Kleber was not fond of General Bonaparte, and endured his ascendency with a sort of impatience, and now he was sorry that he had quitted the banks of the Rhine for the banks of the Nile.  The chief command did not counterbalance the necessity of remaining in Egypt, for he took no pleasure in commanding.

[Illustration:  124.jpg statue of general Kleber at Strasburg]

Kleber, however, was the most popular of the generals among the soldiery.  His name was hailed by them with entire confidence, and somewhat cheered them for the loss of the illustrious commander who had just left them.  He returned to Cairo, assumed the command with a sort of ostentation, and took possession of the fine Arabian mansion which his predecessor had occupied in the Ezbekieh Place.  But it was not long before the solicitudes of the chief command, which were insupportable to him, the new dangers with which the Turks and the English threatened Egypt, and the grief of exile, which was general, filled his soul with the most gloomy discouragement.

Kleber, together with Poussielgue, the administrator of the army, at once prepared and addressed despatches to the Directory, placing the condition of the troops, the finances, and the number of the enemy in the most melancholy light.  These despatches fell into the hands of the English, and the duplicate reports found their way into the hands of Bonaparte himself.  Bonaparte had left instructions with Kleber to meet every possible contingency during his absence, even to the necessity of an evacuation of Egypt.  “I am going to France,” said he, “either as a private man or as a public man; I will get reinforcement sent to you.  But if by next spring (he was writing in August, 1799) you have received no supplies, no instructions; if the plague has carried off more than fifteen hundred men, independently of losses by war; if a considerable force, which you should be incapable of resisting, presses you hard, negotiate with the vizier:  consent even, if it must be so, to an evacuation; subject to one condition, that of referring to the French government; and meanwhile continue to occupy.  You will thus have gained time, and it is impossible that, during the interval, you should not have received succour.”

The instructions were very sound; but the case foreseen was far from being realised at the time when Kleber determined to negotiate for the evacuation of Egypt.  Murad Bey, disheartened, was a fugitive in Upper Egypt with a few Mamluks.  Ibrahim Bey, who, under the government of the Mamluks, shared the sovereignty with him, was then in Lower Egypt towards the frontier of Syria..  He had four hundred horse.  Djezzar Pasha was shut up in St. Jean d’Acre, and, so far from preparing a reinforcement of men for the army of the grand vizier, he viewed, on the contrary, with high displeasure, the approach of a fresh Turkish army, now that his pashalik was delivered from the