Admissions of General Dupuis and Adjutant-General Boyer--The
malcontents--Final discussion between Bonaparte and my father--Battle
of Aboukir--My father finds treasure--His letter on this subject.
It may perhaps be thought that my father's ill-humour, his vexation
at not having the command of a division and his Republican spirit,
all combined to jaundice his views. Very well, let us examine the
correspondence of the Egyptian Army intercepted by Nelson's squadron,
and read a letter from General Dupuis.
He had no grounds for complaint, for he was in command of Cairo, and he
owns in the first lines of his despatch that the position was far above
his deserts.
"DUPUIS, Brigadier-General in command of the fortress, to
his friend CARLO.
"GRAND CAIRO,
"_11th Thermidor, Year VI._
"I have been in the thick of it both on land and sea, in
Europe and in Africa. Yes, my dear friend, on our arrival
at Malta I was ordered to disband the military knighthood
there and take possession of their effects. Then, after we
had taken Alexandria by storm, I was made commander of the
fortress. To-day, after a most painful march of twenty-two
days across the desert, we reached Grand Cairo, beating the
Mamelukes, or rather putting them to flight, for they aren't
worth our powder and shot.
"Behold me then, my friend, invested with fresh honours,
which I could not refuse, for they have now added the
commandership of Cairo. This position, offered me by
Bonaparte, was too fine a one to be lightly refused.
"The conduct of the brigade in the skirmish of the Pyramids
was unique: it alone destroyed 4000 Mameluke cavalry, took
40 pieces of cannon in position, all their trenches, their
flags, their magnificent horses and their richly laden
baggage; for there is not a single soldier who hasn't a
hundred louis on him, and, without exaggeration, several of
them have five hundred.
"Finally, dear boy, I occupy to-day the finest palace in
Cairo, belonging to the favourite sultana of Ibrahim Bey,
Sultan of Egypt. I live in his enchanted palace in the midst
of the nymphs of the Nile, but I am keeping the promise I
made to my little European sweetheart.
"This town is atrocious; the very streets reek with the
plagues caused by their filthiness: the people are degraded
and disgusting.
"Although I work like a horse I have not yet succeeded in
finding my way about this vast city; it is much larger than
Paris, and so different.
'_Ah! qu'il me tarde de revoir la Ligurie!_'
"But, my friend, although I am wonderfully well off here,
and in the lap of luxury, I often think of my friends. Where
is the worthy Manita? I weep at our separation ... but I
hope to rejoin you all soon, yes, soon; I am terribly sick
of being so far away from you all.
"Our crossing of the desert and our various fights resulted
in very few losses. The army is in good trim, and is now
busy preparing for a start. I don't know whether we are
bound for Syria: we are ready for any move. I had the
ill-luck to lose my ...[1] at the storming of Alexandria.
"Do pray send me all your news.
"You may judge of the cowardliness of this great and vastly
overrated people when I tell you that I took this immense
city, on the 5th of the month, with only two companies of
grenadiers.
"It has a population of 600,000 souls.
"Good-bye, my dear friend! A thousand messages to
Marcellin, his mother, his father, his daddy Carlo, and to
all our friends.
"Believe me, ever yours devotedly, DUPUIS.
"I write by this courier to Pépin and Spinola.
"Tell Pépin he was very lucky to be exiled: would to God I
had been too! My kind regards to him and his family, also to
poor Pietto; and to Honoria, your brother and your uncle."
We can judge from this letter that the general's enthusiasm did not run
high! Here was a man who was governor of Cairo, who acknowledged that
the position was far above his deserts, and yet he declares that he
would rather have been exiled than enjoy the honours thrust upon him!
"Doubtless, a governor is a very great personage," quoth Sancho; "but I
would rather stay in my own village and tend my goats than be governor
of Barataria."
To complete our account of the state of affairs, I will place before my
readers some extracts from a letter of Adjutant-General Boyer:--
"To return to Alexandria. The town has nothing of antiquity
about it beyond its name. Picture to yourself ruins
inhabited by an impassive people, who take everything as it
comes, whom nothing astonishes; who, pipe in mouth, squat on
their haunches all day long before their doors on a bench,
taking very little notice of their families or children; the
mothers wander about, their faces covered with black rags,
offering their children for sale to the passers-by; the men,
half naked, with bodies the colour of bronze, and loathsome
skins, stirring up the muddy streams, devouring and grubbing
up all they find, like pigs; houses hardly twenty feet high,
with flat roofs, the insides like stables, the outsides just
four bare walls. Such are the houses of Alexandria!
"Then remember that around this sink of squalor and misery
are the foundations of the most celebrated city of ancient
times, and the most precious monuments of art.
"When we left this town to ascend the Nile we found a desert
as bare as your hand, where, every five or ten leagues,
we came upon a wretched well of brackish water. Imagine an
army compelled to cross those arid plains, which do not
afford the soldier the faintest fleck of shade against the
intolerable heat. Dressed in woollen, carrying his five
days' rations and his knapsack, a soldier is so overcome
by the heat and the weight of the things he is carrying
that at the end of an hour's march he lightens his burden
by throwing away his rations, thinking only of his present
sufferings, and regardless of the morrow's hunger.
"He is parched with thirst, and there is no water to drink.
Then, to add to the horror of the picture, the men begin to
die of thirst, of exhaustion and of heat; others, seeing
their comrades' sufferings, blow their own brains out;
others, again, throw themselves with all their arms and
baggage into the Nile, and perish in its waters.
"Each day our march saw the same sights, with even more
unbelievable and unheard-of hardships still! The whole army
went without bread for seventeen days. The soldiers lived on
pumpkins and _prooils_ and what vegetables they could pick
up by the way. And that was all the food either general or
common soldier had. The generals often fasted for eighteen,
twenty, or twenty-four hours, as the soldiers, being the
first to reach a village, would pillage everywhere, and
the officers had often to satisfy themselves with what the
soldiers had refused, or with their wasteful leavings.
"It is useless to tell you of our drinks, as here we have to
live under Mahomedan law, which forbids wine, but gives us
abundance of Nile water as a substitute.[2]
"If you wish to hear about the country along the banks of
the Nile and to form an exact and correct idea of it, you
should follow the topographical winding of that river.
"Two leagues below Cairo, it divides into two branches: one
flows out at Rosetta, the other at Damietta; the Delta lies
between these two tributaries, an extraordinarily fertile
tract of land watered by the Nile. At the land end of these
two branches is a border of cultivated country sometimes
over a league in width, and sometimes less. When you have
traversed this, you enter the desert, on the one side
stretching away into Lybia, and on the other leading to the
plains adjoining the Red Sea. The country round Rosetta and
Cairo is densely populated; and quantities of rice, maize,
and lentils are cultivated.
"The villages are one and all detestable; they are made of
mud worked up by the feet and heaped up with holes scooped
out from above.
"To give yourself a better idea, call to mind the snow-heaps
children make at home. Their ovens are an exact reproduction
of the ancient ones used in the Egyptian palaces. The
cultivators, commonly called _Fellahs,_ are extremely
industrious; they live on very little, and in a state of
indescribable filthiness. I have seen them drink the dregs
left by my camels and horses in the water-troughs.
"And this is the Egypt so cried up by historians and
travellers!
"Nevertheless, in spite of all these abominations and evils,
I will admit that the country is quite capable of becoming
to France a colony of almost incalculable value; but it
will need time, and men. I can see that soldiers are not
a suitable class of men to found colonies, and certainly
not our soldiers. Ours are terrible in battle, terrible
perhaps after a victory, unquestionably the bravest fighters
in the world; but they are very little good for distant
expeditions, for they are easily discouraged; idle and
inconsequent, they are sufficient unto themselves. They have
even been heard to say as their generals were passing: 'Look
at those killers of French folk!'
"The cup is empty, I have drained it to the dregs: only
my resolutions of perseverance are left me, my health, a
courage which I trust will never desert me; and, with these,
I will struggle to the last.
"Yesterday I saw the Council of Justice Bonaparte has
formed: it is composed of nine persons. I saw nine
automatons dressed in Turkish garb; their turbans were
superb, their beards magnificent, and their robes reminded
me of the images of the twelve apostles which my father kept
in a cupboard. But, concerning their talent, attainments,
genius, and knowledge, I cannot tell you anything: the
proceedings are always kept secret, Turkish fashion. Nowhere
is there so much ignorance, nowhere so much display of
wealth, nowhere such bad and sordid use of temporal power.
"Enough of this chapter: I wished to give you my version,
and I do not deny that I have omitted a great deal: but
General Bonaparte's report will supply my deficiencies.
"Do not worry over me; I suffer, but so does the whole army.
My personal effects have come to hand, so I have every
compensation in my troubles. Do not be anxious about me, I
am enjoying good health.
"Mind and look after your own. I hope to have the pleasure
of seeing you in a year's time: I shall know how to
appreciate you by that time, I can tell you! My warm love to
my sisters.
"I am, your obedient and affectionate son, BOYER."
So we see opinion concerning the Egyptian expedition was unanimous:
everyone suffered, everyone complained, everyone longed to get back to
France.
The recollection of these complainings and the remembrance of the
smouldering mutiny followed Bonaparte even to St. Helena.
"Once, when the mood possessed me," he related, "I suddenly appeared
in the midst of a group of discontented generals, and, addressing
my remarks to the tallest of them, I said to him angrily, 'You
are suggesting seditious proposals, take care I do not enforce my
prerogative. Your five feet ten inches could not save you from being
shot within two hours.'"
The tall general whom he addressed was my father; only Bonaparte was no
more exact in relating stories than in the writing of his bulletins.
We will give our own version of the incident.
After the battle of the Pyramids, in which my father fought with his
hunting-rifle like a common soldier (there being no cavalry), he went
to see Bonaparte at Gizeh. He had noticed that, since the meeting at
Damanhour, the commander-in-chief had avoided him, and he wished for an
explanation.
That explanation was not hard to obtain. Directly Bonaparte caught
sight of my father, he frowned, and, pressing his hat down on his head,
he said:
"Ah! it is you. So much the better! Let us go into this room."
With these words he opened a door, and my father went in first.
Bonaparte followed him, and bolted the door.
"General," he then went on to say, "you are behaving badly towards me;
you are doing your best to demoralise the army; I know all that passed
at Damanhour."
My father stepped forward, and placing his hand on Bonaparte's arm,
which rested on the sheath of his sword, he said:
"Before I answer you, General, I must ask your motive for locking that
door, and your object in according me the honour of this interview?"
"For the purpose of telling you that I consider the highest and the
lowest in my army are equal when it becomes a question of discipline;
and that, if occasion warrants, I shall shoot a general as soon as a
drummer-boy."
"Possibly, General; but I think, nevertheless, there are several men
whom you would think twice before shooting."
"Not if they impeded my plans!"
"Wait a bit, General; a moment ago you spoke of discipline, now it is
yourself only of whom you are talking.... Very well, then I will give
you an explanation.... It is true there was a gathering at Damanhour,
and we generals, feeling discouraged after that first march, did
question among ourselves the object of this expedition, thinking we
detected personal ambition as that object rather than motives of public
good; I said that, for the honour and glory of patriotism I would go
all round the world, but if it were only just to satisfy your caprice,
I would not go another step. What I said that evening I now repeat to
your face, and if the sneak who reported my words to you said anything
else than what I have told you he is worse even than a spy, he is a
liar!"
Bonaparte looked at my father for a moment, then, almost
affectionately, he said:
"And so, Dumas, you make a division in your mind: you place France on
one side and me on the other. You think I separate her interests and
fortunes from my own."
"I think that the interests of France ought to come before those of
an individual, no matter how great that man may be.... I do not think
that the fortunes of any nation should be subordinated to those of an
individual."
"So you are ready to separate from me?"
"Yes, so soon as I am convinced that you are separating yourself from
France."
"You are mistaken, Dumas," Bonaparte replied coldly.
"Quite possibly," replied my father; "but I disapprove of
dictatorships--whether those of Sulla or of Cæsar."
"And you request--?"
"Leave to return to France, the first opportunity that presents itself."
"Very good. I promise you I will raise no difficulties in the way of
your departure."
"I thank you, General: it is the only favour I ask of you;" and,
bowing, my father walked to the door, unbolted it and went out.
As he withdrew, he thought he overheard Bonaparte muttering these words:
"Blind fool! not to believe in my fortunes!"
My father met Dermoncourt a quarter of an hour after, and related what
had passed between Bonaparte and himself; and a score of times since
has Dermoncourt repeated that conversation to me word for word--a
conversation which had so momentous an influence on my father's and on
my own future.
On August 1st the battle of Aboukir was fought, and the French fleet
was destroyed. That put a stop, for the time, to the question of my
father's return or that of anybody else.
That terrible battle had a disastrous effect on the army: even
Bonaparte was momentarily overwhelmed by it, and exclaimed with
Augustus: "Varus! what have you done with my legions?" He cried out
several times, "Brueys! Brueys! what have you done with our ships?"
The uncertainty of his return to France troubled Bonaparte more than
all. The fleet destroyed, he was no longer master of his actions; and
the prospect of remaining six years in Egypt, which he had faced so
calmly, now looked unendurable to him. When Bourrienne tried one day to
comfort him, by telling him to rely on the Directory, he exclaimed:
"Your Directory! You know well enough it is only a set of damned
idiots, who hate me and are jealous of me.... They will leave me to
perish here. Don't you see all those faces? It will be a race who shall
get away first."
This last outburst was excited by the reports brought to Bonaparte of
the general discontent.
Kléber was not spared in these reports any more than my father had
been. He knew that Bonaparte spoke of him as an opponent, and, on
August the 22nd, 1798, he wrote him the following letter:--
"You would be unjust, Citizen General, if you mistake the
vehemence with which I have laid my needs before you, for
signs of weakness or of discouragement. It matters little to
me whether I live or die, provided that I live for the glory
of our arms, and that I die as I have lived. You may rely
therefore on me, and on all whom you place under my orders,
to stand by you through thick and thin. I have already sent
you word that the events of the 14th[3] have had no other
effect than to rouse indignation among the soldiers and a
desire for vengeance."
To this Bonaparte replied:--
"Rest assured of the value I attach to your esteem and
friendship. I am afraid we had drifted a little apart....
You would be doing me injustice were you to doubt the sorrow
this has caused me.... When there are any clouds over the
land of Egypt they pass off in six hours; with me, if clouds
arise, they are gone in three.
"I have just as high a regard for you as you have hitherto
shown towards me."
There is a wide distance between these chilly letters and the
enthusiastic admiration which Kléber felt when he exclaimed, as he laid
his hand on Bonaparte's shoulder:
"General, you are a world in yourself."
Truly it is the poet who makes history, and the history he makes is
the finest of all histories. Erase Bonaparte's noble saying at the
Pyramids, erase Kléber's words to Bonaparte, and you take away the
golden halo which encircled that great Egyptian expedition--the most
wild and futile of expeditions, if not the most gigantic and poetic.
Meanwhile a comparatively abundant supply of provisions had succeeded
scarcity; and this material well-being made the soldiers forget for
the moment their fatigues and sufferings since the beginning of the
campaign. But unfortunately another trouble appeared--money was
absolutely not to be had.
It was about this time that Bonaparte wrote to Kléber the following
letter, which is of earlier date than the one we have just given: it
enlightens us concerning the famous insurrection at Cairo, in the
suppression of which my father took a prominent part.
"BONAPARTE, General-in-Chief, to KLÉBER, Chief of Division.
"HEADQUARTERS AT CAIRO,
"_9th Thermidor, Year VI._
"We are badly off for money at Cairo, Citizen General.
We want all the bullion we left behind at Alexandria to
exchange for some hard cash advanced us by the bankers. I
beg you therefore to call a meeting of the merchants who
hold the bullion and to ask it back from them. I will give
them corn and rice in exchange--we have any quantity of
that. We are as rich in provisions as we are poor in cash,
and absolutely must withdraw from commerce as much of our
bullion and silver as possible in exchange for merchandise.
"We have undergone _greater hardships than the majority of
people have courage to endure._ At the present moment we are
resting here at Cairo, but it does not afford us much in the
way of recompense. All the divisions are here.
"The general staff will have informed you of the military
events which preceded our entry into Cairo. It was a
brilliant engagement. We threw 2000 well-mounted Mamelukes
into the Nile.
"Send us Arabic and French printing outfits. See that they
ship all the wine, spirits, tents and shoes, send them all
by sea to Rosetta, and when they have crossed the Nile they
will have no difficulty in reaching Cairo.
"I await news of your health; I hope it will very soon be
re-established and you will shortly be fit to rejoin us.
"I have written to Louis to set off to Rosetta with all my
effects.
"I have just found a letter from Louis, dated 21 Messidor:
it was in a garden belonging to one of the Mamelukes, which
proves that one of your couriers was intercepted by them.
"Greetings, BONAPARTE."
About the time when paucity of money was being so much felt that
Bonaparte was obliged to withdraw the ingots of gold and silver which
he had pledged with merchants for money lent, offering them grain in
exchange,--a valueless commodity in that fertile land,--my father,
while making some improvements to the house he occupied, once the
property of a bey, my father, I say, found treasure estimated at nearly
two millions (of francs). The owner of the house had left it behind him
in his rapid flight.
My father wrote to Bonaparte at once:--
"CITIZEN GENERAL,--The leopard can no more change his spots
than the honest man can go against his conscience.
"I therefore send you treasure estimated at nearly two
millions (of francs) that I have just discovered.
"If I am killed, or if I die of melancholy here, remember
that I am a poor man and that I leave a wife and child
behind me in France.
"With friendly greetings, A. DUMAS."
This letter, which was officially printed among the correspondence
of the Egyptian Army, produced a very great effect when certain
accusations were being raised against several chief officers. It was
reproduced in the New York and Philadelphian papers, and became known
throughout that growing Republic. Fifty years later, when called to
Holland to attend the coronation of its young king, the United States
ambassador at The Hague, the Hon. M. d'Areysas, repeated it to me word
for word.
[Footnote 1: We must explain that, the word being apparently illegible,
the English could not print it, so we are left to wonder what the
important thing could be that General Dupuis had the misfortune to
lose.]
bound for Syria [Footnote 2: Some editions read "l'eau du ciel" for
"l'eau du Nil."]
[Footnote 3: 14th Thermidor (1st August).]