CHAPTER XII.

View of the respective Situations of Great Britain and France, at the Period of Napoleon's return from Italy.Negotiations at Lisle-Broken off.—Army of England decreed, and Buonaparte named to the Command-He takes up his Residence in Paris.-Public Honours.-The real Views of the Directory discovered to be the Expedition to Egypt.-Armies of Italy and the Rhine, compared and contrasted.-Napoleon's Objects and Motives in heading the Egyptian Expedition-those of the Directory regarding it-Its actual Impolicy.- Curious Statement by Miot.-The Armament sails from Toulon, on 19th May 1798.-Napoleon arrives before Malta on 10th JuneProceeds on his course, and escaping the British Squadron, lands at Alexandria on the 1st July.-Description of the various Classes who inhabit Egypt:-1. The Fellahs and Bedouins-2. The Cophts -3. The Mamelukes.

-Napoleon issues a Proclamation against the Mamelukes. —Marches against them on the 7th July.-Discontent of the French Troops.-Battle of the Pyramids on 21st of July.- Cairo surrenders.

It might have been thought, such was the success of the French arms on the land, and of the British upon the sea, that the war must now be near its natural and unavoidable termination, like a fire when there no longer remain any combustibles to be devoured. Wherever water could bear them, the British vessels of war had swept

the seas of the enemy. The greater part of the foreign colonies belonging to France and her allies, among whom she now numbered Holland and Spain, were in the possession of the English, nor had France a chance of recovering them. On the contrary, not a musket was seen pointed against France on the continent; so that it seemed as if the great rival nations, fighting with different weapons, and on different elements, must at length give up a contest, in which it was almost impossible to come to a decisive struggle.

An attempt accordingly was made, by the negotiation of Lisle, to bring to a period the war, which appeared now to subsist entirely without an object. Lord Malmesbury, on that occasion, gave in, on the part of Britain, an offer to surrender all the conquests she had made from France and her allies; on condition of the cession of Trinidad, on the part of Spain, and of the Cape of Good Hope, Cochin, and Ceylon, on the part of Holland, with some stipulations in favour of the Prince of Orange and his adherents in the Netherlands. The French commissioners, in reply, declared, that their instructions required that the English should make a complete cession of their conquests, without any equivalent whatever; and they insisted, as indispensable preliminaries, that the King of Great Britain should lay aside his titular designation of King of France-that the Toulon fleet should be restored and that the English should renounce their right to certain mortgages over the Netherlands, for money lent to the Emperor. Lord Malmesbury, of course, rejected a sweeping set of

propositions, which decided every question against England even before the negotiation commenced, and solicited the French to offer some modified form of treaty. The 18th Fructidor, however, had in the interim taken place, and the Republican party, being in possession of complete authority, broke off the negotiation, if it could be called such, abruptly, and ordered the English ambassador out of the dominions of the republic with very little ceremony. It was now proclaimed generally, that the existence of the English Carthage in the neighbourhood of the French Rome was altogether inadmissible; that England must be subdued once more, as in the times of William the Conqueror ; and the hopes of a complete and final victory over their natural rival and enemy, as the two nations are but overapt to esteem each other, presented so flattering a prospect, that there was scarce a party in France, not even amongst the Royalists, which did not enter on what was expected to prove the decisive contest, with the revival of all those feelings of bitter animosity that had distinguished past

ages.

Towards the end of October 1797, the Directory announced, that there should be instantly assembled on the shores of the ocean an army, to be called the Army of England, and that the Citizen-General Buonaparte was named to the command. The intelligence was received in every part of France with all the triumph which attends the anticipation of certain victory. The address of the Directory

[Annual Register, v. xl. p. 6.]

numbered all the conquests which France had won, and the efforts she had made, and prepared the French nation to expect the fruit of so many victories and sacrifices when they had punished England for her perfidy and maritime tyranny. "It is at London where the misfortunes of all Europe are forged and manufactured—It is in London that they must be terminated." In a solemn meeting held by the Directory, for the purpose of receiving the treaty of peace with Austria, which was presented to them by Berthier and Monge on the part of Buonaparte, the latter, who had been one of the commissioners for pillaging Italy of her pictures and statues, and who looked, doubtless, to a new harvest of rarities in England, accepted, on the part of the army and general, the task imposed by the French rulers. "The Government of England and the French Republic cannot both continue to exist-you have given the word which shall fallalready our victorious troops brandish their arms, and Scipio is at their head."

While this farce, for such it proved, was acting in Paris, the chief of the intended enterprise arrived there, and took up his abode in the Dec. 5. same modest house which he had occupied before becoming the conqueror of palaces. The community of Paris, with much elegance, paid their successful general the compliment of changing the name of the street from Rue Chantereine to Rue de la Victoire.

In a metropolis where all is welcome that can vary the tedium of human life, the arrival of any remarkable person is a species of holyday; but

such an eminent character as Buonaparte-the conqueror—the sage—the politician—the undaunted braver of every difficulty-the invincible victor in every battle-who had carried the banners of the Republic from Genoa till their approach scared the Pontiff in Rome, and the emperor in Vienna, was no everyday wonder. His youth, too, added to the marvel, and still more the claim of general superiority over the society in which he mingled, though consisting of the most distinguished persons in France; a superiority cloaking itself with a species of reserve, which inferred, "You may look upon me, but you cannot penetrate or see through me." "1 Napoleon's general manner in society, during this part of his life, has been described by an observer of first-rate power; according to whom, he was one for whom the admiration which could not be refused to him, was always mingled with a portion of fear. He was different in his manner from other men, and neither pleased nor angry, kind nor severe, after the common fashion of humanity. He appeared to live for the execution of his own plans, and to consider others only in so far as they were connected with, and could advance or oppose them. He estimated his fellow-mortals no otherwise than as they could be useful to his views; and, with a precision of intelligence which seemed intuitive from its rapidity, he penetrated the sentiments of those whom it was worth his while to study. Buonaparte did not then possess the ordinary tone of light conversation in society;

1 [Thibaudeau, t. iii. p. 413; Montholon, t. iv. p. 266.]