ch were dropped by the way-side.
There were not horses enough for the sick and the wounded, though Napoleon
and all his generals marched on foot. The artillery pieces were left among
the sand hills, that the horses might be used for the relief of the
sufferers. Many of the wounded were necessarily abandoned to perish by the
way-side. Many who could not obtain a horse, knowing the horrible death by
torture which awaited them, should they fall into the hands of the Turks,
hobbled along with bleeding wounds in intolerable agony. With most
affecting earnestness, though unavailingly, they implored their comrades
to help them. Misery destroys humanity. Each one thought only of himself.
Seldom have the demoralizing influences and the horrors of war been more
signally displayed than in this march of twenty-five days. Napoleon was
deeply moved by the spectacle of misery around him. One day as he was
toiling along through the sands, at the head of a column, with the blazing
sun of Syria pouring down upon his unprotected head, with the sick, the
wounded, and the dying, all around him, he saw an officer, in perfect
health, riding on horseback, refusing to surrender his saddle to the sick.
The indignation of Napoleon was so aroused, that by one blow from the hilt
of his sword he laid the officer prostrate upon the earth, and then helped
a wounded soldier into his saddle. The deed was greeted with a shout of
acclamation from the ranks. The "recording angel in heaven's chancery"
will blot out the record of such violence with a tear.

The historian has no right to draw the vail over the revolting horrors of
war. Though he may wish to preserve his pages from the repulsive recital,
justice to humanity demands that the barbarism, the crime, and the cruelty
of war should be faithfully portrayed. The soldiers refused to render the
slightest assistance to the sick or the wounded. They feared that every
one who was not well was attacked by the plague. These poor dying
sufferers were not only objects of horror, but also of derision. The
soldiers burst into immoderate fits of laughter in looking upon the
convulsive efforts which the dying made to rise from the sands upon which
they had fallen. "He has made up his account," said one. "He will not get
on far," said another. And when the exhausted wretch fell to rise no more,
they exclaimed, with perfect indifference, "His lodging is secured." The
troops were harassed upon their march by hordes of m