—­[The prisoners and flags were sent.  The Turkish flags were entrusted by Berthier to the Adjutant-Commandant Boyer, who conducted a convoy of sick and wounded to Egypt.  Sidney Smith acknowledges the loss of some flags by the Turks.  The Turkish prisoners were used as carriers of the litters for the wounded, and were, for the most part, brought into Egypt. (Erreurs, tome i. pp. 47 and 160)]—­

Thus terminated this disastrous expedition.  I have read somewhere that during this immortal campaign the two heroes Murat and Mourad had often been in face of one another.  There is only a little difficulty; Mourad Bey never put his foot in Syria.

We proceeded along the coast, and passed Mount Carmel.  Some of the wounded were carried on litters, the remainder on horses, mules, and camels.  At a short distance from Mount Carmel we were informed that three soldiers, ill of the plague, who were left in a convent (which served for a hospital), and abandoned too confidently to the generosity of the Turks, had been barbarously put to death.

A most intolerable thirst, the total want of water, an excessive heat, and a fatiguing march over burning sand-hills, quite disheartened the men, and made every generous sentiment give way to feelings of the grossest selfishness and most shocking indifference.  I saw officers, with their limbs amputated, thrown off the litters, whose removal in that way had been ordered, and who had themselves given money to recompense the bearers.  I saw the amputated, the wounded, the infected, or those only suspected of infection, deserted and left to themselves.  The march was illumined by torches, lighted for the purpose of setting fire to the little towns, villages, and hamlets which lay in the route, and the rich crops with which the land was then covered.  The whole country was in a blaze.  Those who were ordered to preside at this work of destruction seemed eager to spread desolation on every side, as if they could thereby avenge themselves for their reverses, and find in such dreadful havoc an alleviation of their sufferings.  We were constantly surrounded by plunderers, incendiaries, and the dying, who, stretched on the sides of the road, implored assistance in a feeble voice, saying, “I am not infected—­I am only wounded;” and to convince those whom they addressed, they reopened their old wounds, or inflicted on themselves fresh ones.  Still nobody attended to them.  “It is all over with him,” was the observation applied to the unfortunate beings in succession, while every one pressed onward.  The sun, which shone in an unclouded sky in all its brightness, was often darkened by our conflagrations.  On our right lay the sea; on our left, and behind us, the desert made by ourselves; before were the privations and sufferings which awaited us.  Such was our true situation.