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.