would they really oppose an army from the French mainland when the
only possible beneficiaries were the English?
After the debacle in the Directory on 24 February, Napoleon went
away to compose a memorandum, stressing the advantages of an Egyptian
expedition and setting out the minimum requirements in men and
materiel. The Directors baulked at the size of expedition Napoleon
proposed, especially as it would divert military resources from the
European front, but they desperately wanted to be rid of Bonaparte so
agreed to the enterprise on 5 March. The much-touted idea that the
Directors opposed the adventure vehemently is false. Secret preparations
were at once put in hand. Napoleon meanwhile ostentatiously attended
the Institute daily, as if he were intending to withdraw into private life; as
a further blind he was renamed commander of the descent on England
with much public trumpeting.
Napoleon's motives for going to Egypt were a curious mixture of the
rational and the irrational, in which expediency and cold calculation went
hand in hand with his 'Oriental complex'. Some of the ideas in his
memorandum were highly attractive to the Directory, though it is not
clear how practicable they were. The most tantalizing notion was that of
establishing a French colony without slaves to take the place of Santo
Domingo and the sugar islands of the West Indies, which would provide
France with the primary products of Af rica, Syria and Arabia while also
providing a huge market for French manufactures.
In the short term, there were cogent military arguments, even if based
on rather too many imponderables. If the conquest of Egypt was wholly
successful, it could be used as a springboard for reinforcing Tippoo
Sahib, sultan of Mysore, and the Mahrattas and ultimately expelling the
British from India; links with Tippoo had been all but severed when the
British captured the Cape of Good Hope. If a Suez canal could be dug,
this would destroy the efficacy of the route round the Cape and neutralize
British seapower. An immediate consequence of the conquest of Egypt
might be that France could use the country as a bargaining counter
against Turkey. Certainly the threat to India would pressurise Pitt
towards peace. Above all, the invasion of Egypt would be easier to achieve
and less expensive than a descent on England.
These points could be argued for and against and were well within the
realm of the feasible. But some of Napoleon's utterances suggest an
unassimilated obsession with the Orient, where the motives cannot be
integrated into a rational framework. His reading of Plutarch, Marigny
and Abbe Raynal had augmented his desire to emulate Alexander the
Great and Tamerlane. He was always interested in the Turkish empire
marcin
(Marcin)
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