by Alan Schom
This new expedition (and its controversial leader) had enemies, resulting in a potentially disastrous news leak to the semiofficial Moniteur. An item in that paper on April 1 announced that an expedition “of both a scientific and military nature” was forming, “having for its destination Egypt. By thus getting closer to the Indies [British India], its purpose will be to attack the English there.”[131] Meanwhile, of course, most of Bonaparte’s commanders and even most of the government’s high officials had remained in complete ignorance. In a subsequent attempt at damage control, and further to confuse the British, on April 4 the Moniteur carried an official government announcement that “General Bonaparte will be leaving for Brest within the next ten days to take command of the Army of England.”[132]
As for the naval arm of the enterprise, clearly the fleet and convoy would never sail on April 9 as ordered. Brueys’s fleet, which had already been at sea off and on for well over a year, had left Corfu weeks earlier but had not yet arrived. What is more, most of the warships would be in a poor state of repair after so many months at sea, while requiring largely new crews as a result of massive desertions. For all that, his tattered fleet of six French ships of the line and five commandeered Venetian battleships, attended by nine frigates (six of them French), were a welcome sight as they finally dropped anchor at Toulon on April 2.
The welcome received by Admiral Brueys, his officers, and crews was short-lived, however. Scarcely had he stepped ashore after his long absence from home than a dismayed Brueys was informed, on behalf of the Armaments Commission and Napoleon Bonaparte, that all the warships under his command were “to set sail again without delay,” with a respite only to revictual and take on troops for a new, undisclosed destination. Rubbing salt into the wound, the commission also informed Brueys that the naval treasury was empty and could not pay his men and officers their nine months’ back salaries!
Regardless of decisions made by men sitting at desks back in Paris, refitting and repairing an entire fleet required time, the admiral insisted. There was the further disagreeable task of unleashing press-gangs all along the coast to bring the ships’ complements up to minimal strength. This of course meant that when they did eventually sail it would be with largely untrained crews, and even then with the strict proviso “with as few foreigners as possible,” if the perennial problems of mass desertions and rampant misbehavior were to be checked. To this was added the unusual decision Brueys now took to dismiss a large number of incompetent or insubordinate officers, including five ships’ captains. What is more, he refused to put to sea again with less than six months’ provisions rather than the three designated. The actual task of pressing thousands of new sailors would be an onerous one at best. Once accomplished, discipline had to be maintained, he argued, and present regulations against and punishments for insubordination by officers and seamen — a debilitating problem throughout the entire fleet — were far too lax. The juries created during the Revolution to hear more serious cases at courts-martial should be eliminated and greater authority assigned to the captain, “including the right to apply the death penalty for cowardice in combat.” As for sailors who deserted in the face of the enemy, they “must be shot on the spot,” and desertion while still in port, “which has paralyzed our naval forces,” dealt with severely. “We now have to fight a powerful, well-trained enemy, with three times the number of vessels we have.” He concluded in very tough language to his naval chief in Paris: “The campaign we are about to undertake will be decisive for us. Either we will see the annhilation of our own navy, or else we will become the preponderant naval force in the whole of Europe. In the final analysis, then, the outcome of the entire expedition depends on our own success at sea over our rivals.” It was blunt talk but badly needed, laced with a few home truths that had to be taken seriously by the politicians in Paris if the French navy was to be rebuilt from the ruins wrought by the French Revolution.
In addition to the chaotic rush to launch this armada, there were some very odd ingredients. Commander-in-Chief Bonaparte, for instance, had announced his immediate need for French, Greek, and Arabic printing presses, and the seconding to the expedition of numerous celebrated savants and scholars, including astronomers, geometricians, naturalists, a geologist, a chemist, archaeologists, various Orientalist-interpreters, a bevy of engineers on loan from the department of roads and bridges, even a balloon specialist, and a brilliant, talented artist who would one day reorganize the entire Louvre while laying the basis for new Egyptological studies — Vivant Denon.
Thousands of troops soon converged on the Marseilles-Toulon area, most of them arriving by boat via the Rhône. And while the army paymaster was seeing to the disbursement of the first several million francs from Paris, the financially strapped Bonaparte was instructing General Schauenburg, then commanding the Armée d’Helvétie,[133] to seize three million francs from the Swiss treasury in Bern and ship this sum under guard to Lyons. Indeed, on top of the usual lack of the most elementary army supplies — shoes, muskets (of the twelve thousand additional ones just received, ten thousand were broken), artillery, gunpowder, not to mention transport vessels — the one commodity ever in short supply, crippling and delaying army and naval preparations alike, was ready cash (despite the earlier facile assurances of both Bonaparte and Talleyrand). The naval ordonnateur of Marseilles alone requested a staggering 5,837,377 francs for his port. Meanwhile Gaspard Monge, who had just arrived at Civitavecchia to spur the embarkation preparations, found to his utter consternation that work was at a virtual standstill. He asked Bonaparte for 2,500,000 francs immediately. In Corsica it was the same story, local suppliers refusing to cooperate until they were paid for past services. Nor was the position of the French fleet any better: They were still owed 1,800,000 francs for the past nine months, leading Brueys to plead with Napoleon for funds. Nevertheless Brueys remained 100 percent behind Bonaparte, indeed almost pathetically so, praising him to the skies while assuring him of his unswerving personal devotion as well as of his “purest intentions...for a successful expedition...and my attachment to our republican government.”
Despite the authorized expenditure of millions of francs, the purchase of vast quantities of arms and muntions, an extraordinarily complex array of army transfers of thousands of troops to the Mediterranean ports, and the rushed repairs and construction of ships, not to mention the seizure of more than two hundred vessels for the proposed expedition, it was only on April 12, 1798, that the Executive Directory finally issued the two long-awaited critical decrees concerning all this activity. At the Luxembourg Palace, the Directory announced the creation of a military force to be called the “Army of the Orient,” naming “Citizen Bonaparte, at present Commander in Chief of the Army of England,” as its chief. An accompanying decree confirmed that Bonaparte was to “direct the armed land and sea forces under his command against Egypt and seize that country.” At the same time he was ordered “to chase the English from all their possessions in the East, or wherever he finds them...destroying their commercial houses in the Red Sea.” He was to “cut off [and secure] the Isthmus of Suez and take all necessary measures required to assure the unimpeded and exclusive use of the Red Sea for the benefit of the French Republic,” while maintaining “good relations with the Grand Seigneur [Ottoman sultan] and his immediate subjects, insofar as it is in his ability to do so.”
In an introductory apologia for this unprovoked invasion and seizure of Ottoman territory, the Directory complained that the Mameluke beys “who have seized the government of Egypt” — making it appear as if this had just been done, instead of almost three hundred years earlier — “formed the closest ties with the English,” becoming totally dependent on them. In consequence the Mamelukes had “carried out the most blatant hostilities and the most horribly cruel acts against the French people, whom they now daily harass, pillage, and murder,” thereby leaving the French Republic with no recourse but to exercise “its duty of pursuing the enemies of the Republic in ever
y quarter.” The decree concluded that as England had gained complete control of the Cape of Good Hope, the French Republic had no alternative but to open...another route to reach “the Indies.” A third decree instructed Bonaparte also to “seize” Malta, because of “hostile acts” carried out against France by the Order of Malta and because of the declaration by its grand master five years earlier “insolently” refusing to recognize the newly formed first French Republic, resulting in “the paralysis of French navigation in the Mediterranean.” With these three decrees officially — if secretly — “promulgated,” from the viewpoint of the French government, henceforth the entire operation was now perfectly legal, permitting them to proceed with a clear conscience.
In the midst of all this mayhem, the very next day Commander-in-Chief Bonparte — as if not preoccupied enough with the innumerable problems encumbering the launching of this expedition — again reminded the world of his brilliance and the wide sweep of his outlook, as he presented the Directory with a “Note on the War with England.” In this lengthy analysis he informed the Directory that although the invasion plan for England had been postponed, it must not be discarded. In fact, he considered it an important element of the overall geopolitical strategy — one phase of a worldwide military operation, of which the invasion of Egypt was another — to bring haughty England to the negotiating table to conclude a lasting peace with France.
In this astonishing piece of Napoleona the commander in chief of the Army of the Orient presented one of the most illogical, indeed, preposterous pipe dreams of his career, calling for combined military operations to include twin landings in November 1798, one of forty thousand troops in England, launched from Boulogne in four hundred gunboats, and another of ten thousand men from Texel, in occupied Holland, destined for Scottish shores, while separate armies were conquering Egypt and India. He supported this proposal with an astonishingly lavish shipbuilding proposal for the French navy to counter the British fleet, including the expenditure of “forty to fifty million francs.”
As mad as the scheme appeared, so totally unrealistic in its expectations, given the very limited means available to France and its much smaller navy, nevertheless its triple objective of striking hard at England by simultaneous attacks on British India, Egypt, and British home shores was breathtaking. Bonaparte contended that only such a global operation could defeat England. But Bonaparte’s ignorance of British naval strategy and the inferior quality of French naval training, officers, and crews was considerable too. This was one of his principal weaknesses throughout his military career: He would make plans for a sweeping campaign against a powerful enemy based on his own wishes, without attempting to understand or take into account the opposing military forces, dispositions, or strategy — or his own failings.
It is hard to say how Bonaparte had the temerity to present this fantastic scheme, at the risk of being considered an utterly irresponsible young man — he was, after all, only twenty-eight — or simply a madman. Given the temper of Europe, with an unsettled new peace treaty with Austria just signed, and England still fomenting unrest on the Continent in an attempt to form a new anti-French coalition, France could hardly afford to strip its own frontiers and shores of army and naval forces. Indeed, Bonaparte was having enough difficulty scraping together the thirty-eight thousand or so troops he needed for his immediate Egyptian expedition — as late as April 15 it was still nine thousand men short, excluding the navy’s separate recruitment problems.
Then there was the question of finding enough powerful ships of the line to escort the slow-sailing and vulnerable convoy of transport vessels for the invasion of England (Bonaparte apparently having forgotten to include such an escort for them), with his fifty ships at Brest held down by the British fleet off Ushant. Nor did Napoleon take into consideration the matter of the hundreds of transport vessels needed in the Channel and North Sea, Brueys encountering sufficient problems finding the three hundred or so envisaged for the Egyptian convoy. And where were the naval and transport vessels for the proposed landing in India to come from? The discrepancies continued to pile up, as in the case of Talleyrand’s original proposal, which involved only five ships of the line as a naval escort for the Egyptian convoy, whereas Brueys estimated that he could not sail with fewer than thirteen battleships, exclusive of frigates and small naval escort vessels. Indeed, so short was Brueys of even unarmed transports that he was ordering additional vessels to be hastily built at Toulon and in Italy, while purchasing, borrowing, or simply confiscating foreign-owned neutral ships in Genoa, Marseilles, Civitavecchia, and Ajaccio.
The most elementary items required for an army, including muskets and shoes, were never found in sufficient quantities for the projected force for Egypt (Napoleon’s official proposal had been only twenty-eight-thousand men). Even something so simple as an adequate flour supply was proving difficult, and then in Corsica they suddenly discovered that — because of unexpected drought, immobilizing the waterless mills — sufficient wheat could not be milled for the smaller convoy forming there. Even the lack of wood — for ships’ ovens and later for the army in a barren Egypt — was to prove a trial.
In the final analysis, however, one fundamental weak link — on which ultimate success or failure depended — was, as Brueys rightly acknowledged, the French navy, in particular its lack of trained manpower. Desertions, poor pay and conditions, the risk of death, and unqualified and undisciplined landsmen and officers all took their toll. With officers little more reliable than their deserting crews, naval morale was the scandal of the armed forces, causing the newly promoted Vice Admiral Brueys no end of heartache — and he needed no fewer than 3,600 officers just for the fifty-six warships comprising his armada. If he could not find adequate crews and officers for his thirteen ships of the line, how were they to be provided with the additional sixty-two proposed by Bonaparte for his fantastic simultaneous invasion plan for India, Egypt, and Great Britain? Amassing even the ten to fifteen million francs (the ultimate figure was never revealed) for only the Egyptian expedition was a nightmare. But for Napoleon’s comprehensive project, it was a matter of fifty million francs — at a time when the French treasury was already on the verge of bankruptcy again, despite the vast booty channeled to France from occupied Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. And, with the new peace treaty in place, there would be no more trains of booty and war contributions. Peace would prove the ruination of the treasury. Finally Napoleon had failed to take one more factor into consideration for his plan — time.
Back in March, when he had first submitted the Egyptian proposal, it was after declaring the impossibility of invading England “for several years” because it would take that long to find the ships and men to build a new navy. But a month later he was talking about launching a much larger army by November 1798 — that very year. Ships had to be built and armaments ordered. It took weeks just to send out the orders for the timber, hemp, canvas, and other products needed for the construction of new vessels, which could then take up to two years to build. Additional cannon would have to be manufactured as well. In the best of circumstances, given unlimited funding, Bonaparte’s great new plan would take at least two-and-a-half years to implement, but he was proposing to launch this pipe dream in seven months.
Napoleon was never able to adapt his dreams to reality. Unfortunately Gaspard Monge was not available to study his latest proposal, nor was the practical Berthier. Nonetheless, what this great fantasy project did prove to the Directory was that General Bonaparte had a frighteningly brilliant brain, capable of coping with a vast, complicated — indeed global — strategy. If his plans were not feasible, they nevertheless were the product of a most extraordinary man, from whom much and anything might be expected — and perhaps feared — in the future. It was worth the price, and a relief to know, that he would soon be far away, at the other end of the Mediterranean.
*
To the spring of 1798, already so fraught with obstacles, decisions, and tension f
or Napoleon, was now added an element that first amazed and then stunned him. In March, Louise Compoint, a maid recently fired by Josephine under disagreeable circumstances, met with him to accuse his wife of carrying on an affair with a handsome young officer by the name of Louis-Hippolyle Quentin Charles, the very same Lieutenant Charles who had arrived in Milan with Josephine during the Italian campaign. What is more, the maid insisted, they were involved in illegal investments and speculations.[134] Napoleon, who knew only too well how vindictive and dishonest servants could be, questioned Josephine’s archenemy in the Bonaparte clan (all of whom had in fact rejected her), his brother Joseph. After making several enquiries, Joseph met with Napoleon on March 19 to give his report, confirming everything...and more.
Josephine had met Charles in April 1796 and had been carrying on a passionate affair with him ever since. Throughout 1796 and 1797, during the Italian campaign, Napoleon’s presence and that of his staff presented the lovers with some obstacles, but they managed to conclude in grand style with an orgy in Venice following the signing of the Treaty of Campo Formio, just prior to their return to France. Then, while Napoleon was en route to Rastadt, Josephine and Charles had again traveled together in her carriage (at Napoleon’s expense), taking several weeks to cross the Alps, Charles leaving before the carriage crossed the frontier. On his wife’s arrival in Paris on January 2, 1798 — weeks late — Napoleon had been furious but totally unaware of the lieutenant sharing her favors and affections. Moreover Joseph, himself deeply involved in all sorts of business dealings and investments, including shady ones, informed his brother that Josephine and Charles were involved with Barras and others as investors in the Bodin Company, which specialized first in war contracts — many of them fraudulent, and all enormously lucrative — with the Army of Italy, and later in the purchase and sale of hundreds of national properties, particularly in northern occupied lands, including estates, abbeys, and convents.
