precautions, find its way this year into Egypt, and carry off more you "With respect to fortifications, Alexandria and El-Arish are the keys of Egypt. Citizen Poussielgue has had exclusively the charge of the finances, and I have found him a man of application and ability. He begins to see daylight through the dark administration of these affairs in this country. I intended, if possible, to make an effort in this winter to establish a new plan of taxation, with the view of managing without the Copts: but, should you think of undertaking it, I advise you to exercise much previous reflection, since it would be better to be too late than too soon with this operaBuild a tion. Undoubtedly, in the course of the winter, some French ships of war will be at Alexandria, at Burlos, or at Damietta. Endeavour to assemble 5 or 600 battery and a tower at Burlos. Mamelukes, whom, on the arrival of the French vessels, you could contrive to get arrested, all in one day, at Cairo, or in the other provinces, and embark them for France. If you cannot get hold of Mamethe lukes, hostages from among the Arabs or the Sheiks in El-Belled, whom puryou could arrest on some pretence, might be made to answer pose. These individuals, arriving in France, would be kept there for a year or two, would see the greatness of the nation, would acquire an idea of our manners and language, and, on returning to Egypt, would be so many partizans of our cause. "I have applied repeatedly to the French government for a company of players, and shall make a point of sending them out to you. This accommodation is of great importance, both as an amusement to our own army, and as a method of changing the manners of the country." In the letter of Kleber to the Directory, particular notice is taken of the passage in which Bonaparte adverted to the possible loss of 1500 men by the plague : "I have "I have brought this passage, Citizen-Directors," under your view, because it is characteristic in more points than one, and shews very clearly the reality of my situation. Of what importance can 1500 men, more or less, be in the immense extent of country which I have to defend, and the actions which we have daily to sustain ? "Alexandria and El-Arish are the two keys of Egypt!" El-Arish is a wretched fort, four days' journey in the desert; and the great difficulty of provisioning it prevents us from keeping in it a garrison of more than 250 men. Six hundred Mamelukes and Arabs may, whenever they chuse, interrupt its communication with Catieh; and, on the departure of Bonaparte, this garrison had provisions only for a fortnight. Alexandria is not a fortress, but a vast intrenched camp; it was, in truth, sufficiently well defended by a large train of besieging artillery, but, since we have lost that artillery in the disastrous campaign of Syria, and since Bonaparte has withdrawn all the ship-cannon to complete the equipment of the two frigates with which he has taken his departure, this camp could make only a feeble resistance.” It is interesting, after these documents, to observe the light in which Bonaparte represented the situation of his army to the Turkish government, in the pacific overture which he addressed to them: "Head Quarters, Cairo, 18th August, 1799. "Bonaparte, General in Chief, to the Grand Vizier, great among the great, enlightened, and wise; sole depository of the confidence of the greatest of Sultans. "I have the honour to write to your Excellency by the Effendi who was made prisoner at Aboukir, and whom I now send back to apprize you of the true situation of Egypt; as well as to commence negociations between the Sublime Porte and the French republic, with the view of putting an end to a war which is pernicious to both States, By what fatality is it, that Turkey and France, who have been on a friendly footing in all ages, (France the enemy of Russia and of Austria; Turkey, the enemy of Russia and of Austria,) happen to be at war with each other? How can your Excellency fail to be aware that every Frenchman who is killed is a friend lost to Turkey? Your Excellency cannot be ignorant that Russia is the true enemy of Islamism. The Emperor Paul has made himself grand master of Malta; that is, he has taken a vow to make war on Mussulmans. Is not he the head of the Greek church; that is, of the most numerous enemies of the Mohammedan faith? France, on the contrary, has destroyed the knights of Malta, burst the chains of the Turks who were there in captivity, and believes, agreeably to the tenets of the Mohammedan faith, that there is but one God. The Turkish government, therefore, after having remained the ally of France as long as the latter continued a Christian power, has made war on France from the moment that she approximated ber religion to the Mohammedan faith. Russia and England have deceived the Sublime Porte. They intercepted the couriers through whom we gave you notice of the expedition to Egypt, and represented this expedition as the beginning of the invasion of the Turkish empire; - as if I had not always declared that the object of the French republic was to destroy the Mamelukes, and not to make war on the Sublime Porte, to injure the interests of the English, and not of our great and faithful ally, the Emperor Selim. The Sublime Porte declared war in January against France with unexampled precipitation, without waiting the arrival of our ambassador Descorches, who had already left. Paris for Constantinople; without asking any explanation from me, or replying to any of the advances which I had made. "My army is strong, perfectly disciplined, and provided with all that is necessary to make it victorious over other armies, were they numerous as the sands of the ocean. Citadels and strong places, bristled with cannon, have been raised along the coast, and along the frontiers on the side of the desert; I thus fear nothing; I am invincible but I owe to humanity, to true policy, and to the most antient and most faithful of allies, the Emperor Selim, the measure which I now embrace. What the Porte could never attain by force of arms, she may attain by negociation. I will overwhelm every army that attempts the invasion of Egypt, but I will reply in a conciliating manner to all the overtures of negociation that you may make to me. From the moment in which Turkey ceases to act in concert with our enemies, Russia and Austria, France will do all that depends on her to restore good intelligence, or to remove whatever might cause disunion between the two states. You wish to have Egypt, we are told; it never was the intention of France to deprive you of it. Invest your minister at Paris with full power, or send one similarly authorized into Egypt, and the whole may be settled in a couple of hours. As for me, I shall account it the happiest day of my life, when I shall be enabled to terminate a war which is both impolitic and without an object." It appears by a letter from General Damas, chief of the Staff, dated 12th October 1799, that the effective force of the French army had amounted on the 23d September 1798 to 33,000 men: but, at the date in question, it was reduced to effective, 16,000; unfit for active service, 4,000; wholly disabled, 2,000. The list of the officers whom Bonaparte brought with him to France is of some importance, as it indicates the men on whom he thought he could place complete dependence for the prosecution of his designs at home; and the reader will here find several of his subsequent dignitaries under more humble titles: The above extracts contain nearly all that is interesting in this collection; the contents of which have long been known, in substance, to the British public, in consequence of the interception of the dispatches forwarded by General Kleber to the Directory in the latter part of 1799. ART. VI. Histoire du 18me Brumaire, &c.; i. e. History of the 18th Brumaire, and of Bonaparte, by M. GALLAIS, Author of the 18th Fructidor," and of the "Appeal to Posterity." Pp. 172. Paris. 1814. 8vo. THIS 66 HIS writer divides his subject, with great appearance of method, into nineteen chapters, which treat respectively of the state of parties previously to the return of Bonaparte from Egypt; of his early exploits in Italy; of the manner of accomplishing the revolution of the 18th Brumaire; and finally of the succeeding events. Few topics promise greater interest, particularly at a time when it might reasonably be supposed that some of the secret springs of these singular occurrences would be unveiled: but the author of this tract seems to go no farther than news-papers and magazines, in quest of documents. Nothing can be more barren than the account, as he terms it, of the early years of Bonaparte; and, if the observations on the state of parties be somewhat less uninteresting, they must be allowed to bear very slender marks of information and discrimination. Those of our countrymen, who expected to find the principles of liberty influence the writers, the military men, or the civil functionaries of France, have been, in general, woefully disappointed on obtaining an intimate acquaintance with those individuals. The truth is that, among the busy actors on the revolutionary scene, liberty was a mere rallying-word, and the real object of ambition was the attainment of government-offices. Rebell, the wellknown Director, acknowleged that the Revolution answered chiefly the purpose of "raising what was low, and bringing down what was exalted:" while a more concise and sarcastic writer declared it to consist in acquiring the means of telling your neighbour," Ote-tci de là, que je m'y mette." "Get thee out of place that I may get in." We have been unable to discover any thing new or striking in this account of the events of the 18th Brumaire, which in truth was nothing else than the overthrow of a disjointed government by an artful man at the head of 10,000 soldiers. The Directory, like the council of five hundred, had no force to oppose to the bayonets; and the people, disappointed by ten years of unavailing change, saw the whole transaction with complete complete indifference. The talent of Bonaparte was displayed, not in the management of the events of that day, but in the skill with which he adapted his falsehoods to each faction in succession, so as to persuade them all of his friendship, and eventually to absorb the whole power in himself.-After the recent political overthrow, it is amusing to look back to the extravagant compliments which were lavished by the different public bodies who came forwards to Bonaparte with their addresses, on his accession to the consular power; and an extract from them will serve to conclude our notice of this tract: "The genius of France was extinct, and you have created it anew." Department des Landes. "In the flower of age, you have dried up all the sources of glory." City of Tours. "You have reduced the genius of language to an inability to express, with adequate dignity, the magnitude and immensity of your services." Department of Calais. "Your glory surpasses that of all the heroes of antiquity; it has cost no tears." Department des Deux Sevres. "Perhaps in this address a portion of eulogium is offensive to your soul, which, indulgent in all other respects, is severe in this alone. Heaven has decreed that no man shall possess all kinds of courage; and it has refused to you the power of supporting praise." President of the National Institute. "Why are you not immortal in a physical, as you already are in a moral sense?" Department de Golo. ART. VII. De l'Assassinat, &c. i. e. On the Assassination of the Duke d'Enghien, and on the attempted Justification of M. de Caulincourt. 8vo. pp. 50. Printed at Orleans, and sold at Paris. 1814. WE E find rather more matter in this than in many French pamphlets of the present day; and, if the writer tells us nothing very striking, he leaves us at least in no doubt as to his meaning. He commences by an argument apparently unconnected with his subject, and little to be expected from a Bourbonnite; we mean on the liberty of the press, which has not, he insists, been sufficiently established by the late constitution. Much attention has been excited in France by the discussions on this most important topic, since the re-establishment of the legitimate monarchy: but, when we perceive a party-writer calling so loudly for it, it is not unfair to suspect that he means the liberty of abusing his political opponents; and a tolerably good proof of this is afforded by the sarcastic manner in which the present author quotes the accusations that were urged in the beginning of April against the Senate, Kk 4 for |