Robert "Tito" Edwards, K.M.

In 1784, two teenage cadets sat at the same desk at the École Militaire in Paris. One was Napoleon Bonaparte, a poor Corsican scholarship boy the other cadets mocked for his accent. The other was Antoine de Phélippeaux, from an old French noble family. They hated each other. They kicked each other under the desk so constantly that a teacher had to separate them. Both trained as artillery officers and graduated in 1785. Then the Revolution split them apart. Napoleon rose with the Republic. Phélippeaux stayed loyal to the king. He fled France, fought in the émigré royalist army, then slipped back in to organize a royalist uprising. He was captured and escaped. In 1798 he pulled off his most daring move. British naval officer Sidney Smith had been locked in the Temple prison in Paris for two years. Phélippeaux and his accomplices showed up dressed as French officers carrying forged transfer orders, walked Smith out the front gate, and got him to England. A year later, both men were in the Middle East. Napoleon had conquered Egypt and marched into Syria. His next target was Acre, an old crusader fortress on the coast. If it fell, the road north was open. Smith commanded the British ships off the coast. Phélippeaux, now a colonel in British service, took charge of the defenses. Before the siege even started, Smith's ships captured the French flotilla carrying Napoleon's heavy siege guns. Phélippeaux had them hauled up onto Acre's walls. Napoleon was now being shot at with his own artillery, aimed by the man he used to kick under a desk. For two months the French threw assault after assault at the walls. Phélippeaux rebuilt the breaches, dug counter-trenches, and threw up new inner walls behind the old ones so every time the French broke through, they found another wall waiting. Plague spread through the French camp. Phélippeaux never saw how it ended. He died of fever in the middle of the siege. He was 31. In May 1799, Napoleon gave up and marched back to Egypt. A few months later he abandoned his army there and sailed home to seize power in France. Years later on St. Helena, he said that if Acre had fallen, he would have changed the face of the world. He was stopped by his old deskmate.