Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/281

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Lady Hester Stanhope.
267

balls thrown in in twenty-four hours!—at last, taken by storm, and little more than 200 of the garrison remaining!—then the wretched inhabitants, who expected to find succour from their old friends in the country, finding their backs turned upon them in the dread and awe they stood in of Ibrahim Pasha; nay, it is very strange to say that the Franks likewise held back in a most extraordinary manner. Therefore, these unhappy people had no resource but in me, and I did the best I could for them all. Mahomet Ali, Ibrahim Pasha, Sheriff Pasha, all set at me at once, in order to make me give up certain persons, who immediately would have lost their heads for having fought well in the cause which they were engaged in. I opposed them all round single-handed, and said that I neither protected these persons in the English or French name, but in my own, as a poor Arab, who would not give up an unhappy being but with his own life; that there was no other chance of making me bend by any other means than by attempting mine. In this manner I saved some unfortunate beings, whom I got rid of by degrees, by sending them back to their own country, or providing for them at a distance in some way or another. Can you, as a soldier, blame me for what I have done? I should have acted in the same way before your eyes to the victims of your own sword. Then the host of orphans, and