The Sultan's Daughter rb-7

by Dennis Wheatley

  Macdonald, arriving in the north with the French Army that had occupied the Kingdom of Naples, had, in mid-June, defeated the Austrians at Modena; but Suvoroff, by a rapid concentration and forced march, had thrown his Russians on Macdonald's force before Moreau could come to his aid. Three days of desperate fighting had ensued, at the end of which the terrible Muscovites had proved the masters of the French. Macdonald's troops had broken and, in small parties, staggered back across the Apennines, to reach Genoa in a state of utter exhaustion. Suvoroff, for these brilliant victories in the Allied cause, had been given the title of Prince Italiski.

  These disasters to the French had led to the fall of the puppet States they had created: the Cisapline, Roman and Parthenopean Republics. On all sides priests, Royalists, bourgeoisie and fanatical peasants were exacting vengeance for the repression, brutality and robbery to which they had been subjected by the bringers of 'Liberty'. Mob leaders, gentle intellectuals with Liberal views and all who had collaborated with the French from either the worst or best motives were, through the length and breadth of the peninsula, impartially dragged from their homes by the hundred and shot, hanged, slashed to death or burnt in public.

  It was in the south that this ferocious vengeance reached its peak. In Naples the three castles, garrisoned by French troops and so-called 'patriots', continued to hold out; but by mid-

  June Cardinal Ruffo's irregulars had entered the city, butchered every Republican they could find and laid siege to the castles.

  Ruffo, wishing to pacify the kingdom, offered these garrisons the honours of war and a safe-conduct to France if they would capitulate. The Republicans agreed to these generous terms and Captain Foote, then the senior officer with the British Squadron lying off Naples, also signed the terms of capitulation.

  But on June 2'th Nelson arrived, invested with unlimited powers by King Ferdinand who was still in Palermo. The British Admiral promptly asserted that Cardinal Ruffo and Captain Foote had exceeded their authority in granting terms to the enemy garrisons. He declared the capitulation agreement null and void and, with a vindictiveness difficult to understand in so gentle a man, but evidently largely inspired by Emma Hamilton as the mouthpiece of the Queen, had the Republican leaders who had surrendered executed and the Neapolitan Admiral Caracciolo hanged from his own yardarm.

  Secretly, as an Englishman, Roger rejoiced to hear these tidings. Although he had the warmest personal feelings for many friends he had made among the French, he had never wavered in his conviction that the hyrda-headed monster that had been produced by the Revolution could bring only evil to the peoples whom it first fascinated and then enslaved. It was excellent news that the Italians were, with the help of the Austrians and Russians, again achieving their freedom and from a worse tyranny than any they had known before. He hoped that it heralded the downfall of the collection of atheists, murderers and thieves who had for so long controlled the destinies of France.

  But policy demanded that he should allow the Sarodopulouses to continue to believe that he was a French Colonel, and he had felt that it would be time enough to disclose to Zanthe the truth about himself when, and if, he could succeed in getting her out of Egypt. So, at this latest news from Europe, he had to pull a long face and pretend grave concern.

  Roger and Zanthe had fixed the date of their marriage as August 29th. On the evening of August 22nd, just as the sun was about to set, a Lieutenant of Bonaparte's favourite regiment, the Guides, rode up to the villa on a lathered horse, bringing a despatch. Tearing it open, Roger saw it was in Bourrienne's writing and was an order signed by the General-in-Chief. It read:

  I require you to report to me immediately. You will accompany the bearer of this with a minimum of delay.

  Roger was greatly puzzled, but felt that he could not possibly ignore the summons. Thinking it unlikely that he would be away for long, he told Zanthe that he would send her a message as soon as he possibly could and, in any case, would get permission to return for their we'ding day. While he was taking leave of her and the Sarodopulouses, a horse was being saddled for him. Ten minutes later he rode away with the Lieutenant of Guides.

  When Roger asked the Lieutenant where they were making for the latter replied, '1 regret, mon Colonel, that I am under orders not to reveal the whereabouts of the General-in-Chief; but we have no great distance to go. We must, though, make all speed, because I lost my way when coming to find you and so was more than an hour behind time in delivering my despatch.'

  The Lieutenant had turned west and, alternately trotting and cantering, they rode along the coast until they reached the little bay in which Roger had come upon the British landing party collecting springwater. Darkness had fallen, but a solitary boat lay there in which were men with lanterns. Their light showed thirty or forty saddled but riderless horses wandering loose about the beach. As soon as Roger reached the shore, a naval officer in the boat shouted to him to be quick and come aboard.

  More puzzled than ever he dismounted, abandoned his horse and, followed by the Lieutenant, scrambled over the gunwale. The boat pushed off at once and, after fifteen minutes' rowing, came alongside a ship that Roger judged to be a frigate. The crew were in the act of setting sail.

  He found a group of men on the quarter-deck which was lit by flambeaux. In its centre stood Bonaparte. With him were Berthier, Murat, Lannes, Marmont, Bessieres, Andreossi, Monge, Berthol-let, Bourrienne, Duroc, de Beauharnais, and the other members of his personal Staff. Marching up to him, Roger saluted and said:

  ' Mon General. You sent for me.'

  Bonaparte nodded. ' You are late, and lucky to be taken off in time.'

  'Your pardon, but in time for what? ' Roger asked.

  ' Why, to accompany me back to France, of course,' snapped the pale-faced little Corsican. ' Where else should I be going in a frigate? '

  Roger stared at him aghast. The boat in which he had been brought aboard was being hauled in. The frigate's sails were filled with wind and she was already moving through the water. It was now too late to ask to be set ashore. Bleakly, he realized that his marriage to Zanthe would now never take place. Three weeks earlier he had overcome the temptation to desert her. Now Fate had decreed that without having any say in the matter he should do so. But he was not going home.

  Back into the Secret Battle

  There was tremendous jubilation aboard the frigate. It was fifteen months since Bonaparte's expedition had sailed from Toulon and those who accompanied him had said good-bye to their wives and sweethearts. During thirteen of those months they had lived in an utterly alien land, where white women were as rare as white blackbirds, where wine was almost unobtainable and where the food was unappetizing and monotonous. As soldiers it was their trade to face danger but there had been added to it terrible marches under a blistering sun, days of torture from thirst, fear of the plague and a never-ending irritation from swarms of flies. Now, the seemingly impossible had happened. The nightmare that was Egypt was being left behind. The frigate was actually under sail. They were on their way back to France, which meant everything in life they held dear. Roger could not wonder that joy was depicted on every face.

  He soon learned the reason for his inclusion and why it had been so belated. When those selected by Bonaparte to accompany him were already on board, Marmont happened to mention to Eugene de Beauharnis the help that Roger had given him in his office at Alexandria during the emergency caused by the Turkish landing. Eugene spoke to his step-father and the General-in-Chief at once agreed that ' le brave Breuc' must not be left behind if there was still time to fetch him. As Roger thanked the chubby-faced youngster he felt that never had so handsome a return been made for a pair of pistols as for those he had given Eugene when only a boy of fifteen.

  From Eugene he learned that there were two frigates, Muriou and Carrdre, under the command of Vice-Admiral Gantheaume.

  They had been sheltering in the harbour of Alexandria and, at Bonaparte's orders, had been secretly prepared for sea. But Bonapar
te's departure had been made possible only because Sir Sidney Smith had had to withdraw his Squadron to Cyprus for repairs, thus raising the blockade temporarily and leaving the coast clear.

  Bonaparte had packed nearly five hundred passengers into the two frigates. They consisted of the pick of his officers, a number of the most gifted savants, a big bodyguard of his Guides and many personal servants. As Roger heard this he realized that had he been left behind the fate he had dreaded would have been more likely than ever to overtake him. Bonaparte had not only abandoned his Army, but had weakened it immeasurably by taking with him the greater part of its brains and guts.

  Of the best Generals, only Kleber, Desaix and Junot had been left behind, and the two latter only because they were too distant to recall in time. Desaix was in command of the forces in Upper Egypt and Junot, with his Division, was on the Syrian border. Kleber had been nominated General-in-Chief. He was a fine fighting man, but had little talent for administration; and it was that, above all, which was needed at headquarters if the Army was to be kept from becoming mutinous from despair and shattered morale.

  But at the moment those who had escaped were not thinking of the fate to which they had left their comrades. The wind was light but steady, the sea calm and the frigate carried a good stock of wine. For hours they laughed, drank and sang gay choruses. Roger joined in. It would have been contrary to his nature not to do so; but, later, when he lay in a narrow cabin, cheek-by-jowl with the other aides-de-camp, it was a long time before he could get to sleep from picturing Zanthe's distress when she learned that he had left her.

  Next day he had a talk with his old friend Bourrienne, and learned what had led to their master talking his momentous decision. At the recent battle of Aboukir the Turks had taken a number of captives. Sir Sidney Smith had intervened to prevent their being murdered, then arranged with Bonaparte an exchange of prisoners. The Commodore had also sent ashore a number of French wounded whom he had rescued from Jaffa. To show appreciation of the Englishman's chivalrous behaviour, Bonaparte had sent some presents to him. Sir Sidney had returned the compilment, and among his gifts had been a bundle of news-sheets covering events in Europe up to June 10th.

  It was ten months since any official news had been received from France. By way of Algiers and Tripoli, or Greece and Crete, carried by blockade-runners, rumours had trickled through to the effect that Austria was again at war with France and that all was not well in Italy. But it was not until the night of August 2nd-3rd, during which Bonaparte had sat up until the small hours in Alexandria reading these news-sheets, that he had realized the seriousness of the situation. The following morning he had exclaimed to Bourrienne:

  ' My presentiments have come true; The fools have lost Italy! All the fruits of our victories are gone. I must leave Egypt in order to save France.'

  Having taken his decision, he acted with speed and secrecy. He told only Berthier and Gantheaume; ordering the latter to prepare the two frigates and two small supply ships with enough food for a two-month voyage. On August 5th he left Alexandria, on the 10th he arrived in Cairo. There, he gave out that he intended to carry out an inspection of Desaix's force in Upper Egypt. A few days later he announced a change of plan: he was going to make a tour of the Delta. Meanwhile Bourrienne had collected all the people Bonaparte intended to take with him, but it was not until they reached Alexandria on the 22nd that any of them were told that they were going home to France.

  Kleber had been at Damietta and Bonaparte had written, asking him to meet him for a conference at Rosetta. But with the duplicity that was typical of his methods the Corsican had never intended to keep the appointment. To escape protests and reproaches, he had simply sent a letter to await Kleber's arrival. It appointed him General-in-Chief, with powers to surrender to the British, but only if the ravages of the plague became so bad that the Army became incapable of resistance. The unfortunate Kleber had been left to find out for himself that the Army was ten million francs in debt and that Bonaparte had taken with him every sou of ready money.

  When Roger asked Bourrienne for the news that had been gleaned from the papers sent by Sir Sidney Smith, the Chef de Cabinet told him of the serious reverses the French had met with in the neighbourhood of the Rhine and from north to south in Italy. Roger had already learned most of this from Sarodopulous, but there was later news about Switzerland. Matters were going badly for the French there also. Mass£na had been compelled to relinquish the Grissons; then, on May 2'th, two Austrian armies, joining forces, had brought such a weight of numbers against him that he had been driven back to the line of the river Limmat and Zurich.

  Bourrienne, with intense indignation, gave an account of the murder of the French envoys at Rastatt and went on to speak of affairs in Paris. In mid-May the retirement by ballot of one of the Directors had become due and this time the lot had fallen on Jean-Francois Rewbell. The handsome, corrupt, licentious aristocrat Barras had been the most prominent figure in the Directory, right from its formation; but it was the coarse, ruthless, dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary Rewbell who had managed it and, time after time, frustrated the attempts of the Moderate majority in the Legislative Assembly to restore some degree of true liberty to the French people.

  Rewbell had been replaced by the Abb£ Sieyes, one of the strangest figures of the Revolution. He had become prominent in its earliest days and had remained so ever since. When asked, in after years, what he had done in the Revolution he replied, 'I survived.' For anyone who had been one of the original leaders that was no small feat. A few others, such as Talleyrand, had done so, but only by going into exile during the worst years of the Terror. Sieyes, the most subtle of intriguers, had, by changing his coat a dozen times, not only kept his head on his shoulders but occupied some post of importance in every successive Government.

  He was not a bloodthirsty man but had an intense hatred of the aristocracy and was incredibly vain of his intellectual powers. Above all he fancied himself as a drafter of Constitutions, although many of his ideas on the subject were impracticable. On the fall of Robespierre he had been among the first chosen by the rump Convention to be one of the new governing body of five—the Directory. But as his proposals for a new Constitution had been rejected he had, in a huff, refused office.

  This change in the personnel of the Directory was of far greater importance than any which had preceded it, and later in the day Roger pondered over its possible results. As Sieyes was a renegade and an atheist, his appointment would not lead to greater religious toleration and, as a revolutionary, he would, no doubt, support the Directory in their policy of continuing to repress individual liberty. But he was far too careful of his own skin to act as Rewbell would have done in a crisis and back his opinions with ruthless force. In consequence, this change in the Directory must greatly weaken it; and for a long time past it had been hated and despised by both the great mass of the people and the Liberal majority which sat, powerless under its rule, in the Legislative Assembly. Therefore, it now needed only a strong man to play Cromwell in order to put an end to the Directory.

  Roger had no doubt that Bonaparte must be well aware of this. Overtures to lead a coup d'etat to overthrow the Directory had been made to him in the spring of '98 and Talleyrand had told Roger that the little Corsican had refrained only because, being an extremely astute politician, he had decided that the time was not yet ripe. Instead he had gone off to Egypt, with the possibility of carving for himself an Empire in the East while time worked for him in France. He had failed in the first, but time had marched on just the same and now the plum looked ripe for the picking.

  As Roger thought of this he realized that a sudden change had taken place in his own mentality. He had gone to Egypt only because Talleyrand had virtually forced him to. While there he had twice furnished Nelson with valuable information about Bonaparte's intentions. But that had given him no great satisfaction. It was not to secure information about the situation of an Army operating three thousand miles from England that
Mr. Pitt had sent him to Paris. The work in which he had specialized for so long and in which he had been so successful was using his wide acquaintance with enemies in high places to assess the future policy of their Governments. To be back in Paris again and, perhaps, be able, to some degree, to influence events in favour of his country was a very different matter from remaining virtually useless and cut off from all the amenities of life in Egypt.

  One thing seemed certain: Bonaparte's return to Paris would lead to a crisis of some kind, and the more Roger speculated on its possibly far-reaching results the more eager he became for the voyage to be over.

  For some days, and particularly at nights, he was haunted by thoughts of Zanthe. When the news reached her that Bonaparte had decamped, taking his finest Generals and his personal Staff with him, she would realize that Roger was with them and on his way back to France; but she could not be expected to guess that he had not had the option of refusing to leave her, or even the opportunity to send her a message. She could only suppose that, having been given the chance, he had callously deserted her. That worried him even more than having lost her; although at times such was his feeling for her that he almost wished he had been left behind to marry her as they had planned.

  It was on the third day out that, up on the quarter-deck, Bonaparte suddenly asked him, ' What happened to your Princess? '

  Roger told him; but the Corsican only gave a grunt, then said, '1, too, have had to deprive myself of much happiness by leaving behind in Cairo my little Bellilotte. She implored me to take her with me, but I refused. We have to face the fact that we may be captured by the English. Most of the English sailors have been without women for many months and I could not bear to think what might happen to her if she fell into their hands.'