To Bonaparte this disaster came as a bolt from the blue.  Only two days before, he had written from Cairo to Brueys that all the conduct of the English made him believe them to be inferior in numbers and fully satisfied with blockading Malta.  Yet, in order to restore the morale of his army, utterly depressed by this disaster, he affected a confidence which he could no longer feel, and said:  “Well! here we must remain or achieve a grandeur like that of the ancients."[106] He had recently assured his intimates that after routing the Beys’ forces he would return to France and strike a blow direct at England.  Whatever he may have designed, he was now a prisoner in his conquest.  His men, even some of his highest officers, as Berthier, Bessieres, Lannes, Murat, Dumas, and others, bitterly complained of their miserable position.  But the commander, whose spirits rose with adversity, took effective means for repressing such discontent.  To the last-named, a powerful mulatto, he exclaimed:  “You have held seditious parleys:  take care that I do not perform my duty:  your six feet of stature shall not save you from being shot”:  and he offered passports for France to a few of the most discontented and useless officers, well knowing that after Nelson’s victory they could scarcely be used.  Others, again, out-Heroding Herod, suggested that the frigates and transports at Alexandria should be taken to pieces and conveyed on camels’ backs to Suez, there to be used for the invasion of India.[107]

The versatility of Bonaparte’s genius was never more marked than at this time of discouragement.  While his enemies figured him and his exhausted troops as vainly seeking to escape from those arid wastes; while Nelson was landing the French prisoners in order to increase his embarrassment about food, Bonaparte and his savants were developing constructive powers of the highest order, which made the army independent of Europe.  It was a vast undertaking.  Deprived of most of their treasure and many of their mechanical appliances by the loss of the fleet, the savants and engineers had, as it were, to start from the beginning.  Some strove to meet the difficulties of food-supply by extending the cultivation of corn and rice, or by the construction of large ovens and bakeries, or of windmills for grinding corn.  Others planted vineyards for the future, or sought to appease the ceaseless thirst of the soldiery by the manufacture of a kind of native beer.  Foundries and workshops began, though slowly, to supply tools and machines; the earth was rifled of her treasures, natron was wrought, saltpetre works were established, and gunpowder was thereby procured for the army with an energy which recalled the prodigies of activity of 1793.