aimed volleys from his advancing squares panicked the Turks, who had
seen what just 2,ooo Frenchmen could do and were terrified at the
thought of being caught between the two armies. The retreat became a
rout, and soon the threat from the Army of Damascus was no more.
Amazingly, Kleber's army, which had fought all day, had lost just two
killed and sixty wounded in a ten-hour battle with 25,000 horsemen.
If everything had gone right against the Army of Damascus, at Acre
everything was still going wrong. When, on 1 April, the French sappers
exploded a large mine under the 'Tower of the Damned' guarding the
city, against all predictions it failed to crack the masonry and provide the
breach needed. In a frontal assault Napoleon narrowly escaped death
from an exploding shell through the quick action of his personal
bodyguard, the Guides. There was a shortage of food and essential
materiel, also of ammunition and cannonballs. Even when the rest of the
siege artillery arrived safely at Jaffa and Napoleon was able to bring big
guns to bear on Acre, he still could not take the city. Then plague broke
out again, with 270 new cases by the end of April.
On his return from Mount Tabor Napoleon ordered a series of
desperate frontal assaults. For the first ten days of May the tide of battle
ebbed and flowed with fury. On 8 May Lannes actually breached the
defences and got inside the fort, sustaining serious wounds in the process,
only to find himself confronted with a second line of defence, even more
formidable. One of his generals -it may have been the irrepressible Junot
- remarked that Turks were inside and Europeans outside yet they were
attacking Turkish-style a fortress defended European-style. Reluctantly
Napoleon concluded that the citadel, continually reinforced by sea and
with fresh forces pouring in daily from Rhodes, could never be taken. He
had no option but to raise the siege; sixty-three days of investment and
eight costly all-out attacks had all been for nothing.
This was the first serious setback in Bonaparte's military career. In the
three months' fighting so far the French had lost 4,500 casualties
(including 2,000 dead) from an army of IJ,OOO. Four generals had
perished outside Acre: Bon, Caffarelli, Dommartin and Rambaud.
Napoleon failed at Acre partly through bad luck and partly through
miscalculation. First he lost half his 24-pounders to the Royal Navy, then
he failed to equip his other guns adequately: he had allowed only 200
rounds per 24-pounder and 300 shells per mortar, when he needed twice
the quantity of shells and five times the rounds. Most of all, he had
calculated that Acre would surrender without a fight, which of course it
would have done had he not been delayed at E1 Arish and Jaffa.
Moreover, if the usually reliable Franc;ois Bernoyer is to be believed,