All owned the Mussulman fought well; And many French that day had fell Had Arabs better weapons.” CHAPTER XXVII. LOOT. Mr. Galea once more comes to my assistance and lends me his journal to write the story of the sad sequel to the capitulation of Sfax. My readers must remember that he was an eye-witness of most of the facts to which he speaks, and in justice to him I must say that his narrative is fully borne out and corroborated, not only by Mr. Consular-Agent Leonardi’s official reports, but by a mass of evidence tendered before the International Commission appointed to investigate the circumstances on the spot. If this were not the case, I would willingly pass over in silence the disagreeable subject of the sacking which followed the shelling, and which has given rise to so much heart-burning on all sides. Loot in the hour of victory was not first invented at Sfax, its occurrence is the rule rather than the exception in the annals of warfare, and as few countries can fairly throw a stone in the matter, I fail to see that it in any way involves the national honour of France, or affects the reputation of anybody beyond those immediately concerned in the incident I am about to speak of. There can be no doubt whatever that the French soldiers who drove the Arabs out of Sfax on the 16th July 1881, followed up their triumph by an almost indiscriminate pillage of both the European and Arab quarters of the town. What was done happened in the face of day, and can neither be gainsaid or denied, and the subsequent attempts to minimise the transaction were at once unworthy and useless. Still more so is it censurable, to have postponed the relief of the sufferers indefinitely, and to endeavour to wring the compensation from the Arabs, who are nearly all the debtors of the persons who have been more or less ruined by the events in question. To my mind, these things are a far greater blemish to the good name of France than the excesses committed by her troops in the flush of success or the intoxication of conquest. With those few observations I return to Mr. Galea’s diary:—