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.