In spite having reached the position of bishop in the Catholic Church, Talleyrand was a staunch Freemason who, during the early years of the Revolution, had been a supporter of the Duke of Orléans. Talleyrand had been a member of the prestigious lodge Les Philalethes in Paris, and of the lodge Les Amis Réunis (to which Marat, Sieyès and Condorcet also belonged).27 Les Philalethes in Paris had been much involved with Cagliostro's Egyptian Rite back in 1784 – 5, where it was said that many of their members joined his lodge in Paris. The Freemason Henry Evans explains: The controversy between Cagliostro and the Lodge of Philalethes (or ‘Lovers of Truth’) is Masonic history. On February 15, 1785, the members of the Philalethes, with Savalette de Langes at their head, met in Paris to discuss questions of importance regarding Freemasonry, such as its origin, essential nature, relations with the occult sciences, etc … among them being French and Austrian princes, councillors, financiers, barons, ambassadors, officers of the army, doctors, farmers, a general, and last but not least two professors of magic. M. de Langes was a royal banker, who had been prominent in the old Illuminati. A summons had been sent to Cagliostro to attend the convention, and he had assured the messenger that he would take part in its deliberations. But he changed his mind and demanded that the Philalethes adopt the constitutions of the Egyptian Rite, burn their archives, and be initiated into the Mother Lodge at Lyons [‘Triumphant Wisdom’], intimating that they were not in possession of the true Masonry. He deigned, as he said, to extend his hand over them, and consented ‘to send a ray of light into the darkness of their temple.’ The Baron von Gleichen was deputed to see Cagliostro and ask for more detailed information, and at the same time to request the presence of the members of the Mother Lodge at the convention. Renewed correspondence took place, but Cagliostro would not recede from his position. Finally three delegates from the Philalethes, among them the Marquis de Marnésia of French le-Comte, repaired to Lyons, and were initiated into Egyptian Masonry. In their report to the convention occur the following significant words: ‘His [Cagliostro's] doctrine ought to be regarded as sublime and pure; and without having a perfect acquaintance with our language, he employs it as did the prophets of old …’28
Could any of this ‘Egyptian’ hype have influenced Talleyrand in any way when he later began to push the idea of an ‘Egyptian expedition’ to Napoleon? It seems plausible, particularly since there were existing precedents for a French invasion of Egypt.
In 1249, five years after his army had captured the Cathar stronghold at Montségur, King Louis IX landing at the port of Damietta with a force of French knights and attempted to win control of Egypt. The king was defeated and captured by the Arabs at Mansoura, a small town on the road to Cairo, but was eventually ransomed for a huge sum. Undeterred Louis IX was to organize a second attempt to seize Egypt in 1270, this time approaching across the desert from a landing-point in Tunisia. But terrible diseases afflicted the French invaders and the king himself died on the desert trek.
A few centuries later, in 1672, the famous mathematician and philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz, presented Louis XIV with a secret plan for a full-scale invasion of Egypt.29 Louis XIV was then at war with Holland and ultimately turned down the plan – the real object of which may have been to divert his attention from European conquests by getting him to focus instead on a ‘universal mission’ to unite East and West in the style of Alexander the Great.
Scholars suspect Leibniz to have been a member of the ‘invisible’ brotherhood of the Rosicrucians.30 It is also known that he was for a long while in contact with the Jesuit and Hermetic-Cabalist, Athanasius Kircher, with whom he shared an interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs and obelisks.31 Kircher appears to have influenced Leibniz in his mathematical and philosophical research and especially in his studies of ancient languages which in due course would become a personal obsession.32
The idea of an invasion of Egypt still did not go away. Other similar plans were later proposed by the Duke of Choiseul, minister of foreign affairs under Louis XV.33 Choiseul was among the very first of the high aristocrats of France to become a Freemason.34 He was also a bitter enemy of the Jesuits whom he eventually managed to have banned from France in 1764. His wife, the Duchess of Choiseul, was a regular participant in the adoption lodge ‘Isis’ that Cagliostro had opened at Paris in 1785, and had even been nominated as the lodge's Grand Mistress at one stage.35 Being the man responsible for the modernization of the French fleet, Choiseul was the authority on any naval invasion France cared to consider. But his project, too, was eventually shelved.
So when Talleyrand put forward his plan for the invasion of Egypt in early 1798, it was at first received with some hesitation. On the one hand Napoleon was wary of crossing the Mediterranean at a time when the British fleet under Horatio Nelson was actively seeking French prey. On the other hand the prospect of a glorious, and seemingly easy victory evoking the exploits of Alexander and Caesar was extremely tempting and Napoleon found it difficult to ignore. Intelligence reports had shown that the port of Alexandria was manned by a small and poorly-trained Arab garrison that was hardly a match for modern French battleships and Napoleon's elite troops.
Trouble with Joséphine
There were painful personal considerations bearing down on Napoleon when he took the decision to invade Egypt. These involved his wife, Joséphine. The couple had been married for barely two years and already Joséphine had been unfaithful with a young officer called Hippolyte Charles. Indeed a few months after their wedding in 1796 Napoleon – then away waging war in Italy – seems to have sensed that something was wrong with Joséphine's behavior and was prompted to write her this rather immature letter: I write you, my beloved one, very often, and you write very little. You are wicked and naughty, very naughty, as much as you are fickle. It is unfaithful so to deceive a poor husband, a tender lover! Ought he to lose all his enjoyments because he is so far away, borne down with toil, fatigue, and hardship? Without his Joséphine, without the assurance of her love, what is left him upon earth? What can he do? … Adieu, adorable Joséphine; one of these nights your door will open with a great noise, as a jealous person, and you will find me in your arms. A thousand loving kisses.36
In November 1796, Joséphine made a trip to Genoa with Hippolyte Charles, which provoked anger and emotional confusion in Napoleon. Although he now strongly suspected his wife of infidelity, his huge pride and obsessive love caused him to react paradoxically: I do not love you anymore! On the contrary, I detest you. You are a vile, mean, beastly slut. You don't write to me at all. You don't love your husband … Soon I will be holding you in my arms, then I will cover you with a million kisses, burning like the equator …37
On 5 March 1798, amidst eloquent orations evoking France's ‘universal mission’ and the alleged need to thwart British trade with India, the Directory voted in favour of a military expedition to Egypt to be headed by Napoleon. The vote was kept secret until the fleet actually set sail from Toulon on 19 May 1798.38 According to British historian Aubrey Noakes, Napoleon had wanted Joséphine to come along, probably to keep her away from mischief in Paris, but she had stubbornly refused.39 But Vincent Cronin, in his biography of Napoleon, says the opposite, that it was Joséphine who desperately wanted to go to Egypt but that it was Napoleon who refused her.40 Either way the result was that Joséphine stayed behind with strict orders from Napoleon not to see Hippolyte Charles ever again. Apparently a rather odd exchange of words took place between Napoleon and Joséphine as he prepared to board the flagship, l’Orient, bound for Egypt: ‘When will you return?’ She murmured.
‘Six months, six years, perhaps never.’ Bonaparte replied indifferently. As the boat pushed off from the quay, Joséphine stepped forward with one last message: ‘Good bye, Good bye! If you go to Thebes [Luxor], do send me a little obelisk …’41
And so, in this tense emotional mood, Napoleon set out for Egypt on his epic adventure of discovery and glory. In spite of Joséphine's disloyalty and frivolity, he was still madl
y in love with her, and fervently believed in their historical destiny together. Now, perhaps more than ever, he must have wanted to impress on her his heroism and unique sense of mission.
‘We who have destroyed the Pope …’
When the French fleet reached Alexandria on 1 July 1798, an excited Napoleon issued a rather curious proclamation to the Egyptian people, who were under the supposedly oppressive rule of the Mameluks:42 People of Egypt! You will be told that I come to destroy your religion. Do not believe it. Reply that I come to restore your rights and punish the usurpers, and that I venerate more than the Mameluks, Allah, his Prophet and the Koran … There formerly existed in Egypt great cities, great canals, great commerce; by what means have they all been destroyed if not by the avarice, the injustice, and the tyranny of the Mameluks? … Sheikhs! Imams! Go tell the people that we are the friends of true Muslims. Is it not we who have destroyed the Pope who preached that war must be made on Muslims? Is it not we who have destroyed the Knights of Malta because these madmen believed that God willed them to make war on Muslims? Is it not we who have been long friends with the Sultan and the enemies of his enemies? …43
There is a very revealing color etching by the Parisian printer A. H. Basset dating from that time which shows what Napoleon might have had in mind.44 In the top register Napoleon is seen in the center of the scene standing next to the pyramids of Giza and receiving the key of Egypt from two Arabs kneeling at his feet. Above Napoleon are two angels holding a wreath-crown; one angel represents ‘Glory’ and the other ‘Renown’. In the lower register Napoleon is shown pointing to a large glowing triangle (the Supreme Being) hovering next to him, and seems to be inviting representatives of all the known religions to venerate the universal ‘God’ symbolized by the glowing triangle.
After Napoleon's capture of Cairo in late July 1798, the Arabs played along with his offer of a covenant between the new French Republic and Islam, all the while secretly hating him and his troops as much as they had hated the crusaders of bygone days. But it was a case of bargaining now with the devil until a way was found to throw him out. Meanwhile it must have been at about this time that General Jean-Andoche Junot, through a personal letter he had received from Paris, brought Napoleon irrefutable evidence that Joséphine had been seen staying at an inn with Hippolyte Charles immediately after he had left her in Toulon. Napoleon was devastated. In retaliation he began an open affair in Cairo with Pauline Fourès, the pretty wife of a young officer.45
The folie égyptienne, as historians would later call Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, was to cost France dearly: the complete destruction of the French invasion fleet at Abu Qir by the British under Nelson, and the loss of nearly 40 per cent of the expeditionary army which, at the outset, had totaled some 54,000 men. Worse still was the humiliating surrender of the survivors to the British forces under Ralph Abercromby at Alexandria.
Napoleon himself returned to France long before the surrender and somehow managed to survive this military and political disaster. Soon enough an effective propaganda campaign began to convert the reality of the defeat into the perception of a cultural victory.
The savants and the destiny of Napoleon
Napoleon had taken along to Egypt 167 ‘savants’ – scholars and the erudite from many different disciplines – amongst them surveyors, mathematicians, astronomers, engineers, botanists, linguists, poets, artists and architects, all hand-picked from the newly formed Institut National de France. It had been the mathematician Gaspard Monge who had personally recruited them. Monge was one of Napoleon's closest friends and advisors, and considered the young general as his ‘adopted son.’46 The reader will recall that Monge was a prominent Freemason from the Nine Sisters lodge in Paris and had been directly responsible with Charles-Gilbert Romme for the introduction of the Republican calendar modeled on the Egyptian solar year. While in Egypt, Monge founded the Institut d’Égypte in Cairo, a scientific and Encyclopédist body modeled on its French counterpart, the Institut National. Monge acted as president of the Institut d’Égypte with Napoleon acting as his vice-president.47 Many of the other savants and officers who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt were also Freemasons, notably his right hand man, General Jean-Baptiste Kléber, who is said to have founded the first modern Masonic lodge on Egyptian soil.48
Also among the savants was Dominique-Vivant Denon, an artist with an incredible talent for freehand sketching and the making of etchings. A highly educated man, Denon had been a diplomat in Russia and Sweden before the Revolution. He had been about to face the guillotine in December 1793 for his alleged royalist sympathies when he had been rescued from the blade by his friend, the painter Jacques-Louis David. A prominent member of the National Convention, David, had masterminded the celebrations of ‘Isis of the Bastille’ and in December 1793 was busy promoting the Cult of the Supreme Being with Robespierre.
Denon, who was talented, sophisticated and very handsome, was a favourite with the ladies of the aristocracy. He was highly admired by Catherine II of Russia and had no difficulty in winning the favour of the up-and-coming Joséphine who introduced him to Napoleon. Joséphine urged Napoleon to take Denon to Egypt, but as the latter was not a member of the Institut National, Napoleon had at first resisted the idea. Eventually, however, as was often the case, he yielded to Joséphine's demands. It was a decision he would not regret, for it was Denon, through the publication of his spectacular drawings, who would find the magic to transform Napoleon's Egyptian fiasco into a cultural victory for him in person and for the French Republic as a whole.
Albeit tarnished a little by the defeat at Abu Qir and the humiliating surrender of the expeditionary army at Alexandria, Napoleon's ‘conquest’ of Egypt, allowed him to stand alongside history's most illustrious military heroes and empire builders: Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar. And now here, in flesh and blood, was France's own Napoleon the Great. He had ‘returned from Egypt’ like some mythical solar hero ready to found a new French Empire modeled on the empire of Charlemagne. The famous Description de l’Égypte, which was published under the supervision of Denon, was dedicated to ‘Napoleon le Grand’, who is depicted on the frontcover as an Apollo-Sol Invictus, hero-king. There he may still be seen, riding the solar chariot under the protection of the Egyptian symbol of the winged solar disc – into which, in this case, has been placed a star.
Is it an accident that at about the same time, but on the other side of the Atlantic, the same symbolic representation of Apollo-Sol Invictus – including the same solar chariot and the same winged solar disk with the same star – would be used in connection with George Washington? We will return to this mystery in the next chapter.
Few historians would disagree that the driving force behind Napoleon's military conquests was his unshakable belief in his own destiny – the belief that he had somehow been chosen by history to unite all Europe, and perhaps even the whole world, under one, universal rule. Since his vision for this rule was based on French republican ideals, virtues and laws, Napoleon, by his own reckoning, had become the embodiment of the Revolution and its universal, almost sacred ‘mission’.
After his return from Egypt in 1799 and now barely 30 years of age, Napoleon had the Directory proclaim him ‘first consul’ of the Republic, a term clearly drawn from republican Rome. In 1802 he was voted consul for life and soon, with his large and well-trained armies, he had annexed to France vast territories in Europe that included Germany, Austria and Italy. He was, by then ‘emperor’ of Europe in everything but title.
Then in 1804, now 35 years of age, Napoleon went for the ultimate prize.
The Holy ‘French’ Empire
On Christmas Day AD 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish general, Charlemagne, as first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne was in Rome with a large army to ‘protect’ the pope but the legend has it that he had merely entered the Basilica of St. Peter to take part in the Mass. When he approached the altar and kneeled to pray, the pope placed a golden crown on his
head and caused the congregation to cry out: Life and victory to Charles the August, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!49
It is said that the pope even prostrated himself before Charlemagne and paid him homage in the manner once accorded to ancient Roman emperors, which also included anointing him with sacred oil.
After Charlemagne's ‘coronation’, no other emperor or king had ever again been given the great honour of being physically crowned by a pope. A thousand years later, however, Napoleon Bonaparte decided it was high time to change all that.50 To this end he had Pope Pius VII forcefully brought to Paris in late 1804. The coronation, meticulously planned by Napoleon himself, took place in the Cathedral of Notre Dame which, until very recently, had served as the ‘Temple of the goddess Reason’. Just before the climax of the event, Napoleon stepped forward, took the crown away from the pope's hands and, in a grand symbolic gesture, crowned himself emperor. Under the bemused gaze of the pope, Napoleon then took a smaller crown and placed it on the head of the lovely and promiscuous Joséphine, making her empress.51 David was to immortalize this moment in an appropriately huge painting that may be viewed today in the Louvre. Also marking the occasion, the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, a Freemason, a member of the Nine Sisters lodge, and formerly a close friend of Cagliostro, made a marble bust of Joséphine.52
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