE Operations of the British Army in Egypt . . 49 Battle op the Baltic (Copenhagen) . . . .111 Chart of the European Coasts showing the Blockaded Ports 171 Battle of Trafalgar 209 j: » ....... 213 Action in the Aix (Basque) Roads . . . . 313 PERIOD IV NELSON AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SEA VOL. II. A PERIOD IV.— THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SEA (From the Confederacy of the Northern Powers, March 4, 1 So 1, to the outbreak of Peninsular War, May 30, 1808.) GENERAL CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1S01. Feb. 4. Peace of Luneville betwixt Franco and Austria. Mar. 4. League of armed neutrality— The Northern Powers combine against England. ,, 23. British fleet under Sir Hyde Parker and Lord Nelson pass Sound. April 2. Battle of Copenhagen. ,, 3. Prussia seizes Hanover. June 1. Embargo taken off ships of Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Sept. 2. Surrender of Alexandria and capitulation of French troops in Egypt. Oct. 1. Preliminaries of peace between England and France. ,, 10. Peace ratified. Nov. 9. Celebration of Peace of Paris. Dec. 14. Great French armament sails for San Domingo. 1802. Jan. 25. Bonaparte President of Italian Republic. Mar. 25. Treaty of Amiens between France and England signed. April 17. Concordat published at Paris. ,, 24. English militia disbanded. May 26. Bonaparte First Consul for life. Juue 26. Ligurian Republic established. Aug. 25. First Consul forbids circulation of English news- papers in Fiance. 3 4 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1802. Oct. 21. French troops enter Switzerland. ,, 23. Parma and Placeuza annexed by France. 1S03. May 12. Lord. Whitworth (English Ambassador) leaves Paris. ,, 17. Great Britain declares war against France. ,, 22. Bonaparte arrests all English visitors in France. June 14. Hanover occupied by French. ,, 21. English colonial produce prohibited in France. Aug. 10. Scindia defeated by English. Sept. 23. Battle of Assaye. Nov. 19. French surrender San Domingo to blacks. Dec. 9. Panic of French invasion in England — Yeomen and volunteers in Great Britain, 379,943 — Blockade of French ports. 1804. Feb. 15. French fleet defeated by homeward bound India- men under Captain Dance. Mar. 21. Execution of Due d'Enghien. May 12. Change of British Ministry— Pitt again Premier. ,, 18. Bonaparte declared Emperor of France with title of Napoleon I. Oct. 4. Nelson attacks Boulogne flotilla. ,, 29. Spanish treasure frigates captured. Nov. 1. Sir George Bumboldt (British Minister) seized in Germany by French, and carried off to France. ,, 15. Holkar defeated by English. Dec. 2. Napoleon crowned by Pope at Paris. 1805. Jan. 24. War declared by England against Spain. Mar. 29. Villeneuve escapes from Toulon — Nelson in pur- suit. April 3. Treaty of Petersburg— Third coalition against France. May 26. Napoleon crowned King of Italy at Milan. June 26. Impeachment of Lord Melville. July 22. Sir Robert Calder's action with Villeneuve. Aug. 20. Villeneuve enters Cadiz — Failure of Napoleon's naval combinations. Sept. 8. War between France, Russia and Austria. Oct. 17. Surrender of Mack at Ulm. „ 20. French pass the Adige. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 5 1805. Oct. 21. Trafalgar. Nov. 4. Capture of French squadron by Strackan. ,, 13. French enter Vienna. Dec. 2. Austerlitz. ,, 6. Armistice between France and Austria. ,, 26. Peace of Presburg. 1806. Jan. 8. Cape of Good Hope captured by English. ,, 23. Death of Pitt. Feb. 5. Ministry of "All the Talents "—Lord Grenville Premier. ,, 6. Duckworth defeats French fleet in West Indies. ,, 15. Joseph Bonaparte king of Naples. Mar. 28. Prussia shuts her ports against British. April 5. War between England and Prussia. June 5. Louis Bonaparte king of Holland. „ 12. Lord Melville acquitted. July 2. Buenos Ayres taken by English. „ 4. Battle of Maida. ,, 20. Peace between France and Russia. Aug. 12. Spaniards retake Buenos Ayres. Sept. 13. Death of Fox. Oct. 3. Jena. ,, 6. Unsuccessful negotiations for peace — Fourth coalition. Nov. 20. Berlin Decree against English commerce. ,, 28. French enter Warsaw. 1807. Jan. 1. Orders in Council in reply to Berlin Decree. ,, 28. Peace between England and Prussia. Feb. 3. Montevideo taken by English. „ 8. Eyhui. ,, 19. Sir John Duckwood at Dardanelles. Mar. 2. Percival Prime Minister. ,, 21. Alexandria surrenders to English under General Fraser. May 20. Danzig surrenders to French. ,, zi. Fraser repulsed at Rosetta. June 14. Friedland. „ 25. The raft of Tilsit. July 5. General Whitelocke at Buenos Ayres. 6 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1807. July 9. Peace between France and Prussia. ,, 18. Copenhagen bombarded by an English fleet under Cathcart and Gambier. Prussia prohibits commerce with England. Danish fleet at Copenhagen surrendered. Alexandria evacuated by English under Fraser. Russia declares war against England. Second Orders in Council blockading ports of France and her allies. Portuguese royal family sail for Brazil. French under Junot enter Lisbon. Jerome Bonaparte king of Westphalia. Bonaparte issues decree at Milan against inter- course with England. Kehl, Wesel, Cassel, and Flushing united to France. Mar. 19. King of Spain abdicates in favour of his son, Prince of Asturias. May 1. Charles IV. of Spain abdicates at Bayonne in favoxir of Bonaparte. Sept. 2. »> 7- Nov. 23- 1. >> 16. >> 29. Dec. 3°- 1. >» 17. S08. Jan. 21. HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE: THE STORY OF THE GREAT WAR (1793-1815) CHAPTER I THE RETURN FROM THE EAST THE march of the French back from Acre to Egypt was attended with great suffering; it suggests, indeed, the retreat from Moscow translated into terms of heat. Thirst took the place of the frost, and plague of the Cossacks. The spirit of the French soldiers was broken; the plague was in their blood. Men fell stricken from the ranks as they marched, and their comrades had for them neither pity nor help. Bonaparte made all his offi- cers give up their horses for the service of the sick and wounded ; but in spite of this, the track of the retreating army was marked by a trail of dying and abandoned men. 8 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE At Jaffa there were French soldiers in the hospital too sick to be removed, yet to abandon them to the pursuing Arabs was death. According to a familiar story, Bonaparte poisoned 400 of these in order to save them from Turkish cruelty! This story is vehemently contradicted, and as vehemently asserted. That all the French sick were not thus poisoned is certain, for Sidney Smith found seven still alive when he visited the French hospital at Jaffa two days after Bonaparte had left. It is beyond doubt, however, that Bonaparte suggested to his doctors the expediency, if not the kindness, of poisoning such of his sick as could not be removed. The French doctors gravely debated the question, and, in the words of one of their number, decided "it was their business to cure men, not to kill them." Bonaparte at St. Helena denied that he actually gave orders for the poisoning of the sick, but he contended that, if he had done so, he would have performed a righteous and humane act. Marshal Bertrand, in the same conversation at St. Helena, declared it was a universal belief through- out the French army that the sick had been poisoned. Mourad Bey had emerged afresh during Bona- parte's absence in Syria, and was giving trouble; there had been one or two partial insurrections, suppressed with great cruelty. But the one serious danger which menaced Bonaparte was the appear- THE RETURN FROM THE EAST 9 ance of a fleet of a hundred Turkish ships in Aboukir Bay, bringing a force of 15,000 troops for the ex- pulsion of the French from Egypt. The Turks landed and entrenched themselves on the peninsula while waiting for the appearance of Mourad Bey, whose Mamelukes were to give the expedition what it wanted — an active cavalry. Bonaparte, with three divisions under Lannes, Murat, and Bon, marched at speed, and with characteristic energy, to crush the invading force. "This battle," he said to Murat, before the fight began, "will decide the fate of the world" — a sphinx-like sentence which sorely puzzled Murat, who was a good cavalry officer, but no politician. Why should one more victory over a Turkish army in Egypt "decide the fate of the world " ? The battle of Aboukir, fought on July 25, was a victory for the French of an almost unique kind. The Turkish army was not so much overthrown as destroyed. The French cavalry charged so fiercely on the broken Turks, that the maddened human rout, with its terror and tumult, was swept into the sea, and, according to Bonaparte's own arithmetic, nearly 9000 fugitives were drowned. A single dra- matic incident in this wild scene is worth record- ing. One drowning and fugitive Albanian was dragged from the crowds of perishing Turks into Sidney Smith's own boat. That rescued Albanian, pulled gasping into the Tigres gig, was Mehemet 10 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE Ali, then a nameless soldier in the Turkish ranks, but destined to found a great dynasty in Egypt, and to die nearly fifty years afterwards, having accom- plished in the East nearly all that Napoleon him- self dreamed of, but failed to achieve. If that dripping and half-drowned Albanian had not been saved by the rough hands of British sailors from amongst the crowds of perishing fugitives, the his- tory of Egypt would have been different; and, amongst other details, Fraser's inglorious expedi- tion in 1 807 might not have ended in mere slaughter and shame. The real value of the victory of Aboukir to Bonaparte was that it gave him a chance of return- ing to Europe with at least a respectable amount of glory. The Egyptian expedition was a failure. It had already cost France a fleet ; it was almost certain to cost it an army. Undertaken to thrust England out of the Mediterranean, its result had been to make the British flag supreme in that sea. Bonaparte was naturally eager to disentangle himself from such a fiasco, and appear afresh — Avith some decent nimbus of victory round his head — in France, where a throne was to be lost or won. It was because he saw behind the defeat of the Turkish army the return to France that he said to Murat the battle " would decide the fate of the world." After the battle Sidney Smith sent to Bonaparte, under a flag of truce, a packet of newspapers which THE RETURN FROM THE EAST^ II told the dolorous tale of French disasters in Europe during the last ten months. Bonaparte spent the whole night reading that tale of domestic unrest and foreign defeat. The coalition against France had revived ; Turkey and Kussia had joined it. The French were hard pressed from Amsterdam to Naples. Suwarroff, the greatest general Russia has ever produced, had applied to French generals something of Bonaparte's own methods against the Austrians in 1796, and with startling results. Mac- donald was crushed by him on the Trebbia and Joubert at Novi. Mantua had fallen. Moreau had saved his army only by a skilful but disastrous retreat. It was necessary for Bonaparte's plans that the Directory should be discredited by foreign disasters, and these disasters had certainly come in troops. Civil war, moreover, had broken out in the west of France, and against the Chouans the infamous law of hostages had been passed, a law which made a whole class responsible for the shot of a single peasant. In each district all persons related to the emigrants, or to the ancient regime, were held as hostages for the good behaviour of the entire district. Their property was made liable for all robberies which occurred, and four of them were transported for every assassination reported. Jacobinism, too, had lifted up its menacing head in Paris. The elections of May 1799 were unfavourable to the 12 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE Directory, and that body had been reconstructed, and a Jacobin leaven infused into it. Bonaparte calculated, with reasonable certainty, that he had only to appear on such a distracted stage and the supreme power would inevitably fall to him. The strain of superstitious fatalism in Bonaparte's character is shown by a curious incident. During the fierce struggle in the trenches before Acre news reached him that a French gunboat on the Nile, named the Italy, had been attacked by the Arabs and blown up. Bonaparte accepted it as an omen. He said to Bourrienne, "Italy is lost to France! All is over ! My presentiments never deceive me ! " No logic could shake that superstitious belief; and when, after the battle of Aboukir, he read the news- papers Sidney Smith had sent him, his imagination at once ran back to the omen of the ill-fated Italy on the Nile. " My presentiments," he said, " did not deceive me. Italy is lost ! " He took his steps with characteristic decision. Two frigates were secretly prepared for the return to France, only Berthier and Gantheaume being allowed to know Bonaparte's intentions. He him- self returned to Cairo, gathered round him the staff he proposed to take with him, and announced that he was starting on a visit to Upper Egypt. But as soon as he had left Cairo he changed his route, and pushed at speed to the sea-coast. He wrote to Kleber transferring to him the command of the THE RETURN FROM THE EAST I 3 army, and assigning a rendezvous with him, for pur- poses of consultation, at which he knew Kleber could not possibly bo present. Kleber was clear-sighted, plain-spoken, and choleric ; an interview with him would have been decidedly unpleasant. On the night of August 22, Bonaparte set sail, leaving behind him an infuriated successor, a disgusted army, and a wrecked adventure. Kleber soothed his own angry feelings by writing a wrathful de- spatch to the Directory. This, however, fell into the hands of the British, and when at last it reached Paris the Directory had vanished, and Bonaparte himself, now become First Consul, had the grim satisfaction of reading it. " Fortune," says Lanfrey, "had changed the accused into a judge, and had prepared for each his recompense; for one the poniard of a fanatic, for the other the first throne in the world." Bonaparte, stealing from the shores of Egypt under cover of night, leaving behind him the gallant army which had followed his fortunes with such devotion, is not a very noble figure ; but his characteristic good fortune followed him. Sidney Smith had sailed to Cyprus for supplies, and the sea was clear. Instead of taking the ordinary course, the French frigates crept along the African coast ; it was three weeks before they sighted Tunis. Under the shelter of darkness the ships stole, with all lights hidden, through the narrow waters betwixt 14 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE Sicily and Africa, patrolled by a couple of Nel- son's ships, and, after a six weeks' voyage, reached Corsica. Two plans were open to Bonaparte : he might land in Italy, assume command of the French army, win some dramatic victory, and then appear in Paris as the saviour of the nation ; or he might sail direct for France, and reach Paris with the least possible delay. In Paris things were swiftly moving to a crisis ; and Bonaparte, who knew, as few men ever did, how precious a factor in great events time is, decided to waste no priceless moments in winning a theatrical victory in Italy. Nay, there seemed some risk that Bonaparte, in the role of a saviour, might be super- fluous. Bernadotte was Minister of War, and had begun to infuse both energy and method into the military operations of France. Massena had won some brilliant victories over the Austrians in that brief campaign known as the battle of Zurich. The combined English and Russian expedition to Holland had already failed, and failed ignobly. Bonaparte quickly made his choice. If he lingered much longer he felt he might be regarded as un- necessary. On October 8 he set sail for the French coast ; but as night was falling the white sails of a British squadron showed on the western sky-line coming swiftly down before the wind. Gantheaume wished to put back to Corsica, but Bonaparte insisted on keeping the course for France. The night which THE RETURN FROM THE EAST I 5 followed was a time of singular agitation for Bona- parte. To become a British prisoner when in sight not only of the French coast, but of what Bonaparte's matchless intuition told him was a French throne, would indeed be a stroke of cruel fortune. Bona- parte resolved, if no other chance of escape offered, to man a boat, abandon the frigates, and pull to the French coast. In the interests of painters and rhetoricians it is to be regretted that this course was not adopted. The spectacle of the greatest soldier of modern days, who had sailed from France on a scheme of conquest, with a great fleet and a gal- lant army, returning unattended and in a cockboat, would at least have been dramatic. But the British ships mistook Gantheaume's frigates for Venetians, and kept peacefully on their course. Early in October the despatch announcing Bona- parte's victory over the Turks at Aboukir was read in the Council of the Five Hundred. It was the first definite intelligence from Egypt which had reached France for months. Bonaparte and his army had vanished from the gaze of France behind the clouds of battle-smoke which arose above the contending fleets in Aboukir Bay. Suddenly the smoke w r as blown aside, and Bonaparte appeared once more, wearing a halo of victory! On October 15, while Paris was yet full of the exultation of the news from Egypt, another piece of intelligence startled France. Bonaparte had landed in Corsica ; he was on his way 1 6 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE to Paris ! Not only the fact, but the time and manner of Bonaparte's return kindled the general French imagination. He brought back, it is true, neither fleet nor army, but he came from a land of mystery with the tale of strange victories, and in the hour of France's need. France wanted another 1 796 ; a hero to lead her armies to yet more dazzling conquests. And in a moment the general imagination took fire, the hopes and fears of all contending parties found a centre in " the hero of Egypt." The political situation when Bonaparte returned to Paris was very curious. He found awaiting him not so much a conspiracy as a nest of conspiracies. The Jacobins were conspiring against the Directory, and the members of the Directory were conspiring against each other. All Bonaparte's political alli- ances had hitherto been with the Jacobins; he found, too, that military opinion was on their side as against a cluster of imbecile civilians, who had so mismanaged the war. But, with his incomparable shrewdness, Bonaparte soon realised that another Jacobin regime was impossible. Its bloody history fatally discredited that party. France Avould not risk a second Reign of Terror, a new Robespierre. Bonaparte had to choose betwixt Barras and Sieves in the Directory itself. Sieyes was the ablest mem- ber in the Director}', and was also the most active conspirator for its overthrow. He could not for- give the existing constitution for having taken the THE RETURN FROM THE EAST 17 place of the one he had himself framed. At first Bonaparte stood coldly aloof from Sieyes. At some dinner-party, indeed, he even affected not to see him. "Do you observe," cried Sieyes in anger, "that in- solent little fellow's behaviour towards a member of a Government which ought to have had him shot ? " Bonaparte and Sieyes, however, found they needed each other. The one must be the lawyer of the new constitution, and the other its man of action. Sieyes had shrewdness enough to see that his new ally would use him and fling him aside. " I know," he said, "the fate that awaits me." On November 9, only four weeks after Bonaparte had returned from Egypt, the coup d'etat took place. Bonaparte was made commander of all the troops in Paris. The Councils were summoned to meet at St. Cloud, where a proposal for the reform of the constitution was ready to be submitted. The proposal would certainly be accepted in the Council of the Ancients, but in the Council of the Five Hundred the Jacobin element was strong, and this was the point of peril. Sieyes was to have made his appearance in this Council when the opposition grew dangerous ; but his courage failed him. He could frame constitu- tions, but he could not make them march. Bona- parte had to take the part from whieh Sieyes shrunk. He appeared in the Council, was met with angry shouts and hustled out of it. He then sent VOL. II. B 1 8 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE in his grenadiers to clear the hall and rescue his brother Lucien, who was president. That night Lucien held a meeting of such members of the Council as belonged to his own faction — only thirty in number. It assumed the functions of the whole Chamber. A committee was named to report on the state of affairs. Its report advised that Sieyes, Bonaparte, and Roger Duclos should be a provisional executive, with the title of Consuls, and, with the help of twenty members from each Council, should frame the new constitu- tion — the meetings of both Councils being mean- while suspended, and the Council of the Five Hundred being energetically purged of objection- able members. The provisional Consulate lasted a little over four weeks, and Bonaparte emerged from it the absolute master of France, with the title of First Consul, and with despotic powers which Louis XIV. might have envied. The final result of the Revolution, of the agitations and storms, the massacres and the suffer- ings of the ten years since 1789, was thus to set up in France a monarchy more absolute than that of the Bourbons, and to place on the throne of France a soldier with the unchecked powers of a despot, and with an ambition more greedy, if not more pitiless, than perhaps that of any other con- queror known to history. CHAPTER II WASTED EXPEDITIONS THE British campaign which ended the Egyptian episode in the Napoleonic wars is worth telling in detail, as being that which restored the sorely damaged prestige of the British army, and the first in which Great Britain won on land a distinct, not to say a brilliant, advantage over France. The blaze of a hundred victories won by British soldiers in the later stages of the great war, from the Peninsula to Waterloo, hides in merciful obscurity the failures and disasters of previous years. On the sea Great Britain was splendidly victorious; but the story of her arms on land during the first eight years of the strife is a catalogue of blunders and of capitu- lations; of absurd expeditions, begun without sane plans, conducted without rational leadership, and ended with more or less of ignominy. It was not that Great Britain had no army; her statesmen did not know how to use it, nor her generals how to lead it. The art of victory seemed to have temporarily emigrated from the British army. British sailors during that period never went into battle 19 20 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE without a confident expectation of winning. British soldiers never embarked on an expedition without a gloomy conviction that they would return with diminished numbers and shrunken credit. And his- tory usually fulfilled those cheerful expectations. The story of the Duke of York's inglorious cam- paign in Holland has been already told, and it was but the first of a series of costly and bloody failures. Thus in 1799 the British Cabinet conceived the idea of despatching an expedition to North Hol- land for the purpose of expelling the French, and giving back to the Prince of Orange his lost domi- nions. Russia was to join England in the adventure, England supplying all the cash, and each Power contributing not less than 18,000 troops, the joint expedition to be under the command of the Duke of York. That general's previous performances in Flanders were a sufficient guarantee of failure ; but, as a still further precaution against success, he was instructed to do nothing without the consent of a Council of War composed of six generals ! The point in Holland most difficult for attack was chosen for the landing of the troops, and on August 13, 1799, Sir Ralph Abercromby sailed with 10,000 men for Helder, this being the advance-guard of the expedition. Abercromby himself was a much experienced Scottish soldier, as brave as his own sword, but singularly unlucky in war; and he was quite persuaded the expedition must fail. "My SIR RALPH ABERCROMBY From a mezzotint after the portrait by J. Hoppner, R.A. WASTED EXPEDITIONS 21 mind," he -wrote to a friend just before sailing, "always went in opposition to this undertaking." "It involved perils," he said, "which ought not to be risked." Thus an expedition which began with- out a plan was conducted by a general without a hope! The British private of that day, or of any day, seldom failed, however, in fighting quality. The troops were landed on August 27, in wild weather, through a heavy surf, and in much confusion; but the stubborn British infantry, without any help from artillery, stormed the sand-dunes which over- looked their landing-place and drove roughly back the Dutch troops which opposed them. Nearly 500 men, however, perished in the landing. The Helder was reached, and a small Dutch fleet lying there, consisting of seven ships of the line and several frigates, was captured, with a great supply of mili- tary stores. If the expedition had closed at this point it would have been a sufficiently creditable bit of work. But the Russian contingent arrived, the Duke of York, with his absurd military council, took command, and the allied troops began the task of fighting their way to Amsterdam through the long defile of North Holland. The weather was bitter ; the country was a net- work of marshes and canals, broken by sandhills held in great force by the French and the Dutch. It is difficult to write with patience of the senile 2 2 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE generalship of the campaign. The Duke of York was brave enough in a passive fashion; he would, as Sir Henry Bunbury says, "stand all day to be shot at" cheerfully enough. But he had neither sense nor knowledge. He would talk at his dinner- table of his allies, or of his own officers, like a half- drunken boy; and under his management the Russian troops became nearly as hostile in temper as the French themselves. There was much hard fighting, and an infinite amount of still harder splashing along wet roads and through treacherous marshes ; but all without sane plan or concert. The British regiments were flooded with men attracted by extraordinary bounties from the militia; there was not time even to clothe these raw recruits in the uniform of the regiments they joined. So when drawn up on parade, a British regiment offered to the eye of the astonished spectator a bewildered patchwork of different uniforms. The troops, in a word, were as raw as their generals were incompetent. On September 19 the allied army set out from its lines, 35,000 strong, to fight its way to Amsterdam, expecting to reach that city in five days; but by October 9 it was back in its own lines, with its hopes wrecked, its discipline — such as it had — ruined, its ammunition exhausted, and having lost 10,000 of its bravest officers and men. There was much wrong-headed fighting, and British soldiers, perhaps, WASTED EXPEDITIONS 2 3 never fought better or were worse led. Bunbury, as a proof of the unyielding spirit of the British soldier, tells the story of how, in the tumult and slaughter of the retreat, he tried to gather up a battalion for the purpose of holding a particular village. He failed in his efforts till he came across a battalion of the i st Guards, resting on their arms in column in the muddy road, and he begged Colonel Maitland, who was in command, to return with him and hold the village against the advancing French. Maitland urged that his men had been fighting for hours and were totally exhausted; most of their officers were killed; they had no ammunition. Bunbury still urged the advance, but Maitland, he says, "appeared to have lost the powers of his mind under fatigue of body and anxiety. At this moment a grenadier, lifting his chin from the muzzle on which he was leaning, said in a loud and steady voice, 'Give us some more cartridges, and we will see what can be done.' The officers, who were anxiously clustering about us at the head of the column, caught up the prompter's word. Maitland cried, ' Shoulder arms ! ' They marched for Krab- bendam, and I galloped to find and bring to them a supply of ammunition." When the allied forces regained their lines they were still 25,000 strong, with the British fleet in their rear. But their generals were without either plan or hope, and within a week they concluded a 24 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE capitulation by which they withdrew from Holland, surrendered the captured Helder, and gave a pledge that the British Government would send back to France 8000 French prisoners of war. It marks the complete bankruptcy of spirit in the leaders of the ill-fated expedition that they welcomed this ignoble capitulation with almost tearful gratitude. Abercromby wrote to a friend, " What could tempt the French to agree to it I cannot conceive. One- half this army must have fallen into their hands, with all our artillery, stores, &c." Abercromby, however, is the one figure who emerges with un- damaged credit from this inglorious expedition, and the British Government wished to reward his services with a peerage, a large sum of money, or a grant of Caribbean lands. But Abercromby rejected the pro- posal. Such an expedition, he said in substance, supplied no argument for " rewarding " anybody ! Another illustration of the manner in which the British Cabinet, to quote Sheridan's phrase, " nibbled at the rind of France," is supplied by the Ostend adventure. It occurred to some official wiseacre that to blow up the sluice gates near Ostend would be a delightfully annoying act to the French, and in May 1798 a brigade of picked troops, under General Coote, was despatched for that purpose. The troops landed, and duly blew up the sluices, and then discovered that the furious surf running made it impossible to re-embark. It was impracticable, of WASTED EXPEDITIONS 25 course, for a single English brigade, however gallant, to light the whole of France, and, after resisting till half their numbers had fallen, the survivors sur- rendered. A gallant brigade was thus sacrificed to destroy a sluice gate! In December 1799, General Sir Charles Stuart, who had captured Minorca in 1798, and was then commander of the forces in the Mediterranean, sub- mitted to the British Cabinet a daring and very able plan. He proposed that 15,000 British troops should be placed under his command, with which he would establish himself on the Maritime Alps and cut the French communications with Italy. Had this plan been carried out promptly and with energy, Genoa, where Massena was being besieged, must have fallen a month earlier than it actually did, and Melas, the Austrian commander-in-chief, would have been strengthened with 20,000 seasoned troops to meet Napoleon as he crossed the St. Ber- nard. Marengo, in that case, might well have been a French defeat, and the whole course of history have been changed. The British Cabinet, thankful for anybody who would invent a plan for it, ac- cepted Stuart's proposals, and that general promptly organised his staff. After six weeks' loitering medi- tation, however, the British Government informed Stuart that they could only send him 10,000 men , and in six weeks more the 10,000 shrank to 5000, and Sir Charles Stuart, a man of impatient and 26 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE resentful temper, threw up the whole scheme in disgust. The 5000 men intended for Stuart were by this time, however, actually on board transports, and they must be sent somewhere. After remaining at their anchorage till the end of April, they were sent to Minorca and placed under the orders of Sir Ralph Abercromby. Here was a British army afloat in the Mediterranean, but with nothing par- ticular for it to do ! Sir Ralph took his forces to Genoa, intending to strengthen the garrison of that place, but arrived there too late. Marengo had been fought, and the French were in possession. The troops were then taken — apparently for safety — to Leghorn, and the Queen of Naples used all her arts to induce Abercromby to land his men there and take up the war in Italy against Bonaparte. But that cautious Scotsman was not to be tempted. No doubt 10,000 British troops in the mountain passes betwixt Florence and Bologna would have greatly helped the Austrians, but Abercromby had "no orders," and was not the man to act without them. Another British army, it is to be noted, was at the same time afloat in another part of the Mediter- ranean, on board a squadron under the command of Sir Edward Pellew, looking about, in an equally imbecile fashion, for something to be attacked. They were directed to make a descent upon Belleisle. The WASTED EXPEDITIONS 2? expedition accordingly sailed, looked at Belleisle, de- cided it was too strong to be meddled with, and then, as Bunbury says, sailed away, " unharming and un- harmed," some of the troops returning to England, others sailing to Minorca. The next attempt to "do something" was made at Ferrol, against which place Sir James Pultney sailed with a considerable fleet and a fine body of troops. Pultney landed, had a brisk skirmish with the Spaniards, looked at Ferrol from the summit of the neighbouring hills, and then re-embarked, having decided that " nothing could be done." The soldiers sniffed contemptuously at the sailors as the cause of the failure, and the sailors swore round naval oaths at the soldiers for their useless pro- menade. More gunpowder, in fact, was burned in duels betwixt these two branches of the service over the Ferrol expedition than was expended against the enemy. In August, orders reached Abercromby to join Pultney at Gibraltar, taking 10,000 men from Minorca, and make a joint descent on Cadiz. On October 4, just as the equinoctial gales commenced to rage, the expedition was off Cadiz. Keith was in command of the fleet, while no less than 22,000 men, exclusive of officers, crowded into 120 trans- ports, formed the army under Abercromby's orders. The expedition, in a word, was on a scale which, wisely used for some fit end, might have produced 28 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE far-reaching results. Abercromby proposed to dis- embark at Rota, and orders were issued to land at that place. But the boats of the squadron could only carry 3000 men ; the ships were ten miles from shore ; the sea was rough. It was known that 8000 Spanish troops were drawn up to resist the landing, and at that moment Keith reported to Abercromby that in the state of the weather he could not guarantee to maintain communications with the troops if they landed, or to take them off again, if retreat became necessary. To throw 3000 troops ashore at nightfall, without artillery and without support, in the presence of a hostile force double their numbers, would be mad- ness. The troops climbed back from their tossing boats to the ships, and Abercromby called on Keith to take the responsibility of saying that he could, or that he could not, land and re-cmbark the troops. But Keith would say nothing definite, and his huge fleet lay rolling in the sea off Cadiz waiting for a clear resolve to be reached by somebody. At two o'clock on the morning of October 6, Sir Ralph, says his biographer, " left his bed and went to the cot of Lord Keith, demanding his decision." The spectacle of the venerable Sir Ralph — he was nearly seventy years of age — in a nightcap, waking the almost equally venerable Keith — pro- bably also in a nightcap — at two o'clock in the morning to learn whether he had come to any WASTED EXPEDITIONS 29 " decision " about landing the troops is not without its humour. But the fate of an army of 22,000 gal- lant men hung on those two night-capped heads. Keith, it seemed, had no "decision" about him. The expedition was abandoned. Half the troops, under Pultney, sailed for Lisbon, the other half, under Abercromby, returned to Minorca. It seemed probable that the British army in the Mediterranean would repeat the fabled experiences of the Flying Dutchman, and be for ever unable to land anywhere. Yet this army, blown of the vagrant winds to all quarters of the heavens, was really the corps d'dite of Great Britain, and surpassed in numbers and equipment the troops which Wellington — during most stages of the Peninsular war, at least — had under his standards. The effect on the soldiers themselves may be imagined. "The troops," says Sir Robert Wilson, " from so long a continuance at sea and in weather so violent, began to sink in mind and strength." The necessity of doing something with this army, in order to save both its reason and its health, was really one of the motives which inspired the ex- pedition to Egypt in 1801 — an expedition whose brilliant success restored the tarnished fame of the British soldier, and gave him back his ancient place of pride as the best fighting material known to history. Other reasons — some wise, and some mistaken — 30 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE moved the British Cabinet to this new adventure. The presence of the French in Egypt was a per- petual menace to the interests of England in India. Bonaparte, now First Consul, and the victor of Marengo, was making desperate efforts to restore the French power in the Mediterranean, and if he succeeded, Egypt might well become permanently a French possession. In any case, if peace were proposed, it would be an enormous advantage to Bonaparte in the negotiations which must follow if the Tricolour still flew over Egypt. He would make that fact an argument for demanding concessions elsewhere, or even for making the permanent occu- pation of Egypt a condition of peace. It would neutralise that advantage to France if, when negotia- tions for peace began, a British force was at least contesting the possession of Egypt with the French. It is an incidental proof of the curious want of wisdom which so often marked the British con- duct of this war, that a year earlier Sir Sidney Smith had concluded — or rather had endorsed — at El Arish a treaty with Kleber, the French com- mander-in-chief, for the entire abandonment of Egypt. But Sidney Smith had no technical right to pledge Great Britain to any such treaty, and his act was promptly disavowed. The British Government, in a word, could have obtained in 1799, without firing a shot and without the ex- penditure of sixpence, the very advantage for which, WASTED EXPEDITIONS 3 I in 1 80 1, it had to pay the price of uncounted gold and the blood of many thousands of brave men; and that opportunity was thrown away ! Kleber had, by this time, fallen under the knife of an assassin, but his letters to the Directory, written in the mood of anger and despair kindled by the sudden departure of Bonaparte from Egypt, had been captured by the English. These com- munications naturally took their tint from Kleber's temper, rather than his judgment. They drew an absurdly gloomy picture of the French position. Everything, Kleber declared, was ruined. There was much debt and no gunpowder. The soldiers were either sick or helpless. Nothing was possible to the army but irretrievable disaster. How wrong-headed was Kleber's account of the French power in Egypt is proved by the fact that, immediately after writing it, Kleber himself was able to inflict two decisive defeats on the Mamelukes ; and on March 20 at Heliopolis — after the Convention of El Arish, that is, had been disavowed by the British Government — he won over the army of the Grand Vizier, 40,000 strong, a victory more brilliant, perhaps, than any Bonaparte himself won on Egyptian soil. The British Cabinet, however, took Kleber's wrath- tinted syllables for exact statistics. It was per- suaded that the French troops in Egypt numbered only 15,000 or 16,000, with little ammunition and less hope, many of them sick, and all of them dis- 32 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE contented. As a matter of fact, the French force in Egypt exceeded 32,000 men, abundantly equipped and in perfect fighting efficiency ; they were in unchallenged possession of the entire country, with all its fortresses and harbours. And against an army of this strength Abercromby was despatched with a force of not quite 15,000 men! But here, at last, British soldiers had, if not a fair field, yet a field on which their native valour had a fair opportunity of displaying itself, unfettered by the blunders of statesmen and the sloth of incompetent generals. The plan of the British Cabinet was, if not grand, at least grandiose. Sir Ralph Abercromby, with nearly 16,000 troops, was to sail from Minorca to the mouth of the Nile; a great Turkish army was to march from Syria, cross the desert, and attack the French from the east ; while an Indian force, under Sir David Baird, was to ascend the Red Sea, and march from Suez to Cairo. The plan, that is, took in three continents, and soldiers of all tints and nationalities. But combinations spread over so vast an area of land and sea, and which depended for their success on the punctuality of Turkish generals, and the capacity of the British transports of that period to run to time betwixt Bombay and Suez, were naturally exposed to many risks. The hope of Turkish help proved, after the fashion of such WASTED EXPEDITIONS 3$ hopes, the idlest of dreams. Baird's lumbering transports, storm-buffeted and sorely strained, did not appear in the Red Sea till the campaign was virtually decided. Abercromby's troops alone made their appearance off the Egyptian coast according to agreement. The plan of a convergence of armed forces upon the French in Egypt from three widely remote points — dusky Sepoys through the Red Sea, undrilled Turkish battalions from Asia Minor, and sober British infantry from the Mediterranean — broke down in two of its elements, as was inevitable, at the very outset. How hopelessly wrong was the estimate of the British Cabinet as to the strength of the French in Egypt may be judged from a single fact. That estimate gave 15,000 as the number of French troops in Egypt. After all the fighting of the campaign the number of French troops who capitulated at Cairo and Alexandria amounted to 24,180. VOL. 11. CHAPTER III THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT ON March 2, 1801, Abercromby's expedition dropped anchor in Aboukir Bay, the men-of- war riding on exactly the position the French ships had occupied in the battle of the Nile. The Foudroyant, indeed, actually chafed her cables against the sunken hull of the Orient, Brueys' ill- fated flagship, whose anchor she afterwards fished up. Counting transports and men-of-war, the fleet numbered 175 vessels, carrying 15,330 troops, as gallant a force as England ever sent forth to fight for her flag. The expedition had, in one sense, many dis- advantages. Its purpose was known. Major Mack- arras and Major Fletcher, Abercromby's engineers, were sent in advance to examine and report on the proposed landing-place, and fell into the enemy's hands while doing so, Mackarras being shot. The enemy knew, therefore, the exact spot where it was intended to land. Just as the British fleet was casting anchor, too, a frigate suddenly bore up, separated itself from the crowd of ships, 34 THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT 3 5 and made a dash into the harbour of Alexandria. It was a French frigate, that, two nights previously, had run by ill-chance into the midst of the British fleet. With great cleverness its captain put as British a look as possible on his ship, and kept coolly on with the convoy until able to make a safe dash into Alexandria, taking with him, of course, full details of the expedition. Egypt, again, was for the British practically an unknown country. The Admiralty had supplied the expedition with a solitary and very bad map of the country, and with much wholly misleading information about the strength of the French in it. But the spirit of the expedition was high. The men were eager to try their strength against the French. Edward Paget, then in command of the 28th, wrote to his father on August 7, " You may depend upon it that there is a certain devil in this army that will carry it through thick and thin. It is the first fair trial between Englishmen and Frenchmen, during the whole of this war, and at no former period of our history did John Bull ever hold his enemy cheaper." There was no loitering Duke of York, with a half-senile council of war, to paralyse the generalship. And Abercromby reckoned confi- dently — if unwisely — on the assistance of the 8000 troops from India under General Baird who were to land from the Red Sea and march across the desert to Cairo. 36 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE The wind blew fiercely till March 7, making land- ing impossible, but as night fell on that date, the sea and wind went down, and it was determined to dis- embark at once. The landing was a very brilliant and soldierly bit of work. Abercromby had seen the tumult and peril which attended the ill-arranged landing of the expedition in Holland on August 27, 1799, and had learnt his lesson, and the plan he adopted at Aboukir is yet the study and admiration of experts. The problem was to throw the troops ashore so that they would be instantly in fighting order, each regiment a unit, and each cluster of regiments an orderly brigade. The first line consisted of flat-bottomed boats, each boat holding fifty men, with an interval of fifty feet betwixt it and the next boat. Then came a line of ships' cutters, and one of towed launches. The second and third lines contained men of the same companies as those of the first line, and when the shore was reached these boats were to pull up in the fifty-feet intervals betwixt the boats in the first, so as to land simultaneously. Each boat was to drop a grapnel from its stern on nearing the beach, so as to warp off clear the moment the troops it carried had leaped ashore. The boats were grouped into divisions, each under a naval captain, and the lines at either flank were covered by gunboats. The soldiers had orders to sit down in the bottom of the boats, to observe absolute silence, and not to THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT 37 load till they landed. The effect of this arrangement was that 5000 men leaped on the beach at almost the same moment of time, and in companies, regiments, and brigades. They were instructed to fall into line just as they leaped ashore, and no soldier, or group of soldiers, thinking themselves out of place, were to close to either flank till ordered to do so by a senior officer. Some launches were fitted to carry field-pieces with artillerymen, so that they could run ashore in instant readiness for action. At two o'clock on the morning of the 8th, while the Egyptian skies above them were still gleaming with innumerable stars, the troops in each transport stepped down into the waiting boats. The transports lay at a considerable distance from the shore, and the boats pulled slowly in to lighter vessels, previously stationed as a rendezvous, at little more than gun- shot distance from the beach. Here the boats were drawn up in the order we have described. The men saw before them the sandy beach, commanded by low wind-blown ridges. On their ritrht there was a steep sandhill whose front was commanded by the guns of the castle of Aboukir. The beach was crescent-shaped, and on the crest of the sandhills above, at regular intervals, were patches of colour, showing where the French were posted in great strength to resist the landing. At eight o'clock the signal was given, and instantly the triple lines of boats, each carrying its cluster of & 38 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE silent soldiers, was in movement, the pace of each boat being regulated by that on the extreme right. The sea was perfectly calm, and the spectacle one of the most picturesque imaginable. The strip of shining sea across which, in such perfect order, the long ranks of boats were creeping resembled the smooth floor of an amphitheatre. Seaward the great fleet of 175 ships formed a sort of wall of masts, crowded with sailors watching the sight; on the land the curving sandhills, for a mile and a half, were crested with the waiting French. Presently from the sandhills, and from either flank, broke a hundred jets of white smoke. The French batteries had opened fire, and across sea and land rolled the thunder of their wrath. Sir Robert Wilson says that on the glassy sea the effect of the French fire was as though a furious hailstorm were sweeping over the shining floor of water; but the hailstones were bullets ! The packed soldiers, however, kept their places; the seamen pulled steadily on. One boat after another was struck and sunk, but the others pushed on without pause. A broken and irregular cheer ran down the line of moving boats, a cheer in which there was a note of anger and chal- lenge. The boats reached the shore almost simultane- ously. In a moment the men leaped out, and along a curving front of a mile and a half, with scarcely a moment's delay, there was a steadfast line of armed men, with skirmishers running eagerly forward. THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT 39 The very first man ashore is said to have been Colonel Brent Spencer, who commanded the 40th. As he leaped on the beach, a French soldier, accord- ing to the Regimental History, stepped from behind a hillock near, ran forward a few paces, and, lifting his musket, was about to shoot him. Spencer, how- ever, lifted his cane — he carried no more formidable weapon — shook it at the Frenchman, and cried, " Oh, you scoundrel ! " Spencer's coolness, and, perhaps, the sudden vision of 5000 men falling instantly into line of battle within a few paces of him, shook the Frenchman's nerve. He hesitated; then, without waiting to fire his musket, he turned and ran ! Moore, who commanded the right of the British line, led the 23rd and 28th and the flank companies of the 40th straight up the steep sandhill before them without firing a shot. Two French battalions in their road were broken into fragments by the vehemence of the British onfall, and four pieces of artillery were captured. Farther to the left, the 42nd and the 5 8th, under Brigadier Oakes, performed a similar feat with equal fire and daring. On the extreme left the Coldstreams, the 3rd Guards, and the 54th fell into somapconfusion. The boats carry- ing them ran into shoal water ; the men had to wade ashore, and were charged by the French cavalry before they could form. For a moment, on the yielding sand and in the shallow water, there was a confused and desperate struggle, horsemen smiting 40 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE with swords at broken infantry-men, defending them- selves with musket and bayonet. But, though they were comparatively raw troops opposed to war- hardened veterans, nothing could resist the British. The hills were carried along their whole extent, and the French driven back in confusion ; but in those thirty minutes of desperate fighting over 500 of the British forces were killed or wounded. It was a gallant exploit, and Nelson himself — no mean judge of feats of war — wrote of it to Sir Robert Wilson more than a year afterwards, " I have always said, and I do think, that the landing of the British army was the very finest act that even a British army could achieve." After the land- ing and the fight Paget writes to his father, " It is impossible for troops to have behaved better — indeed, I did not think it possible for troops to have con- ducted themselves so well. There was a degree of system and regularity displayed on the 13th far beyond belief, and a cool intrepidity that never was exceeded." Aboukir Bay, in a word, ought to have, on double grounds, a classic interest for every good Englishman. On that strip of sea and sand the British fleet and the British army, each in turn, per- formed a deed of memorable skill and daring. For three days following the landing the weather was stormy, and the business of disembarking stores, &c, difficult; but on March 12 the British troops commenced their advance westward towards THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT 4 1 Alexandria. Before tliein ran a spit of land, some twelve miles long and not more than a mile and a half broad, with the sea to the north and Lake Aboukir to the south. With a front so narrow, rich in capabilities of defence, and strongly held by an enemy of equal strength and burning with military pride, the task of forcing a path to Alex- andria was one of great difficulty. The boats of the British men-of-war, however, by this time, found their way into Lake Aboukir, and this was a happy circumstance for the British, as their left flank was thus covered. The British marched in columns, a screen of French horse falling back before them, till, on a range of low heights, barring almost the entire promontory, the French army was dis- covered. Abercromby encamped that night within a mile and a half of the enemy, and at six o'clock the following morning attacked fiercely. The French were full of a pride fed by many victories, and were very scornful of British soldiership. They did not wait for the British attack, but, with an impulse of pride, moved down from their strong position to meet it. The French were strong in cavalry, and the 26th Chasseurs-a-cheval rode with great fury on the 90th Light Infantry, under Colonel Hill, which formed the advance-guard of the centre British column. The 90th met the rush of fiery horsemen in line, and, according to the orthodox 42 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUKOPE traditions of war, ought to have been broken to fragments. Hill's Light Infantry, however, had exactly that same quality of cool and obstinate valour which made Colin Campbell's " thin red line " famous at Balaclava more than fifty years after- wards. The slender extended front of the 90th stood in the track of the galloping horsemen without quailing; the flame and smoke of musketry fire ran along its whole front. The French Chasseurs were gallant men, and they pushed their charge home almost to the very bayonets — some of their number even dying of bayonet wounds — but they could not shake or break the gallant 90th, and had to fall back with heavy loss. The British pushed steadily on. Abercromby's plan was to turn the enemy's right, and the sharpest fighting naturally fell to Cavan's brigade, with the 92nd Highlanders as its advance - guard, which formed the British left. Some French field-pieces smote the 92nd heavily with grape, while a French regiment of great fame, the 6 1 st demi-brigade, known as "The Invincibles," came forward at the quick- step to meet the 92nd with the bayonet. The Highlanders, however, proved too much for even the "Invincibles," who broke under the actual push of steel, and in their victorious rush the Highlanders captured two field-pieces. Moore, who commanded the British right wing, moved so as to keep in line with the left wing ; and the French THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT 43 right being thus driven back, a retreat began along their whole line until a range of heights, on which some heavy guns were planted, was reached. Abercromby, after a consultation with Hutchinson, his second in command, resolved to assault the new position. Hutchinson was to lead the three brigades in the second line against the French right ; Moore, with the reserve and with the Guards, at the same moment was to attack the French left. Hutchinson, on reaching the point he was to attack, found it was of unexpected strength, and, if carried, could not be held, as it was commanded by fortified heights beyond. He halted, therefore, and sent for new in- structions from Abercromby. During that long halt, and while Abercromby reconnoitred, the French were firing heavily, and there was much slaughter. " We had two captains and between thirty and forty rank and file knocked down without firing a shot or hearing a syllable uttered, the regiment standing in open column, with intervals that would have done credit to a Phoenix Park review." This is how Paget describes the part played by his regiment, the 28th, during that fatal pause when the English stood passively to be shot down by the French. "The army," says Sir Robert Wilson, " continued under the most terrible and destructive fire from the enemy's guns to which the troops were ever ex- posed. The work of death was never more quick, or greater opportunity afforded for destruction. The 44 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE French, no longer in danger, had only to load and fire. Aim was unnecessary; the bullets could not but do their office and plunge into the lines. For several hours did the English remain patiently suffering this exterminating fire, and never betrayed the least irresolution. If a word was heard, it con- tained only a wish to be led on to the assault." Abercromby finally abandoned his attack, but the British loss for the day was nearly 1300 men, and the greater part of it was incurred during that long and murderous halt within gunshot of the French batteries, while Abercromby and Hutchinson were con- sidering whether they should attack. Both generals, it may be added, were so extremely short-sighted as to be semi-blind, and to that physical defect in their leaders the chief loss of the British was due. The loss of the French was only 700. Abercromby now resolved to wait till his heavy guns could be landed before attacking Alexandria, while General Menou, with 6000 troops, joined the force defending that city, and announced his inten- tion of driving the British to their ships. A week's pause intervened, each side being busy strengthening its position and preparing for a decisive struggle. Abercromby, however, never a sanguine general, began to take an anxious view of his prospects. He had lost 2000 gallant troops since his landing; the French were enormously superior in artillery and cavalry ; there was no hope of Turkish assistance, and THE BRITISH LANDING IN EGYPT 45 no word of Baird's arrival from India. Abercroinby was personally as brave as the Cid, but he was an old man, and he was, unfortunately, only too familiar with expeditions which ended in retreat. On the night of March 20, in a talk with Moore, the most trusted of his lieutenants, Abercromby ex- plained the decision he had reached. As soon as his heavy guns were up he would make a resolute attack on the French position, and if it failed, they must take to their ships. What Abercromby, gallant soldier as he was, did not quite realise, was the fighting quality of his own troops. Before noon the very next day the great battle was fought, and the French force in Egypt decisively shattered ; though as for Aber- cromby himself, it was to be his last fight. The British army stretched from the sea to Lake Maadieh, a front of a mile and a half. On the right were some extensive ruins, called by the French Le Camp des Romains, overlooking the beach, and somewhat in advance of the British front. These were held by the 58th. A redoubt to the left of the ruins, and open to the rear, was held by the 28th. Next came a shallow valley, some 300 yards broad, in which was placed the British cavalry. Then came a great sandhill, on which stood the Guards, forming the British centre. The left was held by Craddock and Cavan, with part of the latter's brigade thrown back so as to face the shore of Lake Mareotis. CHAPTER IV ALEXANDRIA: AND AFTERWARDS THE night of March 20 passed quietly. Moore, who was general officer for the day, had just given the usual order for the pickets to fall back at daybreak. It was, as afterwards in the Peninsula, a standing order that every regiment should be formed at its post an hour before daybreak, and the lines were silently mustering in the pitch darkness in obedience to that plan, when far to the British left rose the sharp crackle of musketry. Moore was riding off to ascertain its cause, when, deep and sudden, there came the blast of rolling volleys on the extreme British right. Moore's soldierly brain instantly grasped the position. " That is the true attack," he said, and turning round his horse, rode with speed to where, high in the blackness, stood the great ruins held by the 58th and the 28th, all ringed now with darting musketry fire. Menou had taken the initiative and was attacking. The French plan of attack was conceived with great skill, and carried out with fire and resolu- tion. The forces on both sides were of about 46 ALEXANDRIA I AND AFTERWARDS 47 equal strength — about 12,000 fighting men. Menou divided his force into three columns. The left column, under General Lanusse, a daring and ener- getic soldier, consisted of 3000 picked troops; the centre was led by General Rampon; the right col- umn was under General Regnier. An hour before dawn, while night still lay black and almost star- less on the landscape, a body of dragoons and a detachment of the dromedary corps were to make a dash upon a redoubt which formed the extreme left of the British line. The three main columns of attack had meanwhile crept silently, and under cover of the darkness, within striking reach of the British front. Directly the crackle of musketry awoke at the redoubt on the extreme British left, Lanusse was to take his column forward at the run, pierce through the valley to the left of the Roman camp, attack that position both in front and rear, carry it, then sweep sharply round to the rear of the ridge held by the Guards, which formed the British centre. The French attack being delivered en echelon — the three columns coming up, that is, not simultaneously, but one after the other — it was calculated that Lanusse would be storming in a tempest of musketry fire past the rear of the position held by the Guards just when Rampon was assailing it in front ; and that process would be repeated on the English left as Regnier flung himself on it. 48 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE The battle of Alexandria, as Menou planned it, was to be, in a word, the story of the Nile as Nelson fought it, translated into the terms of a land battle. Granted that Lanusse could pierce the British right and swing sharply round to the left, all the remaining positions in the British line would be crushed in succession by an attack on both front and rear, and the entire British army would be whirled, a tumultuous and wrecked mass, into the waters of Lake Maadieh. Lanusse, to do him justice, was exactly the man to carry out the first step in such a scheme of battle. He led his column swiftly and with great resolution against the redoubt held by the 28th. The left wing of the 42nd Highlanders, under Major Stirling, was in the open ground to the left of the redoubt, its right wing, under Colonel Stewart, was some 200 yards in the rear. The 28th held the redoubt itself stubbornly, but so black was the darkness — night and mist and smoke together blotting everything out — that as Moore rode up all he could see was the two lines of pointed and darting flames, that now seemed almost to touch and the next moment fell back from each other, while the air was full of the roar of musketry and the sound of the fiercely-beaten French drums. Moore's horse was shot; Paget, Avho commanded the 28th, fell severely wounded. The volleys of the 58th in the Roman camp, by this time roll- M ^_ QJ O O i) 5 *& CQ -2 J3 li ^ - - W CO iis S o 3 V « o •x I*- 3. ■» £ MS it s°» ^ « c; to 6 m 6 VOL. II. D $Q HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE ing fiercely, deepened the tumult of sound. The French columns had pushed forward with audacious courage. One column, indeed, consisting of what was called " The Invincible Legion " — a title which the fighting of that morning was to irretrievably ruin — was actually marching, unseen, betwixt the two wings of the 42nd to attack the flank of the ruins held by the 58th. The sand made the tread of their feet as they marched soundless; even the trundling of a six-pounder gun they had with them was unheard. But a quick-eyed private in the right wing of the 42nd caught a glimpse of a mass of black figures defiling, as silently as ghosts, across their front. He eagerly drew his captain's attention to it, and begged that they might charge at once. The officer was incredulous, but running forward a few steps, found that his alert private was correct. Moore himself promptly wheeled round the rear rank of the left wing, and from both faces the 42nd poured their steady volleys into the French, the Highlanders thus being engaged at the same moment on both rear and front. Still push- ing recklessly forward, the French column swept past the rear of the redoubt held by the 28th. That gallant regiment was at that moment en- gaged in repelling a fierce attack on the front of the redoubt, but its rear-rank men, too, promptly swung round and opened fire on the column pass- ing behind them. Two British regiments were thus ALEXANDRIA : AND AFTERWARDS 5 I engaged at the same moment on two faces. The 58th and the 40th, which held the ruins, met the head of the French column as it approached with a crushing fire, and Moore, who had run to the right wing of the 42nd, wheeled it round, and poured close and deadly volleys on the rear of the French. "The Invincible Legion," in brief, found itself in a death-trap. Smitten with fire on three faces at once, it was simply destroyed. The sur- vivors, reduced to about 200, surrendered, and their standard, inscribed with, the names of a score of Italian victories, was yielded to Major Stirling of the 42nd. Moore was leading back the wing of the 42nd to its position, when up the shallow valley, 300 yards wide, which ran betwixt the British right and centre, was heard the tumult of galloping hoofs. It was the French cavalry, 1000 strong, coming on at full speed. The Highlanders were caught, and in a moment the furiously riding horsemen had swept through them and over them. But a High- land regiment when broken up into units is still a dangerous thing. Each unit becomes a wrathful and desperately fighting man, who persists in thrust- ing and shooting when, according to the recognised military usage in such a case, he ought to be running away! "Though broken," says Bunbury, " the Highlanders, as they regained their legs, plied their muskets individually, and so coolly that they struck down many men and horses." The High- 5 2 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE landers and the French cavalry were so intermixed that the flank companies of the 40th were, for some minutes, unable to fire on the contending mass. The French horsemen, however, quickly disen- tangled themselves, and rode fiercely on to the rear of the 28th. That regiment in turn promptly faced round its rear rank and met the torrent of charging cavalry with a fire so steadfast that it swerved, and broke, in a sort of human spray, away to the flank. For that exploit the men of the 28th still wear the number of their regiment on the back as well as the front of their caps. The rush of the desperately charging French horsemen was finally arrested by a brigade which General Stewart brought up from the second line. The attack on the ruins and the redoubt was still pushed with sullen fury, but on both sides ammuni- tion was failing, and the French and the 28th actually fought with stones when the last bullets in their pouches had been fired. Nor were those primitive weapons harmless, a sergeant of the 28th being killed by a stone thrown from the hand of a furious Frenchman. The grenadiers of the 40th at last leaped out with the bayonet and drove off the stubborn enemy. The French plan of piercing through the British right had thus failed, and with that failure their whole scheme of battle went to pieces. Rampon, with the central French column, attacked the front of the position hold by the Guards in vain; a ALEXANDRIA: AND AFTERWARDS 53 second attempt to turn their left flank was defeated with even greater slaughter. The right column of the French, under Regnier, was to advance only when the success of the attack led by Lanusse was assured, and, as it never reached success, Regnier did not move. The battle began at four o'clock, by nine o'clock it was ended. Menou's plan of attack was able ; it was carried into execution with sn-eat fire and courage — a courage which was not without a certain flavour of con- tempt for their enemies on the part of the French. The French were veterans, to whom victory was a habit; they knew the ground; they were splendidly led. And yet they failed ! The British line was unpierceable. Some of the British regiments were assailed on three sides at once, yet their formation was never shaken. The Highlanders caught in line by a torrent of galloping horsemen and shattered, yet somehow survived that process, and emerged from the tumult, no doubt, in a high degree of Celtic anger, but with fighting quality undestroyed. These "raw" British troops, in a word, had met the veterans of France in a fair light and in equal strength, and had beaten them ! The moral effect of the battle was immense. It shattered the almost magic charm which seemed to rest on the French standards. It awoke afresh the military spirit of England. It showed that the blood of the men who triumphed at Crecy and at Agincourt flowed still in British veins. That spectacle of the stubborn regi- 54 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE ments at Alexandria, fighting with equal coolness on both faces at once, created a new tradition for British soldiers everywhere. Paget, who commanded the 28th, became its colonel at the tender age of eighteen ; he was not twenty-six when he commanded that regiment in the wild night fight at Alexandria. Paget came of a fighting family. His eldest brother commanded Moore's cavalry in their retreat to Corunna, and Wellington's cavalry at Waterloo, and in both offices won fame for himself. Two of Paget's brothers were gallant sailors; yet another was a hard-fighting major of hussars, and Paget himself was very young to command a regi- ment which, like the 28th at Alexandria, was furi- ously attacked in the darkness on two fronts at once. But no war-seasoned veteran could have shown greater coolness and resource than this very juvenile colonel. His order — cool, ringing, prompt — " Eear rank 28th. Right about ! Fire ! " — not merely saved the 28th, it added a new and kindling tradi- tion to British military history. If the 28th still carry, as we have seen, the number of their regiment on the back as well as the front of their head-dress, they owe that unique distinction to the coolness and resource of their youthful colonel at Alexandria. The losses on both sides were heavy, that of the French being not less than 3000 men, including 900 prisoners, while the British killed and wounded reached nearly 1500. But not the least loss to the British was that of Abercromby himself. Danger ALEXANDRIA : AND AFTERWARDS 5 5 always drew Abercromby like a magnet. Wherever the fight was closest and most bloody, he was sure to be found, blinking with his bat-like shortness of vision on gleaming swords and flashing muskets, with a composed sort of philosophy. All the members of his staff were in a benevolent con- spiracy to keep their general out of peril, usually with very imperfect success. In the darkness of that wild struggle at Alexandria, he had ridden to the right of his army, where the fight was fiercest, and when the French cavalry broke through the 42nd Highlanders, Abercromby was caught in the rush of the charging horsemen. Moore had previ- ously caught a glimpse of Abercromby's venerable figure through the gloom, right in the track of the charging cavalry, and by gesture and voice had tried to rescue him, but in vain. In a moment the furious horsemen were round the British general. One Frenchman, who, from the tassel dangling from his sword-hilt, seemed to be an officer, rode straight at Abercromby with lifted sword, and smote him on the breast. He was so close that the blow was ineffective. Abercromby was weaponless, but as his horse and that of the Frenchman jostled together, he caught his enemy's uplifted wrist and wrested the sword from his grasp, and the next moment a private of the 42nd thrust his bayonet into the Frenchman, who fell, leaving his sword in Aber- cromby's hand. The tumult of horsemen in another moment had $6 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE swept past in the darkness, and Abercromby rode composedly to the redoubt held by the Guards, dismounted, climbed to one of the guns, whence he could command a view of the field in the now fast- kindling dawn. In answer to some inquiries he complained of the contusion in his breast, but of nothing else, and until ten o'clock was standing or walking about, giving orders to suit the changing fortunes of the fight. Yet for all these hours Aber- cromby was suffering from a mortal wound ! A bullet had pierced his thigh, the ball lodging in the bone so deeply that it could not be extracted. The hardy old general at last confessed to being faint, and sat down on the ground, leaning his back against a parapet of the redoubt. A surgeon was brought to examine his wound; it was deter- mined to carry him to the flagship; he was lifted upon a litter, and some one took a blanket from a soldier, and put it under the general's head as a pillow. " What are you putting under my head ? " asked Abercromby, and the reply was, " Only a soldier's blanket." " Only a soldier's blanket ! " said the general ; " it means a great deal to the soldier. Send me the name of the soldier to whom it belongs, that it may be returned to him." And in the very faintness of his dying hour Abercromby reminded his attendants to send back that soldier's blanket ! Abercromby can hardly be reckoned a great com- mander, but he was a soldier of a fine type, and one in which the British army is fortunately rich — high- ■ ipllll .. .■".'• ; "<■ ■ . .".-.' . • "■';■ . .'-v. t!P*? ?}$£& > •ki-^5 M Ms B8Wjjj{ESjffiy" , > m V.- V* LORD HUTCHINSON After an engraving hy W. NlCHOLLS ALEXANDRIA: AND AFTERWARDS 5 7 minded, loyal, cool, rich in saving common-sense, and with an infinite capacity for taking pains. Abercromby had probably never read Wordsworth, but Wordsworth's noble lines on " duty," that " stern lawgiver," whose countenance yet wears " the godhead's most benignant grace," admirably express the keynote of Abercromby's life. There was not an ignoble fibre in the old Scottish soldier's char- acter. "As he looked out from under his thick shaggy eyebrows," says one who knew him well, " he gave one the idea of a very good-natured lion." There was something lion-like in Abercromby's character, and that it was plentifully flavoured with humanity that story of the soldier's blanket shows. Abercromby's death was a genuine disaster to the British army. It seemed to be left leaderless. The next in command, General Hutchinson, was almost unknown to the army, and what little was known about him aroused dislike. It would be difficult to imagine a less soldierly figure than that of Aber- cromby's successor. "Harsh features, jaundiced by ill-health, extreme short - sightedness, a stooping body, a slouching gait, an utterly neglected dress " — this is the portrait of Hutchinson drawn by Bunbury, who served under him. The new commander, too, had other unhappy qualities. He was idle, dreamy, shy, with the clumsy manners that are begotten of shyness, and with the bitter temper bred of a bad digestion. But events were to show that there were at least some of the qualities of a great soldier in 58 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE Hutchinson. Abercromby — no mean judge of men — had specially asked that he might be his second in command, and in the campaign which folloAved Alexandria, and which ended in the entire overthrow of the French, Hutchinson showed a clearness of brain and a capacity for firm resolve which entitled him to high rank as a soldier. Hutchinson's first step was to isolate Alexandria, and he effected this with great adroitness by cutting the embankment of the canal and letting the sea rush into Lake Mareotis. Four cuts were made in the wall of the canal ; and, just as evening fell on April 13, the first ripple of the waters of the Mediter- ranean ran through one of these cuts into the long dry bed of the ancient lake. There was a fall of six feet from the Mediterranean level to the floor of Lake Mareotis, and a few blows of the pick thus, in effect, created a small sea, with an area of more than 1200 square miles, upon which the British gunboats could sail, and which practically cut off Alexandria with its garrison from the rest of the French forces in Egypt. Rosetta fell before the British advance, and Hutchinson's gunboats were now able to ascend the Nile. General Eyre Coote, with 6000 troops, was left to blockade Menou in Alexandria, while Hutchinson himself, with less than 5000 men, under- took to fight his way up the Nile to Cairo ; his force, though not his fighting strength, being increased by the arrival of 4000 Turkish troops under the com- ALEXANDRIA : AND AFTERWARDS $9 mand of the Capitan Pacha. Some 4500 good French troops, under General Legrange, held Rahmanieh, the junction of the Alexandria Canal and the Nile, and it was expected that a point so vital would be held with great stubbornness. But the shadow of the defeat at Alexandria was upon the French, and they fell back almost without resistance before Hutchinson's approach. But the British force seemed utterly inadequate for the desperate task of marching on Cairo, held by a force more numerous than itself, and which would be enormously strengthened by the troops under Legrange. The season was hot. There was plague in Cairo. The British army had no siege guns. The Turkish army was little better than a camp of nomads, and there was no sign yet of Sir David Baird's appearance from India. But Hutchinson, with high courage, resolved to push on, and his resolve was the signal for what was well-nigh a mutiny in the British camp. Their moody and solitary general was neither loved nor understood by the British officers, and a written plan was sub- mitted to both Moore and Coote in turn for de- priving Hutchinson of the command ! Both those fine officers were loyal, Hutchinson's strength of will asserted itself, and on May 1 1 the British columns, in somewhat sulky mood — as far as their officers, at least, were concerned — began their march southward. The very next morning came the news that a single 60 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE ship, bringing two companies of the 86th, had arrived at Suez from India, and also that General Belliard, in command at Cairo, was marching out in force to scatter the Turkish auxiliaries. Hutchinson, however, pushed steadily on, while a fierce sirocco scorched his panting troops as with the blast of a furnace. On the 16th a gleam of good fortune befell the British. The Arab scouts reported that a strong French convoy, with supplies, was marching towards Cairo. It consisted of over 700 camels, guarded by 600 French veterans. General Doyle, with 250 dragoons and some infantry, was at once despatched to attack the convoy, and his dragoons, outriding the infantry, found the convoy massed together in fighting order, and of quite un- expected strength. Doyle hesitated to attack with his cavalry only, and Sir Kobert Wilson asked per- mission to ride up to the French ranks with a flag of truce and demand their surrender. It was a stroke of almost impish audacity, and yet it succeeded ! Wilson, with some difficulty, borrowed a reasonably white pocket handkerchief, tied it to his sword blade, and galloped up to the French line. Its commander rode out a few paces to meet him, and Wilson, in a voice loud enough for the French soldiers to hear, demanded the surrender of the de- tachment on condition of being allowed to return to France. The French commander sternly refused the offer and bade Wilson retire. ALEXANDRIA : AND AFTERWARDS 6 1 Wilson rode slowly away ; but his words, " revenir en France," had fallen on eager ears and acted like a charm. A tumult arose in the French ranks, and presently a French aide-de-camp was galloping in Wilson's tracks to beg him to return. As a result the whole detachment surrendered. Menou lost nearly 600 of his best troops without a shot being fired ! The truth is, the French were tired of Egypt : they were eager to see the shores of la belle France again, and on any terms. The combats round Alexandria, too, were both a surprise and a dis- couragement to them. The French prisoners frankly told then British captors they had never before ex- perienced such hard fighting. They believed the British, moreover, to be stronger than they really were; and if capitulation meant a safe and prompt return to France, then the French felt there was much to be said in favour of that process. And that is a mood — especially in the French character — not favourable to great deeds. Hutchinson's Turkish auxiliaries had moved con- siderably ahead of the slow-footed British columns, and on May 1 5 they were within a day's march of Cairo. General Belliard believed he saw his oppor- tunity, and with 4500 infantry, 1000 cavahy, and 24 guns, he dashed out upon the Turks, resolved to add one more to the shining roll of French victories in Egypt. But the Turks had some British officers with them, and already that curious faculty for 62 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE the leadership of men of other races, which all history shows the British possess, had made itself felt. The Turks fought with a spirit and a skill they had never before manifested ; and, after a combat of several hours, Belliard fell back, sorely disconcerted, on Cairo — the first time French troops in the open had failed to overthrow Turks. Hutchinson, it is true, had yet some cause for anxiety. He had already sent iooo of his soldiers down the Nile to the hospitals ; there were rumours that Admiral Gantheaume, with a strong squadron, was on his way to the relief of Alexandria ; no tidings had come of Baird's arrival. But the British general, with his scanty handful of troops, resolutely set himself to besiege Cairo — he would besiege 13,000 men, that is, with 4000; — a feat of military audacity almost without precedent, and one which marks the new temper which had crept into British soldiership. But Belliard had no spirit to sustain a siege, and on the morning of June 22 he sent to ask terms. These were quickly settled. The French were to march, under British escort, with all their arms and baggage, to Rosetta, and thence be conveyed, in British transports, to France. Thus on July 10 there started down the left bank of the Nile the most singular procession, perhaps, ever witnessed. It consisted of 8000 French soldiers, completely equipped, with field -pieces splendidly horsed, and cavalry well mounted, escorted by 3500 ALEXANDRIA : AND AFTERWARDS 63 British, with some Turkish auxiliaries. A huge flotilla on the Nile itself carried the French sick and women, with civilians and baggage. And for 200 miles that strange procession crept cheerfully along, English and French mingling by each other's camp-fires at night with the utmost good temper. That procession of surrendered French battalions began at Embabah, the very scene of Napoleon's victory of the Pyramids, won only three years be- fore. Napoleon then, it will be remembered, in a memorable speech, invited his soldiers to consider that from the summit of those Pyramids forty cen- turies contemplated them. And now those same Pyramids looked down on the astonishing spectacle of those identical veterans marching as prisoners of war under an escort of Scotch regiments, whose skirling pipes were pouring out the strains of " Highland Laddie ! " Nothing could exceed the meekness with which these war-famous veterans embarked in the English boats to be transported back to France as beaten troops. One boat, flying a black flag, headed the huge convoy. It carried the embalmed body of the assassinated Kleber. On August 7 a squadron of British transports took on board the entire army that had surrendered at Cairo, which, with non-combatants, amounted to 1 3,672, and sailed with it for French ports. Under the articles of capitulation at Cairo, General Menou and the French troops in Alexandria were 64 HOW ENGLAND SAVED EUEOPE entitled to the same terms; but Menou, in great wrath, proclaimed that he would hold Alexandria to his very last cartridge; and Hutchinson, now marching down the Nile to rejoin Coote, had the task of the reduction of Alexandria before him. Reinforcements were by this time flowing in to the British. Eight battalions of infantry had arrived from England, and Baird, with 5000 troops from India, had made his appearance on the Upper Nile. The story of Baird's expedition is itself a romance. His force consisted of the 10th, 80th, 86th, and 88th regiments, with three battalions of volunteer Sepoys, and large drafts of artillery-men. These were to be joined on their passage by the 61st and a troop of the 8th Light Dragoons from the Cape of Good Hope. Wellesley was to have been Baird's second in command, but an attack of inter- mittent fever prevented him joining the expedition. It is curious to remember that the Susanna, the transport in which he was to have sailed, was lost on the voyage. But for that happy touch of fever Wellesley might have found a nameless and wander- ing grave somewhere in the Indian Ocean ; and the greatest of English soldiers would thus have disap- peared, with his career unfulfilled, from history ! The force was to land at Suez, march across the desert, and join hands with Abercromby before Alexandria. But persistent storms buffeted Baird's lumbering transports. They were scattered; not a few .ships SIR DAVID BAIRD from an engraving after the drawing by A. J. Oliver, A.R.A. ..' ALEXANDRIA: AND AFTERWARDS 65 gave up the struggle, and turned tlieir stems towards India again. In the reef-sown and almost mcharted waters of the Ked Sea the fleet was still more hopelessly broken up, and its admiral reached Suez alone with his flag-ship. His com- modore, Sir Home Popham, succeeded in gathering up a cluster of the scattered transports, and with them dropped anchor in the Bay of Cosseir on r