Chapter X: The Mediterranean From 1799 to 1801 (2)

That the relief or re-enforcement of Bonaparte was intended seems improbable; although both St. Vincent and Nelson entertained this suspicion, upon which the latter acted. M. Thiers, indeed, finds Bruix's cruise inexplicable on any other supposition, but he does not assert the fact.[277] The feelings of the Directory towards that general were not strictly benevolent, and the ships carried neither troops nor supplies of importance; but the destruction of Nelson's scattered detachments, coupled as that might have been with the victualling of Malta, would have been a most worthy object, and one of very probable fulfilment. It is noteworthy that Nelson received his first news of Bruix's approach on the 12th of May, at Palermo, and on the 14th the French admiral entered Toulon. Now the distance from Gibraltar to Toulon is only one hundred and fifty miles less than that from Gibraltar to Palermo. Nelson could not have collected his ships in time to present a united front; and even could he, his whole force did not exceed ten or twelve to the enemy's twenty-four. As it was, Bruix's adventure, though daring in conception and active in execution, resulted merely in bringing back to France sixteen Spanish ships-of-the-line to be hostages for the continuance of the Spanish alliance, tottering under the adverse events of 1799; and this possibly was the great purpose of the Directory. If so, the excursion was political rather than military; and hence an opportunity, of a kind which, when rightly improved, has always been most pregnant of military consequences—concentration opposed to dispersion—remains to us merely an impressive lesson of what might have been, but was not. "Your lordship," wrote Nelson four years later to St. Vincent, "knows what Admiral Bruix might have done had he done his duty."[278] "The cruise of Admiral Bruix," says Captain Chevalier,[279] "was well conceived, but failed through the weakness of our allies and the inexperience of our own officers and crews.... The Spanish squadron brought to Brest, the gage of an alliance then very tottering, was the only result of this campaign. It is impossible to have any illusion as to the extent of the services rendered by the fleet on the coast of Italy. A division of frigates would have done as much."

The conduct of the British admirals in the Mediterranean, caught at so serious a disadvantage through no fault of their own, deserves to be considered. Dispersed in a fashion that was perfectly proper and efficient under the previous conditions, the arrival of Bruix imposed concentration, with a consequent enforced abandonment of some positions. St. Vincent's first step was to order Nelson to concentrate in the neighborhood of Sicily, while he himself drew Keith and Duckworth together at Minorca. This effected, the British would present two squadrons; one of twenty ships-of-the-line in the west, centring about Minorca; the other, four hundred miles distant, of fifteen or sixteen ships,[280] gathered off the west end of Sicily to dispute the passage to Malta and Alexandria. This smaller division thus seems to have been much exposed; but, independently of its greatly superior efficiency to the French, it must be remembered that St. Vincent, as soon as he reached Minorca, knew that Nelson was in no immediate danger, for the French had given him the go-by and gone to Toulon. Cruising therefore off Cape San Sebastian, to intercept the junction of the Spaniards to the French, he was in constant touch of Minorca, barely one hundred miles distant, and, at the same time, was as near to Nelson as were the French in Toulon, whether they went east or west of Corsica. Being only one hundred and twenty miles from Toulon, and in such a position that a wind fair for the French to sail was also fair to bring his lookouts down to him, he could hope to overtake them,—if not in time to save Nelson, yet with the certainty of finding the French so badly handled that they could scarcely escape him. He no doubt reasoned as did Nelson to the ministry just before Trafalgar: "I ventured without any fear [to predict] that if Calder [with eighteen ships] got fairly alongside their twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail, by the time the enemy had beat our fleet soundly, they would do us no harm this year."[281] Save Malta, which could not have maintained the twenty thousand men in their fleet for a month and was otherwise barren of resources, the French would have had no port to fall back on and would have been lost to the republic.[282] Had St. Vincent cruised off Cartagena, where the Spaniards were, he would have been in better position to check them, but he would have uncovered both Minorca and Nelson to the French; both being nearer to Toulon than to Cartagena. Not only so, but Cartagena being three hundred miles farther from Toulon than Cape San Sebastian is, the British lookout ships would have had all that greater distance to go to their admiral, who, when found, would then be further from his chief points of interest than when off the Cape. As soon, however, as St. Vincent learned that the French had gone east from Toulon, being relieved from any immediate apprehension concerning the Spaniards, he re-enforced Nelson with four ships, raising his squadron to sixteen British against a possible French twenty-four.

It was during the week following the detachment to Nelson that St. Vincent left the fleet, and that Keith made the false move which has been so severely blamed. It appears to the author, from all the information accessible to him, that Keith took this step wholly independent of St. Vincent's special orders, which are alleged as controlling him. He acted in deference, partly, to the general orders given before turning over the command, and partly to his own views of the situation.[283] These seem to have differed from those of St. Vincent, who laid most stress on disabling the enemy's fleets; whereas Keith was dominated by the fear of losing Minorca. This feeling led him to deviate from the order to cruise off the Gulf of Rosas, as it also led him soon after, on two occasions, to direct Nelson to detach ships for the defence of the island; which Nelson, with very doubtful propriety, refused to do.[284] Minorca, in this case, very appositely illustrates the embarrassment of a fleet upon which an important seaport wholly depends for security. In the present instance the beating of the French fleet and the protection of Minorca introduced two apparently divergent motives, which became personified in St. Vincent and his lieutenant. The former saw the best protection to the island to be in beating the fleet; Keith subordinated the latter to the former. With St. Vincent agreed Nelson's simple but accurate view of naval strategy: "I consider the best defence for his Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside the French."[285] Keith, on the other hand, in a somewhat later letter, expresses almost pathetically the embarrassment caused by his inferior strategic insight. "It is very hard I cannot find these vagabonds in some spot or other, and that I am so _shackled_ with this defenceless island."[286] Properly every seaport should be able to hold out for a length of time, longer or shorter, according to its importance, entirely independent of the fleet. The latter will then be able to exert its great faculty, its mobility, unfettered by considerations of what is happening at the port. For so long the latter is safe; meanwhile the fleet may be absent. The best coast-defence is a navy; not because fortifications are not absolutely necessary, but because beating the enemy's fleet is the best of all defences.

After the vain pursuit of Admiral Bruix, Lord Keith brought his fleet into Torbay on the 17th of August. On the 18th Earl St. Vincent landed at Portsmouth, thus formally quitting the Mediterranean command, which he had held for three years and nine months. Four days afterwards, on the 22d of August, 1799, Bonaparte secretly embarked at Alexandria to return into France.

After the Syrian campaign the French army had re-entered Cairo on the 14th of June. On the 11th of July Sir Sidney Smith, with his two ships, anchored in Aboukir Bay, accompanying, or being accompanied by, a Turkish fleet of thirteen ships-of-the-line with a hundred other sail of frigates and transports. Embarked on board the latter were troops variously estimated at from ten to thirty thousand men.[287] On the 15th Bonaparte, at Cairo, learned that his anticipations of an attack by sea, during the fine season, had been realized. He promptly ordered Desaix to evacuate upper Egypt for the security of Cairo, and rapidly drew together in the neighborhood of Alexandria the detachments in lower Egypt. This concentration was effected on the 19th, but by that time the Turks had landed and stormed the Castle of Aboukir, which fell on the 16th. On the 25th the French attacked the enemy on the peninsula of Aboukir, and the same scene that had witnessed the destruction of Brueys's squadron a year before now saw the entire overthrow of the Mahometan army. All who had landed were either killed, driven into the sea and drowned, or taken prisoners. Among the latter was the Turkish commander-in-chief.

After the defeat flags of truce passed between Bonaparte and the British commodore, through which the former received English newspapers up to the 10th of June.[288] By them he learned the victorious advance of the second coalition, and the defeats of the French in Germany and Italy. His resolution was speedily taken to return to France. It has been disputed whether this was a sudden determination not before entertained, as asserted by his secretary Bourrienne; or whether it represents a purpose gradually and naturally formed. Napoleon himself in later years attributed his decision to information obtained from Phélippeaux in the trenches before Acre; when the combatants, separated by but a few yards, often exchanged words.[289] It is, however, certain that the thought had long been familiar to him; for, in a letter to the Directory as early as October 7, 1798, he had announced his intention of returning to Europe in certain very probable contingencies.[290] The same message was repeated a few months later.[291] In truth his keen military sagacity, resembling the most delicate yet most highly cultivated intuitions, had divined the misfortunes awaiting France at the time he learned by the Ragusan ship that Naples had declared war and that all[292] the powers were arming. During his own Italian campaign, even after the British had left the Mediterranean, his mind had been preoccupied with the danger from Naples; and he foresaw in Egypt the disasters that must result from an ex-centric movement of the French army in that quarter, if followed by any reverses in upper Italy. Bourrienne tells a story which illustrates vividly the superstitious vein in his character, as well as the foreboding of evil that he had carried with him into Syria. While before Acre, news was received that a Nile boat named the "Italy," in the employ of the French army, had after a gallant defence been blown up by her crew to avoid capture by the Arabs. The incident and the name made a strong impression upon Bonaparte. "My friend," said he to Bourrienne, "Italy is lost to France. All is over; my presentiments never deceive me;" nor could any argument rid his mind of this conviction, dependent rather upon his instinctive perceptions than upon a slight and fortuitous coincidence.[293] So, when he read Sidney Smith's gazettes, he cried again: "My presentiment did not deceive me! Italy is lost!"[294]

Admiral Ganteaume was directed to prepare rapidly two of the frigates which had fallen to France in her share of the spoil of Venice; and the persons intended to accompany the general were quietly notified. After the defeat of the Turks at Aboukir, Sidney Smith had resumed the blockade of Alexandria; but on the 9th of August he withdrew to Cyprus, probably for water. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Bonaparte sailed, and after a tedious passage landed at Fréjus on the 9th of October. One month later the Directory was overthrown and the supreme power in France passed into Bonaparte's hands.

Thus ended, so far at least as the great designer was concerned, Bonaparte's Oriental Expedition; an undertaking which has been freely stigmatized as a dream, marked by the eccentricities of its author's genius, not by his usual keen intelligence. A dream it was, it is true; but not for its Eastern impossibilities, nor for its wide flights of imagination, the faculty which Bonaparte possessed in so eminent a degree, without which he never could have conceived his extraordinary policy, and to which he usually joined a width and depth of practical wisdom which balanced his imagination and made possible the realizing of his visions. That it was no dream to rouse and combine the nations of the East under the headship of one man, witness the careers of the adventurers who there, from age to age, have risen to empire; and who certainly were not superior in genius, nor as leaders of men, to the great Corsican. Witness, too, the motley host which he gathered under one standard, from all the highly organized nations of continental Europe, for that other great Eastern expedition in which he wrecked his fortunes. The Egyptian enterprise and all its brilliant hopes definitively failed at Acre, in the march against Turkey through Syria; and it failed,—why? Because a British seaman, by his command of the sea and his support to the garrison, maintained the possession of a place, to advance beyond which, unsubdued, would entail ruin. Forty years later an army, not of the superb soldiers of the French revolution, but of native Egyptians, led by Ibrahim Pasha, whom none will equal to Napoleon, undertook the same march, captured Acre, and had progressed victoriously into the heart of Asia Minor when the British navy again interfered and called a halt. How came it that a naval captain, with two ships-of-the-line and a few small vessels, controlled absolutely the far east of the Mediterranean? Because in Aboukir Bay, nine months before, Nelson had destroyed the French fleet. That magnificent battle not only signalized the genius for war of the British admiral, but proclaimed aloud the existence of a power destined ever, and in all parts, to clip the wings of the coming emperor. The Eastern enterprise of Bonaparte failed, not because of miscalculations as to what was possible in that far East, which Western people so ill can understand; but because he, to the end of his career, was never able rightly to appreciate the conditions of naval warfare. His perfect military insight was not mistaken in affirming that the principles of war upon the sea must be the same as upon land; it was by the failure to comprehend the circumstances to which the principles must be applied—the failure to realize the possibilities and the limitations of the naval warfare of his day—that the general and the emperor were alike led into fatal miscalculations. The Nile and Trafalgar, each the grave of a great conception, proclaimed the same cause and the same effect; underlying each was the inability of Napoleon to understand what ships could do and what they could not, according to the conditions of the sea and the capacity of the seamen.

There was, however, one radical fallacy underlying Bonaparte's Egyptian, or rather Oriental, expedition,—for in his mind it far outleaped the narrow limits of the Nile valley,—and that lay in the effect he expected to produce upon Great Britain. It is all very well to stigmatize, after Lanfrey's fashion, as the vagaries of a distempered fancy, the vast projects of Eastern conquest and dominion, which unquestionably filled his mind with dreams of a sweep to his arms rivalling that of Alexander and of the Roman legions. An extraordinary, perhaps even an extravagant, imagination was one of the necessary conditions of Napoleon's wonderful career. That it should from time to time lead him into great mistakes, and ultimately to his ruin, was perhaps inevitable. Without it, or with it in a markedly less degree, he might have died in his palace an old man and left his throne to a son, if not to a dynasty; but also without it he would not have produced upon his own age and upon all subsequent history the effects which he has left. To it were due the Oriental visions, to which, regarded as a military enterprise, the present writer is certainly not ready to apply the word "fantastic." But, as a blow directed against Great Britain, there was in them a fatal defect of conception, due more to a miscalculation of the intellect, a prejudice of his day, than to a wild flight of fancy.

In the relations of India to Great Britain, Bonaparte, in common with all Frenchmen of his age, mistook effect for cause. The possession of India and of other colonies was to them the cause of British prosperity; just as at a later time, and now, the wide extent of British commerce has seemed to many the cause of Great Britain's wealth and eminence among the nations. That there is truth in this view is not to be denied; but it is the kind of truth compatible with putting the cart before the horse, mistaking the fruit for the tree, the flower for the plant. There was less excuse for a blunder of this kind in a quick-witted nation like the French, for they had before their eyes the fact that they had long owned some of the richest colonies in the world; and yet the British had, upon their own ground, amid all disadvantages of position, absorbed the commerce of the West Indies, French as well as Spanish. In local advantages, Great Britain in the West Indies had not the tenth of what France and Spain had; yet she so drank the wealth of the region that one fourth of her envied commerce then depended upon it. So in India; Great Britain sucked the wealth of India, because of the energy and commercial genius of her people. Had Bonaparte's visions been realized and India dominated, Great Britain would not have been overcome. A splendid bough would have been torn from a tree, and, in falling, would have carried to the ground the fruit depending from it; but not only was the amount of the fruit exaggerated, but the recuperative power of the root, the aptitude of the great trunk to throw out new branches, was not understood. Had Bonaparte converted the rule of India from England to France, he would have embarrassed, not destroyed, British traffic therein. Like the banyan tree, a new sucker would have been thrown out and reached the soil in some new spot, defying efforts at repression; as British commerce later refused to die under the far more searching efforts of the Continental System.

The strength of Great Britain could be said to lie in her commerce only as, and because, it was the external manifestation of the wisdom and strength of the British people, unhampered by any control beyond that of a government and institutions in essential sympathy with them. In the enjoyment of these blessings,—in their independence and untrammelled pursuit of wealth,—they were secured by their powerful navy; and so long as this breastplate was borne, unpierced, over the heart of the great organism, over the British islands themselves, Great Britain was—not invulnerable—but invincible. She could be hurt indeed, but she could not be slain. Herein was Bonaparte's error. His attempt upon India was strategically a fine conception; it was an attack upon the flank of an enemy whose centre was then too strong for him; but as a broad effort of military policy,—of statesmanship directing arms,—it was simply delivering blows upon an extremity, leaving the heart untouched. The same error pervaded his whole career; for, with all his genius, he still was, as Thiers has well said, the child of his century. So, in his later years, he was beguiled into the strife wherein he bruised Great Britain's heel, and she bruised his head. Yet his mistake, supreme genius that he was, is scarce to be wondered at; for after all the story of his career, of his huge power, of his unrelenting hostility, of his indomitable energy, unremittingly directed to the destruction of his chief enemy,—after all this and its failure,—we still find men harping on the weakness of Great Britain through her exposed commerce. Her dependence upon trade, and the apparent slackening of the colonial ties, foretell her fatal weakness in the hour of trial. So thought Napoleon; so think we. Yet the commercial genius of her people is not abated; and the most fruitful parts of that colonial system existed scarcely, if at all, in those old days, when her commerce was as great in proportion to her numbers as it is now. To paralyze this, it must be taken by the throat; no snapping at the heels will do it. To command the sea approaches to the British islands will be to destroy the power of the State; as a preliminary thereto the British navy must be neutralized by superior numbers, or by superior skill.

Like the furtive intrusion and hasty retreat of Bruix's fleet, the stealthy manner of Bonaparte's return to Europe proclaimed the control of the Mediterranean by the British navy, and foretold the certain fall of his two great conquests, Egypt and Malta. His own personal credit was too deeply staked upon their deliverance, both by his original responsibility for the expedition and by the promises of succor made to the soldiers abandoned in Egypt, to admit a doubt of his wish to save them, if it could be done. His correspondence is full of the subject, and numerous efforts were made; as great, probably, as were permitted by the desperate struggle with external enemies and internal disorder in which he found France plunged. All, however, proved fruitless. The detailed stories of the loss of Egypt and of Malta by France have much interest, both for the military and unprofessional reader; but they are summed up in the one fact which prophesied their fall: France had lost all power to dispute the control of the sea. From February, 1799, when a small frigate entered La Valetta, to January, 1800, not a vessel reached the port. In the latter month a dispatch-boat got in, bringing news of Bonaparte's accession to power as First Consul; which event, though two months old, was still unknown to the garrison. On the 6th of February Admiral Perrée, who had served on the Nile and in Syria to Bonaparte's great satisfaction, sailed from Toulon with the "Généreux," seventy-four, one of the ships that had escaped from Aboukir Bay, three smaller vessels, and one large transport. A quantity of supplies and between three and four thousand troops for the relief of Malta were embarked in the squadron. On the 18th they fell in with several British ships, under Nelson's immediate command; and after the exchange of a few shots, one of which killed Perrée, the "Généreux" and the transport struck to a force too superior to be resisted. The other ships returned to Toulon.

All further attempts to introduce relief likewise failed. During the two years' blockade, from September, 1798, to September, 1800, only five vessels succeeded in entering the port.[295] The "Guillaume Tell," which had lain in Valetta harbor since the battle of the Nile, attempted to escape on the night of the 31st of March, being charged with letters to Bonaparte saying that the place could not hold out longer than June. The ship was intercepted by the British, and surrendered after a brilliant fight, in which all her masts were shot away[296] and over a fifth of her crew killed and wounded. One of the vessels sharing in this capture was Lord Nelson's flag-ship, the "Foudroyant," but the admiral himself was not on board. Swayed by a variety of feelings, to analyze which is unnecessary and not altogether pleasant to those who admire his fame, he had asked, after the return of Lord Keith, to be relieved and granted a repose to which his long and brilliant services assuredly entitled him. He thus failed to receive the surrender of the last of the ships which escaped from the Nile, and to accomplish the reduction of Malta, whose ultimate fate had been determined by his previous career of victory. The island held out until the 5th of September, 1800. Nelson on the 11th of July struck his flag in Leghorn, and in company with the Hamiltons went home overland, by way of Trieste and Vienna, reaching England in November.

The story of Egypt is longer and its surrender was later,—due also to force, not to starvation. An army powerful enough to hold in submission and reap the use of the fertile valley of the Nile, could never be reduced like the port of a rocky island, blocked by sea and surrounded by a people in successful insurrection. Nevertheless, the same cause that determined the loss of Malta operated effectually to make Egypt a worse than barren possession.

Bonaparte, though wielding uncontrolled sway over all the resources of France, found as great difficulty in getting news from his conquest or substantial succor to it as he had had, when in Egypt, to obtain intelligence from home. Unwearying official effort and lavish inducements to private enterprise alike proved vain. In the first week of September, 1800, the return of the "Osiris," a dispatch-boat that had successfully made the round voyage between France and Egypt, was rewarded by a gift of three thousand dollars to the captain and two months' pay to the crew. This extravagant recompense sufficiently testifies the difficulty of the feat; and over seven weeks later, on October 29, Bonaparte writes to Menou, "We have no direct news of you since the arrival of the 'Osiris.'" This letter was to be entrusted to Admiral Ganteaume; but three months elapsed before that officer was enabled by a violent gale to evade the British blockade of Brest. Appeals were made to Spain, and government agents sent throughout the south of France, as well as to Corsica, to Genoa, to Leghorn, to the Adriatic, to Taranto, when Italy after Marengo again fell under Bonaparte's control. Numerous small vessels, both neutral and friendly, were from every quarter to start for Egypt, if by chance some of them might reach their destination; but no substantial result followed. For the most part they only swelled the list of captures, and attested the absolute control of the sea by Great Britain.

Kleber, the illustrious general to whom Bonaparte left the burden he himself dropped, in a letter which fell into the hands of the British, addressed to the Directory the following words:[297] "I know all the importance of the possession of Egypt. I used to say in Europe that this country was for France the fulcrum, by means of which she might move at will the commercial system of every quarter of the globe; but to do this effectually, a powerful lever is required, and that lever is a Navy. Ours has ceased to exist. Since that period everything has changed; and peace with the Porte is, in my opinion, the only expedient that holds out to us a method of fairly getting rid of an enterprise no longer capable of attaining the object for which it was undertaken."[298] In other words, the French force of admirable and veteran soldiers in Egypt was uselessly locked up there; being unable either to escape or to receive re-enforcement, they were lost to their country. So thought Nelson, who frequently declared in his own vehement fashion that not one should with his consent return to Europe, and who gave to Sir Sidney Smith most positive orders on no account to allow a single Frenchman to leave Egypt under passports.[299] So thought Bonaparte, despite the censure which he and his undiscriminating supporters have seen fit to pass upon Kleber. Six weeks before he sailed for Europe[300] he wrote to the Directory: "We need at least six thousand men to replace our losses since landing in Egypt.... With fifteen thousand re-enforcements we could go to Constantinople. We should need, then, two thousand cavalry, six thousand recruits for the regiments now here; five hundred artillerists; five hundred mechanics (carpenters, masons, etc.); five demi-brigades of two thousand men each; twenty thousand muskets, forty thousand bayonets, etc. etc. _If you cannot send us all this assistance it will be necessary to make peace_; for, between this and next June, we may expect to lose another six thousand men."[301] But how was this help to be sent when the sea was securely closed?

Bonaparte and Kleber held essentially the same view of the situation; but the one was interested, like a bankrupt, in concealing the state of affairs, the other was not. Kleber therefore gladly closed with a proposition, made by the Turks under the countenance of Sir Sidney Smith, who still remained in the Levant, by which the French were to be permitted to evacuate Egypt and to be carried to France; Turkey furnishing such transports as were needed beyond those already in Alexandria. A convention to this effect was signed at El Arish on the 24th of January, 1800, by commissioners representing Kleber on the one hand and the commander-in-chief of the Turks on the other. The French army would thus be restored to France, under no obligations that would prevent its at once entering the field against the allies of Great Britain and Turkey. Sir Sidney Smith did not sign; but it appears from his letter of March 8, 1800,[302] to M. Poussielgue, one of Kleber's commissioners, that he was perfectly cognizant of and approving the terms of an agreement in direct contravention of the treaty of alliance between Turkey and Great Britain, and containing an article (the eleventh) engaging his government to issue the passports and safe conducts for the return of the French,[303] which depended absolutely upon its control of the sea, and which his own orders from his superiors explicitly forbade.

The British government had meantime instructed Lord Keith that the French should not be allowed to leave Egypt, except as prisoners of war. On the 8th of January, over a fortnight before the convention of El Arish was signed, the admiral wrote from Port Mahon to notify Smith of these directions, which were identical in spirit with those he already had from Nelson. With this letter he enclosed one to Kleber, "to be made use of if circumstances should so require." This letter, cast in the peremptory tone probably needed to repress Smith, informed Kleber curtly that he had "received positive orders not to consent to any capitulation of the French troops, unless they should lay down their arms, surrender themselves prisoners of war, and deliver up the ships and stores in Alexandria." Even in this event they were not to be permitted to return to France until exchanged. The admiral added that any vessel with French troops on board, having passports "from others than those authorized to grant them," would be forced by British cruisers to return to Alexandria.[304] Smith, knowing that he had exceeded his authority, had nothing to do in face of this communication but to transmit the letters apologetically to Kleber, expressing the hope that the engagement allowed by him would ultimately be sustained. In this he was not deceived. The British cabinet, learning that Kleber had executed an essential part of his own agreements, under the impression that Smith had authority to pledge his government, sent other instructions to Keith, authorizing the carrying out of the convention while expressly denying Smith's right to accede to it. Owing to the length of time required in that age for these communications to pass back and forth, such action had been taken by Kleber, before these new instructions were received, that the convention never became operative. The French occupation lingered on. Kleber, being assassinated on the 14th of June, 1800, was succeeded by Menou, an incapable man; and in March, 1801, a British army under General Abercromby landed in Aboukir Bay. Abercromby was mortally wounded on the 21st, at the battle of Alexandria; but his successor was equal to the task before him, and in September, 1801, shortly before the preliminaries of peace with Great Britain were signed, the last of the French quitted Egypt.

The terms under which the evacuation was made were much the same as those granted at El Arish; but circumstances had very greatly changed. The battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800, and the treaty of Lunéville, February 9, 1801, had restored peace to the Continent; the French troops would not now re-enforce an enemy to the allies of Great Britain. Not only so, but since the power of Austria had been broken, Great Britain herself was intending a peace, to which the policy of Bonaparte at that time pointed. It was therefore important to her that in the negotiations the possession of Egypt, however barren, should not be one of the cards in the adversary's hand. No terms were then too easy, provided they insured the immediate departure of the French army.