Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

Once decided on, preparations were made with promptness and in utter secrecy. On May 19, 1798, Bonaparte set sail from Toulon with a fleet of 400 slow-moving transports bearing an army of 38,000 men. A brilliant corps of young generals accompanied him, Berthier, Murat, Desaix, Marmont, Lannes, Kleber, tried and tested in Italy the year before. He also took with him a traveling library in which Plutarch's Lives and Xenphon's Anabasis and the Koran were a few of the significant contents. Fellow-voyagers, also, were over 100 distinguished scholars, scientists, artists, engineers, for this expedition was to be no mere military promenade but was designed to widen the bounds of human knowledge by an elaborate study of the products and customs, the history and the art of that country, famous, yet little known. This, indeed, was destined to be the most permanent and valuable result of an expedition which laid the broad foundations of modern Egyptology in 'The Description of Egypt,' a monumental work which presented to the world in sumptuous form the discoveries and investigations of this group of learned men.

The hazards were enormous. Admiral Nelson with a powerful English fleet was in the Mediterranean. The French managed to escape him. Stopping on the way to seize the important position of Malta and to forward the contents of its treasury to the Directors, Bonaparte reached his destination at the end of June and disembarked in safety. The nominal ruler of Egypt was the Sultan of Turkey but the real rulers were the Mamelukes, a sort of feudal military caste. They constituted a splendid body of cavalrymen but they were no match for the invaders, as they lacked infantry and artillery, and were, moreover, far inferior in numbers.

Seizing Alexandria on July 2 the French army began the march to Cairo. The difficulties of the march were great, as no account had been taken, in the preparations, of the character of the climate and the country. The soldiers wore the heavy uniforms in vogue in Europe. In the march across the blazing sands they experienced hunger, thirst, heat. Many perished from thirst, serious eye troubles were caused by the frightful glare, suicide was not infrequent. Finally, however, after nearly three weeks of this agony, the battle came just outside Cairo. There Bonaparte administered a smashing defeat to the Mamelukes, encouraging his soldiers by one of his thrilling phrases, "Soldiers, from the summit of these pyramids forty centuries look down upon you." The Battle of the Pyramids, July 21, 1798, gave the French control of Cairo. The Mamelukes were dispersed. They had lost 2,000 men. Bonaparte had lost very few.

But no sooner had the French conquered the country than they became prisoners in it. For, on August 1, Nelson had surprised the French fleet as it was lying in the harbor of Abukir Bay, east of Alexandria, and had captured or destroyed it. Only two battleships and a frigate managed to escape. This Battle of the Nile, as it was called, was one of the most decisive sea fights of this entire period. It was Bonaparte's first taste of British sea power. It was not his last.

Bonaparte received the news of this terrible disaster, which cut him off from France and cooped him up in a hot and poor country, with superb composure. "Well! we must remain in this land, and come forth great, as did the ancients. This is the hour when characters of a superior order should show themselves." And later he said that the English "will perhaps compel us to do greater things than we intended."

He had need of all his resources, material and moral. Hearing that the Sultan of Turkey had declared war upon him, he resolved, in January, 1799, to invade Syria, one of the Sultan's provinces, wishing to restore or reaffirm the confidence of his soldiers by fresh victories and thinking, perhaps, of a march on India or on Constantinople, taking "Europe in the rear," as he expressed it. If such was his hope, it was destined to disappointment. The crossing of the desert from Egypt into Syria was painful in the extreme, marked by the horrors of heat and thirst. The soldiers marched amid clouds of sand blown against them by a suffocating wind. They however seized the forts of Gaza and Jaffa, and destroyed a Turkish army at Mt. Tabor, near Nazareth, but were arrested at Acre, which they could not take by siege, because it was on the sea coast and was aided by the British fleet, but which they partly took by storm, only to be forced finally to withdraw because of terrific losses. For two months the struggle for Acre went on. Plague broke out, ammunition ran short, and Bonaparte was again beaten by sea-power. He led his army back to Cairo in a memorable march, covering 300 miles in twenty-six days, over scorching sands and amidst appalling scenes of disaster and desperation. He had sacrificed 5,000 men, had accomplished nothing, and had been checked for the first time in his career. On reaching Cairo he had the effrontery to act as if he had been triumphant, and sent out lying bulletins, not caring to have the truth known.

A few weeks later he did win a notable victory, this time at Abukir, against a Turkish army that had just disembarked. This he correctly described when he announced, "It is one of the finest I have ever witnessed. Of the army landed by the enemy, not a man has escaped." Over 10,000 Turks lost their lives in this, the last exploit of Bonaparte in Egypt. For now he resolved to return to France, to leave the whole adventure in other hands, seeing that it must inevitably fail, and to seek his fortune in fairer fields. He had heard news from France that made Bonaparte anxious to return. A new coalition had been formed return to during his absence, the French had been driven out of Italy, France itself was threatened with invasion. The Directory was discredited and unpopular because of its incompetence and blunders. Bonaparte did not dare inform his soldiers, who had endured so much, of his plan. He did not even dare to tell Kleber, to whom he intrusted the command of the army by a letter which reached the latter too late for him to protest. He set sail secretly on the night of August 21, 1799, accompanied by Berthier, Murat, and five other officers and by two or three scientists. Kleber was later assassinated by a Mohammedan fanatic and the French army was forced to capitulate and evacuate Egypt, in August, 1801. That ended the Egyptian expedition.

It was no easy thing to get back from Egypt to France with the English scouring the seas, and the winds against him. Sometimes the little sailboat on which Bonaparte had taken passage was beaten-back ten miles a day. Then the wind would shift at night and progress would be made. It took three weeks of hugging the southern shore of the Mediterranean before the narrows between Africa and Sicily were reached. These were guarded by an English battleship. But the French slipped through at night, lights out. Reaching Corsica they stopped several days, the winds dead against them. It seemed as if every one on the island claimed relationship with their fellow-citizen who had been rendered "illustrious by glory." Bonaparte saw his native inland for the last time in his life. Finally he sailed for France, and was nearly overhauled by the British, who chased him to almost within sight of land. The journey from the coast to Paris was a continuous ovation. The crowds were such that frequently the carriages could advance but slowly. Evenings there were illuminations everywhere. When Paris was reached delirium broke forth.

He arrived in the nick of time, as was his wont. Finally the pear was ripe. The government was in the last stages of unpopularity and discredit. Incompetent and corrupt, it was also unsuccessful. The Directory was in existence for four years, from October, 1795 to November, 1 1799. Its career was agitated. The defects of the constitution, the perplexing circumstances of the times, the ambitions and intrigues of individuals seeking personal advantage and recking little of the state, had strained the institutions of the country almost to the breaking point, and had created a widespread feeling of weariness and disgust. Friction had been constant between the Directors and the legislature, and on two occasions the former had laid violent hands upon the latter, once arresting a group of royalist deputies and annulling their election, once doing the same to a group of radical republicans. They had thus made sport of the constitution and destroyed the rights of the voters. Their foreign policy, after Bonaparte had sailed for Egypt, had been so aggressive and blundering that a new coalition had been formed against France, consisting of England, Austria, and Russia, which country now abandoned its eastern isolation and entered upon a period of active participation in the affairs of western Europe. The coalition was successful, the French were driven out of Germany back upon the Rhine, out of Italy, and the invasion of France was, perhaps, impending. The domestic policy of the Directors had also resulted in fanning once more the embers of religious war in Vendee.