Napoleon in Egypt (9 page)

Astonishingly, one member of Pitt the Younger’s cabinet, the Minister of War, Henry Dundas, had guessed correctly that Napoleon was planning to invade Egypt and then march overland to attack the British in India. This view was reinforced when intelligence arrived in London from Udney, the British consul in Leghorn (Livorno), saying he had received word that Napoleon’s destination was Egypt. All this was dismissed by Pitt as unlikely. However, in order to appraise the situation, a message was sent on May 2 from Earl Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, to Admiral St. Vincent, who was besieging the Spanish fleet off Cadiz. This message informed St. Vincent that at the risk of weakening the British fleet, “the appearance of a British squadron in the Mediterranean is a condition on which the fate of Europe may at this moment be stated to depend.”
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St. Vincent was ordered to dispatch Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson to fulfill this role. In fact, on the previous day St. Vincent had upon his own initiative sent Nelson into the Mediterranean with a squadron containing three battleships, two frigates and a sloop “to endeavour to ascertain the real object of the preparations in the making by the French.”
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Napoleon supervised the assembly of his expeditionary force from Paris. He would complete this complex international operation, involving the loading of almost 40,000 men, their military equipment, supplies and artillery onto hundreds of vessels at six different ports, in just ten weeks, using methods which are now seen as forming the basis of modern logistical theory. Having accomplished this mammoth task, he hurried south to Toulon, planning to set out within days of his arrival, in order to reach Egypt well before the annual flooding of the Nile halted any military campaigning over a wide area of the country. He arrived in Toulon, accompanied by Josephine, early on the morning of May 9. Immediately he embarked on an extensive inspection of the fleet, his arrival aboard each warship being greeted with a two-gun salute that resonated throughout the harbor, echoing from the hills above—the very spot where he had gained his first triumph as a young artillery captain just five years previously. That night military bands played in the squares of the city, the public buildings were illuminated in his honor, and the streets were thronged with soldiers. Several eye witnesses commented on how the entire city was filled with an almost unbearable frisson of anticipation. Ahead lay an unknown yet undoubtedly historic undertaking, and all knew that while some might be returning as heroes, others would not be returning at all.

Next day Napoleon reviewed his troops, many of whom had fought bravely and victoriously under him in the Italian campaign, accumulating modest fortunes from booty in the process. In an unprecedented measure, he had ensured that the booty captured by his soldiers during the Italian campaign was sent safely home. This had prevented it from being lost, gambled away or stolen; it had also ensured that his soldiers were not impeded by unnecessary baggage on their forced marches. Such a move made for enhanced discipline in the ranks: there was a lack of drunkenness (booty could not be sold for wine), less fighting over gambling losses, and the soldiers’ morale was in creased by the thought of what awaited them when they returned. Although they had not yet managed to get home to enjoy these savings, almost all of those present had good reason to be grateful to the charismatic young commander who had led them to heroic victories. This, as much as any other reason, explains why they were so willing to follow him into the unknown. Amidst the hurried assembly of so many men at so many disembarkation points there was ample opportunity for desertion, but although desertions are known to have taken place, these were no more than usual under normal circumstances.

After inspecting the troops, Napoleon addressed them:

Soldiers of the Army of the Mediterranean!

You are now a wing of the Army of England. You have campaigned in the mountains, in the plains and before fortresses; but you have yet to take part in a naval campaign. The Roman legions that you have sometimes rivaled, but have yet to equal, fought Carthage on this very sea . . . Victory never forsook them. . . . Europe is watching you. You have a great destiny to fulfill, battles to fight, dangers and hardships to overcome. You hold in your hands the future prosperity of France, the good of mankind and your own glory. The ideal of Liberty that has made the Republic the arbiter of Europe will make it also arbiter of distant oceans, of faraway countries.
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He went on to promise that if they succeeded, each man would be awarded a bounty of six acres of land. Such an appeal went to the heart of all rural Frenchmen—though they remained blissfully ignorant of the location of their promised six-acre plots, which were seemingly part of Napoleon’s covert plan to establish a permanent military presence loyal to his command in his new Oriental empire.
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Two days later, on the eve of May 12, the embarkation of all troops from their barracks and camps into the waiting vessels was complete. The commander of the Mediterranean fleet, Vice-Admiral Brueys, informed Napoleon that the fleet was in full readiness to weigh anchor and sail on the morrow.

By now Nelson and his squadron had taken up position off Toulon, and were riding at anchor several miles out to sea, just below the horizon. One of Nelson’s frigates intercepted an unwary French corvette; the crew were interrogated, and Nelson learned that at Toulon “fifteen sail of the line are apparently ready for sea.”
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IV

Outward Bound

O
VERNIGHT
on Saturday, May 12, a strong wind blew up, in the form of the notorious mistral. By morning this had developed into a raging storm, forcing Vice-Admiral Brueys to postpone the sailing of the expeditionary fleet from Toulon. The chilling mistral continued to howl down from the mountains for another seven days, until finally in the early hours of May 19 the storm abated, and at six
A.M.
the waiting ships received the order from
L’Orient
to depart.
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According to plan, the ships in Toulon harbor weighed anchor and made their way under sail towards the open sea, each ship lowering its colors in salute as it passed beneath the towering decks of
L’Orient
, which was at the time easily the largest and most powerful warship in the world, with its 120 cannons mounted on three decks. In all, the Toulon convoy of the Egyptian expedition was made up of 180 ships, consisting of thirteen ships of the line, nine frigates, twenty-three corvettes, sloops and smaller armed vessels, as well as 135 transport vessels of various sizes. For much of the day, Napoleon stood on deck watching as they passed. Regimental bands played from the passing ships, cannons thundered from the forts in the hills, the crowds on the quayside waved and cheered—the procession took no less than eight hours to clear the port.

Napoleon was aware that his expeditionary force might be sailing into danger from the British navy, but he dismissed this, writing to the Directory on the very day of his departure: “Four Spanish frigates arrived yesterday from Minorca . . . it appears that there are a number of English warships in the lower Mediterranean, but it doesn’t look as if they will bother us.”
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In fact, he was to be a lot luckier than he realized. The very storm that had prevented him from sailing had driven Nelson and his waiting squadron from their station, the offshore gale being so strong that it carried them far to the south, in the process dismasting Nelson’s ship
Vanguard.
Against all advice, Nelson effected repairs off the southwestern tip of Sardinia, and then proceeded to sail the 300 miles back north; but amidst the storm he had become separated from his two fast frigates, and these had returned to Gibraltar, assuming that he had done likewise. This meant that he was now deprived of the “eyes” of his squadron, which could carry out recon naissance over a wide area. On May 27 Nelson and his reduced squadron arrived back at their station off Toulon. The following day they intercepted a neutral merchantman out of Marseilles, which informed them that Napoleon’s fleet had sailed nine days previously for an unknown destination.

By now Napoleon’s Toulon convoy had long since joined up with the Marseilles convoy, which was carrying troops under the command of Jean-Louis-Ebenezer Reynier, as well as the Genoa convoy carrying troops under Menou, and together they had all proceeded east and then southwards along the Italian coast. The convoy from Civitavecchia carrying troops under Desaix had not materialized at the appointed rendezvous, and after a brief wait Napoleon ordered Vice-Admiral Brueys to continue south. A day later Napoleon dispatched the frigate
Pomone
for Naples to pick up Josephine.

Josephine had traveled with Napoleon to Toulon on the understanding that she would be accompanying him to Egypt. All the indications are that she had not really wanted to go, but had felt it would best suit her purpose if she made a show of being willing. Napoleon was similarly ambivalent, but for very different reasons. He could not bear the thought of being separated from her, but evidently he had taken the sighting of British warships a little more seriously than he had indicated in his note to the Directory, and felt that the fleet might be in some danger immediately after it left Toulon. As a result, he arranged that Josephine should travel overland to Naples, where he would send the
Pomone
to pick her up when the danger was past. Josephine, however, appears to have “misunderstood” how long it would take her to travel to Naples, and instead set off north, missing her appointment with the
Pomone
, and eventually returning to Paris and the arms of Hippolyte Charles. Deeply disappointed at the return of the empty frigate, Napoleon continued on his way, finally effecting a successful rendezvous with Desaix and the Civitavecchia flotilla off Malta on June 9.

Malta had been in the possession of the Knights of Malta, an ancient crusading order, for over 250 years, resisting all who sought to dislodge them. The large harbor at Valletta was protected by the most formidable fortress in Europe, which had walls that were ten feet thick and defended by 1,500 cannon. But when Poussielgue had reported to Napoleon on his return from his spying mission, he had revealed that the fortress was in fact in a dilapidated condition, its guns largely rusted and in disrepair. The knights themselves had fallen into a similar state of decay: of the 327 resident knights, fifty were too ancient to fight, and of the rest around 200 were French and unwilling to bear arms against their compatriots. Further intelligence had revealed that the 10,000 conscripted Maltese who made up the garrison were in no mood to lose their lives defending their unpopular masters.

The appearance of Napoleon’s vast fleet off Malta caused consternation amongst the population. According to one astonished eye witness: “Never had Malta seen such a numberless fleet in her waters. The sea was covered into the far distance with ships of all sizes whose masts resembled a huge forest.”
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The Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, an aging and weak Prussian called Ferdinand von Hompesch, decided to send a message asking Napoleon his intentions: a somewhat super fluous move, for Napoleon had already landed armed men who had taken over the unfortified parts of the main island with hardly a shot fired. Napoleon dispatched ashore his savant Dolomieu, in the hope that the former Knight of Malta would be able to reach an agreement with von Hompesch. Dolomieu undertook his mission with extreme reluctance. He had no experience whatsoever of negotiating, and he knew that the Knights would be within their rights to seize him and execute him for returning to Malta. To make matters worse, Napoleon insisted that he be accompanied by Poussielgue, who would immediately be recognized as having been a spy. Confronted with this delegation, von Hompesch dithered. For twenty-four hours there was a tense standoff, whilst that night, undercover of darkness, the alleyways of Valletta descended into mayhem, with bands of Maltese conscripts bearing torches roaming the alleyways and setting upon any Knights they could find.

On June 11 von Hompesch surrendered, in return for an annual pension of 300,000 francs from the French government. During the course of the following week the Knights of Malta were sent into exile, with each awarded a modest pension dependent upon his length of service. Napoleon now established his headquarters ashore and set about transforming a medieval anachronism into an island with the trappings of a modern state. His energy all but defies belief. During the ensuing seven days he issued 168 reports, orders and dispatches: these abolished all feudal privileges, reformed the monasteries, and guaranteed equal rights to Christians, Jews and Muslims. At the same time he freed 2,000 Turkish and Moorish slaves from their shackles in “the disgusting galleys.”
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He reformed the education system, establishing fifteen schools to teach “the principles of morality and of the French constitution,” and also making provision to send sixty promising pupils for free education in France (echoing the system that had enabled him to leave Corsica and study at the military college in Brienne).

Yet he also took as much as he gave. He dispatched his two senior savants, Monge and Berthollet, to fulfill the role they had performed so successfully for the Directory in Italy: with their expert eye, they sought out the valuables in the island’s monasteries, churches, knightly residences and treasuries. Within a week, seven million francs’ worth had been “deducted” from Malta’s exchequer. At the same time, so many valuables (mainly in the form of gold plate and jewelry) had been seized that there was not sufficient time to evaluate them, though Napoleon was reliably informed (probably by Monge) that their worth too certainly ran into millions. Napoleon ordered a generous portion of the cash to be sent to France to keep the Directory happy, but kept the rest to bolster the finances of the Egyptian expedition.