The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon. Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases
the generous treatment observed towards Wurmser that secured to me the submission of the Grand Master and his Knights.”
3rd. The conquest of Egypt was planned with as much judgment as it was executed with skill. If Saint Jean d’Acre had surrendered to the French army, a great revolution would have taken place in the East; the General-in-chief would have established an empire there, and the destinies of France would have taken a different turn.
4th. On its return from the campaign of Syria, the French army had scarcely sustained any loss; it remained in the most formidable and prosperous condition.
5th. The departure of the General-in-chief for France was the result of a grand and magnanimous plan. How ridiculous is the imbecility of those who consider that departure as an escape or a desertion!
6th. Kleber fell a victim to Mussulman fanaticism. There is not the slightest foundation for the absurd calumny which would have attributed this catastrophe to the policy of his predecessor, or to the intrigues of his successor.
7th, and lastly. It is pretty well proved that Egypt would have remained for ever a French province if any other but Menou had been appointed for her defence; nothing but the gross errors of that general could have lost us the possession of Egypt.
The Emperor said, that no army in the world was less fit for the Egyptian expedition than that which he led there—the army of Italy. It would be difficult to describe the disgust, the discontent, the melancholy, the despair of that army, on its first arrival in Egypt. The Emperor himself saw two dragoons run out of the ranks and throw themselves into the Nile. Bertrand had seen the most distinguished generals, such as Lannes and Murat, in momentary fits of rage, throw their laced hats on the sand and trample on them in the presence of the soldiers. The Emperor explained these feelings surprisingly well. “This army,” said he, “had fulfilled its career. All the individuals belonging to it were satiated with wealth, rank, pleasure, and consideration; they were not fit for the Deserts and the fatigues of Egypt: and,” continued he, “had that army been placed in other hands than mine, it is difficult to say what excesses might not have been committed.”
More than one conspiracy was formed to carry away the flags to Alexandria, and other things of the same sort. The influence, the character, and the glory of the General, could alone restrain the troops. One day, Napoleon, losing his temper in his turn, rushed among a group of discontented generals, and addressing himself, to the tallest, “You have held mutinous language,” said he, with vehemence, “take care that I do not fulfil my duty; it is not your being six foot high that should save you from being shot in a couple of hours.”
With regard, however, to their conduct before the enemy, the Emperor said that this army never ceased to be the army of Italy; that it still preserved the same admirable character. The most difficult party to manage was that which the Emperor used to call “the faction of the sentimentalists,” whom it was impossible to keep under any restraint; their minds were diseased; they spent the night in gazing on the moon for the reflected image of the idols they had left in Europe. At the head of this party was Berthier, the weak and spiritless Berthier, who, when the General-in-chief was preparing to sail from Toulon, posted night and day from Paris to tell him that he was unwell, and could not accompany him, though he was the head of the staff. The General-in-chief took not the smallest notice of what he said, and Berthier, finding himself no longer at the feet of the fair one who had despatched him with the excuse, set sail along with him! On his arrival in Egypt, he became a prey to ennui, and was unable to subdue his tender recollections;—he solicited and obtained permission to return to France. He took leave of Napoleon, and bade him a formal adieu; but shortly returned with his eyes full of tears, saying that, after all, he would not dishonour himself, and that he could not separate his destiny from that of his General.
Berthier’s love was mingled with a kind of worship. Adjoining the tent, destined for his own use, he always had another prepared, and furnished with the magnificence of the most elegant boudoir; this was consecrated to the portrait of his mistress, before which he would sometimes even go so far as to burn incense. This tent was pitched even in the deserts of Syria. Napoleon said, with a smile, that his temple had oftener than once been profaned by a worship less pure, through the clandestine introduction of foreign divinities.
Berthier never relinquished his passion, which sometimes carried him to the very verge of idiotcy. In his first account of the battle of Marengo, young Visconti, his aide-de-camp, who was but a captain at most, was mentioned five or six times in remembrance of his mother. “One would have thought,” said Napoleon, “that the youth had gained the battle.” Surely the General-in-chief must have been ready to throw the paper in the writer’s face!
The Emperor calculated that he had given Berthier forty millions during his life; but he supposed that from this weakness of his mind, his want of regularity, and his ridiculous passion, he had squandered away a great part of it.
The discontent of the troops in Egypt happily vented itself in sarcastic jokes: this is the humour which always bears a Frenchman through difficulties. They bore a great resentment against General Caffarelli, whom they believed to have been one of the promoters of the expedition. Caffarelli had a wooden leg, having lost one of his limbs on the banks of the Rhine; and whenever the soldiers saw him hobbling-past, they would say, loud enough for him to hear,—“That fellow does not care what happens; he is certain, at all events, to have one foot in France.”
The men of science who accompanied the expedition also came in for their share of the jests. Asses were very numerous in Egypt; almost all the soldiers possessed one or two, and they used always to call them their demi-savans.
The General-in-chief, on his departure from France, had issued a proclamation, in which he informed the troops that he was about to take them to a country where he would make them all rich; where they should each have seven acres of land at their disposal. The soldiers, when they found themselves in the midst of the Desert, surrounded by the boundless ocean of sand, began to question the generosity of their General: they thought he had observed singular moderation in having promised only seven acres. “The rogue,” said they, “might with safety give us as much as he pleases; we should not abuse his good nature.”
While the army was passing through Syria, there was not a soldier but was heard to repeat these lines from Zaire:—
Les Français sont lassés de chercher désormais
Des climats que pour eux le destin n’a point faits,
Ils n’abandonnent point leur fertile patrie,
Pour languir aux déserts de l’aride Arabie.
On one occasion, the General-in-chief, having a few moments’ leisure to look about the country, took advantage of the ebb-tide, and crossed on foot to the opposite coast of the Red Sea. Night surprised him on his return, and he lost his way in the midst of the rising tide. He was in the greatest danger, and very narrowly escaped perishing precisely in the same manner as Pharaoh. “This,” said Napoleon, “would have furnished all the preachers of Christianity with a splendid text against me.” On reaching the Arabian coast of the Red Sea, he received a deputation of the Cenobites of Mount Sinai, who came to implore his protection, and to request him to inscribe his name on the ancient register of their charters. Napoleon inscribed his name in the same list with those of Ali, Saladin, Ibrahim, and others! In allusion to this circumstance, or something of a similar kind, the Emperor observed that he had in the course of one year received letters from Rome and Mecca; the Pope addressing him as his dearest son, and the Sherif styling him the Protector of the holy Kaaba.
This singular coincidence, however, is scarcely surprising, with reference to him who has led armies both through the burning sands of the Tropic, and over the frozen Steppes of the North; who, when he narrowly escaped being swallowed up in the waves of the Red Sea, or might have perished in the flames of Moscow, was threatening the Indies from those two extreme points.
The General-in-chief shared the fatigues of the soldiers. The privations endured by every individual in the army were sometimes so great that they were compelled to dispute with each other for the smallest enjoyments, without the least distinction