The General, during this interval of repose, received no communication from the French government; but rumours now began to reach his quarters which might well give him new anxieties.  The report of another rupture with Austria gradually met with more credence; and it was before long placed beyond a doubt, that the Ottoman Porte, instead of being tempted into any recognition of the French establishment in Egypt, had declared war against the Republic, and summoned all the strength of her empire to pour in overwhelming numbers on the isolated army of Buonaparte.

As yet, however, there was no appearance of an enemy; and Napoleon seized the opportunity to explore the Isthmus of Suez, where a narrow neck of land divides the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, partly with the view of restoring the communication which in remote times existed between them, and partly of providing for the defence of Egypt, should the Ottomans attempt their invasion by the way of Syria.

He visited the Maronite monks of Mount Sinai, and, as Mahomet had done before him, affixed his name to their charter of privileges; he examined also the fountain of Moses:  and nearly lost his life in exploring, during low water, the sands of the Red Sea, where Pharaoh is supposed to have perished in the pursuit of the Hebrews.  “The night overtook us,” says Savary in his Memoirs, “the waters began to rise around us, the guard in advance exclaimed that their horses were swimming.  Buonaparte saved us all by one of those simple expedients which occur to an imperturbable mind.  Placing himself in the centre, he bade all the rest form a circle round him, and then ride out each man in a separate direction, and each to halt as soon as he found his horse swimming.  The man whose horse continued to march the last, was sure, he said, to be in the right direction; him accordingly we all followed, and reached Suez at two in the morning in safety, though so rapidly had the tide advanced, that the water was at the poitrels of our horses ere we made the land.”

On his return to Cairo, the General despatched a trusty messenger into India, inviting Tippoo Saib to inform him exactly of the condition of the English army in that region, and signifying that Egypt was only the first post in a march destined to surpass that of Alexander!  “He spent whole days,” writes his secretary, “in lying flat on the ground stretched upon maps of Asia.”

At length the time for action came.  Leaving 15,000 in and about Cairo, the division of Dessaix in Upper Egypt, and garrisons in the chief towns,—­Buonaparte on the 11th of February 1799 marched for Syria at the head of 10,000 picked men, with the intention of crushing the Turkish armament in that quarter, before their chief force (which he now knew was assembling at Rhodes) should have time to reach Egypt by sea.  Traversing the desert which divides Africa from Asia, he took possession of the fortress El-Arish, (15 Feb.) whose