I am presently reading Paul Strathern's "Napoleon in Egypt" and am reading about how Napoleon's forces had bought back some of the men that had been captured by Bedouins. The following passage piqued my interest;
He asked one of the returned prisoners,"How did they treat you?" whereupon the man dissolved into tears. "Why are you crying?" demanded Napoleon.
Between sobs, the man explained that they had been subjected to what Bourienne tactfully describes as "the treatment so well known in the Orient."
"You big booby," remonstrated Napoleon, "That's not too bad. Serves you right for falling behind the column. You should thank heaven for having come out of it so lightly. Now stop blubbing and answer my question."
But as Bourienne drily observed, "the little time that he had spent amongst the Arabs, and the way they had treated him, had prevented him from making the least observation, and he was unable to tell his commander anything at all."
What was this treatment, and how could it be so famous and terrible that it could reduce a military man to uncontrolled sobbing, yet Napoleon would dismiss it so readily?
Reading it in the context of the book I'm reasonably confident that it's a reference to some kind of sodomy or other sexual violation/rape. The reference on the next page, for instance that prisoners could be mistreated "or even slaughter[ed], but the French soldiers were unprepared for this particular violation."
That being said, obviously neither the book nor the account it's quoting are explicit about that matter. That in and of itself points towards rape/sexual violence, however. A merely physical attack wouldn't be so shameful as to warrant either euphemism or silence.