interpretation of Napoleon himself, so that we are supposed to see the
incident as a turning point in his life. According to this view, from being
idealistic he became cynical and ambitious, and it was in Egypt that the
first strains of tyranny appeared. But Napoleon was always both idealistic
and cynically ambitious, so the alleged antinomy does not hold. As for
tyranny, Napoleon's most resolute critics always claim this was in
evidence already in Corsica in the events of Easter 1792.
None the less, Napoleon's response to Junot's indiscretion is puzzling.
In Cairo, before the Battle of the Nile was fought and he still expected to
be back in France in a couple of months, he wrote to Joseph:The veil is torn ... It is sad when one and the same heart is torn by
such conflicting fe elings fo r one person ... Make arrangements fo r a
country place to be ready fo r my return, either near Paris or in
Burgundy. I expect to shut myself away there for the winter. I need to
be alone. I am tired of grandeur; all my feelings have dried up. I no
longer care about glory. At twenty-nine I have exhausted everything.
There is nothing now left fo r me but to become completely selfish.Joseph, who had put all the relevant facts before Napoleon in March,
must have wondered why his brother should have waited until reaching
Egypt before writing in this vein. He retaliated by drawing the purse
strings tighter and making Josephine sweat for her prodigious advances;
Josephine hit back by alleging that Joseph was siphoning off her
allowance to fund his own property speculations.
The day before Napoleon wrote this letter (24 July) the seventeen
year-old Eugene Beauharnais, torn between love of his mother and
devotion to Napoleon, wrote to Josephine to warn her that her husband
now knew everything about Charles: he added, with more filial piety than
conviction, that he was sure all the stories were just idle rumours. Just
after the Battle of the Nile both letters were intercepted in the
Mediterranean by British cruisers. Here was a golden opportunity to turn
the propaganda tables on the master of propaganda. Both letters appeared
in the London Morning Chronicle of 24 November. By the end of the
month they were printed in the French press as well and Napoleon was
the laughing-stock of Paris.
In Cairo he turned to the problem of extinguishing the military menace
from the Mamelukes. His forces caught up with Ibrahim Bey and
defeated him heavily at Salalieh on I I August, but the French hold on
Egypt was still tenuous. After a number of massacres of outlying French
garrisons he was forced to send out more search-and-destroy missions.