The conclusion is in these words.  “The army which I confide to you is composed of my children; in all times, even in the midst of the greatest sufferings, I have received the marks of their attachment:  keep alive in them these sentiments.  You owe this to the particular esteem and true attachment which I bear towards yourself.”

[Footnote 27:  Djezzar means butcher:  he had well earned this title by the mercilessness of his administration.]

[Footnote 28:  Sir Sydney Smith, having been taken prisoner and most unjustifiably confined by the French government in the dungeons of the Temple, had made his escape through the zeal of certain of the royalist party, and chiefly of Philippeaux.]

[Footnote 29:  The handsome swordsman—­i.e. Murat.]

[Footnote 30:  De Bourienne, whose curious work has appeared since the first edition of this narrative was published, confirms this statement of Napoleon:  but Napoleon, it is obvious, might have received letters which he did not choose to communicate to his secretary.]

CHAPTER XIII

     Retrospect—­Buonaparte arrives in France—­The Revolution of the
     18th Brumaire—­The Provisional Consulate.

We must now pause for a moment to indicate, however briefly and imperfectly, the course of events which had determined Napoleon to abandon the army of Egypt.

While the negotiations at Rastadt were still in progress, the Directory, on the most flimsy of pretences, marched an army into Switzerland; and, by vast superiority of numbers, overwhelmed the defence of the unprepared mountaineers.  The conquered cantons were formed into another republic of the new kind—­to wit, “the Helvetian:”  nominally a sister and ally, but really a slave of the French.  Another force, acting under orders equally unjustifiable, seized Turin, and dethroned the King of Sardinia.  Lastly, the Pope, in spite of all his humiliating concessions at Tollentino, saw a republican insurrection, roused by French instigation, within his capital.  Tumults and bloodshed ensued; and Joseph Buonaparte, the French ambassador, narrowly escaped with his life.  A French army forthwith advanced on Rome; the Pope’s functions as a temporal prince were terminated; he retired to the exile of Siena; and another of those feeble phantoms, which the Directory delighted to invest with glorious names, appeared under the title of “the Roman Republic.”

These outrages roused anew the indignation, the first, of all true lovers of freedom, the second, of the monarchs whose representatives were assembled at Rastadt, and the third, of the Catholic population throughout Europe.  England was not slow to take advantage of the unprincipled rashness of the Directory, and of the sentiments which it was fitted to inspire; and the result was a new coalition against France, in which the great power of Russia now, for the first time, took a part.  The French plenipotentiaries were suddenly ordered to quit Rastadt; and, within a few hours afterwards, they were murdered on their journey by banditti clad in the Austrian uniform, most assuredly not acting under orders from the Austrian government—­and now commonly believed to have been set on by certain angry intriguers of the Luxembourg.