On December 5, 1797, Napoleon returned to Paris. With studious eye for effect, he adopted that line of conduct most calculated, as he thought, to preserve his reputation and to inflame public curiosity. He was determined not to stale his presence. Making no display, and avoiding commonplace demonstrations, he doffed his uniform, put on the sober dress of a member of the Institute, to which he was elected in place of Carnot, screened himself within the privacy of his home, and cultivated the society of scholars, authors, scientists, and non-combatants generally. When he went out, it was as a private citizen, his two-horse carriage unattended by aides or escort. He demurely attended the meetings of the Institute, and on public occasions was to be found in his place, in his class, among the savants, just as though he had set his mind now on literary matters and was going to write a book. His brother Joseph gave it out that Napoleon’s ambition was to settle down and be quiet, to enjoy literature, friends, and, possibly, the luxuries of the office of Justice of the Peace. It must have been a queer sight to have seen the little Corsican dress-parading as a guileless man of letters; it is very doubtful whether many were deceived by his exaggerated modesty. Those who were in place and power, the men whom he would have to combat and overcome, were not for a moment duped. They suspected, dreaded, and watched him. Prepare for him they could not, for they had not the means. He had said nothing and done nothing which they had not indorsed; with hearts full of repugnance, with faces more or less wry, they had sanctioned even when their instructions had been disobeyed. They could not seize him by brute force, or put him out of the way. They were too weak; he too strong. He was the idol of soldiers and civilians alike; the Directors were not the idols of anybody. They could not even have him poisoned, or stabbed, for he was on his guard against that very thing. Soon after his return to Paris he had received warning of a plot to poison him; he had caused the bearer of the note to be accompanied by a magistrate to the house of the woman who had furnished the information, and she was found lying dead on the floor, her throat cut and her body mutilated. The would-be murderers had, doubtless, discovered her betrayal of them, and had in this manner taken vengeance and assured their own safety. After such an occurrence, Napoleon was not the man to be caught napping; and it was noticed that at the official banquets to which he was invited he either ate nothing, or slightly lunched on wine and bread brought by one of his aides.

The Directory gave him, in due time, a grand public reception at the Luxembourg, which was attended by immense numbers, and which was as imposing as the pomp of ceremony and the genuine enthusiasm of the people could make it. But the part played by the Directory and Talleyrand was theatrically overdone, and gave a tone of bombast and insincerity to the whole.

What now must Napoleon do? There was peace on the Continent; he was too young for a place in the Directory, and if he remained in Paris too long, France would forget him. This was the reasoning of Napoleon, the most impatient of men. Evidently the reasoning was unsound; it was dictated only by his feverish, constitutional need of action. There was no danger of his sinking out of notice or importance in France. There was the danger of his being identified with a party, but even this peril has been exaggerated. Astute and coldly calculating as he was, the party he would have chosen, had he seen fit to choose one at all, would probably have been the strongest, and political success comes to that in the long run.

He had been too impatient in Corsica in his earlier struggles; he had there alienated the wise and lovable Paoli, who wanted to be his friend, but could not sympathize with his too violent, too selfishly ambitious character. He had been too impatient to get on in France, and had been perilously near losing his head as a terrorist in the fall of Robespierre. Too anxious for social recognition and independent military command, he had fallen into the snares of Barras and the shady adventuress of whom the libertine Director was tired, and had rushed into a marriage which proved fatal to him as a man and a monarch. The same feverish haste was again upon him, and was to continue to be upon him all the days of his life, until his final premature rush from Elba was to lead him, through the bloody portals of Waterloo, to his prison on the bleak rock of St. Helena.

How could a few months of quiet in Paris have tarnished his fame? Had he not seen the heart of liberalism throughout all Europe warm to Paoli,—the time having come,—although the patriot exile had been sitting quietly at English firesides for twenty-one years? Who in France was likely to outstrip Napoleon in one year, two years, ten years? Hoche was dead, Moreau in disgrace, Jourdan under the cloud of defeat, Augereau on the shelf, Carnot an exile, Pichegru banished. In the Directory there was not a man who could give him the slightest concern.

But to Napoleon it seemed absolutely necessary that he must be actively engaged—publicly, and as master. He could not get the law changed so that he could become a director; he could not quite risk an attack in the Directory. That pear was not yet ripe. He had wished to be sent to Rastadt to straighten matters there, but the Directory chose another man. Napoleon, resenting the slight, threatened, once too often, to resign. A Director (some say Rewbell, others LarÉvelliÈre) handed him a pen, with the challenge, “Write it, General!” Moulins interposed, and Napoleon beat a retreat, checkmated for the time.

Apparently, as a last resort, the expedition to Egypt was planned, both Napoleon and the Directory cordially agreeing upon one thing—that it was best for him to leave France for a while.

The attack on Egypt suggested itself naturally enough as a flank movement against England. The idea did not originate with Napoleon; it was familiar to the foreign policy of France, and had been urged upon the Bourbon kings repeatedly. With his partiality for the East, whose vague, mysterious grandeurs and infinite possibilities never ceased to fascinate him, the oft-rejected plan became to Napoleon a welcome diversion. Veiling his design under the pretence of a direct attack upon England, he bent all his energies to the preparations for the invasion of Egypt. Nominally belonging to Turkey, the ancient ally of France, Egypt was in fact ruled by the Mamelukes, a military caste which had, in course of time, evolved from the personal body-guard of Saladin. The reign of the Mamelukes was harsh and despotic; they paid little respect to religion, and none to law; and Napoleon thought that by telling the Sultan he would overthrow the Mamelukes in the Sultan’s interest, while he assured the subject Egyptians that he came to liberate them from Mameluke tyranny, he would deceive both Sultan and Egyptians. As it happened, he deceived neither.

It was a part of the scheme agreed on by Napoleon and the Directors that Talleyrand should go to Constantinople and gain over the Sultan to neutrality, if to nothing more favorable. With this understanding, Napoleon gathered up the best generals, the best troops, the best vessels, swept the magazines, cleaned out the directorial treasury, and even borrowed from the Institute its best savants, and weighed anchor at Toulon, May 18, 1798, for Alexandria. The wily Talleyrand did not go to Turkey, had apparently never intended to go, and that part of the plan failed from the beginning. English diplomats took possession of the Sultanic mind; and what they saw, the heir of the Prophet saw. To save herself from a movement which threatened her in the East, Great Britain warmed to the infidel, forgot crusading vows and traditions, guided infidel counsels, supplied infidel needs, and aimed infidel guns. So that from the day he set sail, Napoleon had against him all the resources of England, all the power of Ottoman arms, all the strength of Mameluke resistance, all the discouragement of native Egyptian hostility.

To reach Egypt at all it was necessary that he should run the extreme risk of encountering the British fleet. By the victory England had won over the Spanish allies of France off Cape St. Vincent (February, 1797), and over the Dutch at Camperdown (October, 1797), France was left without naval support. In a sea-fight between herself and England, all the advantage would have been with her foe. Conscious of this, Nelson did his utmost to come upon Napoleon during his voyage, and the two fleets passed each other once in the night; but Napoleon’s rare luck favored him, and Nelson missed his prey.

The capture of Malta was a part of Napoleon’s plan. This island fortress belonged to the Knights of St. John, a belated remnant of the ancient orders of chivalry, created for the purpose of retrieving Palestine from the infidel. These soldiers of the Cross had fallen upon evil days and ways; their armor very rusty indeed, their banners covered with dust, their spurs very, very cold. In a world which had seen a new dispensation come, the knights were dismally, somewhat ludicrously, out of place. Asked, What are you doing here? What do you intend to do? What is your excuse for not being dead? the knights would have been stricken dumb. No intelligible reply was possible. Camped there upon a place of strength and beauty, a fortress girdled by the Mediterranean, they were, in theory, Christendom’s outpost against the infidel. Christendom, in theory, was yet intent upon raising up champions who would tread in the steps of Godfrey, of Tancred, of Richard Coeur de Lion. In theory, Christendom was never going to rest till the tomb of Jesus had been redeemed, till the shadow of Mahomet should be lifted from the Holy Land. And so it happened that the knights had stopped at Malta, long ages ago, resting upon their arms, until such time as Christendom should rouse itself and send reËnforcement. The time had never come. The knights, they waited; but the crusader of Europe had gone home to stay. Once and again, as the centuries crept slowly by, the Church had turned in its sleep and mumbled something about the tomb of Christ; but the Church was only talking in its sleep, and the knights had continued to wait. A king, now and then, suddenly awakened to the fact that he was a very great scoundrel, must finally die, would probably go to hell, and therefore needed to redeem himself at the expense of the infidel, swore a great oath to renew the crusades; but such vows bore no fruit; the spasm of remorse passed over, and the knights continued to wait. Really, it was not so hard upon them. They had a royal home, a royal treasury, a royal standing and a sacred. They lived a pleasant life; they doffed iron armor, and wore silks, velvets, and other precious stuffs more congenial to the flesh than metallic plates. They came to love such things as good eating, joyous entertainments, the smiles and the favors of fair ladies, and the sweetness of doing nothing generally.

Malta being defended by such decadent champions, it was easily captured by such a man as Napoleon Bonaparte. There was, perhaps, bribery; there was, certainly, collusion, and the resistance offered was but nominal. General Caffarelli probably voiced the general sentiment when he said, looking around at the vast strength of the fortress, “It is lucky we had some one to let us in.” Leaving a garrison under Vaubois to hold the place, Napoleon again set sail for Egypt.

Nelson was flying hither and thither, on the keenest of hunts, hoping to pounce upon the crowded vessels of the French, and to sink them. Storms, fog, bad guessing, and Napoleonic luck fought against the English, and they missed the quarry completely. Napoleon hastily landed near Alexandria, July 2, 1798, marched upon the city, and easily took it. After a short rest, the army set out by the shortest route for Cairo. The sun was terribly hot, the desert a burning torment, water it was almost impossible to supply, food failed, and the skirmishes of the enemy from behind sandhills, rocks, or scraggy bushes harassed the march, cutting off every straggler. Bitterly the soldiers complained, contrasting this torrid wilderness to the fertile beauty of Italian plains. Even the generals became disheartened, indignant, almost mutinous. Men like Murat and Lannes dashed their plumed and braided hats on the ground, trampled them, and damned the day that had brought them to this barren Hades.

The common soldiers bitterly recalled Napoleon’s promise that each of them should make enough out of the campaign to buy seven acres of land. Was this desert a fair sample of the land they were to get? If so, why the limit of seven acres?

The trying march was over at last, the Nile was reached, and then came the relief of battle and easy victory. The Mamelukes were great horsemen, the best in the world, perhaps; but they had no infantry and no artillery worth the name. In the hands of Napoleon they were children. Battle with Mamelukes was target practice, during which French marksmen, in hollow square, shot out of their saddles the simple-minded Mamelukes, who fancied that they could do everything with horses.

In all of the battles which took place, the tactics of the French were the same: “Form square: savants and asses to the centre.” Then, while the baggage, the learned men, and the long-eared donkeys rested securely within the lines, a steady fire of musketry and cannon emptied the saddles of the heroes of the desert.

To see the Mamelukes come thundering on to the attack, was magnificent; to see them drop in the sand without having been able to reach the French, was pitiful.

After a skirmish at Shebreis, in which the Mamelukes were driven off without any difficulty (July 13), came the encounter known as the Battle of the Pyramids (July 21), chiefly remembered now as that in which Napoleon dramatically exclaimed to his troops as they were being made ready for the struggle, “Soldiers, from yonder pyramids forty centuries look down upon you!” The telescope had revealed to him the fact that the artillery of the enemy consisted of guns taken from their flotilla on the river. These guns were not on carriages, like field artillery, and therefore they could not be moved at will during battle. This suggested to him a change in his own dispositions. A portion of his army being left to deal with the stationary artillery and the infantry which manned the feeble, sand-bank intrenchments, he directed the other to march out of the range of the guns, for the purpose of throwing against the Mameluke horse his own cavalry, supported by infantry and artillery. Murad Bey, the commander-in-chief of the opposing army, seized the moment when this change was being made by Napoleon to launch against him a mass of seven thousand Mameluke horse. This mighty host struck the division of Desaix when it was in motion, and therefore unprepared for cavalry. For an instant the French, at least of that column, were in peril. So quickly, however, did the veterans of Desaix form squares, so quickly did Napoleon see the point of danger and send relief, that the battle was never in real doubt. The camp of the Arabs was stormed, the Mameluke cavalry slaughtered; and, inflicting a loss computed at ten thousand on the enemy, the French had but a score or two killed and one hundred and twenty wounded.

The Mameluke power was shattered by the Battle of the Pyramids, and the conquest of Egypt was practically achieved. For some days Frenchmen fished the Nile for dead Mamelukes, to secure the wealth which those warriors carried on their persons.

Arrived in Cairo, Napoleon did his utmost to assure the permanence of his triumph. He caused the religion, the laws, the customs of the country, to be respected. Pursuing his policy of trying to deceive the Mahometans, he proclaimed that the French were the true champions of the Prophet; that they had chastised the Pope, and conquered the Knights of Malta; therefore the people of Egypt should be convinced that they were the enemies of the Christians.

“We are the true Mussulmans!” read the proclamation. “Did we not destroy the Pope because he had preached a crusade against the Mahometans? Did we not destroy the Knights of Malta because they said that God had directed them to fight the followers of Mahomet?”

He cultivated the influential men of the country, and encouraged the belief that he himself might become a Mussulman. In truth, Napoleon admired Mahomet greatly, and he never shrank from saying so, then or afterward. In the classification of the books of his private library, made in his own writing, he grouped under the same head the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, and Mythology, and Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws. These he enumerated in the class of Politics and Morals. He reminded his soldiers that the Roman legions had respected all religions. He did not remind them that Roman rulers had considered all religions as equally useful for purposes of government; nor that Roman philosophers had regarded them all as equally sons and daughters of that primeval pair, Fear and Fraud—fear of the unknown, and the fraud which practises upon it.

Napoleon found that Mahometan priests were as eager to convert him as Christian priests had been to capture Constantine and Clovis. In the one case as in the other, the priests were willing to compromise the creed to gain the convert. Napoleon did not quite join the faithful himself, but he approved of General Menou’s apostasy, and he ostentatiously observed the Mahometan festivals.

Both Napoleon and Bourrienne denied, as others assert, that he went into the mosque, sat cross-legged on the cushion amid the faithful, muttered Koran verses as they did, and rolled head and body about as a good Mussulman should. If he did not do so it was because he thought, as a matter of policy, that the act would not compensate him for the trouble and the ridicule. He afterward did just about that much for the Christian religion; and faith had no more to do with his conduct in the one case than in the other. As he went farther with the Jacobins than it was pleasant to remember, so he probably went farther with the Mahometans than he cared to admit; for he certainly prevailed upon the priesthood to do that which was forbidden by the Koran unless he was a convert. They officially directed the people to obey him and pay him tribute. Nor is there any doubt that the leaders among the priests liked him well enough, personally, to watch over his personal safety. General KlÉber, who succeeded him in command, neglected to pay the chiefs those attentions Napoleon had lavished upon them, and in turn they neglected him. To this, perhaps, his assassination was due.

Regarding Egypt as a colony to be developed, rather than a conquest to be despoiled, Napoleon devoted every attention to civil affairs. He reorganized the administration, conforming as nearly as possible to established customs. He set up a printing-press, established foundries and manufactories, planned storage dams and canals to add to the cultivable soil, organized an institute, and started a newspaper. He sent his savants abroad to dig, delve, excavate, explore, map the present and decipher the past of Egypt. Napoleon himself used his leisure in visiting historic places and making plans for the material progress of the benighted land. He discovered traces of the ancient canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, and formed the resolution of reopening it. He himself located the lines for new canals. He crossed the Red Sea ford which the Israelites used in fleeing from bondage, and, staying too long on the opposite shore, was caught by the rising tide, and came near meeting the fate of Pharaoh and his host. More self-possessed than Pharaoh, Napoleon halted when he realized his peril, caused his escort to form a circle around him, and each to ride outward. Those who found themselves going into deeper water drew back, followed those who had found fordable places; and, by this simple manoeuvre, he deprived needy Christendom of a new text and a modern instance.

While on the farther shore Napoleon visited the Wells of Moses, and heard the petition of the monks of Sinai. At their request, he confirmed their privileges, and put his name to the charters which bore the signature of Saladin.

A terrible blow fell upon him in August when Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the famous battle of the Nile. There is doubt as to who was to blame for this calamity. Napoleon cast it upon Brueys, the French admiral who lost the battle; and Brueys, killed in the action, could not be heard in reply. He had drawn up his ships in semicircle so close to the shore that he considered himself comparatively safe, protected as he was by land batteries at the doubtful end of his line.

But Nelson, on the waters, was what Bonaparte was on land—the boldest of planners and the most desperate of fighters. He came up at sunset, and did not wait till morning, as Brueys expected. He went right to work, reconnoitred his enemy, conceived the idea of turning his line, getting in behind with some of his ships, and thus putting the French between two fires. The manoeuvre was difficult and dangerous, but succeeded. Nelson rammed some of his ships in on the land side of the amazed Brueys, who had made no preparations for such a manoeuvre. Caught between two terrible fires, Brueys was a lost man from the beginning. It was a night battle, awful beyond the power of description. When it ended next day, the English had practically obliterated the French fleet; Napoleon was cut off from Europe. When the news reached him, he was stunned, almost crushed; but rallying immediately, he wrote to KlÉber, “The English will compel us to do greater things in Egypt than we had intended.”

Desaix conquered Upper Egypt; organized resistance to the invaders ceased for the time, and from the cataracts to the sea Napoleon held the valley down. The administration began to work smoothly, taxes seemed lighter because more equitably distributed, and the various enterprises Napoleon had set on foot began to show some life. He enrolled natives in his army, and formed a body of Mamelukes which afterward appeared so picturesquely in France. Two young Mamelukes, Roustan and Ibrahim, given him by one of the pachas, became his personal attendants, and served him faithfully till his power was broken in 1814.

The ruin of the fleet was not the only grief of Napoleon in the months which followed. Junot had acted the part of the candid friend, and had revealed to Napoleon the secret of Josephine’s infidelities. Captain Hypolite Charles had reappeared in the absence of the husband, and was now living with the wife at Malmaison. So openly was this connection kept up that the Director, Gohier, a friend of Josephine, advised her to divorce Napoleon and marry Charles. The first shock of Junot’s revelation threw Napoleon into a paroxism of wrath, then into a stupor of despair and dull disgust with everything. Then, by a reaction, natural, perhaps, to a man of his temperament, he threw himself into libertine excesses. Prior to this period his morals, considering the times and the temptations, had been remarkably pure. Henceforth he was occasionally to give himself a license which scandalized even the French officers. Scorning subterfuge and concealment, he became as bold as any born king, a rake by divine right, in the shamelessness of his amours. He appeared in public at Cairo with Madame Foures, his mistress, riding in the carriage by his side; and if Bourrienne tells the truth on Napoleon, and Carlyle tells no lie on Peter the Great, the one was about as obscene as the other while the lustful impulse prevailed.