Success may for inscrutable purposes continue to attend him. Abject Senates may decree him a Throne or the Pantheon; but history shall render injured humanity justice, and an indignant posterity inscribe on his cenotaph "Ille venena Colchica "Et quicquid usquam concipitur nefas, I am, Sir, yours, ROBERT WILSON, K. M. T. n 2 No. XI. Extracts from WITTMAN'S Travels in Asiatic Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. JAFFA is surrounded by a stone wall, provided, at certain distances, with towers alternately square and round. Notwithstanding this wall cannot boast of any great strength, it sufficed to force Buonaparte's army to break ground, and to erect batteries against it to the southward. After a breach had been effected, the French troops stormed, and carried the place. It was probably owing to the obstinate defence made by the Turks, that the French commander in chief was induced to give orders for the horrid massacre which succeeded. Four thousand of the wretched inhabitants, who had surrendered, and who had, in vain, implored the mercy of their conquerors, were, together with a part of the late Turkish garrison of El-Arish (amounting, it has been said, to five or six hundred) dragged out in cold blood, four days after the French had obtained possession of Jaffa, to the sand hills, about a league distant, in the way to Gaza, and there there most inhumanly put to death. I have seen the skeletons of these unfortunate victims, which lie scattered over the hills, a modern Golgotha, which remains a lasting disgrace to a nation calling itself civilized. It would give pleasure to the author of this work, as well as to every liberal mind, to hear these facts contradicted on substantial evidence, Indeed, I am sorry to add, that the charge of cruelty against the French General does not rest here. It having been reported that, previously to the retreat of the French army from Syria, their commander in chief had ordered all the French sick at Jaffa to be poisoned, I was led to make the enquiry to which every one who should have visited the spot would naturally have been directed, respecting an act of such singular, and, it should seem, wanton inhumanity. It concerns me to have to state, not only that such a circumstance was positively asserted to have happened; but that, while in Egypt, an individual was pointed out to us, as having been the executioner of these diabolical commands. At the same time six hundred Albanians left the camp for El-Arish. I made an excursion, in the evening, to the sand hills (situated near the the sea-side, and about three miles distant from the encampment), the scene of the horrid massacre of the captured Turks and Christians, by the order of the French commander in chief, Buonaparté, some days after he had taken possession of Jaffa. I have already touched on this act, so inglorious to its perpetrator, in the account I have given of that place; and I shall add here, that the distance of time which elapsed after these poor wretches had surrendered, and which furnished a fit opportunity for cool reflection, and the distance of the spot to which they were led, at least a league from the place of their captivity, manifest a spirit of diabolical revenge, of atrocious tyranny, which, for the honour of human nature, it is to be trusted will never recur on any future occasion, among civilized and enlightened nations, to blacken the page of history, and to sully the military character. The surface of the ground had been some time before thickly covered with the skeletons of the victims; but at the time of my visit they were much reduced in number, the Grand Vizier having ordered a large hole to be dug, into which as many as could be well collected were thrown. Sculls, bones, remnants of clothing, &c. &c. were still, notwithstanding, scattered over every part of the hillocks. No. XII. LE 18 BRUMAIRE, AN VIII. Ode, attribuée à Chénier. QUELLES tempêtes effroyables Les fleuves n'ont plus de rivages; Ah! plutôt, pour se faire absoudre Les cieux peut-être avec la foudre, Dieux du peuple que l'on opprime, De l'audacieux attentat, Qu'aux jours malheureux de Brumaire, Trop vain espoir de la vengeance! Le |