ACCOUNT OF BOOKS. 
made by our author of the atrocities 
of the massacre of the Turks at Jafia, 
and the poisoning of the wounded 
soldiery in the hospitals, had the 
French minister at the court of Lon- 
don the hardihood to attribute the 
mission of Sebastiani, notwithstand- 
ing thé glaring fact of the report of 
the latter having been actually pub- 
lished before Sif Robert Wilson’s 
book had appeared! Although far- 
ther confutation of this impudent 
falshood was unnecessary, yet, as the 
veracity of our author was likewise 
attacked in the ‘official correspond- 
ence,” he thought it proper to make 
the following remarks on the French 
statement, to secure the publicity of 
which, and its perusal on the conti- 
rent of Europe; he addressed to the 
editor of the Courier de Londres ; 
and which, without farther preface 
or comment, wé shall lay before our 
readers. 
Sir, 
In the official correspondence 
lately published, there appears some 
remarks which the French ambassa- 
dor was instructed to make on my 
History of the Expedition to Egypt, 
and of which I feel called upon to 
take notice, not in personal contro- 
versy with general Andreossy, for, 
conscious of the superior virtue of 
my cause, I. find myself neither ag- 
grieved nor irritated by the language 
he has used ; but that the public may 
not attribute my silence to a desire 
of evading further discussion, and 
‘thus the shallow mode of contradic- 
tion, adopted by the chief consul, ac- 
quire an unmerited consideration. 
_ The ambassador observes, ‘¢ That 
a colonel in the English army has 
published a work in England filled 
with the most atrocious and disgust- 
ag calumnies against the French 
941 
army and its general. The lies it 
contains baye been contradicted by 
the reception which colonel Sebasti- 
ani experienced. ‘The publicity of 
his report was at once a refutation 
and reparation which the French 
army had a right te expect.” 
But surely a new signification 
must have been attached in France 
to the word calumny, when such @ 
term is applied to my account of the 
conduct of the French troops in 
Egypt, and the consequent disposi- 
tion of the inhabitants towards him ! 
Independent, however, of the 
proofs to be adduced in corrobora- 
tion of my statement, Europe may 
justly appreciate the probable truth 
of what I have written when she re- 
collects the unparalleled sufferings 
endured by the unoffending countries 
into which, during the last war, a 
French army penetrated, and she will 
at least hesitate to believe that the 
same armies should voluntarily ame- 
hiorate their conduct in a country 
more remote, where the atrocities 
they might commit would be jess 
liable to publicity, and that this extra- 
ordinary change should be in favour 
-of a people whose principles and re- 
sistance might have excited the re- 
sentment of more generous invaders. 
I will not enter into an unneces- 
sary detail of numerous facts which 
I could urge; but I appeal to thé 
honour of every British officer em- 
ployed in Egypt, whether those ob- 
servations are not sacredly true, 
which describe the French as being 
hateful to the inhabitants of that 
country, which represent them as 
having merited that hatred from the 
ruin and devastation with which 
their progress through it has been 
marked ; and I am ready, if there 
be one who refuses to sanction this 
relation, to resign for ever every 
pretension 
