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Authors: Joseph Wheelan

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Eaton's affinity for indigenous people and knack for adapting to their environment would prove indispensable during the rigorous months ahead. These traits had made him a gifted scout and spy under General “Mad Anthony” Wayne in the Ohio country, when he donned buckskins and infiltrated the Miami Indian villages, and on the Spanish frontier in southeast Georgia—places where he had become adept at living off the land, engaging in guerrilla warfare and rapid movement. When Jefferson, Madison, and Smith approved Eaton's plan to restore Hamet to Tripoli's throne, it is unlikely that they realized to what extent success would depend on Eaton's abilities.
 
On the Nile, the Eaton party passed scenes worthy of Dante's pen—indiscriminate killings, villages ransacked so many times that nothing of the slightest value remained, and starving refugees. Bandits and armed deserters from the warring armies robbed one and all. “Egypt has no master,” Eaton wrote to Sir Alexander Ball, the governor of Malta. “The Turkish soldiery, restrained by no discipline sieze with the hand of rapine, everything for which passion creates a desire,” and the Mamelukes were no better. “Wild Arabs” roved the banks of the Nile, ready to pounce on the defenseless. They carefully avoided the well-armed Americans and British in Eaton's two boats, each equipped with a swivel-mounted gun. Along the way, Eaton's party hunted pigeons and fowl; if the sight of their arms didn't discourage the Arabs, the loud reports of gunfire certainly did. They reached Sabour as Arabs were driving off the villagers' herds; the day before, the same village had been plundered by 500 Albanian deserters from the Turkish army.
At Sabour, the people welcomed the sight of the Americans' redand-blue uniforms and round hats. (The French wore triangular
hats.) “They kissed our hands; and with prostrations to the ground and eyes inflamed with anguish implored English succor,” Eaton wrote to Ball, suggesting the time for an English reoccupation might be at hand. In fact, everywhere they went, the people wanted to know if they were English and when they planned to return and restore order. Egyptians, Eaton said, preferred the English because they
“pay
for every thing; the French
pay nothing
and take everything—They don't like this kind of deliverers.” Eaton impressed the natives with his rifle marksmanship by splitting an orange twice with three shots at 32 yards.
 
In Turkish-ruled Cairo, Eaton learned Hamet had joined the other side, the Mamelukes. No one knew exactly where he was. Moreover, his alliance with the rebels made a rendezvous awkward, with Turkish troops controlling the countryside between Cairo and the Mamelukes' strongholds to the south, and the Mameluke redoubts themselves under attack.
Cairo's viceroy, Khorshid, politely overlooked the fact that their ally had joined the enemy, and made the Americans welcome. Cairo, more populous (260,000) than anyplace most of the Americans had ever seen, put on a show for the visitors. They were escorted to the palace in a torchlight parade through the city. Spectators lined the road for a mile and a half, eager to see the men from the New World, who were accompanied by some of Khorshid's attendants and six splendidly liveried Arabian horses.
At the palace, Khorshid rose from an embroidered purple sofa with damask cushions to greet them ceremoniously. They drank coffee, smoked pipes, and ate sherbet while the viceroy peppered them with questions about the United States, its geography, government, and people. Eaton made the most of the situation,
describing at length the customs of the American people and explaining that the Barbary War was being fought to vindicate U.S. rights. He compared the Barbary pirates and the Ottomans in a manner flattering to the Turks. Eaton said Americans and Turks were alike, and drew startling—but not necessarily accurate—parallels between Islam and the peculiar offshoot of Christianity he claimed Americans practiced: the worship of one God, with no unnecessary bloodshed.
With the ice broken by Eaton's flattery, the viceroy brought up the ticklish subject of Hamet. He had intended to honor his predecessor's promises to aid Hamet until his unfortunate alliance with the Mamelukes. Eaton, who knew that everything depended on the viceroy's support, interjected that “it was more like God to pardon than to punish a repenting enemy.” His homage to the viceroy's godlike powers and his other flattery utterly disarmed Khorshid; he promised to send emissaries to locate Hamet and to permit Hamet to join Eaton and leave Egypt unmolested. It was a supreme diplomatic victory for Eaton. He cemented their relationship by announcing that he wished to name Dr. Francesco Mendrici, formerly the Tunis bey's doctor, to be the agent for the United States in Cairo. Khorshid certainly raised no objections; Mendrici happened to be his chief physician.
The viceroy's envoy traced Hamet to the Upper Egypt city of Miniet, where 3,000 besieged Mamelukes recently had thrown back 8,000 attacking Albanians and Turks. Eaton sent a letter suggesting that they meet in Rosetta, where Hamet could seek British protection.
Eaton impatiently awaited a response in Cairo, acutely aware that all of his hopes for driving Yusuf from power with a land expedition hinged on Hamet's reply. Would he join Eaton? Had he
abandoned hopes of regaining his throne? Eaton knew that without his cooperation, there could be no insurgency, no invasion.
The reply, which came quickly, was all that Eaton had hoped for. After mildly rebuking Eaton for delaying, Hamet said he was leaving Miniet for the home of a sheik friend to begin preparing for the expedition. “Thus you must assist from the sea and I from the land, and God will aid us in establishing peace and tranquility.”
A few days later brought another letter from Hamet: “I cannot but congratulate you and felicitate myself after so much apprehension doubt and solicitude, that we now calculate with certainty on the success of our expedition....” He already was headed down the Nile to meet Eaton. Bring plenty of money, he said unnecessarily—Eaton well knew that money was everything in North Africa. “Do not think about money because the occasion demands heavy expenditure. It is a matter of making war, and war calls for money and men.”
 
They agreed to rendezvous near Lake Fiaume, 190 miles from the Mediterranean coast and on the edge of Egypt's Western Desert. Eaton embarked from Alexandria at the head of a troop of mounted men consisting of Lieutenant Blake, Midshipman Mann, and twenty-three others. Less than halfway to Lake Fiaume, Turkish troops stopped them at their lines, the outermost frontier of Turk-controlled territory, and would not permit them to go on. Eaton and his men had no choice but to settle into Demanhour, governed tyrannically by the local Turkish army commander known as the Kerchief. Eaton went to work trying to win over the harsh, dour leader, flattering him for his troops' military bearing, and stating that he was undoubtedly a man of valor. Few could resist Eaton's charm for very long. Soon the Kerchief
and Eaton were on excellent terms, and the Kerchief had no problem with Eaton's notifying Hamet that he was in Demanhour and inviting him to join him there.
While he waited, Eaton watched the Turkish troops drill, visited the Kerchief, and reconnoitered the village, whose inhabitants were as intensely curious about the Americans as they were about the villagers. Eaton began to notice a mournful-looking boy lurking around his lodgings. The boy shied away whenever Eaton invited him inside. Eaton made inquiries about him, and learned that the boy's father, a prominent, wealthy villager, had owned the house where Eaton was staying. But when the Turks came, they beheaded him and appropriated all of his property, including his home. The boy, five brothers and sisters, and their mother lived only a few doors down from Eaton. Softhearted when it came to women and children, Eaton gave the family all of the pocket money that he had. “The child kissed my hand; and wept! God, I thank thee that my children are Americans!” To his wife Eliza, he wrote: “There is more pleasure in being generous than rich ... Man wants but little, and not that little long.”
Unaccountably, the Kerchief cooled toward the Americans. Turkish guards suddenly appeared outside the Americans' quarters and accompanied them on their walks. Eaton tried to learn from the Kerchief the reason for the chill, but the leader was closed and suspicious. Finally, Eaton teased out the problem: The French consul was spreading it about Egypt that Eaton and his men were British spies who were using Hamet to aid the Mameluke rebels. It was believable enough, given the rumors already abroad that the British were secretly subsidizing the Mamelukes. Once again, the Americans had been caught in England and France's crossfire.
Eaton so thoroughly allayed the Kerchief's suspicions that when Hamet reached Demanhour on February 5 with his suite of 100 attendants, they were greeted by salutes from the Kerchief's honor guard. “Tents were pitched for the accommodation of his people, and provision made for their refreshment—the Bashaw sleeps tonight at the Kercheifs house, and tomorrow afternoon we depart for Alexandria....” However, the French consul's slander damaged Hamet in Alexandria. The governor and admiral forbade him to set foot in the city, and refused to let him embark by ship from there.
The restrictions didn't matter. Hamet had decided to attack by land rather than by sea, wisely reasoning that if he sailed, he would have to depend on his followers making their way cross-country without his leadership. Most of them probably would never reach Derna. The decision resolved a host of problems that Lieutenant Isaac Hull had foreseen, chief among them being space; if even 100 of Hamet's force sailed to Derna on the
Argus,
there would have been no room for their provisions.
The expedition's audacity invested the sojourners' preparations with an electric quality. They would have to cross 460 miles of rocky, arid wasteland before Hull could resupply them at Bomba. Would they be able to carry enough food and water to last them until then? Would Hamet, as he claimed, be able to marshal support among the desert inhabitants, or would they only encounter hostile Bedouin tribes? Once the invaders reached Bomba, they would be only three days from Derna, Tripoli's second-largest city. And from Derna, it was but another 100 miles to Benghazi. If an attack on Benghazi succeeded, U.S. warships would carry the army the last 400 miles to Tripoli itself for the climactic assault.
Hamet camped at Arab's Tower, 30 miles west of Alexandria's
old port, while Eaton and O‘Bannon went into Alexandria to recruit soldiers.
 
 
 
Hull had begun signing up mercenaries in the port city while Eaton was waiting in Demanhour for Hamet, but the jittery Turkish officials ordered him to hand over some Maltese whom he had recruited, then demanded that he stop altogether. Hull discharged everyone he had signed, closed his Alexandria house, and moved aboard the Argus. The French whisperings about Eaton's party really being British spies were damaging enough, but Yusuf made matters worse by sending an envoy to Alexandria to persuade the governor and admiral to stop Hamet from leaving Egypt. The envoy was remarkably frank with the governor. The bashaw, he said, feared that his people would rally to Hamet's standard, and he would have to flee or lose his head. Yusuf was weary of the war with America, the envoy said.
Yusuf's growing concern over his brother's movements was becoming increasingly evident in Tripoli as well. He “is now very attentive upon your transactions with his brother in Alexandria—a Camp is going against Derne ,” Nissen, the Danish consul in Tripoli, wrote in sympathetic ink to Consul Davis in Tunis. Yusuf's agent in Malta, Gaetano Schembry, was urging the bashaw to intensify his ill-treatment of the
Philadelphia
prisoners to force America to agree to peace. Nissen warned in his secret message to Davis: “... you Sacrifice your prisoner's life here in case of success.”
Even before Eaton's rendezvous with Hamet, gloom had pervaded the bashaw's castle over the protracted war. And then the 1804 grain harvest was so poor that in October, Yusuf had halted all grain sales—except to his household. This had precipitated a
fierce argument with Murad Reis, his Scottish son-in-law, who had planned to buy barley in the market. Yusuf lost his temper with Murad—the grand admiral was drunk and insolent—and struck him and threw him in prison. Later, when tempers cooled, the bashaw released him and blamed their quarrel on a servant. The servant was punished with 500 bastinados. In November, Yusuf suffered an epileptic seizure. “His people thought he was possessed with the devil,” wrote Cowdery. A marabout, a Moslem holy man, was summoned to drive the devil out; the seizure's abatement was ascribed to his incantations. In December, Yusuf presided over his son's marriage to Hamet's eldest daughter, a “very handsome” twelve-year-old.
 
While Hamet enlisted Arab supporters, Eaton and Lieutenant O‘Bannon tramped the streets of Alexandria looking for European soldiers of fortune. Hull opened a $10,000 line of credit in Alexandria and had given Eaton $3,000 cash for recruitment expenses. Eaton spent it and an additional $3,000 before completing preparations for the expedition. Eaton estimated the expedition would cost at least $20,000, a bargain by any measure. Before parting with Hull, Eaton got another $7,000 advance and instructed Hull to have $7,000 more for him at Bomba. Eaton well knew that in North Africa, where only one's tribe and Islam commanded absolute loyalty, money was the third-best guarantor. “Cash will do much with the inhabitants of this Country; even those whom it will not engage to fight, will by it be engaged not to fight: With it we can pass generally.”
A more diverse army probably never assembled under U.S. auspices. There were Greeks, Italians, Tripolitans, Egyptians, Frenchmen, Arabs, Americans, and British—eleven nationalities
in all. Of the 400 or more expeditioners, just 10 were Americans: Eaton, Lieutenant O‘Bannon, Marine Sergeant Arthur Campbell, 6 Marine privates, and Midshipman Paoli Peck from the
Argus.
Two Englishmen had signed on—Richard Farquhar and his brother Percival. (But only one Farquhar actually went on the expedition; it is unclear which, for Eaton referred to both as “Richard”; one of the Richards was turned out for embezzling $1,332.) Selim Comb, a Turk, was in charge of the 25 cannoneers, who had no cannons. Captain Luco Ulovix and a Lieutenant Constantine led 38 mixed European and Egyptian infantry, mostly Greeks. The rest consisted of Hamet and his 90 Tripolitan attendants, and up to 300 Arab cavalry and footmen under Sheiks il Taiib and Mahomet. Scores of horses, 107 camels, and some jackasses carried the food, water, and ammunition.
BOOK: Jefferson's War
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