vegetables, and meat. Barbarism reaches its highest level here. There is
no money, not even for paying the troops. In two months I can be back in
France. Look after my interests, I beseech you; I have a great deal of
trouble at home; the veil has been torn off once for all—I have no one
left in the world but you. Your affection is precious to me. Only one
thing could increase my bitterness—if I were to lose you, if you also
were to play the traitor. How terrible that all my affections should be
concentrated upon one personality. You understand me? Make arrangements
that as soon as I return home I shall have at my disposal a country
house near Paris or in Burgundy, a place where I can spend the winter in
absolute seclusion. Mankind has become loathsome to me. I need rest and
solitude. Greatness bores me to death. The fount of feeling is dried up.
At twenty-nine years of age, I find that fame is vanity. I’ve got to the
end of everything. Only one resource is left to me, to become an absolute
egoist. I shall keep my house in Paris, and not hand it over to any one!
I have nothing more than what I brought into the world with me. I have
never been unjust to you, that you must admit, though I have often wanted
to be. You will understand. Kiss your wife for me, and Jerome. Bonaparte.”
This cynicism and misanthropy, the desire for vengeance and the demand
for satisfaction, have at length, and for the first time, become merged
in a symphony of melancholy. The melancholy note had been sounded twelve
years before in his diary, but since then it has been silent. A heart
that desired to give itself wholly, in which trust had been ever renewed
despite many disillusionments, now seems to have been pierced through and
through. Victory, glory, to be a second Alexander—all dust and ashes. If
a man is deceived where he least deserves it, and where he has trusted
with all the ardency of youth, what is greatness to him? He begins
his letter with rice and vegetables, and ends with solitude and utter
disheartenment. What is left for him in the world besides his brother? “I
have got to the end of everything.”
XV
A blow quickened him back to life.
Returning from a ride in the desert, he entered Marmont’s tent to find
that all his associates were greatly perturbed. What had happened? The
French fleet had been destroyed. The day before, there had been a
sea-fight in Aboukir Bay, and only four ships had escaped. All the rest
had been sunk or captured by Nelson.
The officers stood in gloomy silence. The grenadier on sentry duty in
front of the tent understood, every one understood, the meaning of this
reverse. Napoleon’s face paled, but he recovered his composure instantly,
realising that it was his business to restore the morale of the others.
After a brief pause, he was ready with encouraging words: “So we are cut
off in Egypt. Good. We must keep our heads above the stormy waters; the
sea will soon be smooth once more.—Perhaps we are predestined to change
the face of the East. Here we must remain, or achieve a grandeur like
that of the ancients!”
A terrible reverse! What will Paris say? He is not admiral of the
fleet, and was not present at the battle of the Nile, but the disaster
will certainly affect his prestige. How are we to get home again? On
Turkish ships? But will the sultan remain neutral any longer? He has
been wavering between Russia and France, and will be likely, now, to
turn against the French. England, too. The fleet annihilated; thirteen
battleships gone. How many years will it be before we can again face
England on the high seas? A decade, perhaps. Allah is Allah, but behind
what cloud was my star hidden?
No, not my star! For, when he reports the defeat, he conceals nothing,
but is careful to explain in his official despatches that fortune had
delayed Nelson’s return until the French had been able to secure their
footing in Egypt.
Weeks of uncertainty. This is a new phase in Bonaparte’s life. He must
remain inactive, while he waits for news that will throw light upon the
state of affairs in Europe. If England keeps good watch, perhaps no
letter will be able to cross the seas. For the first time in his career,
he begins to wonder how he can kill time. The administration of a whole
army, the suppression of disturbances, the rehabilitation of crumbling
fortresses—these are no more than variants of idleness. The hours
hang heavily, and he becomes more nervous, more fanciful than of yore.
Bourrienne tries to tranquillise the commander’s mind, saying: “Let us
wait till we hear what the Directory proposes to do!”
“The Directory? A dung-heap! The Directors hate me, and will leave me
here to rot!”
If he could only ride! But it is too hot, at any rate to ride in uniform,
and an attempt to wear Arab clothing has been abandoned. Sometimes he
goes for a ride, in spite of the heat. When, on his return, he finds that
no despatches have come, he grows meditative:
“Do you know what I have been thinking, Bourrienne?—If I ever see France
again, my greatest ambition will be to conduct a campaign on the Bavarian
lowland. There I could win a great battle, and take vengeance for
Blenheim. Then I should retire to my country seat, and lead a quiet life,
perfectly contented.” The fire still glows; the kettle goes on simmering!
In the plain of the Po, his restless spirit was yearning for the East;
having made his way to Egypt, he craves for Bavaria; and always he thinks
in terms of battles.
Now, when his future is so uncertain, when he is perhaps cut off from all
chance of returning home, and when there is no longer a strong tie of
personal affection to bind him to distant Europe, he opens negotiations
with the shah of Persia and Tippoo Sahib, England’s enemies: asking
the former for a right of way to India; and offering the latter an
alliance, and deliverance from “The iron yoke of England.” The prospect
of following in Alexander’s footsteps looms nearer. But when he comes
to practical calculations he begins to doubt the possibility: “Only if
fifteen thousand men can be left here, and I have another thirty thousand
at my disposal, shall I be able to venture a march on India.”
Although all remains in the realm of fancy, such imaginative excursions
fill Bonaparte’s happiest hours; he luxuriates in these vast plans.
Four years later, he declares: “In Egypt alone did I feel free from
the trammels of civilisation; and there I seemed to have the means of
realising all my dreams. I pictured myself on the road to Asia, the
founder of a new religion, mounted on an elephant, wearing a turban,
and holding a new Koran which contained my own message. My plan was to
weld the experiences of two worlds, to force history into my service, to
attack the English power in India, and, through my conquests there, to
reopen communications with Europe.”
Are these the visions of a poet? Or is it that the conqueror and the poet
are close kin? In Egypt, he has a romantic name for himself, “Sultan El
Kebir”—he is, in truth, always the sultan, more or less. El Kebir is his
third name, as visionary as the whole campaign.
His lively imagination, his spleen on account of his wife’s
infidelity—these combine with the influences of climate and lack of
occupation to drive him into an amourette. A pretty young woman, the
wife of a lieutenant, had sailed with the army from Toulon, in male
attire. She was the illegitimate daughter of a cook, had herself been a
dressmaker before marriage, was piquant, blonde, violet-eyed. He takes
her to himself, and sends her husband back to France on official service.
She soon learns to play Cleopatra’s part boldly and charmingly; graces
the head of his table; drives out with him. But Eugene, her rival’s son,
is adjutant, and his duty is to follow the carriage on horseback. This
conjuncture is disagreeable to all parties, and so the young man is given
furlough.
Eugene knows more than he cares to know about the scandal attaching to
his mother’s name; Bonaparte has himself enlightened the youth. What a
painful situation! His mother, not far on in the thirties, is a coquette,
and makes his step-father (the hero of the nation!) ridiculous in all
men’s eyes by her open and shameless intrigue with a young coxcomb
who is but little older than her son. Eugene himself has to look on
while Napoleon, commander-in-chief of the army and pasha of the new
French colony, flaunts his mistress before the public gaze. The little
dressmaker, who would probably find the handsome adjutant more to her
taste than his step-father, laughs gaily, showing her white teeth.
Anyhow, she has cut out the Creole countess, and she glories in the new
spirit of equality. Napoleon Bonaparte is the central figure of the
composition. All he asks of the young woman is that she shall give him a
child.
An heir, that is what he has been wanting for years! If she will but
provide one, he will marry her, for divorces can be arranged. One of his
ruling passions is the desire to found a family. The mother would be of
working-class origin? So are most of his generals! What matter, so long
as the child is legitimate, and of the blood of Bonaparte? He believes in
the equality of all who play an active part in the world; but he believes
no less strongly in legitimacy. The hereditary succession of kingship is
over and done with. The hereditary succession of efficiency is the new
doctrine. Such is the fallacy by which his mind is enslaved.
After a while, he says savagely to one of his confidants: “The silly
fool of a woman does not even know how to make children!” The gibe is
retailed to her, and she exclaims mockingly: “It’s not my fault, you
know!” Bonaparte hears of the rejoinder, and his face is shadowed. He
has no proof to the contrary, nothing but the inner consciousness of a
productivity such as no mortal has ever had before.
His spirit embraces the whole world in its grasp. But if nature has
denied him the capacity for reproduction, the foundation of all activity
has been shattered. His self-confidence would collapse.
XVI
In the Institute, the commander-in-chief sits as an equal among equals.
He never tries, in argument there, to gain a victory by rank instead of
reason. Yet many of the questions that are discussed relate to army
matters of immediate practical importance, such as the filtering of Nile
water, the erection of windmills, the search for ingredients needed to
make gunpowder. On one occasion, Napoleon grew heated. Berthollet said
quietly: “You are wrong, my friend, for you have lost your temper.” A
naval surgeon supported Berthollet. “You men of science are as thick as
thieves,” exclaimed Bonaparte. “Chemistry plays the cook for medicine,
and plays the assassin for science!” The surgeon’s answer came pat: “But
how, Citizen-General, would you define the conqueror’s art?” Within the
republic of learning, this equality pleased the dictator, whom elsewhere
hardly any one now ventured to contradict.
For weeks in succession, the orders of the day ended with the words: “No
news from France.” Everything was at a standstill; widespread uncertainty
prevailed. Amid the general inertia, the travelling university was an
exception; the savants were hard at work, studying, advising, ever ready
to help in the second line. As far as they were concerned, this time of
waiting was a great opportunity for research. A thorough investigation of
the country and its resources was in progress: the fishes of the Nile and
the minerals of the Red Sea, the flora of the Delta and the constituents
of the desert sand—all were now for the first time being elaborately
scrutinised. The exploitation of the natron lakes and the Nile mud was
under consideration. The physicians of the expedition were enquiring
into the causes of oriental plague; and of trachoma, the terrible form
of ophthalmia which is so frequent a cause of blindness in Egypt. A
dictionary and a grammar were printed; some of the buried temples of
Upper Egypt were disinterred; the Wells of Moses were discovered. One
day, an engineer officer came back from Rosetta bringing with him a
granite slab on which there was a polyglot inscription, chiselled in
Greek and in two variants of the ancient Egyptian picture-writing. The
riddle of the hieroglyphs had been unriddled.
What especially interested the commander, however, was the possibility
of cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. He made long journeys
in the desert, always exposed to the danger of Bedouin raids; traced
the line of the ancient canal; planned the course of a new channel. All
his speculations were confirmed half a century later by Lesseps. Not
like an adventurer whose schemes have miscarried, but in the spirit of a
conqueror, he designed to separate the continents and link the seas.
Now at length! Some merchants on small vessels have managed to slip
through the English lines. From them, Napoleon learns that the
destruction of the French fleet off Aboukir has brought about a general
transformation. The sultan has entered into an alliance with Russia,
and the two powers have declared war on France. Achmed, the Turkish
commander, is marching on Egypt through Syria. The malcontents in Cairo,
encouraged by these tidings, rise in revolt. The insurrection is quelled
by artillery fire, and the heads of the rebels are exposed on pikes as a
warning. “This will have a salutary effect. Clemency is no good here.”
On the whole, the commander is more relieved than alarmed. If the Turks
are marching southwards, so much the better; at length he will have a
chance of beating them in open fight.
From most of his close associates he conceals his deeper cause for
anxiety. When he left France to occupy Egypt, his aim was to secure a
position that would help him in his scheme for the conquest of India.
“With ships, we can cross the seas; with camels we can cross the
desert.” He had allowed fifteen months for the conquest of Egypt and the
consolidation of his power there, and for the preparation and equipment
of his forces for the Indian campaign. That would need forty thousand
men, as many camels, and one hundred and twenty field-guns. He had asked
for extensive reinforcements; ships, guns, and men. These were to support
his land army by sea.
The battle of the Nile had frustrated his fine schemes. The English
were blockading the coast; the sultan had become his enemy; Egyptian
sentiment was now hostile. But it was Napoleon’s way to adapt his plans
to changing circumstances, and it seemed to him that he could derive
advantage from the turn of events. The Turks and the English are going to
make a joint landing? That threatens our very existence here? Well, then,
let us attack to escape destruction! Seize all the magazines and ports
from the Turks, arm the Syrian Christians, stir up the Druses! If we were
to take the fortress of Acre, opinion in Cairo would veer round to our
side. By June, we shall be in Damascus; shall thrust outposts forward
into the Taurus; march eastward with 26,000 Frenchmen, 6,000 Mamelukes,
and 18,000 Druses. Desaix will come direct from Egypt. The sultan will
find it expedient to keep quiet. The shah of Persia has already agreed to
our marching by way of Bassora and Shiraz. By March, if Allah favours us,
we shall reach the Indus.
Once more, Bonaparte fashions a splendid dream out of pressing
embarrassments. He sets out for Syria.
There are practically no roads. Sometimes he rides as many as forty-five
miles in fifteen hours, invariably by night, without water, and almost
always with the vanguard. When Jaffa falls, three thousand Turkish
soldiers surrender. What on earth is he to do with them? Keep them
prisoner? His own men are on short commons; and, besides, he would then
have to spare thousands of Frenchmen to guard the Turks. Send them home?
He has no ships. Exchange them? The Turks have no prisoners. Set them
free? Then they will reinforce Acre, the next stronghold. What on earth
is he to do? Council of war!
All are in favour of killing the prisoners. Only a few days before,
the Turks killed one of our envoys! Our own troops would be infuriated
if they were to go hungrier still because of these fellows. Bonaparte
wavers, thinks matters over for three days, and finally agrees. The
prisoners are marched down to the sea and slaughtered. Subsequent
military critics, especially the Germans, have agreed that there was no
choice.
Acre lies before us. There we shall find stores of new weapons. Then
onwards towards the north! The great dream renews itself during these
weeks. Now that Turkey has declared war, he is completely isolated, and
forced into a life-and-death struggle. Everything is possible, for needs
must when the devil drives. But he is not quite easy in his mind about
the Indian scheme, for he mentions an alternative plan to one of his
officers: “After I have seized Acre, I shall march upon Damascus and
Aleppo, augmenting my army as I go, for I shall announce to the people
the overthrow of the tyrannous pashas. Then, with overwhelming forces,
I shall take Constantinople, make an end of Turkey, and found a new and
great empire. This will bring me immortal fame. Perhaps I shall then make
my way home through Adrianople or Vienna, after annihilating the house of
Habsburg.”
Always the same visions, magnified now, when the situation grows
desperate.
He reaches Acre. Not a big fortress, but well supplied with modern
weapons, and defended by English officers and artillerists. Three
successive attempts to storm the place are fruitless. English battleships
arrive to support the besieged, and threaten the besiegers.
At last, after eight months, he has direct news from Paris! It is little
to his taste. Talleyrand has not gone to Constantinople to treat with the
sultan. Is the rogue hedging? The French Republic is at war with Naples
and Sardinia. Moreau and Augereau, Bonaparte’s rivals, have high command.
Why, in God’s name, do we squat here on the burning sands, inactive?
Storm the place! Are our schemes to be wrecked against these miserable
walls?
Who is in charge of the defence! Phélippeaux is there, a skilled
engineer, one of Napoleon’s old comrades at the Cadets’ School in Paris,
afterwards an émigré who had entered the English service!
Why can they not take the place by storm? Bonaparte has no patience
for a slow siege, for starving his enemy into surrender. The whole idea
is foreign to his impetuous temperament. A fortress, like a woman, must
be taken by storm, or not at all. He cannot beg, serve, or woo; and he
cannot wait. Now time presses, and to wait is out of the question. Storm!
The soldiers begin to murmur. Even among the officers there are
mutterings which are the heralds of mutiny. “Let us have Kléber for our
leader; he is humane and gentle.”
Bonaparte sits in his tent, thinking matters over. A terrible hour! Is
England to be ever invincible, even on land, even here in the East?
Is the siege to drag on for months? Impossible! Europe is full of the
clash of arms. Turn back, without having won a victory? An unprecedented
experience, an entirely new feeling; but there is no choice. The
enterprise must be abandoned. Back to Egypt! It is only half the truth
to say that Acre barred his march upon India. Who can tell whether, if
the fortress had been taken, he would have pressed on towards the Indus
notwithstanding the ominous news from Paris. We should have to reckon
with incalculable feelings here. Every coincidence is symbolical. Before
Acre and on the Po, France is at war with the same monarchical coalition.
None but the son of the revolution can save the situation. Contrary to
his usual custom, he does not ride in the van, but for hours after the
columns have started southward, till nightfall indeed, he stays behind on
an elevation to contemplate the stubborn fortress, his mind filled with a
sort of ferocious melancholy.
A ghastly retreat. No roads, no water, the plague as rearguard. Is
Bonaparte’s career to be ruined by the desert and the black death? Calm
of aspect, he visits the sick in hospital, and encourages them wherever
possible. The doctor points to fifty cases as hopeless. They must be
put out of their misery, thinks Bonaparte; their path to death must be
smoothed. With a royal assumption of responsibility, he orders a lethal
dose of opium. The doctor demurs. It remains uncertain whether some one
else carried out the order. “In such circumstances,” he says later, “I
would have had my own son poisoned.”
Two thousand sick men and six thousand who are still in health make their
way slowly through the desert. Every four of the healthy has to carry a
comrade who is too ill to walk, for there are not enough horses to bear
the sick and the maimed. The staff officers are all marching with the
rest. This is by Napoleon’s command. An equerry asks him which horse he
will ride. “Did you not hear the order?” retorts the commander, striking
the man with his whip. “Every one on foot!”
At length the retreating army reaches Cairo. By entering with a triumphal
display of captured colours, and by proclamations and marches, he makes a
vain attempt to delude the people of Egypt.
What is Paris saying? What shall he tell Paris? We did not occupy Acre,
because the plague was raging there! That was why we withdrew from the
siege! In the Institute, a committee is appointed to substantiate this
tale. A doctor stands up, and, in the presence of a hundred savants,
refuses to attach his name to this fiction. The commander yields with a
wry face, but bears no grudge against the stalwart, whom he promotes more
than once in years to come.
The Turks now arrive by sea, intending to make an end of the French.
Once more, the whole existence of the expeditionary force is at stake.
The enemy is to land in Aboukir Bay, just a year after the battle of the
Nile. He lets them land, and then inflicts a crushing defeat on them,
though their army outnumbers his by two to one. After the battle, Murat
meets him, and embracing him, says: “General, you are as great as the
world, but the world is too small for you!” Bonaparte writes to Cairo:
“You will have heard of the battle on the shores of Aboukir Bay, one of
the finest I have ever seen! Of the army the enemy had landed, not a man
escaped.”
At this time he notices among the Mamelukes who have entered his service
a tall, handsome fellow with blue eyes, a Georgian named Rustam, who has
five times been sold as a slave. Fidelity is written on his countenance.
Napoleon gives him a sword with an enchased hilt and scabbard, and makes
him his body-servant. For fifteen years, Rustam sleeps outside his
master’s door.
After the victory at Aboukir, Napoleon enters into a parley with the
admiral of the blockading fleet. Ostensibly he wishes to discuss an
exchange of prisoners with the English. Really he is hungering for news;
newspapers are worth more than king’s crowns. Some one manages to get
hold of what he covets, and an adjutant brings them into his tent. The
commander is asleep. “Here are newspapers, General. Bad news.” He sits
up. “What’s happened?”
“Scherer has been beaten. We have lost nearly the whole of Italy.”
Napoleon jumps out of bed, seizes the papers, and goes on reading them
all through the night, with an occasional pause for an outburst of wrath.
At dawn, he sends for his admiral-in-chief, is closeted with the seaman
for a couple of hours, and then sets out for Cairo.
“I have made up my mind to return to France,” he says behind shut doors
to the faithful Marmont. “You will come with me. Our armies in Europe
have been defeated. God knows where the enemy will have got to by now.
Italy is lost. What are they about, these incompetent idiots at the head
of affairs? Stupidity and corruption! I have borne the whole burden
single-handed, and by my victories have propped up a government which
could never have maintained itself but for me. As soon as I leave,
everything collapses. If I start at once, I shall get to Paris almost
as soon as the news of my latest victory. My presence will restore
confidence to the troops, and will reanimate the citizens with hopes for
a happier future.”
“My future,” he thinks, as soon as Marmont has gone. “People will say
I have abandoned the army in Egypt. It will get along all right under
Kléber. I came here to found a colony. It is founded, and the Turks have
been beaten. Help can only come from France, and no one but myself can
send it. I have nothing more to gain here, but everything to win on the
battle-fields of Europe. Thirty years! How many days before I can get
away? The admiral says it is a bad wind for Toulon, and that English
warships swarm in the Mediterranean. I’m afraid I can’t get to Paris in
an air-balloon! But Paris is the heart of the world. I must risk the sea
passage.”
XVII