people the necessity of flying from their deliverers whenever they were apprized of their coming, they stript their houses even to the door and window-frames; and a village thus deserted had the appearance of a ruin a century old. Here, when the French had ransacked the walls to the very foundation, a soldier came out of a cave dragging a she-goat which he had found there. He was followed by an old man, carrying two young infants in his arms: he laid these helpless babes upon the ground, fell on his knees, and without uttering a word, but weeping all the while, pointed to the children and to the goat, for if they were deprived of her milk they must perish. The goat was killed; and another Frenchman having picked up a third child, whose mother had dropt it in her flight, laid it down beside the other two, not reflecting, while he performed an act of intended kindness, that the three must now perish together!

We came to Gamerissiem, unfortunately for this village, for the cries of the women soon convinced us that our soldiers, profiting by the darkness of the night, under pretence of seeking provisions, and notwithstanding their weariness, were enjoying by violence the gratifications which the place offered them. The inhabitants, pillaged, dishonoured, and urged to desperation, fell upon the patroles whom we sent to defend them: and these, attacked by the furious natives, were killing them in their own defence for want of being able to explain their object, and make themselves understood.'-' Our cavalry fell in with a number of the enemy at Meusketto, and put to the sword a thousand of these deluded people. This was certainly not a lesson of fraternization; but our position, perhaps, rendered an act of severity necessary; this province required to be taught that it could not brave us with impunity; it was, besides, our policy to conceal from them that our means were small, and our resources dispersed, and to give them the impression of our being as vindictive when provoked, as mild when treated with respect.'- We, who boasted that we were more just than the Mamelukes, committed daily, and almost necessarily, a great number of iniquitous acts.'

These are the honest confessions and the miserable apologies of M. Denon. He tells us that the soldiers were continually putting innocent peasants to death because they mistook them for enemies; that they frequently mistook the poor merchants with whom they fell in for enemies also, and before the mistake could be rectified, shot them and plundered their merchandize; that the gain from such outrages fell to the share of the commissaries, Copts and interpreters, whom he calls the bloodsuckers of the army; the soldiers, who sought every opportunity to enrich themselves, being often interrupted, and called off by the drum beating to arms, or the trumpet sounding to horse. He tells us, that when the inhabitants, after the troops had past on, returned to their houses, they found

that

that utensils, ploughs, doors, roofs, in short every thing combustible, had been burnt; their corn consumed, their fowls and pigeons devoured, their earthen vessels broken in the mere wantonness of devastation :-nothing left but the fragments, and the bodies of the dogs killed in endeavouring to defend the property of their masters! He tells us, that when they made any stay in a village, the inhabitants were summoned to return on pain of being treated as rebels; and that when they submitted to these threats, and came to pay the contribution, they were sometimes mistaken with their clubs for men in arms, and sure of being assailed by several discharges from the riflemen and patroles, before an explanation could take place. He tells us, that they who did not abandon their houses, but paid the contribution and supplied the wants of the army, avoided the unpleasant abode of the desert, saw their provisions eaten with regularity, and might come in for a portion of them, preserving a part of their doors, selling their eggs to the soldiers, and having few of their wives and daughters ravished :'-but they who chose this alternative were punished by the Mamelukes. Such were the blessings which Buonaparte conferred upon the people of Egypt! Such was the conduct of the army which he had trained up :-of those soldiers' whose delicate sensibility made M. Denon proud of being their companion, and of calling himself a Frenchman!' He tells us, that during the whole expedition a flock of kites and vultures followed them, hastening to their prey whenever the sound of cannon ceased, and always joined company with the army whenever it halted, being sure that something would always be left for their share. And he tells us, that at the island of Philoe they saw mothers drowning their children, whom they could not carry away, and mutilating the girls to save them from the violence of the soldiers-the French soldiers-the deliverers, the civilizers of Egypt-the men of delicate sensibility!

Buonaparte's profession of the Mahommedan faith had not deceived the Sherif of Mecca; the Mahommedans seem indeed to have regarded it as an impious insult to their understanding and their faith, and a degree of zeal was excited in Arabia greater than has been manifested or felt in that country at any time since the Crusades. Succours came over to Murad Bey, as for a Holy War: they were all volunteers, and most of them wore the green turban, the mark of the descent which they claimed from the prophet: their arms were three javelins, a pike, a dagger, a brace of pistols, and a carabine, and they fought with a desperate valour which defied, and even exulted in death, considering it as the noblest mode of martyrdom. Denon saw one of them still strike at two of the French, and wound them both, while they were holding him nailed against a wall with their bayonets. These men displayed more enter

prize

prize and more fervour in the cause than the Mamelukes, whose immediate interests were so much more nearly concerned. They got possession of a flotilla which was bringing stores to the invaders up the Nile, put to death all the French on board, erected a battery with the guns which they had taken, and thus commanded the navigation of the river. With the ammunition thus obtained, they resisted the attack of the enemy in a village with a mud fortress; it was in vain to hatter this fortress, the bullets merely past through the walls without doing any other hurt to it :-the village was set on fire, and though the fortress was separated from the burning houses, the walls became heated like an oven, and the besieged suffered the most intolerable pains of heat and thirst. One of their magazines blew up, and the flames then extended in every direction. They were without water, but they were seen extinguishing the fire with their feet and hands, and even rolling upon it in hope of smothering it with their bodies. 'Black and naked,' says Denon, they were seen running through the flames, and resembling so many devils in hell.' During this tremendous scene there were intervals of tranquillity, and then a solitary voice was heard; it was that of their sheik, who was wholly employed in prayer, and in exhorting them to fight for their faith: and these Mahommedans, amid their torments, answered him with hymus and shouts, and then rushed out against the enemy. About thirty cut their way through. During the night the French kept up two blazing fires against the walls as a safer expedient than storming them, and in the morning they entered, and put to the sword those who, notwithstanding they were half roasted alive, still offered resistance! This success cost the French 150 men, a seventh of their whole number; and it reduced them to their last box of cartridges, when they were 150 leagues from Cairo, where, as the loss of the flotilla was not known, it was not supposed that they were in want of supplies. Had the enemy known their situation, or had the Mamelukes been as enterprizing as their allies from Mecca, this division of the French army would have been destroyed.

But

General Belliard commanded the French in this last dreadful action. Denon represents him as an enlightened, amiable, and honourable man, so are they all-all honourable men!' General Belliard has other blood upon his soul than that which he shed in war; he was governor of Madrid under Murat, and therefore deeply implicated in the military murders which were committed after the insurrection of the 2d of May,-murders scarcely less atrocious than those of Fouché and Carrier during the high frenzy fit of the French revolution. Desaix did not live long enough to damn himself by such systematic acts of atrocity as marked these wretches of the Egyptian school, or Ney, Massena, Soult,

Suchet,

pre

Suchet, and the other worthies of Buonaparte's army. Denon says that his mild and unvarying equity obtained for him the title of the Just. How many wise ideas,' says he, on civil government and philanthropy, suggested themselves to his mind, when the sound of the trumpet and the roll of the drum ceased to give him the fever of war! And he represents him as moralising and philosophising on the borders of the desert, and asking the artists if the scene before them was not an error of nature, as if Providence, having provided abundantly for the necessities of the rest of the world, had stopt here for want of materials!' It is some presumption in favour of Desaix that Buonaparte, who can have no sympathy with any thing that approaches to good, is known to have disliked him; but the conduct of his troops in this expedition must weigh heavier against him in the scale; nor does it avail to say that he could neither vent nor punish their excesses; a man of real goodness would not have placed himself in a situation where he was compelled to sanction such abominations. It is said that in this attempt to conquer Upper Egypt, 40,000 of the inhabitants were slain. No efforts were spared for effecting this conquest. Desaix fortified Syene, and, Frenchman-like, inscribed the termination of the march of the French through Egypt on a granite rock beyond the Cataracts: coffee-houses were established here, in which the officers gambled with cards manufactured upon the spot, and the soldiers, with a gaiety equally characteristic, set up a mile-stone with the inscription, Route de Paris, No. onze cent, soixante sept milles trois cents quarante. Gantheaume was ordered to fit out an expedition from Suez against Cosseir, occupy that port, and establish if possible a communication between Desaix and the towns of Yambo, Jedda, and Mocha. The latter part of the plan failed because the Arabians were not to be deceived by the professions of Buonaparte; and the attempt against Cosseir failed also; but that fort some time afterwards was taken possession of by General Belliard. Murad meantime, taught by experience, kept up a desultory war; the ability which he displayed in these trying circumstances established his ascendancy over the other Beys; his power among the Mamelukes was never so absolute as when he was struggling with this formidable foe; and the French were finally glad to compound with him by a treaty, which left him master of great part of Upper Egypt. M. Miot asserts that Buonaparte undertook the expedition on an assurance that Talleyrand would be sent to Constantinople, and obtain the Porte's consent to the seizure of Egypt. Talleyrand, he says, was too wise to undertake such an embassy, and it is not easy to believe that Buonaparte could expect any such negociation to succeed. Be that as it may, it was not long before he learnt that the Turks were preparing to act against him. Ibrahim Bey,

with

with a force of Mamelukes which he had learnt not to despise, had retreated into Syria, and Djezzar, the pacha of Acre, had taken possession of the fort of El Arish on the frontier. Buonaparte resolved upon entering Syria that he might break up Ibrahim's force, punish Djezzar, and meet the Turkish army half way on their line of march. He had another and not less powerful motive: Syria was a fertile country, as yet unravaged, and Damascus one of the wealthiest cities of the Levant. He took with him about 12,500 men, consisting of four divisions of infantry under Generals Kleber, Regnier, Lasnes, and Bon. Murat commanded the cavalry, amounting to 800, Daumartin the artillery, Caffarelli the engineers. Buonaparte had mounted a detachment upon dromedaries for this expedition; their patience of heat and thirst he thought would render them peculiarly serviceable. C'étoit une idée heureuse que celle de rendre propres à la guerre ces animaux sobres et légers, says M. Miot. They who reflect as they ought upon the qualities with which the camel is endowed, and the purposes for which it is so evidently destined, will not easily admit the happiness of the idea. The patience, the gentleness, the docility of this animal had hitherto sanctified it to the uses of commerce and of peace. Buonaparte is the first person who ever desecrated the nature of the camel, without which the desert would be impassable, by training it to war. A treatise was once written to prove that the sun is the place of punishment, and that its light proceeds from that fire in which the sinful are everlastingly tormented;-it may be said of the camel corps as of this hypothesis, that the genius of the inventor was less remarkable than the hardness of his heart. M. Larrey, in a better spirit, devised means of carrying the wounded in panniers, one on each side the camel's hunch, so suspended as to give the least possible motion, and so constructed as to allow the sufferer in case of necessity to be laid in them at length; fifty camels were assigned for this service; but no sooner had they reached the frontiers, than with that inhumanity which characterised the whole expedition, they were seized for the transport service, and the hospital was left to shift as it could. Dugua was left at Cairo with the command in chief, Desaix in Upper Egypt, and Marmont at Alexandria, because of his thorough knowledge of artillery and engineering. Rear-admiral Pérée was ordered to embark some battering guns at Alexandria, and co-operate with the army upon the coast of Syria.

Regnier's division formed the advanced-guard, and laid siege to El Arish, an old square castle in a miserable town, unprovided with artillery, and garrisoned by Arnauts and Maugrebins, who confided in the support of Djezzar's cavalry, and of Ibrahim Bey. In reconnoitring the town he had no less than 300 men wounded; this

loss