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Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1852

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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1852


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY, 1852 ***





                                 Harper’s

                           New Monthly Magazine

                    No. XXI.—February, 1852.—Vol. IV.





CONTENTS


Public Life Of Benjamin Franklin. By Jacob Abbott.
Napoleon Bonaparte. The Syrian Expedition. By John S. C. Abbott.
Great Objects Attained By Little Things.
The Sublime Porte.
The Curse Of Gold. A Dream.
Maurice Tiernay, The Soldier Of Fortune.
Anecdotes And Aphorisms.
A Curious Page Of Family History.
The Ass Of La Marca.
The Legend Of The Weeping Chamber.
An Old Maid’s First Love.
The Poison-Eaters.
A Child’s History Of King John’s Reign. By Charles Dickens.
My Novel; Or, Varieties In English Life.
The Orphan’s Dream Of Christmas.
What Christmas Is In The Company Of John Doe. By Charles Dickens.
What Christmas Is, As We Grow Older. By Charles Dickens.
Helen Corrie.—Leaves From The Note-Book Of A Curate.
The Good Old Times In Paris.
Vision Of Charles XI.
Street-Scenes Of The French Usurpation.
What Becomes Of The Rind?
Mazzini, The Italian Liberal.
Chewing The Buyo. A Sketch Of The Philippines.
Sketch Of Suwarow.
Monthly Record of Current Events.
   United States.
   South America.
   Europe.
Editor’s Table.
Editor’s Easy Chair.
Editor’s Drawer.
Literary Notices
A Leaf from Punch
Fashions for February.
Footnotes






PUBLIC LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.(1) BY JACOB ABBOTT.


                    [Illustration: Benjamin Franklin.]

Benjamin Franklin entered upon his career as a public man when very near
the middle of the active portion of his life. His history, therefore,
naturally divides itself into two equal portions, each entirely distinct
from the other. Until the age of about thirty-five he was simply a
Philadelphia mechanic, discharging his duties, however, in that capacity
so gracefully and with such brilliant success, as to invest industry, and
frugality, and all the other plain and unpretending virtues of humble life
with a sort of poetic charm which has been the means of commending them in
the most effectual manner, to millions of his countrymen. At length,
having accomplished in this field a work equal to the labor of any
ordinary life-time, he was by a sudden shifting of the scene in the drama
of his life, as it were, withdrawn from it, at once and entirely, and
ushered into a wholly different sphere. During all the latter half of his
life he was almost exclusively a public man. He was brought forward by a
peculiar combination of circumstances into a most conspicuous position; a
position, which not only made him the object of interest and attention to
the whole civilized world, but which also invested him with a controlling
power in respect to some of the most important events and transactions of
modern times. Thus there lived, as it were, two Benjamin Franklins,
Benjamin Franklin the honest Philadelphia printer, who quietly prosecuted
his trade during the first part of the eighteenth century, setting an
example of industry and thrift which was destined afterward to exert an
influence over half the world—and Benjamin Franklin the great American
statesman, who flourished in the last part of the same century, and
occupied himself in building and securing the foundations of what will
perhaps prove the greatest political power that any human combination has
ever formed. It is this latter history which is to form the subject of the
present article.

It is remarkable that the first functions which Franklin fulfilled in
public life were of a military character. When he found that his thrift
and prosperity as a citizen, and the integrity and good sense which were
so conspicuous in his personal character, were giving him a great
ascendency among his fellow men, he naturally began to take an interest in
the welfare of the community; and when he first began to turn his
attention in earnest to this subject, which was about the year 1743, there
were two points which seemed to him to demand attention. One was, the want
of a college in Philadelphia; the other, the necessity of some means of
defense against foreign invasion. Spain had been for some time at war with
England, and now France had joined with Spain in prosecuting the war. The
English colonies in America were in imminent danger of being attacked by
the French forces. The influence of the Friends was, however, predominant
in the colonial legislature, and no vote could be obtained there for any
military purposes; though the governor, and a very considerable part of
the population, were extremely desirous that suitable preparations for
defending the city should be made.

There was thus much diversity of sentiment in the public mind, and many
conflicting opinions were expressed in private conversation; but every
thing was unsettled, and no one could tell what it was best to undertake
to do.

Under these circumstances Franklin wrote and published a pamphlet entitled
Plain Truth, placing the defenseless condition of the colony in a strong
light, and calling upon the people to take measures for averting the
danger. This pamphlet produced a great sensation. A meeting of the
citizens was convened. An enrollment of the citizens in voluntary
companies was proposed and carried by acclamation. Papers were circulated
and large numbers of signatures were obtained. The ladies prepared silken
banners, embroidering them with suitable devices and presented these
banners to the companies that were formed. In a word, the whole city was
filled with military enthusiasm. The number of men that were enrolled as
the result of this movement was ten thousand.

                     [Illustration: Silken Banners.]

Such a case as this is probably wholly without a parallel in the history
of the world, when the legislative government of a state being held back
by conscientious scruples from adopting military measures for the public
defense in a case of imminent danger, the whole community rise voluntarily
at the call of a private citizen, to organize and arm themselves under the
executive power. There was, it is true, very much in the peculiar
circumstances of the occasion to give efficiency to the measures which
Franklin adopted, but there are very few men who, even in such
circumstances, would have conceived of such a design, or could have
accomplished it, if they had made the attempt.

The officers of the Philadelphia regiment, organized from these
volunteers, chose Franklin their colonel. He however declined the
appointment, considering himself, as he said, not qualified for it. They
then appointed another man. Franklin, however, continued to be foremost in
all the movements and plans for maturing and carrying into effect the
military arrangements that were required.

Among other things, he conceived the idea of constructing a battery on the
bank of the river below the town, to defend it from ships that might
attempt to come up the river. To construct this battery, and to provide
cannon for it, would require a considerable amount of money; and in order
to raise the necessary funds, Franklin proposed a public lottery. He
considered the emergency of the crisis, as it would seem, a sufficient
justification for a resort to such a measure. The lottery was arranged,
and the tickets offered for sale. They were taken very fast, for the whole
community were deeply interested in the success of the enterprise. The
money was thus raised and the battery was erected. The walls of it were
made of logs framed together, the space between being filled with earth.

The great difficulty, however, was to obtain cannon for the armament of
the battery. The associates succeeded at length in finding a few pieces of
old ordnance in Boston which they could buy. These they procured and
mounted in their places on the battery. They then sent to England to
obtain more; and in the mean time Franklin was dispatched as a
commissioner to New York, to attempt to borrow some cannon there, to be
used until those which they expected to receive from England should
arrive. His application was in the end successful, though the consent of
Governor Clinton, to whom the application was made, was gained in a
somewhat singular way. “At first,” says Franklin, “he refused us
peremptorily; but at dinner with his council, where there was great
drinking of Madeira wine, as the custom of the place then was, he softened
by degrees, and said he would lend us _six_. After a few more bumpers he
advanced to _ten_; and at length he very good-naturedly conceded
_eighteen_.”

                        [Illustration: Gun Guard.]

The pieces thus borrowed were eighteen pounders, all in excellent order
and well mounted on suitable carriages. They were soon transported to
Philadelphia and set up in their places on the battery, where they
remained while the war lasted. A company was organized to mount guard
there by day and night. Franklin himself was one of this guard, and he
regularly performed his duty as a common soldier, in rotation with the
rest. In fact, one secret of the great ascendency which he acquired at
this time over all those who were in any way connected with him, was the
unassuming and unpretending spirit which he manifested. He never sought to
appropriate to himself the credit of what he did, but always voluntarily
assumed his full share of all labors and sacrifices that were required.

The members of the society of Friends were very numerous in Philadelphia
at this time, and they held a controlling influence in the legislature.
And inasmuch as the tenets of their society expressly forbade them to
engage in war or war-like operations of any kind, no vote could be
obtained in the legislature to provide for any military preparations. The
Friends, however, were not disposed to insist so tenaciously upon their
views as to be unwilling that others should act as they saw fit. It was
even thought that many of them were willing to encourage and promote the
measures which Franklin was pursuing for the defense of the province, so
far as they could do so without directly violating their professed
principles by acting personally in furtherance of them.

Various instances occurred of this tacit acquiescence on the part of the
Friends in the defensive preparations which were going forward. It was
proposed for example that the fire-company which has already been alluded
to, should invest their surplus funds in lottery tickets, for the battery.
The Friends would not _vote_ for this measure, but a sufficient number of
them absented themselves from the meeting to allow the others to carry it.
In the legislature moreover, they would sometimes grant money “_for the
king’s use_” the tacit understanding being that the funds were to be
employed for military purposes. At one time, before the question of
appropriating the surplus funds of the fire company was disposed of,
Franklin had an idea—which he proposed to one of his friends—of
introducing a resolution at a meeting of the company, for purchasing a
_fire-engine_ with the money. “And then,” said he, “we will buy a _cannon_
with it, for no one can deny that that is a _fire-engine_.”

                     [Illustration: Indian Bonfire.]

Soon after this Franklin went as a commissioner from the government, to
make a treaty with a tribe of Indians at Carlisle, in the interior of
Pennsylvania. On the night after the treaty was concluded, a great uproar
was heard in the Indian camp, just without the town. The commissioners
went to see what was the matter. They found that the Indians had made a
great bonfire in the middle of the square around which their tents were
pitched, and that all the company, men and women, were around it,
shouting, quarreling and fighting. The spectacle of their dark colored
bodies, half naked, and seen only by the gloomy light of the fire, running
after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by the most
unearthly yellings, presented a dreadful scene. The frenzy of the people
was so great that there was no possibility of restraining it, and the
commissioners were obliged to retire and leave the savages to themselves.

                             [Illustration.]

After this Franklin returned to Philadelphia and devoted his attention to
a variety of plans for the improvement of the city, in all of which his
characteristic ingenuity in devising means for the accomplishment of his
plans, and his calm and quiet, but efficient energy in carrying them into
effect, were as conspicuous as ever. One of the first enterprises in which
he engaged was the founding of a hospital for the reception and cure of
sick persons. The institution which he was the means of establishing has
since become one of the most prominent and useful institutions of the
country. He caused a petition to be prepared and presented to the
Assembly, asking for a grant from the public funds in aid of this
undertaking. The country members were at first opposed to the plan,
thinking that it would mainly benefit the city. In order to diminish this
opposition, Franklin framed the petition so as not to ask for a direct and
absolute grant of the money that was required, but caused a resolve to be
drawn up granting the sum of two thousand pounds from the public treasury
on condition that the same sum should previously be raised by private
subscription. Many of the members were willing to vote for this, who would
not have voted for an unconditional donation; and so the vote was passed
without much opposition.

After this the private subscriptions went on very prosperously; for each
person who was applied to considered the conditional promise of the
Assembly as an additional motive to give, since every man’s donation would
be doubled by the public grant, if the required amount was made up. This
consideration had so powerful an influence that the subscriptions soon
exceeded the requisite sum. Thus the hospital was founded.

                       [Illustration: Poor Woman.]

Franklin interested himself also in introducing plans for paving, sweeping
and lighting the streets of the city. Before this time the streets had
been kept in very bad condition. This was the case, in fact, at that
period, in almost all cities—in those of Europe as well as those of
America. In connection with this subject Franklin relates an incident that
occurred when he was in London, which illustrates very strikingly both the
condition of the cities in those days, and the peculiar traits of
Franklin’s character. It seems that he found one morning at the door of
his lodgings a poor woman sweeping the pavement with a birch broom. She
appeared very pale and feeble, as if just recovering from a fit of
sickness. “I asked her,” says Franklin, “who employed her to sweep there.”
“Nobody,” said she, “but I am poor and in distress, and I sweeps before
gentlefolks’ doors and hopes they will give me something.”

Instead of driving the poor woman away, Franklin set her at work to sweep
the whole street clean, saying that when she had done it he would pay her
a shilling. She worked diligently all the morning upon the task which
Franklin had assigned her, and at noon came for her shilling. This
incident, trifling as it might seem, led Franklin to a long train of
reflections and calculations in respect to the sweeping of the streets of
cities, and to the formation of plans which were afterward adopted with
much success.

In the year 1755, Franklin became connected with the famous expedition of
General Braddock in the western part of Pennsylvania, which ended so
disastrously. A new war had broken out between the French and the English,
and the French, who had long held possession of Canada, and had gradually
been extending their posts down into the valley of the Mississippi, at
length took possession of the point of confluence of the Monongahela and
Alleghany rivers, where Pittsburg now stands. Here they built a fort,
which they called Fort Du Quesne. From this fort, as the English allege,
the French organized bands of Indians from the tribes which lived in the
neighborhood, and made predatory incursions into the English colonies,
especially into Pennsylvania. The English government accordingly sent
General Braddock at the head of a large force, with instructions to march
through the woods, take the fort, and thus put an end to these incursions.

General Braddock landed with his troops at a port in Virginia, and thence
marched into Maryland on his way to Pennsylvania. He soon found himself in
very serious difficulty, however, from being unable to procure wagons for
the transportation of the military stores and other baggage which it was
necessary to take with the army in going through such a wilderness as lay
between him and fort Du Quesne. He had sent all about the country to
procure wagons, but few could be obtained.

In the mean time the Assembly at Philadelphia made arrangements for
Franklin to go to Maryland to meet General Braddock on his way, and give
him any aid which it might be in his power to render. They were the more
inclined to do this from the fact that for some time there had been a good
deal of disagreement and contention between the colony of Pennsylvania and
the government in England, and they had heard that General Braddock was
much prejudiced against the Assembly on that account. They accordingly
dispatched Franklin as their agent, to proceed to the camp and assure
General Braddock of the desire of the Assembly to co-operate with him by
every means in their power.

Franklin found when he reached the camp, that the general was in great
trouble and perplexity for want of wagons, and he immediately undertook to
procure them for him. He accordingly took a commission from the general
for this purpose, and went at once to Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, and
there issued circulars which he sent to all the farmers in the country,
inviting them to bring their wagons to Lancaster, and offering them
advantageous terms for the hire of them. These measures were perfectly
successful. The wagons came in, in great numbers, and an abundant supply
was speedily obtained. This success was owing partly to Franklin’s
sagacity in knowing exactly where to send for wagons, and what sort of
inducements to offer to the farmers to make them willing to bring them
out, and partly to the universal respect and confidence that was felt
toward him personally, which led the farmers to come forward readily at
_his_ call and on _his_ promise, when they would have been suspicious and
distrustful of any offers which Braddock could have made them through any
of the English officers under his command. A train of one hundred and
fifty wagons, and two hundred and fifty carrying horses were very soon on
their way to the camp.

Encouraged by the success of these measures, Franklin conceived of another
plan to promote the comfort and welfare of Braddock’s army. He procured a
grant of money from the Assembly to be applied to purchasing stores for
the subaltern officers, who, as he had learned, were very scantily
supplied with the articles necessary for their comfort. With this money he
purchased a supply of such commodities as he judged would be most useful
in camp, such as coffee, tea, sugar, biscuit, butter, cheese, hams, &c.,
and dividing these stores into parcels, so as to make one for each officer
in the army, he placed the parcels upon as many horses, and sent them to
the camp. The supply intended for each officer made a load for one horse.

                      [Illustration: Supply Horse.]

Notwithstanding all these efforts, however, to promote the success of
Braddock’s expedition, it was destined, as is well known, to come to a
very disastrous end. Braddock allowed himself to fall into an ambuscade.
Here he was attacked by the Indians with terrible fury. The men stood
their ground as long as possible, but finally were seized with a panic and
fled in all directions. The wagoners—men who had come from the
Philadelphia farms in charge of the wagons that had been furnished in
answer to Franklin’s call—in making their escape, took each a horse out of
his team, and galloped away, and thus the wagons themselves and all the
provisions, ammunition, and military stores of every kind, fell into the
hands of the enemy. Braddock himself was wounded, nearly half of the
troops were killed, and the whole object of the expedition was completely
frustrated. The wounded general was conveyed back about forty miles to the
rear, and there, a few days afterward, he died.

                    [Illustration: Braddock’s Escape.]

Of course a feeling of great alarm was awakened throughout Pennsylvania as
the tidings of this disaster were spread abroad. Every one was convinced
that some efficient measures must at once he adopted to defend the country
from the incursions of the French and Indians on the frontier. There was,
however, a very serious difficulty in the way of taking such measures.

This difficulty was, an obstinate quarrel which had existed for a long
time between the governor and the Assembly. The governor was appointed in
England, and he represented the views and the interests of the English
proprietors of the colony. The Assembly were elected by the people of the
colony, and of course represented their interests and views. Now the
proprietors had instructed the governor to insist that _their_ property
should not be subject to taxation; and to refuse his assent to all bills
for raising money unless the property of the proprietors should be
exempted. On the other hand the colonists maintained that the land
belonging to the proprietors was as justly subject to taxation as any
other property; and they refused to pass any bills for raising money
unless the property of the proprietors was included. Thus nothing could be
done.

This dispute had already been long protracted and both parties had become
somewhat obstinate in their determination to maintain the ground which
they had respectively taken. Even now when the country was in this
imminent danger, it was some time before either side would yield, while
each charged upon the other the responsibility of refusing to provide the
means for the defense of the country.

At length, however, a sort of compromise was made. The proprietors offered
to contribute a certain sum toward the public defense, and the Assembly
consented to receive the contribution in lieu of a tax, and passed a law
for raising money, exempting the proprietors’ land from being taxed. The
sum of sixty thousand pounds was thus raised, and Franklin was appointed
one of the commissioners for disposing of the money.

A law was also enacted for organizing and arming a volunteer militia; and
while the companies were forming, the governor persuaded Franklin to take
command of the force, and proceed at the head of it to the frontier.
Franklin was reluctant to undertake this military business, as his whole
life had been devoted to entirely different pursuits. He, however,
accepted the appointment, and undertook the defense of the frontier.

There was a settlement of Moravians about fifty or sixty miles from
Philadelphia, at Bethlehem, which was then upon the frontier. Bethlehem
was the principal settlement of the Moravians, but they had several
villages besides. One of these villages, named Gnadenhütten, had just been
destroyed by the Indians, and the whole settlement was in great alarm.
Franklin proceeded to Bethlehem with his force, and having made such
arrangements and preparations as seemed necessary there, he obtained some
wagons for his stores, and set off on a march to Gnadenhütten. His object
was to erect a fort and establish a garrison there.

                             [Illustration.]

It was in the dead of winter, and before the column had proceeded many
miles a violent storm of rain came on, but there were no habitations along
the road, and no places of shelter; so the party were obliged to proceed.
They went on toiling heavily through the mud and snow.

They were of course in constant danger of an attack from the Indians, and
were the more apprehensive of this from the fact that on such a march they
were necessarily in a very defenseless condition. Besides, the rain fell
so continually and so abundantly that the men could not keep the locks of
their muskets dry. They went on, however, in this way for many hours, but
at last they came to the house of a solitary German settler, and here they
determined to stop for the night. The whole troop crowded into the house
and into the barn, where they lay that night huddled together, and “as
wet,” Franklin says, “as water could make them.” The next day, however,
was fair, and they proceeded on their march in a somewhat more comfortable
manner.

They arrived at length at Gnadenhütten, where a most melancholy spectacle
awaited them. The village was in ruins. The country people of the
neighborhood had attempted to give the bodies of the murdered inhabitants
a hurried burial; but they had only half performed their work, and the
first duty which devolved on Franklin’s soldiers was to complete the
interment in a proper manner. The next thing to be thought of was to
provide some sort of shelter for the soldiers; for they had no tents, and
all the houses had been destroyed.

There was a mill near by, around which were several piles of pine boards
which the Indians had not destroyed. Franklin set his troops at work to
make huts of these boards, and thus in a short time his whole army was
comfortably sheltered. All this was done on the day and evening of their
arrival, and on the following morning the whole force was employed in
commencing operations upon the fort.

The fort was to be built of palisades, and it was marked out of such a
size that the circumference was four hundred and fifty-five feet. This
would require four hundred and fifty-five palisades; for the palisades
were to be formed of logs, of a foot in diameter upon an average, and
eighteen feet long. The palisades were to be obtained from the trees in
the neighborhood, and these trees were so tall that each tree would make
three palisades. The men had seventy axes in all, and the most skillful
and able woodmen in the company were immediately set at work to fell the
trees. Franklin says that he was surprised to observe how fast these axmen
would cut the trees down; and at length he had the curiosity to look at
his watch when two men began to cut at a pine. They brought it down in six
minutes; and on measuring it, where they had cut it off, Franklin found
the diameter of the tree to be fourteen inches.

While the woodmen were cutting the palisades a large number of other
laborers were employed in digging a trench all around the circumference of
the fort to receive them. This trench was made about three feet deep, and
wide enough to receive the large ends of the palisades. As fast as the
palisades were cut they were brought to the spot, by means of the wagon
wheels which had been separated from the wagon bodies for this purpose.
The palisades were set up, close together, in the trench, and the earth
was rammed in around them; thus the inclosure of the fort was soon
completed.

A platform was then built all around on the inside, for the men to stand
upon to fire through the loop holes which were left in the palisades
above. There was one swivel gun, which the men had brought with them in
one of the wagons. This gun they mounted in one corner of the fort, and as
soon as they had mounted it they fired it, in order, as Franklin said, to
let the Indians know, if any were within hearing, that they had such
artillery.

There _were_ Indians within hearing it seems; several bands were lurking
in the neighborhood, secretly watching the movements of Franklin’s
command. This was found to be the case a short time after the fort was
completed, for when Franklin found his army securely posted he sent out a
party of scouts to explore the surrounding country to see if any traces of
Indians could be found. These men saw no Indians, but they found certain
places on the neighboring hills where it was evident that Indians had been
lurking to watch the proceedings of the soldiers in building the fort.
Franklin’s men were much struck with the ingenious contrivance which the
Indians had resorted to, in order to escape being observed while thus
watching. As it was in the depth of the winter it was absolutely necessary
for them to have a fire, and without some special precaution a fire would
have betrayed them, by the light which it would emit at night, or the
smoke which would rise from it by day. To avoid this, the Indians, they
found, had dug holes in the ground, and made their fires in the bottoms of
the holes, using charcoal only for fuel, for this would emit no smoke.
They obtained the charcoal from the embers, and brands, and burnt ends of
logs, which they found in the woods near by. The soldiers found by the
marks on the grass around these holes that the Indians had been accustomed
to sit around them upon the edges, with their feet below, near the fire.

The building and arming of such a fort, and the other military
arrangements which Franklin made on the frontier produced such an
impression upon the Indians that they gradually withdrew, leaving that
part of the country in a tolerably secure condition. Soon after this
Franklin was summoned by the governor to return to Philadelphia, as his
presence and counsel were required there. He found on his arrival that he
had acquired great fame by the success of his military operations. In fact
quite a distinguished honor was paid to him, soon after this time, on the
occasion of his going to Virginia on some public business. The officers of
the regiment resolved to escort him out of the town, on the morning when
he was to commence his journey. He knew nothing of this project until just
as he was coming forth, when he found the officers at the door, all
mounted and dressed in their uniforms. Franklin says that he was a good
deal chagrined at their appearing, as he could not avoid their
accompanying him, though if he had known it beforehand he should have
prevented it.

                        [Illustration: Departure.]

While Franklin was thus acquiring some considerable military renown in
America, he was becoming quite celebrated as a philosopher on the
continent of Europe. It seems that some years before, the library society
of Philadelphia had received some articles of electrical apparatus from
England, and Franklin had performed certain experiments with them which
led him to believe, what had not been known before, that lightning was an
electrical phenomenon. He wrote some account of his experiments, and of
the views which they had led him to entertain, and sent it to the person
from whom the library society had received the apparatus. These papers
attracted much attention, and were at length laid before the Royal Society
of London, and soon afterward published in the transactions of the
Society. In this form they were seen by a distinguished French
philosopher, the Count de Buffon, who caused them to be be translated into
the French language and published at Paris. By this means the attention of
the whole scientific world was called to Franklin’s speculations, and as
the correctness of his views was fully established by subsequent
investigations and experiments, he acquired great renown. He was elected a
member of the various scientific societies, and the Royal Society of
London sent him a magnificent gold medal.

                     [Illustration: Count de Buffon.]

This medal was brought to America to be delivered to Franklin by a new
Governor, Captain Denny, who was about this time appointed over the colony
of Pennsylvania. The course of public business had often brought Franklin
and the former governor into conflict with each other; for the governor,
as has already been said, represented the interests of the English
proprietors of the colony, while Franklin espoused very warmly the cause
of the people. The governor often sent messages and addresses to the
Assembly censuring them for the course of proceeding which they had
followed in reference to taxing the proprietors’ lands, and the Assembly
often appointed Franklin to draw up suitable replies. The new governor
seems to have been pleased with having the medal intrusted to his charge,
as he intended in commencing his administration, to do all in his power to
propitiate Franklin, so as to secure the great influence which the
philosopher had now begun to wield in the province, in his favor.

When Governor Denny arrived at Philadelphia and entered upon the duties of
his office, he determined on giving a great entertainment to the people of
Philadelphia, and to take that occasion for presenting Franklin with his
medal. This he accordingly did; and he accompanied the presentation with
an appropriate speech, in which he complimented Franklin in a very
handsome manner for his scientific attainments, and spoke in flattering
terms of the renown which he was acquiring in Europe. After the dinner, he
took Franklin aside into a small room, leaving the general company still
at the table, and entered into conversation with him in respect to the
affairs of the province and the contemplated measures of his
administration. He had been advised, he said, by his friends in England,
to cultivate a good understanding with Franklin, as a man capable of
giving him the best advice, and of contributing most effectually to making
his administration easy. He said a great deal about the friendly feeling
toward the colony which was entertained by the proprietors, and about the
advantage which it would be to all concerned, and to Franklin in
particular, if the opposition which had been made to the proprietor’s
views should be discontinued, and harmony restored between them and the
people of the colony.

                   [Illustration: Franklin and Denny.]

During all this time while the governor was plying his guest with these
flatteries and promises, he was offering him wine and drinking his health;
for the people at the dinner table, when they found that the governor did
not return, sent a decanter of Madeira and some glasses into the room
where he and Franklin were sitting. All these civilities and
blandishments, however, on the part of the governor seem to have been
thrown away. Franklin replied with politeness, but yet in such a manner as
to evince a full determination to adhere faithfully to the cause of the
colonists, in case any farther encroachments on their rights should be
attempted.

In fact the breach between the people of the colony and the proprietors in
England soon began to grow wider, under the administration of the new
governor, than they had ever been before, until at length it was decided
to send Franklin to England to lay a remonstrance and petition against the
proceedings of the proprietors, before the king. Franklin accordingly took
passage on board of a packet which was to sail from New York.

A great many embarrassments and delays, however, supervened before he
finally set sail. In the first place, he was detained by certain
negotiations which were entered into between Governors Loudoun of New
York, and Denny of Philadelphia on the one part, and the Philadelphia
Assembly on the other, in a vain attempt to compromise the difficulty,
until the packet in which he had taken passage had sailed, carrying with
her all the stores which he had laid in for the voyage. Next, he found
himself detained week after week in New York by the dilatoriness and
perpetual procrastination of Governor Loudoun, who kept back the packets
as they came in, one after another, in order to get his dispatches
prepared. He was always busy writing letters and dispatches, but they
seemed never to be ready; so that it was said of him by some wags that he
was like the figure of St. George upon the tavern signs, “who though
always on horseback never rides on.”

                     [Illustration: St. George Sign.]

After being detained in this way several weeks, it was announced that the
packets were about to sail, and the passengers were all ordered to go on
board. The packets proceeded to Sandy Hook, and there anchored to wait for
the governor’s final dispatches. Here they were kept waiting day after day
for about six weeks, so that at last the passengers’ stores were consumed,
and they had to obtain a fresh supply; and one of the vessels became so
foul with the incrustation of shells and barnacles upon her hull, that she
required to be taken into dock and cleaned. At length, however, the fleet
sailed, and Franklin, after various adventures, arrived safely one foggy
morning at Falmouth in England.

                        [Illustration: The Ship.]

The vessel narrowly escaped shipwreck on the Scilly Islands as they were
approaching the town of Falmouth. Although the wind was not violent, the
weather was very thick and hazy, and there was a treacherous current
drifting them toward the rocks as they attempted to pass by the island and
gain the shore. There was a watchman stationed at the bow, whose duty it
was to keep a vigilant look-out. This watchman was called to from time to
time by an officer on the deck, “Look out well before there,” and he as
often answered “Ay, ay;” but he neglected his duty, notwithstanding, being
probably half asleep at his station; for suddenly all on deck were alarmed
by an outcry, and looking forward they saw the light-house which stood
upon the rocks, looming up close before them. The ship was immediately
brought round by a kind of manœuvre considered very dangerous in such
circumstances, but it was successful in this case, and thus they escaped
the impending danger. The passengers were all aware of the peril they were
in, and many of them were exceedingly alarmed. In fact, the shipmaster and
the seamen considered it a very narrow escape. If the ship had gone upon
the rocks, the whole company would probably have perished.

It was Sunday morning and the bells were ringing for church when the
passengers landed. Franklin with the others went to church immediately,
with hearts full of gratitude to God, as he says, for the deliverance
which they had experienced. He then went to his inn and wrote a letter to
his family giving them an account of his voyage.

                    [Illustration: Franklin Writing.]

A few days after this he went up to London, and began to devote himself to
the business of his agency.

He found, however, that he made very slow progress in accomplishing his
object, for the ministry were so much engaged with other affairs, that for
a long time he could not obtain a hearing. He however was not idle. He
wrote pamphlets and articles in the newspapers; and every thing that he
wrote was of so original a character, and so apposite, and was moreover
expressed with so much terseness and point, that it attracted great
attention and acquired great influence.

In fact, Franklin was distinguished all his life for the genius and
originality which he displayed in expressing any sentiments which he
wished to inculcate upon mankind. One of the most striking examples of
this is the celebrated Parable against persecution of which he is
generally considered the author; it is as follows:

                 [Illustration: Abraham and the Old Man.]


    And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the
    door of his tent, about the going down of the sun.

    2. And behold, a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the
    wilderness, leaning on a staff.

    3. And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, “Turn in, I
    pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt
    arise early on the morrow, and go on thy way.”

    4. But the man said, “Nay, for I will abide under this tree.”

    5. And Abraham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went
    into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did
    eat.

    6. And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto
    him, “Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, Creator
    of heaven and earth?”

    7. And the man answered and said, “I do not worship the God thou
    speakest of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to
    myself a god, which abideth alway in mine house, and provideth me
    with all things.”

    8. And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose
    and fell upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the
    wilderness.

    9. And at midnight God called unto Abraham, saying, “Abraham,
    where is the stranger?”

    10. And Abraham answered and said, “Lord, he would not worship
    thee, neither would he call upon thy name; therefore have I driven
    him out from before my face into the wilderness.”

    11. And God said, “Have I borne with him these hundred ninety and
    eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him, notwithstanding
    his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, that art thyself a
    sinner, bear with him one night?”


                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

This parable, the idea of which Franklin probably obtained from some
ancient Persian books, he wrote out and committed to memory, and he used
to amuse himself sometimes by opening the Bible, and repeating the parable
as if he were reading it from that book; and he found, he said, that very
few auditors were sufficiently acquainted with the contents of the sacred
volume to suspect the deception.

He often expressed the sentiments which he wished to inculcate, in some
unusual and striking form, as in this instance. His conversation assumed
somewhat the same character, so that wherever he was, his sayings and
doings always attracted great attention.

In respect to this parable on persecution, although it is generally
considered as the production of Franklin, it was never really claimed as
such by him. In fact, Franklin himself did not publish it. It was
published without his knowledge, by a friend of his in Scotland, the
celebrated Lord Kames, who inserted it in a volume of his writings, saying
it was “furnished to him” by Franklin. Lord Kames resided in Scotland, and
Franklin became acquainted with him during a visit which he made to that
country in the summer of 1759. Lord Kames became very greatly interested
in Franklin’s character, and a warm friendship and constant correspondence
was kept up between the two philosophers for many years, as long, in fact,
as Lord Kames lived; for Franklin was the survivor.

                     [Illustration: Mrs. Stevenson.]

Franklin’s residence while he was in London was in Craven-street, near the
Strand, at the house of a Mrs. Stevenson. This house is still commemorated
in the London Guide Books, among other places of historical interest in
the metropolis, on account of its having been the home of the
distinguished philosopher so long. Franklin lived on very friendly terms
with Mrs. Stevenson and her family, while he remained in her house, and he
interested himself in the studies and instruction of her daughter. At the
same time he kept up a constant and familiar correspondence with his wife
and family at home. One of his sons was with him during his residence in
England having accompanied him when he came over. His friends were very
desirous that he should send for his wife to come to England too, and more
especially his daughter Sally, who was a very attractive and agreeable
young lady, just arrived to years of woman-hood. One of Franklin’s most
intimate friends, Mr. Strahan, a member of Parliament, wrote to Mrs.
Franklin very urgently requesting her to come to England with her
daughter. Franklin himself, however, seems not to have seconded this
proposition very strongly. He knew, in the first place, that his wife had
an irresistible repugnance to undertaking a sea voyage, and then he was
continually hoping that the long and weary negotiations in which he was
engaged would be brought soon to an end, so that he could return himself
to his native land.

At length, after an infinite variety of difficulties and delays, the
object for which Franklin had been sent to England was in the main
accomplished. It was decided that the lands of the proprietors should be
taxed as well as the property of the colonists. There were several other
measures which he had been desirous of securing, which he found then
impracticable. Still his object in the main was accomplished, and the
Assembly were well satisfied with what he had done. He accordingly
concluded to return to America.

He left England about the end of August, in 1762, in company with ten sail
of merchant ships under convoy of a man-of-war. They touched at Madeira on
the passage, where they were very kindly received by the inhabitants, and
Franklin was very much interested in the observations which he made on the
island and its productions. After remaining on the island for a few days,
and furnishing the ships with provisions and refreshments of all kinds,
the ships sailed again. They proceeded southward until they reached the
trade winds, and then westward toward the coast of America. All this time
the weather was so favorable, and the water was so smooth, that there were
very few days when the passengers could not visit from ship to ship,
dining with each other on board the different vessels, which made the time
pass very agreeably; “much more so,” as Franklin said, “than when one goes
in a single ship, as this was like traveling in a moving village with all
one’s neighbors about one.”

He arrived at home on the 1st of November, after an absence of between
five and six years. He found his wife and daughter well—the latter, as he
says, grown to quite a woman, and with many amiable accomplishments,
acquired during his absence. He was received too with great distinction by
the public authorities and by the people of Philadelphia. The Assembly
voted him twelve thousand pounds for his services, and also passed a vote
of thanks, to be presented to him in public by the Speaker. His friends
came in great numbers to see him and congratulate him on his safe return,
so that his house for many days was filled with them. Besides these public
and private honors bestowed upon himself, Franklin experienced an
additional satisfaction also at this time on account of the distinction to
which his son was attaining. His son had been appointed Governor of New
Jersey just before his father left England, and he remained behind when
his father sailed, in order to be married to a very agreeable West India
lady to whom he had proposed himself, with his father’s consent and
approbation. The young governor and his bride arrived in Philadelphia a
few months after Franklin himself came home. Franklin accompanied his son
to New Jersey, where he had the pleasure of seeing him warmly welcomed by
people of all ranks, and then left him happily established in his
government there.

Soon after this Franklin, who still held the office of postmaster for the
colonies, turned his attention to the condition of the post-office, and
concluded to make a tour of inspection with reference to this business in
all the colonies north of Philadelphia. He took his daughter with him on
this journey, although it was likely to be a very long and fatiguing one.
He traveled in a wagon, accompanied by a saddle horse. His daughter rode
on this horse for a considerable part of the journey. At the beginning of
it she rode on the horse only occasionally; but, as she became accustomed
to the exercise, she found it more and more agreeable, and on the journey
home she traveled in this manner nearly all the way from Rhode Island to
Philadelphia.

                   [Illustration: Travelling by Wagon.]

Not long after this time new Indian difficulties occurred on the
frontiers, which called for the raising of a new military force to
suppress them. A law was accordingly proposed in the Assembly for
providing the necessary funds for this purpose by a tax. And now it was
found that the question which Franklin had been sent to Europe to arrange,
namely, the question of taxing the proprietary lands had not, after all,
been so definitely settled as was supposed. The language of the law was
this: “The uncultivated lands of the proprietaries shall not be assessed
higher than the lowest rate at which any uncultivated lands belonging to
the inhabitants shall be assessed;” and on attempting to determine the
practical application of this language, it was found to be susceptible of
two interpretations. The Assembly understood it to mean that the land of
the proprietaries should not be taxed higher than that of any of the
inhabitants, _of the same quality_. Whereas the governor insisted that the
meaning must be that none of the proprietaries’ land should be taxed any
higher than the lowest and poorest belonging to any of the inhabitants.
The language of the enactment is, perhaps, susceptible of either
construction. It will certainly bear the one which the governor put upon
it, and as he insisted, in the most absolute and determined manner, upon
his view of the question, the Assembly were at length compelled to yield;
for the terrible danger which impended over the colony from the Indians on
the frontier would not admit of delay.

The people of the colony, though thus beaten in the contest and forced to
submit, were by no means disposed to submit peaceably. On the contrary a
very general feeling of indignation and resentment took possession of the
community, and at length it was determined to send a petition to the King
of Great Britain, praying him to dispossess the proprietaries of the power
which they were so obstinately determined on abusing, and to assume the
government of the colonies himself, as a prerogative of the crown. The
coming to this determination on the part of the colony was not effected
without a great deal of debate, and political animosity and contention,
for the governor of course had a party on his side, and they exerted
themselves to the utmost to prevent the adoption of the petition. It was,
however, carried against all opposition. The Speaker of the Assembly
however, refused to sign the bill when it was passed, and he resigned his
office to avoid the performance of this duty, an act which would of course
greatly please the proprietary party. The majority of the Assembly then
elected Franklin Speaker, and he at once signed the bill. This proceeding
made Franklin specially obnoxious to the proprietary party, and at the
next election of members of the Assembly they made every possible effort
in Franklin’s district to prevent his being chosen. They succeeded.
Franklin lost his election by about twenty-five votes out of four
thousand. But though the proprietary interest was thus the strongest in
Franklin’s district, it was found when the new Assembly came together that
the party that was opposed to them was in a majority of two-thirds; and in
order to rebuke their opponents for the efforts which they had made to
defeat Franklin in his district, they immediately passed a vote to send
him to England again, as a special messenger, to present the petition
which they had voted, to the king.

                         [Illustration: Church.]

The animosity and excitement which attended this contest was of course
extreme, and the character and the whole political course of Franklin,
were assailed by his enemies with all the violence and pertinacity that
characterize political contests of this kind at the present day. Franklin,
however, bore it all very good-naturedly. Just before he sailed, after he
had left Philadelphia to repair to the ship, which was lying some distance
down the river, he wrote a very affectionate letter to his daughter to bid
her farewell and give her his parting counsels. “You know,” said he, in
this letter, “that I have many enemies, all, indeed, on the public account
(for I can not recollect that I have in a private capacity given just
cause of offense to any one whatever), yet they are enemies, and very
bitter ones; and you must expect their enmity will extend in some degree
to you, so that your slightest indiscretions will be magnified into
crimes, in order the more sensibly to wound and afflict me. It is,
therefore, the more necessary for you to be extremely circumspect in all
your behavior, that no advantage may be given to their malevolence.” Then
followed various counsels relating to her duty to her mother, her general
deportment, her studies, and her obligations to the church. The church
with which Franklin was connected was of the Episcopal denomination, and
he took a great interest in its prosperity; though he manifested the same
liberality and public spirit here as in all the other relations that he
sustained. At one time, for example, it was proposed by certain members of
the congregation to form a sort of colony, and build a new church in
another place. A portion of the people opposed this plan as tending to
weaken the mother church, but Franklin favored it, thinking that in the
end the measure would have a contrary effect from the one they
apprehended. He compared it to the swarming of bees, by which, he said,
the comfort and prosperity of the old hive was increased, and a new and
flourishing colony established to keep the parent stock in countenance.
Very few persons, at that period, would have seen either the expediency or
the duty of pursuing such a course in respect to the colonization of a
portion of a church: though now such views are very extensively
entertained by all liberal minded men, and many such colonies are now
formed from thriving churches, with the concurrence of all concerned.

                [Illustration: Assembled upon the wharf.]

But to return to the voyage. Franklin was to embark on board his ship at
Chester, a port situated down the river from Philadelphia, on the confines
of the State of Delaware. A cavalcade of three hundred people from
Philadelphia accompanied him to Chester, and a great company assembled
upon the wharf, when the vessel was about to sail, to take leave of their
distinguished countryman and wish him a prosperous voyage. The crowd thus
assembled saluted Franklin with acclamations and cheers, as the boat which
was to convey him to the vessel slowly moved away from the shore. The day
of his sailing was the 7th of November, 1764, about two years after his
return from his former visit.

The voyage across the Atlantic was a prosperous one, notwithstanding that
it was so late in the season. Franklin wrote a letter home to give his
wife and daughter an account of his voyage, before he left the vessel. On
landing he proceeded to London, and went directly to his old landlady’s,
at Mrs. Stevenson’s, in Craven-street, Strand. When the news of his safe
arrival reached Philadelphia, the people of the city celebrated the event
by ringing the bells, and other modes of public rejoicing. The hostility
which had been manifested toward him had operated to make him a greater
favorite than ever.

Franklin now began to turn his attention toward the business of his
agency. He had not been long in England, however, before difficulties grew
up between the colonies and the mother country, which proved to be of a
far more serious character than those which had been discussed at
Philadelphia. Parliament claimed the right to tax the colonies. The
colonies maintained that their own legislatures alone had this right, and
a long and obstinate dispute ensued. The English government devised all
sorts of expedients to assess the taxes in such a way that the Americans
should be compelled to pay them; and the Americans on their part met these
attempts by equally ingenious and far more effectual contrivances for
evading the payment. For a time the Americans refused to use any British
commodities, in order that the people of England might see that by the
persisting of the government in their determination to tax the colonies,
they would lose a very valuable trade. Franklin joined in this effort,
insomuch that for a long time he would not make purchases in England of
any articles to send home to his family. At length the difficulty was in
some measure compromised. One of the most obnoxious of the acts of
Parliament for taxing America was repealed, and then for the first time
Franklin purchased and sent home to his wife and daughter quite a trunk
full of dresses—silks, satins, and brocade—with gloves, and bottles of
lavender water, and other such niceties to fill the corners. He told her,
in the letter which he sent with this trunk, that, as the Stamp Act was
repealed, he was now willing that she should have a new gown.

                        [Illustration: The Gown.]

In fact the great philosopher’s attention was attracted at this time in
some degree to the effect of dress upon his own personal appearance, for
on making a visit to Paris, which he did toward the close of 1767, he says
that the French tailor and perruquier so transformed him as to make him
appear twenty years younger than he really was.

                  [Illustration: Twenty Years Younger.]

Franklin received a great deal of attention while he was in Paris, and he
seems to have enjoyed his visit there very highly. The most distinguished
men in the walks of literature and science sought his society, for they
all knew well his reputation as a philosopher; and many of them had read
his writings and had repeated the experiments which he had made, and which
had awakened so deep an interest throughout the whole learned world.
Franklin received too, many marks of distinction and honor from the public
men of France—especially from those who were connected with the
government. It was supposed that they had been watching the progress of
the disputes between England and her colonies, and secretly hoping that
these disputes might end in an open rupture; for such a rupture they
thought would end in weakening the power of their ancient rival.
Sympathizing thus with the party in this contest which Franklin
represented, they naturally felt a special interest in him. Franklin was
presented at court, and received into the most distinguished society in
the metropolis.

After a time he returned again to England, but he found when he arrived
there that the state of things between the English government and the
American colonies was growing worse instead of better. Parliament insisted
on its right “to bind the colonies,” as their resolve expressed it, “in
all cases whatsoever.” The Americans, on the other hand, were more and
more determined to resist such a claim. Parliament adopted measures more
and more stringent every day, to compel the colonies to submit. They
passed coercive laws; they devised ingenious modes of levying taxes; they
sent out troops, and in every possible way strengthened the military
position of the government in America. The colonists, on the other hand,
began to evince the most determined spirit of hostility to the measures of
the mother country. They held great public assemblages; they passed
violent resolves; they began to form extensive and formidable combinations
for resisting or evading the laws. Thus every thing portended an
approaching conflict.

Franklin exerted all his power and influence for a long time in attempting
to heal the breach. He wrote pamphlets and articles in the newspapers in
England defending, though in a tone of great candor and moderation, the
rights of America, and urging the ministry and people of England not to
persist in their attempts at coercion. At the same time he wrote letters
to America, endeavoring to diminish the violence of the agitation there,
in hopes that by keeping back the tide of excitement and passion which was
so rapidly rising, some mode of adjustment might be found to terminate the
difficulty. All these efforts were, however, in vain. The quarrel grew
wider and more hopeless every day.

About this time the administration of the colonial affairs for the English
government was committed to a new officer, Lord Hillsborough, who was now
made Secretary of State for America; and immediately new negotiations were
entered into, and new schemes formed, for settling the dispute. Two or
three years thus passed away, but nothing was done. At length Lord
Hillsborough seems to have conceived the idea of winning over Franklin’s
influence to the side of the English government by compliments and
flattering attentions. He met him one morning in Dublin, at the house of
the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, where he paid him special civilities, and
invited him in the most cordial manner to visit him at his country mansion
at Hillsborough, in the north of England. Franklin was then contemplating
a journey northward, and in the course of this journey he stopped at
Hillsborough. He and his party were received with the greatest attention
by his lordship, and detained four days, during which time Franklin was
loaded with civilities.

If these attentions were really designed to make Franklin more manageable,
as the representative of the colonies in the contest that was going on,
they wholly failed of their object; for in the negotiations which
followed, Franklin continued as firm and intractable as ever. In fact, not
long after this, he came directly into conflict with Lord Hillsborough
before the Board of Trade, when a certain measure relating to the
colony—one which Lord Hillsborough strongly opposed, and Franklin as
strenuously advocated—was in debate. At last after a long contest Franklin
gained the day; and this result so changed his lordship’s sentiments
toward Franklin that for some time he treated him with marked rudeness. At
one time Franklin called to pay his respects to Lord Hillsborough on a day
when his lordship was holding a levee, and when there were a number of
carriages at the door. Franklin’s coachman drove up, alighted, and was
opening the carriage for Franklin to dismount, when the porter came out,
and in the most supercilious and surly manner rebuked the coachman for
opening the door of the carriage before he had inquired whether his
lordship was at home; and then turning to Franklin he said, “My lord is
_not_ at home.”

                [Illustration: Franklin and Hillsborough.]

Lord Hillsborough, however, recovered from his resentment after this, in
the course of a year; and at length on one occasion his lordship called
upon Franklin in his room, and accosted him in a very cordial and friendly
manner, as if no difficulty between them had ever occurred.

In the mean time the determination in America to resist the principle of
the supremacy of Parliament over the colonies, became more and more
extended. A disposition was manifested by the several colonies to combine
their efforts for this end, and one after another of them sent out
commissions to Franklin to act as their agent, as well as agent for
Pennsylvania. Things went on in this way until a certain tragical affair
occurred in Boston, known generally in American accounts of these events
as the Boston massacre, which greatly increased the popular excitement
among the people of the colonies.

This massacre, as it was called, was the shooting of some persons in a
crowd in State-street in Boston, by the British soldiers. It originated
thus: A company of boys one day undertook to burn effigies of certain
merchants who persisted in importing British goods and secretly selling
them, thus taking sides as it were against their countrymen in the contest
that was going on. While doing this a man whom they considered a spy and
informer came by; and the boys, in some way or other, became involved in a
quarrel with him. The man retreated to his house; the boys followed him
and threw snow-balls and pieces of ice at the house when he had gone in.
The man brought a gun to the window and shot one of the boys dead on the
spot.

                     [Illustration: Boston Massacre.]

This of course produced a very intense excitement throughout the city. The
soldiers naturally took part with those supposed to favor British
interests; this exasperated the populace against them, and finally, after
various collisions, a case occurred in which the British officer deemed it
his duty to order the troops to fire upon a crowd of people that were
assembled to taunt and threaten them, and pelt them with ice and snow.
They had been led to assemble thus, through some quarrel that had sprung
up between a sentinel and one of the young men of the town. In the firing
three men were killed outright, and two more were mortally wounded. The
killing of these men was called a massacre, and the tidings of it produced
a universal and uncontrollable excitement throughout the provinces.

                      [Illustration: Lord Chatham.]

In proportion, however, as the spirit of resistance to British rule
manifested itself in America, the determination became more and more firm
and decided on the part of the British government not to yield. It is a
point of honor with all governments, and especially with monarchical
governments, not to give way in the slightest degree to what they call
rebellion. There were, however, a few among the British statesmen who
foresaw the impossibility of subduing the spirit which was manifesting
itself in America, by any force which could be brought to bear upon so
distant and determined a population. Lord Chatham was one of these; and he
actually brought forward in Parliament, in 1775, just before the
revolution broke out, a bill for withdrawing the troops from Boston as the
first step toward a conciliatory course of measures. Franklin was present
in Parliament, by Chatham’s particular request, at the time when this
motion was brought forward. In the speech which Lord Chatham made on this
occasion, he alluded to Franklin, and spoke of him in the highest terms.
The motion was advocated too, by Lord Camden, another of the British
peers, who made an able speech in favor of it. On the other hand it was
most violently opposed by other speakers, and Franklin himself was
assailed by one of them in very severe terms. When the vote came to be
taken, it was lost by a large majority; and thus all hope of any thing
like a reconciliation disappeared.

                       [Illustration: Lord Camden.]

A great variety of ingenious devices were resorted to from time to time to
propitiate Franklin, and to secure his influence in America, in favor of
some mode of settling the difficulty, which would involve submission on
the part of the colonies. He was for example quite celebrated for his
skill in playing chess, and at one time he was informed that a certain
lady of high rank desired to play chess with him, thinking that she could
beat him. He of course acceded to this request and played several games
with her. The lady was a sister of Lord Howe, a nobleman who subsequently
took a very active and important part in the events of the revolution. It
turned out in the end that this plan of playing chess was only a manœuvre
to open the way for Franklin’s visiting at Mrs. Howe’s house, in order
that Lord Howe himself might there have the opportunity of conferring with
him on American affairs without attracting attention. Various conferences
were accordingly held between Franklin and Lord Howe, at this lady’s
house, and many other similar negotiations were carried on with various
other prominent men about this time, but they led to nothing satisfactory.
In fact, the object of them all was to bring over Franklin to the British
side of the question, and to induce him to exert his almost unlimited
influence with the colonies to bring them over. But nothing of this sort
could be done.

                        [Illustration: Mrs. Howe.]

Ten years had now passed away since Franklin went to England, and it began
to appear very obvious that the difficulties in which his mission had
originated, could not be settled, but would soon lead to an open rupture
between the colonies and the mother country. Franklin of course concluded
that for him to remain any longer in England would be of no avail. He had
hitherto exerted all his power to promote a settlement of the dispute, and
had endeavored to calm the excitement of the people at home, and restrain
them from the adoption of any rash or hasty measures. He now, however,
gave up all hope of a peaceable settlement of the question, and returned
to America prepared to do what lay in his power to aid his countrymen in
the approaching struggle.

It was in May, 1775, that Franklin arrived in Philadelphia, just about the
time that open hostilities were commenced between the colonies and the
mother country. Though he was now quite advanced in age, being about
seventy years old, he found himself called to the discharge of the most
responsible and arduous duties. A Continental Congress had been
summoned—to consist of delegates from all the colonies. Franklin was
elected, on the next day after his arrival, as a member of this body, and
he entered at once upon the discharge of the duties which his position
brought upon him, and prosecuted them in the most efficient manner. In all
the measures which were adopted by Congress for organizing and arming the
country, he took a very prominent and conspicuous part. In fact so high
was the estimation in which he was held, on account of his wisdom and
experience, and the far-reaching sagacity which characterized all his
doings, that men were not willing to allow any important business to be
transacted without his concurrence; and at length, notwithstanding his
advanced age, for he was now, as has been said, about seventy years old,
they proposed to send him as a commissioner into Canada.

The province of Canada had not hitherto evinced a disposition to take part
with the other colonies in the contest which had been coming on, and now
Congress, thinking it desirable to secure the co-operation of that colony
if possible, decided on sending a commission there to confer with the
people, and endeavor to induce them to join the general confederation.
Franklin was appointed at the head of this commission. He readily
consented to accept the appointment, though for a man of his years the
journey, long as it was, and leading through such a wilderness as then
intervened, was a very formidable undertaking. So few were the facilities
for traveling in those days that it required five or six weeks to make the
journey. The commissioners left Philadelphia on the 20th of March, and did
not reach Montreal until near the end of April. In fact after commencing
the journey, and finding how fatiguing and how protracted it was likely to
be, Franklin felt some doubt whether he should ever live to return; and
when he reached Saratoga he wrote to a friend, saying that he began to
apprehend that he had undertaken a fatigue which at his time of life might
prove too much for him; and so he had taken paper, he said, to write to a
few friends by way of farewell.

He did, however, safely return, after a time, though unfortunately the
mission proved unsuccessful. The Canadians were not disposed to join the
confederation.

At length early in the spring of 1776 the leading statesmen of America
came to the conclusion that the end of the contest in which they were
engaged must be the absolute and final separation of the colonies from the
mother country, and the establishment of an independent government for
America. When this was resolved upon, a committee of five members of
Congress, namely Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston, were
appointed a committee to prepare a declaration of independence. The
original resolution, on the basis of which the appointment of this
committee was made, was as follows:

“Resolved, That these united colonies are and of right ought to be free
and independent states, and that all political connection between them and
Great Britain is, and of right ought to be totally dissolved.”

                      [Illustration: The Committee.]

This resolution was first proposed and debated on the 8th of June. Some of
the provinces were however found to be not quite prepared for such a
measure, and so the debate was adjourned. The vote was finally taken on
the 1st of July, and carried by a majority of nine out of thirteen
colonies. Pennsylvania and South Carolina were against it; Delaware was
divided; and New York did not vote, on account of some informality in the
instructions of her delegates.

In the mean time the committee had proceeded to the work of drawing up the
declaration of independence. Jefferson was appointed to write the
document, and he, when he had prepared his draft, read it in committee
meeting for the consideration of the other members. The committee approved
the draft substantially as Jefferson had written it, and it was
accordingly reported to Congress and was adopted by the vote of all the
colonies.

For by the time that the final and decisive vote was to be taken, the
delegates from all the colonies had received fresh instructions from their
constituents, or fresh intelligence in respect to the state of public
sentiment in the communities which they represented, so that at last the
concurrence of the colonies was unanimous in the act of separation; and
all the members present on the 4th of July, the day on which the
declaration was passed, excepting one, signed the paper; thus making
themselves individually and personally responsible for it, under the awful
pains and penalties of treason.

In connection with these discussions in relations to the declaration of
independence, a curious instance is preserved of the tone of good humor
and pleasantry which always marked the intercourse which Franklin held
with others, even in cases where interests of the most momentous
importance were concerned. When Jefferson had read his draft in the
presence of the committee, the several members had various suggestions to
make, and amendments to propose, as is usual in such cases; while the
author, as is also equally usual, was very sensitive to these criticisms,
and was unwilling to consent to any changing of his work. At length
Jefferson appearing to be quite annoyed by the changes proposed, Franklin
consoled him by saying that his case was not quite so bad, after all, as
that of John Thompson, the hatter. “He wrote a sign,” said Franklin, “to
be put up over his door, which read thus, ‘_John Thompson makes and sells
hats for ready money_.’ On showing his work to his friends they one and
all began to amend it. The first proposed to strike out ‘for ready money,’
since it was obvious, he said, that if a hatter sold hats at all he would
be glad to sell them for ready money. Another thought the words ‘makes and
sells hats,’ superfluous—that idea being conveyed in the word ‘hatter;’
and finally a third proposed to expunge the ‘hatter,’ and put the figure
of a hat after the name, instead, which he said would be equally well
understood, and be more striking. Thus the composition was reduced from
‘John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,’ to simply
‘John Thompson,’ with the figure of a hat subjoined.” The whole story was
perhaps fabricated by Franklin on the spot, for the occasion. It answered
its purpose, however, perfectly. Jefferson laughed, and his good-humor was
restored.

In the mean time during the summer of 1776 the hostile operations which
had been commenced between the new government and the parent state were
prosecuted on both sides with great vigor. Great Britain however did not
yet give up all hope of persuading the revolted provinces to return. The
English government sent out Lord Howe with instructions to communicate
with the leading men in America and endeavor to effect some accommodation
of the difficulty. When Lord Howe arrived in this country he attempted to
open communications with the Americans through Franklin, but insuperable
difficulties were encountered at the outset. Lord Howe could only treat
with the American authorities as private persons in a state of rebellion,
and the offers he made were offers of _pardon_. The American government
indignantly rejected all such propositions. In a letter which he wrote in
reply to Lord Howe Franklin says, “Directing pardons to be offered to the
colonies, who are the very parties injured, expresses indeed that opinion
of our ignorance, baseness, and insensibility, which your uninformed and
proud nation has long been pleased to entertain of us: but it can have no
other effect than that of increasing our resentment.” Of course all hope
of an accommodation was soon abandoned, and both parties began to give
their whole attention to the means for a vigorous prosecution of the war.

                             [Illustration.]

The American government soon turned their thoughts to the subject of
forming some foreign alliance to help them in the impending struggle; and
they presently proposed to send Franklin to France to attempt to open a
negotiation for this purpose with the government of that country. Franklin
was now very far advanced in life and his age and infirmities would
naturally have prompted him to desire repose—but he did not decline the
duty to which he was thus called; and all aged men should learn from his
example that they are not to consider the work of life as ended, so long
as any available health and strength remain.

Franklin arrived in Paris in the middle of winter in 1776. He traveled on
this expedition wholly as a private person, his appointment as
commissioner to the court of France having been kept a profound secret,
for obvious reasons. He however, immediately entered into private
negotiations with the French ministry, and though he found the French
government disposed to afford the Americans such indirect aid as could be
secretly rendered, they were not yet willing to form any alliance with
them, or to take any open ground in their favor. While this state of
things continued, Franklin, of course, and his brother commissioners could
not be admitted to the French court; but though they were all the time in
secret communication with the government, they assumed the position at
Paris of private gentlemen residing at the great capital for their
pleasure.

Notwithstanding his being thus apparently in private life, Franklin was a
very conspicuous object of public attention at Paris. His name and fame
had been so long before the world, and his character and manners were
invested with so singular a charm, that he was universally known and
admired; all ranks and classes of people were full of enthusiasm for the
venerable American philosopher. Pictures, busts, and medallions of the
illustrious Franklin were met on every hand. He was received into the very
highest society, being welcomed by all circles with the greatest
cordiality and interest.

                        [Illustration: In Paris.]

At length, after the lapse of about a year, the progress of the Americans
in making good their defense against the armies of the mother country was
so decided, that it began to appear very probable that the independence of
the country would be maintained, and the French government deemed that it
would be safe for them to enter into treaties of commerce and friendship
with the new state. This was accordingly done in February, 1778, though it
necessarily involved the consequence of a war with England.

When these treaties were at length signed, Franklin and the two other
commissioners were formally presented at court, where they were received
by the French monarch as the acknowledged representatives of an
independent and sovereign power, now for the first time taking her place
among the nations of the earth. This was an event in the life of Franklin
of the highest interest and importance, since the open negotiations of the
American government by France made the success of the country, in its
effort to achieve its independence, almost certain, and thus it was the
seal and consummation of all that he had been so laboriously toiling to
accomplish for fifty years. For we may safely say that the great end and
aim of Franklin’s life, the one object which he kept constantly in view,
and to which all his efforts tended from the beginning to the end of his
public career, was the security of popular rights and popular liberty
against the encroachments of aristocratic prerogative and power; and the
establishment of the independence of these United States, which he saw
thus happily settled at last, sealed and secured this object for half the
world.

As soon as the event of the acknowledgment of the independence of the
United States of America, by the French government transpired, the whole
subject of the conflict between the late colonies and the mother country
assumed a new aspect before mankind. The British government became now
more desirous than ever to contrive some means of settling the dispute
without entirely losing so important a portion of their ancient dominion.
A great many applications were made to Franklin, by the secret agents of
the British government, with a view of drawing off the Americans from
their alliance with the French, and making a separate peace with them.
Franklin, however, would listen to no such proposals, but on the contrary,
made them all known to the French government.

Another consequence of the recognition of American independence was that a
large number of young French gentlemen desired to proceed to America and
join the army there. Many of them applied to Franklin for commissions—more
in fact than could possibly be received. Among those who were successful
was the Marquis de La Fayette, then a young man, who came to this country
with letters of recommendation from Franklin, and who afterward
distinguished himself so highly in the war.

                       [Illustration: La Fayette.]

After this, Franklin remained in France for several years, at first as
commissioner, and afterward as minister plenipotentiary of the government
at the French court, during all which time the most arduous and the most
responsible public duties devolved upon him. He concluded most important
negotiations with other foreign powers. He received of the French
government and transmitted to America vast sums of money to be used in the
prosecution of the war. He conferred with various other commissioners and
embassadors who were sent out from time to time from the government at
home. In a word, there devolved upon him day by day, an uninterrupted
succession of duties of the most arduous and responsible character.

                     [Illustration: Printing Office.]

It is a curious illustration of the manner in which the tastes and habits
of early life come back in old age, that Franklin was accustomed at this
time, for recreation, to amuse himself with a little printing office,
which he caused to be arranged at his lodgings—on a small scale it is
true—but sufficiently complete to enable him to live his youth over again,
as it were, in bringing back old associations and thoughts to his mind by
giving himself up to his ancient occupations. The things that he printed
in this little office were all trifles, as he called them, and were only
intended for the amusement of his friends; but the work of producing them
gave him great pleasure.

The time at length arrived when England began to conclude that it would be
best for her to give up the attempt to reduce her revolted colonies to
subjection again; and negotiations for peace were commenced at Paris, at
first indirectly and informally, and afterward in a more open and decided
manner. In these negotiations Franklin of course took a very prominent
part. In fact the conclusion and signing of the great treaty of peace
between Great Britain and the United States, by which the independence of
this nation was finally and fully acknowledged, was the last crowning act
of Franklin’s official career. The treaty was signed in 1783, and thus the
work of the great statesman’s life was ended. His public life, in fact,
began and ended with the beginning and the end of that great protracted
struggle by which the American nation was ushered into being. His history
is then simply the history of the establishment of American independence;
and when this work was achieved his duty was done.

Soon after the peace was made, Franklin prepared to take leave of France,
in order to return to his native land. He had contemplated a tour over the
continent before going back to America, but the increasing infirmities of
age prevented the realization of this plan. When the time arrived for
leaving Paris, almost all the rank, fashion, and wealth of the city
gathered around him to bid him farewell. He was borne in the queen’s
palanquin to Havre, and accompanied on the journey by numerous friends.
From Havre he crossed the channel to Southampton, and there took passage
in the London packet for Philadelphia.

The voyage occupied a period of forty-eight days, at the end of which time
the ship anchored just below Philadelphia. The health-officer of the port
went on board, and finding no sickness gave the passengers leave to land.
The passengers accordingly left the ship in a boat, and landed at the
Market-street wharf, where crowds of people were assembled, who received
Franklin with loud acclamations, and accompanied him through the streets,
with cheers and rejoicings, to his door.

In a word, the great philosopher and statesman, on his return to his
native land, received the welcome he deserved, and spent the short period
that still remained to him on earth, surrounded by his countrymen and
friends, the object of universal respect and veneration. But great as was
the veneration which was felt for his name and memory then, it is greater
now, and it will be greater and greater still, at the end of every
succeeding century, as long as any written records of our country’s early
history remain.





NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.(2) THE SYRIAN EXPEDITION. BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.


Though, after the Battle of the Pyramids, Napoleon was the undisputed
master of Egypt, still much was to be accomplished in pursuing the
desperate remnants of the Mamelukes, and in preparing to resist the
overwhelming forces which it was to be expected that England and Turkey
would send against him. Mourad Bey had retreated with a few thousand of
his horsemen into Upper Egypt. Napoleon dispatched General Desaix, with
two thousand men, to pursue him. After several terribly bloody conflicts,
Desaix took possession of all of Upper Egypt as far as the cataracts.
Imbibing the humane and politic sentiments of Napoleon, he became widely
renowned and beloved for his justice and his clemency. A large party of
scientific men accompanied the military division, examining every object
of interest, and taking accurate drawings of those sphinxes, obelisks,
temples, and sepulchral monuments, which, in solitary grandeur, have
withstood the ravages of four thousand years. To the present hour, the
Egyptians remember with affection, the mild and merciful, yet efficient
government of Desaix. They were never weary with contrasting it with the
despotism of the Turks.

               [Illustration: The Escape from the Red Sea.]

In the mean time Napoleon, in person, made an expedition to Suez, to
inspect the proposed route of a canal to connect the waters of the
Mediterranean with the Red Sea. With indefatigable activity of mind he
gave orders for the construction of new works to fortify the harbor of
Suez, and commenced the formation of an infant marine. One day, with quite
a retinue, he made an excursion to that identical point of the Red Sea
which, as tradition reports, the children of Israel crossed three thousand
years ago. The tide was out, and he passed over to the Asiatic shore upon
extended flats. Various objects of interest engrossed his attention until
late in the afternoon, when he commenced his return. The twilight faded
away, and darkness came rapidly on. The party lost their path, and, as
they were wandering, bewildered among the sands, the rapidly returning
tide surrounded them. The darkness of the night increased, and the horses
floundered deeper and deeper in the rising waves The water reached the
girths of the saddles, and dashed upon the feet of the riders, and
destruction seemed inevitable. From this perilous position Napoleon
extricated himself, by that presence of mind, and promptness of decision,
which seemed never to fail him. It was an awful hour and an awful scene.
And yet, amidst the darkness and the rising waves of apparently a
shoreless ocean, the spirit of Napoleon was as unperturbed as if he were
reposing in slippered ease upon his sofa. He collected his escort around
him, in concentric circles, each horseman facing outward, and ranged in
several rows. He then ordered them to advance, each in a straight line.
When the horse of the leader of one of these columns lost his foothold,
and began to swim, the column drew back, and followed in the direction of
another column, which had not yet lost the firm ground. The radii, thus
thrown out in every direction, were thus successively withdrawn, till all
were following in the direction of one column, which had a stable footing.
Thus escape was effected. The horses did not reach the shore until
midnight, when they were wading breast deep in the swelling waves. The
tide rises on that part of the coast to the height of twenty-two feet.
“Had I perished in that manner, like Pharaoh,” said Napoleon, “it would
have furnished all the preachers of Christendom with a magnificent text
against me.”

England, animated in the highest degree by the great victory of Aboukir,
now redoubled her exertions to concentrate all the armies of Europe upon
Republican France. Napoleon had been very solicitous to avoid a rupture
with the Grand Seignor at Constantinople. The Mamelukes who had revolted
against his authority had soothed the pride of the Ottoman Porte, and
purchased peace by paying tribute. Napoleon proposed to continue the
tribute, that the revenues of the Turkish Empire might not be diminished
by the transfer of the sovereignty of Egypt from the oppressive Mamelukes
to better hands. The Sultan was not sorry to see the Mamelukes punished,
but he looked with much jealousy upon the movements of a victorious
European army so near his throne. The destruction of the French fleet
deprived Napoleon of his ascendency in the Levant, and gave the
preponderance to England. The agents of the British government succeeded
in rousing Turkey to arms, to recover a province which the Mamelukes had
wrested from her, before Napoleon took it from the Mamelukes. Russia also,
with her barbaric legions, was roused by the eloquence of England, to rush
upon the French Republic in this day of disaster. Her troops crowded down
from the north to ally themselves with the turbaned Turk, for the
extermination of the French in Egypt. Old enmities were forgotten, as
Christians and Mussulmans grasped hands in friendship, forgetting all
other animosities in their common hatred and dread of Republicanism. The
Russian fleet crowded down from the Black Sea, through the Bosphorus, to
the Golden Horn, where, amidst the thunders of artillery, and the
acclamations of the hundreds of thousands who throng the streets of
Constantinople, Pera, and Scutari, it was received into the embrace of the
Turkish squadron. It was indeed a gorgeous spectacle as, beneath the
unclouded splendor of a September sun, this majestic armament swept
through the beautiful scenery of the Hellespont. The shores of Europe and
Asia, separated by this classic strait, were lined with admiring
spectators, as the crescent and the cross, in friendly blending, fluttered
together in the breeze. The combined squadron emerged into the
Mediterranean, to co-operate with the victorious fleet of England, which
was now the undisputed mistress of the sea. Religious animosities the most
inveterate, and national antipathies the most violent were reconciled by
the pressure of a still stronger hostility to those principles of popular
liberty which threatened to overthrow the despotism both of the Sultan and
the Czar. The Grand Seignor had assembled an army of twenty thousand men
at Rhodes. They were to be conveyed by the combined fleet to the shores of
Egypt, and there effect a landing under cover of its guns. Another vast
army was assembled in Syria, to march down upon the French by way of the
desert, and attack them simultaneously with the forces sent by the fleet.
England, and the emissaries of the Bourbons, with vast sums of money
accumulated from the European monarchies, were actively co-operating upon
the Syrian coast, by landing munitions of war, and by supplying able
military engineers. The British Government was also accumulating a vast
army in India, to be conveyed by transports up the Red Sea, and to fall
upon the French in their rear. England also succeeded in forming a new
coalition with Austria, Sardinia, Naples, and other minor European states
to drive the French out of Italy, and with countless numbers to invade the
territory of France. Thus it would be in vain for the Directory to attempt
even to send succors to their absent general. And it was not doubted that
Napoleon, thus assailed in diverse quarters by overpowering numbers, would
fall an easy prey to his foes. Thus suddenly and portentously peril
frowned upon France from every quarter.

Mourad Bey, animated by this prospect of the overthrow of his victorious
foes, formed a widespread conspiracy, embracing all the friends of the
Mamelukes and of the Turks. Every Frenchman was doomed to death, as in one
hour, all over the land, the conspirators, with scimitar and poniard,
should fall upon their unsuspecting foes. In this dark day of accumulating
disaster the genius of Napoleon blazed forth with new and terrible
brilliance.

But few troops were at the time in Cairo, for no apprehension of danger
was cherished, and the French were scattered over Egypt, engaged in all
plans of utility. At five o’clock on the morning of the 21st of October,
Napoleon was awoke from sleep by the announcement that the city was in
revolt, that mounted Bedouin Arabs were crowding in at the gates, that
several officers and many soldiers were already assassinated. He ordered
an aid immediately to take a number of the Guard, and quell the
insurrection. But a few moments passed ere one of them returned covered
with blood, and informed him that all the rest were slain. It was an hour
of fearful peril. Calmly, fearlessly, mercilessly did Napoleon encounter
it. Immediately mounting his horse, accompanied by a body of his faithful
Guards, he proceeded to every threatened point. Instantly the presence of
Napoleon was felt. A perfect storm of grape-shot, cannon-balls, and
bomb-shells swept the streets with unintermitted and terrible destruction.
Blood flowed in torrents. The insurgents, in dismay, fled to the most
populous quarter of the city. Napoleon followed them with their doom, as
calm as destiny. From the windows and the roofs the insurgents fought with
desperation. The buildings were immediately enveloped in flames. They fled
into the streets only to be hewn down with sabres and mown down with
grape-shot. Multitudes, bleeding and breathless with consternation, sought
refuge in the mosques. The mosques were battered down and set on fire, and
the wretched inmates perished miserably. The calm yet terrible energy with
which Napoleon annihilated “the murderers of the French,” sent a thrill of
dismay through Egypt. A large body of Turks, who had surprised and
assassinated a party of the French, intrenched themselves in a small
village. Their doom was sealed. The next day a long line of asses, heavily
laden with sacks, was seen entering the gates of Cairo. The mysterious
procession proceeded to the public square. The sacks were opened, and the
ghastly, gory heads of the assassins were rolled upon the pavements. The
city gazed upon the spectacle with horror. “Such,” said Napoleon, sternly,
“is the doom of murderers.” This language of energetic action was awfully
eloquent. It was heard and heeded. It accomplished the purpose for which
it was uttered. Neither Turk nor Arab ventured again to raise the dagger
against Napoleon. Egypt felt the spell of the mighty conqueror, and stood
still, while he gathered his strength to encounter England, and Russia,
and Turkey in their combined power. What comment shall be made upon this
horrible transaction. It was the stern necessity of diabolical war. “My
soldiers,” said Napoleon, “are my children.” The lives of thirty thousand
Frenchmen were in his keeping. Mercy to the barbaric and insurgent Turks
would have been counted weakness, and the bones of Napoleon and of his
army would soon have whitened the sands of the desert. War is a wholesale
system of brutality and carnage. The most revolting, execrable details are
essential to its vigorous execution. Bomb-shells can not be thrown
affectionately. Charges of cavalry can not be made with a meek and lowly
spirit. Red-hot shot, falling into the beleagured city, will not turn from
the cradle of the infant, or from the couch of the dying maiden. These
horrible scenes must continue to be enacted till the nations of the earth
shall learn war no more.

Early in January, Napoleon received intelligence that the vanguard of the
Syrian army, with a formidable artillery train, and vast military stores,
which had been furnished from the English ships, had invaded Egypt, on the
borders of the great Syrian desert, and had captured El Arish. He
immediately resolved to anticipate the movement of his enemies, to cross
the desert with the rapidity of the wind, to fall upon the enemy unawares,
and thus to cut up this formidable army before it could be strengthened by
the co-operation of the host assembled at Rhodes.

Napoleon intended to rally around his standard the Druses of Mount
Lebanon, and all the Christian tribes of Syria, who were anxiously
awaiting his approach, and having established friendly relations with the
Ottoman Porte, to march, with an army of an hundred thousand auxiliaries,
upon the Indus, and drive the English out of India. As England was the
undisputed mistress of the sea, this was the only point where Republican
France could assail its unrelenting foe. The imagination of Napoleon was
lost in contemplating the visions of power and of empire thus rising
before him.

                 [Illustration: The Dromedary Regiment.]

For such an enterprise the ambitious general, with an army of but ten
thousand men, commenced his march over the desert, one hundred and fifty
miles broad, which separates Africa from Asia. The Pacha of Syria, called
Achmet the _Butcher_, from his merciless ferocity, was execrated by the
Syrians. Napoleon had received delegations from the Christian tribes
entreating him to come for their deliverance from the most intolerable
oppression, and assuring him of their readiness to join his standard. The
English, to divert the attention of Napoleon from his project upon Syria,
commenced the bombardment of Alexandria. He understood the object of the
unavailing attack, and treated it with disdain. He raised a regiment of
entirely a new kind, called the dromedary regiment. Two men, seated back
to back, were mounted on each dromedary; and such was the strength and
endurance of these animals, that they could thus travel ninety miles
without food, water, or rest. This regiment was formed to give chase to
the Arab robbers who, in fierce banditti bands, were the scourge of Egypt.
The marauders were held in terror by the destruction with which they were
overwhelmed by these swift avengers. Napoleon himself rode upon a
dromedary. The conveyance of an army of ten thousand men, with horses and
artillery, across such an apparently interminable waste of shifting sand,
was attended with inconceivable suffering. To allay the despair of the
soldiers, Napoleon, ever calm and unagitated in the contemplation of any
catastrophe however dreadful, soon dismounted, and waded through the
burning sands by the side of the soldiers, sharing the deprivations and
the toils of the humblest private in the ranks. Five days were occupied in
traversing this forlorn waste. Water was carried for the troops in skins.
At times portions of the army, almost perishing with thirst, surrendered
themselves to despair. The presence of Napoleon, however, invariably
reanimated hope and courage. The soldiers were ashamed to complain when
they saw their youthful leader, pale and slender, and with health
seriously impaired, toiling along by their side, sharing cheerfully all
their privations and fatigues. The heat of these glowing deserts, beneath
the fierce glare of a cloudless sun, was almost intolerable. At one time,
when nearly suffocated by the intense heat, while passing by some ruins, a
common soldier yielded to Napoleon the fragments of a pillar, in whose
refreshing shadow he contrived, for a few moments, to shield his head.
“And this,” said Napoleon, “was no trifling concession.” At another time a
party of the troops got lost among the sand hills and nearly perished.
Napoleon took some Arabs on dromedaries, and hastened in pursuit of them.
When found they were nearly dead from thirst, fatigue, and despair. Some
of the younger soldiers, in their frenzy, had broken their muskets and
thrown them away. The sight of their beloved general revived their hopes,
and inspired them with new life. Napoleon informed them that provisions
and water were at hand. “But,” said he, “if relief had been longer
delayed, would that have excused your murmurings and loss of courage? No!
soldiers, learn to die with honor.”

After a march of five days they arrived before El Arish, one of those
small, strongly fortified military towns, deformed by every aspect of
poverty and wretchedness, with which iron despotism has filled the once
fertile plains of Syria. El Arish was within the boundaries of Egypt. It
had been captured by the Turks, and they had accumulated there immense
magazines of military stores. It was the hour of midnight when Napoleon
arrived beneath its walls. The Turks, not dreaming that a foe was near,
were roused from sleep by the storm of balls and shells, shaking the walls
and crushing down through the roofs of their dwellings. They sprang to
their guns, and, behind the ramparts of stone, fought with their
accustomed bravery. But after a short and bloody conflict, they were
compelled to retire, and effected a disorderly retreat. The garrison, in
the citadel, consisting of nearly two thousand men, were taken prisoners.
Napoleon was not a little embarrassed in deciding what to do with these
men. He had but ten thousand soldiers with whom to encounter the whole
power of the Ottoman Porte, aided by the fleets of England and Russia.
Famine was in his camp, and it was with difficulty that he could obtain
daily rations for his troops. He could not keep these prisoners with him.
They would eat the bread for which his army was hungering; they would
demand a strong guard to keep them from insurrection; and the French army
was already so disproportionate to the number of its foes, that not an
individual could be spared from active service. They would surely take
occasion, in the perilous moments of the day of battle, to rise in revolt,
and thus, perhaps, effect the total destruction of the French army.
Consequently, to retain them in the camp was an idea not to be entertained
for a moment. To disarm them, and dismiss them upon their word of honor no
longer to serve against the French, appeared almost equally perilous.
There was no sense of honor in the heart of the barbarian Turk. The very
idea of keeping faith with infidels they laughed to scorn. They would
immediately join the nearest division of the Turkish army, and thus swell
the already multitudinous ranks of the foe, and even if they did not
secure the final defeat of Napoleon, they would certainly cost him the
lives of many of his soldiers. He could not supply them with food, neither
could he spare an escort to conduct them across the desert to Egypt. To
shoot them in cold blood was revolting to humanity. Napoleon, however,
generously resolved to give them their liberty, taking their pledge that
they would no longer serve against him; and in order to help them keep
their word, he sent a division of the army to escort them, one day’s
march, toward Bagdad, whither they promised to go. But no sooner had the
escort commenced its return to the army, than these men, between one and
two thousand in number, turned also, and made a straight path for their
feet to the fortress of Jaffa, laughing at the simplicity of their
outwitted foe. But Napoleon was not a man to be laughed at. This merriment
soon died away in fearful wailings. Here they joined the marshaled hosts
of Achmet the Butcher. The bloody pacha armed them anew, and placed them
in his foremost ranks, again to pour a shower of bullets upon the little
band headed by Napoleon. El Arish is in Egypt, eighteen miles from the
granite pillars which mark the confines of Asia and Africa. Napoleon now
continued his march through a dry, barren, and thirsty land. After having
traversed a dreary desert of an hundred and fifty miles, the whole aspect
of the country began rapidly to change. The soldiers were delighted to see
the wreaths of vapor gathering in the hitherto glowing and cloudless
skies. Green and flowery valleys, groves of olive-trees, and wood-covered
hills, rose, like a vision of enchantment, before the eye, so long weary
of gazing upon shifting sands and barren rocks. Napoleon often alluded to
his passage across the desert, remarking that the scene was ever
peculiarly gratifying to his mind. “I never passed the desert,” said he,
“without experiencing very powerful emotions. It was the image of
immensity to my thoughts. It displayed no limits. It had neither beginning
nor end. It was an ocean for the foot of man.” As they approached the
mountains of Syria, clouds began to darken the sky, and when a few drops
of rain descended, a phenomenon which they had not witnessed for many
months, the joy of the soldiers was exuberant. A murmur of delight ran
through the army, and a curious spectacle was presented, as, with shouts
of joy and peals of laughter, the soldiers, in a body, threw back their
heads and opened their mouths, to catch the grateful drops upon their dry
and thirsty lips.

But when dark night came on, and, with saturated clothing, they threw
themselves down, in the drenching rain, for their night’s bivouac, they
remembered with pleasure the star-spangled firmament and the dry sands of
cloudless, rainless Egypt. The march of a few days brought them to Gaza.
Here they encountered another division of the Turkish army. Though headed
by the ferocious Achmet himself, the Turks were, in an hour, dispersed
before the resistless onset of the French, and all the military stores,
which had been collected in the place, fell into the hands of the
conqueror. But perils were now rapidly accumulating around the adventurous
band. England, with her invincible fleet, was landing men, and munitions
of war and artillery, and European engineers, to arrest the progress of
the audacious and indefatigable victor. The combined squadrons of Turkey
and Russia, also, were hovering along the coast, to prevent any possible
supplies from being forwarded to Napoleon from Alexandria. Thirty thousand
Turks, infantry and horsemen, were marshaled at Damascus. Twenty thousand
were at Rhodes. Through all the ravines of Syria, the turbaned Musselmans,
with gleaming sabres, were crowding down to swell the hostile ranks,
already sufficiently numerous to render Napoleon’s destruction apparently
certain. Still unintimidated, Napoleon pressed on, with the utmost
celerity, into the midst of his foes. On the 3d of March, twenty-three
days after leaving Cairo, he arrived at Jaffa, the ancient Joppa. This
place, strongly garrisoned, was surrounded by a massive wall flanked by
towers. Napoleon had no heavy battering train, for such ponderous machines
could not be dragged across the desert. He had ordered some pieces to be
forwarded to him from Alexandria, by small vessels, which could coast near
the shore. But they had been intercepted and taken by the vigilance of the
English cruisers. Not an hour, however, was to be lost. From every point
in the circumference of the circle, of which his little band was the
centre, the foe was hurrying to meet him. The sea was whitened with their
fleets, and the tramp of their dense columns shook the land. His only hope
was, by rapidity of action, to defeat the separate divisions before all
should unite. With his light artillery he battered a breach in the walls,
and then, to save the effusion of blood, sent a summons to the commander
to surrender. The barbarian Turk, regardless of the rules of civilized
warfare, cut off the head of the unfortunate messenger, and raised the
ghastly, gory trophy, upon a pole, from one of the towers. This was his
bloody defiance and his threat. The enraged soldiers, with extraordinary
intrepidity, rushed in at the breach and took sanguinary vengeance. The
French suffered very severely, and the carnage, on both sides, was awful.
Nothing could restrain the fury of the assailants, enraged at the wanton
murder of their comrade. For many hours a scene of horror was exhibited in
the streets of Jaffa, which could hardly have been surpassed had the
conflict raged between fiends in the world of woe. Earth has never
presented a spectacle more horrible than that of a city taken by assault.
The vilest and the most abandoned of mankind invariably crowd into the
ranks of an army. Imagination shrinks appalled from the contemplation of
the rush of ten thousand demons, infuriated and inflamed, into the
dwellings of a crowded city.

Napoleon, shocked at the outrages which were perpetrated, sent two of his
aids to appease the fury of the soldiers, and to stop the massacre.
Proceeding upon this message of mercy, they advanced to a large building
where a portion of the garrison had taken refuge. The soldiers were
shooting them as they appeared at the windows, battering the doors with
cannon-balls, and setting fire to the edifice, that all might be consumed
together. The Turks fought with the energies of despair. These were the
men who had capitulated at El Arish, and who had violated their parole.
They now offered to surrender again, if their lives might be spared. The
aids, with much difficulty, rescued them from the rage of the maddened
soldiers, and they were conducted, some two thousand in number, as
prisoners into the French camp. Napoleon was walking in front of his tent,
when he saw this multitude of men approaching. The whole dreadfulness of
the dilemma in which he was placed flashed upon him instantaneously. His
countenance fell, and in tones of deep grief he exclaimed, “What do they
wish me to do with these men? Have I food for them—ships to convey them to
Egypt or France? Why have they served me thus?” The aids excused
themselves for taking them prisoners, by pleading that he had ordered them
to go and stop the carnage. “Yes!” Napoleon replied sadly, “as to women,
children, and old men, all the peaceable inhabitants, but not with respect
to armed soldiers. It was your duty to die, rather than bring these
unfortunate creatures to me. What do you want me to do with them?”

A council of war was immediately held in the tent of Napoleon, to decide
upon their fate. Long did the council deliberate, and, finally, it
adjourned without coming to any conclusion. The next day the council was
again convened. All the generals of division were summoned to attend. For
many anxious hours they deliberated, sincerely desirous of discovering any
measures by which they might save the lives of the unfortunate prisoners.
The murmurs of the French soldiers were loud and threatening. They
complained bitterly of having their scanty rations given to the prisoners;
of having men again liberated who had already broken their pledge of
honor, and had caused the death of many of their comrades. General Bon
represented that the discontent was so deep and general, that unless
something were expeditiously done, a serious revolt in the army was to be
apprehended. Still the council adjourned, and the third day arrived
without their being able to come to any conclusion favorable to the lives
of these unfortunate men. Napoleon watched the ocean with intense
solicitude, hoping against hope that some French vessel might appear, to
relieve him of the fearful burden. But the evil went on increasing. The
murmurs grew louder. The peril of the army was real and imminent, and, by
the delay, was already seriously magnified. It was impossible longer to
keep the prisoners in the camp. If set at liberty, it was only
contributing so many more troops to swell the ranks of Achmet the Butcher,
and thus, perhaps, to insure the total discomfiture and destruction of the
French army. The Turks spared no prisoners. All who fell into their hands
perished by horrible torture. The council at last unanimously decided that
the men must be put to death. Napoleon, with extreme reluctance, signed
the fatal order. The melancholy troop, in the silence of despair, were
led, firmly fettered, to the sand hills, on the sea-coast, where they were
divided into small squares, and mown down by successive discharges of
musketry. The dreadful scene was soon over, and they were all silent in
death. The pyramid of their bones still remains in the desert, a frightful
memorial of the horrors of war.

As this transaction has ever been deemed the darkest blot upon the
character of Napoleon, it seems but fair to give his defense in his own
words: “I ordered,” said Napoleon at St. Helena, “about a thousand or
twelve hundred to be shot. Among the garrison at Jaffa a number of Turkish
troops were discovered, whom I had taken a short time before at El Arish,
and sent to Bagdad, on their parole not to be found in arms against me for
a year. I had caused them to be escorted thirty-six miles, on their way to
Bagdad, by a division of my army. But, instead of proceeding to Bagdad,
they threw themselves into Jaffa, defended it to the last, and cost me the
lives of many of my brave troops. Moreover, before I attacked the town I
sent them a flag of truce. Immediately after, we saw the head of the
bearer elevated on a pole over the wall. Now, if I had spared them again,
and sent them away on their parole, they would directly have gone to Acre,
and have played over, for the second time, the same scene that they had
done at Jaffa. In justice to the lives of my soldiers, as every general
ought to consider himself as their father, and them as his children, I
could not allow this. To leave as a guard a portion of my army, already
reduced in number in consequence of the breach of faith of those wretches,
was impossible. Indeed, to have acted otherwise than as I did, would
probably have caused the destruction of my whole army. I, therefore,
availing myself of the rights of war, which authorize the putting to death
prisoners taken under such circumstances, independent of the right given
to me by having taken the city by assault, and that of retaliation on the
Turks, ordered that the prisoners, who, in defiance of their capitulation,
had been found bearing arms against me, should be selected out and shot.
The rest, amounting to a considerable number, were spared. I would do the
same thing again to-morrow, and so would Wellington, or any general
commanding an army under similar circumstances.” Whatever judgment
posterity may pronounce upon this transaction, no one can see in it any
indication of an innate love of cruelty in Napoleon. He regarded the
transaction as one of the stern necessities of war. The whole system is
one of unmitigated horror. Bomb-shells are thrown into cities to explode
in the chambers of maidens and in the cradles of infants, and the
incidental destruction of innocence and helplessness is disregarded. The
execrable ferocity of the details of war are essential to the system. To
say that Napoleon ought not to have shot these prisoners, is simply to say
that he ought to have relinquished the contest, to have surrendered
himself and his army to the tender mercies of the Turk; and to allow
England, and Austria, and Russia, to force back upon the disenthralled
French nation the detested reign of the Bourbons. England was bombarding
the cities of France, to compel a proud nation to re-enthrone a discarded
and hated king. The French, in self-defense, were endeavoring to repel
their powerful foe, by marching to India, England’s only vulnerable point.
Surely, the responsibility of this war rests with the assailants, and not
with the assailed. There was a powerful party in the British Parliament
and throughout the nation, the friends of reform and of popular liberty,
who sympathized entirely with the French in this conflict, and who
earnestly protested against a war which they deemed impolitic and unjust.
But the king and the nobles prevailed, and as the French would not meekly
submit to their demands, the world was deluged with blood. “Nothing was
easier,” says Alison, “than to have disarmed the captives and sent them
away.” The remark is unworthy of the eloquent and distinguished historian.
It is simply affirming that France should have yielded the conflict, and
submitted to British dictation. It would have been far more in accordance
with the spirit of the events to have said, “Nothing was easier than for
England to allow France to choose her own form of government.” But had
this been done, the throne of England’s king, and the castles of her
nobles might have been overturned by the earthquake of revolution. Alas,
for man!

Bourrienne, the rejected secretary of Napoleon, who became the enemy of
his former benefactor, and who, as the minister and flatterer of Louis
XVIII., recorded with caustic bitterness the career of the great rival of
the European kings, thus closes his narrative of this transaction: “I have
related the truth; the whole truth. I assisted at all the conferences and
deliberations, though, of course, without possessing any deliberative
voice. But I must in candor declare, that had I possessed a right of
voting, my voice would have been for death. The result of the
deliberations, and the circumstances of the army, would have constrained
me to this. War, unfortunately, offers instances, by no means rare, in
which an immutable law, of all times and common to all nations, has
decreed that private interests shall succumb to the paramount good of the
public, and that humanity itself shall be forgotten. It is for posterity
to judge whether such was the terrible position of Bonaparte. I have a
firm conviction that it was. And this is strengthened by the fact, that
the opinion of the members of the council was unanimous upon the subject,
and that the order was issued upon their decision. I owe it also to truth
to state, that Napoleon yielded only at the last extremity, and was,
perhaps, one of those who witnessed the massacre with the deepest sorrow.”
Even Sir Walter Scott, who, unfortunately, allowed his Tory predilections
to dim the truth of his unstudied yet classic page, while affirming that
“this bloody deed must always remain a deep stain upon the character of
Napoleon,” is constrained to admit, “yet we do not view it as the
indulgence of an innate love of cruelty; for nothing in Bonaparte’s
history shows the existence of that vice; and there are many things which
intimate his disposition to have been naturally humane.”

Napoleon now prepared to march upon Acre, the most important military post
in Syria. Behind its strong ramparts Achmet the Butcher had gathered all
his troops and military stores, determined upon the most desperate
resistance. Colonel Philippeaux, an emissary of the Bourbons, and a former
school-mate of Napoleon, contributed all the skill of an accomplished
French engineer in arming the fortifications and conducting the defense.
Achmet immediately sent intelligence of the approaching attack to Sir
Sydney Smith, who was cruising in the Levant with an English fleet. He
immediately sailed for Acre, with two ships of the line and several
smaller vessels, and proudly entered the harbor two days before the French
made their appearance, strengthening Achmet with an abundant supply of
engineers, artillerymen, and ammunition. Most unfortunately for Napoleon,
Sir Sydney, just before he entered the harbor, captured the flotilla,
dispatched from Alexandria with the siege equipage, as it was cautiously
creeping around the headlands of Carmel. The whole battering train,
amounting to forty-four heavy guns, he immediately mounted upon the
ramparts, and manned them with English soldiers. This was an irreparable
loss to Napoleon, but with undiminished zeal the besiegers, with very
slender means, advanced their works. Napoleon now sent an officer with a
letter to Achmet, offering to treat for peace “Why,” said he, in this,
“should I deprive an old man, whom I do not know, of a few years of life?
What signify a few leagues more, added to the countries I have conquered?
Since God has given victory into my hands, I will, like him, be forgiving
and merciful, not only toward the people, but toward their rulers also.”
The barbarian Turk, regardless of the flag of truce, cut off the head of
this messenger, though Napoleon had taken the precaution to send a Turkish
prisoner with the flag, and raised the ghastly trophy upon a pole, over
his battlements, in savage defiance. The decapitated body he sewed up in a
sack, and threw it into the sea. Napoleon then issued a proclamation to
the people of Syria: “I am come into Syria,” said he, “to drive out the
Mamelukes and the army of the Pacha. What right had Achmet to send his
troops to attack me in Egypt? He has provoked me to war. I have brought it
to him. But it is not on you, inhabitants, that I intend to inflict its
horrors. Remain quiet in your homes. Let those who have abandoned them
through fear return again. I will grant to every one the property which he
possesses. It is my wish that the Cadis continue their functions as usual,
and dispense justice; that religion, in particular, be protected and
revered, and that the mosques should continue to be frequented by all
faithful Mussulmans. It is from God that all good things come; it is he
who gives the victory. The example of what has occurred at Gaza and Jaffa
ought to teach you that if I am terrible to my enemies, I am kind to my
friends, and, above all, benevolent and merciful to the poor.”

The plague, that most dreadful scourge of the East, now broke out in the
army. It was a new form of danger, and created a fearful panic. The
soldiers refused to approach their sick comrades, and even the physicians,
terrified in view of the fearful contagion, abandoned the sufferers to die
unaided. Napoleon immediately entered the hospitals, sat down by the cots
of the sick soldiers, took their fevered hands in his own, even pressed
their bleeding tumors, and spoke to them words of encouragement and hope.
The dying soldiers looked upon their heroic and sympathizing friend with
eyes moistened with gratitude, and blessed him. Their courage was
reanimated and thus they gained new strength to throw off the dreadful
disease. “You are right,” said a grenadier, upon whom the plague had made
such ravages, that he could hardly move a limb; “your grenadiers were not
made to die in a hospital.” The physicians, shamed by the heroism of
Napoleon, returned to their duty. The soldiers, animated by the example of
their chief, no longer refused to administer to the wants of their
suffering comrades, and thus the progress of the infection in the army was
materially arrested. One of the physicians reproached Napoleon for his
imprudence, in exposing himself to such fearful peril. He coolly replied,
“It is but my duty. I am the commander-in-chief.”

                   [Illustration: The Plague Hospital.]

Napoleon now pressed the siege of Acre. It was the only fortress in Syria
which could stop him. Its subjugation would make him the undisputed master
of Syria. Napoleon had already formed an alliance with the Druses and
other Christian tribes, who had taken refuge from the extortions of the
Turks, among the mountains of Lebanon, and they only awaited the capture
of Acre to join his standard in a body, and to throw off the intolerable
yoke of Moslem despotism. Delegations of their leading men frequently
appeared in the tent of Napoleon, and their prayers were fervently
ascending for the success of the French arms. That in this conflict
Napoleon was contending on the side of human liberty, and the allies for
the support of despotism, is undeniable. The Turks were not idle. By vast
exertions they had roused the whole Mussulman population to march, in the
name of the Prophet, for the destruction of the “Christian dogs.” An
enormous army was marshaled, and was on its way for the relief of the
beleagured city. Damascus had furnished its thousands. The scattered
remnants of the fierce Mamelukes, and the mounted Bedouins of the desert,
had congregated, to rush, with resistless numbers, upon their bold
antagonist.

Napoleon had been engaged for ten days in an almost incessant assault upon
the works of Acre, when the approach of the great Turkish army was
announced. It consisted of about thirty thousand troops, twelve thousand
of whom were the fiercest and best-trained horsemen in the world. Napoleon
had but eight thousand effective men with which to encounter the
well-trained army of Europeans and Turks within the walls of Acre, and the
numerous host rushing to its rescue. He acted with his usual promptitude.
Leaving two thousand men to protect the works and cover the siege, he
boldly advanced with but six thousand men, to encounter the thirty
thousand already exulting in his speedy and sure destruction. Kleber was
sent forward with an advance-guard of three thousand men. Napoleon
followed soon after, with three thousand more. As Kleber, with his little
band, defiled from a narrow valley at the foot of Mount Tabor, he entered
upon an extended plain. It was early in the morning of the sixteenth of
April. The unclouded sun was just rising over the hills of Palestine, and
revealed to his view the whole embattled Turkish host spread out before
him. The eye was dazzled with the magnificent spectacle, as proud banners
and plumes, and gaudy turbans and glittering steel, and all the barbaric
martial pomp of the East was reflected by the rays of the brilliant
morning. Twelve thousand horsemen, decorated with the most gorgeous
trappings of military show, and mounted on the fleetest Arabian chargers,
were prancing and curveting in all directions. A loud and exultant shout
of vengeance and joy, rising like the roar of the ocean, burst from the
Turkish ranks, as soon as they perceived their victims enter the plain.
The French, too proud and self-confident to retreat before any superiority
in numbers, had barely time to form themselves into one of Napoleon’s
impregnable squares, when the whole cavalcade of horsemen, with gleaming
sabres and hideous yells, and like the sweep of the wind, came rushing
down upon them. Every man in the French squares knew that his life
depended upon his immobility; and each one stood, shoulder to shoulder
with his comrades, like a rock. It is impossible to drive a horse upon the
point of a bayonet. He has an instinct of self-preservation which no power
of the spur can overcome. He can be driven to the bayonet’s point, but if
the bayonet remains firm he will rear and plunge, and wheel, in defiance
of all the efforts of his rider to force his breast against it. As the
immense mass came thundering down upon the square, it was received by
volcanic bursts of fire from the French veterans, and horse and riders
rolled together in the dust. Chevaux-de-frise of bayonets, presented from
every side of this living, flaming citadel, prevented the possibility of
piercing the square. For six long hours this little band sustained the
dreadful and unequal conflict. The artillery of the enemy plowed their
ranks in vain. In vain the horsemen made reiterated charges on every side.
The French, by the tremendous fire incessantly pouring from their ranks,
soon formed around them a rampart of dead men and horses. Behind this
horrible abattis, they bid stern defiance to the utmost fury of their
enemies. Seven long hours passed away while the battle raged with unabated
ferocity. The mid-day sun was now blazing upon the exhausted band. Their
ammunition was nearly expended. Notwithstanding the enormous slaughter
they had made, their foes seemed undiminished in number. A conflict so
unequal could not much longer continue. The French were calling to their
aid a noble despair, expecting there to perish, but resolved, to a man, to
sell their lives most dearly.

Matters were in this state, when at one o’clock Napoleon, with three
thousand men, arrived on the heights which overlooked the field of battle.
The field was covered with a countless multitude, swaying to and fro in
the most horrible clamor and confusion. They were canopied with thick
volumes of smoke, which almost concealed the combatants from view.
Napoleon could only distinguish the French by the regular and
unintermitted volleys which issued from their ranks, presenting one steady
spot, incessantly emitting lightning flashes, in the midst of the moving
multitude with which it was surrounded. With that instinctive judgment
which enabled him, with the rapidity of lightning, to adopt the most
important decisions, Napoleon instantly took his resolution. He formed his
little band into two squares, and advanced in such a manner as to compose,
with the square of Kleber, a triangle inclosing the Turks. Thus, with
unparalleled audacity, with six thousand men he undertook to surround
thirty thousand of as fierce and desperate soldiers as the world has ever
seen. Cautiously and silently the two squares hurried on to the relief of
their friends, giving no sign of approach, till they were just ready to
plunge upon the plains. Suddenly the loud report of a cannon upon the
hills startled with joyful surprise the weary heroes. They recognized
instantly the voice of Napoleon rushing to their rescue. One wild shout of
almost delirious joy burst from the ranks. “It is Bonaparte! It is
Bonaparte!” That name operated as a talisman upon every heart. Tears of
emotion dimmed the eyes of those scarred and bleeding veterans, as,
disdaining longer to act upon the defensive, they grasped their weapons
with nervous energy, and made a desperate onset upon their multitudinous
foes. The Turks were assailed by a murderous fire instantaneously
discharged from the three points of this triangle. Discouraged by the
indomitable resolution with which they had been repulsed, and bewildered
by the triple assault, they broke and fled. The mighty host, like ocean
waves, swept across the plain, when suddenly it was encountered by one of
the fresh squares, and in refluent surges rolled back in frightful
disorder. A scene of horror now ensued utterly unimaginable. The Turks
were cut off from retreat in every direction. The enormous mass of
infantry, horse, artillery, and baggage, was driven in upon itself, in
wild and horrible confusion. From the French squares there flashed one
incessant sheet of flame. Peal after peal, the artillery thundered in a
continuous roar. These thoroughly-drilled veterans fired with a rapidity
and a precision which seemed to the Turks supernatural. An incessant storm
of cannon-balls, grape-shot, and bullets pierced the motley mass, and the
bayonets of the French dripped with blood.

Murat was there, with his proud cavalry—Murat, whom Napoleon has described
as in battle probably the bravest man in the world. Of majestic frame,
dressed in the extreme of military ostentation, and mounted upon the most
powerful of Arabian chargers, he towered, proudly eminent, above all his
band. With the utmost enthusiasm he charged into the swollen tide of
turbaned heads and flashing scimitars. As his strong horse reared and
plunged in the midst of the sabre strokes falling swiftly on every side
around him, his white plume, which ever led to victory, gleamed like a
banner over the tumultuous throng. It is almost an inexplicable
development of human nature to hear Murat exclaim, “In the hottest of this
terrible fight, I thought of Christ, and of his transfiguration upon this
very spot, two thousand years ago, and the reflection inspired me with
ten-fold courage and strength.” The fiend-like disposition created by
these horrible scenes, is illustrated by the conduct of a French soldier
on this occasion. He was dying of a frightful wound. Still he crawled to a
mangled Mameluke, even more feeble than himself, also in the agonies of
death, and, seizing him by the throat, tried to strangle him. “How can
you,” exclaimed a French officer, to the human tiger, “in your condition,
be guilty of such an act?” “You speak much at your ease,” the man replied,
“you who are unhurt; but I, while I am dying, must reap some enjoyment
while I can.”

The victory was complete. The Turkish army was not merely conquered, it
was destroyed. As that day’s sun, vailed in smoke, solemnly descended,
like a ball of fire, behind the hills of Lebanon, the whole majestic
array, assembled for the invasion of Egypt, and who had boasted that they
were “innumerable as the sands of the sea or as the stars of heaven,” had
disappeared to be seen no more. The Turkish camp, with four hundred camels
and an immense booty, fell into the hands of the victors.

This signal victory was achieved by a small division of Napoleon’s army,
of but six thousand men, in a pitched battle, on an open field. Such
exploits history can not record without amazement. The ostensible and
avowed object of Napoleon’s march into Syria was now accomplished.
Napoleon returned again to Acre, to prosecute with new vigor its siege,
for, though the great army, marshaled for his destruction, was
annihilated, he had other plans, infinitely more majestic, revolving in
his capacious mind. One evening he was standing with his secretary upon
the mount which still bears the name of Richard Cœur de Lion,
contemplating the smouldering scene of blood and ruin around him, when,
after a few moments of silent thought, he exclaimed, “Yes, Bourrienne,
that miserable fort has cost me dear. But matters have gone too far not to
make a last effort. The fate of the East depends upon the capture of Acre.
That is the key of Constantinople or of India. If we succeed in taking
this paltry town, I shall obtain the treasures of the Pacha, and arms for
three hundred thousand men. I will then raise and arm the whole population
of Syria, already so exasperated by the cruelty of Achmet, and for whose
fall all classes daily supplicate Heaven. I shall advance on Damascus and
Aleppo. I will recruit my army, as I advance, by enlisting all the
discontented. I will announce to the people the breaking of their chains
and the abolition of the tyrannical governments of the Pachas. The Druses
wait but for the fall of Acre, to declare themselves. I am already offered
the keys of Damascus. My armed masses will penetrate to Constantinople,
and the Mussulman dominion will be overturned. I shall found in the East a
new and mighty empire, which will fix my position with posterity.”

With these visions animating his mind, and having fully persuaded himself
that he was the child of destiny, he prosecuted, with all possible vigor,
the siege of Acre. But English and Russian and Turkish fleets were in that
harbor. English generals, and French engineers, and European and Turkish
soldiers, stood, side by side, behind those formidable ramparts, to resist
the utmost endeavors of their assailants, with equal vigor, science, and
fearlessness. No pen can describe the desperate conflicts and the scenes
of carnage which ensued. Day after day, night after night, and week after
week, the horrible slaughter, without intermission, continued. The French
succeeded in transporting, by means of their cruisers, from Alexandria, a
few pieces of heavy artillery, and the walls of Acre were reduced to a
pile of blackened ruins. The streets were plowed up, and the houses blown
down by bomb-shells. Bleeding forms, blackened with smoke, and with
clothing burnt and tattered, rushed upon each other, with dripping sabres
and bayonets, and with hideous yells which rose even above the incessant
thunders of the cannonade. The noise, the uproar, the flash of guns, the
enveloping cloud of sulphurous smoke converting the day into hideous
night, and the unintermitted flashes of musketry and artillery,
transforming night into lurid and portentous day, the forms of the
combatants, gliding like spectres, with demoniacal fury through the
darkness, the blast of trumpets, the shout of onset, the shriek of death,
presented a scene which no tongue can tell nor imagination conceive. There
was no time to bury the dead, and the putrefaction of hundreds of corpses
under that burning sun added appalling horrors. To the pure spirits of a
happier world, in the sweet companionship of celestial mansions, loving
and blessing each other, it must have appeared a spectacle worthy of
pandemonium. And yet the human heart is so wicked, that it can often,
forgetting the atrocity of such a scene, find a strange pleasure in the
contemplation of its energy and its heroism. We are indeed a fallen race.

There were occasional lulls in this awful storm, during which each party
would be rousing its energies for more terrible collision. The besiegers
burrowed mines deep under the foundations of walls and towers, and with
the explosion of hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, opened volcanic
craters, blowing men and rocks into hideous ruin. In the midst of the
shower of destruction darkening the skies, the assailants rushed, with
sabres and dripping bayonets, to the assault. The onset, on the part of
the French, was as furious and desperate as mortal man is capable of
making. The repulse was equally determined and fearless.

Sir Sydney Smith conducted the defense, with the combined English and
Turkish troops. He displayed consummate skill, and unconquerable firmness,
and availed himself of every weapon of effective warfare. Conscious of the
earnest desire of the French soldiers to return to France, and of the
despair with which the army had been oppressed when the fleet was
destroyed, and thus all hope of return was cut off, he circulated a
proclamation among them, offering to convey safely to France every soldier
who would desert from the standard of Napoleon. This proclamation, in
large numbers, was thrown from the ramparts to the French troops. A more
tempting offer could not have been presented, and yet so strong was the
attachment of the soldiers for their chief, that it is not known that a
single individual availed himself of the privilege. Napoleon issued a
counter proclamation to his army, in which he asserted that the English
commodore had actually gone mad. This so provoked Sir Sydney, that he sent
a challenge to Napoleon to meet him in single combat. The young general
proudly replied, “If Sir Sydney will send Marlborough from his grave, to
meet me, I will think of it. In the mean time, if the gallant commodore
wishes to display his personal prowess, I will neutralize a few yards of
the beach, and send a tall grenadier, with whom he can run a tilt.”

In the progress of the siege, Gen. Caffarelli was struck by a ball and
mortally wounded. For eighteen days he lingered in extreme pain, and then
died. Napoleon was strongly attached to him, and during all the period,
twice every day, made a visit to his couch of suffering. So great was his
influence over the patient, that though the wounded general was frequently
delirious, no sooner was the name of Napoleon announced, than he became
perfectly collected, and conversed coherently.

                     [Illustration: The Bomb-Shell.]

The most affecting proofs were frequently given of the entire devotion of
the troops to Napoleon. One day, while giving some directions in the
trenches, a shell, with its fuse fiercely burning, fell at his feet. Two
grenadiers, perceiving his danger, instantly rushed toward him, encircled
him in their arms, and completely shielded every part of his body with
their own. The shell exploded, blowing a hole in the earth sufficiently
large to bury a cart and two horses. All three were tumbled into the
excavation, and covered with stones and sand. One of the men was rather
severely wounded; Napoleon escaped with but a few slight bruises. He
immediately elevated both of these heroes to the rank of officers.

“Never yet, I believe,” said Napoleon, “has there been such devotion shown
by soldiers to their general, as mine have manifested for me. At Arcola,
Colonel Muiron threw himself before me, covered my body with his own, and
received the blow which was intended for me. He fell at my feet, and his
blood spouted up in my face. In all my misfortunes never has the soldier
been wanting in fidelity—never has man been served more faithfully by his
troops. With the last drop of blood gushing out of their veins, they
exclaimed, _Vive Napoleon_.”

The siege had now continued for sixty days. Napoleon had lost nearly three
thousand men, by the sword and the plague. The hospitals were full of the
sick and the wounded. Still, Napoleon remitted not his efforts. “Victory,”
said he, “belongs to the most persevering.” Napoleon had now expended all
his cannon-balls. By a singular expedient he obtained a fresh supply. A
party of soldiers was sent upon the beach, and set to work, apparently
throwing up a rampart for the erection of a battery. Sir Sydney
immediately approached with the English ships, and poured in upon them
broadside after broadside from all his tiers. The soldiers, who perfectly
comprehended the joke, convulsed with laughter, ran and collected the
balls as they rolled over the sand. Napoleon ordered a dollar to be paid
to the soldiers for each ball thus obtained. When this supply was
exhausted, a few horsemen or wagons were sent out upon the beach, as if
engaged in some important movement, when the English commodore would again
approach and present them, from his plethoric magazines, with another
liberal supply. Thus for a long time Napoleon replenished his exhausted
stores.

One afternoon in May, a fleet of thirty sail of the line was descried in
the distant horizon, approaching Acre. All eyes were instantly turned in
that direction. The sight awakened intense anxiety in the hearts of both
besiegers and besieged. The French hoped that they were French ships
conveying to them succors from Alexandria or from France. The besieged
flattered themselves that they were friendly sails, bringing to them such
aid as would enable them effectually to repulse their terrible foes. The
English cruisers immediately stood out of the bay to reconnoitre the
unknown fleet. Great was the disappointment of the French when they saw
the two squadrons unite, and the crescent of the Turk, and the pennant of
England, in friendly blending, approach the bay together. The Turkish
fleet brought a reinforcement of twelve thousand men, with an abundant
supply of military stores. Napoleon’s only hope was to capture the place
before the disembarkation of these reinforcements. Calculating that the
landing could not be effected in less than six hours, he resolved upon an
immediate assault. In the deepening twilight, a black and massy column,
issued from the trenches, and advanced, with the firm and silent steps of
utter desperation, to the breach. The besieged knowing that, if they could
hold out but a few hours longer, deliverance was certain, were animated to
the most determined resistance. A horrible scene of slaughter ensued. The
troops, from the ships, in the utmost haste, were embarked in the boats,
and were pulling, as rapidly as possible, across the bay, to aid their
failing friends. Sir Sydney himself headed the crews of the ships, and led
them armed with pikes to the breach. The assailants gained the summit of
the heap of stones into which the wall had been battered, and even forced
their way into the garden of the pacha. But a perfect swarm of janizaries
suddenly poured in upon them, with the keen sabre in one hand, and the
dagger in the other, and in a few moments they were all reduced to
headless trunks. The Turks gave no quarter. The remorseless Butcher sat in
the court-yard of his palace, paying a liberal reward for the gory head of
every infidel which was laid at his feet. He smiled upon the ghastly
trophies heaped up in piles around him. The chivalric Sir Sydney must at
times have felt not a little abashed in contemplating the deeds of his
allies. He was, however, fighting to arrest the progress of free
institutions, and the scimitar of the Turk was a fitting instrument to be
employed in such a service. In promotion of the same object, but a few
years before, the “tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage” had been
called into requisition, to deluge the borders of our own land with blood.
Napoleon was contending to wrest from the hand of Achmet the Butcher, his
bloody scimitar. Sir Sydney, with the united despots of Turkey and of
Russia, was struggling to help him retain it.

Sir Sydney also issued a proclamation to the Druses, and other Christian
tribes of Syria, urging them to trust to the faith of a “Christian
knight,” rather than to that of an “unprincipled renegado.” But the
“Christian knight,” in the hour of victory, forgot the poor Druses, and
they were left, without even one word of sympathy, to bleed, during ages
whose limits can not yet be seen, beneath the dripping yataghan of the
Moslem. Column after column of the French advanced to the assault, but all
were repulsed with dreadful slaughter. Every hour the strength of the
enemy was increasing. Every hour the forces of Napoleon were melting away,
before the awful storm sweeping from the battlements. In these terrific
conflicts, where immense masses were contending hand to hand, it was found
that the scimitar of the Turk was a far more efficient weapon of
destruction than the bayonet of the European.

Success was now hopeless. Sadly Napoleon made preparations to relinquish
the enterprise. He knew that a formidable Turkish army, aided by the
fleets of England and Russia, was soon to be conveyed from Rhodes to
Egypt. Not an hour longer could he delay his return to meet it. Had not
Napoleon been crippled by the loss of his fleet at Aboukir, victory at
Acre would have been attained without any difficulty. The imagination is
bewildered in contemplating the results which might have ensued. Even
without the aid of the fleet, but for the indomitable activity, courage,
and energy of Sir Sydney Smith, Acre would have fallen, and the bloody
reign of the Butcher would have come to an end. This destruction of
Napoleon’s magnificent anticipations of Oriental conquest must have been a
bitter disappointment. It was the termination of the most sanguine hope of
his life. And it was a lofty ambition in the heart of a young man of
twenty-six, to break the chains which bound the countless millions of
Asia, in the most degrading slavery, and to create a boundless empire such
as earth had never before seen, which should develop all the physical,
intellectual, and social energies of man.

History can record with unerring truth the _deeds_ of man and his _avowed
designs_. The attempt to delineate the conflicting _motives_, which
stimulate the heart of a frail mortal, are hazardous. Even the most lowly
Christian finds unworthy motives mingling with his best actions. Napoleon
was not a Christian. He had learned no lessons in the school of Christ.
Did he merely wish to aggrandize himself, to create and perpetuate his own
renown, by being the greatest and the best monarch earth has ever known?
This is not a Christian spirit. But it is not like the spirit which
demonized the heart of Nero, which stimulated the lust of Henry the
Eighth, which fired the bosom of Alexander with his invincible phalanxes,
and which urged Tamerlane, with his mounted hordes, to the field of blood.
Our Saviour was entirely regardless of self in his endeavors to bless
mankind. Even Washington, who though one of the best of mortals, must be
contemplated at an infinite distance from the Son of God, seemed to forget
himself in his love for his country. That absence of regard for self can
not be so distinctly seen in Napoleon. He wished to be the great
benefactor of the world, elevating the condition and rousing the energies
of man, not that he might obtain wealth and live in splendor, not that he
might revel in voluptuous indulgences, but apparently that his own name
might be embalmed in glory. This is not a holy motive. Neither is it
degrading and dishonorable. We hate the mercenary despot. We despise the
voluptuary. But history can not justly consign Napoleon either to hatred
or to contempt. Had Christian motives impelled him, making all due
allowance for human frailty, he might have been regarded as a saint. Now
he is but a hero.

The ambitious conqueror who invades a peaceful land, and with fire and
blood subjugates a timid and helpless people, that he may bow their necks
to the yoke of slavery, that he may doom them to ignorance and
degradation, that he may extort from them their treasures by the energies
of the dungeon, the scimetar, and the bastinado, consigning the millions
to mud hovels, penury, and misery, that he and his haughty parasites may
revel in voluptuousness and splendor, deserves the execrations of the
world. Such were the rulers of the Orient. But we can not with equal
severity condemn the ambition of him, who marches not to forge chains, but
to break them; not to establish despotism, but to assail despotic
usurpers; not to degrade and impoverish the people, but to ennoble, and to
elevate, and to enrich them; not to extort from the scanty earnings of the
poor the means of living in licentiousness and all luxurious indulgence,
but to endure all toil, all hardship, all deprivation cheerfully, that the
lethargic nations may be roused to enterprise, to industry, and to thrift.
Such was the ambition of Napoleon. Surely it was lofty. But far more lofty
is that ambition of which Christ is the great exemplar, which can bury
self entirely in oblivion.

Twenty years after the discomfiture at Acre, Napoleon, when imprisoned
upon the Rock of St. Helena, alluded to these dreams of his early life.
“Acre once taken,” said he; “the French army would have flown to Aleppo
and Damascus. In the twinkling of an eye it would have been on the
Euphrates. The Christians of Syria, the Druses, the Christians of Armenia,
would have joined it. The whole population of the East would have been
agitated.” Some one said, he would have soon been reinforced by one
hundred thousand men. “Say rather, six hundred thousand,” Napoleon
replied. “Who can calculate what would have happened! I would have reached
Constantinople and the Indies—I would have changed the face of the world.”

The manner in which Napoleon bore this disappointment most strikingly
illustrates the truth of his own remarkable assertion. “Nature seems to
have calculated that I should endure great reverses. She has given me a
mind of marble. Thunder can not ruffle it. The shaft merely glides along.”
Even his most intimate friends could discern no indications of discontent.
He seemed to feel that it was not his destiny to found an empire in the
East, and, acquiescing without a murmur, he turned his attention to other
enterprises. “That man,” said he, with perfect good-nature, speaking of
Sir Sydney Smith, “made me miss my destiny.” Napoleon ever manifested the
most singular magnanimity in recognizing the good qualities of his
enemies. He indulged in no feelings of exasperation toward Sir Sydney,
notwithstanding his agency in frustrating the most cherished plan of his
life.—Wurmser, with whom he engaged in such terrible conflicts in Italy,
he declared to be a brave and magnanimous foe; and, in the hour of
triumph, treated him with a degree of delicacy and generosity which could
not have been surpassed had his vanquished antagonist been his intimate
friend. Of Prince Charles, with whom he fought repeated and most desperate
battles in his march upon Vienna, he remarked, “He is a _good man_, which
includes every thing when said of a prince. He is incapable of a
dishonorable action.” And even of his eccentric and versatile antagonist
at Acre, Napoleon says, with great impartiality and accuracy of judgment,
“Sir Sydney Smith is a brave officer. He displayed considerable ability in
the treaty for the evacuation of Egypt by the French. He also manifested
great honor in sending immediately to Kleber the refusal of Lord Keith to
ratify the treaty, which saved the French army. If he had kept it a secret
for seven or eight days longer, Cairo would have been given up to the
Turks, and the French army would have been obliged to surrender to the
English. He also displayed great humanity and honor in all his proceedings
toward the French who fell into his hands. He is active, intelligent,
intriguing, and indefatigable; but I believe that he is half crazy. The
chief cause of the failure at Acre was, that he took all my battering
train, which was on board several small vessels. Had it not been for that
I should have taken Acre in spite of him. He behaved very bravely. He sent
me, by means of a flag of truce, a lieutenant or midshipman, with a letter
containing a challenge to me, to meet him in some place he pointed out, in
order to fight a duel. I laughed at this, and sent him back an intimation
that when he brought Marlborough to fight me, I would meet him.
Notwithstanding this, I like the character of the man. He has certain good
qualities, and, as an old enemy, I should like to see him.”

A minute dissector of human nature may discern, in this singular candor, a
destitution of earnestness of principle. The heart is incapable of this
indifference, when it cherishes a profound conviction of right and wrong.
It is undoubtedly true that Napoleon encountered his foes upon the field
of battle, with very much the same feeling with which he would meet an
opponent in a game of chess. These wars were fierce conflicts between the
kings and the people; and Napoleon was not angry with the kings for
defending strongly their own cause. There were of course moments of
irritation, but his prevailing feeling was that his foes were to be
conquered, not condemned. At one time he expressed much surprise in
perceiving that Alexander of Russia had allowed feelings of personal
hostility to enter into the conflict. A chess-player could not have
manifested more unaffected wonder, in finding his opponent in a rage at
the check of his king. Napoleon does not appear often to have acted from a
deep sense of moral obligation. His justice, generosity, and magnanimity
were rather the instinctive impulses of a noble nature, than the result of
a profound conviction of duty. We see but few indications, in the life of
Napoleon, of tenderness of conscience. That faculty needs a kind of
culture which Napoleon never enjoyed.

He also cherished the conviction that his opponents were urged on by the
same destiny by which he believed himself to be impelled. “I am well
taught,” said Dryfesdale, “and strong in the belief, that man does naught
of himself. He is but the foam upon the billow, which rises, bubbles, and
bursts, not by its own efforts, but by the mightier impulse of fate, which
urges him.” The doctrine called _destiny_ by Napoleon, and _philosophical
necessity_ by Priestley, and _divine decrees_ by Calvin, assuming in each
mind characteristic modifications, indicated by the name which each
assigned to it, is a doctrine which often nerves to the most heroic and
virtuous endeavors, and which is also capable of the most awful
perversion.

Napoleon was an inveterate enemy to dueling, and strongly prohibited it in
the army. One evening in Egypt, at a convivial party, General Lanusse
spoke sarcastically respecting the condition of the army. Junot,
understanding his remarks to reflect upon Napoleon, whom he almost
worshiped, was instantly in a flame, and stigmatized Lanusse as a traitor.
Lanusse retorted by calling Junot a scoundrel. Instantly swords were
drawn, and all were upon their feet, for such words demanded blood.
“Hearken,” said Junot, sternly, “I called you a traitor; I do not think
that you are one. You called me a scoundrel; you know that I am not such.
But we must fight. One of us must die. I hate you, for you have abused the
man whom I love and admire, as much as I do God, if not more.” It was a
dark night. The whole party, by the light of torches, proceeded to the
bottom of the garden which sloped to the Nile, when the two half
inebriated generals cut at each other with their swords, until the head of
Lanusse was laid open, and the bowels of Junot almost protruded from a
frightful wound. When Napoleon, the next morning, heard of the occurrence,
he was exceedingly indignant. “What?” exclaimed he, “are they determined
to cut each other’s throats? Must they go into the midst of the reeds of
the Nile to dispute it with the crocodiles? Have they not enough, then,
with the Arabs, the plague, and the Mamelukes? You deserve, Monsieur
Junot,” said he, as if his aid were present before him, “you richly
deserve, as soon as you get well, to be put under arrest for a month.”

In preparation for abandoning the siege of Acre, Napoleon issued the
following proclamation to his troops. “Soldiers! You have traversed the
desert which separates Asia from Africa, with the rapidity of an Arab
force. The army, which was on its march to invade Egypt, is destroyed. You
have taken its general, its field artillery, camels, and baggage. You have
captured all the fortified posts, which secure the wells of the desert.
You have dispersed, at Mount Tabor, those swarms of brigands, collected
from all parts of Asia, hoping to share the plunder of Egypt. The thirty
ships, which, twelve days since, you saw enter the port of Acre, were
destined for an attack upon Alexandria. But you compelled them to hasten
to the relief of Acre. Several of their standards will contribute to adorn
your triumphal entry into Egypt. After having maintained the war, with a
handful of men, during three months, in the heart of Syria, taken forty
pieces of cannon, fifty stands of colors, six thousand prisoners, and
captured or destroyed the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, and Acre, we
prepare to return to Egypt, where, by a threatened invasion, our presence
is imperiously demanded. A few days longer might give you the hope of
taking the Pacha in his palace. But at this season the castle of Acre is
not worth the loss of three days, nor the loss of those brave soldiers who
would consequently fall, and who are necessary for more essential
services. Soldiers! we have yet a toilsome and a perilous task to perform.
After having, by this campaign, secured ourselves from attacks from the
eastward, it will perhaps be necessary to repel efforts which may be made
from the west.”

On the 20th of May, Napoleon, for the first time in his life, relinquished
an enterprise unaccomplished. An incessant fire was kept up in the
trenches till the last moment, while the baggage, the sick, and the field
artillery were silently defiling to the rear, so that the Turks had no
suspicion that the besiegers were about to abandon their works. Napoleon
left three thousand of his troops, slain or dead of the plague, buried in
the sands of Acre. He had accomplished the ostensible and avowed object of
his expedition. He had utterly destroyed the vast assemblages formed in
Syria for the invasion of Egypt, and had rendered the enemy, in that
quarter, incapable of acting against him. Acre had been overwhelmed by his
fire, and was now reduced to a heap of ruins. Those vague and brilliant
dreams of conquest in the East, which he secretly cherished, had not been
revealed to the soldiers. They simply knew that they had triumphantly
accomplished the object announced to them, in the destruction of the great
Turkish army. Elated with the pride of conquerors, they prepared to
return, with the utmost celerity, to encounter another army, assembled at
Rhodes, which was soon to be landed, by the hostile fleet, upon some part
of the shores of Egypt. Thus, while Napoleon was frustrated in the
accomplishment of his undivulged but most majestic plans, he still
appeared to the world an invincible conqueror.

There were, in the hospitals, twelve hundred sick and wounded. These were
to be conveyed on horses and on litters. Napoleon relinquished his own
horse for the wounded, and toiled along through the burning sands with the
humblest soldiers on foot. The Druses and other tribes, hostile to the
Porte, were in a state of great dismay when they learned that the French
were retiring. They knew that they must encounter terrible vengeance at
the hands of Achmet the Butcher. The victory of the allies riveted upon
them anew their chains, and a wail, which would have caused the ear of
Christendom to tingle, ascended from terrified villages, as fathers and
mothers and children cowered beneath the storm of vengeance which fell
upon them, from the hands of the merciless Turk. But England was too far
away for the shrieks to be heard in her pious dwellings.

At Jaffa, among the multitude of the sick, there were seven found near to
death. They were dying of the plague, and could not be removed. Napoleon
himself fearlessly went into the plague hospital, passed through all its
wards, and spoke words of sympathy and encouragement to the sufferers. The
eyes of the dying were turned to him, and followed his steps, with
indescribable affection, as he passed from cot to cot. The seven who were
in such a condition that their removal was impossible, Napoleon for some
time contemplated with most tender solicitude. He could not endure the
thought of leaving them to be taken by the Turks; for the Turks tortured
to death every prisoner who fell into their hands. He at last suggested to
the physician the expediency of administering to them an opium pill, which
would expedite, by a few hours, their death, and thus save them from the
hands of their cruel foe. The physician gave the highly admired reply, “My
profession is to cure, not to kill.” Napoleon reflected a moment in
silence, and said no more upon the subject, but left a rear-guard of five
hundred men to protect them, until the last should have expired. For this
suggestion Napoleon has been most severely censured. However much it may
indicate mistaken views of Christian duty, it certainly does not indicate
a cruel disposition. It was his tenderness of heart, and his love for his
soldiers, which led to the proposal. An unfeeling monster would not have
troubled himself about these few valueless and dying men; but, without a
thought, would have left them to their fate. In reference to the severity
with which this transaction has been condemned, Napoleon remarked at St.
Helena, “I do not think that it would have been a crime had opium been
administered to them. On the contrary, I think it would have been a
virtue. To leave a few unfortunate men, who could not recover, in order
that they might be massacred by the Turks with the most dreadful tortures,
as was their custom, would, I think, have been cruelty. A general ought to
act with his soldiers, as he would wish should be done to himself. Now
would not any man, under similar circumstances, who had his senses, have
preferred dying easily, a few hours sooner, rather than expire under the
tortures of those barbarians? If my own son, and I believe I love my son
as well as any father does his child, were in a similar situation with
these men, I would advise it to be done. And if so situated myself, I
would insist upon it, if I had sense enough and strength enough to demand
it. However, affairs were not so pressing as to prevent me from leaving a
party to take care of them, which was done. If I had thought such a
measure as that of giving opium necessary, I would have called a council
of war, have stated the necessity of it, and have published it in the
order of the day. It should have been no secret. Do you think, if I had
been capable of secretly poisoning my soldiers, as doing a necessary
action secretly would give it the appearance of a crime, or of such
barbarities as driving my carriage over the dead, and the still bleeding
bodies of the wounded, that my troops would have fought for me with an
enthusiasm and affection without a parallel? No, no! I never should have
done so a second time. Some would have shot me in passing. Even some of
the wounded, who had sufficient strength left to pull a trigger, would
have dispatched me. I never committed a crime in all my political career.
At my last hour I can assert that. Had I done so, I should not have been
here now. I should have dispatched the Bourbons. It only rested with me to
give my consent, and they would have ceased to live. I have, however,
often thought since on this point of morals, and, I believe, if thoroughly
considered, it is always better to suffer a man to terminate his destiny,
be it what it may. I judged so afterward in the case of my friend Duroc,
who, when his bowels were falling out before my eyes, repeatedly cried to
me to have him put out of his misery. I said to him ‘I pity you, my
friend, but there is no remedy, it is necessary to suffer to the last.’ ”

Sir Robert Wilson recorded, that the merciless and blood-thirsty monster
Napoleon, poisoned at Jaffa five hundred and eighty of his sick and
wounded soldiers, merely to relieve himself of the encumbrance of taking
care of them. The statement was circulated, and believed throughout Europe
and America. And thousands still judge of Napoleon through the influence
of such assertions. Sir Robert was afterward convinced of his error, and
became the friend of Napoleon. When some one was speaking, in terms of
indignation, of the author of the atrocious libel, Napoleon replied, “You
know but little of men and of the passions by which they are actuated.
What leads you to imagine that Sir Robert is not a man of enthusiasm and
of violent passions, who wrote what he then believed to be true? He may
have been misinformed and deceived, and may now be sorry for it. He may be
as sincere now in wishing us well as he formerly was in seeking to injure
us.” Again he said, “The fact is that I not only never committed any
crime, but I never even thought of doing so. I have always marched with
the opinions of five or six millions of men. In spite of all the libels, I
have no fear whatever respecting my fame. Posterity will do me justice.
The truth will be known, and the good which I have done will be compared
with the faults which I have committed. I am not uneasy as to the result.”

Baron Larrey was the chief of the medical staff. “Larrey,” said Napoleon
to O’Meara, “was the most honest man, and the best friend to the soldier
whom I ever knew. Indefatigable in his exertions for the wounded, he was
seen on the field of battle, immediately after an action, accompanied by a
train of young surgeons, endeavoring to discover if any signs of life
remained in the bodies. He scarcely allowed a moment of repose to his
assistants, and kept them ever at their posts. He tormented the generals,
and disturbed them out of their beds at night, whenever he wanted
accommodations or assistance for the sick or wounded. They were all afraid
of him, as they knew that if his wishes were not complied with, he would
immediately come and make a complaint to me.” Larrey, on his return to
Europe, published a medical work, which he dedicated to Napoleon as a
tribute due to him for the care which he always took of the sick and
wounded soldiers. Assulini, another eminent physician, records, “Napoleon,
great in every emergence, braved on several occasions the danger of
contagion. I have seen him in the hospitals at Jaffa, inspecting the
wards, and talking familiarly with the soldiers attacked by the plague.
This heroic example allayed the fears of the army, cheered the spirits of
the sick, and encouraged the hospital attendants, whom the progress of the
disease and the fear of contagion had considerably alarmed.”

The march over the burning desert was long and painful, and many of the
sick and wounded perished. The sufferings of the army were inconceivable.
Twelve hundred persons, faint with disease, or agonized with broken bones
or ghastly wounds, were borne along, over the rough and weary way, on
horseback. Many were so exhausted with debility and pain that they were
tied to the saddles, and were thus hurried onward, with limbs freshly
amputated and with bones shivered to splinters. The path of the army was
marked by the bodies of the dead, which were dropped by the way-side.
There were not horses enough for the sick and the wounded, though Napoleon
and all his generals marched on foot. The artillery pieces were left among
the sand hills, that the horses might be used for the relief of the
sufferers. Many of the wounded were necessarily abandoned to perish by the
way-side. Many who could not obtain a horse, knowing the horrible death by
torture which awaited them, should they fall into the hands of the Turks,
hobbled along with bleeding wounds in intolerable agony. With most
affecting earnestness, though unavailingly, they implored their comrades
to help them. Misery destroys humanity. Each one thought only of himself.
Seldom have the demoralizing influences and the horrors of war been more
signally displayed than in this march of twenty-five days. Napoleon was
deeply moved by the spectacle of misery around him. One day as he was
toiling along through the sands, at the head of a column, with the blazing
sun of Syria pouring down upon his unprotected head, with the sick, the
wounded, and the dying, all around him, he saw an officer, in perfect
health, riding on horseback, refusing to surrender his saddle to the sick.
The indignation of Napoleon was so aroused, that by one blow from the hilt
of his sword he laid the officer prostrate upon the earth, and then helped
a wounded soldier into his saddle. The deed was greeted with a shout of
acclamation from the ranks. The “recording angel in heaven’s chancery”
will blot out the record of such violence with a tear.

The historian has no right to draw the vail over the revolting horrors of
war. Though he may wish to preserve his pages from the repulsive recital,
justice to humanity demands that the barbarism, the crime, and the cruelty
of war should be faithfully portrayed. The soldiers refused to render the
slightest assistance to the sick or the wounded. They feared that every
one who was not well was attacked by the plague. These poor dying
sufferers were not only objects of horror, but also of derision. The
soldiers burst into immoderate fits of laughter in looking upon the
convulsive efforts which the dying made to rise from the sands upon which
they had fallen. “He has made up his account,” said one. “He will not get
on far,” said another. And when the exhausted wretch fell to rise no more,
they exclaimed, with perfect indifference, “His lodging is secured.” The
troops were harassed upon their march by hordes of mounted Arabs, ever
prowling around them. To protect themselves from assault, and to avenge
attacks, they fired villages, and burned the fields of grain, and with
bestial fury pursued shrieking maids and matrons. Such deeds almost
invariably attend the progress of an army, for an army is ever the resort
and the congenial home of the moral dregs of creation. Napoleon must at
times have been horror-stricken in contemplating the infernal
instrumentality which he was using for the accomplishment of his purposes.
The only excuse which can be offered for him is, that it was then as now,
the prevalent conviction of the world that war, with all its inevitable
abominations, is a necessary evil. The soldiers were glad to be fired upon
from a house, for it furnished them with an excuse for rushing in, and
perpetrating deeds of atrocious violence in its secret chambers.

Those infected by the plague accompanied the army at some distance from
the main body. Their encampment was always separated from the bivouacs of
the troops, and was with terror avoided by those soldiers who, without the
tremor of a nerve, could storm a battery. Napoleon, however, always
pitched his tent by their side. Every night he visited them to see if
their wants were attended to. And every morning he was present, with
parental kindness, to see them file off at the moment of departure. Such
tenderness, at the hands of one who was filling the world with his renown,
won the hearts of the soldiers. He merited their love. Even to the present
day the scarred and mutilated victims of these wars, still lingering in
the Hotel des Invalides at Paris, will flame with enthusiastic admiration
at the very mention of the name of Napoleon. There is no man, living or
dead, who at the present moment is the object of such enthusiastic love as
Napoleon Bonaparte. And they who knew him the best love him the most.

One day, on their return, an Arab tribe came to meet him, to show their
respect and to offer their services as guides. The son of the chief of the
tribe, a little boy about twelve years of age, was mounted on a dromedary,
riding by the side of Napoleon, and chatting with great familiarity.
“Sultan Kebir,” said the young Arab to Napoleon, “I could give you good
advice, now that you are returning to Cairo.” “Well! speak, my friend,”
said Napoleon; “if your advice is good I will follow it.” “I will tell you
what I would do, were I in your place,” the young chief rejoined. “As soon
as I got to Cairo, I would send for the richest slave-merchant in the
market, and I would choose twenty of the prettiest women for myself. I
would then send for the richest jewelers, and would make them give me up a
good share of their stock. I would then do the same with all the other
merchants. For what is the use of reigning, or being powerful, if not to
acquire riches?” “But, my friend,” replied Napoleon, “suppose it were more
noble to preserve these things for others?” The young barbarian was quite
perplexed in endeavoring to comprehend ambition so lofty, intellectual,
and refined. “He was, however,” said Napoleon, “very promising for an
Arab. He was lively and courageous, and led his troops with dignity and
order. He is perhaps destined one day or other, to carry his advice into
execution in the market-place of Cairo.”

                 [Illustration: Arrival of the Courier.]

At length Napoleon arrived at Cairo, after an absence of three months.
With great pomp and triumph he entered the city. He found, on his return
to Egypt, that deep discontent pervaded the army. The soldiers had now
been absent from France for a year. For six months they had heard no news
whatever from home, as not a single French vessel had been able to cross
the Mediterranean. Napoleon, finding his plans frustrated for establishing
an empire which should overshadow all the East, began to turn his thoughts
again to France. He knew, however, that there was another Turkish army
collected at Rhodes, prepared, in co-operation with the fleets of Russia
and England, to make a descent on Egypt. He could not think of leaving the
army until that formidable foe was disposed of. He knew not when or where
the landing would be attempted, and could only wait.

One evening, in July, he was walking with a friend in the environs of
Cairo, beneath the shadow of the Pyramids, when an Arab horseman was seen,
enveloped in a cloud of dust, rapidly approaching him over the desert. He
brought dispatches from Alexandria, informing Napoleon that a powerful
fleet had appeared in the Bay of Aboukir, that eighteen thousand Turks had
landed, fierce and fearless soldiers, each armed with musket, pistol, and
sabre; that their artillery was numerous, and well served by British
officers; that the combined English, Russian, and Turkish fleets supported
the armament in the bay; that Mourad Bey, with a numerous body of Mameluke
cavalry, was crossing the desert from Upper Egypt to join the invaders;
that the village of Aboukir had been taken by the Turks, the garrison cut
to pieces, and the citadel compelled to capitulate. Thus the storm burst
upon Egypt.

Napoleon immediately retired to his tent, where he remained till 3 o’clock
the next morning, dictating orders for the instant advance of the troops;
and for the conduct of those who were to remain in Cairo, and at the other
military stations. At 4 o’clock in the morning he was on horseback, and
the army in full march. The French troops were necessarily so
scattered—some in Upper Egypt, eight hundred miles above Cairo, some upon
the borders of the desert to prevent incursions from Syria, some at
Alexandria—that Napoleon could take with him but eight thousand men. By
night and by day, through smothering dust and burning sands, and beneath
the rays of an almost blistering sun, his troops, hungry and thirsty, with
iron sinews, almost rushed along, accomplishing one of those extraordinary
marches which filled the world with wonder. In seven days he reached the
Bay of Aboukir.

It was the hour of midnight, on the 25th of July, 1799, when Napoleon,
with six thousand men, arrived within sight of the strongly intrenched
camp of the Turks. They had thrown up intrenchments among the sand-hills
on the shore of the bay. He ascended an eminence and carefully examined
the position of his sleeping foes. By the bright moonlight he saw the vast
fleet of the allies riding at anchor in the offing, and his practiced eye
could count the mighty host, of infantry and artillery and horsemen,
slumbering before him. He knew that the Turks were awaiting the arrival of
the formidable Mameluke cavalry from Egypt, and for still greater
reinforcements, of men and munitions of war, from Acre, and other parts of
Syria. Kleber, with a division of two thousand of the army, had not yet
arrived. Napoleon resolved immediately to attack his foes, though they
were eighteen thousand strong. It was indeed an unequal conflict. These
janizaries were the most fierce, merciless, and indomitable of men; and
their energies were directed by English officers and by French engineers.
Just one year before, Napoleon with his army had landed upon that beach.
Where the allied fleet now rode so proudly, the French fleet had been
utterly destroyed. The bosom of Napoleon burned with the desire to avenge
this disaster. As Napoleon stood silently contemplating the scene, Murat
by his side, he foresaw the long results depending upon the issue of the
conflict. Utter defeat would be to him utter ruin. A partial victory would
but prolong the conflict, and render it impossible for him, without
dishonor, to abandon Egypt and return to France. The entire destruction of
his foes would enable him, with the renown of an invincible conqueror, to
leave the army in safety and embark for Paris, where he doubted not that,
in the tumult of the unsettled times, avenues of glory would be opened
before him. So strongly was he impressed with the great destinies for
which he believed himself to be created, that, turning to Murat, he said,
“This battle will decide the fate of the world.” The distinguished cavalry
commander, unable to appreciate the grandeur of Napoleon’s thoughts,
replied, “At least of this army. But every French soldier feels now that
he must conquer or die. And be assured, if ever infantry were charged to
the teeth by cavalry, the Turks shall be to-morrow so charged by mine.”

The first gray of the morning was just appearing in the East, when the
Turkish army was aroused by the tramp of the French columns, and by a
shower of bomb-shells falling in the midst of their intrenchments. One of
the most terrible battles recorded in history then ensued. The awful
genius of Napoleon never shone forth more fearfully than on that bloody
day. He stood upon a gentle eminence, calm, silent, unperturbed, pitiless,
and guided, with resistless skill, the carnage. The onslaught of the
French was like that of wolves. The Turks were driven like deer before
them. Every man remembered that in that bay the proud fleet of France had
perished. Every man felt that the kings of Europe had banded for the
destruction of the French Republic. Every man exulted in the thought that
there were but six thousand French Republicans to hurl themselves upon
England, Russia, and Turkey combined, nearly twenty thousand strong. The
Turks, perplexed and confounded by the skill and fury of the assault, were
driven in upon each other in horrible confusion. The French, trained to
load and fire with a rapidity which seemed miraculous, poured in upon them
a perfect hurricane of bullets, balls, and shells. They were torn to
pieces, mown down, bayoneted, and trampled under iron hoofs. In utter
consternation, thousands of them plunged into the sea, horsemen and
footmen, and struggled in the waves, in the insane attempt to swim to the
ships, three miles distant from the shore. With terrible calmness of
energy Napoleon opened upon the drowning host the tornado of his
batteries, and the water was swept with grape-shot as by a hail-storm. The
Turks were on the point of a peninsula. Escape by land was impossible.
They would not ask for quarter. The silent and proud spirit of Napoleon
was inflamed with the resolve to achieve a victory which should reclaim
the name of Aboukir to the arms of France. Murat redeemed his pledge.
Plunging with his cavalry into the densest throng of the enemy, he spurred
his fiery steed, reckless of peril, to the very centre of the Turkish
camp, where stood Mustapha Pacha, surrounded by his staff. The proud Turk
had barely time to discharge a pistol at his audacious foe, which slightly
wounded Murat, ere the dripping sabre of the French general severed half
of his hand from the wrist. Thus wounded, the leader of the Turkish army
was immediately captured, and sent in triumph to Napoleon. As Napoleon
received his illustrious prisoner, magnanimously desiring to soothe the
bitterness of his utter discomfiture, he courteously said, “I will take
care to inform the Sultan of the courage you have displayed in this
battle, though it has been your misfortune to lose it.” “Thou mayst save
thyself that trouble,” the proud Turk haughtily replied. “My master knows
me better than thou canst.”

Before 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the whole Turkish army was destroyed.
Hardly an individual escaped. About two thousand prisoners were taken in
the fort. All the rest perished, either drowned in the sea, or slain upon
the land. Sir Sydney Smith, who had chosen the position occupied by the
Turkish army, with the utmost difficulty avoided capture. In the midst of
the terrible scene of tumult and death, the Commodore succeeded in getting
on board a boat, and was rowed to his ships. More than twelve thousand
corpses of the turbaned Turks were floating in the bay of Aboukir, beneath
whose crimsoned waves, but a few months before, almost an equal number of
the French had sunk in death. Such utter destruction of an army is perhaps
unexampled in the annals of war. If God frowned upon France in the naval
battle of Aboukir, He as signally frowned upon her foes in this terrific
conflict on the land.

The cloudless sun descended peacefully, in the evening, beneath the blue
waves of the Mediterranean. Napoleon stood at the door of his tent, calmly
contemplating the scene, from whence all his foes had thus suddenly and
utterly vanished. Just then Kleber arrived, with his division of two
thousand men, for whom Napoleon had not waited. The distinguished soldier,
who had long been an ardent admirer of Napoleon, was overwhelmed with
amazement in contemplating the magnitude of the victory. In his enthusiasm
he threw his arms around the neck of his adored chieftain, exclaiming,
“Let me embrace you, my General, you are great as the universe.”

                   [Illustration: Napoleon and Kleber.]

Egypt was now quiet. Not a foe remained to be encountered. No immediate
attack, from any quarter, was to be feared. Nothing remained to be done
but to carry on the routine of the administration of the infant colony.
These duties required no especial genius, and could be very creditably
performed by any respectable governor.

It was, however, but a barren victory which Napoleon had obtained, at such
an enormous expenditure of suffering and of life. It was in vain for the
isolated army, cut off, by the destruction of its fleet, from all
intercourse with Europe, to think of the invasion of India. The French
troops had exactly “caught the Tartar.” Egypt was of no possible avail as
a colony, with the Mediterranean crowded with hostile English, and
Russian, and Turkish cruisers. For the same reason, it was impossible for
the army to leave those shores and return to France.  Thus the victorious
French, in the midst of all their triumphs, found that they had built up
for themselves prison walls from which, though they could repel their
enemies, there was no escape. The sovereignty of Egypt alone was too petty
an affair to satisfy the boundless ambition of Napoleon. Destiny, he
thought, deciding against an Empire in the East, was only guiding him back
to an Empire in the West.

For ten months Napoleon had now received no certain intelligence
respecting Europe. Sir Sydney Smith, either in the exercise of the spirit
of gentlemanly courtesy, or enjoying a malicious pleasure in communicating
to his victor tidings of disaster upon disaster falling upon France, sent
to him a file of newspapers full of the most humiliating intelligence. The
hostile fleet, leaving its whole army of eighteen thousand men, buried in
the sands, or beneath the waves, weighed anchor and disappeared.

Napoleon spent the whole night, with intense interest, examining those
papers. He learned that France was in a state of indescribable confusion;
that the imbecile government of the Directory, resorting to the most
absurd measures, was despised and disregarded; that plots and
counter-plots, conspiracies and assassinations filled the land. He
learned, to his astonishment, that France was again involved in war with
monarchical Europe; that the Austrians had invaded Italy anew, and driven
the French over the Alps; and that the banded armies of the European kings
were crowding upon the frontiers of the distracted republic. “Ah!” he
exclaimed to Bourrienne, “my forebodings have not deceived me. The fools
have lost Italy. All the fruit of our victories has disappeared. I must
leave Egypt. We must return to France immediately, and, if possible,
repair these disasters, and save France from destruction.”

                       [Illustration: The Return.]

It was a signal peculiarity in the mind of Napoleon that his decisions
appeared to be instinctive rather than deliberative. With the rapidity of
the lightning’s flash his mind contemplated all the considerations upon
each side of a question, and instantaneously came to the result. These
judgments, apparently so hasty, combined all the wisdom which others
obtain by the slow and painful process of weeks of deliberation and
uncertainty. Thus in the midst of the innumerable combinations of the
field of battle, he never suffered from a moment of perplexity; he never
hesitated between this plan and that plan, but instantaneously, and
without the slightest misgivings, decided upon that very course, to which
the most slow and mature deliberation would have guided him. This
instinctive promptness of correct decision was one great secret of his
mighty power. It pertained alike to every subject with which the human
mind could be conversant. The promptness of his decision was only equaled
by the energy of his execution. He therefore accomplished in hours that
which would have engrossed the energies of other minds for days.

Thus, in the present case, he decided, upon the moment, to return to
France. The details of his return, as to the disposition to be made of the
army, the manner in which he would attempt to evade the British cruisers,
and the individuals he would take with him, were all immediately settled
in his mind. He called Bourrienne, Berthier, and Gantheaume before him,
and informed them of his decision, enjoining upon them the most perfect
secrecy, lest intelligence of his preparations should be communicated to
the allied fleet. He ordered Gantheaume immediately to get ready for sea
two frigates from the harbor of Alexandria, and two small vessels, with
provisions for four hundred men for two months. Napoleon then returned
with the army to Cairo. He arrived there on the 10th of August, and again,
as a resistless conqueror, entered the city. He prevented any suspicion of
his projected departure, from arising among the soldiers, by planning an
expedition to explore Upper Egypt.

One morning he announced his intention of going down the Nile, to spend a
few days in examining the Delta. He took with him a small retinue, and
striking across the desert, proceeded with the utmost celerity to
Alexandria, where they arrived on the 22d of August. Concealed by the
shades of the evening of the same day, he left the town, with eight
selected companions, and escorted by a few of his faithful guards.
Silently and rapidly they rode to a solitary part of the bay, the party
wondering what this movement could mean. Here they discovered, dimly in
the distance, two frigates riding at anchor, and some fishing-boats near
the shore, apparently waiting to receive them. Then Napoleon announced to
his companions that their destination was France. The joy of the company
was inconceivable. The horses were left upon the beach, to find their way
back to Alexandria. The victorious fugitives crowded into the boats, and
were rowed out, in the dim and silent night, to the frigates. The sails
were immediately spread, and before the light of morning dawned, the low
and sandy outline of the Egyptian shore had disappeared beneath the
horizon of the sea.





GREAT OBJECTS ATTAINED BY LITTLE THINGS.


There is nothing, however small, in nature that has not its appropriate
use—nothing, however insignificant it may appear to us, that has not some
important mission to fulfill. The living dust that swarms in clusters
about our cheese—the mildew casting its emerald tint over our
preserves—the lichen and the moss wearing away the words of grief and
honor engraved upon the tombs of our forefathers, have each their
appropriate work, and are all important in the great economy of nature.
The little moss which so effectually aroused the emotions of Mungo Park
when far away from his friends and kin, and when his spirits were almost
failing, may teach a moral lesson to us all, and serve to inspire us with
some of that perseverance and energy to travel through life, that it did
Mungo Park in his journey through the African desert. By the steady and
long-continued efforts of this fragile little plant, high mountains have
been leveled, which no human power could have brought from their towering
heights. Adamantine rocks have been reduced to pebbles; cliffs have
mouldered in heaps upon the shore; and castles and strongholds raised by
the hand of man have proved weak and powerless under the ravages of this
tiny agent, and become scenes of ruin and desolation—the habitations of
the owl and the bat. Yet who, to look upon the lichen, would think it
could do all this?—so modest that we might almost take it for a part of
the ground upon which we tread. Can this, we exclaim, be a leveler of
mountains and mausoleums! Contemplate its unobtrusive, humble course;
endowed by nature with an organization capable of vegetating in the most
unpropitious circumstances—requiring indeed little more than the mere
moisture of the atmosphere to sustain it, the lichen sends forth its small
filamentous roots and clings to the hard, dry rock with a most determined
pertinacity. These little fibres, which can scarcely be discerned with the
naked eye, find their way into the minute crevices of the stone; now,
firmly attached, the rain-drops lodge upon their fronds or membranaceous
scales on the surface, and filtering to their roots, moisten the space
which they occupy, and the little plant is then enabled to work itself
further into the rock; the dimensions of the aperture become enlarged, and
the water runs in in greater quantities. This work, carried on by a legion
ten thousand strong, soon pierces the stony cliff with innumerable
fissures, which being filled with rain, the frost causes it to split, and
large pieces roll down to the levels beneath, reduced to sand, or to
become soil for the growth of a more exalted vegetation.—This, of course,
is a work of time—of generations, perhaps, measured by the span of human
life; but, undaunted, the mission of the humble lichen goes on and
prospers. Is not this a lesson worth learning from the book of nature?
Does it not contain much that we might profit by, and set us an example
that we should do well to imitate? “Persevere, and despise not little
things,” is the lesson we draw from it ourselves, and the poorest and
humblest reader of this page will be able to accomplish great things, if
he will take the precept to himself, engrave it upon his heart, or hold it
constantly before him; depend upon it, you will gain more inspiration from
these words than from half the wise sayings of the philosophers of old.

But nature is full of examples to stimulate us to perseverance, and
beautiful illustrations of how much can be achieved by little
things—trifles unheeded by the multitude. The worms that we tread in the
dust beneath our feet, are the choicest friends of the husbandman. A tract
of land rendered barren by the incrustation of stones upon its surface,
becomes by their labors a rich and fertile plain; they loosen and throw up
in nutritious mealy hillocks the hardest and most unprofitable soil—the
stones disappear, and where all was sterility and worthlessness, is soon
rich with a luxurious vegetation. We may call to mind, too, the worm upon
the mulberry-tree, and its miles of fine-spun glistening silk; we may
watch the process of its transformation till the choice fabric which its
patient industry had produced is dyed by an infusion gained from another
little insect (the Cochineal), and then, endowed with the glory of tint
and softness of texture, it is cut into robes to deck the beauty of our
English wives and daughters. Yet, those ignorant of their usefulness would
despise these little laborers, as they do others equally valuable. The bee
and the ant, again, are instances which we may all observe—but how few
will spare five minutes to contemplate them. Yet, where is the man,
sluggard though he be, who would not shake off his slothfulness on
observing the patient industry and frugal economy of the little ant? or
where is the drunkard and spendthrift who could watch the bee, so busy in
garnering up a rich store for the coming winter—laboring while the sun
shone, to sustain them when the frost and rain, and the flowerless plants
shut out all means of gaining their daily bread; and not put his shoulder
to the wheel, and think of old age, and the clouds that are gathering in
the heavens? The worth of all the delicious sweets we have derived from
the industry of the little bee, is nothing, when compared with the value
of this moral which they teach us.

If we turn from the book of Nature and open the annals of discovery and
science, many instances of the importance of little things will start up
and crowd around us—of events which appear in the lowest degree
insignificant, being the cause of vast and stupendous discoveries. “The
smallest thing becomes respectable,” says Foster, “when regarded as the
commencement of what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. The
first rude settlement of Romulus would have been an insignificant
circumstance, and might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at
length commanded the world. The little rill near the source of one of the
great American rivers is an interesting object to the traveler, who is
apprised as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that
this is the stream which runs so far, and gradually swells into so immense
a flood.” By the accidental mixing of a little nitre and potash, gunpowder
was discovered. In ancient times, before the days of Pliny, some merchants
traveling across a sandy desert, could find no rock at hand on which to
kindle a fire to prepare their food; as a substitute, they took a block of
alkali from among their heaps of merchandise, and lit a fire thereon. The
merchants stared with surprise when they saw the huge block melting
beneath the heat, and running down in a glistening stream as it mingled
with the sand, and still more so, when they discovered into what a hard
and shining substance it had been transformed. From this, says Pliny,
originated the making of glass. The sunbeams dazzling on a crystal prism
unfolded the whole theory of colors. A few rude types carved from a wooden
block have been the means of revolutionizing nations, overthrowing
dynasties, and rooting out the most hardened despotisms—of driving away a
multitude of imps of superstition, which for ages had been the terror of
the learned, and of spreading the light of truth and knowledge from the
frontiers of civilization to the coasts of darkness and barbarism. “We
must destroy the Press,” exclaimed the furious Wolsey, “or the Press will
destroy us.” The battle was fought, the Press was triumphant, and Popery
banished from the shores of Britain. The swinging of a lamp suspended from
a ceiling led Galileo to search into the laws of oscillation of the
pendulum; and by the fall of an apple the great Newton was led to unfold
what had hitherto been deemed one of the secrets of the Deity—a mystery
over which God had thrown a vail, which it would be presumption for man to
lift or dare to pry beneath. Had Newton disregarded little things, and
failed to profit by gentle hints, we should perhaps have thought so still,
and our minds would not have been so filled with the glory of Him who made
the heavens; but with these great truths revealed to our understandings,
we exclaim from our hearts, “Manifold, O God! are thy works; in wisdom
hast thou made them all.”

When the heart of the woolspinner of Genoa was sickening with “hope
deferred,” and his men, who had long been straining their eyes in vain to
catch a glimpse of land, were about to burst into open mutiny, and were
shouting fearfully to their leader to steer the vessel back again,
Columbus picked up a piece of wood which 

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