The History of Napoleon Buonaparte. J. G. Lockhart

the French retreated with great loss, and—the Turks, headed by the English seamen, pursuing them to their lines—a great mine, designed to blow up the chief tower of Acre, was explored, and means taken for countermining it.

      Meanwhile a vast Mussulman army had been gathered among the mountains of Samaria, and was preparing to descend upon Acre, and attack the besiegers in concert with the garrison of Djezzar. Junot, with his division, marched to encounter them, and would have been overwhelmed by their numbers, had not Napoleon himself followed and rescued him (April 8) at Nazareth, where the splendid cavalry of the orientals were, as usual, unable to resist the solid squares and well-directed musketry of the French. Kleber, with another division, was in like manner endangered, and in like manner rescued by the general-in-chief at Mount Tabor (April 15). The Mussulmans dispersed on all hands; and Napoleon, returning to his siege, pressed it on with desperate assaults, day after day, in which his best soldiers were thinned, before the united efforts of Djezzar's gallantry, and the skill of his allies. At length, however, a party of French succeeded in forcing their way into the great tower, and in establishing themselves in one part of it, in despite of all the resolution that could be opposed to them. At the same critical moment, there appeared in the offing a Turkish fleet, which was known to carry great reinforcements for the Pacha. Everything conspired to prompt Napoleon to finish his enterprise at whatever cost, and he was bravely seconded.

      Sir Sydney Smith, however, was as resolute to hold out until the fleet should arrive, as Napoleon was eager to anticipate its coming. The English commander repaired with his handful of seaman to the tower, and after a furious assault dislodged the occupants. Buonaparte did not renew the attack in that quarter, but succeeded in breaking the wall in another part of the town; and the heroic Lannes headed a French party who actually entered Acre at that opening. But Djezzar was willing they should enter. He suffered them to come in unmolested; and then, before they could form, threw such a crowd of Turks upon them, that discipline was of no avail: it was a mere multitude of duels, and the brave orientals with their scimitars and pistols, overpowered their enemies, and put them to death—almost to a man. Lannes himself was with difficulty carried back desperately wounded.

      The rage of Buonaparte at these repeated discomfitures may be imagined. The whole evil was ascribed, and justly, to the presence of Sir Sydney Smith; and he spoke of that chivalrous person ever after with the venom of a personal hatred. Sir Sydney, in requital of Buonaparte's proclamation—inviting (as was his usual fashion) the subjects of the Pacha to avoid his yoke, and ally themselves with the invaders—put forth a counter address to the Druses and other Christian inhabitants of Syria, invoking their assistance in the name of their religion, against the blasphemous general of a nation which had renounced Christianity. Napoleon upon this said that Sir Sydney was a madman; and if his story be true, Sir Sydney challenged him to single combat; to which he made answer, that he would not come forth to a duel unless the English could fetch Marlborough from his grave, but that, in the meantime, any one of his grenadiers would willingly give the challenger such satisfaction as he was entitled to demand. Whatever inaccuracy there may be in some of these circumstances, there is no doubt of the fact that Buonaparte and the brave commodore strove together at Acre, under the highest influence of personal resentment, as well as martial skill and determination.

      [21st May.] The siege had now lasted sixty days. Once more Napoleon commanded an assault, and his officers and soldiery once more obeyed him with devoted and fruitless gallantry. The loss his army had by this time undergone was very great. Caffarelli and many other officers of the highest importance were no more. The plague had some time before this appeared in the camp; every day the ranks of his legions were thinned by this pestilence, as well as by the weapons of the defenders of Acre. The hearts of all men were quickly sinking. The Turkish fleet was at hand to reinforce Djezzar; and upon the utter failure of the attack of the 21st of May, Napoleon yielded to stern necessity, and began his retreat upon Jaffa.

      The plague now raged in the army. The very name of this horrible scourge shook the nerves of the Europeans; its symptoms filled them with indescribable horror. The sick despaired utterly; the healthy trembled to minister to them in their misery. Napoleon went through the hospitals, and at once breathed hope into the sufferers, and rebuked the cowardice of their attendants, by squeezing and relieving with his own hand the foul ulcers which no one had dared to touch. Pity that this act of true heroism must ever be recorded on the same page that tells the story of the sand-hills!

      The name of Jaffa was already sufficiently stained; but fame speedily represented Napoleon as having now made it the scene of another atrocity, not less shocking than that of the massacre of the Turkish prisoners.

      The accusation, which for many years made so much noise throughout Europe, amounts to this: that on the 27th of May, when it was necessary for Napoleon to pursue his march from Jaffa for Egypt, a certain number of the plague-patients in the hospital were found to be in a state that held out no hope whatever of their recovery; that the general, being unwilling to leave them to the tender mercies of the Turks, conceived the notion of administering opium, and so procuring for them at least a speedy and an easy death; and that a number of men were accordingly taken off in this method by his command. The story, the circumstances of which were much varied in different accounts, especially as regards the numbers of the poisoned (raised sometimes as high as 500), was first disseminated by Sir Robert Wilson, and was in substance generally believed in England. In each and all of its parts, on the contrary, it was wholly denied by the admirers of Buonaparte, who treated it as one of the many gross falsehoods, which certainly were circulated touching the personal character and conduct of their idol, during the continuance of his power.

      Buonaparte himself, while at St. Helena, referred to the story frequently; and never hesitated to admit that it originated in the following occurrence. He sent, he said, the night before the march was to commerce, for Desgenettes, the chief of the medical staff, and proposed to him, under such circumstances as have been described, the propriety of giving opium, in mortal doses, to seven men, adding that, had his son been in their situation, he would have thought it his duty, as a father, to treat him in the same method; and that, most certainly, had he himself been in that situation, and capable of understanding it, he would have considered the deadly cup as the best boon that friendship could offer him. M. Desgenettes, however, (said the ex-Emperor) did not consider himself as entitled to interfere in any such method with the lives of his fellow men: the patients were abandoned; and, at least, one of the number fell alive into the hands of Sir Sidney Smith, and recovered.

      Such is Napoleon's narrative; and it is confirmed in all particulars of importance, save two, by De Bourienne. That writer states distinctly that he was present when Napoleon, Berthier and the usual suite, examined the hospital—heard the discussion which followed, and the order given for administering mortal potions to the hopeless patients—in number sixty. He does not assert that he saw the poison administered, but says he has no doubt the order was executed; and concludes with defending the measure by arguments similar to those already quoted from the lips of his master.

      Whether the opium was really administered or not—that the audacious proposal to that effect was made by Napoleon, we have his own admission; and every reader must form his opinion—as to the degree of guilt which attaches to the fact of having meditated and designed the deed in question, under the circumstances above detailed. That Buonaparte, accustomed to witness slaughter in every form, was in general but a callous calculator when the loss of human life was to be considered, no one can doubt. That his motives, on this occasion, were cruel, no human being, who considers either the temper or the situation of the man, will ever believe. He doubtless designed, by shortening those men's lives, to do them the best service in his power. The presumption of thus daring to sport with the laws of God and man, when expedience seemed to recommend such interference, was quite in the character of the young General: cruelty was not; least of all, cruelty to his own soldiery—the very beings on whose affection all his greatness depended.

      The march onwards was a continued scene of misery; for the wounded and the sick were many, the heat oppressive, the thirst intolerable; and the ferocious Djezzar was hard behind, and the wild Arabs of the desert hovered round them on every side, so that he who fell behind his company was sure to be slain. How hard and callous the hearts of brave men can become when every thought is occupied with self,