the governor treated them with lofty scorn, telling them to be pleased to go away as quickly as possible, since Egypt really had no wish to know anything about either the French or the English. Nelson, seeing that the enemy had evidently not yet reached the country, set sail for Crete with black murder in his heart at this new disappointment. As so often happens in summer, however, a dense haze lay over the water, and during one of the following nights the two fleets passed one another unseen. When Nelson arrived at Syracuse, after a fruitless search, he declared that his heart nearly broke. He had chased the French for 600 leagues, had been within fifty miles of them, and yet had missed

them.

After leaving Crete Bonaparte issued a proclamation to the troops, informing them of their destination, which until now had not leaked out. "Soldiers!" he wrote, "you go to undertake a conquest of which the effects upon the civilisation and the commerce of the world are incalculable. You will strike at England the most certain and the most acute blow while waiting to give her the death-stroke. . . . The Mamelukes who favour exclusively English commerce

some days after our arrival will exist no more. The peoples with whom we are going to live are Muhammedans; their main article of faith is this: There is no God but God, and Muhammed is His prophet.' . . . Have for

the ceremonies prescribed by the Koran the same tolerance that you have had for convents, for synagogues, for the religion of Moses, and for that of Jesus Christ."

On July 1 the fleet arrived before Alexandria, and the governor, startled by the number of ships, sent messengers to Cairo saying that French vessels "without beginning or end" were outside the harbour. A council was at once called in the metropolis to decide upon a course of action; and one deputy, voicing the wishes of the mob, proposed that, as proposed that, as a first step, the Europeans there resident should be massacred. The more temperate judgment of the leading Mamelukes, and of the Turkish representative, Bekir Pasha, however, caused this irresponsible suggestion to be abandoned. Egyptians are by nature kindly and humane. On many occasions, both in Pharaonic days and in recent times, they have shown marked aversion to bloodshed; and it is a fact, not always recognised, that throughout their history they are very decidedly conspicuous for their gentleness and forbearance. Now, at this council meeting, not only was the thought of massacre put aside, but measures were actually taken for the safety of all Europeans, and Ibrahim Bey went so far as to place one of his palaces, situated in the fashionable quarter at the south side of the Pool of Elephants, at the disposal of the European ladies, who were invited to take up their resi

Egyptian people by the audacious Little Corporal. Its insincerity is only less astonishing than the obvious satisfaction with which it was written. It displays Bonaparte at his worst: glib, cunning, a hypoorite, and a liar. It shows, too, how completely he misunderstood the Orient and its peoples in supposing that such a document would influence any of them in his favour.

The proclamation begins by stating that the hour of the chastisement of the Mamelukes has arrived. "For a long time," it continues, "this crowd of slaves bought in Georgia and the Caucasus have tyrannised the most beautiful place in the world; but God, on whom all depends, has ordained that their empire is finished. People of Egypt, they have told you that I am come to destroy your religion. Do not believe them! Answer that I am come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect, more than the Mamelukes, God, His Prophet, and the Koran. Tell them that all men are equal before God: intelligence, talents, and virtues alone differentiate them." (This, of course, was rank blasphemy to Moslem minds, for the Koran teaches that there can be no equality between Muhammedans and Christians.) What virtues or intellectual qualities, he asked in the cant of the Republic, could these tyrants boast that should give them the exclusive right to all that made life worth living? Was there a beautiful piece of land, a beautiful slave, a beautiful horse, a

beautiful house: the Mamelukes seized it. "But God is just and compassionate to the people... Cadis, shêkhs, imams, tchorbadjis, say to the people that we are the friends of true Musulmans. Is it not we who have destroyed the Pope who said that he was going to make war on the Musulmans? Is it not we who have destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these madmen believed that God wished them to wage war against the Musulmans? Is it not we who have been throughout all the centuries the friends of the Sultan (whose desires may God fulfil!) and the enemy of his enemies?" Then, bursting into biblical language in order to give his discourse the necessary Oriental touch, he writes: "Thrice happy are those who will be on our side! They will prosper in their fortune and their rank. Happy those who remain neutral! They will have time to get to know us, and will range themselves with us. But woe, woe threefold, to those who arm themselves for the Mamelukes and fight against us! There will be no hope for them: they will perish." The proclamation ends with an order to the religious leaders of Islam to pray for the French cause. 66 Each man will thank God for the destruction of the Mamelukes and will cry: Glory to the Sultan ! Glory to the French army his friend! Malediction to the Mamelukes, and good luck to the people of Egypt!"

On July 9, when the summer was at its height, the advance on Cairo began. A

garrison having been left at Alexandria, the bulk of the army took the direct road to the capital, following the route of the present railway line; but General Dugua with a smaller force was sent eastwards to the neighbouring town of Rosetta, which stands at one of the mouths of the Nile, whence he was to make his way up the river to El Rahmanieh, where the two divisions were to meet. The

latter force was able to carry its baggage and provisions on native boats, which were towed up the stream with comparative ease; but Bonaparte's division, and more especially its advanceguard, under General Desaix, suffered great hardships, for very insufficient supplies were to be obtained from the impoverished and half - deserted villages along the route, while the wells in many cases had been filled up. Bands of Arabs continuously harassed the weary, sweating troops, cutting off the stragglers by day and sniping at the bivouacs by night. On one occasion Bonaparte himself escaped capture only by the merest chance. The great heat of an Egyptian summer which drenches one in perspiration, the powerful sun which must have caused the heavy uniforms to be a torture to the wearers and the metal appurtenances to become unbearable to the touch, the flies and mosquitos which ceaselessly tormented them, the unquenchable thirst produced by energetic action under the blazing heavens, the lack of food, the constant fear of attack, and the

unknown fate which awaited them, must have rendered the march towards Cairo an experience suggestive of nightmare.

After ten days of such distressing conditions the temper of the army became almost unmanageable. "For what had they been sent to Egypt?" the soldiers are said to have asked. "Had the Directoire deported them, wishing to be rid of them?" Many of them drowned themselves in the Nile, considering a rapid death in the muddy waters to be more to their liking than a continuity of miseries such as they had endured since they set out from Alexandria. They were bitterly disappointed at the poverty of the towns through which they passed. They had believed Egypt to be a land of palaces whose walls were studded with jewels and whose floors were paved with gold. They had looked forward to rich booty, and had pictured themselves billeted in splendour and waited upon by fair slave-girls. Instead of all that their imaginations had thus portrayed, they beheld dirty hovels or tumbled-down houses, and miserable, vermin-infested townspeople; while of food there was little to be procured, and that little of mean quality.

Bonaparte, himself low-spirited, must have also experienced something of the disillusionment undergone by his soldiers. Like them he had dreamed of the riches of the Orient, and had permitted himself to indulge in the very common but very erroneous belief, that

Egypt was a land of the Arabian Nights' variety. He now saw around him in the sunscorched villages and fields of the Delta nothing but ruin, poverty, and distress.

On the 10th July General Desaix arrived with the advance-guard at El Rahmanieh, and there he encountered a large force of Mamelukes, who had travelled from Cairo confidently expecting to overthrow the infidels at the first shock of battle; but these warriors were no match for the disciplined troops of France, and in spite of a fiery display of courage they were easily routed. Two days later the flotilla, which was to meet the main army at this place, was suddenly attacked by the Mamelukes and came very near to capture. So serious, indeed, was the situation that one of the savants attached to the expedition, named Bertillon, was observed during the course of the fight to be filling his commodious pockets with stones taken from the ballast of the boat in which he was travelling, in order, as he afterwards explained, that he might drown the more quickly if capture became otherwise unavoidable. At the end of the day, however, Bonaparte arrived, and the Egyptians were driven off. One of the Mameluke chieftains, exasperated by the defeat, and unaware that the days of Western chivalry were as good as dead, rode up to the French lines clad in his Saracen chainarmour and waving his huge crusading sword. In a loud voice he challenged any French officer to single combat; and it must have been with indig

nant astonishment in his mind that he fell a few moments later before the fire of his unimaginative adversaries.

A week's march brought the army in sight of the capital, and on the 20th it had reached a spot on the west bank of the Nile almost exactly opposite to Cairo. The city stood on the east bank about a mile back from the river, all the space now covered by the modern European quarter of Kasr - el - Nil and Kasr - ed Doubara being then open fields. On the west bank, barring the farther progress of the invaders, the Mameluke army was drawn up near the village of Embabeh. In the far distance, many miles to the south-west, rose the three great pyramids, dim upon the horizon and half-hidden hind the groves of palms. The order was given to prepare for battle, and early in the morning of the 21st July Bonaparte addressed the troops in the well-known words: "Soldiers, forty centuries are watching you"-words which for some inadequate reason are treasured up by history as though they had something more than a theatrical quality. Actually, however, they were not at all apt. The centuries

be

much under - estimated which looked down from the pyramids would have had to have used a telescope to see the battle, and the reminder that these long Egyptian years were keeping an eye on them might well have been somewhat dispiriting to the troops as meaning that the occult power of Egypt's mighty past