No French victory was ever marked by more unbridled license than that which the victorious troops practised at Jaffa. But what followed was worse. Although the prisoners of war were too numerous for the ordinary usage, yet they should have been treated according to the terms of quarter they had exacted. On the seventh a council of war unanimously voted that the old rule under which no quarter is given to defenders in an assault should be applied to them. For two days Bonaparte hesitated, but on the ninth his decision was taken. A few Egyptians were sent home, and the remainder of the prisoners, together with the eight hundred militia from El Arish, were marched to the beach, and shot. In the report to the Directory the total number was put at twelve hundred. Two eye-witnesses estimated it--one at three thousand, the other at four thousand. "I have been severe with those of your troops who violated the laws of war," wrote the author of the deed to Jezzar. No mention of the fact or excuse for it was made in any other portion of his correspondence at the time. All winter long he had been dealing as an Oriental with Orientals, and this was but a piece of the same conduct. The code of Christian morality was far from his mind. In January, for instance, he had ordered Murat to kill all the prisoners of a hostile tribe in the desert, whom he could not bring away; and in the same month identical orders were issued to Berthier concerning another horde. The plea which is made by the eulogists of Napoleon, and by some recent military writers, for this wholesale execution, is that among these slaughtered men the garrison of El Arish, which had surrendered, had been found again with arms in their hands; that they were deserving of death according to all the laws of war; and that, as to the rest, there were no French prisoners for whom to exchange them, and no provisions to support them; consequently their presence with the army would jeopardize its success, and it was therefore justifiable to diminish the enemy's resisting power by their execution. Those who believe that in any war, whether just or unjust, the practice of barbarity is excusable if it lead to speedy victory will agree with that opinion.