The young men understood and retired in dismay. Croisier was weeping. Eugene tried to console him; but he shook his head and said: "It is all over with me; the first opportunity that offers I shall let myself be shot."
Before deciding upon the fate of the unfortunate prisoners, Bonaparte decided to call a council of the generals. But soldiers and generals had bivouacked outside the town. The soldiers did not stop until they were weary. Besides the four thousand prisoners, they left nearly five thousand dead. The pillage of the houses lasted all night. From time to time shots echoed through the night. Dull cries of anguish resounded incessantly in the streets, the houses, and the mosques.
They came from soldiers who were dragged from their places of concealment and slaughtered; by inhabitants who were trying to defend their treasures; by husbands and fathers who were striving to defend their wives and daughters from the brutality of the soldiers.
But the vengeance of Heaven was hidden beneath all this cruelty. The plague was in Jaffa, and the army carried the germs of it away with them.
The prisoners were, in the first place, ordered to sit down together in front of the tents. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Their faces were downcast, more from dread of what was in store for them than from anger. They had seen Bonaparte's face darken when he perceived them; and they had heard, although they had not understood it, the reprimand which he had bestowed upon the young soldiers. But what they had not understood they had divined.
Some of them ventured to say, "I am hungry"; others, "I am thirsty."
They brought them all water and gave each of them a piece of bread, taken from the soldiers' rations. This reassured them a trifle.
As fast as the generals returned they were bidden to repair at once to the general-in-chief's tent. They deliberated a long time without arriving at any decision. On the following day the diurnal reports of the generals of division came in. All complained of insufficient rations. The only ones who had eaten and drunk their fill were those who had entered the town during the fight and were therefore entitled to take part in the pillage. But they constituted merely a fourth of the army. All the rest complained at having to share their bread with the enemy, who had been rescued from legitimate vengeance; since, according to the laws of war, Jaffa having been taken by storm, all the soldiers who were within its walls should have perished by the sword.
The council assembled once more. Five questions were proposed for its deliberation.