difficulties in maintaining itself, and the soldier rarely received his full ration. This difficulty of subsistence would augment in consequence of the evil disposition of the inhabitants towards us. To feed the Jaffa prisoners while we kept them with us, was not only to increase our wants, but also constantly to encumber our own movements; to confine them at Jaffa would, without removing the first inconvenience, have created another-the possibility of a revolt, considering the small force that could have been left to garrison the place; to send them into Egypt would have been obliging ourselves to dismiss a considerable detachment, which would greatly reduce the force of the expedition; to set them at liberty upon their parole, notwithstanding all the engagements into which they could have entered, would have been sending them to increase the strength of our enemies, and particularly the garrison of St. John d'Acre; for Djezzar was not a man to respect promises made by his soldiers, men also little religious themselves as to a point of honour of which they knew not the force. There remained then only one course which reconciled every thing: it was a frightful one; however it appears to have been believed to be necessary. 'On the 20 Ventose, (March 10,) in the afternoon, the Jaffa prisoners were put in motion in the midst of a vast square battalion formed by the troops of General Bon's division. A dark rumour of the fate which was prepared for them, determined me, as well as many other persons, to mount on horseback, and follow this silent column of victims, to satisfy myself whether what had been told me was well founded. The Turks, marching pell-mell, already foresaw their fate; they shed no tears; they uttered no cries; they were resigned. Some, who were wounded, and could not march so fast as the rest, were bayonetted on the way. Some others went about the crowd, and appeared to be giving salutary advice in this imminent danger. Perhaps the boldest might have thought that it would not be impossible for them to break through the battalion which surrounded them: perhaps they hoped that in dispersing themselves over the plains which they were crossing, a certain number might escape death. Every means had been taken to prevent this, and the Turks made no attempt to escape. Having reached the sand-hills to the south west of Jaffa they were halted near a pool of stagnant and dirty water. Then the officer who commanded the troops had the mass divided into small bodies, and these being led to many different parts were there fusilladed. This horrible operation required much time, notwithstanding the number of troops employed in this dreadful sacrifice: I owe it to these troops to declare that they did not without extreme repugnance submit to the abominable service which was required from their victorious hands. There was a group of prisoners near the pool of water, among whom were some old chiefs of a noble and resolute courage, and one young man whose courage was dreadfully shaken. Atso tender an age he must have believed himself innocent, and that feeling hurried him on to an action which appeared to shock those about him. He threw himself at the feet of the horse which the chief of the French troops rode, and embraced the knees of that officer, imploring him to spare his life, and exclaiming, Of what am am I guilty? What evil have I done? His tears, his affecting cries were unavailing; they could not change the fatal sentence pronounced upon his lot. With the exception of this young man, all the other Turks made their ablutions calmly in the stagnant water of which I have spoken, then taking each other's hand, after having laid it upon the heart and the lips, according to the manner of salutation, they gave and received an eternal adieu. Their courageous spirits appeared to defy death; you saw in their tranquillity the confidence which in these last moments was inspired by their religion, and the hope of a happy hereafter. They seemed to say, I quit this world to go and enjoy with Mahommed a lasting happiness. Thus the reward after this life which the Koran promises supported the Mussulman, conquered indeed, but still proud in his adversity. 'I saw a respectable old man whose tone and manners announced a superior rank. I saw him coolly order a hole to be made before him in the loose sand, deep enough to bury him alive; doubtless he did not chuse to die by any other hands than those of his own people: within this protecting and dolorous grave he laid himself upon his back; and his comrades addressing their supplicatory prayers to God, covered him presently with sand, and trampled afterwards upon the soil which served him for a winding sheet, probably with the idea of accelerating the end of his sufferings. This spectacle, which makes my heart palpitate, and which I paint but too feebly, took place during the execution of the parties distributed about the sand hills. At length there remained no more of all the prisoners than those who were placed near the pool of water. Our soldiers had exhausted their cartridges; and it was necessary to destroy them with the bayonet and the sword. I could not support this horrible sight, but hastened away, pale and almost fainting. Some officers informed me in the evening that these unhappy men, yielding to that irresistible impulse of nature which makes us shrink from death even when we have no longer a hope of escaping it, strove to get one behind another, and received in their limbs, the blows aimed at the heart, which would at once have terminated their wretched lives. Then was there formed, since it must be related, a dreadful pyramid of the dead and of the dying streaming with blood, and it was necessary to drag away the bodies of those who had already expired, in order to finish the wretches who, under cover of this frightful and shocking rampart, had not yet been reached. This picture is exact and faithful; and the recollection makes my hand tremble, though the whole horror is not described.' When the first account of this massacre was published by Sir Robert Wilson, many persons doubted and not a few disbelieved it. They thought it too monstrous to be possible; and they were strengthened in this incredulity by remembering that when the National Convention past a decree for refusing quarter to the British and Hanoverians, the armies had refused to obey it. parte, who made this publication of Sir Robert Wilson's one of his complaints against the English government, is now known, during C 3 during his retirement at Elba, to have admitted both the atrocious acts of which that officer in so manly a manner accused him, and to have justified them by necessity, the devil's plea. Sir Robert, like M. Miot, makes an excuse for the soldiers who were employed in this accursed service. There would be a want of generosity,' he says, 'in naming individuals, and branding them to the latest posterity with infamy for obeying a command, when their submission became an act of necessity, since the whole army did not mutiny against the execution.' He adds that Kleber remonstrated against it in the most strenuous manner; that Bonn, whose division was made to commit the butchery, was absent; that the officer who commanded in his absence refused to execute the order, till Buonaparte sent Berthier to enforce obedience; and that several French officers, from whom his information was partly derived, declared the recollection of this massacre tormented them; that, accustomed as they had been to sights of cruelty, they could not look back upon it without horror. It is indeed certain that whatever guilt may attach to the instruments in this massacre, is primarily and exclusively derived from Buonaparte himself; Buonaparte who, at the very time when he was resolving upon the massacre, issued proclamations in which he professed to be clement and merciful after the example of God! There are deeds of so black a criminality as to be beyond all earthly redemption; and this is of them.' Had the after-actions of Buonaparte been as good as they have been evil, the massacre of Jaffa would have left upon his memory a stain of ineffaceable guilt, an infamy which no series of victories, no glory, no power or dominion, no lapse of ages could obliterate :-the deed could never have been undone. τῶν δὲ πεπραγμένων, Ἐν δίκα τε καὶ παρὰ δίκαν Χρόνος, ο πάντων πατὴρ, Δύναιτο θεμεν ἔργως τέλος.—Pindar. Olymp. 2. But so far has Buonaparte been from imitating the example of Augustus, and seeking, by the use of imperial power, to win from the minds of men (too easily won in such cases) an amnesty for past offences, that the massacre at Jaffa is forgotten because he has overshadowed it by huger crimes. They who call to mind the devastation which he has spread over the whole extent of Europe, from Lisbon to Mosco, can feel no additional indignation, no deeper abhorrence for this incarnation of the Evil Principle, when they think of his deeds in Syria and Egypt. Since the peace of Amiens, more than four millions of human beings have been sacrificed to the personal ambition of Napoleon Buonaparte; and how slight a portion of the great aggregate of misery whereof he has been been author and sole main-spring, does even this statement represent! In his history, the murder of more than 3000 men in cold blood, deliberately resolved on, and deliberately executed, will be treated by his historians as it is by himself as a mere trifle, an event scarcely worthy of mention. The spot is lost in the confluent eruption of his enormities. But in the history of the French army the event is of more importance. From that hour the character of that army was irremediably fixed; like Macbeth they were in So deep in blood, that sin must pluck on sin. The sense of honour and of self-respect was from that hour for ever lost; after such a deed, they became what South calls hell-anddamnation proof; it was an infernal sacrament by which their leader baptized them in blood, to be fit servants of himself and children of reprobation. From this school his generals, his dukes, and his marshals have proceeded-Murat, Junot, Lasnes, Savary, Belliard, Davoust, &c. The character there acquired was communicated to the whole French army, and it can now no longer be doubted that there can be no peace for Europe while such an army continues to exist in the centre of civilized society. Buonaparte did not advance from Jaffa till four days after the massacre, though the unburied bodies of his victims lay reeking under his nostrils. The number is stated by Sir Robert Wilson at 3800. Miot thinks there were not quite so many; Berthier says the garrison who were put to the sword were about 3700; a few hundred more or less signify little in this account. The French inclined to the right on their way, for the purpose of dispersing some Nauplasian and Damascan troops, who were on this occasion too prudent to expose themselves to any serious loss. In one affair they compelled the invaders to retreat, and wounded General Damas dangerously; and in another, Lasnes's division suffered more injury than it inflicted. This was a severe march for the cattle of the camp, especially for the camels, animals whom nature has destined for a level* country and a sandy soil, and who were over-worked in a clayey country, among mountains, and in a season of heavy rains. On the 16th, Kleber took possession of Caiffa without resistance, and here also the Turks, with their usual imprudence, left a considerable quantity of rice and biscuit. A garrison was left here under Lambert, chief of the dromedary squadron. This was a point of considerable importance: but Buonaparte had no hold upon Syria unless he made himself master of The Arabs have a saying that if you ask the camel which he likes best, up hill, or down, he will reply, God's curse light upon both. € 4 Acre, Acre, for the rice, which is the staple food of the inhabitants, is alt brought to that port. The ports of that country, whose merchants were once princes, have been injured by design, as well as by long neglect, and the course of nature. The Emir Fakreddin, whose name was so well known in the early part of the last century, blocked up as far as he could all the harbours from Bairout to Acre, in order to prevent the Turks from entering them; he did this by sinking boats and stones in them. Something had probably been done to remove these obstructions at Acre, and the port, though bad, was the best upon the coast. There is better anchorage at Caiffa, but ships are exposed there to a prevailing north-west wind, from which at Acre they are sheltered by the town itself. And here Buonaparte beheld that sight which of all others he abhorred and dreaded most-the British flag upon the seas. Sir Sidney Smith, with the Tigre and the Theseus, was in the road. Already he trembled for his expected battering-train; but never having yet encountered the English upon shore, he little expected the loss and humiliation which awaited him before the walls of Acre. ney 6 The fortifications of this town,' says Volney, though more frequently repaired than any others in all Syria, are of no importance; there are only a few wretched low towers near the port, on which canuon are mounted, but these rusty iron pieces are so bad, that some of them burst every time they are fired. Its defence on the land side is only a mere garden wall without any ditch.' Upon Volthe French would rely as the latest and most judicious authority; and though they might now suspect that neither guns nor gunners would be wanting, still they thought it impossible that such old and imperfect works could offer any effectual or even serious resistance. Buonaparte believed and said that the siege would be of short duration, and would terminate as brilliantly as that of Jaffa. Acre had been so often and so obstinately besieged, that perhaps so much blood has never been shed before any other city. Arms which were used during the Crusades, are still preserved in some of its towers; and stone balls of more than a foot in diameter, which had been employed in former sieges, were lying in such numbers about the fields, that Djezzár might have collected them for service if he had had any artillery of sufficient calibre. On the 18th, Buonaparte led his army to an eminence which commanded the town, at the distance of a mile. And here,' says Berthier, may be said to have commenced one of the most memorable irregular sieges in modern history.' Djezzar had thrown up some intrenchments upon the ground, which he abandoned when the enemy approached; but the French did not long remain there; a shell which fell in the midst of Bon's division, and killed an officer and two subalterns, made them hastily remove to encamp behind a little hill |