[1799 A.D.] his free will and caprice, emulated all the atrocities of the Parisian Septembrists.

He

Immediately after this, the French were checked before the walls of Acre. They formed in vain the siege. The ferocious Jezzar commanded within, and Sir Sidney Smith aided him with cannon, and at need with sailors to work them. The Turkish army, in the meantime advanced, surprised and surrounded Kléber at Mount Tabor; but that general kept them at bay till Bonaparte came to his rescue, surrounded the Moslems in turn, routed and slaughtered them. Acre, despite this victory, was impregnable; after repeated efforts, and the loss of the bravest officers, the French were obliged to retreat. In passing by Jaffa1 [or Joppa] another instance occurred of Napoleon's placing himself above the common principles of morality. proposed to administer strong doses of opium to those incurably afflicted with the plague. A system of mercy daily applied to animals he thought might be extended to human life. The surgeons recoiled at a theory of mercy that might be taken for murder. In this instance, as in the more guilty ones of Jaffa and the duke d'Enghien, the influence of the Revolution is seen. Bonaparte was not naturally either a monster, or even a cruel man. But he had started to manhood at a time when the universal mind of France presented a tabula rasa of all principle, moral and religious. The great doctrine of expediency had been preached and hallowed by the Revolution, the energy of which was then, and is still, largely admired, and the grand successes of which, as well as its many salutary consequences, were considered if not to hallow its crimes, at least to excuse the principle which generated them.

Returning to Egypt, Bonaparte had to contend with the insurrection of the Arabs, and the discontented projects of his own troops. In July a Turkish army landed at Abukir: the general hastened to attack it. The Moslems showed their wonted valour, repulsed his first effort, till, assaulted again whilst busied in decapitating the slain, they were driven back in disorder. Murat with his cavalry penetrated amongst them, sabred multitudes, and drove the rest into the bay of Abukir. The sea was strewn with turbans. Having thus wiped out the disgrace of Acre, Bonaparte, whose object was not to vegetate in Egypt, prepared to leave his army secretly, and repair to France.f

TROUBLES OF THE NEW DIRECTORY

Meanwhile, the Revolution of the 30th Prairial had hardly bettered matters. As a natural consequence of liberty the parties were raising their heads. The "law of hostages" had had no other effect than to make recruits for the Chouans. The hopes of the royalists revived. But they had then but a small representation in the councils, and their most prudent leaders continued to be attached to the constitution of the year III, while others were in haste to depart from it; they awaited events. Some believed that a reform of the constitution would lead to a hereditary presidency.

The patriots showed themselves much more enterprising. They organised in the riding-school (manège) a society with a president, secretaries, and correspondents. This was the club du Manège. Demands were made for the execution of all the terrorist measures, for the disarmament of the royalists, for arming the national guard with pikes and cannon, for the

[1 Bonaparte's touching the plague sores of the sick at this place should be remembered, not only as an act of heroism, but as evincing his soldier-like belief in predestination, the only and the singular principle of his creed.]

[1799 A.D.]

impeachment of the old directors or of the generals, and for the most severe laws against emigration. The journals of the party, especially the Hommes libres, supported this resurrection of Jacobinism; however, while proposing revolutionary measures, they made the pretence of not departing from the constitution and never re-establishing the guillotine.

Besides the directors, Gohier and Moulins, the patriots had on their side the generals Jourdan, Augereau, Bernadotte, and Marbot the governor of Paris. They also counted on Barras, but he had become Sieyès's man, and deserted them, judging that the future would be different and yielding to the advice of Fouché, to whom Barras caused the ministry of police to be given. He was perfectly fitted for the position, being crafty and subtle, well informed of the secrets of the Jacobins all of whom he knew, and being always ready to betray his friends of yesterday for the sake of those of to-morrow. He already deserved what Bonaparte said. of him with reference to his mania for intrigue and for being in everything that "he walked in everybody's shoes." Sieyès sanctioned his appointment in order to rid himself of the "patriots," whom he detested and feared as ungovernable men. He had the courage to tell them of their actions and to crush their absurd proposals in several discourses delivered at the fêtes of July 14th, July 28th (9th Thermidor), and August 10th. He stigmatised the time to which were accredited "those disastrous maxims that enlightenment must yield to ignorance, wisdom to folly, reflection to passion; when all those who had served or were capable of serving their country were discredited, outraged, and persecuted, when the most tutelary authority was the most hated because it was authority, when all ideas were confused to such an extent that all those who ought not to be charged with anything were persistently charged with everything." He vigorously attacked those who thought that "to strengthen a government is an infamy and to destroy is always a glory; who as lawless enemies of all order or even appearance of order wished to govern by shouts and not by laws." These philippics had all the more success on account of the demonstrated and well-known circumspection of their author.

LUCIEN BONAPARTE

(1775-1840)

Sieyes had the riding-school closed. This was done quietly by a simple order of the inspectors of the council of Ancients, the action being based upon the fact that the riding-school belonged to the Tuileries. The patriots expelled from the riding-school at once reorganised their club du Manège in the rue du Bac in another hall called the Temple of Peace. Even there

[1799 A.D.]

Sieyès pursued them, strengthened by his former success and knowing that he would be supported by a justly alarmed public; for the reappearance of the Jacobins had caused disorders at Amiens, Bordeaux, and Marseilles. On the 13th of August Fouché closed the new club and the directors assumed authority to undertake domiciliary visits in Paris. There was neither opposition nor disorder. The populace proved itself to be tranquillised and indifferent to the invectives which the Jacobin journals heaped upon Sieyès, Barras, and Fouché.

Next the directors, in the absence of a special law, applied to the journalists the penalties prescribed by article 145 of the constitution against the authors and accomplices of plots. They issued warrants of arrest against the printers and editors of thirteen journals and sealed up their presses. The patriot representatives did not fail to cry out that this was a tyranny, that the Directory would not leave the press free because it was meditating a disgraceful peace or a coup d'état. However, the sixty-eight accused men were deported to Oléron, and the commission appointed to make a report on the liberty of the press did not make it.

On the 10th of the same month the Directory announced that the domiciliary visits authorised in Paris had been followed by 540 arrests and that the law of hostages would be applied to eighteen departments. On the 13th Jourdan proposed to declare the country in peril: "Our places," he said, "are jeopardised by treason. In the interior a vast royalist conspiracy is entangling the whole republic in its net." The moment had come, according to him, to arouse enthusiasm, to give a new impulse to patriotism. The republicans must rise in a body. For two days this motion filled the assembly of the Five Hundred with tumult and disorder. It was an unfortunate calling forth of the revolutionary traditions.

One incident embittered the discussion. Jourdan announced that Bernadotte had been dismissed from the ministry of war, doubtless because he was a patriot, and he expressed fears of the possibility of a coup d'état. The assembly arose; all the members shouted that they were ready to die at their posts. Lucien Bonaparte repeated the watchword which Jourdan had uttered -liberty or death. Augereau after a pretended explanation of the part he had had in Fructidor, when he had crushed a conspiracy, took the oath to defend the councils. The motion concerning the peril of the country was rejected, but the agitation had spread outside the hall and the deputies who had voted it down were hissed upon leaving the hall.s

NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM EGYPT (1799 A.D.)

For nearly ten months Bonaparte had received from the Directory only a single despatch which had escaped the hands of the English; but a letter had lately reached him from his brother Joseph, which pressed for his return. On the occasion of an exchange of prisoners, Sidney Smith, who was cruising about near Alexandria, maliciously sent him some newspapers full of bad news. This was at the time of the reverses in Germany and Italy. Since his brother's letter, Bonaparte had meditated leaving Egypt. What he learned from those newspapers decided him. It was clear to him that the days of the Directory were numbered, and that his own time had come. He had no hesitation in deserting the army he had launched on so perilous a venture. He deceived it by the announcement of a journey into Upper Egypt, and, taking the opposite direction, he travelled quickly to Alexandria, which he had made a rendezvous for those he wished to take with him.

He

[1799 A.D.]

sent word to Desaix, who was in Upper Egypt, to prepare to rejoin him in France; he took most of the best generals with him, Berthier, Lannes, Murat, Marmont, Duroc, the experts Berthollet, Monge, and others, leaving Kléber, to whom he forwarded his instructions, to do what he could with the remainder. He authorised Kléber to treat for the evacuation of Egypt if he had not received succour from France by the following May and if the plague had cost him over fifteen hundred men.

On being informed of the departure of Sidney Smith, who had been obliged to retire to re-victual his fleet, he embarked on the night of the 5th Fructidor (22nd of August) with a small squadron composed of two frigates and two small vessels. Contrary winds and the necessity of avoiding the English rendered the crossing long and difficult. Bonaparte put into his native island for a few days, and it

Iwas in Corsica that he obtained information on the situation in France.1

In sight of Toulon he narrowly escaped falling into the middle of an English squadron. He escaped the enemy and disembarked at St. Raphael, in the gulf of Fréjus (October 9th, 1799). From Fréjus to Lyons the population received him with the ringing of bells and the blaze of illuminations. The brilliant welcome which he received at Lyons proved to him that the reactionary party, which dominated in that large town, was not attached to the Bourbons and only asked to devote themselves to him. He wrote to his wife and to his brothers that he was going to Paris by way of Burgundy, and then travelled by another route, fearing some obstacle or ambush by the road, at the hands of the Directory. The Moniteur announced his return for the 15th of October. He arrived on the 16th. That very evening he presented himself at the house of Gohier, at that time president of the Directory. "President," he said, "the news which reached me in Egypt was so alarming that I have not hesitated to leave my army to come and share your perils.

[ Hamel,e however, says: "He had not even warned Kléber who, with his unreserved candour, would not have failed to tell him how shameless this desertion was, and how culpable it was of him to abandon to an unknown fate so many brave men whom his ambition, his persistent and dogged will, his unappeaseable thirst for renown had thrown without any gain to France into distant Egypt. As it was necessary to leave someone in command, he sent written instructions to the conqueror of Mount Tabor, appointing him in his place to command the army of occupation. No doubt some daring on his part was required to face a perilous voyage in an inferior frigate through the Mediterranean, furrowed in every sense of the word by the victorious English fleets. But there was nothing left to do in Egypt. His irreparable reverse at Acre had demolished his wild dream of laying the foundations of his fortune in the East. He was being invited more or less openly to play the role of dictator in France. How could a man of his temper hesitate? He had all that was necessary towards success-prodigious talent, profound genius, and entire absence of scruple. If in Henry IV's opinion Paris was worth a mass,' the prospect of becoming supreme lord over France was in the eyes of Napoleon well worth the risk of being taken by an English cruiser."]

H. W.- VOL. XII. 21

[1799 A.D.]

"General," answered Gohier, "those perils were great; but we have come out of them gloriously. You arrive to join us in celebrating the triumphs of your companions in arms.'

The next day Bonaparte appeared at the official audience of the Directory. He renewed his protestations and, laying his hand on the hilt of his sword, declared that he would never draw it except for the defence "of the republic and its government."

The council of the Five Hundred made an advance to him by electing as their president his brother Lucien, who had acquired some influence by his intrigues and by his flowery and declamatory eloquence. This choice was a grave imprudence, as the event proved.

Bonaparte did not immediately think of a conspiracy and a coup d'état. He knew that ardent republicans aimed at getting the election of Sieyes

GOHIER
(1746-1830)

annulled for some irregularity, as had happened in the case of Treilhard. In that event, he meditated procuring his own election as director in the room of Sieyes. But his youth precluded him according to the terms of the constitution, and the two sincerely republican directors, Gohier and Moulins allowed no one to touch the constitution. Neither would the Five Hundred have permitted it. Gohier and Moulins would have restored Bonaparte to the army of Italy; Barras and Sieyes were not in agreement with them on the subject. He was offered, however, a command-in-chief. He did not accept it, on the plea of ill-health. He then conceived the idea of coming to an understanding with the Jacobins for the purpose of making a change in the Directory by a coup de main, if the majority could not be obtained in the Five Hundred. For this the concurrence of the republican generals present in Paris would have been needed. Bernadotte

and Jourdan refused to take part in the violation of the constitution. Sieyes' responsibility towards posterity is immense. Without him Bonaparte could not have succeeded. Sieyès secured Bonaparte a basis in the very heart of the powers organised by that constitution whose destruction was being plotted. Sieyès commanded a majority of the council of Ancients composed of men who feared the revolutionary ferment of the Five Hundred, and who were disgusted and disheartened by the perpetual divisions of the Directory. Many sincere republicans judged a change in the constitution indispensable to the salvation of the republic, and that the five directors must be replaced by a more concentrated executive power. They were thus drawn, against their will, into preparing the ruin of liberty. Without the concurrence of the majority of the Ancients and of a fraction of the Five Hundred, in the projects vaguely put forward by Bonaparte, a purely military revolution would not have been possible. In spite of the disdainful hostility which the generals exhibited towards the declaimers of the assemblies, the