The confidence of the Directory had grown with each successive victory of Bonaparte, and had induced a tone in their transactions with foreign governments which the latter looked upon as arrogant, if not presumptuous. Yielding to politic considerations of effect upon popular opinion, Pitt had sent to France, in October, 1796, a practised diplomatist, Lord Malmesbury, to treat for peace. The terms proposed by Great Britain were substantially a restitution of conquests on both sides. If France would give back to the emperor the Netherlands and Lombardy, Great Britain, who had lost nothing of her own, would return to France her possessions in the East and West Indies, as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with the status ante bellum of the fisheries. As regards the colonies taken from Holland, the disposition would be to restore them, if the government of the stadtholder were replaced; but if the republic set up by the assistance of French arms were maintained, Great Britain and the emperor, from whom the former refused to dissociate herself, would insist upon indemnification elsewhere for the injury thus done to their political position in Europe. With these understandings as a basis, the British government would be willing to enter upon negotiations for a general peace; to which it expressly required that Russia and Portugal, as well as the emperor, should be admitted. The French government replied that Great Britain had no authority to speak here for her allies; and further, that to cede territory which had been incorporated by the edicts of the Convention, as the Netherlands had, was inconsistent with the organic law of the republic. This latter plea was treated by the British government as trifling; no negotiation to close a war could go on, if results, favorable to one party, were secluded from discussion by the ægis of its constitution. As the case stood, France and Great Britain were both conquerors; the chief allies of each were losers. Great Britain proposed that each should surrender its winnings for the benefit of its allies. France refused, because its conquests were now part of the national territory, and as such inalienable. Taking exception, moreover, to delays caused by Malmesbury's frequent references to his government for instructions, the Directory, on the 20th of December, ordered him to leave Paris, within the not very civil space of forty-eight hours.

Similar cavalier treatment was at the same time experienced by the United States. Our government, after the maritime war began, had frequent disputes with both belligerents,—concerning the treatment of American ships by the British and French cruisers,—the protection of enemies' goods by the neutral flag,—the stipulations of Jay's treaty of commerce and navigation, in 1794, regarded by France as unduly favorable to Great Britain,—and the attitude of the United States towards French privateers, which were at first allowed and afterwards forbidden to sell prizes in her ports. These difficulties were fundamentally due to the fact that, the United States having practically no navy, neither belligerent felt under any bonds to respect her rights. To Great Britain, however, friendly relations were important on account of trade interests; while France, having no merchant ships, found an advantage in using Americans as carriers, and their ports as bases from which her cruisers could harass British commerce. The former of these benefits Great Britain curtailed by the claim that enemy's goods were, by international law, seizable under a neutral flag. The United States admitted this, and also, in the interests of her own peace and neutrality, declined longer to favor French commerce-destroying. Mutual discontent followed, and resulted in the recall of the French embassy from America, in November, 1796. At the same time President Washington, being dissatisfied with Munroe, the minister at Paris, removed him. When the latter, on the 30th of December, took his leave, the President of the Directory made a speech, highly complimentary to him personally, but offensive to the United States government; and evinced, as President Adams justly said, "a disposition to separate the people of the United States from the government, and thus to produce divisions fatal to our peace." The same theory of the divergent interests of rulers and people, with which the French republic started on its self-imposed mission forcibly to regenerate ancient despotisms, was thus impartially applied to the free American people under the government of their chosen and beloved fellow-citizen, Washington. The Directory refused to receive Pinckney, the new envoy from the United States. He remained in Paris, unrecognized, for a month; but the morning after hearing of the victory of Rivoli, the Directory ordered him to leave France.

By a somewhat singular coincidence, while the republic was thus embroiling itself with the two chief maritime states, a change of rulers took place in Russia; which, if not strictly a maritime power, was yet well placed, through her preponderance on the Baltic, to affect the naval interests of the world. The Empress Catherine II. died on the 17th of November, 1796, when about to conclude an agreement with the courts of London and Vienna to abandon her rather passive attitude of hostility towards France, and send an army of sixty thousand men to the support of Austria. Her successor, Paul I., allowed this treaty to drop, and resumed a bearing of cold watchfulness, until Bonaparte, by the seizure of Malta, and the Directory by a threat of war if commerce were permitted between his empire and Great Britain, drove his half-insane temper into open hostilities. But this was a year later.

These events at the end of 1796 coincided in time with the close alliance of the republic with Spain and Holland and its formal treaties of peace with the Italian states. By these and by the preliminaries of Leoben were defined the external relations of France in April, 1797. At the same moment her internal condition became alarming. The time had come to choose new members to replace one third of each body of the legislature; and the elections, still influenced by the memory of the Terror, resulted in the return of so many reactionaries as to give these a majority in both houses, especially in the lower. The latter at once showed its spirit by electing for speaker, by a large majority, General Pichegru, who was in open quarrel with the Directory; and followed up this significant act by a series of measures calculated to thwart the executive power and enfeeble its action. The opposition between the legislature and the Directory grew more and more pronounced throughout the summer months; but the reactionists failed to read aright the signs of the times. They allowed themselves, by the machinations of the royalists and through injudicious acts of their own, to seem enemies of republican government, which aroused the anxiety of Hoche, commanding the army of the Sambre and Meuse; and they directly brought into question the conduct of Bonaparte towards Venice, thus stirring up the more personal and violent enmity of the brilliant conqueror of Italy. The legislature thus found itself opposed by the two generals who stood highest in public esteem as essential to the safety of France, and who, each according to his own nature, transmitted his feelings to the troops under his command, and prepared them for a coup d'état. Inflammatory speeches and toasts prevailed throughout the armies, to which the republic was dear rather as a name than as a reality, and they were easily led to think that the two houses were contemplating a return to royalty.

The majority of the Directory, half-believing the same thing, and chafed by an opposition which seriously hampered the working of the government, were ready for violent measures. Two of its members, however, were not prepared for such action; and one of these, Carnot, the organizer of the republic's early victories, was then serving his turn as president of the Directory. Unknown to him the three plotters matured their scheme, and called upon Bonaparte to send them Augereau, the most revolutionary of the generals in Italy, to direct the troops in such forcible proceedings as might be necessary. Upon his arrival he was made commandant of the military division of Paris, despite the opposition of Carnot. The latter's presidency expired on the 24th of August, and he was succeeded by one of the conspirators. On the night of September 3d Augereau surrounded the castle and garden of the Tuileries with twelve thousand troops and forty cannon, driving out the legislators who were then there, together with their guard. The Directory ordered the arrest, by its own guard, of the two members not in the plot. Carnot escaped into Switzerland; but Barthélemi, their other colleague, was seized. The next day the members of the two houses who had not been imprisoned met and passed a resolution, invalidating a number of the recent elections, and exiling to Cayenne the two directors and fifty-three representatives. The legislature, thus purged, was brought into harmony with the executive. An address was next issued to the departments and to the armies, declaring that the country had been invaded and disorganized by the Counter-Revolution and that patriotism, with the social and public virtues, had taken refuge with the armies. "In this," says a republican historian, "there was unhappily some truth. The middle class had become reactionary or inert; the populace now intervened but little in political movements; active democracy scarcely showed itself out of the armies. But if armies can defend liberty, they cannot put it in practice and maintain its life when abandoned by civil society. The revolution just effected with the consent of the soldiery was leading to another revolution to be effected by and for the soldiers." [153] The 18th of Fructidor, 1797, was the logical forerunner of the 18th of Brumaire, 1799, when Bonaparte seized the reins of government.

The strife between the Directory and the legislature kept all Europe in suspense; for its result would profoundly affect the course of existing discussions. The emperor, repenting of his precipitation at Leoben, kept holding off from a final treaty, seeking to introduce Great Britain as a party to the deliberations. This Bonaparte indignantly refused; for it would defeat his principal aim of separate negotiations. Pitt, more desirous than before of peace, again sent Malmesbury. The Directory kept him dancing attendance at Lille, the appointed place of meeting, during its struggle with the Councils. It made several demands most unlikely to be conceded, and upon these prolonged a discussion, to which the ministry, who now really wished a favorable termination, patiently submitted. A week after the coup d'état the French negotiators were recalled, and in their place were sent others, who immediately upon arrival demanded of the British ambassador whether he had "powers to restore to France and its allies all the possessions which since the beginning of the war have passed into the hands of the English." An answer was required in the course of the same day. Malmesbury coolly replied that he neither could, nor ought to, treat on any other principle than that of compensations. The French envoys then sent him orders from the Directory to return within twenty-four hours to his Court and get powers to make those restorations. This, of course, put an end to the conference, and the war went on for four years more.

During these eventful months Bonaparte, already the most influential man in the nation through his hold upon men's imaginations, was ripening projects deeply affecting the control of the sea and the future direction to be given the gigantic efforts of which France had shown herself capable. On the 5th of April, under his management, there had been concluded with the king of Sardinia, subject to ratification by the Directory, a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance, to which was prefixed a secret article ceding to France the island of Sardinia upon condition of compensation on the continent. [154] Soon after, however, events occurred which opened to his penetrating genius a more satisfactory combination. During his invasion of Carinthia the people in his rear, throughout the possessions of Venice on the Italian mainland, rose against the French, massacring several hundred soldiers who fell into their hands. This gave him a pretext for disposing of these territories, as already stated, [155] in the secret articles of Leoben, and at the same time drew from him the sinister prediction that the government of Venice, shut up to its small island, would not be of long duration. [156] On the 2d of May, having returned to Italy, he issued a proclamation, [157] setting forth his many causes of complaint for the commotions excited in his rear, endangering the army "then plunged in the gorges of Styria." He ordered the French minister to leave Venice, all Venetian agents to quit Lombardy and the Venetian possessions, and the French general to treat the troops of the republic as enemies, and to tear down her standard throughout the mainland.

This declaration of war was followed, on the 16th of May, by the abdication of the ancient oligarchy in favor of a provisional government, which requested the presence of a French division in the city to maintain order during the transition period. This Bonaparte granted, sending five thousand men, and observing cynically in his despatch to the Directory that it would thus be possible to avoid the odium attendant upon the execution of the secret preliminaries with Austria, and at the same time to quiet the clamors of Europe; since "it is apparent that the occupation is only temporary and at the demand of the Venetians themselves." [158] Ten days later he despatched General Gentili, recalled from Corsica, to Corfu with some two thousand troops, directing him to secure his hold both upon the islands and the Venetian squadron lying there, but always to act as though supporting the Venetian commissioners who were to accompany him. "If the islanders incline to independence," wrote he, "flatter them, and talk about Greece, Athens, and Sparta." [159] To the Venetian government he wrote that the expedition was sent to second its commissioners; and on the same day to the Directory, that Corfu ought to be irrevocably possessed by the French. "The island of Malta," he added, "is of the utmost importance to us.... Why should not our fleet seize it before entering the Atlantic? That little island is priceless to us. Secret articles with the king of Sardinia stipulate for us the occupation of the little islands of San Pietro. Now is the moment to fortify them;" [160] for the British Mediterranean fleet was before Cadiz, and the Channel fleet in full mutiny.

Four months later Bonaparte again wrote, "With San Pietro, Corfu, and Malta, we shall be masters of the whole Mediterranean." [161] "The islands of Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia are of more consequence to us than all Italy. If we had to choose, better restore Italy to the emperor and keep the four islands.... The empire of the Turks crumbles daily. The possession of the four islands will enable us to sustain it, or to take our share. The time is not far distant when we shall feel that, truly to destroy England, we must take possession of Egypt. The vast Ottoman Empire, which is perishing daily, puts on us the obligation to take means for the preservation of our Levant trade." [162] "If at the peace we have to consent to the cession of the Cape of Good Hope to England, we should seize Egypt. That country has never belonged to a European nation. It does not now belong to the Grand Turk. We could leave here with twenty-five thousand men, convoyed by eight or ten ships-of-the-line, and take possession of it. I wish you would inquire, Citizen Minister, what effect upon the Porte would result from our expedition to Egypt." [163] "Our occupation of Corfu and the other islands entails relations with the pashas of Albania. These are well affected to the French. In vain should we seek to sustain the Turkish Empire; we shall see its fall in our day. Corfu and Zante give us mastery of the Adriatic and the Levant." [164] In these quotations, which could be multiplied, is seen the genesis of the great Egyptian expedition, to which, until it was carried into effect, Bonaparte recurred again and again with the persistency characteristic of his conceptions.

While he was thus employed, on the one hand flattering Venice with the hope of continued national existence, and on the other treating with Austria for her extinction and a division of the spoil, in which France was to have the Ionian Islands and the Venetian navy, [165]—while Malmesbury was negotiating at Lille, and the Directory was in bitter conflict with the Councils,—there was painfully sailing for England, crippled and suffering, the man who was destined to dispel the gorgeous dreams of Eastern achievement which filled Bonaparte's brain, and to shatter the French navy,—the all-essential link which alone could knit together these diverse maritime possessions, the one foundation upon which stood the whole projected fabric of Mediterranean control. During the wearing times of the Cadiz blockade, Lord St. Vincent, aware how much the listlessness of such inactive service contributed to foment mutiny, endeavored ingeniously to contrive fighting to occupy the minds of the seamen. For that purpose, largely, he bombarded Cadiz; and for that purpose he sent Nelson, with a detached squadron, to seize the town of Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands by a sudden and vigorous assault, hoping also there to take the rich cargo of a galleon, laden on account of the Court of Spain. The attack was made on the night of July 24, with all the vigor to be expected of Nelson, but under great disadvantage. It resulted in a disastrous repulse with heavy loss; and the admiral himself suffered amputation of the right arm. It became necessary for him to go to England, where he remained through a long and painful convalescence until the following April; when he again sailed to join the Mediterranean fleet, arriving just in time to command the squadron sent in pursuit of Bonaparte.

The dissensions which weakened the external action of the French government having been silenced by the coup d'état of September 4, Bonaparte rapidly drew to an end the negotiations with Austria. On the 17th of October, 1797, he, as sole representative of France, signed the treaty of Campo Formio; which followed the general lines of the Leoben preliminaries, yet with important differences. The dissimulation concerning Venice was thrown aside, and the ancient state wholly disappeared. The city, with the mainland as far as the Adige, were given to Austria. West of the Adige, the old Venetian provinces went to the Cisalpine Republic, which was also dowered with the papal legations attributed for a brief moment to Venice. The countries and islands east of the Adriatic which had belonged to her were divided at the Gulf of Drino. All inside that point went to Austria; all outside, to France, which thus became possessed of the desire of Bonaparte's heart, Corfu and its sister islands, with some slight territory on the adjacent mainland. The cession of the Netherlands to France was confirmed, and provision was made for a Congress to be held at Rastadt for the pacification and rearrangement of the German Empire; for Bonaparte had persisted in treating with the emperor on account only of his own dominions, and apart from the rest of the empire. By secret stipulations, the two great powers agreed to support each other's demands and interests in the Congress; where France wished to secure a certain line of the Rhine, and Austria to indemnify herself, at the expense of some German minor states, for the losses undergone by the treaty.

The salient features of this treaty were therefore the cession of Belgium; the annihilation of Venice; the settlement of the Cisalpine Republic as a powerful dependency of France; the strengthening of the latter as a Mediterranean state by the gain of the Ionian Islands; and, finally, the loosing of her hands against Great Britain, which now stood without a strong ally in all Europe. Bonaparte justified his action to his critics on these grounds, but especially on account of the necessity of dealing with Great Britain single-handed. "When the Cisalpine has the best military frontier in Europe, when France gains Mayence and the Rhine, when she has in the Levant Corfu, extremely well fortified, and the islands, what more would you wish? To scatter our force, in order that England may continue to take from us, from Spain, from Holland, our colonies, and postpone yet further the restoration of our trade and our navy?... Either our government must destroy the English monarchy, or must expect itself to be destroyed by the corruption and intrigue of those active islanders. The present moment offers us a fine game. Let us concentrate all our activity upon the navy, and destroy England. That done, Europe is at our feet." [166] Thus did Bonaparte demonstrate that the scene of strife was to be transferred to the sea.

The Directory at once ratified the Treaty of Campo Formio, and named Bonaparte one of three plenipotentiaries to the Congress of Rastadt. The general remained in Italy for a month longer, organizing the new state, and distributing the army with a view to support the interests of France, while withdrawing some thirty thousand men for the intended army of England. On the 17th of November he left Milan, and on the 25th arrived at Rastadt. He remained there, however, but a week; and then, apparently at the call of the Directory, [167] started for Paris, which he reached on the 5th of December. He was avowedly to command the army of England, and during the two following months his correspondence betrays no sign of any other purpose; his orders to various subordinates, and especially to Berthier, his celebrated chief-of-staff, at the time commanding in Italy, abound with dispositions and instructions to transfer troops thence towards the Channel. Particularly significant of such intention were the orders sent from him to Admiral Brueys, commanding the French division in Corfu, to start for Brest, [168] —a mission which would make his force inaccessible for the Egyptian expedition. Too much stress, however, cannot be laid upon such indications coming from so crafty a nature; and the first intimation of a change of purpose has more the appearance of stripping off a mask than of awakening from a dream. "Make what efforts we will," wrote he to the Directory, on February 23, 1798, "we shall not for many years acquire the control of the seas. To make a descent upon England, without being master of the sea, is the boldest and most difficult operation ever attempted." [169] Most true, but not new. Nor was the veil under which he covered his change of attitude very difficult to pierce. On the 7th of February, 1798, he wrote to the Minister of War that he was about to visit the Channel coast, near Dunkirk, sending Kleber and Desaix to Havre and Brest. On the 12th from Dunkirk he sends engineers to examine Boulogne, Etaples, Ambleteuse, and Calais,—ports on which he, five years later, based his more serious projects of invasion; and at the same time two others are dispatched to Holland to demand help of various kinds. The very next day, February 13, he sends orders to Toulon, in the name of the Directory, not only to hold on to the ships ordered for Brest, but to send despatch vessels in every direction to recall to Toulon all ships-of-war cruising in the Mediterranean. [170] Returning to Paris, he addressed a letter to the government, setting forth what needed to be done by the month of April in order to make the attempt upon Great Britain even possible,—a long array of requirements, which only he, if his heart were in the matter, was capable of accomplishing. He concluded by saying there were but three ways of reaching England. One was by direct invasion; the second, by an attempt upon Hanover and Hamburg,—the continental centres of her trade; the last, by an expedition to the Levant.

On the 5th of March Bonaparte communicated to the government a note containing the dispositions necessary for an expedition to seize Egypt and Malta. The same day the Directory issued a number of decrees, constituting a commission on the Coast Defences of the Mediterranean, under cover of which the needed preparations were to be carried on, and defining the various steps to be taken. The ships at Toulon were required to be ready for sea on the 4th of April. Admiral Brueys, who had been unable to sail for Brest on account of want of provisions, was on February 12 ordered to Toulon. He arrived there with, his squadron on the 2d of April, and was appointed to command the naval part of the expedition, to consist of thirteen ships-of-the-line with smaller vessels. All arrangements were pushed with the greatest activity possible, though much retarded by the extreme want of naval stores, of provisions, and of money. Still greater difficulty was experienced from scarcity of sailors; the inducements offered by privateers having drawn away almost all the seamen of the republic, and landed great numbers of them in British prisons,—a sad result of the much-vaunted commerce-destroying. Through all, the pretence of invading England was maintained; and Bonaparte himself, to mislead opinion, stayed till the last moment in Paris. The Spanish fleet at Cadiz was, by the urgent demands of the Directory, made to assume positions which threatened an approaching departure, in order to fasten St. Vincent's ships to the port and foster in British minds the easily aroused fear of an invasion of Ireland. But measures so extensive could not long escape comment and suspicion. The actual intentions of the Directory were kept so impenetrably secret that, after the expedition sailed, the senior naval officer at Toulon wrote to the Minister of Marine, "I know no more of the movements of the squadron than if it did not belong to the republic;" [171] but it was not possible to conceal the patent fact that Marseille, Toulon, Genoa, Civita Vecchia, and Corsica were alive with hurried preparations for a great naval undertaking, whatever its destination might be. It was evident, therefore, that France was about to expose herself for a time upon the sea to the blows of Great Britain, and the ministry determined not to let such an opportunity slip.

During the year 1797 no British fleet, and, with the rare exception of one or two scattered cruisers, no British ship-of-war, had entered the Mediterranean. The gathering of the Spanish navy at Cadiz, and of the greater part of the French in Brest, with the apparent design to invade Ireland or England, had dictated the concentration of the British navy before those two ports; either immediately, as St. Vincent at Cadiz, or by the dispositions—less fitted to compass their purpose—of the Channel fleet, by which bodies of ships were gathered at points other than Brest, with the hope of combining them against any sortie from that port. Great Britain, during the time following St. Vincent's retreat from the Mediterranean, was in the position of a nation struggling for existence,—for so she felt it, [172] —which had been compelled to contract her lines through loss of force, due to the gradual submission of her allies to her enemies. To this had further conduced the threatening attitude of the Dutch navy in the Texel, requiring a strong North Sea fleet. To her other embarrassments had been added, in this year of distress, the extensive mutinies in the navy. Though appeased in some instances and quelled in others, the spirit which caused them still existed. Under these circumstances Bonaparte, in 1797, had met no naval obstacle to his plans for the control of the Mediterranean, which had, moreover, been so covert as to escape detection. Admiral Brueys had gone from Toulon to the Adriatic, remained there several months, and returned in peace; and all minor naval movements went on undisturbed. The destiny of Corfu was not revealed till the end of the year; the purpose to get hold of Malta, seriously entertained by Brueys at the instigation of Bonaparte, [173] never transpired; and the talk about the army of England combined with the actual positions of the allied fleets to retain the British in the same stations. Toward the end of 1797 several circumstances occurred to relieve the pressure. In October Admiral Duncan inflicted upon the Dutch fleet, off the Texel, a defeat so decisive and complete as to throw it out of the contest for a long time. Of fifteen ships opposed to him, nine were taken. The condition of the French fleet in Brest, if not accurately known to be as bad as Bonaparte represented it, [174] was still sufficiently understood. No attempt had been made during the summer or winter of 1797 to renew the Irish expedition; and when the opening spring of 1798 permitted the Channel fleet in a body to keep the sea, the ministry felt it safe to detach a force to the Mediterranean.

Sir Horatio Nelson sailed from England on the 10th of April, and joined the fleet off Cadiz on the 30th. Lord St. Vincent welcomed him gladly, and at once sent him with three ships-of-the-line to the Mediterranean, to watch the impending armament, and, if possible, learn its destination. Nelson left the fleet on the 2d of May, the day before Bonaparte quitted Paris. On the 17th, having been unavoidably delayed at Gibraltar, he was in the neighborhood of Toulon, and captured a French corvette just leaving port; from which he learned particulars as to the naval force of the enemy, but nothing as regarded its destination. On the night of the 20th, in a violent gale of wind, his own ship was dismasted and with difficulty saved from going ashore. By great exertions she was towed by her consorts into the San Pietro Islands, at the south end of Sardinia, where she anchored on the 23d. On the 19th Bonaparte had sailed with the Marseille and Toulon divisions of the expedition. He was to be joined on the way by the detachments from Genoa, Corsica, and Civita Vecchia,—the total number of troops amounting to between thirty and thirty-five thousand.

On the same day that Nelson parted from St. Vincent, May 2, the admiralty wrote to the latter that it was essential to send twelve ships-of-the-line into the Mediterranean to counteract the French armament; and that to replace them eight ships had been ordered from England. A private letter from the First Lord, by the same mail, authorized St. Vincent to take his whole force for this object, if necessary, but hoped a detachment would be sufficient. In the latter case, while the choice of its commander was left to the admiral, it was intimated that Nelson, though junior to two other flag-officers, was by all means the proper man. Jervis had already made the same decision; and now at once told off and prepared the nine ships-of-the-line, forming the inshore squadron of the blockade, to start the moment the expected re-enforcement arrived. The junction of the latter with the main fleet was made May 24, out of sight of the port; and during the night Captain Troubridge sailed with the inshore ships, their places being taken by vessels similarly painted, so that no suspicion of the transaction might arise in Cadiz. On the 7th of June Troubridge joined Nelson, having picked up two more ships by the way; so that the British were now thirteen seventy-fours and one of fifty guns. By a very strange fatality, however, the frigates at first with Nelson had parted company the night his ship was dismasted, and had never rejoined. Troubridge brought only one little brig; and, as it was inadmissible to scatter the ships-of-the-line, the want of lookout vessels seriously affected all Nelson's movements in the long and harassing pursuit, covering nearly eight weeks, that lay before him.

After leaving Toulon, Bonaparte directed his force along the Gulf of Genoa, where, on the night of May 20, he experienced the same gale that dismasted Nelson. The next day the convoy from Genoa joined. Steering south along the east coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, the division from Corsica met him on the 26th off the south end of the island, but that from Civita Vecchia failed to appear. Here the French first heard that Nelson was in the Mediterranean with three ships, and expected ten more. Bonaparte then continued on for Malta, which he reached on the 9th of June, and found there the division from Civita Vecchia, thus bringing his whole force under his hand. The island was immediately summoned, and after a faint show of resistance capitulated on the 12th; the French fleet and convoy, numbering four hundred sail, entering the port of La Valetta on the 13th. Bonaparte remained the time necessary to secure his conquest temporarily; then leaving a garrison of four thousand men, and notifying the Directory that at least four thousand more with ample supplies were needed, he sailed again on June 19 for Egypt.

The British fleet, after its junction, was becalmed for several days. It then made the best of its way round the north end of Corsica, and thence south between Italy and the islands. Not till June 14, off Civita Vecchia, was probable information received that the French had been seen ten days before off the south-west point of Sicily, steering to the eastward. As yet there was no certainty as to their destination, and Nelson had no light vessels for scouts. St. Vincent in his instructions had said, reflecting the ideas of the government, that the enemy's "object appears to be either an attack upon Naples or Sicily, the conveyance of an army to some part of Spain to invade Portugal, or to pass through the Straits with the view of proceeding to Ireland." The whole situation vividly illustrates the difficulty of pursuit by sea, and the necessity of stationing and keeping the detaining force near the point of the enemy's departure before he can get away. By whatsoever fault, certainly not that of Nelson or St. Vincent, the British fleet was a fortnight too late in entering the Mediterranean. It would have been yet more so, had the resources of the French dockyards answered to the spur of Bonaparte's urgency; but it is ill goading a starved horse.

An easterly course, however, with a fresh north-west wind, indicated that neither Spain nor the Atlantic was the destination of the French armament; and Nelson at once decided it must be Malta, to be used as a base of operations against Sicily. "Were I," said he, "the admiral of the fleet attending an army for the invasion of Sicily, I should say to the general: 'If you can take Malta, it secures the safety of the fleet and the transports, and your own safe retreat, if necessary;' Malta is in the direct road to Sicily." [175] Pausing a moment to communicate with Naples, he there heard, on the 17th of June, that the French had landed at Malta; and pushing on, received off Messina the news of its surrender. This was on the 20th, the day after Bonaparte sailed from the island for Egypt. On the 22d, off Cape Passaro, the south-east extremity of Sicily, a vessel was spoken, from which Nelson gained the information of Bonaparte's departure, supposed to be for Sicily; but he had meantime learned from Naples that the French had no intention of molesting any part of that kingdom. Utterly in the dark, and without frigates, he concluded, after weighing all the chances, that Egypt was the enemy's destination, and with a fair wind and a press of sail shaped his course for Alexandria. On the 28th the fleet came off the port, and sent a boat ashore. No French vessels had been seen on the coast.

This remarkable miscarriage, happening to a man of so much energy and intuition, was due primarily to his want of small lookout ships; and secondly, to Bonaparte's using the simple, yet at sea sufficient, ruse [176] of taking an indirect instead of a direct course to his object. This, however, in a narrow sea, with so numerous a body of vessels, would not have served him, had the British admiral had those active purveyors of information, those eyes of the fleet, which are so essential to naval as to land warfare. [177] On leaving Malta, Bonaparte directed the expedition to steer first for Candia. After a week's quiet navigation he was off the south side of the island, and on the 27th of June was joined by a frigate from Naples, to tell him of Nelson, with fourteen sail, being off that port ten days before. At this moment the British admiral had already outstripped his chase. On the 25th the two fleets had been about sixty miles apart, the French due north of the British, steering in nearly parallel directions. [178] When Bonaparte knew that his enemy was somewhere near upon his heels, he again changed the course, ordering the fleet to make the land seventy miles west of Alexandria, and sending a frigate direct to the port to reconnoitre. On the 29th of June, the day Nelson sailed away from Alexandria, the light squadron signalled the coast, along which the fleet sailed till July 1st, when it anchored off the city. Determined to run no chance of an enemy's frustrating his objects, the commander-in-chief landed his army the same evening.

If, in this celebrated chase, Nelson made a serious mistake, it was upon his arrival at Alexandria. He had reasoned carefully, and, as the event proved, accurately, that the French were bound to Egypt; and had justly realized the threat to the British supremacy in India contained in such an attempt. Knowing the time when the French left Malta, as he did, and that they were accompanied by so great a train of transports, it seems a fair criticism that he should have trusted his judgment a little further, and waited off the suspected port of destination to see whether so cumbrous a body had not been outsailed by his compact, homogeneous force. He appears, on finding his expectations deceived, to have fallen into a frame of mind familiar to most, in which a false step, however imposed by the conditions under which it was taken, can be seen only in the light of the unfortunate consequences, and therein assumes the color of a fault, or at best of a blunder. "His active and anxious mind," wrote Sir Edward Berry, who, as captain of the flag-ship, was witness of his daily feelings, "would not permit him to rest a moment in the same place; he therefore shaped his course to the northward for the coast of Caramania." [179] His one thought now was to get back to the westward, taking a more northerly course on the return, so as to increase the chance of information. The fleet accordingly stretched to the northward until the coast of Asia Minor was made, and then beat back along the south shore of Candia, not seeing a single vessel until it had passed that island. On the 19th of July it reached Syracuse, whence Nelson wrote to the British minister at Naples that, having gone a round of six hundred leagues with the utmost expedition, he was as ignorant of the situation of the enemy as he had been four weeks before. The squadron now filled with water, which was running short, and on the 24th again sailed for Alexandria; the admiral having satisfied himself that the French were at least neither in Corfu nor to the westward. On the 1st of August the minarets of the city were seen, and soon after the port full of shipping, with the French flag upon the walls, but, to Nelson's bitter disappointment, no large ships of war. At one in the afternoon, however, one of his fleet made signal that a number of ships-of-the-line were at anchor in Aboukir Bay, twelve or fifteen miles east of Alexandria; and Nelson, prompt to attack as Bonaparte had been to disembark, gave slippery fortune, so long unkind, no chance again to balk him, but with a brisk breeze flew at once upon the foe.

Neither by the character of the anchorage nor by its own dispositions was the French fleet prepared for the attack thus suddenly, and most unexpectedly, precipitated upon it. Two days after the army landed, the commander-in-chief gave Admiral Brueys explicit and urgent orders at once to sound the old port of Alexandria, and, if possible, take his ships in there; if not, and if Aboukir Bay would admit of defence at anchor against a superior force, he might choose a position there. Failing both, he was to go with his heavy vessels to Corfu. [180] That and the other Ionian Islands were within Bonaparte's district, by the decree of April 12 making him commander of the Army of the East. In a much later dispatch, which Brueys did not live to receive, he explains that it was indispensable to preserve the fleet from serious injury until the affair in Egypt was settled, in order to check any movement of the Porte; for, though the allegiance of the Mamelukes was but nominal, it was possible the Sultan might resent the French invasion. The justice of this cautious view was shown by the action of the Porte as soon as the destruction of the fleet became known. Brueys ordered the necessary soundings, and the report which he received on July 18, a fortnight before the battle, was favorable; with good weather it was possible to take the ships-of-the-line inside. [181] The admiral, however, was an invalid, and of a temper naturally undecided; unable to make a choice of difficulties, he hung on the balance and remained inactive, taking refuge in a persuasion that the British would not return. Bonaparte thought the same. "All the conduct of the English," wrote he on the 30th of July, "indicates that they are inferior in number, and content themselves with blockading Malta and intercepting its supplies." But the great soldier, prone as he always was to tempt fortune to the utmost for a great object, found in this opinion no reason for running unnecessary risks and in the same breath insisted upon Alexandria or Corfu for the fleet. Brueys had taken his ships to Aboukir Bay on the 8th of July, and there remained. He had the orders of his commander; but the latter, at a distance and absorbed in the cares of his operations ashore, could not communicate to his vacillating subordinate the impulse of his own energy. All the work of the squadron proceeded listlessly; the belief that the British fleet would not return sapped every effort; carelessness, indiscipline and insubordination, among officers and men, caused constant complaint and trouble. In such delusion and lethargy went by the priceless days which were passed by Nelson in unresting thought and movement, in "a fever of anxiety" [182] that scarcely allowed him to eat or drink.