The First Consul could not forget his cherished conquest in the East.  It was constantly the object of his thoughts.  He endeavoured to send reinforcements to his army from Brest and Toulon, but without success.  He soon had cause to repent having entrusted to the hands of Menou the command-in-chief, to which he became entitled only by seniority, after the assassination of Kleber by Soleiman Heleby.  But Bonaparte’s indignation was excited when he became acquainted with Menou’s neglect and mismanagement, when he saw him giving reins to his passion for reform, altering and destroying everything, creating nothing good in its stead, and dreaming about forming a land communication with the Hottentots and Congo instead of studying how to preserve the country.  His pitiful plans of defence, which were useless from their want of combination, appeared to the First Consul the height of ignorance.  Forgetful of all the principles of strategy, of which Bonaparte’s conduct afforded so many examples, he opposed to the landing of Abercromby a few isolated corps, which were unable to withstand the enemy’s attack, while the English army might have been entirely annihilated had all the disposable troops been sent against it.

The great admiration which Menou expressed at the expedition to Egypt; his excessive fondness for that country, the religion of which he had ridiculously enough embraced under the name of Abdallah; the efforts he made, in his sphere, to preserve the colony; his enthusiasm and blind attachment to Bonaparte; the flattering and encouraging accounts he gave of the situation of the army, at first had the effect of entirely covering Menou’s incapacity.

—­[For a ludicrous description of Menou see the Memoirs of Marmont:—­ “Clever and gay, he was an agreeable talker, but a great liar.  He was not destitute of some education.  His character, one of the oddest in the world, came very near to lunacy:  Constantly writing, always in motion in his room, riding for exercise every day, he was never able to start on any necessary of useful journey. . . .  When, later, Bonaparte, then First Consul, gave him by special favour the administration of Piedmont, he put off his departure from day to day for six months; and then he only did start because his friend Maret himself put him into his carriage, with post-horses already harnessed to it. . . .  When he left this post they found in his cabinet 900 letters which he had not opened.  He was an eccentric lunatic, amusing enough sometimes, but a curse to everything which depended on him.” (Memoirs of the Duc de Raguse, tome i. p. 410).]—­

This alone can account for the First Consul’s preference of him.  But I am far from concurring in what has been asserted by many persons, that France lost Egypt at the very moment when it seemed most easy of preservation.  Egypt was conquered by a genius of vast intelligence, great capacity, and profound military science.  Fatuity, stupidity, and incapacity