350 PROJECTED INVASION OF ENGLAND. [1798. The winter passed away, the spring came on, and still the cry of invasion was echoed in every port from Antwerp to Toulon; and Frenchmen asked impatiently when the great attempt would be made. On the 20th of April a royal message was delivered to Parliament, that "from various advices received by his majesty it appears that the preparations for the embarkation of troops and warlike stores are carried on with considerable and increasing activity in the ports of France, Flanders, and Holland, with the avowed design of attempting the invasion of his majesty's dominions." On this occasion Sheridan expressed his own feelings, and the feelings of the country, in a burst of patriotism which soared far above party objects: "It is not glory the French seek for; they are already gorged with it: it is not territory they grasp at; they are already encumbered with the extent they have acquired. What, then, is their object? They come for what they really want: they come for ships, for commerce, for credit, and for capital. They come for the sinews, the bones, the marrow, the very heart's blood of Britain." Sheridan at the same time declared that his political enmity to his majesty's present ministers was irreconcileable; that his attachment to his right honourable friend (Fox), and to his political principles, was unaltered and unalterable. Fox, some months previous, had seceded from Parliament. There was no general secession of the Whig party; but in a letter to lord Holland, Fox expressed his strong dislike to attend again himself.* In a subsequent letter he says, "A seceder I will be, till I see a very different state of things from the present; and indeed if they were to alter more materially than can be expected, it would be with more reluctance than I can describe, or than is perhaps reasonable, that I should return to politics."+ As the head of a great party he had lost his power. Whether he was wise, or true to his duty as a patriot, to retire at a season of such danger to his pleasant studies at St. Anne's Hill, may be doubtful. It is delightful, however, to contemplate a great orator and a man of the world so easily surrendering the excitements of his former life; reading the Iliad; writing of Prior, and Ariosto, and Dryden, and La Fontaine; going through Lucretius regularly; and taking up Chaucer upon his nephew's suggestion. It is pleasant to see how literature can fill up an aching void, however created. The "avowed design" of the invasion of our country was a feint. Bonaparte had persuaded the Directory to agree to an enterprize which, if successful, would be more permanently injuricus to England than a landing in Kent and a march upon London, with the certainty that the country could not be held, and that not an invader would return to exhibit his booty. The vast preparations in the ports of the Mediterranean for a great enterprize were given out by the French government to be in connection with the armaments in the ports of the Channel. Large bodies of troops were collected at Toulon, at Genoa, at Ajaccio, at Civita Vecchia; and this army was called the left wing of the army of England. Bonaparte had with great difficulty persuaded the Directory to postpone their scheme for the invasion of the British islands, and to permit him to embark an army for Egypt, the possession of which country, he maintained, would open to France the commerce of the East, and prepare the way for the conquest of India. Having subdued Egypt, "Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 144. + Ibid. p. 246. 1798.] EXPEDITION TO EGYPT-NELSON IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 351 he would return before another winter to plant the tricolour on the Tower of London. In April, Bonaparte was appointed general-in-chief of the Army of the East. The secret had been well kept. The means of furnishing this armament had been supplied by the appropriation of three millions of treasure which had been seized at Berne, and by forced contributions levied at Genoa and at Rome. The French government, at the beginning of January, had stirred up the democratic party in some of the Swiss Cantons, and had sent their troops to attack those Cantons which resisted the demand of the fraternizing French republicans that the ancient constitution of the republic of Switzerland should be abolished, and a republic created after the new model. The internal dissensions in some of the Cantons favoured this attempt to introduce the theories of liberty and equality in this ancient stronghold of freedom. The principal object of the French commander was plunder. After a brave resistance on the part of the Bernese, Berne was entered by the French on the 5th of March. Bonaparte was very quickly in communication with the French commissioners, directing them how to forward the spoil of the Bernese treasury to Toulon. At Rome, which the French army had entered at the end of January, with a pre-concerted determination to overturn the papal government, the pillage, conducted under the orders of the superior officers, was more unsparing than that which followed the entrance of Alaric, when at the hour of midnight "the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet." Unlike the king of the Goths, Massena, who commanded the French, did not massacre the people; unlike Alaric also in this, that whilst the barbarian exhorted his troops "to respect the churches of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul as holy and inviolable sanctuaries," the French carried off the priestly vestments, the sacred vessels, and the famous altar-pieces of modern Rome, little of such spoils being reserved for public uses, but sold to the Jews who followed the camp. Some of the francs and piastres that the Jews paid for the supply of their melting-pots found their way to Napoleon at Toulon. A larger portion went into the bags of Massena and his rapacious staff. The French fleet under admiral Brueys was in the harbour of Toulon, ready to sail upon its secret destination. Something different from the invasion of England was in contemplation; for on board the admiral's ship, l'Orient, were a hundred literary men and artists, mathematicians and naturalists, who were certainly not required to enlighten the French upon the native productions or the antiquities of the British isles. Bonaparte arrived at Toulon on the 9th of May, and issued one of his grandiloquent proclamations to his troops. The armament consisted of thirteen ships of the line, many frigates and corvettes, and four hundred transports. The army which it was to carry to some unknown shore consisted of forty thousand men. On the 19th of May this formidable expedition left the great French harbour of the Mediterranean. On the day when Bonaparte arrived at Toulon, Nelson had sailed from Gibraltar, with three seventy-fours, four frigates, and a sloop, to watch the movements of the enemy. Since the most daring of British naval commanders had fought in the battle of St. Vincent, he had lost an arm in an unsuccessful attack upon the island of Teneriffe. For some time his * See Gibbon, A.D. 410, chap. xxxi. 352 SEIZURE OF MALTA BY BONAPARTE. [1798. spirit was depressed, and he thought that a left-handed admiral could never again be useful. He had lost also his right eye, and was severely wounded in his body. But he had not lost that indomitable spirit which rose superior to wounds and weakness of constitution. He rested some time at home; and then, early in 1798, sailed in the Vanguard to join the fleet under lord St. Vincent. The Admiralty had suggested, and lord St. Vincent had previously determined, that a detachment of the squadron blockading the Spanish fleet should sail to the Mediterranean, under the command of Nelson. The seniors of the fleet were offended at this preference of a junior officer; and men of routine at home shrugged their shoulders, and feared, with the cold lord Grenville, that Nelson "will do something too desperate." He was not stinted in his means, being finally reinforced with ten of the best ships of St. Vincent's fleet. The first operation of Bonaparte was the seizure of Malta. His fleet was in sight of the island on the 9th of June. He had other weapons than his cannon for the reduction of a place deemed impregnable. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem had held the real sovereignty of the island since 1530. These Knights of Malta, powerful at sea, had formed one of the bulwarks of Christendom against the Ottomans. They had gradually lost their warlike prowess, as well as their religious austerity; and Malta, protected by its fortifications, became the seat of luxury for this last of the monastic military orders, whose occupation was gone. Bonaparte had confiscated their property in Italy; and he had sent a skilful agent to the island to sow dissensions amongst the Knights, and thus to prepare the way for the fall of the community. There were many French Knights among them, to whom the principal military "Court, &c., of George III.," vol. ii. p. 406. 1798.] BONAPARTE LANDS AT ALEXANDRIA. 353 commands had been entrusted by the Grand Master, a weak German. Bonaparte, on the 9th of June, sent a demand to the Grand Master, that his whole fleet should be permitted to enter the great harbour for the purpose of taking in water. The reply was that, according to the rules of the Order, only two ships, or at most four, could be allowed to enter the port at one time. The answer was interpreted as equivalent to a declaration of hostility; and Bonaparte issued orders that the army should disembark the next morning on the coasts of the island wherever a landing could be effected. The island was taken almost without opposition; the French Knights declaring that they would not fight against their countrymen. On the 13th of June, the French were put in possession of La Valletta and the surrounding forts. Bonaparte made all sorts of promises of compensation to the recreant Knights, which the Directory were not very careful to keep. He landed to examine his prize; when general Caffarelli, who accompanied him, said, "We are very lucky that there was somebody in the place to open the doors for us." Leaving a garrison to occupy the new possession, the French sailed away on the 20th, with all the gold and silver of the treasury, and all the plate of the churches and religious houses. "The essential point now," says Thiers, "was not to encounter the English fleet;" nevertheless, he adds, "nobody was afraid of the encounter." Nelson was at Naples on the day when Bonaparte quitted Malta. He immediately sailed. On the 22nd, at night, the two fleets crossed each other's track unperceived, between Cape Mesurata and the mouth of the Adriatic. The frigates of the British fleet had been separated from the main body, and thus Nelson had no certain intelligence. His sagacity made him conjecture that the destination of the armament was Egypt. He made the most direct course to Alexandria, which he reached on the 28th. No enemy was there, and no tidings could be obtained of them. On the morning of the 1st of July, admiral Brueys was off the same port, and learnt that Nelson had sailed away in search of him. Bonaparte demanded that he should be landed at some distance from Alexandria, for preparations appeared for the defence of the ancient city. As he and several thousand troops who followed him reached the shore in boats, a vessel appeared in sight, and the cry went forth that it was an English sail. "Fortune," he exclaimed, "dost thou abandon me? Give me only five days!" A French frigate was the cause of the momentary alarm. Nelson had returned to Sicily. The Sultan was at peace with France; a French minister was at Constantinople. Such trifling formalities in the laws of nations were little respected by the man who told his soldiers that "the genius of Liberty having rendered the Republic the arbiter of Europe, had assigned to her the same power over the seas and over the most distant nations." * Four thousand of the French army were landed, and marched in three columns to the attack of Alexandria. It was quickly taken by assault. Bonaparte announced that he came. neither to ravage the country, nor to question the authority of the Grand Seignor, but to put down the domination of the Mamlooks, who tyrannized over the people by the authority of the Beys. He proclaimed to the population of Egypt, in magnificent language that he caused to be translated into Arabic, that he came not to destroy their religion. We Frenchmen are true *Proclamation at Toulon. 354 ** BATTLE OF THE PYRAMIDS. [1798. Mussulmans. Have not we destroyed the Pope, who called upon Europe to make war upon Mussulmans? Have not we destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these madmen believed that God had called them to make war upon Mussulmans? Leaving a garrison of three thousand men in Alexandria, the main army commenced its march to Cairo. Bonaparte was anxious to arrive there before the periodical inundation of the Nile. The fleet of Brueys remained at anchor in the road of Aboukir. Bonaparte chose the shorter route to Cairo through the desert of Damanhour, leading thirty thousand men,-to each of whom he had promised to grant seven acres of fertile land in the conquered territories, through plains of sand without a drop of water. They murmured, and almost mutinied, but they endured, and at length reached the banks of the Nile, at Rahmameh, where a flotilla, laden with provisions, baggage, and artillery, awaited them. The Mamlooks, with Mourad Bey at their head, were around the French. The invaders had to fight with enemies who came upon them in detachments; gave a fierce assault; and then fled. As they approached the great Pyramids of Jizeh, they found an enemy more formidable than these scattered bands. Mourad Bey was encamped with twelve thousand Mamlooks and eight thousand mounted Bedouins, on the west bank of the Nile, and opposite Cairo. The French looked upon the great entrepôt, where the soldiers expected to find the gorgeous palaces and the rich bazaars of which some had read in Galland's "Arabian Nights," whose tales they had recounted to their comrades on their dreary march under a burning sun. They had to sustain the attack of Mourad Bey and his Mamlooks, who came upon them with the fury of a tempest. In the East, Bonaparte was ever in his altitudes; and he now pointed to the Pyramids, and exclaimed to his soldiers, "Forty centuries look down upon you." The chief attack of the Mamlooks was upon a square which Desaix commanded. In spite of the desperate courage of this formidable cavalry, the steadiness of the disciplined soldiery of the army of Italy repelled every assault; and after a tremendous loss Mourad Bey retreated towards Upper Egypt. His intrenched camp was forced, amidst a fearful carnage. The conquerors had no difficulty in obtaining possession of Cairo. Ibrahim Bey evacuated the city, which on the 25th of July Bonaparte entered. His policy now was to conciliate the people instead of oppressing them. He addressed himself to the principal scheiks, and obtained from them a declaration in favour of the French. It went forth with the same authority amongst the Mussulmans as a brief of the Pope addressed to Roman Catholics. In the grand mosque a litany was sung to the glory of " the Favourite of Victory, who at the head of the valiant of the West has destroyed the infantry and the horse of the Mamlooks." A few weeks later "the Favourite of Victory" was seated in the grand mosque at the Feast of the Prophets, sitting cross-legged as he repeated the words of the Koran, and edifying the sacred college by his piety.† From the beginning to the end of July, Mr. Pitt was waiting with anxious expectation for news from the Mediterranean. During this suspense he wrote to the Speaker that he "could not be quite sure of keeping any engagement he might make." It was not till the 26th of September that the English government knew the actual result of the toils and disappointments to which * Thiers, livre xxxix. Thiers, livre xxxix. (August, 1798.) |