Napoleon in Egypt

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter three of the Story of Napoleon by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
Patrick Seville. Chapter three, Napoleon in Egypt. After the Treaty
of Campoformio was quite settled, Napoleon said good bye to

(00:20):
his army and set out for Paris. When he arrived,
the people greeted him eagerly and thronged to see him.
They changed the name of the street in which he
lived to Victory Street. But the rulers the directory had
begun to be afraid of this imperious soldier, who looked
so small and delicate, and who had yet a will

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of iron, and seemed to hold the fate of nations
in his hand. They were jealous of him, too, for
wherever he went it was the conqueror of Italy who
was cheered, not the rulers of France. Every soldier declared
that it was high time to be done with lawyers
and make the little corporal king. France and Britain were

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at this time bitter enemies, and the French were eager
to conquer Britain. So Napoleon decided to carry out a
plan which he had long thought of, that was to
conquer Egypt, to found a colony there, and thus in
some way injured Britain's trade with India and the East.
Egypt at this time was claimed by the Turks and

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formed part of the Ottoman Empire. France and Turkey were
at peace, but that made a little difference to Napoleon.
The Directory agreed to Napoleon's plan for conquering Egypt. They
were very anxious to get the better of Britain in
some way, and they were not a little anxious to
get rid of Napoleon and keep him busy at something
away from France. For this expedition into Egypt, Napoleon gathered

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together about twenty thousand of his finest soldiers and cleverest officers,
And although the preparations were made with great secrecy, the
British government learned that something was going on. So Nelson
was sent with some ships to watch the Mediterranean. But
in May, when the French fleet was ready to sail,
a great storm arose. It did such damage to the

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British ships that Nelson was obliged to put into a
port in the island of Sardinia to repair them. As
soon as Napoleon knew that the way was clear, he
gave orders to sail. On a beautiful May morning, just
as the sun was rising, the great fleet sailed out
on the waters of the Mediterranean. Soldiers said Napoleon to

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them as they set out, you are one of the
wings of the army of England. All eyes of Europe
are upon you. You were going to do more than you
have ever done, for the prosperity of your fatherland, for
the good of man, and for your own glory. Besides
speaking to them in this grand way, Napoleon promised each
man that he should come home rich enough to buy

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six acres of land. When Nelson found that Napoleon had
left Toulon, he sailed up and down the Mediterranean looking
for him, but he could not find him. Meanwhile, Napoleon
reached Malta, took possession of the island, left to garrison
a Frenchman there, and sailed on his way to Egypt.
On the thirtieth of June, just as the sun was setting,

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Napoleon arrived at Alexandria. A storm was blowing and such
waves were beating upon the shore that it was dangerous
to land. By seeing a strange sail in the distance.
Napoleon would not wait. He feared that the British were
at last upon his heels fortune. He cried, I ask,
but five hours will you deny them? And so, in

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the darkness and the storm, the troops were landed, but
the waves were so fierce that many of the men
were drowned. Then through the night the French march to Alexandria,
and wearied and hungry as they were attacked it in
the dawning of the day. The Turks and Arabs shout
their gates and fought with all their might against this

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unsuspected enemy. But the ancient walls could not stand the
onslaught of Napoleon and his legions, and soon the flag
of France was floating from the battlements. In July, Napoleon
left Alexandria to march against Cairo. Many of his soldiers
were old and tried men. They had endured the heat

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of Italy cheerfully for there, although the sun was hot,
they had marched through fertile lands, well watered and pleasant.
At the end of the day's march, food and wine
were always to be had. But now day by day
they marched over burning sand under a brazen sky, to
a land barren and empty, whether neither man nor beast

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was to be seen, And where there are scarce a
growing thing but thorny shrubs, with feet burned and blistered,
with parched tongues and cracked lips, blinded by the glare
of the sun upon the sand, met by swarms of
flies and insects. The marsh became a torture to the men.
Gasping in the intolerable heat, they threw off their clothes,

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trying to find relief. Was this where the general had
promised them six acres of land, they angrily demanded. Even
the officers could hardly bear the fiery torment. They pulled
off their cockades and trod them in the sand, and
murmured of rebellion. Napoleon alone seemed cool and calm. He
wore his heavy uniform buttoned up to the throat as usual.

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When the men were throwing away almost every garment, and
when they were gasping and perspiring, he seemed as cool
in body as in mind. As the army wound along
the weary way, many men two worn out to keep
up with the others, fell behind, then out of the
dust of the desert. Through the glare of the dazzling sun.
A company of fleet mounted Arabs would dash upon the stragglers.

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Muskets cracked, bright steel flashed, and the blood of Frenchmen
stained the yellow desert sand. And for a fortnight the
toilsome march dragged on through the seemingly endless wilds, until
the men began to believe that there was no such
place as Cairo. For the first time they had lost
their faith in their leader. Then, at last, one day,

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over the unbroken waste of desert, there arose enormous masses
and straight lines and angles. They were the Pyramids. Here
the Mamelukes, as the Egyptian soldiers were called, awaited their enemy,
drawn out in glittering lines, with cannon pointed and camp entrenched.
They waited through a telescope. Napoleon carefully examined the lines

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of the foe. He was a great general, but he
noticed the smallest details. He now saw something which none
of his officers had seen. The enemy's cannon were not
on wheels. They were fixed and could only be fired
in one direction. That decided the day. Napoleon drew up
his men so that that they should be out of

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range of the cannon, then pointing to the Pyramids. As
the bell began, soldiers, he cried, forty centuries looked down
upon you, And there in the sandy desert, under the
burning sun, Mameluke and frenchmen fought, flashing in the sunlight.
The brilliant cavalcade came, spurring on again and again it

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broke against a solid wall of glittering bayonets. The fight
was fearful. When the Mamelukes could no longer shoot, they
dashed their pistols and the faces of their enemies. When wounded,
they crawled on the sand, hewing, hacking, and stabbing all
that they could reach. But at last, scattered and thinned
by the fearful charge of the French, the Mamelukes fled.

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Many threw themselves into the nile, and the panic of
flight many were cut down by the pursuing French. Those
who escaped carried to all parts of Egypt the fame
and terror of Sultan Keber, the King of Fire, as
they called Napoleon. Four days after the Battle of the Pyramids,
Napoleon entered Cairo, and here for some months he made

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his headquarters, ruling and commanding, fighting and punishing making new
laws for Egypt, much as a few months before he
had done in Italy. But meanwhile Napoleon's conquests in Egypt
had been made useless, for the French fleet had been destroyed.
Soon after the French soldiers had been landed, Nelson at

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last found the enemy he had been seeking so long,
although Napoleon had escaped him. When the French and British
fleets met, the Battle of the Nile was fought, in
which the French were utterly defeated. Of that battle, it
would read in the life of Nelson. When the news
of the battle was brought to Napoleon, he was filled
with grief. Not only had the British, whom he had

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hoped to crush, been victorious once more, but by that
victory he and his soldiers were cut off from France.
Then the Turks, no longer having the French fleet to fear,
declared war against France and made ready an army to
attack Napoleon in Egypt. This army was expected to land
in Syria, and Napoleon decided to meet him there. So

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once more, the weary tramp through the burning desert began
fighting and taking towns on the way. The army at
length reached Acre. This time a cruel ruler called Jasar
Pasha the Butcher, lived there. Napoleon sent a message to
this chief, hoping to win him to his side, but
the butcher cut off the messenger's head and threw his

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body into the sea in a sack. So Napoleon began
to besiege Acre. But now he had more than Turks
against him. For Sir Sidney Smith, a British captain, was
anchored in the bay with two British ships, and he
helped the Turks with men and guns. For two months
the siege went on. Napoleon had no battering guns with

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which to break down the wall, for Sir Sidney Smith
had seized his ships as they were coming from Alexandria
with them, so he could make little impression. Then the
plague broke out among his men, and at last, sorely
against his will, Napoleon was forced to give up the
siege and march back. In the darkness and silence of

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a May night, the French army crept away. Thus ended
Napoleon's dreams of power in the East. He had been
beaten by the one enemy who was always to beat
him the British, for had no British ships been in
the Bay of Acre, the town might have fallen. Had
Saint John de Acre fallen, I would have changed the

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face of the world, said Napoleon. The retreat from Acre
was one long agony. The sun blazed down upon the
weary and now disheartened soldiers, many of whom were wounded
and ill. Those who were too ill to walk were
born in litters. But sometimes the men, tired of carrying
their wounded cos and themselves scarcely able to drag along,

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would throw them down and leave them to die by
the wayside or fall into the hands of the terrible Turks.
Sometimes the thirsting troops would see in the distance a
cool oasis with waving palm trees and pools of sparkling water.
Eagerly they would press forward, only to find a few
moments later that what they had seen was a mirage,

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a deceitful picture of the desert. Sometimes, when they did
not find water, it was so foul or salt that
their thirst was made worse rather than better. And all
the way they were beset by pursuing Turks and wild
desert arabs, so that many more died on the march
than in the battle. But at last the miseries were ended,

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and the worn out army reached Cairo again. Here Napoleon
set himself once more to the ruling of Egypt, and
by a great victory over the Turks at Aberker Bay,
he blotted out the memory of his defeat at Acre All.
During the time of the Syrian campaign, Napoleon had no
news from France. Now some old newspapers came into his hands.

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From them, he learned that things were indeed going ill
at home. Italy was lost, and all his great conquests
were wiped out, as if they had never been. The
fools have lost Italy, he exclaimed, all the fruits of
my victories have disappeared, and must leave Egypt. But he
had no ships in which to carry his army home,

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so he resolved to go alone, taking only about five
hundred men with him, and leaving one of his generals
in charge of the campaign, which from the beginning had
been utterly useless. Napoleon had made all his preparations with
great secrecy. He dared not tell his soldiers that he
was going to desert them. One dark August night, under

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the pale light of the twinkling stars. As silently as possible,
the company rode down to the harbor of Alexandria. Quickly
and stealthily. The men went on board two wading vessels,
which instantly set sail for home. End of Chapter three.