Chapter 6

THE EXPEDITION TO EGYPT[6]

[Footnote 6: Boulay de la Meurthe: Le Directoire et l'expédition d'Égypte. De Villiers du Terrage: Journal et Souvenirs sur l'expédition d'Égypte. Otherwise as before.]

French Policy Regarding Egypt -- Bonaparte's Use of It -- His Military Dispositions and Expectations -- His "Complete Code of Politics" -- The Alternatives He Saw -- Friction Between Bonaparte and the Directory -- The Fleet and the Army--The Departure.

Taken in its largest sense, the social life of the world has been due to the relations of commerce, thought, and religion between the Orient and the Occident. The short road from one to the other is by way of the Red Sea, the Isthmus, and the Mediterranean. The controlling site on that thoroughfare is Egypt. From the crusades onward the domination of the countries and lands in that great basin was the prize for which France and England were always contending. Pierre du Bois proposed the seizure of Egypt to Philip le Bel in the fourteenth century; Leibnitz sought to draw Louis XIV out of Germany by explaining to him the dazzling advantage of the same enterprise; d'Argenson suggested the Suez Canal in 1738; and Choiseul kept alive the plan of occupying Egypt. The republic had inherited the notion of world conquest which had occupied both Philip le Bel and Louis XIV, although in another form. Bonaparte, in the double rôle of Raynal´s disciple and supplanter of the Revolution, was full of the same idea. It was his early study of the "Philosophical and Political History of the Two Indies" which made him, in one of his conversations before Campo Formio, designate Europe as a mole-hill when compared with the six hundred millions of men in the East. In these same pages, as in Plutarch, he had read of Alexander the Great, and had learned to admire his example; there, too, he was told that with a proper population and a firm administration Alexandria would rise to greater eminence than London, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome. These opinions he imbibed and never changed, reiterating them even at St. Helena, where he confessed that but for the repulse at Acre he would have founded an Oriental empire. The policy of the Directory was no doubt partly his; but to a far greater extent it mirrored the feeling abroad in the entire nation, and among all its agents, that the times were ripe for the seizure of Egypt. Talleyrand had called the attention of the Institute to its feasibility, and Magallon, the French consul at Cairo, filled his despatches with suggestions as to ways and means. By the spring of 1798 the plan of the Directory was formed and their preparations were finished. Under Talleyrand's supervision a statement of policy, with its historical justification, had been made ready for publication, while the secret outfit of ships and men at Toulon and other points was complete.

[Sidenote: 1798]

The justification of the expedition to the Sultan and to Europe was the plea that Egypt no longer belonged to Turkey. Mameluke usurpers were holding it in disgraceful bondage; France would liberate it. To enforce this view with the Porte, every insurgent of the steadily disintegrating Ottoman empire had for months been receiving encouragement from Bonaparte's letters and agents, and now the grand vizir was given to understand that if an attempt were made to interfere with the French forces, these rebels would be unchained in his rear; on the other hand, he was encouraged to regard the invaders as auxiliaries to suppress rebellion both on the Danube and on the Nile. Bonaparte was playing for high stakes; he probably hoped to win Turkey as an ally, and thus draw Russia and Austria away from France, but was determined in case of failure to hold Egypt as the French share when ultimately the expected partition of the Sultan's domains should be made.

Otherwise it is impossible to explain why he so managed as to leave France helpless against her Continental enemies; why all the gathered treasures of Italy and Switzerland were spent in his own preparations; why almost every general of ability and every regiment of prowess was destined for Egypt, while in the face of an impending European crash the national treasury was depleted, the inferior troops at his own disposal were left at home, and the remaining veterans of Hoche and Moreau were scattered in various divisions between the Rhine and the Pyrenees. The Army of England assembled in the north was temporarily in a state of atrophy. It was kept at Boulogne with depleted ranks, but ready to be recruited for a landing in England as a subordinate move, if the British should be overpowered in the Levant and compelled to divide their fleet. Otherwise, as Bonaparte thought and said after a visit in February to the shores of the Channel, it would be too hazardous to attempt a landing in face of the tremendous armament afloat under the English flag. "To invade England without the mastery of the seas is an enterprise the boldest and most difficult that has been undertaken. If it be possible, it is only by a surprise passage (of the Channel)." He felt that in any case it would be best to spend the summer in fitting out the fleet at Brest for an invasion of Ireland during the autumn. Two questions which present themselves in this connection cannot be answered categorically: Was it of his own free will that Bonaparte accepted the command of the Egyptian expedition, or did the directors force it on him? What was the ultimate design of the great schemer if the imminent war broke out while the best French troops were in Africa?

In considering the probabilities as to both these queries, it appears as if Bonaparte had convinced himself that the open assumption of authority was for the moment impossible. He could not be a director: candidates for that office must be forty years old. He dared not take Barras's suggestion and seize the dictatorship, even temporarily, because the Jacobin members of the Directory made it plain, in certain very disorderly sessions of that body, that they would not tolerate such a plan and were strong enough to thwart it. These scenes, which were not kept secret, and were described in the coffee-houses, led the Paris populace to suspect Bonaparte. They were enjoying a temporary repose which it would have been dangerous at the moment for any aspirant to disturb. It must have seemed plain that a change in the constitution was essential to anything like the speedy realization of his personal ambition, which had already taken definite form. As early as September nineteenth, 1797, Bonaparte wrote Talleyrand a letter containing what he called his complete code of politics. His sphinx-like demeanor and the mysterious allusions already quoted from the festival speech, taken in connection with that outline, confirm the notion that Talleyrand, Barras, and Sieyès were preparing for a new constitution, which should be ready for use when the spring elections had increased the number of royalist delegates, as they were sure to do, and had thus produced a clash between the executive and the legislature.

The "complete code of politics" expresses the same contempt for all antecedent French political speculation as that felt by Sieyès. Even Montesquieu had but arranged and analyzed the results of his reading and travels; though doubtless capable, he had done nothing really constructive. The English had confused the respective functions of the various powers in government. In view of their history, it was easy to see why the taxing power was in the House of Commons. But why should that body also declare war or make peace? Great Britain, being a state whose constitution was compounded of privileges, "a black ceiling with a gilt edge," was quite different from France, where these had been abolished, and all power proceeded directly from the sovereign people. Why, then, as under the present constitution, should the French legislature alone have rights which belonged to government in its totality? This sovereign power, he continued, "naturally falls, I think, into two magistracies quite distinct: one supervises, but does not act, and to this what we now call the executive power should be compelled to submit important measures--the legislation of execution, so to speak. This great magistracy would be truly the chief council of the nation; it would have all that part of administration or of execution which is by our constitution intrusted to the legislative." This assembly should be numerous, and composed only of men who had already held positions of public trust. The legislative should make and change the organic laws, but not in two to three days, as at present; for after an organic law has once been made operative, it should not be changed without four or five months of discussion. "This legislative power, without rank in the Republic, impassive, without eyes or ears for what is about it, would have no ambition, and would not inundate us with more than a thousand specific statutes which, by their absurdity, destroy their own validity, and make us, with three hundred tomes of laws, a nation without laws." Is this effusion a recurrence to youthful crudities of ideal politics, or does it hint at the exercise by that upper magistracy of its unchecked powers through a single executive agent like himself? Certain it is, this very concept, though sensibly changed, had a direct influence on the institutions of the empire.

In the absence of sufficient evidence as to the facts, there is but one complex theory which explains subsequent occurrences. The Egyptian expedition, as its commander publicly said in leaving Toulon, was the right wing of the Army of England; at the same time it was consonant with the ancient French policy, and appealed to the romantic, Oriental side of Bonaparte's own temperament; finally, as a practical measure it gave him a chance to await with distinction the outcome of affairs in Paris, whether it should be, as he said to Bourrienne, "for a few months or for six years." At the same time it was an anchor to windward. In consequence of the Bernadotte incident, the Austrian plenipotentiaries at Rastadt had refused even the entire left bank of the Rhine to France, and European sentiment was apparently consolidating for another coalition. "I go to the Orient," Napoleon said to Joseph, "with every means to guarantee success. If France needs me; if the number of those who think like Talleyrand, Sieyès, and Roederer increases; if war breaks out, and is unlucky for France, then I shall return, more certain of public opinion than now. If, on the other hand, the Republic is successful in war; if a political general like me appears and centers the hopes of the people in himself, good; then still in the Orient I shall perhaps do greater service to the world than he."

Everything indicates that in the months immediately (p.~052) preceding his departure there was friction between Bonaparte and the Directory. It is said that in one of their sessions, called to consider the situation, Bonaparte proposed to reknit the negotiations of Rastadt by himself returning thither, but that François was designated to go in his stead. Thereupon the worn-out scene of threatening resignation was rehearsed by him once more. "Here is a pen," said Rewbell; "you need rest." But Merlin snatched it; and as the furious aspirant, seeing his supremacy jeopardized, left the room, the others heard the words, "The pear is not yet ripe." "Believe me, it is good advice I give you," said Barras, in a private interview immediately after: "leave the country as soon as you can." There was abundant room for such scenes in a committee which considered as its own the policy of indirect attack on England through the East, while all its members were chafing under the dictatorial presence of an embodied and dissatisfied ambition which Talleyrand declares had really devised the scheme, but was now uncertain as to which was the best to take of not two or three, but half a dozen courses. The cast of the die decided for Egypt. The secrecy of preparation had kept even the French in doubt. England for a time was entirely misled, and made the nearly fatal blunder of concentrating her naval force in the Channel, and of guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean with only the few ships she could spare, while on the waters of that sea itself she had virtually no force.

Meantime the great fleet at Toulon, nearly the equal of any which France had ever launched, was entirely ready. To convoy the four hundred overloaded transports, there were fifteen ships of the line, fifteen frigates, seven corvettes, and thirty minor armed vessels. It was a surprise even to the initiated that at the last moment the soldiers were found to number not twenty-five thousand, as originally proposed, but forty thousand, comprising the flower of the republican armies. Of division generals there were D'Hilliers, Vaubois, Desaix, Kléber, Menou, Reynier, and Dugua; of brigade generals, Lannes, Davout, Murat, and Andréossy; of colonels, Marmont, Junot, Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and Bessières. The most novel feature of all was a carefully organized and equipped expedition of a hundred or more scholars, who, according to what was then the fashion, were destined to gather the treasures of the Pharaohs and of the Ptolemies for the collections of Paris. Their apparatus for discovery was the best obtainable, their learning was at least respectable, and their library was a mixture of the ancient classics with those of the modern romanticism, of medieval lore with modern atheism. There were of course the great military memoirs, of Turenne, Condé, Luxembourg, Eugene, and Charles XII; more interesting is the inclusion of fifteen volumes of geography and discovery. Whither bound? Was this another Alexander? Homer and Vergil jostled Ossian, Ariosto, and Tasso, while Rousseau's "Héloïse" stood neighbor to Goethe's "Werther." Among other "political" works were Montesquieu, the Vedas, the Koran, and the Bible. Caroline Bonaparte gave her brother as a farewell gift a little pocket library, among the volumes of which were Bacon's "Essays," Mme. de Staël's "Influence of the Passions," and Mercier's "Philosophic Visions." The curious have examined these volumes, and found in their well-worn pages a few passages specially marked. In his hours of solitude the great solitary read in Bacon how he who dominates others loses his own liberty; in Mme. de Staël how hard it is to keep the acquisitions of ambition; in Mercier of an Oriental visionary who, after the glories of temporary success, ended his days in exile and forgetfulness.

It was on April twelfth that Bonaparte received his final instructions from the executive. He was to seize Malta, drive the British from all their Oriental possessions which he could hope to capture, destroy their factories on the Red Sea, pierce the Isthmus of Suez, improve the condition of all the native populations, and keep a good understanding with the Sultan. Meantime from twenty-five to thirty thousand men were to be assembled at some point on the Channel as a feint against Great Britain so that her attention should be withdrawn for the time being from the Mediterranean. The very next day the departing general deposited with the Directory his secret plan for the camp at Boulogne and a scheme for the surprise passage. The scholar troop was ordered to Toulon and the commander-in-chief prepared to follow. But the Bernadotte incident at Vienna raised the war cloud and he waited a month until it disappeared from the horizon. Throughout that period Bonaparte kept the directors on tenterhooks by repeated offers to return to Rastadt, where he alone could secure reparation for the insult to the republic in the person of her ambassador. But the Austrians were unready for another appeal to arms, Thugut offered reparation, and the dangerous marplot of the Directory was at last free to remove his troublesome presence from Europe. He left Paris on the night of May third.