24th, 1800, and Lord Keith's letter, announc-fought, and been forgotten-nations have ing that the British Government would agree come and gone, and left no trace behind them to no capitulation, was dated Minorca, January-but the memory of that noble truthfulness 8th, 1800, or sixteen days before the signature remained, and expanded into a national charof the treaty. This letter was founded on in-acteristic; and our countrymen may, at this structions sent out by the English Cabinet to hour, in the streets of Cairo, hear the Arabs Lord Keith, dated December 17th, in conse- swear "by the honor of an Englishman.” ’— quence of the intercepted letters of Kleber, vol. i. p. 55. which had fallen into their hands immediately after Napoleon's return. Kleber no sooner We do not distinctly understand whether received Lord Keith's letter than he resumed Mr. Warburton means that the Arabs still hostilities, and fought the battle of Heliopolis remember and speak of this transaction, or with his wonted precipitance, without once reflecting on the fact that the letter on which whether he merely uses a form of speech he founded so much was written not only long indicating that an impression was produced before intelligence of the treaty had reached upon their minds strongly favorable to the England, but from Minorca, sixteen days be- English character for honor. The latter fore the treaty itself was signed. "No sooner, view would probably be the correct one; however," said Mr. Pitt in his place in Parlia- for we confess we have not been so sanment, was it known in England that the

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French general had the faith of a British offi-guine as to suppose that facts manifesting cer pledged to him, and was disposed to act the honor and good faith of nations, are upon it, than instructions were sent out to specifically understood and treasured up by have the Convention executed, though the offi- the masses of the people in any country. cer in question had, in fact, no authority to Our steady hope of the reward properly besign it." Orders accordingly were sent out longing to national honesty is not founded to execute the treaty, and they arrived in May, 1800, long after the battle of Heliopolis; upon a belief that any signal act of good and Kleber had consented to a renewal of the faith will be long or accurately remembertreaty, when it was interrupted by his assas- ed by the multitude, but rather upon this sination at Grand Cairo on June 14th, 1800. firm belief, namely, that a long series of Sir Sydney Smith had no authority to agree treaties performed and promises fulfilled, to the convention, nor was he the command-in spite of temptation to break them, will ing officer on the station, in whom that power always be vaguely summed up in the minds necessarily resided, but a mere commodore in command of a ship of the line and two fri- of the nations, until in the end a corre gates, Lord Keith being the head of the squad-sponding amount of confidence is engenron in the Mediterranean. This conduct-dered. in agreeing, contrary to their obvious interests, to restore the French a powerful veteran army, irrecoverably separated from the Republic at the very time when it most stood in need of its assistance, in consequence of a convention acceded to without authority by a subordinate officer-is the strongest instance of the good faith of the English Cabinet; and affords a striking contrast to the conduct of Napoleon soon after, in refusing to ratify the armistice of Treviso, concluded with full powers by his general, Brune, a proceeding which the French historians mention, not only without disapprobation, but manifest satisfaction.' -Alison's History of Europe, 5th edit. vol. iv. p. 561.

It has been seen that Lord Keith's instructions forbade all capitulation, except upon the terms of the French surrendering as prisoners of war. 'To such insults,' said the heroic and fiery Kleber, 'we will answer with battles and victories.' And he made good his speech. An army of 40,000 Ottomans had passed the Desert, and hung on the eastern frontier of Egypt. The French commander was obliged, there fore, to concentrate his troops; and as he did so, the futility of Buonaparte's attempts to influence the Egyptians was made manifest. Cairo rose, and forced its small garrison of Frenchmen to take refuge in the Lord Keith's instructions not to act upon citadel. Other places followed the examthe Convention signed by the French and ple; but meanwhile, on a fair moonlight Turkish commanders were instantly com-night, the armies met near the ruins of Hemunicated to Kleber by his high-minded liopolis, and Kleber gained by far the most foe, Sir Sydney Smith.

'The spirit,' says Mr. Warburton, which dictated the British sailor's act was understood in the deserts-a voice went forth among

the tents of the Bedouins and the palaces of the despot, that England preferred honor to advantage. Battles, since then, have been

brilliant victory that had been hitherto achieved by the French arms against the rude masses of the East. The victorious general followed up his military successes by an able civil administration; and a hard, yet steady and judicious pressure upon the resources of the country, soon enabled him

to retrieve the financial condition of his The Convention of Alexandria must army. Now, however, arrived instructions have counteracted, in great measure, the from England, based upon that high sense effect produced by our victories upon the of honor which induced Pitt to ratify the public opinion of the East. Orientals merely implied approval of an English offi- habitually distrust the existence of a power cer, even although that officer was wholly which is exerted with any thing like chaunauthorized to act. Kleber again signed ritable, or even politic forbearance; and the convention; but before he could give seeing that the Englishman had been ineffect to its stipulations he was assassinated duced to let his old foe escape so easily, by a fanatical Mussulman. they would hardly believe it possible that Menou, the new French commander, re- the latter could have been utterly beaten. pudiated the convention, and prepared to If we had erected a handsome pyramid with measure his strength with a foe more trou- the skulls of the French soldiers, and had blesome than any whom the Republicans sold all the savans as slaves, we should have had hitherto encountered in the land of conciliated more effectually the love and esEgypt. The battle of Aboukir is vividly teem of the Turks. Still, although our described by Mr. Warburton; but neither upon this nor upon the subsequent successes of the English arms can we now afford time to dwell. It is more within our purpose to remark that the prestige of French superiority, even over mere Örientals, was at length shaken; for a Turkish general was persuaded to act in the field with such an astonishing amount of common sense, that he absolutely gained a kind of victory over Belliard, and compelled a French general, with 6000 prime troops, to retreat before scimitars, shouts, and yataghans.

prowess had thus fallen short of perfection, we had done a good deal. The forced evacuation of Egypt by a French army, so lately holding it in military possession, was a fact for men's minds to dwell on. In time of profound peace and professed amity between the governments of the invading and invaded countries, a vast armament had landed on the shores of Egypt-the clear superiority of European discipline and European tactics had been displayed to the full-the invaders had shrunk from no sort or amount of expedient cruelty-they had spared no act of treachery-no form of At length a final capitulation was signed. falsehood, if only it seemed advantageousThe French (more tenderly used in treaty they had debased themselves by renouncthan in battle) were allowed to depart in ing their religion (or, if not their own, at peace; troops, artists, savans, and all, tak-least the religion of their forefathers) for ing with them their arms and accoutre- the nonsensical forms of mere Orientals— ments, their collections of antiquities, and their savans, too, had tried their little arts. their famous drawings of Egyptian monuments.* The guns which they were forced to abandon amounted in number to several hundreds; but in order that, on arriving at Toulon, they might have the air of bringing back their artillery with them, they stipulated for the right of carrying off ten field-pieces. Thus, in almost all the acts of the invaders, from the day when the expedition sailed from France under the name of The Left Wing of the Army of England,' up to the final capitulation of Alexandria, we detect the principle of deception.

And now-with their numbers diminished by nearly one-half, their artillery reduced to ten pieces, their character for invincibility and good faith reduced to nothing at allthey passed away to the West like a plague, and, as though in compliance with the prayer of the Mussulmans, to 'infest the cities of Christians.'

His

The Ottoman empire now rested from French visitation; but before six years were over, the late General of the Republican army in Egypt had become the Emperor of the West; and when Sebastiani presented his credentials as ambassador at the Porte, he represented, to all seeming, * All these curiosities and objects of art were the greatest of earthly potentates. to have been delivered up to the English by the terms of the Convention. The savans, however, power, therefore, was great, and he knew stoutly rebelled against this provision. They de- how to make it tell. The diplomatist who clared that, if it were insisted upon, they would represents a powerful European state at an destroy all the articles in question, and would Eastern court, must be something more throw upon Lord Hutchinson the infamy of be- than a mere rounder of periods and softener coming a 'second Amrou;' and the English commander was so much alarmed or mystified by of phrases. Geographical distance is only this threat that he actually surrendered the claim. one of the many causes which make it imVOL. V.-No. I. 7

proportionately attenuated the resources of British negotiators throughout all Europe. Sir Robert Adair's highly interesting Memoir of his Embassy shows how keenly the check was felt by him at Vienna.

French expedition of 1798. We had this, however, to say for ourselves, as honorably contradistinguishing us from the Frenchnamely, that we were at war with the sovereign of the country which we chose to invade.

possible to set down in London or Paris minute instructions that can be treated as strictly binding at the Sublime Gate of the Seraglio, or the Heavenly Ark of Tehraun; and where the Foreign Office is impotent to instruct, the ambassador must have Pretty closely upon this capital blunder power to choose. State events in the East, there followed our ill-advised descent too, are sudden in their coming-grand in (March 1807) upon the coast of Egypt. their consequences. By the test of a great The British force successfully established emergency Sebastiani was tried, and he itself in Damietta and Alexandria; but a showed himself sagacious, decisive, intrepid disaster sustained at Rosetta by a strong -ntrepid as though he were handling detachment of our troops so discouraged troops against some old-fashioned general, those in command that they were glad to who issued his orders, like Cuesta, from out sign an honorable convention providing for of a coach and six. The influence of Na- the restoration of prisoners and the evacuapoleon (we speak merely of his influence tion of the country. Now, considering that upon the court and councils of the Turks) at the time of planning the enterprise we was raised to a height that absolutely ex- were engaged in deadly struggle with an cluded the enemies of France from the European potentate then fully a match for friendship of the Sultan. The English our strength, we are bound to conclude ultimatum was therefore imperious, re- that, in the conception of this scheme for quiring the Porte to come to an immediate the invasion of Egypt, there was something rupture with France, and to join the Anglo- of the frivolity which had characterized the Russian alliance. The Divan replied by a declaration of war; and Admiral Duckworth, with seven ships of the line and two frigates, boldly forced the Dardanelles, sailed through the Marmora, and brought up within sight of the Seraglio point. The city was at this moment defenceless, and At this time the alliance between France the ships of the Sultan lay, tempting and and the Porte appeared to be firm as the easy of capture, in the Golden Horn. The hills. An ambassador was accredited by Divan, feeling itself, as it were, in a glass- the Sultan to Napoleon, and he found him house, was vastly anxious to avoid being where best an emperor' beseems the pursmashed, and fully disposed to give way. ple-he found him in arms on the Vistula, But Sebastiani, bold and sanguine, saw in all the pride and strength that is implied grounds of hope in the possible simplicity by a line of operations as safe as the Champs of the British commander. The full extent Elysées, yet more than a thousand miles of a brave sailor's innocence in diplomacy could never be known until it was fairly tested; and 'good Sir John' might perhaps be amused by pretended negotiations until the preparations necessary for resisting an attack could be perfected. At all events the Turks might be persuaded to try the experiment. They tried it. In seven days the defences of the city and the duping of the Devonshire admiral were complete. An attack was no longer practicable. The fleet, returning through the Dardanelles, once more ran the gauntlet of the monsterguns; and before the British commander anchored again off Tenedos, his losses were 250 men killed or wounded; an opportunity of bursting the Franco-Ottoman alliance thrown away; and his character for common sense missing. This brilliant achievement of course raised Sebastiani to the very zenith of diplomatic glory, and

long. Napoleon, recurring to his favorite Oriental style, told the Ottoman, that sooner should his right arm quarrel with his left than he the Emperor of France with his brother the great Padishah. There is every reason to believe that at this moment Napoleon was sincere; but he thought no more of breaking inconvenient engagements with a Turkish ambassador than if he had spoken his promises to a mere tur ban and bundle of shawls, without a man in the midst of them. This was soon proved; and we shall presently see that, in a very few months from the utterance of the vow just quoted, the 'right arm' quietly agreed to the dismemberment and partition of the unfortunate 'left.'

In the character of a gifted, high-spirited parvenu (and our remark applies to the small social ambitions, no less than to the broad arena of public affairs), a readiness

seemed to be prolonged for a while by the conference of Erfurth; but Napoleon, finding at last that he had been duped (for tolerance in the direction of Spain' was no fair exchange for 'tolerance in the direction of Turkey,') gradually receded from his engagements. This was usual with him. When he made a blunder in war, he denied it; when he blundered in the making of a treaty, he broke it. No partition took place, and the sultan still held his own.

to insult or deal sternly with the older and viding between them the whole of European more feeble-minded rulers of the earth is Turkey, except the city of Constantinople often found strangely united with a suscep- and the promontory on which it is situate. tibility of being cajoled by them. The In short, the fair provinces of the sultan, to power and the weakness-the poison and whose government Napoleon had been its antidote-grow up together. Of this swearing eternal friendship, were treated as seeming anomaly in the human character diamond snuff-boxes, and quietly presented Napoleon stands an example. Until after by emperor to czar, and czar to emperor, the battle of Friedland he had been the con- with assurances of high consideration.' queror the humbler of princes; now he Instantly (that is, even before he demounted the raft on the Niemen; and lo! parted from Tilsitt,) Napoleon despatched great joy for the wily Alexander-great joy eager instructions to Marmont, in Illyria, by and by for Europe-he showed his and to Sebastiani, at Constantinople, preweakness, that weakness which afterwards paratory to the seizure and enjoyment of reduced him from a self-trusting soldier to the Western Pashalics. But an arrangethe mere son-in-law* of a German sovereign. ment for the partition of the Turkish emThe Great Captain, in short, was cajolea- pire, without providing for the appropriable, and he who had been trampling so tion of Constantinople, was illusory. The fiercely on the House of Brandenburg sultan, retaining only the city itself and the could at once be flattered and talked into promontory on which it stands, could not meanness by the imperial craft of a Ro- have preserved the envied site against the manoff. Alexander affected to be irresis-imperial holder of Bulgaria. The amity of tibly charmed, and even subdued by Na- the emperors had some duration, and poleon's style of talking-a style (so Count Munster described it) half lapidary, half quack-advertisement.' By thus seeming to be wheedled himself, the Czar absolutely wheedled Napoleon into engagements for the partition of the Ottoman empire. Contrive that your enemy shall betray his friends, and you gain a long march on him. And this march Alexander gained over Na poleon by persuading him to betray the Sultan. No obscurity now veils the secret arrangements of Tilsitt. Bignon, the appointed defender and diplomatic historian of Napoleon, seems to have thought it necessary to begin by wrapping up his hero's treason in a slightly nebulous phrase, and therefore, instead of saying at once that the dismemberment of the Grand Signor's dominions was decided upon, he tells us that the French Emperor was induced to extend towards the czar a certain tolerance in the direction of Turkey.' He is afterwards, however, compelled to give the eighth written article, which formally provided for the partition of the Ottoman empire, in the event of the sultan's refusing or delaying to accept Napoleon's mediation: and finally, he admits that the emperors did in fact come to an unconditional agreement for di*The fatuity with which Napoleon in 1813 and '14 relied upon the aid of his 'beaupère, is made to appear very plainly in Caulaincourt's memoirs. But the most melancholy trait is that told by Bourrienne of the Emperor's coolly alluding to some room in the Tuileries as having been decorated in the time du Roi, mon oncle'-Louis XVI-husband of poor Maria-Louisa's aunt.

It might seem that because the magnificent gifts offered to the czar by the French emperor consisted of another man's provinces, and because, too, those gifts were never actually handed over, therefore the concessions of Napoleon cost him but little. They cost him dear indeed. If the engagements of Tilsitt had never been entered into, of course the irritation occasioned by Napoleon's breach of them would never have been engendered. And this very irritation was the true virus of that protracted altercation that brought about in due season the fatal invasion of Russia. But Napoleon's ill faith in making the arrangements of Tilsitt, no less than his ill faith in evading them, was to the French emperor, an element of destruction. The betrayal of the sultan brought its separate punishment upon the faithless ally. And thus it was that retribution came. When Napoleon was preparing for the invasion of Russia, that power, then at war with the Porte, was engaged with a vast portion of her military force on the Lower Danube.

Her successes had been slow and insignifi-jof France to the Pasha of Egypt were made cant, her failures mortifying, the loss of and broken, can never be so plainly made men occasioned by the insalubrity of the manifest as by quoting the very words of climate very great; and now that she was the two Frenchmen who, in 1840, succesto be attacked in the heart of her empire by sively held the portfolio for foreign affairs, the great Napoleon in person, at the head The four powers had been holding stern of the whole western continent, her hither-language to Mehemet Ali, and had plainly to ineffectual efforts on the Danube would warned him that, if he delayed the surrennecessarily be paralyzed, and the Ottoman, der of Northern Syria beyond the period with a very little more of vigor in the con- fixed upon, they would wrest from him not duct of the war, might seriously humble his only that territory, but Acre and Palestine ancient enemy, recover lost ground, and re- too; and that, if he delayed yet further, trieve the disgraces of half a century. they would put a period to his rule even in Moreover, the vast seeming greatness of the Egypt. The crafty old Pasha, thus menFrench emperor at this period must have aced, naturally turned to his volatile protectended strongly to fascinate the Oriental tor, and wanted to know how far he might mind. How then, and by what earthly rely upon French aid. M. Thiers instantmeans, could the Divan be persuaded to ly despatched M. Walewski (a reputed son resist these attractive forces?-By remind- of Napoleon, and therefore hereditarily ening it of Tilsitt. There was nothing to set titled to watch the state of the French against the greatness of Napoleon's power, Lake') with instructions to promise great except the greatness of his treachery. things in the name of France-armed and The true tenor of the secret arrangements arming. On the 25th of November, 1840, was carefully manifested and explained to M. Thiers stood in his place in the Chamthe simple Turks; and these men, under- ber of Deputies, and spoke these words: standing how coolly their supposed ally had I proposed to the King, therefore, to arm prepared to dismember their empire, were not 400,000 but 630,000 men, of the line, fired with an indignation so strong as actu- and 300,000 of mobilized national guards.. ally to supersede the desire of gratifying This was what I said to the Pasha-" Do national selfishness and old national hates. not pass the Taurus; cover well St. Jean The Porte not only refrained from taking d'Acre and Alexandria; demand the mediadvantage of Russia's predicament by push-ation of France, and if you can make the ing the war with alacrity, but was actually war last out-if you can prolong it till the induced to conclude a peace with the Czar. spring-France will then, at the head of all Thus Russia was enabled to concentrate her forces, negociate for you, and will do all her resources against the French inva- so with advantage." We thought it der. Troops from the Ottoman borders necessary to add a physical effect to a morwere rapidly drafted northward; and when al effect--that is to say, to send the French Napoleon, retreating from Moscow, ap-fleet to Alexandria [this was never done], proached the banks of the Beresina, Tchit- and to make the French flag float on chagoff, with a force of some forty thousand the walls of that town [nor this].' 'Yes, men, now freely spared from the Danube, gentlemen,' said the same statesman, on completed that terrible circle which turned the 28th, I would have demanded the the failure and embarrassment of the grand modification of the treaty [the treaty of the army' to absolute destruction.

15th July], and if it had been refused, although, as a statesman, I know perfectly well how terrible the word war is for a country, I would have cried war! war!and I should have found an echo in France.'

The last great era of ambitious interference by France in the affairs of the Levant is that of 1840. The diplomatic strife of that and the preceding year was waged in two acts: first, the French abandoned the These were not the words of a mere subsultan for the sake of madly abetting Me- editor of a war-crying journal, but of a man hemet Ali against the four powers; and, who had just delivered up the portfolio of secondly, they abandoned Mehemet Ali in foreign affairs, and who, not two months order to return to their senses. The histo- before, had power to engage for a mighty ry of act the first long since received full noon-day light from Lord Palmerston's admirable despatch of the 31st of August, 1840; but the second phase of the business, and the coolness with which the promises

nation. But whilst M. Thiers was promising, the four powers were performing: they let slip the dashing Commodore Napier upon the coast of Syria. Thiers continued to promise, but he withdrew his fleet-lest