Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/213

1799.] NAPOLEON 201 manded by the Directory to do (lfap. Corr,, iv. 53). The people rose against the knights ; the grand master Hompesch opened negotiations, and on the 12th Bonaparte entered La Valette. He is enthusiastic about the strength and importance of the position thus won. "It is the strongest place in Europe ; those who would dislodge us must pay dear." He spent some days in organizing a new Government for the island, and set sail again on the 19th. On July 2 he issues his first order in Alexandria. During the passage we find him prosecuting his earlier scheme of the emancipation of Greece. Thus from Malta he sends Lavalette with a letter to Ali Pasha of Janina. His plan therefore seems to embrace Greece and Egypt at once, and thus to take for granted the command of the sea, almost as if no English fleet existed. The miscalcula tion was soon made manifest. Bonaparte himself, after occupying Alexandria, set out again on the 8th and inarched on Cairo ; he defeated the Mamelukes first at C hebreiss and then at Embabeh within sight of the Pyramids, where the enemy lost 2000 and the French about 20 or 30 killed and 120 wounded. He is in Cairo on the 24th, where for the most part he remains till January of 1799. But a week after his arrival in Cairo the fleet which had brought him from France, with its admiral Brueys, was destroyed by Nelson in Aboukir Bay. For the first time, in reporting this event to the Directory, it seems to flash on Bonaparte s mind that the English are masters of the sea. The grand design is ruined by this single stroke. France is left at war with almost all Europe, and with Turkey also (for Bonaparte s hope of deceiving the sultan by representing himself as asserting his cause against the Mamelukes was frustrated), and her best generals with a fine army are imprisoned in another continent. Invasion It might still be possible to create a revolution in Turkey of Syria. j n Asia, if not in Turkey in Europe. The Turks were pre paring an army in Syria, and in February 1799 Bonaparte anticipated their attack by invading Syria with about 1 2,000 men. He took El Arish on the 20th, then Gaza, and arrived at Jaffa on March 3. It was taken by assault, and a massacre commenced which, unfortunately for Bonaparte s reputation, was stopped by some officers. The consequence was that upwards of 2000 prisoners were taken. Bonaparte, unwilling. either to spare food for them or to let them go, ordered the adjutant-general to take them to the sea-shore and there shoot them, taking precautions to prevent any from escaping. This was done. " Now," writes Bonaparte, " there remains St Jean D Acre." This fortress was the seat of the pasha, Jezzar. It is on the sea-shore, and accord ingly England could intervene. Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, commanding a squadron on the coast, opened fire on the French as they approached the shore, and was surprised to find his fire answered only by musketry. In a moment he divined that the siege artillery was to come from Alexandria by sea, and very speedily he discovered the ships that carried it and took possession of them. On March 19 Bonaparte is before Acre, but the place receives supplies from the sea, and support from the English ships, while his artillery is lost. He is detained there for two whole months, and retires at last without success. This check, he said, changed the destiny of the world, for he calculated that the fall of Jezzar would have been followed by the adhesion of all the subject tribes, Druses and Christians, which would have given him an army ready for the con quest of Asia. The failure had been partially redeemed by a victory won in April over an army which had marched from the interior to the relief of Acre under Abdallah Pasha, and which Bonaparte defeated on the plain of Esdraelon (the battle is usually named from Mount Tabor). In the middle of May the retreat began, a counterpart on a small scale of the retreat from Moscow, heat and pestilence taking the place of frost and the Cossacks. On the 24th he is again at Jaffa, from which he writes his report to the Directory explaining that he had deliberately abstained from entering Acre because of the plague which, as he heard, was ravaging the city. On June 14 his letters are again dated from Cairo. His second stay in Egypt lasts two months, which were spent partly in hunting the dethroned chief of the Mamelukes, Murad Bey, partly in meeting a new Turkish army, which arrived in July in the Bay of Aboukir. He inflicted on it an annihilating defeat near its landing-place ; according to his own account ten or twelve thousand persons were drowned. This victory masked the final failure of the expedition. It was a failure such as would have ruined Bonaparte in a state enjoying publicity, where the responsibility could have been brought home to him and the facts could have been discussed. For a year of warfare, for the loss of the fleet, of 6000 soldiers, and of several distinguished officers (Brueys, Caffarelli, Cretin), for disastrous defeats suffered in Europe, which might have been averted by Bonaparte and his army, for the loss for an indefinite time of the army itself, which could only return to France by permission of the English, there was nothing to show. No progress was made in con ciliating the people. Bonaparte had arrived with an inten tion of appealing to the religious instinct of the Semitic races. He had imagined apparently that the rebellion of France against the Catholic religion might be presented to the Moslems as a victory of their faith. He had declared himself a Mussulman commissioned by the Most High to humble the cross. He had hoped at the same time to conciliate the sultan ; it had been arranged that Talleyrand should go to Constantinople for the purpose. But Talleyrand remained at Paris, the sultan was not con ciliated, the people were not deluded by Bonaparte s reli gious appeals. Rebellion after rebellion had broken out, and had been repressed with savage cruelty. It was time for him to extricate himself from so miserable a business. It appears from the correspondence that he had promised to be back in France as early as October 1798, a fact which shows how completely all his calculations had been dis appointed. Sir Sidney Smith now contrived that he should receive a packet of journals, by which he was informed of all that had passed recently in Europe and of the disasters that France had suffered. His resolution was immediately taken. On August 22 he wrote to Kleber announcing that he transferred to him the command of the expedition, and that he himself would return to Europe, taking with him Berthier, Lannes, Murat, Andrtossi, Marmont, Monge, and Berthollet, and giving orders that Junot should follow in October and Desaix in November. After carefully spreading false accounts of his intentions, Return he set sail with two frigates in the night of the same day. He arrived after a voyage of more than six weeks, during which he revisited Corsica, in the harbour of Frejus on October 9. From this moment the tide of his fortune began to flow again. His reappearance seemed providential, and was hailed with delight throughout France. The system established in Fructidor was essentially military. It had led directly to the violent aggressions of 1798, and to a great law of military service introduced by General Jourdan, which was the basis of the Napoleonic armies; it had created a new European war. But it was evidently inconsistent with the form of government established in 1795. A Directory of civilians were not qualified to conduct a policy so systematically warlike. Hence the war of 1799 had been palpably mismanaged. The armies and the generals were there, but the presiding strategist XVII. 26 France,