stores and sailors, with the result that the armada was ready for sea by the middle of May 1798. The secrecy maintained as to its destination was equally remarkable. The British government inclined to the belief that it was destined either for Ireland or for Naples. As the British fleet had abandoned the Mediterranean since November 1796 and had recently been disorganized by two serious mutinies, Bonaparte’s plan of conquering Egypt was by no means so rash as has sometimes been represented.
The ostensible aims of the expedition, as drawn up by him, and countersigned by the Directory on the 12th of April, were the seizure of Egypt, the driving of the British from all their possessions in the East and the cutting of the Suez canal. But apart from these public aims there were private motives which weighed with Bonaparte. His relations to the Directors were most strained. They feared his ability and ambition; while he credited them with the design of poisoning him. Shortly before his starting, an open rupture was scarcely averted; and he and his brothers allowed the idea to get abroad that he was being virtually banished from France. It is certain, however, that his whole heart was in the expedition, which appealed to his love of romance and of the gigantic. His words to Joseph Bonaparte shortly before sailing are significant: “Our dreams of a republic were youthful illusions. Since the 9th of Thermidor, the republican instinct has grown weaker every day. To-day all eyes are on me: to-morrow they may be on another. . . . I depart for the Orient with all the means of success at my disposal. If my country needs me, if there are additions to the number of those who share the opinion of Talleyrand, Sieyès and Roederer, that war will break out again and that it will be unsuccessful for France, I will return, more sure of the feeling of the nation.” He added, however, that if France waged a successful war, he would remain in the East, and do more damage to England there than by mere demonstrations in the English Channel.
The Toulon fleet set sail on the 19th of May; and when the other contingents from the ports of France and Italy joined the flag, the armada comprised thirteen sail of the line, fourteen frigates, many smaller warships and some three hundred transports. An interesting feature of the expedition was the presence on board of several savants who were charged to examine the antiquities and develop the resources of Egypt. The chief had lately become a member of the Institute, and did his utmost to inflame in France that love of art and science which he had helped to kindle by enriching the museums of Paris with the treasures of Italy. By good fortune the armada evaded Nelson and arrived safely off Malta. Thanks to French intrigues, the Knights of Malta offered the tamest defence of their capital. During the week which he spent there, Bonaparte displayed marvellous energy in endowing the city with modern institutions; he even arranged the course of studies to be followed in the university. Setting sail for Egypt on the 19th of June, he again had the good fortune to elude Nelson and arrived off Alexandria on the 2nd of July. For an account of the Egyptian and Syrian campaigns see French Revolutionary Wars. But here we may point out the influence of the expedition on Egypt, on European politics and on the fortunes of Bonaparte. The chief direct result in the life of the Egyptian people was the virtual destruction of the governing caste of the Mamelukes, the Turks finding it easy to rid themselves of their surviving chiefs and to re-establish the authority of the Sultan. As for the benefits which Bonaparte and his savants helped to confer on Egypt, they soon vanished. The great canal was not begun; irrigation works were started but were soon given up. The letters of Kléber and Menou (the successors of Bonaparte) show that the expenditure on public works had been so reckless that the colony was virtually bankrupt at the time of Bonaparte’s departure; and William Hamilton, who travelled through Egypt in 1802, found few traces, other than military, of the French occupation. The indirect results, however, were incalculably great. Though for the present the Sultan regained his hold upon Egypt, yet in reality Bonaparte set in motion forces which could not be stayed until the ascendancy of one or other of the western maritime powers in that land was definitely decided.
The effects of the expedition in the sphere of world-politics were equally remarkable and more immediate. The British government, alarmed by Bonaparte’s attempt to intrigue with Tippoo Sahib, put forth all its strength in India and destroyed the power of that ambitious ruler. Nelson’s capture of Malta (5th of September 1800) also secured for the time a sure base for British fleets in the Mediterranean. A Russo-Turkish fleet wrested Corfu from the French; and the Neapolitan Bourbons, emboldened by the news of the battle of the Nile, began hostilities with France which preluded the war of the Second Coalition. In the domain of science the results of the expedition were of unique interest. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone furnished the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics; and archaeology, no less than the more practical sciences, acknowledges its debt of gratitude to the man who first brought the valley of the Nile into close touch with the thought of the West.
Finally, it should be noted that, amid the failure of the national aims which the Directory and Bonaparte set forth, his own desires received a startlingly complete fulfilment. The war of the Second Coalition having brought about the expulsion of the French from Italy, the Directors were exposed to a storm of indignation in France, not unmixed with contempt; and this state of public opinion enabled the young conqueror within a month of his landing at Fréjus (9th of October 1799) easily to prevail over the Directory and the elective councils of the nation. In the spring of 1798 he had judged the pear to be not ripe; in Brumaire 1799 it came off almost at a touch.
In order to understand the sharp swing of the political pendulum back from republicanism to autocracy which took place at Brumaire, it is needful to remember that the virtual failure of the Egyptian Expedition was then unknown. The news of Bonaparte’s signal victory over the Turkish army at Aboukir aroused general rejoicings undimmed by any save the vaguest rumours of his reverse at Acre. In the popular imagination he seemed to be the only possible guarantor of victory abroad and order at home. This was unjust to the many men who were working, not without success, to raise the Republic out of its many difficulties. Masséna’s triumph at Zurich (September 25th-26th, 1799) paralysed the Second Coalition; and, though the Austrians continued to make progress along the Italian riviera, the French Republic was in little danger on that side so long as it held Switzerland.
The internal condition of France was also not so desperate as has often been represented. True, the Directory seemed on the point of collapse; it had been overcome by the popularly elected Chambers in the insignificant coup d’état of 30 Prairial (18th of June) 1799; when Larevellière-Lépeaux and Merlin were compelled to resign. The retirement of Rewbell a short time previously also rid France of a turbulent and corrupt administrator. His place was now filled by Sieyès. This ex-priest, this disillusioned Jacobin and skilful spinner of cobweb constitutions, enjoyed for a time the chief reputation in France. His oracular reserve, personal honesty and consistency of aim had gained him the suffrages of all who hoped to save France from the harpies of the Directory and the violent rhetoricians of the now reconstituted Jacobin Club. He was known to disapprove of the Directory both as an institution in the making of which he had had no hand, and of its personnel, with one exception. This was natural. The new Directors, Gohier and Moulin, were honest but incapable and narrow-minded, As for Barras, his venality and vices outweighed even his capacity for successful intrigue. The fifth Director, Ducos, an ex-Girondin, was sure to swim with the stream. Clearly, then, the Directory was doomed.
It was far otherwise with the Councils. A majority of the Ancients was ready to support Sieyès and make drastic changes in the constitution; but in the Council of Five Hundred the prevalent feeling was democratic or even Jacobinical. The aim of Sieyès was to perpetuate the republic, but in a bureaucratic or autocratic form. With this aim in view he sought to find a man possessing ability in war and probity in civil affairs, who would act as figure-head to his long projected constitution. For a time affairs moved as he wished. The Jacobin Club was
