Napoleon: A Biography

(Marcin) #1

However, Napoleon was prevailed on by Talleyrand to do separate
estimates for Egypt alone, so as not to alarm the Directors. He therefore
asked for 25,000 men and the use of the Toulon fleet already in being,
making the costings far less than for the descent on England, and the
Directors granted him this without demur.
Next he assembled a galaxy of military talent. The thirty-year-old
Louis Charles Desaix was a military hero Napoleon had met in Rastadt
the previous November. Desaix was an ex-aristocrat who as a young man
had refused to become an emigre; ugly, with a sabre scar across his face,
he was still an avid womanizer. He had won his laurels in Moreau's Black
Forest campaign in 1796 and the following year held the fortress of Kehly
for two months against the Austrians where a lesser man would have
capitulated after a week. He and Napoleon had a rare rapport and perhaps
not coincidentally he was the greatest military talent ever to fight at
Bonaparte's side. The forty-five-year-old Jean-Baptiste Kleber, on the
other hand, never liked Napoleon but was invaluable in the field. His
pedigree included the Vendee War and victories at Fleurus and
Altenkirchen in 1794-96.
Additionally Napoleon had as his chief of cavalry General Dumas,
future father of the novelist, and the one-legged General Louis Caffarelli
as chief of engineers; the reliable Louis Berthier acted as chief of staf f and
Androche Junot as principal aide-de-camp. Most of the other generals
were 'new men': d'Hilliers, Menou, Bon, Reynier. Napoleon was lucky in
being able to take so much military talent with him at a time when
warfare threatened France on other fronts, but the Directory played into
his hands by turning down his offer to give up Desaix and Kleber so that
they could concentrate on descents on the British Isles.
Money was a particular problem, for Talleyrand and Napoleon had
sold the idea of Egypt to the Directors on the ground that it would pay
for itself. This meant that Napoleon would have to raise nine million
francs before the expedition could sail. He demanded from the Directors
permission for handpicked men to go abroad to extract this sum and
accordingly sent Joubert, Berthier and Brune to, respectively, Holland,
Rome and Switzerland to obtain the funds. These plundering expeditions
were the most barefaced Napoleon had yet authorized. Brune's ruthless
campaign in Switzerland, where he uplifted fourteen million francs,
achieved notoriety and Brune himself became a byword for plundering.
When the Directory appointed him to Italy, he had the audacity to levy a
further zoo,ooo francs for the 'expenses' of his previous looting. On the
journey south the bottom of his carriage collapsed under the weight of
stolen gold he had stashed in its boot. In Italy Brune continued his career

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