General Menou was among the foremost to comply with his wishes, and assumed the name of Abdallah, on marrying an Egyptian woman.

It was rather strange to see Menou, who had refused to massacre the Parisians, thus become an humble and degraded courtier of the Corsican executioner. But that evidently shews that Menou declined that bloody execution for want of courage, and not for want of good-will.

Even Tallien, who had formerly been the hero of the day, and the saviour of France, hastened to Egypt, where he became a member of Buonaparte's institute, and editor of a paper called the Egyptian Decade. It is not asserted whether he turned Mussulman; nor could that be the motive of the aversion contracted by his faithful wife during his absence; since it is well known that she was remarkably kind to the Turkish Ambassador in Paris.

The British ships blocking up the ports of Egypt, France was deprived for a long time from hearing of the Corsican hero and his army.

CHAPTER V.

The Invasion of Syria.-Siege of St. John d'Acre, chiefly defended by Sir Sydney Smith and Five Hundred English Marines.-Buonaparte is repulsed, and compelled to raise the Siege; having, some Time before, put to death near Four Thousand Turks, Prisoners of War, Three Days after their Surrender at Jaffa; and having also poisoned Five Hundred and Eighty French Soldiers, wounded and sick, in the Hospitals.-The French drive the Allied Armies from Switzerland and from Holland.

WHILST Buonaparte and his army were thus

cut off from Europe, the most absurd reports were spread (no doubt by the partisans of the artful Corsican,) representing him as a victim to the jealousy of the Directory, who had thought proper to remove so great, famous, and fortunate a general. They pretended that the Directory, unable to repay the signal services of Buonaparte, and fearing, at the same time, his popularity, had contrived, with Talleyrand, to flatter the ambitious vanity of that young conqueror with an expedition, which would raise his fame

above the glory acquired by Alexander or Cæsar. They added, that, as Buonaparte was sure of being director at the next election, the Directory had resolved to put him out of the way, by sacrificing him and his army; having even directed that the fleet should be exposed to certain destruction, in order that no possibility could exist of his return.

Such reports, industriously spread by Buonaparte's adherents, and, perhaps, purposely concerted with him before his departure, rendered him, in the eyes of many, as a martyr to the cause of liberty, and the welfare of France..

It was not considered that this insidious Corsican wanted neither an army nor a fleet to come back; nor was it even supposed that he might become a base deserter, and a traitor to his army.

But whilst his name became thus more popular than ever, his restless and destructive ambition prompted him to seize and plunder Aleppo and Smyrna, where he knew well that his army would find a compensation for the disappointed hopes of conquering India. It is highly probable that he even flattered himself with the conquest and plunder of Constantinople; after which, intending to march to Persia with his army increased both with Greeks and Macedonians, who had not forgotten that Alexander was their countryman.

Intoxicated with his former successes, the vain

youth could not foresee even the possibility of a repulse, wherever he was pleased to go: accordingly, he gave orders that one half of his army should remain in Egypt, and that the other half should prepare for the invasion of Syria.

As long as he had no other enemies to fight, but the undisciplined Mussulmans, his march met with a very insignificant opposition. He therefore took and destroyed every thing which had the appearance of a fortification.

It was then that he threatened to go to Jerusalem, where he purposed to plant the famous tree of French liberty on the very spot where stood the cross of Jesus Christ, in whose sepulchre he intended to bury the first French soldier who should happen to be killed.* Such were the uncommon menaces of that vile impostor, who has the effrontery to call himself the restorer of the Christian and Roman Catholic Religion in France!

But what a series of horrid crimes must now be related!

The atrocious murderer of the Toulonese and Parisians, the plunderer and destroyer of Italy, became the infamous assassin of the prisoners of war, and even of the French soldiers in Syria. And as such nefarious and unparalleled crimes

* See page 157 of Dr. Wittman's Travels in Syria with the army of the Grand Vizier, published in London, 1803.

should be recorded in all their minute circumstances, let the narrative of Sir Robert Wilson be here inserted.* *

It is highly important that mention should also be made of the judicious remarks of that officer in his preface.

"To those," he says, "who may imagine that my repre"sentations of General Buonaparte's conduct in the several “instances referred to are imprudent and improper, at this "moment, to be brought forward, I must premise, that, if "they are concerned only for the character of that General, "I am happy to afford them an occasion to be better ac"quainted with this celebrated man, who, by his great for"tune and uninterrupted career of victory, (with one excep"tion of Acre, that glorious monument of British conduct), "has dazzled the understandings of the mass of mankind, and "prevented the results of those enquiries having proper in"fluence, which those, with whom the opinions of the day "do not pass current, have instituted on his pretensions to "the admiration of posterity.

"To those, whose motives of disapprobation proceed from "a regard for tranquillity, exciting the wish that a general amnesty of oblivion might be extended to the past, first I "will say, that the dissemination of this principle would "tend to produce more wickedness in the world than has "ever been yet committed: for what is there to intimidate "ambition, in full possession of power, but the pen of the "historian? What can guarantee mankind from the atroci❝ties of a licentious despotism, but an assurance that the "memory of great crimes is perpetuated in the records of " history?

"If the charges are not founded, the man yet lives to exo"nerate his injured character. If he cannot refute them, "then must he sink into his grave loaded with the heavy "weight of such offences, and the miserable prescience that

H