Page:Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.pdf/12

12 considerable forces. The walls were carried by storm, 3,000 Turks died with arms in their hands, and the town was given up during three hours to the fury of the French soldiery. It was here Napoleon ordered 1,200 prisoners to be shot.

The Pacha of Syria, Achmet-Dgezzar, having fortified St. Jean d'Acre with a determination to defend it to the last, Bonaparte pushed his troops forward, and on the 19th led his forces to an eminence which commanded Acre. This celebrated siege, which began on the 20th of March, 1799, was Napoleon's first encounter with an Englishman, and his first disgrace. The name of Sir Sydney Smith will be as immortal as that of the foe he vanquished, while the bravery of the English will be for ever exalted. The siege lasted sixty days, and, long before it was raised, the plague entered Bonaparte's camp, and every day his legions were thinned by the pestilence.

The French army returned to Jaffa, May 24th, and Bonaparte, finding that his hospitals were crowded with sick, sent for a physician, and entered into a long conversation with him respecting the danger of contagion, concluding at last with the remark, that something must be done to remedy the evil, and, that the destruction of the sick already in the hospital, was the only means which could be adopted! The physician, alarmed at the proposal, remonstrated vehemently against the atrocity of such a murder; but finding that Bonaparte persevered and menaced, he indignantly left the tent.

Bonaparte, however, was not to be diverted from his object by moral considerations; he persevered, and found an apothecary, who consented to become his agent, and to administer poison to the sick. Opium at night was distributed in gratifying food! The wretched unsuspecting victims banqueted, and in a few hours, five hundred and eighty soldiers, who had