No general has a right to see men abandon the means of defence, and then--after the lapse of three days too!--inflict on them the worst fate that could have befallen them had they held out.

The only remaining plea is that of expediency; and it is one upon which many a retail as well as wholesale murderer might justify his crime.
Buonaparte had now ascertained that the Pacha of Syria, Achmet-Djezzar,[27] was at St.Jean d'Acre, (so renowned in the history of the crusades,) and determined to defend that place to extremity, with the forces which had already been assembled for the invasion of Egypt.
He in vain endeavoured to seduce this ferocious chief from his allegiance to the Porte, by holding out the hope of a separate independent government, under the protection of France.

The first of Napoleon's messengers returned without an answer; the second was put to death; and the army moved on Acre in all the zeal of revenge, while the necessary apparatus of a siege was ordered to be sent round by sea from Alexandria.
Sir Sydney Smith was then cruising in the Levant with two British ships of the line, the _Tigre_ and the _Theseus_; and, being informed by the Pacha of the approaching storm, hastened to support him in the defence of Acre.

Napoleon's vessels, conveying guns and stores from Egypt, fell into his hands, and he appeared off the town two days before the French army came in view of it.

He had on board his ship Colonel Philippeaux, a French royalist of great talents (formerly Buonaparte's school-fellow at Brienne);[28] and the Pacha willingly permitted the English commodore and this skilful ally, to regulate for him, as far as was possible, the plan of his defence.
The loss of his own heavy artillery and the presence of two English ships, were inauspicious omens; yet Buonaparte doubted not that the Turkish garrison would shrink before his onset, and he instantly commenced the siege.