Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

108 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTand then more fiercely at dawn. “The battle continued. The ships ran up theirsails and distanced themselves.” The battle lasted all day. He said that the twofleets seemed evenly matched, and at some points it appeared to him that thetricolor would wave victorious at the end of the day.On the third of August, no longer able to discern the fleets, he awaitednews impatiently. Gen. Jacques Menou bribed some Bedouin to go to Abuqir,where the French fleet had been at anchor, to bring back information. At 2 P.M.a dispatch boat arrived. Its sailors had been watching the battle from a distance,but then had had to make for the mouth of the Nile, afraid they were beingpursued by the enemy. The crew, fearing that their vessel was displacing toomuch water for the relatively shallow river, dumped their cannon overboard.As it approached the riverbank at Rosetta, a crowd of Frenchmen gathered.The captain disembarked and reported “news too happy to allow for anydoubting of his certitude.”For most of 17 Thermidor, there was no further information on the outcomeof the battle. At length a letter arrived from Kléber in Alexandria forMenou. Its contents were kept secret. “They were afraid to share it. Therefore,it was bad.” Persons in the circle of the general learned the truth, that “our fleetno longer existed, and that the sunken vessels were the Orient and theArthémise.” Further news was carried to Rosetta by a crowd of runaway sailors,he said. “The sadness, the despair was all the greater because the joy had been solively.” The British had captured the ship with the mailbags, and so suddenlypossessed a treasure trove of intelligence on all French operations in Egypt, aswell as the opportunity to amuse themselves by going through the private correspondenceof the French soldiers, including that of Bonaparte. They quicklyhad the correspondence published. 2 Bonaparte, already depressed at the news ofJosephine’s infidelity, now had to stand by and watch it broadcast to the worldby his worst enemies.Adm. Horatio Nelson had come back to Alexandria with his fleet and had,spying the French sails, rushed to the attack in the late evening, risking a nightbattle. 3 The menace of unknown shoals and of firing blind at one’s own shipsusually dissuaded naval commanders from fighting in the dark, but the confidentNelson appears not to have given the matter a second thought. The twofleets were almost evenly matched, with thirteen ships of the line each, and over900 guns actually mounted on each side (not all of the 1,026 French guns hadactually been mounted). Although the French ships may have been lighter andmore maneuverable, and they carried slightly heavier cannon, neither provedhelpful to them. They fought at anchor, and their heavier cannon balls took the