Napoleon in Egypt by Paul Strathern

this whilst we stood waiting for what seemed like inevitable death. 6
     
    Napoleon takes up the story in his memoirs: “Kléber was lost . . .he sustained and repulsed a great number of charges; but the Turks had taken all the foothills of Mount Tabor and occupied all the surrounding high ground. . . . His position was hopeless, when suddenly a number of soldiers called out: ‘Look over there, it’s the little corporal!’” * At first no one believed them. “But the old soldiers who had fought with Napoleon before, and were used to his tactics, took up their cries; they believed they could see in the distance the glint of bayonets.” When word reached Kléber in the middle of his square, he “climbed to a vantage point and pointed his telescope at where they were indicating . . . but he could see nothing; the soldiers themselves believed it to be an illusion, and this glimmer of hope vanished.” 7
    In desperation Kléber decided to abandon his artillery and wounded, form his men into a column, and attempt a breakout with every man for himself. Meanwhile it became evident that the enemy was massing for a final grand charge to overrun and slaughter the French. It was now that the miracle took place. Kléber’s soldiers had not in fact been mistaken: Napoleon was indeed coming to their rescue, but for the moment his men were invisible as they moved forward across a slope covered with head-high wild wheat. Napoleon described how next “the commander-in-chief [himself] ordered a square to march up onto an embankment. The heads of these men and their bayonets were soon visible on the battlefield to friend and foe alike.” At the same time he ordered a salvo from his artillery. The Turkish forces were momentarily disconcerted, but were soon reassured by the stirring sight of the advancing Mameluke cavalry of Ibrahim Bey and the tough regiments of the Nablus mountain tribesmen. The Army of Damascus still had the upper hand.
    It was now that Napoleon played another master-stroke. Moving his three squares between the enemy forces and their camp, he simultaneously dispatched 300 men in amongst the enemy tents, with orders to set fire to them and make a great show of requisitioning their supplies and their camels. This was a purely psychological tactic, and had an immediate effect on the Turkish forces, who felt themselves cut off. Their ranks were overcome by panic and they began to flee, at first in their hundreds, and then, as the panic spread, in their thousands. Kléber needed no signal, and at once acted in instinctive cohesion with Napoleon, ordering his men to break out—this time in an aggressive charge, rather than a frantic flight for their lives. Their blood was up, and Millet, who took part in the charge, described what happened next:
     
    Remember, we were dying of thirst. Well, our thirst for vengeance had extinguished our thirst for mere water, and instead kindled our thirst for blood. . . . Here we were, wading up to our waists through the water of that lake which only a short time previously we had been craving to drink from. But now we no longer even thought of drinking, only of killing and dyeing the lake red with the blood of those barbarians. Just a short time previously they had been longing to cut off our heads and drown our bodies in that very lake, in which they were now drowning and filling with their bodies. 8
     
    The vast Army of Damascus scattered in their tens of thousands. The cavalry headed into the mountains to the south, whilst the infantry scrambled towards the River Jordan, whose waters had risen due to the recent rains, and whose banks were a quagmire. Several thousand were drowned; French losses, on the other hand, were astonishingly light—if Napoleon is to be believed: “Kléber lost 250–300 men killed or wounded, while the columns of the commander-in-chief lost 3–4 men.” 9
    In his memoirs, Napoleon described how after the battle he “ascended the mountain, which rises like