POISONING OF THE SICK AT JAFFA.
The retreat from before Acre was conducted with equal skill and secrecy, though Buonaparte was compelled to leave behind his heavy cannon, which he either buried or threw into the sea. But, by a rumour which long prevailed in the French army, he was alleged to have taken a far more extraordinary measure of preparation for retreat, by destroying with opium the sick in the hospitals, who could not march along with the army.
This transaction is said to have taken place under the following circumstances. The siege of Acre being raised on the 21st of May, 1799, the French army retreated to Jaffa, where their military hospitals had been established during the siege. Upon the 27th, Buonaparte was under the necessity of continuing his retreat, and in the meantime such of the patients as were convalescent were sent forward on the road to Egypt, under the necessary precautions for their safety. There remained an indefinite number, reaching at the greatest computation to betwixt twenty and thirty, but stated by Buonaparte himself to be only seven, whose condition was desperate. Their disease was the plague, and to carry them onward, seemed to threaten the army with infection; while to leave them behind, was abandoning them to the cruelty of the Turks, by whom all stragglers and prisoners were cruelly murdered, often with protracted torture. It was on this occasion that Buonaparte submitted to Desgenettes, chief of the medical staff, the propriety of ending the victims' misery by a dose of opium. The physician answered, with the heroism belonging to his profession, that his art taught him how to cure men, not to kill them.[411]
The proposal was agreeable to Buonaparte's principles, who advocating the legality of suicide, naturally might believe, that if a man has a right to relieve himself of intolerable evils by depriving himself of life, a general or a monarch may deal forth that measure to his soldiers or subjects, which he would think it advisable to act upon in his own case. It was consistent, also, with his character, rather to look at results than at the measures which were to produce them, and to consider in many cases the end as an excuse for the means. "I would have desired such a relief for myself in the same circumstances," he said to Mr. Warden.[412] To O'Meara he affirmed, "that he would have taken such a step even with respect to his own son."[413] The fallacy of this reasoning is demonstrable; but Buonaparte was saved from acting on it by the resistance of Desgenettes. A rear-guard was left to protect these unhappy men; and the English found some of them alive, who, if Desgenettes had been more compliant, would have been poisoned by their physician. If Buonaparte was guilty of entertaining such a purpose, whether entertained from indifference to human life, or from wild and misdirected ideas of humanity, he met an appropriate punishment in the general belief which long subsisted, that the deed had been actually carried into execution, not in the persons of a few expiring wretches only, but upon several hundred men. Miot says the report was current in the French army,—Sir Robert Wilson found it credited among their officers, when they became the English prisoners,—and Count Las Cases admits it was generally believed by the soldiers. But though popular credulity eagerly receives whatever stories are marked by the horrible and wonderful, history, on the contrary, demands direct evidence, and the existence of powerful motives,[414] for whatever is beyond the ordinary bounds of credibility. The poisoning of five or six hundred men is neither easily managed nor easily concealed; and why should the French leader have had recourse to it, since, like many a retreating general before him, he had only to leave the patients for whom he had not the means of transportation? To poison the sick and helpless, must have destroyed his interest with the remainder of his soldiers; whereas, to have left them to their fate, was a matter too customary, and too much considered as a point of necessity, to create any discontent[415] among those, whose interest, as well as that of their general, consisted in moving on as fast as possible. Again, had such a horrible expedient been had recourse to, it could not have escaped the knowledge of Sir Sidney Smith, who would not have failed to give the horrid fact publicity, were it only to retaliate upon Buonaparte for the scandalous accusations which he had circulated against the English. But though he mentions various complaints which the prisoners made against their general, and though he states himself to have found seven men alive in the hospitals at Jaffa, (being apparently the very persons whom it had been proposed to despatch by opium,) he says not a word of what he would doubtless have told not unwillingly, had there been ground for believing it. Neither, among the numerous persons to whom the truth must be known, has any one come forward since Buonaparte's fall, who could give the least evidence to authenticate the report otherwise than as a rumour, that had sprung out of the unjustifiable proposal which had indeed been made by Buonaparte to Desgenettes, but never acted upon. The same patient and impartial investigation, therefore, which compels us to record that the massacre of the Turkish prisoners in cold blood is fully proved, induces us to declare, that the poisoning of the sick at Jaffa has been affirmed without sufficient evidence.[416]
Buonaparte continued his retreat from Syria, annoyed by the natives, who harassed his march, and retaliating the injuries which he received, by plundering and burning the villages which lay in the course of his march. He left Jaffa on the 28th May, and upon the 14th June re-entered Cairo, with a reputation not so much increased by the victory at Mount Tabor, as diminished and sullied, for the time, by the retreat from Acre.
Lower Egypt, during the absence of Buonaparte, had remained undisturbed, unless by partial insurrections. In one of these an impostor personated that mysterious individual, the Imaum Mohadi, of whom the Orientals believe that he is not dead, but is destined to return and combat Antichrist, before the consummation of all things takes place. This pretender to supernatural power, as well as others who placed themselves at the head of insurrections without such high pretensions, was completely defeated; and the French showed the greatest severity in punishing their followers, and the country which had furnished them with partisans.[417]
In Upper Egypt there had been more obstinate contention. Murad Bey, already mentioned as the ablest chief of the Mamelukes, had maintained himself in that country with a degree of boldness and sagacity, which gave the French much trouble. His fine force of cavalry enabled him to advance or retreat at pleasure, and his perfect acquaintance with the country added much to his advantage.
Desaix, sent against Murad after the battle of the Pyramids, had again defeated the Mameluke chief at Sedinan, where was once more made evident the superiority of European discipline over the valour of the irregular cavalry of the East. Still the destruction of the enterprising bey was far from complete. Reinforced by a body of cavalry, Desaix,[418] in the month of December, 1798, again attacked him, and, after a number of encounters, terminating generally to the advantage of the French, the remaining Mamelukes, with their allies the Arabs, were at length compelled to take shelter in the Desert. Egypt seemed entirely at the command of the French; and Cosseir, a seaport on the Red Sea, had been taken possession of by a flotilla, fitted out to command that gulf.[419]
Three or four weeks after Buonaparte's return from Syria, this flattering state of tranquillity seemed on the point of being disturbed. Murad Bey, re-entering Upper Egypt with his Mamelukes and allies, descended the Nile in two bodies, one occupying each bank of the river. Ibrahim Bey, formerly his partner in the government of Egypt, made a corresponding movement towards the frontiers of Syria, as if to communicate with the right-hand division of Murad's army. La Grange was despatched against the Mamelukes who occupied the right bank, while Murat marched against those who, under the bey himself, were descending the Nile. The French were entertained at the idea of the two Murats, as they termed them, from the similarity of their names, meeting and encountering each other; but the Mameluke Murad retreated before Le Beau Sabreur—the handsome swordsman—of the French army.[420]
THE TURKISH ARMY AT ABOUKIR.