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Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 03 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 22 of 154 (14%)
the heights was kept up with vigour for two days.

About twelve of the principal chiefs of Cairo were arrested and confined
in an apartment at headquarters. They awaited with the calmest
resignation the death they knew they merited; but Bonaparte merely
detained them as hostages. The aga in the service of Bonaparte was
astonished that sentence of death was not pronounced upon them; and he
said, shrugging his shoulders, and with a gesture apparently intended to
provoke severity, "You see they expect it."

On the third the insurrection was at an end, and tranquillity restored.
Numerous prisoners were conducted to the citadel. In obedience to an
order which I wrote every evening, twelve were put to death nightly. The
bodies were then put into sacks and thrown into the Nile. There were
many women included in these nocturnal executions.

I am not aware that the number of victims amounted to thirty per day, as
Bonaparte assured General Reynier in a letter which he wrote to him six
days after the restoration of tranquillity. "Every night," said he,
"we cut off thirty heads. This, I hope, will be an effectual example."
I am of opinion that in this instance he exaggerated the extent of his
just revenge.

Some time after the revolt of Cairo the necessity of ensuring our own
safety forced the commission of a terrible act of cruelty. A tribe of
Arabs in the neighbourhood of Cairo had surprised and massacred a party
of French. The General-in-Chief ordered his aide de camp Croisier to
proceed to the spot, surround the tribe, destroy the huts, kill all the
men, and conduct the rest of the population to Cairo. The order was to
decapitate the victims, and bring their heads in sacks to Cairo to be
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