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20 opening on the Baltic. Besides, to the deeply religious Russians a war with the Turks was, up to the most recent times, a Holy War, a kind of crusade. The Empress Catherine succeeded in conquering the shores of the Black Sea, but failed in conquering Constantinople, which she desired to take. With this object in view she proposed the partition of Turkey to Austria in the time of Maria Theresa and of Joseph the Second. According to her historian Castera, she urged the Minister of France to advise his Government that France should join Russia for the purpose of partitioning the Turkish Empire. As a reward she offered Egypt to France, the conquest of which she believed to be easy.

Catherine's offer of Egypt to France is significant, and should be carefully noted. For centuries France, guided by a sure instinct of territorial values, had been hankering after the possession of Egypt, seeing in that country a door to the lands of the Far East and one of the most important strategical positions in the world. The great historian Sorel wrote in 'Bonaparte et Hoche en 1797' that the possession of Egypt was 'le réve qui, depuis les croissades, hante les imaginations françaises.'

France hungered after Egypt. Her thinkers had planned the construction of the Suez Canal a century before de Lesseps. After the outbreak of the Revolution her historic ambition seemed likely to be fulfilled. The French Republic was at war with England and Russia. England might be attacked in India by way of Egypt, and Egypt might, at the same time, be made a base of operations for an attack upon Russia in the Black Sea in conjunction with Turkey. While England and Russia were thus being attacked a revolution should be engineered in Ireland to complete England's discomfiture. On the 23rd Germinal of the year VI—that is, on April 12, 1798—the Directoire appointed the youthful General Bonaparte commander of the Armée d'Orient, and ordered him to take Egypt, to cut the Suez Canal, and to secure to the French