Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

THE GENIUS OF LIBERTY3the Continent. Captain Jean-Honoré Horace Say, an engineer from a prominentHuguenot family and the brother of the eminent economist Jean-BaptisteSay, also reported for duty during those days in Toulon. In an anonymous memoirhistorians have traced to him, he recalled, “The . . . French Republic wantedat last to revenge itself on London for the defeats and adversities that afflictedour nascent liberty and through which the British Cabinet has sought, for manyyears, to strangle the inexorable expansion of a new republic, which sooner orlater must defeat them.” 3 Some officers hoped the fleet would head west, passthe straits of Gibraltar, and make immediately for England. Many thought thatdislodging King George III’s navy from the Mediterranean, as Bonaparte’s artilleryhad displaced the British from their brief occupation of Toulon itself in1793, might be a preliminary to such an invasion. For this strategic purpose, theislands of Sardinia, Malta, and even Sicily would make sense as targets, as buildingblocks toward a French Mediterranean Empire.Some speculated that the force would strike at British links with India by attackingEgypt. British goods and soldiers bound for Calcutta most commonly, atthat time, sailed around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. But when British officialswished to send emergency dispatches, they could cut thousands of milesoff the journey by sending envoys via the Mediterranean to Alexandria, up theNile to Cairo, and thence overland to the Red Sea. There they could board vesselsthat glided past coffee-rich Yemen into the Arabian Sea and across the glassyIndian Ocean. This shorter route would not become commercially viable untilsteamships began plying these waters decades later, but it had strategic importancefor Britain’s communications with the Jewel in the Crown of its empire.Few officers thought an Egyptian campaign likely, but Moiret found that thecivilian intellectuals, scientists, and artists who had, somewhat mysteriously, beenrecruited to accompany the expedition put it forward with some certitude. TheCommission of Science and Arts consisted of 151 persons, 84 of them havingtechnical qualifications and another 10 being physicians, and they formed thelargest such body of experts to have accompanied a French military expedition. 4The twenty-eight-year-old Bonaparte himself had secretly departed Parisearly on the morning of 5 May, with his attractive wife, Josephine. Bonaparte,having determined to embark on a dangerous adventure, faced a painful personaldilemma. He was seriously thinking about taking Josephine with him onthe expedition. The previous winter, he had confronted her with gossip that shewas having an affair. She had denied it all. He believed her because he wantedto, but the rumors were true. It may be that he did not trust her to stay behindwithout him. He had no idea then that she had cut back to just one affair at a