At Aboukir and Acre

At Aboukir and Acre, by George
Alfred Henty

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Title: At Aboukir and Acre A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt
Author: George Alfred Henty
Release Date: August 2, 2007 [EBook #22224]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ABOUKIR AND ACRE ***

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[Illustration: "WELL, MY LAD, WHO ARE YOU?"

Page 124]

At Aboukir and Acre
A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt
BY
G. A. HENTY
Author of "The Dash for Khartoum" "By Right of Conquest" "In Greek
Waters" "St. Bartholomew's Eve" &c.
Illustrated
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED LONDON AND GLASGOW
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED 50 Old Bailey, LONDON 17 Stanhope
Street, GLASGOW
BLACKIE & SON (INDIA) LIMITED Warwick House, Fort Street,
BOMBAY
BLACKIE & SON (CANADA) LIMITED 1118 Bay Street,
TORONTO
Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Limited, Glasgow

PREFACE
With the general knowledge of geography now possessed we may well
wonder at the wild notion entertained both by Bonaparte and the
French authorities that it would be possible, after conquering Egypt, to
march an army through Syria, Persia, and the wild countries of the
northern borders of India, and to drive the British altogether from that
country. The march, even if unopposed, would have been a stupendous

one, and the warlike chiefs of Northern India, who, as yet, were not
even threatened by a British advance, would have united against an
invading army from the north, and would, had it not been of prodigious
strength, have annihilated it. The French had enormously exaggerated
the power of Tippoo Sahib, with whom they had opened negotiations,
and even had their fantastic designs succeeded, it is certain that the
Tiger of Mysore would, in a very short time, have felt as deep a hatred
for them as he did for the British.
But even had such a march been possible, the extreme danger in which
an army landed in Egypt would be placed of being cut off, by the
superior strength of the British navy, from all communication with
France, should alone have deterred them from so wild a project. The
fate of the campaign was indeed decided when the first gun was fired in
the Bay of Aboukir, and the destruction of the French fleet sealed the
fate of Napoleon's army. The noble defence of Acre by Sir Sidney
Smith was the final blow to Napoleon's projects, and from that moment
it was but a question of time when the French army would be forced to
lay down its arms, and be conveyed, in British transports, back to
France. The credit of the signal failure of the enterprise must be divided
between Nelson, Sir Sidney Smith, and Sir Ralph Abercrombie.

CONTENTS
CHAP. Page
I. MAKING A FRIEND 11
II. A BEDOUIN TRIBE 31
III. LEFT BEHIND 49
IV. THE BATTLE OF THE PYRAMIDS 66
V. A STREET ATTACK 86
VI. THE RISING IN CAIRO 105

VII. SAVED 122
VIII. AN EGYPTIAN TOMB 142
IX. SIR SIDNEY SMITH 162
X. A SEA-FIGHT 182
XI. ACRE 199
XII. A DESPERATE SIEGE 217
XIII. AN INDEPENDENT COMMAND 234
XIV. A PIRATE HOLD 251
XV. CRUISING 270
XVI. A VISIT HOME 287
XVII. ABERCROMBIE'S EXPEDITION 304
XVIII. THE BATTLE OF ALEXANDRIA 322
XIX. QUIET AND REST 340

ILLUSTRATIONS.
Facing Page
"WELL, MY LAD, WHO ARE YOU?" Frontispiece
ALI AND AYALA APPEARED 144
EDGAR HITS OUT 184
WITH A TREMENDOUS CHEER, FLUNG THEMSELVES UPON
THE PIRATES 256

GIVING A YELL OF DERISION AND DEFIANCE 328
* * * * *
Plan of the Battle of the Nile 84
Plan of the Siege of St. Jean D'Acre 209
Plan of the Battle of Alexandria 329

AT ABOUKIR AND ACRE
CHAPTER I.
MAKING A FRIEND.
Two lads were standing in one of the bastions of a fort looking over the
sea. There were neither guards nor sentinels there. The guns stood on
their carriages, looking clean and ready for action, but this was not the
result of care and attention, but simply because in so dry a climate iron
rusts but little. A close examination would have shown that the wooden
carriages on which they stood were so cracked and warped by heat that
they would have fallen to pieces at the first discharge of the guns they
upheld. Piles of