SIR WILLIAM SIDNEY SMITH.
307
pitate retreat, which was put in execution in the night between the 20th and 21st instant. I had above said, that the battering train of artillery (except the carriages, which were burnt) is now in our hands, amounting to 23 pieces. The howitzers and medium twelve-pounders, originally conveyed by land with much difficulty, and successfully employed to make the first breach, were embarked in the country vessels at Jaffa, to be conveyed coastwise, together with the worst among the 2000 wounded, which embarrassed the march of the army. This operation was to be expected; I took care, therefore, to be between Jaffa and Damietta before the French army could get as far as the former place. The vessels being hurried to sea, without seamen to navigate them, and the wounded being in want of every necessary, even water and provisions, they steered strait to his Majesty’s ships, in full confidence of receiving the succours of humanity, in which they were not disappointed. I have sent them on to Damietta, where they will receive further aid as their situation requires, and which it was out of my power to give so many. Their expressions of gratitude to us were mingled with execrations on the name of their General, who had, as they said, thus exposed them to peril rather than fairly and honorably renew the intercourse with the English, which he had broken off by a false and malicious assertion that I had intentionally exposed the former prisoners to the infection of the plague. To the honor of the French army be it said, this assertion was not believed by them; and it thus recoiled on its author. The intention of it was evidently to do away the effect which the proclamation of the Porte began to make on the soldiers, whose eager hands were held above the parapet of their works to receive them when thrown from the breach. He cannot plead misinformation as his excuse, his Aidede-camp, M. Lallemand, having had free intercourse with these prisoners on board the Tigre, when he came to treat about them; and they having been ordered, though too late, not to repeat their expressions of contentment at the prospect of going home. It was evident to both sides, that when a General had recourse to such a shallow, and at the same time to such a mean artifice as a malicious falsehood, all better resources were at an end, and the defection in his army was consequently increased to the highest pitch. The utmost disorder has been manifested in the retreat; and the whole track between Acre and Gaza is strewed with the dead bodies of those who have sunk under fatigue, or the effect of slight wounds; such as could walk, unfortunately for them, not having been embarked. The rowing gun-boats annoyed the van column of the retreating army in its march along the beach, and the Arabs harrassed its rear when it turned inland to’ avoid their fire. We observed the smoke of musketry behind the sand hills, from the attack of a party of them, which came down to our boats, and touched our flag with every token of union and respect. Ismael Pasha, governor of Jerusalem, to whom notice was sent of Buonaparte’s preparations for retreat, having entered this town by land at the same time that we brought our guns to bear on it by sea, a stop was put to the massacre and pillage already begun by the Nablusians. The English flag rehoisted on the consul’s house (under which the Pasha met me) serves as an asylum for
