VANISHED DREAMS  
Napoleon, speaking of Saint-Jean-d'Acre at Saint Helena, said: "That paltry town held the destiny of the East. If Saint-Jean-d'Acre had fallen, I would have changed the face of the world."
This regret, expressed some twenty years later, gives an idea of the poignancy of what Bonaparte must have suffered at the time, when he realized the impossibility of taking Saint-Jean-d'Acre, and published the following order in all the divisions of the army.
As usual, Bourrienne wrote at his dictation:
Soldiers! You have crossed the desert which separates Africa from Asia with more rapidity than an army of Arabs.
The army, which was on its way to invade Egypt, is destroyed. You have taken its general, its camp baggage, its supplies and its camels.
You have captured all the strongholds which defend the wells of the desert. On the fields of Mount Tabor you have dispersed the cloud of men which had gathered from all parts of Asia in the hope of pillaging Egypt.
Finally, after having maintained the war with a handful of men in the heart of Syria for more than three months, taken forty pieces of artillery, fifty flags, six thousand prisoners, levelled the fortifications of Gaza, Jaffa, Ka?ffa, and Acre, we are about to return to Egypt; the season of disembarkation calls me back.
A few days more and we might hope to take the pasha in his own palace; but at this season the price of the castle of Acre is not worth the loss of a few days, and the brave men whom I should lose are now necessary to me for other operations.
Soldiers, we have a season of fatigue and danger before us. Having made it impossible for the East to do anything against us during the forthcoming campaign, we shall perhaps be forced to repulse the attack of a part of the West.
You will find new opportunities for glory; and if in so many battles, every day is marked with the loss of a brave[Pg 649] man, other brave men must be made every day, and take their places among the little band who set the example of daring in times of danger, and who make victory easy.
As he finished dictating this bulletin to Bourrienne, Bonaparte rose and went out of his tent as if to breathe more freely. Bourrienne followed him uneasily; events seldom left such a deep impression upon that heart of bronze.
Bonaparte climbed the little hill which overlooked the camp, seated himself upon a stone, and remained for a long time staring at the partially demolished fortress and the ocean which lay before him in its immensity. Finally he said: "The men who will write my life will not understand why I was so anxious to take this wretched little place. Ah, if I had taken it as I hoped!"
He let his head fall upon his hands.
"And if you had taken it?" asked Bourrienne.
"If I had taken it," replied Bonaparte, seizing his hand, "I should have found the treasures of the pasha in the city and arms for three hundred thousand men; I would have aroused and armed all Syria; I would have marched upon Damascus and Aleppo; I would have swelled my army with all the malcontents; I would have announced the abolition of servitude and the tyrannical rule of the pashas to the people; I would have reached Constantinople with my armed hordes; I would have overthrown the Turkish Empire; I would have founded a new and vast empire in the Orient which would have fixed my place in history; and perhaps I should have returned to Paris by way of Adrianople and Vienna, after having humbled the house of Austria."
This, as will be seen, was nothing more nor less than C?sar's project when he fell beneath the assassin's knife; it was his war among the Parthians which was to end only in Germany. As far as was the man of the 13th Vendémiaire from the conqueror of Italy, so far was the conqueror of Italy that day from the conqueror of Egypt.
Proclaimed throughout Europe the greatest of living generals, he sought, on the shores where Alexander, Hanni[Pg 650]bal and C?sar had fought, to equal if not surpass the names of these captains of antiquity; and he did surpass them, since he tried to do what they only dreamed of.
"What would have become of Europe," said Pascal, speaking of Cromwell's death from calculus, "if that grain of sand had not entered his entrails?"
What would have become of Bonaparte's fortunes if Saint-Jean-d'Acre had not stood in the way?
He was dreaming of this great mystery of the unknown when his eye was attracted by a black speck between the mountains of the Carmel chain which was gradually growing larger. As it drew nearer he recognized a soldier of that dromedary corps which he had created "to pursue the fugitives more swiftly after the battle."
Bonaparte drew his gla............