The first blood I saw shed in war was General Kleber’s.  He was struck in the head by a ball, not in storming the walls, but whilst heading the attack.  He came to Pompey’s Pillar, where many members of the staff were assembled, and where the General-in-Chief was watching the attack.  I then spoke to Kleber for the first time, and from that day our friendship commenced.  I had the good fortune to contribute somewhat towards the assistance of which he stood in need, and which, as we were situated, could not be procured very easily.

It has been endeavoured to represent the capture of Alexandria, which surrendered after a few hours, as a brilliant exploit.  The General-in-Chief himself wrote that the city had been taken after a few discharges of cannon; the walls, badly fortified, were soon scaled.  Alexandria was not delivered up to pillage, as has been asserted, and often repeated.  This would have been a most impolitic mode of commencing the conquest of Egypt, which had no strong places requiring to be intimidated by a great example.

Bonaparte, with some others, entered the city by a narrow street which scarcely allowed two persons to walk abreast; I was with him.  We were stopped by some musket-shots fired from a low window by a man and a woman.  They repeated their fire several times.  The guides who preceded their General kept up a heavy fire on the window.  The man and woman fell dead, and we passed on in safety, for the place had surrendered.

Bonaparte employed the six days during which he remained in Alexandria in establishing order in the city and province, with that activity and superior talent which I could never sufficiently admire, and in directing the march of the army across the province of Bohahire’h.  He sent Desaix with 4500 infantry and 60 cavalry to Beda, on the road to Damanhour.  This general was the first to experience the privations and sufferings which the whole army had soon to endure.  His great mind, his attachment to Bonaparte, seemed for a moment about to yield to the obstacles which presented themselves.  On the 15th of July he wrote from Bohahire’h as follows:  “I beseech you do not let us stop longer in this position.  My men are discouraged and murmur.  Make us advance or fall back without delay.  The villages consist merely of huts, absolutely without resources.”

In these immense plains, scorched by the vertical rays of a burning sun, water, everywhere else so common, becomes an object of contest.  The wells and springs, those secret treasures of the desert, are carefully concealed from the travellers; and frequently, after our most oppressive marches, nothing could be found to allay the urgent cravings of thirst but a little brackish water of the most disgusting description.

   —­[Some idea of the misery endured by the French troops on this
   occasion may be gathered from the following description is
   Napoleon’s Memoirs, dictated at St. Helena: