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Bonaparte had been, as we have just seen, named General of the Artillery of the Army of Nice as a reward for the services rendered to the Republic before Toulon. It was there that he became intimate with the younger Robespierre, who was a Representative of the People to that army. Recalled to Paris some time before the 9th Thermidor, the latter did all he could to influence the young General to follow him, promising him the direct protection of his brother. But Bonaparte invariably refused him. The time was not yet come when he should take part.

Then perhaps another motive was withholding him, and this time again, was it chance that was protecting genius? If it was so, chance was making itself visible, and had taken the form of a young and pretty female Representative of the People, who was sharing, at the Army of Nice, the mission of her husband. Bonaparte had for her a serious affection, which he manifested by proofs of a gallantry quite warlike. One day as he was walking with her in the environs of the gorge of Tenda the idea came to the young General to give his beautiful companion the spectacle of a little war, and he ordered an attack of the outpost. One dozen men were victims of this amusement, and Napoleon has more than once confessed to Saint-Helene that these twelve men, killed without real motive and by a mere fancy, were to him a greater cause of remorse than the death of the six hundred thousand soldiers that he had scattered in the snowy steppes of Russia.

It was during this interval that the Representatives of the People near the Army of Italy passed the following decree:

“ General Bonaparte will return to Genoa to confer, jointly with the diplomatic representatives of the French Republic, with the Government of Genoa upon the subjects referred to in his instructions.

“ The Charge d’Affaires near the Republic of Genoa will recognize him and will have him recognized by the Genoan Government.

“Loano, the 25th Messidor, year II. of the Republic.”

The real object of this mission was to have the young General see with his own eyes the fortresses of Savone and Genoa, and to enable him to take away, upon artillery and other military subjects, all possible information; in short, to enable him to collect all facts which might reveal the intention of the Genoan Government relative to the coalition. ~

Whilst Bonaparte was accomplishing this mission, Robespierre was marching to the scaffold, and the Terrorist Deputies were replaced by Albitte and Salicetti. Their arrival at Barcelonnette was signalized by the following decree:

“ The Representatives of the People near the Army of the Alps and Italy.

“ Considering that General Bonaparte, Commandant-in-chief of the Artillery of the Army of Italy, has totally lost their confidence by most suspicious conduct, and above all by the journey he has latterly made to Genoa, resolve as follows:

“ The General of Brigade Bonaparte, Commandant-in-chief of the Artillery of the Army of Italy is provisionally suspended from his duties; he will be, through the care and under the responsibility of the General-in-chief of the said Army, kept in a state of arrest and arraigned before the Committee of Public Safety, under good and safe escort; seals will be affixed upon all his papers and effects, of which an inventory will be made by the Commissioners, who shall be appointed upon the premises by the Representatives of the People, Salicetti and Albitte, and all those said papers which shall be found suspicious will be sent to the Committee of Public Safety.

“ Done at Barcelonnette, the 19th Thermidor, year II. of the French Republic, one, indivisible, and democratic.

“ Signed. Albitte, Salicetti, Laporte.

“ A true copy, the General-in-chief of the Army in Italy.

“ Signed. Dumerbion.”

The decree was put into execution. Bonaparte was conducted to the prison of Nice, and there remained fourteen days; after which, by a second decree, signed by the same men, his liberty was provisionally restored.

However, Bonaparte got out of a danger only to be disgusted. The emergencies of the Thermidor had brought about a reorganization in the committees of the Convention. An old captain named Aubry, finding himself in charge of the War Committee, made a new list of the army, in which he placed himself as General of the Artillery. As for Bonaparte, in exchange for the rank he held, they gave him that of General of Infantry in La Vendee. Bonaparte, who deemed the theatre of a civil war in a corner of France to be too narrow, refused to go to his post, and was, by a decree of the Committee of Public Safety, stricken from the list of general officers on the active list.

Bonaparte already believed himself too necessary to France not to be deeply impressed with such injustice; nevertheless, as he had not yet reached one of those heights of life from which the whole horizon which is to be gone over can be seen, he had already hopes, it is true, but not certainties. These hopes were shattered. He, who was full of genius and of the hopes of the future, thought himself condemned to a long and perhaps eternal inaction, and that in a time when everybody reached fortune very quickly.

He rented temporarily a room in a hotel on the Rue du Mail; sold his horses and carriage for six thousand francs; collected the little money that he possessed, and resolved to retire into the country. Exalted imaginations always leap from one extreme to the other. Exiled from the camps, Bonaparte saw nothing but rural life. Not being able to be Caesar, he made himself Cin-cinnatus.

It was then that he recalled Valence, where he had passed three years, so obscure and so happy. It was to this place that he directed his searches, accompanied by his brother Joseph, who was returning to Marseilles. In passing Montelimart the two travellers stopped. Bonaparte found the site and the climate of the city suitable, and asked if there was not in the surrounding country some cheap property for sale. They referred him to M. Grasson of the Official Council, with whom he arranged to go the next day and visit a little country-seat called Beauserret, which name, in thepatois of the country, meant Beause-jour, which was indicative of the agreeable situation. In effect Bonaparte and Joseph visited this country-seat. It was in every particular convenient for them. They feared only, on seeing its extent and good state of preservation, that the price would be too high. They ventured the question—thirty thousand francs—that price was nothing.

Bonaparte and Joseph returned to Montelimart to consult together. Their little fortunes united allowed them to appropriate this sum for the purchase of their future hermitage. They fixed a meeting for the third day after. It was upon the very premises that they desired to conclude their agreement, so agreeable to them was Beauserret. M. Grasson accompanied them there again. They examined the property even more in detail than the first time. At length Bonaparte, astonished that they gave for so small a sum such a charming country-seat, asked if there was not some unseen cause which lowered the price.

“Yes,” answered M. Grasson, “but without importance to you.”

“No matter,” replied Bonaparte, “ I wish to know it.”

“ There was a murder committed.”

“ And by whom? ”

“ By a son upon his father.”

“ A parricide! ” exclaimed Bonaparte, becoming paler than usual. “ Let us leave, Joseph.”

And seizing his brother by the arm, he rushed out of the apartments, re-ascended his cabriolet, arriving at Montelimart asked for post-horses, and set out immediately for Paris, while Joseph continued his route to Marseilles.

He was going there to marry the daughter of a rich merchant named Clary, who afterwards became also the father-in-law of Bernadotte.

As for Bonaparte, driven once more by destiny towards Paris, that great centre of great events, he there resumed that obscure and hidden life, which was weighing so much upon him. It was then that, not being able to stand this inaction, he addressed to the Government a note, in which he expressed the view that it would be for the interest of France to do all that it possibly could to increase the military power of Turkey at the moment when the Empress of Russia had just strengthened her alliance with Austria. On this account he offered himself to the Government to go across to Constantinople with six or seven officers of different troops, who could instruct the numerous and brave, but little seasoned militia of the Sultan.

The Government did not condescend to answer this note and Bonaparte remained in Paris. What would have happened to the world if a clerk of the Minister had placed at the bottom of this request the word “ Granted? ” God only knows.

However, on the 22d of August, 1795, the Constitution of the year III. had been adopted, and the legislators who had drawn it up had stipulated in it that two thirds of the members composing the National Convention should form part of the new legislative body. This was the downfall of the hopes of the opposite party, which had hoped by the total renewal of the elections to secure the introduction of a new majority representing their opinion. This opposition was especially sustained by the Sections of Paris, which declared that they would not accept the Constitution unless the provision as to the re-election of the two-thirds was annulled. The Convention maintained the Constitution in its entirety. The Sections commenced to murmur. On the 25th of September, some precursory troubles arose. Finally, during the day of October 4th (12th Vendemiaire) the danger became so pressing that the Convention thought it was time to take the matter seriously in hand. Consequently it addressed to General Alexandre Dumas, Commander-in-chief of the Army of the Alps, then absent on leave, the following letter, the very brevity of which showed the urgency:

“ General Alexandre Dumas will return instantly to Paris, there to take charge of the forces of the Army.”

The order of the Convention was carried to the Hotel Mirabeau, but General Dumas had left three days before for Villers-Cotterets, where he received the letter on the morning of the 13th.

In the meantime the danger was increasing hour by hour, and they could not await the arrival of him who had been sent for. Consequently, during the night, the Representative of the People, Barras, was appointed Commander-in-chief of the Interior. He wanted a second. He cast his eyes upon Bonaparte.

Destiny, as we have seen, had cleared away his route. That hour of the future, which has to strike, it is said, once in the life of every man, had come for him. The cannon of the 13th Vendemiaire resounded in the capital.

The Sections, he had just destroyed, gave him the name of Mitrailleur, and the Convention, that he had just preserved, the title of General-in-chief of the Army of Italy.

But this great day had not only an influence upon the political life of Bonaparte, but a decisive effect upon his private life also. The disarming of the Sections had just been wrought with a vigor made necessary by the circumstances, when one day a child of ten or twelve years presented himself to the staff, beseeching General Bonaparte to give orders that the sword of his father, who had been a General of the Republic, be given back to him. Bonaparte, touched by the demand and by the juvenile grace with which it was made, caused search for the sword to be made, and, having found it, he returned it to him. The child, at the sight of this sacred weapon that he believed lost, kissed in tears the handle so many times touched by the paternal hand. The General was touched by this filial love and expressed so much good will to the child, that his mother believed herself obliged to come the next day to make him a visit of thanks.

The child was Eugene, and the mother Josephine.

On the 21st of March, 1796, Bonaparte left for the Army of Italy, taking away with him in his carriage two thousand louis. This was all that he was able to get together by joining to his own fortune and those of his friends, the subsidies of the Directory. It is with this sum that he went to conquer Italy. It was seven times less than Alexander carried when he went to conquer India.

On arriving at Nice he found an army without discipline, without ammunition, without victuals, and without clothes. As soon as he reached the headquarters he ordered to be distributed to each of the generals, to aid them to enter into the campaign, the sum of four louis. Afterwards he said to the soldiers, pointing Italy out to them:

“ Comrades, in the midst of all these rocks you want everything. Cast your eyes upon the rich plains which unroll themselves at your feet. They belong to us. Let us go and take them.”

This was very near the language used by Hannibal to his soldiers nineteen hundred years ago, and during that nineteen hundred years there had passed between these two men but one man worthy to be compared with them —that was Caesar.

The soldiers to whom Bonaparte addressed these words were the wrecks of an army which, in the sterile rocks of the river of Genoa, had been painfully holding themselves on the defensive for two years, and which had before them two hundred thousand of the best troops of the Empire and of Piedmont. Bonaparte attacked this mass with scarcely thirty thousand men and in eleven days defeated them five times—at Montenotte, at Millesimo, at Dego, at Vico, and at Mondovi. Then he opened the gates of the cities with one hand, whilst with the other he won battles. He took by storm the fortresses of Coni, Tortone, Alexandria, and Ceva. In eleven days the Austrians were separated from the Piedmontese, Provera was taken, and the King of Sardinia was forced to sign a capitulation in his own capital. Then Bonaparte advanced upon Upper Italy. Then divining future successes by past ones, he wrote to the Directory:

“ To-morrow I march on Beaulieu; I will oblige him to repass the Po; I will pass immediately after him; I will take possession of all Lombardy and before a month I hope to be upon the mountains of Tyrol, to find there the Army of the Rhine, and, in concert with it, to carry the war into Bavaria.”

In fact, Beaulieu was pursued. He turned back vainly to oppose the passage of the Po. The passage was effected. He sheltered himself behind the walls of Lodi. A combat of three hours expelled him. He ranged himself in battle on the left bank of the Adda, defending with his artillery the bridge that he had not had time to destroy. The French army formed itself into a close column, threw itself upon the bridge, upset all that opposed it, scattered the Austrian army, and continued its march, passing over their bodies. Then Pavia surrendered, Pizzighitone and Cremona fell, the castle of Milan opened its gate, the King of Sardinia signed the peace, the Dukes of Parma and Modena followed his example, and Beaulieu had but time to shut himself up in Mantua.

It was in this treaty with the Duke of Modena that Bonaparte gave the first proof of his unselfishness by refusing four millions in gold which the Commander of Este offered him in the name of his brother and which Salicetti, Commissioner of the Government near the Army, pressed him to accept.

It was also in this campaign that he received the popular name, which reopened to him in 1815 the doors of France. This was the occasion. His youth, when he had just taken command of the army, had inspired some astonishment in the old soldiers, so they resolved to confer upon him themselves the inferior grades from which the Government had seemingly exempted him. Consequently, they met together after each battle to give him a grade, and when he turned into camp he received from the oldest veterans, who saluted him, his new title. It was thus that he was made Corporal of Lodi. From that time the nickname of “ Little Corporal” remained always with Napoleon.

However, Bonaparte made but one halt, of an instant, and in this halt envy met him again. The Directory, which had seen in the correspondence of the soldier the revelation of the political man, feared that the conqueror might constitute himself the arbiter of Italy, and it prepared to associate Kellermann with him. Bonaparte learned of it and wrote:

“To associate Kellermann with me is to desire to lose all. I cannot serve willingly with a man who believes himself to be the best tactician of Europe; moreover, I believe one bad general to be preferable to two good ones. War is like government—a thing of tact.”

Afterwards he made his solemn entry into Milan, where, whilst the Directory signed at Paris the treaty of peace negotiated by Salicetti at the Court of Turin, the negotiations begun with Parma terminated, and those with Naples and Rome opened, he prepared himself for the conquest of Upper Italy.

The key of Germany was Mantua. It was Mantua, therefore, that must be taken. One hundred and five pieces of cannon taken at the castle of Milan were directed upon the city. Serrurier carried the outworks and the seige commenced.

Then the Cabinet at Vienna appreciated the gravity of the situation. They sent to the relief of Beaulieu twenty-five thousand men under the orders of Quasdanowitch, and thirty-five thousand under those of Wurmser. A Milanese spy was charged with despatches which announced this reinforcement, and pledged himself to penetrate into the city.

The spy fell into a night round commanded by the Aide-de-camp Dermoncourt and was brought to General Dumas. Fruitlessly they searched him; they found nothing upon him. They were ready to give him his liberty, when by one of those revelations of destiny, General Dumas surmised that he had swallowed his despatches. The spy denied it. General Dumas ordered him to be shot. The spy confessed. He was replaced in charge of the Aide-de-camp Dermoncourt, who, by means of an emetic administered by the chief surgeon, became possessed of a bullet of beeswax the size of a marble. It contained the letter of Wurmser written upon parchment with a raven’s quill. This letter gave the minutest details of the operations of the opposing army. The letter was sent to Bonaparte. Quasdanowitch and Wurmser separated; the first marched upon Brescia and the second upon Mantua. This was the same fault that had already caused the loss of Provera and Argentau. Bonaparte left ten thousand men before the city; with twenty-five thousand men he went to meet Quasdanowitch, whom he threw back into the gorges of Tyrol, after having defeated him at Salo and Lonato; then immediately he turned back to Wurmser, who learned of the defeat of his colleague by the presence of the army that conquered him. Attacked with French impetuosity, he was beaten at Castiglione. In five days the Austrians had lost twenty thousand men and fifty pieces of cannon. This victory had given Quasdanowitch time to rally. Bonaparte went again to him; defeated him at San Marco, at Sarravalle, and at Roveredo. Then he returned, after the battles of Bas-sano, Rimolano, and Cavalo, to lay a second time the siege before Mantua, where Wurmser had entered with the remains of his army.

There, while the works were being made, the States formed around him and consolidated at his word. He founded republics on both sides of the Po, expelled the English from Corsica, and pressed at the same time upon Genoa, Venice, and the Holy See, which he prevented from uprising. It was in the midst of these vast political combinations that he learned of the approach of a new Imperial Army led by Alvinzi; but there was a fatality upon all those men. The same fault committed by his predecessors, Alvinzi committed in his turn. He divided his army into two bodies; one, composed of thirty thousand men led by himself, was to cross the Veronese and reach Mantua; the other, composed of fifteen thousand men under the command of Davidowitch, was to spread itself out upon the Adige. Bonaparte marched to meet Alvinzi, met him at Arcole, struggled hand to hand with him three days, and did not leave off until five thousand dead of his army slept on the field of battle, and eight thousand prisoners and thirty pieces of cannon were taken. Then, all panting from Arcole, he rushed between Davidowitch, who came out of Tyrol, and Wurmser, who came out of Mantua; threw back the one into his mountains, the other into his city. He learned upon the battle-field that Alvinzi and Provera were just joining each other. He routed Alvinzi at Rivoli, and compelled Provera, by the battles of Saint George and Favorita, to surrender. Finally, rid from all his adversaries, he returned to Mantua, encircled it, pressed it, smothered it, and forced it to surrender at the moment when a fifth army, detached from the reserves of the Rhine, was advancing, led by an Archduke. No humiliation was spared Austria. The defeats of its generals told upon the throne. On the ioth of March, 1797, Prince Charles was beaten at the Pass of Tagliamento. This victory opened to us the State of Venice and the gorges of Tyrol. The French advanced at a running pace through the way that was opened to them; triumphed at Lavis, at Trasmis, at Clausen; entered Trieste; carried by storm Tarvis, Gradisca, and Villach; pursued with eagerness the Archduke, whom they abandoned, only to occupy the routes to the capital of Austria; and finally penetrated to within thirty leagues of Vienna. There Bonaparte halted to await the Parliamentarians. It had been a year since he left Nice. In that year he had destroyed six armies, had taken Alexandria, Turin, Milan, and Mantua, and had planted the tri-colored flag upon the Alps of Piedmont, upon Italy, and Tyrol. Around him began to shine the names of Massena, Augereau, Jou-bert, Marmont, and Berthier. The galaxy was forming, the satellites revolved around their star, the sky of the Empire was constellating.

Bonaparte was not deceived. The parliamentarians arrived. Leoben was fixed as the seat of the negotiations. Bonaparte had no more need of full power from the Directory. He made the war; he will make the peace.

“ Seeing the position of things,” he wrote, “ the negotiations even with the Emperor have become military operations.”

Nevertheless this work was spun out. All the crafts of diplomacy surrounded and tired him. But a day came when the lion became tired of being entangled in a net. He arose in the midst of a discussion, seized a magnificent china tea-set, broke it in pieces and trod upon it; then, turning to the stupefied plenipotentiaries, he said:

“ Thus will I pulverize you all, since you wish it.” 1

The diplomats returned to sentiments more peaceful. They gave audience to the treaty. In the first article the Emperor was made to declare that he recognized the French Republic.

“ Strike out that paragraph,” said Bonaparte; “ the French Republic is as the sun upon the horizon. Blind are those upon whom its brightness has not shone.”

Thus at the age of twenty-seven years Bonaparte held in one hand the sword that divided empires and in the other the balance that weighed kings. Vainly the Directory traced his way. He marched in his own. If he did not yet command, already he did not obey. The Directory wrote him to remember that Wurmser was an emigrant. Wurmser fell into the hands of Bonaparte, who had for him all the regard due to misfortune and old age. The Directory used in reference to the Pope outrageous formulas; Bonaparte wrote to him always with respect, and called him only by the name of Most Holy Father. The Directory deported the priests and proscribed them; Bonaparte directed his army to regard them as brothers and to honor them as ministers of God. The Directory tried to exterminate every vestige of the aristocracy; Bonaparte wrote to the democracy of Genoa to blame the excesses which they had carried on against the nobles, and let them know that if they wished to preserve his esteem they must respect the statue of Doria.

On the 15th Vendemiaire, year VI., the treaty of Campo-Formio was signed, and Austria, to which Venice was left, renounced its claims upon Belgium and its pretensions to Italy. Bonaparte left Italy for France, and on the 15th Frimaire of the same year (5th December, 1797) he arrived at Paris. Bonaparte had remained absent two years, and in those two years had taken one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, one hundred and seventy flags, five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, six hundred field pieces, five pontoon trains, nine vessels of sixty-four guns, twelve frigates of thirty-two, twelve corvettes, and eighteen galleys. Moreover, after having, as we have seen, brought with him from France two thousand louis, he had sent there altogether, at different times, nearly fifty millions. Contrary to all ancient and modern traditions it was the Army that fed the fatherland.

With peace Bonaparte saw arrive the limit of his military career. Unable to remain inactive, he aspired to the place of one of the two Directors, who were just going out. Unfortunately he was but twenty-eight years old. It was a violation, so great and so sudden, of the Constitution of the year III. that they did not dare to even make the proposition. He returned then to his little house in the Rue Chantereine, struggling in advance, by the combinations of his genius, against an enemy more terrible than all those that he had combated up to that time—neglect.

“ The memory of nothing is preserved at Paris,” said he. “ If I remain a long time idle I am lost. One fame in this great Babylon succeeds another, and they will not have seen me more than three times at the play when I will not be looked at so much.”

While waiting for something better he had himself appointed a member of the National Academy.

Finally on the 29th of January, 1798, he said to his Secretary:

“ Bourrienne, I cannot remain here; there is nothing to do; they will listen to nothing. I see that if I remain I will sink in a short time. Everything wears out here. I have already no more glory. This little Europe does not furnish enough of it. It is a mole-hill. There have never been such great empires and revolutions as in the East where live six hundred millions of men. I must go to the East; all great fame comes from there.”

Thus he must exceed all the fame of the greatest. He has already done more than Hannibal. He will do as much as Alexander and Caesar, but his name is wanting on the pyramids, where are written these two great names.

On April 12, 1798, Bonaparte was commissioned General-in-chief of the Army of the East.

He had already, as we have seen, only to ask in order to obtain. On arriving at Toulon he gave proof that he had but to command to be obeyed.

An old man of eighty years had been shot just two days before the time of his arrival in that city. On the 16th of May, 1798, he wrote the following letter to the military commissions of the ninth division established by virtue of the law of the 19th Fructidor:

“Bonaparte, Member of the National Institute.

“ I have learned, citizens, with the greatest grief, that old men of the age of seventy and eighty years, and miserable women, pregnant or surrounded by children of tender age, have been shot, accused of emigration.

“ Should then the soldiers of liberty have become executioners?

“ Should then the pity that they have manifested in the midst of combats die in their hearts?

“The law of the 19th Fructidor has been a measure of public safety. Its intention has been to reach the conspirators and not miserable women and decaying old men.

“ I exhort you then, citizens, that every time that the law shall present to your tribunal old men of more than sixty years, or women, to declare that in the midst of combats you have respected the old men and the wives of your enemies. .

“ The soldier who signs a sentence against a person incapable of bearing arms is a coward.

“ Bonaparte.”

This-letter saved the life of an unfortunate who was comprised in that category. Bonaparte embarked three days after. Thus his last farewell to France was the exercise of a royal act, the dispensing of the pardoning power. -

Malta was purchased in advance. Bonaparte made it surrender to him while passing, and on the first of July, 1798, he touched the land of Egypt near Fort Marabout at some distance from Alexandria.

As soon as he learned this news, Mourad-Bey, whom they were coming to seek like a lion in his den, called to him his Mamelukes, let go in the current of the Nile a flotilla of djermes, of canges and of launches, armed for war, and sent to follow his boats a body of twelve to fifteen hundred cavaliers on the banks of the river, which Desaix, who commanded our advance guard, met on the 14th at the village of Minieh-Salam. This was the first time since the Crusades that the Orient and the Occident met face to face.

The shock was terrible. This militia, glittering with gold, swift as the wind, devouring as the flame, charged even upon our squares, the'gun-barrels of which it cut to pieces with its tempered Damascus sabres. Then, when the fire burst from these squares as from a volcano, it unrolled itself like a scarf of gold and silk, visited at full gallop all these iron angles, each face of which sent its volley; and, when they saw any breach impossible, they fled finally like a long line of birds, leaving around our battalions a belt, moving still, of mutilated men and horses, and went off some distance to form anew, only to return to attempt a new charge as useless and slaughterous as the other.

In the middle of the day they rallied for the last time, but instead of coming again upon us they took the road to the desert and disappeared in the horizon in a whirlwind of sand.

It was at Djizeh that Mourad learned of the repulse at Ch6breiss. The same day messengers were sent to the Said, to the Fayoum, and to the desert. Everywhere, Beys, Sheiks, Mamelukes—all were convoked against the common enemy; each one was compelled to come with his horse and arms. Three days after Mourad had around him six thousand horsemen.

All this troop hastened by the war cry of its chief camped in disorder on the banks of the Nile in sight of Cairo and the Pyramids, between the village of Embabeh, on which it rested its right, and Djizeh, the favorite residence of Mourad, to which it stretched out its left. As for the latter, he had planted his tent around a gigantic sycamore, the shade of which covered fifty horsemen. It was in this position that, after having put his militia in a little order, he waited for the French army which was ascending the Nile.

On the 23d, at the break of day, Desaix, who marched always in the advance guard, perceived a party of five hundred Mamelukes, which had been sent to reconnoitre and which fell back without ceasing to be in view. At four o’clock in the morning Mourad heard loud acclamations; it was the entire army cheering the Pyramids.

At six o’clock the French and Mamelukes were in each other’s presence.

As one pictures the battle-field, it was the same that Cambyses, the other conqueror, who had come from the other end of the world, had selected to crush the Egyptians. Two thousand four hundred years had elapsed. The Nile and the Pyramids were still there, but the Sphinx of granite, which the Persians mutilated in the face, had only its gigantic head out of the sand. The Colossus, of which Herodotus spoke, had fallen, Memphis had disappeared, Cairo had sprung up. All these reminders, distinct and present in the minds of the French chiefs, were hovering vaguely over the soldiers like those unknown birds which formerly passed over battles, and which foretold victory.

As for the site, it was a vast plain of sand, suitable for the manoeuvres of the cavalry. A village called Bekir rose in the middle. A small stream bounded it a little in advance of Djizeh. Mourad and all his cavalry rested against the Nile, with Cairo behind them.

Bonaparte saw, from this disposition of the land and his foes, that it was possible for him not only to conquer the Mamelukes, but even to exterminate them. He arranged his army in a semicircle, forming of each division gigantic squares, in the centre of which was placed the artillery. Desaix, accustomed to march in advance, commanded the first square placed between Embabeh and Djizeh; then came the Regnier division; the Kleber division, deprived of its chief, who had been wounded at Alexandria, and commanded by Dugua; then the Menou division, commanded by Vial; finally, forming the extreme left, protected by the Nile and nearest to Embabeh, the division of General Bon.

All the squares were to move together to march upon Embabeh,. and to throw into the Nile the village, horses, Mamelukes and intrenchments.

But Mourad was not the man to stay behind some hillocks of sand. Scarcely had the squares taken position when the Mamelukes rushed out of their intrenchments in uneven masses and without choice, without calculation, threw themselves upon the squares which they found nearest to them—these were the Desaix and Regnier divisions.

Arriving at the mouth of the guns the assailants divided into two columns; the first rushed headlong upon the left angle of the Regnier division, the second upon the right angle of the Desaix division. The squares let them approach to within ten paces, then they blazed forth; horses and horsemen found themselves stopped by a wall of flames; the first two lines of Mamelukes fell as if the earth had quaked under them; the remnants of the column, carried on by its course, stopped by this rampart of iron and fire, not being able or willing to turn back, marched along in its ignorance, in front of the Regnier square, the fire of which threw it back upon the Desaix division. This latter then, finding itself taken between these two waterspouts of men and horses, which were whirling around it, presented to them the points of the bayonets of its first rank, while two others were emitting flames, and opening their angles to let pass cannon balls impatient to mix in this sanguinary fete.

There was a moment when the two divisions found themselves completely surrounded, and when all means were put in operation to open these impassable and deadly squares. The Mamelukes charging to within ten paces, received the double fire of musketry and artillery; then turning their horses around, frightened at the sight of the bayonets, they forced them to advance backwards and, making them rear, they fell down together, whilst the horsemen, dismounted, were dragging themselves on their knees, crawling like serpents, and cutting the hamstrings of our soldiers. It was thus during the three-quarters of an hour that this dreadful conflict lasted. Our soldiers in this kind of warfare no longer saw men; they believed it to be an action with phantoms, spectres and demons. Finally, infuriated Mamelukes, cries of men, neighing of horses, flames and smoke, all vanished as if by a whirlwind: there remained between the two divisions only a bloody battlefield, covered with arms and standards, strewn with the dead and dying, complaining, and rising like the swell of the sea not yet entirely calmed.

At this moment all the squares, with a step as regular as that of a parade, advanced, closing Embabeh in their circle of fire. Suddenly the line of the Bey blazed forth in its turn: thirty-seven pieces of artillery were shooting upon the plain their network of bronze. The flotilla leaped upon the Nile, shattered by the recoil of the bombards, and Mourad, at the head of three thousand horsemen, darted in his turn to see if he could not break these infernal squares. Then the column which had commenced the attack and which had had time to reorganize itself, recognized him, and returned also against his first and mortal enemies.

It must have been a marvellous thing for the eye of the eagle hovering over the battle-field, to see these six thousand horsemen, the first in the world, mounted upon horses whose feet left no traces upon the sand, turning about like a pack of hounds around those immovable and inflammable squares, binding them in their folds, enveloping them in their rings, seeking to throttle them when they could not open them, dispersing, reforming to disperse again, changing face as the waves which beat upon the shore; then returning as far as the squares in a single line led by the indefatigable Mourad standing erect, like a gigantic serpent, the head of which was occasionally seen. All at once the batteries of the in-trenchments changed artillerists. The Mamelukes heard the thunder of their own cannon, and saw themselves carried off by their own bullets. Their flotilla took fire and exploded. Whilst Mourad was wasting his teeth and claws against our squares, the three columns of attack had taken possession of the intrenchment, and Marmont, commanding the plain, was firing upon the infuriated Mamelukes from the heights of Embabeh.

Then Bonaparte ordered a new manoeuvre, and all was finished. The squares opened, unfolded, joined, and were welded like the links of a chain. Mourad and his Mamelukes found themselves caught between their own intrenchments and the French line. Mourad saw that the battle was lost. He rallied the men who remained with him, and between this double line of fire darted headlong, with the aerial speed of his horses, into the aperture that the Desaix division had left between itself and the Nile, passed as a whirlwind under the last fire of our soldiers, penetrated into the village of Djizeh, and reappeared, an instant after, above it, retiring towards upper Egypt with two or three hundred horsemen, the remnant of his power.

He had left upon the field of battle three thousand men, forty pieces of artillery, forty loaded camels, his tents, his horses and his slaves. This field, covered with gold, cashmeres and silk, was abandoned to the victorious soldiers, who secured an immense booty, for all those Mamelukes were adorned with the most beautiful armor, and wore jewels of gold and silver.

Bonaparte slept the same night at Djizeh, and on the third day he entered Cairo by the gate of Victory.

Scarcely was he in Cairo when Bonaparte dreamt, not only of the colonization of the country which he had just come to occupy, but even of the conquest of India by the way of the Euphrates. He wrote to the Directory a note in which he asked for reinforcements, arms, war equipages, surgeons, pharmacists, physicians, comedians, gardeners, puppet-players for the people, and fifty Frenchwomen. He sent a courier to Typpo-Saeb to propose to him an alliance against the English. Then, lulled with this double hope, he set out in pursuit of Ibrahim, the most influential of the Beys after Mourad. He destroyed him at Saheley’h, and, whilst receiving congratulations for this victory, a messenger brought him the news of the entire loss of his fleet. Nelson had crushed Brueys. The fleet had disappeared as in a shipwreck. No more communication with France; no more hope of conquering India. It was necessary to remain in Egypt or to go forth as great as the ancients.

Bonaparte returned to Cairo and celebrated the anniversary of the birth of Mahomet and the foundation of the Republic. In the midst of these fetes Cairo revolted, and whilst he battered it down from the heights of Mo-kattam, God came to his aid with a storm. All subsided in four days. Bonaparte left for Suez. He desired to see the Red Sea and to set foot in Asia at the age of Alexander. He came near dying like Pharaoh; a guide saved him.

Now his eyes were turned towards Syria. The time to disembark from Egypt had passed, and he could not return until the month of July following. An expedition by way of Gaza and El Arich was to be feared; for Djezzar-Pasha, surnamed the butcher, had just taken possession of the last-named city. It was necessary to destroy this vanguard of the Ottoman Porte, to overturn the ramparts of Jaffa, of Gaza, and of Acre; to ravage the country and to destroy all its resources; and, finally, to render impossible the passage of an army through the desert. This plan was known. But did he not perhaps conceal one of those gigantic expeditions such as Bonaparte had always in store in the remotest parts of his mind? We will see.

He left at the head of ten thousand men. He divided the infantry into four bodies, which he placed under the orders of Bon, Kleber, Lannes, and Regnier, gave the cavalry to Murat, the artillery to Dommartin, and the engineers to Cafarelli-Dufalga. El Arich was attacked on the ist of Ventose; the 7th, Gaza was occupied without resistance; the 17th, Jaffa, carried by storm, saw its garrison, composed of five thousand men, put to the edge of the sword. Then the triumphal march continued. They arrived before Saint-Jean-d’Acre, and on the 30th of the same month a breach was opened. It was then that the reverses commenced.

It was a Frenchman who commanded the town, an old comrade of Napoleon. Examined together at the Military School, they had been the same day sent to their respective corps. Attached to the Royalist party, Phe-lippeaux favored the escape of Sydney Smith from the Temple. He followed him to England, and preceded him to Syria. It was with his genius much more than with the ramparts of Acre that Bonaparte came into collision. At the first glance of the eye he saw that the defence was conducted by a superior man. A siege according to the regular rule was impossible. He must carry the city. Three successive assaults were made without result. During one of these assaults a bomb fell at the feet of Bonaparte. Two grenadiers immediately threw themselves upon him, placing him between them, elevated their arms above his head and covered him on all sides. The bomb exploded and, as by a miracle, its fragments respected their devotion; no one was wounded. One of these grenadiers was called Daumesnil. He was a general in 1809, lost a leg at Moscow in 1812, and was in command at Vincennes in 1814.

In the meantime relief came from all sides to Djezzar; the Pashas of Syria had reunited their forces and marched upon Acre; Sydney Smith hastened with the English fleet; finally the plague, this auxiliary more terrible than all the others, came to the aid of the executioner of Syria. It was necessary first to get rid of the army of Damascus. Bonaparte, instead of waiting for it or stepping back at its approach, marched on, met and scattered it in the valley of Mt. Tabor. Then he returned to attempt five more assaults as useless as the first. Saint-Jean-d’Acre was to him a cursed city; he could not pass beyond it.

Every one was surprised that he exerted himself so to take a small town;Jthat there he risked his life each day; that he lost his best officers and his bravest soldiers. Everybody blamed him for this obstinacy, which seemed to be without aimj Yet there was an aim. He explained it himself after one of these unfruitful assaults, when Duroc had been wounded, for it was necessary that some great mind like his own should know that he would not play a game of nonsense.

“Yes,” said he; “I see that this miserable paltry town has cost me many people and taken much time, but things are too far advanced for me not to try a new effort. If I succeed, I shall find in the city the treasures of the Pasha and arms for three hundred thousand men. I will rouse to action and arm Syria, which has been so much excited by the cruelty of Djezzar, the downfall of whom, at each assault, the populace demand of God. I will march upon Damascus and Alep. In advancing into the country I will increase my army with the discontented ones; I will announce to the people the abolition of slavery and the tyrannous government of the Pashas; I will arrive at Constantinople with armed crowds; I will turn the Turkish Empire upside down; I will form in the Orient a new and great empire, which will fix my place in posterity; and I will return to Paris by the way of Adrianople and Vienna after having annihilated the house of Austria.”

Then, uttering a sigh, he continued:

“ If I do not succeed in the last assault that I will attempt I shall leave on the spot; time presses me—I shall not be in Cairo before the middle of June; the winds will then be favorable to go from the north into Egypt. Constantinople will send on troops to Alexandria and to Rosetta—I must be there. I do not fear this year the army which will come later by land. I will have everything destroyed up to the entrance of the desert. I will render impossible the passage of an army from now to the end of two years. People cannot live in the midst of the ruins.”

It was this last course he was forced to take. The army withdrew upon Jaffa; there Bonaparte visited the hospital for pestiferous patients—this will be the most beautiful production of the painter Gros. All that was transportable was taken by sea towards Damietta, and by land to Gaza and El Arich. Sixty of them remained who had but one day to live, and who in one hour would fall into the hands of the Turks. The same stern necessity that had caused the garrison of Jaffa to be put to the edge of the sword raised its voice. The pharmacist, R-, they say, had a potion distributed to the dying ones, and instead of the tortures that were reserved for them by the Turks—they had at least a sweet agony.

Finally, on the 26th Prairial, after a long and painful march, the army re-entered Cairo. It was time. Mourad-Bey had escaped from Desaix and was menacing lower Egypt; a second time he met the French at the foot of the Pyramids; Bonaparte ordered everything to be ready for battle; this time it was he who took the position of the Mamelukes and who placed his rear against the river, but the morning of the next day Mourad-Bey had disappeared; Bonaparte was astonished, but on the same day all was explained to him; the fleet, as he had divined, had landed at Aboukir just at the time he foretold; Mourad, by unfrequented roads, had gone to join the camp of the Turks.

On arriving he found the Pasha full of the loftiest hopes; when he had appeared the French detachments, too feeble to fight him, had fallen back to concentrate.

“ Indeed,” said Moustapha Pasha to the Bey of the Mamelukes, “I show myself to these Frenchmen, so much feared, the sight of whom thou art not able to bear, and behold, they fly before me.”

“Pasha,” answered Mourad-Bey, “render thanks to the Prophet that he may ordain that the Frenchmen retire, for if they return thou wilt vanish before them like the dust before the north wind.”

The son of the desert was prophesying. Some days after this Bonaparte arrived; after three hours of battle the Turks gave way and took to flight; Moustapha Pasha tendered his sword with a bloody hand to Murat; two hundred men surrendered with him; two thousand remained upon the field of battle; ten thousand were drowned; twenty pieces of cannon, tents, and baggage fell into our hands; the fort of Aboukir was retaken; the Mamelukes were thrown back beyond the desert; and the English and Turks sought for a place of refuge upon their vessels.

Bonaparte sent a flag of truce to the Admiral’s vessel; he must negotiate for the return of the prisoners, whom it was impossible to guard and useless to shoot as at Jaffa; in exchange the Admiral sent to Bonaparte some wine, fruits, and the Frankfort Gazette of June 20th, 1799.

Since the month of June, 1798, that is to say for more than one year, Bonaparte had been without news from France. He cast his eyes upon the paper, ran over it rapidly and exclaimed:

“ My presentiments have not deceived me. Italy has been lost. It is necessary that I depart.”

In effect the French had reached that point where he desired them to be, unfortunate enough to see him arriving not as an ambitious person, but as a savior.

Gantheaume, called by him, soon came. Bonaparte ordered him to prepare the two frigates La Muiron and La Carrere and the two little ships La Revanche and La Fortune, with provisions for four or five hundred men for two months. On the 22d of August he wrote to the army:

“ News from Europe has made me decide to depart for France. I leave the command to General Kleber; the army shall soon have news of me. I cannot say more. It is painful for me to part from soldiers to whom I am so much attached, but it will only be for a short while. The General I leave them has the confidence of the army and myself.”

The next day he embarked on the La Muiron. Gantheaume wished to take the open sea; Bonaparte opposed it.

“ I wish,” said he, “ that you sail along the coast of Africa as much as possible; you will follow this route up to the south of Sardinia. I have a handful of brave men; I have a little artillery; if the English present themselves I will run aground upon the sands; I will reach by land Oran, Tunis, or another port, and there I will find the means to re-embark.”

During twenty-one days the west and northwest winds beat Bonaparte back towards the port from which he had just come. At last the first breezes of an east wind were felt. Gantheaume opened all his sails to it; in a little while they passed beyond where Carthage formerly was, doubled Sardinia going along the western side; on the first of October they entered the port of Ajaccio, where they changed seventeen thousand francs of Turkish sequins into French money—this was all that Bonaparte brought back from Egypt;—finally on the seventh of the same month they left Corsica and made sail for France from which they were but seventy leagues. On the evening of the eighth a squadron of forty vessels was sighted. Gantheaume proposed that they turn around and return to Corsica.

“ No,” cried Bonaparte, imperiously; “ force the sails, every one at his post; to the northwest, to the northwest; let us sail! ”

They passed the whole night in uneasiness; Bonaparte did not leave the deck; he had a large launch prepared, put in it twelve sailors, ordered his secretary to select the most inlportant of his papers, and take twenty men with whom he could run aground on the coast of Corsica. At daybreak all these precautions had become useless, all terrors were dissipated, the fleet had sailed away towards the northeast. On the 8th of October, at the break of day, they perceived Frejus; at eight o’clock they entered the roadstead. Soon the noise spread about that the two frigates carried Bonaparte; the sea was covered with vessels; all sanitary measures, that Bonaparte had made up his mind to violate, were forgotten by the people; in vain did they try to make them observe the danger that was threatening.

“We prefer the pest to the Austrians,” they answered.

Bonaparte was taken, led away, carried; it was a fete, an ovation, a triumph. Finally, in the midst of enthusiasm, acclamation, delirium, Caesar set foot upon that land where there was no longer a Brutus.

Six weeks after France had no Directors, but it had three Consuls, and among these three Consuls there was one, according to the saying of Sieyes, who knew all, who did all, who could do all.

We have arrived at the 18th Brumaire.

1. Bourrienne, in his Memoirs of Napoleon, vol. i., page 3 (Scribners' edition), referring to this incident, says: "But let us dismiss this story with the rest, and among them that of the porcelain tray that was said to have been smashed and thrown at the head of M. de Cobentzel. I certainly know nothing of any such scene ; our manners at Passeriano were not quite so bad." (See Memoirs of Segur, vol. i., page 375)-—J- B. L.