Once the sounds of the fighting had died away Napoleon made his way down the trench and up on to the ground in front of the breach, accompanied by fifty of the guides, who watched the walls on either side closely as they guarded their general.The rubble shifted under his boots and he had some difficulty in scrambling through the breach.There were bodies in the streets, scores of them. Mostly Turks, cut down in the ferocious assault mounted by Lannes and his men. Napoleon encountered only a handful of wounded Frenchmen as he passed through the town. Near the harbour Dr Desgenettes and his men were treating a group of severely injured soldiers, stretched out in a row on the street.The doctor looked up from his work as Napoleon and the guides marched by, but quickly wiped his brow and turned back to his patients.The main street through the town gave out on to the harbour, and Napoleon stopped in surprise at the sight that met his eyes. On the beach next to the harbour were thousands of Turks, huddled tightly together as they sat under the watchful eyes of the French guards. As Napoleon approached the exhausted French troops slumped on the foul-smelling quay, another batch of prisoners was marched out of a side street to join their comrades. They wore the distinctive red and green turbans of the men who had surrendered at El Arish. Napoleon felt a cold rage seep through his veins.

He found General Lannes sitting on a divan that had been hauled out on to the quay and dragged into the shade cast by the wall of a mosque. Napoleon was greatly relieved to see Eugène sitting on a chair nearby, talking animatedly with some of the younger officers of Lannes’s division.

Napoleon thrust his arm towards the prisoners. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

Lannes rose to his feet and stood stiffly before his commander. ‘Sir?’

‘I take it that they are prisoners.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I told you not to show the enemy any mercy.’

‘I know that, sir. But they fought hard and fair before they were forced to give up.’

‘Fine. And what do you propose to do with them now?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Lannes admitted. ‘I hadn’t considered that yet.We’ve only just finished mopping up the last of the resistance.’

‘We can’t have any prisoners.’ Napoleon spoke with quiet intensity. ‘We have no spare supplies to feed them with, no spare troops to guard them, and, in any case, those from El Arish have broken the terms of their parole . . .’

Lannes stared at him with a pained expression. ‘What do you want me to do, sir?’

‘I want you to dispose of the prisoners. All of them.’

Lannes glanced round at the figures packed on the beach.‘But there must be nearly three thousand of them.’