garrison, after a vigorous assault, capitulated on condition that they should be permitted to retreat into Syria, pledging their parole not to serve again during the war.  Pursuing his march, he took Gazah (that ancient city of the Philistines) without opposition; but at Jaffa (the Joppa of holy writ) the Moslem made a resolute defence.  The walls were carried by storm, 3000 Turks died with arms in their hands, and the town was given up during three hours to the fury of the French soldiery—­who never, as Napoleon confessed, availed themselves of the licence of war more savagely than on this occasion.

A part of the garrison—­amounting, according to Buonaparte, to 1200 men, but stated by others as nearly 3000 in number—­held out for some hours longer in the mosques and citadel; but at length, seeing no chance of rescue, grounded their arms on the 7th of March.  Eugene Beauharnois, who in person accepted their submission, was violently rebuked by Napoleon for having done so:  the soldiery murmured, asking how these barbarians were to be fed, when they themselves were already suffering severe privations.  The General summoned his chief officers to council and, after long discussion, it was resolved that, in this case, necessity left no room for mercy.  On the 10th—­three days after their surrender—­the prisoners were marched out of Jaffa, in the centre of a battalion under General Bon.  When they had reached the sand-hills, at some distance from the town, they were divided into small parties, and shot or bayoneted to a man.  They, like true fatalists, submitted in silence; and their bodies were gathered together into a pyramid, where, after the lapse of thirty years, their bones are still visible whitening the sand.

Such was the massacre of Jaffa, which will ever form one of the darkest stains on the name of Napoleon.  He admitted the fact himself;—­and justified it on the double plea, that he could not afford soldiers to guard so many prisoners, and that he could not grant them the benefit of their parole, because they were the very men who had already been set free on such terms at El-Arish.  To this last defence the answer is, unfortunately for him, very obvious.  He could not possibly have recognised in every one of these victims, an individual who had already given and broken his parole.  If he did—­still that would not avail him:—­the men surrendered with arms in their hands.  No general has a right to see men abandon the means of defence, and then—­after the lapse of three days too!—­inflict on them the worst fate that could have befallen them had they held out.  The only remaining plea is that of expediency; and it is one upon which many a retail as well as wholesale murderer might justify his crime.