ch 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 hav