Such have been the atrocities of Turkish warfare within the memory of living man; but French officers have in our days emulated the cruelty of Ottoman commanders, and shown that the nation which boasts of marching at the head of civilisation has still retained much of its ancient Gallic barbarism. When Marshal Pelissier filled with smoke the crowded caves of the Dahra in 1844, and destroyed many hundreds of Kabyls whose great crime it was to defend their country against the French hordes, it has been stated, as an excuse for this atrocity, that he left open some of the entrances to the caves, and that he only resorted to the smoke as a means of compelling the fugitives to come out and surrender; but no such excuse can be pleaded in favour of his successor, St. Arnaud. In the summer of 1845,[23] this French commander received private information that a body of Arabs had taken refuge in the cave of Shelas. Thither he marched a body of troops. Eleven of the fugitives came out and surrendered; but it was known to St. Arnaud, though not to any other Frenchman, that five hundred men remained in the cave. All these people Colonel St. Arnaud determined to kill, and at the same time to keep the deed secret even from the troops engaged in the operation, as the smoking of the Caves of the Dahra had not greatly tended to raise France in the public opinion of Europe. Except his brother and Marshal Bugeaud, whose approval was the prize he sought, no one was to know what he did. He contrived to execute both his purposes. Thus he writes to his brother:—‘I had all the apertures hermetically stopped up. I made one vast sepulchre. No one went into the caverns; no one but myself knew that under these there are 500 brigands who will never again slaughter Frenchmen. A confidential report has told all to the marshal, without terrible poetry or imagery. Brother, no one is so good as I am by taste and by nature. From the 8th to the 12th I have been ill, but my conscience does not reproach me. I have done my duty as a commander, and to-morrow I would do the same over again; but I have taken a disgust to Africa.’ With such nauseous sentiment wrote the man, ‘_good_ by taste and nature,’ who seven years later was to attach the memory of his name to the bloody days of December, and to deal with many a French republican as he had dealt with the Arabs. Footnote 23: Kinglake. CHAPTER XVI. HERMIT CAVES—ROCK TEMPLES—ROCK CHURCHES. St. Paul of Thebes—St. Anthony—His Visit to Alexandria, and death— Numerous Cave Hermits in the East—St. Benedict in the Cave of Subiaco— St. Cuthbert—St. Beatus—Rock Temples of Kanara—The Wonders of Ellora— Ipsamboul—Rock Churches of Lalibala in Abyssinia—The Cave of Trophonios—The Grotto of St. Rosolia near Palermo—The Chapel of Agios Niketas in Greece—The Chapel of Oberstein on the Nahe—The repentant fratricide.