appeared in sight, they feared it was English, and Buonaparte exclaimed, Fortune, dost thou abandon me! What-only five days!' It was one of their own frigates. The ships anchored, orders were given to land, and a proclamation was distributed through the fleet more curious and more characteristic than the first.

'Soldiers,' said Buonaparte, you are about to undertake a conquest whose effect upon the civilization and the commerce of the world will be incalculable. You will inflict upon England the severest strokea stroke which she will feel most, till you can give her her deathblow. We shall make some fatiguing marches, we shall fight some battles, we shall succeed in all our enterprizes; the destinies are for us. The Mameluke Beys who favoured English commerce, who loaded our merchants with arbitrary imposts, and tyrannized over the unhappy inhabitants of the Nile, a few days after our arrival will exist no longer. The people with whom we are about to live are Mahommedans; their first article of faith is this-There is no other God than God, and Mahommed is his prophet. Do not contradict them. Act towards them as you have done towards the Jews and the Italians. Treat those Muftis and Imans with respect, as you have Rabbis and Bishops. Have the same toleration for the ceremonies which the Koran prescribes and for the mosques, as you have had for convents and synagogues, for the religions of Moses and of Jesus Christ. These people treat women otherwise than we do-but in every country the ravisher is a monster. Pillage enriches only a few-it dishonours us, it destroys our resources, it makes the people our enemies, whom it is our interest to have for friends. The first town which we shall enter was built by Alexander. At every step we shall find great recollections worthy to excite the emulation of the French.'

The landing was made in haste, and in such weather that many men were lost; they had to row three leagues in a rolling sea, upon a shore full of rocks and shoals; the wind blowing violently against them, and the waves dashing against the breakers which surround the coast: but though they boasted that they were profiting by Nelson's faults and blunders,* they stood too much in fear of him to delay the disembarkation for more favourable circumstances. By six in the morning a sufficient number were landed to attack and carry a small fort, called Le Marabou, where the first European flag was planted, which had been raised in hostility in Egypt since the Crusades. They were now ten miles from Alexandria; between four and five thousand men were landed, but neither horses nor artillery, nor was it practicable to disembark them. Buonaparte left orders that the remaining troops should form as fast as they reached the shore, and follow him, and he began his march. It was across a desert: men and officers alike displayed the greatest ardour on the

* Profitant de toutes ses fautes, et utilisant son ineptie.

A 3

occasion;

6

It

occasion; and General Caffarelli, who had a wooden leg, performed the march on foot, rather than wait for a horse. At noon the city was attacked. Ill-prepared, as the Turks were, with a few three or four pounders, and some awkward musquetry, they made more resistance than might have been expected. About 250 of the French were wounded; among them Kleber and Menou, who were thrown from the parapet. These people,' said Louis Buonaparte, ' have no idea of children's play; they either kill or are killed. was their fortune now to meet with enemies as merciless as themselves. 'We were under the necessity,' says Denon, of putting the whole of them to death at the breach.' But the slaughter did not cease with the resistance. The Turks and the inhabitants also fled to their mosques, seeking protection from their God and their prophet; and then (it is a Frenchman* and an eye-witness who speaks) men and women, old and young, and infants at the breasts were slaughtered! This butchery continued for four hours; after which, another Frenchman assures us, the remaining part of the inhabitants were much astonished at not having their throats cut. Be it remembered that all this bloodshed was premeditated. We might have spared the men whom we lost,' says AdjutantGeneral Boyer, by only summoning the town; mais il falloit commencer par étonner son ennemi.'

The inhabitants were not less astonished when an Arabic proclamation was read to them by a Maronite priest, and circulated among them. It began, 'In the Name of God, gracious and merciful. There is no God but God; he has no son nor associate in his kingdom.' It dwelt upon the oppression which the people of Egypt endured from the Mamelukes, and represented the insults and injuries that the Beys inflicted upon the French merchants as the cause of this invasion. " Buonaparte,' it proceeded, the General of the French Republic, according to the principles of liberty, is now arrived; and the Almighty, the Lord of both worlds, has sealed the destruction of the Beys. Inhabitants of Egypt, when the Beys tell you that the French are come to destroy your religion, believe them not. Answer them, that they are only come to rescue the rights of the poor from the hands of their tyrants, and that the French adore the Supreme Being, and honour the Prophet and his holy Koran more than they do. The French are true Mussul

* Ceux-ci, repoussés de tout côté, réfugient chez leur Dieu et leur Prophète; ils remplissent leurs mosqués; hommes, femmes, vieillards, jeunes et enfans, tous sont massacrés. Au bout de quatre heures nos soldats mettent fin à leur fureur.-Intercept. Letters, p. 137.

+ Restoit une partie des habitans fort étonnée qu'on ne leur coupât le cou.-Part I.

P. 13.

men.

men. Not long since they marched to Rome and overthrew the throne of the Pope, who excited the Christians against the professors of Islamism. Afterwards they directed their course to Malta, and drove out the Unbelievers, who imagined they were appointed by God to make war upon the Mussulmen.' In this memorable proclamation, Buonaparte affirmed that the French were the friends of the Grand Seignior, and the enemies of his enemies: he called upon the Egyptians to enjoy the blessings of a system, in which the wisest and the most virtuous were to govern, and the people were to be happy. Thrice happy,' said he,' are they who shall be with us; they shall prosper in their fortunes. Happy they who shall be neuter! they will have time to know us, and they will join us also. But woe, woe, woe to those who take arms for the Mamelukes; there shall be no hope for them; they shall perish.' He concluded by decreeing that every village which opposed him should be burnt, and ordering a thanksgiving. Let every one return thanks to God for the destruction of the Mamelukes, and cry Glory to the Sultan! Glory to the French army, his ally! Curse upon the Mamelukes, and Happiness for the people of Egypt.'*

Among the other antiquities at Alexandria some arms were found, which had been taken from the army under St. Louis, in his fatal crusade against Egypt, a sight which might have awakened, in a wiser and less presumptuous race, some ominous reflections. The French began now to ask themselves how they liked their promised land. The manner in which men of different pursuits and temperaments expressed their feelings is highly characteristic.

Judge,' says M. Miot, by Volney's first pages, of the impression which must be made upon us, by these houses with grated windows, this solitude, this silence, these camels, these disgusting dogs covered with vermin, these hideous women holding between their teeth the corner of a veil of coarse blue cloth to conceal from us their features and their black bosoms. At the sight of Alexandria and its inhabitants, at beholding these vast plains devoid of all verdure, at breathing the burning air of the desert, melancholy began to find its way among us; and already some Frenchmen, turning towards their country their weary eyes, let the expression of regret escape them in sighs, a regret which more painful proofs were soon to render more poignant.'

Denon observed that nothing in this long and melancholy city reminded him of Europe and its cheerfulness, except the sparrows, who were the same bold and active birds in both countries: the very dogs in Egypt are degraded; they are the slaves of men and not the companions; and, consequently, possess none of the good qualities which kindness and domestication call forth. Whatever

* This proclamation is not in M. Miot's first edition; its publication would not have been agreeable to the First Consul just at the time of the Concordat.

can be affected by man is deteriorated in that unhappy country. M. Jaubert, in the hurry of disembarkation, the confusion of a city taken by assault, the preparatious for farther conquests, and the motley assemblage of generals and soldiers, Frenchmen, Copts, Turks, and Arabs, horses and camels, saw a lively type of the revolution which, as he believed, was about to change the face of Egypt. M. Larrey, whose improvements in the art of military surgery in the 19th century, are hardly less important than those of Ambrose Paré in the 16th, observed, with astonishment, how favourably wounds healed in that benignant climate. Louis Buonaparte, shuddering at the ferocity of the wild Arabs, exclaimed against Jean Jacques, for having called such wretches the men of nature. Could he see them, he would tremble with shame and astonishment, that he should ever have been able to admire them! Oh how many misanthropists would be converted if chance should cast them into the midst of the deserts of Arabia! The savans looked among the antiquities for what might be transported to France: Alexander's tomb was instantly marked out by Denon and Dolomieu; and others, perhaps, thought of realising the plan, which Maillet proposed in Louis XIVth's reign, of removing Pompey's Pillar to Paris. The soldiers, meantime, who bivouacked among the ruins of Alexandria, were many of them bit by scorpions, and began to curse the plagues of Egypt. But the fright was greater than the injury, and the application of either acid or alcali, or even sea-water, removed the inflammation. A parade of clemency was made towards the Sheik of Alexandria. I have taken you in arnis,' said Buonaparte, and I might treat you as a prisoner; but, as you have behaved with courage, and I think bravery inseparable from honour, I give you back your arms, and think you will be as faithful to the Republic as you have been to a bad government.' The Sheik, who saw thirty thousand men landed, all chosen troops, with a correspondent train of artillery, was now fully sensible how little he could resist such negociators; and he accordingly assented to whatever was proposed. An agreement, therefore, was soon made between Buonaparte and the principal men of Alexandria, they promising to be faithful, and he pledging himself that they should be subjected to no vexations from the army. He now ordered that the French who had fallen before the city should be buried at the base of Pompey's pillar, and their names engraved upon it. Such an order was in the taste of the day, but perhaps some of the savans interfered, and saved the pillar from being thus disfigured. Kleber's division, at that time under General Dugua, was sent to occupy Rosetta, and from thence proceed along the Nile, to cover a flotilla under the Chief of Division Perrée. The rest of the army advanced towards Cairo, the divisions being marched off as fast as they landed, without allowing

them

them time to see the wretchedness of the land, or acquire any information of the country through which they were to pass. The first part of their march lay across the desert. Buonaparte, seeing that his men were in want of every thing requisite for such a march, said to them, like a tragedy hero, Les vertus sont pour nous-the virtues are on our side! He himself set out in the evening, and marched through the night: his head was wrapped in a handkerchief, and he frequently touched Berthier upon the shoulder, saying, with evident satisfaction, Well, Berthier! here we are at last! Eh bien, Berthier! nous y sommes enfin !'

Perhaps at this time Buonaparte dreamt of founding an empire for himself in the East. French travellers had represented Egypt as the most favoured part of the world. The Arabs call it Misr, the Place, as they call the Koran, the Book; the Turks regard it as an earthly Paradise: what it had been was known from the ancients, and Savary had given a rapturous description of it, even in its present state. 'What might not a people, who cultivated the arts and sciences, still undertake here! What treasures might they not gain from commerce and agriculture! What advantage might they not render science and history by the interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics!'-It is beyond a doubt that these representations had produced a deep effect upon the French. The Directory, in seizing Egypt, did but execute a project which had long been contemplated by the old government. They perhaps wished to rid themselves of an army and a general whom they feared; and the general might very well suppose, that the European powers would more willingly leave him in possession of that country than suffer it to be annexed to France. Of his followers a large proportion certainly went for plunder: but among the adventurers, who looked up to him, and felt that superstition concerning his fortunes, which throughout his life he has constantly inculcated, there must have been many who embraced a military life in the first ardour of generous youth, and were led on, imperceptibly, from horror to horror, and from crime to crime, till they became the curse and the opprobrium of the human race. This transmutation was completely effected in Egypt. During that expedition generals and soldiers acquired that character which has since been communicated to the French army, a total insensibility towards human sufferings, a total contempt of all moral and religious principles.

As Denon was leaving Alexandria he saw a young and handsome Frenchwoman sitting upon a fragment of ruin which was covered with blood, and surrounded by the dead bodies of those who had been slaughtered in the assault. Insensible to the horrors around her and ignorant of the sufferings that awaited her, she told him

she