ntal disappointment.

There was indeed much to exasperate him. At Acre he had lost nearly
5,000 men in killed, wounded, and plague-stricken, though he falsely
reported to the Directory that his losses during the whole expedition
did not exceed 1,500 men: and during the terrible retreat to Jaffa he
was shocked, not only by occasional suicides of soldiers in his
presence, but by the utter callousness of officers and men to the
claims of the sick and wounded. It was as a rebuke to this inhumanity
that he ordered all to march on foot, and his authority seems even to
have been exerted to prevent some attempts at poisoning the
plague-stricken. The narrative of J. Miot, commissary of the army,
shows that these suggestions originated among the soldiery at Acre
when threatened with the toil of transporting those unfortunates back
to Egypt; and, as his testimony is generally adverse to Bonaparte, and
he mentions the same horrible device, when speaking of the hospitals
at Jaffa, as a camp rumour, it may be regarded as scarcely worthy of
credence.[118]

Undoubtedly the scenes were heartrending at Jaffa; and it has been
generally believed that the victims of the plague were then and there
put out of their miseries by large doses of opium. Certainly the
hospitals were crowded with wounded and victims of the plague; but
during the seven days' halt at that town adequate measures were taken
by the chief medical officers, Desgenettes and Larrey, for their
transport to Egypt. More than a thousand were sent away on ships,
seven of which were fortunately present; and 800 were conveyed to
Egypt in carts or litters across the desert.[119] Another fact
suffices to refute the slander mentioned above. From the despatch of
Sir Sidney Smith to Nelson of May 30th, 1799, it appears that, when
the English commodore touched at Jaffa, he found some of the abandoned
ones _still alive_: "We have found seven poor fellows in the hospital
and will take care of them." He also supplied the French ships
conveying the wounded with water, provisions, and stores, of which
they were much in need, and allowed them to proceed to their
destination. It is true that the evidence of Las Cases at St. Helena,
eagerly cited by Lanfrey, seems to show that some of the worst cases
in the Jaffa hospitals were got rid of by opium; but the admission by
Napoleon that the administering of opium was justifiable occurred in
one of those casuistical discussions which turn, no