General Desaix had marched into Upper Egypt in pursuit of Mourad Bey.  We learned that Ibrahim, who, next to Mourad, was the most influential of the bays, had proceeded towards Syria, by the way of Belbeis and Salehye’h.  The General-in-Chief immediately determined to march in person against that formidable enemy, and he left Cairo about fifteen days after he had entered it.  It is unnecessary to describe the well-known engagement in which Bonaparte drove Ibrahim back upon El-Arish; besides, I do not enter minutely into the details of battles, my chief object being to record events which I personally witnessed.

At the battle of Salehye’h Bonaparte thought he had lost one of his ‘aides de camp’, Sulkowsky, to whom he was much attached, and who had been with us during the whole of the campaign of Italy.  On the field of battle one object of regret cannot long engross the mind; yet, on his return to Cairo, Bonaparte frequently spoke to me of Sulkowsky in terms of unfeigned sorrow.

“I cannot,” said he one day, “sufficiently admire the noble spirit and determined courage of poor Sulkowsky.”  He often said that Sulkowsky would have been a valuable aid to whoever might undertake the resuscitation of Poland.  Fortunately that brave officer was not killed on that occasion, though seriously wounded.  He was, however, killed shortly after.

The destruction of the French squadron in the roads of Aboukir occurred during the absence of the General-in-Chief.  This event happened on the 1st of August.  The details are generally known; but there is one circumstance to which I cannot refrain from alluding, and which excited deep interest at the time.  This was the heroic courage of the son of Casablanca, the captain of the ‘Orient’.  Casablanca was among the wounded, and when the vessel was blown up his son, a lad of ten years of age, preferred perishing with him rather than saving himself, when one of the seamen had secured him the means of escape.  I told the ’aide de camp’, sent by General Kleber, who had the command of Alexandria, that the General-in-Chief was near Salehye’h.  He proceeded thither immediately, and Bonaparte hastened back to Cairo, a distance of about thirty-three leagues.

In spite of any assertions that may have been made to the contrary, the fact is, that as soon as the French troops set foot in Egypt, they were filled with dissatisfaction, and ardently longed to return home.’

—­[’Erreurs’ objects to this description of the complaints of the army, but Savary (tome i. pp. 66, 67, and tome i. p. 89) fully confirms it, giving the reason that the army was not a homogeneous body, but a mixed force taken from Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Genoa, and Marseilles; see also Thiers, tome v. p. 283.  But the fact is not singular.  For a striking instance, in the days of the Empire, of the soldiers in 1809, in Spain, actually threatening Napoleon in his own hearing, see De Gonneville