remarkable success, aided by the undoubted fact that troops continued to
collect in Channel ports; they would eventually be used in the ill-fated
Hardy-Humbert expedition to Ireland in August. Only the English agent
at Leghorn correctly guessed the true destination of Napoleon's men but
his view was dismissed sceptically at the Admiralty. Another factor
helping Napoleon was that at the very time he set out for Egypt, a great
rebellion broke out in Ireland, which occupied a good deal of English
attention. The one serious miscalculation - it was nearly fatal - that
Napoleon made was to assume that the Royal Navy would not re-enter
the Mediterranean. Some instinct - or was it merely the Jeremiah laments
of his right-hand man Henry Dundas? - led the warmongering and
ferocious Francophobe William Pitt to send a strong naval squadron
under Nelson into the Mediterranean, when the obvious course would
have been simply to bottle up the exit from the Straits of Gibraltar.
Ironically, it was land-based events in Europe rather than the Royal
Navy which nearly torpedoed the Egyptian expedition. Napoleon's
Machiavellian suggestion that Bernadotte be appointed envoy to Vienna
had succeeded in discrediting the vainglorious Gascon, just as Bonaparte
had hoped, but the boomerang effects threatened to unhorse him as well.
On 22 April Napoleon wrote to Admiral Brueys, commanding the
Toulon fleet that was to cover the expedition on its perilous track to
Egypt, that he would be leaving for Toulon tomorrow. Suddenly urgent
word came from the Directory that Napoleon was required to return to
Rastadt, there to demand satisfaction from the Austrian emperor for the
'Bernadotte affair'. Once ensconced in Vienna as ambassador, the ultra
Jacobin Bernadotte ran up the tricolour on the masthead of his 'hotel'.
This was construed as an insult by the Viennese, who flouted diplomatic
immunity, invaded the house, tore down the flag and plied Bernadotte
with insults.
The Directors' instinctive reaction was to declare war, but Napoleon
advised them strongly that they should not reopen hostilities because of
the folly of Bernadotte. He declared himself satisfied that the Austrians
would give satisfaction for the incident and, besides, French forces were
now too dispersed - in Rome, Switzerland, Holland, the Channel ports -
to make a campaign against Austria feasible. The response of the
Directors was that Napoleon should go to Rastadt with all speed.
Napoleon told them forthrightly that his involvement with Campo
Formio and Rastadt had ended the year before and he would not be
gomg.
Here was yet another stand-off, and for the first time since his return
to Paris Napoleon began seriously to consider seizing power as the only
marcin
(Marcin)
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