of St John on Malta. Against the day when Egypt would be completely
conquered he announced that the country would be run in the same way
as its capital, with each of its fourteen provinces ruled by a committee of
nine Egyptians and a French adviser. He himself would be overall ruler,
assisted by a senate of I 89 Egyptian notables.
In Cairo Napoleon had two disasters to mull over, one public, the
other private. The public disaster was the loss of the French fleet at
Aboukir. Nelson finally got definite news of the movements of the French
fleet while he was off Greece and put about for Alexandria on 31 July.
Next day he came on Brueys's thirteen ships of the line in Aboukir Bay
and came close to annihilating them; the flagship L 'Orient, containing the
boy who stood on the burning deck, exploded around midnight and only
two French ships survived the naval holocaust. This was Nelson's
greatest victory to date, made possible because Brueys stupidly left his
flank between the bay and the shallows unguarded. Nelson sent his ships
into the narrow gap, thus catching the French between two fires.
Napoleon has sometimes been held personally to blame for this disaster
through the imprecision of his orders to Brueys. The French admiral
claimed he had remained at anchor because he was obeying Bonaparte's
orders. Napoleon was adamant that he had instructed Brueys to enter the
port of Alexandria or, if he was unable to do so, to proceed to Corfu. The
best evidence suggests that Napoleon did issue unclear or imprecise
orders, for on his own admission it suddenly came to him at Cairo that
Brueys was in great danger. He therefore sent his aide Julien north with
explicit orders, but Julien was murdered by Arabs before he reached
Alexandria.
Yet even if Napoleon's orders appeared to constrain Brueys, this does
not explain why he did not make his left impregnable by placing a battery
on (or a floating battery near) the isle of Aboukir. Brueys was, after all, an
admiral in the French Navy and should have been able to work out for
himself that he had either to plug that gap, to anchor inside the port of
Alexandria, or at least stand away for Greece. A good admiral exercises
initiative and disregards orders that make no sense, just as Nelson
habitually did. Only an incompetent seaman would at once have
permitted himself to be out of range of his covering shore batteries and
provided a gap between the shore and his ships which Nelson's captains
could enter.
This may be the point to raise a general issue. Napoleon's critics make
a point of leaping on any of his instructions that contains an ambiguity
and saying that it was therefore he, not his subordinates, who was at fault.
Yet it is surprising how often his subordinates interpreted these orders to
marcin
(Marcin)
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