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.