since the
age of the Crusades that seaport had been the chief place of arms of
Palestine; but the harbour was now nearly silted up, and even the
neighbouring roadstead of Hayfa was desolate. The fortress was
formidable only to orientals. In his work, "Les Ruines," Volney had
remarked about Acre: "Through all this part of Asia bastions, lines of
defence, covered ways, ramparts, and in short everything relating to
modern fortification are utterly unknown; and a single thirty-gun
frigate would easily bombard and lay in ruins the whole coast." This
judgment of his former friend undoubtedly lulled Bonaparte into
illusory confidence, and the rank and file after their success at
Jaffa expected an easy triumph at Acre.

This would doubtless have happened but for British help. Captain
Miller, of H.M.S. "Theseus," thus reported on the condition of Acre
before Sir Sidney Smith's arrival:

"I found almost every embrasure empty except those towards the sea.
Many years' collection of the dirt of the town thrown in such a
situation as completely covered the approach to the gate from the
only guns that could flank it and from the sea ... none of their
batteries have casemates, traverses, or splinter-proofs: they have
many guns, but generally small and defective--the carriages in
general so." [115]

Captain Miller's energy made good some of these defects; but the place
was still lamentably weak when, on March 15th, Sir Sidney Smith
arrived. The English squadron in the east of the Mediterranean had,
to Nelson's chagrin, been confided to the command of this ardent young
officer, who now had the good fortune to capture off the promontory of
Mount Carmel seven French vessels containing Bonaparte's siege-train.
This event had a decisive influence on the fortunes of the siege and
of the whole campaign. The French cannon were now hastily mounted on
the very walls that they had been intended to breach; while the gun
vessels reinforced the two English frigates, and were ready to pour a
searching fire on the assailants in their trenches or as they rushed
against the walls. These had also been hastily strengthened under the
direction of a French royalist officer named Phelippeaux, an old
schoolfellow of Bonaparte, and later on a comrade of Sidney Smith,
alike in his imprisonment and in his escape from the clutches of the
revolutionists. Sharing the lot of the adventurous young seaman,
Phelippeaux sailed to th