Napoleon was an inveterate enemy to dueling, and strongly prohibited it in the army. One evening in Egypt, at a convivial party, General Lanusse spoke sarcastically respecting the condition of the army. Junot, understanding his remarks to reflect upon Napoleon, whom he almost worshiped, was instantly in a flame, and stigmatized Lanusse as a traitor. Lanusse retorted by calling Junot a scoundrel. Instantly swords were drawn, and all were upon their feet, for such words demanded blood. “Hearken,” said Junot, sternly, “I called you a traitor; I do not think that you are one. You called me a scoundrel; you know that I am not such. But we must fight. One of us must die. I hate you, for you have abused the man whom I love and admire, as much as I do God, if not more.” It was a dark night. The whole party, by the light of torches, proceeded to the bottom of the garden which sloped to the Nile, when the two half inebriated generals cut at each other with their swords, until the head of Lanusse was laid open, and the bowels of Junot almost protruded from a frightful wound. When Napoleon, the next morning, heard of the occurrence, he was exceedingly indignant. “What?” exclaimed he, “are they determined to cut each other's throats? Must they go into the midst of the reeds of the Nile to dispute it with the crocodiles? Have they not enough, then, with the Arabs, the plague, and the Mamelukes? You deserve, Monsieur Junot,” said he, as if his aid were present before him, “you richly deserve, as soon as you get well, to be put under arrest for a month.”
In preparation for abandoning the siege of Acre, Napoleon issued the following proclamation to his troops. “Soldiers! You have traversed the desert which separates Asia from Africa, with the rapidity of an Arab force. The army, which was on its march to invade Egypt, is destroyed. You have taken its general, its field artillery, camels, and baggage. You have captured all the fortified posts, which secure the wells of the desert. You have dispersed, at Mount Tabor, those swarms of brigands, collected from all parts of Asia, hoping to share the plunder of Egypt. The thirty ships, which, twelve days since, you saw enter the port of Acre, were destined for an attack upon Alexandria. But you compelled them to hasten to the relief of Acre. Several of their standards will contribute to adorn your triumphal entry into Egypt. After having maintained the war, with a handful of men, during three months, in the heart of Syria, taken forty pieces of cannon, fifty stands of colors, six thousand prisoners, and captured or destroyed the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, and Acre, we prepare to return to Egypt, where, by a threatened invasion, our presence is imperiously demanded. A few days longer might give you the hope of taking the Pacha in his palace. But at this season the castle of Acre is not worth the loss of three days, nor the loss of those brave soldiers who would consequently fall, and who are necessary for more essential services. Soldiers! we have yet a toilsome and a perilous task to perform. After having, by this campaign, secured ourselves from attacks from the eastward, it will perhaps be necessary to repel efforts which may be made from the west.”
On the 20th of May, Napoleon, for the first time in his life, relinquished an enterprise unaccomplished. An incessant fire was kept up in the trenches till the last moment, while the baggage, the sick, and the field artillery were silently defiling to the rear, so that the Turks had no suspicion that the besiegers were about to abandon their works. Napoleon left three thousand of his troops, slain or dead of the plague, buried in the sands of Acre. He had accomplished the ostensible and avowed object of his expedition. He had utterly destroyed the vast assemblages formed in Syria for the invasion of Egypt, and had rendered the enemy, in that quarter, incapable of acting against him. Acre had been overwhelmed by his fire, and was now reduced to a heap of ruins. Those vague and brilliant dreams of conquest in the East, which he secretly cherished, had not been revealed to the soldiers. They simply knew that they had triumphantly accomplished the object announced to them, in the destruction of the great Turkish army. Elated with the pride of conquerors, they prepared to return, with the utmost celerity, to encounter another army, assembled at Rhodes, which was soon to be landed, by the hostile fleet, upon some part of the shores of Egypt. Thus, while Napoleon was frustrated in the accomplishment of his undivulged but most majestic plans, he still appeared to the world an invincible conqueror.
There were, in the hospitals, twelve hundred sick and wounded. These were to be conveyed on horses and on litters. Napoleon relinquished his own horse for the wounded, and toiled along through the burning sands with the humblest soldiers on foot. The Druses and other tribes, hostile to the Porte, were in a state of great dismay when they learned that the French were retiring. They knew that they must encounter terrible vengeance at the hands of Achmet the Butcher. The victory of the allies riveted upon them anew their chains, and a wail, which would have caused the ear of Christendom to tingle, ascended from terrified villages, as fathers and mothers and children cowered beneath the storm of vengeance which fell upon them, from the hands of the merciless Turk. But England was too far away for the shrieks to be heard in her pious dwellings.
At Jaffa, among the multitude of the sick, there were seven found near to death. They were dying of the plague, and could not be removed. Napoleon himself fearlessly went into the plague hospital, passed through all its wards, and spoke words of sympathy and encouragement to the sufferers. The eyes of the dying were turned to him, and followed his steps, with indescribable affection, as he passed from cot to cot. The seven who were in such a condition that their removal was impossible, Napoleon for some time contemplated with most tender solicitude. He could not endure the thought of leaving them to be taken by the Turks; for the Turks tortured to death every prisoner who fell into their hands. He at last suggested to the physician the expediency of administering to them an opium pill, which would expedite, by a few hours, their death, and thus save them from the hands of their cruel foe. The physician gave the highly admired reply, “My profession is to cure, not to kill.” Napoleon reflected a moment in silence, and said no more upon the subject, but left a rear-guard of five hundred men to protect them, until the last should have expired. For this suggestion Napoleon has been most severely censured. However much it may indicate mistaken views of Christian duty, it certainly does not indicate a cruel disposition. It was his tenderness of heart, and his love for his soldiers, which led to the proposal. An unfeeling monster would not have troubled himself about these few valueless and dying men; but, without a thought, would have left them to their fate. In reference to the severity with which this transaction has been condemned, Napoleon remarked at St. Helena, “I do not think that it would have been a crime had opium been administered to them. On the contrary, I think it would have been a virtue. To leave a few unfortunate men, who could not recover, in order that they might be massacred by the Turks with the most dreadful tortures, as was their custom, would, I think, have been cruelty. A general ought to act with his soldiers, as he would wish should be done to himself. Now would not any man, under similar circumstances, who had his senses, have preferred dying easily, a few hours sooner, rather than expire under the tortures of those barbarians? If my own son, and I believe I love my son as well as any father does his child, were in a similar situation with these men, I would advise it to be done. And if so situated myself, I would insist upon it, if I had sense enough and strength enough to demand it. However, affairs were not so pressing as to prevent me from leaving a party to take care of them, which was done. If I had thought such a measure as that of giving opium necessary, I would have called a council of war, have stated the necessity of it, and have published it in the order of the day. It should have been no secret. Do you think, if I had been capable of secretly poisoning my soldiers, as doing a necessary action secretly would give it the appearance of a crime, or of such barbarities as driving my carriage over the dead, and the still bleeding bodies of the wounded, that my troops would have fought for me with an enthusiasm and affection without a parallel? No, no! I never should have done so a second time. Some would have shot me in passing. Even some of the wounded, who had sufficient strength left to pull a trigger, would have dispatched me. I never committed a crime in all my political career. At my last hour I can assert that. Had I done so, I should not have been here now. I should have dispatched the Bourbons. It only rested with me to give my consent, and they would have ceased to live. I have, however, often thought since on this point of morals, and, I believe, if thoroughly considered, it is always better to suffer a man to terminate his destiny, be it what it may. I judged so afterward in the case of my friend Duroc, who, when [pg 325] his bowels were falling out before my eyes, repeatedly cried to me to have him put out of his misery. I said to him ‘I pity you, my friend, but there is no remedy, it is necessary to suffer to the last.’ ”
Sir Robert Wilson recorded, that the merciless and blood-thirsty monster Napoleon, poisoned at Jaffa five hundred and eighty of his sick and wounded soldiers, merely to relieve himself of the encumbrance of taking care of them. The statement was circulated, and believed throughout Europe and America. And thousands still judge of Napoleon through the influence of such assertions. Sir Robert was afterward convinced of his error, and became the friend of Napoleon. When some one was speaking, in terms of indignation, of the author of the atrocious libel, Napoleon replied, “You know but little of men and of the passions by which they are actuated. What leads you to imagine that Sir Robert is not a man of enthusiasm and of violent passions, who wrote what he then believed to be true? He may have been misinformed and deceived, and may now be sorry for it. He may be as sincere now in wishing us well as he formerly was in seeking to injure us.” Again he said, “The fact is that I not only never committed any crime, but I never even thought of doing so. I have always marched with the opinions of five or six millions of men. In spite of all the libels, I have no fear whatever respecting my fame. Posterity will do me justice. The truth will be known, and the good which I have done will be compared with the faults which I have committed. I am not uneasy as to the result.”
Baron Larrey was the chief of the medical staff. “Larrey,” said Napoleon to O'Meara, “was the most honest man, and the best friend to the soldier whom I ever knew. Indefatigable in his exertions for the wounded, he was seen on the field of battle, immediately after an action, accompanied by a train of young surgeons, endeavoring to discover if any signs of life remained in the bodies. He scarcely allowed a moment of repose to his assistants, and kept them ever at their posts. He tormented the generals, and disturbed them out of their beds at night, whenever he wanted accommodations or assistance for the sick or wounded. They were all afraid of him, as they knew that if his wishes were not complied with, he would immediately come and make a complaint to me.” Larrey, on his return to Europe, published a medical work, which he dedicated to Napoleon as a tribute due to him for the care which he always took of the sick and wounded soldiers. Assulini, another eminent physician, records, “Napoleon, great in every emergence, braved on several occasions the danger of contagion. I have seen him in the hospitals at Jaffa, inspecting the wards, and talking familiarly with the soldiers attacked by the plague. This heroic example allayed the fears of the army, cheered the spirits of the sick, and encouraged the hospital attendants, whom the progress of the disease and the fear of contagion had considerably alarmed.”
The march over the burning desert was long and painful, and many of the sick and wounded perished. The sufferings of the army were inconceivable. Twelve hundred persons, faint with disease, or agonized with broken bones or ghastly wounds, were borne along, over the rough and weary way, on horseback. Many were so exhausted with debility and pain that they were tied to the saddles, and were thus hurried onward, with limbs freshly amputated and with bones shivered to splinters. The path of the army was marked by the bodies of the dead, which were dropped by the way-side. There were not horses enough for the sick and the wounded, though Napoleon and all his generals marched on foot. The artillery pieces were left among the sand hills, that the horses might be used for the relief of the sufferers. Many of the wounded were necessarily abandoned to perish by the way-side. Many who could not obtain a horse, knowing the horrible death by torture which awaited them, should they fall into the hands of the Turks, hobbled along with bleeding wounds in intolerable agony. With most affecting earnestness, though unavailingly, they implored their comrades to help them. Misery destroys humanity. Each one thought only of himself. Seldom have the demoralizing influences and the horrors of war been more signally displayed than in this march of twenty-five days. Napoleon was deeply moved by the spectacle of misery around him. One day as he was toiling along through the sands, at the head of a column, with the blazing sun of Syria pouring down upon his unprotected head, with the sick, the wounded, and the dying, all around him, he saw an officer, in perfect health, riding on horseback, refusing to surrender his saddle to the sick. The indignation of Napoleon was so aroused, that by one blow from the hilt of his sword he laid the officer prostrate upon the earth, and then helped a wounded soldier into his saddle. The deed was greeted with a shout of acclamation from the ranks. The “recording angel in heaven's chancery” will blot out the record of such violence with a tear.
The historian has no right to draw the vail over the revolting horrors of war. Though he may wish to preserve his pages from the repulsive recital, justice to humanity demands that the barbarism, the crime, and the cruelty of war should be faithfully portrayed. The soldiers refused to render the slightest assistance to the sick or the wounded. They feared that every one who was not well was attacked by the plague. These poor dying sufferers were not only objects of horror, but also of derision. The soldiers burst into immoderate fits of laughter in looking upon the convulsive efforts which the dying made to rise from the sands upon which they had fallen. “He has made up his account,” said one. “He will not get on far,” said another. And when the exhausted wretch fell to rise no more, they exclaimed, with perfect indifference, “His lodging is secured.” The troops were harassed upon their march by hordes of mounted [pg 326] Arabs, ever prowling around them. To protect themselves from assault, and to avenge attacks, they fired villages, and burned the fields of grain, and with bestial fury pursued shrieking maids and matrons. Such deeds almost invariably attend the progress of an army, for an army is ever the resort and the congenial home of the moral dregs of creation. Napoleon must at times have been horror-stricken in contemplating the infernal instrumentality which he was using for the accomplishment of his purposes. The only excuse which can be offered for him is, that it was then as now, the prevalent conviction of the world that war, with all its inevitable abominations, is a necessary evil. The soldiers were glad to be fired upon from a house, for it furnished them with an excuse for rushing in, and perpetrating deeds of atrocious violence in its secret chambers.
Those infected by the plague accompanied the army at some distance from the main body. Their encampment was always separated from the bivouacs of the troops, and was with terror avoided by those soldiers who, without the tremor of a nerve, could storm a battery. Napoleon, however, always pitched his tent by their side. Every night he visited them to see if their wants were attended to. And every morning he was present, with parental kindness, to see them file off at the moment of departure. Such tenderness, at the hands of one who was filling the world with his renown, won the hearts of the soldiers. He merited their love. Even to the present day the scarred and mutilated victims of these wars, still lingering in the Hotel des Invalides at Paris, will flame with enthusiastic admiration at the very mention of the name of Napoleon. There is no man, living or dead, who at the present moment is the object of such enthusiastic love as Napoleon Bonaparte. And they who knew him the best love him the most.