Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/46

 40 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE set sail on the 19th. On June 10 it landed at Malta, and on the 12th took possession of the island, which was garrisoned by the French. A week later the fleet renewed its course, reach- ing Alexandria July 1. On the following day the French took the city, and having secured it advanced, to ward the Nile. They crossed the desert, and reached the river July 10. A flotilla ascended the stream, while the army marched along the shore. Arriving before Cairo July 21, they encountered a large body of Mamelukes under Murad Bey, which, after a most determined struggle, was repulsed. The battle was called the battle of the Pyramids, and the success of the French struck terror far into Africa and Asia. Many of the surround- ing tribes submitted to the conqueror. But fortune was preparing for him a terrible re- verse. His fleet, consisting of 13 ships of the Jine, besides frigates, was found in Aboukir bay by Nelson, the English admiral, who had long been in pursuit of it, and was attacked on the evening of Aug. 1, with a degree of vigor and activity which was never surpassed in naval warfare. The whole squadron, with the ex- ception of two ships of the line and two frig- ates, was destroyed or captured. Bonaparte be- ing cut off from the means of return, the sultan issued a declaration of war against him, Sept. 10, for invading one of his provinces, incited an insurrection in Cairo, and prepared to send an army into Egypt. In February, 1799, Bona- parte crossed the desert with about 13,000 men, took El-Arish and Gaza, stormed Jaffa, where 2,500 Turkish prisoners were deliberately mas- sacred, and advanced into Syria. On March 17 the French army reached Acre, defended by a strong force of English, under Sir Sidney Smith, and two ships of the line. Repeated but ineffectual attempts to storm the place were made up to May 20, when Napoleon saw himself compelled to abandon the siege. The French army retreated to Cairo, which place they entered June 14. The Syrian campaign, which had lasted three months, cost the French 4,000 men, who were either killed or died of the plague. On July 25 they recovered the possession of Abonkir from the Turks, after which Napoleon, whom his brother Joseph had succeeded in informing of the distracted con- dition of France and the growing unpopular- ity of the directory, returned home privately with a few personal adherents. He endeav- ored to conceal the failure of his expedition under the glory of its immense scientific results, but he could not disguise from himself that his plan to molest the English supremacy in India, to colonize Egypt, to give France the command of the Mediterranean, and to build np for him- self, perhaps, a vast oriental empire, had mis- carried. He returned in time to take advan- tage of the political intrigues then rife, and, by the covp d'etat of the 18th Brumaire (see BHUMAIEE), to attain supremo power as first consul of the republic (December, 1799). From this time his line of policy unfolded itself more distinctly; to establish order at home, and to humiliate the enemies of the nation, were the honorable objects of it ; but the ex- tension of his own power was unfortunately an end scarcely lass conspicuous. Nothing could have been more needed than a reformation of the administrative departments; the finances were deranged, the treasury empty, the taxes increasing, and trade at a standstill. In the same summary manner in which he ordered his troops, but with remarkable sagacity, and still more remarkable courage and activity, Bona- parte undertook to reform civil affairs. At the same time, Austria, England, and the Porte, if not carrying on active hostilities against France, refused all terms of peace, and a civil war was raging in La Vendee. Suppressing the latter by a series of decided but conciliatory measures, he turned his whole attention to the continental war. An army was secretly concentrated near the lake of Geneva, with which he passed the Great St. Bernard May 14-20, 1800, and enter- ed Milan June 2. On the 14th of the same month, after several unimportant skirmishes, he met the Austrians under Gen. Melas at the village of Marengo, where he achieved another brilliant victory, and by this unexpected blow at once recovered the supremacy of France in Italy, which had been lost in his absence. Having established provisional governments at Milan, Turin, and Genoa, he returned to Paris, where ho was received, July 3, with immense enthusiasm, but in December barely escaped assassination by an infernal machine. As his general, Moreau, had also defeated the arch- duke John in the great battle of Hohenlinden, Dec. 3, 1800, Austria was obliged to make a separate peace. The preliminary treaty of LuneVille, dated Feb. 9, 1801, made a new arrangement of the states of the continent; and although it was essentially the same as that of the treaty of Campo Formio, it con- tained provisions which laid the foundation of much subsequent trouble. Pursuant to the same objects, treaties were concluded with Spam, March 21, 1801 ; with Naples, March 18; with the pope, July 15; with Bavaria, Aug. 24; with Portugal, Sept. 29; with Rus- sia, Oct. 8; with Turkey, the 9th; with Al- giers, Dec. 27 ; and the treaty of Amiens with England, March 27, 1802. Thus it seemed as if a universal cessation of hostilities was about to mark the history of Europe. To the title of conqueror the first consul now added that of pacificator. But his attempt to crush an insurrection of the blacks in Santo Domingo, for which an expedition had been sent out to- ward the close of 1801, under his brother-in-law Gen. Leclerc, is not to be regarded as one of the grounds of this latter title. The greater part of the army, some 20,000 in number, was swept away by fever and the sword ; the blacks WC.TO instigated by brutal cruelties to still more brutal massacres; and the island was desolated by the fiercest exhibitions of alternate terror and re- venge. Jt was by the direct act of Napoleon