Napoleon, shocked at the outrages which were perpetrated, sent two of his aids to appease the fury of the soldiers, and to stop the massacre. Proceeding upon this message of mercy, they advanced to a large building where a portion of the garrison had taken refuge. The soldiers were shooting them as they appeared at the windows, battering the doors with cannon-balls, and setting fire to the edifice, that all might be consumed together. The Turks fought with the energies of despair. These were the men who had capitulated at El Arish, and who had violated their parole. They now offered to surrender again, if their lives might be spared. The aids, with much difficulty, rescued them from the rage of the maddened soldiers, and they were conducted, some two thousand in number, as prisoners into the French camp. Napoleon was walking in front of his tent, when he saw this multitude of men approaching. The whole dreadfulness of the dilemma in which he was placed flashed upon him instantaneously. His countenance fell, and in tones of deep grief he exclaimed, “What do they wish me to do with these men? Have I food for them—ships to convey them to Egypt or France? Why have they served me thus?” The aids excused themselves for taking them prisoners, by pleading that he had ordered them to go and stop the carnage. “Yes!” Napoleon replied sadly, “as to women, children, and old men, all the peaceable inhabitants, but not with respect to armed soldiers. It was your duty to die, rather than bring these unfortunate creatures to me. What do you want me to do with them?”
A council of war was immediately held in the tent of Napoleon, to decide upon their fate. Long did the council deliberate, and, finally, it adjourned without coming to any conclusion. The next day the council was again convened. All the generals of division were summoned to attend. For many anxious hours they deliberated, sincerely desirous of discovering any measures by which they might save the lives of the unfortunate prisoners. The murmurs of the French soldiers were loud and threatening. They complained bitterly of having their scanty rations given to the prisoners; of having men again liberated who had already broken their pledge of honor, and had caused the death of many of their comrades. General Bon represented that the discontent was so deep and general, that unless something were expeditiously done, a serious revolt in the army was to be apprehended. Still the council adjourned, and the third day arrived without their being able to come to any conclusion favorable to the lives of these unfortunate men. Napoleon watched the ocean with intense solicitude, hoping against hope that some French vessel might appear, to relieve him of the fearful burden. But the evil went on increasing. The murmurs grew louder. The peril of the army was real and imminent, and, by the delay, was already seriously magnified. It was impossible longer to keep the prisoners in the camp. If set at liberty, it was only contributing so many more troops to swell the ranks of Achmet the Butcher, and thus, perhaps, to insure the total discomfiture and destruction of the French army. The Turks spared no prisoners. All who fell into their hands perished by horrible torture. The council at last unanimously decided that the men must be put to death. Napoleon, with extreme reluctance, signed the fatal order. The melancholy troop, in the silence of despair, were led, firmly fettered, to the sand hills, on the sea-coast, where they were divided into small squares, and mown down by successive discharges of musketry. The dreadful scene was soon over, and they were all silent in death. The pyramid of their bones still remains in the desert, a frightful memorial of the horrors of war.
As this transaction has ever been deemed the darkest blot upon the character of Napoleon, it seems but fair to give his defense in his own words: “I ordered,” said Napoleon at St. Helena, “about a thousand or twelve hundred to be shot. Among the garrison at Jaffa a number of Turkish troops were discovered, whom I had taken a short time before at El Arish, and sent to Bagdad, on their parole not to be found in arms against me for a year. I had caused them to be escorted thirty-six miles, on their way to Bagdad, by a division of my army. But, instead of proceeding to Bagdad, they threw themselves into Jaffa, defended it to the last, and cost me the lives of many of my brave troops. Moreover, before I attacked the town I sent them a flag of truce. Immediately after, we saw the head of the bearer elevated on a pole over the wall. Now, if I had spared them again, and sent them away on their parole, they would directly have gone to Acre, and have played over, for the second time, the same scene that they had done at Jaffa. In justice to the lives of my soldiers, as every general ought to consider himself as their father, and them as his children, I could not allow this. To leave as a guard a portion of my army, already reduced in number in consequence of the breach of faith of those wretches, was impossible. Indeed, to have acted otherwise than as I did, would probably have caused the destruction of my whole army. I, therefore, availing myself of the rights of war, which authorize the putting to death prisoners taken under such circumstances, independent of the right given to me by having taken the city by assault, and that of retaliation on the Turks, ordered that the prisoners, who, in defiance of their capitulation, had been found bearing arms against me, should be selected out and shot. The rest, amounting to a considerable number, were spared. I would do the same thing again to-morrow, and so would Wellington, or any general commanding an army under similar circumstances.” Whatever judgment posterity may pronounce upon this transaction, no one can see in it any indication of an innate love of cruelty in Napoleon. He regarded the transaction as one of the stern necessities of war. The whole system is one of unmitigated horror. Bomb-shells are thrown into cities to explode in the chambers of maidens and in the cradles of infants, and the incidental destruction of innocence and helplessness is disregarded. The execrable ferocity of the details of war are essential to the system. To say that Napoleon ought not to have shot these prisoners, is simply to say that he ought to have relinquished the contest, to have surrendered himself and his army to the tender mercies of the Turk; and to allow England, and Austria, and Russia, to force back upon the disenthralled French nation the detested reign of the Bourbons. England was bombarding the cities of France, to compel a proud nation to re-enthrone a discarded and hated king. The French, in self-defense, were endeavoring to repel their powerful foe, by marching to India, England's only vulnerable point. Surely, the responsibility of this war rests with the assailants, and not with the assailed. There was a powerful party in the British Parliament and throughout the nation, the friends of reform and of popular liberty, who sympathized entirely with the French in this conflict, and who earnestly protested against a war which they deemed impolitic and unjust. But the king and the nobles prevailed, and as the French would not meekly submit to their demands, the world was deluged with blood. “Nothing was easier,” says Alison, “than to have disarmed the captives and sent them away.” The remark is unworthy of the eloquent and distinguished historian. It is simply affirming that France should have yielded the conflict, and submitted to British dictation. It would have been far more in accordance with the spirit of the events to have said, “Nothing was easier than for England to allow France to choose her own [pg 316] form of government.” But had this been done, the throne of England's king, and the castles of her nobles might have been overturned by the earthquake of revolution. Alas, for man!
Bourrienne, the rejected secretary of Napoleon, who became the enemy of his former benefactor, and who, as the minister and flatterer of Louis XVIII., recorded with caustic bitterness the career of the great rival of the European kings, thus closes his narrative of this transaction: “I have related the truth; the whole truth. I assisted at all the conferences and deliberations, though, of course, without possessing any deliberative voice. But I must in candor declare, that had I possessed a right of voting, my voice would have been for death. The result of the deliberations, and the circumstances of the army, would have constrained me to this. War, unfortunately, offers instances, by no means rare, in which an immutable law, of all times and common to all nations, has decreed that private interests shall succumb to the paramount good of the public, and that humanity itself shall be forgotten. It is for posterity to judge whether such was the terrible position of Bonaparte. I have a firm conviction that it was. And this is strengthened by the fact, that the opinion of the members of the council was unanimous upon the subject, and that the order was issued upon their decision. I owe it also to truth to state, that Napoleon yielded only at the last extremity, and was, perhaps, one of those who witnessed the massacre with the deepest sorrow.” Even Sir Walter Scott, who, unfortunately, allowed his Tory predilections to dim the truth of his unstudied yet classic page, while affirming that “this bloody deed must always remain a deep stain upon the character of Napoleon,” is constrained to admit, “yet we do not view it as the indulgence of an innate love of cruelty; for nothing in Bonaparte's history shows the existence of that vice; and there are many things which intimate his disposition to have been naturally humane.”
Napoleon now prepared to march upon Acre, the most important military post in Syria. Behind its strong ramparts Achmet the Butcher had gathered all his troops and military stores, determined upon the most desperate resistance. Colonel Philippeaux, an emissary of the Bourbons, and a former school-mate of Napoleon, contributed all the skill of an accomplished French engineer in arming the fortifications and conducting the defense. Achmet immediately sent intelligence of the approaching attack to Sir Sydney Smith, who was cruising in the Levant with an English fleet. He immediately sailed for Acre, with two ships of the line and several smaller vessels, and proudly entered the harbor two days before the French made their appearance, strengthening Achmet with an abundant supply of engineers, artillerymen, and ammunition. Most unfortunately for Napoleon, Sir Sydney, just before he entered the harbor, captured the flotilla, dispatched from Alexandria with the siege equipage, as it was cautiously creeping around the headlands of Carmel. The whole battering train, amounting to forty-four heavy guns, he immediately mounted upon the ramparts, and manned them with English soldiers. This was an irreparable loss to Napoleon, but with undiminished zeal the besiegers, with very slender means, advanced their works. Napoleon now sent an officer with a letter to Achmet, offering to treat for peace “Why,” said he, in this, “should I deprive an old man, whom I do not know, of a few years of life? What signify a few leagues more, added to the countries I have conquered? Since God has given victory into my hands, I will, like him, be forgiving and merciful, not only toward the people, but toward their rulers also.” The barbarian Turk, regardless of the flag of truce, cut off the head of this messenger, though Napoleon had taken the precaution to send a Turkish prisoner with the flag, and raised the ghastly trophy upon a pole, over his battlements, in savage defiance. The decapitated body he sewed up in a sack, and threw it into the sea. Napoleon then issued a proclamation to the people of Syria: “I am come into Syria,” said he, “to drive out the Mamelukes and the army of the Pacha. What right had Achmet to send his troops to attack me in Egypt? He has provoked me to war. I have brought it to him. But it is not on you, inhabitants, that I intend to inflict its horrors. Remain quiet in your homes. Let those who have abandoned them through fear return again. I will grant to every one the property which he possesses. It is my wish that the Cadis continue their functions as usual, and dispense justice; that religion, in particular, be protected and revered, and that the mosques should continue to be frequented by all faithful Mussulmans. It is from God that all good things come; it is he who gives the victory. The example of what has occurred at Gaza and Jaffa ought to teach you that if I am terrible to my enemies, I am kind to my friends, and, above all, benevolent and merciful to the poor.”
The plague, that most dreadful scourge of the East, now broke out in the army. It was a new form of danger, and created a fearful panic. The soldiers refused to approach their sick comrades, and even the physicians, terrified in view of the fearful contagion, abandoned the sufferers to die unaided. Napoleon immediately entered the hospitals, sat down by the cots of the sick soldiers, took their fevered hands in his own, even pressed their bleeding tumors, and spoke to them words of encouragement and hope. The dying soldiers looked upon their heroic and sympathizing friend with eyes moistened with gratitude, and blessed him. Their courage was reanimated and thus they gained new strength to throw off the dreadful disease. “You are right,” said a grenadier, upon whom the plague had made such ravages, that he could hardly move a limb; “your grenadiers were not made to die in a hospital.” The physicians, shamed by the heroism of Napoleon, returned to their duty. The soldiers, animated by the example of their chief, no longer refused to administer to the wants of their suffering comrades, and thus the progress of the infection in [pg 317] the army was materially arrested. One of the physicians reproached Napoleon for his imprudence, in exposing himself to such fearful peril. He coolly replied, “It is but my duty. I am the commander-in-chief.”
Napoleon now pressed the siege of Acre. It was the only fortress in Syria which could stop him. Its subjugation would make him the undisputed master of Syria. Napoleon had already formed an alliance with the Druses and other Christian tribes, who had taken refuge from the extortions of the Turks, among the mountains of Lebanon, and they only awaited the capture of Acre to join his standard in a body, and to throw off the intolerable yoke of Moslem despotism. Delegations of their leading men frequently appeared in the tent of Napoleon, and their prayers were fervently ascending for the success of the French arms. That in this conflict Napoleon was contending on the side of human liberty, and the allies for the support of despotism, is undeniable. The Turks were not idle. By vast exertions they had roused the whole Mussulman population to march, in the name of the Prophet, for the destruction of the “Christian dogs.” An enormous army was marshaled, and was on its way for the relief of the beleagured city. Damascus had furnished its thousands. The scattered remnants of the fierce Mamelukes, and the mounted Bedouins of the desert, had congregated, to rush, with resistless numbers, upon their bold antagonist.
Napoleon had been engaged for ten days in an almost incessant assault upon the works of Acre, when the approach of the great Turkish army was announced. It consisted of about thirty [pg 318] thousand troops, twelve thousand of whom were the fiercest and best-trained horsemen in the world. Napoleon had but eight thousand effective men with which to encounter the well-trained army of Europeans and Turks within the walls of Acre, and the numerous host rushing to its rescue. He acted with his usual promptitude. Leaving two thousand men to protect the works and cover the siege, he boldly advanced with but six thousand men, to encounter the thirty thousand already exulting in his speedy and sure destruction. Kleber was sent forward with an advance-guard of three thousand men. Napoleon followed soon after, with three thousand more. As Kleber, with his little band, defiled from a narrow valley at the foot of Mount Tabor, he entered upon an extended plain. It was early in the morning of the sixteenth of April. The unclouded sun was just rising over the hills of Palestine, and revealed to his view the whole embattled Turkish host spread out before him. The eye was dazzled with the magnificent spectacle, as proud banners and plumes, and gaudy turbans and glittering steel, and all the barbaric martial pomp of the East was reflected by the rays of the brilliant morning. Twelve thousand horsemen, decorated with the most gorgeous trappings of military show, and mounted on the fleetest Arabian chargers, were prancing and curveting in all directions. A loud and exultant shout of vengeance and joy, rising like the roar of the ocean, burst from the Turkish ranks, as soon as they perceived their victims enter the plain. The French, too proud and self-confident to retreat before any superiority in numbers, had barely time to form themselves into one of Napoleon's impregnable squares, when the whole cavalcade of horsemen, with gleaming sabres and hideous yells, and like the sweep of the wind, came rushing down upon them. Every man in the French squares knew that his life depended upon his immobility; and each one stood, shoulder to shoulder with his comrades, like a rock. It is impossible to drive a horse upon the point of a bayonet. He has an instinct of self-preservation which no power of the spur can overcome. He can be driven to the bayonet's point, but if the bayonet remains firm he will rear and plunge, and wheel, in defiance of all the efforts of his rider to force his breast against it. As the immense mass came thundering down upon the square, it was received by volcanic bursts of fire from the French veterans, and horse and riders rolled together in the dust. Chevaux-de-frise of bayonets, presented from every side of this living, flaming citadel, prevented the possibility of piercing the square. For six long hours this little band sustained the dreadful and unequal conflict. The artillery of the enemy plowed their ranks in vain. In vain the horsemen made reiterated charges on every side. The French, by the tremendous fire incessantly pouring from their ranks, soon formed around them a rampart of dead men and horses. Behind this horrible abattis, they bid stern defiance to the utmost fury of their enemies. Seven long hours passed away while the battle raged with unabated ferocity. The mid-day sun was now blazing upon the exhausted band. Their ammunition was nearly expended. Notwithstanding the enormous slaughter they had made, their foes seemed undiminished in number. A conflict so unequal could not much longer continue. The French were calling to their aid a noble despair, expecting there to perish, but resolved, to a man, to sell their lives most dearly.
Matters were in this state, when at one o'clock Napoleon, with three thousand men, arrived on the heights which overlooked the field of battle. The field was covered with a countless multitude, swaying to and fro in the most horrible clamor and confusion. They were canopied with thick volumes of smoke, which almost concealed the combatants from view. Napoleon could only distinguish the French by the regular and unintermitted volleys which issued from their ranks, presenting one steady spot, incessantly emitting lightning flashes, in the midst of the moving multitude with which it was surrounded. With that instinctive judgment which enabled him, with the rapidity of lightning, to adopt the most important decisions, Napoleon instantly took his resolution. He formed his little band into two squares, and advanced in such a manner as to compose, with the square of Kleber, a triangle inclosing the Turks. Thus, with unparalleled audacity, with six thousand men he undertook to surround thirty thousand of as fierce and desperate soldiers as the world has ever seen. Cautiously and silently the two squares hurried on to the relief of their friends, giving no sign of approach, till they were just ready to plunge upon the plains. Suddenly the loud report of a cannon upon the hills startled with joyful surprise the weary heroes. They recognized instantly the voice of Napoleon rushing to their rescue. One wild shout of almost delirious joy burst from the ranks. “It is Bonaparte! It is Bonaparte!” That name operated as a talisman upon every heart. Tears of emotion dimmed the eyes of those scarred and bleeding veterans, as, disdaining longer to act upon the defensive, they grasped their weapons with nervous energy, and made a desperate onset upon their multitudinous foes. The Turks were assailed by a murderous fire instantaneously discharged from the three points of this triangle. Discouraged by the indomitable resolution with which they had been repulsed, and bewildered by the triple assault, they broke and fled. The mighty host, like ocean waves, swept across the plain, when suddenly it was encountered by one of the fresh squares, and in refluent surges rolled back in frightful disorder. A scene of horror now ensued utterly unimaginable. The Turks were cut off from retreat in every direction. The enormous mass of infantry, horse, artillery, and baggage, was driven in upon itself, in wild and horrible confusion. From the French squares there flashed one incessant sheet of flame. Peal after peal, the artillery thundered in a continuous roar. These thoroughly-drilled veterans fired with a rapidity and a precision which seemed to the [pg 319] Turks supernatural. An incessant storm of cannon-balls, grape-shot, and bullets pierced the motley mass, and the bayonets of the French dripped with blood.