ousand soldiers with whom to encounter the whole
power of the Ottoman Porte, aided by the fleets of England and Russia.
Famine was in his camp, and it was with difficulty that he could obtain
daily rations for his troops. He could not keep these prisoners with him.
They would eat the bread for which his army was hungering; they would
demand a strong guard to keep them from insurrection; and the French army
was already so disproportionate to the number of its foes, that not an
individual could be spared from active service. They would surely take
occasion, in the perilous moments of the day of battle, to rise in revolt,
and thus, perhaps, effect the total destruction of the French army.
Consequently, to retain them in the camp was an idea not to be entertained
for a moment. To disarm them, and dismiss them upon their word of honor no
longer to serve against the French, appeared almost equally perilous.
There was no sense of honor in the heart of the barbarian Turk. The very
idea of keeping faith with infidels they laughed to scorn. They would
immediately join the nearest division of the Turkish army, and thus swell
the already multitudinous ranks of the foe, and even if they did not
secure the final defeat of Napoleon, they would certainly cost him the
lives of many of his soldiers. He could not supply them with food, neither
could he spare an escort to conduct them across the desert to Egypt. To
shoot them in cold blood was revolting to humanity. Napoleon, however,
generously resolved to give them their liberty, taking their pledge that
they would no longer serve against him; and in order to help them keep
their word, he sent a division of the army to escort them, one day's
march, toward Bagdad, whither they promised to go. But no sooner had the
escort commenced its return to the army, than these men, between one and
two thousand in number, turned also, and made a straight path for their
feet to the fortress of Jaffa, laughing at the simplicity of their
outwitted foe. But Napoleon was not a man to be laughed at. This merriment
soon died away in fearful wailings. Here they joined the marshaled hosts
of Achmet the Butcher. The bloody pacha armed them anew, and placed them
in his foremost ranks, again to pour a shower of bullets upon the little
band headed by Napoleon. El Arish is in Egypt, eighteen miles from the
granite pillars which mark the confines of Asia and Africa. Napoleon now
continued his march through a dry, barre