do with these 2,500 or 3,000 prisoners?  They could not be trusted to serve with the French; besides, the provisions scarcely sufficed for Bonaparte’s own men, who began to complain loudly at sharing any with Turks and Albanians.  They could not be sent away to Egypt, there to spread discontent:  and only 300 Egyptians were so sent away.[113] Finally, on the demand of his generals and troops, the remaining prisoners were shot down on the seashore.  There is, however, no warrant for the malicious assertion that Bonaparte readily gave the fatal order.  On the contrary, he delayed it for three days, until the growing difficulties and the loud complaints of his soldiers wrung it from him as a last resort.

Moreover, several of the victims had already fought against him at El Arisch, and had violated their promise that they would fight no more against the French in that campaign.  M. Lanfrey’s assertion that there is no evidence for the identification is untenable, in view of a document which I have discovered in the Records of the British Admiralty.  Inclosed with Sir Sidney Smith’s despatches is one from the secretary of Gezzar, dated Acre, March 1st, 1799, in which the Pacha urgently entreats the British commodore to come to his help, because his (Gezzar’s) troops had failed to hold El Arisch, and the same troops had also abandoned Gaza and were in great dread of the French at Jaffa.  Considered from the military point of view, the massacre at Jaffa is perhaps defensible; and Bonaparte’s reluctant assent contrasts favourably with the conduct of many commanders in similar cases.  Perhaps an episode like that at Jaffa is not without its uses in opening the eyes of mankind to the ghastly shifts by which military glory may have to be won.  The alternative to the massacre was the detaching of a French battalion to conduct their prisoners to Egypt.  As that would seriously have weakened the little army, the prisoners were shot.

A deadlier foe was now to be faced.  Already at El Arisch a few cases of the plague had appeared in Kleber’s division, which had come from Rosetta and Damietta; and the relics of the retreating Mameluke and Turkish forces seem also to have bequeathed that disease as a fatal legacy to their pursuers.  After Jaffa the malady attacked most battalions of the army; and it may have quickened Bonaparte’s march towards Acre.  Certain it is that he rejected Kleber’s advice to advance inland towards Nablus, the ancient Shechem, and from that commanding centre to dominate Palestine and defy the power of Gezzar.[114]

[Illustration:  PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF ACRE FROM A CONTEMPORARY SKETCH]