About the end of August Bonaparte wished to open negotiations with the Pasha of Acre, nicknamed the Butcher.  He offered Djezzar his friendship, sought his in return, and gave him the most consolatory assurances of the safety of his dominions.  He promised to support him against the Grand Seignior, at the very moment when he was assuring the Egyptians that he would support the Grand Seignior against the beys.  But Djezzar, confiding in his own strength and in the protection of the English, who had anticipated Bonaparte, was deaf to every overture, and would not even receive Beauvoisin, who was sent to him on the 22d of August.  A second envoy was beheaded at Acre.  The occupations of Bonaparte and the necessity of obtaining a more solid footing in Egypt retarded for the moment the invasion of that pashalic, which provoked vengeance by its barbarities, besides being a dangerous neighbour.

From the time he received the accounts of the disaster of Aboukir until the revolt of Cairo on the 22d of October, Bonaparte sometimes found the time hang heavily on his hands.  Though he devoted attention to everything, yet there was not sufficient occupation for his singularly active mind.  When the heat was not too great he rode on horseback; and on his return, if he found no despatches to read (which often happened), no orders to send off; or no letters to answer, he was immediately absorbed in reverie, and would sometimes converse very strangely.  One day, after a long pause, he said to me: 

“Do you know what I am thinking of?”—­“Upon my word, that would be very difficult; you think of such extraordinary things.”—­“I don’t know,” continued he, “that I shall ever see France again; but if I do, my only ambition is to make a glorious campaign in Germany—­in the plains of Bavaria; there to gain a great battle, and to avenge France for the defeat of Hochstadt.  After that I would retire into the country, and live quietly.”

He then entered upon a long dissertation on the preference he would give to Germany as the theatre of war; the fine character of the people, and the prosperity and wealth of the country, and its power of supporting an army.  His conversations were sometimes very long; but always replete with interest.

—­[So early as 1794 Napoleon had suggested that Austria should always be attacked in Germany, not in Italy.  “It is Germany that should be overwhelmed; that done, Italy and Spain fall of themselves.  Germany should be attacked, not Spain or Italy.  If we obtain great success, advantage should never be taken of it to penetrate into Italy while Germany, unweakened, offers a formidable front” (Iung’s Bonaparte, tome ii. p. 936), He was always opposed to the wild plans which had ruined so many French armies in Italy, and which the Directory tried to force on him, of marching on Rome and Naples after every success in the north.]—­

In these intervals of leisure Bonaparte was accustomed