be rendered possible.  Sir Sidney manifested a disposition to enter into arrangements, acting as “Minister Plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty,” and attributing to himself a power which he had ceased to hold since the arrival of Lord Elgin as ambassador at Constantinople.  Poussielgue was an advocate for evacuation; Desaix just the reverse.  The conditions proposed by Kleber were unreasonable:  not that they were an exorbitant equivalent for what was given up in giving up Egypt, but because they were not feasible.  Sir Sidney made Kleber sensible of this.  Officers treating for a mere suspension of arms could not include topics of vast extent in their negotiation, such as the demand for the possession of the Venetian Islands, and the annulment of the Triple Alliance.  But it was urgently necessary to settle two points immediately:  the departure of the wounded and of the scientific men attached to the expedition, for whom Desaix solicited safe-conduct; and secondly, a suspension of arms, for the army of the grand vizier, though marching slowly, would soon be in presence of the French.  It had actually arrived before the fort of El Arish, the first French post on the frontiers of Syria, and had summoned it to surrender.  The negotiations, in fact, had been going on for a fortnight on board Le Tigre, while floating at the pleasure of the winds off the coasts of Syria and Egypt:  the parties had said all they had to say, and the negotiations could not be continued to any useful purpose without the concurrence of the grand vizier.  Sir Sidney, availing himself of a favourable moment, pushed off in a boat which landed him on the coast, after incurring some danger, and ordered the captain of Le Tigre to meet him in the port of Jaffa, where Poussielgue and Desaix were to be put ashore, if the conferences were to be transferred to the camp of the grand vizier.

At the moment when the English commodore reached the camp, a horrible event had occurred at El Arish.  The grand vizier had collected around him an army of seventy or eighty thousand fanatic Mussulmans.  The Turks were joined by the Mamluks.  Ibrahim Bey, who had some time before retired to Syria, and Murad Bey, who had descended by a long circuit from the cataracts to the environs of Suez, had become the auxiliaries of their former adversaries.  The English had made for this army a sort of field-artillery, drawn by mules.  The fort of El Arish, before which the Turks were at this moment, was, according to the declaration of General Bonaparte, one of the two keys of Egypt; Alexandria was the other.

The Turkish advanced-guard having reached El Arish, Colonel Douglas, an English officer in the service of Turkey, summoned Cazals, the commandant, to surrender.  The culpable sentiments which the officers had too much encouraged in the army then burst forth.  The soldiers in the garrison at El Arish, vehemently longing, like their comrades, to leave Egypt, declared to the commandant that they would not fight, and that he must make up his mind to surrender the fort.