‘It’s no good. They’re getting cut to pieces. Sound the recall.’

The moment the notes from the bugles cut across the battlefield the French troops turned and ran for their lives, pursued all the way back to their trenches by musket fire. At the same time Napoleon ordered the guns on his left flank to be abandoned. As the crews hurried out of range the British sailors methodically knocked out one battery after another until they ran out of targets, and it seemed as if stillness and quiet returned to the scene, until the combatants’ ears recovered from the numbing effects of the previous din and could pick up the thin cries and shrieks of the wounded and dying men still out on the battlefield.

‘What now, sir?’ Berthier asked quietly as he surveyed the wrecked batteries and the bodies scattered before the walls of Acre.

Napoleon shrugged. ‘Now we have to try something else. We’ll attempt another assault when the sappers have mined that bastion.’

It took another five days for the tunnel to be dug under the foundations of the bastion.The engineers packed the small space with barrels of gunpowder, laid a fuse and withdrew from the tunnel. Once again the approach trenches were filled with assault troops as they waited for the moment to attack. When all was ready, the chief engineer lit the fuse and fell back as it sputtered brightly into the darkness of the tunnel. Every man in the French army watched in tense silence, necks and shoulders strained as they braced themselves against the blast.When it came there was a sheet of flame from the end of the tunnel and the ground at the base of the bastion blew up into the air.A shower of rock, stones, soil and dust shrouded the scene. Napoleon felt the tremor pass through the ground under his feet and then the air was filled with the roar of the detonation.

At once, every man on the staff and the assembled senior officers strained to pick out the detail through the slowly clearing pall of dust. Then a puff of wind from the sea cleared the view and Napoleon’s heart sank. The only sign of damage was the collapse of a stretch of the battlements and a small crack that ran only halfway up the wall.There was nothing for it but to call off the attack, and the men trudged back from the approach trenches to their tents in the camp.

The field guns resumed their bombardment of the wall, with the same dispiriting lack of effect, day after day, until Berthier brought it to Napoleon’s attention that their stock of ammunition was running dangerously low.The next day the army headquarters issued a proclamation offering a bounty on any enemy cannon balls that could be retrieved from the ground in front of the walls. Those men who still had enough spirit of adventure amused themselves with daring sprints from their trenches to grab the nearest ball and then hurry back to safety before the Turks could respond with a fusillade of musket fire.A few did not make it, but the steady flow of recovered shot went some way towards supplementing the dwindling supplies in the army’s stores.

The replacement siege guns were landed at Haifa in the middle of April and hauled overland to the siege lines. New, better protected, batteries were constructed on the right flank, and sweating crews manoeuvred the heavy guns into position and brought up the powder and shot ready for the renewed attack on the bastion. They opened fire on the last day of April and Napoleon noted with satisfaction that they were immediately having an effect. Each heavy ball smashed into the city’s defences, dislodging a small fall of masonry. Within a day a practical breach had been opened and the French army prepared itself for another attack.

In those first few days of May the increasingly weary French battalions launched one assault after another, only to be repulsed by the Turkish troops, who fought with a tenacity that the French had not encountered before. There were severe losses on both sides. General Bon was shot dead in the breach as he urged his men forward, and the irrepressible General Lannes was wounded, once again, as he and two companies of grenadiers managed to break into the city, only to discover that Ahmad Pasha’s men had built an inner line of defences.

In the middle of the month Napoleon called his senior officers to a meeting in his tent late in the evening. He watched as they filed in through the flaps and quietly took their seats.The strain and exhaustion of the last sixty days was etched into their faces, and even before he asked them for their views Napoleon knew that the fight had gone out of them and he would have to perform a miracle to persuade them that Acre could be taken. The trouble was, he felt as bitter and tired as they did and he was momentarily tempted to break off the siege and return to Egypt without even asking for their assessment of the army’s chances. Then some inner reserve of determination stirred in him and he resolved to try to persuade them that the fight could yet be won.

‘Gentlemen . . .’ Napoleon smiled faintly. ‘Friends. Berthier tells me that the men are at the end of their endurance, that some of you are openly saying that we cannot take Acre, and that we must retreat. Does any man here wish to say anything?’

Junot stirred uncomfortably. ‘Sir, it’s been two months and we’re no nearer taking Acre than we’ve ever been.’

‘No nearer? I think you seriously underestimate what we have achieved so far. We’ve breached their walls and must have killed thousands of their men. One last—’

‘Sir,’ Lannes interrupted. He wore a bloodstained dressing around his head and looked pained and drawn as he spoke.‘They have built an inner wall. I’ve seen it. We’d have almost as much difficulty overwhelming that as we did the outer wall. And what does it matter how many of them we kill? Yesterday - we all saw it - a flotilla of ships dropped anchor out to sea and they’ve been ferrying in fresh supplies and troops all through the night and the following day. Sir, I’d follow you anywhere, you know I would. But this is a fight we cannot win.’

‘General Lannes is right, sir,’ added Berthier.‘While the enemy can keep being supplied by sea, we are running out of supplies here on land. We’re also running low on ammunition and powder. More worrying still is this morning’s report from Desgenettes. Nearly two and a half thousand of our men are now on the list of sick and wounded. Sir, the army is being bled white by this siege and the assaults we have attempted so far.’ He would have said more, but he caught the wild glint in his commander’s eye and the words died on his lips.

Napoleon stared round the table at his officers. ‘Is there no man here who considers it our duty to continue the fight? Well?’

No one spoke and Napoleon suddenly realised he had lost them. If these men . . . if General Lannes, of all people, had lost faith in victory, then the attempt to take Acre truly was finished. He lowered his head into his hands for a moment and then looked up slowly and nodded.

‘Very well . . . I accept your views. If you will not fight then no man will. I’ll give the order . . . We’ll break camp and march back to Egypt. The siege of Acre is over.’

Chapter 45

‘Having maintained ourselves in the heat of Syria for three months, with only a handful of men, after capturing forty guns and six thousand prisoners; after razing the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa and Acre, we shall return to Egypt. I am obliged to go back there because it is the season of the year when hostile landings may be expected.’

Junot finished reading the proclamation aloud and Napoleon nodded with satisfaction. ‘It strikes a suitably uplifting tone, I think.’

‘Of course, sir,’ Junot agreed in a measured voice. ‘But the fact is that Acre is still in Turkish hands. I wonder if the men will really share your view of our, er, success?’