The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

[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, the story of that march presents a fearful picture. When a comrade, after quitting his ranks, being stimulated by the despair of falling into the hands of the Turks or Arabs, yet once again reared himself from the burning sand, and made a last attempt to stagger after the column, his painful and ineffectual efforts furnished matter for military merriment. "He is drunk," said one; "his march will not be a long one," answered another; and when he once more sank helpless and hopeless, a third remarked, "our friend has at length taken up his quarters." It is not to be omitted, that Napoleon did, on this occasion, all that became his situation. He issued an order that every horse should be given up to the service of the sick. A moment afterwards one of his attendants came to ask which horse the General wished to reserve for himself: "Scoundrel!" cried he, "do you not know the order? Let everyone march on foot—I the first.—Begone." He accordingly, during the rest of the march, walked by the side of the sick, cheering them by his eye and his voice, and exhibiting to all the soldiery the example at once of endurance and of compassion.

[June 14.] Having at length accomplished this perilous journey, Buonaparte repaired to his old headquarters at Cairo, and re-entered on his great functions as the establisher of a new government in the state of Egypt. But he had not long occupied himself thus, ere new rumours concerning the beys on the Upper Nile, who seemed to have some strong and urgent motive for endeavouring to force a passage downwards, began to be mingled with, and by degrees explained by, tidings daily repeated of some grand disembarkation of the Ottomans, designed to have place in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. Leaving Dessaix, therefore, once more in command at Cairo, he himself descended the Nile, and travelled with all speed to Alexandria, where he found his presence most necessary. For, in effect, the great Turkish fleet had already run into the bay of Aboukir; and an army of 18,000, having gained the fortress, were there strengthening themselves, with the view of awaiting the promised descent and junction of the Mamelukes, and then, with overwhelming superiority of numbers, advancing to Alexandria, and completing the ruin of the French invaders.

Buonaparte, reaching Alexandria on the evening of the 24th of July, found his army already posted in the neighbourhood of Aboukir, and prepared to anticipate the attack of the Turks on the morrow. Surveying their entrenched camp from the heights above with Murat, he said, "Go how it may, the battle of to-morrow will decide the fate of the world." "Of this army at least," answered Murat; "but the Turks have no cavalry, and, if ever infantry were charged to the teeth by horse, they shall be so by mine." Murat did not penetrate the hidden meaning of Napoleon's words, but he made good his own.