The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon. Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases

injury which he has sustained through mistake. “Even for myself,” said he, “how could I undertake to say that there might not have existed circumstances sufficiently powerful, notwithstanding my natural sentiments, to induce me to emigrate? The vicinity of the frontier, for instance, a friendly attachment, or the influence of a chief. In revolutions, we can only speak with certainty to what we have done: it is silly to affirm that we could not have acted otherwise.” The Emperor then related a singular example of the influence of chance over the destinies of men. Serrurier and the younger Hedouville, while travelling together on foot to emigrate into Spain, were met by a military patrol. Hedouville, being the younger and more active of the two, cleared the frontier, thought himself very lucky, and went to spend a life of mere vegetation in Spain. Serrurier, on the contrary, being obliged to return into the interior, bewailed his unhappy fate, and became a marshal: such is the uncertainty of human foresight and calculations!

      At Saint-Jean d’Acre, the General-in-chief lost Caffarelli, of whom he was extremely fond. Caffarelli entertained a sort of reverential respect for the General-in-chief. The influence of this sentiment was so great that, though he was delirious for several days previous to his death, when Napoleon went to see him, the announcement of his name seemed to recal him to life: he became more collected, his spirits revived, and he conversed coherently; but he relapsed into his former state immediately after Napoleon’s departure. This singular phenomenon was renewed every time the General-in-chief paid him a visit.

      Napoleon received, during the siege of Saint-Jean d’Acre, an affecting proof of heroic devotedness. While he was in the trenches, a shell fell at his feet; two grenadiers who observed it immediately rushed towards him, placed him between them, and raising their arms above his head, completely covered every part of his body. Happily the shell respected the whole group; nobody was injured.

      One of these brave grenadiers afterwards became General Dumesnil, who lost a leg in the campaign of Moscow, and commanded the fortress of Vincennes at the time of the invasion in 1814. The capital had been for some weeks occupied by the Allies, and Dumesnil still held out. Nothing was then talked of in Paris but his obstinate defence, and his humorous reply when summoned by the Russians to surrender;—“Give me back my leg, and I will give up my fortress.”

      The French soldiers acquired extraordinary reputation in Egypt, and not without cause; they had dispersed and dismayed the celebrated Mamelucks, the most formidable militia of the East. After the retreat from Syria, a Turkish army landed at Aboukir: Murat-Bey, the most powerful and brave of the Mamelucks, left Upper Egypt, whither he had fled for safety, and reached the Turkish camp by a circuitous route. On the landing of the Turks, the French detachments had fallen back in order to concentrate their forces. The Pacha who commanded the Turks was delighted at this movement, which he mistook for the effect of fear; and, on perceiving Murat-Bey, he exultingly exclaimed:—“So! these are the terrible French whom you could not face; see, the moment I make my appearance, how they fly before me.“ The indignant Murat-Bey furiously replied:—“Pacha, render thanks to the Prophet that it has pleased these Frenchmen to retire; if they should return, you will disappear before them like dust before the wind.”

      His words were prophetical:—some days after, the French poured down upon the Turkish army and put it to flight. Murat-Bey, who had interviews with several of our generals, was extremely surprised at their diminutive stature and pitiful condition. The Oriental nations attach high importance to the bodily stature, and they were unable to conceive how so much genius could exist within such small dimensions. The appearance of Kleber alone came up to their ideas; he was an uncommonly fine-looking man, but his manners were rude. The discrimination of the Egyptians induced them to think that he was not a Frenchman; in fact, though a native of Alsace, he had spent the early part of his life in the Prussian army, and might very well have passed for a German. Some one said that Kleber had been a Janissary in his youth; the Emperor burst into a fit of laughter, and said somebody had been imposing on him.

      The Grand-Marshal told the Emperor that at the battle of Aboukir he was for the first time placed in his army, and near his person. He was then so little accustomed to the boldness of his manœuvres, that he scarcely understood any of the orders he heard him give. “Particularly, Sire,” added he, “when I heard you call out to an officer, ‘Hercule, my dear fellow, take twenty-five men and charge that rabble:’ I really thought I had lost my senses; your Majesty pointed to a detachment of a thousand Turkish horse.”

      After all, the losses sustained by the army in Egypt were far from being so considerable as might have been expected in a country to which the troops were unaccustomed; particularly when the insalubrity of the climate, the remoteness of the resources of the country, the ravages of the plague, and the numerous actions which have immortalized that army, are taken into account. The French force, at its landing in Egypt, amounted to 30,000 men; it was augmented by the wrecks of the battle of Aboukir, and probably also by some partial arrivals from France; and yet the total loss sustained by the army, from the commencement of the campaign to two months after the departure of the General-in-chief for Europe, (during the space of seven or eight-and-twenty months,) amounted only to 8,915, as is proved by the official report of the Muster-master-general.22

      The life of a man must indeed be replete with prodigies, when one of his acts, which is without parallel in history scarcely arrests our attention. When Cæsar passed the Rubicon, he possessed an army, and was advancing in his own defence. When Alexander, urged by the ardour of youth and the fire of genius, landed in Asia, to make war on the great King, he, Alexander, was the son of a king, a king himself, and courted the chances of ambition and glory at the head of the forces of his kingdom. But that a private individual, whose name three years before was unknown to the world, who at that moment had nothing to aid him but the reputation of a few victories, his name, and the consciousness of his genius, should have dared to conceive the project of taking into his own hands the destinies of thirty millions of men, of protecting them from external defeats and internal dissensions;—that, roused by the recital of the troubles which were described to him, and by the idea of the disasters which he foresaw, he should have exclaimed, “France will be lost through these fine talkers, these babblers: now is the time to save her!”—that he should have abandoned his army, and crossed the seas, at the risk of his liberty and reputation, have reached the French soil and flown to the capital; that he should there have seized the helm, and stopped short a nation intoxicated with every excess; that he should have suddenly brought her back to the true course of reason and justice;—that he should from that moment have prepared for her a career of power and glory till then unknown;—and that all this should have been accomplished without the shedding of a single tear or a drop of blood;—such an undertaking may be regarded as one of the most gigantic and sublime that ever was heard of; it will fill calm and dispassionate posterity with astonishment and admiration; though at the time it was branded by some with the name of a desperate flight, and an infamous desertion. The army, however, which Napoleon left behind him, continued to occupy Egypt for the space of two years longer. It was the opinion of the Emperor that it ought never to have been forced to surrender; and the Grand Marshal, who accompanied the army to the last moment, concurred in that opinion.

      After the departure of the General-in-chief, Kleber, who succeeded him, deceived and misled by intrigues, treated for the evacuation of Egypt; but when the enemy’s refusal compelled him to seek for new glory, and to form a more just estimate of his own force, he totally altered his opinions, and declared himself favourable to the occupation of Egypt; and this had even become the general sentiment of the army. He now thought only of maintaining himself in the country; he dismissed those who had influenced him in forming his first design, and collected around him only those who favoured the contrary measure. Had he lived, Egypt would have been secure; to his death her loss must be attributed. The command of the army was afterwards divided between Menou and Regnier. It then became a mere field of intrigue: the energy and courage of the French troops continued unabated; but they were no longer employed and directed as they had been by Kleber. Menou was totally inefficient; the English advanced to attack him with twenty thousand men; his force was much more considerable, and the general spirit of the two armies was not to be compared. By an inconceivable infatuation, Menou hastily dispersed his troops, as soon as he learned that the English were about to appear, the latter advanced in a mass, and were attacked only in detail. “How blind is