THE EMBARKATION.
“Soldiers! you are one of the wings of the army of England. You have made war in mountains, plains and cities. It remains to make it on the ocean. The Roman legions, whom you have often imitated but not yet equaled, combated Carthage, by turns, on the seas and on the plains of Zama. Victory never deserted their
standards, because they never ceased to be brave, patient, and united. Soldiers! the eyes of Europe are upon you. You have great destinies to accomplish, battles to fight, dangers and fatigues to overcome. You are about to do more than you have yet done, for the prosperity of your country, the happiness of man and for your own glory.” Thus the magnitude of the enterprise was announced, while at the same time it was left vailed in mystery.
Napoleon had, on many occasions, expressed his dislike of the arbitrary course pursued by the Directory. In private he expressed, in the strongest terms, his horror of Jacobin cruelty and despotism. “The Directors,” said he “can not long retain their position. They know not how to do any thing for the imagination of the nation.” It is said that the Directors, at last, were so much annoyed by his censure that they seriously contemplated his arrest and applied to Fouché for that purpose. The wily minister of police replied, “Napoleon Bonaparte is not the man to be arrested; neither is Fouché the man who will undertake to arrest him.” When Bourrienne inquired if he were really determined to risk his fate on the Expedition to Egypt, “Yes!” he replied, “if I remain here, it will be necessary for me to overturn this miserable government, and make myself king. But we must not think of that yet. The pear is not yet ripe. I have sounded, but the time has not yet come. I must first dazzle these gentlemen by my exploits.” One of his last acts before embarkation was to issue a humane proclamation to the military commission at Toulon urging a more merciful construction of one of the tyrannical edicts of the Directory against the emigrants. “I exhort you, citizens,” said he, “when the law presents at
your tribunal old men and females, to declare that, in the midst of war, Frenchmen respect the aged and the women, even of their enemies. The soldier who signs a sentence against one incapable of bearing arms is a coward.” There was perhaps not another man in France, who would have dared thus to oppose the sanguinary measures of government. This benevolent interposition met however with a response in the hearts of the people, and added a fresh laurel to his brow.
On the morning of the 19th of May, 1798, just as the sun was rising over the blue waves of the Mediterranean the fleet got under way. Napoleon, with Eugene, embarked in the Orient, an enormous ship of one hundred and twenty guns. It was a brilliant morning and the unclouded sun perhaps never shone upon a more splendid scene. The magnificent armament extended over a semi-circle of not less than eighteen miles. The parting between Napoleon and Josephine is represented as having been tender and affecting in the extreme. She was very anxious to accompany him, but he deemed the perils to which they would be exposed, and the hardships they must necessarily endure, far too formidable for a lady to encounter. Josephine stood upon a balcony, with her eyes blinded with tears, as she waved her adieus to Napoleon, and watched the receding fleet, till the lessening sails disappeared beneath the distant horizon. The squadron sailed first to Genoa, thence to Ajaccio, and thence to Civita Vecchia, to join the convoys collected in those ports. The signal was then given for the whole fleet to bear away, as rapidly as possible, for Malta.
THE DISTANT ALPS.
In coasting along the shores of Italy, Napoleon, from the deck of the Orient descried, far away in the distant horizon, the snow-capped summits of the Alps. He called for a telescope, and gazed long and earnestly upon the scene of his early achievements. “I can not,” said he, “behold without emotion, the land of Italy. These mountains command the plains where I have so often led the French to victory. Now I am bound to the East. With the same troops victory is still secure.”
All were fascinated by the striking originality, animation, and eloquence of his conversation. Deeply read in all that is illustrious in the past, every island, every bay, every promontory, every headland recalled the heroic deeds of antiquity. In pleasant weather Napoleon passed nearly all the time upon deck, surrounded by a group never weary of listening to the freshness and the poetic vigor of his remarks. Upon all subjects he was alike at home, and the most distinguished philosophers, in their several branches of science, were amazed at the instinctive comprehensiveness with which every subject seemed to be familiar to his mind. He was never depressed and never mirthful. A calm and thoughtful energy inspired every moment. From all the ships the officers and distinguished men were in turn invited to dine with him. He displayed wonderful tact in drawing them out in conversation, forming with unerring skill an estimate of character, and thus preparing himself for the selection of suitable agents in all the emergencies which were to be encountered. In nothing was the genius of Napoleon more conspicuous, than in the lightning-like rapidity with which he detected any vein of genius in another. Not a moment of time was lost. Intellectual conversation, or reading or philosophical discussion caused the hours to fly on swiftest wing. Napoleon always, even in his most hurried campaigns, took a compact library with him. When driving in his carriage, from post to post of the army, he improved the moments in garnering up that knowledge, for the accumulation of which he ever manifested such an insatiable desire. Words were with him nothing, ideas every thing. He devoured biography, history, philosophy, treatises upon political economy and upon all the sciences. His contempt for works of fiction—the whole class of novels and romances—amounted almost to indignation. He