The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  However Smith now learned that the British government, believing the French in Egypt to be on the brink of total defeat, had disavowed the agreement at El Arish. (In fact the British government had changed its mind, but neglected to inform Smith in time.) By then the Turks, under the terms of the agreement, had arrived in Cairo. Kléber, appalled by the British disavowal, promptly ordered his men into the field and in a spectacular battle near the ancient Heliopolis routed a Turkish army four times as large and within a week had chased them out of Egypt altogether. Napoleon had never won such a victory.

  Even so, Kléber sought desperately to reach agreement with the Turks: he told General Menou, who had congratulated him:

  My stupidity is so enormous that even today I do not believe that the Convention of El Arish was a political mistake or that there is any reason to lose one’s head over the victory I have won with my army. Even today, I am profoundly convinced that, by means of that treaty, I had succeeded in putting a reasonable end to an insane enterprise. Even today I remain convinced that we shall receive no help from France and that we shall never . . . found any colonies in Egypt unless the cotton plants and palm trees should soon produce soldiers and bullets . . .

  One Turkish contingent bypassed the French after Heliopolis and reached Cairo, which had been left unprotected. Thus encouraged, mobs took to the streets, causing a few weeks of looting, rape and anarchy. Kléber was forced to bombard the city, eventually regaining control and expelling the Turks. Soon afterwards Kléber was assassinated by an Arab fanatic, who had his hand cut off and was then impaled alive in a French reprisal more akin to the methods of their ‘barbarian’ enemies. It was long alleged, possibly rightly, that the assassination was a British plot: certainly France thus lost one of its best, most far-seeing and humane generals.

  Menou took over. His zest for turning Egypt into a French colony had been second only to Napoleon’s. Menou, a capable but small-minded administrator, immediately repudiated the treaty of El Arish. The British, giving up all hope of peace after this catalogue of misunderstandings, sent Sir Ralph Abercromby of West Indies fame at the head of an army which landed in Aboukir Bay early in 1801 under heavy fire, which cost them 600 men. At the Battle of Canopus a fortnight later, Menou lost around 4,000 men to British losses of around 1,500, but Abercromby himself was mortally wounded.

  The British succeeded in cutting off Menou in Alexandria from the garrison in Cairo and secured the support of Murad Bey, who had long been harassing the French, although that old rogue died soon afterwards. The Turks also re-entered Egypt from the east. General Balliard, in charge of Cairo, decided to capitulate rather than fight for a lost cause. Some 13,000 French troops were permitted to evacuate Cairo bearing arms, under the supervision of Sir John Moore, and embarked at Rosetta, arriving in France in October. Menou’s forces held out for some weeks at Alexandria but sought terms at the end of August. The British insisted on keeping the Rosetta Stone which provided the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics.

  Of more than 50,000 French soldiers and civilians who had come over with Napoleon on that surreal adventure into Egypt, fewer than half – some 23,000 – returned. Napoleon’s objectives in conquering Egypt were almost entirely frustrated except in two regards: he had broken the power of the Mamelukes who were soon to be seen off by Mehemet Ali, the founder of modern Egypt. French archaeological and scientific interest in Egypt was also to continue for several decades, resulting eventually in the building of the Suez Canal by de Lesseps. But the Saharan sands swallowed up Napoleon’s imperial foray there as surely as they had for centuries the great temples of ancient Egypt. All that was left was the loss of a large army and a huge fleet.

  Part 6

  THE SHORT PEACE

  Chapter 39

  COUP D’ÉTAT

  Napoleon returned to Europe gratifyingly preceded by news of his victory at Alexandria. In spite of the appalling disaster of the Egyptian campaign as a whole, he behaved from the first like a conquering hero, presenting the campaign as his greatest military triumph to date. Arriving on 9 October, he ignored the requirements of quarantine and set out immediately on the week-long journey to Paris. On the way, he was greeted by fair-sized crowds, especially in Avignon, and arrived in the capital on 11 October.

  There he discovered that, although he was regarded as a victorious general, he was only one of many. Moreover, the tide in the fast-moving war in Europe had turned again. The Russians, who had entered the war on Austria’s side partly out of anger at France’s intervention in Ottoman Egypt – Russia regarded Turkey as its own rightful prey – had succeeded in reversing the Napoleonic conquests in northern Italy, taken Turin, and forced the French out of Rome. Generals Moreau, Schérer and MacDonald had all been defeated. By the end of June only Genoa and part of Liguria remained in French hands. The Austrian commander, Archduke Charles, had defeated Jourdan on the central front and even the hapless Duke of York in alliance with the Russians had managed to capture most of Holland. All of this had earlier encouraged Napoleon to pose, bogusly, as France’s only successful military commander, the man who could yet save his country.

  By October, however, things looked rather different: Masséna had defeated the Archduke Charles at Zurich two months before and the Russians and the Austrians were beginning to quarrel bitterly. Ney meanwhile defeated the Austrians on the Rhine. In the same month as Napoleon arrived, General Bruce had soundly beaten the wretched Duke of York in Holland and forced the British to evacuate once again. All of these men were skilful generals at least on a par with Napoleon. The difference was that they lacked his overweening ambition and scheming political mind.

  On his arrival in Paris, he decided to have it out with the errant Josephine who had so embarrassed him. Both his welcoming brothers, Joseph and Lucien, confirmed that Hippolyte Charles had lived with her for months at a time, and that the two of them were enjoying huge kickbacks from military contracts secured in his name. When Napoleon arrived at her house, he found her away – in fact she had travelled to Lyon to meet him, but he had taken a different route. When she returned exhausted from the futile journey at eleven o’clock at night, she found that Napoleon had locked her out of the house.

  She spent the night on the doorstep begging to be let in – until she was joined by her daughter Hortense and the brave young Eugène, who eventually persuaded their stepfather to yield. After a further burst of anger he calmed down and soon they were making love with all the passion of newlyweds. Josephine remarked of Napoleon: ‘He is a man who has never loved anyone but himself; he is the most ingrained and ferocious egotist the Earth has ever seen. He has never known anything but his own interest and ambition.’ But Napoleon must have been besottedly in love with her, or he would never have forgiven her for her liaison with Charles and her holding him up to ridicule.

  She, for her part, was now increasingly committed to him, not just for his successes but to maintain her ever more expensive tastes. Moreover Josephine was an intriguer herself, and a valuable political ally for him. She told Napoleon that his old flame, Désirée, Joseph’s sister-in-law, had married Jean Bernadotte, one of Napoleon’s most dangerous political rivals who had briefly served as minister of war before antagonizing the most powerful man in the Directory, the Abbé Emmanuel Sieyès. Bernadotte was of humble Gascon origin, but was tall, with thick, curly black hair, an imposing nose and the adopted manner of a grand aristocrat. He has received a bad press, partly because of his arrogance and largely because of Napoleon’s intense dislike. But he was particularly dangerous as the most powerful leader in the army of the then Jacobin faction, the left-wing descendants of Robespierre (which did not prevent him accepting a royal crown when offered it, as so often is this way with revolutionaries). Bernadotte was one of the senior generals not afraid of standing up to Napoleon. He refused to call upon Napoleon on his return and suggested that he be court-martialled for abandoning his army in Egypt and refusing to be quarantined. He also refused to attend an official dinner in
Napoleon’s honour, on the grounds that the latter might be carrying the plague. Napoleon, however, was the more cunning: instead of rising to his provocations he sought to neutralize him by dragging him into his orbit. Désirée would report on her husband to Napoleon’s family circle.

  Josephine remained close to Paul Barras, still a member of the Directory, but no longer its dominant figure. Barras, formerly Josephine’s lover, regarded Napoleon almost paternally as his protégé. But Barras was widely identified as the most corrupt member of a ruling elite famous for its venality: with a reputation for reckless affairs with members of both sexes, for gambling and for selling government jobs, his reputation was not enhanced by his being a cousin of the now notorious Marquis de Sade. Moreover, the unprincipled Barras had secretly gone over to the royalists, who were working for the restoration of Louis XVIII and were now perhaps the most powerful faction in France. Barras had allegedly been bribed some 12 million francs to do so.

  Napoleon had no time for the royalists: he wanted to rule himself, not restore the monarchy. So he turned to Louis Gohier, ostensibly the most powerful of the Directors and yet another lover of the astonishing Josephine, who had a remarkable ability to attract men of power. Gohier represented the interests of the Thermidoreans, the majority on the legislative council under the 1795 constitution, the Council of Elders (a kind of senate) and the Council of Five Hundred (a kind of lower chamber), who broadly favoured the status quo and opposed a return to the monarchy or a move to the left under the Jacobins. But Gohier was tainted as one of the corrupt circle around Barras and was besides deeply suspicious of Napoleon’s ambition. At a cordial meeting he turned down Napoleon’s request to be made a Director, pointing out that he was only thirty and that the minimum age for a director was forty.

  Napoleon turned back to Barras as a possible ally and bluntly asked him what he thought about ousting the Directory with a coup. Barras professed himself horrified at the idea, partly because he feared Napoleon would soon take power should such a coup take place, even with himself, Barras, leading it, and partly because of his secret new support for the monarchy.

  The other two Directors being minor figures in the pay of the Abbé Sieyès, Napoleon was forced to look to this divine to further his political ambitions. Privately Napoleon detested the abbé. This sinister intellectual cleric with a bald head, long nose and reedy voice, living alone with only books by Voltaire for company, had some claim to be the instigator of the French Revolution itself, with his famous pamphlet We are the Third Estate and his early prominence alongside Mirabeau and Lafayette. Although a liberal by inclination, he had outlasted the tyrannies of Danton and Robespierre, and replied, when asked what he did in the Revolution, ‘I survived’: he had manoeuvred sufficiently skilfully and treacherously to avoid the guillotine.

  Now at fifty-one he had ambitions to become dictator of France, and wanted to dissolve the Directory and the cumbersome existing constitution. What he needed, he confessed to friends, was ‘a sword’, by which he meant a general willing to carry out a coup and install him, Sieyès, in power. He first approached Joubert, but the general was killed in Italy. Both MacDonald and Moreau refused to take part in any such plot.

  Sieyès then turned to Napoleon: the savant was sufficiently intellectually arrogant to believe he could dominate the energetic but supposedly less intelligent soldier – although he paid him a rare compliment: ‘I intend to work with General Bonaparte because of all soldiers he is nearest to being a civilian.’ Sieyès also had a cadre of impressive conspirators around him, including the devious and ruthless chief of police, Fouché, the subtle but duplicitous foreign minister, Talleyrand, and Napoleon’s own brother Lucien, who was a prominent member of the Council of Five Hundred. Lucien began putting it about that Barras had sent Napoleon to Egypt to perish, along with the best men in the army, because he regarded them as a threat.

  Sieyès approached Napoleon to ask him if he would act as the ‘sword’ in a coup. Napoleon, deeply distrustful of this intellectual-politician, nevertheless agreed. The plotters refused to let the unreliable Bernadotte in on the conspiracy, instead seeking to neutralize him; but he had the backing of a large section of the army, its Jacobin meritocrats, including generals Jourdan and Augereau. The next step was to get Barras to support the plotters, along with his protégé Roger Ducos, which would have furnished them with a majority on the Directory to legitimize their seizure of power. Barras refused.

  The conspirators carefully drew up a plan: the Directors would be asked to resign and the Councils of Elders and of the five hundred would be required to appoint a committee to draw up a new constitution. The key point was that the sitting of the councillors would take place outside Paris, at the Palace of St Cloud, to prevent the Paris mob, thought to be loyal either to the Jacobins or the monarchy, staging demonstrations and intimidating the Assembly. Both Barras and Gohier, separately suspecting Napoleon, suggested he be given control of an overseas army. He refused, pretending he was ill. Barras himself approached Napoleon to ask him to join in his own plot to install the King. Napoleon said no.

  At this point, the venal collective leadership of the five Directors, jostling for power, hardly gave the impression of a firm hand. Yet France was not in the throes of national disintegration: its political system was perfectly adequate, although imperfect. In place of absolute monarchy, the incompetence and disturbances of the initial liberal Revolution and the monstrous tyranny of Danton, Marat and Robespierre which had created a bloodbath, government by the Directory had been moderate, had curbed revolutionary excesses and had supervised the war effort brilliantly under the gifted Carnot, then less ably after his eclipse.

  True, the Directory was deeply corrupt. But corruption under the monarchy had been institutional on a completely different scale; and successive governments had been incompetent as well as corrupt – with the exception of the ‘sea-green incorruptible’ Robespierre’s rule by mass murder. Napoleon himself was certainly no sea-green incorruptible. The Napoleon of Italy and Egypt had looted on a par with the ancients, and distributed patronage lavishly to his family and friends, with Josephine in the forefront; he had no scruples about helping himself and amassing fortunes. Corruption was simply part of the politics of rulers of the day across Europe – Napoleon helping himself on a bigger scale than anyone else.

  A further charge brought against the Directory was that of economic incompetence; and it is true that France at the time was in dire economic straits, although not so serious as had existed under the Jacobins, when much of the population was on the brink of starvation. In 1794 the gold franc was worth 75 paper francs; four years later the exchange rate was 80,000 – hyper-inflation. Coffee cost around a franc a grain, a plank of wood some 7,000 francs while sugar was rationed and bread and cheese were almost out of the reach of the ordinary person. The Directory had addressed the problem by raising taxes, levying 100 million francs from France’s most powerful political class, the new rich. Progressive taxation and improved administration only made more enemies, as, less defensibly, did its violent anticlericalism.

  But it is instructive to look at the real cause of France’s inflation, which can be summarized in two words: military expenditure. The French Revolution had spawned a monster with a seemingly inexhaustible appetite – the French army. This huge institution simply absorbed money like a sponge, much of it expended in bribing officers to stay loyal to governments. The cost of foreign wars was enormous, and required further conquests to generate the spoils needed to provide the money to further finance the occupying forces. The problem with the Directory was that it was too weak to rein in the army: if it had been stronger it might have been able to conclude peace with its neighbours, now that most of France’s territorial demands and the concerns for its security were satisfied.

  Napoleon’s solution to France’s economic problems was relentless continued expansion and plunder to pay for France’s needs and to finance yet more foreign wars. France was becoming a perpet
ual war machine, financing itself by gobbling up yet more territory, which in turn required yet more war and finance. The establishment of a military dictatorship was not only no solution, but a further ratcheting up of the problem. Ultimately there was a call for a strong leader in France, as there always is in times of economic discontent.

  The prime reason for Napoleon’s plotting was ambition, pure and simple. He wanted to become dictator of an expansionary France. His problem at this stage was that he was only one of several senior generals who qualified for this role, and he had to find some sort of constitutional figleaf for his putsch: this was provided by the over-clever Abbé Sieyès. Through the use of naked force, the abbé sought to use Napoleon to bring himself to power unconstitutionally. Little did the wily ex-priest realize the contempt in which the crude little general held him, or that within a matter of weeks he would be discarded by Napoleon as so much surplus civilian baggage.

  Napoleon’s hagiographers, and even his detractors, have always portrayed the coup itself – known as 17 Brumaire (19 November) under the Revolution’s absurd calendar – as a masterpiece of skill and political planning. In fact by the standards of an effective Latin American coup, for example, it was no more than a half-botched affair that very nearly went spectacularly wrong. First, Napoleon abruptly cancelled a meeting with Barras the night before on the grounds that he had a headache. Barras guessed exactly what was afoot: ‘I see that Bonaparte has tricked me . . . and yet he owes me everything.’