The Campaigns of Napoleon

by David G Chandler

  Bonaparte had little respect for his nominal masters, the Directory of Five. He usually kept his scorn for them carefully hidden, but from time to time his deep-seated ambitions broke through his shield of discretion. One instance was shortly after the signing of the Peace of Campo Formio, when the young general was walking in the gardens of his headquarters. “Do you suppose,” he asked his companions, “that I triumph in Italy to make the reputations of the lawyers of the Directory?”1 However, he was soon aware that there were worse alternatives. During September secret reports reached him indicating that Royalist sympathizers were rapidly gaining influence in the National Assemblies in Paris and in certain high military quarters. The restoration of the House of Bourbon was the last eventuality that Bonaparte would welcome. Little though he cared for the corrupt Directory, their incompetence and untrustworthiness were far preferable to a restored monarchy, which would certainly make a general peace at the first opportunity and in all probability dispense with the services of a certain adventurer from Corsica. Every nerve, therefore, was strained to forestall a counterrevolution and to strengthen the Republican position. This culminated in sending off the swashbuckling Augereau to Paris with orders to ally with the Jacobin left wing and use his sword to drive the Royalist politicians from the Council of Five Hundred and the “Ancients.” The coup d’état of Fructidor was the brilliant outcome. At one stroke Bonaparte, though still in Italy, silenced the cryptomonarchists, purged the Directory of dangerous elements, and denigrated several rivals, including Pichegru and Moreau, both implicated in Royalist intrigues. The selection of Augereau for this task was a master stroke; it enabled Bonaparte to remain discreetly in the background while his colleague’s limited imagination prevented him from becoming a serious rival for power, although his subsequent appointment to the command of the armies in Germany led to several annoying incidents when he came into conflict with his former commander. Most significantly of all, the events of Fructidor proved beyond any doubt that the French army was the ultimate sanction behind the Government, and thus the real seat of power.

  Meanwhile, the diplomats were conducting tortuous negotiations with the Austrian plenipotentiaries, feeling their way toward a peace that would leave Great Britain and Portugal the only enemies in arms against the Republic. To hasten the desired outcome, the Directory offered Vienna part of the moribund Serene Republic in return for recognition of the French occupation of Lombardy and certain concessions on the Rhine. The partition of Venice was an act of cold, calculating political expediency. Bonaparte was responsible for the first suggestion of the transaction, a fact that reflects little credit on him and probably constituted a serious error, as it led to the Austrian attempt to regain Italy in 1799. Nevertheless, it produced the required effect, and on October 17 the Peace of Campo Formio was formally signed.

  By subtle propaganda, General Bonaparte became associated in the French mind with the conclusion of this successful peace, and his popularity reached new heights. When he at last returned to Paris, on December 5, he was greeted as a public hero and immediately became a lion of Parisian society. Of all the distinctions showered on the young prodigy, none appealed to him more than his election to the exclusive National Institute, the body of famous scientists and men of letters. However, he astutely calculated that the moment for his bid for power had not yet come, and at once threw himself into preparations for the destruction of Pitt’s sea-girt island, which he rightly recognized to be France’s most implacable and dangerous foe. Several months earlier he had written to the Directory: “The Austrians are avaricious and slow, no people is less interesting or dangerous to us. The Englishman, on the other hand, is generous, scheming and active. Our Government must destroy the English monarchy…. Let us concert all our activity on the navy and destroy England. That done, Europe is at our feet.”2

  In that deduction he would have been proved substantially correct. Although the First Coalition had collapsed in ruins about the feet of its architect—William Pitt—owing to a combination of French martial achievement, Allied dissension (Austria, Prussia and Russia had been as much concerned with their wrangle over Poland as with opposition to France), the misuse of British military resources in pursuit of a Chathamite “penny-packet” policy, and a complete misunderstanding of the ideological nature of the war, the British people remained the implacable and determined opponent of the regicide Republic. Even in 1797, Great Britain’s attempts to join in the peace talks were patently halfhearted—or so it seemed to the French Government—and it was clear to Bonaparte that Pitt would lose little time in attempting to form a new coalition against France. It was thus clearly in the French interest to strain every nerve to bring England low, and it was equally important for Bonaparte’s private interests that he should be at the forefront of any attempt to do so. The greatest danger to the fulfilment of his ambitions was inactivity; peace would mean mediocrity for the young Corsican, and he had no wish to become “just another general” among a crowd of unemployed officers.

  For these public and personal reasons, therefore, Bonaparte threw himself zealously into the task of preparing plans for the reduction of England, using every scrap of influence he and his wife could procure to persuade the Directory to use his services. He had little real reason for anxiety, however; for once, his interests and those of the Directory coincided. In spite of their venality, they were not altogether fools, and it was obvious that the busier the soldiers were, and the further away from the intrigues of Paris, the safer the Government would be. The majority of the Directors were also aware that their emergency powers would not survive one day of a general peace, and therefore welcomed the continuation of hostilities. Years later, Napoleon described the prevalent situation: “The Directory was dominated by its own weakness; in order to exist it needed a perpetual state of war just as other governments need peace.”3

  Be that as it might, there was little doubt that the attitude of the French Government toward warfare had mellowed considerably since the patriotic and hysterical days of 1792. For the first three years of war the issue had been one mainly of survival, but after 1795 this critical period gave place to overt imperialism, thinly disguised under a veneer of revolutionary zeal. Bonaparte’s First Italian Campaign, Moreau’s and Jourdan’s efforts in Germany, the seizure of Rome and of Switzerland in February and March 1798, and most of all the Egyptian adventure, were all evidences of a lust for loot and territorial aggrandizement rather than a genuine desire for national security. To these questionable public motives of the Government must be added Bonaparte’s private thirst for military glory and political advancement. For once, then, he and the Directory were in agreement, and together they laid their plans for the elimination of England before Austria and Russia re-entered the arena.

  Opinions differed, however, as to the best means of achieving their common purpose. The Directory was at first eager to mount a direct invasion of England and take their foe by the throat, and consequently appointed Bonaparte to command the Army of England, a force of 120,000 men collected along the northern coast of France. In January the general left Paris for a rapid tour of inspection of the invasion mounting area from Étaples to Walcheren, but what he saw convinced him that the operation would be wholly impracticable until the French navy secured undisputed control of La Manche. Even if that was achieved, he realized that the cost of the enterprise would be prohibitive. In his report to the Directory, therefore, his tone was markedly pessimistic, and in place of the invasion scheme he suggested three other possibilities. First, France could make peace with George III (he never took this suggestion seriously, knowing the Directory’s frame of mind as well as he did). Secondly, the Army of England could be employed against Hanover, an affair of prestige not really worth the candle as it might lead to a general war in central Europe before France was ready. Thirdly, he suggested a threat to England’s rich commerce with India by way of an invasion of Egypt.

  This was by no means the first time that Bonaparte’s th
oughts had turned to the idea of a campaign in the Orient. He had long been fascinated by the eastern scene with its apparently limitless opportunities for military glory. “Europe is a molehill,”4 he exclaimed once to Bourienne, or so that worthy asserted in his memoirs. “We must go to the Orient; all great glory has always been acquired there.”5 His romantic streak caused him to dream of emulating the conquests of Alexander the Great, and he avidly read the accounts of travelers to the region including the work of Marigny, de Tott and the Abbé Reynard. On a more practical plane, he saw that such a venture would be comparatively economical of French resources; he had no wish to complete the ruination of the state he might one day take over. Most of all, he was aware that the rickety Directory was not yet ripe for the coup de grâce, and as he described it, “the streets of Paris burn the soles of my feet.”6 A short absence from Paris, no more than six months was his first optimistic estimate, might give the Directors enough rope to hang themselves and afford him the opportunity to gather fresh laurels. Furthermore, the expedition would mean an end to dulling inaction, however transitory. It is clear that he was thinking on the lines of a voyage to Egypt as early as the spring of 1797, as Desaix reveals. Not long after, Bonaparte wrote to the Directory: “The day is not far distant when we should appreciate the necessity, in order really to destroy England, of seizing Egypt.”7 The French occupation of the Adriatic islands of Corfu and Zante and the army’s control of much of the littoral of Italy offered convenient mounting areas. The rapid crumbling of Turkish authority over its unwieldy Empire, of which Egypt formed one of the most intractable parts, presented an ideal opportunity for adventure and a weighty blow against England at one and the same time. Turkey had always interested Bonaparte; in his youth he even considered joining the Sultan’s artillery in emulation of de Bonneval, and now, in his hour of fame, he suggested that French intervention could be disguised as an attempt to re-establish the Porte’s authority over a dilatory province.

  Similar ideas had been put forward by successive French governments for more than half a century, and when the Directory took up the scheme they were in fact returning to a very hoary dream of l’Ancien Régime. Indeed, as early as 1536, Francis I formed a tenuous alliance with Suliman the Magnificent, for all his unenviable reputation as “the Scourge of Christendom,” and in later years it had behoved Louis XIV and his successors to maintain at least an appearance of friendship for the Porte. The merchants of Marseilles invested deeply in the eastern commodities of coffee, rice, sugar and cotton, and the French Minister, Choiseul, went so far as to consider a plan for the seizure of Egypt in 1769 with a view to establishing a permanent colony there, but Vergennes later insisted on the continuation of “traditional” amicable relations with Constantinople. This policy notwithstanding, Baron de Tott was dispatched in 1777 on a mission to the de facto governors of Egypt, Ibrahim and Murad Bey (both of whom were destined to figure prominently in the events of twenty-one years later), with orders to spy out the land around Suez. His reports proved of great value to General Bonaparte and the other planners of the enterprise of 1798.

  The motives that galvanized the Directory into life in that year were a complex mixture of the old and the new, the traditional and the revolutionary. Besides the ancient desire to acquire a new colony for France—and the decision to add the capture of Malta to the other objectives was a further direct link with the foreign policies of former centuries—there was also a series of more recent incentives. The Directory was eager to recoup the loss of France’s West Indian colonies, and it seemed likely to certain optimists that Egypt possessed great latent wealth which only awaited development. Moreover, control of Egypt, “the link joining Africa, Asia and Europe,” might well lead to the lucrative domination of the ancient trade routes to Arabia and India, and perhaps a canal could be dug through the Suez Isthmus. It was also hoped that rapid and decisive action by France might thwart British diplomatic endeavors to persuade the Porte to conclude an anti-French alliance. The presence of a powerful French army in a Turkish possession, ostensibly motivated by a desire to guide a dilatory province back to its allegiance, would be worth many hundreds of diplomatic approaches. Most attractive of all, the occupation of Egypt could offer an opportunity of opening closer relations with certain anti-British elements in India, most notably Tippoo Sahib, Sultan of Mysore. French military missions had long been active in training his sepoys, but since the British capture of the former Dutch possession of the Cape of Good Hope, direct communication had virtually ceased.

  The mere threat of a blow against England’s rich Asian trade, however illusory, could be expected to disrupt Pitt’s efforts and possibly lead to an opportunity for concluding a victorious peace. In addition, the cost of mounting an expedition against Egypt, for all its distance from the shore of France, would be far cheaper than a full-scale invasion of the British Isles; for the past five hundred years Egypt had been ruled, or rather exploited by a handful of Beys at the head of some ten thousand ferocious Mamelukes, and their subjection was not expected to present a major military problem. To these incentives, traditional, economic, political and military was added one other, a genuine desire to improve the lot of the notoriously depressed fellahin, or Egyptian peasantry. This sense of civilizing mission was a product of the better ideals enunciated by the French Revolution and was almost unique at the time. Doubtless there was also present a strong desire to develop Egypt into a well-ordered and valuable colony for France’s benefit, but the streak of idealism should not be ignored. It appeared logical to the members of the Directory that France, in their opinion the most advanced and progressive society on earth, should step in to return some measure of prosperity to the people inhabiting the Nile Valley, the original cradle of civilization. From this amalgam of motive, realistic and visionary, genuine and bogus, there gradually evolved the decision to launch Bonaparte and a French army into the Orient.

  General Bonaparte’s most influential supporter was the unfrocked Bishop of Autun, the wily Talleyrand, since July 1797 the Directory’s foreign minister. Alone of all the Directors, he was eager to avert future wars in Europe, hoping to channel France’s acquisitive energy and bellicosity into distant fields. “By establishing France in Africa we shall guarantee the peace of Europe”8 summarizes his aims. Pressed by Talleyrand, the Directory finally took the plunge. Bonaparte’s report from the Channel was formally approved on March 2, and on April 12 the Directory issued the necessary arrêts. General Bonaparte was instructed to capture Malta and Egypt, ordered to dislodge the English from the Orient, build a canal through the Isthmus of Suez, improve the situation of the local population and to keep on good terms with the Sultan. Egypt was to maintain the annual tribute payment to Constantinople, and scrupulous respect was to be paid to the Moslem faith, while Talleyrand himself was to lead a mission to Constantinople to explain the French purposes. The newly annexed states of Switzerland and Rome were to be mulcted to finance the project, and a diversionary attack prepared against Ireland to hold English attention.

  It was estimated that six months would suffice for the entire expedition to Egypt, and thereafter General Bonaparte was expected to return to France and place himself at the head of the postponed invasion of England. It will be noticed that there was no specific mention of any attempt to reach India at this stage.

  19

  MEDITERRANEAN CHASE

  The decision taken, ten weeks of hectic preparations ensued. Three million francs of Swiss gold were extracted from Berne to finance the enterprise, and further demands made on Rome. Five embarkation ports were specified, Toulon, Marseilles, Genoa, Ajaccio and Civita Vecchia, and Admiral Brueys, recently arrived from Venice, was ordered to ready the Toulon fleet for departure to an undisclosed destination. Twenty-one demi-brigades were selected from the forces serving in Italy, Rome, Corsica, Switzerland and northern France, and directed to begin their marches to the ports. General Bonaparte was given the highest possible priority for all his requirements, and consequen
tly almost all these units were original components of the old Army of Italy. Similarly, of the thirty-one general officers chosen for the expedition, no less than twenty had previously served under the young genius. Berthier resumed his post of chief of staff, but apart from Vaubois, the divisional generals of the Army of Egypt were relatively new names: d’Hilliers, Bon, Desaix, Kléber and Reynier. This list was to undergo considerable changes in the following months.

  A unique feature of the expedition was the large number and high caliber of the attached civilians. Of a total of 500, no less than 167 were distinguished savants, established men of letters and of science, acknowledged experts in their many fields, carefully selected by Member of the Institute Bonaparte in close consultation with General Caffarelli and the brilliant scientist Berthollet. Pressure of all sorts, fair and foul, was applied to obtain the services of the best men possible, and the final list included the names of the distinguished Monge, Conté the balloonist, Doctors Larrey and Desgenettes, Citizens Dolomieu and Malus and many others. The majority were eminently practical men, but the commission included a composer and the poet, Parseval-Grandmaison.

  Twentieth April was the original sailing date laid down, but administrative problems and a political crisis in Vienna, where General Bernadotte became the center of an international incident which for a while threatened a new outbreak of the European war, caused a postponement to May 19. This delay notwithstanding, the myriad preparations went ahead well. Three hundred sail were requisitioned to carry the expedition, split up among the various specified ports, and Admiral Brueys and his staff gathered thirteen French ships-of-the-line and a similar number of frigates at Toulon ready to shepherd the vast convoy down the Mediterranean. A constant source of anxiety was the shortage of sailors; the fleet was at least 2,000 men below strength.