On the 7th of April, 1799, the promontory on which Saint-Jean-d'Acre is built, the ancient Ptolemais, seemed to be wrapped in as much thunder and lightning as was Mount Sinai on the day when the Lord appeared to Moses from the burning bush. Whence came those reports which shook the coast of Syria as with an earthquake? Whence came that smoke which covered the Gulf of Carmel with a cloud as thick as though Mount Elias had become a burning volcano?
The dream of one of those men, who with a few words change the whole destiny of the world, was accomplished. We are mistaken; we should have said, had vanished. But perhaps it had vanished only to give place to a reality of which this man, ambitious as he was, had never dared to dream.
On the 10th of September, 1797, when the conqueror of Italy heard at Passeriano of the 18th Fructidor and the promulgation of the law which condemned two of the directors, fifty-four deputies, and a hundred and forty-eight private individuals to exile, he fell into a profound revery.
He was doubtless calculating, in his mind, the influence which would accrue to him from this coup d'état, which his hand had directed although Augereau's had alone been visible. He was walking with his secretary, Bourrienne, in the beautiful park of the palace. Suddenly he raised his head and said without any apparent reference to what had gone before: "Assuredly, Europe is a mole-hill. There has never been a great empire or a great revolution save in the East, where there are six hundred millions of men."
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Then when Bourrienne, totally unprepared for this outburst, looked at him in astonishment, he seemed to lose himself again in revery.
On the 1st of January, 1798, Bonaparte—who had been recognized in his box, in which he was trying to conceal himself, at the first performance of "Horatius Coclès," and saluted with an ovation and cries of "Long live Bonaparte!" which shook the building three times—returned to his house in the Rue Chantereine (newly named the Rue de la Victoire) wrapped in melancholy, and said to Bourrienne, to whom he always confided his gloomy thoughts:
"Believe me, Bourrienne, nobody remembers anything in Paris. If I should do nothing for six months I should be lost. One reputation in this Babylon replaces another; they will not see me three times at the theatre before they will cease to look at me."
Again, on the 29th of the same month, he said to Bourrienne, still absorbed in the same dream: "Bourrienne, I will not stay here; there is nothing to be done. If I do remain I am done for; everything goes to seed in France. I have already exhausted my glory. This poor little Europe cannot furnish enough; I must go to the East."
Finally, when he was walking down the Rue Sainte-Anne, with Bourrienne, about a fortnight before his departure on the 18th of April, his secretary, to whom he had not spoken a word since they left the Rue Chantereine, in order to break the silence which annoyed him, said: "Then you have really decided to leave France, general?"
"Yes," replied Bonaparte, "I asked to be one of them, and they refused me. If I stay here I shall have to overthrow them and make myself king. The nobles would never consent to that; I have sounded the ground and the time has not yet come. I should be alone. I must dazzle the people. We will go to Egypt, Bourrienne."
Therefore it was not to communicate with Tippoo-Sahib across Asia, and to attack England in India, that Bonaparte left Europe.
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"I must dazzle the people." In those words lay the true motive for his departure.
On the 3d of May, 1798, he ordered all the generals to embark their troops. On the 4th he left Paris. On the 8th he reached Toulon. On the 19th he went aboard the admiral's vessel, the "Orient." On the 25th he sighted Leghorn and the island of Elba. On the 13th of June he took Malta. On the 19th he set sail again. On the 3d of July he took Alexandria by assault. On the 13th he won the battle of Chebrou?ss. On the 21st he crushed the Mamelukes at the Pyramids. On the 25th he entered Cairo. On the 14th of August he learned of the disaster of Aboukir. On the 24th of December he started, with the members of the Institute, to visit the remains of the Suez Canal. On the 28th he drank at the fountains of Moses, and, like Pharaoh, was almost drowned in the Red Sea. On the 1st of January, 1799, he planned the expedition into Syria. He had conceived the idea six months earlier.
At that time he wrote to Kléber:
If the English continue to overrun the Mediterranean, they will perhaps force us to do greater things than we at first intended.
There was a vague rumor concerning an expedition which the Sultan of Damascus was sending against the French, in which Djezzar Pasha, surnamed "The Butcher," because of his cruelty, led the advance-guard.
The rumor had taken definite shape. Djezzar had advanced by Gaza as far as El-Arich, and had massacred the few French soldiers who were............