by Alan Schom
It is said that General Bonaparte has left for Toulon, and that the fleet in that port, combined with the former squadron of the Venetian Navy, are to try to break the [British] blockade of Cadiz to free the Spanish fleet there, and then, together, proceed to Brest where, with that squadron, they will participate in the landings in England.[145]
By May 10 Najac, in charge of the embarkation at Toulon, had been able to board only twelve thousand troops and five hundred horses, whereas Reynier’s entire division had already embarked, ready to sail from Marseilles.[146] Although the Armaments Commission in charge of the entire enterprise was attempting to create a semblance of organization, the inevitable constant tongue-lashing by a highly finicky Bonaparte at this stage caused more panic than order. Then a fresh last-minute setback occurred at Marseilles, when contrary gale-force winds not only delayed their already revised sailing date of May 10 but also caused considerable damage to ships in the otherwise protected harbor. Somehow a much-harried Reynier nevertheless put to sea on the eleventh, reaching Toulon that same evening. Bonaparte was one man who never accepted excuses.
The port of Toulon was still dark at five o’clock the next morning as a grim Napoleon was piped aboard the Alceste to receive General Reynier’s personal report that the ships still under repair at Marseilles would be joining them shortly. Meanwhile Berthier ordered the last of the cavalry to be aboard four more ships by four o’clock the next morning.
But as usual the beleaguered Ordonnateur Najac brought the commander in chief more bad news. “Although it is my desire to fulfill your orders and needs as completely as it is in my power to do so,” he began, nevertheless “my good will alone cannot suffice to provide the immense resources constantly necessitated by the presence of some 30,000 men.” It boiled down to money problems, of course. He needed an additional 530,000 francs for various port expenses, 1,200,000 francs for the remainder of the unpaid naval salaries, and 1,451,450 francs for victualing, naval armament, and repairs — a grand total of 3,181,450 francs — by midnight, if they were to sail on schedule. Bonaparte was staggered.
When he was not worrying about money, he was trying to cope with the manpower problem, aggravated by the daily desertion of hundreds of ratings (enlisted sailors) and merchant seamen. And the situation with the army was even worse, as Berthier reported to Bonaparte now: Almost every half brigade was down to just fifteen hundred men, each having suffered desertions numbering from five to six hundred even before reaching that port. This meant a loss of 25 percent of his army even before setting sail.
Just to keep the stunned Bonaparte in a perfectly foul mood, Brueys informed him that because of stormy seas and strong winds out of the south, the sailing date of May 13-14 would have to be postponed once again, probably for another five or six days.,s This cacophony of problems hardly boded well.
On the other hand, it did give the love-smitten Bonaparte a few extra days in port with Josephine, and Bourrienne — who as usual worked seven days a week, from dawn to at least 11:00 P.M. — the opportunity at last to ask Napoleon how long he expected to be in Egypt. The reply was hardly reassuring for his secretary, who would be separated from his young wife and family. “A few months, or six years. It all depends on developments there. First I intend to colonize that country.” And even if it took that long, “I am twenty-eight [sic] now and in six years would be only thirty-five. That is hardly old, and those six years — if all goes well — should give me the opportunity to reach India as well.”[147]
Despite the astonishing panoply of mishaps, preparations for the Egyptian expedition were completed and most of the money somehow found. The departure now depended only on the weather — until a series of disturbing naval intelligence reports reached GHQ at Toulon. An English squadron of twenty-seven warships had been sighted at Mahon, on Minorca, whereas all previous intelligence had indicated no major British presence in the Mediterranean for several months. Another source stated that Admiral Lord St. Vincent continued to remain off Cadiz with his entire fleet. A third report mentioned the sighting of fourteen vessels and frigates, along with a cutter, between the Tunisian and Sardinian Coasts. And when on the seventeenth Brueys sent out a ship to reconnoiter his proposed course to Malta, it was pursued by three British ships of the line and three frigates.[148] It was puzzling. What was Bonaparte to make of these conflicting figures and sightings? Additional sightings, notoriously inaccurate and often completely unfounded, were now coming in from Italy, yet the French had to be prepared. But for what? Where? Although still another report now informed Brueys of Rear Adm. Sir Horatio Nelson’s return to the Mediterranean on May 9, nevertheless he had only three ships of the line and four escort frigates with him. Brueys did not know, of course, that the Admiralty was dispatching a sizable number of the largest British warships with which to reinforce this new squadron.[149] Whatever the precise number of enemy ships, the one thing the commander in chief did know for certain was that the sooner they got away the better, which the veering of the contrary easterly winds on May 17 finally made possible. Bonaparte authorized Brueys to set sail.[150]
At 5:00 P.M. on May 18 Brueys ordered the firing of six cannon, the final signal to all personnel on shore to return to their ships immediately. Bonaparte informed General Desaix at Civitavecchia that he hoped to put to sea the following morning.[151] Monge, who on Bonaparte’s special instructions was helping Desaix, replied, “Here I am, transformed into an argonaut! This is another one of those miracles produced by our new Jason...who is going to carry the torch of enlightenment to a country which, for such a long time has remained in darkness, and where he is going to spread [republican] philosophical thought while carrying our national glory even farther afield.” As usual the exuberant Monge, despite his fifty-three years, was bubbling over with excitement and optimism — the perfect tonic for a grim Bonaparte, especially as it came from the one man in France the commander in chief admired perhaps above all others.
After a week of storms, with a beautiful day dawning on May 19, at 6:00 A.M. Brueys hoisted the signal from his flagship, the 118-gun Orient, for the fleet to weigh anchor and put to sea. At General Bonaparte’s personal orders, he also instructed the captains of all vessels to have the “March on England,” a revolutionary hymn, “sung every evening.”
Then Bonaparte addressed the fleet: “Well, let me tell you, you have not yet done enough for the fatherland, nor the fatherland for you,” he repeated from the Italian campaign. He was, he told his troops, about to lead them into a country where, by the services they were to render their country, they would surpass all past exploits. For this he promised each soldier on his return to France five acres of land (a promise he did not keep). “You are going to run fresh risks and share them with your brothers, the sailors...Become the terror of your enemies on land and sea. Imitate the Roman soldiers of yore who fought Carthage on the plains and the Carthaginians on the sea.” As he stepped back from the edge of the quarterdeck and the troops assembled below him on board the Orient, voices roared: “Vive la Republique immortelle! Vive Bonaparte!” and broke into traditional revolutionary songs.
Despite the confusion and incredible obstacles the French had to hurdle in the slapdash mobilization effort, the armada was launched from all five ports, the ships of the line forming into three separate squadrons, a total of fifty-six naval vessels of all classes, manned by more than thirteen thousand officers and men.[152]
“Maintain strict discipline” throughout the fleet, Bonaparte had enjoined Brueys long before setting foot aboard the flagship, and “have a good bed prepared for me, as if you were expecting an invalid.” The commander in chief, who had once applied for a naval commission as a gunner, in fact disliked the sea and sailing and was inevitably seasick most of the time he was aboard any vessel, whatever the size and however calm the waters.
Both Bonaparte and Brueys were only too aware of the necessity of enforcing strict discipline, especially with every vessel practically bursting at the gunwales with supplie
s and humanity. The queen of the French navy, the splendid triple-deck Orient was perhaps worse off than the others in this respect, because it also carried many of the commanders of the expedition as well as the fleet commander, Vice Admiral Brueys. The inordinate number of officers aboard this ship proved a real test of endurance and ingenuity. Their number included Bonaparte’s bevy of aides-de-camp and most of his senior staff with their own staff officers. Naturally Brueys had his own separate naval staff, headed by Rear Adm. Honoré Ganteaume, while the Orient remained under the immediate command of Flag Capt. Louis Casabianca (who had brought his nine-year-old son along in preparation for his early entry as a midshipman in four years’ time). To these were added the high civilian and medical officials. Altogether, a ship that ordinarily carried a complement of perhaps just over one thousand men maximum was now hosting nearly twice that number, every nook and cranny crammed with humanity and materiel — including Bonaparte’s personal store of 4,800 bottles of wine — overflowing from the spacious holds to the main deck itself.
In all, the expedition was to comprise thirty-one generals. Sixteen of them had served prior to 1789 and were trained in the traditional Royal Army, but eleven had been NCOs only, with no formal officer’s training, while five generals had been in the army fewer than nine years.
In addition to the thousands of officers and men, the expedition included the variety of specialists required to keep the army self-sufficient in a hostile land, including blacksmiths, harness makers, carters (for the great variety of vehicles), and hundreds of horse handlers, bakers, cooks, tailors, and gunsmiths.
Dispersed among the 365 naval and transport vessels — exclusive of tons upon tons of food, wine, eaux-de-vie, water, clothing, and small arms — were 171 pieces of artillery, carriages, wagons, 757 other vehicles, scaling ladders, shovels, more than ten thousand picks and axes, not to mention forty-five thousand tons of gunpowder and twelve thousand tons of lead. In addition, some 1,330 horses were aboard makeshift stable ships.
As part of a theoretically semiacademic mission, polymath Monge, chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet, and their colleagues had ordered dozens of crates of astronomical, chemical, physical, survey, surgical, and pharmaceutical instruments, accompanied by a reference library of several hundred tomes on science, philosophy, history, and geography, not to mention an array of what proved to be antiquated and all-but-useless maps of Egypt.
The armada was spearheaded by thirteen battleships, sailing in three separate, parallel divisions or formations, preceding a convoy of 309 vessels. Spread out over several square miles of sea, and proceeding awkwardly at half the battleships’ usual speed, it fell to the dynamic and resourceful thirty-seven-year-old Rear Adm. Denis Decrès and his three frigates to circle this ungainly herd of sail, snapping at their heels like well-trained sheepdogs, while keeping an eye out for an approaching enemy. These transport vessels flew many flags — French, Spanish, Ligurian, Tuscan, Ragusan, Maltese, Turkish, Venetian, Danish, and Swedish — the 309 captains and crew themselves representative of the colorful if captive diversity. Altogether, including seamen, troops, and civilians, the armada was ferrying more than 54,000 men, all theoretically self-sufficient in food and drink, not to mention hay and oats for the horses. Of the total number of men aboard, 36,826 were members of the expeditionary force.
Brueys had charted the safest and most direct course for this unwieldy herd, and with the Toulon and Marseilles convoys having already combined, they sailed easterly now parallel to the French Mediterranean coast, past Nice and the spacious anchorage of Villefranche, and then Monaco, to the entrance of the Gulf of Genoa, where on May 21 they were joined by seventy-two vessels of Gen. Baraguey d’Hilliers’s division out of Genoa.
With that important maneuver completed, Brueys swung sharply south-southeast and headed to the Cape of Corsica, leaving behind the only world and security those troops — still ignorant of their ultimate destination — knew. Clearing the northern tip of Corsica and continuing almost due south along the east coast of the island, they were joined on May 27 by the fourth and smallest convoy of the expedition, comprising just twenty-two vessels, with supplies and Vaubois’s Corsican division.
A very tense Vice Admiral Brueys, with his first truly great command, the like of which would probably not be seen again by anyone in the Mediterranean for decades to come, and his career at stake, would soon be able to breathe a little more easily. There remained only one more rendezvous to complete the already sprawling armada: Desaix’s overdue convoy out of Civitavecchia the following day. With those additional fifty-six sail spotted by a lookout vessel, Bonaparte finally could inform the Directory: “Here we are, all united for the first time, sailing now toward our destination.”[153]
Life on the flagship, with some two thousand men crammed aboard “a floating city,” as Bourrienne called it — though one “without women” — was intensive, with constant comings and goings from Brueys’s cabin and the commander in chief’s much more spacious one with its large stern windows overlooking an azure sea. Naturally it was Bonaparte’s cabin that became the center of their naval universe, where he appeared about ten each morning instead of his usual crack-of-dawn schedule on terra firma. Bonaparte was attended by Bourrienne from the moment he rose, and his quarters were inevitably filled with aides-de-camp, senior army officers, and some select members of the team of savants. Apart from occasional brief promenades on the quarterdeck with Admiral Brueys and Captain Casabianca — usually to discuss specifically naval questions — the general rarely left his quarters. Rare wines in endless number flowed, complimenting the delicacies that both Brueys and Bonaparte had provided on the generous scale one expected at sea, but all served as background for the long, frequently intensive conversations on all sorts of philosophical or scientific questions, lasting well into the early morning and rarely interrupted by music, which Bonaparte disliked. Monge was in constant attendance, at Bonaparte’s insistence and to Monge’s delight. To this warm, outgoing, excitable scientist-mathematician, the doting father of two daughters, young Bonaparte became the adopted son he had never had.
On the face of it, no individual could have appeared a more unlikely candidate for Napoleon Bonaparte’s combination general counselor, chief moral support, and confidant than Monge, the eldest son of a working-class family of Swiss origin, born in Beaune, just south of Dijon, in 1746.[154] All three Monge sons were well educated by the standards of their class. Gaspard was trained in the sciences and mathematics at the small Oratorian school at Beaune, then went on to the more important Oratorian College at Lyons, followed by the Collège de la Trinité in Lyons in 1764. Returning briefly to Beaune, he soon got a teaching position at the prestigious army engineering school, the Ecole de Génie de Mézières.
He worked his way up the ranks as soon as his unusual mathematical abilities were recognized. It was here that he encountered a talented pupil, Lazare Carnot, with whom he would be involved later during the French Revolution. Over the next several years he taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry, writing famous treatises on various subjects. It was while teaching there that he married Marie-Catherine Huart Horbon, a thirty-one-year-old widow. Thanks to a small fortune brought to him by his wife, the hitherto impecunious Monge was able to rise socially and politically; he also had more time for his own experiments.
Turning more to physics, Monge came into contact or corresponded with some of the more prominent scientists and philosophers of his day, and was made a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences. Then he was named external examiner for naval officers and ultimately became a member of the prestigious Institut de France.
With the onset of the Revolution in 1789, Monge became a founder of the Jacobins, espousing extremist republican ideas, including the total destruction of the aristocracy and the execution of the king.
In August 1792 he was duly rewarded with the Ministry of the Marine and, briefly, the premiership. As naval minister he had to face renewed warfare with England and t
he great mutinies ravaging the French navy, while on land French armies were gaining victories and conquering Belgium and Savoy. Monge was responsible for sending out two unsuccessful expeditions — one to Sardinia, and another to help reconquer the island of Santo Domingo from the Haitian slave uprising led by Toussaint-Louverture. By April 1793 Monge had made many political enemies, however, including Georges-Jacques Danton, who forced him to resign that same month.
Thereafter for the most part Monge focused on scientific matters, although he did serve on various government committees dealing with technical questions — preparations for large-scale manufacture of steel, muskets, and gunpowder, and on the famous committee charged with introducing the metric system.
Thanks to Monge and his colleagues, Paris alone was soon producing up to 140,000 muskets a year, French bronze cannon factories increased from two to fifteen, and the number of steel mills rose from four to thirty.[155] Ever the zealous patriot, when Monge discovered workers and labor leaders hindering the manufacturing of armaments needed for hard-pressed French armies, he denounced them to the authorities.[156]
But with the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, Monge, who had been working under the direct orders of the Committee of Public Safety, was himself denounced and forced to go into hiding for several months until a writ for his arrest was withdrawn.
If Monge was renowned as a scientist, his name was later more closely associated with the work he did as one of the founders of the elite Ecole Polytechnique (created November 3, 1794).[157]
In May 1796 he was named to the newly created Commission on Arts and Science and ordered “to visit that part of Italy conquered by the victorious armies of the Republic, to gather all the artistic and scientific ‘monuments’ that you believe worthy of a place in our museums and libraries.”[158] In other words he was given carte blanche to loot in any manner he saw fit.