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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[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 cannon-balls stood between the guns, half-covered with the drifting sand, which formed slopes half-way up the walls of the range of barracks behind, and filled up the rooms on the lower floor. Behind rose the city of Alexandria, with its minarets and mosques, its palaces and its low mud-built huts. Seaward lay a fleet of noble ships with their long lines of port-holes, their