WHEREIN WE SEE THAT BONAPARTE'S PRESENTIMENTS DID NOT DECEIVE HIM  
The French arrived at Jaffa on the 24th. They stayed there the 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th. Jaffa was indeed a city of misfortune for Bonaparte.
The reader will remember the four thousand prisoners whom Croisier and Eugene de Beauharnais had taken, who could neither be fed, nor sent to Cairo, and who had to be, and were, shot.
A graver and still more lamentable necessity awaited Bonaparte on his return. There was a hospital at Jaffa for plague-stricken patients. There is a fine picture by Gros, at the Musée, which portrays Bonaparte in the act of touching the plague stricken at Jaffa. The picture is[Pg 658] none the less beautiful because it represents an occurrence which did not take place.
Here is what M. Thiers says. We who are only petty novelists are sorry to find ourselves again in opposition to that giant among historians. It is the author of "The Revolution," of "The Consulate and the Empire" who is speaking.
When he reached Jaffa, Bonaparte blew up the fortifications. There was a hospital there for plague-stricken patients. It would have been impossible to carry them away. They would have been exposed to inevitable death had they been left where they were, either from sickness, hunger or the cruelty of the enemy. Therefore Bonaparte told Dr. Desgenettes that it would be much more humane to give them opium than to allow them to live; to which the doctor made the much-lauded reply: "My trade is to cure, not to kill." The opium was not administered, and this occurrence served to propagate an outrageous slander which has now been refuted.
I humbly beg M. Thiers's pardon, but this reply credited to Desgenettes, whom I knew as well as I did Larrey and all of the "Egyptians"—I mean my father's companions in the great expedition—is as apocryphal as that of Cambronne.
God forbid that I should slander (that is the word which M. Thiers used) the man who illuminated the first half of the nineteenth century with the torch of his glory; and when we come to Pichegru and the Duc d'Enghien, the reader will see whether I simply repeat infamous echoes.
We have said that Gros's picture represents something which did not happen, and we will prove it. Here is Davoust's report, written under the eyes and the orders of the commander-in-chief, in his official narrative:
The army reached Jaffa on the 5th Prairial (May 24). It remained there the 6th, 7th, and 8th (25th, 26th, 27th of May). The time was spent in disciplining the villages which had behaved badly. The fortifications of Jaffa were all blown up. All the artillery of the place was thrown into the sea. The wounded were sent away, both by land and sea. There were only a few ships, and in order to give time[Pg 659] for the land evacuation we were obliged to defer the departure of the army until the 9th.
Kléber's division formed the rear-guard, and did not start from Jaffa until the 10th (29th of May).
You see not a word about the plague, not a word about the visit to the hospital, and, above all, nothing about the touching of the plague-stricken patients. Not a word in any of the official reports.
Bonaparte's eyes had been bent upon France ever since he had turned them from the East, and it would have been very much misplaced modesty on his part had he concealed such a remarkable fact, which would have done honor, not to his reason perhaps, but to his daring.
Furthermore, this is how Bourrienne, who was an eye-witness, and a very impressionable actor, relates the incident:
Bonaparte went to the hospital. He found men there with their limbs amputated, wounded soldiers, afflicted with ophthalmia, who were moaning piteously, and men sick with the plague. The beds occupied by the latter stood to the right of the entrance. I was walking beside the general. I affirm that I did not see him touch one of the plague patients. Why should he? They were in the last stages of the malady; none of them spoke. Bonaparte knew well that he was not immune from the malady. Would fortune interfere in his behalf to shield him. It had certainly not seconded his plans with sufficient ardor during the last two months for him to depend upon that.
I ask: Would he expose himself to certain death, and leave his army in the midst of a desert which we had just made by our own ravages, in a demolished town, without help, or the hope of receiving any—he so necessary, so indispensable, as everybody must admit, to his army; he upon whom rested the responsibility of all the lives of those who had survived the last disaster, and who had just given proof of such devotion by their unalterable courage, their sufferings, and the endurance of privations; who were doing all that he could............