XXXV. FAREWELL, FRANCE!…

XXXV. FAREWELL, FRANCE!

Five hours elapsed before the vessel got under way; she did so at last, however, and after sailing for an hour, she stopped in the open roadstead. It was nearly midnight.

Then there was a great commotion on deck. Among the innumerable threats which greeted the exiles at Rochefort, cries of "Into the water!" and "Drink out of the great cup!" had been most frequent, and had reached the prisoners' ears. No one expressed his thought, but they each expected to find the end of their tortures in the bed of the Charente. The vessel to which they had been transferred was doubtless one of those which had a movable plug--an ingenious invention of Nero's to rid himself of his mother, and utilized by Carrier to drown the royalists.

They heard the order to put two of the ship's longboats into the water; then an officer commanded every one to stand to his place in a loud voice. Then, after a moment's silence, some one called the names of Pichegru and Aubry.

They embraced their companions and went on deck. A quarter of an hour passed. Suddenly the names of Barthélemy and Delarue were called.

Doubtless the two others had been made away with, and now it was their turn. They embraced their comrades, as Pichegru and Aubry had done, and went on deck, from which they were made to pass into a little boat, where they had to sit side by side in the thwart. A sailor placed himself upon another thwart opposite; the sail was hoisted and they were off like a shot. The two exiles kept feeling the planks with their feet, fancying that they could see the hole which had already swallowed up their comrades.

But this time their fears were without foundation; they were merely being transferred from the brigantine "Brilliant" to the corvette "Vaillante," whither two of their companions had preceded them and where the others were to follow. They were received by Captain Julien, in whose face they sought in vain to read the secret of their destiny. He affected to look severely at them, but when he was alone with them he said: "Gentlemen, it is plain to be seen that you have suffered terribly. But have patience; while executing the orders of the Directory, I shall overlook and neglect nothing that can add to your comfort."

Unhappily for them, Guillet had followed them. He heard the last words, and an hour later Captain Julien was replaced by Captain Laporte.

Strange freak of Fate! The "Vaillante," a corvette carrying twenty-two guns, which the exiles were now boarding, had recently been built at Bayonne; and Villot, who was commanding general of the district, had been chosen to christen her. He himself had selected the name "Vaillante."

The exiles were sent between decks; and as it did not occur to any one to give them anything to eat, Dessonville, who suffered more than any of the others from lack of food, asked: "Do they really propose to let us die of hunger?"

"No, no, gentlemen," said an officer named Des Poyes, laughing. "Do not be uneasy, you will have your supper."

"Only give us some fruit," said the dying Barbé-Marbois; "something to cool our mouths."

A fresh burst of laughter welcomed this request, and some one threw the poor famished creatures a couple of loaves of bread from the deck.

"What a delicious supper," exclaims Ramel, "for poor devils who had eaten nothing for forty hours. And yet a supper we often thought of with regret, for it was the last time that we were given any bread."

Ten minutes later twelve hammocks were distributed to the prisoners; but Pichegru, Ramel, Villot and Dessonville received none.

"And where are we to sleep?" asked Pichegru.

"Come on deck," replied the voice of the new captain, "and I will see that you are told." Pichegru and the others who had not received hammocks did as they were told.

"Put these men in the Lion's Den," said the captain; "that is the lodging set aside for them."

The Lion's Den is the cell set aside for sailors who are condemned to death. When the exiles between decks heard this order they gave vent to angry cries.

"No separation!" they cried. "Put us in that horrible cell with those gentlemen, or leave them here with us."

Barthélemy and his faithful Letellier--that brave servant who had refused to leave his master--dashed on deck; and seeing their four comrades in the clutches of soldiers who were dragging them toward the cell, they slid rather than climbed down the ladder, and found themselves in the hold with them.

"Here!" cried the captain from the top of the hatchway; "come back here, or I will have you driven up with the bayonet." But they lay down.

"There is neither first nor last among us," they retorted; "we are all guilty or we are all innocent. You must treat us all alike."

The soldiers advanced toward them with bayonets levelled, but they did not move. It was only when Pichegru and the others insisted upon it that they returned to the deck. The four were then left in the deepest darkness in the horrible cell, which was foul with exhalations from the hold. They had neither hammock nor coverings, and could not lie down, for the cell was too narrow, nor yet stand up, for it was too low.

The twelve others crowded between decks were not much better off; for the hatches were closed, and, like their comrades, they had no air and could not move about.

Toward four o'clock in the morning the captain gave the order to set sail; and amid the shouts of the crew, the creaking of the rigging, the roaring of the waves breaking against the corvette, like a sob from the sides of the vessel itself, came the last cry: "Farewell, France!"

And like an echo from the entrails of the hold the same cry was repeated, almost unintelligibly, on account of the depths whence it came: "Farewell, France."

* * * * *

The reader may perhaps wonder that I have dwelt so long upon this melancholy tale, which would become more melancholy still, were we to follow the ill-fated exiles to the end of their journey of forty-five days. But the reader would probably not have my courage, which I owe to the necessity not of rehabilitating them--I leave to history that task--but of directing the compassion of future generations toward the men who sacrificed themselves for France.

It has seemed to me that the old pagan saying, "Woe to the vanquished!" has always been brutal, and is nothing less than impious in these days of modernity; and by some instinct of my heart I always incline toward the vanquished and my sympathies are ever with them.

They who have read my books know that I have described with the same degree of impartiality and sympathy the demise of Joan of Arc at Rouen and the passing of Mary Stuart at Fotheringay, the appearance of Charles I. upon the scaffold at Whitehall and of Marie Antoinette on the Place de la Révolution.

But there is one peculiarity of historians which I have ever deplored, and that is that they marvel at the tears a king can shed, without studying as carefully the burden of agony which oppresses that poor human machine when dying, when it is supported by the conviction of its innocence and integrity, whether it belong to the middle or even the lower classes of society.

Such were these men whose sufferings I have endeavored to describe, and for whom we find not a single historian expressing regret, and who, by the clever expedient adopted by their persecutors of confusing them with men like Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes, were first despoiled of the sympathy of their contemporaries, and then cheated of their inheritance of the compassion of posterity.

THE EIGHTH CRUSADE

When we announced to you, dear readers, the importance in matter of size alone of our novel of "The Whites and the Blues," that is to say, when we warned you that it would comprise a certain number of volumes, we said at the same time that it was the sequel of "The Companions of Jehu."

But as our plan comprised the description of the great events of the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, from 1793 to 1815--that is to say, to offer you a panorama of the twenty-two years of our history--we have filled nearly three volumes with descriptions of the principal crises of the Revolution, and have only reached the year 1799, in which our story of "The Companions of Jehu" begins.

If several of our characters, who play parts in that novel also appear in "The Whites and the Blues," it will not be surprising if at five or six points of the fresh episode upon which we are about to enter, the two narratives coincide, and if some of the chapters of the first book are repeated naturally enough in the second, since the events are not only on parallel lines, but are often identical.

Once we have passed the execution of Morgan and his companions, our novel will in reality become a sequel to "The Companions of Jehu," since the third and only remaining brother of the family of Sainte-Hermine becomes the hero and principal personage of the volumes which remain to be published under the title of "The Empire."

We give this explanation, dear readers, that you may not be surprised at this coincidence between the two books; and if we dared to ask so much at your hands, we would beg you to read again "The Companions of Jehu" when reading the "Eighth Crusade."

Do I need to add, dear readers, that this new work is the most strictly historical of any that I have undertaken, and was conceived, composed and written in pursuance of a great object; that, namely, of obtaining the perusal of ten volumes of history under the guise of ten volumes of romance? The events related in "The Whites and the Blues" are the most important of our age; and it is essential that our people, who have played such a leading rôle for the last seventy years in the affairs of Europe, and who are called upon to play a still greater part, should know these grand pages of our annals as they deserve to be known.

Then when restorations follow revolutions, and revolutions follow restorations, when each party, at the moment of its elevation, raises statues to those who represent it--statues destined to be cast down by the opposite party, only to give place to others--feeble minds and short-sighted visions falter before all these great men of the moment, who become traitors, and whom their contemporaries find no more difficulty in dishonoring than they did in exalting. It is therefore well for a keener eye and a more impartial mind to say: "This is plaster and this is marble; this is lead and this gold."

There are statues which are thrown from their pedestals and which rise again of themselves. There are, on the contrary, those which fall of themselves and which are shattered in their fall. Mirabeau, after having been carried to the Pantheon with great pomp, has no statue to-day. Louis XVI., after being tossed into the common ditch, has his memorial chapel.

Perhaps posterity has been rather severe with Mirabeau, and equally lenient toward Louis XVI., but we must bow alike before its severity and its indulgence. And yet, without envying Louis XVI. his memorial chapel, we would like to see a statue erected to Mirabeau. The more guilty of the two, in our opinion, was not he who sold but he who bought.

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I. SAINT-JEAN-D'ACRE

On the 7th of April, 1799, the promontory on which Saint-Jean-d'Acre is built, the ancient Ptolemais, seemed to be wrapped in as much thunder and lightning as was Mount Sinai on the day when the Lord appeared to Moses from the burning bush.

Whence came those reports which shook the coast of Syria as with an earthquake? Whence came that smoke which covered the Gulf of Carmel with a cloud as thick as though Mount Elias had become a burning volcano?

The dream of one of those men, who with a few words change the whole destiny of the world, was accomplished. We are mistaken; we should have said, had vanished. But perhaps it had vanished only to give place to a reality of which this man, ambitious as he was, had never dared to dream.

* * * * *

On the 10th of September, 1797, when the conqueror of Italy heard at Passeriano of the 18th Fructidor and the promulgation of the law which condemned two of the directors, fifty-four deputies, and a hundred and forty-eight private individuals to exile, he fell into a profound revery.

He was doubtless calculating, in his mind, the influence which would accrue to him from this coup d'état, which his hand had directed although Augereau's had alone been visible. He was walking with his secretary, Bourrienne, in the beautiful park of the palace. Suddenly he raised his head and said without any apparent reference to what had gone before: "Assuredly, Europe is a mole-hill. There has never been a great empire or a great revolution save in the East, where there are six hundred millions of men."

Then when Bourrienne, totally unprepared for this outburst, looked at him in astonishment, he seemed to lose himself again in revery.

On the 1st of January, 1798, Bonaparte--who had been recognized in his box, in which he was trying to conceal himself, at the first performance of "Horatius Coclès," and saluted with an ovation and cries of "Long live Bonaparte!" which shook the building three times--returned to his house in the Rue Chantereine (newly named the Rue de la Victoire) wrapped in melancholy, and said to Bourrienne, to whom he always confided his gloomy thoughts:

"Believe me, Bourrienne, nobody remembers anything in Paris. If I should do nothing for six months I should be lost. One reputation in this Babylon replaces another; they will not see me three times at the theatre before they will cease to look at me."

Again, on the 29th of the same month, he said to Bourrienne, still absorbed in the same dream: "Bourrienne, I will not stay here; there is nothing to be done. If I do remain I am done for; everything goes to seed in France. I have already exhausted my glory. This poor little Europe cannot furnish enough; I must go to the East."

Finally, when he was walking down the Rue Sainte-Anne, with Bourrienne, about a fortnight before his departure on the 18th of April, his secretary, to whom he had not spoken a word since they left the Rue Chantereine, in order to break the silence which annoyed him, said: "Then you have really decided to leave France, general?"

"Yes," replied Bonaparte, "I asked to be one of them, and they refused me. If I stay here I shall have to overthrow them and make myself king. The nobles would never consent to that; I have sounded the ground and the time has not yet come. I should be alone. I must dazzle the people. We will go to Egypt, Bourrienne."

Therefore it was not to communicate with Tippoo-Sahib across Asia, and to attack England in India, that Bonaparte left Europe.

"I must dazzle the people." In those words lay the true motive for his departure.

* * * * *

On the 3d of May, 1798, he ordered all the generals to embark their troops. On the 4th he left Paris. On the 8th he reached Toulon. On the 19th he went aboard the admiral's vessel, the "Orient." On the 25th he sighted Leghorn and the island of Elba. On the 13th of June he took Malta. On the 19th he set sail again. On the 3d of July he took Alexandria by assault. On the 13th he won the battle of Chebrouïss. On the 21st he crushed the Mamelukes at the Pyramids. On the 25th he entered Cairo. On the 14th of August he learned of the disaster of Aboukir. On the 24th of December he started, with the members of the Institute, to visit the remains of the Suez Canal. On the 28th he drank at the fountains of Moses, and, like Pharaoh, was almost drowned in the Red Sea. On the 1st of January, 1799, he planned the expedition into Syria. He had conceived the idea six months earlier.

At that time he wrote to Kléber:

If the English continue to overrun the Mediterranean, they will perhaps force us to do greater things than we at first intended.

There was a vague rumor concerning an expedition which the Sultan of Damascus was sending against the French, in which Djezzar Pasha, surnamed "The Butcher," because of his cruelty, led the advance-guard.

The rumor had taken definite shape. Djezzar had advanced by Gaza as far as El-Arich, and had massacred the few French soldiers who were there in the fortress.

Among his young ordnance officers, Bonaparte had the brothers Mailly de Château-Renaud. He sent the younger with a flag of truce to Djezzar, who, in defiance of military law, took him prisoner. This was a declaration of war. Bonaparte, with his customary rapidity of decision, determined to destroy the advance-guard of the Ottoman Empire.

In case of success, he himself would tell later what were his hopes. If repulsed, he would raze the walls of Gaza, Jaffa, and Acre, ravage the country and destroy all the supplies, making it impossible for an army, even a native one, to cross the desert.

On the 11th of February, 1799, Bonaparte entered Syria at the head of twelve thousand men. He had with him that galaxy of gallant men who gravitated around him during the first and most brilliant part of his life.

He had Kléber, the handsomest and bravest horseman in the army. He had Murat, who disputed this double title with Kléber. He had Junot, who was such a remarkable shot that he could split a dozen balls in succession on the point of a knife. He had Lannes, who had already earned his title of Duc de Montebello, but had not yet assumed it. He had Reynier, who was destined to decide the victory of Heliopolis. He had Caffarelli, who was doomed to lie in that trench which he had dug.

And in subordinate positions he had for aides-de-camp Eugene de Beauharnais, our young friend of Strasbourg, who had brought about the marriage between Josephine and Bonaparte by going to ask the latter for his father's sword. He had Croisier, gloomy and taciturn ever since he had faltered in an encounter with the Arabs and the word "coward" had escaped Bonaparte's lips. He had the elder of the two Maillys, who was determined to deliver or avenge his brother. He had the young Sheik of Aher, chief of the Druses, whose name, if not his power, extended from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean.

And, finally, he had an old acquaintance of ours, Roland de Montrevel, whose habitual intrepidity had, since the day of his capture at Cairo, been doubled by that strange desire for death which we have seen him display in "The Companions of Jehu."

On the 17th of February the army reached El-Arich. The soldiers had suffered greatly from thirst during the journey. Only once did they find refreshment and amusement at the end of their day's stage. That was at Messoudiah, or "The Fortunate Spot," on the shores of the Mediterranean, at a place composed of small dunes of fine sand. Here chance led a soldier to imitate Moses' miracle. As he thrust his stick into the ground, the water gushed forth as from an artesian well. The soldier tasted it, and finding it excellent, he called his comrades and shared his discovery with them. Every one then punched his own hole and had his own well. Nothing more was needed to restore the soldiers to cheerfulness.

El-Arich surrendered at the first summons. On the 28th of February the green and fertile plains of Syria came in sight. At the same time, mountains and valleys, recalling those of Europe, could be plainly discerned through a light rain--a rare thing in the East.

On the 1st of March they camped at Ramleh--the ancient Rama, where Rachel gave way to her great despair, which the Bible describes in this nobly pathetic verse:

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentations and weepings and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they were not.

Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and Joseph passed by Rama on their way to Egypt. The church which the monks gave Bonaparte for a hospital was built on the very spot where the holy family stopped to rest.

The well whose fresh, pure water slaked the thirst of the whole army was the very same which, seventeen hundred and ninety-nine years before, had refreshed the holy fugitives. He also was from Rama, that disciple Joseph, whose pious hand wrapped the body of our Lord Jesus Christ in the shroud.

Perhaps not one man in the whole vast multitude knew the sacred tradition. But one thing they did know, and that was that they were not more than eighteen miles from Jerusalem.

As they walked beneath the olive trees which are perhaps the most beautiful in all the East, and which the soldiers ruthlessly cut down to make their bivouac fires, Bourrienne asked Bonaparte: "General, shall you not go to Jerusalem?"

"Oh, no," he replied, carelessly; "Jerusalem is not within my line of operations. I do not care to get into trouble with the mountaineers on these bad roads; and then on the other side of the mountain I should be attacked by a large body of cavalry. I have no ambition to emulate the fate of Crassus."

Crassus, it will be remembered, was massacred by the Parthians.

There is this that is strange in Bonaparte's life, that while he was at one time within eighteen miles of Jerusalem (the cradle of Christ) and at another within eighteen miles of Rome (the cradle of the Papacy), he had no desire to see either Rome or Jerusalem.

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II. THE PRISONERS

Two days before, within a mile of Gaza (which means in Arabic "treasure" and in Hebrew "strong")--the same Gaza whose gates were carried away by Samson, who died with three thousand Philistines beneath the ruins of the temple which he had overthrown--they had met Abdallah, Pasha of Damascus.

He was at the head of his cavalry. That pertained to Murat's department. Murat took a hundred men from the thousand which he commanded, and with his riding-whip in his hand--for when opposed to the Mussulman, Arab, and Maugrabin cavalry he rarely deigned to draw his sabre--he charged them vigorously. Abdallah turned and fled toward the town. The army followed him and took up its position on the opposite side.

They arrived at Ramleh the day after this skirmish. From Ramleh they marched upon Jaffa. To the soldiers' great satisfaction, the clouds gathered above their heads for the second time, and the rain fell. A deputation was sent to Bonaparte in the name of the army, asking that they be allowed to take a bath. Bonaparte granted the permission and ordered a halt. Then each soldier pulled off his clothes and revelled in the luxury of feeling the cool rain upon his burning body. Then the army started again, refreshed and joyous, and singing the "Marseillaise" with one accord.

Abdallah's Mamelukes and cavalry no more dared wait for the French than they had dared wait at Gaza. They returned to their city firm in their belief that every Mussulman is safe so long as he is behind a wall. This garrison of Jaffa was composed of a singular medley, who, drunk with fanaticism, were now about to set the best army in the world at defiance.

There were representatives there from all parts of the East--from the extreme end of Africa to the uttermost confines of Asia. There were Maugrabins with their long white coats. There were Albanians, with their long guns mounted in silver and inlaid with coral. There were Kurds, with their long lances ornamented with ostrich plumes. There were Aleppians, who all wore, either on one cheek or the other, the mark of the famous button of Aleppo. There were men of Damascus with curved swords of such finely tempered steel that they could cut a silk handkerchief floating in the air. There were Nataloians, Karamanians, and negroes.

On the 3d they arrived before the walls of Jaffa, and on the 4th the city was invested. On the same day Murat made a reconnoissance around the ramparts to determine on which side it would be best to attack. On the 7th everything was in readiness to bombard the city.

Bonaparte desired to try conciliatory measures before beginning the bombardment. He knew the meaning of a struggle against such a population, even were he victorious.

He dictated the following summons:

God is merciful and pitiful.

General Bonaparte, whom the Arabs have surnamed the "Sultan of Fire," charges me to tell you that Djezzar Pasha commenced hostilities in Egypt by taking the fortress of El-Arich; that God, who is always on the side of justice, gave the victory to the French army, who recaptured the fortress, from which he desires to drive the troops of Djezzar Pasha, who ought never to have entered it; that Jaffa is surrounded on all sides; that the batteries will begin in two hours to batter down the walls with shot and shell, and destroy the defences; that his heart is touched by the thought of the harm that would befall the city and its inhabitants should it be taken by assault; that he offers a safe-conduct and protection to the garrison and the inhabitants of the city, and that he will consequently postpone the bombardment until seven o'clock in the morning.

The summons was addressed to Abou-Saib, the governor of Jaffa. Roland held out his hand to take it.

"What are you doing?" asked Bonaparte.

"Do you not need a messenger?" replied the young man, laughing; "it may as well be I as any one else."

"No," replied Bonaparte; "on the contrary, it had better be any one else than you, and better a Mussulman than a Christian."

"Why so, general?"

"Because while Abou-Saib may perhaps cut off the head of a Mussulman, he would most certainly cut off that of a Christian."

"All the more reason," replied Roland, shrugging his shoulders.

"Enough," said Bonaparte: "I do not wish it."

Roland went off into a corner pouting like a spoiled child.

Then Bonaparte said to his dragoman: "Ask whether there is any Turk or Arab, in short any Mussulman, who will undertake to deliver this despatch."

The dragoman repeated the question aloud.

A Mameluke from the dromedary corps came forward.

"I will," said he.

The dragoman looked at Bonaparte.

"Tell him what he risks," said the general-in-chief.

"The Sultan of Fire wishes you to know that you risk your life in taking this message."

"What is written is written," replied the Mussulman, and he held out his hand.

He was given a white flag and a trumpeter. They approached the town on horseback, and the gates opened to receive them. Ten minutes later there was a great commotion on the ramparts just in front of the general's camp. The trumpeter appeared, dragged roughly along by two Albanians. They ordered him to sound his trumpet to attract the attention of the French army.

He sounded the call. Just as all eyes were fixed upon the walls, a man approached holding in his hand a severed head wearing a turban. He extended his arm over the ramparts; the turban fell off, and the head dropped at the foot of the wall. It belonged to the Mussulman who had carried the summons. Ten minutes later the trumpeter came out of the same gate through which he had entered, but he was alone.

The next morning at seven o'clock, as Bonaparte had said, six pieces began to thunder one after the other. At four o'clock the breach was practicable, and Bonaparte ordered the assault. He looked around for Roland to give him the command of one of the regiments which were to enter the breach. Roland was not there.

The carabineers of the twenty-second light brigade and the chasseurs of the same brigade, supported by the artillery and the engineers, rushed forward to the assault, commanded by General Rambeau, Adjutant-general Nethervood, and Vernois. They all mounted to the breach; and in spite of the fusillade which met them in front, and the showers of grape from the few cannon which had not been silenced, and which took them from behind, they waged a terrible fight over the fallen tower.

The struggle lasted for a quarter of an hour, and the besiegers had not been able to enter the breach, nor had the besieged succeeded in forcing them back. All the efforts on both sides seemed to be concentrated on the spot, when suddenly Roland appeared upon the dismantled tower holding a Turkish standard and followed by some fifty men. He waved the standard crying: "The city is taken!"

This is what had happened: That morning about six o'clock, the hour of dawn in the East, Roland had gone down to his bath in the sea, and there had discovered a sort of breach in the angle made by a wall and a tower. He had assured himself that the breach led into the city; then he took his bath and returned to the army just as the bombardment had begun. There, as he was well known to be one of Bonaparte's privileged favorites, and at the same time one of the most recklessly daring officers in the army, cries of "Captain Roland! Captain Roland!" resounded on all sides.

Roland knew what that meant. It meant, "Haven't you something impossible to attempt? Here we are."

"Fifty volunteers!" he cried.

A hundred offered themselves.

"Fifty!" he repeated.

And he selected the fifty, taking every other man in order not to hurt their feelings. Then he took two trumpeters and two drummers, and leading the way himself, he conducted them through the hole he had found into the city. His fifty men followed him.

They met a party of about one hundred men carrying a flag. They fell upon them and harried them with their bayonets. Roland seized the flag, and it was that one which he had waved from the ramparts. He was hailed by shouts from the whole army; but he thought the time had now come to use his drums and trumpets.

The whole garrison was at the breach, not expecting any rear attack, when they suddenly heard the drums beside them and the French trumpets behind them. At the same time, two discharges of musketry and a hailstorm of bullets fell among the besieged. They turned, only to see gun-barrels reflecting the rays of the sun and tri-colored plumes waving in the wind in every direction. The smoke drifting toward them on the sea-breeze concealed the small number of the French rear attacking party. They believed that they had been betrayed. A frightful panic ensued, and they deserted the breach.

But Roland had sent ten of his men to open one of the gates. General Lannes's division poured in, and the besieged found French bayonets where they had thought to find the road clear for flight. By a reaction common to ferocious people, who, never giving quarter, never expect any, they seized their arms with renewed fury, and the combat began again with all the appearance of a massacre. Bonaparte, being ignorant of what was happening within the walls--seeing the smoke rising along the ramparts and hearing the rattle of musketry, while no one returned, not even the wounded--sent Eugene de Beauharnais and Croisier to see what was going on, bidding them to return and report at once.

They both wore the emblem of their rank, the aide-de-camp's scarf, on their arm. They had been impatiently awaiting the word which would permit of their taking part in the fight. They entered the town at a run and penetrated to the very heart of the carnage. They were recognized as envoys of the commander-in-chief, and as they were supposed to be the bearers of a message the firing ceased for a minute. A few of the Albanians could speak French. One of them cried: "If our lives are spared we will surrender at once. If not, we will fight until the last one of us is killed."

The two aides-de-camp had no means of knowing Bonaparte's secrets. They were young and they were actuated by sentiments of humanity. Without authority they promised the poor fellows that their lives should be spared. The firing ceased, and the prisoners were taken to the camp. There were four thousand of them.

As for the soldiers, they knew their rights. The town had been taken by assault. After the massacre came the pillage.

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III. THE CARNAGE

Bonaparte was walking in front of his tent with Bourrienne, impatiently awaiting news, and having no other of his intimates at hand, when he saw two troops of armed men leaving the town by different gates. One of them was led by Croisier, and the other by Eugene de Beauharnais. Their young faces shone with joy.

Croisier, who had not smiled since he had had the misfortune to displease the commander-in-chief, was smiling now, for he hoped that this fine prize would conciliate the master. Bonaparte understood the whole thing. He grew pale, and said sorrowfully: "What do you suppose I am going to do with those men? Have I food to give them? Have I ships to send the wretched creatures to France or Egypt?"

The two young men halted ten feet from him. They saw by the rigid expression of his face that they had made a mistake.

"What have you there?" he asked.

Croisier dared not reply, but Eugene spoke for both.

"As you see, general, prisoners."

"Did I tell you to take any prisoners?"

"You told us to stop the carnage," replied Eugene, timidly.

"Yes," replied the general, "of women, children, and old men I did; but not of armed soldiers. Do you know that you have forced me to commit a crime?"

The young men understood and retired in dismay. Croisier was weeping. Eugene tried to console him; but he shook his head and said: "It is all over with me; the first opportunity that offers I shall let myself be shot."

Before deciding upon the fate of the unfortunate prisoners, Bonaparte decided to call a council of the generals. But soldiers and generals had bivouacked outside the town. The soldiers did not stop until they were weary. Besides the four thousand prisoners, they left nearly five thousand dead. The pillage of the houses lasted all night. From time to time shots echoed through the night. Dull cries of anguish resounded incessantly in the streets, the houses, and the mosques.

They came from soldiers who were dragged from their places of concealment and slaughtered; by inhabitants who were trying to defend their treasures; by husbands and fathers who were striving to defend their wives and daughters from the brutality of the soldiers.

But the vengeance of Heaven was hidden beneath all this cruelty. The plague was in Jaffa, and the army carried the germs of it away with them.

The prisoners were, in the first place, ordered to sit down together in front of the tents. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Their faces were downcast, more from dread of what was in store for them than from anger. They had seen Bonaparte's face darken when he perceived them; and they had heard, although they had not understood it, the reprimand which he had bestowed upon the young soldiers. But what they had not understood they had divined.

Some of them ventured to say, "I am hungry"; others, "I am thirsty."

They brought them all water and gave each of them a piece of bread, taken from the soldiers' rations. This reassured them a trifle.

As fast as the generals returned they were bidden to repair at once to the general-in-chief's tent. They deliberated a long time without arriving at any decision. On the following day the diurnal reports of the generals of division came in. All complained of insufficient rations. The only ones who had eaten and drunk their fill were those who had entered the town during the fight and were therefore entitled to take part in the pillage. But they constituted merely a fourth of the army. All the rest complained at having to share their bread with the enemy, who had been rescued from legitimate vengeance; since, according to the laws of war, Jaffa having been taken by storm, all the soldiers who were within its walls should have perished by the sword.

The council assembled once more. Five questions were proposed for its deliberation.

"Should the men be sent to Egypt?"

But this would require a large escort, and the army was already over-weak to defend itself against the deadly hostility of the country. Besides that, how could they and their escort be fed until they reached Cairo, when they would be obliged to travel through the enemy's country, previously laid waste by the army which had just passed through it and which had no food to give the prisoners to start with.

"Should they put them on shipboard?"

Where were the ships? Where could they be found? The sea was like a desert, or at least it was dotted by no friendly sails.

"Should they be restored to liberty?"

In that case they would go straight to Saint-Jean-d'Acre, to reinforce the Pasha, or else into the mountains of Nablos. Then in every ravine they would be assailed by an invisible army of sharpshooters.

"Should they incorporate them, disarmed as they were, in the Republican army?"

But the provisions, already scanty for ten thousand men, would be still more inadequate for fourteen thousand. Then they ran great danger from such comrades in a hostile country. At the first opportunity they would deal out death for the life which had been left them. What is a dog of a Christian to a Turk? Is it not a pious and meritorious act in the eyes of the Prophet to deal death to the infidel?

Bonaparte rose as they were about to propose the fifth condition.

"Let us wait until to-morrow," he said.

He himself could not have told what he expected to gain by waiting. It was for one of those strange chances, which sometimes prevent a great crime, and which, when they intervene, are called the interposition of Providence.

He waited in vain. On the fourth day, the question, which they had not dared to ask had to be confronted:

"Should the prisoners be shot?"

The murmurs were increasing, and the evil was growing. The soldiers might at any moment throw themselves upon the prisoners, and thus lend an appearance of revolt and assassination to that which was in reality an outcome of the necessities of the case.

The sentence was unanimous, with the exception of a single vote. One of those present did not vote at all. The unfortunates were to be shot.

Bonaparte hastened from his tent and gazed searchingly out to sea. A tempest of human emotions was surging in his breast. He had not at that period acquired the stoicism born of numerous battlefields. The man who later looked upon Austerlitz, Eylau, and Moscow without moving a muscle, was not sufficiently familiarized with death to throw such prey to him at one fell swoop without a tremor of remorse. On the vessel which had conveyed him to Egypt his pity and compassion had astonished everybody. During such a journey it was impossible to avoid occasional accidents, or that some men should not fall overboard. This accident occurred several times during the crossing on board the "Orient." At such times only was it possible to compass all the human feeling in Bonaparte's heart.

As soon as he heard the cry, "Man overboard!" he would dart up on deck if he were not already there and order a boat to be lowered. From that moment he would not rest until the man was found and saved. Bourrienne had orders to reward with great liberality the men who had undertaken the task of rescue, and if there were among them a sailor who deserved punishment for neglect of duty, he pardoned him and rewarded him with money besides.

One dark night the splash of a body falling into the water was heard. Bonaparte as usual rushed from his cabin to the deck, and ordered a boat to be lowered. The sailors, who knew that not only were they doing a good deed, but that they would be rewarded for it afterward, threw themselves into the boat with their customary activity and zeal. After five minutes of ceaseless questioning on Bonaparte's part, "Has the man been saved?" he was rewarded with a shout of laughter.

The man who had fallen into the water was a quarter of beef from the store-room.

"Double the reward, Bourrienne," said Bonaparte; "it might have been a man, and the next time they might think it was merely a quarter of beef."

The order for this execution must emanate from him. He delayed giving it, and the time was passing. Finally he called for his horse, leaped into his saddle, took an escort of twenty men, and rode away, crying: "Do it!"

He dared not say, "Fire!"

A scene like that which ensued cannot be described.

Those great massacres which occurred during the course of antiquity have no place in modern history. Out of the four thousand a few escaped, because, having thrown themselves into the water, they were able to swim out to some reefs where they were beyond the range of the musketry.

Neither Eugene de Beauharnais nor Croisier dared show themselves before Bonaparte until they reached Saint-Jean-d'Acre and were compelled to take their orders from him.

The French were encamped before Saint-Jean-d'Acre on the 18th. In spite of the English frigates lying in the harbor, some of the young officers, among them the Sheik of Aher, Roland and the Comte de Mailly, asked permission to go and bathe in the roadstead. The permission was accorded.

When they were diving De Mailly found a leather sack, which was floating under water. The bathers were curious to know what it contained and swam with it to the bank. It was tied up with a cord, and apparently concealed a human body.

The cord was untied, the sack opened, and Mailly recognized the head and body of his brother, who had been sent a month before with a flag of truce to Djezzar Pasha, who had beheaded him when he perceived the dust made by the advance-guard of the French.

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IV. FROM ANCIENT DAYS TO OUR OWN

Since it is our good fortune to have readers sufficiently intelligent to encourage us to write a book in which romance is relegated to the second place, we shall doubtless be permitted to detail not only the modern, but also the ancient history of the places which we visit with our heroes. There is much charm for the poet, the historian, even the dreamer, in treading upon soil composed of the ashes of past generations; and nowhere more than in the region we are now treading do we find traces of those great historical catastrophes which, becoming less substantial and fainter in outline as the years roll past, finally disappear like ruins and the spectres of ruins amid the ever-thickening shadows of the past.

This is true of the city which we have just left, throbbing with shrieks of anguish, overflowing with carnage and blood, with its walls battered to pieces and its houses in flames. The rapid movement of our narrative, and our desire to enter modern Jaffa with our young conqueror, have hitherto prevented us from telling you what manner of place was the Jaffa of olden days.

Jaffa in Hebrew signifies beauty. Joppa in Phœnician means height.

Jaffa is to the eastern gulf of the Mediterranean what Jiddah is to the Red Sea. It is the city of pilgrims. Every Christian pilgrim on his way to visit the tomb of Christ takes in Jaffa on the road. Every Mussulman hadji who goes to Mecca to visit the Prophet's tomb takes in Jiddah on his way.

When we read the great works of to-day on Egypt--works in which the most learned men of the day have united their efforts--we are astonished to find so few of these luminous points which, placed in the dark night of the past, illuminate and attract the traveller like beacons.

We are about to attempt what they have neglected to do.

The author who assigns to Jaffa (the Joppa of the Phœnicians) the most ancient place in history is Pomponius Mela, who affirms that it was built before the deluge.

Est Joppe ante diluvium condita.

And Joppa must have built before the deluge, since the historian Josephus, in his "Antiquities," says, with Berosius and Nicolas of Damascus, not exactly that the Ark was built at Joppa--for that would be in contradiction with the Bible--but that it stopped there. They assure us that in their time fragments of it were still shown to incredulous travellers, and that they used as a remedy, which was efficacious in all cases as a universal panacea, the dust of the tar which was used to coat the Ark.

It was at Joppa, if we may believe Pliny, that Andromeda was chained to the rocks, to be devoured by the sea-monster; there she was delivered by Perseus, mounted on the Chimera and armed with the head of Medusa, which turned the beholder into stone.

Pliny affirms that during the reign of Adrian the holes through which Andromeda's chain had been passed were still visible; and Saint Jerome--a witness who cannot be accused of partiality--declares that he saw them.

The skeleton of the sea-monster, forty feet long, was thought by some of the people of Joppa to be that of the divinity Ceto. The water of the fountain in which Perseus bathed after killing the monster was ever afterward tinged with his blood. Pausanias tells us so, and declares that he saw the rose-tinged water with his own eyes. Ceto, a goddess of whom Pliny speaks (colitur fabulosa Ceto), and who is called Derceto by historians, was the name which tradition gave to the unknown mother of Semiramis.

Diodorus relates the pretty fable of the unknown mother with the quaint charm which makes poetry of this fable without robbing it of its sensuousness.

"There is," he says, "in Syria a city called Ascalon, overlooking a deep lake in which fish abound, and near it is a temple dedicated to the celebrated goddess whom the Syrians call Derceto.

"She has a head and a face like a woman's; all the rest of the body is that of a fish. The learned men of the nation say that Venus, having been offended by Derceto, inspired her with a passion for a young priest as intense as that which she had awakened in Phedrus and Sappho. Derceto had a daughter by him; but she repented so bitterly of her fault that she caused the youth to disappear, abandoned the infant in a desert place full of rocks, and threw herself into the lake, where her body was transformed into that of a siren. For this reason the Syrians worship the fish as gods, and abstain from eating them.

"But the little girl was saved and fed by doves, who came in great numbers and made their nests among the rocks where she had been left to die.

"A shepherd found her and brought her up with as much care as if she had been his own daughter, and named her Semiramis, or 'the daughter of the doves.'"

If we may believe Diodorus, it is to this daughter of the doves, the haughty Semiramis, the wife and murderess of Ninus, who fortified Babylon and laid out those magnificent gardens, the envy and the admiration of the ancient world, that the Orientals owe the splendid costume which they wear to this day. When she had reached the height of her power, having conquered Egyptian Arabia, a part of Ethiopia, Libya, and all Asia as far as the Indus, she felt the need of inventing a costume for her travels which should be at once convenient and elegant, in which she could not only perform the ordinary duties of life, but also ride horseback and fight. This costume was adopted by all the people whom she conquered.

"She was so beautiful," says Valerius Maximus, "that one day when an insurrection broke out in her capital, just as she was at her toilet, she had only to show herself, half naked and with her hair unbound, to restore order."

Perhaps we may find the reason for Venus' hatred of Derceto in Higinus.

"The Syrian goddess who was worshipped at Hierapolis," he says, "was Venus. An egg fell from heaven into the Euphrates; the fishes brought it to the bank, where it was hatched by a dove. Venus issued from it, and became the goddess of the Syrians, while Jupiter, at her request, placed the fishes in the sky; and she in gratitude harnessed her nurses to her chariot."

The famous temple of Dagon, where the statue of the god was found overturned before the Ark with both hands broken, was situated in the city of Azoth, between Joppa and Ascalon.

Read the Bible, that great treasure-house of history and poetry, and you will see that the cedars of Lebanon, brought for the building of the Temple of Solomon, came from the gates of Joppa. You will see that the prophet Jonah came to the gates of Joppa to embark for Tarsus when he was flying from the face of the Lord.

Then, passing from the Bible to Josephus, whose writings may be called the continuation of it, you will see that Judas Maccabeus, to avenge his two hundred brethren who had been treacherously slain by the inhabitants, came with sword and firebrand and set fire to the ships anchored in the port, and put to death with the sword all who had escaped the fire.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles as follows:

There was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and alms deeds which she did.

And it came to pass in those days that she was sick, and died: whom when they had washed they laid her in an upper chamber.

And for as much as Lydda was nigh to Joppa, and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent unto him two men, desiring him that he would not delay to come to them.

Then Peter arose and went to them, when he was come, they brought him to the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats which Dorcas had made when she was with them.

But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down and prayed; and turned to the body and said, "Tabitha, arise!" And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

And he gave her his hand and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows he presented her alive.

And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord.

And it came to pass that he tarried many days in Joppa with one Simon, a tanner.

It was there that the servants of the centurion Cornelius found him when they came to beg him to go to Cesarea. It was in Simon's house that he had the vision bidding him carry the Gospel to the Gentiles.

At the time of the rising of the Jews against Rome, Sextus besieged Joppa, took it by storm and burned it. Eight thousand of the inhabitants perished; but it was soon rebuilt. As the new city was constantly sending forth pirates, who infested the coasts of Syria and made expeditions as far as Greece and even Egypt, the Emperor Vespasian took it again, razed it to the ground from the first to the last house, and built a fortress on its site.

But in his Jewish wars, Josephus relates that a new city soon sprang up at the foot of the fortress of Vespasian, which became the seat of a bishopric, or rather of a bishop, from the reign of Constantine, A.D. 330, until the invasion of the Arabs in 636. This bishopric was established during the First Crusade, and made subject to the metropolitan See of Cesarea. Finally it was converted into a county, and embellished and fortified by Baldwin I., Emperor of Constantinople.

Saint Louis also came to Joppa; and Joinville, his ingenuous historian, tells of the sojourn which he made with the Comte de Japhe, as the good chevalier Frenchifies the name.

This Comte de Japhe, who was Gautier de Brienne, did his best to clean and whitewash the city, which was in such a deplorable state that Saint Louis was ashamed of it, and took it upon himself to build its walls and beautify its churches. Saint Louis received the news of his mother's death while there.

"When the sainted king," writes Joinville, "saw the archbishop of Tyre and his confessor entering his apartments with expressions of sorrow, he asked them to go with him to his chapel, which was his refuge from all the ills of the world.

"Then when he had heard the fatal news, he fell upon his knees, and with clasped hands he exclaimed, weeping: 'I thank thee, O God, that thou didst lend my mother to me, while it seemed best to thee, and for that, in thy good pleasure, thou hast taken her again to thee. It is true that I loved her above all other creatures, and she deserved it; but since thou hast taken her from me, may thy holy name be blessed for evermore.'"

The works erected by Saint Louis were destroyed in 1268 by the Pasha of Egypt, Bibas, who levelled the citadel to the ground, and sent the wood and precious marbles of it which it was composed to Cairo to build his mosque.

Finally, when Monconys visited Palestine, he found at Jaffa only a castle and three caves hollowed out of a rock. We have told of its condition when Bonaparte entered it, and in what state he left it.

We shall return once more to this town, which to Bonaparte was neither Jaffa the Beautiful, nor Jaffa the Lofty, but Jaffa the Fatal.

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V. SIDNEY SMITH

On the 18th, at daybreak, while the army was crossing the little stream of the Kerdaneah, on a bridge thrown over it during the night, Bonaparte, accompanied only by Roland de Montrevel, the Sheik of Aher, and the Comte de Mailly, whom he was utterly unable to reconcile to his brother's death, do what he would, ascended a little hill not far from the town to which he had laid siege.

From its summit he could see the whole country, including not only the two English vessels, "Tiger" and "Theseus," rocking upon the breast of the sea, but also the troops of the Pasha, occupying all the gardens around the city.

"Let all that rabble be dislodged from those gardens," he said, "and driven back into the town."

As he had addressed no one in particular, all three young men started off like three hawks in pursuit of the same prey. But he cried in his harsh voice: "Roland! Sheik of Aher!"

The two young men, when they heard their names, stopped their horses, which were tugging at their bits, and returned to their places beside the commander-in-chief. Mailly went on with a hundred sharpshooters, a like number of grenadiers and voltigeurs, and spurring his horse to a gallop, charged at their head.

Bonaparte had great confidence in the omens of war. It was for that reason that he had been so greatly displeased with Croisier's hesitation during their first engagement with the Bedouins, and had reproached him so bitterly for it.

He could see the movements of the troops through his glass, which was an excellent one, from where he stood. He saw Eugene de Beauharnais and Croisier, who had not dared to speak to him since that unfortunate day at Jaffa, take command, the former of the grenadiers and the latter of the sharpshooters, while Mailly, with the utmost deference to his companions, led the voltigeurs.

If the commander-in-chief was looking for a ready omen he should have been content. While Roland was impatiently gnawing at his silver mounted riding-whip, and the Sheik of Aher on the contrary was watching the fray with all the patience and calmness of an Arab, Bonaparte saw the three detachments pass through the ruins of a village, a Turkish cemetery, and a little wood whose freshness plainly showed that it was watered by a spring, and hurl themselves upon the enemy in spite of the brisk firing of the Arnauts and the Albanians, whom he recognized by their magnificent gold embroidered costumes and their long silver-mounted rifles, and rout them at the first charge.

The firing on the French side began vigorously, and continued with increasing vigor, while above it they could hear the loud explosion of the hand-grenades, which the French soldiers threw with their hands, and with which they tormented the fugitives.

They all arrived about the same time at the foot of the ramparts; but the posterns being closed behind the Mussulmans, and the walls being enveloped with a girdle of fire, the three hundred Frenchmen were forced to beat a retreat, after having killed about one hundred and fifty of the enemy.

The three young men had displayed marvellous gallantry, and had performed prodigies of valor in their emulation of each other.

Eugene had killed an Arnaut, who was a head taller than he, in a hand-to-hand encounter; Mailly had approached within ten paces of a group which was making a stand, had discharged both barrels of his pistol at them, and had then rejoined his own men with a single bound. Croisier, for his part, had sabred two Arabs who had attacked him at the same time, cutting open the head of one of them and breaking the blade of his sabre in the breast of the second, and had returned with the bloody hilt dangling from his wrist.

Bonaparte turned to the Sheik of Aher and said: "Give me your sword in exchange for mine." And he detached his own sword from his belt and handed it to the Sheik.

The latter kissed the hilt, and hastily handed him his own.

"Roland," said Bonaparte, "go and present my compliments to Eugene and De Mailly; as for Croisier, you will simply say to him: 'Here is a sword which the commander-in-chief has sent you. He has been watching you.'"

Roland set off at a gallop. The young men to whom Bonaparte had sent these congratulations leaped in their saddles for joy, and embraced each other. Croisier, like the Sheik of Aher, kissed the hilt of the sword which had been sent him, threw away the scabbard and broken hilt of the old one, and put the one Bonaparte had given him at his belt, saying: "Thank the commander-in-chief for me, and say to him that he will have reason to be satisfied with me at the first assault."

The entire army had gradually ascended the hill where Bonaparte was stationed like an equestrian statue. The soldiers shouted with delight when they saw their comrades drive the Maugrabins before them as the wind scatters the sand of the sea. Like Bonaparte, the army could see no great difference between the fortifications of Saint-Jean d'Acre and those of Jaffa; and, like Bonaparte, they did not doubt that the city would be taken at the second or third assault.

The French were ignorant that there were two men within the walls of Saint-Jean d'Acre who were worth more in themselves than a whole army of Mussulmans.

They were Sidney Smith, the English Admiral who commanded the "Tiger" and the "Theseus," which were gracefully cradled on the waters of the Gulf of Carmel, and Colonel Phélippeaux, who had charge of the defensive works and the fortress of Djezzar the Butcher. Phélippeaux had been Bonaparte's friend and schoolfellow at Brienne, his rival at college and in his mathematical successes. Fortune, chance, or accident had now cast his lot among Bonaparte's foes.

Sidney Smith, whom the exiles of the 18th Fructidor had met at the Temple, had by a strange freak of fate escaped from his prison and reached London, where he resumed his place in the English army just at the time of Bonaparte's departure from Toulon.

It was Phélippeaux who had undertaken the rescue of Sidney Smith, and he had succeeded in his daring enterprise. False orders had been prepared, under the pretext of removing the captive from one prison to another. A stamped fac-simile of the minister of police's signature had been obtained at a heavy price. From whom? From him perhaps; who knows?

Under the name of Loger, and attired in an adjutant-general's uniform, Sidney Smith's friend had presented himself at the prison and exhibited his false order to the clerk. He examined it closely, and was forced to admit that it was correct in every particular. But he said: "You will need a guard of at least six men for a prisoner of such importance."

The pretended adjutant-general said: "For a man of such importance I shall need only his word." Then, turning to the prisoner, he added: "Commodore, you are a military man as well as I; your parole, that you will not seek to escape, will suffice for me. If you will give it I shall need no escort."

And Sidney Smith, like the honorable Englishman that he was, would not lie even to escape. He replied: "Sir, if it will satisfy you, I will promise to follow you wherever you may go."

And Adjutant-general Loger escorted Sidney Smith to England. These two men were now turned loose upon Bonaparte.

Phélippeaux undertook the defence of the fortress as we have said; Sidney Smith was to provide the arms and the soldiers.

And there, where Bonaparte expected to find only a stupid Turk in command, as at Gaza and Jaffa, he found all the science of a compatriot, and all the hatred of an Englishman.

That same evening Bonaparte ordered Sanson, the chief of the engineering brigade, to reconnoitre the counterscarp. The latter waited until it was very dark. It was a moonless night well suited to such operations. He set out alone, traversed the ruined village, and the gardens from which the Arabs had been dislodged and driven in the morning. Seeing a black mass ahead which could be nothing else than the fortress, he got down on his hands and knees to feel the ground step by step. Just as he discovered a more rapid angle which made him believe that the moat was without facing, he was discovered by a sentinel whose eyes were probably accustomed to the darkness, or who in common with other men shared that propensity of the animals which enables them to see in the dark.

His cry "Who goes there?" rang out in the darkness.

Sanson did not reply. The cry was repeated a second, then a third time; a shot followed, and the ball shattered the outstretched hand of the general of the engineers. In spite of his terrible sufferings the officer made no sound; he crawled back again, thinking that he had studied the moat sufficiently, and made his report to Bonaparte.

The trench was begun on the following day. They took advantage of the gardens which were the ancient moats of Ptolemais, whose history we will relate later, as we did that of Jaffa.

They used an aqueduct which crossed the glacis, and in ignorance of the fatal support which Djezzar possessed to the undoing of the French, they gave the trench but three feet of depth.

When the giant Kléber saw the trench he shrugged his shoulders and said to Bonaparte: "That is a fine trench, general: it will scarcely reach to my knees."

On the 23d of March Sidney Smith captured the two large vessels which were bringing Bonaparte his heavy artillery and the army its supplies. The French watched this capture without being able to prevent it, and found themselves in the strange position of besiegers being fought with their own weapons.

On the 25th they made a breach and attempted an assault, but were stopped by the counterscarp and the ditch.

On the 26th of March, the besieged, led by no less a personage than Djezzar Pasha himself, attempted a sortie to destroy the works which had already been begun. But being charged with the bayonet, they were at once repulsed and were obliged to retreat within the gates of the city.

Although the French battery consisted of only four twelve-pounders, eight eight-pounders and four howitzers, this feeble battery was unmasked on the 28th, and made a breach in the tower against which the principal attack was directed. Although of heavier calibre than those of the French, Djezzar's cannon were silenced by the enemy, and the towers offered a practicable breach at three o'clock in the afternoon.

A cry of joy burst from the French when they saw the wall crumble and caught a glimpse of the interior. The grenadiers, who had been the first to enter Jaffa, excited by the memory, and thinking that it would be no more difficult to take Acre than it had been to take Jaffa, asked with one accord to be allowed to enter the breach.

Bonaparte had been in the trench with his staff ever since the morning; yet he hesitated to give the order for the assault. However, egged on by Captain Mailly, who told him that he could no longer restrain the grenadiers, Bonaparte decided, and, in spite of himself, the words escaped him: "Well, go then!"

The grenadiers of the sixty-ninth brigade, led by Mailly, dashed at once into the breach; but to their great astonishment where they had expected to find the slope of the moat, they found an escarpment twelve feet high. Then came the cry, "Ladders! Ladders!"

Ladders were thrown into the breach, the grenadiers leaped from the top of the counterscarp down to them, and Mailly seized the first ladder and threw it into the breach; twenty more were at once placed beside the first one.

But the breach was filled with Arnauts and Albanians, who fired at close range, and even rolled down stones upon their assailants. Half the ladders were broken, and in falling carried down those who had mounted upon them. Mailly was severely wounded and fell from the top to the bottom of his. The fire of the besieged was redoubled; the grenadiers were obliged to retreat, and to use the ladders with which they had hoped to scale the breach to climb up the counterscarp again.

Mailly, who was wounded in the foot and could not walk, begged his soldiers to take him with them. One of them put him on his shoulders, and fell with a bullet through the head a moment later. A second took up the wounded man and carried him to the foot of a ladder where he fell with a broken thigh. Eager to put themselves in safety, they abandoned him, and they could hear his voice crying, while no one stopped to reply to him: "At least make an end of me with a bullet, if you cannot save me."

Poor Mailly had not long to suffer. The moats were no sooner evacuated by the French soldiers than the Turks swarmed down into them, and cut off the heads of all who were left.

Djezzar thought to bestow a suitable gift upon Sidney Smith; he had all these heads put in a sack and sent to the English commodore. Sidney Smith merely looked sadly at the ghastly trophy and said: "This is what it means to be allied with barbarians."

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VI. PTOLEMAIS

However indifferent Bonaparte was in regard to Jerusalem, having passed within twenty miles of it without tarrying to visit it, he was none the less interested in the ground on which he stood. Being unable, or not having cared to do as Alexander did at the time of his conquest of India, to go out of his way to visit the high-priest of Jerusalem, he regarded it as some compensation to stand upon the ancient site of Ptolemais, and to set up his tent where Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Philippe-Auguste had set up theirs.

Far from being indifferent to his historical surroundings, his heart rejoiced in it; and he had chosen the little hill where he had watched the fight on the first day as his headquarters, confident that the heroes who had preceded him had placed their banners on the same spot.

But he, the first of the leaders of political crusades, following the banner of his own fortune and leaving behind him all the religious beliefs which had led millions of men to the same place, from Godfrey de Bouillon to Saint Louis--he, on the contrary, brought in his train the science of the eighteenth century, of Volney and Dupuis; or, in other words, scepticism.

While caring little for Christian traditions, he was on the other hand deeply interested in historical legends.

The very evening of the unfortunate assault in which poor Mailly had perished by the same death as his brother, he assembled his officers and generals in his tent, and ordered Bourrienne to take the few books which composed his library from the boxes. Unfortunately it contained but few historical works relating to Syria. He had only Plutarch, the lives of Cicero, Pompey, Alexander and Antony; and in the way of political literature he had only the Old and New Testaments and a Mythology.

He gave each of the books which we have just named to the most literary of his generals or his young friends, and then called upon the historical reminiscences of the others, which, combined with his own, formed the only information which he could obtain in that desert country. Thus he was but incompletely informed. We who, more fortunate than he, have the literature of the Crusades before our eyes, can raise the veil of centuries for our readers, and give them the history of this little corner of the earth, from the time when it fell to the share of the tribe of Asher in the distribution of the Promised Land, until the day when Richard Cœur-de-Lion endeavored to take it for the third time from the Saracens.

Its old name was Acco, meaning "burning sands," and the Arabs still call it Acca. Made tributary to Egypt by the kings of the Greek dynasty of Ptolemy, who inherited Alexandria upon the death of the conqueror of the Indies, it bore the name of Ptolemais about one hundred and six years before the birth of Christ.

Vespasian, when preparing his expedition against Judea, spent three months at Ptolemais, and held court there for the kings and princes of the adjacent countries.

It was there that Titus saw Berenice, daughter of Agrippa I., and fell in love with her.

But Bonaparte had nothing relating to this period save a tragedy of Racine's, fragments of which he was wont to make Talma declaim with great frequency.

The Acts of the Apostles says: "From Tyre we came to Ptolemais, where our voyage ended, and having saluted our brethren, we abode one day with them." As you know, Saint Paul says that, and it was he who came from Tyre to Ptolemais.

The first siege of Ptolemais by the Crusaders began in 1189. Boah-Eddin, an Arab historian, says, in speaking of the Christians, that they were so numerous that God alone could number them. But on the other hand a Christian author, one Gauthier Yinisauf, chronicler of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, assures us that Saladin's army was more numerous than that of Darius.

After the battle of Tiberius (of which we shall have occasion to speak in describing the battle of Mount Tabor), Guy de Lusignan, having escaped from captivity, laid siege to Jerusalem, whose fortifications had just been rebuilt. Strong towers defended it on the seaward coast. One was called the Tower of the Flies, because the pagans offered up their sacrifices there, and the smell of the human flesh attracted the flies. The other was called the Accursed Tower, because, says Gauthier Vinisauf in his "Itinerary of King Richard," it was in this tower that the pieces of silver were struck for which Judas sold Christ.

It was by this very same old "accursed tower" that the Saracens made their way into the city in 1291.

Although he was ignorant of the fact, that was the very tower which Bonaparte had so unsuccessfully attacked. Walter Scott, in one of his best novels, "The Talisman," has related an incident of this famous siege, which lasted two years. The Arab histories, much less well-known than the French, contain some interesting data concerning this siege.

Ibn-Alatir, one of Saladin's physicians, has, among others, left us an interesting account of the Mussulman camp.

"In the midst of the camp (it is Ibn-Alatir who is speaking) was a vast square where the farriers' forges were located. There were one hundred and forty of them. We can judge of the rest of the camp in proportion.

"In a single kitchen there were twenty-nine pots, each one large enough to hold a sheep. I myself counted the number of shops registered as markets. I counted seven thousand. You must know that they are not like our city shops. A shop in a camp would make a hundred of ours. All were well supplied. I have heard that when Saladin changed his camp to retire to Karouba, although the distance was short, that it cost one butter-merchant seventy gold pieces to move his shop. As for the old and new clothes shops, they were something beyond description. There were more than one thousand baths in the camp. They were kept by Africans, and it cost a piece of silver to take a bath.

"The camp of the Christians was like a fortified city. All the trades and all the mechanical arts were represented there."

The markets were supplied with meat, fish and fruits as completely as the capital of a great kingdom could have been. There were even churches with bells there. Therefore it was usually at the hour of mass that the Saracens attacked the camp.

"A poor English priest," says Michaud, "built a chapel dedicated to the dead at his own expense on the plain of Ptolemais. There was a vast plot of consecrated ground around the chapel, whither he followed the remains of more than one hundred thousand pilgrims, chanting their burial service himself. Forty lords of Lubeck and Bremen made tents with the sails of their vessels for the poor soldiers of their country and took care of them in sickness. This was the origin of a celebrated order which still exists under the name of the Teutonic Order."

Whoever has travelled in the East, in Egypt, or to Constantinople, has made the acquaintance of the famous Turkish Punchinello, called Caragous. The exploits of our Punchinello are as nothing when compared to his; and he, the cynic of cynics, would blush at the most innocent jokes of his turbaned colleague.

It was during this siege, in which Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Saladin played such an important part, that the ancestor of the modern Caragous appeared. He was an Emir.

Another historical date, no less important to verify, is that of the first bill of exchange. Emad-Eddin speaks of an ambassador of the Caliph of Bagdad who was the bearer of two loads of naphtha and reeds, and who brought with him five persons skilled in the distillation and the use of naphtha. It is admitted that naphtha and Greek fire are one and the same. Furthermore, this same ambassador brought a note of hand for twenty thousand pieces of gold on the merchants of Bagdad. Thus the bill of exchange and the note of hand are not inventions of modern commerce, as they were used in the East in the year 1191.

It was during this two years' siege that the besieged invented the Zenbourech, which the popes afterward forbade the Christians to use. It was a sort of arrow about twelve inches long and four inches thick. It had four sides, an iron point, and a feathered head. Vinisauf relates that this dreadful arrow, thrown by the instrument which was used to shoot it, would at times pass through the bodies of two men armed with shields, and then bury itself in the wall.

It was toward the close of this siege that the great dispute arose which alienated Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Leopold, duke of Austria. Cœur-de-Lion, who sometimes returned from an assault so riddled with arrows that he looked like a pin-cushion, as his historian says, was justly proud of his courage and strength. Leopold, who was equally proud, had his flag hoisted over the city which he had just entered with Richard. Richard might have put his own flag beside that of Duke Leopold, but he preferred to take down the Austrian flag and throw it into a ditch. All the Germans revolted and wished to attack the king in his quarters; but Leopold opposed this.

A year later, as Richard did not wish to return to his domain through France, owing to his differences with Philippe-Auguste, he travelled through Austria in disguise; but he was recognized in spite of it, made prisoner, and incarcerated in the castle of Durenstein. For two years no one knew what had become of him; this thunderbolt of war had been extinguished like a meteor. There were no traces left of Richard Cœur-de-Lion.

A gentleman of Arras named Blondel undertook to find him; and one day, without having the least idea that he was so near the English king, he sat down at the foot of an old castle, and began to sing the first verse of a couplet which he had composed with Richard. Richard, by the way, was a bit of a poet in his leisure moments. When he heard the first verse of this couplet which he and Blondel had composed, he suspected the latter's presence and replied with the second.

The rest of the story, which has furnished Grétry with a theme for his masterpiece, is well known.

Ptolemais surrendered to the Christians, as we have said, after a siege of two years. The garrison were promised their lives on condition that they surrender the True Cross, which was captured at the battle of Tiberias. It is needless to say that, once at liberty, the Saracens forgot all about their promise.

A hundred years later, Ptolemais was recaptured from the Christians, never to be given up to them again.

This siege also had its chroniclers, its sudden turns of fortune, which rent all Europe and Asia, and its devotion, which was marked in more than one instance by heroism and self-abnegation.

Saint Antonius relates a curious legend in reference to this siege.

"There was," he says, "a celebrated monastery of nuns at Saint-Jean d'Acre belonging to the order of Saint Claire. When the Saracens entered the town, the abbess ordered the convent bell to be rung, and assembled all the community.

"Addressing the nuns, she said: 'My dear daughters and beloved sisters, we have promised the Lord Jesus Christ to be his spotless wives. We are at this moment in twofold danger--danger to our lives and danger to our purity. Those enemies of our bodies and of our souls as well are close at hand, who, after dishonoring those whom they meet, run them through with the sword. If we cannot escape them by flight, at least we can do so by taking a painful but invincible resolve. It is woman's beauty which attracts men most frequently. Let us despoil ourselves of this attraction. Let us use our faces as a means of preserving our moral beauty, our chastity, intact. I will set you the example. Let those who wish to appear spotless before their spotless Spouse imitate their mistress!'

"Having spoken thus, she cut off her nose with a knife. The others followed her example, and courageously disfigured themselves in order to appear more beautiful in the eyes of the Lord.

"By this means they preserved their purity," continues Saint Antonius; "for the Mussulmans, upon seeing their bleeding faces, experienced naught save horror for them, and contented themselves with merely taking their lives."

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VII. THE SCOUTS

During this evening when Bonaparte had assembled all his staff, not as a council of war or to formulate a plan of battle, but as a literary and historical committee, several messengers arrived for the Sheik of Aher to warn him that the Pasha of Damascus was preparing to cross the Jordan with an army, in order to force Bonaparte to raise the siege of Saint-Jean-d'Acre.

This army, which, according to the always exaggerated reports of the Arabs, had an immense baggage train with it, was to cross the Jordan at Jacob's Bridge.

On the other hand, Djezzar's agents had visited all the sea-coast of Said, and this contingent had joined those of Aleppo and Damascus, with the greater feeling of security since the messengers of the Pasha had everywhere spread the report that the French were a mere handful of men, that they had no artillery, and that it would suffice for the Pasha of Damascus to show himself and unite with Djezzar to exterminate Bonaparte and his army.

At this news, Bonaparte threw down the volume of Plutarch which he was reading and called for Junot, Vial and Murat. He sent Vial north to take possession of Sour--the ancient Tyre. He despatched Murat northeast to make sure of the Fort of Zaphet; and Junot south, with orders to take possession of Nazareth, and to take observation of the surrounding country from the elevated position of this village.

Vial crossed the mountains at Cape Blanco, and came in sight of Sour on the 3d of April. The French general, from his post at the crest of a little hill, could see the frightened inhabitants leaving the town in disorder with every sign of great terror. He entered the town without any opposition, promised peace and protection to the people who had remained, reassured them, persuaded them to go and look for those who had run away, and at the end of three or four days had the pleasure of seeing them all in their own homes again. Vial returned to Saint-Jean-d'Acre on the 6th of April, leaving a garrison of two hundred men at Sour.

Murat was equally fortunate with his expedition. He made his way to Fort Zaphet, where a few shots drove away half of the garrison. The other half, which was composed of Maugrabins, offered to put themselves under Murat's orders. From there he went to the Jordan, reconnoitred its right bank, took a look at the Lake of Tiberias, and, leaving a French garrison well-provisioned at the fort, he returned with his Maugrabins on the 6th of April.

Junot had taken Nazareth--our Saviour's birthplace--and had encamped there, half in and half out of the village, awaiting fresh orders from Bonaparte, who had told him not to return until he was recalled.

But Murat's endeavors to reassure the commander-in-chief were all vain. His presentiments, and above all the insistence of the Sheik of Aher, gave him no rest in regard to this invisible army which was marching against him. Therefore he accepted the Sheik's offer to go as a scout to the Lake of Tiberias.

Roland, who was weary of remaining in the camp, where, being constantly under Bonaparte's eyes, he could not risk his life as he wished, asked leave to accompany the Sheik in his explorations. They set forth that same night, taking advantage of the coolness and darkness to reach the plain of Esdrelon, which offered them the double shelter of the mountains of Nablos to the right and those of Nazareth to the left.

* * * * *

"On the 7th of April, the promontory on which Saint-Jean-d'Acre is built, the ancient Ptolemais, seemed to be wrapped in as much thunder and lightning as was Mount Sinai on the day when the Lord appeared to Moses from the burning bush.

"Whence came those reports which shook the coast of Syria as with an earthquake? Whence came that smoke which covered the Gulf of Carmel with a cloud as thick as though Mount Elias had become a burning volcano?"

We began the first chapter of the new narrative with these words. The other chapters have only served to explain what had preceded this Syrian campaign--the eighth, and probably the last Crusade.

Bonaparte was in fact beginning his second assault. He had taken advantage of the return of Vial and Murat to try his luck once more. He was in the trench scarcely a hundred paces from the ramparts. Near him stood General Caffarelli, with whom he was talking. The latter was standing with his hand on his hip, to help balance himself on his wooden leg. The joint of his elbow was just visible above the trench. The peak of Bonaparte's three-cornered hat was also visible above the trench, and it was carried away with a bullet. He stooped down to pick it up, and as he did so noticed the general's position, and, drawing near to him, he said: "General, those Arnauts and Albanians are excellent marksmen, as my hat has just discovered. Take care that they do not do to your arm what they have just done to my hat."

Caffarelli made a disdainful movement. The gallant general had left one of his legs on the banks of the Rhine, and he did not seem alarmed at the prospect of leaving some other portion of his body on the banks of the Kerdaneah. He did not move.

A moment later Bonaparte saw him start and turn round with his arm hanging lifeless at his side. A bullet had struck his elbow and broken the joint. At the same moment Bonaparte raised his eyes and discovered Croisier, not ten paces from them, standing on the edge of the trench. It was useless bravado. Bonaparte therefore called out: "Come down, Croisier, come down! You have no business there. Come down: I wish it."

"Did you not say in public one day that I was a coward?"

"I was wrong, Croisier," replied the general, "and you have proved to me since that I was mistaken. Come down."

Croisier started to obey, but he fell down instead. A bullet had broken his thigh.

"Larrey! Larrey!" cried Bonaparte, stamping his foot impatiently, "here, come here; I have some work for you."

Larrey came up. They laid Croisier on some muskets. As for Caffarelli, he walked away, leaning on the arm of the chief surgeon.

Let us leave the assault, begun under such gloomy auspices, to take its course, and cast our eyes on the beautiful plain of Esdrelon, covered with flowers, and the river Kishon, whose course is marked by a long extent of rose-laurels.

Two horsemen were carelessly riding along the banks of this river. One of them, dressed in the green uniform of the mounted chasseurs, with his sabre at his side and his three-cornered hat on his head, was fanning himself with a perfumed handkerchief, as he might have done with a fan. The tri-colored cockade in his hat showed that he belonged to the French army.

The other wore a red cap tied around his head with a piece of chamois skin. A brilliantly colored head-dress fell over his shoulders. He was completely enveloped in a burnoose of white cashmere, which, when it opened, revealed a rich Oriental caftan of green velvet embroidered with gold. He had a party-colored silk belt, its shades arranged with that marvellous taste which is only to be found in Eastern stuffs. Two pistols with silver-gilt handles wrought like the finest lace were stuck into this belt on one side. His sword alone was of French make. He had wide trousers of red satin tucked into green boots embroidered like the caftan, and of the same material. Besides all this he carried a long, slender lance, light as a reed and strong as a bar of iron, tipped at the end with a bunch of ostrich feathers.

The two young men halted in a bend of the river, in the shade of a little grove of palms; and there, laughing pleasantly together as befitted travelling companions, they began to prepare to eat their breakfast, which consisted of a few pieces of biscuit which the young Frenchman took from his holsters and dipped for a moment in the river.

As for the Arab, he began to look around and above him. Then without saying a word he attacked one of the palm-trees, whose tender porous wood yielded readily to the sharp steel.

"In truth that is a good sword which the commander-in-chief gave me a few days ago," he said; "and I hope before long to try it on something besides palm-trees."

"I should think so," replied the Frenchman, munching the biscuit with his teeth; "that was a gift of Versailles manufacture. But are you destroying that poor tree just to try the temper of the blade?"

"Look!" replied the Arab, pointing upward.

"Faith!" replied the Frenchman, "we shall have a better breakfast than I thought, for it is a date-palm."

And just then the tree fell with a crash, bringing enough fully ripened dates for two or three meals within their reach. They began to attack with the appetites of twenty-five the manna which the Lord had sent. They were in the midst of their meal when the Arab's horse began to neigh.

The Arab uttered an exclamation, darted out of the little grove and scanned the plain of Esdrelon, in the middle of which they had paused to breakfast.

"What is it?" asked the Frenchman, nonchalantly.

"One of ours riding a fast mare. We shall probably learn what we want to know from him."

He returned and seated himself near his companion, without disturbing himself about his horse, which set off at a fast gallop to meet the oncoming rider. Ten minutes later they heard the gallop of two horses.

A Druse, who had recognized his chief's horse, stopped near the group of palms, where the presence of a second horse indicated that the party had stopped, even if there were no encampment.

"Azib!" called the Arab chief.

The Druse leaped from his horse, throwing the reins upon its neck, and advanced toward the sheik with his hands crossed on his breast and bowing low. The sheik addressed a few words in Arabic to him.

"I was not mistaken," said the Sheik of Aher, turning to his companion. "The advance-guard of the Pasha of Damascus has just crossed Jacob's Bridge."

"We will go and see," returned Roland, whom our readers have doubtless recognized from his indifference to danger.

"There is no need," returned the sheik; "Azib has seen."

"Yes," returned Roland, "but perhaps Azib has not seen correctly. I shall feel more certain when I have seen for myself. This great mountain which looks like a pie must be Mount Tabor. The Jordan is therefore just beyond it. We are within a mile of it. Let us go and look; then we shall know for ourselves what to think."

And without stopping to see whether the Sheik of Aher was following him, Roland leaped upon his horse, which was refreshed by its halt, and galloped swiftly away in the direction of Mount Tabor. A minute later he caught the gallop of the others behind him.

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VIII. THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS OF NAZARETH

He rode for three miles over the beautiful plain of Esdrelon--the most immense and the most celebrated in Palestine after that of the Jordan.

In other days it was styled the Paradise and the Granary of Syria, the Plain of Jezreel, the Field of Esdrela, the Plain of Mejiddo. It is mentioned in the Bible under all these names. It witnessed the defeat of the Midianites and the Amalekites by Gideon. It saw Saul encamped by the fountain of Jezreel to fight the Philistines, who were assembled at Aphek. It was in this plain that poor Naboth had his vineyard near the palace of the rich Ahab, and there the infamous Jezebel had him stoned to death as a blasphemer in order to obtain possession of his inheritance. It was there that Joram had his heart pierced by an arrow hurled by the hand of Jehu. And, finally, it was almost on the same spot where the young men had breakfasted, that Jezebel, by Jehu's orders, was thrown from a window, and her body was devoured by dogs.

In the Middle Ages this plain which has seen so many sights was called the Plain of Sabas. To-day it is called Merdjibn-Amer, which means "Pasturage of the sons of Amer." It extends for about fifteen miles between the mountains of Gilboa and those of Nazareth. Mount Tabor rises at its extreme end, and it was toward that that the three riders were galloping without giving a thought to the celebrity of the ground which their horses were trampling with their feet.

Mount Tabor is accessible on all sides, and particularly so toward Fouli, by way of which they were approaching.

They were obliged to climb the summit--an easy task for their Arab horses--before they could look over the Jordan, which from any lower elevation obscured their view of the Jordan and the Lake of Tiberias.

But as they ascended, the horizon broadened around them. Soon, like an immense blue cloth framed in golden-hued sand on one side and hills of tawny verdure on the other, they discovered the Lake of Tiberias, joined to the Dead Sea by the Jordan, which stretches across the bare plain like a yellow ribbon sparkling in the sun. Their eyes were riveted in that direction by the sight of the whole army of the Pasha of Damascus, which was following the eastern bank of the lake and crossing Jacob's Bridge. The entire advance-guard had already disappeared between the lake and the mountain of Tiberias. It was evidently on its way to the village.

It was impossible for the young men to compute, even approximately, the number of this vast concourse. The cavalry alone, marching in the fantastic fashion which the Orientals affect, covered miles of ground. Although the young men were twelve miles away, they could catch the gleam of the weapons, and to them flashes of gold seemed to dart up through the clouds of dust from under the horses' feet.

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. There was no time to lose. The Sheik of Aher and Azib, by resting an hour or two near the river Kishon, could reach Bonaparte's camp about daybreak or a little before, and give him warning.

As for Roland, he undertook to go to Nazareth and put Junot on his guard, intending to remain and fight with him there, where he could have more liberty of action.

The three young men descended the mountain rapidly. They separated at its foot, the two Arabs striking directly across the plain of Esdrelon, and Roland spurring straight for Nazareth, whose white houses, lying like a nest of doves amid the sombre verdure of the mountains, he had seen from the summit of Mount Tabor.

The traveller who has visited Nazareth will remember what abominable roads lead to it. They are bordered with precipices, now on the right, now on the left, and the beautiful flowers which grow wherever there is earth to hold their roots, add to the attractions of the desert, but do not lessen its dangers. There are white lilies, yellow narcissi, blue crocuses, and roses whose freshness and sweetness are beyond description.

Does not the Hebrew word "nezer," which is the root of Nazareth, mean flower?

Owing to the winding road, Roland caught several glimpses of Nazareth before he finally arrived there. When he was within ten minutes of the place he met a detachment of the grenadiers of the nineteenth brigade and making himself known, he inquired whether the general was in Nazareth or its environs.

The general was in Nazareth and had visited its outposts not an hour ago. Roland was obliged to let his horse walk. The noble animal had made thirty-five or forty miles without any rest other than that at breakfast; but as Roland was now sure of finding the general he had no need to force him.

He found a squad of dragoons at the first house in the village, commanded by one of his friends, Major Desnoyers. He left his horse in charge of a soldier and inquired where he could find General Junot's quarters.

It was then about half-past five in the evening. Desnoyers looked at the sun, which was just about to set behind the mountains of Nablos, and replied with a laugh: "This is the hour when the women of Nazareth go to the springs for water. General Junot is probably on his way to the spring."

Roland shrugged his shoulders. Evidently he thought that the general's place was elsewhere, and that he had others to review besides the beautiful daughters of Nazareth. Nevertheless he followed the directions given him and soon reached the other end of the village.

The spring was situated some ten minutes' walk beyond the last house. The avenue leading to it was lined on either side with immense cactus-trees which formed a wall. Roland espied the general a short distance from the spring, where he with his two aides-de-camp followed with his eyes the women who were going and coming.

Junot recognized him at once as General Bonaparte's ordnance officer. The commander-in-chief's partiality for Roland was well-known, and would in itself have sufficed to win him smiles from every one; but his courteous familiarity, and daring courage, which were proverbial in the army, would have won him friends, even though he had possessed a much smaller share of the general's favor.

Junot came to meet him with outstretched hand. Roland, a strict adherent of the proprieties, saluted him as his superior officer; for he dreaded above all that they should think that he attributed the commander-in-chief's kindness to him to his own merit.

"Do you bring us good news, my dear Roland?" asked Junot.

"Yes, general; since I come to announce to you the presence of the enemy," replied Roland.

"Faith!" said Junot, "next to the sight of these beautiful girls, who carry their jugs as if they were each a veritable Princess Nausica, I know of nothing that would be more agreeable to me than a glimpse of the enemy. Look, Roland; see what a haughty air the wenches have. Would you not say they were so many antique goddesses? And when shall we look for the enemy?"

"As soon as you please, general, since they are not more than fifteen or eighteen miles from here."

"Do you know what they answer when you tell them that they are beautiful? 'The Virgin Mary wills it so.' This is really the first time since we came to Syria that I have seen really beautiful women. Have you seen them--the enemy, I mean?"

"With my own eyes, general."

"Where were they coming from? Where are they going? What do they want of us?"

"They are coming from Damascus, and I presume they want to defeat us. They are going to Saint-Jean-d'Acre, if I am not mistaken, to raise the siege."

"Only that? Oh, we will cut them off! Are you going to stay with us, or return to Bonaparte?"

"I shall stay with you, general. I have a great longing to try a turn with the rascals. We are dying of boredom at the siege. Except for the two or three sorties which Djezzar has had the stupidity to make we have had nothing to vary the monotony."

"Well," said Junot, "I can promise you that you will find some variety by to-morrow. By the way, I forgot to ask you how many there were?"

"Ah, general, I will reply to you as an Arab would. As well try to count the sands of the sea! There must be at least twenty-five or thirty thousand of them."

Junot scratched his head.

"The devil!" he said, "there is not much to be done with the few men I have with me."

"How many have you?" asked Roland.

"Just a hundred men more than the three hundred Spartans. But we can do what they did, and that will not be so bad. However, to-morrow morning will be time enough to think of all that. Would you like to see the curiosities of the town, or would you like some supper?"

"Well," said Roland, "it is true that we are in Nazareth, and that interesting relics should not be scarce; but I will not conceal from you, general, that my stomach is just at present more impatient than my eyes. I breakfasted this morning near the Kishon off some hardtack and some dates; and I confess that I am both hungry and thirsty."

"If you will give me the pleasure of supping with me we will try to appease your appetite. As for your thirst, you will never find a better opportunity to quench it." Then, addressing a young girl, he said in Arabic: "Water! Thy brother is thirsty." And he pointed to Roland.

She drew near, tall and stern, her tunic with its long flowing sleeves leaving her arms bare. She tipped the jug which she was carrying on her right shoulder until it was on a level with her left hand. Then with a most graceful motion she offered the water to Roland.

Roland drank deeply, not because the girl was beautiful but because the water was fresh.

"Has my brother drank sufficiently?" asked the girl.

"Yes," replied Roland in the same language, "and thy brother thanks thee."

The young girl bowed, replaced her jug on her right shoulder, and continued on her way to the village.

"Do you know that you speak Arabic very fluently?" asked Junot, laughing.

"Was I not wounded and a prisoner for a month with those rogues," asked Roland, "at the time of the insurrection of Cairo? I had to learn a little Arabic in spite of myself. And since the commander-in-chief has found out that I can chatter a little in the language of the Prophet, he is determined to use me as his interpreter on all occasions."

"Upon my word," said Junot, "if I thought I could learn Arabic as well as you have in a month, I would pay the same price, and get myself wounded and taken prisoner to-morrow."

"Well, general," said Roland, with that harsh, nervous laugh peculiar to him, "if I might offer my advice to you it would be to learn some other language and in a different manner. Let us go to supper, general."

And Roland started for the village without another glance at the beautiful Nazarenes whom Junot and his aides paused again and again to look upon.

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IX. THE BATTLE OF NAZARETH

At dawn the next day, about six o'clock in the morning, the drums beat and the trumpets sounded the call.

Roland had told Junot that the advance-guard of the Damascenes was on its way to Tiberias, and Junot, not wishing to give them time to besiege him in his mountain, crossed the ravine between the hills which rise around Nazareth and descend through the valley as far as the village of Cana, which he did not see until he was within three-quarters of a mile of it, for it was hidden behind a spur of the mountain.

The enemy might be either in the valley of Batouf or on the plain which lies at the foot of Mount Tabor. But in either case, as the French were coming down from the "high places," as Scripture has it, they were in no danger of being surprised; on the contrary, they were sure to see the enemy at a distance.

The soldiers were better versed in the miracle which Jesus performed at Cana than in any of his other miracles; and of all the places sanctified by his memory, Cana was the one that was the most firmly impressed upon their minds. For it was at the wedding at Cana that Jesus turned the water into wine. And although the soldiers were very happy on the days when they had water, it is self-evident that they would have been happier had there been any days on which they could have had wine.

It was also at Cana that Jesus performed that other miracle of which Saint John speaks:

There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he had heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him and besought him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was on the point of death.

Then Jesus said unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.

The nobleman said unto him, Sir, come down, lest my child die.

Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth. And the man believed the word which Jesus had spoken unto him and went his way.

And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, Thy son liveth.

Junot found the Sheik El-Beled at the entrance of the village of Cana, who was coming to meet him to ask him to go no further, as he said there were two or three thousand of the enemy's cavalry on the plain.

Junot had one hundred and fifty grenadiers of the nineteenth brigade of the line, a hundred and fifty carabineers of the second light, and about a hundred cavalry commanded by Major Duvivier, belonging to the fourteenth dragoons. This made exactly four hundred men, as he had said on the previous night.

He thanked the Sheik El-Beled, and to the latter's great admiration he continued on his way. When he reached one of the branches of the little river which takes its source at Cana, he followed its bank. As he came to the pass which separates Loubi from the mountains of Cana, he saw two or three thousand cavalry divided into several corps, who were galloping about between Loubi and Mount Tabor. To obtain a better idea of their position, he spurred his horse to a gallop and rode as far as the ruins of a little village on the crest of a hill, which the natives of the country called Meschanah.

But just then he caught sight of a second corps marching from the village of Loubi. It was composed of Mamelukes, Maugrabins, and Turcomans. This troop was almost as strong as the other, and Junot, with his four hundred men, had five thousand against him. Moreover, this troop was marching in a compact body, contrary to the custom of the Orientals, and was advancing slowly and in good order. He could see a great many standards, banners and horses' tails in their ranks.

These horses' tails, which served as the ensigns of the pashas, had been the laughing stock of the French until they had learned the origin of this singular standard. Then they had heard that at the battle of Nicopolis, Bajazet, seeing that his standard had been captured by the Christians, with one blow had severed his horse's tail from his body, and putting it on a pike had rallied his soldiers around this novel oriflamme and won the battle, which had proved one of the most disastrous to Christianity which has ever been fought.

Junot was right in estimating that the troop which was marching in such good order was the only one to be feared. He sent fifty grenadiers to keep back the cavalry whom he had first seen, and whom he had recognized as Bedouins who would be content with harassing his troops during the fight. But he drew up a hundred grenadiers and the hundred and fifty carabineers in opposition to the regular force, keeping the hundred dragoons in reserve, in order to use them later where they might be most needed.

The Turks, when they saw this handful of men draw up to wait for them, thought that they were struck motionless with terror. They approached within pistol range; but then the grenadiers and the carabineers, each choosing his man, fired, and the whole front rank of the Turkish force fell, some of the bullets plowing their way to horses and men in the third and fourth lines. This volley created great confusion among the enemy, and gave the carabineers and grenadiers time to reload. But this time only the front rank fired, the second then passing forward their loaded guns and receiving the discharged ones in exchange.

This continuous fusillade made the Turks falter; but when they saw their own numbers, and the insignificant number of the enemy, they charged with loud shouts. This was the moment for which Roland was waiting. When Junot ordered his two hundred and fifty men to form a hollow square, Roland, at the head of his hundred and fifty dragoons, dashed upon the troop, which was advancing in disorderly fashion, and took them in the flank.

The Turks were not accustomed to these straight sabres, which pierced them like lances at a distance, where their curved cimeters were of no use. The effect of this charge was terrible in consequence. The dragoons cut straight through the body of Mussulmans, coming out on the other side. They gave the square an opportunity to discharge their rifles, and then dashed into the furrow which the bullets had plowed; and riding with sabres held straight before them, enlarged the furrow until it seemed to burst, and the Turkish horsemen, instead of continuing to march with closed ranks, began to scatter all over the plain.

Roland had closed with the standard-bearer of one of the head chiefs. As he wore the curved sabre of the chasseurs instead of the straight one of the dragoons, he and his antagonist were on equal terms. Two or three times, letting the reins fall upon his horse's neck and guiding him with his legs, he carried his hand to his pistols; but this means of defence seemed to him unworthy. He urged his horse upon that of his adversary, and seized the man about the body, and the struggle continued, while the horses, recognizing each other as enemies, bit and tore savagely at each other. For a moment those who were surrounding the two adversaries paused; Frenchmen and Mussulmans waited to see the end. But Roland, loosening his girths, drove the spurs into his horse, which seemed to slip from under him, and his weight dragging upon the Mussulman, he fell head downward, hanging by the stirrups. In a second Roland was up again, his bloody sabre in one hand and the Turkish standard in the other. As for the Mussulman, he was dead, and his horse, spurred by a prick from Roland's sabre, dragged him into the ranks of his comrades, where he increased the disorder.

Meanwhile, the Arabs on the plain of Mount Tabor hastened toward the firing. Two chiefs, who were better mounted, preceded them by about five hundred paces. Junot rode out alone to meet them, ordering his soldiers to leave them to him.

He halted a hundred paces in advance of the fifty whom he had sent as if in derision against the Arabs on the plain; and noticing that the two horsemen with whom he had to do were separated by about a hundred paces, he let his sabre hang by its knot, and took a pistol from his holster. He saw two flaming eyes between the ears of the horse who was coming at full speed against him, and (we have said that he was marvellously skilful with the pistol) he put a ball straight through their owner's forehead. The rider fell, and the horse, carried on by its own impetus, was caught by one of the fifty grenadiers, while the general, replacing the pistol in the holster, and seizing his sabre, cut off his second adversary's head with a single blow.

Then each officer, inspired by his general's example, left the ranks. Ten or twelve single combats like that which we have just described engaged the attention of the whole army, who applauded vigorously. The Turks were defeated in all.

The battle lasted from half-past eight in the morning until three in the afternoon, when Junot ordered a retreat into the mountains of Cana. When he came down in the morning he had seen a large plateau well-suited to his purpose, for he knew that, with his four hundred men, while he could make a brilliant fight he could not expect to win the victory. The battle had been fought; four hundred Frenchmen had held the ground against five thousand Turks for five hours; they had left eight hundred dead and three hundred wounded of the enemy upon the field of battle. They themselves had had five men killed and one wounded.

Junot gave orders that they should take the wounded man with them, and, as his leg was broken, they laid him upon a litter, which four of his comrades carried.

Roland mounted his horse again. He had exchanged his curved sabre for a straight one; and in his holsters he had his pistols, with which he could cut a pomegranate flower at twenty paces. With Junot's two aides-de-camp he took command of the hundred dragoons who formed the general's cavalry; and the three young men in their amicable rivalry converted this errand of death into a pleasure party. Whether they were fighting hand-to-hand with the Turks with their swords, or whether, encouraged by their general's example, they contented themselves with using them as a target for their bullets, they filled the day with picturesque incidents which long furnished heroic anecdotes and amusing tales for the bivouac of the Army of the East.

Junot was sheltered from attack and secure in his position at four o'clock in the afternoon. He had established himself oh his plateau, past which flowed one of the feeders of the little river which empties into the sea near Carmel, and was in communication with the Greek and Catholic priests of Cana and Nazareth. He could therefore afford to wait quietly for the reinforcements which Bonaparte would be sure to send him after he had been warned by the Sheik of Aher.

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X. MOUNT TABOR

As Roland had said, the Sheik of Aher reached the camp about daybreak. In accordance with his maxim, "Always wake me for bad news but never for good," Bonaparte had been awakened.

The sheik, when admitted to his presence, told him what he had seen, and that twenty-five or thirty thousand men had just crossed the Jordan and entered the territory of Tiberias.

When Bonaparte inquired what had become of Roland, he replied that the young aide-de-camp had volunteered to go and warn Junot, who was at Nazareth, and that there was a great plain at the foot of Tabor between the mountains of Nablos and that mountain in which twenty-five thousand Turks could sleep without inconvenience. Bonaparte sent some one to wake Bourrienne, called for his map, and summoned Kléber.

In the latter's presence he bade the young Druse point out the exact place at which the Mussulmans had crossed the river, the road which they had followed, and that which he and the sheik had taken in returning to the camp.

"You will take your division," Bonaparte said to Kléber; "it should consist of about two thousand men. The sheik will serve as your guide, so that you may follow the same road as that which he chose for Roland. You will reach Safarie by the shortest route; you should be at Nazareth by to-morrow morning. Let each of your men carry enough water for the day. Although I see a river marked on the map, I fear that at this season it will be dried up. If possible give battle on the plain, either in front of or behind Mount Tabor, at Loubi or Fouli. We must take our revenge for the battle of Tiberias which Saladin won over Guy de Lusignan in 1187. See that the Turks lose nothing by waiting all these years. Do not worry about me; I will get there in time."

Kléber assembled his division, and bivouacked near Safarie that evening--Saint Anne and Saint Joachim inhabited that city, according to tradition.

That same evening he was in communication with Junot who had left an advance-guard at Cana, and gone on to Nazareth, for which he showed great partiality. He learned from him that the enemy had not left their position at Loubi, and that they could therefore be found at one of the two points which Bonaparte had indicated--that is, the one in front of Mount Tabor.

There was a village called Saïd-Jarra about three-quarters of a mile from Loubi, which was occupied by a portion of the Turkish army, about seven or eight thousand men in all. He ordered Junot to attack it with a part of his division, while he formed a square with the rest of the men, and charged the cavalry.

Two hours later the pasha's infantry were driven from Saïd-Jarra and the cavalry from Loubi.

The Turks, completely routed, fell back upon the Jordan in great disorder. Junot had two horses killed under him in this engagement. Having nothing better at hand than a dromedary, he mounted that, and soon found himself among the Turks, to whom he looked like a giant. The animal's hamstrings were cut and the dromedary fell, or rather sunk under him. Fortunately Roland had not lost sight of him; he came up with Junot's aide-de-camp, Teinturier--the same one whom Roland had found with him watching the damsels at Nazareth. They fell upon the mass surrounding Junot like a thunderbolt, opened a passage, and made their way to him. They placed him on the horse of a dead Mameluke, and all three, pistol in hand, pierced this living wall and reappeared in the midst of their soldiers, who had believed them to be dead, and who were hastening forward with no other object than that of recovering their dead bodies.

Kléber had come so fast that his army wagons had been unable to keep up with him, and they were unable to pursue the fugitives for lack of ammunition. He fell back upon Nazareth and fortified his position at Safarie.

On the 13th, Kléber sent scouts to reconnoitre the enemy's position. The Mamelukes of Ibrahim Bey, the Janissaries of Damascus, the Arabs of Aleppo, and the different tribes of Syria, had effected a junction with the people of Nablos; and all these different tribes were encamped in the plain of Loubi or Esdrelon.

Kléber informed the commander-in-chief of these details at once. He told him that he had reconnoitred the hostile army, that it amounted to about thirty thousand men, of which there were twenty thousand cavalry; and he announced that he proposed to attack this multitude with his twenty-five hundred men on the following day. He ended his letter with these words: "The enemy is exactly where you wanted him. Try to come to the jollification."

The Sheik of Aher was intrusted with this message; but, as the plain was overrun with hostile riders, it was sent in triplicate by three different men over three different roads. Bonaparte received two of the three despatches--one at eleven o'clock at night, the other at one in the morning. The third messenger was never heard from.

Bonaparte fully intended to participate in the "jollification." He was eager for general action and a decisive battle which should drive all these hordes back, that they might not eventually crush him against the walls of Saint-Jean-d'Acre.

Murat was sent forward with a thousand infantry, one light piece of artillery, and a detachment of dragoons, at two o'clock in the morning. He had orders to march until he came to the Jordan, where he was to take possession of Jacob's Bridge, to prevent the retreat of the Turkish army. He had more than thirty miles to make.

Bonaparte started at three in the morning, taking every man with him who was not absolutely needed to keep the enemy within their walls. He bivouacked on the heights of Safarie at daybreak, and distributed bread, water and brandy to his men. He had been forced to take the longest road, because his artillery and wagons could not follow him along the banks of the Kishon. He took up his march again at nine o'clock in the morning, and at ten he reached the foot of Mount Tabor.

There, about nine miles away, on the vast plain of Esdrelon, he saw Kléber's division, scarcely twenty-five hundred strong, face to face with the entire body of the enemy's army, which enveloped it on all sides, and where it looked like a black patch surrounded by a wall of fire.

It was being attacked by more than twenty thousand cavalry, which twisted now like an avalanche, now like a whirlwind. Never had these men, who had seen so many things, been confronted with such a horde of cavalry, charging and galloping around them. And yet each soldier, standing foot to foot with his neighbor, preserved the terrible calmness which could alone insure his safety, received the Turks at the end of his rifle, and fired only when he was sure of his man; stabbing the horses with his bayonet when they came too near, but reserving his bullets for their riders.

Each man had received fifty cartridges, but at eleven in the morning they were obliged to make a fresh distribution of fifty more. They had fired a hundred thousand bullets; they had made a breastwork of dead horses and men around themselves; and this horrible heap, this bleeding wall, sheltered them like a rampart.

This was what Bonaparte and his men saw when they rounded Mount Tabor. At this sight enthusiastic shouts rang down the line: "To the enemy! To the enemy!"

But Bonaparte shouted, "Halt!" He made them take a quarter of an hour's rest. He knew that Kléber could hold out for hours yet if necessary, and he wished the day's work to be well done. Then he formed his six thousand men into two squares of three thousand men each, and distributed them in such wise as to inclose the whole savage horde of cavalry and infantry in a triangle of steel and fire.

The combatants were in such deadly earnest that--like the Romans and Carthaginians, who, during the battle of Trasimene did not feel the earthquake which overthrew twenty-two cities--neither the Turks nor the French perceived the advance of the two armed bodies, in whose trains thunder was rolling, as yet mute, but with its glistening weapons flashing in the sunlight, forerunners of the storm which was about to burst.

Suddenly they heard a single cannon-shot. This was the signal agreed upon to warn Kléber of Bonaparte's approach. The three squares were now not more than three miles apart, and their combined fire was about to be directed upon a struggling mass of twenty-five thousand men. The fire burst forth from all three sides at once.

The Mamelukes and Janissaries, in short all the cavalry, turned this way and that, not knowing how to escape from the furnace, while the ten thousand infantry, ignorant of all the art and science of war, broke their ranks and hurled themselves upon all three lines of fire.

All who were fortunate enough to run between the shots were fortunate enough to escape. At the end of an hour the fugitives had disappeared like dust swept by the wind, leaving the plain covered with dead, abandoning their camp, their standards, four hundred camels, and an immense amount of booty.

The fugitives thought themselves safe, and those who succeeded in reaching the mountains of Nablos did indeed find shelter there; but those who tried to escape across the Jordan by the way they had come, found Murat and his thousand men guarding the ford of the river.

The French did not stop until they were weary of killing. Bonaparte and Kléber met upon the battlefield and embraced amid the shouts of the three squares.

According to tradition, it was then that the colossal Kléber, putting his hand on Bonaparte's shoulder, who barely reached to his chest, said those words which have so often since been disputed: "General, you are as great as the world!"

Bonaparte ought to have been content.

He had just conquered on the same spot where Guy de Lusignan had been defeated; it was there that, on the 5th of July, 1187, the French, "after having exhausted even the source of their tears," says the Arab author, "met in desperate conflict with the Mussulmans commanded by Saladin."

"At the beginning," says the same author, "they fought like lions; but at the end they were nothing more than scattered sheep." Surrounded on all sides, they were driven back to the foot of the Mount of Beatitudes, where our Saviour in teaching the people had said: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they that weep, blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake"; and where he also said: "When ye pray say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.'"

The whole action took place in the neighborhood of this mountain, which the infidels call Mount Hittin.

Guy de Lusignan took refuge among the hills and defended the True Cross as well as he could; but he could not prevent the Mussulmans from capturing it after they had mortally wounded the Bishop of Saint-Jean-d'Acre who was carrying it.

Raymond opened a passage for his men and escaped to Tripoli, where he died of grief. So long as a single group of horsemen remained, they returned to the charge; but it melted before the Saracens like wax before a blazing furnace. Finally the king's standard fell to rise no more. Guy de Lusignan was made a prisoner, and Saladin, taking the sword of the King of Jerusalem from the hands of the man who brought it to him, dismounted from his horse, and, kneeling down, gave thanks to Mohammed for the victory.

Never did Christians in Palestine or elsewhere suffer such a defeat. "In looking over the number of the dead," says an eye-witness, "one could not credit the fact that any prisoners had been made; in looking upon the prisoners one could not believe that there were any dead."

The king, after having sworn to renounce his kingdom, was sent to Damascus. All the chevaliers of the Temple and the Hospitallers lost their heads. Saladin, fearing that his soldiers might feel the touch of that pity which left him unmoved, offered fifty gold pieces for the head of every one of these soldiers-monks which should be brought to him.

Scarcely a thousand men were left out of the whole Christian army. The Arab authors say that prisoners were sold for a pair of sandals, and that they exposed the heads of the Christians like melons in Damascus.

Monseigneur Mislin, in his beautiful book, "Les Saints Lieux," says that a year after this horrible carnage, in crossing the field of Hittin, he still found heaps of bones, and that the mountains and valleys adjoining were covered with remains which wild beasts had dragged thither.

After the battle of Mount Tabor the jackals of the plain of Esdrelon had no need to envy the hyenas of the mountain of Tiberias.

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XI. THE BULLET MERCHANT

Since Bonaparte had returned from Mount Tabor, nearly a month before, not a day had passed that the batteries had ceased to thunder, or when there had been a truce between besieged and besiegers. This was the first resistance that Fortune had cast in Bonaparte's path. The siege of Saint-Jean-d'Acre lasted sixty days. There were seven assaults and twelve sorties. Caffarelli died from having his arm amputated, and Croisier was still confined to his couch of suffering. A thousand men had been killed or had died of the plague. And while there was still plenty of powder there were no bullets.

The report spread through the army; such things cannot be concealed from the soldiers. One morning a sergeant-major approached Roland, who was in the trench with Bonaparte, and said to him: "Is it true, my commandant, that the commander-in-chief is in need of bullets?"

"Yes," replied Roland. "Why?"

"Oh," replied the sergeant-major, with a movement of the neck which was peculiar to him, and apparently dated back to the days when he wore a cravat for the first time, and did not like the feeling, "if he wants some I can get them for him."

"You?"

"Yes, I. And not so dear either. Five sous."

"Five sous! And they cost the government forty!"

"You see, it would be a good bargain."

"You are not joking?"

"Do you think I would joke with my superiors?"

Roland went up to Bonaparte and told him what the sergeant-major had just said.

"These rogues often have good ideas," he said. "Call him."

Roland beckoned to the sergeant to come forward. He advanced with a military step, and stopped a couple of yards away from Bonaparte with his hand at the vizor of his shako.

"Are you the bullet merchant?" asked Bonaparte.

"I sell them, but I do not make them."

"And you can furnish them for five sous?"

"Yes, general."

"How do you do that?"

"Ah! that is my secret! If I were to tell it, everybody would be selling them."

"How many can you furnish me?"

"As many as you wish," replied the sergeant-major.

"What must I give you for that?"

"Permission to go in bathing with my company."

Bonaparte burst out laughing, for he understood at once.

"Very well," he said. "Go!"

The sergeant-major saluted and started off at a run. Shortly afterward the commander-in-chief and his aide saw the company to whom the former had given the permission to bathe pass with the sergeant-major at their head.

"Come and see something curious," said Bonaparte.

And taking Roland's arm, he ascended a little hill, from which the whole gulf was visible.

They saw the sergeant-major set the example by rushing into the water, as he certainly would have done had he been rushing into fire, after having first removed his clothing, and wade into the sea with a part of his men, while the others scattered along the shore. Roland had not understood until then.

But scarcely had the sergeant-major executed this manœuvre than the English frigates and the ramparts of Saint-Jean-d'Acre opened fire, and a storm of bullets fell around them. As the soldiers, both those who were in the water and those who had remained on shore, took good care to stay at a safe distance from each other, the bullets fell into the spaces between them, and were immediately picked up without a single one being lost, not even those which fell into the water. The beach sloped gradually, and the soldiers had only to stoop and pick them up.

This strange game lasted two hours. At the end of that time the inventor of the system had collected from a thousand to twelve hundred bullets, which netted three hundred francs to the company, a hundred francs for each man lost. The company thought it a very good bargain. As the batteries of the frigates and the city were of the same calibre (16 and 12) as those used by the French army; not a bullet was lost.

The next day the company went in bathing again, and when the commander-in-chief heard the cannonading he could not resist the temptation of witnessing the strange spectacle once more, and this time some of the principal officers of the army accompanied him. Roland could not contain himself. He was one of those men who go mad over the sound of cannon and who are intoxicated by the smell of powder. He dashed down to the shore in two bounds, and tossing all of his clothes except his drawers upon the shore, he sprang into the sea. Twice Bonaparte called him back, but he did not seem to hear.

"What ails the foolish fellow," he murmured, "that he will never let slip an opportunity to be killed?"

Roland was no longer there to reply, and he would probably not have replied had he been there. Bonaparte followed him with his eyes. He soon passed the cordon of bathers, and swam out until he was almost within musket range of the "Tiger." They opened fire upon him, and the balls sent the water seething around him.

This did not disturb him, and his conduct so closely resembled bravado that an officer on the "Tiger" ordered a boat lowered. Roland longed to be killed, but he did not wish to be taken prisoner. He swam vigorously for the reefs which lie along the base of Saint-Jean-d'Acre. It was impossible for the boat to pursue him among those reefs.

Roland disappeared for a moment, and Bonaparte was beginning to fear that some accident had befallen him, when he reappeared at the foot of the city, within the range of fire of the musketry. The Turks, seeing a Christian within rifle-shot, did not hesitate to fire upon him; but Roland seemed to be in league with the bullets. He walked slowly back along the edge of the water. The sand on one side and the water on the other were thrown up almost at his very feet. He reached the spot where he had removed his clothes, dressed himself, and returned to Bonaparte's side.

A vivandière who was with the party at the time, distributing the contents of her cask to the bullet gatherers, offered him a glass.

"Ah! is it you, Goddess of Reason?" said Roland. "You know very well that I never drink brandy."

"No," said she; "but once does not make a habit, and what you have just done deserves a drop, citizen-commandant." And she held out a little silver cup full of liquor.

"To the health of the commander-in-chief and of Saint-Jean-d'Acre," said she.

Roland raised his glass toward Bonaparte and drank. Then he offered her a piece of money.

"Pooh!" said she, "I sell my liquor to those who need to buy courage, but not to you. Besides, my husband will make a good thing out of this."

"What is your husband doing?"

"He is the bullet merchant."

"Well, to judge by the cannonading, he is liable to make a fortune in a short time. Where is this husband of yours?"

"There he is," she said, pointing out to Roland the sergeant-major who had suggested that he be allowed to sell bullets to Bonaparte. As the Goddess of Reason was pointing, a shell buried itself in the sand not four feet from the speculator.

The sergeant-major, who seemed to be familiar with all sorts of projectiles, threw himself face downward in the sand and waited. The shell burst in about three minutes, scattering a cloud of sand.

"Upon my word, Goddess of Reason," said Roland, "I am afraid that shell has made you a widow."

But the sergeant-major rose unhurt from the midst of the dust and sand. He seemed to be rising from the crater of a volcano. "Long live the Republic!" he shouted as he shook himself.

And on the instant, from the shore and the water, that sacred phrase, which made the dead immortal, was taken up by spectators and actors.

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XII. HOW CITIZEN PIERRE-CLAUDE FARAUD WAS MADE A SUB-LIEUTENANT

This collecting of musket balls lasted four days; but the English and Turks finally guessed the meaning of this performance which they had at first taken to be bravado.

A count of the balls showed that they had picked up thirty-four hundred. Bonaparte paid for them to the last sou through Estève, the paymaster of the army.

"Ah!" said Estève, when he recognized the sergeant-major, "so you are speculating in artillery again! I paid you for a cannon at Froeschwiller, and now I am to pay you for thirty-four hundred cannon-balls at Saint-Jean-d'Acre."

"Pooh!" said the sergeant-major, "I am none the richer for it; the six hundred francs at Froeschwiller, together with the Prince de Condé's treasure, went to the fund of the widows and orphans of Dawendorff."

"And what are you going to do with this money?"

"Oh! I have a use for it."

"Might I ask what it is?"

"Certainly, since I depend on you to undertake the commission, citizen-paymaster. This money is destined for our brave Captain Guillet's old mother. He was killed at the last assault. He bequeathed her to his company before he died. The Republic is not very rich and might forget to pay the pensions of its widows. Well, in default of a pension the company will send her a little capital. It is a great pity, though, that those fools of Turks and those devils of Englishmen should have guessed our game and refused to keep it up any longer; we would have made up a sum of a thousand francs for the poor woman. But what will you, citizen-paymaster! The prettiest girl in the world can give no more than she has; and the thirty-second brigade, although it is the prettiest girl in the army, has only one hundred and seventy francs to offer."

"Where does Captain Guillet's mother live?"

"At Châteauroux, the capital of the Indre. Ah! it is fine to be faithful to one's old regiment, and that is just what he was, that brave Captain Guillet."

"Very well, the sum shall be paid to her, in the name of the third company of the thirty-second brigade, and of--"

"Pierre-Claude Faraud, the executor of his will."

"Thanks. And now, Pierre-Claude Faraud, the commander-in-chief wishes me to say to you that he wants to speak with you."

"Whenever he likes," replied the sergeant-major, with that twist of the neck which was peculiar to him. "Pierre-Claude Faraud is never too much embarrassed to talk."

"He will send for you."

"I await the summons." And the sergeant-major turned upon his heel and returned to the barracks of the thirty-second brigade, to wait until he was sent for.

Bonaparte was eating dinner in his tent when he was informed that the sergeant-major whom he had sent for was awaiting his pleasure.

"Let him come in," said Bonaparte.

The sergeant-major entered.

"Ah! it is you," said Bonaparte.

"Yes, citizen-general, did you not send for me?" replied Faraud.

"What brigade do you belong to?"

"The thirty-second."

"To what company?"

"The third."

"Captain?"

"Captain Guillet, deceased."

"Not replaced?"

"Not replaced."

"Which of the two lieutenants is the braver."

"There is no 'braver' in the thirty-second. They are all equally brave."

"The older, then?"

"Lieutenant Valats, who stayed at his post with a shot through his breast."

"The second lieutenant was not wounded?"

"That was not his fault."

"Very well. Valats then will be captain, and the second lieutenant will succeed him. Now, is there not an under-officer who has distinguished himself?"

"All the men distinguished themselves."

"But I cannot make them all lieutenants, stupid."

"That is a fact. Well, then there is Taberly."

"Who is Taberly?"

"A brave man."

"And would his appointment be well received?"

"With applause."

"Then there will be a vacant sub-lieutenancy. Who is the oldest sergeant-major?"

The man whom he was questioning made a movement with his neck as if his cravat were strangling him. "He is one Pierre-Claude Faraud," he replied.

"What have you to say about him?"

"Nothing much."

"Perhaps you do not know him?"

"It is exactly because I do know him."

"Well, I know him also."

"You know him, general?"

"Yes; he is an aristocrat of the Army of the Rhine--"

"Oh!"

"A quarrelsome fellow--"

"General!"

"Whom I caught fighting a duel with a brave Republican at Milan."

"He was one of his friends, general. Friends may fight."

"And whom I sent to the guard-house for forty-eight hours."

"Twenty-four, general."

"Then I cheated him out of the other twenty-four."

"He is ready to take them, general."

"A sub-lieutenant is not sent to the guard-house; he is put under arrest."

"General, Pierre-Claude Faraud is not a sub-lieutenant, he is only a sergeant-major."

"Oh, yes; he is a sub-lieutenant."

"That's a good one, for example! Since when?"

"Since this morning. See what it is to have patrons."

"I? Patrons?"

"Oho! So it is you?"

"Yes, it is I. And I should like to know who my patrons are."

"I," replied Estève, "who have twice seen you generously give away money which you have earned."

"And I," said Roland, "because I want a brave man to second me on an expedition from which few will return."

"Take him," said Bonaparte; "but I advise you not to give him sentry duty if there are any wolves in the country."

"What, general, do you know that story?"

"I know everything, monsieur."

"General," said Faraud, "you are the one to do my twenty-four hours in the guard-house."

"Why?"

"Because you have just said monsieur."

"Come, come," said Bonaparte, laughing, "you are a bright fellow; I shall remember you. In the meantime you must drink a glass of wine to the health of the Republic."

"General," said Roland, "citizen Faraud never drinks to the health of the Republic in anything but brandy."

"The deuce! And I have none," said Bonaparte.

"I have provided for the emergency," replied Roland; and going to the flap of the tent he said, "Come in, citizeness Reason."

Citizeness Reason obeyed. She was still beautiful, although the sun of Egypt had darkened her complexion.

"Rose here!" exclaimed Faraud.

"Do you know the citizeness?" asked Roland, laughing.

"I should think so; she is my wife!" replied Faraud.

"Citizeness," said Bonaparte, "I saw you at work in the midst of the musket balls. Roland wanted to pay you for the brandy you gave him when he came out of the water, but you refused. As I had no brandy here, and my guests each desire a glass, Roland said: 'Let us call the Goddess of Reason, and we can pay her for it all at the same time.' So we called you. Now serve us."

Citizeness Reason tipped her little cask and poured out a glassful for each. She forgot Faraud.

"When the health of the Republic is drunk," observed Roland, "everybody drinks."

"But any one who chooses is at liberty to drink water," cried Bonaparte; and raising his glass, he cried, gayly, "To the health of the Republic."

The toast was repeated in chorus. Then Roland, drawing a parchment from his pocket, said: "Here is your bill of exchange on posterity, but it is in your husband's name. You may indorse it, but he alone can use it."

The Goddess of Reason unfolded the parchment with trembling hands, while Faraud looked on with sparkling eyes.

"Here, Pierre," she cried, "read it! It is your commission as sub-lieutenant in Taberly's place."

"Is that true?" asked Faraud.

"Look for yourself."

Faraud looked.

"Hurrah! Sub-lieutenant Faraud!" he shouted. "Long live General Bonaparte!"

"Twenty-four hours' arrest for having cried 'Long live General Bonaparte!' instead of 'Long live the Republic!'" said Bonaparte.

"I certainly cannot escape them," said Faraud; "but I will do those twenty-four hours with pleasure."

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XIII. THE LAST ASSAULT

During the night following Faraud's promotion to a sub-lieutenancy, Bonaparte received eight heavy pieces of artillery and an abundance of ammunition. Faraud's thirty-four hundred balls had served to repulse the sorties from the town. The "Accursed Tower" was almost completely demolished, and Bonaparte resolved to make a last effort.

Then, too, the circumstances rendered this imperative.

A Turkish fleet of thirty vessels, escorted by English warships, was sighted on the 8th of May. It was scarcely daylight when Bonaparte learned of this. He climbed the little hill whence he could survey the entire harbor. It was his opinion that the fleet came from the Island of Rhodes, and was conveying ammunition, troops and provisions to the besieged.

It became imperative therefore to take Saint-Jean-d'Acre before the town received these reinforcements.

When Roland saw that he had decided upon the attack, he asked the general for two hundred men with full permission to use them in any way and for whatever purpose he should choose.

Bonaparte asked for an explanation. He had great confidence in Roland's bravery, which amounted almost to rashness; but because of this very rashness he feared to intrust the lives of two hundred men to him. Then Roland explained that the day when he took his long swim he had seen a breach in the walls from the sea which could not be seen from land, and which had evidently caused the besieged no anxiety, defended as it was by an inside battery and the fire from the English frigates. He intended to enter the town through this breach and then create a diversion with his two hundred men.

Bonaparte gave him the desired permission. Roland chose two hundred men from the thirty-second brigade, and among them Sub-lieutenant Faraud.

Bonaparte ordered a general attack. Murat, Rampon, Vial, Kléber, Junot, generals of division, generals of brigade, chiefs of corps, all were to charge at once.

At ten o'clock in the morning all the outer works which had been recaptured by the enemy were thrown down once more. Five flags were taken, three cannon carried off, and four more spiked. But the besieged did not yield an inch; as fast as they were beaten down, others took their places. Never had such audacity and ardor, never had more impetuous courage and obstinate valor, struggled for the possession of a city.

Generals, officers and soldiers fought together in confusion in the trench. Kléber, armed with an Albanian rifle which he had wrested from its owner, made a club of it, and raising it above his head as a thresher uses his flail, he brought down a man with every blow. Murat, with his head uncovered and his long hair floating in the wind, was flashing his sabre back and forth, its fine temper bringing its message of death to all those who came in contact with it. Junot killed a man, now with a pistol, now with a rifle, every time he fired.

Boyer, the commander of the eighteenth brigade, fell in the disorder with seventeen officers and more than a hundred and fifty soldiers of his corps; but Lannes, Bon, and Vial passed over their bodies, which only served to raise them closer to the ramparts.

Bonaparte, not in the trench, but upon it, was directing the artillery himself, and motionless, a target for all, was making a breach in the wall on his right with the cannon in the tower. They had made a practicable opening at the end of an hour. They had no bushes with which to fill up the ditch; but they threw in the corpses as they had already done at another part of the ramparts. Mussulmans and Christians, French and Turks, thrown out through the windows of the tower where they laid heaped up, raised a bridge as high as the ramparts.

Shouts of "Long live the Republic!" were heard, with cries of "To the assault!" The band played the "Marseillaise," and the rest of the army joined in the fight.

Bonaparte sent one of his ordnance officers named Raimbaud, to tell Roland that the time had come for him to effect his diversion; but when he learned what had been projected, instead of returning to Bonaparte, Raimbaud asked permission to remain with Roland. The two young men were friends, and when a battle is on one does not refuse favors of that sort to a friend.

Roland no sooner heard the order than he placed himself at the head of his two hundred men, plunged into the water with them, turned the corner of the bastion with the water up to their waists, and presented himself in the breach with the trumpets in front. The attack was so unexpected, although the siege had lasted two months, that the gunners were not even at their posts. Roland took possession of them, and having no men to work them, he spiked them. Then shouting, "Victory! Victory!" they dashed into the winding streets of the town.

These cries were heard on the ramparts and redoubled the ardor of the besiegers. For the second time Bonaparte believed himself master of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, and sprang into the "Accursed Tower," which they had had such difficulty in taking. But when he reached it he saw with dismay that the French troops had been brought to a halt by a second inclosure. This was the one which Colonel Phélippeaux--Bonaparte's companion at Brienne--had constructed behind the other.

Leaning half-way out of the window, Bonaparte shouted encouragement to his soldiers. The grenadiers, furious at meeting with this fresh obstacle, attempted to mount on each other's shoulders for want of ladders; but suddenly, while the assailants were being attacked in front by those who had been placed there to defend the inclosure, they were swept by a battery in the flank. A tremendous fusillade burst forth on all sides--from the houses, the streets, the barricades, and even from Djezzar's seraglio. A thick smoke poured up from the city. It was Roland, Raimbaud and Faraud who had fired the bazar. In the midst of the smoke they appeared on the roofs of the houses, and endeavored to enter into communication with those on the ramparts. Through the smoke of the fire and of the artillery they saw the tri-colored plumes waving, and from the city and the ramparts they could hear the cry of "Victory!" which went up for the third time that day. It was destined to be the last.

The soldiers who were to effect a junction with Roland's two hundred men, a portion of whom had already slid down into the town, while the others were fighting on the ramparts or in the ditches, being assailed by volleys from four sides, hesitated as the bullets whistled and the cannon roared around them, falling like hail and passing like a hurricane. Lannes, wounded in the head by a musket ball, fell upon his knees, and was carried off by his soldiers. Kléber held his own like an invulnerable giant in the midst of the fire. Bon and Vial were driven back into the ditch. Bonaparte sought for some one to support Kléber, but every one was occupied. He then ordered the retreat with tears of rage in his eyes; for he did not doubt that all who had entered the town with Roland, together with those who had slipped over the ramparts to join him, some two hundred and fifty or three hundred in all, were lost. And what a harvest of heads they would have to gather in the moat the next day.

He was the last one to retreat, and he shut himself up in his tent with orders that no one was to disturb him. This was the first time in the course of three years that he had doubted his own fortune.

What a sublime page could be written by the historian who could tell what thoughts passed through his mind in that hour of despair.

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XIV. THE LAST BULLETIN

Meanwhile Roland and his men, and those who had gone into the town to join him, having cherished for a time the hope that they were to be supported, were at last forced to the conviction that they had been abandoned. The shouts of victory which had answered their own became fainter and fainter, and then died away. Then the volleys of musketry and cannon gradually grew fainter, until they had ceased entirely in the course of an hour. Amid the other sounds which encompassed him, Roland even thought that he heard the sound of the drums and trumpets sounding and beating the retreat.

Then, as we have said, all these sounds ceased.

Then, like a tide rising upon all sides at once, from all points of the compass, the little troop was assailed by English, Turks, Mamelukes, Arnauts, Albanians--the entire garrison, in short, of some eight thousand men.

Roland formed his little troop into a square, one side of which he backed against a mosque, thus converting it into a fortress, and there, after making them swear to defend themselves to the death against these enemies from whom they knew they could expect no quarter, they waited with levelled bayonets.

The Turks, full of overweening confidence in their cavalry as usual, dashed upon the little troop with such violence that, although the double volley of the French laid low over sixty men and horses, those who came up behind rode over their bodies and dashed upon the bayonets of the still smoking guns.

But there they were forced to stop. The second rank had time to reload and fire at close quarters. They had no choice but to fall back, and as they could not again cross the heap of corpses, they sought to flee to the right and left. Two terrible volleys accompanied their flight and cut them down in swaths. But they returned with all the greater desperation.

Then a frightful struggle ensued, a regular hand-to-hand encounter, in which the Turkish horsemen, defying the murderous volleys, rushed up to the very points of the French bayonets, to discharge their pistols at their adversaries.

Others again, seeing that the reflection of the sun upon the gun-barrels frightened their horses, made them walk backward, and, forcing them to rear, threw them over on the bayonets. The wounded dragged themselves along the ground, and, gliding like serpents under the gun-barrels, hamstrung the French.

Roland, perceiving that the number of his men was decreasing, and that, despite the triple row of corpses which formed a rampart for the little troop, he could not hope to sustain the unequal fight much longer, had the door of the mosque opened, and with the utmost composure, continuing his murderous fire all the while, he bade his men enter, being the last to pass through the door himself. Then the firing began again through every opening in the mosque; but the Turks brought up pieces of artillery and trained them against the door. Roland himself was near a window, and one after another, the three gunners who drew near to apply the match to the touch-hole fell. Then a horsemen rode swiftly toward the gun, and, before any one could divine his motive, he fired his pistol at the priming. The gun was discharged, and the door broken in.

This broken entrance emitted such a terrible fusillade, however, that the Turks presented themselves before it three times to enter the mosque and were repulsed each time. Mad with rage, they rallied, and made a fourth attempt, but this time only a few scattered shots replied to their shouts of death. The little troop had exhausted its ammunition. The grenadiers awaited the enemy with fixed bayonets.

"Friends," cried Roland, "remember that you have sworn to die rather than be made prisoners by Djezzar the Butcher, who cut off your comrades' heads."

"We swear it!" replied Roland's two hundred men with one voice.

"Long live the Republic!" said Roland.

"Long live the Republic!" they all repeated after him.

And each man prepared to die, but to sell his life dearly. Just then a group of officers appeared at the doorway with Sidney Smith at their head. They all carried their swords in their scabbards. Smith raised his hat and made a sign that he wished to speak. Silence ensued.

"Gentlemen," he said in excellent French, "you are brave men, and it shall never be said that men who had borne themselves like heroes were massacred in my presence. Give yourselves up; I will guarantee that your lives shall be spared."

"It is too much or not enough," replied Roland.

"Pray what do you want?"

"Kill us to the last man, or let us all go."

"You are exacting, gentlemen," said the commodore; "but one can refuse nothing to such men as you. But you will permit me to furnish you with an escort of Englishmen as far as the gate? Otherwise none of you will reach it alive. Is that agreed?"

"Yes, my lord," replied Roland; "and we can only thank you for your courtesy."

Sidney Smith left two English officers to guard the door, entered the mosque himself, and held out his hand to Roland. Ten minutes later the English escort arrived.

The French soldiers with fixed bayonets, and the English officers with drawn swords, traversed the street which led to the French camp, amid the imprecations of the Mussulmans, the howling of the women, and the cries of the children. The ten or twelve wounded, among them Faraud, were carried on improvised litters of gun-barrels. The Goddess of Reason walked beside the sub-lieutenant's litter, pistol in hand. Smith and his English soldiers accompanied the grenadiers until they were out of range of the Turkish guns, and as they defiled before the redcoats the latter presented arms.

Bonaparte, as we have said, had retired within his tent. He called for Plutarch, and read the biography of Augustus; then, thinking of Roland and his gallant companions, who were probably being murdered, he muttered, like Augustus after the battle of Teutberg: "Varus, give me back my legions!"

But he had no one of whom he could demand his legions, for he had been his own Varus.

Suddenly he heard a great uproar and the strains of the "Marseillaise" reached his ears. Why did these soldiers rejoice and sing when their general was weeping with rage?

He sprang to the door of his tent. The first persons he saw were Roland, his aide-de-camp Raimbaud, and Faraud.

The wounded man was leaning on the shoulder of the Goddess of Reason. Behind them came the two hundred men whom Bonaparte had thought lost.

"Ah, my good friend," he said, pressing Roland's hand, "I was mourning for you. I thought you were lost. How the devil did you get out of it?"

"Raimbaud will tell you," said Roland, who was in a bad humor because he owed his life to an Englishman; "I am too thirsty to talk, I want something to drink."

And taking a glass full of water, which was standing upon the table, he emptied it at a single draught, while Bonaparte went out to meet the soldiers, all the more delighted to see them since he had never expected to do so again.

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XV. VANISHED DREAMS

Napoleon, speaking of Saint-Jean-d'Acre at Saint Helena, said: "That paltry town held the destiny of the East. If Saint-Jean-d'Acre had fallen, I would have changed the face of the world."

This regret, expressed some twenty years later, gives an idea of the poignancy of what Bonaparte must have suffered at the time, when he realized the impossibility of taking Saint-Jean-d'Acre, and published the following order in all the divisions of the army.

As usual, Bourrienne wrote at his dictation:

Soldiers! You have crossed the desert which separates Africa from Asia with more rapidity than an army of Arabs.

The army, which was on its way to invade Egypt, is destroyed. You have taken its general, its camp baggage, its supplies and its camels.

You have captured all the strongholds which defend the wells of the desert. On the fields of Mount Tabor you have dispersed the cloud of men which had gathered from all parts of Asia in the hope of pillaging Egypt.

Finally, after having maintained the war with a handful of men in the heart of Syria for more than three months, taken forty pieces of artillery, fifty flags, six thousand prisoners, levelled the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, Kaïffa, and Acre, we are about to return to Egypt; the season of disembarkation calls me back.

A few days more and we might hope to take the pasha in his own palace; but at this season the price of the castle of Acre is not worth the loss of a few days, and the brave men whom I should lose are now necessary to me for other operations.

Soldiers, we have a season of fatigue and danger before us. Having made it impossible for the East to do anything against us during the forthcoming campaign, we shall perhaps be forced to repulse the attack of a part of the West.

You will find new opportunities for glory; and if in so many battles, every day is marked with the loss of a brave man, other brave men must be made every day, and take their places among the little band who set the example of daring in times of danger, and who make victory easy.

As he finished dictating this bulletin to Bourrienne, Bonaparte rose and went out of his tent as if to breathe more freely. Bourrienne followed him uneasily; events seldom left such a deep impression upon that heart of bronze.

Bonaparte climbed the little hill which overlooked the camp, seated himself upon a stone, and remained for a long time staring at the partially demolished fortress and the ocean which lay before him in its immensity. Finally he said: "The men who will write my life will not understand why I was so anxious to take this wretched little place. Ah, if I had taken it as I hoped!"

He let his head fall upon his hands.

"And if you had taken it?" asked Bourrienne.

"If I had taken it," replied Bonaparte, seizing his hand, "I should have found the treasures of the pasha in the city and arms for three hundred thousand men; I would have aroused and armed all Syria; I would have marched upon Damascus and Aleppo; I would have swelled my army with all the malcontents; I would have announced the abolition of servitude and the tyrannical rule of the pashas to the people; I would have reached Constantinople with my armed hordes; I would have overthrown the Turkish Empire; I would have founded a new and vast empire in the Orient which would have fixed my place in history; and perhaps I should have returned to Paris by way of Adrianople and Vienna, after having humbled the house of Austria."

This, as will be seen, was nothing more nor less than Cæsar's project when he fell beneath the assassin's knife; it was his war among the Parthians which was to end only in Germany. As far as was the man of the 13th Vendémiaire from the conqueror of Italy, so far was the conqueror of Italy that day from the conqueror of Egypt.

Proclaimed throughout Europe the greatest of living generals, he sought, on the shores where Alexander, Hannibal and Cæsar had fought, to equal if not surpass the names of these captains of antiquity; and he did surpass them, since he tried to do what they only dreamed of.

"What would have become of Europe," said Pascal, speaking of Cromwell's death from calculus, "if that grain of sand had not entered his entrails?"

What would have become of Bonaparte's fortunes if Saint-Jean-d'Acre had not stood in the way?

He was dreaming of this great mystery of the unknown when his eye was attracted by a black speck between the mountains of the Carmel chain which was gradually growing larger. As it drew nearer he recognized a soldier of that dromedary corps which he had created "to pursue the fugitives more swiftly after the battle."

Bonaparte drew his glass from his pocket, and, after taking a good look, he said: "Good! Now we shall have some news from Egypt."

And he stood up. The messenger also recognized him; he promptly turned his dromedary, which was edging toward the camp, somewhat out of the direct line toward the hill. Bonaparte descended the hill. The soldier, who seemed to be an excellent rider, put his dromedary to a gallop. He wore the uniform of a quartermaster-general.

"Where do you come from?" called Bonaparte as soon as the man could hear him.

"From Upper Egypt," was the answer.

"What news?"----"Bad, general."

Bonaparte stamped his foot. "Come here," he said.

The man reached Bonaparte in a few moments. The dromedary knelt down and the man slid to the ground.

"Here, citizen-general," he said, and he handed him a despatch. Bonaparte passed it to Bourrienne, saying: "Read it." Bourrienne read:

To the Commander-in-Chief, Bonaparte:

I do not know whether this despatch will reach you, general, or whether, if it does, you will be in a position to remedy the disaster with which I am threatened.

While General Desaix was pursuing the Mamelukes from the coast of Syout, the flotilla composed of the "Italie," and several other armed ships, which carried almost all of the supplies of the division, some artillery, and the sick and wounded, was detained off the coast of Beyrout by the wind.

The flotilla was attacked within a quarter of an hour by the Sherif Hassan and three or four thousand men. We are not in any condition to resist but we shall do so.

But we cannot escape death save by a miracle.

I am preparing this despatch, to which I shall add the details of the battle as it progresses.

Hassan attacks us with a sharp fusillade; I have ordered his fire to be returned. It is two o'clock in the afternoon.

Three o'clock--The Arabs are returning to the charge for the third time, after suffering terrible havoc from our artillery. I have lost a third of my men.

Four o'clock--The Arabs have thrown themselves into the river and taken the small boats. I have only a dozen men, all the rest are dead or wounded. I shall wait until the Arabs have crowded aboard the "Italie," and then I shall blow her up with myself and them.

I am sending this despatch by a brave and clever man, who has promised me that, unless he is killed, he will find you wherever you are. In ten minutes all will be over. CAPTAIN MORANDI.

"And then?" asked Bonaparte.

"That is all."

"But Captain Morandi?"

"Blew himself up, general," replied the messenger.

"And you?"

"Oh, I did not wait until he blew himself up; I blew away before that, after carefully concealing my despatch in my tobacco-box. Then I swam under water to a place where I hid in the tall grass. When it was dark I came out from under the water, and crawled on all fours to the camp where I came upon a sleeping Arab. I put a dagger into him, and taking his dromedary I started off at a gallop."

"And you have come from Beyrout?"

"Yes, citizen-general."

"Without accident?"

"If you call shots fired at or by me accidents, then I have had plenty and my camel also. Between us we have been hit four times. He three times in the side, and I once in the shoulder. We have been hungry and thirsty; he has eaten nothing at all, and I have eaten horseflesh. But here we are. You are well, citizen-general; that is all that is necessary."

"But Morandi?" asked Bonaparte.

"The deuce! as he put the match to the powder himself, I rather think that it would be difficult to find any of him, even a piece as big as a nut."

"And the 'Italie'?"

"There is not enough of the 'Italie' left to make matches."

"You were right, my friend; this is indeed bad news. Bourrienne, you will say that I am superstitious; but did you notice the name of the vessel?"

"The 'Italie.'"

"Well, now listen, Bourrienne. Italy is lost to France; that is beyond doubt; my presentiments never deceive me."

Bourrienne shrugged his shoulders. "What connection do you find between a ship which is blown up twenty-four hundred miles from France, on the Nile, and Italy?"

"I have said it," replied Bonaparte with a prophetic accent, "and you will see." Then, after a moment's silence, he said, pointing to the messenger: "Take this good fellow with you, Bourrienne; give him thirty talaris, and get him to tell you the story of the battle of Beyrout."

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XVI. THE RETREAT

In the evening, in order to conceal its movements from the enemy as well as to avoid the heat of the day, the army began its retreat. The orders were to follow the Mediterranean for the fresh air of the sea.

Bonaparte called Bourrienne and dictated an order to the effect that all who were able must go on foot, leaving the horses, mules and camels for the sick and wounded.

An anecdote will at times convey the state of a man's mind better than any number of descriptions.

Bonaparte had just finished his dictation when his personal attendant, Vigogne senior, entered the tent, and asked: "General, which horse have you reserved for yourself?"

Bonaparte looked him through and through, and then, striking him in the face with his riding-whip, he retorted: "Did you not hear the order, imbecile? Everybody is to go on foot, myself as well as the others. Go!" And he went.

There were three men sick of the plague at Mount Carmel; they, too ill to be moved, were left to the generosity of the Turks and the care of the Carmelite brothers.

Unfortunately, Sidney Smith was not there to save them and the Turks put them to death. Word of this was brought to Bonaparte after he had gone six miles. Then Bonaparte gave full vent to the passion of which the blow which he struck Vigogne was only the prelude. He stopped the artillery wagons and distributed torches to all the army. Then he gave orders to light the torches and to set fire to all the small towns and villages, hamlets and houses on the road. The barley was ripe; they set fire to it. It was a terrible yet a magnificent sight. The whole coast was in flames for thirty miles around, and the sea reflected the tremendous ocean of flames like a gigantic mirror. The bridge, being bare sand, was the only thing which was not on fire, and seemed like a bridge thrown over the Cocytus.

Bonaparte became alarmed when, after breakfast, he again took the head of the column. A devouring thirst, the total want of water, excessive heat, and a fatiguing march through burning sand-dunes had completely demoralized the men, and caused the most cruel selfishness and the most heartrending indifference to supersede all generous sentiments.

And this continued day after day. They began by ridding themselves of those who were sick of the plague under pretext that it was dangerous to take them along. Then came the turn of the wounded. The unfortunate men cried out: "We have not got the plague, we are only wounded." And they showed their old wounds, or inflicted new ones on themselves. But the soldiers did not even turn their heads. "Your turn has come," they said. And they went on.

Bonaparte shuddered with terror when he saw this. He ordered a halt. He forced all the able-bodied men who were on mules, horses, or dromedaries to give them up to the sick and wounded.

They reached Tentoura on the 20th of May, in a stifling heat. They sought vainly for a bit of grass or a tree to give them shelter from the blazing sky. They lay down upon the sand, but it was fiery hot. Men were continually falling to rise no more. A wounded man in a litter asked for water. Bonaparte went up to him.

"Who have you got there?" asked he.

"We do not know," replied the men. "All that we do know is that he wears double epaulets."

The moans and the prayer for water had ceased.

"Who are you?" asked Bonaparte.

The wounded man was silent. Bonaparte raised the cloth which shaded the litter and recognized Croisier.

"Ah, my poor boy!" he exclaimed.

Croisier began to sob bitterly.

"Come," said Bonaparte, "have a little courage."

"Ah," said Croisier, lifting himself up in his litter, "you think I am weeping because I am going to die? I am weeping because you called me a coward; and I tried to get myself killed just because you did call me that."

"But," said Bonaparte, "I sent you a sword after that. Didn't Roland give it to you?"

"Here it is," replied Croisier, seizing the weapon which was at his side, and carrying it to his lips. "Those who are carrying me know that I want to have it buried with me. Tell them to do that, general."

And the wounded man clasped his hands imploringly.

Bonaparte dropped the corner of the cloth which covered the litter, gave the necessary order, and walked away.

When they left Tentoura on the following day they came upon a quicksand of considerable extent. There was no other road, so the artillery was obliged to take it, and the guns sank deep in the sand. They laid all the sick and wounded on the edge for a time, while they harnessed all the horses to the gun-carriages and wagons. But it was useless; wagons and cannon sunk to their middle in the sand. The able-bodied soldiers asked to be allowed to make a last effort. They exhausted themselves uselessly.

They wept as they abandoned the brass which they had so often blessed, which had so often witnessed their triumphs, and which had made Europe tremble.

They slept at Cesarea on the 22d of May.

So many of the sick and wounded had died that horses were more plentiful. Bonaparte, who was himself far from well, had nearly died from fatigue on the previous day. He was so strongly urged to do so that he finally consented to mount a horse. He had hardly gone three hundred paces beyond Cesarea when, about daybreak, a man fired pointblank at him from behind some bushes, but missed him.

The soldiers who were near the commander-in-chief darted into the thicket and dragged out the man, a native of Nablos, who was condemned to be shot on the spot. Four men pushed him toward the sea with the butts of their carbines; there they pulled their triggers, but none of the guns went off. The night had been damp and the powder was wet.

The Syrian, astonished at finding himself still alive, recovered his presence of mind immediately, and throwing himself into the sea, swam to a reef beyond the range of their muskets. The soldiers in their first stupefaction watched him go without thinking to fire off their muskets.

But Bonaparte, who knew what a bad effect it would have upon the superstitious population if such an attempt were to go unpunished, ordered a platoon to fire upon him. They obeyed, but the man was out of range, and the balls fell hissing into the water wide of the reef. The man drew a dagger from his breast and made a threatening gesture with it. Bonaparte ordered them to load again with a charge and a half, and fire once more.

"It is useless," said Roland; "I will go." And he instantly threw off all his clothing, retaining only his drawers.

"Stay here, Roland," said Bonaparte; "I do not wish you to risk your life for that of an assassin."

But whether he did not hear him, or whether he did not wish to hear, Roland had already borrowed a dagger from the Sheik of Aher, who was retreating with the army, and, thrusting it between his teeth, he had thrown himself into the sea. The soldiers, who knew that the young captain was the most daring in the whole army, shouted "Bravo!" Bonaparte was forced to be a witness of the duel which was impending.

The Syrian did not attempt further flight when he saw that it was only one man who was coming after him, but waited. He presented a fine spectacle there on his rock. With one hand clinched and his dagger in the other he looked like a statue of Spartacus on a pedestal. Roland swam toward him, his course as straight as that of an arrow. The Syrian made no attempt to attack him until he had gained a footing; he even drew back courteously as far as the rock would afford him a footing. Roland emerged from the water, young and handsome, and dripping like a sea-god.

They stood facing each other. The rock which was to serve as their arena resembled the shell of an immense tortoise protruding from the water. The spectators looked for a long scientific contest in which neither would give any advantage to the other. But this was not to be.

Roland had no sooner gained his feet and shaken off the water which blinded him as it fell from his dripping hair, than, without taking any precaution to defend himself against his adversary's dagger, he sprang upon him, not as one man springs upon another, but as a jaguar springs upon the hunter. They saw the flash of the daggers, then the two men fell into the water.

There was a tremendous splashing, then one head reappeared--the blond head of Roland.

He clung to the sharp edges of the rock with one hand, then he rested his knee upon it, and finally stood upright, holding his adversary's head by its mass of long hair in the other hand. He resembled Perseus after he had cut off the Gorgon's head.

A tremendous shout went up among the spectators and reached Roland. Then putting his dagger between his teeth, he sprang into the sea and swam to the shore.

The army had halted. The men had forgotten both heat and thirst. The wounded forgot to think of their wounds. Even the dying found strength to rise on their elbows.

Roland paused ten feet from Bonaparte.

"Here," said he, "is the head of your would-be assassin."

Bonaparte recoiled, in spite of himself. As for Roland, he went straight to his clothes and began to put them on as calmly as if he had come from an ordinary bath, and with a degree of modesty which a woman might have envied him.

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Chapter XVII

WHEREIN WE SEE THAT BONAPARTE'S PRESENTIMENTS DID NOT DECEIVE HIM

The French arrived at Jaffa on the 24th. They stayed there the 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th. Jaffa was indeed a city of misfortune for Bonaparte.

The reader will remember the four thousand prisoners whom Croisier and Eugene de Beauharnais had taken, who could neither be fed, nor sent to Cairo, and who had to be, and were, shot.

A graver and still more lamentable necessity awaited Bonaparte on his return. There was a hospital at Jaffa for plague-stricken patients. There is a fine picture by Gros, at the Musée, which portrays Bonaparte in the act of touching the plague stricken at Jaffa. The picture is none the less beautiful because it represents an occurrence which did not take place.

Here is what M. Thiers says. We who are only petty novelists are sorry to find ourselves again in opposition to that giant among historians. It is the author of "The Revolution," of "The Consulate and the Empire" who is speaking.

When he reached Jaffa, Bonaparte blew up the fortifications. There was a hospital there for plague-stricken patients. It would have been impossible to carry them away. They would have been exposed to inevitable death had they been left where they were, either from sickness, hunger or the cruelty of the enemy. Therefore Bonaparte told Dr. Desgenettes that it would be much more humane to give them opium than to allow them to live; to which the doctor made the much-lauded reply: "My trade is to cure, not to kill." The opium was not administered, and this occurrence served to propagate an outrageous slander which has now been refuted.

I humbly beg M. Thiers's pardon, but this reply credited to Desgenettes, whom I knew as well as I did Larrey and all of the "Egyptians"--I mean my father's companions in the great expedition--is as apocryphal as that of Cambronne.

God forbid that I should slander (that is the word which M. Thiers used) the man who illuminated the first half of the nineteenth century with the torch of his glory; and when we come to Pichegru and the Duc d'Enghien, the reader will see whether I simply repeat infamous echoes.

We have said that Gros's picture represents something which did not happen, and we will prove it. Here is Davoust's report, written under the eyes and the orders of the commander-in-chief, in his official narrative:

The army reached Jaffa on the 5th Prairial (May 24). It remained there the 6th, 7th, and 8th (25th, 26th, 27th of May). The time was spent in disciplining the villages which had behaved badly. The fortifications of Jaffa were all blown up. All the artillery of the place was thrown into the sea. The wounded were sent away, both by land and sea. There were only a few ships, and in order to give time for the land evacuation we were obliged to defer the departure of the army until the 9th.

Kléber's division formed the rear-guard, and did not start from Jaffa until the 10th (29th of May).

You see not a word about the plague, not a word about the visit to the hospital, and, above all, nothing about the touching of the plague-stricken patients. Not a word in any of the official reports.

Bonaparte's eyes had been bent upon France ever since he had turned them from the East, and it would have been very much misplaced modesty on his part had he concealed such a remarkable fact, which would have done honor, not to his reason perhaps, but to his daring.

Furthermore, this is how Bourrienne, who was an eye-witness, and a very impressionable actor, relates the incident:

Bonaparte went to the hospital. He found men there with their limbs amputated, wounded soldiers, afflicted with ophthalmia, who were moaning piteously, and men sick with the plague. The beds occupied by the latter stood to the right of the entrance. I was walking beside the general. I affirm that I did not see him touch one of the plague patients. Why should he? They were in the last stages of the malady; none of them spoke. Bonaparte knew well that he was not immune from the malady. Would fortune interfere in his behalf to shield him. It had certainly not seconded his plans with sufficient ardor during the last two months for him to depend upon that.

I ask: Would he expose himself to certain death, and leave his army in the midst of a desert which we had just made by our own ravages, in a demolished town, without help, or the hope of receiving any--he so necessary, so indispensable, as everybody must admit, to his army; he upon whom rested the responsibility of all the lives of those who had survived the last disaster, and who had just given proof of such devotion by their unalterable courage, their sufferings, and the endurance of privations; who were doing all that he could humanly ask of them, and who had confidence in him.

That is the voice of logic; but here is something convincing.

Bonaparte walked rapidly through the rooms, lightly flicking the yellow tops of his boots with the riding-whip which he held in his hand.

He spoke as follows as he strode back and forth:

"The fortifications are destroyed. Fortune was against me at Saint-Jean-d'Acre. I must go back to Egypt to preserve it against the enemies who are coming. In a few hours the Turks will be here. Let all those who are strong enough to rise, get up and come with us; they will be carried on litters and horses."

There were at the most sixty down with the plague. Anything that may have been said about a greater number is mere exaggeration. Their absolute silence, their complete prostration, and their general weakness announced the near approach of death. To take them in that state meant infallibly to introduce the plague in the army.

If one longs for ceaseless conquests, glory, and brilliant deeds one must accept his share of ill-fortune. When we think we have found something to cavil at in the actions of a leader who is hurried along by reverses and disastrous circumstances to terrible extremities, it is essential, before passing judgment upon him, to post ourselves thoroughly as to the given condition of affairs, and ask ourselves with our hands on our hearts whether we would not have done as he did. Then we must pity the man who is forced to do something cruel, but we must absolve him, since victory--let us be frank about it--cannot be won except with such or similar horrible accompaniments.

Here again is some one who has every interest in telling the truth. Listen:

He ordered an examination to be made in order to determine what had best be done. The report stated that seven or eight were so dangerously ill that they could not live more than twenty-four hours longer, and that, furthermore, plague-stricken as they were, they would spread the disease among all the soldiers who came in contact with them. Several asked for instant death. He thought that it would be an act of charity to advance their death by a few hours.

Do you still doubt? Napoleon shall speak for himself in the first person.

Where is the man who would not have preferred a speedy death to the horror of living exposed to the tortures of these barbarians? If my son--and I think I love him as dearly as a child can be loved--were in a situation similar to that of those unfortunates, my opinion would be in favor of doing the same thing to him; and were I in the same position I should demand that it be done to me.

It seems that nothing could be clearer than those few lines. How does it happen that M. Thiers did not read them? And if he did read them, why did he deny a fact which was confessed by the man who would have the most interest in concealing it?

Thus we establish the truth, not for the purpose of attacking Bonaparte, who could not have acted otherwise, but to prove to the partisans of pure history that it is not always true history.

The little army followed the same route in returning from Cairo that it had on coming to Syria. But the heat grew more terrible each day. When they left Gaza it registered 35 degrees Centigrade, and if the mercury was placed in the sand it rose to 45 degrees. Bonaparte noticed two men filling a grave a short time before they reached El-Arich. He thought he recognized in them the two men to whom he had spoken a fortnight before. And when he questioned them they said that they were indeed the men who had carried Croisier's litter. The poor fellow had just died of tetanus.

"Did you bury his sabre with him?" asked Bonaparte.

"Yes," replied both men together.

He stayed until the grave was filled up. Then fearing that it might be violated, he said: "I want a volunteer to stay here as a sentinel until the army has passed."

"Here," said a voice.

Bonaparte turned and saw Quartermaster Falou seated upon his dromedary. "Ah, is it you?"

"Yes, citizen-general."

"How does it happen that you have a dromedary when the rest are on foot?"

"Because two men have died of the plague on my dromedary's back, and no one will ride it."

"And it seems that you are not afraid of the plague?"

"I am not afraid of anything, citizen-general."

"Very well. I will remember that. Look up your friend Faraud and both of you come to me at Cairo."

"We will be there, citizen-general."

Bonaparte glanced at Croisier's grave.

"Sleep in peace, poor Croisier," he said, "your modest grave will not often be disturbed."

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XVIII. ABOUKIR

On the 14th of June, after a retreat across the burning sands of Syria almost as disastrous as the retreat from Moscow through the snows of the Beresina, Bonaparte entered Cairo in the midst of an immense concourse of people. The sheik, who was awaiting him, presented him with a magnificent horse and the Mameluke Roustan.

Bonaparte had said in his bulletin dated from Saint-Jean-d'Acre, that he was returning to Egypt to oppose the landing of a Turkish force assembled in the Island of Rhodes. He had been correctly informed upon this point, and the lookouts at Alexandria signalled on the 11th of July that they had sighted seventy-six sails in the offing, of which twelve were men-of-war, flying the Ottoman flag.

General Marmont, who was in command, sent courier after courier to Cairo and Rosetta, ordering the commander at Ramanieh to send him all the troops at his disposal, and sent two hundred men to the fort at Aboukir to reinforce that point. That same day Colonel Godard, the commander at Aboukir, wrote to Marmont:

The Turkish fleet is moored in the roadstead; I and my men will hold out until the last man falls rather than yield.

The 12th and 13th were employed by the enemy in hastening the arrival of some battalions which were behindhand.

There were one hundred and thirty ships in the roadstead on the evening of the 13th, of which thirteen carried seventy-four guns each, nine were frigates, and seventeen gunboats. The remainder were transports.

On the following evening Godard and his men had kept their word. He and his men were dead, and the redoubt was captured. Thirty-five men were still shut up in the fort under the command of Colonel Vinache. They held the fort for two days against the whole Turkish army.

Bonaparte learned of this while he was at the Pyramids. He started for Ramanieh, where he arrived on the 19th.

The Turks, now masters of the fort and the redoubt, had landed their whole artillery. Marmont, who had only eighteen hundred troops of the line, and two hundred sailors composing the nautical legion, with which to oppose the Turks at Alexandria, sent courier after courier to Bonaparte. Fortunately, instead of marching upon Alexandria, as Marmont had feared, or upon Rosetta, as Bonaparte had feared, the Turks with their customary indolence contented themselves with occupying the peninsula, and throwing out to the left of the redoubt a great line of intrenchments bordering upon Lake Madieh. They fortified little mounds some five or six feet in front of the redoubt, placing a thousand men in one and two thousand in another. They had eighteen thousand men in all. But they seemed to have come to Egypt for the sole object of being besieged.

On the 23d Bonaparte ordered the French army, which was now only distant a couple of hours' march from the Turkish army, to advance. The advance-guard, composed of Murat's cavalry and three of General Destaing's battalions, with two pieces formed the centre.

The division of General Rampon, who had Generals Fugière and Lanusse under his orders, was on the left. On the right General Lannes's division advanced along the shores of Lake Madieh.

Davoust, with two squadrons of cavalry and a hundred dromedaries, was placed between Alexandria and the army, with orders to head off Mourad Bey, or any one else who should come to the assistance of the Turks, and to keep communication open between Alexandria and the army.

Kléber was expected, and he was to take command of the reserve. And finally Menou, who had gone toward Rosetta, found himself at dawn near the end of the bar of the Nile, by the ferry which crosses Lake Madieh. The French were within sight of the intrenchments almost before the Turks were aware of their proximity.

Bonaparte formed the columns of attack. General Destaing, who commanded them, marched straight against the fortified hill at the right, while two hundred of Murat's cavalry, stationed between the two hills, left their positions, and circling both sides of the hill to the right, cut off the retreat of the Turks who were attacked by General Destaing.

Meanwhile Lannes marched against the hill on the left, which was defended by two thousand Turks, and Murat sent two hundred more of his cavalry around that hill.

Destaing and Murat attacked at almost the same moment and with equal success. The two hills were carried at the bayonet's point. The fugitive Turks met the French cavalry, and threw themselves into the sea.

Destaing, Lannes, and Murat then marched against the village which formed the centre of the peninsula, and attacked in front. A column left the camp at Aboukir and came to the support of the village. Murat drew his sabre, a thing he never did until the last moment, gave the word to his cavalry, charged the column, and drove it back to Aboukir. Meanwhile Lannes and Destaing captured the village. The Turks fled on all sides only to meet Murat's cavalry as it was returning. The battlefield was already strewed with four or five hundred corpses. The French had only one man wounded. He was a mulatto, a compatriot of my father's, the commander of a squad of the Hercules Guides. The French now found themselves upon the highroad which covered the Turkish front.

Bonaparte had it in his power to box the Turks up in Aboukir, and harass them with bombs and shells while he was awaiting the arrival of Kléber and Régnier with their divisions; but he preferred to deal a decisive blow and have done with them. He ordered the army to march straight at the second line of defence. Lannes and Destaing, supported by Lanusse, still bore the brunt of the battle, and won the honors of the day.

The redoubt which defends Aboukir is the work of the English, and consequently it is constructed on the most scientific plan.

It was now defended by nine or ten thousand Turks. It was connected with the sea by a causeway. As the Turks had not had time to dig far enough in the other direction, it did not connect with the Lake of Madieh. A space some three hundred feet in length remained open, but it was occupied by the enemy and swept by the gunners at one and the same time. Bonaparte ordered an attack to the right and the front. Murat, who was ambushed in a grove of palms, was to attack on the left, and crossing the space where there was no causeway, under fire of the gunners, was to drive the enemy before him. The Turks sent out four detachments of about two thousand men each, when they saw these arrangements, who marched against our troops.

The battle would inevitably be a desperate one, for the Turks realized that they were shut up in the peninsula with the sea before them and a wall of French bayonets behind.

A heavy cannonade directed against the redoubt and the intrenchments of the right was the signal for a fresh attack. General Bonaparte thereupon sent General Fugière forward. He followed the bank, and turned to the right of the Turks. The thirty-second, which was stationed on the left of the hamlet which had recently been captured, was to hold the enemy in cheek, and sustain the eighteenth.

It was then that the Turks left their intrenchments and came to meet the French. The latter uttered a joyful shout. This was what they wanted. They rushed upon the enemy with fixed bayonets. The Turks discharged their guns first, then their pistols, and finally drew their sabres. The French soldiers, who were not even checked by the triple discharge, closed in upon them with their sabres.

It was not until then that the Turks realized with what kind of men and weapons they had to reckon. With their guns slung over their shoulders and the sabres hanging by their cords they began a hand-to-hand fight, trying to snatch the terrible bayonets from the rifles, which pierced their breasts as they stretched forth their hands to grasp them.

But nothing could stop the eighteenth. They continued to advance at the same pace, driving the Turks before them to the foot of the intrenchments, which they attempted to carry by storm; but there the soldiers were driven back by a hot fire which raked them diagonally. General Fugière, who led the attack, received a bullet in the head in the beginning. The wound was a slight one, and he kept on, and spoke encouragingly to his men. But when a ball carried away his arm he was obliged to stop.

Adjutant-general Lelong, who came up with a battery of the seventy-fifth, made heroic efforts to induce the soldiers to defy this hurricane of fire. Twice he led them up to it and twice he was repulsed. The third time he darted forward and was on the verge of springing over the intrenchments when he fell dead.

Roland, who was standing near Bonaparte, had for a long time been asking for a command of some sort, which the latter hesitated to give him, until at length he felt that the moment had come for a supreme effort. He turned toward him. "Very well, go!" he said to him.

"Thirty-second brigade!" shouted Roland.

And the gallant survivors of Saint-Jean-d'Acre ran off after him, led by their major, Armagnac. Sub-lieutenant Faraud, recovered from his wound, was in the first rank.

Meanwhile, Brigadier-general Morange had made another attempt; but he was also driven back, leaving thirty men on the glacis and in the trench. The Turks thought that they had conquered. Carried away by their custom of cutting off the heads of the dead, for which they received fifty paras apiece, they left the redoubt in disorder, and began the bloody work.

Roland pointed them out to his indignant soldiers.

"All our men are not dead," he cried; "some of them are only wounded. Let us save them."

At that moment Murat caught a glimpse through the smoke of what was going on. He darted forward under the fire of the artillery, passed through it, cut off the redoubt from the village with his cavalry, and fell upon the men who were engaged in the horrible operation of cutting off heads on the other side of the redoubt, while Roland attacked it in front, dashing in among the Turks with his usual reckless daring, where he mowed down the harvesters.

Bonaparte saw that the Turks had been taken at a disadvantage by this unexpected onslaught, and he sent Lannes with two battalions. Lannes attacked the redoubt with his usual impetuosity, on the left face and at the gorge. Pressed thus on all sides the Turks tried to reach the village of Aboukir; but Murat was between the village and the redoubt with his cavalry, and behind him was Roland and the thirty-second brigade, and at their right Lannes and his two divisions.

Their only refuge was the sea. They threw themselves into it wild with terror; for, since they were not in the habit of giving quarter to their prisoners, they preferred the sea, and the chance of reaching their ships, to death at the hands of the Christians whom they despised.

At this juncture the French were masters of the two hills, where they had begun the assault; of the hamlet where the remainder of those who had been defending the hills had taken refuge; of the redoubt which had cost so many brave men their lives. And now they were before the camp, and the Turkish reserve. They fell upon them.

Nothing could stop the French soldiers, who were drunk with the carnage which they had just perpetrated. Murat's cavalry fell upon the pasha's guard like a whirlwind, a simoom, a hurricane.

Ignorant of the result of the battle, Mustapha, when he heard the shouting and uproar, mounted his horse, and placing himself at the head of his icoglans, he rushed to meet the French, encountered Murat, fired upon him at close range, and inflicted a slight wound. Murat cut off two of his fingers with the first blow of his sabre. With the second he would have cut off his head, but an Arab threw himself in front of the pasha, received the blow and fell dead. Mustapha gave up his cimeter, and Murat sent him to Bonaparte as a prisoner.

See Gros's magnificent picture.

The remnant of the army took refuge within the fort of Aboukir; the others were killed or drowned.

Never had such annihilation been seen since two armies had marched against each other. Aside from the two hundred Janissaries and the hundred men shut up in the fort, nothing was left of the army of eighteen thousand Turks.

Kléber arrived toward the close of the day. He asked about the battle, and inquired where he could find Bonaparte. Bonaparte was musing out on the most advanced point of Aboukir. He was looking at the gulf which had swallowed up the French fleet--his sole hope of returning to France. Kléber went up to him and took him by the arm; and while Bonaparte's eyes remained veiled and sombre, he exclaimed: "General, you are the greatest man in the world!"

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XIX. DEPARTURE

During the year that this eighth crusade lasted--the ninth if we count Saint Louis's double attempt as two--Bonaparte did all that it was humanly possible to do. He took Alexandria, conquered the Mamelukes at Chebrouïss and the Pyramids, took Cairo, achieved the conquest of the Delta, and by means of its marshes completed the conquest of Upper Egypt, took Gaza, Jaffa, and destroyed the Turkish army of Djezzar at Mount Tabor; and finally he annihilated a second Turkish army at Aboukir.

The tri-color had floated triumphantly over the Jordan and the Nile.

But he was ignorant of what was happening in France, and that was why on the evening of his victory of Aboukir he was gazing dreamily at the gulf which had swallowed up his fleet.

He sent for Quartermaster Falou, and questioned him about the battle of Beyrout, the disaster to the flotilla, and the loss of the "Italie," and his presentiment haunted him more persistently than ever. He called Roland in the hope of learning some news.

"My dear Roland," said he, "I greatly desire to open a new career for you."

"What is it?" asked Roland.

"That of a diplomat."

"Oh, what a sad idea that is, general."

"Nevertheless, you must yield to it."

"What! You are not going to allow me to refuse?"

"No."

"Then explain."

"I am going to send you with a flag of truce to Sidney Smith."

"My instructions?"

"You are to find out what is happening in France, and you will try to distinguish the truth from the false in what the commodore tells you, by no means an easy matter."

"I will do my best. What will be the ostensible object of my embassy?"

"An exchange of prisoners. The English have twenty-five of our men; we have two hundred and fifty Turks. We will give them the two hundred and fifty men if they will give us our twenty-five Frenchmen."

"And when am I to start?"

"To-day."

It was the 26th of July.

Roland went and he returned that same evening with a pile of newspapers. Sidney had recognized him as the hero of Saint-Jean-d'Acre, and had offered no objections to telling him what was going on in Europe. Then, as he had read incredulity in Roland's eyes, he had given him all the French, English, and German papers which he had on the "Tiger."

The news which these papers contained was disastrous. The Republic, defeated at Sockah and Magnano, had lost Germany at Sockah and Magnano. Masséna, intrenched in Switzerland, occupied an unassailable position on the Albis. The Appenines had been invaded and the Var threatened.

The next day, when Bonaparte saw Roland, he asked: "Well?"

"Well?" replied the young man.

"I knew that Italy was lost!"

"You will have to take it again."

"We will try," returned Bonaparte. "Call Bourrienne."

Bourrienne was called.

"Ask Berthier where Ganthéaume is," said Bonaparte.

"He is at Ramanieh superintending the construction of the fleet which is to start for Upper Egypt."

"Are you sure?"

"I received a letter from him yesterday."

"I need a brave and reliable messenger," Bonaparte said to Roland; "send for Falou and his dromedary."

Roland went out.

"Write these few words to Alexandria, Bourrienne," continued Bonaparte.

As soon as this is received Admiral Ganthéaume will report to General Bonaparte. BOURRIENNE. 26th July, 1799.

Ten minutes later Roland returned with Falou and his dromedary.

Bonaparte glanced at the messenger with satisfaction.

"Is your mount in as good a condition as you are?" he asked.

"My dromedary and I, general, are in condition to do seventy-five miles a day."

"I only ask twenty."

"A mere nothing."

"You must carry a letter."

"Where?"

"To Ramanieh."

"It shall be delivered to-night."

"Read the superscription."

"Admiral Ganthéaume."

"Now if you were to lose it--"

"I will not lose it."

"One must foresee everything. Listen to what it says."

"Is it long?"

"Only a sentence."

"That is all right then; what is it?"

As soon as this is received Admiral Ganthéaume will report to General Bonaparte.

"That is easy to remember."

"Then go."

Falou made his dromedary kneel down, climbed upon his hump, and started him off at a trot.

"I am off," he shouted.

And he was in fact already some distance off. The next evening he appeared again.

"The admiral is following me," he shouted.

The admiral arrived during the night. Bonaparte had not retired and Ganthéaume found him writing.

"You will prepare," said Bonaparte, "two frigates, the 'Muiron' and the 'Carrière,' and two smaller vessels, the 'Revanche' and the 'Fortune,' with provisions enough to last forty or fifty men two months. Not a word about it to any one. You are to come with me."

Ganthéaume withdrew, promising not to speak of it.

Bonaparte sent for Murat.

"Italy is lost," said he; "the wretches! They have wasted the fruits of our victories. We must go. Select five hundred men for me." Then, turning to Roland, he added: "You will see that Falou and Faraud are included in the detachment."

Roland bowed assent.

General Kléber, to whom Bonaparte intended to leave the command of the army, was invited to Rosetta, "to confer with the commander-in-chief on matters of the utmost importance."

Bonaparte made an appointment with him which he knew very well he could not keep. He wished, however, to avoid Kléber's reproaches and bitter frankness. He wrote all that he would have said to him, and gave as his reason for not keeping his appointment his fear that the English cruisers might return at any moment.

The vessels destined for Bonaparte were once more to carry Cæsar and his fortune. But this time it was not Cæsar sailing eastward to add Egypt to the conquests of Rome; it was Cæsar revolving in his mind the vast projects which had made the conqueror of the Gauls cross the Rubicon.

He was going back without recoiling at the idea of overturning the government for which he had fought on the 13th Vendémiaire, and which he had sustained on the 18th Fructidor.

A dream of gigantic magnitude had faded away before Saint-Jean-d'Acre. A still vaster vision was forming in his mind as he left Alexandria.

On the 23d of August, a dark and gloomy night, a boat pushed off from the Egyptian shore, and put Bonaparte aboard the "Muiron."

THE END

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's Note:-- | | | | Punctuation errors have been corrected. | | | | The following suspected printer's errors have been addressed. | | | | Page 172. misson changed to mission. (diplomat for this mission) | | | | Page 286. Convenion changed to Convention. (The Convention felt) | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+

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