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]

Always prompt to strike at the heart, the commander-in-chief
determined to march straight on Acre, where that notorious Turkish
pacha sat intrenched behind weak walls and the ramparts of terror
which his calculating ferocity had reared around him. Ever