m caused by these vast designs only served to spur on our
forces to efforts which cost Tippoo his life and the French most of
their Indian settlements.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX

SYRIA

Meanwhile Turkey had declared war on France, and was sending an army
through Syria for the recovery of Egypt, while another expedition was
assembling at Rhodes. Like all great captains, Bonaparte was never
content with the defensive: his convictions and his pugnacious
instincts alike urged him to give rather than to receive the blow; and
he argued that he could attack and destroy the Syrian force before the
cessation of the winter's gales would allow the other Turkish
expedition to attempt a disembarkation at Aboukir. If he waited in
Egypt, he might have to meet the two attacks at once, whereas, if he
struck at Jaffa and Acre, he would rid himself of the chief mass of
his foes. Besides, as he explained in his letter of February 10th,
1799, to the Directors, his seizure of those towns would rob the
English fleet of its base of supplies and thereby cripple its
activities off the coast of Egypt. So far, his reasons for the Syrian
campaign are intelligible and sound. But he also gave out that,
leaving Desaix and his Ethiopian supernumeraries to defend Egypt, he
himself would accomplish the conquest of Syria and the East: he would
raise in revolt the Christians of the Lebanon and Armenia, overthrow
the Turkish power in Asia, and then march either on Constantinople or
Delhi.

It is difficult to take this quite seriously, considering that he had
only 12,000 men available for these adventures; and with anyone but
Bonaparte they might be dismissed as utterly Quixotic. But in his case
we must seek for some practical purpose; for he never divorced fancy
from fact, and in his best days imagination was the hand-maid of
politics and strategy rather than the mistress. Probably these
gorgeous visions were bodied forth so as to inspirit the soldiery and
enthrall the imagination of France. He had already proved the immense
power of imagination over that susceptible people. In one sense, his
whole expedition was but a picturesque drama; and an imposing climax
could now be found in the plan of an Eastern Empire, that opened up
dazzling vistas of glory and veiled his figure in a grandiose mirage,
beside which the civilian Directors were dwarfed into ridiculous
puppets.

If these vast schemes are to be taken seriou