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NAZARETH.
pean name in the Levant, and have been very beneficial to the
cause of Christianity under the actual circumstances of the East.
The friars are chiefly Spaniards ; they are exasperated against
France, for pretending to protect them, without affording them the
smallest relief from the Pasha’s oppressions :* but they are obliged
to accept this protection, as the Spanish ambassador at Constantinople -
is not yet acknowledged by the Porte. They are well
worth the attention of any ambassador at the Porte, whose
government is desirous of maintaining an influence in Syria,
for they command the consciences of upwards of eighty thousand
souls.
When the French invaded Syria, Nazareth was occupied by six
or eight hundred men, whose advanced posts were at Tabaria and
Szaffad. Two hours from hence, General Kleber sustained with a
corps not exceeding fifteen hundred men, the attack of the whole
Syrian army, amounting to at least twenty-five thousand. He was
posted in the plain of Esdrelon, near the village of Foule, where he
formed his battalion into a square, which continued fighting from
sun-rise to mid-day, until they had expended almost all their
ammunition. Bonaparte, informed of Kleber’s perilous situation,
advanced to his support with six hundred men. No sooner had
he come in sight of the enemy and fired a shot over the plain,
than the Turks, supposing that a large force was advancing, took
precipitately to flight, during which several thousands were killed,
and many drowned in the river Daboury, which then inundated
a part of the plain. Bonaparte dined at Nazareth, the most northern -
point that he reached in Syria, and returned the same day to
Akka.
* I understood from the Spanish consul at Cairo, that when the news of the capture ¬
of Madrid, in August, 1812, reached Jerusalem, the Spanish priests celebrated
a public Te Deum, and took the oaths prescribed by the new constitution of the Cortes.
